by Brad Taylor
“So, we’re safe here? The Ummah are all true believers?”
Bakr scoffed, “No. No way. Most of the Muslims came here to escape their life at home. They were told about the free welfare and decided to join in. Don’t trust them just because they pray to Mecca. They’ll turn you in simply to prove they aren’t a threat.”
Wearily unpacking their bags, Bakr checked to ensure the weapon was still intact in its duct-tape cocoon. Seeing no signs of a breach, he asked Sayyidd to set up the M4 satellite phone and check the e-mail account.
Sayyidd demurred. “Let’s get some sleep first. The message will be waiting for us when we get up, and there’s nothing we can do with it right now anyway.”
Bakr started to argue but didn’t have the energy. He was growing weary of his partnership with Sayyidd, wanting to be on his own again. He was unsure why his leadership had chosen Sayyidd for their original mission, but was becoming convinced it had been a mistake. A mistake that he would more than likely have to rectify. Crawling into bed, he turned out the lights.
65
Finished cleaning up, I gave Jennifer’s door a light knock. I sensed her looking through the peephole, then saw the door swing open. Jennifer was smiling, standing barefoot while finishing buttoning the top of her shirt, her hair wet and smelling of shampoo.
“Hey, you’re early. Let me get my shoes.”
She moved away from the door without waiting on a response, which was lucky, because seeing her like that made me about as comfortable as a snail crossing salt flats. Don’t knock like this again. Call first.
She came back to the door wearing a ball cap, her wet hair stuck through the hole in the back. The effect floored me. Heather had worn her hair the same way almost every weekend. Jesus. I can’t do this. I knew it wasn’t Jennifer’s fault, but the combined effect cut me to the quick. She noticed me stiffen and looked at me with concern.
“Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
I had no idea why my brain had made that connection. Heather looked nothing like Jennifer. It was just a ball cap—a stupid connection that passed quickly, like the jolt you feel when a car starts crossing into your lane on the freeway, then swerves back.
“Nothing. Let’s go. I did a recce of the north lobby and found the business center.”
Eight minutes later we were sitting in the The Link, a pseudo- business center, pseudocafé, with me on one computer and Jennifer on another. I logged on to the Embassy Suites Web site in Old Town Alexandria and proceeded to get us a couple of rooms.
I was finishing up the reservation, asking for adjoining rooms, when Jennifer whispered, “Pike. There’s another message. It’s in a different e-mail account. The first account’s empty. The message we printed in Belize is gone.”
I closed out my system. “Print it out.”
After she hit print I said, “Scoot over. Let me try something.”
I got behind the keyboard and typed www.whatismyipaddress.com.
“What’re you doing?”
“Well, we can’t read the message itself, but with a little luck, we can determine where it came from. All I have to do is get the full header of the e-mail and paste it into this Web site. It should have the originating IP address, which, if we’re lucky, is tied to an actual location. Sometimes it’s good to go, other times it doesn’t work, but it’s worth a shot.”
I clicked “get source” and waited for the computer to quit churning. The screen loaded with an analysis of the message.
Jennifer asked, “What’s that telling us? Do you understand any of that?”
“No. The normal human language is at the bottom.”
I scrolled down the screen until I saw “source.” I felt Jennifer leaning over my shoulder, reading the screen:
Country: Norway
City: Oslo
Lat: 59.54.45
Long: 10.44.19
“You’re a genius!” she exclaimed.
She got a stranglehold on my neck, giving it a hug. She pecked my cheek with a light kiss.
What the hell was that? I leaned away from her.
“I can’t believe you just did that! It’s like black magic or something. Why don’t you raise your hands and say, ‘Behave, and I’ll bring back the sun’?”
“Hold on. All this really says is that the message went through Norway as a first gate. It doesn’t mean it came from Norway. There’s a good chance of that, but it isn’t absolute proof. It’s easy to fool this type of thing.”
“All right, all right. It’s still pretty cool. You’re a walking library of cool stuff.”
I didn’t let it show, but I was secretly pleased with the attention. If I’d had a tail, I’d have been wagging it like a dog getting a pat from his owner. I’m pathetic.
“I’m going to delete this completely. If nothing else, it’ll slow down the terrorists.”
Making sure the message was gone from both the in-box and the trash file, I said, “I got a couple of rooms in D.C. Tomorrow, I’ll give a friend from my old unit a call. He’s an Arabic speaker and can decipher both this message and the one before. Sound like a plan?”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
We headed back to our rooms to rack out. Jennifer opened her door, then turned around.
“Hey, Pike?”
I stopped working my key. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for that thing in the business center. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
She couldn’t have made me more uncomfortable if she had asked to borrow a condom. Why bring it up?
“That’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just still a little touchy about that sort of thing, I guess. Not your fault.”
“That’s what I mean. I could tell I made you uncomfortable. I wasn’t trying to . . . to . . . make you think of your wife. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure we’re still on the same sheet of music. I shouldn’t have done that.” She broke into a smile. “But you do have some neat tricks.”
