Authors: Brad Taylor
She said, “I found that in Lucas’s luggage, along with other things from people he’s killed. I also found out where he’s going and what hotel he’ll be staying in. We can do this.”
I wanted to. It felt right. But I knew it wouldn’t work.
“Jennifer, I’m with you, but Lucas knows both you and me on sight. There’s no way we can get this done. He’s a hard target, not like some of the losers you’ve seen us take down. Shit, just look at what he did in Dubai.”
She said, “So convince the team. They’ll listen to you. They’ll help.”
“Why? Why do you want this so much now?”
She looked out the window at the stars, saying nothing. I was about to ask again when she said, “I realize this isn’t like me, but I
knew
Ethan. I caused his death by showing up at his house. The ID made it real. And I need to make it right.”
I looked at the license again, seeing Ethan alive in my mind’s eye, then running through implications of a nonsanctioned hit. The logistics involved, and the repercussions. I thought we could do it, but only a DOA mission. There would be no way to exfiltrate a live prisoner, and no one to transfer him to if we could. I knew that would end the operation for Jennifer. Her sense of fair play wouldn’t allow it, but I’d let her come to that conclusion.
“Okay. I’ll talk to the team. See if they’ll go along, but we’re going to be limited on our options. We’ll have no support team to take custody.”
“I get that. I understand.”
“Well, what do you want to do with Lucas when we find him?”
She locked eyes with me, her teeth clenched together, the muscles in her jaw vibrating.
“I want you to fucking kill him.”
L
ucas Kane searched
one more news story just to be sure and read the same results with a sense of relief. The peace conference in Qatar was going ahead as scheduled. Which meant the money transfer would go ahead as well.
When he’d arrived yesterday afternoon the news had been full of reports about the “failure” of one of the Burj Khalifa’s elevators, with sensational stories about the excruciatingly protracted length of time the people floated inside, knowing they were going to die, screaming all the way down until they impacted at terminal velocity with the force of an out-of-control freight train.
The fact the sheikh of Dubai and the United States Middle East envoy were in the building made it that much more salacious, with newscasters breathlessly repeating what little they knew over and over again, adding nothing to the knowledge of what had occurred, but driving the story to a fever pitch. He’d assumed the worst, but finally, the Dubai government lifted its censorship blanket, and the news began reporting that both men had lived.
Not really caring about their corporeal status, Lucas focused on the political results of the attack, trying to find the standing of the envoy’s mission in Qatar. He’d checked back online several times during the day until he had finally found the story in front of him.
It made him both relieved and a little jealous. While all news outlets were reporting a simple mechanical failure, he knew for a fact what
had happened.
No wonder I had such trouble killing Pike. That guy’s a fucking predator.
He couldn’t help but be impressed with the operation, precisely because it hadn’t made the news. With a pang of envy, Lucas realized that Pike and his team were better than anyone he had ever served with. He would have liked to recruit the man as a partner.
We could really clean up.
He wondered if Pike had reflected on how he’d been able to prevent the deaths of the sheikh and the envoy. If he’d given a little thanks to Lucas for his help.
Probably not, after talking to Jennifer.
He smiled at the memory, then reflexively moved his hand to his broken nose, the light touch bringing a stab of pain.
Serves that bitch right.
Now sure his own mission hadn’t been sabotaged, he typed a different address into the computer. After it loaded, he typed in an administrator’s password, then began scrubbing the list.
He knew the envoy himself wouldn’t be trudging around the Middle East carrying a suitcase full of cash. No matter how much VIP treatment he got, it just didn’t make any sense. The risk of loss or discovery was simply too great, and he knew it wasn’t coming from the State Department’s budget in the first place.
If the envoy was truly transferring black cash, it would be coming from the CIA. Nobody else had the architecture or experience to bury a large sum of money from the scrutiny of Congress. Which meant a separate flight for the escorts, most likely ground branch case officers from the Special Activities Division.
Whoever was coming, he knew they’d be traveling as State Department employees. That being the case, they’d be using the State Department’s travel website to book their tickets in an attempt to blend in with the myriad other moves State did on a daily basis.
Before he’d had to flee the United States, he’d developed a solid business solving problems for various people, including a man named Harold Standish on the National Security Council. Standish had passed him administrative rights to the State travel website, and they
had proven useful on several different operations. In the end, Lucas had ended up killing Standish, but had kept the administrative privileges.
He sorted the listing of travelers by date, then location, working backward from Qatar. He came up empty. The site listed nobody as traveling to Qatar from the State Department in the next four days.
Probably because they’re all on that private jet the envoy’s using.
