Dead Six (12 page)

The lead guard said something to me in Arabic, his voice raised to make himself heard over the blaring music. Al Falah and the other man stopped. I didn’t understand the language, but I definitely got the gist from the tone of his voice. The thug was a tall man, with a bushy mustache. His right hand was beneath his brown jacket, resting on the butt of a gun. I made eye contact with him for the first time. He held his left hand up, signaling me to stop, still talking. He grew angry when he realized that I was a foreigner and took another step closer. He was only a few feet in front of me now. Young Mr. Al Falah had an obnoxious grin on his face; his friend seemed nervous.

My eyes darted to the left. Tailor was right behind the other bodyguard. His hands came up, extending his own pistol. He fired a shot; the muffled pop of the suppressed .45 round discharging was barely audible over the singing that echoed through the alley. Tailor’s target dropped to the sidewalk.

The bodyguard in front of me turned around quickly, having heard the discharge. Before he knew what was happening, I had my own pistol up and put a .45 slug into his left ear. My gun was on Al Falah before the body hit the sidewalk. He and his friend both turned to face me, eyes wide, staring at my pistol. Tailor’s .45 popped twice more, and Al Falah’s friend fell to the ground, two gunshot wounds to his back.

Al Falah looked down at his companion, then turned around to see the muzzle of Tailor’s suppressed pistol. He turned back to me, skin pale, eyes fixed on my pistol, and raised his hands slowly. A puddle formed on the sidewalk beneath him as his bladder let go.

An instant later, Tailor snapped open a collapsible baton and struck Al Falah on the neck. He cried out in pain and dropped to the sidewalk, falling into his own piss. I watched the street while Tailor zip tied our prisoner’s hands. Al Falah looked up at me one last time before Tailor pulled a black bag over his head.

“Ginger, Nightcrawler,” I said over the radio, “We got him. Get up here.” I unscrewed the suppressor from my pistol and reholstered it. I then snapped open my automatic knife, cut the shoulder strap on Al Falah’s bag, and pulled it off of him.

Without turning on its headlights, the van sped up the alley, coming to a stop right next to us. The sliding side door opened. Hudson jumped out, grabbed Al Falah, and effortlessly threw him into the van. He climbed back in, and I followed, laptop bag in hand.

Just as the call to prayer died away, Tailor noticed Al Falah’s friend, lying facedown in his own blood with two bullets in his back. He was still alive. He groaned slightly and tried to move. Without blinking, Tailor stepped forward, shot him in the back of the head, then jumped into the van, pulling the door closed behind him.

We backed down the alley until we came to the cross street, turned on the headlights, and sped away into the night. Tailor called Control over the radio to inform them of our success. I slumped against the wall of the van and looked down at my watch again.
1909.
Not bad.
Hunter had been right. It’d been remarkably easy.

Stepping forward, Tailor roughly pulled the black bag from Al Falah’s head, knocking off his checkered headdress in the process. The young terrorist looked around, still groggy from the sedative and from being clocked by Tailor. His eyes grew wide as he became aware of the surroundings and his situation. He was handcuffed to a chair in the basement of our safe house. We had him shoved off into a corner. The only illumination was from a bright lamp we’d set up. I had to shake my head at the whole scene; it was like something from a bad spy movie.

Al Falah looked at Tailor, fear in his eyes. His mouth was slightly open, but he didn’t, or maybe couldn’t, speak. He then looked over to me; his eyes darted down to the pistol on my left hip. We’d removed our jackets in order to openly display our weapons.

To my left was Hudson. Al Falah seemed especially intimidated by him. Hudson, for his part, just folded his muscular arms across his chest and stared the skinny terrorist down, not saying a word.

“Do you speak English?” I asked. Our prisoner’s eyes darted back to me. He didn’t say anything.

“I know you can understand me,” Tailor said, leaning in a little closer. He was probably right; almost all educated Gulf Arabs spoke English. “So we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the pushing-your-shit-in way. What’s it gonna be, ace?”

Al Falah, for his part, seemed to have found a little bit of spine. He closed his mouth and sat up a little straighter in his chair, staring defiantly at the wall behind us. Tailor straightened up, then looked over at Hudson and me, grinning. It seemed that Al Falah didn’t want to do this the easy way.

