Authors: Brad Taylor
“What?”
“We’re okay. You did good work. Saved the day.”
I flipped closed the computer in front of me and said, “Mind explaining?”
“The Ghost placed explosives on both the cables holding the cars and on the emergency brake systems designed to prevent a catastrophe if the cables failed. Your EMP stopped one single charge from going off. The brake system that contained the sheikh and the envoy. They got a wild ride for a few floors, but no permanent damage.”
“So only one elevator came down?”
“Yeah. It’s not pretty. Probably had ten to fifteen people in it, half American. Not good, but certainly not the worst we could be facing.”
I sat back, no longer worried about packing up, letting the relief wash over me. Enjoying the small victory. And feeling a little guilty about calling this a victory when so many had died.
“Okay. I’ll chalk this up as a win. What’s Kurt saying? You going to jail?”
He grinned again. “No. The Council’s okay with it because of the end result. If we hadn’t executed, the envoy would be dead. Kurt’s just a little pissed that I didn’t call him beforehand. I’ll get my ass chewed, but that’s about it.”
I was surprised. “You didn’t call him at all? Even for a SITREP?”
“No. I figured he’d tell me to stand down and that it would be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
Now
that
was a gutsy decision.
“What if I’d screwed up? Turned this into an international incident?”
“Why ask the question? You didn’t.”
I couldn’t believe he’d risked so much solely on my actions. It altered my opinion of him. Raised it exponentially.
I said, “Well, there’s always next time.”
He smiled and said, “We’ve got to get the detainees out to the desert. Skyhook’s on the way. Kurt wants this wrapped up quickly, get us out of here before someone connects the dots. I’m flying home tomorrow with the support package. You guys switch hotels, stay for one more day, then head out.”
The door opened, and Jennifer entered, sending a flutter to my stomach I wasn’t used to feeling. I ignored Blaine.
“Jesus, what the hell have you been doing? I’ve been worried sick.”
She gave me a wan smile and said, “I had some car trouble. A flat tire.”
I noticed her hair was wet, and she was now wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt rolled down to her wrists. “You changed clothes. What’s up? You took the time to take a shower before contacting us?”
She shifted back and forth and said, “I sent you a text. I sweated like crazy changing the tire. I just wanted to freshen up a little.”
She looked around and said, “What’s going on? Where do we stand?”
I explained the situation, then said, “As for where we stand, I was just asking that very thing.”
Blaine said, “What else is there? I told you what’s going to happen in the next twenty-four hours.”
“What about Lucas?”
He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Pike, hey, I get the guy tried to kill you, but he’s not a security threat. His information panned out. He’s gone, and the Taskforce isn’t going to hunt him.”
I saw Jennifer’s jaw drop. I said, “Are you serious? He killed Ethan Meriweather, along with his entire family. He’s still designated as a DOA target.”
DOA stood for Dead Or Alive and was a Taskforce designation that was rarely used. Almost one hundred percent of the time, we wanted the information inside the terrorist’s head. DOA meant the target was a distinct and urgent threat to national security, and we’d deemed the loss of information through interrogation less important than neutralizing him. Very few targets met that definition in our little world. Most terrorists like that were vaporized by a predator drone in areas within which we couldn’t operate.
I’d never had a DOA target, but the teams that did jokingly said it stood for “Dead On Arrival,” since nobody in their right mind would continue trying to capture a guy when it was authorized to kill him. Much, much easier to do. Lucas had earned the title when he’d murdered the family of a Taskforce member.
“Pike, I get that. If it was up to me, we’d go hunting right now, but we’ve worn out our welcome on this op. Orders are to get everyone home and let things cool down. No more overt actions. Period.”
Before I could answer, Jennifer blurted, “You can’t let him go! He’s a murderer. We need to catch him.”
Both Blaine and I jerked our heads to her, startled at what she had said. An uncharacteristic outburst from someone who was as close to a bleeding heart as the Taskforce had.
Blaine said, “I hear you. I really do, and we’ll get him eventually.
