by Brad Taylor
Knuckles grinned and said, “The ‘so what’ is that Kurt needs a new awardee. Someone to prance in front of the Council. And that Cayman mission fits the bill.”
I immediately snapped back, “Bullshit! I’m not doing that. I’m a damn civilian. This is supposed to help out guys on active duty. Guys like you. I am not going in front of the Council and getting some bullshit award. No way.”
Jennifer understood my tolerance for such dog and pony shows, which was nonexistent, but also saw the bigger picture. She said, “Hey, hey. Come on. It’s not all gunfighting. You want to play in the game, you also have to play by the rules. All they want to do is thank you. Look at it this way: It’s your chance to show them you’re a thinking, erudite man instead of a muscle with a trigger finger.”
She looked at Knuckles and said, “It might help alleviate all of the fear those guys have about Grolier Recovery Services. Pike can be the smartest guy in the room when he’s forced to act like a human. I think it’s a good idea.”
Knuckles grinned and leaned forward conspiratorially. He said, “I’m glad you feel that way, Koko, because they don’t give a shit about Pike. The award’s for you.”
14
I heard his words, and, embarrassingly, my first thought was What the hell? I’m not good enough? Like a guy who said he’d never go to a party, then found out he wasn’t invited.
Jennifer said, “Me? What for? The whole purpose of those awards is to help the guys still on active duty. I’ve never even been in the military.”
Knuckles said, “Yeah, I know, but we’re in a whole new world. Kurt wants to showcase you. No offense, but you’re the only female Operator in the Taskforce. It’ll sell well on the political front.”
I said, “That’s absolute bullshit. No way is GRS going to be leveraged for some sort of political horse-trading. They can use our company for killing terrorists, but we’re not playing those games. Kurt can’t just bang the drum and ask us to start dancing.”
Knuckles laughed and held up his hands. “Calm down. I told Kurt this would happen. Nobody’s being hurt. Guy will still get his award; he just won’t have a ceremony. Kurt’s got something he wants to say tomorrow at the Council meeting, and the only time he can guarantee they all attend is one of these award ceremonies. He wasn’t going to tell them it was off.”
Jennifer said, “I don’t like being a showpiece. I didn’t come to the Taskforce because I have some mission for women’s rights. It’s hard enough just getting any of the males to trust me. This ceremony will set that back to the beginning.”
The words hung for a bit, then Knuckles said, “Remember what you just told Pike? About showing the Council what he’s really like? And how that would do some good? This will do some good. The Taskforce knows what you’re capable of. This won’t change that.”
She balled up a napkin and said, “You know what I can do. You and the rest of Pike’s team are the only ones who do. Decoy’s dead. The others look at me as a liability. I know how this will play in the team room.”
Knuckles looked at me, and I shrugged, agreeing with her. Fuck the Council. He said, “This award isn’t going to alter your actions on the Decoy tape. That’s set in stone.”
She flinched at the words, seeing the fight in her mind and not being sure what to say. I leaned forward into Knuckles’s face, angry that he’d brought that up. It was an event she was still dealing with, alone at night, when the bad man comes.
“Don’t go there. That’s not right.”
Knuckles said, “It is right. And if you were the team leader you claim to be, instead of protecting her as her partner, you’d see it. Her reputation has nothing to do with this ceremony. She already owns her reputation.”
She said, “This has nothing to do with Decoy—”
He cut her off and said, “Yes, it does. At the end of the day, just like you told Pike, it’s all about operating. All about permission. Stroke the Council a little bit. Make them feel good about what we’re doing. Take off the edge of killer-commando crap and put on the pink ruffle of women’s equality. Who cares if it’s fake? The men in the team room won’t, I promise. Pike’s no longer there, but I am.”
She leaned back, not liking the logic. I didn’t either, but I saw it to be true. The Oversight Council was designed to execute Taskforce operations in the absence of politics, but in America, that was impossible. Politics always trumped the mission. Always. And that damn Decoy tape spoke for itself.
I said, “So Jennifer’s going to be paraded in front of the Council tomorrow? What’s she supposed to say? What’s the message?”
Knuckles looked toward the door and said, “Ask the man yourself.” I saw Kurt coming down the length of the bar. Knuckles grinned and said, “I’m just a team member.”
He winked at me, and, for the first time, I wondered when he’d leave my team. After my fall from grace, then my return, he’d voluntarily turned over command of his team—my team—solely because of our relationship. We were closer than brothers, but hearing his words today, he proved again he was clearly smarter than 95 percent of the men inside the Taskforce—and they were some pretty smart individuals to begin with. Truth be told, he was smarter than me. And I was keeping him down by making him stay forever number two. How long would he be willing to remain there? The thought scared me.
Kurt approached the table, and Jennifer stood, giving him an embrace. He said, “How’s my favorite female Operator?”
She said, “You mean your only female Operator? Apparently about to do a song and dance for you.”
Kurt looked at Knuckles, and he said, “Hey, you didn’t say it was classified.”
