by Bentley, Don
I tried not to think about the boy in the front seat who’d died crying for his mother. The boy who looked like the son that Laila and I would never have.
I tried not to think about him, but I still did.
His name was Ali, and he deserved to be remembered.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Fifteen minutes after extracting my battered, but still drivable, truck from the scene of the ambush, I was almost to the meet site. The road I’d been following was lined with a series of parks on the left and the customary stone walls denoting family residences on the right. While the rest of the nation was in the process of tearing itself apart at the seams, the war seemed to have bypassed this little section of Syria completely.
The orderly road continued for another half kilometer; I proceeded at a stately pace past a well-adorned mosque, the twin minarets illuminated by warm orange light. This place was the picture of suburbia. It was hard to imagine that, less than ten miles from here, the hulk of a bullet-ridden car contained the body of a boy named Ali. A boy who’d just wanted to go home, but now would never have the chance.
War rarely made sense, but this conflict was a doozy. The fighting here was worse than the tribal strife of Afghanistan or the insurgent violence that had consumed Iraq. Here, a death cult competed for attention with a maniacal despot who used chemical weapons on his own people as proxies from half a dozen nations fought both for and against the dictator. In Syria, the battle lines weren’t just confusing; they were nonexistent. Whatever idealistic outcome I’d once wanted for this nation was gone, scoured away by blood and tears. At this point, I cared about freeing Shaw and prying the new chemical weapon from the terrorists’ hands.
Any aspirations I’d held beyond that had died with Ali.
Leaving the mosque behind, I passed an industrial complex on my right before coming to another intersection. I turned left and made my way down a side street on which stood a series of shops, their exteriors covered by collapsible metal shutters. Keeping one hand on the wheel, I used the other to scoop my smartphone from the seat next to me so that I could consult the moving map display.
According to the imagery I’d downloaded prior to leaving COP Johnson, this road dead-ended at a series of industrial buildings. Originally, I’d planned to leave the truck in one of the adjacent parking lots and continue to the meet site on foot. That, of course, had been before I’d shattered my ankle and taken a grazing round to the quadriceps of my other leg. Now I would have to call an audible and hope that Einstein could adjust on the fly.
Passing a soccer field, I slowed and killed the headlights. Then I searched for a clump of trees at the far corner of the field. In a first for this mission, the trees were exactly where I expected them to be. I turned the truck off the road, nudging the battered frame between two of the largest Turkish pines before switching off the ignition. Without the sound of the Toyota’s wheezing engine, the night’s stillness crashed through the open windows, bringing with it the smell of rotting trash.
In a typical clandestine encounter, the meet between asset and handler occurred within a four-minute window. Variations on either side of that window meant that something had gone wrong, and the meeting should be aborted. Though this meet had become anything but typical, tradecraft was still tradecraft. The digital clock on the truck’s dashboard showed that I had exactly five minutes until my rendezvous with Einstein.
Time for the audible.
Keying the encrypted DIA app, I brought up my conversation thread with Einstein and began to type.
Change of plans. Look for a white Hilux truck at site Bravo. Climb in.
So much for tradecraft. My text had all the subtlety of a bullhorn, but I saw no other way. Normally, a handler trained his or her asset as their relationship progressed. Code words that denoted meeting sites, methods, and recognition signals were provided and memorized. In a normal scenario, I could have texted Einstein a series of benign-seeming phrases that would have alerted him to a crash meeting in the passenger seat of my truck.
But this wasn’t a normal scenario. Einstein had turned down my initial pitch flat. Business as a weapons scientist for hire was booming, and he had no reason to jeopardize his lucrative career by becoming my asset. I’d made him repeat the name of the DIA covert-communications app before he’d disappeared, but that was as far as our relationship had progressed. Instead of a new asset, I’d been left with nothing but a monstrous expense report spanning two continents.
But this had been before he’d taken a job with the Saudis working on a little side project that the U.S. didn’t sanction, but didn’t actively oppose. A side project that had morphed into the role of lead scientist for a terrorist organization’s WMD program.
In reality, Einstein was damn lucky he’d survived this long. I didn’t agree with President Gonzales on most policy issues, but the man rained down Hellfire missiles like he owned stock in Boeing. That Einstein hadn’t yet been the recipient of a U.S.-taxpayer-funded trip to paradise said something about the prevalence of targets in this part of the world.
This aside, something had changed with Einstein since our last meeting. I doubted that his sudden desire to side with the angels had anything to do with newly discovered morality. In all likelihood, his arrangement with his current customers had gone sour, and Einstein was looking for an escape hatch. At least that was the more charitable explanation. A pessimistic person might think that Einstein’s willingness to help, and access to the exact information I needed, was too convenient by half.
Either way, because he wasn’t my asset, Einstein had zero tradecraft training. This meant that the instructions I texted him were about as cryptic as a Betty Crocker recipe. Only the knowledge that Colonel Fitz and his Delta operators were thirty minutes away by helicopter gave me the slightest bit of hope that I could pull this off.
