The Forgotten Soldier

by Brad Taylor

  I lost the weapon.

  He was strong, and Jesus, he could fight.

  I felt my shoulder begin to give, and instinct kicked in. I rolled my body toward the sweep, breaking the tension on my shoulder and punching him in the back of the head with two jabs. He continued to work the hold, and I knew I needed to get him to focus somewhere else. Punching wasn’t working.

  I reached across his head with my left hand and clamped it onto his forehead, searching for his eyes with my fingers. I pulled his head backward, gouging the eyes as hard as I could from my weak position. He screamed and jerked upright, giving me immediate relief.

  I pulled my arm free and clamped my legs around his waist, then reached across his body, grabbing his shirt collar with both hands, my arms forming an X. I yanked out and saw his eyes bulge. He tried to pry my arms open, wrenching and grunting to no avail. I pulled harder. He hit me in the face, but I didn’t quit. Huffing like a bull, he rose with brute strength, holding me in the air, my legs around his waist and my arms still cinching his shirt into his neck.

  He slammed back into the ground, my body taking the full force of both our weights. One of my hands broke free, and it was enough of a respite for him to continue. He collapsed on top of me and we began swimming our limbs, both fighting for position, arms and legs moving in and out in a game of action and counteraction, neither one of us gaining dominance, the only noise the slapping of skin and the hissing of our breath.

  In desperation, he went back to attempting to pound my face, forcing me to tuck my chin and block with my arms. I rotated one leg high, slamming it against his neck, trying for a triangle choke with my thighs. He swam an arm under, preventing it, and I immediately reversed and torqued with my body, flinging him over with my leg against his head. He landed on his back and mule-kicked with the strength of both thighs, throwing me off.

  He leapt up, doing a Bruce Lee kung fu flip-up like he was being filmed. He saw Knuckles sprinting toward him and took off, running flat out into the park.

  I rose, breathing heavily, the whole fight lasting no more than a minute. Very few things were as exhausting as grappling with someone who knows what they’re doing, and the entire event was something of a shock.

  I said, “What the fuck took you so long?”

  He said, “Me? My guy is down. What the hell were you doing?”

  I wiped the sweat from my face, dusted off my clothes, and picked up my useless Glock.

  “That guy can fight. If there’s a terrorist camp out there teaching his skills, America’s in trouble.”

  62

  Guy popped another Red Bull and slugged half of the can, absently scratching the bandage over the puncture wounds in his calf. He needed the caffeine, given that he was definitely running on a lack of sleep. But today was the endgame. The trap was set. All he had to do was get back inside Haider’s car to arm the device. A perfect final piece of justice, mimicking the way his brother had died. Only, Guy’s attack would be surgical. No massive explosion. No dead civilians. No collateral damage whatsoever.

  He’d been very, very busy the last thirty hours.

  He’d left Nikos and the rest of the dead where they lay, fleeing down the fire escape to the street below, pausing just long enough to use his socks as an improvised bandage on his leg, then blending into the crowds on the main avenue fronting the sex club. He’d left his car where he’d parked it, preferring to walk the six or so blocks to the Athenaeum InterContinental Hotel.

  Wanting to start the mission immediately.

  He’d entered, completely calm, ignoring the pain in his leg and the surreptitious glances at the blood on his jeans. He knew if he acted relaxed and normal, they’d logically connect the color to paint or some other stain. Nobody who was wounded would be acting as he was.

  The attack of Nikos was already behind him, giving him no other thought than he’d purchased breathing room to accomplish his mission. It had been bought with blood, but he was fairly sure he’d cauterized any threat from local forces. His only concern was that it would alter his target’s planned actions. They might even flee back to Qatar.

  He didn’t think so, because he was convinced they had a mission to accomplish. Some greater obligation that would force them to remain. But that wasn’t a given, which required rapid action.

  The hotel lobby was huge, stretching out in all directions, marble walls and pillars dominating the space. He’d looked for a spot to set up, out of sight of the exit, and found two escalators to the right of the reception desk. They went down an additional two floors, below street level, to a section of meeting rooms and scattered tables for breaks from conference panels. The top was open to the lobby, like an indoor mall, but he doubted his target would look down. And he didn’t need to look up.

  He’d used Nassir’s phone history to program the Gremlin with the number Nassir had been talking to when he was captured—clearly another target—and had set an alarm to notify him when it was in proximity.

  He’d sat for a little under an hour, reading a stray English newspaper and impatiently staring at the tablet screen of the Gremlin. He was running through other options for tracking the target, considering an attempt to locate his room, when the Gremlin had triggered, surprising him.

  The phone was in the lobby, and the Gremlin had automatically attacked it, attempting to insert the same malware Guy had used to trap Nassir.

  The signal strength from the Gremlin told him it was too weak for a rapid insert. At this pace, it would take fifteen minutes, and he was sure he didn’t have that time. He needed to close the gap. It was a risk, but he wanted eyes on to determine a profile of his target anyway.

