by Brian Drake
“Get the .50-cal ready,” Stiletto said.
Miller left his seat to prepare the weapon.
Stiletto held the chopper aloft. The chalet was another two-story affair, laid out in an L-shape, with an open area marked for a landing spot. Stiletto moved the chopper back and forth over the building, noting assault points. As he flew back over the landing zone, he spotted Zolac and Karl Staar. They stopped at the edge of the platform and waved.
Stiletto moved the chopper so his side faced them. He said to Miller, “Let ‘em have it!”
Miller threw open the side door, swinging the long snout of the .50-caliber Browning outside. He lined up and pulled the trigger. The weapon hammered as the heavy caliber bullets flashed from the muzzle. Zolac and Staar sprinted away as Miller peppered the landing pad and the building itself with a long string of slugs.
Return fire came their way right away, from Raeder, who smashed an upper-story window with his rifle and aimed outward. Stiletto lifted the chopper out of his line of sight and Miller made another sweep, blasting through sections of the house. Stiletto swooped over a driveway where two SUVs sat waiting. Miller hosed them with the big .50, blasting the tires and glass, reducing the vehicles to bits and pieces.
“We’re out of ammo!” Miller said.
Stiletto put the chopper down on the landing pad and the two men hustled out under fire. Raeder continued shooting from the window; he saw Staar and Elisa doing the same from other windows. Grabbing his HK and combat harness from Miller, Stiletto ran out of the chopper. He blasted back at Raeder, forcing the other man to duck from view. Shots from Staar smacked the ground as he ran for a door and crashed through with Miller on his heels.
A living room with expensive furniture lay before them. Stiletto and Miller dodged the furniture heading for a set of steps. Heavy footsteps pounded overhead; Raeder and Staar shouted commands.
EVERYONE ON the second floor hugged the ground.
“They’ll come up the stairs,” Staar said.
Elisa clutched her pistol tight, face straight and eyes alert as she watched the top of the stairs.
Zolac, with his own weapon, huddled in a corner out of the direct action.
Staar ordered Raeder to bring grenades.
Rader crawled to another corner and grabbed a green metal ammo box, dragged it over to Staar.
Elisa backed away from the stairs and joined Zolac. They watched Staar and Raeder help themselves to the frag grenades in the box.
Staar and Raeder communicated with silent signals. Staar moved forward with a grenade. Raeder fired down the stairway, sweeping the muzzle left and right; Staar tossed the grenade and fired to cover Raeder as he tossed the second one.
STILETTO AND Miller bolted backward as the grenades bounced down the steps.
Miller found cover behind a couch; as Stiletto dived over a table, the grenades exploded, filling the room with a thunderous blast which shook the walls and reduced the items in the room to shattered rubble.
They dashed back to the base of the stairs.
Voices upstairs. Unintelligible. Potshots from above.
“Somebody will be right at the top,” Stiletto whispered. He unhooked a flash-bang stun grenade from his combat harness, pulled the pin, and Miller raised his SMG to cover.
The stun grenade arced upward, bouncing off a wall; somebody yelled; a bright light accompanied the explosion. Miller triggered covering fire as Scott started up the staircase. Miller ran behind him.
As he reached the landing, Scott set his sights on Zolac and Elisa. Despite the flash-bang she raised her weapon, the muzzle zeroed on Scott’s face. The HK UMP bucked against Stiletto’s shoulder. The woman’s body jerked repeatedly as the rounds tore into her. Zolac stood, dropped his weapon and raised his hands.
Stiletto ignored the gesture. He stitched a line of slugs chest-to-stomach, splitting Zolac open and spraying the wall behind him with blood and tissue, and Zolac let out a strangled cry.
Stiletto leaped over their bodies and pivoted right. Miller, behind him, already had a bead on Staar and Raeder, who were also on their feet. Miller’s SMG spat flame. Raeder’s head snapped back, blood spattering on Staar, as Staar brought up his assault rifle. Stiletto and Miller fired at the same time. The rounds cut Staar down and he landed hard beside Raeder.
