by Rick Jones
Cummings redirected his weapon. The Citroën pulling closer. The target of Kimball’s back now within the crosshairs.
Cummings started to pull back on the trigger, couldn’t miss, the targeted killing about to be finalized.
And then a second and third vehicle burst onto the scene with the cars coming from opposite sides of the street, one from the left side, the other from the right, the vehicles converging on the Citroën.
The vehicle on the right hit the Citroën’s rear bumper, hard, the impact causing Cumming’s to lose his stability and to fall from the vehicle, the man hitting and bouncing along the pavement a moment before the following vehicle ran him over. In a moment too quick to respond, the trailing vehicle then took flight as if it hit a speedbump at incredible speed before it settled back to a corrected course.
That left Deveraux.
The third vehicle rammed the Citroën hard from the driver’s rear-side panel, with the metal and plastic denting. The Citroën weaved first to the left, then to the right, corrected itself, and drove on.
Deveraux looked in his mirrors, all of them, the two sides and the rearview; he saw two riders in each car, shapes and shadows behind the glass of their windshields.
The Pulizija, Deveraux self-chastised. But Kimball was slowing down, his motorcycle in its final death throes, a target for the Citroën.
Deveraux floored the pedal, the Citroën giving a slight hitch as the gears shifted. The headlights spotlighted Kimball’s back, the target looming closer, becoming brighter, a few more feet before impact.
And then the Citroën was slammed hard from the rear, pushing the vehicle forward but causing him to lose control. The car started to go into a tailspin, drifting as the left-front bumper barely clipping the rear tire of Kimball’s motorcycle, the bike was now skidding and losing control, then upending and spinning in quick revolutions through the air. Kimball became airborne then hit the pavement, the man rolling and sliding along the bricks as friction tore away pieces of clothing.
The Citroën began to roll and tilt before rolling over completely, the vehicle somersaulting along the pavement until it was a dented mass that had hardly any resemblance of its former self.
When the vehicle came to a final stop with steam rising skyward from a smashed radiator, four shapes got out of their cars.
Kimball was bruised and sore all over, his body having felt better days. But other than the wound to his shoulder, he was certainly manageable as he readied himself for battle. However, the gun was lost to him during his flight. But the knife he still had.
The shapes came closer, all silhouetted against the backdrop.
Kimball reached for the knife, felt its hilt and gripped it, then a slow draw from the waistband at the small of his back, the man ready to regain his feet and take a stance—
An arm reached out to Kimball with an open hand to take his. Beneath the conical-shaped beam of light from a distant lamp, the man leaned into its feeble illumination.
Leviticus had never before looked so good to Kimball.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cooper had seen the entire situation play out on the screen. Hayden was still alive, the man aided by others. Cummings was dead, his body a twisted mass of broken bones and torn cartilage quite a distance from their current location. Deveraux was still a question mark, however. His vehicle was in such ruins that Cooper surmised that the operative’s outcome for survival was not good.
Cooper closed his eyes and fought for calm. This whole situation with Kimball Hayden was becoming a cluster. One man. One bullet. That’s all it takes.
He opened his eyes.
Several people were dead, making Malta a killing ground that the media would certainly covet and canvass, since the body count was rising at a pandemic rate. Deveraux’s team failed for the most part. But he still had a few able bodies to piece together a viable unit.
Cooper took in a long breath and let it out with an equally long sigh, the man forcing calm.
The principals in D.C are not going to like it when they hear what Cooper had to say about Deveraux's failed attempt—that there were at least two, maybe three dead which included Deveraux, and another man wounded: Santomango.
On the screen, Kimball Hayden was getting to his feet. The men in question, half in the shadows and half in the light, were all unknowns.
Cooper sat before the BGAN system and keyed up a secured line.
Two seconds later Hartlin showed up on the Skype screen. “Has the targeted killing been satisfied?” he simply asked.
Cooper hesitated, his face saying it all. “Hart,” he began. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.”
Hartlin’s eyes started to roll in oh-no fashion. “Please don’t tell me that Deveraux missed his mark.”
Cooper told him everything.
#
When Ripper and Dill returned to Base Command fifteen minutes after Cooper got offline with Hartlin, Cooper was looking at a plasma screen that was cut into four live feeds.
In the room stood the balance of Deveraux’s team. Santomango was having his wounded shoulder attended to by Maynard, another of Deveraux’s teammates; and Ripley, a former Ranger who possessed peak skills in hand-to-hand combat. Since Santomango was down and Ripper moved with a limp which depleted his capabilities to some degree, that left Rodgers, Maynard, Dill and Ripley, as the core group. Cooper helmed Base Command. And Bates operated elsewhere as the in-theater strategist for ‘Operation Incite.’
Cooper continued to look at the plasma screen with one hand cupping his elbow and a hand to his chin, the man toying with the small hairs of his growing shadow. “You get what you needed?” he asked without turning from the monitor.
Ripper and Dill placed the aluminum cases on the table. “Three bricks,” said Ripper. “All Semtex. The units are idle but are on fuse timers.”
