Armed with their beers they walked around the side of the country club where the reception was being held and found a quiet spot at an outside table away from the main bustle. Although it was edging toward October it was a bright, sunny day with only a slight breeze.
“Listen, Marcus, I really do want to apologize,” Scott said.
“Me too,” said Marcus.
“What have you got to apologize for?”
Marcus looked uncomfortable. “I feel bad not asking you to be my best man. I mean, you were always my first choice, you know. But I figured… as I hadn’t heard from you for such a long time…”
“I know. I’ve been a bad friend.”
But Marcus shook his head.
“That’s not what I meant. I know you would have got in touch if you could. So I figured you were doing some real serious shit and couldn’t get in touch with nobody. I didn’t know how to contact you, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have wanted to hassle you with something so trivial.”
“Your wedding is not trivial,” Scott protested.
Marcus smiled. “Well, yeah, I know. To me it’s not. But compared to what you’re doing—”
“Uh-uh, stop right there.” Scott lifted his beer glass and swept it in a wide arc to encompass his surroundings. “All this? Days like today? This is exactly what we’re fighting for. This is important. This. And by the way, did I say congratulations?”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “Probably. It’s a word I’ve heard so many times today I’ll be muttering it in my sleep.”
Scott laughed and the two of them chinked glasses. As they drank, Scott realized this was the most relaxed, the most complete, he’d felt for at least the past two years. Discovering his little red book had been stolen had put him on tenterhooks, even given him nightmares where he was being interrogated by a faceless, hostile jury. That feeling had continued throughout his period of counterterrorism training, during which he had expected a whole ton of MIB-instigated shit to come down on him at any moment.
The fact that it hadn’t had only further fueled his ongoing sense of apprehension. Then, of course, 9/11 had happened, and although that unbelievable and unprecedented event had pushed thoughts of his little red book to the back of his mind, his continuing involvement in its consequences had cranked up his fear and anxiety to insanely intense levels for a whole bunch of other reasons.
Thinking of his little red book for the first time in a while prompted him to ask, “So how are things at H12?”
Marcus scrunched up his face. “Hectic. Busier than ever. Guess you guys aren’t the only ones affected by 9/11. Everyone’s on high alert these days, you know?”
Scott nodded. Almost reluctantly he asked, “And what about the MIBs?”
“Still around. Still a bunch of arrogant assholes. There’s more of ’em now, I guess, but we mostly keep out of their way, and they keep out of ours.” He took a sip of his drink, looking out over the expanse of sun-dappled lawn, as though marveling there were still pockets of the planet that were able to bask in tranquility. Almost casually he added, “There’s a new group now too.”
“What do you mean?” asked Scott, sharply enough to snag Marcus’s attention.
“Man, you are tense. They ain’t nothing for you to worry about.”
Scott forced a smile. “Probably not. I’m just curious. Another group of government suits, you mean?”
“Well, no, not like that. But you know how folks talk, and how a lot of that talk is just hot air?”
Scott nodded.
“Well, rumor has it these new guys are kind of a rival to the MIBs. Same agenda but a different agenda, if you know what I mean. Different way of operating too. The MIBs is all suits and government shit, but Havana—”
“Havana?” Scott interrupted.
“That’s what everyone says they’re called. Course, I ain’t seen that written down on any official documents.”
“Okay,” said Scott. “Go on.”
“So, as I was saying, Havana is more military. And when I say military, I mean real tough. The sort of guys that make Spider look like a cissy.”
Scott laughed. “I can’t believe that.”
“Well… maybe not. But you just know these guys have been around and seen some shit. Their leader is this big guy. Kind of old, but musclebound, you know.”
Scott remembered the night he’d last seen the man he thought Marcus was talking about. The way he and his team had looked, as if they’d been in a major firefight. The body bags.
“Those guys were around when I was there,” he said. “I saw them on base now and again.”
