One Rough Man

everything I have, but you know what my reputation is. He might blow me off, and I wouldn’t blame him. Either way, this is a problem for the Taskforce, not for me.”

Ethan mulled over his options. Finally, he said, “Yeah, I can do that. I don’t know how soon I’ll see the boss — you remember his schedule — but I’ll certainly tell him when I see him.”

* * *

Ethan stood at the door until they drove off. Once they were out of sight he went to the telephone to call Domino’s for the second time that week. Before he dialed, he thought about Pike’s visit. He picked up the handset, calling the Taskforce duty officer instead.

71

Mason hung up the cloned cell phone. Picking up the clean duty phone, he called Lucas.

“We got a hit. Pike was visiting a guy named Ethan Merriweather tonight.”

“Is he still there?”

“No. He left. The man on the phone says that Pike talked about interesting stuff, and just wanted to relay that. Want to do anything with this?”

“Yeah. Alert the team. Tell them to get in as fast as possible. While we’re inbound, figure out everything you can on this Ethan Merriweather. Find out where he lives and do a quick analysis of the area. I don’t want to waste any time when we get to the office. Give us a target dump on both the man and his location.”

“You got it. Anything specific you want me to hone in on?”

“Yeah, figure out if this guy’s a badass as well. Check his military background. I guarantee he has one.”

“Roger that. See you in thirty minutes.”

It took Mason all of ten minutes to get a complete background on Ethan, to include his address, family members, and the last time he had paid his electric bill.

Thirty-two minutes later he was briefing the assembled team.

“The target is a thirty-four-year-old Caucasian male. His MOS is 96B, intel analyst. He is currently working in J3 Special Operations Division at the Pentagon. He’s airborne qualified, but that’s it as far as specialized schooling we care about. Basically, he’s your standard intel weenie. No known firearms, no bills being paid to ‘Johnny’s house of jujitsu,’ nothing dangerous at all.

“He has a wife and two children, both girls; ages eight and eleven. Of note, he does have a dog, but I couldn’t determine a breed. All I could find were some vet bills for various things, which leads me to believe the dog is getting on in years.”

Moving to the next slide in the presentation, Mason continued the briefing, covering the neighborhood and the house where Ethan lived in detail. When he finished, he turned the briefing over to Lucas.

Standing up, Lucas said, “This is pretty straightforward. We simply need this Ethan to tell us where to find Pike. Once we have that information, terminate whoever is in the house. Don’t do it before we have the information, since you might need to use the wife or children for persuasion on the target.”

Randy, one of the SF men, cut in. “What’s our authorized level of persuasion? What if he refuses to talk?”

“There is no limit. Make him talk. Does anyone here have any qualms about that?”

The team looked around at each other, but nobody said a word.

“If you look at the team, you’ll see the only two missing from the Fort Bragg op are Carl and Alan. When push came to shove, they didn’t have the stomach for the work. Almost caused mission failure right when we were culminating.”

Lucas made eye contact with each member of the team. “Does anyone have any qualms about terminating the wife and kids? No judgments here, not everyone can do this kind of work. If that’s you, say so now, before we launch.”

Once again, nobody said anything.

“Okay. Spend ten minutes figuring out how you want to tackle this problem. No more than that. It’s pretty straightforward and the trail’s getting colder every second we sit here. For all we know, Pike and the girl are already driving to another city. I expect you guys to be on the road in fifteen minutes.”

72

I rolled over, groggy and unsure of what had awakened me, the noise blending in to my semiconscious dream. I realized my cell phone was ringing and snatched it up before whoever was calling could hang up, knowing it was either a wrong number or Kurt.

“Hello?”

“Pike, is that you?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“It’s Kurt. We need to meet. You went to Ethan Merriweather’s house last night?”

“Yes, sir, I did, but it was simply to get all the facts before I talked to you today. I didn’t do anything—”

“Ethan’s dead,” Kurt said, “I need to talk to you right now.”

I was wide-awake now. “What? What the fuck are you talking about? I just saw him.”

“I’m not going to talk on a cell phone. Let’s do this face-to-face.”

I stopped my questions. “When and where?”

“It’s now about nine forty-five.”

I fumbled for my watch, thinking that surely couldn’t be right, but it was. Jennifer and I had decided just to sleep in until we woke up, but I never figured we’d both be out until this late in the morning. I must have been more tired than I thought.

Kurt continued talking. “I have to clean up a few things and make sure efforts are tracking over here. Meet me at eleven at Four Courts.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Don’t be late. I won’t have a lot of time and I need to figure out what the hell’s going on.”

“I won’t be late. I’m staying a hundred feet from a Metro stop.”

I hung up the phone, my head spinning over what I had just heard. Haji dead? He was healthy as a horse. Did he have a heart attack or something? Get hit by a car? Surely this had nothing to do with our visit. Did it?

There wasn’t any sense in trying to figure it out without any facts. I could sort it out with Kurt in an hour.

As I began putting on my clothes, the ramification of what Kurt had said finally hit home. Haji was dead. Having had multiple friends die in combat since 9/11, I understood the grieving process at the graduate level, but it didn’t make it any easier. I had a hollow feeling inside, something I knew would bounce around for a long time, slowly diminishing until it only appeared when something triggered a memory of Ethan.

I remembered Kathy and the kids, wishing I had seen them last night. They would need support right now. I was sure the Taskforce was on that. They were very, very good about taking care of the families of fallen soldiers. Even so, I wanted to help, and wished the first time I was to see Kathy would not have been in the wake of Ethan’s death.

* * *

In Crystalcity, Lucas’s team was gearing up for another run at Pike and Jennifer. Even though last night hadn’t paid off immediately, it looked like it had worked in the end.

Lucas’s research assistant was furiously working the computer to gather all data on “Four Courts” and hotels near Metro stops in the D.C. area.

Lucas was giving instructions while the men got their kit on and equipment organized.

“We know they’re taking the Metro, which means they’ll be walking to the linkup. We’ll need a trigger