by Brad Taylor
She came on. “Yeah. We’re set. Got clear fields of fire for everything out front. Pike, they’ve got men outside the house. We had to take one down a hundred meters away.”
Hearing the words on the radio, all three of us began scanning with our night vision. I knew we weren’t compromised, though, because of the racket Retro had made at the creek. If someone were out here, they’d have already been shooting. I glanced at Brett with an unspoken question.
How’d you miss him?
He shrugged, whispering, “Must have left while we were getting off the hill.”
Jennifer tried to sound calm, like a day at the beach, but there was something else in her voice. I said, “You good?”
“Yeah. I am now. Remind me to give Nung a bonus.”
I was reassured that she was still on her game and it wasn’t nerves. I said, “About to break cover. Get on the scope.”
She said, “Pike, they’re running outside. I see two guys carrying a body to a car.”
Body? Dead?
It didn’t matter. Slamming the place was all that remained.
In a clinical voice that belied my apprehension of what we’d find, I said, “Moving now.”
Knowing that Brett and Retro were on the radio, I didn’t give any further commands. We broke cover and sprinted to the back of the house, bashing through the bushes to the back door. I kept my muzzle on the doorknob, watching for any movement, while Brett slapped a charge straight down the middle with double-stick tape.
He primed it and rolled to the right. I went left, Retro right behind me, his hand on my shoulder telling me he was ready. Brett looked at me and I nodded.
He capped the charge and the door splintered inward in a violent explosion. I was already two steps toward it before it went off, catching some of the backblast. I entered, muzzle ready, and saw one man on the ground, a piece of wood sticking out of his jaw and an AK held slackly in his hands. I popped a double-tap and heard firing to my right.
Retro, taking care of the other heat source. We started flowing to the next room and Jennifer called, “Car moving. I say again, car moving.”
We hit the next door in a stack, and I said, “Stop it from leaving. Can’t talk.”
Retro flung it open, and I entered, number one man again. I saw a muzzle flash as soon as I cleared the breach, my mind cataloging the action in clinical detail, working in hyperdrive to distinguish friend from foe and assess my own physical state. NOT HIT. NOT HIT. FIRING FROM THE LEFT. AIM. SQUEEZE. TARGET DOWN. SWEEP. BODY = GUN = TARGET. SQUEEZE. TARGET DOWN.
The room was clear, and Brett was the first to the next door.
* * *
Jennifer saw the headlights flare and knew the car was coming. The lights from the vehicle behind it came on, compounding her problem. She cinched the weapon into her shoulder and welded her cheek to the stock, exhaling. She’d seen the men running back and forth, seen the body tossed in the back, then both vehicles began rolling her way. Without moving her head, she said, “Nung, there’s a friendly in the lead car. Do not shoot into the body. Take out the tires. All of them. First car only. The other wants to run, let it.”
He said, “Understood.”
A burst of gravel, and the two-car caravan began to rocket down the dirt track, bouncing on the uneven grade.
She took aim at the right front tire and cracked a round. It missed. The car kept coming, gaining speed. She exhaled, going into a zone, ignoring the press of time. She squeezed again, and the tire blew. The vehicle kept coming. She refocused and let off a double-tap. The second tire blew. The car rolled onward. She heard Nung fire and saw the right rear tire explode. The car skidded to a stop, grinding on the rims alone, stuck in the mud of the track.
The men jumped out and Nung cracked a round, dropping the driver. They all crouched down, searching for the fire. One man screamed, shouting orders, and she saw them pull the body from the first car and begin dragging it to the second. She said, “Take out the other car!”
She squeezed off a round, and they made her position. A fusillade of fire rained down, forcing them both to duck behind the small earthen berm they’d chosen.
A small gap, a reload or something else, and they both rose up, Nung shooting as soon as he cleared the rise, hitting one of the men. Jennifer sighted down and did the same, watching the man twirl, his death giving her nothing more than grim satisfaction. She rotated to the man with the hostage and pulled the trigger. His head exploded and he dropped midstride, sliding into the dirt. Another man took his place, and the body was inside the second car.
It began moving and she focused on the tires, cracking rounds. The vehicle jerked around the first car, blocking her shots. She kept shooting, hearing Nung to her right doing the same, but the car rocketed past, hitting the dirt road hard enough to almost cause it to flip. In seconds, it was around the bend and out of sight.
A round snapped by her head and she refocused on the disabled vehicle, seeing two men still shooting. She centered on one and squeezed. He dropped. She brought the other into her reticle and he stuck his hands in the air, dropping his weapon. She saw the action and held up. Nung broke the trigger to the rear, and he dropped.
71
Brett tried the doorknob, nodded, then flung it open. Retro entered and fired immediately, taking out a hostile directly in our path. He went left and I went right, entering a makeshift kitchen. I saw a man with a hood on his head, another just beyond with an AK. I hit him with a double-tap, the weapon recoiling into my shoulder in a familiar caress. I swept the room, looking for other threats, but none remained.
I felt the adrenaline racing through me and fought to control it. To keep my wits about me, because now it was thinking time.
