by Chris Lowry
“What are you looking for?” screamed Lt.
“Key,” Brill shouted back.
“The fucking plane doesn't need keys!”
Brill shrugged and ran into the plane.
“Close the door,” he said to Washington and tripped into the cockpit.
“I thought you said you could fly.”
“I didn't say anything,” Brill studied the controls.
It was a jumble of dials, and gauges on a console in front of a yoke. He pressed the two pedals on the floor and listened to the clink of something near the back.
“Find the start button,” he said.
“We're going to die,” the Lt slid into the co-pilot's seat.
He reached forward and jammed a button. The left engine roared to life. Brill jammed another button and the right engine followed it.
“Look for brakes,” said Brill.
He thrust the throttle forward and the plane groaned. The Lt jammed a second set of buttons and the plane lurched forward.
Brill used the pedals to turn it around and the plane slowly rumbled toward the runway.
“Speed,” said the Lt.
Brill shoved the throttle forward again.
“More speed,” said the Lt. He pushed back in his seat, trying to will the plane off the ground.
“Buckle up,” Brill yelled.
Bullets pinged off the fuselage.
“Speed!” screamed the Lt.
Brill jammed the throttle all the way down and yanked back on the yoke. The asphalt raced beneath the window as the end of the runway loomed. The plane shuddered once, shuddered twice and lifted off the ground.
It soared over the barrier blocking the end of the runway and straight toward buildings.
“Speed!” the Lt shouted again.
Brill yanked up on the yoke, pulling it all the way to his stomach.
The plane nose lifted almost straight up as it fought for altitude. Brill remembered that too high too fast could cause a stall, so he pushed the yoke forward, trying to level off.
The Twin Otter bucked and rolled, but he finally got it under a semblance of control. It wasn't quite level, but it was headed in the right direction.
“See,” Brill breathed out in a huge sigh. “Flying.”
The Lt reached up and flipped on the autopilot.
“At least until we run out of gas. Flying is easy. Landing is the hard part.”
Washington slid into the Navigator's seat.
“We'll land. I trust him, LT.”
“Better you than me,” he said as he unbuckled. “I'm going to check on my men.”
He slid past them and through the narrow cockpit door. Washington leaned across the recently vacated seat.
“How's the shoulder?” the CO asked.
“Works,” Brill grimaced.
“I'm going to need a long run after this mission,” he grunted.
“You run?” Brill asked. “How far?”
“My last race was a 100 miler,” the CO grinned.
“That far?” Brill said. “I run, but haven't done a race yet.”
“You should. What's your longest distance?”
“I just run for fun.”
“Our personality types need an outlet. Some guys lift weights, which I do, but for some of us, it's not enough. We run for an hour at a six-minute pace and you're knocking out 10 miles. Try running fifty miles at a 7-minute pace. Or a hundred at nine. Then you really know what you're made of.”
“True grit.”
“Yeah, after fifty, it's all willpower. The body starts to do weird things. It's my release.”
“I'll have to try it.”
“Let me know, I'll run with you.”
“Deal,” said Brill.
“If you land,” the CO smirked.
“When we land.”
“Hey, I'm from Missouri. Show me.”
The two men stared at the horizon, the ground blending into a dark shade of verdant green as they passed beyond the reach of the desert and puttered over the treetops.
Brill relaxed a little.
The jungle below could be full of RPG toting rebels all aiming for the tail section of the Twin Otter, but he felt at home.
He couldn't go back though.
Back in the US, he had to find some answers. Someone set him up. That meant there was a leak in the organization, and he needed to find out who.
He kept a hand on the yoke and planned it out in his head while his shoulder throbbed. His mission one was a success but not without lessons.
He wondered if the next one would have as big of a bang.
THE END
FLASH BANG
Flash Bang
The cafe served strong coffee in tiny delicate cups. The caffeine content alone had his heart racing and Brill wondered why it didn’t eat through the delicate aged paper thin porcelain.
He took a small sip of his third cup and listened to the thudding beat of his heart accelerate. It made him smile.
Constant training, running eighty miles or more per week and daily meditation kept his normal heart rate in the low range, but add a jolt of java to his system and it took off like a jackrabbit jumping.
He was waiting for a man to join him.
Not at the table, but in the cafe, itself.
The man was late, which was why he was on his third cup. It pissed him off just a little. He had learned long ago to just go with the flow, and his laid-back attitude developed in a surf van life on the coastal wilderness of South Africa was at odds with his look.
Buzz cut hair, sharp jawline, sharp cheeks and a plain face that was completely forgettable except under the most extreme circumstances. He looked like he was former military, and carried himself with discipline. It showed in the precision with which he lifted the tiny cup from the saucer, from the eyes that never stopped roaming, taking in detail after detail of his surroundings.
“Another sir?” the waiter asked with a strong accent.
Brill waved him off. One more and his heart might explode. After he was finished, he planned to hole up in the safe house and do a movie binge while running the treadmill just to run off some of the energy.