  He ignored the escalators, as they spilled out right into the heart of the lobby, and instead moved to the elevators in the rear. He exited behind the reception desk, looking at his screen. The handset was still captured, and the signal strength was growing.

  He moved adjacent to the concierge desk and saw three men outside the glass doors of the entrance, talking to a bellman. Two were from his brother’s target package. One was the man he’d followed in Crete. All of them together, waiting on a vehicle. Exactly what Guy wanted to see.

  A valet brought a car around, and Guy trained on the model, needing crucial information. It was a late-model Audi A7. A very expensive automobile, with very unique security components. But no automobile was completely safe, if one knew the weaknesses. In the old days, it would be a physical, metal key or a slim-jim and a hot-wire. In modern times, it was all about the digits. He watched the men enter, noting the positions, as his primary target’s location would be critical.

  They settled in and drove away.

  He’d learned three things he needed to know: One, the make and model of the car. Two, that they used the valet, so the key would be stored with every other valet key. And three, his primary target took the passenger’s seat, with the man from Crete driving and the other man from the target package taking a seat in the back.

  He’d retrieved his car, retreated to his hotel, and got online. In the not-so-distant past—say, less than a week ago—he would have had Taskforce assets to accomplish what he wanted, but that time was gone. Luckily, the Taskforce didn’t do research and development in a vacuum. They relied on Operators to determine the direction and focus, relied on the men who would use the equipment on the ground to test and refine.

  All Taskforce Operators were trained in “obtaining” vehicles in the absence of a key for in extremis use, but they’d realized that they were learning rudimentary skills suitable for a B movie made in the ’80s, with the car industry moving leaps and bounds every year, just like everything else in the Internet age. In between deployments, Guy had been detailed to an automobile cell, created to teach the means for stealing a car with the latest electronics and security. They’d developed work-arounds for just about every make and model, a tiring slog, given the number, but in the
process Guy had learned one thing: The crooks were already ahead of them.

  And that’s where he turned now. People in the past who had provided unwitting assistance to a unit they didn’t even know existed.

  He sent an email to an account in Beirut, Lebanon, that manufactured the two devices he needed, asking for a “dealer” in Athens, Greece. The man’s website sold the products to “help” locksmiths “recover” vehicles, but given the features touted, the legality was thinly veiled. Things like “clone a key within forty seconds,” “immediately render safe the alarm system,” and “container can be shaped in a multitude of forms”—a bunch of features that would have no bearing if the owner were standing nearby.

  He closed the computer, letting the message do its work, then reserved a room at the Athenaeum with his final pay-as-you-go card. That done, he went to an electronics store for the components he’d need for his trap. Nothing special, and all commercial, off the shelf.

  By the time he’d returned, he had his answer for a contact in Athens, the man in Beirut not even bothering to ascertain why he wanted to know or whether he was law enforcement. Two hours later, he had the equipment he needed to access the car. In truth, during the transaction, he’d had more fear he was dealing with someone who knew about his connection to Nikos than the man did about his being out to set him up. Clearly, nobody in Greece cared about car theft.

  He was running on fumes, but he was set. He needed only two more pieces of information: where they stored the keys for valet, and where they parked the car.

  He’d returned to his hotel, eating a soggy gyro for a meal and waiting until nightfall, catching the only three hours of sleep he’d get for the foreseeable future. After midnight, he’d returned to the Athenaeum. He sat across the street and waited, watching the movements of the valet drivers taking the vehicles from the rich after a night on the town. He located a closet just inside the front door, where they placed the keys, the same one that was used to temporarily store luggage from guests.

  Perfect.

  63

  After identifying the location of the key storage, Guy entered the garage, searching for the valet spaces. There were just two floors, and the valet spaces were fairly easy to find. In minutes, he located the Audi in a corner, away from the lights, one of only seven cars parked in the valet spaces.

  Even better.

  He checked for cameras and found two, one near the entrance to the garage, and one near the elevators. None focused on the valet parking.

  He returned to his car and retrieved his equipment, then went to the front desk, dragging a carry-on roller and holding a briefcase. He checked in, got his keys, then said he was late to meet a friend at a bar—delayed plane and all that—and had no time to go to his room. Would they hold his luggage until he returned?

  Of course they would. He watched to ensure that the bag went into the same closet he’d seen before, then exited the hotel, taking the briefcase.

  He walked around the block, then penetrated the garage, now moving swiftly. He went straight to the Audi, going around to the front, against the wall, and opened the briefcase, pulling out a black box with an antenna and a digital readout. He turned it on, and saw a read of three different codes from three different cars.

  Modern-day vehicles have an enormous amount of encryption technology embedded into the key fobs they use. Rolling codes, time-outs, shifting encryption, all were designed to defeat the latest cat-and-mouse game of stealing the transmitted unlock signal and, for the most part, did prevent him from doing that very thing. But his target also used an RFID transmitter, whereby if the physical fob itself was close to the car, a person could unlock or lock the vehicle simply by touch, without sending a code. It was considered the perfect security, because the signal was so low that the fob had to be present for the door to unlock—within a meter or two—and if the fob was present, it must either be stolen or be from the owner.

