Chapter 6:
From Sea to Shining Sea
Tailor looked over at me. I nodded, and he spoke into his radio. “Copy that. Stand by. Control, Xbox, we’re standing by.”
“Xbox, Control,” Sarah said, sounding as calm and distant as ever. “Execute. Be careful,” she added, her voice softening just a bit.
I smiled to myself. “This is going to be a turkey shoot,” I said, observing our target building through binoculars one last time. “You think they’d have beefed up security after we snatched the Al Falah kid out here.”
“They did,” Tailor corrected. “Look. That guy right there, he’s got a rifle.”
“What is that, a G3?” I asked absentmindedly. “Look, another guy in the doorway. Looks like he’s got a sub-gun.”
“I think they’re wearing vests,” Tailor said. He patted the driver on the shoulder. “Let’s go. Shafter, Ginger, stand by to execute. When you hear shooting, enter and clear. Watch for friendlies—we’ll be coming in from the other side.”
Hudson acknowledged. Our driver, a guy from another chalk that everyone called Animal, flipped on the headlights and stomped on the gas. Our up-armored van roared down the narrow street toward the social club.
The little side street had several cars parked on either side. Tonight was the most popular night, and it seemed that the disappearance of Al Falah hadn’t deterred the enemy from using the place. The two armed clowns outside wouldn’t pose a problem. Our plan was laughably simple: take out the two armed guards outside, then enter and kill every son of a bitch in the place. Tailor and I would enter from the front, while Hudson and Wheeler would enter from the rear. The rear door led down into a basement, where we believed there might be a weapons cache. Animal was going to stay with the van. He was from Singer’s chalk; he’d been hurt and couldn’t run, but he could still drive.
The terrorist with the G3 rifle was meandering up the street, checking the parked cars when he was illuminated by our headlights. I saw him clearly; he was wearing black fatigues, a ski mask, a blue body-armor vest, and a chest rig for spare magazines. He looked pretty squared away, and our van’s windshield probably wouldn’t stop direct hits from a 7.62x51mm weapon.
That didn’t deter Animal. He swerved the van right at the terrorist. I braced myself. The man in the black fatigues dodged to the left. He wasn’t fast enough. Our heavy, armored van came to a stop with a crunch of twisting metal and shattering glass. The little Toyota sedan we hit crumpled and was pushed up onto the curb. The man in black was pinned between our van and the Toyota, his legs and hips crushed.
“Move, move!” Tailor shouted, pulling the van’s right-side door open. I shouldered the paratrooper SAW I was carrying and headed for the door. I heard two quick shots as Animal leaned out the window and blasted the pinned terrorist with his .45. I ignored it as I ripped off a short burst at the man guarding the door, my machine gun roaring loudly in the narrow alley. The 5.56mm bullets punched through him, splattering blood on the wall behind. He was so surprised he hadn’t even gotten his weapon ready.
I came up to the door. Tailor was right behind me. Stepping over the body, I reached forward and yanked the door open just as a long rattle of automatic fire could be heard from behind the building. I held the door open, and Tailor tossed in a pyrotechnic distraction device. We would’ve used grenades, but we didn’t know where Hudson and Wheeler were. A couple seconds later the device detonated, blasting the room with a head-splitting concussion.
Tailor and I stormed inside, weapons at the ready. The doorway dog-legged around into a main room. We rounded the corner. The social club was in chaos. Men were running in every direction, shouting and screaming in Arabic. Billiards tables lined one wall, and couches lined the other. The air stank of smoke from cigarettes, hookahs, and our flash-bang. Terrorist propaganda and Islamic flags were plastered all over the walls.
Men ran toward us, trying to get out of the building. They were either too confused and didn’t realize we were there, or thought we were their own armed guys. It didn’t really matter. I leveled my machine gun and squeezed the trigger.
It was a massacre. Tailor and I moved laterally across the main room, firing at anything that moved. A door burst open and a pair of men came running in, armed with assault rifles, but we cut them down before they even realized what was happening. The crowd of terrorist recruits turned, trying to escape down the stairs, tripping over overturned chairs, bodies, and each other as they fled. It didn’t do them any good.
“We’re in the basement,” Wheeler said over the radio. The men trying to flee out the back entrance were gunned down as they came upon Wheeler and Hudson.
The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes. I stood amongst the carnage in the social club, pulling a fresh belt of ammunition onto my weapon’s feed tray. The machine gun in my hands was hot to the touch; I’d gone through a hundred-round belt in less than two minutes. Probably two dozen bodies lay on the floor, ripped apart by gunfire. The air stank of powder, smoke, and death.
