by Bentley, Don
“It’s me, brother,” I said, relief washing over me as Frodo’s voice filled my ear. “I’m in a bit of a jam.”
“Hang tight, buddy. I’ve got eyes on you. The UAV’s got another thirty minutes of loiter time, and I’m working to retask a replacement as we speak. Start heading east and I’ll vector you past the roadblocks. I’ll get you home.”
“Any chance of the QRF through?”
“No. I’m sorry. The fucking administration rolled over. Other than the Sentinel, there will be no more incursions into Russian-controlled airspace. Your hitters aren’t coming.”
“The President’s fine with leaving Shaw to the jihadis?”
“He doesn’t see it that way. James is in the Situation Room, and he ducks out to give me SITREPs when he can. The President’s staff was split about sending Colonel Fitz in the first place. The JSOC commander and James were all for it. The President’s limp-dick Chief of Staff was against it. Director Castle cast the deciding vote.”
“The CIA Director?”
“Yep. Apparently she’s got more balls than the Chief of Staff. Anyway, now that the mission almost went south, she’s got egg on her face, and he’s calling the shots.”
“What about Shaw?”
“According to Charles, his indigenous Syrian network has eyes on Shaw’s location and is about to attempt a rescue.”
I shifted the phone from one ear to the other as I looked across the still night. Other than a flickering mercury light casting pale shadows across the chain-link fence in front of the building, nothing moved.
Absolutely nothing.
“If the CIA has assets here, they’re really good at hiding,” I said. “Other than Einstein, there isn’t another living soul around.”
“I hear you, brother, but according to James, the President’s gun-shy after nearly starting a shooting war with the Russians. The cavalry isn’t coming. If you don’t want to abandon Shaw, at least pull back and find somewhere to lie low. Maybe you can help the CIA’s Syrian assets once they show.”
“Come on, Frodo. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter. With that Sentinel orbiting at fifty thousand feet, you’ve got the best seat in the house. Does your eye in the sky see a convoy of technical vehicles heading this way?”
For a moment, I thought my friend was going to lie to me. I should have known better. Friends are brave enough to tell each other the truth, even when the truth is catastrophic.
“No, Matty,” Frodo said, the words coming out with a sigh. “I retasked the Sentinel as soon as I realized it was you on the phone. Nothing’s moving.”
“That’s because Charles’s guys aren’t coming. You know it, and I know it.”
To Frodo’s credit, he didn’t argue. He simply asked the next logical question. The one I didn’t have an answer for, or at least not an answer he was going to like.
“What now?”
I looked at the building in front of me, praying for some sort of omen. I had no idea what form this omen might take, but right about now, I wasn’t all that choosy. I’d accept anything from a phantom toddler to a burning bush, but what I got instead was a whole lot of nothing. The truck creaked on tired shocks as Einstein shifted behind the steering wheel, but other than that, nothing changed.
Nothing at all.
Maybe the Almighty wasn’t in a talkative mood, or maybe He was otherwise occupied. Either way, I was on my own.
“Here’s how this is gonna go down,” I said, my semblance of a plan coming together even as the words left my mouth. “I’m gonna use Einstein to get into the building. Then I’m gonna find Shaw.”
“I don’t want to hear that bullshit,” Frodo said. “You and I have both been around the block enough times to know that isn’t gonna work. This is what I think—you feel like you can’t come home without Shaw, so you’re going to make sure you don’t. This is a suicide mission.”
“You’re wrong, brother,” I said, feeling clarity for the first time in months. “I know you can’t see it, but you’re wrong. I’m scared out of my mind. I do want to bring Shaw home, more than anything I’ve ever wanted. But I’m not suicidal. If I was suicidal, I’d be going this alone. But I’m not alone. I’ve got you.”
“I’m a broken-ass cripple, Matty. How can I help you from here?”
So I told him in five short sentences. It was a plan of sorts, but one so desperate that even if it succeeded, Frodo and I would both be considered persona non grata by our respective organizations. If it failed, I’d be dead, and Frodo would spend the better part of his adult life in prison.
Like I said, it wasn’t pretty, but it was all I had.
When I finished speaking, I had a thought—a fleeting one, but it shamed me nonetheless. For the briefest of instants, I wondered if what I was asking was too much. If my best friend would turn me down.
But that wasn’t Frodo.
“Okay, brother,” Frodo said without a second’s hesitation. “I’m on it, but I’m gonna need room to maneuver. The chatter on the jihadi websites has spiked. We think they’re going to execute Shaw in the next thirty minutes. I won’t even be able to get where I need to go that fast. You’ve got to buy me time.”
“I’ll buy you time,” I said, staring at the building’s shadowy form, “but not much. You’ve got to hurry.”
“I’m already gone,” Frodo said, and ended the call.
It occurred to me that, for the first time in my friendship with Frodo, I was glad that he wasn’t standing beside me. Even if he’d been in his pre-ambush prime, the two of us trying to rescue Shaw would have been a fool’s errand. But now, with a broken body that had kept him six thousand miles away, Frodo might just stand a chance of saving my life one last time. But first, I had to do my part.
Putting the phone in my pocket, I got back into the car.
