Scott Matthews - The Assassin's list

Vectoring back from right to left, Drake thought he saw the glow of a cigarette midway between the two-story building and the fence line he’d just crossed.

“Mike, put your scope on that small stand of trees directly in front of me. I thought I saw something there.”

After a moment, Mike confirmed it.

“You have a man smoking a cigarette in the middle of that stand of trees. I don’t know how he got there. I’ve been watching that area from the buildings to the fence since you went in. He wasn’t there a minute ago. I would have spotted him.”

“I’ll head his way and see what he’s doing. If they have guards posted, I may be wasting my time. If he’s just taking a smoke break, maybe I can follow him and find a way in. If he looks my way, signal.”

Drake moved quietly forward, keeping his eyes on the stand of trees faintly illuminated by the stars overhead. Growing up in the city, he never got over how bright the stars were in central Oregon, east of the Cascade mountain range. After covering the first fifty yards of open rangeland, he stopped and looked again for the red glow of the cigarette he’d seen earlier.

“Mike, is he still there? I can’t see him.”

“Neither can I,” Mike said. “I watched him until a minute ago when I looked away to check for activity down around the buildings. When I looked back, he was gone. Stay put until I find him.”

Drake dropped to the ground and searched the area ahead of him. All he saw with his night vision goggles were a few gnarly juniper trees bunched together. The trees were only seven or eight feet tall, but their twisted shapes provided excellent cover for a man sneaking a smoke or standing guard duty.

“He’s not there,” Mike reported. “Unless this guy is a world-class sprinter, and ran back behind one of those buildings when I looked away, he just disappeared.”

“Not possible, I would have heard him. I’m going to take a look.” He wasn’t going to risk getting any closer until he knew where the smoker went. A posted guard doesn’t smoke, and no one was that fast over uneven rangeland.

Drake stood and moved ahead, watching for movement. When he was twenty yards from the junipers, he checked with his spotter again.

“Still clear?” he asked.

“Go. I don’t see anyone from here,” Mike reported.

Drake moved forward and stopped behind the first juniper large enough to provide cover. He could still smell the tobacco smoke hanging in the night air. He was alone amidst the ancient shapes of the junipers, with no sign of danger until he stepped down on a metal surface and froze.

Drake’s first thought was that he had stepped on a mine. He’d worked around mined areas along the border between Iraq and Iran, seen hundreds of boys and men missing arms and legs. Then he started remembering what he’d been taught about land mines. He squatted down without shifting his weight and gently felt the surface around his feet. It felt like a manhole cover. Feeling around the circumference of the metal plate, he found an opening, wide enough for four of his fingers to lift the cover.

“Mike, you won’t believe this. I know how our smoker disappeared. I’m standing on top of a manhole cover. He must have surfaced from somewhere underground for a smoke break.”

“If they’re hiding something underground, they’re not going to be happy the hired help is using it to sneak out for smokes.”

“I’m going to try and lift this cover, see if he left it open for his next break. It might be my way in,” Drake said.

“You sure you want to do this? If you trip an alarm, you’ll have a hell of a time getting back out.”

“If I’m wrong and ISIS is running a legitimate operation, they’ll just call the cops. You can bail me out. If I’m right and don’t make it out, you’ll know my hunch was right. We win either way.”

Drake stepped off the manhole cover and wedged his fingers in the half-inch crack around the edge. He lifted the cover and saw a soft red glow lighting a concrete shaft with a steel ladder leading down.

“Mike, I’m going in. The cover wasn’t secured. Looks like a tunnel leads back toward the buildings. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, or signal I’m in trouble.”

Drake climbed down the ladder, closing the cover behind him. The tunnel led to a metal door fifty yards away. He moved quickly down the tunnel, took a moment to slow his heart, and pulled the door open with his right hand.

He saw a long hallway with unfinished concrete walls, doors on each side, and industrial-type lighting overhead. Drake moved quietly to the first door on the left and listened. Easing it open, he found the room empty except for a bed, a small desk and a military gray, portable metal closet against the far wall. It looked like some of the barrack quarters he’d occupied over the years.

The door across the hall opened onto a large sleeping bay, with enough empty bunks lining each wall to sleep twenty or thirty men. He saw showers and sinks at the far end. Whatever this place is, Drake thought, it’s built to accommodate a lot of people.

Back in the hallway, he checked the next two doors on the left. Both rooms looked like the first he had entered. The next room on the left, however, looked like it was being used. The bed was made in military fashion, and on the desk was an open Koran. He saw a prayer rug on the floor and, on the side of the gray metal closet, a uniform was hung. Stepping closer, he saw that it was a security staff uniform with a Umatilla Depot patch on the left shoulder. The name tag sewn above the right pocket said the uniform belonged to Jameer Williams.

Drake felt a chill run up the back of his neck. The Umatilla Depot was one of seven U.S. Army installations in the United States currently storing chemical weapons. It was located two hours east, six miles south of the Columbia River. A new chemical agent disposal facility had been built in 2001, to incinerate the twelve percent of the nation’s chemical weapon stockpile housed there. So far, only thirty percent of the stockpiled Sarin (GB), nerve agent (VX), or mustard blister agent (HD) had been destroyed.

While he didn’t consider himself Islamophobic, learning that ISIS was housing or training security personnel from the nearby chemical weapons depot unnerved him.

In the next room, Drake found another prayer rug and another security staff uniform belonging to one Mohammed Marcus. As he started to search Mohammed’s desk, he heard voices in the hallway. Two men, who sounded like they were headed his way.

“You see them girls? Those brothers having themselves a time tonight.”

“Just a taste of paradise, like Kaamil said. Gonna be all I can do to let them party alone.”

Drake stood behind the door, hoping he wasn’t in one of their rooms. When the two men passed, he eased the door open and watched them walk toward the sleeping bay. They were wearing tricolor camo fatigues and desert combat boots, like the ones worn by the National Guard units in and around Portland. Both men were tall and appeared to be in their twenties, black, with close-cropped hair.

Before they entered the sleeping bay, one of them said “Kaamil only gave us five minutes to hit the head, we better hurry. Hope Yousef hurried up his smoke break. He won’t wanna miss the show.”

As soon as both men were out of sight, Drake slipped out and turned left. He wanted to see the party area the two men were talking about. Just then, the double doors at the end of the hallway started to open. Another man in camo fatigues was backing through the door, holding a large cardboard box in his hands.

Drake had just enough time to open the next door on his left and duck into the room. It was the same as the other two, except for a framed picture of a beautiful woman on the dresser.