Stiletto scanned the rest of the room. No further threats. He finally lowered the HK and glanced at Miller.
“Nice shooting,” he said.
“Nice throw,” Miller told him.
GENERAL IKE faced Stiletto across his desk.
“Fahzil and the others captured in Brussels haven’t revealed the source of the Delta Nine gas,” Fleming said, “but they will. And I’ll have a new target for you.”
“What about Zolac’s associates?”
“We’ll move on the ones who haven’t vanished, but from the material gathered in Austria and from what we’ve learned from Gratien, the accountant, the NWRF is smashed to bits. They will not bother us again.”
“There’s still one more thing, sir,” Stiletto said.
“Yes, Miller and his girlfriend. I’m told they’re already cooperating.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
General Ike let out a breath and looked grim.
“Point me in the right direction, sir.”
Fleming produced a file from his desk. He showed Stiletto the pictures, travel records, and proof of Tattaglia hacking Jenny Farnsworth’s account. He also showed him the video of the assassin’s interrogation. The blonde man had spilled everything after he’d been disfigured enough by the torture experts.
“I think a heart attack would certainly be convenient,” Fleming said.
“What do we tell the DCI?”
“I think this Agency has suffered enough from men like Tattaglia. A heart attack doesn’t leave room for any questions.”
Stiletto took the file without a word.
Fleming did not add he’d also investigated David McNeil; when he had, of course, turned out to be innocent of any wrong doing, Fleming had cancelled the surveillance. Of all of his choices during the Miller caper, that one bothered him the most.
But sending Stiletto to finish Tattaglia did not bother him at all.
Leo Tattaglia lived in a quiet suburb in Arlington. Stiletto arrived around three a.m. He carried a set of lock-picks, the code to Tattaglia’s alarm system, and a cylindrical container holding a hypodermic needle.
He picked the front lock, entered, and typed a code into the alarm pad beside the door, deactivating the system.
When his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the house, Stiletto started walking.
Down the hall.
Up the stairs.
Tattaglia snored in his bed.
Stiletto opened the container and slipped out the hypo. With his thumb on the plunger, he went around the bed, aimed for Tattaglia’s exposed arm, and rammed the needle into flesh. Pressed the plunger. The fluid in the hypo rushed into the traitor’s bloodstream.
Stiletto pulled out the empty hypo as Tattaglia jerked awake. The agent snapped on the nightstand lamp and stepped back.
“Stiletto!”
Scott held up the hypo. “It will look like a heart attack, Leo.”
Tattaglia’s face blanched.
“You. . .you. . .”
Tattaglia tried to say more but the drug kicked in. The traitor’s mouth opened; his scream was a choked squeal as he grabbed at his chest. His face tightened and his eyes widened in agony. He fell back on the bed, eyes still open.
Stiletto stood still and waited.
The traitor did not come back to life. His body lay on the bed like a heavy sack of garbage.
Five minutes later he thumbed Tattaglia’s eyes closed and switched out the light.
THE END
Thank you very much for reading my story. If you liked it, or even if you didn’t, please leave a review by clicking here. And keep reading for a sneak preview of Stiletto #2: The Fairmont Maneuver!
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Also by Brian Drake:
Bullet for One
Reaper’s Dozen: 12 Tales of Crime & Suspense
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Prologue
Switzerland – The Beginning
Lars Blaser knew that the dark-haired woman with the long legs worked at the U.S. Embassy in Bern. He didn’t know that the C.I.A. paid her salary. That would be a bonus, the benefit of which he would soon discover.
Lars followed her from the embassy to Adriano’s Bar & Café on a sunny Thursday. He noticed nothing of the pleasant day around him. All he wanted was to talk to somebody who worked at the embassy, but he couldn’t just show up at the door because the Iranians were watching. If he met her outside the embassy maybe they would think he was having an affair with her.
