by Brad Taylor
I could hear the wedding girls shrieking at what Jennifer had done. Probably wondering how they could learn to do it too. One of them began dialing a phone.
The problem with Jennifer’s choice of submission was she couldn’t do anything to defend herself without letting go of the man on the ground. But she knew she didn’t need to.
She shouted, “Pike!” as one of the men reached for her hair. He got a handful before I landed a perfect uppercut. He was bent slightly at the waist, his chin forward. I felt his jaw slam shut as his head snapped straight back. He collapsed onto the deck, unconscious.
I spun around and faced the group, Jennifer’s tussle to my back.
“Anyone else want a piece of us?”
The women just stared slack-jawed, but I could tell the men realized they had tangled with more than they had bargained for. Even in their drunken state. They were all looking for something interesting on the ground or in the trees. Anywhere but at me.
I caught flashing lights in my peripheral vision. The bridesmaid must have called the police. Out of time.
I slapped Jennifer’s hands, shouting, “Time to go!”
She released his arm and I jerked her to her feet, saying, “Can’t go out the front door.”
Jennifer looked at the ten-foot brick wall at the back of the patio and started sprinting.
Great . . . acting like a monkey to evade the law. No damn dignity whatsoever.
I sprinted after her and we hit the wall at the same time, me coming off a table and her running straight up it in a toe-kip. We landed in the parking lot behind it and kept going, Jennifer laughing like we had just thrown water balloons at a car.
Driving back over the Ravenel Bridge to Mt. Pleasant, I said, “You talk about me losing control, what the hell was that back there?”
She looked a little embarrassed, then indignant. “Enough was enough. I didn’t try to hurt him. I was just subduing him. If it had been you he’d be in the hospital.”
She tried to show how serious she was, but a grin leaked out.
“Well, what were you going to do after you subdued him?” I said. “With all those other guys around?”
She didn’t respond, because we both knew the answer. I was going to step in.
“Look, I’m good with it. Those assholes deserved it, but if there’s a learning point here it’s that you can’t go around doing that sort of stuff.”
“What? That’s what I’m always telling you.”
“No, no, I don’t mean because I think it’s wrong. I mean because you’re a woman. I can run around kicking ass all day and it won’t raise an eyebrow.”
She started to wind up and I rushed out, “It may be chauvinistic, but that’s just the truth. Word’s going to get out about that little scuffle, and people are going to wonder how a pencil-neck anthropologist managed to kick someone’s ass that was twice her size. You have the skills now, and you need to protect them. Protect what we really do. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”
I expected her to blow up, but instead I saw her reflecting on what I had said. I decided to drop it.
“Hey, in the end I’m just glad you’ll only take so much shit before you blow your top. I was beginning to wonder if you had to have a gun at your head before you’d defend yourself.”
She grinned again, and I knew we were beyond it, lesson learned.
“You never finished about Knuckles. Is he coming with us, or not?”
“Not. Apparently he has his hands full doing something else.”
5
K
nuckles felt the heat radiating off the black pavement like an open oven, the sweat rolling down his face in a perpetual drivel, forcing him to wipe his nose every few seconds to keep the salty liquid from hitting the screen in his lap. For the first time, he began to wonder if the sensitive equipment could withstand the punishment. After all, almost all of it was specially constructed—without the military specifications that made the equipment look, well, military. Taskforce spends bazillions on kit and I’m in a van with no AC.
Blending in is one thing, but this is ridiculous. Johnny’s going to pay. Johnny was the team leader of the Taskforce element that Knuckles
was replacing, and as such, he was the one who’d coordinated all of
the in-country assets. Not that Knuckles couldn’t have done so in his
sleep. He’d been to Tunisia chasing Crusty on and off for damn near
eight years, always waiting on Omega.
In truth, the rotations had grown boring, with only one bit of adventure when Crusty had moved from Tunis, the capital, to Sousse,
farther down the coast, after the uprisings that brought down the
government in the initial salvos of the Arab Spring. Crusty didn’t
know it, but the move actually fit in better for the Taskforce cover. His
desire to remain anonymous to whatever new government took over
had inadvertently helped them out.
A couple of years ago, Knuckles had actually gotten Omega authority while he was on rotation—on the X and ready to go—when he’d been diverted to another mission, sparing the terrorist yet again. He had begun to think that Crusty would never go. That he had some lucky charm allowing him to evade the U.S. net, even though he stomped around in plain sight. Knuckles had deployed to Sousse with his team three days ago, and while transitioning with Johnny’s team, prepping for yet another collection mission, the mythical Omega call
came from Colonel Hale.
The Bluetooth in his ear chirped, the voice coming through sounding sterile because of the encryption. “Knuckles, this is Decoy. We’re
in.”
“Good to go . . . break, break, Johnny, you got eyes on Crusty?” “Still at the office. No issues.”
