The Forgotten Soldier

by Brad Taylor

  I said, “Everyone listen to me. You don’t follow the orders we’re given, and you’re done in the Taskforce. They will replace you with someone who will. They’ve done it to me before.”

  I looked at Nick, the newest member. He nodded, not backing down. Comfortable with the choice. I continued, “But nobody argues with success. I’ve seen that firsthand. You can ignore an order if it makes everyone else look good in the end.”

  I went eye to eye with the team, ending with Jennifer. I said, “I’m not killing Guy just because the Taskforce says so. He’s coming home.”

  I looked at Knuckles. “You want to solve this problem the right way?”

  He nodded, a slow smile spreading on his face. He said, “Yeah. No matter what the Council says.”

  I said, “Okay, then, since all you geniuses want to keep me from sleep, how do we do that? We’re all burned for surveillance, and he’ll start shooting the moment he sees us.”

  “Where do we stand with Taskforce assets?”

  “He’s ditched his phone. Not surprising, since it’s the first thing any one of us would do. The Taskforce has cut off his credit cards and frozen his bank accounts under the name Sean Parnell, but we don’t know how much cash he has. With the bank problems in Greece, he probably came over here with a sizable amount. Which, I guess, is saying we don’t have a hell of a lot to track with. It was a mistake to confront him on the ferry.”

  Brett said, “Aw, that’s bullshit. Don’t second-guess that. We were always only getting one shot at a meeting, and it was the perfect spot for the endgame you envisioned. Didn’t work out. What else we got?”

  “Kurt’s taking my report to the Oversight Council. If we are sanctioned for Alpha against the guy on the ferry, we’ll get complete Taskforce assets for tracking, and that also might be the leverage we need to bring him in.”

  Nick said, “But he’s the only one who knows who the man is. A catch-22. We can’t even identify the target without Guy pointing the way.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. That’s what I’ll tell Guy. We have Alpha to explore, but we need his intelligence. We need him on the team, not fighting the team.”

  Knuckles said, “You think he’ll buy that?”

  “Best I can do.”

  Nick said, “Doesn’t fix the primary problem. We don’t know where Guy is or how to get in touch with him.”

  Brett said, “Yeah, yeah, we don’t have a handle, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Something will break. You work with Pike long enough, and something always does.”

  Nick looked skeptical, but was afraid to say anything as the junior member of the team.

  Brett laughed at his expression and said, “Trust me. It’ll happen. Him sleeping with Jennifer is some kind of magic.”

  Jennifer scowled, still under the covers, and Brett said, “Hey, babe, you got to contribute somehow.”

  I grinned at the ribbing and said, “Okay, enough. What we need right now is rest. We can’t do anything until the Oversight Council meets anyway. Everyone, head on back to your rooms.”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I felt my phone vibrate with a text. It was from Carly, and it was succinct.

  Guy just called me. We need to meet.

  Knuckles saw my face and said, “What is it?”

  I passed him the phone. “We aren’t getting any sleep.”

  Brett looked at the text, then at Jennifer, eyes open in mock amazement. He said, “You’ve been busy.”

  This time the pillow found its mark.

  52

  Guy felt the cold seep into the car, the cooling engine ticking its drum of surrender to the outside air. Shoehorned between two cars on the frontage road next to Andrea Siggrou Street, he watched the front entrance to a four-story building, the bold sign outside proclaiming THE COTTON CLUB SEX THEATER.

  He was farther away than he wanted, with eight lanes of traffic complete with median separating him from his target, but the alternative was to park on the eastern frontage road right next to the target and risk being seen. He was forced to use optics, but he felt more secure.

  He’d been in position for two hours and had seen little in the way of movement in or out of the building, but that was to be expected. The disco didn’t even open for five more hours, remaining still until the darkness came like a brood of vampires waiting to wake, but sooner or later, Nikos would show.

  Carly’s information had been vague, but he was sure it was accurate. They were too close personally for her to play any silly spy games. She would have just told him no outright. She’d given him the bare minimum of what he wanted, clearly trying to help, but there was something about the call that was off, and he wondered if she was growing suspicious. She’d seemed distant during the conversation. Hesitant. He’d asked what was wrong and she’d proclaimed work, then said she couldn’t talk about it. At one point, he thought she was about to ask a question, then she’d backed off.

  It troubled him, but he knew she would never turn him in, both because of their friendship and because she didn’t even know who to report him to. The CIA was absolutely out of the question, and she didn’t know how to contact the Taskforce.

  But Pike did. And that man was devious. In addition, he had Knuckles as his 2IC. Knuckles had been as close to Decoy as Guy. He was the man who’d recruited Decoy to the Taskforce in the first place, and had been the man who provided the notification of Decoy’s death to Carly. She knew him as well as she did Decoy, which was to say as well as she knew Guy. There was a chance they’d find her here and question her.

