Sphere Of Influence

by Kyle Mills

  "Mark?"

  It was a little hard to hear but not too bad. Laura's voice was clearly recognizable.

  "How are things going out there?" he said. "Are you okay?"

  "We're still in position around the Afghans' house. It was quiet until about two minutes ago. Suddenly we're seeing a hell of a lot of activity."

  "Shit," Beamon muttered and looked at his watch. An hour and fifteen minutes into Volkov's operation.

  They'd been working on the assumption that when Yasin figured out he'd been screwed, the first people he'd warn would be his holy warriors in America. This was the signal that it was time for a blitz.

  "Laura! Laura--are you still there?"

  "I'm here, Mark. I can barely hear you."

  "Go ahead and move in. But be careful--they're probably expecting you."

  "Are you sure we should go now, Mark? Look, there's still no sign of the launcher. Maybe--"

  "Trust me, Laura. It's not going to get any better--it's only going to get worse."

  "Okay, Mark. We're on it."

  Beamon clicked off the line and stared down at the phone for a moment. What now? Did he warn Volkov, the man who was probably sending him to his death? As much as he didn't want to, he had little choice. In the end, his and Volkov's interests were more or less the same: They wanted al-Qaeda crushed.

  He dialed the phone and listened to it ring. When he leaned his head back, he saw that the young man in front of him had his camera out of its case and was aiming it right at him.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  The line picked up and Christian Volkov's voice came over the headphones. "Mark? Mark? Are you there?" "Hang on." Beamon grabbed the lens of the camera and pushed it away. "I'm not the story you're looking for. You got that?"

  The young man took his words for the threat they were and laid the camera in his lap.

  "Yeah, I'm here," Beamon said into the mike. "Yasin's got us. If I were you, I'd light a fire under this thing."

  "I understand. Hold on. . . . Elizabeth! Call everyone in, right now. We aren't going to be able to coordinate things from here anymore. Tell them it's possible that the Afghans will be ready for them. . . ."

  When Beamon looked up, the camera was back in his face. He couldn't summon the will to push it out of the way again, though. He might as well let it capture what he'd become--a key player in providing on-time delivery of quality heroin at reasonable prices. When someone finally put a bullet in him, he'd probably end up as the assistant manager of Hell's Wal-Mart.

  "Mark--are you still there?"

  "Yeah."

  "How is everything going? Are you all right?"

  "I'm great, Christian," he responded suspiciously. "I'm just great."

  Chapter 66

  LAURA Vilechi ran crouched as low as possible, finally throwing herself to the ground next to a prone man in desert camo. He didn't move from his position, examining a double-wide trailer about a hundred yards away through the scope of his rifle.

  "Anything new?"

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "Based on what I can see through the gaps in the curtains, they're still pretty excited. No one's come outside, though."

  Laura straightened the sunglasses on her face and peered over the mound they had taken cover behind. The sun-bleached home was the only building in sight, erected in a broad depression with a dry riverbed running through it. They were only about forty miles from the Las Vegas strip, but it might as well have been a hundred miles. With the exception of the trailer and the barely discernible dirt road leading to it, there was nothing but empty, rolling desert and mountains as far as the eye could see.

  She pulled a pair of binoculars from a pocket in her fatigues and scanned the terrain but didn't see anything she hadn't seen a hundred times before. The building was more than two decades old and, according to the plans the manufacturer had faxed her, encompassed exactly eleven hundred and twenty square feet. There was no phone service, no garage, no outside storage sheds. Power was provided by a propane tank and a generator. The only foliage in sight was a few bushy trees growing in front of a low ridge that rose about fifteen feet high near the riverbed.

  "Mark says we go in now," she said, rolling onto her back and staring up at the unbroken blue of the sky.

  That actually got the man next to her to divert his attention from the house for a moment. "What about the launcher? There's nowhere down there big enough to hide it. If we blow this thing now . . ."

  He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't have to. They'd been there for two days, praying that a truck big enough to carry the launcher would roll up. But now it didn't look like that was going to happen. If they went in now, they guaranteed that the launcher would never show up--that it would be diverted to another, unknown site. It was a no-win situation.

  "He says the activity we've seen is because they know they've been compromised." She sighed quietly. As much as she wanted to, second-guessing Mark in this kind of situation was almost never productive. He wouldn't have told her to move if he wasn't sure.

  "Shit," she muttered, and then pulled out a walkie-talkie and spoke into it. "We're going in. Is everyone in position?"

  She got an affirmative from her entire team, as she knew she would. They were all good people--handpicked by her from the substantial manpower she'd been given. Headquarters was completely unaware of this operation--she was doing it on her own authority. If it blew up in her face, her men could honestly say they were just following orders.

  "Okay. Everything nice and easy, according to Plan C as in Charlie. Set your watch in five, four, three, two, one, now. Five minutes to get into breach position."

  She hung the walkie-talkie on her belt and pointlessly patted the bulletproof vest she was wearing. Her heart rate was already way up, and the sweat on her face had turned cold despite the relentless Nevada sun. She rolled on her side and faced the man lying next to her. "What about you, Jim? Are you ready?"