Lieutenant Colonel Blaine Alexander, the element leader for Omega
operations, had decided to continue with the collection mission first,
before taking Crusty down. Knuckles had fought it, wanting to do the
mission and get the hell out of Tunisia, but there’d been some chatter
about an assassination attempt, and while an interrogation would collect invaluable data, there was the option to simply monitor Crusty
for a few days. See what he said and who he talked to. So, they were
planting clandestine cameras inside his residence, imaging his hard
drive and wiring the place for sound. If it didn’t provide any benefit,
they’d take him down.
Knuckles couldn’t fault Blaine’s logic, especially since Crusty had
evaded capture for damn near ten years. Interrogations were fine, and
Crusty would get plenty of them, but you never really knew if the
subject wasn’t just stringing you along, telling you a bald-faced lie to
protect himself. As Blaine had said about the cameras, “one-eye don’t
lie.”
A few more days won’t hurt . . . if I don’t melt.
He looked at his watch and called Johnny again, wondering why
Crusty was breaking his pattern, today of all days.
“Johnny, this is Knuckles, what’s his status? He should have broken
the box ten minutes ago.”
“Easy. I’ve got the place locked down, and a beacon on his moped.
He’s still inside. If it changes, I’ll call you.”
Knuckles paused, wanting to remind Johnny who was in charge
out here on the ground. He took the high road.
“Roger. Standing by.”
The call aggravated him. The light admonishment of “easy” was a
direct slap in his face. Made more glaring because everyone on the net
knew that he’d just spent the last eight months in physical therapy
from a catastrophic wound sustained on a mission similar to this one.
It was an unspoken question of whether he was still capable. Like I’m
ab
out to panic or something.
In truth, Johnny’s team should have been headed home right now,
but with the additional mission tasked by Blaine, they’d stayed behind,
their whole purpose to keep eyes on Crusty while Knuckles’ team did
the breaking and entering. It made sense, because Johnny’s men had the
most recent pattern of life on the target, but the call still grated. His earpiece crackled, bringing him back to the mission. “Cameras
and mikes in place. Going to image the hard drive now.” “Roger. No movement on the target. Plenty of time.”
Johnny cut in, “Crusty’s on the move. Got a trigger on the moped.” What?
“Say again? The moped’s moving? Who was the trigger on the office? Did you get positive ID that he left the building?”
“Uhh . . . no. No PID. But the moped’s leaving now. I’ve got the
beacon track. I’m getting someone on it. I’ll have a visual ASAP.” “How’d he get out without you triggering?”
He got no response and knew there’d been a screwup. He saw no
reason to drive the blade home a second time, and simply waited. He
was in a position to react, should he have to.
Still plenty of time. Let it play out.
Knuckles called Blaine in the Ops Center, giving an update and letting him know they were in motion.
Retro, the other operator with him, analyzed the beacon track and said, “He’s doing the usual pattern. No issues there, but how the hell did he get out of the building without Johnny seeing him? Something’s
not kosher.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t trust this tech surveillance bullshit. All
we know is that his moped is moving. No idea if he’s on it or not.”
Knuckles thought about it for a second, then said, “We’re still good.
He’s either in the building or on the moped. We got that track, and he’s
still a good twenty minutes away from his house.”
Knuckles was about to check in with Decoy, when he was beaten
to the punch. “We got an intruder. I say again, we got an intruder.” What the hell? In all the time they’d tracked Crusty, he’d gone to
this apartment alone.
“Say again?”
Decoy’s breath came in pants as he sprinted somewhere Knuckles
couldn’t see. “His mistress just entered the building. We’re moving to
the roof. We’ve got the cameras operational on WiFi. She’s on the
ground floor, and searching. I don’t know what she’s searching for, but
it had better not be us.”
“Get out of sight. Get gone.”
Seconds later, Decoy came back, no longer out of breath. “She’s
packing up. She’s got some luggage and she’s shoving things in.” “What do you mean? She’s packing his clothes? How’s she acting?
Is she taking a trip with a friend, or running from the law?” “She’s definitely running from the law. She’s packing like someone’s
going to kick the door in. And it’s all of his shit. There isn’t any women’s stuff in here. She’s on the second floor now, and ripping his laptop
apart from the docking station.”
Knuckles remembered the mission. “Did you image it?” “No time. She came in before we could.”
It took a moment for the full ramifications to hit home. He knows
he’s being hunted. He’s going to run.
He called Blaine and gave a SITREP, getting authority for an inextremis takedown of a fleeting target. It was risky, because they weren’t set for a perfect hit, but they did know his habitual route. Knuckles was positioned to intercept if necessary. The only problem
was that Crusty was now going to pick the kill zone. Not optimal. Retro gave him a location of the beacon track, and he saw it was
only a few blocks away, on a street headed to the P12 highway. Still
inside the residential area where the roads were no more than alleys,
ribbons that wandered aimlessly, hemmed in by wall-to-wall buildings
on either side.
Got to get to him before he hits the thoroughfare.
He gunned their van, swinging it around the narrow street, ignoring the bleating horn from the vehicle behind him as he hopped the
curb to complete the U-turn.
“Retro, give me a lock-on.”
