Assassin's Code

by Ward Larsen

  “Hello, David.”

  “Hi.”

  “I’ve still got a good ping on Uday’s sat phone,” she said.

  “Good … although that’s not why I’m calling.”

  Slaton hesitated there, until she said, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m good. I just have a favor to ask.”

  “Sure, what can I do for you?”

  “Remember when I told you about the satellite connection on my boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you track it down?”

  A hesitation.

  “It’s okay,” he added.

  “Yes, Anton thought we should know where your wife was.”

  “He was right. Do you still have a lock on it?”

  “No, I haven’t been following it … but I’m pretty sure I could find it again if I tried.”

  “Try.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I want you to send a message for me.” He gave her a specific address.

  “Okay. What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. Tell them I miss them, and that I’ll be home soon. And mention to my wife I that was thinking we should cruise the Med this fall.”

  “Okay, I can do that. Anything else?”

  “No, I think that about covers it. Thanks.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The Golan Heights was born as a volcanic plateau, a great table of inner earth rising above the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. Dozens of volcanic cones give evidence of its creation, and the resulting basalt plain stretches eastward deep into Syria. On flat and relatively featureless terrain, the forests of past eras have been replaced by scrub and low-lying brush, and in a few quarters beaten into farmland. It is a place with little cover, hardpan surfaces, and has long been sparsely populated. For Slaton’s team, it was a topography that translated directly into one word—“speed.”

  The ATVs had been purchased as stock models, but their recreational lineage ended there. Engine performance had been boosted, and on a decent road they could eclipse seventy miles an hour. Thin steel decks had been added front and rear for carrying gear. The tires were special run-flat variants, and light armor had been welded over vital points on the engine. The exhaust system was sound-suppressed, and rerouted to minimize IR signature. For tonight’s mission, which demanded speed over unimproved terrain, optional roll cages had been installed. The vehicles were staged forward on an Army flatbed, and unloaded within a mile of the border as dusk was taking its grip.

  At that point, Slaton and the others got a final update from the drone before making their dash into Syria. The planned route avoided not only Hezbollah outposts and minefields, but all known inhabited structures. Farmhouses, villages, and even storage sheds were kept two hundred yards distant.

  The Golan Heights border was established by the U.N. in 1974. Erring on the side of caution, two lines of demarcation were drawn—to the west was a boundary designated “Alpha,” and to the east “Bravo.” The buffer zone between them had been monitored by U.N. troops ever since.

  “The sector we’re going through is watched by Fijians,” said Aaron. “They’re actually pretty good, as far as U.N. troops go, but I found what looks like a useful gap.”

  “Okay,” said Slaton, as he quietly watched the others. Matai was triple-checking his weapons, and he saw Tal rolling his neck as if warming up for a big game.

  Aaron continued, “Once we get across Bravo there are a few farms, but most are fallow this time of year. Outside that, the terrain will be rough.”

  “Then you should lead,” Slaton said. “You’ve got the most time in one of these seats.”

  “Right—so let’s do this.”

  * * *

  They departed in loose formation into a moonless night. Slaton was impressed by the quietness of the ATVs, especially at high throttle settings. Everyone wore night-vision goggles, necessary to avoid the thicker stands of vegetation and hidden wadis. Each man also wore comm gear, although as quiet as the ATVs were, talking was impossible as they bounded over the rock-hard landscape.

  The buffer zone was quickly behind them, and Slaton followed Aaron’s lead as they skirted groves of mature olive trees and grainfields waiting patiently for spring. They stopped twice in the first ten minutes, once to let two cars pass on a crossing road, and again when Aaron spotted two young boys walking on a distant path. Slaton wished they could have waited until the early-morning hours, when most people would be asleep, but their hand had been forced.

  Thirty cautious minutes later they reached the outskirts of Nawa. Aaron slowed the convoy as the first habitations came into view, and they parked half a mile clear in a dense stand of brush. All four men rendezvoused at the top of a gentle hill, Aaron and Slaton in the center, Tal and Matai on the flanks. Everyone was alert for the slightest deviation in sound or movement.

