Enemy of Mine pl-3

by Brad Taylor

  I saw the pool area ahead and fought to keep up, pushing people out of the way. “Head to the gardens by the pool. We’ll sweep toward Brett in the south.”

  We exited, and I took a quick glance around, seeing an expansive landscaped area with multiple paths meandering through it. Jesus. He could hide anywhere in here. Knuckles took the first path he saw and started moving at a light jog, peering into the bushes. I stopped at a map on a bulletin board. The quickest way around the hotel and into the city was the south, but that had a chokepoint of a lagoon. He’d have to go across a causeway with no cover, something Lucas wouldn’t do unless he was driven to it. No, he’s in here.

  I looked at the map again and saw that the lagoon path ran right into a parking lot next to the tennis courts at the north end of the park. From there, it was a straight shot to the Corniche road. It was too big a risk.

  “Knuckles, I’m headed to the lagoon for a quick look. Brett, what’s your status?”

  “I’m in the park to the south of the lagoon, moving north.”

  “Close in quickly. He hasn’t had that much time, and if he’s across the lagoon, we’re about to lose him.”

  I broke out of the landscaping on the south side of the hotel, seeing the expanse of the artificial lagoon. I traced the pathway around it, focusing on every human I saw. Most were couples. None were running. I saw a threesome of two men and a woman at the apex of the path, right before it began to curve back to shore. One of the men was carrying a brushed aluminum briefcase.

  Lucas had stopped running as soon as he realized it was drawing attention from everyone else on the path. It would be a beacon attracting Pike when he got outside. He sidled up to a couple slowly walking down the promenade. When they stopped, he stopped. Eventually, the man glared at him, pulling his wife and walking at a faster pace. Lucas began walking again, a little farther back, but still close enough to irritate the man. Lucas glanced back and saw Pike at the edge of the lagoon.

  Keep cool. He’s not running. He hasn’t seen you.

  He turned his head around and walked right into the man, who’d stopped walking and now stood with legs spread, hands on his hips.

  The man said something in French and poked Lucas in the shoulder. Lucas said, “Hey, look, I don’t want any trouble. Sorry. Please move out of the way.”

  Speaking with a heavy accent, the man said, “Why don’t you just stay here? Wait five minutes before you start following us again?”

  Lucas looked back and saw Pike had now stepped onto the walkway, coming toward him and talking into a cell phone.

  Shit. I’m going to get boxed.

  Without a word, he punched the man hard in the stomach. When he bent over in pain, Lucas whipped the briefcase into his face, dropping him like a stone. The woman screamed, and Lucas hooked her legs, getting her off balance, then shoved her hard in the shoulder, throwing her into the lagoon.

  Her splash caused several people to orient on the scuffle. Two came running toward him from the direction of the hotel. Right behind them was Pike. Now sprinting and no longer talking on the phone.

  Lucas took off as well, scanning the far side of the lagoon for other men, knowing they were coming. He needed to beat them to shore or he was done.

  He had fifty meters to go when he saw rapid movement deep in the park. It was the black man, coming on strong, but not yet seeing Lucas. He was running on the edge of the park, without orienting on the lagoon path.

  Lucas redoubled his efforts, leapt off the path to the shore, and began sprinting to the tennis courts and the parking lot beyond. He saw salvation, a mere one hundred yards away.

  A taxi. With its on-duty light illuminated.

  “Brett, he’s on the lagoon path. Get your ass north!”

  Before I even put the phone down, I saw Lucas punch the man he was with, then toss the woman into the lagoon. What the hell?

  At first, I’d thought Lucas had help and was glad to see the violence. I took off after him, rounding the apex and ignoring the pleas of the female treading water.

  I saw him reach the shore and head to the road running parallel to the tennis courts. He was getting closer to making it into the city, but I was confident we’d catch him. Especially with Brett’s speed.

  Lucas left the road, running across a primarily empty parking lot. I followed his line of march and saw his intent.