  He nodded and they both started crawling forward through the sharp rocks and dust. Her torso was protected but she could feel the blood starting to run down her elbows and knees as they were attacked by the desert floor. Oddly, though, there was no pain. It was being drowned in adrenaline.

  They made it to their designated position, an unimpressive dirt rise about thirty feet from the house, with time to spare. This was, by far, the closest she or any of her team had been. The indistinct forms that had been appearing and disappearing behind the curtains now took shape, turning unmistakably human for the first time.

  The people inside the house were moving urgently now--none were framed by the window for more than a second. Her instincts told her that Mark was right. They were packing up and getting ready to move out. How, she wasn't sure--there was no vehicle in sight. And that was the one glimmer of hope she still had.

  Laura looked up at her partner, who was watching the house from near the top of the rise, and put the walkie-talkie's earpiece back in her ear.

  "Is everyone in final position?"

  She got four affirmatives out of four. They had the house more or less surrounded, with ten people grouped in pairs behind what little natural cover the area provided. There had been three separate plans: A through C, in order of optimism. A had assumed that the truck would show up and that everyone would come out of the house. With four good snipers on her team, that had been as close to a no-brainer as they were going to come. B had been to kick in the doors and go in fast and hard--the assumption being that they had surprise on their side. The worst-case scenario, which of course was the one they were faced with, was the less certain Plan C.

  Laura depressed the button on the side of her walkie-talkie. "Are we scrambling cell phone transmissions?"

  She got an affirmative from the team handling the microwave device behind the house.

  "All right. Do it."

  A moment later a deep, heavily amplified voice broke the silence.

  "This is the FBI. We have your positi
on surrounded. Come out of the house with your hands up!" The instructions were then repeated in Arabic.

  The response was easily predicted: the sound of breaking glass, quickly drowned out by the deafening roar of automatic rifle fire.

  Laura and her partner ducked as a spray of bullets kicked up enough dirt that they both found themselves spitting it from their mouths. The sound of gunfire gained in frequency and volume as the FBI agents surrounding the trailer joined in.

  Another well-timed burst of adrenaline helped Laura crawl around the edge of the small hill and begin returning fire. The bullet impacts near her had stopped and there seemed to be no flashes coming from the house, suggesting that the men inside had dropped to the floor to try to survive the barrage.

  "What was that?" she heard her partner yell.

  "What?"

  "Listen!"

  She did, and heard the mechanical whine of an engine just below the disorienting roar of their guns.

  "Where the hell is that coming from?" she shouted, rolling a little farther out into the open. She still couldn't see anything, but the sound was definitely getting closer. "Where--"

  A voice coming over her earpiece cut her off.

  "It was in a goddamn cave! Laura, are you reading me? We've got a Frito-Lay truck coming across the riverbed toward your position! There was a cave in the ridge behind the house! The entrance was covered with trees!"

  She crawled desperately back behind the rise and over her partner, who had stopped firing but was still searching for a target. Except for the ringing in her ears and the roar of the approaching engine, everything had gone silent.

  "There it is!" Laura said when the truck appeared from behind the house. It looked like it was going at its absolute top speed over the broken terrain, jumping up over the ruts and obstacles in the road and then slamming down hard enough to bottom the shocks. It swayed dangerously as it came around the corner, sending a spray of dust that hung in the still air.

  "Eric!" Laura yelled into the walkie-talkie. "It's coming up on your position! Can you get the tires?"

  The ridiculous fact was that because of the difficulty in recruiting for this illegal operation, they had no backup at all. And because of the open terrain, their cars were over three miles away. If the truck made it past them, there was actually a possibility that it could disappear again.

  "Eric, did you read me?"

  The truck hit a sharp-edged horizontal rut and she saw one of the front tires blow. When the rear tires hit, they both blew. Obviously they hadn't been designed for fully loaded off-road use. A single gunshot took out the last tire. The scene was almost comical now. The truck's engine was gunning desperately and it was jumping wildly over the uneven ground, but Laura guessed it was only making about ten miles an hour. The road smoothed out after another few hundred yards, though, and she guessed the driver would be able to coax it up to fifteen or so. He probably wouldn't make it far, but she couldn't take that chance.

  "I'm going for the truck," she yelled into her walkie-talkie. "Cover me."

  Her partner grabbed her by the back of her flak jacket before she could break into the open. "Laura, they're waiting for that. They stopped shooting to conserve their ammo to keep us away from the truck!"

  She just looked at him and shrugged. "That thing won't get far on four flats, but it might get close enough to Vegas to get a wild shot off before we can stop it. If I miss, get on the phone to the Vegas cops."

  The gunfire started again in earnest the second she cleared her cover, masking the sound of the struggling truck. She heard the distinct hiss of rounds as they sped by her head, but forced herself to ignore it and just run. Sprinting past the lumbering vehicle, she finally stopped directly in its path.

  The position made the truck an easy target and temporarily provided cover from the men shooting at her from inside the house. The drawback was that in about three seconds she was either going to be run over or she was going to have to dive out of the way and put herself back in the line of fire.

  Her rifle was on full automatic and she squeezed off a volley at the truck's radiator, making sure that no matter what happened, it wouldn't ever make it to the highway. Then she emptied her clip into the windshield.

