by Brad Taylor
Tightening her ponytail, oblivious to the stares, she said, “What’s the frown for?”
I quickly pasted on a smile. “Nothing. It’s showtime. Get ready to rumble.”
We heard the announcer cheer as the Kenyans were let loose, running faster than a human being should be capable. In short order, we were walking to the start line, then jogging in the massive crowd of people, Jennifer weaving in and out, trying to keep her pace but prevented by the slugs who came to run once a year.
After about a mile of bump-and-go we reached the bottom of the bridge, the long slope to the top a daunting obstacle to the once-a-year runners. They began to walk and the crowd thinned. Jennifer glanced back at me once, then took off like a gazelle, intent on making up lost time, churning up the slope like it didn’t exist.
Holy shit.
The rest of the run was a blur as my vision narrowed to the small of her back, my mind ignoring the pain. I felt like I was back at Special Forces selection, willing myself forward, thinking of nothing but driving my body faster than it was prepared to go.
We finished in 41:48. It would have been quicker but Jennifer didn’t have free rein with the crowds around. Thank God. We crossed the line and continued walking, Jennifer’s face all aglow and me trying to keep from vomiting, straining to keep upright to save my dignity. My own fault for getting lazy on vacation.
I felt the pain in my knees and wondered how much was laziness and how much was just the march of time. Eight years ago, when I was Jennifer’s age, I could have done that pace hungover while carrying a rucksack. Now, at thirty-eight, I could feel the frost creeping in. It was still outside the window of my house, but it was coming.
We wandered around for a little bit, getting some free bananas and water at the post-race stalls, then went down East Bay Street for the after-party. Something I was hoping would make the pain worth it.
Getting to the rooftop deck on top of the Vendue Inn, I fought through the crowd to the bar, checking the Taskforce phone out of reflex. I pulled up short, Jennifer bumping into me, surprised to see a missed call from a blocked number, which could have meant one of two things: Either I’d missed out on the credit card deal of a lifetime, or Kurt Hale, the commander of the Taskforce, had tried to reach me.
I dialed this month’s current number, letting it bounce and hum through Lord knows how many different switchboards in an effort to confuse anyone who might have been tracking the call. Eventually, I heard a human voice.
Jennifer started to ask who I was dialing, but I held up a finger, answering her question when she heard me speak a known phrase. Minutes later, I was connected with Kurt, and when I hung up I couldn’t decide if I was happy or incredibly pissed off.
Jennifer had patiently waited, using the time to get some more free fruit and a couple of Bloody Marys. She handed me one and said, “So what’s up?”
“Knuckles is in trouble. I don’t know what sort, but it has something to do with our company.”
“Our company? Grolier Services? How can that be? He’s just a fake employee. They can’t use that without us, can they?”
“No. Well, we’ve never really discussed it with them. We’re the first company that was formed from the ground up by operators, independent of the Taskforce. Maybe they consider it part of their stable, like every other cover organization. I won’t know until I talk to Kurt. He wants to meet in DC.”
“When?”
“Tonight. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. No big deal.”
She kicked a deck pebble with her foot, debating, then said, “Are you coming back here or going somewhere else?”
“I’ll definitely be coming back here, but it might be just to pack.”
She held my eyes for a moment, then shook her head and said, “Can I shower first?”
5
Malik Musavi, Persian carpet salesman. The very notion disgusted him. He hated the playacting but knew it was necessary—especially given his organization’s amateurish attempts in this country a year and a half ago. So he trudged up Sukhumvit Road, trying to decipher the address of the Oriental rug merchant while simultaneously waving off the insistent Bangkok tuk-tuk drivers, a pathetic smile slathered on his face.
He despised working undercover and hadn’t done it in years. In fact, since he was a young recruit in the newly formed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran—otherwise known as the Pasdaran. Because of his language skills, he had been recruited into the Quds Force—the Pasdaran element responsible for spreading the revolution beyond Iran’s borders, along with other unsavory tasks. Back then, he had always posed as a student, which was a little easier to pull off. Even in places like Argentina and Venezuela. Now a brigadier general within the Pasdaran Quds, he hadn’t been tactically operational in ten years, but he’d been given a blessed opportunity. A mission of the highest priority, and after the debacle a year and a half ago, there was no way he was going to sit in Tehran and read reports like he had for the previous operation. Especially when those reports detailed bombs accidentally going off in Bangkok apartments. Or even worse, the gleeful stories from the Great Satan’s press about his men whoring in Pattaya the week before the debacle. His men.
Not only had the Quds failed to kill a single Zionist diplomat, one of the men was arrested running away from the misfire, with his Iranian passport. Well, arrested after he threw a grenade at the pursuing police, only to have it bounce off a tree and blow his own legs off.
The entire episode still made him seethe a year and a half later. The damn Zionists penetrated Iran with impunity, murdering a plethora of nuclear scientists, and his men couldn’t even kill a single Jew-dog in the freewheeling country of Thailand. In fact, they couldn’t kill anyone at all, police, Jew, or otherwise. Not counting themselves, that is.
