The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1)

by Christopher Metcalf

  “No reason really. Just like to know the motivation for my character.”

  “This motivation comes from inside, does it not?” The Jordanian smiled again at his much younger mission mate. “Motivation is not hard to find for this mission.”

  “Not this mission. I’m thinking in more general terms. Why we’re doing what we’re doing.” Lance turned back to the window.

  “Good and evil. That simple.” Tarwanah was a man of few words. “We are in a battle every day. We choose sides and do what we must.” The Jordanian looked over at Lance with a quizzical look. “What are you thinking?”

  “I know the good and evil stuff. I understand making that choice, I just wonder where it all fits sometimes.”

  Tarwanah added, “You must concentrate on the mission. That gives you the answers. Everything else has no importance until it is completed. And then of course, there is the next one.”

  Lance turned from the window and smiled at Tarwanah. “Don’t worry about me brother. Failure is not an option.” He turned back to the window. “I just like to let my mind wander when I’m riding in a car and can look out the window and see the world here and now. I wonder about it all.”

  “I understand. Don’t like your timing particularly well, but I understand.” Tarwanah’s voice was soothing.

  Lance leaned his head against the window glass and closed his eyes. He started humming and then singing. The song his brain chose for the occasion was both melodic and touching. It was one he had come to truly love in the two years since he first heard it driving from San Angelo to San Antonio to catch a flight. It told the tale of a young woman trapped by society, by her loyalty to others who let her down at every turn.

  “This is nice,” Tarwanah responded. “It is a love song, yes?”

  “No. It’s about loss, poverty, unrealized dreams.”

  “It is a fast car, no?” The Jordanian asked.

  Lance smiled. “The car is just a vehicle, it isn’t the way out she thought it was. Just a car.”

  They rode in silence for several minutes. They passed farms, groves of trees, canals bringing water’s lifeblood from the Tigris River into the fields to grow the plants that feed the people of the land of Eden.

  “So the car in the song is fast, but it isn’t fast enough to escape reality?” Tarwanah asked.

  Lance opened his eyes and laughed. He reached over and smacked Tarwanah on the shoulder. “Exactly, my man. You nailed it.” He said this in Arabic. “He can leave or he can stay and face the world as it is. Deal with responsibility or move on down the line.”

  “Yes, he’s got to make a decision. Now here is my problem with America.” And Tarwanah looked stern for the moment.

  “How’s that?”

  “Americans always dream of a better life, more money, more things. They think they can get it all just by changing, by leaving one place, one home for another.”

  “Go on…” Lance nodded.

  “He thinks because he has a car he can get a better life and she thinks that because he has this car he can give her a better life. Nowhere do they talk about work, struggle, commitment, dedication.”

  Lance’s turn. “Ah, now here is the problem I have with Arabs. They jump to conclusions without all the facts. They assume that because some Americans have nice things that everyone wants nothing more than a fast car, nice house or worst of all, to be famous. You didn’t hear the rest of the song.”

  “I assume it will be the usual American story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girls back. Everyone lives happily ever after. The end.”

  Lance smiled and laughed at this. “You realize, you’ve said more to me in the last few minutes than you’ve said in the weeks we’ve been together before.”

  “This is what I do when I am riding in a car and have time to think.” Tarwanah smiled.

  “Very good, that I understand.” Lanced turned back to the window and the groves of trees. “Let me sing the rest of the song for you.”

  “Please.”

  Lance closed his eyes and tapped his hands on his thighs to get the rhythm back. He sang the whole song from beginning to end. It is a great song.

  Tarwanah took it in for a few moments. “Now that changes everything. I see now it is about working, caring for others, dreaming of a better life but realizing the better life cannot be found with the one you love. It is a song of loss. Very sad.”

  “Yes. But what is really sad is the number of people who live life just like that. Never getting out, never giving your children a better life. Letting the cycle perpetuate itself.”

  “Man, you’re getting me down.” Tarwanah said this in English with a very good Brooklyn accent. Lance cracked up.