“Wheeler, go get Sarah,” Tailor said then, talking over his shoulder. Wheeler, who was behind us, near the stairs, nodded and headed up to the main floor of the safe house. A few moments later, he clomped back down the stairs. Behind him, Sarah gracefully made her way down, clipboard in hand. She followed him across the darkened room.

The prisoner’s eyes grew wide again when Sarah stepped into the light. He stared up at her shapely figure, and his mouth fell open again. She was taller than he was. She looked back down at him, not saying anything. Wheeler pulled up a second chair, and slid it next to her. She sat in it, crossing her legs and laying the clipboard in her lap. She clicked open a pen, leaned forward, and spoke to Al Falah in Arabic.

He looked back at us, then back at her, then back at us again, seemingly confused. Sarah repeated whatever it was that she’d said, her voice a little bit harsher. Al Falah seemingly balked at this and said something back.

“What’d he say?” Hudson asked.

“He just called me a cunt,” Sarah said. “Said he doesn’t have to answer to a woman.”

“Really?” Tailor said. Without another word, he stepped forward and punched Al Falah across the face. The terrorist’s head snapped to the side, and he cried out in pain. “Ask him now.”

Sarah repeated whatever it is she said to Al Falah. His voice wavered, but the young terrorist apparently didn’t tell Sarah whatever it was she wanted to hear. She looked up at us and just shook her head.

Tailor shrugged. “Okay, asshole,” he said and punched Al Falah again. Hudson stepped around Sarah and violently struck our prisoner himself. Al Falah’s head snapped back, and the young Arab cried out. Tailor and Hudson took turns hitting him a few more times. Hudson was strong as an ox and had to take it easy. A real shot from that man would have cracked Al Falah’s skull.

“What are you asking him?” I said, looking down at Sarah.

“This kid is just a small fry. His uncle, Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah, is the real target. I’m asking about him.”

I looked back up at our prisoner. Tailor and Hudson had stopped pummeling him for a moment. One eye was puffy and swelling shut, and blood was running from both his nose and lip. It was unpleasant, but this was war. If any of us were captured, we could expect worse. Sarah remained cool but seemed uncomfortable with what was happening. Nonetheless, she repeated her question, her voice sounding cold and harsh.

The young Al Falah spent a few moments staring at his lap, breathing heavily, blood dripping onto his clothes. He lifted his head back, still panting, and looked over at Sarah. He took a deep breath. Sarah lifted her clipboard just in time to block a blob of spit and blood. I had to give the kid credit; he’d certainly found his backbone. Not that it was going to do him any good.

“Oh, that’s
it,
” I said, speaking to Al Falah for the first time. I lifted my right foot and booted our prisoner in the chest. He gasped in pain, rocked back on his chair, and fell over backward, smashing his hands between the chair and the concrete floor. I moved forward, planting my right foot into his chest again, and drew my pistol. Holding the Sig .45 in both hands, I looked down at Al Falah, the sights aligned with the bridge of his nose.

“Valentine, no!” Sarah exclaimed, coming up out of her chair and putting her hand on my shoulder. “We need information from him.”

“Tell him if he doesn’t start talking I’m going to blow his head off,” I said coldly.
The Calm
had overtaken me, as it often did right before I had to shoot someone. Sarah had sensed the change. She hesitated. “
Tell him,
” I repeated, more firmly. Sarah stepped around me. Al Falah’s eyes were focused on the muzzle of my pistol and nothing else. Sarah leaned down and spoke to him. Al Falah sputtered something back.

“What’d he say?” Hudson asked.

Sarah stood up and sighed. “He says he’s prepared to die. I think he wants to. He’s scared shitless. He thinks it’ll make him a martyr.”

“Fuck that,” Tailor said, squatting down next to our prisoner. He reached into his pocket and drew his knife. With the push of a button, the blade snapped forward out of the handle. Tailor reached down and grabbed Al Falah’s face with his left hand. “Tell him that if he doesn’t start
talking,
I’m going to start
cutting parts
off him. Tell him we’re
not
going to kill him. I’ll just cut off his ears, his nose, his tongue, and put out his eyes, and knock out his teeth, and dump him on the side of the road somewhere. He can live the rest of his shitty life as a beggar, or he can kill himself and not get his virgins. I’m not gonna do him no favors.”