  “Brett, he’s heading for a taxi. Get on him! Don’t let him reach it.”

  I saw Brett round the corner to the tennis court road and knew he wasn’t going to catch Lucas in time. “Jennifer! What’s your location? Come south to the tennis courts, block in Lucas.”

  I got no response and kept running, now on the tennis road myself. I was thirty meters behind Brett and seventy behind Lucas. He ripped open the back door of the taxi and threw in the briefcase.

  I saw the door close, and the cab began to roll. It circled around, getting onto the tennis court road. And freedom. I stopped running, disgusted. We’d need a miracle to catch him now. “Jennifer, what’s your status? He’s in a cab about to head north on the Corniche road. I need eyes on.”

  I received no response. Instead, an SUV jumped the curb from the Corniche road. It raced across the grass, chewing up the perfectly coiffed landscaping, and exploded into the parking lot, reaching a speed of forty miles an hour.

  It veered right at the cab, homing in like a laser-guided missile. The cab swerved left to avoid an impact, to no avail. The SUV collided head-on into the rear passenger door, both vehicles grinding to a stop.

  Through the rising smoke, I saw Lucas crawl out the far side and drop to the ground. He rose unsteadily, grabbed the briefcase, and began jogging across the parking lot. The SUV door opened, and Jennifer sprang out, moving much faster. She leapt across the hood of the cab, closed the gap to Lucas, and threw herself into his body, hitting him in the backs of his thighs and bringing him to the ground.

  Sprinting as fast as I could, I saw Jennifer wrap her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck in a submission hold. I saw Lucas’s arms swinging wildly at the demon on his back, to no avail. Brett reached them first, and I heard him shouting something. He then began to pull Jennifer’s arms away from Lucas’s neck.

  I was close enough to see that Lucas was already unconscious, his tongue lolling to the side, eyes half open, and still Jennifer torqued her arms back, bending his neck farther and farther. Brett shouted again, and I realized what was happening.

  Jesus. She’s trying to kill him.

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  The doorknob to the conference room rattled, and we all snapped our heads toward it. Blaine Alexander entered and went from face to face until he saw me.

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Me? What the hell for?”

  “Don’t know, and you don’t have to do it.”

  I thought for a minute. About the costs and the rewards. “Would it help with the interrogation?”

  “Yeah. We give him something, now he has to give back. He knows a ton about Hezbollah operations, but he’s playing coy. We’ll get it out of him eventually, but this would make it easier. So far it’s his only demand.”

  I looked at Jennifer. She said, “I don’t think you should do it. It’s not worth the price. It’ll eat you alive, and…and you might not be able to hold back.”

  “I’m okay with that. I won’t kill him. I’m just not sure I want to hear what that fuck’s got to say.”

  Blaine said, “I’ll be there as well. I’ll make sure Pike stays cool.”

  “You don’t want to go, I’ll take your place,” Brett said. “Give Mr. Kane a little love.”

  Which was a damn sight different from what he was spouting in the SUV headed back to Al Udeid Air Base.

  Decoy had rolled into the parking lot as Brett and I were wrestling Jennifer off of Lucas. He’d monitored the radio transmissions and had abandoned the bomb damage assessment to help us apprehend him. Jennifer had fought like a wildcat, but eventually given up. We’d
thrown Lucas’s rag doll body into the back and hauled ass out of there.

  I’d called Blaine, giving him the situation as I knew it, and telling him we had the diamonds and Lucas. After I’d hung up, I’d given Jennifer a questioning look. Her wild eyes were gone, now filled with what looked like shame.

  I said, “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to get near him. To be forced to kill him. I was afraid of what it would do to you.”

  “So you were going to kill him?”

  From the driver’s seat, Knuckles said, “It’s not too late.”

  Brett, in the back watching Lucas, said, “Nobody’s going to kill him. Not with me in the vehicle. It’s not what we do.”

  Knuckles said, “He’s a DOA target. Doesn’t matter.”