  “That’s just life my man. Can’t put all your hopes in a fast car.” He turned to Tarwanah. “Or all your fears in one bomb.”

  “How about three bombs?” Tarwanah asked.

  “Now that’s scary. Three bombs in the wrong hands is a reality I don’t like.” They let that be it for a while. Ten minutes later they were on a stretch of highway and across the bridge into southeast Baghdad. Still about 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

  They had traveled in radio silence for the duration as planned. As they crossed into the city, Lance took out the small radio in his pant pocket under his thawb. In Arabic he relayed instructions to all three vehicles. “Honey agenda. No sales.” The short staccato words confirmed no changes in plans. Since the satellite phone in his other pocket had not rung, Lance had to assume no changes in plan had been proffered by Seibel.

  Tarwanah hummed and sang the song from a few minutes ago. Lance liked how it sounded when sung with a pleasant Jordanian accent.

  He closed his eyes as they crossed the Tigris River and exited the highway. As the vehicle crossed under a highway overpass and Tarwanah negotiated the path that would bring them to the transaction spot, Lance kept his eyes closed and saw the three moving vehicles on a satellite map below from 5,000 feet. He had memorized Baghdad roadways and made a couple of suggestions to Seibel on routes.

  He went ahead of the trucks on his mind map to the location they were heading toward. The warehouse district where the meeting was to take place was ideal. Few people, lighter traffic and multiple entrance and egress options. Eyes closed, he went from map to timeline to plan of attack to nuclear warhead disarming.

  He opened his eyes and looked at his watch. The mission was still ahead of schedule and no news over the satellite phone meant the transport truck carrying the nukes traveling up Highway 6 was moving on schedule. He didn’t like it. Too easy, too clean. There had to be something Seibel had missed.

  “You feeling good about this?” He turned to Tarwanah.

  “Not at all. Haven’t liked this one from day one. Iraqis, Russians, KGB, Mukhabarat, Delta Forces, nuclear weapons. Too many moving pieces.” Tarwanah replied.

  “You trust Seibel though.” Lance asked.

  “No one is better.” He smiled again as he kept his eyes on the road. “I fully expect you to be as good one day. But that is many years and many missions away.”

  “You trust me?”

  Tarwanah smiled. “I am here aren’t I? I could have taken any of the other vehicles, but I know where you are will be the most likely opportunity for action and therefore the opportunity to try to control an uncontrollable situation.”

  The satellite phone rang. Lance clicked it on and put it to his ear. The message was brief.

  “Time and time again. Affirm.”

  He heard the words and became a different person.

  A switch flipped; a door opened. His melancholy vanished. His eyes lazy and languid from a two-hour drive on bumpy dirt roads tightened and squinted.

  He brought the radio to his mouth and spoke in flawless Arabic. “The morning calls us to prayer in the light of day. The smoke spirals.” The spotters and team leads in the other two trucks heard the words and sat up, tightened belts, secured firearms in holsters and said a prayer if inclined. They we
re here to do a job. A job, which likely entailed killing others, many others. And maybe saving the world along the way.

  Lance surveyed the warehouses up and down the street in Baghdad’s Al Wahdah district. The transaction was to take place three hours from now less than a half mile from their current location. Lance had asked Seibel just once a little more than three weeks ago why they couldn’t just take the merchandise out on the highway in the middle of nowhere. Swoop in, take out all players, snag the warheads and hightail it back over the border. Seibel’s answer was direct and to the point, much more so than normal.

  “We need a large body count on this one. Need to eliminate players on all three sides in a most deliberate manner. No loose ends. We need to send a message.” Seibel was usually very eloquent, more literate in his delivery. Lance could tell that this one was important. This one was for the ages. And Lance liked being a part of that.

  Still, he would have preferred to take the convoy out on the desert highway instead of in a warehouse district where there were corners, darkened windows and shadows lurking in doorways. Not to mention a bunch of Iraqi soldiers around. He rubbed his hands down his thighs and instinctively brought his hands to the handles of the guns under his thawb. He would kill someone, maybe several someones.