It was a habit he had developed in South Africa before joining the Recce, the special forces of the South African Defense Force. He needed a special dispensation and dual citizenship, both documents made simple with a call from a cabinet member Brill was happy to call friend. The habit probably kept him alive, he thought. He worked to keep his mind from wandering on the wonders of running, and was mostly successful.
The appearance of Avi Goldstein brought him right into focus. The Israeli ex-pat was short with curly black hair that ran from his head down to his chest and arms. Every exposed inch was curly black hair, and the arms dealer liked to wear his custom-made shirts with almost all the buttons undone.
The fabric stretched over his expansive stomach which exposed even more of the hirsute chest.
“Booby,” Avi embraced the waitress. His hand wandered down her back and across her buttocks.
Brill watched her face blanch in disgust before she hid it behind a beaming smile. Avi was a big tipper, he knew from observation and the waitress his regular. She would put up with a lot for what he would put on his American Express Black Card.
“Right on time,” he whispered as Avi shouted out his order. Brill could almost repeat it with him.
“Cafe au lait, perrier and a Stella,” Brill’s lips moved as the Israeli ordered.
The man settled into his chair and pulled out a small cellphone. He slid through a number and started talking into it.
The waitress brought his order on a silver tray and set it in front of him. He patted her on the small of her back and let his hand slide down lower. She smiled and extracted herself with a little grace.
Brill was impressed.
Avi was meeting Bashar Al Assad a terrorist leader of the Lions of Arabia in the cafe in Athens for the express purpose of selling him an arms package of used Soviet w
eapons from a warehouse in Belarus.
How Avi was connected to Belarus mafia was a dot for someone else to connect. As was why Mossad allowed him to operate for so long unimpeded. Brill suspected that the arms sold to the terrorist were used to overthrow or destabilize other governments in the Middle East, which took pressure off the Jewish nation clinging precariously to land on the edge of the Mediterranean. His instructs back in Virginia had suggested he read about history and geography, and Brill had planned out a course of study. It had yet to touch on the politics of the region where he found himself operating as of late.
His specialty was Africa.
But politics in the desert seemed pretty much the same as the jungle or even the civilized shore of America. People struggled to get what they wanted and have their way, and damn the consequences or innocent bystanders.
A black armored Mercedes rolled up to the sidewalk entrance to the cafe and disgorged two bodyguards, giant hulking men with black hair and dark glasses. They were fat over muscle, giant bellies overlapping their belts, and relied on size instead of speed.
Brill knew there as a third guard in the back seat of the car who covered Bashar’s back as he exited and lay in wait just in case he was needed.
The man himself stood up from the vehicle and stretched in the sunlight. He was lean and hard looking, a patron of the desert sun that tanned his skin into a leathery sheen. He had three fingers on his left hand from a small bomb explosion as he built a suicide vest, and scars along that same cheek and side of his face. It was hidden now behind black sunglasses that matched the bodyguards.
Brill watched him walk over to Avi and embrace the man, kissing both cheeks as was custom. He wanted to marvel at the action, since an Arab man sworn to remove Israel from the map was expressing affection to a Jewish arms dealer. This proved to Brill that circumstance not only made strange bedfellows, that if the bad men in the world would stop trying to put one over on the rest of society, everyone could all pretty much get along. Common goals meant common sense should take over.
On the other hand, hatreds ran pretty deep and Brill knew a thing about rage. It was a potent fuel to get a mission accomplished, one he tapped into himself often.
Bashar sat across from Avi and accepted the coffee and water. Avi nursed the bottle of beer as the two men began to negotiate.
Showtime, thought Brill and stood up.
He pulled a couple of coins out of his pocket and left enough on the table to cover Avi’s bill and tip for the waitress. With his back to the bodyguards, he lit two small M-80 firecrackers from his pocket and rolled them under the tables toward the road.
Each firecracker had a ten second fuse so he counted down from nine as he pulled a Glock 19 from the waist of his pants. He didn’t need to rack the slide or check the chamber because he had done it a dozen times in the hotel room and on the way to the cafe.
The M80’s explosion echoed up the narrow stone streets the sound bouncing off the walls to amplify the effect.
The two bodyguards by the car jumped and flinched. They spread out and pulled pistols from shoulder holsters and searched for the source of the sound.
Brill marched across the twenty feet of the cafe toward Avi. He raised his gun and sent two shots through the man’s heart. He shifted the gun to the closest bodyguard and dropped him with a round to the forehead and repeated the action to the second man.
Bashar screamed and cowered under the table mewling in fear.
Brill didn’t have him on his list, but the man was a terrorist and killer. The world would be a better place without him so he took a shot and drilled him through the nose with a hollow point.
Another man screamed in the new silence. The backseat bodyguard scrambled out of the car, still yelling as he fumbled for his pistol. Brill dropped him with a round to the chest and a second to the head just to be sure.
He bent over grabbed Avi’s phone and attaché and walked calmly away from the crying and befuddled patrons of the cafe, twenty seconds after he stood up from his table.