But that didn’t explain the lack of the escorts. Surely they aren’t on the plane as well, flying all over the Middle East protecting a suitcase of wealth?
Don’t get panicked. Maybe they just haven’t bought a ticket yet.
The conference was due to last for five days, starting from today, so they could be flying at any time. He decided to simply wait here in Frankfurt, checking back each day. At the end of five days, he’d just have to figure out something else to do for a living. Maybe the Far East. In the meantime there was plenty of female companionship one block from his hotel, in the Frankfurt red-light district near the Hauptbahnhof.
I
was finishing up
in Lucas’s hotel room when Decoy called to tell me no change.
“Still banging the keys in the Internet café.”
“Can you see what he’s working on?”
“Not without sitting next to him, but I’m close enough to see that someone really thrashed him. Both his eyes are black.”
I placed Lucas’s shirts back in the suitcase exactly as I had found them, then saw the leather satchel Jennifer had mentioned.
“Keep your distance. I’m almost done here. When he clears out, give us a call. Jennifer and I’ll take a look. You guys stay on him. Where is it?”
“Underground at the Hauptbahnhof. There’s a little shopping area here. Middle of the concourse, opposite the S-Bahn entrances. You can’t miss it.”
“Which box?”
“Third one from the left. Bank along the north wall.”
“Got it.”
Opening the satchel, I flipped through the trinkets until I found a keychain from Reno. A keychain I recognized. It was Ethan’s wife’s, who had been killed at the same time as Ethan. No way was the keychain a coincidence. Lucas had been there. Had murdered them. I dug around a little more and pulled out the other driver’s license Jennifer
had mentioned.
Someone else that bastard killed.
I wrote down the data, then zipped the satchel closed.
I hadn’t found much about his future intentions, no receipts, ticket stubs, anything like that. But that was just gravy anyway, because I’d confirmed where he’d be sleeping tonight. Before exiting the room, I disabled the chain and the dead bolt, not wanting Lucas to be able to prevent my key-card from working. Satisfied, I jogged down the stairs to join Jennifer in the lobby, wondering if what I was doing was just.
Out in the desert it had seemed right. Even easy. Jennifer agreeing that he should be killed had been the icing on the cake. It had to be the correct path if even
she
thought so. Now, I wasn’t so sure. I would be the one pulling the trigger. Nobody else.
I’d lied to Blaine and let him fly on home, then broke the news to the team, attempting to convince them to assist. I’d told them it was strictly voluntary and strictly outside the Taskforce. This was personal, and I’d be the one doing the killing. Conducting surveillance was one thing, but there was no way I could ask the men to help me in the actual takedown of Lucas. When it came down to it, it would be a one-man operation, with the others long gone.
In the end, Jennifer had been right: They all came on board fairly easily. Knuckles was in immediately, even stating he didn’t mind the killing part. Decoy came on board as well, but Brett balked. I understood his reluctance, especially since we hadn’t ever been teammates. He didn’t know Ethan or his family, couldn’t understand the pain their loss had caused. Eventually the peer pressure got to him, and he agreed to conduct initial surveillance, but wanted nothing to do with the killing.
Now, after twenty-four hours and a night of rest, the feeling of righteousness had dissipated somewhat, and I was going through the motions of tracking Lucas mechanically, tamping down the passion of the act. I didn’t like how it was affecting me. I thought killing him would be just like any other combat action I’d been forced into, but it wasn’t, and the difference was starting to seep in.
I’d never taken a life in cold blood, purely for personal reasons, and a part of me was having a tough time coming to grips with the undertaking, even given the loss of Ethan’s family. Not so much because of the killing, but because of the repercussions. Killing in combat, for the defense of the nation or simply self-preservation, was something I could do and had done. Killing in cold blood was something else entirely, and I was fearful of what it might do to my psyche. I wasn’t guessing about the damage. I had a lot of experience in that arena.
I had lived in a cesspool of guilt and rage after my family died and knew intimately how powerful the subconscious mind was. I had no desire to return to that cancerous place and feared I was now freely volunteering to do so.
Another part of me, prehistoric and reptilian, relished the opportunity, the scar tissue that had covered it beginning to break down, giving it room to blossom. That part didn’t give a rat’s ass about the consequences. I could hear it chanting in the background, “Yes…yes…yes,” and it was growing louder. The bloodlust was unsettling.
I found Jennifer in the lobby and said, “Your information was spot-on. It’s his room.”
We started walking across the lobby and she said, “So? What’re you going to do?”
“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 café 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 cafés, 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 café. Luckily, the computer Decoy had described was still free.