Sabotage

by C. G. Cooper

  McKnight eased himself up from the hotel bed and blinked a few times to clear the vision that had been stamped in his brain like he'd stared into the sun too long. Now the smell had moved to a taste and it made him want to spit on the floor. He shook the thoughts away and tried to clear his head.

  Why that dream? Why now?

  He washed his face in the bathroom, brushed his teeth not once, not twice, but three times. The smell and the ambient taste of his father had finally left.

  Why now? McKnight thought. He was just slipping into a new T-shirt thinking that maybe a walk, or even a run, would do him some good when he heard a knock at the door. It was one of his always-present assistants. The only time he had to himself was in his hotel room, and even that wasn't sacred anymore. The staffer walked in without a greeting, already spouting off the morning's agenda. McKnight listened to him a moment, resisting the urge to bark at the boy, telling him to leave him alone.

  "Hold on," McKnight said calmly, "That first meeting - the breakfast."

  The staffer looked up, obviously peeved he had been interrupted. "Sir, the one with donor from Sedona?"

  "Yes that one," McKnight confirmed, "Reschedule it, and I want you to tell my security detail I've decided to go for a run."

  The look on the man's face was priceless. It was as if McKnight had just called his mother a no-good gold digger.

  "But sir, there's so much on the—we just— “

  McKnight did cut him off this time. "We've been going non-stop for weeks. I need a few minutes to myself. Make sure everyone else knows. Tell the security detail to be here in five minutes."

  He turned to find his running shoes, cutting off any further rebuff from the staffer. The kid did his job. Less than a minute later McKnight's phone dinged. The morning schedule, already reworked. Good. Maybe a few miles and some sweat will get that damn bastard out of my head.

  It worked. Less than an hour later he was back in his hotel room showering and refocused. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a muddled day. It was no way to start off a morning. He was always looking forward, facing down the path instead of behind, but as he combed his hair he couldn't help but wonder what other surprises the day might hold.

  The thirty-minute breakfast with the wine baron transformed into a five-minute ride to the next event. The donor didn't seem to mind. He was more concerned with getting a selfie with the congressman to send his daughter proof that his money had bought time with the future president. McKnight took it all in stride, knowing that if the Chinese didn't come through soon he'd need as many donors as he could get.

  Just before lunch, after he had delivered a steaming pile of pizzas to one of his local campaign offices, a message came through. It was his moneyman. The first couple sentences did not put McKnight at ease. The Chinese were still dragging their feet. The American operatives had yet to be found. As a result, the deal was incomplete. That was the bad news, but as he scrolled through the moneyman's explanation, the next part came into stark focus—the good news.

  The Chinese were offering him an olive branch, a token of goodwill to the future president of the United States. Those were the moneyman's exact words. A bit too melodramatic for McKnight, but hell, he needed some good news. He scrolled down further. A brief explanation and then a series of pictures and then, wide-eyed with sudden excitement, there was a video. There was a goddamned video. "Yes," McKnight muttered under his breath.

  One of his staffers asked, "Did you say something, Congressman?"

  McKnight shook his head, "No, I'm fine. Thank you, just some good news."

  "Are we almost there?" the staffer asked the driver.

  The driver looked back over his shoulder and announced, "Fifteen minutes, Congressman."

  McKnight didn’t even hear it.

  Perfect. Just perfect. He replied to the moneyman's message and instructed him to disseminate the information in any way he saw fit, but to wait until McKnight had a chance to make his own public statement. He wanted to light the fire and then watch it rage. He tapped send. Off skittered the message, blazing through encrypted protocols in a twisted path much like McKnight's own.

  Maybe that dream had just been an omen that his father was watching and obviously jealous. Yes, that had to be it. Well, McKnight would show his father. He would show that piece of crap despite everything he'd said and put young Antonio through, that young boy was now a man, and that man was reaching for the stars. Soon he would control the stars and then forever he would stamp out his father's memory.

  Chapter 8

  Karl insisted he was fine, but Vince knew otherwise. At first he thought it was just fatigue, but he knew there was something really wrong as they made their way across the lake. Its choppy surface cast them this way and that, and if not for Christian’s catlike quick reflexes, Karl would have gone overboard. Karl normally would have been concerned by the near miss. Instead, he shrugged it off and became gruff to the point of being abrasive.

  But even in the dim light, Vince could see that his friend's eyes were unfocused; he looked half drunk. And when he coughed it sounded wet, like a career smoker. Vince had seen Karl smoke plenty of cigarettes over the years. Hell, they all had. It was a perfect cover, but he didn't remember the cough, so it had to be something new.

  When Vince asked his friend again if he was okay, Karl pushed him away, and this time sat deeper in the oversized canoe. The steady drone of the outboard engine continued as the hull slapped against the waves, one after another in a steady rhythm. Maybe he had been hurt in the crash. It was possible. Vince had seen it before. You got hurt, yet all the adrenaline coursing through your body helped mask the pain so you could ignore it. Then when the adrenaline left your body, the injury became apparent. He didn't want to press Karl. He trusted him too much, but if there really was something wrong he needed to know now.