Then again, if Einstein was setting me up, thirty minutes might be twenty-nine minutes too long.
My phone vibrated with Einstein’s reply.
Understood. Two minutes.
My palms tingled as sweat droplets formed on my neck and forehead. No matter how many times I’d done this, I never got over the nerves that accompanied a crash meeting. Normally, Frodo was watching my back, but tonight, my only companion was a UAV, slicing through the dark sky more than eight miles above my head.
Tonight, I was an army of one.
I eyed the rearview and side mirrors. Outside, the world slept while, inside the truck, the air was charged with nervous energy.
The number of operational rules I’d broken to force this meeting was enormous. My nonstandard communication strategy with Einstein aside, I hadn’t been able to conduct a reconnaissance of the meet site ahead of time, I was in an unfamiliar vehicle, and I had no paramilitary team providing overwatch. Given the insular nature of this neighborhood, I’d kept my surveillance detection run to almost nothing. This meant that if a countersurveillance team was in place, they’d probably made me.
Yet as bad as the situation was, there was precious little I could do to make it better. If I played things safe, I might live, but Shaw would most certainly die. Everything else paled in comparison to that one indisputable truth.
My phone vibrated.
Entering the park.
Setting the phone in my lap, I scanned across the open ground in front of me, wishing for the night-vision goggles I’d abandoned back at the farm with my parachute and jump gear. The terrain stretched for a good hundred yards, rolling through a series of small hills toward a lonely copse of trees where I expected Einstein to emerge. I let my eyes lose focus as I probed the darkness, searching for movement with my peripheral vision.
Nothing.
Rubbing my thumb across the phone, I considered sending the brevity word that would trigger Fitz, but didn’t. Once Fitz and his men were airborne, I knew his cell reception, and by extension our communications, would be spotty
. If I’d had a sat radio, I’d have given the command to go as soon as I’d received Einstein’s confirmation text. The sat radio would have provided uninterrupted coms with Fitz, allowing me to wave him off if things went south. But with just a phone at my disposal, I wasn’t willing to put the lives of another dozen men at risk.
No Einstein, no launch of Fitz and his men. For me, this part of the equation was simple.
A gangly figure limped into view at the far side of the field.
Einstein.
A childhood accident had left him with a leg that had never correctly healed, so even from this distance, his gait was impossible to miss.
As were the two men exiting the woods behind him.
THIRTY-EIGHT
For a long second, I watched the two men glide through the shadows, keeping pace with the seemingly oblivious Einstein. The pair made no attempt to close the seventy-five or so yards separating them from the lanky scientist, but neither did they deviate from the path Einstein chose across the otherwise vacant park. In a traditional scenario, this would have been cause to abort the meet and push to the alternate linkup location, but there wasn’t time.
I had to have Einstein’s information.
This meant that the scientist’s shadows were dead men walking. Now I just needed a plan that would allow me to eliminate two trained killers when I could barely walk. I wasted precious seconds trying to come up with a way to deal with Einstein’s minders from my current location before abandoning the idea. An unaware Einstein, a wide-open section of ground with great fields of fire, and my injured body all added up to just one possible outcome—disaster. If I had any hope of snatching Einstein from his tail, I needed to pick more advantageous terrain.
I needed to move.
I started the engine and, keeping the headlights off, backed down the same side street I’d followed to the park’s entrance. I’d smashed the truck’s reverse lights before driving to the meet site, but I still didn’t want to risk turning the vehicle around. The human eye was naturally attuned to motion, and I wanted as little of it as possible. Backing down the street, while difficult in the dark, provided me with the greatest chance of remaining undetected.
Arriving at a T intersection, I swung the wheel to the right, then positioned the truck’s nose toward the street to the left.
The narrow alley ran perpendicular to the field Einstein was traversing, presenting a natural choke point. A series of shuttered storefronts stretched down the street, interrupted by a single freestanding kiosk about fifteen yards in front of me. At first glance, the wooden structure didn’t look like much. It was a simple vendor’s stand assembled out of scrap lumber, but its placement was about as close to perfect as I would get—directly in the center of the pedestrian pathway leading from the park.
I grabbed my phone and thumbed Einstein a text.
Head to the end of the field and turn left. My truck is parked at the end of the alley.
The screen stayed blank for what seemed like an eternity, and then Einstein responded.
Why the change?
I debated telling him the truth, but decided against it. I didn’t know how he would react to learning he was under surveillance. Besides, his surprise might just work to my advantage.
Will explain later. Text when you reach the end of the field.
Okay.
Stowing the phone, I scooped up my Glock, but left the AK-47 on the front seat. As much as I’d welcome the additional firepower, I needed to do my next bit of killing quietly. I needed the suppressor-equipped pistol.
I reached for the console and activated the truck’s hazard lights. Then I eased myself out, balancing on my right leg and attempting to breathe through the jolt of pain the movement caused. The eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen the ISIS fighters manning the checkpoint had given me took the edge off, but nothing short of morphine would dull the pain completely. Focusing on the task at hand, I tossed a rag over the driver’s-side hazard light to muffle the sound and shattered the bulb with two quick strikes with the Glock’s polymer handgrip. The orange strobe effect from both lights would be too bright, but one should be just about right.
