by Jack Murphy
“Listen to me you white devil,” The Arab continued to taunt Deckard in his native language. “You wanted me and now you have found me but what is it that you are really looking for out here in the desert tonight? Are you sure you want to find what you are looking for?”
Deckard understood the words but was barely listening. His adversary's strength was not as a fighter but rather as a cunning manipulator. He was the battlefield's landscaper, making both sides of conflicts believe what he wanted them to believe.
“We have never met, I am sure of it, but I know your work and you know mine. I've seen the way you move. You move like those commandos in Iraq. I bet you never considered that it was me doing the cutting in so many of those beheading videos did you?”
Sticking to the shadows, Deckard kept low and attempted to circle around by taking cover under another aircraft. The Arab fired a few probing shots, a recon by fire to elicit a response so he could pin point Deckard's position. He didn't take the bait.
“Listen, you need me as much as I need you. I create the nightmares you need American! You could not exist without someone providing these horrors. Men like you are only switched on when your nightmares are clear, like now, like tonight you see?”
Deckard moved silently around The Arab's flank. If he could take him alive, there was no end to what they could get him to confess to on camera. They could blow the entire conspiracy wide open.
“America needs these nightmares,” The Arab lectured. “Your country needs these monsters even as it denies that they exist. Without these fears they would have to look in the mirror and confront who they really are. Without me, you would have to confront what you really are. Then you would see that you are just like me. Blood for blood. I take a head and you set out to take a dozen. I play my games and you play yours.”
Looking down, The Arab saw a subtle shift in the shadows.
Pivoting on one foot, The Arab spun to confront Deckard. He attempted to bring his rifle into play but Deckard was a blur of motion as he parried the weapon aside with his own. A low kick connected with The Arab's inner knee causing an explosion of pain inside the joint. A butt stroke from the American rode right down his forearm and stripped the AK-47 out of his hand.
“Not as easy as cutting the head off unconscious women is it?” Deckard asked him.
Against a professional soldier, a butcher like The Arab was simply out classed.
With a guttural scream, The Arab moved with surprising speed. Reaching out, he grabbed the barrel of Deckard's AK-103 and attempted to muscle it away so that it was no longer pointed at him. Deckard simply took a knee, using his leverage to his advantage as his opponent attempted to push the gun barrel up and away. By dropping to a knee, the gun barrel was now realigned with The Arab's torso.
Three shots cracked out in the night.
The Arab stood there for a moment, his hands exploring his stomach and finding his palms suddenly slick with blood. Calmly, he sat down in the desert sand before laying down on his back. As blood poured from his wounds, he accepted that he was going to die.
Deckard stood over him, his face expressionless.
“Who are you?” The Arab asked with blood splatter around his lips.
“Nightmare's end.”
Now Deckard could recognize the scars that ran down the arms and legs of the bleeding man as he only wore a t-shirt and shorts. Lifting his shirt he saw that they extended in deep lines across his stomach and chest as well.
“Who did this to you?”
“I did,” he said, his voice growing faint.
Deckard let his rifle hang by its sling and rotated it to his side. Drawing the Sub-Saharan combat knife, he knelt down beside The Arab.
“Do it,” the dying man gasped. “I would do the same and worse to you.”
Amid the killing and the violence, Deckard could feel himself spinning out of control. The drug cartels had escalated the level of bloodshed to levels that even the Iraqi insurgents had difficultly matching. Once they starting killing, they then started creating massacre after massacre to try to one up each other. Once you started down that path, it seemed that there was no end to it. The only future in that cycle was mass graves filled with bloated, rotting corpses. Now he was a part of that as he had cut off Jimenez' head just to get his point across.
The Arab was not a soldier, a mercenary, or really even a terrorist in the conventional sense. He was an artist. He manipulated and destroyed biological life wherever he went, all to advance someone else's political agenda. Someone else. Some player with no name.
“Who do you work for?” Deckard asked.
“None of us really know the names behind these wars we fight,” The Arab answered. “I am no more enlightened then you are.”
Reaching into a pouch on his plate carrier, Deckard pulled out a black marker and began writing across the top of The Arab's shirt collar.
“What...what are you doing?” His eyes were slowly closing.
“Making sure that whoever you work for gets my message.”
Finished writing, he put away the marker and balanced his knife in one hand. Flipping it over into a reverse grip, Deckard plunged the blade into his fallen enemy's chest cavity, slicing through his heart. With a final heave of his chest, The Arab settled to the ground and died.
Deckard left the knife sticking out of the dead man's chest and began walking back towards the runway.
Behind him, he left a river of corpses, demons, and ghosts in his wake.
Four men walked across the airfield.