“Yeah?” said Marcus. “Okay, well, maybe they’re not as new as I thought. But they’re around a whole lot more now. They seem civil enough, I guess, but they keep themselves to themselves.”
“And you say they have the same agenda as the MIBs?”
Marcus shrugged and pulled a face. “Same, but different.”
“Which means what?”
“Talk is they’re into top secret stuff. Maybe even weird stuff. Some say their job is to steal new weapons and technology – maybe cybernetics, shit like that – from the Russians or the Chinese. Others say it’s even weirder.”
“Weirder how?”
Marcus looked half-amused, half-apologetic. “Ah, you know… X-Files stuff. Aliens. Spaceships. Death rays. Killer robots.” He shrugged and laughed. “Some of the guys got too much time on their hands.”
“So this is where you losers have got to!”
The voice was loud, and Scott knew without turning whom it belonged to.
“Aw, man,” he said to Marcus. “Ever noticed how, just when you think things are going so well, something always turns up to spoil it?”
“Fuck you, Devlin!” Flynn said, stepping into view on Scott’s right and banging his beer down on the table so hard that a mini-wave surged up and over the side of the glass. His collar was undone, his bow tie hanging askew, and he had what looked like a smear of Thousand Island dressing on the lapel of his cream jacket. His face, by contrast, was red with alcohol. Even his eyeballs were pink.
Planting his feet squarely by the side of Scott’s chair, he made a jerky upward movement with his right hand. “Come on, fuckface! Stand up!”
Scott sighed. “You really want to do this?”
“You bet I do! Come on, on your feet!”
With another sigh, Scott rose slowly to his feet and turned to face Flynn –who promptly lurched forward and threw his arms around his old army buddy.
“Fuck, man! It’s so great to see you!” Flynn cried. “We all thought you were dead!”
Scott staggered backward under Flynn’s weight, recovering and planting his feet only after knocking his chair against the table and spilling yet more beer. Patting Flynn’s sweaty back as his old friend bear-hugged him, he frowned over Flynn’s shoulder at Marcus and Lau, who was now standing behind Flynn with a familiar, long-suffering expression on his face.
“You seriously thought that?” he said.
Lau looked embarrassed. “Well, we considered it. We hadn’t heard from you in so long.”
Scott looked at Marcus. It pained him to think his friend had harbored such thoughts.
Before either of them could say anything, Flynn released him and placed his hands on Scott’s shoulders.
“We thought it,” he said, “but Marcus didn’t. Not for a single minute. He had faith.”
“So how has it been?” Lau said. “If you’re allowed to talk about it, that is?”
“Terrifying,” said Scott. “Intense. Momentous. Exciting. Worthwhile. Heartbreaking. Unbelievable.” He paused. “It’s… you really feel you’re making a difference, you know? A difference to the world, I mean.”
“Unlike us,” said Flynn, and belched. “We’re just the cleanup guys.”
“You really feel that?” said Scott.
Flynn shrugged. Letting go of Scott’s shoulders, he flopped back into a chair and grabbed his beer. As Scott and Lau
sat down too, Marcus said, “I guess what we do is important. I mean, we save lives sometimes. But after the Twin Towers… well, I guess you can’t help looking around and thinking everyone else has a more… worthwhile job than you do. That maybe you’re just… treading water.”
Scott took a breath, then said, “What if I could change that?”
Lau’s expression was unreadable. “How?”
Scott looked around the table. “I hate to do this on Marcus’s wedding day, but I knew it would be the only chance I’d get to see all three of you guys together, and I wanted to sound you out before making an official approach.”
“Approach about what?” said Marcus.
“We’re homing in on various targets, but we’re spread pretty thin. We need more manpower. I’ve been tasked with putting a new team together, and I’d like all of you to be on it.”
He paused to gauge reactions. All three were now staring at him intently – including Flynn, who seemed to have magically cast off his drunkenness as if it were a jacket.
“Go on,” Marcus said.
