by Brad Taylor
I hadn’t found much about his future intentions, no receipts, ticket stubs, anything like that. But that was just gravy anyway, because I’d confirmed where he’d be sleeping tonight. Before exiting the room, I disabled the chain and the dead bolt, not wanting Lucas to be able to prevent my key-card from working. Satisfied, I jogged down the stairs to join Jennifer in the lobby, wondering if what I was doing was just.
Out in the desert it had seemed right. Even easy. Jennifer agreeing that he should be killed had been the icing on the cake. It had to be the correct path if even she thought so. Now, I wasn’t so sure. I would be the one pulling the trigger. Nobody else.
I’d lied to Blaine and let him fly on home, then broke the news to the team, attempting to convince them to assist. I’d told them it was strictly voluntary and strictly outside the Taskforce. This was personal, and I’d be the one doing the killing. Conducting surveillance was one thing, but there was no way I could ask the men to help me in the actual takedown of Lucas. When it came down to it, it would be a one-man operation, with the others long gone.
In the end, Jennifer had been right: They all came on board fairly easily. Knuckles was in immediately, even stating he didn’t mind the killing part. Decoy came on board as well, but Brett balked. I understood his reluctance, especially since we hadn’t ever been teammates. He didn’t know Ethan or his family, couldn’t understand the pain their loss had caused. Eventually the peer pressure got to him, and he agreed to conduct initial surveillance, but wanted nothing to do with the killing.
Now, after twenty-four hours and a night of rest, the feeling of righteousness had dissipated somewhat, and I was going through the motions of tracking Lucas mechanically, tamping down the passion of the act. I didn’t like how it was affecting me. I thought killing him would be just like any other combat action I’d been forced into, but it wasn’t, and the difference was starting to seep in.
I’d never taken a life in cold blood, purely for personal reasons, and a part of me was having a tough time coming to grips with the undertaking, even given the loss of Ethan’s family. Not so much because of the killing, but because of the repercussions. Killing in combat, for the defense of the nation or simply self-preservation, was something I could do and had done. Killing in cold blood was something else entirely, and I was fearful of what it might do to my psyche. I wasn’t guessing about the damage. I had a lot of experience in that arena.
I had lived in a cesspool of guilt and rage after my family died and knew intimately how powerful the subconscious mind was. I had no desire to return to that cancerous place and feared I was now freely volunteering to do so.
Another part of me, prehistoric and reptilian, relished the opportunity, the scar tissue that had covered it beginning to break down, giving it room to blossom. That part didn’t give a rat’s ass about the consequences. I could hear it chanting in the background, “Yes…yes…yes,” and it was growing louder. The bloodlust was unsettling.
I found Jennifer in the lobby and said, “Your information was spot-on. It’s his room.”
We started walking across the lobby and she said, “So? What’re you going to do?”
“Kill him tonight, when he’s back in it.” I said it like I was talking about getting takeout.
She nodded her head vaguely, coming to grips with the fact that the information she’d provided was now going to be used to take a life.
“I don’t have time to go back and forth on this. We only have another day before we’re missed by Kurt and the Taskforce.”
We’d flown out right behind Blaine yesterday, him thinking we were going to hang around for one more day. After spending twenty-four hours in Frankfurt, we were now going to send a SITREP describing aircraft troubles-as if we’d just arrived from Dubai-and a subsequent layover. I’d bought us forty-eight hours, and that was it. I was just happy we’d managed to find Lucas in the city in such a short amount of time.
He’d thrown away the phone we’d originally tracked him with, so that was no help. Luckily, Jennifer had the four hotels she’d discovered from his Internet search in Dubai. Finding the one he was in, using his Canadian ID, had been easy. Finding his room without Taskforce hacking help, however, had been a different matter.
We had to do it the old-fashioned way, by distracting the guy behind the reception area. I’d first positioned Brett as a trigger for Lucas in the lobby, then had both him and Decoy begin the surveillance of him, using Knuckles as nothing more than a taxicab to drop them off and pick them up during the operation.
As soon as Lucas had cleared the building, I’d thrown Jennifer into the breach to use her wily female charms to get the reception guy to leave his counter. I don’t know what she said, but off they went to the business center, leaving me with plenty of time to find Lucas’s room and imprint a separate key-card. She had come back glaring at me, with the young man in tow practically drooling.
Now, with everything in place, the operation became real. I was going to kill him. In cold blood. I was no longer going to try to kill him, and I wasn’t looking for him in Frankfurt in the hopes of killing him. I’d found him, and he was dead just as surely as Ethan’s family. Tonight.
Decoy called as we exited Lucas’s hotel. “He’s moving. Out of the cafe and up the stairs.”
“Got it. We’re headed that way now. Give me a call when he’s clear.”
“Roger.”
I hung up my cell and said, “We have a little mini-mission. I need you to drop me off at the Hauptbahnhof, then circle the block until I call.”
“What’s up?”
“Apparently Lucas is using Internet cafes, and I want to see what he’s up to. I need the forensics thumb drive you used in Lucas’s room in Dubai.”