“How long to detonation?” Cooper asked.
“Just under nineteen hours.”
“Location of deployment?’
“The St. John’s Co-Cathedral.”
“Time of deployment?”
“During the Mass of the Santa Marija. Fifteen minutes after noon time. We’re to deploy the units one hour before the ceremony takes place.”
Cooper continued to toy with the hairs on his chin, the man mesmerized by the four different windows on the screen.
Ripper looked around the room and noted the others. Then: “Deveraux?”
Cooper shook his head. Unsure. Then he rewound the video display on the monitor and played back the scene where Deveraux was bearing down on Kimball Hayden, the kill all but assured, the Citroën closing in for the crushing blow.
Then the interception by two additional vehicles. The steel of the cars bumping and grinding, sparks bursting then flaming out.
And then the multiple roll.
In the subsequent scenes, blackened shapes emerged from the interrupting vehicles to aid Kimball Hayden to his feet, all shapes blacker than black, even in the cones of feeble light that were cast from the neighboring street lamps.
After checking Deveraux, they dragged him from the wreckage and placed him in one of the vehicles. Then the vehicles left the area, all traveling from one screen to the next until they ended up on the fourth screen, which was the final shot to roads less travelled outside of Valletta.
“Deveraux’s still alive?” Ripper asked.
“They wouldn’t have taken him otherwise. Wouldn’t make sense if he wasn’t.”
“And those with Hayden?”
Cooper shrugged. “Unknown.” Then he leaned over the keyboard and retyped additional commands from the fingers of one hand, and brought up the live feeds of street images on the screen that cut from one section to another in intermittent cycles.
“Tomorrow. At noon,” Cooper finally said. “At the St. John’s Co-Cathedral.”
“Yeah.”
Cooper gave off a perceptible nod with a slight incline of his chin. “That gives us seventeen hours to find
Hayden,” he said. “The mission remains twofold.”
Ripper looked over the SAD team—all deadly and lethal, all ready for combat. On such a small island as Malta, he thought, Kimball Hayden didn’t stand a chance.
Not now.
Not ever.
Ripper felt the twinge of pain in his thigh, then considered how much he wanted a piece of Kimball Hayden.
In the suitcase, the timers counted down:
. . . 18:24:18 . . .
. . . 18:24:17 . . .
. . . 18:24:16 . . .
There was still plenty of time to achieve the means of a twofold mission.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hart Senate Building
Washington D.C.
“DAMMIT!” Senator Rhames slammed the heel of his fist hard against his desktop, knocking a glass trinket off the edge and to the floor, though it didn’t shatter upon the carpet. He leaned back in his seat and wiped a hand across his forehead to clear away the rising beads of sweat on his brow. “One man,” he said irritably. “We’re talking about one man against the Special Activities Division. Bodies are lining up in the streets of Malta. The police are everywhere, which means that ‘Operation Incite’ will be much more difficult to achieve.”
“We can use this to our advantage,” said Hartlin.
“How so?”
“We’ll spin it to make it look like all these killings were a result of ISIS factions.”
“It won’t work. They do their damage openly.”
“That’s true. But we can stage-manage the situation to our benefit. Start sending messages through the chat rooms as if ISIS was taking full responsibility for random kills in Valletta. Make the world believe that these chats are being created by the group. Then let every global intelligence agency track and analyze these messages. Then we’ll stage-manage these agencies to believe that the killings are a result of ISIS insurgencies, which will bolster our position with the government of Malta.”
Senator Rhames appeared to be mulling this over while his eyes were fixing on a point against the far wall. “And that’s why you’re the deputy director of one of the most prestigious intel agencies in the world,” he stated. Then after a beat: “Spin it, Mr. Hartlin. Make it happen. Do we have anything left of your groups to neutralize Hayden and see ‘Operation Incite’ to its fruition?”
“Hayden is no longer alone. That needs to be known since we don’t know who these people that he’s with are. But yes. We have enough of a unit to see this done on both counts.”
“Very good. But others need to be contacted on this. Hayden is too great of a threat.”
“I understand.”
Without saying anything further, Senator Rhames disconnected the call and dialed another number. After a few rings someone picked up.
“Senator Shore,” Rhames said in greeting. “We appear to have a rather dire predicament.”
“And what would that be?”
“Do you remember a man by the name of Kimball Hayden?”
The senator on the other end hesitated for a long moment. Then: “Of course. Why? How long has he been dead now?”
“Well that’s the predicament,” Rhames returned evenly. “It appears that he’s still alive . . . And he’s very much on the loose.”
It was the last thing Senator Shore wanted to hear.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hart Senate Building
Washington, D.C.
Thirty Minutes Later
Unlike Senator Rhames, who was a portly man, Senator Shore had a flat stomach and kept himself in shape, the man a jogger who never did less than five miles a day. He was hawkish-looking with close-set eyes that were so dark they seemed without pupils. And when he spoke he did so with the persuasive manner of political correctness by choosing his words carefully not because the situation called for it, but because he had done it for so long that it had become second nature to him.