  If it were stolen, then no amount of encryption would matter. After all, if someone stole the keys to a 1970 Volkswagen, the same thing would occur. So it wasn’t something to worry about. Except ingenious thieves had found a work-around.

  His contact in Beirut had developed an amplifier that would take the weak signal of the key fob and transmit it over four hundred meters to a mated receiver, which would, in turn, transmit the same signal to the car. In effect, tricking the car into thinking the fob was present, the computer inside not realizing the fob had turned into the size of a briefcase.

  It wasn’t exactly easy, as the amplifier had to be within two meters of the key fob, and had to be there for the length of time it took to enter the vehicle. Not a technique that would work with someone moving around with the key fob in his or her pocket. But something that was easy for a key fob locked in a valet closet.

  He clicked the first signal, then touched the handle of the driver’s door. The car remained locked. He clicked the second, and touched. The headlights flashed, and the doors unlocked. He smiled.

  Money well spent.

  He pulled the handle and slid into the footwell. He withdrew a blank Audi key fob and a small device with a circle of plastic on one end and a data connection on the other. He rotated on his back and pulled open the ODB II port that was used for diagnostics of the vehicle’s engine via the car’s central computer. The one that controlled everything about the vehicle. Including its security codes.

  The key fob’s security was designed to prevent the codes from being stolen out of the air, while in use, not from inside the vehicle itself. Access to the car laid bare the entire system. After all, even owners needed a way to program a new fob, and that had to happen in conjunction with the vehicle itself. The ODB port was the gateway for doing so, and was mandated to work with a standardized software program to prevent the manufacturers from building in a proprietary system that would force the owner to only use their service centers for diagnostics. It was a bit of legalized egalitarianism that worked in the car thief’s favor.

  He plugged in the data connection, waited for the LED light to flash, then placed the key fob blank into the plastic circle. He sat just over a minute, then saw the LED strobe for five seconds before shutting off.

  He unplugged from the port, then held up the fob. Moment of truth.

  He pressed the button, and the door locks snapped shut. Now under the command of his new fob.

  He had no idea if the car would start, and no intention of trying. The man in Beirut claimed it would, but also stated that there were “variables” in models he couldn’t control when it came to actually driving the car. Just getting in was assured, but running the vehicle was out of his hands. A disclaimer, you know, because he truly cared about helping out the owner with a new key fob.

  Guy didn’t care. All he needed was a way to access the car on the move, without the laborious briefcase trick.

  He put the fob down and withdrew his final items from the briefcase: the hand grenade he’d taken from Nikos’s office, a digital, battery-powered capacitor, and a section of wire colored black and white.

  He’d already rigged the grenade for an electrical charge instead of the friction primer that was normally used, drilling out the spring that rotated the firing pin, rendering the grenade safe before continuing.

  From the driver’s seat, he taped the digital capacitor to the body and connected the wires running out of the fuse set. He pushed a button, checking the battery on the capacitor and the connection with the fuse, making sure he had a clean circuit. A light flashed green, telling him the capacitor could store the electrical charge he’d need, and the circuit was good.

  He went to the passenger’s side and opened the door, flicking off the overhead light. He spent thirty more minutes underneath the seat, securing the grenade under the cushion and splicing the leads into the air bag release system, his chosen form of initiation.

  In all modern cars, there was a small pressu
re switch in the passenger seat that let the computer know if someone was occupying that space, which, in turn, told the computer to arm the air bag. This was what he leveraged.

  When he was done, he had a perfect pressure-plate booby trap. Should someone sit down, they’d close an electrical circuit, and in so doing, initiate the grenade. He tested the components for electrical flow, saw it was good, then disconnected one of the leads, defusing the system. He wouldn’t arm it until he was sure his target was in the vehicle, which was the point of the new key fob.

  It wasn’t foolproof, as the grenade fuse would still require four to five seconds to explode—enough time to escape if someone were switched on to a threat. In addition, the seat itself would mitigate the blast, but he was sure it would kill whoever was inside the car and he thought the mitigation was a good thing. He didn’t want any collateral damage from innocents walking by the vehicle. Or because someone different used the car. Which was why he was sitting on Perikleous Street, just down from the Embassy of Qatar, slugging Red Bulls and waiting on his targets to exit.

  He’d watched the Audi appear early in the morning at the Athenaeum Hotel, and was pleased to see the same package as yesterday: The driver from Crete, the primary face from the target package in the passenger seat, and the secondary one in the backseat. He’d begun to follow, just waiting for the chance to arm his trap. Sooner or later, they’d stop for lunch or something else, and he’d get the chance to turn the expensive ride into a death trap.

  Today was the day.

  64

  Haider not only heard the displeasure through his father’s chosen words, but he also recognized the disgust in his father’s voice even through the VPN connection, the enunciation leaving no doubt that the man on the other end thought he was talking to an idiot.

  “So you actually had your friend attempt to interdict a meeting with the CIA? And you thought this was prudent?”