ABU BAKR AWOKE BEFORE ABU SAYYIDD. He could feel the endgame in his bones and was itching to bring it about. Quietly setting up the M4, he logged on to the Internet and checked the next address on the e-mail list. Two messages were in the in-box, both supposedly from Nigeria telling him he had been named in a rich man’s will. All he needed to do was wire some money to get his inheritance. Disappointed, Bakr checked the other addresses. None contained the message he was looking for. This was getting a little annoying. Working at a snail’s pace was fine when one had that luxury, but they needed to get moving. It had been over forty-eight hours since their last message.
He woke up Sayyidd.
“We have no new message.”
Sayyidd rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, secretly happy that his desire to go to bed earlier had proved to be the right call.
“How long should we wait? What do we do if he never contacts us?”
“I think we should send another message to The Sheik. If that doesn’t work, we head out on our own. I think I can get some SEMTEX explosives from some helpers in the Balkans, but we won’t be able to implicate the Persians. God willing, we’ll still accomplish our mission.”
Sayyidd was pleased that Bakr was now getting impatient, and was willing to strike out together with or without the message.
“Let’s send the e-mail,” he said.
Bakr turned back to the computer and typed a simple message:
We have successfully entered the country of Walid. He hasn’t contacted us. We wanted to ensure that he knew we were ready to meet. God willing, please give us the path to take.
Bakr closed the laptop. “Now we wait.”
66
Lucas leaned back from his computer with a new appreciation for his adversary. His research/administration assistant had sent him a data dump on his assigned targets. On the screen was the enlisted record brief for Nephilim Logan, the man he knew as Pike. The ERB was a one-page document used by the U.S. Army to encapsulate a soldier’s career. In Pike’s case, his assign
ments read like a who’s who of the military elite. Initial assignment to the 3rd Ranger Battalion, on to Special Forces, with two years in Okinawa in 1st Bn, 1st Special Forces Group, followed by eleven years in 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta. His last assignment had been as some do-nothing communications technician on Fort Bragg. Retirement job.
His military schooling had produced more badges than he was allowed to wear at any one time on his uniform, to include a Combat Infantryman’s Badge with a star, indicating combat in two different conflicts. He would clearly not be an easy target. Another time, another place, and we’d be drinking beers together.
Jennifer Cahill, on the other hand, had proven to be exactly as advertised: a college student. The only thing remarkable about her was her picture, since even the passport photo couldn’t hide her good looks. Other than that, she had spent most of her adult life as either a student or a housewife.
Lucas was a careful, meticulous planner. He would become obsessed with the research on his targets prior to conducting a mission. It was what made him successful on assignments that were way outside the bounds of U.S. law. In truth, it was no different than what he’d done while in the military. Learn about the enemy in the hopes of exploiting a weakness and avoiding enemy strengths. To this end, he’d found it useful in his work to subscribe to various data mining Web sites available on the Internet. It never failed to amaze him how much information was free for the taking to someone who wanted to look.
He was broken out of his thoughts by the phone ringing. Looking at the caller ID, he saw it was Standish. Shit. Just what I need.
“Hello?”
“Hey. Standish here. Have you heard anything yet?”
Why the hell is he bothering me? Standish had no expertise at all in man-hunting. His skills were in personal destruction from the shadows. Cowardly stabbing people in the back. The truth of the matter was that Lucas respected the target Standish had given him much more than he did Standish himself. But Standish was paying the bills. I just need to cut out this micromanaging bullshit.
“Standish. Listen to me. You gave me the phone less than twenty-four hours ago. I’m not sure what you think’s going to happen, but your target is a hard, hard man. This isn’t going to be easy. I’ll get it done, but I won’t be answering to you every five minutes. I’ll call you when the mission’s accomplished. If you don’t hear from me, assume it hasn’t been done. You got that?”
“Whoa. I’m the one paying for this. If I want information, you’ll give it to me. I’m not going to throw money at you just to have you blow it without oversight. Do you have that?”
“Yeah. I got it. Fuck this. I quit.”
“What? You can’t quit. You owe me.”
Lucas snarled, “I owe you nothing. You push that button one more time and you’re going to see firsthand what I owe you. Understand? I don’t want to hear that ever again.”
Lucas waited a few seconds, hearing nothing but breathing.
“Call me when you have something.”
“Fine.”
Lucas was sick of hearing what he owed Standish. Fucking politician . A weasel like every other politician. No honor. No belief in something greater than himself. Just whatever favor could be gleaned based on which way the wind was blowing. Yeah, Standish had possibly helped him out, but the truth of the matter was there wasn’t any proof that he had done anything wrong. The only people who could prove he had killed civilians were dead in an IED attack. He’d eventually have gotten off anyway.
He regretted having killed his teammates, but they had lost their way. It was war, Goddammit. He had killed the civilians to get information on terrorist attacks. It had worked. The team broke up a terrorist cell that had murdered at least thirty Americans and would have murdered thirty more. He didn’t understand why his teammates had chosen to turn him in, but he couldn’t let it stand. He had done the right thing. Two noncombatants for thirty Americans. How could that not be seen as a good thing?
