One Rough Man

What’s your mission? Who hired you? Who’s the boss?”

Six minutes later I had all the information I could get from the guy. It wasn’t much. He knew that the company was owned by a former SEAL named Lucas and that the mission had been to simply kill Jennifer and me. The good news was they were the only team on the ground, and the Taskforce had killed or captured everyone in it. As to how the team had found us, the man only knew that it was by electronic means. Somehow, Mason seemed to have an accurate picture of where Jennifer and I had been both in Oslo and in Tuzla.

Knuckles asked, “How could he get a beacon on you without you knowing?”

“I have no idea. It could be our cell phones, but I don’t see how. We’ve had three different sets since this started, and bought each one with cash. The only other thing I’ve been carrying is Kurt’s personal pager. It hasn’t been out of my hands since he gave it to me, so it can’t be that.”

“You don’t have anything else they could have altered?”

“No. We’ve been living like vagabonds. Doesn’t matter now, anyway. The team’s dead and we need to get moving. We can figure it out later.”

Knuckles pressed a hidden switch on his thumb, giving his men commands through what looked like an ordinary Bluetooth cell phone earpiece. They coalesced around us, all reaching out and shaking my hand or giving me an embrace.

Knuckles gave a brief warning order of what was about to happen, then split the team between the two functioning sedans. After they began loading, he looked down at the driver, asking, “What about this guy?”

Fuck turning the other cheek. “Well, I promised Jennifer I wouldn’t kill him, so I guess he stays. Doesn’t mean I can’t make it hard for him.”

I aimed the Glock at the man’s knee and pulled the trigger, shattering the patella. I ignored his scream. You’re lucky you didn’t kill Jennifer. Nothing would’ve stopped me from carving you up.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s go. We can talk as we drive.”

I left the man writhing on the ground in pain, blood jetting out from the wound. Four steps to the car, I glanced at the sky. No lightning. Must be Old Testament Day.

We got in the car with Jennifer. Having heard the gunshot, she gave me a questioning look.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t kill him. If he’s smart, he’ll come out alive.”

She said nothing.

I headed back to Tuzla, the other car following. “Before I begin, give me a rundown on what you’ve got here. What are the assets available?”

“Well, we were at Omega in Tunis, so we’ve got the total package on the ground. You saw the 427. We can use that in a pinch, but only to exfil whoever we get. We have no cover for status here, so I can’t let that thing be seen doing anything operational. Dropping in here was pretty damn risky, but the gunfight sort of overcame that. It’s supposed to only be passing through. Obviously, we have the team you just saw, but we have the same issues. We’re all employees of Epeius, supposedly exploring for oil in Tunisia. We’re really hanging it out here. There’ll be no plausible deniability if this falls apart.”

Knuckles was gently reminding me of the potential sacrifice should things go wrong.

“Sounds like you guys were about to pull the trigger. Sorry for the change of mission, but, trust me, it’s worth it.”

Knuckles said, “You’ll be sorrier about it when I tell you who the target is.”

“Who?”

“Your old pal Crusty.”

“Crusty? That bastard’s still around? You guys haven’t taken him off the board?”

“Yeah, he’s still around, and he’s moved up in the world. He’s no longer just a low-hanging fruit to whack for the hell of it. His security ain’t getting any better, though. We can fall right back into it, as long as we don’t blow our cover over here.”

Shit. He’s not going to like what I have to say. “Well, it’s going to be sticky. Our target knows he’s being hunted. It’s going to be very hard to take him off the board without a firefight. Whatever happens to your cover, it’ll be worth it.”

“Let me guess, you’ve found Bin Laden and he’s here with a nuke on his back.”

“Close. It’s not Bin Laden.”

He didn’t need a map drawn out. “You’re tracking someone with WMD? For real?”

“Yeah. He’s going to deploy it soon. Maybe in the next few hours. And I don’t know where the fuck he went.”

94

We planned our next moves in a parking lot a block down from Carlos’s hotel. It had been a little strange at first, since out of the five folks on the ground, four of them had been my guys — including Knuckles. I could tell he was unsure how to handle the situation, so I had deferred to him and simply fallen in as a team member. He didn’t say anything, but I knew him well enough to see he was greatly relieved. I also knew he’d let me take over the team if I’d asked. But I wasn’t ready. These men had worked and trained relentlessly for a very long time to hone their skills to a razor’s edge. Part of that was individual, and part was teamwork. Either way, I was on the low end of the stick for both. Taking charge would just be an ego trip. Knuckles is the man now.

And he had grown quite a bit while I was gone. I watched him with the team and could see they were clicking. It was painful to admit, but my taking over would just make them less effective. I was satisfied with providing the intelligence, letting Knuckles handle the assault. I knew he’d defer to me if it came to that.

Knuckles finished giving instructions, wasting little time on fancy planning. “All right, remember we’re dealing with WMD. Take that seriously. Pike’s going to lead the way. We get to the room and scan it for heat. If we see a source, we go in hard. If the room’s clean, we take it slow. No sense alerting the rest of the hotel if we don’t have to.”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of the mission brief. It was like nothing had changed, and I was sitting on the patio at Tbilisi. About to save the world. Maybe that’s a bit much, but it was a good feeling. Knuckles finally got to us. “Jennifer, I want you to engage the man at the front desk. Keep him focused on you until we’re in the stairwell. We’re going to enter in two groups, three seconds apart. Once the second group is in the stairwell, you can head on back to the cars here.”

Jennifer nodded, apparently comfortable in her role.

“Pike, I want you to lead so we don’t make a mistake on the door, but once you’ve pinpointed the objective, I want you to pull security while we’re in the room. Okay?”

Security? That sucks. I didn’t push it. “No issues. It’s all yours. You got any kit for me?”

Knuckles grinned, obviously relieved that I hadn’t demanded to be with the entry team.

“Of course,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t have anything. You never did.” He turned to a man carrying a civilian pack. “Give him the kit we brought.”

Inside the bag was some communications equipment and an H&K UMP, just like everyone else was sporting. It was a small, lightweight submachine gun built primarily of space age polymer, which made it easier to break down and hide from X-ray inspection. While it lost the power of the cartridges chambered in carbines and rifles, the UMP had the appeal for the Taskforce of being easily concealable. There were other automatic weapons that were smaller, but the UMP chambered the more powerful.45 caliber instead of the ubiquitous, but less powerful, 9mm. The.45 had a much greater knockdown power and was a subsonic round, thus making the UMP easy to suppress without the need for special rounds. I pulled it out and did a functions check, knowing it was unnecessary, but doing it anyway out of habit.

Once he saw I was ready, Knuckles started the ball rolling, telling Jennifer, “Showtime. We’ll be thirty seconds behind you.”

She glanced at me with a question. No fear, just unsure of whether she should leave. Wanting my approval