  He searched himself for a moment and found no emotions. No fear, no anger. He’d gotten into this position and, like many things in his life, he didn’t find it all that hard. He thought to himself as he absently squeezed the grip of a gun in his right hand -- is today the day? He might be one of those among Seibel’s body count on this mission. Again, he didn’t feel any emotional tug at that thought either. He turned to Tarwanah who had been watching him out of the corner of his eye.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean what?” The Jordanian hunched his shoulders.

  “You’re sitting there eyeing me. I see your wheels spinning. You’re thinking something.”

  Tarwanah smiled. “I’m always thinking something. Maybe I’m wondering what you are thinking.”

  “I was just thinking of another song, like usual.” Lance lied, as always.

  “Which song, let’s hear it.”

  Lance just smiled. “That’s all right, I’ll keep this one to myself.” He turned back to the window and thought for a moment about exactly which song he would like to hear one last time before he died. He was only 24, but music had been his constant companion. He thought of being a child and riding in the tiny storage area behind the back seat of his mother’s VW Bug. A song by Elton John was his favorite then.

  A little later on, a classic by Mannford Mann’s Earth Band was his theme song. His teenage years were dominated by U2. That was it. No question, no more debate. U2 was it. That is the band he’d like to be listening to when the light faded to black or whatever happens when you die. Pretty friggin lame to be thinking about something so trivial. But then, isn’t life just a series of trivial events punctuated by moments of chaos?

  “I think I can say without an ounce of doubt that I am scared.” Lance changed subjects.

  “You wouldn’t be alive if you weren’t afraid.” Tarwanah swung the wheel of the large truck to turn down a tight alley just two blocks from their appointed location. His calm demeanor told nothing of fear. “We all live in fear every moment, the question is what you do in the next moment.” He put the truck in park and exhaled a deep breath. “We are all going to die. What we do while we’re alive is all that matters. There is nothing else.”

  “That doesn’t sound very Muslim.”

  “Allah is not here and Allah won’t stop these assholes from getting an atomic bomb and killing thousands, maybe millions. This is our challenge.” He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms to the ceiling of the truck’s cabin. “What I know of you my friend Lance, is that you aren’t afraid of dying or being hurt. You are only afraid of one thing.”

  “And that is?”

  “You are afraid of failure. That and maybe about being wrong.”

  “Everyone’s afraid of failing. What do you mean being wrong?” Lance asked.

  Tarwanah looked at him for a few moments. His two decades longer on this Earth showed in the lines of his face. “You’ll figure it out. You are smart.”

  Chapter 36

  Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium is called such because its location at the confluence of three rivers – the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela. Two coming in, one going out. Lance let this geographic trivial fact he’d heard during a football game broadcast slip into his mind as he walked down a narrow alleyway between two warehouses. The word confluence got him thinking. The next two hours would indeed bring together a confluence of forces, interests and ideologies. This mash-up would mean death for many of its participants. That was fine, as long as nuclear weapons did not fall into the hands of those who would gladly kill millions more.

  He walked past a worker sitting on stairs outside a warehouse side door. He nodded to him and looked up to the sky. It was clear blue and would make for easy targeting by pilots who would be filling the skies within hours as midnight approached. The air portion of Operation Desert Storm, was soon to begin.

  Lance assumed he knew something others on this mission did not. At least one satellite had his current position in view. Another tracked a truck traveling northwest up to Baghdad. The order had already been issued if the operation was unsuccessful, the location was to be inundated by a barrage of bombs sure to destroy the warheads, kill all those in the area and possibly set off a nuclear explosion. If it did, well that’s the chance Saddam’s lackies took when they embarked on a mission to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Thousands would be killed, but that would still be thousands less than might be doomed if nuclear warheads rained down on Tel Aviv or Istanbul or Tehran. Lance’s radio headset chirped to let him know Team 2 was in position.