He laughed at the thought. He was a university physics professor, not the kind of man who had affairs with pretty brunettes with long legs.
The woman sat outside, her back to the café’s white stucco outer wall, reading an English language magazine. A waiter buzzed in-and-out of the arched entrance, serving the outside tables. The woman had placed her purse on the table with the opening close to her right hand. Nothing made her stand out from the other patrons, except maybe her business suit, which seemed out of place with the surrounding tourists in street clothes. Her long hair was tied back, strands falling alongside her face. Brown eyes, small nose. She scanned her surroundings every few minutes, as if on a programmed routine.
The tourists, busy with maps and menus written in German, and their food, which they attacked with gusto, didn’t notice him as he approached. He stepped through the gap in the knee-high divider on the sidewalk.
He wasn’t entirely nondescript. Tall, middle-aged, and a little paunchy, he wore a light tweed jacket, tan slacks, white shirt. He’d forgotten to remove the university security badge from his jacket lapel. The yellow badge displayed the University of Bern’s logo, a lower-case U with a raised B above, with his name in smaller type below.
He hesitated a moment as he neared the woman’s table, but he had no other ideas. He needed help. Badly.
The legs of the extra chair scraped loudly on the concrete as he pulled it back. He sat. She gave him a startled look and reached for her purse.
What he said stopped her hand.
“The Iranians want me to build them a bomb,” he said. “You have to help me.”
The words took a moment to sink in. She blinked a few times. “I’m sorry, what?” She leaned closer to Blaser, magazine forgotten, but her hand still remained close to the purse.
Blaser’s voice shook as he went through his memorized speech. “My name is Lars Blaser. I’m a physicist at the university. My life is in danger. Two days ago, an Iranian named Shahram Hamin said he would kill me and my family if I did not help his country make a nuclear bomb.”
“That’s very interesting,” she said.
“You work at the U.S. Embassy. I followed you here. Tell the Americans. I need help. I can’t do it.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Won’t. I can build a bomb blindfolded, that’s not a problem. But what they want—”
The woman completed the reach into her purse but brought out a pen and crumpled envelope. She straightened the envelope and handed him both items.
“Name and telephone and somewhere else we can reach you.”
“You promise?”
“You picked the right person to follow, Mr. Blaser.”
Blaser provided his information and then the woman told him to leave. He rose stiffly, though with relief on his face, and walked away.
The waiter brought her order, the Lord Sandwich with roast beef and tartar sauce, and Jennifer Turkel asked for a to-go box. Emergency at work and all that. The waiter suppressed an annoyed frown but complied.
On the walk back she called her boss to explain the surprise meeting. He told her to hurry. When she returned to the gated multi-level stone building on Sulgeneckstrasse 19 that housed the U.S. Embassy, she met him in his office to further discuss the situation.
Her boss, Peter Hyatt, was the case officer in charge of the small team of agents that included Jennifer. There wasn’t much spying to do in Switzerland, per se, but gossip and tidbits of information were always drifting through the wind, especially at embassy parties, and sometimes they caught some of it and passed it along to headquarters.
“Could be a crank,” Hyatt said. He’d loosened his tie the moment he entered the building that morning. Everybody wondered why he bothered with it. The loosened tie was the only thing sloppy about him. He ran a tight ship otherwise. His worst quality was writing memos, three or four a week, mostly housekeeping items and the other waste-of-time advisories from a boss with not enough to do.
“Aside from the fact that you got lazy and didn’t see a civilian following you,” he said, “what do you think?”
Jennifer Turkel didn’t argue. She certainly should have spotted Blaser. But she did regret that her actions would spawn another memo, probably a four-pager on the importance of tradecraft with highlighted excerpts from the field manual.
“It’s worth a look.”
“The Iranians have their own scientists. Why him?”
“They wanted somebody vulnerable, and they found one,” she said. “I have to file a report anyway. We can’t let it go if he’s telling the truth.”
