by Brad Taylor
He said, “You’re screwing with the camera angle. Lean back.”
The target at the table answered a cell phone.
Aaron said, “Shit. Lean back—now.”
Alex did so abruptly, causing the camera to sway wildly. Aaron said, “Stay still.”
The man turned away from them, still on the phone.
Aaron said, “We need to move. You need to move. Stand up and go to the bathroom. Walk by the table and get me a shot of his face as long as you can. Stop and ask the table for directions, but not to him. Let him keep talking on the phone.”
Hesitantly, Alex stood. More forcefully than he wanted to, Aaron said, “Go.”
She did, sidling between the throngs of tour bus patrons and locals, threading between the tables and down the stairs, the picture on Aaron’s tablet jumping left and right. She reached the patio and it stabilized. She walked toward the restrooms, then stopped at the table, asking directions. He recorded about a fifteen-second snippet of the phone conversation, unsure if the software would be able to utilize the footage because the target’s face was partially obscured by his smartphone.
He glanced over the balcony to see the interaction, and she broke contact, doing a passable job of being a tourist. He saw no outward interest in the interruption.
Aaron ignored the rest of the feed, wondering if Alex would be smart enough to cut it off if she really chose to use the bathroom. She did. Or maybe the Bluetooth simply lost contact because of distance.He grinned and took a sip of his beer, surreptitiously giving the target table a side-eye.
The Israeli was asking a waitress for the check. Aaron immediately picked up his phone and called Alex, telling her to return.
The men tossed some rand on the table, preparing to leave, and he saw her coming across the patio. She mounted the stairs to the balcony and he stood, saying, “Hopefully they take the same car. If they split up, we’ll stick to the target.”
Hidden by the balcony railing, they let the group exit the restaurant, then followed, getting to the parking lot just as they were loading a single car. A part of him spiked at the action, since they’d
arrived in two separate cars.
He should have listened to his sixth sense. Lulled by the minimal threat of his mission, he thought he had his bases covered, but he had forgotten a hard truth he’d learned in the past: In warfare, the enemy gets a vote.
2
As we crossed the lobby to the Las Vegas Venetian casino, another gaggle of bearded men went by, all wearing cargo pants and baseball caps with Velcro patches. Half of them toted some form of corduroy nylon backpack, which also sported a variety of gun-porn patches, depicting things like ISIS Hunter or a Punisher skull.
I said, “I have never seen this many supercommando ‘operators’ in one place in my life.”
Knuckles laughed and said, “Yeah, this event brings ’em out of the woodwork, no doubt. But make no mistake, the real deal’s running around in here as well. In fact, keep your eyes peeled. The odds of us running into someone we know are pretty high, so be prepared to run the cover story.”
Working in cover was the worst when you did it in an area where the locals potentially knew you. Whenever that happened, the nastiest thing that could occur—besides getting your fingernails pulled out by the enemy—was running into someone who knew who you were in real life. It was the surest way to blow the hell out of what you were pretending. An FBI agent infiltrating an outlaw motorcycle gang would be in dire straights if he bumped into a friend from law school.
In this case, Knuckles was still active-duty Navy and I was retired Army. In the world of the Taskforce, when we were out in the badlands earning our ISIS Hunter patches for real, he was a civilian employee of my company, but if another SEAL from his past saw him here, they’d know that was bullshit, so we’d created a story that was plausible should that happen to either of us.
It was my first trip to the fabled SHOT Show in Las Vegas, the largest gun show on earth, and the interior of the Sands Convention Center was literally stuffed with booth after booth selling various weapons, accessories, and outdoor gear. It was Mecca to people like me, and the Taskforce sent a contingent every year to prowl the halls looking for anything new that we could incorporate into our mission. Back when I was on active duty, as the team leader, I’d always let a junior member of the team make the trip, and Knuckles, my 2IC, had been a few times before.
Given how he was dressed, I was surprised they let him in.
In contrast to the bearded ones, he looked like he had come to protest the convention, with his long hippie hair, Che Guevara T-shirt, and lack of any tacti-cool paraphernalia. He was even wearing a leather necklace with a bronze peace sign the size of a fifty-cent piece—either as irony or as a challenge. With him it was hard to tell, but if someone took it as a challenge, they’d be sorely wishing they hadn’t. Unlike a lot of the posers at the convention, he was most definitely an Operator.
While the trip was a little bit of a boondoggle, we did have a specific mission. We’d just come from a booth manned by a company called ZEV Technologies—a maker of high-end aftermarket components and custom frame/slide work for Glock pistols—and had sealed a deal to test some pistols for our specific applications.
Although we already had our own armorer support that we used to hone our combat weapons, Kurt Hale—the commander of the Taskforce—was wondering if we weren’t just reinventing the wheel and wanted to see if it would be better to simply farm out the work. After talking to ZEV, I was beginning to believe he was right, only our wheels were something from a Conestoga wagon while ZEV was racing around on run-flats.
We pushed through the crowd and entered the cavernous Venetian casino, working our way to Las Vegas Boulevard. We exited into the sunshine, leaving the commandos and gamblers, only to be hit by Guatemalan refugees trying to hand me cards with hookers offering their services. One of the strangest things about Vegas.