He’s just not a strategic threat. I have to agree with Kurt on this one. Yeah, he’s a shithead, but he’s not a Taskforce shithead. He’s someone else’s problem.”
I saw Jennifer clenching her jaw so tight the muscles rippled in her cheek. She said nothing else, and honestly, I was good with it.
“So get these guys to the Skyhook and call it a day?”
“Yeah. Can you handle that?”
“No issues at all. We’ll use the same DZ that the equipment came into. Jennifer can find it easy.”
“Then get moving. I’ll send the alert and the L-one-hundred will be here three hours after nightfall.”
Thirty minutes later we had two four-wheel drive Nissan Pathfinders loaded up, Decoy and Brett in one with the two terrorists bundled in the back, and Jennifer and I leading the way to link up with the L100, the sun setting on the horizon.
The Skyhook was an extraction technique invented in the late 1950s. Used operationally only a few times, it had remained in the U.S. inventory until the 1980s, when the Department of Defense decided it was easier to fly in a helicopter than risk the damage to a human using the extravagant system. I’d done a lot of borderline things in my career, but testing this capability was at the top of stupid, which is why we only used it for terrorists.
The system had actually been used by Hollywood more than by the CIA or DOD—appearing in multiple movies—and had eventually been phased out when helicopters began to do aerial refueling that gave them the ability to reach over great distances.
It still worked for us because our problem wasn’t reach. It was explaining what the hell we were doing in the country. Thus, having a plane conducting an overflight on a registered flight plan, then dip for a span of seconds to intersect the package before returning to flight
altitude, solved a lot of extraction problems for folks we couldn’t get through immigration.
Bouncing across the desert, Jennifer did nothing but steer and navigate, never once asking me about anything that had happened. That and her demeanor told me something was different. She had an aura melting off of her that permeated the entire vehicle. Maybe something only I could sense, but it was there, filling the cab with its stench. I said nothing, waiting for her to open up.
Eventually, she said, “What do you think about Lucas? You going to let that go?”
“What do you mean? I don’t really have a choice. He’s an asshole, but I’m not going to chase his butt all over the world.”
She looked at me for a long pause, reading my face. When she returned to the road, she said, “What about Ethan’s family? Isn’t that enough?”
Where was this going?
“Yeah, that’s definitely enough, but I don’t have the team or the intel to chase him. He’ll turn up.”
“What if I told you I had the intel? That inside his room I found where he’s going? Would that be enough?”
“What kind of game are you playing? Why are you asking?”
She looked at me again, and I saw a door slam closed. “Nothing. Just asking. It doesn’t matter to me either.”
W
e reached the pickup grid
without speaking again. I knew something was wrong, but was genuinely unsure of what to say or how to act. I let it ride.
Decoy and Brett unloaded the two prisoners while I laid out the kit, consisting of nothing more than a specially constructed rope and a helium balloon. Jennifer attached the battery wires for what looked like an ordinary pocket calculator to the antenna lead of the radio, giving us the ability to hear the aircraft’s encrypted transmissions through the stereo in the Pathfinder. It was a simple decryption device that translated the radio calls of the aircraft, transmitted using a standard FM frequency on the radio dial. The hitch was we couldn’t speak back verbally. That didn’t mean we couldn’t communicate.
Both of the terrorists had been sedated with a special drug that was not unlike controlled substances used on every college campus in America. It gave a sense of euphoria while inhibiting conscious thought. They were coherent, but just barely, looking around with glazed eyes like they were trying to understand what was happening. They had enough coordination to put on the special jumpsuits for the ride, completely oblivious as to why they were doing it.
Ten minutes out, Jennifer fired up the Pathfinder and dialed the radio to the correct frequency. I stood by with an infrared pointer, barely able to make out the terrorists thirty feet away in the dark, sitting back-to-back in orange jumpsuits.
We heard nothing but static for four minutes, then a clear break.
“Prometheus, Prometheus, this is Stork. You got a baby for me to deliver?”
I fired up the IR pointer and began doing slow loops in the sky.
“Roger, Prometheus, got your rope. Stand by. Be on target in ten minutes.”
