“I pulled the intel you wanted on al-Abadi, but there are other high profile potentials in town as of late. I thought you might be interested in a couple.” Jeff crossed his arms over his broad chest and watched Jay carefully. “Tell me about who you’ve contracted.”
Jay looked up and cracked a grin. “You really don’t want to know.”
“If it’s Lynch and Wells, then you’re right. I don’t.”
Jay turned back to the file and nodded slightly. “Like I said…”
“Yo, Jeffy.” Deric nodded to the older man. “What about our supplies?”
Jeff groaned and tossed a set of keys to Deric. “Weapons are crated and locked in the back. I could only get you one armored car.”
“Government?” Steve asked as he scanned the office.
“Nope. Civilian Mercedes G class. You’ll have four wheel drive and a supercharged V-8. Probably need it to move that heavy SOB.”
Steve smiled broadly. “Nothing like armor plate to suck your gas mileage.”
“Better broke than dead.” Deric tossed the keys to Jim. “You’re driving.”
Jim pocketed the keys and sat down behind one of the desks. “What’s the word on the street?”
Jeff shook his head. “There’s nothing. Apparently Abadi is planning some big anti-Western demonstration. Supposed to set records as far as the turnout.”
“I thought our standing with the locals had improved.” Jay closed the file and tossed it to Gregg, who slipped it into his bag.
“Abadi is paying demonstrators.” Jeff cleared his throat. “It’s a ruse, though.” He pointed to the map where a red line was highlighted through the center of Karachi. “While he gathers the unwashed masses and all of the local media, his henchmen are on the outskirts, moving weapons. Nobody notices what the left hand is doing because the right hand has them mesmerized.”
“And that’s when you swoop in?” Jim asked.
“Nope. We’re just to observe and track. I’m almost positive that the guns are going to one of the local terrorist groups. We’re just not sure which.”
Bridger stood up and got his attention. “That’s interesting and all, but you said there were other names to consider?”
Jeff nodded. “We have a state politician who is in town, pressing flesh and raising funds for the next election. There’s also a sympathetic magistrate here.”
“Sympathetic?” Jay asked.
“To the terror groups.” Jeff sighed. “It’s getting to where anybody with an AK and the ability to string together more than three sentences without stuttering can start a brand new terror group. The State Department claims that they’re branches from the bigger groups, but in reality, it’s just the local version of drunken rednecks stirring up trouble.”
Bridger groaned. “Great. How the hell are we going to decide which one to snatch?”
“Snatch?” Jeff was suddenly alert and glancing between the different operators.
Jay squirmed slightly and stood from the desk. “Yeah, about that.”
“Tell me you aren’t going to cause an incident.”
Jay shook his head. “No, not at all. I mean…well…as long as nobody finds out.”
Jeff groaned and fell into his chair. “Do I want to know? No, wait…I don’t. Do I?”
Bridger stepped closer and placed a hand on his ex-partner’s shoulder. “I’m being set up. And from what we can tell, it’s somebody with either the CIA or NSA.”
Jeff stared at him wide eyed. “You’re shitting me.”
Deric lowered his voice. “We think it’s an assassination attempt. Do you have any idea which of those three the alphabet soup guys would want most dead?”
Jeff opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. His mind tried to wrap itself around the possibility. Finally he got out, “Abadi would be the top of my list.”
“That’s what I thought, too.” Gregg stood and rifled through his bag. He pulled out the file they had printed out on Abadi. “This is all we’ve gathered.”
Jeff skimmed through the file and paused. “Some of these are NSA…and they’re not redacted.” He turned to Gregg. “How the hell did you get these?”
“I never kiss and tell,” Gregg smirked.
Jeff looked back through the information and shook his head. “See…we didn’t even know he was involved in the local human trafficking.”
“Now you do.” Jay reached for the file and handed it back to Gregg. “We’re going to pull him from the street during the demonstration and hide him. Any wetwork teams won’t be able to retire him if they can’t find him.”
“You’re going to protect a known terrorist? A man that we now know is chest deep in the sex slave markets? A gun and drug runner?”
“If that’s what it takes to clear Bobby’s name, yeah.”
Jeff tossed the file back and turned to Jay, “There’s rumors that al-Abadi isn’t the one calling the shots around these parts. Mind you, it’s all rumors, but we’re hearing that there is somebody higher up the food chain.”
“But no idea who?”
“Not at the moment. We’re looking into a couple of different possibilities. We don’t have the intel to justify snatching somebody off the street, though.”
Jay stood and gave Jeff a questioning look. “You’re not going to try to stop us are you?”
Jeff opened his mouth but chose not to say the words that came to his mind. He sighed heavily and ran his hand across his face. “I don’t know about any of this, got it?”
Jay smiled and patted his arm. “Good man.” Turning to his crew he nodded, “Time to load up.”
Outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan
MARCUS WELLS SCANNED the streets below and clicked his radio. “He’s on the move.”
“I’ve got him,” the voice on the other end squawked as the encryption device unscrambled the vocal message.
Marcus turned his long range optics to a man sitting at an open café, his dark sunglasses betraying his eyes. He watched as the man picked up his coffee and quickly downed it then stood and tucked the newspaper under his arm. He slowly pushed his chair in and dropped a tip on the table before turning and making his way lazily down the narrow street.
“He’s approaching a vehicle. Get me a plate number.”
Ryan Lynch turned and crossed the street, purposely stepping in front of the black Range Rover
