One Rough Man

by Brad Taylor

  “Get out from underneath the truck! Take off your headscarf and start waving it. Hurry.”

  She wiggled out, ripping off the scarf and waving it back and forth like she was in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean.

  “What’s up? Why am I doing this?”

  Someone else is God’s entertainment. Someone who fucking deserves it. “It’s the cavalry. Stand by. These assholes are dead.”

  The pager vibrated again with a single word: Marked.

  The world had returned to level, all doubt and fear banished by that simple message. I had been given an incredible gift. A miracle.

  The feeling of relief was short-lived as the air around us snapped with supersonic rounds puncturing the steel of the Pajero. Shit. We’re out of time.

  “Get back underneath the truck. Move!”

  I shoved Jennifer bodily backward, then began raking the hillside with the Glock, hitting nothing but hoping to suppress the incoming fire. Bullets were chewing up the ground around us, causing a feral fear to surface. So fucking close. Not fair. I got Jennifer behind the wheel well, jammed underneath the axle, and turned to fight. The two men were coming fast, one firing while the other moved, flip-flopping down the slope. I snapped off the remaining rounds in the first magazine and reloaded, traversing the hillside to draw the fire away from Jennifer’s position. I dove behind the cover of a large tree, the ground around me exploding in pops like someone was working a Weed Eater against the trunk. Where’s the fucking cavalry?

  I could tell who was moving and who was shooting because there was a pregnant pause in the fire each time they transitioned. I waited for it, then rolled to the right, attempting to keep them from flanking me or closing on Jennifer. I knew it was ridiculously stupid, but if I didn’t even up the odds, we were both dead, and the small gap was all I had in my favor. If I did it right, I’d be facing the man on the move, and he’d block the shot of the guy providing the suppressive fire.

  As soon as I aimed the Glock, I knew I was dead. I had picked the wrong side. The man to the left was moving, and I was facing the barrel of the man to the right, aimed directly at my head fifty meters away. Too far to hit with the pistol, but easy for the assault rifle. Fuck.

  No rounds came my way. Instead, the man turned and aimed at the crest of the hill. For the first time I felt the deep thump of rotor blades. A Bell 427 helicopter sliced across the top of the hill, incongruously painted in bright yellow and white, with a logo emblazoned on the side reading Epeius Oil Exploration. The helicopter’s blades bit into the air as it rotated violently, the open door facing the earth. I could see the team inside, held in place by the centrifugal force of the rotation, three holding SR-25 sniper systems at the ready. I couldn’t hear the gunshots due to the rotor blades but saw the muzzles flash, two times each.

  “Yeah, motherfuckers. Eat that.”

  The helicopter immediately circled around to the other side of the car hiding the single man. He jumped up and began to run, only to be cut down by the precision fire of the men inside, the 7.62 match-grade rounds flying unerringly toward his head as if it was a giant magnet.

  Finished shooting what it could see from the air, the helo hovered over the road, its right door sliding open and a man hooking a thick fast-rope to the rescue hoist hanging off the side. Once attached, he threw out a kick bag holding the remaining coils. It fell to earth, the fast-rope snaking out of the bag on the way down. No sooner had the rope hit the ground than men began sliding down it, controlling their descent by hand and foot pressure alone, like a fireman sliding on a pole. One after another they exited the aircraft, until a total of five men were on the asphalt, fanning out and looking for targets.

  When the last man hit the ground, the crew chief dropped the rope, allowing it to fall harmlessly to earth. The helicopter banked and flew out of sight.

  I stood up, manacled hands in the air, saying, “You got them all.”

  The lead man turned, smoothly training his weapon on me. There was no overt threat in the gesture. The weapon simply moved as naturally as if the man were pointing.

  I stared, mute at first, before words finally found me.

  “Holy shit, Knuckles?”

  93

  Knuckles was trying very hard to remain serious, but he couldn’t stop a giant grin from creeping over his face.

  “Hello, Pike. Seems like I’m always bailing you out of trouble.”