  The voyage had been relatively calm and safe up to that point, but as they closed in on civilization, there was a much higher risk of being seen, and all four of them needed to be at their best to get through it. Vince was sitting right in front of the grandfather piloting the craft.

  The colonel leaned close so only the old man could hear him inquire, "Could we head to shore soon? I think maybe we should all get some rest."

  The man nodded his understanding, and then Vince felt the boat veer left ever so slightly. Karl must have sensed it too, because even though he sat grumbling to himself, he turned to Vince and asked, "Where are we going?"

  Vince pointed to the shore and announced, "I figured we might want to hunker down and get a little shuteye for tomorrow." Karl seemed to mull it over, as if he was deciding whether to agree or throw in a veto, but in the end he just nodded. Off the boat he continued to be sullen and withdrawn.

  Once they were on shore, they carefully concealed the boat. The four travelers shared a single MRE from Christian's backpack. While Vince felt like he could have eaten four of the damn things, Karl only took small nibbles of the orange pound cake. It appeared it took every ounce of energy he had remaining. This was usually the time when Karl Schneider was cracking a joke or giving his boss a hard time, but he just sat there, nibbling away, avoiding eye contact.

  But still Vince had to trust his friend to tell him if he was in real pain. Some guys just went into a sort of hibernation mode to let their bodies heal on their own, and now that he thought about it, he’d never even seen Karl injured, so he didn't know the man’s telltale signs. Some men showed it on their faces, others in the way they walked or talked, and still others shut down, although that didn't happen often in the elite confines of Delta.

  Vince awoke to an overcast sky which barely allowed the sun to peek through. He rolled over in their hiding spot to see Karl's face. He was asleep, but that wasn't what concerned Vince. His chin was red, like he’d dipped it in a bowl of paint, and there was blood dripping from it.

  Vince shook his friend awake and when Karl didn't snap back to reality like he usually did, he continued to shake K
arl until his eyes opened. It was quite visible to Vince that Karl was struggling to regain his bearings.

  Vince handed him a bottle of water. "How are you feeling, partner?"

  Karl snagged the water and chugged half the bottle before he realized what he had done to their limited supply. He handed it back apologetically. "What time is it?"

  "Quarter after ten," Vince answered, "How did you sleep?"

  Karl pinched the bridge of his nose, "I've got the damnedest headache. I can't remember the last time I was this dehydrated."

  "You've got something on your chin," Vince said.

  “What?" he reached down to touch his chin, the blood sticky on his fingertips. Karl's eyes darted from his fingers, to Vince, and then back to his fingertips.

  "How badly are you hurt?" Vince inquired.

  Karl ignored the question, trying to wipe the blood off on his shirt sleeve. When he was done, he still looked like a kid who had tried to drink too much Kool-Aid, and it spilled over, leaving behind a red stain on his skin.

  "Are we hanging around here until nightfall?" Karl asked.

  "Don't be a stubborn ass,” Vince demanded, "If you're hurt just tell me, okay?"

  The two men locked eyes. Karl was the first to look away. "I'm fine, okay?"

  "No you're not," Vince pressed. "Unless you tried to make out with a rock last night, something's wrong."

  "I'm not hurt, okay. It's not that."

  "Then what is it, dammit? You know how it works, Karl, there is no I in us. We work as a team. If you're hurt, you need to tell me."

  "I'm not hurt, okay?"

  Vince could tell by his friend's tone that he was telling the truth. Then he understood, and his heart sank. “How long have you known?" Vince coaxed.

  He half expected Karl not to answer, but he did. "Seven, maybe eight months."

  "And how long did they tell you you've got?"

  "Seven, maybe eight months," Karl repeated.

  "And there's no chance?" Karl shook his head. "So what was all that nonsense about getting that place, starting the training company?”

  "It wasn't nonsense, okay? Goddammit, Vince. Hell, we've had some good adventures, haven't we? I thought we might have one more. I thought I might beat this thing."

  "You can't beat this kind of thing by yourself," Vince said. "Have you tried to get help? Have they offered you any treatment options?"

  "Of course they have, but it's all crap. The first doctor told me it was terminal. I got a second opinion and the doctor didn't say the same thing but I could see it in his eyes. He told me outright that I was dying, and a hundred million dollars couldn't save my ass. So there it is. You want to give me shit for that, you go ahead. But you can't blame me for having a dream—for thinking that maybe you and me could build something good—so that maybe we could enjoy something we deserved. So just leave me alone, okay? I'll get through this my own way."

