Scott Matthews - The Assassin's list

When the man with the box passed the room, Drake inched the door open and snuck a quick peek down the hallway. The first two men were just coming out of the sleeping bay. The man with the box stood waiting for them to clear the doorway.

“You two better hurry, you’re going to be late. I’ll make sure Yousef is back.”

Drake pulled the door closed as the two men came running past. If someone went looking for Yousef and found the manhole cover unsecured, he’d have to find another way out. He had to make a run for it and hope the man with the box didn’t come out before he reached the other end of the hallway.

In college, he was first team, weak side linebacker, and the quickest on the team in closing a hole or chasing down a runner. He could still run a mile in five minutes and fifteen seconds. But tonight, when he needed to reach the tunnel in a hurry, it seemed like he was running in quicksand.

“Hey, what the hell you doing here,” the man with the box yelled, as Drake ran past the sleeping bay door. “Stop or I’ll shoot your ass.”

Drake barely broke stride, seeing the box man wasn’t armed, and pushed through the steel door. He ran down the long tunnel and scrambled up the ladder out of the underground bunker.

“Mike,” he whispered loudly, as he threw open the manhole cover and broke into a run, “I’m gonna have company shortly. Where should I go?”

“I see you. Lights are going on all over. Angle to your left, toward the shooting range, where it’s dark. From there, you have a pretty clear path to my ridge.”

Drake ran toward the covered firing line of the shooting range, then angled up toward the ridge. No one seemed to be chasing him. Another hundred yards and he would reach the fence, then the ridge beyond.

“Bad news, Amigo. They’re sending dogs. Three packs of Dobermans, one of them is headed your way, be there in half a minute. You want me to take them out?”

“No, I’m gonna make like Mel Gibson,” Drake said between pants, “and stare them down. Hell yes, shoot them.”

From the ridge, Drake was two hundred yards away and covering ground quickly. The Dobermans, though, were closing faster. The problem was one of timing. Mike would have to hit all four dogs in a matter of seconds.

“If I say ‘down,’ get behind a rock or something. You may have to help me here. Commencing fire now.”

Behind Drake, four large Dobermans were running straight at him, like greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit. The lead dog was slightly ahead. The other three were flanking him.

Twenty yards behind Drake, the lead Doberman went down in a rolling tumble, knocking the dog to his right momentarily off course. Then the dog on the left did a somersault when his head exploded.

Drake didn’t turn to look, but he heard the sound of another dog fall. He knew he wouldn’t hear the whisper of the 7.62mm rounds coming from Mike’s suppressed M24A2.

“Down,” he heard, and dove behind a small boulder. He looked up as the last Doberman went airborne, like a guided missile aimed straight at his face. He rolled to his right, looking up in time to see the last dog’s head explode.

“Come on, Kemo Sabe ,” Mike said, “no time to be lying around. You have more dogs headed your way.”

Drake got up and ran for the fence, deciding to tell his friend he thought he’d cut it a little close with that last dog.

In the ISIS command center, Kaamil stared at the surveillance monitors. Someone had broken into the bunker and wandered around in the martyr’s rooms. Malik would kill him for allowing this to happen. Kaamil moved closer to the monitor and replayed the video. The hooded man entered from the steel door that was supposed to be locked. He had come down through the escape tunnel, which was never to be used unless their survival required it. How had this happened? He watched as the man moved from room to room, until he was frightened off.

He replayed the video once more, this time running it back ten minutes before the intruder entered. There, six minutes before the intruder entered, one of the new trainees opened the steel door a crack to make sure no one was in the hallway, and then dashed into the sleeping bay. Unbelievable! After all the screening and tests the men went through, how had one so stupid made it this far?

Kaamil slammed his hands down on the console and punched on the computer audio microphone.

“Abed, Rashid, get to command center immediately. Bring Ibrahim and the new man Yousef with you. Now!” he shouted.

The problem was twofold; find out who the intruder was, and make sure Malik didn’t hear about him before he returned to Las Vegas. The first problem was the hardest by far. The intruder wore a black balaclava and black clothing. There was nothing obvious in his outward appearance. He looked fit, over six feet tall, and he moved like some of the combat instructors he’d trained with. The man could be one of Roberto’s competitors, someone who learned about the ranch and came to spy.

It could also be someone Malik had sent to test them. Which meant it was already too late to keep Malik from hearing about the intruder. There was one thing he wasn’t concerned about, though. The intruder wasn’t from the government. A government man would get a search warrant first and come in through the front door. And he wouldn’t wear a balaclava, he’d have FBI, in big white letters, on his jacket.

Before his two lieutenants arrived, Kaamil took a 9mm Glock from a drawer in the command console and stuck it inside his belt. When they entered the room, he watched each of them carefully. He’d known both men in prison, and they had proven their loyalty to him time and time again. But, he’d put them in charge of the dormitory wing and ultimately they were responsible. They were nervous. The small movements of their hands and the stiffness in their postures gave them away. They were not so afraid they refused to meet his withering glare, and he knew it was because they trusted him.

The other two men were also nervous and afraid. Kaamil addressed them first.

“Someone broke into our bunker tonight, and was allowed to escape. Do either of you know how that happened?”

Ibrahim, the one carrying the box into the sleeping bay who had confronted the intruder, stared at the wall behind Kaamil and said, “No.”

Kaamil stepped in front of Yousef. “Do you know how the intruder got in?”

“How would I know?” Yousef said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe he got in when the Mexican brought the girls.”

Kaamil wanted to laugh at the man’s stupid attempt to blame his action on someone else. The smell of tobacco was still strong on him.

“Do you know the Koran, Yousef? Do you know that the Prophet commands us to do what is just and forbids us to do what is evil? You know that, Yousef?” Kaamil asked quietly.

“Of course, and ‘allows them as lawful what is good, and prohibits them from what is bad,’” Yousef said, finishing the sura Kaamil had paraphrased.

“And do you consider lying something that is good, or is something that is bad?”

In that moment, the look in Yousef’s eyes signaled he understood Kaamil knew and that he was about to die. It was also the moment Kaamil whipped the Glock around and shot the man in the heart, took a step to his left and shot Ibrahim.

“Let that be a lesson,” he said to Abed and Rashid, as he put the Glock down on the command console. “Lying to me will kill you. Not being a warrior and stopping an intruder when you have the chance, will kill you as well. Now, no one else knows someone broke in tonight, and no one else is ever going to know. We failed to secure this facility. It will not happen again. Keep these two here until the men are in bed. Then remove them with the party trash. If anyone asks, they were selected for a mission and haven’t returned yet.”