  I was grinning like a schoolboy, too, but I didn’t give a shit. “Hey, Knuckles. It’s really good to see you.”

  Knuckles came over while the rest of the men fanned out, clearing the immediate area and searching the dead men and vehicles.

  I stuck both of my cuffed hands out for a handshake, which Knuckles ignored. Instead he gave me a powerful embrace.

  He held my shoulders. “It’s really good to see you too. Alive, I mean.”

  “Man, you ain’t lying. Ten more seconds and you’d be scraping us off the street.”

  “Who’s the babe?”

  Jennifer scowled, but I knew Knuckles was just kidding, trying to figure out what was going on.

  “This is Jennifer Cahill, my partner in crime.”

  Knuckles smiled warmly, disarming her anger, and shook her hand.

  I asked, “How in the hell did you get here so quick? I tripped my beacon less than an hour ago.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It caused us to shit our pants. We were alerted by Kurt a day and a half ago. We’re over in Tunis, doing ‘Oil Exploration.’ ”

  Knuckles raised his hands, making quotation marks.

  “We were told simply to get our ass to Tuzla with the total package and link up with you. We got to Sarajevo this morning from Italy, refueled, and were heading in to Tuzla when your beacon went off. We homed in on it and saw the gunfight going on down here. The beacon wasn’t precise enough to tell us who was who on the ground, so we paged you.”

  I couldn’t believe how close we had come to dying. I’ve used up my luck for the rest of my life. Or maybe it wasn’t luck.

  One of the men came up with the keys to the handcuffs on my wrists. I gave him an embrace as well, like it was old home week. I waved in the direction the chopper had left.

  “What’s up with the helo? That’s new.”

  Knuckles grinned. “Yeah, we got that since you left. It’s a Bell 427. State of the art. You know the motto of the Taskforce—‘Money’s no object.’ Anyway, we were tracking your favorite guy over in Tunis and about to pull the trigger when we got the redirect to here.”

  He paused, looking around at the battle site they had just entered.

  “Enough about my story. What in the hell is going on here? Who are these guys?”

  “I have no idea about the assholes here, but there’s a terrorist in Tuzla that needs to be killed. We gotta get moving.”

  One of the men hollered at Knuckles, standing over the driver Jennifer had beaten into submission. He was awake and scared.

  “Hey,” I said, “I forgot about him. I guess there is someone who can tell us what’s going on.”

  I pulled Jennifer out of earshot of the other men.

  “Listen, I need you to get into the car across the street. Sit in the back and close the doors.”

  She looked at me warily. “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I’m not asking you to leave because I’m going to make him take his clothes off.”

  “Pike ... are you sure? I don’t think this is right.”

  “Jennifer, he told me in the car that he blinded Ethan’s daughter. You don’t have to like it, but I’m going to make him tell me what’s going on.”

  Jennifer’s eyes widened, but she stood firm. “And then you’re going to do what? Kill him? Just like that? In cold blood?”

  “We don’t have time for this. Carlos is still running loose.”

  “I get that, Pike, I really do, but I don’t want you to kill him. You’ll be just like him. You’ll become him. Is that what you want?”
<
br />   Can’t she see he deserves to die? I thought about what had happened today. Who was alive and who was dead. And the gift. Shit. Maybe she’s right. “Okay, look, I won’t kill him. Just get in the car.”

  Jennifer hesitated, then jogged away to the car without looking back.

  Knuckles and I walked to the man on the ground, now sitting up and staring at us, fear radiating off of him, his face swollen and bloody from where Jennifer had kicked the shit out of him.

  I squatted down to his level, tapping his forehead with the barrel of my Glock. “Hey, tough guy. Didn’t quite work out like you wanted, did it?”

  He began babbling instantly. “Don’t kill me. I’ll tell you everything I know, but I swear, it isn’t much. I’m just a contractor for a company called Trident Global Threat Analysis. Please ...”

  “Trident Threat Analysis, huh? How original. Let me guess, you’re a SEAL.”