I said, “Backsweep. Clear this place completely. Watch the windows.”
Brett and Retro left, barrels going wherever their eyeballs went, and I jumped to the man on the floor. I pulled off his hood and saw it wasn’t Nicholas Seacrest.
Damn it.
He was unconscious and appeared to be drugged, his eyes rolling back in his head and his tongue hanging out. I laid him back down and called Jennifer.
“Koko, what’s your status?”
“We’re clear. Can we come in?”
Brett entered the kitchen and gave me a thumbs-up. “Yeah. Target’s secure. We’ve got one hostage. Where’s the other one?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.”
Which I knew wasn’t going to be good.
I looked at Brett and said, “Start SSE. Search this place for anything we can get.”
He said, “Retro’s already on it, but I don’t think it’s going to be much. These guys look like pipe-swingers. I think they were hired as local protection. I don’t think they’re part of the plan.”
I pointed to an Inmarsat terminal on the window ledge, its connecting USB cables dangling as if whatever had been attached had been ripped out. “Get him on that. See if there’s anything he can glean.”
Outside, I heard Jennifer say, “Coming in,” then a pause, her not wanting to get shot as a threat.
I said, “Come on. You’re good.”
She entered, taken aback at the carnage. She said, “I guess you guys had the same fight I did.”
Brett looked up, saying, “Really?”
“Yeah. Yeah. It was . . . not fun.”
Her eyes were glistening with a little postcombat scare, and I knew she’d seen the elephant. So did Brett. He nodded at her, saying nothing else, then went to get Retro.
Nung came in behind her and she pointed at him, saying, “He saved the mission. The man’s quick as a mongoose. They had a guy on the road. Hidden in the bushes.”
I looked at him, and he said, “You told me to protect her.” As robotic as ever.
Jennifer said, “Then he shot a guy trying to surrender.”
I gl
ared at Nung, and he said, “He was trying to kill us.”
“Damn it! When will you get it through your head that I’d like to talk to one of these guys?”
He looked around the room, the bodies littering the floor, and said, “You missed your chance too, I guess.”
Retro entered and I pointed to the Inmarsat. “Can you get anything out of that?”
“Probably not. It’s just a terminal. I need the laptop that was using it.”
I said, “Well, examine it anyway.”
He went to work, and I asked Jennifer, “What happened with the other hostage?”
She told me the story, and I cursed. I saw her face fall, and knew I’d just blamed her. I said, “Not your fault. I’m just pissed. We were so close.”
She tentatively nodded, and I went into team-leader mode. “Jennifer, it’s not your fault. We were forced to execute. Forced to pull this out of our ass, and we did damn good. Nobody got killed, and we got one. We’ll get the others.”
At the mention of others, she perked up and said, “Where’s Kylie? Why isn’t she here?”
“I have no idea. This guy is out like he’s been boozing on Bourbon Street. We probably won’t get any answers until he wakes up.”
“What now?”
“Shit. I don’t know. I’d like to get some sleep, but I’ll be willing to bet that Blaine and Kurt won’t let that happen. You want to call them?”
She smiled. “Uh . . . no. That’s team-leader department.”
While Retro went through the terminal, I called Blaine. After I told him what I had, where we were, and the risks to the hostage we held, he ordered me to remain in place, feeling a medical team would have more freedom here than at our B&B. Less chance of compromise, which, given that I hadn’t heard any sirens, was probably a good bet. If we were compromised here, we’d already know it.
He called in the docs and a cleaning team, who were really getting a workout on this op, then said Kurt wanted to talk to me directly.
I knew why. I rang off and dialed. Kurt answered, saying he’d heard we’d rescued Travis Deleon, the husband of the governor of Texas. I told him, yeah, I thought so, but the guy was drugged out of his mind. I had no idea who he was. I gave him the rundown of what had happened.
He said, “Good work,” then got around to it. “Kylie?”
“Boss, she’s not here. I’m sorry.”
He said nothing. The silence grew, and I said, “But we came close. We’re on them now. They’re on the run. They had to run out of here without a plan. They had no time to figure anything out.”
“You said there was only one other hostage.”
“Yeah. The one in the car.”
“You think that was her? Or Nick?”
I gave him the truth that Jennifer had relayed. “Sir, the body that went into the car was a male. Almost positive. But it might have been her.”
He said, “I’m not sure what to wish for.”
“They’re both out there. We’ll get them both.”
“What’s your next move? Where from here?”
And that was the part of the conversation I didn’t want to broach. I had nothing. This lead was so thin it was a miracle it had worked out. Retro might get something from the Inmarsat, but it wasn’t likely. Whatever he had was historical, and these guys would be too smart to run to anything that they’d ever touched before.
I said, “Sir, we’re at a dead end. I’ve used up my magic. They’re on the road, and I have no idea where.”
“Shit. This hit might just get them to kill ’em. Dump them in a ditch somewhere.”
That took me aback. “Sir, you’re not suggesting—”
“No, no. No way. You got back one. Hell, you got back three. I’m just projecting.”
I said, “All I need is a thread. Just one lead.”
He said, “What’s that?”
“I said, all I need is a thread.”