“I . . .” Sarah said, hesitating.

“
Tell him!”
Tailor shouted, poking the very tip of his blade into Al Falah’s face. There was no doubt that Tailor would do it.

Sarah steeled herself, leaned back down to our prisoner, and spoke to him again for a few moments. His eyes grew wider as he processed her words. He looked over to me, with the muzzle of my pistol still pointed between his eyes, then over to Tailor and the knife poking into his face. Apparently the short, scary Southerner with the disfiguring razor was the more frightening prospect of the two of us. Falah hesitated for what seemed like an eternity.

“I . . . I . . . okay,” Al Falah then sputtered, speaking English for the first time. “I will tell you. I will tell you! Please . . .”

“That’s more like it,” Tailor said. He pushed the switch on his knife, and the blade disappeared back into the handle. I took my foot off of Al Falah’s chest and holstered my pistol. Tailor and I then grabbed the back of his chair, hoisted him up, and set our prisoner upright again.

“Your uncle,” Sarah said, sitting back down in her chair. “Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah. Tell me everything you know about him.” The young Arab took one last look around the room, lowered his head slightly, and began to talk. He had a
lot
to say.

Stepping onto the roof, I saw Sarah silhouetted against the lights of the city. She was standing by the wall that ran around the roof of the house, smoking a cigarette. Hearing me open the door, she turned around briefly and nodded. I returned the nod, and stood beside her.

Below us was the small villa that we used for a safe house. The house itself was big, with no less than six bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and a big common area downstairs. In addition to that, it had a huge basement. Basements were rare in homes in the Middle East. The safe house also had a tall wall around it. Next to the house was a large carport that held four vehicles. In front of the house was a sort of garden with a grove of tall palm trees and a mess of ferns at their bases.

“Are you okay?” I asked, looking out over the city. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t,” she said, exhaling a puff of smoke. “I mean, I quit years ago. I bummed one off Tailor. I just . . . sometimes when I get stressed I have one. That’s all.”

“Oh, I see. What’s wrong?”

“I thought you were going to kill that guy.”

“Sarah.” I paused for a moment while I struggled to find the right words. “I
did
kill a man tonight. One of Al Falah’s bodyguards.”

“I know! I ordered you to. It’s just . . . I don’t know. I’m being stupid. I’ve never been part of an interrogation like that before.”

“I was a little surprised to see you here,” I said.

“I was surprised when they called me out. I guess the other Arabic speakers were busy. Walker was probably busy pulling somebody’s fingernails out. I was told that normally I wouldn’t leave the compound much. I’m not even supposed to know where all of the safe houses are!”

“You’ve never done an interrogation like that before, have you?” I asked.

“No. I suppose you’ve done a lot of them, right?”

“Not really,” I said truthfully. “I was mostly a trigger-puller. We had intel specialists do that kind of thing.”

“Tailor seemed like he was enjoying himself,” she said hesitantly.

“Well . . . Tailor is
crazy.
He’s always been like that.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Years now. Since we were in Africa together.”

“Do you really trust him?” Sarah asked, putting out her cigarette on the top of the wall and looking over at me.

“With my life,” I replied. “I don’t know if I’d trust him with anybody else’s, though.”

Sarah looked at me sideways, eyebrows raised. She then let out a sardonic chuckle. “You’re funny, Mike,” she said, calling me by my given name for the first time. We stood together, looking out over the lights of the city, for what seemed like a long time. Neither one of us said anything.

“You did fine, by the way,” I said at last.

“What?”

“In the interrogation,” I continued. “You really kept your cool in there. You really seemed like you knew your stuff.”

“I’ve been trained,” Sarah said, “by, um, our employers for Project Heartbreaker. I just didn’t know how intense it was going to be.”

“It gets easier. I mean, it sounds horrible, but you get used to it.”

“I hope so,” Sarah said. “We’re just getting started.”

“You hear something?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.” She looked back over at me. “We’ve got a list of targets a mile long. Terrorists, financiers, support people, recruiting people, you name it.”

“You know all of the targets?” I asked incredulously.

“What? Oh, no. I just got a peek at it. It’s not just names, either. It’s places. Gatherings.
Events
. This is going to get
ugly
, Mike.”