  The man nodded.

  The Trident was the nickname given to the badge awarded after successfully completing Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, the arduous selection and training course that produced the Navy SEALs. Not too hard to figure out.

  “How about that,” I said to Knuckles. “He’s a fuckin’ retard. I can’t believe a SEAL came that close to killing me.”

  Knuckles, an ex-member of SEAL Team Six, chuckled and said, “Maybe we should cut him a break for choosing the right branch of service.”

  “He’s on the team that tortured and killed Ethan’s family.”

  Knuckles’s smile faded. “Maybe you should let me take a crack at him.”

  I returned to the driver, staring into his eyes, conveying no mercy. “Maybe I will. Depends on my man here. What’s your mission? Who hired you? Who’s the boss?”

  Six minutes later I had all the information I could get from the guy. It wasn’t much. He knew that the company was owned by a former SEAL named Lucas and that the mission had been to simply kill Jennifer and me. The good news was they were the only team on the ground, and the Taskforce had killed or captured everyone in it. As to how the team had found us, the man only knew that it was by electronic means. Somehow, Mason seemed to have an accurate picture of where Jennifer and I had been both in Oslo and in Tuzla.

  Knuckles asked, “How could he get a beacon on you without you knowing?”

  “I have no idea. It could be our cell phones, but I don’t see how. We’ve had three different sets since this started, and bought each one with cash. The only other thing I’ve been carrying is Kurt’s personal pager. It hasn’t been out of my hands since he gave it to me, so it can’t be that.”

  “You don’t have anything else they could have altered?”

  “No. We’ve been living like vagabonds. Doesn’t matter now, anyway. The team’s dead and we need to get moving. We can figure it out later.”

  Knuckles pressed a hidden switch on his thumb, giving his men commands through what looked like an ordinary Bluetooth cell phone earpiece. They coalesced around us, all reaching out and shaking my hand or giving me an embrace.

  Knuckles gave a brief warning order of what was about to happen, then split the team between the two functioning sedans. After they began loading, he looked down at the driver, asking, “What about this guy?”

  Fuck turning the other cheek. “Well, I promised Jennifer I wouldn’t kill him, so I guess he stays. Doesn’t mean I can’t make it hard for him.”

  I aimed the Glock at the man’s knee and pulled the trigger, shattering the patella. I ignored his scream. You’re lucky you didn’t kill Jennifer. Nothing would’ve stopped me from carving you up.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go. We can talk as we drive.”

  I left the man writhing on the ground in pain, blood jetting out from the wound. Four steps to the car, I glanced at the sky. No lightning. Must be Old Testament Day.

  We got in the car with Jennifer. Having heard the gunshot, she gave me a questioning look.

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t kill him. If he’s smart, he’ll come out alive.”

  She said nothing.

  I headed back to Tuzla, the other car following. “Before I begin, give me a rundown on what you’ve got here. What are the assets available?”

  “Well, we were at Omega in Tunis, so we’ve got the total package on the ground. You saw the 427. We can use that in a pinch, but only to exfil whoever we get. We have no cover for status here, so I can’t let that thing be seen doing anything operational. Dropping in here was pretty damn risky, but the gunfight sort of overcame that. It’s supposed to only be passing through. Obviously, we have the team you just saw, but we have the same issues. We’re all employees of Epeius, supposedly exploring for oil in Tunisia. We’re really hanging it out here. There’ll be no plausible deniability if this falls apart.”

  Knuckles was gently reminding me of the potential sacrifice should things go wrong.

  “Sounds like you guys were about to pull the trigger. Sorry for the change of mission, but, trust me, it’s worth it.”

  Knuckles said, “You’ll be sorrier about it when I tell you who the target is.”

  “Who?”

  “Your old pal Crusty.”

  “Crusty? That bastard’s still around? You guys haven’t taken him off the board?”

  “Yeah, he’s still around, and he’s moved up in the world. He’s no longer just a low-hanging fruit to whack for the hell of it. His security ain’t getting any better, though. We can fall right back into it, as long as we don’t blow our cover over here.”