“Two blocks back. He’s on a one-lane road right now. Take a left,
and we’ll intersect his line of march behind him. What’s the play?” Knuckles thought for a moment, driving like a madman, then said,
“Push his ass over with the van. If anyone’s on the road, let him go.” “Vehicles aren’t the only threat. You can’t predict who’ll see this
from the buildings. You sure?”
“No. But he’s running, which means we’ve been blown somehow.
We need to get his ass for that as much as anything else.” They made the left and entered a narrow one-way road with barely
enough room for the van, the uneven cobblestone surface rattling
Knuckles’ teeth. In front of them was a moped, the man on it having
a bald top with a ring of ragged hair blowing in the wind, a Bluetooth
headset in his ear.
Crusty.
Knuckles looked down the street and saw nothing but the occasional garbage bin. No vehicles or pedestrians. He inched the van
forward, saying, “Check our six. Anything?”
Retro said, “Nothing I can see, but that don’t mean shit.” “Good enough for government work.”
Knuckles floored the van, closing in behind the moped. He brought the nose adjacent to its rear tire, then gently swung the bumper over, just enough to kiss the rubber. The contact caused Crusty to panic, jerking the handlebars in an overreaction. The moped skipped onto a pile of trash, he hammered the front brake, and the front wheel locked up. The moped swung sideways, launching the terrorist out of the
saddle. They both skittered to a halt twenty feet in front of the van. Retro was already out of the door before the bike stopped its slide,
Taser at the ready. He hit the juice as Knuckles pulled abreast, the
door of the vehicle open and waiting.
Retro threw him in the van, slamming the door shut and giving
Knuckles a look of utter amazement. Knuckles floored the gas, getting
out of the area, feeling physically sick.
He called Blaine in the Ops Center.
“We took down the moped. But it isn’t Crusty.”
6
H
is true name was Abdul Rahman, but he had not heard it uttered aloud in years. Sometimes, lying on his crude pallet adjacent to the remains of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, surrounded in darkness feebly attacked by a lone candle, he would say the name over and over, as if to prove it still existed.
He was known by many, many different names. So many that even he had trouble remembering which one to use for a given mission. He took pleasure in knowing that the Lebanese authorities, along with the Zionist dogs in Israel, believed they were tracking four or five different men.
Another time, another place, and he would have been an educated man. A scholar, perhaps. Or an engineer. He certainly looked the part. He was only five feet four inches tall, and slight of build. His vision was so weak that he was forced to wear glasses with lenses thick enough to distort his eyes when seen from the front.
Although bordering on physical frailty, he’d been blessed with one thing that had allowed him to survive in the refugee camps as a child, and to thrive as a soldier of God: His intelligence outmatched just about anyone he came across. He had never been formally evaluated, but even as a child he knew that he was smarter than everyone else. Not in a smug or superior way. It was just a fact, like the boys who were stronger. Truth be told, he used to play stupid as a child so as to better fit in wi
th the other boys in the camp, and had found this talent to be helpful when he wanted to be underestimated as a grown man.
His intelligence had facilitated many successes in the long struggle, but it was his strength of will that set him apart from the average fighter, no matter their skills. He simply would not quit.
In 2007, the Lebanese Armed Forces captured him in a massive sweep when they invaded the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp to root out the Palestinian terrorist group Fatah al-Islam. He was not a member of that group, and considered it to be just one of many with more brawn and rage than brains. He went to prison anyway, with a dozen others, and was beaten for weeks, but he never gave up any of the aliases he had used in the past. Names that would have sealed his death. Eventually convinced they held a nobody, he was released, and he returned to the camp only to find it had been utterly destroyed in the fighting. A wasteland of shattered concrete and bent metal.
Infuriated at what had become of his home, he had finished the job of the LAF. Using his Palestinian connections, he hunted down the remaining Fatah al-Islam members who had evaded the Lebanese net. In his mind, they did not understand the struggle, and had brought untold suffering on the Palestinian people in the camp for nothing more than a bank robbery. A simple crime that garnered nothing.
His actions spawned a plethora of myths: Hezbollah assassins had infiltrated the camps to blunt the growth of Sunni extremism; Israeli Mossad agents were using a secret weapon that killed from a distance; or a Jack the Ripper–type bogeyman was on the loose. The last was closest to the truth, with Palestinian mothers using his acts to keep rowdy children in line. He didn’t bother to correct them. He became known as Ash’abah, or the Ghost.
He didn’t associate himself with any specific group, but he’d worked for them all at one time or another. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and many more. At the least, even with the politics and infighting, they’d all been driven by the same desires he had: pushing Israel into the sea and reclaiming Palestinian land. Recent history around the Middle East had changed that equation, frightening him to his core.
Libya was gone as a supporter, and Syria, once a staunch ally in the struggle, providing funding, equipment, and protection, was now struggling with its own survival. Osama bin Laden was dead. And the once vaunted Palestinian Liberation Organization, which had evolved into the Palestinian Authority, was on the slippery slope of capitulation, eschewing terrorism and even discussing whether to overtly affirm Israel’s right to exist.