by Jack Murphy
“They- they- they- called him-”
“I'm listening,” the Mexican interrogator said as he spun the hammer in his hand by the handle, the pry bar at the end spinning around.
“Deckard. They called him Deckard.”
Another CISEN agent materialized out of the shadows in a corner of the interrogation cell. He handed the hammer-wielding agent a set of photographs. One by one, he began to hold the pictures in front of Kenny's face.
“Is this him?”
The first picture showed a Northern European looking soldier. Like the other photographs, it was a close up shot taken from a high resolution camera that had been running at a highly secure and classified Department of Energy site in Nevada. At least it had been until the men shown in the photographs crashed the party.
“No, I never saw him.”
“What about this guy?” He said flipping to the next picture.
“They called him Pat. He was out there the night they took apart the Jimenez cartel.”
“With your help?”
Kenny swallowed.
“Yes.”
“What about this next guy?”
The next picture showed an Arab looking soldier, kitted out like the others.
“No, that's not Deckard. I don't think he was in Oaxaca either. Not with the others.”
The interrogator was getting frustrated. Kenny could see the frown even under the ski mask he wore. He flipped to the next picture. It showed a thin man with high cheekbones and Asian eyes.
“They called him Nikita. He was their sniper.”
The interrogator held up the last picture.
“That's him,” Kenny said with a gasp as if he was about to pass out. “That's Deckard.”
The interrogator stood up straight and looked at the surveillance camera in the corner of the room.
Ted Snyder looked away from the black and white surveillance footage that was streaming live to the screen of his laptop. After weeks of living in fear with round the clock security men patrolling his property and following him everywhere, he had finally identified the active threat against him.
“Deckard,” he said the name to himself.
As the CEO of G3 Communications, it wouldn't be hard for him to make some phone calls and find out who the hell this cowboy was. Deckard had shot up southern Mexico and then turned his sights on a G3 Communications covert operation that ran a ratline of weapons, and bodies, into and through Mexico.
The security people at G3, all of them former CIA, SEALs, or Green Berets, had to admit that they were amazed by how fast the mercenaries had taken apart G3's operation. What Deckard had done was completely unprecedented. G3 had built a covert and clandestine infrastructure that ran down the spine of Mexico for them to fly in weapons and assassins. Deckard had identified that infrastructure, hijacked it, and rode it all the way north to its source in the Nevada desert.
Then he, and a couple other mercenaries, had dropped into Area 14, where G3 had been running the MEK terrorist organization, and burned the place to the ground. Deckard had sent a message in more ways than one, including a personal threat leveled against Ted.
G3 Communication ran covert operations for the United States government and other entities all over the world. Because of Deckard's actions, many of those operations were interrupted; others had to be closed down altogether. There was no question when it came to MEK, Deckard and his boys had killed all of them. It wasn't just Ted who was afraid, powerful people in some of the world's most influential places now had this Deckard character on their mind before even knowing his name.
Now Ted had that name.
With the MEK operation blown, Ted had transferred operational control of several other programs to other players. He had no idea how many of those programs were now blown or otherwise compromised. One of those programs was called Liquid Sky. High-end killers. Americans. They did the job right when proxies like MEK couldn't cut it.
Ted had handed Liquid Sky off to a retired General, a former JSOC commander.
The G3 Communications CEO realized that the CISEN agents in Mexico were waiting on his approval. He typed out a non-committal reply and sent it to them via instant messenger. The gist of it was that he was satisfied with the information they had obtained and he no longer needed Kenny Rodriguez. The Mexicans would know what to do with him.
Reaching for his cell phone, he entered into an encrypted phone-call app called Silent Circle and dialed General McCoy. It was time to put Liquid Sky on this target and paint a bullseye on the back of Deckard's head.
31
Two dark forms swam their way to shore.
Taking a knee in the gentle waves they carefully inspected the shoreline with their Night Optical Devices. A row of bungalows was laid out in front of them, some with lights on inside, others blacked out. Everything appeared normal, so they turned around and used a red-lens flashlight to signal the Zodiac rubber rafts that bobbed up and down in the ocean out past the breakers in the night.
With the all-clear signal confirmed, the mercenaries on the Zodiacs began paddling to shore. The Zodiacs came in with PKM machine gunners posted at the nose of each boat to pull frontal security. Three Zodiacs in total came to shore, the PKM gunners immediately jumping off and running up the beach before settling into firing positions with the Russian-made machine guns resting on their bipods.
The other mercenaries dismounted and pulled the Zodiacs up onto the beach. Samruk International's senior Non-Commissioned Officer, Sergeant Major Korgan, oversaw the entire operation. This platoon had seen their Platoon Sergeant killed by an IED in Mexico. Not that they needed the supervision. Their movements were smooth and rehearsed.
Two Squads moved up to the primary objective. Frank, the senior Samruk operative on the ground indicated the target house with an infrared laser that the other mercenaries could see through the green tint of their night vision.
The Kazakh mercenaries noted the sliding glass door. It had been left unlocked, so the point man simply slid the door open and slipped inside. The other mercenaries followed him in. Other squads were moving out to clear the other bungalows that Deckard had indicated as belonging to Liquid Sky.