  Shit. He’s not going to like what I have to say. “Well, it’s going to be sticky. Our target knows he’s being hunted. It’s going to be very hard to take him off the board without a firefight. Whatever happens to your cover, it’ll be worth it.”

  “Let me guess, you’ve found Bin Laden and he’s here with a nuke on his back.”

  “Close. It’s not Bin Laden.”

  He didn’t need a map drawn out. “You’re tracking someone with WMD? For real?”

  “Yeah. He’s going to deploy it soon. Maybe in the next few hours. And I don’t know where the fuck he went.”

  94

  We planned our next moves in a parking lot a block down from Carlos’s hotel. It had been a little strange at first, since out of the five folks on the ground, four of them had been my guys—including Knuckles. I could tell he was unsure how to handle the situation, so I had deferred to him and simply fallen in as a team member. He didn’t say anything, but I knew him well enough to see he was greatly relieved. I also knew he’d let me take over the team if I’d asked. But I wasn’t ready. These men had worked and trained relentlessly for a very long time to hone their skills to a razor’s edge. Part of that was individual, and part was teamwork. Either way, I was on the low end of the stick for both. Taking charge would just be an ego trip. Knuckles is the man now.

  And he had grown quite a bit while I was gone. I watched him with the team and could see they were clicking. It was painful to admit, but my taking over would just make them less effective. I was satisfied with providing the intelligence, letting Knuckles handle the assault. I knew he’d defer to me if it came to that.

  Knuckles finished giving instructions, wasting little time on fancy planning. “All right, remember we’re dealing with WMD. Take that seriously. Pike’s going to lead the way. We get to the room and scan it for heat. If we see a source, we go in hard. If the room’s clean, we take it slow. No sense alerting the rest of the hotel if we don’t have to.”

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of the mission brief. It was like nothing had changed, and I was sitting on the patio at Tbilisi. About to save the world. Maybe that’s a bit much, but it was a good feeling. Knuckles finally got to us. “Jennifer, I want you to engage the man at the front desk. Keep him focused on you until we’re in the stairwell. We’re going to enter in two groups, three seconds apart. Once the second group is in the stairwell, you can head on back to the cars here.”

  Jennifer nodded, app
arently comfortable in her role.

  “Pike, I want you to lead so we don’t make a mistake on the door, but once you’ve pinpointed the objective, I want you to pull security while we’re in the room. Okay?”

  Security? That sucks. I didn’t push it. “No issues. It’s all yours. You got any kit for me?”

  Knuckles grinned, obviously relieved that I hadn’t demanded to be with the entry team.

  “Of course,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t have anything. You never did.” He turned to a man carrying a civilian pack. “Give him the kit we brought.”

  Inside the bag was some communications equipment and an H&K UMP, just like everyone else was sporting. It was a small, lightweight submachine gun built primarily of space age polymer, which made it easier to break down and hide from X-ray inspection. While it lost the power of the cartridges chambered in carbines and rifles, the UMP had the appeal for the Taskforce of being easily concealable. There were other automatic weapons that were smaller, but the UMP chambered the more powerful .45 caliber instead of the ubiquitous, but less powerful, 9mm. The .45 had a much greater knockdown power and was a subsonic round, thus making the UMP easy to suppress without the need for special rounds. I pulled it out and did a functions check, knowing it was unnecessary, but doing it anyway out of habit.

  Once he saw I was ready, Knuckles started the ball rolling, telling Jennifer, “Showtime. We’ll be thirty seconds behind you.”

  She glanced at me with a question. No fear, just unsure of whether she should leave. Wanting my approval before she followed the orders of a stranger she’d just met.

  I said, “Time to put your money where your mouth is.”

  She broke into a smile and started walking, saying, “Please. I’m just wondering if I should stay behind so I can pull your ass out of the fire.”

  Knuckles let her get out of earshot before saying, “Is she good to go? What was that all about?”