Operation Zulu

by Ernest Dempsey

  The door opened behind him, and a darkly tanned man with jet-black hair stepped through. He was followed by eight others.

  Scott looked over his shoulder at the newcomers. “Right on time,” he said, nodding to the man walking his way. The other eight formed a sort of semi-circle around the room, enveloping the visitors, so there was nowhere they could go, assuming the door they’d come through to get in was locked.

  The Middle Eastern man stopped next to Scott. The scowl on his face seemed almost permanent as if he were made of stone, a statue carved long ago by one of the great masters.

  “These two?” the man said in a heavy accent.

  “Yes, sir. These are the two.”

  Zeke tipped his head at the new guy. “Zeke Marshall. Nice to meet you. Killed a bunch of innocent people lately?”

  “Not recently.”

  “Oh, well that’s a shame. But it’s a new year, early days yet. I’m sure things will pick up once this winter is gone. I find it difficult to get motivated to do anything when it’s so cold outside.”

  “You killed my brother,” the man said.

  “Oh,” Phoenix realized their peril. “Your brother?”

  “Yes. I am Achmed Naharajar. Malar Ackbar was my brother.”

  23

  “Brother?” Zeke said. There was a mocking tone laced with disbelief in his voice. “But…you don’t have the same last name.” He held back the urge to chuckle, though a little snort slipped through his lips. “Unless, you know, you had two different dads.” He turned to Phoenix. “Do they do that sort of thing here? I mean, I know we’re in a different culture where sort of anything goes.”

  “Yeah, the women are men and the sheep are afraid.”

  “Right,” Zeke laughed. He pointed at his friend, taking an extra couple of seconds to appreciate the joke. Then he turned back to Achmed. “You’re not half sheep…are you?” Zeke’s eyes looked the man up and down from head to toe as if trying to determine the answer for himself.

  Fire blazed in the man’s eyes. “He is my brother, in Allah,” Achmed sneered.

  “Was,” Zeke cheerfully corrected with a goofy smile. “Because, you know, the whole explosion thing. Which, by the way, we are terribly sorry about. I believe your friend Scott here was saying something about an accident.”

  “It was no accident,” Achmed replied. “You killed him. And now the four of you are going to die.”

  “How could you do this Scott? You were a good agent. But you’re working for a bunch of terrorists? Why? You’ve turned your back on your country.”

  Scott turned the gun her way. “Why? Why, Jess? I’ll tell you why.”

  Zeke leaned close to his friend. “Twenty bucks we get his whole life sob story about how he’s never gotten what he wanted because he’s gay.” Zeke made sure his voice didn’t go above a whisper.

  Phoenix twisted his head slightly. “What? He’s not gay.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “My country turned its back on me,” Scott said. “They would never accept me for who I am.”

  Zeke didn’t move his head, but his eyes shifted to the left toward his friend and he raised both eyebrows as if to say I told you so.

  “Turned their back on you?” Jessica asked. At this point, she was trying to stall.

  “Yeah. You think what they pay us is fair? We put our lives on the line every single day. At any given moment we have multiple people looking for us, hunting us, tracking us down to kill us. Sometimes it’s even our own who are doing the hunting.”

  “Pay up,” Phoenix hissed. He subtly twisted his hand so it was facing palm up by his side.

  “And what do we get for it?” Scott went on. “A pension? A salary that’s barely at the top of the middle class, if you’re lucky? Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that old Uncle Sam doesn’t like the idea of having a gay man as an operative.”

  “Aw, man,” Phoenix said.

  Zeke huffed twice and held out his palm.

  Phoenix shrugged. “I’ll have to Venmo it to you when we get back.”

  “Wait,” Achmed said, turning to his partner. “You’re gay?”

  Scott realized the mistake and quickly started talking again. “So, my partners and I put together a little plan. My connections at the GIC and with the Joint Chiefs helped me get this place up and running again. We have a core group of soldiers who are part of the operation.”