Einstein hadn’t liked my plan before. When he heard what was in store for us now, he might just decide that death by Hellfire was a better option.
FORTY-SIX
We aren’t leaving, are we?”
Einstein asked the question with a finality to his voice. It was the type of question a pestering child might ask, one to which he already knew the answer.
“Rest assured, we’re leaving, but not without the American who’s sitting in that building. Got it?”
Einstein shook his head and looked away. I watched the muscles of his jaw clench and unclench as he fought against the inevitable. Say something and risk the rough side of my tongue, or sit there and sulk in silence.
His internal monologue lasted for all of two seconds.
“Look,” he said, turning back to me, “I don’t bloody well pretend to understand what you do any more than I suspect you’d be able to help an analytical chemist select the correct sorbents for a class one nerve agent. But it doesn’t take a tactical genius to know that you can’t shoot your way into that building. Your friends aren’t coming. There’s no one left.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Someone’s working on our behalf. He’s not here. But you are.”
“Me? There’s no bloody way in hell I’m going into that building. None.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Or what? You’ll kill my family? Fuck off.”
“No,” I said, expelling a breath, “I won’t do that. I misjudged you earlier. I don’t often do that, but I did with you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you’re even more of a narcissistic, self-centered piece of shit than I thought. And that’s saying something. If you possessed even a hint of something redeeming inside that shriveled thing you call a soul, you’d have asked about your family by now. A good man would have even tried to bargain for them, perhaps offering himself in their place. But you’re not a good man, are you?”
Einstein didn’t speak, but the snarl on his lips was answer enough.
/> “No, you don’t really give two shits about your family, at least not when your own life hangs in the balance. So I’m gonna have to persuade you with the only thing you truly value—your own life.”
“If I don’t help you, you’ll kill me? Is that it?”
“Not me,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t have to. Seven miles above us, a Sentinel drone is loitering. It has lots of cool bells and whistles, but you know what it doesn’t have? A Hellfire. Because Hellfires are old-school. Too much collateral damage. Instead, that bird has a belly full of laser-guided small-diameter bombs. The kind of ordnance you put through a window to kill the guy sitting on the couch when you don’t want to hurt the guy eating at a table five feet away. Really is a marvel of modern technology, but that’s not important. What’s important is that in about five seconds, I’m going to open this door and start walking toward that building. If you’re not with me, step for step, one of those small-diameter bombs is going to come winging its way earthward and bury itself in your skull up to its stubby little fins. Is that a good enough reason?”
“I hate you.”
“Glad we understand each other. Women and children—that’s who you killed, motherfucker. Trust me, the only reason you’re still drawing breath is that I need your help. Otherwise, you’d already be a grease spot in the sand. Now, as much fun as this conversation’s been, time is running out. You have a decision to make. Follow my instructions or try your chances with my eye in the sky and her belly full of bombs. What’s it gonna be?”
Einstein looked at me for several long seconds, his jaw clenched as his massive brain ran through about a thousand different scenarios at the speed of light. Undoubtedly, he was searching for the one scenario that would allow him to fuck over yours truly and walk away scot-free. But I wasn’t worried, for the exact reason Einstein himself gave. He might be Doctor Doom, but we were in my world now. I was his lifeline. If he wanted to maintain his ever-so-tenuous hold on that lifeline, he would have to follow me into deeper water.
“Okay,” Einstein said, biting off the word. “What do I do?”
“For starters, you take my pistol,” I said, handing him the Glock. “Then you punch me in the face. Hard.”
For the first time since I’d made his acquaintance, Einstein did exactly what I asked.
In hindsight, I probably should have added a bit more clarity to my instructions, like by substituting the word chin or even cheek for face. But I hadn’t. Einstein responded to my oversight by blasting me squarely in the nose with an intensity that belied his small stature. One second, I was staring at him across the car’s darkened interior, preparing for a shot that would ring my bell. The next, I was choking on the blood pouring down my throat.
Say what you want about my little chemist, but he had a right hand that would have done Tyson proud. Which was good, because, before we were done tonight, my little scrapper might just need to bite through an ear or two.
FORTY-SEVEN
The shaking started sooner than I’d expected. The twitching began as Einstein started the vehicle, and the tremors progressed from my fingertips to my major muscle groups with frightening speed. By the time Einstein had parked the truck, and we’d begun to walk up the gravel pathway to the chain-link fence surrounding the former ball bearing plant turned lab-prison, I could no longer disguise the shudders. Einstein responded with the compassion I’d come to expect from a scientist who sold death to the highest bidder.
“What’s bloody wrong with you?”
“I’m hobbling on a broken fucking ankle,” I said with a whisper. “Cut me some goddamn slack.”
My answer came out with more venom than I’d intended, but it still did the trick. Einstein grabbed my arm, helping to support my weight.
I needed to remember that Einstein was scared shitless, too. That was mostly good, because, for our little scenario to have a snowball’s chance in hell of working, he needed to be terrified. But it was also bad, because frightened people made mistakes, and we couldn’t afford any. Not a one. I’d run operations on tight margins before, but nothing like this.
This boondoggle was in a class all its own.
