All Necessary Force

raise his hand. When the room was quiet, he said, “Please. Let me continue. We can’t predict the future. We might all be in jail in six months, and our entire counterterrorist infrastructure could be gutted. But we don’t know that. What we do know is that the attack’s coming. We don’t know the form or the time, but we know it’s imminent. We have the ability to stop it. Right now.”

He went face-to-face around the room. “I say stop the attack. If it goes bad, it goes bad, but there’s no way I can sit here and say let it go so we can prevent the next one.”

The silence extended from the SECDEFs statement, nobody willing to offer another opinion. Kurt watched Warren consider all that was said, glad that he wasn’t in the president’s shoes. Warren tapped his fingers on the table for a couple of seconds, then looked up.

“Okay. Everyone understand that this is my decision. For the record, you all disagreed vehemently. And I mean that.” He looked at Kurt. “No more Taskforce activity without council oversight. Interdict the explosives and nothing more. That’s the mission. I don’t give a shit what they find out, that’s all they do.”

Stone-faced, Kurt said, “Yes, sir.”

Warren’s expression softened. “Kurt, I know this sounds like I’m looking for a reason to hang them out to dry, but that won’t happen. I trust you. I trust them. Get them back in the fight.”

Warren looked at the pad of paper on the desk, clenching his fists around the pencil in his hands. The pencil snapped under his grasp, surprising the room at the loss of control.

He looked back at Kurt. “Stop this attack. Do what you were designed to do. No fingerprints. Kill those motherfuckers.”

50

Sitting on a small ridgeline overlooking the Budapest farmhouse, I had begun to wonder if we weren’t wasting our time. We’d had a mobile observation post outside the place for damn near two days after the original meet time given to us by the girl in Prague, and so far nothing. I hadn’t worried at first, because every action has a reaction, and our assault in Prague to get the information was bound to have repercussions that would cause a shift as the Albanians dealt with the problem. Naively, I hadn’t thought that the threat extended across the ocean.

Kurt had called me to give the Oversight Council go-ahead for Budapest, then cryptically asked if I was alone. When I told him I was, he had said, “Watch yourself. Don’t leave any fingerprints.”

“Of course. I never do.”

Kurt had laughed, then said, “Bullshit. You left a ton of fingerprints in Prague.” He paused, then said, “But that’s not what I mean. People are antsy here. It’s gotten political because of the election. Even in our world. The hit’s coming, and we have about a fifty percent chance of stopping it. We don’t do it and I’m no longer sure you guys will be shielded. Watch yourself.”

“Whoa. Is the team in the crosshairs? What are you saying?”

I could almost hear Kurt go back into commander role, knowing he’d said too much. “No… no, of course you’re not in the crosshairs. Just don’t leave any fingerprints. You read me?”

My mind running through the implications, I said, “Yeah… yeah, I get you.”

“Pike, it’s good. The president himself backed you up, but everyone’s on edge. You got the ball. Just don’t screw it up.”

I didn’t really care about myself, since I was quasi out of government service and a little bit untouchable, but the team was still in the military and could be hung out to dry if things went bad. Which they might.

“I won’t fuck up. You know that. But I need to know how far to push this. You want it stopped even if it means compromise, or you want me to back off? What’s the cut line?”

“Stop it. Fucking stop it. If it goes bad, I’ve got your back.”

“Will that be enough?”

To his credit, he didn’t lie. “I don’t know.”

And now I sat on a ridgeline eating cold pizza and drinking bottled water, hoping and not hoping that something would happen.

We’d had eyes on the place forty-eight hours after our assault on the slave house, so we’d had plenty of time to assess it. And the results were pretty grim. While it looked like every other ancient farmhouse out here, this one had a pretty sophisticated security apparatus. Offset from the main road and tucked into a little valley with a creek at the rear, it had cameras on both corners out front and over the main door, roving security patrols, guard posts on the road leading in, and no doubt a full-on alarm system on all entrances. It was a mini compound. Besides the main two-story house, there was a one-story carriage house located directly behind it, and a barn kitty-corner to the carriage house. The only good thing was that there weren’t any neighbors nearby. The closest house was located behind our ridgeline observation post, about a half mile away.

After the meet time had come and gone, we’d simply rotated people through the OP, with the remaining members of the team catching some rack in the other van down a dirt road in the tree line. After two days of waiting, having had time to let Kurt’s conversation percolate, I was toying with the idea of going home. Maybe this thread’s pulled out. Maybe our hit alone had stopped the transfer of explosives and stopped the attack itself. Not to mention, we’re all getting a little ripe.

I perked up when a car wound down the drive to the house, one of many that came and went each day. I trained the Blackjack on the car, zooming in until I could make out anyone who exited. The image wasn’t perfect, but it worked pretty well in daylight with the thermal turned off, even given the twilight of the setting sun. Enough to let me look at the place from over a quarter of a mile away and see anything suspicious. And, hooked to our computer system in the van, it had one benefit that our sorry-ass human eyes didn’t: the ability to do a screen capture and run the image through a facial recognition program.

Two men exited the car, and I began firing away with the Blackjack. It took ten frames a second, isolated the facial features of everyone in the frame, and fed that into the computer with facial recognition software. Compared against the cell phone photos that Jennifer had taken at the hotel in Prague, we hoped to get a hit. It wouldn’t be a black-and-white yes-or-no answer, but it would give us a percentage of probability.

Facial recognition was very hard to do with natural photos. The computer would have only what we gave it, so it would be comparing everything with the cell phone image. Thus, any difference in profile, lighting, or size would throw it off. The software program would mitigate that to its best ability by taking the multiple pictures fed it and isolating the ones that most resembled the pose of the cell phone before it started comparing. But it wasn’t foolproof by any means.

While the Blackjack took the photos, I kept an eye on the video image. Two men exited the car, both looking like Arabs to me. Come on. Turn and face the camera. Give me a smile. One scanned the area, providing me a full-on face shot. The other just looked at the house, at best giving me a profile. They were met by security and searched. Which means they aren’t part of the family.

I gave a warning order to the other van. “Get everyone kitted up. We might have jackpot.”

I got an acknowledgment as I watched the men disappear into the house. Two minutes later, the computer spit out its prediction. Seventy-two percent chance on one, fourteen on the other.

Seventy-two. Good enough for government work.

I got on the radio. “Bring up the van. It’s showtime.”

51

Kamil and Adnan were led into the house by two large men, neither making any effort to hide the weapons on their hips, or any effort to act civilly. Kamil felt like he was starting all over again, having to prove he was trustworthy. Which made him uneasy, especially since Draco had called off the initial meeting at the last minute for no reason whatsoever.

The entourage led them through the simple farmhouse to the rear, stopping at a rustic den with a large glass window facing the carriage house and barn in the rear, the sun already dipping below the horizon. Draco was