He came out of the reverie when he realized he’d bypassed the Oriental rug store he was searching to find. He backtracked, worked up his smarmy smile, and entered, ready to playact again.
Thirty minutes later he was back on the street, lighter in business cards and acting disappointed in the rejection from the store. It seemed they were comfortable with their artificial rugs from China, not that he really cared. It was the effort that mattered.
He flagged a tuk-tuk and gave the man a destination a few miles north on Sukhumvit, the ride forming the first leg of his plan to lose the surveillance currently on him. He hadn’t minded someone watching him earlier—in fact he wanted that, since it would simply confirm his cover—but he needed to be clean in order to meet his contact from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The tuk-tuk, nothing more than a motorized pedicab, had the ability to bob and weave through traffic, thereby severing him from anyone following on foot. Of course, he knew the surveillance effort would be prepared for that, and a mounted force would continue, riding mopeds, bicycles, or even another tuk-tuk. This was their city after all. The trick was to force the mounted operatives to get on the ground for a foot-follow, replacing the men he’d left behind. Sooner or later, they’d run out of people.
After ten minutes of the tuk-tuk hacking its way through the congested traffic, the incessant bleating of horns starting to cause a headache, he paid the driver and entered a pharmacy. He bought a packet of over-the-counter medication and exited, back on foot. He continued north, pausing to stop occasionally at the myriad of street-vendor shops, acting like a tourist. Crossing the street and zigzagging through the various shopping areas, he was able to identify two of the surveillance operatives on him by their actions. Both now on foot.
When he figured he’d traveled far enough to separate the second set of operatives from their vehicles, he flagged another tuk-tuk and repeated the procedure, continuing north on Sukhumvit. He had the driver stop suddenly at the Asok Skytrain station and rapidly transferred to the elevated rail system. He took it three stops to the Chit Lom station, sure that this final
leg had cleansed him of any surveillance still in play.
He exited the Skytrain and saw his MOIS contact studying a route map on the wall, a folded newspaper in his left hand. He approached, standing behind the man’s left shoulder to shield the pass. He pulled the folded newspaper out of the contact’s hands and turned away without a word.
He had begun walking to the exit, congratulating himself on the successful mission, pleased to be back in the game after spending so long behind a desk, when he saw a man he recognized. One of the surveillance operatives from earlier, staring at him and talking on a cell phone.
He felt a bump in his heart rate but showed nothing outward, continuing to the exit and ignoring the operative. He walked down the stairs at a casual pace, debating. Had the man seen the pass? Did they know the contact worked at the Iranian embassy? Know he worked for the MOIS? If so, they might decide the action was worth stopping him on the street for questioning. A little exploratory search would ensure he was arrested because of what he now held. But he couldn’t simply throw it away. He needed the information it contained, and then it needed to be destroyed. He couldn’t toss it into a trash can, letting it float about until discovery. Too many other operations had failed because of just such a bet on blind luck.
In this business, he had learned that luck favored the opposition. The Great Satan routinely bulled around, bouncing off of stale rumors, only to find the golden egg in a trash can at the most inopportune time. He was sure it was no different here.
He ran through his options. On the plus side, the fact that he saw the cell phone instead of a radio meant the man was alone. He was using the cell phone as a backup because he was out of radio range with the rest of the team and so he couldn’t be vectoring in a plethora of people. It was one-way communication, probably to a central operations center. They’d have this station to work with but nothing else.
Need to eliminate him before others arrive. Before he can give a complete report on what he’s seen. He knew it would put him in the crosshairs of suspicion but saw no other choice if he wanted to continue.
He went down the stairs at a casual pace, giving the man plenty of time to follow. Across the four-lane road he saw a section of old apartments, crammed in between the glass and steel of the high-rises. He veered toward them, skipping through the stop-and-go traffic.
Walking through the parking lot parallel to the apartments, he ignored the security booth and guards that serviced the area, knowing his brashness would get him through. Sure enough, they paid him not a second glance, and his head began to swivel for cameras. He saw none. He continued on for about seventy meters until he found an alley sandwiched between the old buildings, the stench from rotting garbage overpowering. He opened the newspaper, removed the envelope inside, and stuffed it into his jacket, then reached into his waist and pulled out a wooden-handled ice pick, his hand trembling slightly from the rush. He flattened against the alley wall and waited.
But not for long.
He heard the man’s footsteps, first running, then walking, then nothing. Malik knew the operative was momentarily confused by the loss of his target. And that he would check out the alley.
Soon enough, he heard the man approach. He knew what would happen next: In an effort to keep from burning himself, the operative would casually pass by, as if he had a destination in mind, and simply glance down the alley.
His back pressed to the wall, Malik saw the shadow before the man. As soon as he glimpsed the swing of a leg, he stepped out, grabbed the man’s shirt, and whirled him into the passage, slamming him into the bricks with a forearm to the neck. Before the target could react, Malik drove the ice pick into his right eye, all the way through until it hit the skull on the far side, then oscillated the pick in rapid circles, ripping the brain tissue. The man began to twitch as if he were having a seizure, then slid down the wall to the ground. Other than the ocular fluid that had sprayed at the puncture, there was almost no blood.