He had been working the civilian side of the defense industry for over a year now, and was beginning to hate it. Everything was about the almighty dollar. Nothing was about a cause, a goal greater than the individual. It disgusted him, and he wanted out. Even his actions in Afghanistan, while others might not understand them, were for something larger than money. At the least, it saved American lives, even counting the two who had died at his hand. The sacrifice was for a larger effort. Now his work did nothing but cause money to exchange hands.
It wasn’t that he disliked the work. Truth be told, he’d never minded killing, any more than the average big game hunter. He didn’t draw any particular pleasure from the act itself but did enjoy the hunt. Now, though, the purpose was gone.
Since he had started contracting out, most of his employment had been nothing more than gleaning sleazy information for Standish, the greatest “success” coming when he found a political rival with a young boy. It disgusted him. He’d done only one violent act since leaving the Navy, on behalf of a foreign corporation looking to gain an inside advantage on a classified defense contract. Their only competition was a small outfit at Fort Bragg, something the foreign entity should have been able to outbid. The problem was that the competition was U.S. based, and thus the foreign company was convinced they were going to lose. Lucas had smoked the CEO of the U.S. contractor, securing a foreign win. The money had been extremely lucrative. Worth the woman and child he’d been forced to kill as well. The money Standish was throwing around was even better. Enough to quit this shit forever. He looked at this target as a blessing. The fact that two people would die caused him no angst at all. It was just work.
Lucas returned to the problem at hand. He had a pretty good background on both of his targets now and began to build a plan of attack. He would need his best folks for this one, as he was fairly sure a mistake against Pike had the potential to be catastrophic. He ran through his Rolodex of employees—all of whom worked for him on a contract basis—picking ten that fit the bill. He purposely left out the two who had worked with him at Fort Bragg. When push came to shove, they had balked at killing the woman and child. He had no idea where this would go and didn’t need anyone who might hesitate.
He gave each of the men a call, telling them he had a job and the time to show up at the office if they were interested. He then began building a target package on both Jennifer and Pike. In the back of his mind, he thought about the money he’d make and the chance to get out. To get away from people like Standish. Maybe I’ll get my check and smoke him for free. Help out the country.
67
I waited until I was outside of Fredericksburg, on Interstate 95 about forty-five minutes south of Washington, D.C., before I made the call. I had Jennifer dial the number on our new TracFone, then hand it to me. A man answered on the third ring.
I said, “Ethan, hey, it’s Pike Logan. How’re you doing?”
There was a pregnant pause. I’m sure he was getting over the initial shock of hearing my voice. I looked over at Jennifer, raised my eyebrow, and tilted the phone so she could hear.
“Pike? What’s up? How’re you doing?”
“Hey, nothing like a call from the past. I’m fine. I’m going to be in D.C. tonight, and I thought I’d drop by for a visit.”
Ethan was an analyst inside the Taskforce. As such, he was support. Ordinarily, there was an unofficial separation between operators and direct support personnel, but I had always thought the distinction was bullshit, and had hit it off with Ethan. Being a geographic bachelor whenever I was in D.C., I had dinner with Ethan’s family about twice a month. The last time I had seen him was in the mission brief for the operation in Tbilisi.
Since my implosion, Ethan hadn’t said two words to me. It would do him no good to take sides on my demise, and so he had taken the route of discretion being the better part of valor. I didn’t blame him, although I could hear the wariness in his voice as I finally convinced him to let us come by.
Jennifer, having he
ard my end of the conversation, said, “That’s a friend? Don’t get mad, but out of curiosity, how bad were you when you left? What happened?”
“About as bad as I was when we first met. You can expect everyone to look at me funny, like a cancer patient who might or might not be in remission. Everyone will be afraid to ask how I am.”
I was surprised to find I was comfortable talking about it. That was a first.
“There wasn’t any big blowout, like a drunk finally killing a carload of kids or something. I just sort of . . . fell apart. The Force did everything they could to help me, but it was all based on me wanting to get better. I didn’t. Eventually, I just left.”
Jennifer appeared lost in thought. She finally said, “You ever think about fate, or destiny? You ever think that God makes things happen for a reason?”
“I think about that all the time. In fact, it tears me up. Why’d you ask?”
She suddenly looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I just sometimes wonder.”
I let the silence go for a second, then prodded her. “Wonder what? What were you going to say?”
“Well, what’re the odds of me picking you up at the Windjammer? Me, someone who’s about to get killed, picking up you, the one person with the skills to prevent it? Think about it, what are the odds that we’d collide at all? Given the entire United States? Shit, given just the city of Charleston? It’s just weird, is all. It’s a perfect storm. It makes me think.”
“So what’s the reason for this? Besides my company, I mean?”
“Maybe saving a lot of lives.”
68
Later, after the settling in at the hotel, I decided it was time to get moving. “It looks like we have a few hours before we need to link up with Ethan. I’m going to the Taskforce Headquarters to leave a note for Kurt along with our cell phone numbers.” I paused, not wanting a fight. “No offense, but I can’t take you there. I have to go alone.”