She gave me a quizzical look, then I saw her brain make the connection of what I was asking, and she literally grew red in the face. “I…don’t have it. I gave it to the support crew with the rest of our kit. I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.”
Dammit. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I think Knuckles has one.”
We’d given all of our overt kit like guns, beacons, and radios to the support crew to dispose of-minus one suppressed Glock I’d hidden in my luggage-but things like thumb drives and our Taskforce cell phones were ordinarily kept because they raised no suspicion. I was surprised that she’d given it up. Not like her at all.
Before I could even dial, she was on the phone with Knuckles, getting directions to meet him. In short order, I had the call from Brett saying Lucas was clear, and I was walking down the stairs to the Internet cafe. Luckily, the computer Decoy had described was still free.
I paid for five minutes, then pulled up Internet Explorer, finding the history empty. I plugged in the thumb drive and gathered the websites for the last hour. The most recent were for strip shows here in Frankfurt, which would make our follow a little bit easier tonight and might make it easier to kill Lucas since he’d probably be drunk.
Continuing, I found references to news stories about the Burj Khalifa, which confirmed that I was on the right box, then a site that confused me. It was a State Department travel agency, and the request had been for State Department personnel on all flights going from Germany to Qatar for the next few days.
Qatar? Why’s he looking at that? What’s he up to?
In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. He only had a few more hours on this earth anyway.
67
Lucas returned to his room a little bored. He’d toured just about everything he could around the city, and with the lack of information about the couriers, he had nothing to really work on. He’d thought finding an RFID reader would be hard in Germany, but he’d managed to do that on the first attempt, even locating one that appeared like an ordinary computer, with inconspicuous antennae he could loop outside of his laptop bag when the time came.
With nothing else to do, he powered up the new reader and checked if he could dial into the device he had planted in Qatar. Once online, he inputt
ed the ISP address and smiled when it connected. The improvised explosive device was in place and online. All it needed was a trigger, and he would get that soon.
Seeing it was four o’clock-past check-in time-he packed his bags and called the front desk. “Yes, this is Lucas Kane. I hate to be a bother, but this room is a bit stuffy. I’d like to switch.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re completely full. I can offer you a discount.”
Dammit.
“I don’t want a discount. I want another room. Don’t you have any open for late check-in? Give me theirs and they can have this one. I haven’t been here all day, so the room’s clean.”
“Please hold.”
While he didn’t feel it necessary to switch out hotels every single day, on the days he wasn’t leaving he liked to at least switch rooms, after the check-in time had passed. He did it out of habit. Practice. He felt no danger in Frankfurt, from Hezbollah or anyone else, but that didn’t mean he needed to be sloppy.
The receptionist came back on. “Okay, sir. I do have a room. When would you like to switch?”
“Right now.”
68
I leaned against the headboard of my small hotel bed, remote in one hand and a Glock 30 in the other, the compact gun overshadowed by the large can on the end of the barrel.
I stared at the television, the screen nothing but a bunch of jumbled images that didn’t register in my conscious mind. Nothing was registering in my conscious mind. It was intentionally blank, like a Zen warrior guiding the arrow that is not aimed. At least that’s what I was trying to achieve. In reality, I’d blanked my mind because I couldn’t take the conflict raging between my good angel and my bad. It was easier just to sit, thinking of nothing.
And so I did, for hours, answering the phone occasionally to get an update on Lucas’s night out. He was apparently a sexual dynamo, but he hadn’t had a drop of liquor. At least he’d be sleepy from the workout. I hoped.
I was startled out of my reverie by a knock on the door. Shoving the Glock under a pillow, I opened it to find Jennifer outside.
“What’s up? Is there an issue?”
“Not really. Just bored. I take it the call hasn’t come in yet.”
“Nope, but it’s only ten P.M. He’s probably not coming back until after midnight.”
“Can I come in?”
I really didn’t want her to. I didn’t need the distraction. I needed to think. Or more precisely, I needed a still room so I wouldn’t be forced to think.
She saw my reluctance and said, “Please? I need to ask you a favor.”
I opened the door and pointed at the lone chair in the tiny room. I climbed back on the bed.
“You got a preference on channels?”
“An English one would be nice.”
“I got Doogie Howser in German. Will that work?”
She smiled. “Sure.”
I flipped the TV, turned down the sound of bad dubbing, and said, “What’s up?”
“How are you getting to his hotel tonight?”
“Taxi.”
“You think that’s smart?”
“Well, it’s smarter than walking. Trains have quit running this late.”
“Yeah, that’s my point. You’ll be remembered when they find Lucas. I mean, you’ll probably be one of two cabs who stop there tonight. You and Lucas himself.”
“So, you have a better idea?”
“Yes. Let me drive you.”
The offer surprised me, but it was out of the question.
“No way. Nobody else is getting involved. Especially you.”
“Why? You need the help. Why ‘especially me’?”