  About three blocks from where Lance made his way down an alley, Marta sat backwards straddling a worn kitchen table chair. Resting her elbows on the chair back, she looked through a pair of binoculars from a window on the third floor of an apartment building. Nir stood beside her looking out the same window through another pair of binoculars. The small radio beside her on the table chirped. She picked it up and spoke in Arabic.

  “Yes.”

  “AZ cleared.”

  “Shukran.” She said thank you in Arabic and set the radio back on the table. Josef walked in from the bathroom where he had washed the blood from his face. Killing the family that lived in the apartment until a half an hour ago had been messy.

  “Update?” Josef nodded to the radio.

  “Kadim radioed that the transport has moved through Al Aziziyah. Should arrive in 45 minutes.”

  “Any changes?” Nir asked.

  “Nyet.” Marta turned back to the binoculars to see a small group of men in a warehouse near the building where the exchange was to occur. The group was armed and awaiting further orders from their Mukhabarat leaders. Marta knew that this was just one of four groups stationed near the warehouse the transport truck would enter and the keys would be handed to Mukhabarat Iraqi Intelligence personnel. How she knew all of this was a mystery. “No activity yet. We still wait for their move.”

  She shifted her gaze from the men gathered outside the warehouse to a cargo truck parked down the street with a driver inside smoking and another man leaning against the side. She knew why the truck was parked there as well.

  Approximately 330 yards from Marta’s position, Nikolai Kusnetsov sat a few feet back from a window in a two-story office building looking through a pair of binoculars at the same truck. There was something he didn’t like about it being there.

  He had worked for months to get to this moment with his prized possessions less than an hour away and another $180 million dollars soon to make its way into he and Korovin’s untraceable bank accounts. The year and a half of planning, scheming, putting practice into action and ruthlessly covering up loose ends had brought them to this day.

  No o
ne had ever pulled off one like this. It was at its heart a basic crime. Steal from one group, sell to another. Simple and clean. Cover every angle and remove all loose ends. There were plenty of spy games involved. But it took having the balls to do it. K&K had them.

  Things would get even more interesting in the coming days when they let their friends back in Moscow know about the transaction and the fact that only two of the three warheads had actually made their way into Iraqi hands. It would cost another $200 million for the remaining nuke not to be sold to another rogue regime. He smiled at the bravado of it all. With financial resources like this at their disposal, he and Korovin could truly change the world. Or they could buy a small island or two and set up a new country. Or maybe just take a permanent vacation from 20-plus years of spying and killing.

  The satellite phone on the floor beside him rang. He answered silently.

  “Blissful entreaty. Rarified elation.” Kusnetsov still smiled at Korovin’s insistence on utilizing the code language. Their time together in the Red Army stationed in the living hell of Afghanistan in the 80s had introduced them to the archaic code talk. They had all but forgotten the code language during years of service as elite members of the KGB. But their defection from the agency two years ago necessitated extreme measures. Having a codeset that few could recall, let alone decipher, was a nice treat.

  This last message from his partner was a confirmation that everything was on schedule. Blissful entreaty was Korovin’s pleasure being relayed. Rarified elation had no code meaning. Korovin merely wanted his partner in crime and life to know he was excited about the prospect of consummating a plan they had put into action 19 months ago.

  K&K had served their country well. They’d killed dozens, maybe hundreds. Who kept count? Their years of valuable service were always tainted, of course, by their not so hidden brand of sexuality. The two Russians fell in love within moments of meeting each other as young KGB agents inserted into the military and sent to their death in Afghanistan. Even though they had proven themselves countless times on the battlefield and in all things espionage, they were never able to be at ease. Others condemned their relationship and some had tried to rid the world of them and their particular stain. These people usually ended up dead after K&K applied their skills at destroying individuals and their entire world. K&K didn’t merely kill their enemies. They annihilated families, villages and businesses without a modicum of remorse.