He was sitting across from Senator Rhames, his face registering grave concern. “How is this even possible?” he asked Rhames.
Rhames shrugged. “I don’t think he ever went to Iraq. Maybe he did. Who knows? All that matters is that he’s running around with secrets that few men should know.”
Shore nibbled on his lower lip, a nervous habit and a dead giveaway for those who were well adept at reading facial tics. In this case, Shore’s was the measure of his implicit involvement in the murder of Senator Cartwright many years before. “But he’s been silent all these years,” he said eventually.
“Which is never a guarantee in this business. You know that. And as long as he’s alive, then a mammoth threat continues to loom over us.”
Senator Shore agreed. Several years ago when Kimball Hayden ran operations under the auspices of certain members of Congress and a Joint Chief, risks were always taken with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or the SSCI, waiting in the wings. Since the SSCI was responsible for providing congressional oversight of the entire U.S. intelligence community, and its main function was to conduct investigations deemed necessary to ensure that these organizations were doing their job properly, especially the CIA, they remained a threat to those who managed the ‘off-the-books’ missions. And because the sanctioned hit on a United States Senator went well beyond the legal parameters, one that Shores always questioned throughout his lifetime, it was nevertheless a decision he believed was necessary at the time. Cartwright was a cancer that needed to be sliced away. And now that cancer had metastasized into a man by the name of Kimball Hayden, someone who was far more brutal and savage than Senator Cartwright had even been.
“You know I always had reservations about ordering the hit on Cartwright,” said Shore.
Rhames shook his head disapprovingly. “Don’t go there,” he told him. “You have no right to second guess your decision. Not now. Not when the situation is becoming one of discomfort. You knew it was the right decision then . . . And you know it now. Cartwright was a blight to democracy. He had us by the short-hairs and threatened to ruin our careers if we didn’t vote along with his measures. He represented everything that democracy wasn’t.”
“We also conspired to have one of our own murdered.”
Rhames gave him a hard look. “What’s done is done. And I have slept well with my decision since.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
“Then go to church and pray your guts out for forgiveness. I don’t care. Right now we have to deal with Hayden. And so far he’s taken out two units on two attempts to eradicate him—the failures on both accounts belonging to the Special Activities Division.”
Senator Shore continued to nibble on his lower lip a moment before speaking. “Do we have any backup resources to handle this?”
Rhames nodded. “Cooper is assembling a team in Malta. Members from his and Deveraux’s team. Plans are being processed but not yet implemented. Hayden can only run so far and so fast. We’ll get him.”
“And if we don’t?”
“We will,” Rhames snapped.
Shore leaned forward in his seat. “You know this man as well as I do. You know what he’s capable of doing. He’s already bested two SAD units. What makes you think a third will make any difference?”
“Because I believe in the abilities of the Special Activities Division, that’s why.”
Senator Shore shook his head. “Kimball Hayden is a different breed of animal,” he said in a calm manner. “We both know this. We sent him on a suicide mission to Iraq hoping to see him dead to keep him from talking about Cartwright and the involvement of certain principals, namely us. But he escaped that measure, and now he’s even more dangerous because he knows he’s being hunted. And you know what?”
Rhames waited for the answer to the question he knew was rhetorical.
“Eventually he will become the hunter. He knows who we are. Where we are. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kimball Hayden walked through the front doors of this building to look us in the eyes a moment before he puts a bullet i
n each of our heads.”
“You’re quite the fantasist, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” Shore looked Rhames directly in the eyes. Until Rhames broke his gaze, the action telling Senator Shore he wasn’t quite the fantasist after all. In fact, the possibility was rather genuine.
“It’ll get done,” Rhames eventually said. “Kimball Hayden will be taken and ‘Operation Incite’ will be a go.”
“Now who’s the fantasist,” said Shore. “Especially after two failures trying to kill a man who will regather himself to become the hunter. That’s always been Kimball Hayden. He’s been nothing less.”
Then Senator Rhames spoke with harshness, his patience being taxed. “Hayden is a man. And like all men he has vulnerabilities. No one man has a true will of steel. No one. We will find Kimball Hayden, and we will deal with him.”
Senator Shore eased back into his seat. “And Senators Jacoby and Whitney.”
Jacoby and Whitney were past senators, now retired, who were also involved with the decision making regarding the sanctioned hit against Senator Cartwright. Both men, however, had retired. One lived in Maine, the other lived in New Hampshire.
“They’re private citizens.”
“I know that. Do they know?”
“No. I didn’t think it was necessary to inform them.”
“If Cooper doesn’t succeed to expectations, you know Hayden will come at us all with unstoppable vengeance.”
“I know no such thing.”
“Yeah. You do. And you better pray that Cooper gets the job done. If not—” The senator cut himself short as he got to his feet. For a moment he locked eyes with Senator Rhames with both men considering the same thing: Kimball Hayden was never a man who would be denied.
Without saying anything more, Senator Shore left the room.
Chapter Thirty
Dingli, Malta
Nine Miles West of Valletta