  “It sure as shit does matter. It’s dead or alive. We got him alive, and that’s how he’s going to stay.”

  Knuckles looked at me, and I said, “Let it go.”

  Blaine had managed to set up a no-search entrance onto Al Udeid Air Base using a back gate. From there, we’d taken over a segment of the CIA station on the airfield and were now locked in a conference room until we could fly out. The first thing we’d learned was that the two “State Department” couriers were actually CIA operatives from Brett’s old organization, the Special Activities Division, which had caused him to have a change of heart on the whole DOA thing.

  Blaine said, “Nobody’s going to give Mr. Kane any love. He’s a detained asset like any other. Get your emotions out of it.”

  He looked at me. “Can you do that?”

  “Yeah. I can do it.”

  Jennifer reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Don’t talk about your family. Don’t go there.”

  I gave her what I hoped was a look of reassurance and left the room with Blaine. To keep my mind off of who I was facing, I asked him where we stood.

  “So far, not too bad. The bombing at the Four Seasons has pretty much consumed the entire police force here. We’ve fed them the porter, and he’s now in custody. Odds are he doesn’t know anything, but he makes a pretty good scapegoat, since he worked at the hotel.”

  “What about the chase and the wrecked vehicles?”

  “Well, luckily you were smart enough to rent them with Knuckles’ ID. That thing’s been no good since Beirut anyway. We’ll pay for the damage through a cutout the ID’s tagged to and burn that company as well. It’s a hole, but given the mess going on with the bombing, and the peace conference, a hit-and-run isn’t going to get a lot of police attention. I’ll be here playing cleanup for a while, but I think we’ll be good. The key is getting your party out of here and on U.S. soil. The sooner the better.”

  “When’s that?”

  “The bird I came in on is gassed up and ready to go. The trick is working it into the flow without drawing attention. CIA has two aircraft leaving in a couple of hours to Iraq. We’ll insert into their package to confuse the issue, using false tail numbers until we get to Germany.”

  We reached a single steel door at the end of the hallway. Blaine said, “You sure about this?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”

  He swung open the door, and I saw the back of a man sitting in a single chair. No other furniture in the room. No pictures on the walls, no windows, the room illuminated with harsh overhead fluorescent lights. The only thing in view besides the man was a digital video camera on a tripod to his front.

  I circled and saw they had Lucas flex-tied tightly to the chair. Each wrist and ankle cuffed to the metal arms and legs with a thick plastic zip-tie. The chair itself was bolted down. Looks like we’ve learned a lesson.

  Lucas saw me and said, “Well, well. Marshal Dillon finally gets his man.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk. That’s it. I’ve missed talking to someone who knows what it’s like. But I want to talk alone. That was the deal. No cameras and nobody else in the room.”

  Blaine said, “Tough shit. Here’s Pike. You have five minutes.”

  I said, “I’m good with it. I’m okay. I can do this.”

  82

  Blaine gave me a hard look, trying to determine if I was a loose cannon or not. I nodded, and he grudgingly left the room. I turned off the camera.

  “Okay, Lucas. Here we are. Say whatever it is you have to say.”

  “Come on, Pike. Don’t give me any sanctimonious bullshit. You and I are the same. Three years ago, it was almost you in this chair.”

  “Three years ago you murdered people all over the country trying to get to me. We are not the same.”

  “So what? You kill people all the time. You just think it’s because of some bullshit patriotic reason. I used to be the same way. When I got out of the Navy, I hated the private sector, but after a while, I saw it wasn’t any different. I say I’m doing it for money. You tell yourself you’re doing it for the country. In the end we both do it because we like it.”

  I felt the first tickle of anger. “Bullshit. I don’t run around murdering people.”

  He laughed. “Because the government doesn’t call it murder? Killing’s killing.”

  I decided to knock him back. “Why’d you murder the senator’s wife?”

  It worked. He grew quiet, then said, “You’ve been busy.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone had a vote coming up, and the senator wasn’t playing ball. I got in, and he retired. Simple as that.”