Knuckles said, “What did you think?”
“Seriously? I think we should have flown here with the entire team’s Glocks. No question they can do better than our internal armorers. Nothing against them, but did you work the one they had on display? Better trigger than ours by far.”
Knuckles took a left toward Caesars Palace, passing the gigantic Venetian hotel, saying, “So forget about any other vendors?”
He had a point. While we didn’t fall under any official DoD rules about contracts, it would be stupid to latch on to the first one we found. We had a list of potential companies that could meet our goals, and it wouldn’t be right not to at least check them out. But I was pretty sure where I would end up on my recommendation to Kurt.
I said, “Naw, we should hit ’em up as well, but we only get two days out here, and I want some Vegas time. I’ll send Retro and Jennifer to go hunt them down.”
“Retro isn’t going to like that, and Jennifer’s not exactly an expert.” Retro had been a teammate of mine since Jesus was wearing diapers, but all things come to a close sooner or later. He was set to retire from the military at the end of the month and had truly come out here for vacation. Kurt knew he wasn’t needed but had let him come along as a little retirement gift. Unbeknownst to me, in all our time together, he absolutely loved playing craps, and his wife frowned on gambling. I learned he had planned on spending his entire time in the casinos betting away his per diem like a drunken sailor.
As we were planning to leave for the trip, he’d begged to come along, getting a seat through Kurt, then had turned around and told his wife he was desperately needed for national security, which she bought. As they say, “What happens in Vegas . . .”
I said, “It’s not going to kill him to take a break for a few hours, and as far as Jennifer goes, she could learn something.”
Jennifer was my partner in Grolier Recovery Services—our company—and, outside of some serious weapons training I’d gi
ven her, had no military experience. She wasn’t qualified to judge whether a vendor was worthy and wasn’t needed on this trip either, but I’d paid for her to come along out of my own pocket because, well, she was a partner in more ways than one. She’d planned on spending her time at the pool—or if the weather was too cold, in the spa.
I felt my phone vibrate and saw it was her. I said, “Speak of the devil.”
I answered, “Hey, we’re on Vegas Boulevard headed home. What’s up?”
“Kurt wants to talk on the VPN. Secure.”
“About what?”
“Apparently, about a mission. In Vegas.”
3
Aaron Bergmann left the parking lot of the Sakhumzi restaurant, keeping a few cars between him and his target, blending in with the traffic on Vilakazi Street. In short order, they had left what was sarcastically called by the locals the Beverly Hills of Soweto, crossing out of the Orlando West neighborhood and into Orlando East.
Making sure he was still screened from the car in front of him, he turned to Alex and said, “What’s the video telling us?”
Alex, in the passenger seat, said, “It’s got nothing about diamonds or the diamond exchange. They’re talking about weapons. The black man is being called a general, and he’s asking the blond guy how many soldiers he has. Our target’s only contribution is saying that money is no object.”
She looked at him and said, “What’s going on? This isn’t about blood diamonds. It’s not about embarrassment to Israel or the diamond exchange.”
They entered a single-track road leading to two giant power-plant towers looking like they belonged in a nuclear facility, only they were now painted with multicolored graffiti and artwork. Why would they be coming here?
He said, “Get off the video. Google this place. What’s here?”
She did, just as they passed a sign describing the towers as a fun park, with bungee jumping, paint ball, and other adventure sports. Aaron let the target car roll past the parking lot, seeing it continue on to a cluster of abandoned buildings. He pulled over to the side of the road, caught by a stream of patrons exiting the park, the sun beginning to set.
He said, “Give me something. What is this place? I’m about to lose the target.”
Looking up from her tablet, Alex said, “It’s an old coal-fired power plant. It closed in 1998. In 2008, it reopened as a bungee-jumping place called Orlando Towers. Since then, it’s expanded into a bunch of different adventure events. Something called ‘SCAD Freefall’ and other things.”
“That’s no fucking help. Who owns it? Why are they here?”
Alex snapped back at his tone, looked fearful, realizing she was failing in her duties. She said, “I have no idea. I don’t know how to ascertain that.”
Aaron glanced forward and saw the car drawing away at a slow pace, passing through the remains of the power station. It pulled into an alley between two brick buildings that looked like a setting from a Saw movie, the doors hanging askew and the windows broken. He had to make a decision.
He said, “Switch seats with me. Give me the tablet.”
They did so without opening any doors, playing a game of Twister, arms and legs flapping back and forth in an awkward dance, him keeping an eye on the car to their front. It began to disappear through the crumbling buildings, and he made a choice that would prove fateful.
“Keep going. Slowly. Keep the car in sight, but don’t turn down that alley. Stop before they can see us in the rearview mirror.”
She did so, turning on the headlights to counteract the dying sun. He immediately snapped, “Off, off, turn them off.”
She reflexively twisted the stalk hard enough to break the plastic, shutting out the lights. She looked at him in a panic, and he patted her hand, saying, “Take a breath. We’re okay.”
