Enemy of Mine

“Kill him tonight, when he’s back in it.” I said it like I was talking about getting takeout.

She nodded her head vaguely, coming to grips with the fact that the information she’d provided was now going to be used to take a life.

“I don’t have time to go back and forth on this. We only have another day before we’re missed by Kurt and the Taskforce.”

We’d flown out right behind Blaine yesterday, him thinking we were going to hang around for one more day. After spending twenty-four hours in Frankfurt, we were now going to send a SITREP describing aircraft troubles-as if we’d just arrived from Dubai-and a subsequent layover. I’d bought us forty-eight hours, and that was it. I was just happy we’d managed to find Lucas in the city in such a short amount of time.

He’d thrown away the phone we’d originally tracked him with, so that was no help. Luckily, Jennifer had the four hotels she’d discovered from his Internet search in Dubai. Finding the one he was in, using his Canadian ID, had been easy. Finding his room without Taskforce hacking help, however, had been a different matter.

We had to do it the old-fashioned way, by distracting the guy behind the reception area. I’d first positioned Brett as a trigger for Lucas in the lobby, then had both him and Decoy begin the surveillance of him, using Knuckles as nothing more than a taxicab to drop them off and pick them up during the operation.

As soon as Lucas had cleared the building, I’d thrown Jennifer into the breach to use her wily female charms to get the reception guy to leave his counter. I don’t know what she said, but off they went to the business center, leaving me with plenty of time to find Lucas’s room and imprint a separate key-card. She had come back glaring at me, with the young man in tow practically drooling.

Now, with everything in place, the operation became real. I was going to kill him. In cold blood. I was no longer going to try to kill him, and I wasn’t looking for him in Frankfurt in the hopes of killing him. I’d found him, and he was dead just as surely as Ethan’s family. Tonight.

Decoy called as we exited Lucas’s hotel. “He’s moving. Out of the cafe and up the stairs.”

“Got it. We’re headed that way now. Give me a call when he’s clear.”

“Roger.”

I hung up my cell and said, “We have a little mini-mission. I need you to drop me off at the Hauptbahnhof, then circle the block until I call.”

“What’s up?”

“Apparently Lucas is using Internet cafes, and I want to see what he’s up to. I need the forensics thumb drive you used in Lucas’s room in Dubai.”

She gave me a quizzical look, then I saw her brain make the connection of what I was asking, and she literally grew red in the face. “I…don’t have it. I gave it to the support crew with the rest of our kit. I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.”

Dammit. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I think Knuckles has one.”

We’d given all of our overt kit like guns, beacons, and radios to the support crew to dispose of-minus one suppressed Glock I’d hidden in my luggage-but things like thumb drives and our Taskforce cell phones were ordinarily kept because they raised no suspicion. I was surprised that she’d given it up. Not like her at all.

Before I could even dial, she was on the phone with Knuckles, getting directions to meet him. In short order, I had the call from Brett saying Lucas was clear, and I was walking down the stairs to the Internet cafe. Luckily, the computer Decoy had described was still free.

I paid for five minutes, then pulled up Internet Explorer, finding the history empty. I plugged in the thumb drive and gathered the websites for the last hour. The most recent were for strip shows here in Frankfurt, which would make our follow a little bit easier tonight and might make it easier to kill Lucas since he’d probably be drunk.

Continuing, I found references to news stories about the Burj Khalifa, which confirmed that I was on the right box, then a site that confused me. It was a State Department travel agency, and the request had been for State Department personnel on all flights going from Germany to Qatar for the next few days.

Qatar? Why’s he looking at that? What’s he up to?

In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. He only had a few more hours on this earth anyway.

67

Lucas returned to his room a little bored. He’d toured just about everything he could around the city, and with the lack of information about the couriers, he had nothing to really work on. He’d thought finding an RFID reader would be hard in Germany, but he’d managed to do that on the first attempt, even locating one that appeared like an ordinary computer, with inconspicuous antennae he could loop outside of his laptop bag when the time came.

With nothing else to do, he powered up the new reader and checked if he could dial into the device he had planted in Qatar. Once online, he inputted the ISP address and smiled when it connected. The improvised explosive device was in place and online. All it needed was a trigger, and he would get that soon.

Seeing it was four o’clock-past check-in time-he packed his bags and called the front desk. “Yes, this is Lucas Kane. I hate to be a bother, but this room is a bit stuffy. I’d like to switch.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re completely full. I can offer you a discount.”

Dammit.

“I don’t want a discount. I want another room. Don’t you have any open for late check-in? Give me theirs and they can have this one. I haven’t been here all day, so the room’s clean.”

“Please hold.”

While he didn’t feel it necessary to switch out hotels every single day, on the days he wasn’t leaving he liked to at least switch rooms, after the check-in time had passed. He did it out of habit. Practice. He felt no danger in Frankfurt, from Hezbollah or anyone else, but that didn’t mean he needed to be sloppy.

The receptionist came back on. “Okay, sir. I do have a room. When would you like to switch?”

“Right now.”

68

I leaned against the headboard of my small hotel bed, remote in one hand and a Glock 30 in the other, the compact gun overshadowed by the large can on the end of the barrel.

I stared at the television, the screen nothing but a bunch of jumbled images that didn’t register in my conscious mind. Nothing was registering in my conscious mind. It was intentionally blank, like a Zen warrior guiding the arrow that is not aimed. At least that’s what I was trying to achieve. In reality, I’d blanked my mind because I couldn’t take the conflict raging between my good angel and my bad. It was easier just to sit, thinking of nothing.

And so I did, for hours, answering the phone occasionally to get an update on Lucas’s night out. He was apparently a sexual dynamo, but he hadn’t had a drop of liquor. At least he’d be sleepy from the workout. I hoped.

I was startled out of my reverie by a knock on the door. Shoving the Glock under a pillow, I opened it to find Jennifer outside.

“What’s up? Is there an issue?”

“Not really. Just bored. I take it the call hasn’t come in yet.”

“Nope, but it’s only ten P.M. He’s probably not coming back until after midnight.”

“Can I come in?”

I really didn’t want her to. I didn’t need the distraction. I needed to think. Or more precisely, I needed a still room so I wouldn’t be forced to think.