  Slaton said over the tactical frequency, “Drone updates?”

  Bloch responded immediately, and in less than his usual forceful tone—even thirty miles away, he too sensed a need for quiet. “No change. The phone is still giving a signal from the targeted building, twelve hundred meters from your present position. I see no police or patrols in your quadrant. One vehicle checkpoint remains on the north side of town.”

  “Okay,” Slaton said, “that’s as good as we’re going to get.”

  They struck out in tight formation, Tal and Matai keeping wide, and Slaton taking the point. They trotted low through the scrub with MP7s—everyone’s assault weapon of choice—poised and ready. Tal also carried a short-barrel shotgun on his shoulder in case the need arose for close-quarters work. Slaton veered away from a home that was ablaze with light, and on reaching the first street they shouldered to a wall but kept moving, pausing only occasionally in shadows to look and listen.

  The town was quiet but alive. Music flowed from some unseen window, and a few cars could be heard in the heart of town. The scents were there as well, a tang of cooking meat on one brush of wind, the stench of a backed-up sewer on the next. The sensory static of civilization. Five minutes later they saw their objective: the once-grand villa that had been commandeered by Hezbollah and transformed into a militia outpost.

  The team had spent hours studying the place, two stories of earthen brick and barrel tile. They’d memorized the shape of the courtyard wall, the location of every door and window, and had a good idea of the interior floor plan. Now everyone saw it all firsthand. The villa’s windows were mostly lit, and at that moment there was no one outside. Everyone’s ears strained for sounds. The occasional distant voice interrupted the night, but in every case the tones were calm and conversational. They all heard a chair get pushed back across a tile floor somewhere inside. There was still no moon, and aside from the splash of a streetlight on the southern edge, the exterior looked dark and impenetrable.

  Aaron looked at Slaton, and whispered, “Looks a lot different from our daytime, God’s-eye reconnaissance view.”

  “I know,” Slaton replied. “But then it always does, doesn’t it?”

  * * *

  Uday was alone in the small interrogation room. He was sure Sarah and Faisal were nearby, probably in a similar space—one door, no windows, a small table that separated two chairs. He’d been questioned by an officer for nearly an hour, and had no doubt the others were being asked the same questions. Where are you from? How do you know one another? Why are you traveling to Nawa?

  Thankfully they’d had the foresight to go over it once, on a long stretch of road after Palmyra. The story of a hired driver and a young couple running away from Damascus to escape a forced marriage. It was plausible, but Uday didn’t delude himself—their one-play act, no matter how well performed, would only buy time. Up to this point, things had been relatively civil. Uday, unfortunately, had been in charge of videography for ISIS—more than almost anyone on earth, he knew the depths to which interrogations could sink. He also knew where they inevitably ended, countless pixelated i
mages of butchery burned into his mind. There was actually some small comfort in knowing the endgame. Very soon, he, Sarah, and Faisal would encounter men who were far less reasonable. Men who were better interrogators than they were liars.

  That he had not already been transferred to a more secure facility he took as a minor victory. His greatest fear was that he and Sarah would be separated. For that Uday had no plan, and he knew they would use it against him. He wondered what had come of the phone—he’d seen Sarah conceal it in her gown. The militiamen would have searched her by now, but that was an image Uday didn’t want to dwell on. He tried to remember whether there had been anything incriminating on the handset. He’d used it only to call Baland, but the device had been given to him by a frontline ISIS squad. What might they have installed? Verses from the Quran? Pictures of the caliph? He should have taken the time to sanitize the phone’s memory, just as he’d always done to equipment acquired by his division in Raqqa. How far away that seemed now.

  He was regretting yet another mistake, hunched forward with his head in his hands, when the door burst open. Uday saw a Hezbollah officer he’d not seen before, backed by two guards.

  “Aziz Uday,” he said.