Tailor lit a cigarette, his carbine dangling from its sling. “April fool, motherfuckers,” he said, snapping his Zippo lighter shut. My hands started to shake. The Calm was wearing off, and soon I’d be hit with a flood of emotions as adrenaline dump shocked my system.
The only people we’d let out of the building alive were three Indonesian girls Hudson and Wheeler found in the basement. They were drugged up and had been used as playthings by the terrorist recruits. We found a weapons cache also. AK-103 assault rifles and GP-30 grenade launchers from Russia. G3 rifles from Iran and Pakistan. Rocket-propelled grenades and launchers from China. Thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition. So we dumped some gas, popped a thermite grenade, and burned it all.
As we hurried outside, we noticed that the air reeked of gasoline. In the few minutes we were inside, Animal had kept himself busy by dousing all of the cars parked on the street with gas. As we backed down the street, Hudson tossed a road flare out of the van, igniting the gas and setting the whole row of cars ablaze, just like the building.
The fire quickly spread to the neighboring warehouses. Before long, the entire block was engulfed in flames. It took the city firefighters all night to put the inferno out. In the morning, they found an Ace of Spades playing card stuck to a light pole at the end of the street. Our little calling card been Colonel Hunter’s idea. I liked it.
The balcony was where I came to contemplate. Every wall inside our hideout had something mission related tacked up, as I had to memorize a lot of facts and faces, but that could get obnoxious after a while. I had brought the manila folder from Thailand with me and had been absently flipping through the photos. It had been a long time since I had seen most of those people, and I had never met any of the kids, and now they were all going to die if I didn’t play my cards right.
Over the last few weeks there had been shootings, bombings, and all manner of craziness. Normally Zubara was a quiet place, but now there were blue uniformed SF troops on every corner, and random checkpoints set up by the secret police. There was a war going on, and it was making life difficult for us honest criminals.
I suppose I could call myself an honest criminal. I had tried being a regular criminal, but I found that I didn’t have the stomach to lie to and steal from normal folks. Terrorists on the other hand had lots of money, were fun to lie to, and nobody seemed to mind when I occasionally killed them. And it was easier to sleep at night since I was able to convince myself that I used my sociopathic tendencies for good. Mostly.
The local news was full of stories about random murders and disappearances. Somebody was going down a checklist of the Zoob’s terrorist underworld like a bad issue of The Punisher, and the worst part was that we had no idea who it was. The word on the street was that it was the emir’s secret police killing men loyal to General Sabah, but from what I had seen, this was too professional for those thugs. My money was on the Israelis, but even that didn’t make any sense. The hits were stirring up the fundies and talk of revolution was becoming more and more common. If the emir lost power, then the Izzies would have yet another oil-rich country hating them and funding Hezbollah and that struck me as a bad thing, but then again, I had never been the diplomat type.
So if it wasn’t the emir, and it wasn’t Mossad, who was raising so much hell in the area? It couldn’t be the CIA, as they were way too obvious. I had no evidence, but I was sure that whoever had blown Falah’s heart out was one of them. Having some sort of hit squad mowing down the people that I was supposed to be infiltrating was definitely screwing with my work. It didn’t really matter, though. I just had to keep a low profile until I could get to Adar. Piece of cake.
The sliding door opened and Reaper appeared, gangly and squinting at the sudden brightness. The boy really needed to get more sun, but that would take him away from his precious computers and high-speed Internet.
Reaper was an interesting case. He’d been one of those super-genius kids, awkward and goofy as hell I was sure, and he’d been attending MIT when he was fourteen. When I’d met him six years ago he’d been on the run from the law. Ironically enough, he had the most serious criminal record of my crew. My rap sheet only showed a handful of juvenile offenses whereas Reaper, the child prodigy, had been an overachiever and been indicted for several hundred counts of felony fraud, hacking, and embezzlement before he was old enough to drive.
Time magazine had written a cover story about him. Reaper had used that as his resume when he’d asked to join my crew.
He shuddered. “Man, it’s hot.”
I chuckled. “Wait until summer. It’s barely ninety. How’s your machine thingy coming?”
He shrugged. He’d been working on the device for Phase Three for weeks now. His room was covered in bits and pieces of the complicated gizmo. “I thought about going with a low-inductance capacitor bank discharge, but I said hell with it, the explosive pumped flux compression generator will be so much cooler.”
“You know, I dropped out of high school specifically so I wouldn’t have to know what any of those words meant.”