  “The operation where you sell high-tech, expensive weapons to China?” Zeke asked. Mentally, he noted the comment about connections at GIC and with the Joint Chiefs.

  “You’re gay?” Achmed pressed. The look on his face was either aroused or terrified. At that point, it was hard to tell.

  “Yeah, I’m kind of stuck on the same question as Achmed there,” Phoenix chirped up.

  “Of course I am, you idiot. Bullying you was my way of showing you attention, trying to get you to notice me.”

  “Wait, I’m sorry, guys,” Zeke put up both hands to calm the situation and get them back on track. “Who cares if he’s into dudes or women? All I care about is your dealings with the Chinese, Scotty. You can’t sell those weapons to the Chinese.”

  Scott forced air between his lips, making them flap loudly. Then he started laughing. “The Chinese? You think that’s what this is about? The Chinese? Wow, okay. Here I was thinking you guys might actually have some kind of clue. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  “So, not the Chinese?” Gary muttered.

  Meanwhile, Achmed was seething. His nostrils flared, and it was easy to see he was trying to make a decision. Zeke knew exactly what was going on in the man’s mind. He helped foster it, that righteous indignation that fueled his anger. He was a religious extremist. Men like that had a lower tolerance threshold than almost anyone when it came to things like the confession Scott had just made.

  “No, you twit. I mean, sure, I’ll sell to them if they’re the highest bidders, and I figure they probably will be, but they’re far from the only ones taking interest in these missiles.”

  That was a new thought to Zeke and everyone with him. They’d focused so much on China, and the proximity of Zulu to the Chinese border, that they just naturally assumed that was who Scott and the others were doing business with. Now, though, Scott was describing a situation where he had multiple black-market buyers, all willing to pay top dollar for some brand new high-tech equipment.

  “I guess we can rule out North Korea, right?” Phoenix quipped. “I mean, they’re dead broke.”

  “No North Koreans,” Scott admitted. “Those idiots can’t even keep their own lights on.”

  “And recently they had a massive explosion in an underground testing facility, probably similar to this one, where a bunch of their scientists died trying to create a nuke.”

  Scott laughed. “Yeah, I saw that, too.”

  Something clicked next to Scott’s head and he froze. It was a sound he easily recognized. In truth, you have to be an idiot not to recognize the sound of a gun being cocked. He slowly turned and saw Achmed holding a pistol at full extension. The muzzle was mere inches from Scott’s left eye.

  “Whoa, Achmed, take it easy. What are you doing?”

  “You are an abomination,” the terrorist said. “You are a scourge.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Men who do what you do must be purified through death.”

  “Do what I do…oh, the gay thing? Seriously? That’s what this is about?”

  Scott kept talking. Now he was the one who was stalling. Zeke noticed his left hand shift in his pocket. He had something in that part of his pants. It was almost undetectable, except for the slight square outline in the threading of the leggings. Zeke knew precisely what Scott was doing. He was calling the cavalry.

  “Put the gun down, Achmed. My personal life doesn’t affect you. Okay? We’re both about to make a ton of money. After our business deal is over, you can go out and kill whoever you want. I don’t care. I’ll be on a beach in the Caribbean or
along the Black Sea. Somewhere the United States government can’t find me. I don’t care what you do with your share.”

  “No,” Achmed shook his head. “To tolerate such immorality is blasphemy.”

  The two men squared off, facing each other. The rest of Achmed’s soldiers raised their weapons at their hips, pointing them toward the center of the half circle.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Scott asked. “Seriously? You’re going to flush billions of dollars down the toilet because I like dudes?”

  “There is no price for the work of Allah,” Achmed said. “No cost is too high.”

  “Well, that’s a shame,” Scott said. “I hoped we would be able to work together, have a profitable business relationship. Apparently, though, you don’t see it that way. You’re letting your morals get in the way of making a profit. If you really believed in what you’re doing, you would put aside those prejudices and help me finish this deal. Do you have any idea how many innocent people you will be able to kill with the money you’ll make from this?”

  “They’re not innocent. Not in the eyes of Allah.”