Headlights from a passing car played over the steel gate, and the tremors intensified, my teeth rattling in sympathy. Just beyond the gate was a building that held a chemical lab and a contingent of jihadis intent on sawing off an American’s head in exactly fifteen minutes and thirty-three seconds. “Tight margins” didn’t even begin to describe what we were up against.
As if on cue, Abir manifested just on the other side of the fence. For once, she wasn’t smiling at me from over her dead mother’s shoulder. Instead, she stood on the gravel, just staring, her dark eyes boring holes through me. Was her appearance a good sign, or had I finally lost my mind? I didn’t know and didn’t care.
Like the Easy Company veteran, I was already dead.
“Ready?” I asked, shifting my attention from the toddler to Einstein.
The question was more rhetorical than literal. At this point, we were committed. The security cameras that Einstein had assured me were present would have already captured our shambling approach. Unless one of the small-diameter bombs that the Sentinel didn’t actually carry fell on our heads in the next five seconds, we were going into that building. Then again, a dead toddler was watching me from the other side of the fence.
At this point, anything was possible.
“I’m bloody well ready, you son of a bitch.”
“Easy on the foul language, Doctor Doom. I’m the one with the broken fucking nose, remember?”
My face felt like someone had surgically removed my nose and transplanted a cantaloupe in its place. A fucking pulsating, fucking throbbing cantaloupe full of fucking burning needles burrowing into my fucking face. Einstein had broken the shit out of my nose, and if my other injuries hadn’t also been demanding my attention, I might have given Einstein a shot or two in the face to help sell our story. Fortunately for him, that was easier said than done. With my hands secured behind my back with the dead jihadi’s handcuffs, my swollen nose now occupying half my face’s real estate, a splinted ankle, and a bloodstained bandage covering my leg, I was in a pretty sorry state.
But that was the point.
“Tell me what you’re going to do,” I said, trying to take my mind off our destination.
“I know what to do.”
“Tell. Me.”
Einstein gave an exasperated snort through his nose, which didn’t win him any points from me. I was going to be a mouth breather for at least the next four weeks. In any case, Einstein began to talk.
“You tried to kidnap me. My minders died protecting me. They shot you as you drove away, and you crashed your car. I captured you. Now I’m bringing you here.”
“Why?”
“Because killing two Americans is always better than killing one.”
“Exactly. And when the guards are close enough?”
“I shoot them and give you the gun.”
“Then you lead me to where the American is hidden. I kill his guards, and we barricade ourselves in his cell and wait for the cavalry.”
“And then we go home.”
“And then we go home.”
Einstein’s voice had seemed less than certain. It was almost as if he didn’t quite believe we had a prayer of pulling this off. To be honest, I didn’t, either. If I was really left to my own talents, I wouldn’t have felt too sporty about our odds of survival. But I wasn’t in this by myself.
I had Frodo.
I didn’t tell this to Einstein for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted him to be on his best behavior, and desperation paired with pending death tended to do that to people. Two, as we’d been talking, we passed through the gap in the rusted fence and now stood at the reinforced steel door that marked the building’s entrance. I tried to pause for a moment, if nothing els
e to gird myself with a final breath before I fully committed to this path of madness, but I didn’t get the chance. As Einstein stretched out his fingers, the door swung open on silent hinges revealing a black-clad jihadi.
Showtime.
FORTY-EIGHT
What is this?” said the jihadi who opened the door. “Where are Hassan and Muhammad?”
“Dead,” Einstein said, shoving me into the room with a bit more force than was necessary. “He killed them.”
I sprawled at the guard’s feet, my handcuffed hands unable to break my fall. I turned my head aside at the last moment, narrowly avoiding banging my busted nose against the mud-encrusted concrete, but a moan escaped my lips all the same. Clearing my throat, I hawked a glob of equal parts snot and blood next to the guard’s black-sneakered foot.
He responded with the wholehearted compassion I’d come to expect from a homicidal jihadi. Letting loose a stream of curses that would have made the Prophet blush, the jihadi delivered a series of kicks to my shoulders and back. I curled around my abdomen as much as my restricted hands would allow, trying to absorb the blows with the uninjured portions of my body. I wanted to stay conscious long enough to make sense of what was happening.
Okay, so the shoving-me-through-the-door part wasn’t exactly in the script we’d rehearsed, but Einstein’s ad lib seemed to be working. I was inside the building housing both the chemical weapons lab and Shaw. Step one of our plan was complete. From here on in, everything would be gravy.
Sure, it would.
“Ishmael, let the brothers know we have company. I’ll see to our guest.”
This was a new voice.
I looked up to see the guard Ishmael joined by another man. Unlike Ishmael, who was dressed in jihadi casual—black cargo pants and top, with greasy hair and a thick, bushy beard—the new arrival looked suave. He could have been the Arabic equivalent of the guy who played the world’s most interesting man in those Dos Equis commercials. He wore simple yet expensive clothes—Italian shoes, dress slacks, and a button-down shirt. His thick black hair was neatly styled, and his obligatory beard was trimmed almost down to the skin. When he spoke, his Arabic had an Iraqi tinge.