“I thought you dropped out to commit a triple homicide.”
“Quadruple,” I corrected him. “All I need to know is will it work and will it be ready in time?”
I knew it would be. Reaper had an IQ that was off the charts. He could process data like I could languages. “Starfish will be good to go, but we’ll need a couple of test runs out in the desert, just to make sure.”
“You named it Starfish?” It didn’t resemble a starfish, it looked like a big tube in an aluminum housing. “That’s cheesy.”
“Cheesy awesome,” he answered with pride. I’m sure the name had some sort of geeky historical reference. Reaper changed the subject and pointed at the folder in my hand. “You been thinking about your family?”
I shrugged. “A little, you know . . .” In actuality, I was terrified a bunch of my nieces and nephews were going to get shot in the head for something that they didn’t even know about, but I couldn’t let that show to the kid. He needed me to be sure, indomitable, fearless, all that leadership crap.
Reaper looked slightly embarrassed. “You worried about them?”
“Only if we fail.” The rest went unsaid. We both knew what would happen then: Eddie would kill everyone that had ever mattered to us just out of principle. But he hadn’t come out here to talk about that. “What’ve you got?”
“Adar bought the spoofed e-mails. He just wrote back. He’s leaving Iraq today. He’ll be back in a couple of days.”
I nodded. As long as he had the box, everything would be fine, but from everything I had learned, he always had the box. It was his prized possession and life-insurance policy. “Good. We’ll intercept him at his safe house outside of town.”
“You think he’s as scary as the rumors make him out to be?” Reaper asked. The word on Adar made him sound like some sort of jihadi Jack the Ripper. If Adar had been born into some other society, he probably would have been a serial killer. But luckily for the young murderer from Riyadh, Falah had recruited him and put his natural talents for cruelty to good use for their cause. “I mean, come on, we’ve dealt with some crazies, but this guy takes the cake. Dude, he like eats people and stuff.”
“No big deal.” I clapped my young associate on the back. “So he’s bug-nuts crazy and I get to kill him. I told you this job has some perks.”
“There’s more,” Reaper said. “I just heard on the news, they’re evacuating the American embassy. There’s a big mob protesting in front of it. The State Department said that all Americans need to leave Zubara right away.” His grin exposed a bank of grossly crooked teeth. “I’m guessing that doesn’t apply to us.”
I hadn’t been back in my home country in forever—too many laws, too much order. Life out on the fringe was much more to my liking. “It looks like the Zoob’s heating up. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of here before the place totally melts down.”
“I don’t know, chief,” Reaper said slowly, like he was the one with all the experience. “This shitty little country is important to a lot of powerful folks, shadowy, scary, secret government crazy shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a bunch of stuff going down.”
Oh, not again. I rolled my eyes. “You’ve been listening to that conspiracy theory talk-radio show again, haven’t you?”
“From Sea to Shining Sea?” Reaper shrugged. “You know, it isn’t always just space aliens and Reptoids of the Hollow Earth. Their political analysis is awesome. Way better than the propaganda you get from the regular news. You really should listen. I’ve got it streaming right now if you want.”
I snorted. “If I’m ever commissioned to rob Atlantis, I’ll tune in. In the meantime, you worry too much.”
“I’m just saying, I got a bad feeling about this is all.”
“Hang on, hang on,” I said. I had a situation of my own to deal with. There were at least four bad guys coming up on my left.
“I need help now or I’m gonna die! Shit. I’m hit!”
I could see where Tailor went down. I started for him, but the distraction cost me. I didn’t see the guy with the chainsaw until it was too late.
“Come and save me, damn it.”
There was blood everywhere as I was cut in half. “Too late. I’m dead.” I tossed the vibrating controller on the couch. Tailor swore at me first and then the Xbox.
The biggest open room on the first floor of the dorms had been turned into the rec room. We’d scrounged up a couple of games, a bunch of free weights, and a dart board. Our chalk was enjoying the break. Wheeler was spotting Hudson, as our big man benched-pressed enormous amounts of weight. Wheeler saw that we were toast and got excited. “About time. Our turn. Wrap it up, Hud.”
Hudson grunted as he shoved up three hundred pounds for the ninth time. He was actually scary. “One. More.”
“You suck, Val,” Tailor whined as his character was curb-stomped to death. “You completely and utterly suck. You sucked so hard you choked on your suck. You suck at horde mode.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s this stupid controller. I hate playing shooters on a console. A keyboard and mouse is superior in every way.”