I stood up, shook his hand, and said, “Apparently, this ceremony is so horrible you scared off the one guy who was supposed to get the award.”
Kurt’s expression became grim. “Something else scared Guy off. I just hope he’s taking the time to deal with it.”
15
Guy George laid out his new identity on the hotel bed, checking one more time to see if he could find anything indicating they were forged. Passport, credit cards, driver’s license, and cellular phone, all in the name of Sean Parnell. And all looked perfect.
It was decision time. Kill or not kill?
It had been a week since he’d received the box with his brother’s belongings, and he’d spent the days working in the Taskforce headquarters, studying intelligence and helping the analysts focus on various threats around the world. It was an easy, mindless task. No stress and no danger. In between, he focused on his target package, building linkages and fleshing out what he knew of the Qatari man Kurt had called Haider al-Attiya. The man his brother knew as Abu Kamal.
In the back of his mind, he’d toyed with the fantasy of hunting down the faces on the armband. A daydream that helped him to pass the time. Using his training and knowledge, he constructed exactly how he would do it, cornering the man in one climactic fight, having him beg for his life, then taking it violently. Eventually, he began working the problem back from the actual confrontation. Back to the beginning, occupying his mind with a fantasy to alleviate the pain.
How would he do it if he had no help from the Taskforce? What assets would he need? How could he evade the very net he worked for? With an insider’s perspective, he worried the problem like a piece of meat stuck in his teeth, day after day, over and over again.
The first hurdle was finding an ambush location. Qatar was the obvious choice, since the target lived there, and more than likely the other faces on the armband did too. The Russians had killed some Chechens there a few years ago, and he knew Doha pretty well. The primary problem would be accessing the target. He would be on Haider’s home turf, and getting in, killing him, and getting out would be difficult. Not even the Russians had managed that. Not to mention, he’d need to interrogate the subject before termination. He would have to learn the real names and locations for the o
ther pictures on the sleeve.
He decided he needed a different site, someplace neutral, where the target would hold no advantage. Which meant more research into the target’s habits and movements. In his daydream, he set that aside for the moment.
Mindlessly working with the analysts, answering their questions and helping them focus on real-world targets, his daydreams began moving farther back upstream, focusing on the mechanics. What would he need for the mission? The actual nuts and bolts?
He’d done enough clandestine kill-capture missions to understand exactly what was required, and for this fantasy mission, it was easier than a Taskforce operation. He had no need to worry about exfiltrating with the target to some support facility for interrogation, or about infiltrating an entire team, or—worst of all—waiting on the Oversight Council for permission.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the entire mission profile would be much less complicated. In the Taskforce, the end state of an Omega operation was no evidence. No trace that a mission had even occurred. In his daydream, that didn’t matter. He would leave the body where it lay. But he still needed some items.
Weapons he could get, even untraceable ones. It would require touching contacts he had made in the past while working for the Taskforce, and maybe a healthy dose of cash, but he could do it. With his savings he could buy cell phones, rent vehicles, and charge plane tickets. He could afford all of it, but he ran afoul of what that would require: Each purchase would be tied to him. To his identity.
This presented a significant problem. He had more than one target to kill, and if his name was attached to the first one, the Taskforce would be hunting him, using everything they had. For all of the information and knowledge he had gained working there, they had also learned about him. They had every bit of data on the life of Guy George that could be obtained, to include biometrics. They’d stop his ability to operate within seconds, yanking his credit cards, revoking his passport, and putting him on a no-fly list.
Greater than that, though, was the loyalty he owed to his country. He understood the implications of Taskforce exposure, and any investigation of him by a foreign intelligence organization would lead to his military history, then possibly to the Taskforce. He was aggravated by the cavalier attitude the Oversight Council and the Taskforce had taken about his brother, but he was still faithful. Such an exposure would irreparably harm the defense of the nation he’d sworn to protect, and thus his mission would have the added stricture of protecting his men. His friends.
In his daydream, of course.
After work, he’d taken to doing research on the Internet, leading him to the stinking underbelly of the dark web, a place frequented by criminals and pedophiles. He’d learned that just about anything could be purchased, if the price was right. For instance, he could have a fake passport overnight, but it would fool only a bouncer at a bar. Getting one that would fool a customs official, with holograms and an RFID chip that duplicated a real US passport, required more time. And more information.
He needed a name and social security number that was valid, one that was already in the database of the giant behemoth of the US government, and wasn’t in use by someone else.
He’d never considered the problem of traveling in alias before, with the myriad of databases that had to be cleared, simply because the documents he’d held had been provided by the US government. He hadn’t needed to worry about someone checking if they were real, because they were real.
He toyed with the idea of stealing his Taskforce alias documents for his fantasy mission. After all, he was working in the headquarters and could draw them without question. He’d already memorized the fake life they represented, and it would shield the Taskforce from exposure, but it wouldn’t solve the original problem: The Taskforce would immediately recognize they’d been taken, and then begin cutting off the ties that allowed him to operate, just as surely as if he were using his real identity.