Frank and Sergeant Major Koran were standing on the back deck in the middle of an impressive array of bench presses, free weights, kettlebells, and other exercise equipment when the first shot rang out from inside. Then another. Then another. A half dozen gunshots then blasted all at the same time before everything went quiet.
Inside, they found four security guards bleeding out on the floor. Three looked to be locals from Mauritius. The fourth was an import, probably a Brit. All had been armed. The Kazakh mercenaries had efficiently eliminated each threat.
Frank rushed over to his old friend who was tied to a chair in the center of the room.
“C'mon, c'mon,” he said urgently as he patted the side of his head.
He could barely recognize Aghassi after the beating he had taken. Finally, Aghassi coughed himself awake. He looked at Frank through bloodshot eyes.
“We're here to get you home,” Frank told him. They went way back to when they had served in ISA together. In fact, it was Frank who recommended that Deckard hire Aghassi to work with them at Samruk International.
Aghassi nodded but was unable to talk.
He was banged up good but would live.
Sergeant Major Korgan motioned over one of the Kazakhs who carried breaching equipment. Using a pair of bolt cutters, he cut through the chain on the handcuffs and Frank slashed through the duct tape holding his feet together with his knife.
The men would make a search of the bungalow, conducting a sensitive site exploitation sweep for anything of intelligence value that could be used to help them take down Liquid Sky.
The Kazakhs had reported in to Sergeant Major Korgan by radio that they had secured each objective and were beginning their search. A medic came forward to get an IV into Aghassi so they could start pushing fluids into his system.
Everything was going exactly according to plan, which should have tipped them off.
That was about when one of the Kazakhs searching Bill's office upstairs stepped on a pressure plate. The explosion killed the Samruk mercenary instantly and destroyed everything in the office along with it.
With the office now in flames, the sea winds quickly helped the fire spread.
“Landslide, landslide,” Frank called over the radio net. It was the codeword to evacuate the objective immediately and return to their last rally point.
They had hit a boobytrap and if the local authorities had not been called due to the sound of their gunshots, they certainly would be after the explosion.
As silently as they had arrived, the Samruk International mercenaries flowed back outside, filed down the beach, and slid the Zodiacs back into the ocean. Aghassi was packaged up inside a field stretcher, the medic now pushing pain killers into him through the IV. He was loaded into the center of one of the Zodiacs.
The red flashes of fire trucks could be seen approaching, the sound of the sirens carrying on the wind as the mercenaries disappeared into the dark waters, heading back to their mothership.
32
The airfield in Turkey was buzzing.
White Land Cruisers sped around the runway, ferrying Westerners around the immediate area. Were they working for relief organizations, intelligence services, or corporations? Deckard watched another group of middle aged men depart a third airplane that had landed that morning and decided that probably they were working for all three at the same time.
Syria was now a global conflict that had pulled in actors from far and wide. Russia backed Assad as the Russian Navy had a warm water port in Syria, their last in the Mediterranean, as well as over a billion dollars in defense contracts a year sunk with the Syrian regime. The House of Saud supported the Sunni extremists such as the Al-Nusra front in order to hedge their bets against a strong Shia presence in the Middle East. Qatar supported the same simply because they wanted to be an influential player in Middle Eastern politics, and international influence meant assuming an Islamist bent these days.
America supported the rebel movement, the so-called Free Syrian Army with covert assistance but so little that even the moderates in the movement had defected to Al-Nusra as they were the best support, drawing cash and weapons from the Saudis and Qataris. With the FSA gutted, America was left with few options by the time they began to overtly assist the rebels. Meanwhile, China supported whatever players in the region were not aligned with America.
Long story short, Syria was fucked. Corrupt elites in the Assad regime fought tooth and nail knowing that the Baath party would sink or swim together. If they lost, there would be no negotiated peace. That time had long since passed. Now it was total war until one side annihilated the other. The civilians paid the price as Islamists and Alawite death squads executed entire families in their terror campaigns.
The country would hollow itself out of human life until there simply were not enough fighters left to carry the rifles.
Deckard watched the foreigners load up and drive off, no doubt heading to the converted military garrison in nearby Antakya where the FSA command center was housed along with the headquarters for other Western-sponsored rebel groups. It was also where the rebels met with American, British, Turkish, and Qatari intelligence officers.
What a shit show.
The satellite phone in his pocket buzzed.
Deckard took it out and looked at the screen.
Hostage extracted. One friendly KIA. Negative SSE.
Aghassi was alive but at the cost of another of his men and they were back to square one.
Walking back into the hangar, one of those Westerners he had seen fly in earlier was crouched over one of the two mustard gas bombs they had recovered from Libya. The technician was removing the impact fuse and replacing it with a custom electronic trigger mechanism. The plan called for the bombs to be detonated on the ground with Al-Nusra taking the rap for it, thus providing an excuse for the Western world to invade Syria because no one wanted Islamic radicals trotting around with weapons of mass destruction.
Deckard knew that whoever cooked up this plan was a quack. They were going to end up triggering World War Three.