  Scott saw his counterpart’s finger tensing on the trigger.

  So did Zeke. He’d been carefully shuffling his feet backward, but a sound at the door caused him to stop.

  The door behind him opened and he froze in place for a moment.

  “Put the gun down,” a new voice shouted, echoing throughout the tall chamber. It was strong, authoritative.

  Zeke didn’t have to turn around to see it was one of the soldiers from the cargo bay, but he did anyway, as did everyone else in the room, except Scott. He kept his focus on Achmed.

  The other eight men pointed their weapons at the door, ready to fire if given the command. By the time they reacted, though, five more soldiers had entered through the door. And there were more coming. Whatever was in Scott’s pocket had alerted the entire base to the problem; at least it seemed like the entire base.

  “Don’t do it,” Scott warned. He twisted his head left and right, keeping his gaze focused on Achmed. “You don’t have to die today. Just tell your guys to put down their guns, you put yours down, and we’ll go back to doing business as we planned.”

  Jessica felt herself being drawn away from the center of the conflict. She eased behind one of the counters nearest the back wall and stopped when she felt her tailbone brush against it.

  Gary had slinked down under one of the lengthy desks and was crouching out of sight. Zeke and Phoenix had also taken positions toward the end of one of the rows and were now standing there, waiting for someone to make the first move.

  It was a Mexican standoff, one like they’d seen in the old Western movie, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A stalemate, where neither side had a clear advantage.

  Zeke knew there was no way he and his partners were going to get out of there alive without a little luck, and without these two sides turning on each other. He’d goaded the narrative with a lucky guess about Scott’s sexual preference, but since then had pressed the issue, knowing that it would be a source of contention for both men. Achmed clearly couldn’t let it go. His ultra-conservative ideologies prevented him from seeing Scott as anything other than an abomination, a walking blasphemy that had to be cut out of society like a tumor.

  “He’s not going to do that, Scott,” Zeke informed. “Maybe he’s worried you’ll try something with him. I don’t know. But the fact is, he’s not going to let you walk out of here alive, even if that means he dies as well. That’s how they operate. They won’t stop to think rationally about something. All that matters is following some asinine moral compass that always points to killing those who don’t agree with him.”

  Achmed shrugged and bobbed his head in agreement. “Pretty much.”

  “What?” Scott turned his head toward Zeke and then back to Achmed. “No, listen. We are about to make a lot of money. Imagine all the souls you’ll be able to save with the billions we get from those rockets. Okay? You with me here, Achmed? Achey? Stay focused on the prize here, man. Right now, there are six buyers on their way here, to this place. We’re at the finish line. Okay? Everything we’ve worked for, all the planning that’s gone into this? Don’t throw it all away because you can’t accept the fact that I like—”

  Achmed’s finger twitched. The muzzle on his gun popped and flashed. The bullet plunged through Scott’s eye and out the back of his skull, pre-empted by a burst of pink from the back of his head. The skull shuddered, then wobbled as if held up by a pencil. Then the body toppled over as the knees gave out under his weight. He hit the floor with a smack.

  Instantly, the room erupted in deafening gunfire. The soldiers at least had suppressors on their weapons. The silencers kept the sound of their reports too little more than rapid clicks. The terrorists, however, had no such dampening devices on their guns. Their guns blazed and popped, filling the room with a cacophony of destruction.

  Jessica was the first to dive behind the counters. She ducked behind a chair and pulled it up against her knees, waiting for an opportunity to get a weapon, any weapon, so she could defend herself when the time came.

  Gary was already pretty much under one of the desks when the fighting started. All he had to do was roll completely under and lay in a fetal position. Zeke and Phoenix instantly dropped to their knees and scurried under the nearest desk. Shell casings clinked on the hard floor around them, rolling freely at the feet of the men in the gunfight. Blood splattered on the floor close to Zeke’s hand and he jerked it back in time to avoid being pinned down by one of the soldiers as the man in the fatigues fell down hard right in front of him.