“Not you. Hang on. Your pal Knuckles is talking.”
The phone went down, and I could hear murmured conversation.
He came back. “I gotta go. Get that place cleaned up. Get back to the bird in Shannon. Clear out of there and stand by.”
The urgency in his voice was unmistakable. I said, “What’s going on?”
“I might have your thread.”
72
Kurt hung up, and George Wolffe said, “So they got Travis Deleon? Clean? No compromise?”
“Looks that way.”
George picked up a phone and said, “That’s great news. Palmer will want to kiss you. Of course, he’d want to hang you if it had gone bad.” He started to dial and said, “You want me to tell him about the unilateral decision to assault, or wait until you brief?”
Kurt said, “Don’t call just yet.” George held the phone, a question on his face. Kurt turned to Knuckles. “What do you have?”
Knuckles held out a transcript. “A guy initiated contact with our bait. Wants to talk about the Breedlove story. Claims to have inside information that can be used to leverage the secretary of Homeland Security during his ‘interview.’”
From behind his desk, George hung up the phone and said, “Man, that was quick.”
Four hours earlier, Kurt had enlisted the help of Bartholomew Creedwater, the Taskforce computer specialist, to spoof the number of the secretary’s direct office line, then pretend to be his personal assistant, asking for Kincaid. The reporter had eaten it up, setting a meeting later on in the evening. Kurt had intended to reschedule at the last minute, rolling the meeting to the next night, and continue doing so until it became apparent his plan wasn’t going to work, or the terrorist made contact. He never expected it to happen so soon.
Kurt said, “Creed’s still confident his little intrusion is hidden?”
“Yeah,” Knuckles said. “That stuff is all black magic to me, but he seems to think he can get away with anything.”
“Funny, he thought that same thing when they put on the handcuffs that got him to the Taskforce. I hope he’s right.”
Kurt had two choices to gain access to Kincaid’s telecommunications: Go get a warrant with a judge and legally access his phones using FBI architecture, or see if he had the means to do so locally, using Taskforce assets.
The first choice was the direction he wanted to go, but it was clearly out of the question. He might have convinced the president, but the Oversight Council would have balked, specifically because the Taskforce was forbidden from working domestically, and more generally because nobody in the Justice Department was read onto their very existence. It would invite compromise.
That left option two. Which was decidedly illegal, and Kurt knew he was walking on dangerous ground. As the commander he bore the responsibility to ensure the Taskforce operated within a moral and legal framework. Its very secrecy had always been ripe for abuse, and he understood that well. The last thing he wanted was the unit to metastasize into an American gestapo, and it was his job to lead by example. He couldn’t very well count on his men to exercise sound judgment, only executing operations that were within their charter, if he didn’t.
In the end, Kylie’s fate had won the debate. He’d come back and asked Creed some pointed questions, and there was a reason Creed was chosen. The Taskforce computer network operations cell had plenty of genius-level specialists—hackers—but all had gleaned their skills through the US government. All but one. Creed had been nabbed doing some nasty computer things to unsavory people he deemed worthy of the abuse, and his skill had caught the eye of the Taskforce. In exchange for staying out of jail, he’d left the dark side and come to work for Kurt. It had been a fairly easy fix, because, while he’d definitely broken the law, his actions had led to some racketeering prosecutions and nobody was really itching to make him pay.
Kurt had pulled him out of the fire, and he knew Creed fe
lt undying loyalty—along with no compunction about breaking the law. Especially if Kurt asked.
Technically, the Taskforce charter forbade the collection of content from any cellular or landline communications. They were restricted to geolocation only, using the greater intelligence community for any “chatter” they needed to hear, since the IC already had a robust oversight structure in place. The Oversight Council didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, giving their small organization the ability to start reading emails and listening to calls. When Kurt had asked Creed if it was possible, given the equipment they had, he’d said it could be done—if one had the skill. Kurt had handed him Kincaid’s business card, giving the order, and Creed had grinned, turning to a keyboard. And he’d produced.
Kurt scanned the transcript, stopping on the time. “Shit, this thing’s going down in the next thirty minutes. A daylight meeting?”
Knuckles said, “Yep. Looks like it.”
Reading further, Kurt said, “Garage on Wilson Boulevard. That’s straight up the street in Rosslyn. We can be there in five minutes.”
George took the transcript and read the address. “This guy sure has a sense of humor.”
“What?”
“The garage address is 1401 Wilson Boulevard. It’s a special place for spilling secrets to reporters. It’s where Woodward met Deep Throat.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Same spot.”
Knuckles said, “I’m sure that’s a coincidence. No way is that intentional.”
“Why?” asked Kurt.
“I didn’t tell you the best part. Creed said he spoke with an Irish accent.”
Kurt grinned and pointed to Knuckles’s leg. “Can you fight?”
“Hell yes. I told you that in Europe. Just can’t run very fast, but it sure isn’t affecting my aim.”
Kurt turned to George. “Get the med lab ready for a detainee. I want two interrogators on immediate standby, with a full suite, including drugs.”
George raised an eyebrow and said, “You plan on bringing him here?”