My phone vibrated.
Showtime.
When this was over, I would tell Laila everything, security clearance be damned. Then I’d spend a week or two lying on a beach, inspecting her tan lines. If I felt really motivated, I might try to master the riff from “What Would You Say,” just in case Dave Matthews needed another guitarist for his next tour. Or maybe I’d make Mom happy and apply to dental school. After all, as long as there were guys like me around, I had a feeling there’d be no shortage of people with grills that needed to be straightened.
Either way, once this fiasco was over, so was my career as a spy.
Ignoring my throbbing leg, I hopped over to the edge of the kiosk and lowered myself to the ground. Propping my back against the structure’s wooden frame, I fought the spasms rippling across my quadriceps and calf muscles. The sheen of sweat coating my forehead had nothing to do with the temperature.
My ankle hurt like a son of a bitch.
I removed the trusty suppressor from my pocket and threaded it onto the pistol’s barrel by feel. At the far end of the alley, the truck’s one remaining hazard light winked at me, throwing orange-tinged shadows across the broken pavement. I heard the first set of footsteps just as I locked the suppressor into place with a final turn. Setting the pistol on my lap, I looked at my phone.
At the end of the alley.
I slipped the phone back into a pocket and pushed myself into a squatting position, holding the pistol in a two-handed grip, suppressor pointing upward. I’d done everything I could think of to turn a shitty situation to my advantage. Now either the plan would work or it wouldn’t. From here on out, I could do nothing but wait and pray.
Strangely enough, neither of those options seemed very appealing.
* * *
—
A heavy footfall, followed by a rasping sound as shoe leather dragged against concrete, announced Einstein’s presence.
His DIA-created targeting file had many holes, including the details about the accident that had caused his limp. What I did know was that Einstein had been a rising star within the Pakistani WMD community. As such, the infamous Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, had jealously guarded his personal details, precisely to prevent people like me from pitching their brilliant pupil. Still, I didn’t need the targeting file to know that a man with a debilitating limp wouldn’t be happy about walking the better part of a kilometer to reach his linkup point.
But that was okay. Einstein could yell at me all he wanted once both his guards were dead. As I mentioned before, sometimes happiness was all about perspective.
The off-tempo walk grew louder, and Einstein’s dark form materialized to my right. He passed within inches of me, but as I’d hoped, the truck’s pulsing orange hazard light distracted him. He actually stopped after passing my hide site, his back to me as he thumbed a message into his phone. He was close enough that I could smell the plethora of spices accompanying his Indian and Pakistani food, but I was more focused on what was behind him—namely, his two minders.
Einstein finished typing, and my own phone vibrated. For a long moment, I was terrified that he would pause in place until I replied. But just when I thought I’d have to alter my already tenuous plan, he shrugged his narrow shoulders and started walking. I wanted to scream with relief, but settled for a shakily exhaled breath.
So far, so good.
Einstein lurched toward the flashing orange light while I waited to ambush his pursuers.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Fortunately, the street’s twisting confines had forced Einstein’s minders to tighten their surveillance. As such, my would-be asset was only twenty meters from me, about half the distance to the parked truck, when I
heard the next sets of footfalls. I rolled my shoulders, working loose the kinks, adjusted my grip on the Glock, and pushed myself onto the ball of one foot.
Then they were on me.
In an ideal situation, the two sentinels would have crossed my hide site on the same side, making my difficult task a bit easier.
But not tonight.
Tonight, they passed on either side of the wooden kiosk, staggering their passage by three or four meters. The first man moved by my right shoulder, his eyes fixed on Einstein’s back. His pace quickened as he surged forward, narrowing the gap before Einstein reached the bend in the alleyway and disappeared. A pulse of orange light revealed a bearded face and an AK-47 in a tactical harness before the night swallowed him.
The second man flowed by to my left, and I knew I was in trouble. He moved like a panther. His pace was measured and even, and rather than fixating on his target or his partner, his eyes swept to either side of the alley, probing the darkness with deadly intent. Though I didn’t so much as breathe when he slipped past, something triggered his predatory instincts. One second, he was peering at the shuttered storefronts. The next, his eyes met mine. I saw his expression change as a flash of orange light washed across his face.
It was time.
To his credit, my target didn’t even try to bring his rifle to bear. He was right-handed, which meant the barrel was pointed to his left, angled away from me and therefore out of the fight. A less experienced man would have died while attempting to bring his rifle on target.
But not him.
Instead, he snapped a vicious kick that caught me under the ribs as I was squeezing the Glock’s trigger. The blow knocked my pistol off azimuth, sending the first round into his shoulder instead of his head. My second shot passed harmlessly behind him, sparking off a shuttered storefront. He grunted but didn’t cry out. Instead, he hammered my head with his rifle’s wooden stock, even as he stomped downward, pinning my gun hand to the ground.