“Get started. I’ll fast-track any requests you have.”
Twenty-four hours later, a team flown in from Berlin had Blaser and his family covered with visual, audio, and video surveillance. Jennifer performed the background check from her office.
Seventy-two hours after that, she met with Hyatt again.
“He wasn’t lying, and now we’re tracking the Iranian, Hamin,” she said. “They’re running surveillance on Blaser, too. But they don’t want a complete bomb. What they want are a set of krytrons.”
“Set of what?”
“The gizmo that actually makes a nuclear bomb,” she said. “Goes in the warhead. It facilitates the atomic reaction. Without krytrons, all you have is a radioactive paper weight. The part of the Iranian deal that actually has teeth keeps them from having those.”
“We have to tell HQ,” Hyatt said.
Jennifer and her boss called HQ and provided the new information. HQ told them to stand by. Another forty-eight hours ticked around the clock. Then HQ said they had a plan and an agent on the way to implement the plan.
Scott Stiletto arrived in Bern wearing a fancy three-piece suit and carrying a leather-wrapped briefcase.
He didn’t mind getting out of his stuffy office for a trip around the world but also didn’t think he was the right man for the job. He’d told his chief, General Ike Fleming, after Fleming explained the situation.
“We’re basically running a double agent. That’s not my thing.”
As an agent with the C.I.A.’s Special Actions Division, Stiletto’s “thing” was usually dealing with opponents in more direct ways. No, this sort of job wasn’t his usual task, but he did have a soft spot for what he called “forgotten victims”, people like Blaser forced into situations out of their control by powerful forces who would kill them if they didn’t comply. He liked being the powerful opposing force who could dish out the kind of punishment such animals deserved.
Fleming, sitting across the big desk from Scott in his usual dark suit, agreed, but added, “I lobbied for it. The nuclear angle makes it our business. I think the plan from the seventh floor is a little too fancy. That means risk. Risk means we may need somebody on the ground who can handle such a situation. Our people in Bern aren’t exactly in shape for it.”
And that meant, Fleming said without saying, a man of Stiletto’s caliber.
; Stiletto crossed the tiled floor to where the woman waited. He was tall and well-built with dark hair and rough hands. Only the hands didn’t fit the presentation of a business man on a trip to Bern. They were a working man’s hands.
He introduced himself but didn’t like the look she gave him. Not everybody on the payroll appreciated the “skull smashers” Scott represented. But the Agency needed them for the special jobs nobody else could handle. He hoped she wouldn’t give him a hard time, or end up being an appointed hack who couldn’t properly do her job.
She led the way to her car and during the drive he described the plan.
“You’re gonna get that whole family killed,” she said.
So much for not getting a hard time.
“Maybe,” Stiletto told her, earning another sharp look, “but only if they do something stupid.”
He had no intention of getting anybody killed, but he also wasn’t going to bother trying to change her mind. She’d made it up long before he’d arrived. She didn’t have to like Scott but she had to cooperate. The locals were also probably upset that the case was being taken from them. Scott couldn’t help that. Orders were orders.
She brought him to his hotel and returned to the embassy while he checked in. Then he settled down to wait for the night time meeting Jennifer had arranged. While waiting, he took out the sketch pad he always carried. He was known around HQ as a very capable artist, having learned the skill as a young army brat always on the move and unable to make friends. He started to draw a copy of a set of photographs supplied by the science section at headquarters.
Blaser, as instructed, arrived at a bar not far from the university just before midnight. The lights were low, the walls and carpet dark, with flickering candles at every table. He asked the bartender for Mr. Resnick. The bartender directed Blaser to a back room where Jennifer and Stiletto waited. The bar was a C.I.A. front for just such occasions, the walls fitted with countermeasures to foil any electronic eavesdropping. The room was small and bare but warm. A pitcher of water and three glasses sat on the table. Blaser helped himself to a glass.