The technician replaced the nose cap with one of his own design. It had a keypad and digital display. The client may have been a quack, but whoever he was, he wasn't crazy enough to let Al-Nusra finger the trigger. Liquid Sky would have to input a code to arm the chemical weapons. The nose cap also included a GPS so that its movement could be tracked by satellite. Otherwise, Nusra might flip the switch and ship the bombs to New York or London.
The mustard gas bombs weighed in at eighty pounds each. For them to be parachuted into Syria with the Liquid Sky team, they would both be carefully packed into a Tandem Offset Resupply Delivery System or TORDS, which consisted of a giant cylinder rigged to one of the freefall jumpers by a tether. TORDS could be loaded up with 500 pounds of gear and was designed for a parachutist to jump in a combat resupply for long range reconnaissance teams that operated deep behind enemy lines. The system was awkward to say the least and the U.S. military hardly even used it anymore.
Arriving by plane from Libya was not only the twin mustard gas bombs but also a weapons cache the team was to infiltrate into Syria with, all courtesy of their friend Yezza. Extra weapons, ammunition, explosives, and other mission-essential gear would be loaded up in the TORDS along with the bombs. There were also extra weapons to give to Nusra to help grease the wheels and get them into the rebels' good graces.
The Liquid Sky team was on the other side of the hangar, laying out their kit and packing their MC-5 parachutes. They had Crye precision jumpable plate carriers and an AK-47 rifle for each team member. They would also jump with rucksacks filled with food, some water, ammunition, and other gear in addition to what would be going off the ramp in the TORDS.
Deckard checked over his kit again. He had considered sabotaging at least one Liquid Sky member's parachute. Probably Bill's, or maybe The Operator's, but he didn't have time to do a thorough job. There were too many fail-safes on a MC-5 between the main chute, reserve, and CYPRES system, and he would have to defeat all of them without being noticed.
The Operator sat next to him on the concrete floor, cleaning his rifle for the eighth time that day. Of course his weapon was already immaculate, as was the 1911 pistol he had shipped along with it from Libya. He had on his ever-present mirrored Oakley sunglasses, despite being indoors.
“If you need a sling, there is a box full of them around here somewhere,” Deckard said as he noticed that The Operator's Kalashnikov was lacking something.
“You had your way of doing things at Range 37 and we had our way of doing things on Range 19,” The Operator said curtly.
“Huh?”
The Operator took a deep breath.
“One of the things you quickly learn as an operator as opposed to being in another unit is that you don't use slings. Your weapon goes where you go and aims wherever your eyes look. If you lose your weapon you lose it; you can always get a new one.”
That was an interesting theory. Deckard opted not to follow up on that.
Across the hangar, the technician finished working on the first bomb and moved on to the second. Once he was done with his work, they would load up the TORDS for airborne operations. Deckard decided to wipe down and lube up his AK rifle as well.
They had air laid on to insert them that night.
“Bring it in,” Bill said, his voice echoing as he walked into the hangar. He had an Iridium satellite phone in his hand which he had been using to talk to the client. With an encryption sleeve their commo would be relatively secure, but it was clear that Bill really only talked shop over the Pirate Net he had set up in Mauritius. Over the Iridium phone they would use encryption and only use pro-words, which were pre-determined codewords.
Deckard and The Operator set their rifles down and stood up. Paul and Ramon wal
ked away from their half-packed parachutes. Rick and Nadeesha joined them a few moments later.
“We're cleared hot for tonight,” Bill informed them. “We are jumping at 18,000 feet. The only question left is who here has ever jumped the TORDS before?”
Everyone looked at each other and then up in the air or down at their feet.
“I'm qualified on the TORDS system, but not current,” The Operator volunteered.
“Well nobody is checking to make sure that your online safety worksheets have been completed out here. You got the job.”
“Roger that.”
“Also, each of you needs to know how to work the keypad destruction sequence for the bombs,” Bill told them. “In case I get killed, I expect the rest of you to carry out the mission. Not a big deal since I will never die but you never know.
Bill then walked them through how to enter the activation code into the keypads, set the timer, and how to deactivate the bombs if necessary.
“One more order of business before I cut you all lose to get some sleep before we roll.”
Bill reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of little white pills wrapped inside squares of cellophane. He held them in the palm of his hand, one for each Liquid Sky member.
“Fuck, not this again,” Rick complained.
“If I wanted to hear you bitch and moan I would take my dick out of your mouth,” Bill hissed.
One by one they took a pill packet out of Bill's hand.
“What are they?” Deckard asked.
“Your go-to-hell plan.”
The Operator looked down at his pill pack in the palm of his hand, then made a fist and placed it in his pocket.
“I haven't seen these since Dagestan,” The Operator said.
“Technically I should be making you guys carry them on every mission, I just haven't been enforcing it because I figure each of you has the good god damn common sense to do yourself if it comes to that. This time the client insisted. There is too much riding on this mission and the results are too high profile. If you are going to be captured, take the pill. It works the same way as a morphine overdose, puts you to sleep and then stops your heart. It's painless.”