The Last Operation (The Remnants of War Series, Book 1) (4 page)

He'd rented a two room flat in Chinatown off Mott Street that could be accurately described as a shit-hole, but Daniels didn't care.

He spent two months getting back in shape. Five AM runs for six miles followed by two hours of weight training, a mid-day nap and three hours of Tai-Zen Jiu-jitsu, (Daniels had earned a black belt six years earlier) had become his daily routine. He was leaner and meaner then he'd been in a long time.

He was also down to two hundred bucks and seriously considering the offer from Wendsworth Whittier Lawford III. (Who the hell would name their kid Wendsworth anyway, thought Daniels) W.W. Lawford III had inherited a clothing manufacturing business complete with its own outlets and a chain of department stores.

The man had a sharp business sense and worked hard expanding the business overseas. He was generally known as a pretty decent guy but somewhat paranoid. He wanted Daniels as his head of security for the stores as well as a sort of personal bodyguard. The money was good. There was really nothing wrong with the job except Daniels couldn't see himself there. He knew he would slowly go downhill until one day he would wake up with a potbelly and a golf club in his hand.

Thanks but no thanks.

As far as taking the job short term, a year or so, Daniels knew he would lose the Edge.

The Edge has been with him since his first day at Fort Bragg's Special Forces School back in the day. Hungry and mean as a wolf, he felt the Edge as a mystical force hovering on the fringes of his consciousness. He thought of it like a psychic sixth sense. It made the hair stand on the back of his neck and stopped him just one step before walking into a guerrilla trap in the jungles near Bogota. The Edge nagged him about Mobutu and Kanga and saved him from being murdered. It's always there: his martial guardian angel. But like any force of nature, it needs to be fed, has needs to be nurtured like a hovering spirit. Working for WW Lawford III would destroy it.

Richard Daniels finished the third set of bench presses just when a courier knocked on his door. The guy handed him a message in a sealed manila envelope. A one-sentence message:

Join me for dinner, eight PM, Vincent's in Little Italy.

-
William Taylor

William Taylor, hound dog for CIA black operations division. Taylor had recruited Daniels into covert CIA operations in South America while he was stationed with the Third Special Forces in Panama. He'd continued on several operations in Columbia and Peru until Afghanistan came along. Shortly after his second tour, Daniels had been discharged with the rank of Captain.

The Zaire African disaster had been Daniel's first foray as a mercenary. He really didn't look forward to getting back in with the black operations spooks, but what the hell, he thought, where he was now, he would talk to anybody for a free meal at Vincent's.

It was dark when Daniels left the Tai-Zen dojo at about seven PM. He had intended to take a leisurely stroll to Vincent's and have some wine while waiting for William Taylor. He couldn't say for sure when he first sensed someone following him. The edge warned him well before he felt it in his consciousness. That's how it worked most of the time.

The streets were pretty crowded this early in the evening and Daniels was still in Chinatown. He did a couple of stops and quick turnarounds until he picked out his tail from the crowds.

The man following him was big, well over six foot four, Daniels guessed. Seemingly absorbed by the contents of a Chinese knick-knack shop, he wore bulky sweat suits, "rapper" style with a large floppy Jamaican bush hat pulled low and covering most of his face.

Daniels crossed the avenue twice and turned off into a small dingy street four blocks before Little Italy. The man was still tagging behind, but now he stuck out a little more among the few people on the sidewalk.

Suddenly he ducked into a narrow alley between two streets that turned out to be the back end of a row of small and dirty restaurants. Damp and fetid, the alley had the smell of a place accustomed to holding rotting garbage. Daniels kicked something large and squealing in the darkness as he ran ten feet to the hanging ladder of a fire escape. He jumped, grabbed the bottom rung and hoisted himself on the tiny ledge. Pressing against the building and the ledge, he felt the darkness enveloping him like a trusted old friend. He slowed his breathing and froze his movements, blending with the building and the fire escape.

Daniels saw the man enter the alley, slow and cautious. The stranger approached with the high and silent footstep of the practiced night fighter. Just a little light from the street silhouetted him, enough for a reflected glint of black gunmetal in his right hand.

As the stranger passed beneath, Daniels launched his body from the ledge, both hands joined together in the Club-Kata move. Daniels was silent as a twilight shadow but the man was very good. He must have sensed the subtle change in air pressure, or maybe it was his own Edge. He was just quick enough to deflect the full power of the blow.

Still it was a powerful strike, glancing off the base of his head as he hit the ground with a woosh of expelled air. The man came back with a swing toward Daniels' head and in that nano-second, Daniels saw he had no gun but some sort of blackjack. It whistled past Daniels' head as he ducked.

The man was fast and he was good, especially after the hit he suffered. Most men Daniels knew would have gone down. Daniels grabbed the passing arm in a cross handed hold, turning the energy inward, doubling the arm under and throwing the stranger off balance.

As the man pitched forward, Daniels' knee came up, hitting hard just below the abdomen. He flipped the man, landing him on his back with a muffled thud. In a single blur of motion Daniels came down, knee on the man's chest, left hand on the forehead with thumb and forefinger at the edge of his eyes. Daniels' right hand flicked out and the gravity knife extended and locked. The narrow point of the honed blade rested just below the man's left eye. A tiny drop of blood glinted in the shadowed face.

"One move I don't like and I'll pop your eye like a rotten pimple," Daniels whispered.