Pleased, Malik wiped the ice pick on the man’s sleeve and dragged him behind a Dumpster. He dug through the clothes, finding a police badge and a truncheon. No gun. Turning to leave, he heard a noise deeper in the alley. He whirled around to find a homeless man staring at him, standing on a grimy mattress. The man held out a cup, speaking in Thai, oblivious to what had just transpired.
Malik couldn’t believe his luck. He approached, holding out a wad of baht. He dropped it in the cup and waited for the inevitable Thai thank-you, both hands pressed together in front of the face and head bowed. As soon as the bum looked at his feet, Malik hammered him behind the ear with the truncheon. The man howled and fell to his knees, holding his head. Malik hit him again, knocking him unconscious.
With the man prostrate before him, Malik sagged against the alley wall, catching his breath. When he was in control again, he rolled the bum until he was faceup. He used the truncheon to kill him outright, feeling the bones crunch in the victim’s face from the repeated blows. Malik checked for a pulse, and when he found none he placed the ice pick under the bum’s arm, then pulled the police officer back into the open. He dropped the truncheon near the cop’s outstretched hands and fled.
He conducted a hasty surveillance-detection route, the charge from the killings raging through his body. He forced himself to act naturally, cognizant of the myriad of cameras on the city streets. He casually stopped in various stores and outside stands, meandering farther and farther away, all the while fighting the overpowering urge to run like the wind, the fight-or-flight response overwhelming.
When he was convinced he was clean, he sat on a bus-stop bench and opened the envelope, hoping against hope that the mission was a go and the sacrifices he’d just made wouldn’t simply end up with his catching a flight to Tehran.
The report was in Farsi, and within two sentences, he knew he wouldn’t see his capital any time soon.
Cailleach Laboratories confirmed researching vaccine outside of normal protocols. Have genetically developed a viral strain for testing purposes. Strain is lethal according to source reporting from inside Cailleach, Singapore. Primary research scientist is confirmed as Dr. Sakchai Nakarat.
He scanned through the rest of the report, looking for the golden egg that would continue the mission. And found it at the bottom.
Scientist’s son // Kavi Nakarat // attends the European International Boarding School, Bangkok.
He sat back for a moment, savoring the flush of being operational again and the pride at the enormity of the mission placed upon his shoulders.
The IRGC was responsible for the entire nuclear weapons research infrastructure inside Iran and had been searching for all manner of ways to redirect the West from their laser focus on its development.
Fanning the flames of Syria had proven inadequate, and tit-for-tat reprisals against Israel for the death of Iran’s nuclear scientists had ended in embarrassing failure. They needed something bigger. Something that would cause the entire West to focus on its own survival, country by country, starting with the Great Satan. And now maybe they had found it.
Time to get busy.
6
Elina Maskhadov sipped the small cup of coffee and waited, fingering the simple detonator poking out of her sleeve. Not out of nervousness, which would have been understandable, given that the button would shred her along with every other human in a fifty-foot radius, but for reassurance. Even out of reverence for what she was about to achieve.
The café began to pick up with government functionaries, and she waited still. Waited on her targets. She hated anyone associated with the traitorous Chechen regime of Ramzan Kadyrov, but her targets deserved special attention. A blood-feud eye-for-an-eye.
Only twenty-six, her entire existence had been spent under the constant threat of death, living like an animal in the hills outside of Grozny—or Dzhokhar, as the Chechens called it, after Dzhokhar Dudayev, the assassinated first president of separatis
t Chechnya.
In the old days, she had been too young to understand why the Russian Federation came to put an end to the separatist movement, but she had understood well the toll it had taken. The first battle for Grozny had ended in 1996, and calling it brutal was an understatement, with the Russian military preferring to simply carpet bomb than try to achieve any discrimination between targets. Despite the devastation, the Chechens had prevailed, and the Russians withdrew. Nine years old at the time, she had moved back to the city with her family, only to find a wasteland of rubble.
Three years later, the Russians came again, this time with even less restraint. The war lasted until the new century, when the Russian Federation finally managed to take Grozny again. Or take what was left of it. She couldn’t believe the devastation. It was as if a giant had descended with a sledgehammer, then set about methodically destroying every single building. At sixteen, she found it ironic when, in 2003, the United Nations declared Grozny the most destroyed city on earth.
Throughout her life she had only wanted the fighting to stop. She’d had cousins and uncles who had taken up arms, and had even lost her fiancé to an unlucky artillery round when he had gone to get water, but she had never considered joining the cause. Never felt the urge to fight. Until the “peace” came.
Elina glanced across the intersection and saw her partner at another café, also patiently waiting. The Chechens had learned their lessons well, the primary one being to always alter their tactics. Always keep the enemy guessing as to how the next strike would come. In this case, they had deployed in an X ambush, with all four corners of the busy square holding an instrument of death: a female with enough Semtex and ball bearings to butcher anyone near her.
The initial strike would be done autonomously, by whomever achieved the biggest target first. The other three would wait for the reaction. When the response came, they would then trigger, one by one, taking out targets of opportunity along all three approach routes.