Deckard unclipped his helmet and held it under one arm, watching and waiting as the mercenaries approached him. Behind them, the hints of dawn were peeking from behind the distant hills. As his men grew near, he could see that Kurt wore a tourniquet around one arm where he had been shot while manning the machine gun. Pat had the lower portion of one pant leg cut away where a bloody bandage had been secured in place. Nikita had his sniper rifle slung and carried the weapon of a fallen terrorist. Aghassi limped forward.
They stopped short, looking at him expectantly.
“It's over,” Deckard confirmed.
Kurt nodded. Pat smiled. Aghassi frowned and surveyed the carnage all around them. Nikita's expression was neutral. They were tired, but ready for whatever came next. It was just then that Deckard noticed that Kurt and Aghassi were carrying plastic bags that had been thrown over their shoulders. The documents from inside the command center.
“You guys thinking what I'm thinking?” Pat asked.
“Is the beer light on?” Aghassi wondered aloud.
“What is beer light?” Nikita questioned.
“Not a bad idea,” Kurt said, looking toward Deckard for approval.
“Find a vehicle that is still running so we can get the hell out of here.”
“Then?” Pat asked again.
Deckard shrugged his shoulders.
“Vegas is only an hour away.”
Epilogue:
Bodyguards led the way through the secret back entrance into the exclusive Others Club in the upper east side of Manhattan. Behind them, their principal ambled up the steps and into the elevator. With a 60,000 dollar initiation fee, membership in the Others Club was one of the most coveted, and expensive, in New York City. The principal, flanked by two former Secret Service agents as he rode the elevator, would know as he was one of the founding members.
When the doors pinged open the old man went to his favorite room in the clubhouse, walking past servers and staff preparing for the coming day. Nearly ninety years old, his humble beginnings in Europe continued to hold him back among the city's elite circles. He was denied entry into several of the older, stuffier clubs for New York socialites, one of the reasons why he started his own.
A server greeted him at the door and had him seated at a table that had been arranged specially for him and his guests in the library. While the Yale Club and the Century Club were filled with blue bloods sitting on overstuffed antique leather chairs underneat
h hundred year old glass chandeliers that would have sunk with the Titanic, the Others Club was modern and vibrant. The morning light shined through the windows and glowed amongst the white book cases and modern art work hanging on the walls.
He established the club for a new kind of wealth, and a new kind of man. The Others Club boasted a membership consisting of not just Ivy League alumni, diplomats, and politicians but also of actors, film producers, media personalities, artists, and writers. Those who could pass the thresholds for entry anyway.
It wasn't long before another set of bodyguards showed up and his guests entered the room. The old man rose to shake their hands. The twin brothers were movers in shakers in business as well as domestic politics. The Biermann brothers jetted all over the country during the year, held their own conferences, and chaired political organizations not to mention running candidates for elected office. They were major players in the game. They were also one of the old man's primary antagonists which made them perfect for membership into his club.
The closer they were, the easier it would be to develop a consensus when the time came. A time like today. Like it or not, Manhattan was where finance met and influenced power brokers in government.
“You mentioned something about,” one of the brothers began with some hesitation. He was the younger of the two by eight minutes. “Complications?”
“Don't worry. My people swept this room for bugs before we got here,” the old man said dismissively. “Yes, I've gotten word about the destruction of a Mexican military base early last night. I've delayed them, but the media will be picking it up eventually. I've been assured that we have some time to prepare our mitigation strategy. Meanwhile, my people are looking into this situation in a discreet fashion which ensures that we are all protected.”
“We have a plan in place in case something does come out in the press,” the older Biermann brother stated.
“I can mobilize the Occupy movement through various media watch dog organizations,” the old man agreed. “If the public hears about the government smuggling guns into Mexico we will make it look like a Republican conspiracy theory against a Democrat President.”
“And we can mobilize thousands of Tea Party supporters through our own media outlets,” the brothers said almost in unison, an annoying habit that the twins had. Looking at each other, the older brother continued. “We can get them outraged by the scandal and channel their anger towards the President which will fit nicely with what you have planned.”
“That way,” the younger brother said, picking up the conversation, “the entire scandal turns into nothing more than left wing versus right wing demagoguery and the subsequent investigation will go nowhere with both political parties pitted against each other.”
“During an election season,” the older brother laughed. “Its' a slam dunk. Silence a few whistle blowers, threaten to sue any journalists that get out of line, and the entire affair will peter out on its own.”
The old man pursed his lips.
“Maybe. Let's see what the damage is first before we worry about containment.”
The waitress brought them their breakfast, including three glasses of bourbon, a tradition the three men had started several years prior.
“The military base in Torreon could have been an accident of some kind but on the way here I found out about the Ft. Bliss facility going dark. Now we are getting nothing but radio silence from Area 14. It can't be a coincidence.”
The old man's assistant came in and sat down at another table. Propping a black case in front of him he opened it to reveal a computer screen and keyboard. The twin brothers had a similar system as did many others in their network, up to and including various commanding generals and select members of the President's National Security Council.