  The man’s gun was still leaking gray smoke from the muzzle. His eyes, however, were fixed, his head tilting right so that the lifeless orbs stared straight at Phoenix.

  “Ah,” Phoenix shouted, freaking out at the macabre sight.

  “Shut up,” Zeke said, taking the M4 from the dead man’s hands. He reached back to the body, freed the pistol from its holster, and handed it over to Phoenix. “Here, arm yourself.”

  Phoenix took the proffered weapon and looked at it. Then he looked at the automatic rifle in his partner’s hand.

  “Hey, why do you get the auto and I get the pea shooter?”

  “Are we really going to discuss this right now?”

  A bullet pinged off the floor close to Phoenix’s feet, and he jerked them closer to his body. “I’m just saying. I would love to have something with a little more firepower.”

  “It’s close quarters combat,” Zeke explained, clearly using the BS in his BS degree to its utmost potential. “That pistol will be much handier in here. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “Very kind of you buddy, but I insist. I want you to have the edge.” Phoenix reached over and grasped the buttstock, trying to pry it from his friend’s grip, while at the same time extending the pistol toward him. “Give…me…the...rifle….”

  Another thud hit the ground next to Phoenix, and he jolted back. The body of a man in fatigues fell in a heap, and his gun clattered on the ground beside Phoenix.

  “Ah,” he said, eyeing the dead soldier’s weapon. “That’s better.” He let go of Zeke’s weapon and grabbed at the new one.

  The gunfire continued around them. It was an orchestra of chaos, and the two friends found themselves covering their ears as they waited for a chance to join the fight. Then again, getting into the fray was a bad idea for the two of them, at least at this moment.

  They would be fighting a war on two fronts, both against the Americans working with Scott, and the terrorists.

  “Sit tight for a second,” Zeke said over the terrorists’ gun blasts. “Then when one side is eliminated, we take out the other guys.”

  Phoenix nodded, even though he didn’t fully hear what Zeke had said.

  He rolled out of his position and onto one knee, crouching with his weapon ready. He started firing wildly, the barrel kicking back repeatedly as he spent the contents of the weapon’s mag
azine.

  “No,” Zeke started to protest, but it was too late. His friend was already firing. “Crap.” Zeke dove out into the aisle, pressed the stock of the gun to his shoulder, and squeezed the trigger.

  The weapon clicked rapidly as he unloaded a devastating volley. He felt the gun digging into his shoulder with much more force than he expected. Before he knew it, the thing was out of control. His grip was far too weak, and bullets streaked through the air. The report spun Zeke around in a circle, and he realized that he was back to back with Phoenix, who was having the same trouble. The two sprayed rounds all over the place until their weapons gave off a different click, this one unaccompanied by a discharge.

  Smoke trickled out of their barrels as they stood in the middle of the room and looked around. Bloodstains and streaks covered the walls. One terrorist had been struck by a bullet in the forehead and had fallen against the wall in such a way that he was still standing with knees and ankles locked under him. A couple of seconds went by, and then the joints gave out under his weight. The man collapsed to the floor in a pile. Everyone else, including Achmed, was dead.

  The two friends surveyed the room. There were black marks on the walls where bullets had ricocheted off it. Some of the rounds had struck the desks and computer screens, splintering the surfaces and shattering the glass.

  An acrid odor filled the room, a sickening blend of blood and gun smoke.

  “Did we...?” Phoenix started, but he couldn’t finish the sentence as bile began to creep up in the back of his throat.

  “I think we did,” Zeke answered, nodding.

  Phoenix had to fight to keep from vomiting. He’d never killed anyone before. Prior to that moment, he’d always thought he could do the deed if it was absolutely necessary, in self-defense, something along those lines. Now, though, he felt a wave of nausea wash over him. These were bad people they’d killed, people who were ready to murder them, along with Gary and Jessica, at the drop of a hat.

  “Gary, Jessica,” Zeke realized they were nowhere in sight. “Jessica? Gary? You guys okay?”