  He doubted she would proactively turn him in, but Pike was a different matter. Guy had heard the stories, and seen the results. If there were a weak link—for which Carly qualified—Pike would find it. He was somewhat supernatural in that respect, but even if he did, it no longer mattered. The endgame was approaching rapidly—much quicker than Pike could decipher, even with his skills. Guy would kill the final two men soon, and it did no good to try to determine who was on who’s side. Pike, Carly, the Taskforce, Billings, Nikos—none of that mattered anymore. For him, there was only one side now.

  His.

  After leaving the ferry, Guy had disappeared into the crowds around the dock, moving swiftly to escape whatever net the Taskforce might have attempted. He’d considered throwing his phone into the back of the first passing Bongo truck, leaving it on and transmitting, but then thought better of it, settling for breaking it into pieces.

  After moving steadily north for thirty minutes, losing himself in the concrete and cinder blocks, he’d caught a cab and asked for a cheap hotel. The man had dropped him off at a seedy establishment crammed on a side street, between a butcher shop and an auto repair garage. With only eight rooms and a sign that proclaimed nothing more than HOTEL, he thought it would work.

  He’d checked in using cash, leaving him about a thousand dollars in euros. He tipped the wizened man behind the counter fifty euros to forgo the passport requirement. The clerk had balked, thinking he was an illegal alien or smuggler, until Guy allowed him to inspect his US passport. Guy proclaimed he was afraid of identity theft, and the man believed him. Or, more precisely, with the troubles in the Greek economy, he believed the fifty euros.

  After checking in, he’d set about replacing his phone, attempting to find an ATM that would dispense money from his credit card. His was declined. Initially, he thought it was just a function of the Greek economy, as all ATMs had a limit on the amount a local could withdraw, and thought maybe this bank was saving that limit for Greek citizens, refusing to deliver because his credit card was based in the United States.

  He’d tried two more ATMs with the same results. He’d found a cell phone provider and attempted to purchase a phone directly, using the card under the name Sean Parnell—not something he wanted to do because of the linkages—and the card was declined.

 
So they’d frozen his bank accounts and credit cards. The Taskforce was on the move, just as Pike had said they would be. No matter. He knew their rhythms. Knew how they operated, and it was way, way too slow to interdict him. He reverted to his limited cash supply, buying two five-hundred-dollar pay-as-you-go credit cards.

  By midday, he’d burned through most of one with a new cell phone and a rental car, and figured the second would last long enough. All he needed was a max of two days to complete the mission.

  He saw a knot of men approaching the front door to the Cotton Club and raised his small binoculars. A scrum of guys in black leather and denim, all sporting thick beards. One of the men resembled a face on the target package, but he was too far away for Guy to be sure.

  He saw a preening man in the center, wearing a goatee and a flaming-red suede jacket.

  Nikos.

  First target in Athens.

  53

  Guy still had his mission to take out the final two from the target deck, but couldn’t accomplish it with Nikos on the loose. The man had too many connections. Too many ways to counter him. He needed the targets from Qatar separated from any help. It was the primary reason he’d chosen Greece instead of Qatar to begin with. He’d debated and finally decided Nikos had to go. It was a complication, but a necessary one.

  Guy told himself it was based purely on the mission, but the blackness sliding through him, like ropes greased in a charnel house, told him differently. That asshole had picked the fight. Chosen his fate.

  Guy counted the men. Five total, including Nikos. Probably two or three hired security, with the remaining being friends or ass kissers begging for Nikos’s attention. One held the door, and they all entered. Guy gave them five minutes. From a distant memory, he saw his brother over a board game, tired and cranky, saying, “Give me the dice. I’m going on a suicide run.”

  Guy started the car and headed to the small underground tunnel that would allow him to cross the broad thoroughfare, thinking of the past with his brother. Actually smelling the cans of Schlitz beer they’d pilfered from their father’s fridge on those days long ago.

  Two years apart, they’d had a space of time in high school where they’d become infatuated with the game called Risk. A contest of strategy, it involved using armies and dice to attempt to take over the world. The games themselves could last days, but only if his brother retained interest.

  Guy would play his heart out to the bitter end, no matter if he was losing or not, going on until his plastic armies breathed their final breath. His brother, on the other hand, would get dispirited and quit if he felt he was on the losing end with no recovery. When he became tired of the fight, he’d simply look up and say, “Suicide run,” then put all of his plastic tokens on a single country, rolling the dice and attacking each enemy country with the full force of his men, risking all of them until he either won or was demolished.

  It used to aggravate the hell out of Guy, because one out of ten times, the tactic worked, all based on the chance of the roll of the dice, like doubling a bet on every spin of a roulette wheel. No skill, no thought, no strategy. Just brute force and luck.

  And now he was going to do the same.

  He parked on the back side of the building, driving the car up over the curb on its two right wheels and blocking the ability for the other cars to leave. He didn’t care. Odds were, he wasn’t walking out alive anyway.

  He circled the block, playing his brother’s Pandora list. Feeling the pain. Drawing energy from the anger. He walked up to the door of the Cotton Club, passing by windows that were blacked out, hiding what was inside. He tried the aluminum door handle, pulling it an inch and finding it open.

  He paused for a brief moment, removing his earbuds and adjusting the long barrel of the 6P9 under his left shoulder, getting it ready in the makeshift holster he’d built. He took two deep breaths, controlling the anger and channeling the adrenaline.