Nicknamed, the “Pirate's Net” it was a communications platform developed as a part of Cold War continuity of government planning. In the event of a nuclear war, military planners had decided that the mechanism and functions of government needed parallel systems to allow them to survive. This included a means for the civilian government to talk to the military even after key facilities and satellites had been destroyed by intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Normally run by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Pirate's Net transmitted signals by bouncing them off the ionosphere rather than by satellite, and this gave it the added advantage of making it impossible to tap into and eavesdrop like normal communications. The National Security Agency was recording nearly everything these days, ostensibly for purposes of counter-intelligence but since the 9/11 attacks they recorded civilian communications traffic as well.
Communications nodes in their network had to use a system that could not be recorded or cracked by any agency, anywhere. The stakes were too high.
“Sir,” the assistant said. “Military Police on Ft. Bliss have found the crew at the G3 facility retrained and locked in a closet. Other than a non-life threatening wound, they appear to be fine.”
“What the hell is going on here?” the younger brother asked. Nothing like this had ever happened before. No one had the gall to challenge their power.
“Get Ted on the phone for me,” the old man said, demanding to talk to the CEO of G3 Communications.
“He locked himself in his panic room when he heard about what was happening. His body guards are trying to talk him out,” the assistant said, looking away from the computer screen.
“When was this?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“What about Area 14?”
“Updates show that a security detachment from Creech Air Force base is just arriving. I see a new message being forwarded to us from our contact in the National Security Council.”
The three oligarchs nervously ate their breakfast while the assistant read them the message traffic. They never touched the Pirate's Net but rather let surrogates handle it for legal reasons. Technically the system never should have been outside the hands of ONI as it was piece of classified government technology.
“The reports are coming in through NORTHCOM,” the assistant updated them. “The G3 command and control center burnt to the ground.”
“Now we know why Ted is hiding out in his panic room,” the old man said. “He must have ordered the destruction sequence.”
“The Iraqi contingent appears to have been completely destroyed.”
Forks rang off porcelain as the brothers dropped their utensils on their plates.
“They are counting the dead now, but there are dozens of bodies and destroyed vehicles. It appears to be the entire MEK strike force.”
“What about the provocateur element?” The old man specialized in propaganda and manipulation. When needed, his provocateurs acted all around the globe to help advance his schemes in tandem with various non-governmental organizations.
“They appear to be among the dead, sir. Wait, there is something else coming in.”
The assistant's hands danced across the keyboard and a picture loaded on the screen.
“Uh, you might want to take a look at this,” he said sheepishly.
The old man lumbered from the table, followed by the twins. As they stood behind the operator of the Pirate's Net, their faces went white. The Air Force security detachment had uploaded a picture from the scene of the disaster to the Pentagon, who in turn forwarded it to the White House, and finally to them.
The old man had never met him of course, but the corpse in the photo was the provocateur operative that he knew only as The Arab. A giant black knife was sticking out of his chest. The twins looked faint. Across the top of The Arab's shirt were hastily written words, hashed out with a black marker. The old man's eyes followed across them as he read aloud.
“His boss is next on my target deck.”
Read about the adventures of Deckard's father, a Vietnam veteran turned professional mercenary during the 1980's in the PROMIS series. Here is a sample from issue #3, PROMIS: South Africa...
12SEP83
0032hrs
South Africa
Streetlamps cast golden light down on the long empty roads that twisted throughout the Eastern Cape, insects creating a steady buzz that filled the darkness of night with their presence. The occasional window was still illuminated, only to be dashed as the locals tossed a curtain into place and prepared to bed down for the night. Although not still, the night was calm until the blast rocked through several neighborhoods, shaking people from their beds and setting off alarm systems on several warehouses located in the area.
South Africa was having another one of those nights.
0030hrs
An aluminum ladder thudded silently against the side of the prison wall, the strips of rubber tire treads tied to the top of the ladder damping the sound as it made contact. The ladder had been specially cut for one specific task, to help two black-clad men scale that specific wall. After scrambling up the rungs, the first man tossed a carpet over the barbed wire before uncoiling a rope ladder down the opposite side of the wall.
Crawling over the lip, the two operators did their best to keep a low profile as not to silhouette themselves against the moonlit skyline. Sliding down the rope ladder in a kind of controlled fall, they then slung their AK-47 rifles off their backs. The safeties slid off without the normal distinctive click, the levers wrapped in black electrical tape during mission rehearsals that had been conducted over the past week.
Finding themselves in the courtyard of Middledrift Prison, they sprinted to the heavy steel door that led into the prison itself, their rifle muzzles leading the way and scanning for threats. Black ski masks concealed their features from the ever watching CCTV camera on a pivot mount above the doorway.
Reaching into a satchel, the larger of the two operators produced a specialized door charge made of P4 explosives. Developed years prior during the Rhodesian Bush War, the charge was often called by its nickname, the Gate Crasher.