  Uday felt a tightening in his chest, and his hands squeezed his thighs. He’d thought they might identify him, but not so quickly. “I don’t know that name.”

  The officer, who was significantly older than the previous interrogator, only scowled. “Take him!”

  The two men rushed to Uday and each grabbed an arm. They lifted him to his feet, and although he didn’t try to fight, his legs seemed unresponsive. “Sarah!” he said hoarsely.

  There was no reply.

  He was dragged down a hallway, his feet trailing behind him, then out into the night across a dirt parking apron. A big SUV was waiting twenty yards away, both doors on the right side open invitingly. He got his feet beneath him and tried to see inside, hoping against hope to find Sarah already there. Then, quite unexpectedly, the man on his left suddenly released his grip.

  Uday twisted in that direction as the other man kept going. But only for an instant. All at once the second guard let go as well. Uday stumbled momentarily, then got his balance and stood straight. The second man crumpled to the ground like a bag of wet sand. Unsure what was happening, he looked back at the first guard. He was on the ground as well, silent and motionless, with a small round smudge on his forehead. Something dark was pooling beneath him on the ground. In the same instant that these facts were coalescing in Uday’s muddled brain, the limo began to disintegrate before his eyes. The front windshield burst outward, glass spraying into the sky. A man slumped from the driver’s seat and fell to the dirt. He too remained still.

  A breathless Uday saw two dark figures approaching. They were thickly built and moving fast. Their weapons swept rhythmically, side to side, and both wore night-vision gear on their heads. His nontactical brain could hardly keep up, but a vague hope arose.

  One of the figures spoke. “Aziz Uday?”

  Uday nodded.

  “Come with us! We are here to take you to Israel!”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Slaton had spoken to Uday in English. This had been one of their easier pre-mission decisions—Bloch had gleaned through research that Uday had attended school in England.

  “Let’s go!” Slaton ordered.

  Uday seemed hesitant, and didn’t respond right away. This too was expected. Because he was a technician, this was likely his first combat exposure. He was overwhelmed by the rapid-fire sequence of violent sensory inputs. When Slaton grabbed his arm, Uday tried to pull away. The stonemason’s grip wasn’t to be broken.

  “No!” Uday pleaded. “We must get Sarah and my brother!”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Slaton insisted. His tone was hushed. Other than one shattered windshield, no alarm had been raised, their sound-suppressed weapons working as advertised. He began pulling Uday across the dirt lot. Aaron backed away with them, his head sweeping left and right in search of threats.

  “You have the personnel data?” Slaton asked.

  “No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you! It’s on a memory stick—Sarah has it!”

  Slaton didn’t stop moving, but forced Uday’s eyes to his own. “Which room is she in?”

  “I don’t know. We were separated. But they’ve discovered who I am—they were going to take me elsewhere.”

  Slaton keyed his mic. “The girl has the data,” he transmitted. “Find her fast. The third man too if you see him—it’s Uday’s brother!”

  Tal and Matai acknowledged, and Slaton watched two hulking figures dash with guns raised through the doorway Uday had just exited. Slaton planted Uday behind a solid courtyard wall, and in the same moment he heard the muted mechanical clanks of suppressed MP7 fire, staggered in controlled semiautomatic groupings.

  “Stay with him!” Slaton ordered Aaron, and didn’t wait for a response before sprinting toward the entrance. Then on the radio, “One’s coming in support, same door!”

  He burst through the entrance with his weapon ready. Down a long hall he saw two bodies down, both enemy. The end of stealth was imminent. Tal emerged from a doorway pulling a woman by the elbow. He directed her eyes toward Slaton, who was nearest the exit, and gave the woman a slap on the ass that would have made a horse bolt. Slaton held out his hand like he was asking her to dance, and she sprinted toward him. Slaton had just touched her hand when he saw flashes of motion at the top of the hall.