Before Tailor could rebut and begin another nerd argument, Hudson racked the weights and stood up. “Get outta my chair, Tailor.” He grinned. “Let me show you how it’s done.”
“How about me and you play, Hud?” Tailor asked him. “Let these uncoordinated monkeys go play Candy Land or something. Leave the horde to the real men.”
“It’s my turn,” Wheeler insisted. “Just because it’s your call sign doesn’t mean you can hog it all day. Here, I’ll pull all the weights off for you, and we’ll see if you can do just the bar. Val, you better be ready to spot so he doesn’t drop it on his concave chest and hurt himself.”
Tailor flipped them both the bird as he passed over his controller. “Screw you, Wheeler, you soulless ginger. It ain’t my fault I want to enjoy the finest recreation that Club Sara-Dia has to offer.”
“Saradia,” Hudson corrected as he flopped onto the couch. “Say it with me. Saw-radia.”
“Sara-Dia!” Tailor exclaimed, needlessly accentuating his twang.
“Now you’re just messing with me,” Hudson muttered.
“What?” Tailor asked. “Sara-Dia.”
“Hell, I can’t tell if you’re Southern or handicapped,” Wheeler said. “But I repeat myself.”
We were becoming a tight crew. One of the things I’d missed after leaving Vanguard was the camaraderie. It was good to have the R&R time together. Too bad it was temporary.
One of the colonel’s security men appeared in the doorway. “Tailor, Valentine, Mr. Willis needs to speak to you right away.” He didn’t even wait for the response.
Tailor groaned. “Oh, what now?”
“Come on, man.” I headed for the door. “This is why we’re paid the medium bucks.”
“I’m management. I should be getting bigger bucks.” Tailor reluctantly followed. He stopped at the doorway to shout at Hudson and Wheeler. “Sara-Dia!” Then he ducked around the corner as Wheeler chucked an orange Fanta can at him.
The two of us headed across the courtyard. Tailor seemed to be in a better than normal mood, but shooting people in third-world nations was his element. “How’s Sarah doing?”
“She’s good,” I replied, suspicious. “Why?”
“I bet,” he said, smirking. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Val, I know you two are getting it on. She jumped your bones in the safe house, didn’t she?”
I chuckled. “As a matter of fact—”
Tailor laughed. “I hope you at least turned the couch cushions over.” I felt my face flush, and Tailor laughed at me again. “It’s about time, anyway. That girl’s been after you since the day you met.”
“This whole thing is insane,” I said. “I mean, it’s intense. I feel like a teenager. I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but—”
“Goddamn it Val, there you go again!” Tailor said, interrupting me. “Quit overthinking it! You always spaz out and scare the girl off.”
“When did I ever,” I began.
Tailor interrupted me again. “Remember Teresa?”
“Oh . . . right,” I said.
“I’m always right,” Tailor insisted. I was dubious about that claim, but in this instance he was. Teresa had been a medical assistant with Vanguard, and she was the last woman I’d almost had a relationship with. I more or less pushed her away. I had to give myself credit, though. I was trying really hard to avoid doing the same thing to Sarah. “I’m serious. Stop being such a big spaz-girl. I can’t have you worrying about some bullshit angst when we’re out in the field.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. Tailor doused his cigarette as we entered the building. Gordon Willis and Colonel Hunter were waiting for us in the classroom.
Gordon greeted us enthusiastically. As always, he was wearing a suit. Anders was there also, leaning against the back wall, looking bored. “Mr. Tailor! Mr. Valentine!” Gordon said, vigorously shaking our hands. “Great to see you boys again. Damn fine work you’re doing out there. Your hit on the terrorist recruitment house went off without a hitch. Now, our Zubaran counterparts were pissed that you caused so much collateral damage.” Gordon leaned in closer and theatrically lowered his voice. “Off the record boys, I don’t give a shit about that. I’m glad to see you mopping the floor with hajji.”
“Wait a minute,” Tailor said. “You sure as hell gave a shit last time.”
“I see where you’re coming from, Mr. Tailor. Last time there was some concern that making too big of a splash too soon would cause some of our known targets to go to ground. We were able to keep things under control, and that didn’t happen. The plan now is to kick it in high gear, keep hammering the enemy, so they don’t have any safe places to hide.”
Tailor and I looked at each other. I could tell Tailor wanted to get in Gordon’s face, but I shook my head ever so slightly. He just frowned and sat down.