CHAPTER TWO
“This is a secure line,” the voice announced after three rings
“Shadowboxer,” said Brill. “Mission confirmed.”
“Mission confirmed Shadowboxer. Stand by for secondary assignment.”
The call connected him through a series of clicks and buzzing as his brow wrinkled in confusion. This wasn’t protocol.
After a mission, he was to hide in the safe house for a week, then extract under a false identity. A second mission on the heels of the first meant something had gone wrong.
He replayed the hit in his head. Avi was gone for sure. Two hollow points to the heart don’t leave much muscle to work with unless they put the man on a bypass machine in the first three minutes. Bashar was in the same condition.
He slowed it down and relieved the twenty seconds or so it took to happen and tried to remember if something wasn’t consistent, if it didn’t fit the pattern.
Nope, his hit was confirmed. They were dead men. Then what was the second mission he wondered?
The call clicked through and a new voice picked up. It wasn’t his normal handler.
“Brill,” breathed Shelby in his velvet Southern voice.
Brill stood at attention.
“Sir?”
“Call me Shelby son. After what we’ve been through together we can accept a little familiarity despite the formality of our roles.”
Shelby Johnson was a lame duck Senator from his home state and the man who introduced him to Africa. He was also the Chairman of Barraque, the defense contract company Brill was currently doing off books black operations on the European continent before.
“Shelby,” said Brill. “This is against protocol.”
He was right. There were layers in place designed to protect the head of the company from the actions of its operators and talking on a transcontinental line was breaking all sorts of rules.
Some might argue it made the Chairman an accessory to the murders Brill just committed, though the legal team assembled by the Senator could probably justify a simple conversation.
“Sometimes you just have to look at the rules and say Fudge Em,” grunted the Senator. “I want to tell you that was mighty fine work you did. People noticed and it helped our position greatly.”
Brill felt a small swelling of pride and hated himself for it. His own father had never dispensed praise when he was growing up, so compliments coming from senior males tended to touch his ego. He didn’t like that anyone had that power over him.
“That man was competing with us for a contract,” continued the Senator. “And playing against our national interests. Now Barraque can move in and take over.”
It took a moment for Brill to register what the man said.
“We’re doing the deal, Sir?”
“Shelby,” corrected the Senator. “Yes son, we’re controlling the deal. US products supporting our side in this little disagreement.”
Brill sighed softly.
US policy allowed defense contractors to sell weapons to rebel groups in support national interest overseas. Brill had been on the opposite end of that agreement when Barraque and companies like it armed rebel groups that kidnapped him and his girlfriend when they were volunteering at a refugee camp. Refugee’s created by those US products.
The rebels raped them both and killed his girlfriend before Brill was rescued by a mercenary company. They too fought against US armed rebel groups and militias on the subcontinent, a trend that continued when he joined the South African Defense Force.
This web of deceit bothered him, but since he was unsure what to do about it, and working with Barraque allowed him a lot of latitude to remove bad players from the field, he would put off thinking about it until some point in the future. Right now, he got to kill bad guys and that was enough for him.
“We got a problem and we’re doing a favor for a friend,” said Shelby. “There’s a little argument down in Syria right now that we’re n
ot a part of, but a Senator’s daughter got caught up in the middle.”
“What’s the favor?” asked Brill.
“I wanted you especially for this one son, cause I know it’s close to your heart. The girl and her boyfriend were scooped up by a rebel group. I need you to go in and get them out.”
Rage blossomed in his belly like a mushroom cloud and blood pounded in his temple. Another rebel group harming another innocent girl.
Damn right Shelby wanted to send him in. And since he didn’t say anything to the contrary, there were no orders not to kill them all.
“When do I leave?” he growled into the phone.
“We’ve got a plane waiting for you at the airport,” said Shelby. “I wanted to call you on this because this one is just between you, me and the Senator, got it.”
If he was caught, there wouldn’t be help or anyone coming to his rescue. He was pretty sure a US Senator would be working official channels, but Brill suspected that he was part of a back-door deal, a favor given for some future favor earned.
It didn’t matter.
A young girl and her boyfriend were in trouble. When Brill was in trouble, a group of hard men came to his rescue. He owed one to the universe to try and pay it back.
CHAPTER THREE
A Gulfstream G50 squatted on the runway like a sleek insect. It was painted matte black with golden trim and bore the logo of a fictitious oil exploration company.
There wasn’t but the cover of the Canadian company would buy him time on the runway. He climbed up the set of stairs and settled into the cabin. A single flight attendant came out of the cockpit and shut the door.
He watched as she pulled up the steps and locked them in place while the engines fired up on the plane. They were wasting no time, which was good. The longer the girl and her boyfriend were in rebel hands the more damage that could occur.
Brill wanted to be on the ground and gathering information so he could effect a rescue as fast as possible.
“Would you like something to drink for the flight?” the attendant asked. She had flowing black hair and smoky black eyes that crinkled when she smiled. Brill still felt a little jittery from the coffee triple stack at the cafe so he asked for a beer and for water.