  He trained his MP7 there and saw two hostiles with rifles, but Tal was in his line of fire. At that same moment Matai burst from another room with a man in tow. There was shouting and flailing, a flurry of moving bodies. Slaton had no shot, so he used his body to shield the woman and shoved her outside. The instant they cleared the doorway Slaton heard an exchange of fire—unsuppressed rounds now mixed with the clank of the MP7s.

  With the woman clear of the hallway, Slaton pivoted against the doorjamb. He trained his weapon down the hall, ready to give supporting fire. He saw Tal already moving. Another Hezbollah man was on the ground, motionless. Also on the floor was the man Matai had been trying to rescue. Matai was on one knee, and Slaton heard his report on the comm link. “This is Three. The brother took two rounds, one in the head. He’s done.”

  “All right, egress!” Slaton ordered, leaving regrets for later.

  Tal and Matai ran toward him, keeping to one side to leave Slaton a clear line of fire. Their tactical awareness proved invaluable seconds later when two more green-clad figures appeared at the end of the hall, both brandishing weapons. Slaton dropped the one in front with two quick shots, then the second with a single tap.

  The instant Tal and Matai hit the doorway, voices rose from the connecting hallway, frantic shouting in Arabic. Slaton extracted a flash-bang grenade and tossed it toward the intersection. He didn’t wait to see the results, but heard it go off as he sprinted away. Tal and Matai were already ahead with the girl.

  They all ran across the courtyard to the wall where Aaron was protecting Uday. Slaton was the last to arrive, but before anyone could speak, the sound of an engine rattled the night. A big truck somewhere nearby.

  “We must get Faisal!” Uday shouted.

  “He’s dead,” Slaton said. It was a cruel but necessary reply—not because it was the truth, but for the shock it would induce on Uday. A stunned captive was always easier to handle.

  Slaton heard Aaron coordinating with Bloch on the comm link. They were discussing the best egress route. He turned to Sarah. “You have the memory stick?”

  She stared at him, and he wondered if she spoke English.

  “Do you have—”

  “No!” she said suddenly.

  Slaton felt a clench in his gut. “Did they take it from you?”

  “No—I knew they would. So I hid it.”

  “Hid it? Where?”

  Sarah told him in heavily accented English.

  Slaton keyed his mic. “One here! Ever
ybody hold on—we’ve got a problem!”

  * * *

  The hurried meeting convened two minutes later between the chassis of two rusted-out cars in a scrapyard. Tal and Matai watched the perimeter while Slaton and Aaron hunkered low with Uday and Sarah.

  “It was the place where they stopped us,” she said.

  Slaton pulled out a map and a flashlight, doing his best to not let the light spill from their hide. They all heard shouting in the distance, but according to Aaron, who spoke fluent Arabic, their adversaries seemed stalled in confusion.

  Sarah dragged her finger along a road on the map. “Here—this road.” Her finger stopped. “This first square—they stopped our truck there. When we got out, a man pushed me, and I fell down easily. There was a wall. I hid the stick under a loose stone.”

  Slaton looked at Aaron. “The location checks—we first picked up the phone’s signal in that square.”

  Aaron looked out into the night. “Two hundred meters from here, back through town.”

  Slaton took only seconds to make his call. “I’ll go. Sarah will have to come to show me the exact spot. You three take Uday to the ATVs, then circle west.” Slaton tapped a spot on the map outside town near a minor wadi. “We’ll meet back up there.”

  Aaron stared at Slaton, but didn’t argue. The logic was clear. They would try to get the memory stick, but if Slaton and Sarah failed, the others would at least bring out Uday. A partial victory, but a victory all the same.

  “Do you want to take Tal?” Aaron asked.

  “No, just the two of us. Less conspicuous that way.”

  Everyone heard more shouting in the distance, and the big diesel they’d heard earlier began moving. The response was organizing.

  “Not much time,” Aaron said. “In twenty minutes this place will be crawling. We’ll try to create some distractions and draw them in a different direction.”

  Slaton looked at Sarah. “Can you do this for us?”

  She locked eyes with Uday for a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”