“Have you had a chance to look over your mission packets?” Gordon asked as I took my seat. We hadn’t. “Well, I guess that’s why we’re having this briefing, isn’t it?” Gordon said, laughing at his own joke. Tailor and I ignored him and opened our packets. “As you can see, gentlemen,” Gordon continued, “we don’t have a lot of information on the next target. His name is Adar. We believe that he is originally from Saudi Arabia. We don’t know if Adar is his real name. We also suspect that he has ties to the Saudi government, but we’re not sure what those ties are.”
I looked through my packet as Gordon talked. This guy had spent years running all over Southwest Asia killing American and British soldiers. There was only one photograph, and it was taken from far away. He was a pretty nondescript looking guy, with short hair and a trimmed mustache. He was braced against cinder block wall, looking out a window, carrying a Russian SVU bullpup sniper rifle affixed with a sound suppressor.
“I’ve heard of this guy,” Tailor said. “Read about him on the Net. They say he’s killed over a hundred Americans. The army thinks he’s a myth, nothing but terrorist propaganda.”
“If only that were the case,” Gordon said, doing a very good job of feigning sincerity. “Adar is quite real, and that number is probably accurate. We don’t know who he really is, who he works for, or who trained him, but he’s a definite threat. Eliminating him will help me prove to my superiors that Project Heartbreaker is a worthwhile cause.”
“So we’ve been able to track him down, then?” I asked.
“Exactly!” Gordon said, sounding upbeat. “He keeps a home in Zubara, in the village of Umm Bab, near the Saudi border.”
“So, the US has been trying to find this guy for years, but all of a sudden we find out where he lives? How do we know this information is good?” I asked.
Gordon didn’t bat an eye. “Twenty-four hours ago, we intercepted an e-mail from Adar. He’s returning to Zubara and will be staying at his house here. However, if it turns out Adar isn’t there, we’ll just cancel the operation and go back to square one. If the information proves to be accurate, you two are going to go in and kill Adar.”
“What? Just the two of us again? What about Hudson and Wheeler? They were assigned to me.” Tailor was visibly agitated now.
“The operational plan calls for two shooters, Mr. Tailor,” Gordon said dismissively. “I wasn’t able to get clearance for any more than that.”
“Shouldn’t this get the priority?” I asked. “I mean, we need to get this guy, right?”
“I’m going to level with you boys,” Gordon said, leaning in closer. “My superiors don’t consider Adar a priority target. Eliminating him is a way of garnering more support for Project Heartbreaker, especially from people in the Pentagon. I was able to get approval for this operation, but you two are the only ones I was able to commandeer, if you will, to do the job. People in my chain of command have security concerns. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but . . . well, let’s just say that this operation will be a little unorthodox.”
I wasn’t sure what to think. Gordon sounded sincere, but he always sounded sincere. Adar certainly was a worthy enough target; I’d heard of him too. I sure as hell didn’t like the sound of unorthodox though. “It’s not that killing Adar isn’t worthwhile, sir,” I said cautiously. “It’s just . . . look, we almost got killed on our first mission because we were outnumbered. If we’d had Hudson and Wheeler with us, the complications would’ve been avoided entirely. Because there were just the two of us, we had to improvise.”
“And you lost one of my trucks,” Hunter growled, speaking for the first time.
“Exactly,” I said. “With more eyes on the target, more shooters, we could’ve wiped out all of Al Falah’s bodyguards in a less than a minute. As it was . . . well, things went to shit.”
“I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Valentine,” Gordon said, looking me in the eye. “I don’t like having to take risks like this. But it needs to be done. This Adar has killed over a hundred American soldiers. Let’s get this guy. Can I count on you boys?”
Tailor and I looked at each other again. “We’ll get the job done, sir,” Tailor said.
“Great!” Gordon said, slapping me on the shoulder. I winced as pain shot through my arm; he managed to hit me right where the bandage was. “You boys go ahead and look over those mission packets. There’s a lot of information in there. I’ll be contacting you as soon as we have confirmation that our target is on the ground.” Gordon’s cell phone began to ring. “Excuse me,” he said, answering it. He left the room with his phone in his ear and Anders in tow.
We waited until we heard the outside door close. “Colonel, you didn’t buy any of that horseshit did you?” Tailor asked. “Isn’t there some way we can get more guys for this?”
Hunter’s face was a mask. “I’m afraid not, son,” he said, turning to leave. “It’s not my decision. Wheeler and Hudson will be staying here. You boys relax now, but stay sharp. And don’t discuss this with anyone, not even your teammates. You won’t get much notice for this one. Don’t leave the compound.” With that, Hunter left the room, leaving Tailor and me alone.