“It’s a dangerous job – but then so’s the one you’re doing now. And it’s fucking intense. But the work is variable and interesting and important. Really important. We’re talking ‘preserving the free world and preventing mass murder’ important.” He looked at each of them in turn. “So what do you say?”
For a moment no one said anything. Then Flynn raised his glass. “I’m in. One hundred percent.”
Lau nodded slowly. “Me too.”
Scott looked at his best friend. Newly married. The man of the moment.
“Marcus?” he said.
Marcus didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “How certain is this? This is not just some spur-of-the-moment idea of yours?”
Scott shook his head. “Ever since I was tasked with putting a new team together, I’ve been thinking of you guys. I mean, you’ll have to be vetted, sure, but my word is pretty much law on this. If I tell the Captain I want you in my team, then – unless you’ve got some skeleton in the closet you’re not telling me about – you’ll be in my team. I guarantee it.”
A slow smile crept across Marcus’s face. He picked up his glass and raised it.
“Then I guess I’m in your team,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
2004
After touching down at a military airbase not far from Aberdeen, Scotland, Scott and his team transferred themselves and their equipment into two minibuses, emblazoned with the words “Highland Tours.” Their plan was to arrive by road so as not to alert the enemy, and to use an outdoor pursuits center near the small seaside resort of Dornoch as a temporary HQ.
According to intelligence, the Al-Qaeda training center and bombmaking factory was located in an old schoolhouse on the outskirts of an abandoned village some sixteen klicks inland of Dornoch. Although the sparsely populated northwest Highlands of Scotland, with its lochs and mountains and pine forests, seemed an unlikely location for a hive of terrorist activity, Scott knew from experience that such cells tended to either hide in plain sight, their members generally occupying low-rent accommodation in busy urban areas, or were situated so far out in the sticks there was barely anyone around to question their presence.
The only reason this particular cell – which was said to be responsible for recent terror attacks in London, Manchester and Glasgow, and was even purported to have links with an Al-Qaeda group in Paris – had caused a blip on the radar was down to a combination of memory, observational skills, pure luck and good old-fashioned paranoia. Several months earlier a supermarket checkout girl from Inverness called Muriel Patterson had rung the purchases of a young Asian couple through her register. The reason the sale had stuck in her mind was because the couple had bought a lot of food – over £1,000 worth, in fact. At the time, though, she hadn’t thought too much of it. She had simply assumed the couple were throwing a huge party. When the young man reappeared at the same supermarket three months later, and bought a similar amount of groceries, it just so happened that Muriel was once again on the register. Even on this occasion, she didn’t find the incident particularly noteworthy, except for one thing – this time the man had a different woman with him. This didn’t strike Muriel as overly suspicious (the two women could have been his friends, or cousins, or sisters, or one of the two women might even have been his wife), but she did find it odd enough to mention to her boyfriend, a young police officer called Andy Fulton, during an idle conversation about their respective work days. A combination of keenness and paranoia had prompted Andy to take a look at the supermarket’s CCTV footage, and then, following a hunch, to forward it to the Highland and Islands Counterterrorism Division. To Andy’s surprise, the young man in the footage had subsequently been identified as a “person of interest,” who it was thought might have been heavily involved in the planning of a major, but thankfully thwarted, terrorist attack in Boston. The Boston connection resulted in the information worming its way through to Scott and his team – and now here they were.
Although the young man, twenty-seven-year-old Hasan Merabi, was their prime target, Scott’s team had been tasked, firstly, with confirming the cell’s existence, and then with simply moving in and smashing it, seizing whatever equipment they could in the process, and dealing with any resistance by whatever means necessary.
By launching a nighttime raid in the early hours, Scott hoped to reduce casualties to a minimum. With any luck the majority of cell members at the location – and intelligence indicated there could be anything from a dozen to thirty men, women and teenagers inhabiting the premises – would be sleeping, unarmed, off their guard. The preferable option was to take as many prisoners as possible, simply because the more prisoners there were to interrogate, the more information such a process was likely to yield.