  “What about the military contractor, Tim?”

  “How’d you know about him? Where’s this information coming from?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “He was competing for a contract with an overseas company. He had the edge as a U.S. firm. Getting rid of him made the overseas company a sole-source bid.”

  “And the woman and child that were with him?”

  Don’t go there. Stop right now. I had promised myself I wouldn’t bring up their deaths, but I had walked right down the road to this point like I’d been hypnotized.

  “They were just collateral damage. I didn’t want to kill them, but they walked right into the middle of the operation. I had to make it look like something crazy had happened.”

  “Collateral damage? You fucking murdered two people and call it collateral damage?”

  He scoffed. “Come on, Pike. You never called in an airstrike on a target and had women and kids inside staying with the terrorist? It’s the same damn thing.”

  The rage started to grow, the blackness spreading. My hands began to shake. Back off. Go somewhere else.

  “Who broke your nose? I’d like to shake that guy’s hands, you piece of shit.”

  He looked confused. “Jennifer broke my nose. Right after…”

  What the hell is he talking about?

  “Right after what?”

  He gave me a smug smile. “She didn’t tell you? I guess maybe I was wrong. Maybe we’re not the same. At least in the bedroom.”

  His words sank in, and a part of me was ripped out by the roots. I felt nauseated and dizzy, my vision tunneling into a tube. I leaned against the wall, afraid I was going to black out. I squatted down, breathing deeply. The feeling passed, and a coldness began to seep into my body, like water from the bottom of the ocean. It spread throughout, driving out the rage. Driving out the blackness. I felt nothing at all, and in that moment, I knew what it was like to be Lucas Kane.

  I rose slowly, and he sensed something was wrong. Recognizing how mistaken he had been before. We hadn’t been alike at all. Until now.

  I went to the steel door and flipped the bolt lock. I pulled out my Spyderco knife. I needed to free him from his bonds, but could only do one arm at a time, so I had to make sure he couldn’t attack while I freed the other.

  I reached around him and sliced his right bicep at the juncture where it joined his humerus, the serrated blade going down until I had severed the tendons.

  He screamed and thrashed, then began yelling, “What
the fuck are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Think of the intelligence I have. The help I can give!”

  I said, “You’re wrong about me. I’m not like you.”

  I cut the cuff of the arm I’d just damaged, then the cuff to his right ankle.

  “I’m no murderer.”

  I bent down and cut the left ankle cuff. I heard Blaine pounding on the door outside. I ignored it and cut the cuff on his remaining good arm.

  I looked into his eyes. “But I am a killer.”

  I tossed the knife onto the floor in front of him and stood to the side.

  “I wish I could make this painless, but it’s got to look like something crazy happened here. Like you escaped and attacked me.”

  He said, “Are you fucking nuts? I’m not going to fight you. You just destroyed my arm! I’ll wait until they break that door down.”

  I swung a vicious right hook and snapped his head back.

  “Then I guess you’re going to die like a fucking weasel in that chair. Go for the knife. It’s the last chance the U.S. government is going to give you.”

  He twisted his head until he could see me. “Why, man? I can help the United States. I have more operational data in my head than you’ll ever get. I penetrated Hezbollah. Come on, Jennifer’s just a piece of ass. Ask the man outside the door! She’s not worth the damage you’re going to do to United States security!”

  I smiled with little warmth. I now knew I was going to enjoy this. “She’s worth all I have to give. And for you, that’s going to be considerable.”

  He said nothing. I flipped Heather’s driver’s license into his lap. “You never made the connection to the name, did you?”

  He recognized the license, confusion in his eyes, wondering how I’d found it. Wondering where this was going. When he focused on the last name, his eyes narrowed to slits, and I knew I had won. Knew he would realize nothing remained but to fight. He dove out of the chair toward the knife. I waited a half second, until he got his good hand on it.

  Then I went to work.

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