  This is it. Five men. Only five.

  He knew that was most likely wrong, but also that he held the edge. The men inside this building understood violence, but only on their terms. They had no idea of the pain he could bring. The skill he held.

  He opened the door and went inside, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. The interior was dank and smelled of spilled beer and mildew, the tables looking chipped and dilapidated in the harsh light of the sun before the night settled in and the vampires began to roam.

  To his front was a stage, the center portion spearing out between the tables, the length interspersed with floor-to-ceiling poles. On each side was a bar, the one on the left dark and empty, the one on the right lit by small overhead bulbs. He saw a man talking to two women, the man dressed like the usual pipe-swinger—leather jacket, cropped beard, and scarred, meaty hands. The women were dressed as if they were going to a costume party, one as a flapper from the 1920s, the other like an Egyptian pharaoh’s concubine. Neither was particularly attractive.

  All three were staring at him from the light he’d caused to explode by opening the door. He walked to them, feeling the weight of his pistol. The women looked hesitant. The man looked aggravated.

  Guy said, “Hey, I’m here to see Nikos. Is he around?”

  The man glowered and, in broken English, said, “No. Nobody here by that name.”

  Guy turned to the girls and repeated the question. They became surly, with one, in much better English, saying, “Never heard of him. Maybe he’ll show when we open.”

  Guy nodded, almost robotically, thinking of the size of the building. Thinking of how long it would take to clear without information.

  The man said, “You go.”

  Guy said, “Unfortunately, no. I saw him enter. Either call him or send me up. I’m not leaving.”

  The girls laughed, the one closest to him leaning over, showing her cleavage and saying, “You going to leave. Trust me.”

  The man reached beneath the bar and pulled out a fishing priest with a head encased in a sheath of metal. Just like the one used on Guy days before. He said, “Get out now, or pay.”

  In one fluid motion, Guy withdrew his pistol. He placed the long suppressor against the man’s forehead and pulled the trigger, spraying the back of the bar, the bullet a muted spit. The man dropped straight down, folding like a slinky with the wires bent.

  He turned to the girls, the barrel held in the air. He said, “Do I need to repeat the question?”

  In hurried speech, talking over each other and clinging together as if that would protect them, they told him where to find Nikos’s office.

  He said, “Lay your phones on the bar.”

  They did so and he said, “Get the fuck out of here, now.”

  The ’20s flapper said, “You going to die. You can’t come in here and do this. You going to die.”

  He smiled, a twisted, crazy thing, saying nothing. They fled, spilling the light in again. He let the door close before he moved, cloaking himself in the blessed darkness again.

  Suicide run.

  54

  Nikos said, “By herself? Or with an escort?” He listened, then disconnected from the call. He saw the Arab tense at his words and mentally sized him up. He recognized that Khalid wasn’t the same milquetoast as Haider. This man had steel in him, and might actually have the skill to back up the attitude. He glanced at the two men on either side of the door, giving them an unseen signal. They both withdrew pistols, keeping them between their folded hands in the front, only the barrel poking out.

  Khalid said, “Is it like we thought? She’s going to a meeting?”

  Nikos said, “Haider was my employer. I don’t answer to you.”

  Khalid said, “I speak for Haider, and I heard the call. You answer to our money, and we have offered a significant amount for the death of the American. You still owe us for that.”

  Nikos leaned back in his chair, an ostentatious bit of leather
designed to showcase the man. Present him as a king on a throne responsible for the fate of anyone brought in his presence. The desk in front of him was much larger than necessary, a burnished, solid oak behemoth, and littered with small signals of intimidation. Little indicators of his ability to kill. A replica guillotine, a paperweight shaped like a skull, and a letter opener in the form of a miniature Japanese Katana. The centerpiece was two M67 fragmentation grenades, both with a rubber band on the spoon, indicating the pin had been pulled. Showing that he lived without fear.

  Nikos picked up the letter opener and played with the edge of the blade, saying, “You’ve paid me nothing. I attempted in Crete, and yes, I failed, but it cost you nothing. It cost me a great deal. A lot of cleanup. I’m not sure I want to continue with the same agreement here in Athens, especially when it involves a spy from the CIA. It’s not good for business. Besides, he’s probably still on Crete. I have men looking. “

  “He’s not on Crete. You don’t believe it, and neither do I. Yes, you attempted to catch him, and how long do you think it’ll take for him to decipher who was responsible for that failure? You are now on his list, just like we are. He’s coming here, and you should be afraid.”

  Nikos scoffed, saying, “He’s but one man. He can do nothing to me.”

  “Then why did you place surveillance on the US Embassy? Why did you just receive a call telling you that the American’s contact was leaving by herself?”

  “I keep tabs on her because of my business. Nothing more. I need to ensure she’s not causing an inadvertent problem. We both have equities. I provide her information, and she provides me leeway to operate. I aggravate her, and she could provide the same information to my government. It’s a significant risk to my business. You must understand. I scratch her back, and she scratches mine.”