I hadn’t meant for that to slip out, but I meant it. We’d never had our big talk on where we stood in our relationship, even though she’d threatened it a couple of times-scaring the hell out of me-so I’d never really told her how I felt about her. Truthfully, I was afraid of rejection and had tricked myself into believing that I was content with a lesser connection of being simple business partners. A little Jennifer was much better than none. But that didn’t alter the fact that I would protect her from harm, whether she felt the same way about me or not. Especially since this harm was easily averted.
“Jennifer, you’re not going with me. Period. Out of the question.”
She came over and sat on the bed next to me, pulling up a pillow to place behind her back. And revealing the Glock.
She stared at it for a second, a look of regret on her face, as if she’d caused it to appear. She said, “Pike, I want to be a part of this. I feel responsible. I’m the one who told you. I want to help.”
I waved my hand. “Quit it. It’s not going to happen. Just drop it.”
“It is going to happen, dammit! I am going to be a part of this operation!”
Whoa. Where’s that coming from?
Before I could say anything, she continued. “Pike, it’s my fault. I’m the reason you’re doing this. I’m the one who brought it about. I know you don’t understand. I don’t expect you to, but I need this. I need to be a part of the operation. It can’t be all you. We both suffer the consequences. I can’t have you doing this alone based solely on what I told you.”
What the hell was she talking about? Because she found the hotel rooms, she should be culpable for his death?
I decided to end this with a lie. “Okay, okay. Head on back to your room. I’ll call you when I get the trigger he’s back in bed.”
She said, “Why don’t I just stay here?”
“Because I want to be alone, all right?”
She squinted at me, catching the whiff of dishonesty, but walked to the door. She opened it and said, “You’d better call.”
I said, “I will. Go.”
I lay back on the bed, thinking again of what I was doing. More and more, it didn’t seem right. Maybe it was simply disingenuous mental gymnastics, but Taskforce operations were sanctioned at the highest levels of government. When we went out on a hit, we did so after a thorough vetting, always because the target was a distinct threat to American lives. Doing this on my own, simply for revenge, was beginning to eat at my soul.
We operated with rules for a reason. I wondered if ignoring them made me no different than Lucas. Made me like the stalker of my dreams. A murderer.
Time passed quickly, and when I looked at the motel clock, I was surprised to see it was now past one A.M. The call would be coming at any moment. I made my decision and felt a measure of peace immediately.
Sorry, Ethan, but you know it’s the right choice.
I reached for the phone to call surveillance when there was a knock on the door. Jennifer stood behind it, causing a little thread of anger.
“What are you doing here? I said I’d call.”
“I couldn’t sleep, and I figured it was getting close, so I came back.”
She glanced away, refusing to look me in the eye. She can’t lie worth a damn. But apparently you can’t either. She knew you weren’t going to call.
“Well, you can go to bed for good. The mission’s off.”
She said, “Why? Did he get on a train or something?”
“No. It’s me. I’m not going to pull the trigger.”
69
It took a moment before the implications of his words settled into Jennifer’s mind.
No, no, NO. He can’t get a conscience now.
She said, “What do you mean? What happened?”
Pike turned away from the door, saying over his shoulder, “I can’t do it. I’m going to call Kurt tomorrow, tell him everything we have and get him on board. Make it legal.”
Jennifer said, “Pike, you know that won’t work. Kurt will flip out that we’re even in Germany. He’ll order us home and then rip us apart. Even if he agrees, he’ll want a support team here, and we don’t have time for that.”
He held up his hand. “Let it go. I’ve been thinking about it for two days. I’m not going to do the hit unsanctioned. Either Kurt facilitates
or he doesn’t, but I’m not going off on a vendetta like a Mafia hit man. It’s eating me alive, and I don’t like the damage.”
Jennifer heard what he said and felt shame for what she was putting Pike through. She considered letting it go when that day sprang forth. Lucas’s hot breath, the lamp cord cutting into her hands on the bed as she tried to keep him away, the beating she had taken.
That bastard deserves to die. And Pike deserves to kill him.
“Pike, I need to show you something.”
“Jennifer, forget it. You didn’t see me at my worst. It was a living hell, and this damn mission is bringing me back.”
“Please sit down.”
He did.
Jennifer said, “I found more than Ethan’s driver’s license in Lucas’s room.”
“What do you mean?”
Jennifer pulled out an ID card and handed it to him. She watched him recognize the face, then saw him begin to change before her very eyes. The resignation of only a moment ago disappeared, replaced by a rising tsunami of violence rippling just underneath the surface. A rage vibrating the very air around him. She felt the threat from across the room, and knew she’d made a mistake.
His face twisted toward her, almost unrecognizable, the scar on his cheek standing out stark white against the mottled red of his fury. “Where the fuck did you get this? What are you up to? Some parlor trick to get me to destroy myself? Why?”
He leapt to his feet, shouting now. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you’d do this! I don’t even know you! I don’t want to know you. Get the fuck out!”
She began to backpedal, holding out her hands, getting out of the danger zone while she still could.