He was forced to build from scratch, which meant a name and social security number. A person who was real, but no longer using them. And he hit on a stroke of genius.
Late one night, lying in bed, his mind toying with the problem, he had remembered a man he served with who had been killed in Iraq. His name was Sean Parnell, and he had gone to Ranger School with Guy in 1998. Before identity theft had become a problem.
Back then, the military used soldiers’ social security numbers for everything. It was stamped all over, willy-nilly, on flight manifests, duffel bags, and on official Army orders.
Guy had gone to his closet and dug through his personal files, looking for his orders awarding him the coveted Ranger tab. He found it, holding it under the light of a bedside lamp. Name after name listed, with the social security numbers beside them. He found Parnell’s name, then jotted down the number.
Just in case.
The next day, after work, he’d contacted a seller on the deep web, telling himself it was just for research. He wasn’t really going to do anything with the passport. It was just an experiment to see how such things worked. The Taskforce, chasing terrorists, might want to know how easy it was.
Four days later, using a post office box rented with yet another alias name, he had his passport. A day after that, he had a driver’s license. A real one, from Virginia, which allowed him to open a new bank account.
Two days after that, his alter identity complete, the data from Pike’s mission in the Caymans had floated across his desk.
Haider al-Attiya was supposed to be the one at the party, but according to Pike’s initial report, he hadn’t shown, so Guy had lost interest. Eventually, the finalized roll-up of the mission had arrived, including a photo of the man who had attended.
His name was Ahmed Mansoor, and nobody in the Taskforce had any data on him. He was a ghost. While the Taskforce focused on Brazilian mines, yacht trips to Key West, and Qatar conspiracies involving rare earth metals, Guy focused on the photograph.
It matched another face from the target package. One of the pictures without a name, and this man had gone to the Cayman Islands in lieu of Haider. It was proof positive that Haider was involved in his brother’s death. The coincidence was too great to ignore. No way would both pictures be on his brother’s arm in Afghanistan and now both be working with the same entity from Qatar.
He’d taken the information to Kurt, and his commander had given him a look of sympathy. With the additional information, Kurt had promised to bring it to the Oversight Council, but Guy had seen the futility behind Kurt’s eyes.
That night, he’d lain in bed and made his decision. His first tentative step out of the daydream and into reality.
The next day, he’d put in for leave, claiming he now wanted to go to Montana for his brother’s memorial. He’d avoided Kurt Hale all day long, and then had flown not to Montana but to Key West, Florida.
Ahmed Mansoor’s current location.
16
Murphy’s was starting to get rowdy, with happy hour in full swing. Kurt shook my hand and sat down, looking at the drinks on our table. He said, “Soda? What the hell, Pike?”
I glared at Jennifer and said, “She told me it was bad form.”
Kurt flagged a waitress and ordered a round. When she’d left, he said, “Trust me, I could use a beer.”
I said, “Because you’re pimping out Jennifer like every other general with a female to hoist over his head?”
He rubbed his face and said, “No. Actually, I need a drink because I’m not a general.”
I looked at Knuckles, but he was just as confused. I said, “What’s up, sir?”
He said, “I’ve been fighting this traditional military architecture forever. Created our organization, then took it to the enemy, but the one thing I forgot is that we work inside that traditional architecture. Like it or not.”
The round of beers came, and he took his, drawing a gulp. He
said, “Blaine’s getting RIFed.”
RIF stood for Reduction in Force, and was something the military went through after every surge in recruitment due to war. Basically, the military expanded because of need, sometimes loosening recruiting requirements to fill the ranks. When the need was over, the military contracted, getting rid of those it deemed undesirable.
It had happened after World War II, Vietnam, and the “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War. Now, after we proclaimed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq “over,” regardless of the fighting still going on, the military began its purges again, getting rid of those at the bottom rungs to meet the new congressionally mandated size requirements. But that made no sense for anyone in the Taskforce. No bragging, just facts, we were the absolute best of the best.
I said, “What’s the RIF got to do with Blaine?”
“He got his SERB paperwork today. He’s being involuntarily retired. Because I didn’t protect him.”
SERB stood for Selective Early Retirement Board. In today’s military, anyone at the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher who’d shown no upward movement was placed in the crosshairs. The Army had no emotion about the matter. The men were shoved out the door like a guest who’d overstayed his welcome. But that wasn’t us. Shit, we were the shiny edge of the knife blade, conducting complex operations all over the globe, and Blaine Alexander was the one who controlled all of them. The one who made national-level decisions in the span of a second. The guy who’d saved America’s ass on more than one occasion.
Our unit was a little bit different from the ordinary military construct, to put it mildly. Not wanting the traditional military hierarchy, which led to traditional military inertia, Kurt had built a thinking, adapting organization. In the traditional military, when you reached a certain level, you had a certain rank and a certain predetermined job. In our organization, rank meant nothing. All that mattered was skill.