She exhaled and then inched forward, past the tourist park and into the abandoned buildings. She leaned toward the windshield in the gathering gloom and said, “I see the car in the alley. It’s pulled over next to a trash pile.”
He said, “Park it here, in the shadow of the buildings. Whatever they’re doing, we’re not going to see. We’ve gone far enough.” He pulled out a night vision monocular and handed it to her, saying, “Keep an eye on the car. I’m going to cycle the video.”
He powered up the recording from the restaurant, the conversation between the men spit out at the bottom of the screen by the software package, looking like closed captioning at a sports bar. He saw that Alex was correct. The men were discussing weapons, strategy, and money. The deputy prime minister of Lesotho, Makalo Lenatha, was mentioned, then the black man spoke, and Aaron finally had a name: Lieutenant General Jonathan Mosebo, head of the Lesotho Defence Force.
The readout continued, and he learned that the general was being unceremoniously fired by the prime minister and was none too pleased about it. The other Caucasian, a man called Johan, calmed him down, and the talk continued along nebulous lines about force structures and loyalties.
Nothing to do with diamonds. What the hell?
The phone call came, the target answering, and he fast-forwarded through Alex’s short walk down the stairs. When she appeared by the target’s table, he slowed the video down again, and the scrolling sentences at the bottom turned into gibberish. Confused, he punched a couple of icons on the software package, then realized what the problem was: The man wasn’t speaking English.
He’s speaking Hebrew.
He glanced up from the tablet and saw that a single streetlight had come on, providing enough feeble illumination to potentially compromise them. He began manipulating the software package, saying, “How’re we looking?”
Alex said, “Good. I haven’t seen any movement from them at all.”
Which should have been an indicator.
He loaded the Hebrew suite into the software program, saying, “Get the car turned around and out of the ring of that streetlight. We’ll stay for a couple of more minutes, but this isn’t worth burning ourselves. There’s more going on here than just blood diamonds. I need to assess and report back for guidance.”
She started the vehicle, and he rewound the video feed, getting to the start of the phone conversation. She did a U-turn, parking the car on the opposite side of the street, now facing toward the exit of the dilapidated power station.
He hit play, and the screen cleared. The software suite could only lip-read the target’s end of the conversation, making the readout a little confusing, but eventually, one sentence stitched the others together, clearing the state of play like fog hit with the morning sun.
I have a tail? From Mossad?
The text across the bottom of the screen hung still as the man on the other end of the line talked. Aaron saw the words on the tablet, not wanting to believe them.
His voice grating low, he said, “Get out of here. Now.”
Alex said, “What?”
The man on the other end of the phone quit talking, and the screen spit out the target’s response. You want me to take him out? Are you sure?
In that millisecond, Aaron realized that he was no longer the hunter. He was the hunted. They had been led here for a reason.
He bolted upright and saw men appearing like wraiths from the dilapidated buildings, an anthill kicked over, running toward the car.
He shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!”
The driver’s side window was smashed. He saw Alex’s head yanked out of it, a man trying to pull her from the car by her hair. He exploded forward, grabbing the wrist and slamming it backward, into the shards of glass that remained in the window. The man screamed, releasing Alex’s head. Aaron leaned over and jammed his foot on the accelerator, causing the car to burst forward. The men dove out of the way, with one flipping onto the hood. Alex shouted, and the car skipped into the curb, bounced back, and headed straight into the wall of a building.
> Aaron grabbed the wheel, but not soon enough. They slammed into the brick, the vehicle stopping in a grinding of metal. His door was ripped open, hands jerking all over his body, spilling him out. He hit the ground hard, felt a fist hammer his temple, and heard Alex scream again.
A visceral fear flooded him, the adrenaline coursing through him in a spastic jolt. Like a father defending his family against overwhelming odds, knowing he would lose, he began doing what he knew best.
He turned to fight.
4
Knuckles took a sip of his club soda and said, “This is bullshit. I should not be burning myself for this mission. We should be using Jennifer. It’s easier, and you know it.”
I kept my eye on Retro at the craps table and said, “If GRS is to remain in play for the follow-on mission, I only have two guys here who I can burn. You and Retro.”
“You don’t have to burn me. I can do the follow-on mission. Retro’s the one retiring.”
I took a sip of my own club soda and gave him the side-eye. I said, “You’re slated to train Carly. You want to ditch that for a simple Alpha follow-on mission?”
Carly was a Taskforce CIA case officer who had been granted the honor of attempting to achieve Operator status in the Taskforce. Only the second female to be allowed to try, after Jennifer. It was an open secret that she was dating Knuckles, and he’d fought like hell to get her a shot, with Kurt agreeing only after I’d given my concurrence. She needed some serious training to even begin to think about succeeding, and Knuckles had been detailed to conduct it. His willingness to ditch that for a simple surveillance mission with no chance of high adventure was a little strange, to say the least. Especially after how hard he’d fought to give her the chance.
He toyed with his napkin, then said, “Real-world missions take precedence. That’s all.”
“So I should burn Jennifer so you can go on a potential trip, when she has no commitments and you do? What would Carly say about that?”