That was the call to release the balloon. I attached two infrared ChemLights to the rope, separated by a hundred feet, then turned on the helium. Within seconds, the rope began to rise in the air.
Ordinarily, the plane would be able to see the line in daylight, driving right into it and capturing the rope with a special little “V” attachment in the nose. Since nothing was easy enough for the Taskforce, we did the capture at night, blacked out, which called for the pilot to literally find the two IR ChemLights while wearing night observation goggles and steer his nose toward them, keeping one high and one low, hoping to snag the line.
There was one other difference the Taskforce had to heighten the adventure. The old MC-130s used to have a cable running from the nose to the outside edge of the wings to protect the propellers if the pilot missed the rope, in effect preventing it from snarling in an engine. Since that setup would look decidedly strange on a “commercial” airplane, we didn’t use it. Scary shit I would never do. Taskforce pilots were borderline insane.
We waited, getting no indication the plane was approaching, since all lights had been dashed and it was now diving from a commercial altitude to eight hundred feet. I kept my eye on the two passengers, making sure they didn’t do anything stupid like try to jump up and run. We didn’t flex-cuff them for the same reason we didn’t give them a drug that would make them unconscious; if something went wrong, we wanted them to be at least somewhat capable of helping to save their lives.
Out of nowhere, I heard the four engines of the L100, a stretch, commercial version of the venerable C-130 cargo plane. It raced overhead, and I watched the terrorists, knowing what was coming.
Two seconds later, they were ripped from the ground and flying out of sight. It looked violent as hell, but I knew from experience it had less of a shock than a simple parachute opening.
I waited for the radio call, not wanting to go racing through the desert for a crashed airplane towing terrorists. The stereo crackled, and I relaxed from what came out.
“Prometheus, this is Stork. Baby’s in the crib, and we’re moving to delivery.”
We high-fived for a moment, then packed up. Shortly, I was back in the tomb with Jennifer, only she was now in the passenger seat. We went for ten minutes, the silence getting so dense it was like cotton in the cab, surrounding us both and starting to smother. Eventually, she broke it.
“Do you think letting Lucas go is right?”
What is the damn fascination with him? She couldn’t stand the way I acted in Bosnia when I captured him, now she wishes I’d smoked him when I had the chance?
I turned, seeing her face illuminated by the lights of the dash. “Jennifer, what’s going on? Why do you keep asking about him?”
She paused, then said, “Nothing. I was just wondering.”
“Bullshit. You remember on the boat, when you said you could read me? You were right, but it works both ways. Nobody else sees it, but I do. Tell me what’s going on.”
She stared at me for a moment, then snaked her hand over mine on the bench seat. “I have to tell you something.”
“Okay…I’m ready. I think.”
“It’s personal. You can’t tell anyone else. I mean that.”
What the hell?
“Yeah, sure. You going to let me in on a big secret? I’m finally getting to see the real Jennifer or something?”
She said nothing, and I saw her eyes tear up.
Holy shit. What is going on?
“Lucas…Lucas did something. Something I want you to know about.”
I waited, only hearing sniffles, finally saying, “What?”
When she looked up, her eyes were still wet, but clear, and her voice was now firm. “You know what. He murdered Ethan. Slaughtered his whole family. We need to get him. We shouldn’t let it go.”
The change in tone raised a flag. She’d known about Ethan and his family when I had Lucas in Bosnia.
Why get bloodthirsty now?
“Jennifer, you heard the boss. The Taskforce isn’t going to do anything about it unless he becomes a threat to national security. We don’t chase murderers.”
“I’m not talking about the Taskforce. I’m talking about us.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
She reached into a pocket of her pants and brought out a card. An ID of some sort. She said, “Pull over.”
“Why?”
“Please.”
I did so, getting a radio call from Knuckles behind me. I told him we were fine and to continue on. He protested, and I barked at him. He slowly disappeared ahead of us. Jennifer turned on the dome light and handed me the card.
It was my friend’s driver’s license. Ethan, with that same goofy grin. Now gone, tortured to death by Lucas. The picture caused a spike of anger at his loss.