  They were both silent now. Vince was trying to digest the news that his very best friend was going to die. It was different when you knew death was a possibility like jumping from a plane or breaching a house packed with bad guys. You knew you had each other’s backs, but this was different. Hell, most of their careers they had chosen to gamble with their lives in order to protect others. There was nothing Vince could do or say. He knew at the very core of his being, if he could assume Karl’s fate, he would do so in a heartbeat. And he knew that Karl would do the same for him, but that was impossible.

  So he said the only thing he could think of, "Tell me more about that place with the red roof. How good of a deal did you say we could get?"

  Karl grinned and he was about to reply when they heard the deathly familiar sounds thudding in the distance followed by mortar rounds raining down all around them.

  Chapter 9

  One after another the rounds came in. From habit, Vince began to count the time between shots. They were regular, which meant it wasn't some hillbilly troop of rebels just lobbing rounds their way. There was somebody skilled behind those guns, but what really worried him was their accuracy. From the first shot they'd been almost dead-on—well, if they'd been dead-on, they'd be dead. There had been no direct hit yet, but Vince felt that it was only a matter of time. They were getting pelted by jagged rocks, and one of those could just as easily take them out.

  "We need to go find the kid and his granddad," Karl was saying. The sickness that had been stamped on his features mere moments before had been erased and the warrior had returned. It was as if some unforeseen cosmic force had tapped a finger on his head and said, "You will be a fighter once again," and the familiar steely-eyed gaze Vince had seen so many times before was back.

  He could feel his own heartbeat elevate. Nothing crazy; he'd been under fire before. He took the mortar attack as a given, not really worried about why it was happening. He was more concerned about how they would get themselves out of it.

  "I'll go check on them," Vince said.

  Christian and his grandfather were about twenty feet away in another depression. They couldn't all huddle in the same hole, so they'd decided to split up, but they were gone from the spot where Vince and Karl had left them. He'd half expected to find them in the bottom of a crater from a mortar, but the hole was intact.

  He ran back to Karl.

  "They're gone; I'm not sure where they went.”

  "Do you think they ratted us out?"

  "What do you mean?" Vince asked.

  "Do you think they gave us up to the bad guys?"

  That thought hadn't even crossed Vince's mind, but anything was possible. The coincidence of rounds on target was too demanding to ignore. Maybe Christian had lied; maybe they'd decided that it was safer to give the Americans up than risk their lives. Now that Vince thought about it, the story did seem too perfect. But no, he had to believe that the two men hadn't lied to them. For all intents and purposes, Christian was an American. Vince hadn't smelled a whiff of that fanatical air that he had gotten from a lot of kids Christian's age—the ones that kissed their mothers goodbye only to blow themselves up in the middle of an Israeli bus.

  "No," Vince said. "It couldn't have been them. Maybe it was something else. Maybe they had—"

  Karl cut him off and pointed up in the sky and said, "Look."

  Vince looked up. There it was, unmistakable and unbelievable, some type of helicopter drone hovering in the sky. It was providing whoever was manning it a perfect view of the area. Vince cursed himself for not taking the AK-47 from Christian, but then his mind turned down a darker path.

  The kid had said that whoever was after them was some ragtag bunch of locals, but he'd never heard of any kind of rebels or militias using homemade drones on a regular basis. Besides, the level of competency it took to fly a drone in conjunction with pinpoint accuracy of mortar fire suggested someone outside the Third World was heading the attack. He immediately ruled out the Americans. There's no way they'd be helping to hunt down the two Delta operators.

  It could be that the Somalis or maybe the Eritreans had sent over some crack team to hunt them down. Money and prestige had a way of incentivizing such incursions. But why?

  There was only one answer that made sense, and that filled Vince with the first hint of dread since their plane had gone down. It had to be the Chinese. They had to be the ones helping whoever was behind those mortars. They had the technology and the expertise, and that made Vince realize that their mission wasn't over. It was no longer an escape and evasion anymore. They had to determine, for sure this time, whether the Chinese were involved. They'd seen all the signs and monitored the construction crews, but to provide proof the Chinese were behind some Djibouti paramilitary force, that was something else entirely.

  "We have to go find those mortars," Vince said. "Do you think you can make it?"

  Karl's set expression was all the answer he needed. Dying or not, Karl was still a warrior, and he would never say quit, ever. One problem: they weren't going anywhere with that drone sitting up watching thei
r actions. What they needed was a bit of luck, like that rainstorm the first day. Vince wasn't alone in thinking that luck was that special ingredient you could never expect, but when it came along, it always shone just as brightly as prior preparation. While no freak rainstorm showed up, maybe the next best thing did.

  Over the booms of the landing mortars, Vince suddenly heard gunfire, but it wasn't the steady staccato of an automatic fire aimed their way. It was one shot after another—steady, precise, timed—and the next chance Vince had to look up to the sky for the drone, he could've sworn he saw a spark flare on its dark hull. It was a long shot with a rifle, but still doable. He and Karl probably could've taken it out with a shot or two depending on the thing's armament and movement. There was only one explanation for the gunshots. Vince knew they came from an AK-47; it had to be Christian.