  It didn't stop--or even slow down--forcing her to drop to the ground and roll out of the way. She lay motionless with her face pressed into the dirt and her hands over the back of her head, waiting for the inevitable barrage that would kill her. When, after a few seconds, it didn't materialize, she raised her head enough to see that the muzzle flashes coming from the house had gone dark. Flipping over on her back, she saw that the truck was still moving and had managed to make it to the smoother dirt of the road that would eventually take it to the highway. Despite the better surface, though, it was going slower and slower. One more quick glance toward the house and she got to her feet and started sprinting up behind the truck. Still no gunfire. Hopefully that meant the men in the house were out of ammo, too injured to fire, or dead. Of course, it could just mean that they were lining up their shots really carefully this time.

  She had her Glock in her hand when she finally caught up to the driver's side door. The engine had caught fire and the cab was quickly filling with smoke, despite the damage she'd done to the windshield. All she could see of the driver was an outline in the haze. He looked uninjured, gripping the wheel tightly and continuing to gun what was left of the burning engine. At this point the truck's top speed was no more than four miles per hour.

  "Stop the truck and get out!" she yelled, aiming her pistol at what looked like his head.

  He ignored her.

  "Stop the goddamn truck!"

  The engine finally died, and she could see him jerking on the steering wheel in frustration. He was less than a shadow now, a vague shape in the smoke.

  The flames were licking the windshield and at least some had made their way into the cab--something she assumed would convince him to do as she'd told him. But it didn't.

  The fire inside grew and he just sat there. Finally, Laura ran up and grabbed the door handle, burning her hand as she pulled on it. Locked. She raised her gun to try to break the window but felt a pair of powerful arms grab her from behind and begin dragging her back.

  "Time to go!" came the familiar voice of her partner. He was right. There was no way to know if there was a missile or other kind of explosive in the back of that truck. Or, for that matter, if the gas tank would explode. She turned and ran with him, finally jumping into a ditch a couple of hundred yards away.

  She immediately rose to her knees and looked back at the burning vehicle. Flames were jumping thirty feet in the air and the driver's door was still firmly shut. "My God," she said quietly, shaking her head as though she could dislodge the image of the man calmly burning inside.

  She fell back into the ditch and pressed her back against the dirt wall. "Is everyone okay?"

  "Not a scratch on anybody. I had them all pull back to a safe position in case that thing goes off. We didn't have time to check out the house, but we've got guys covering the exits. I'm guessing there's no one in there alive, though."

  Laura slumped forward, trying to will her heart to slow down.

  "You're one lucky woman," her partner said. "Those guys wanted you something awful when you went for the truck. They all came out in the open and started shooting--pretty much an act of suicide. It's a fucking miracle that we took them all out before you caught a bullet."

  Chapter 67

  BEAMON wouldn't have guessed that it was possible, but his luck seemed to have actually taken another turn for the worse. At the behest of a major international crime lord, he was being force-marched through a hot, wet Mexican jungle by a column of angry-looking soldiers who seemed to speak no English. And to top it off, the whole thing was being captured on camera by the enthusiastic kid behind him.

  Looking on the bright side of things was starting to be a little difficult. The only truly positive things in his life right now were the
shotgun in his hand and the .357 holstered in the small of his back. Beyond that, the only thing he could think of was that they were going generally downhill. The column stopped abruptly and Beamon used the brief rest to look around him. He and his new companions weren't really on what anyone in his right mind would call a trail, but his sense was that they were moving in a generally straight line. The five well-armed men behind him and seven in front didn't exactly inspire confidence. About half were grossly overweight and no fewer than four were wearing gaudy gold jewelry that negated the effectiveness of their camo and marked them as "consultants" to the local drug trade.

  "Would you turn that fucking thing off," Beamon whispered harshly.

  The cameraman took a prudent step back but kept rolling. "Are you kidding, man? This is great stuff! Super-dramatic."

  Beamon leaned his shotgun against a tree and toweled the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. "What's your name?"

  "Tim," the kid said, panning the jungle and the men around them.

  "Look, Tim, why don't you get your ass out of here? Get one of these guys to take you back to the helicopter. I don't know where we're going but I'm guessing it's not somewhere you're going to want to be."

  Tim looked around the camera's eyepiece. "Then, how come you're still here?"

  "Because I figure somebody's going to shoot me either way."

  The column started again and Beamon grabbed his shotgun before being swept forward.

  "Nah," he heard the kid say. "I think I'll just stick with you guys." His tone suggested that he thought Beamon was trying to trick him into giving up an easy Pulitzer.

  The man directly in front of them looked back and put a finger to his lips. The rest of the soldiers were taking their guns off their shoulders and checking them as they continued forward. Beamon pushed the safety off his shotgun and stepped behind a tree, grabbing the young cameraman by the collar and pulling him off the trail. Surprisingly, the rest of the column moved by without protest.

  "What are you doing?" Tim said.

  "When you're not sure who to trust, it's best not to have anyone behind you." The last Mexican passed by and Beamon stepped back out, following at a distance of about ten feet.