The man laid still. Daniels felt his heartbeat through his knee pressing on the stranger's chest. The man gave a strangled retch, his breathing ragged as he replied.

"Godamned, motherfucker, you treat all your old buddies that way?"

"Rollie," Daniels said, pulling up the knife and coming off the man's chest. "You dumbass, an entire year working with me and you didn't learn shit."

The adrenaline cooled and Daniels felt himself getting pissed off. He helped the man to his feet as he slid the gravity knife back to its sleeve pouch.

Master Sergeant Roland Fournier Washington, US Army third Special Forces Group, stood. He shook his head, picked up the billy club and made it disappear in the bulky sweat suit.

"Shit Rollie, what if I capped you?" Daniels said. "I'd be really pissed. With all the paper work to fill out for your miserable carcass."

Both men stepped back in the street. An elderly Chinese couple strolled by, suddenly putting on a burst of speed when they saw them emerge from the alley. Can't say I blame them, thought Daniels.

Rollie massaged the back of his head and groaned. He'd lost his hat and a trickle of blood ran below his eye, cutting a ruby swath in a broad face shining like Kentucky coal.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Daniels said. "Forgot how to use the phone or knock on doors?"

"Nah, I just had to see if you still got it. Heard the brothers did a number on you in Africa. Thought you might be going soft."

"They tried, but I made it out and left a few souvenirs behind."

Rollie laughed as they started walking back to the avenue.

"Sources tell me your souvenirs capped a whole execution squad. Definitely cleared some shit from this world."

"So what is this, a social call?" asked Daniels. "If you wanted to shoot the breeze, you should've called. I got a meeting at eight."

"I know. I'm going too. Old Bill Taylor is picking up the tab at Vincent's."

Rollie and Daniels had first met in during the grueling Special Forces training and testing process at Fort Bragg. A few years later they'd jumped with a four men team for a covert rescue of a CIA informer near Medellin, Columbia. William Taylor had recruited them for that operation. It had been his show and the planning had been perfect. The operation and extraction was smooth and less then seventy-two hours later Rollie and Daniels were knocking back cold ones at the Fort Bragg officers club.

Now, apparently, Taylor wanted them again.

Chapter 4

Daniels and Rollie arrived at Vincent's just after eight. They found Taylor waiting in a little empty back room sitting at a solitary table covered with Italian specialties. Two bottles of primo Chianti were decanted along with some Pellegrini mineral water. Bill Taylor knew how to spend Government funds. Better on them then some eight hundred dollar screwdrivers, thought Daniels.

William Taylor is a man who likes to think of himself as some kind of aristocrat. He reminded Daniels of an accountant, always meticulously dressed and groomed. That large black mole on his cheek is the only thing out of place. Daniels always wondered why he never had it removed.

They spent the first couple of hours on the old days and catching up on what each had been up to. Rollie and Daniels had the kind of friendship and easy camaraderie forged by mutual support and dependence on each other during combat operations. Only people who have had this can truly experience this kind of friendship. William Taylor didn't have it. He was the CIA recruiter and purse string holder, the CEO—they were rank and file.

After a while the conversation slowed and Rollie leaned forward, his eyes fixed and unblinking, getting down to serious business.

"William has a bad situation he wants us to handle," Rollie said. "I told him I'm in only if you head the team. I think you're the only one who can pull this off and get us out alive."

"Well, my mother didn't raise any fools," replied Daniels, turning to Taylor, "William, I appreciate this nice dinner but I'm sure it was more than Langley's concern for my nutrition that brought you here. What's the deal? You guys got a problem?"

William Taylor nodded, took a sip of his Chianti and pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket.

"Yes, I am afraid we do. We have a most vexing problem," he said.

Daniels couldn't help grinning a little. William Taylor talks just like that, no contractions and lots of words like vexing.

"As you know, our intervention in Panama back in the eighties, had been successful, including the capture and conviction of Manuel Noriega on drug running charges," continued Taylor. "There had been somewhat of a brouhaha throughout Latin America, but it fizzed out with time. However, certain developments have come about that could threaten to unravel our entire position in this hemisphere and perhaps bring down this administration. To put it bluntly, we are being blackmailed. The Agency, the Administration and the entire country."

"Why don't you do what you always do," replied Daniels. "Lie or abandon a few people like you did in Iraq."

"Please Richard," said Taylor. "The Kurds were not an agency decision."

"I don't care whose decision it was," replied Daniels. "You pulled our team out after we promised them supplies and air support. We promised them because you told us we would. Then you changed your mind and left them between the Republican Guards and those mountains. So like I said, why don't you just lie about the whole thing?"

"Plausible denial is not a solution in this case. It is much more serious."

Plausible denial. Does it mean a lie so good you begin to believe it yourself, thought Daniels as William Taylor continued.

"Two of our agents were operating with the tacit approval of the South America Desk. It appears that they had withheld some crucial details of their operations. I suppose because of their rate of success, we did not exercise the oversight we should have."

Rollie burst out laughing. "Bullshit! If we get results you could care less how we do it as long as we have the good grace to die with our mouths shut."

Taylor shrugged as he replied. "These agents facilitated the passage of large amounts of drugs from Peru, Ecuador and Columbia through Panama and Mexico—very large amounts. Our shares of the huge profits generated found its way into funding big anti-insurgency operations throughout the hemisphere. No bothersome congressional oversights needed. Those funds were instrumental in keeping communism contained in Cuba, Venezuela and other trouble spots."