Sitting on the front seat of the minibus, directly behind the driver, as it meandered along twisting Highland roads on its three-hour journey, Scott went over and over the details of the mission in his mind. Behind him the men seemed relaxed and confident – playing cards, listening to music, chatting and joking and trading good-natured insults – which was just how Scott liked it. He knew that if they let off steam now, and didn’t spend too much time dwelling on what was to come, when the hour came to snap into action they would be focused, determined and professional. His team had been together for almost two years now – in fact, he realized, in a couple of weeks Marcus and Devon would be celebrating their second wedding anniversary – and in that time they had become a tight, well-oiled unit.
As though thinking of his friend had conjured him into being, Marcus appeared at his side. “You okay, boss?”
Scott gave him a look. “Don’t call me that.”
Marcus laughed and slid into the seat beside him. “Pretty spectacular scenery, huh?”
It was, especially beneath the blazing sunshine of the recent uncharacteristic heatwave, but Scott had been so preoccupied he’d barely noticed it. He grunted assent.
“Think we’ll catch a glimpse of the monster?”
“Huh?”
Marcus pointed out of the side window, where a huge body of water lay flat and murky despite the almost painfully blue and cloudless sky above it.
“You do know this is Loch Ness, right? I thought you were a fan of all this weird stuff?”
Scott stared blankly at the gray water, the surface mostly still, except for when the warm summer wind skimmed across it.
“Monsters don’t seem as cool once you find out what humans are really capable of,” he said.
Marcus was silent for a moment. Then he said, “How do you think it’ll go tonight?”
“How do I think it’ll go? Or how do I hope it’ll go?”
“Both.”
“I hope it’ll go smoothly. Zero casualties. Target secured and apprehended.”
“And how do you think it’ll go?”
Scott looked Marcus in the eye. “You know me, buddy. Always aim for the best possible ou
tcome. Whatever that may be.”
* * *
The moon was like the merest sliver of fingernail, which suited Scott and his team very well. Despite the lack of illumination, their night-vision goggles made their surroundings as clear as day, even if the green luminosity which imbued trees, bushes, stone walls and each other made them feel as if they were operating in a strange, sub-aquatic world.
After a final briefing and a few hours rest, they had set out at 3 a.m., the two minibuses taking the bumpy roads slowly. A mile from their destination the buses pulled into a layby and came to a halt. Any closer and the sound of the engines would have carried to the old school and alerted its inhabitants.
There was little talk as they made last-minute checks and adjustments to their clothing and equipment, and then they set off, moving slowly and silently, weapons raised, alert and ready for every eventuality. They moved through clumps of woodland, across farmers’ fields and through thick, uneven patches of undergrowth. There were even one or two farm tracks and country roads to negotiate, but although they were just as cautious and meticulous as they would have been in a highly populated area, they encountered nothing but a fleeing fox and a few startled rabbits.
The old, stone-built school was at the northern end of the abandoned village, its spacious but overgrown grounds surrounded on three sides by woodland. When it came into view, its tall chimneys jutting above the trees, the twelve-strong team split into four groups and went their separate ways without discussion. The terrain had been meticulously mapped out beforehand, the layout of the building and its grounds assessed in detail for exits, entrances and potential hotspots. This latter category included sites of possible peril, and areas that were likely to be the most highly populated, such as the school hall and the gymnasium, which seemed the most obvious spaces to have been converted into dormitories. The kitchens and bathrooms too had been earmarked as places prone to occasional visitors in the early hours. How keen the school’s new inhabitants were on security was unknown, but Scott had to assume there were armed guards on duty at all times.
His own team, which consisted of himself, Marcus and a tall twenty-five-year-old from Illinois called Ishfaq Bukhari, himself a Muslim whose family originated from Pakistan, moved round to the back of the building, which contained the most obvious and easy access to both the gymnasium and the school hall. Although born in the US, Ishfaq was fluent in Urdu, which might well prove useful if they were to find themselves confronted by frightened women or children.
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