Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

“So what are we supposed to do? Get this card to someone else? Why were we pulled from Syria?”

He snickered, then saw she was serious. “They didn’t tell you why you were sent?”

“No. All we got were the PM instructions.”

“Well, operator ,” he said, “you’re here to save the day. Get the assassin. Protect American interests and all that bullshit. Same thing we always do.”

Jennifer said nothing for a moment, doing the wasted mental calculations of how the mission would affect her trip to Syria. Like a child who’d let go of a balloon, seeing it float inexorably skyward, she tried to find a way to get back what she wanted. She realized Syria was lost for good.

“All right. What can you offer me besides this SD card?”

“Well, for one there’s a very big discrepancy between the information found in Tunisia and what I know. I’ve been hearing about a hit for a few months, but it was always against internal Lebanese interests. Now, the intel weenies think the guy from Tunisia was financing a hit specifically against a U.S. government official. I think they’re wrong.”

“Why? If it’s single-source intel from the mission, it seems prudent. Not something to ignore.”

“It came from the hit, but there wasn’t any smoking gun. You’ll see when you boot up that SD card. The target hasn’t talked yet. The Taskforce intel folks went through his hard drive and pieced it together. They’re keying on the words ‘infidel’ and ‘American,’ and made a leap of logic. It’s prudent if taken by itself, but I’ve been working here for over seven years, feeding the beast quality intel. Those analysts go through one hit and all of the sudden everything I’ve said is discounted. I’ve been hearing those same words used in reference to plenty of assassination attempts, but not as the target.”

“You mean they’re going to kill a foreign national in the presence of an American? At an American-sponsored conference or something?”

“No. In this case, ‘infidel’ has a very specific meaning to these guys. I’m telling you the assassin is an American.”

Back in our hotel room, Jennifer gave me a rundown of what she’d learned while I went through the SD card the agent had passed. I hated hearing the briefing secondhand, but I’d had to make a hard call on who went into the cafe and had decided that I’d do more good outside, ready to react should something go wrong. Jennifer possessed a steel-trap mind and would draw much less attention to the meeting than I would. Hot little hammer meeting a businessman was better than a roughed-up expat.

The case officer’s story certainly matched up; the SD card had a clinical report, with all primary references being the thoughts of some analyst with a fifty-pound head. No concrete information on the target or the timing, with every statement preceded by “appears to be…” or “suggests…” Not a lot of help in our decidedly fluid mission statement. I decided to do my own investigation.

“Come on. Let’s go see a guy I know.”

“Who?”

“A soldier I met a long time ago on a training package here. Before the Taskforce. Before Nine-Eleven. He’s a Special Forces guy I trust.”

We left our fancy hotel, a five-star treat that tried hard to make you forget the deadly terrain it was parked within, but failed because of the metal detectors and physical searches at the door.

Heading to the coast road, we passed the destroyed Holiday Inn, a mocking, bullet-ridden reminder of the animosity simmering just below the surface of Beirut. A testament to both the potential and the reality of the country.

Going generally south along the coast, we left the city behind us. About forty minutes later, we turned east and entered the foothills of the Chouf Mountains, home of the Druze sect.

One of the eighteen recognized sects in Lebanon, it was a monotheistic religion that was neither Christian nor Muslim. Primarily found in the Levant, the Druze were known for their fighting prowess and staunch loyalty.

Driving along winding mountain roads, full of switchbacks, we reached the small town of Deir Al Qamar. I cut north, finally stopping at a modest stone house, carved straight into the side of the mountain with a view that would command millions in the United States.

I killed the engine and said, “Hope he still lives here.”

“Really?” Jennifer said, “That’s the best you can do? How long has it been? Ten, fifteen years?”

“Yeah, but all these homes are family owned. This isn’t like America. The sects tend to stick together for survival, and none more so than the Druze. If he’s not here, whoever is will know where he lives now, and it’ll be somewhere close.”

The door of the house swung open before we were out of the car, an attractive girl of about thirteen on the stoop. She said something in Arabic back into the house, then, in heavily accented English, said, “Can I help you?”

I stopped at the base of the steps. “We’re looking for an old friend of mine. I met him when I was in the Army a long time ago. His name’s Samir al-Atrash.”

Before she could answer, Samir himself came onto the stoop. He looked exactly the same, a tall, rangy guy with jet-black hair and a bushy mustache. He stared at me without recognition for a second or two, and as I waited to see if he would remember me, I realized I was wrong. He wasn’t exactly the same.

My memory of him had been frozen decades before, and like holding an old photo to your reflection in a mirror, I saw the changes. He had some gray coming through and a few more wrinkles. Crow’s-feet around his eyes where there’d been none before.

He said, “Pike?”

I grinned. “I was beginning to think I hadn’t left an impression on you, what with all the money we wasted on your training.”

His face split into a smile. “Impression? No, you didn’t. At least not in any good way.”

I introduced Jennifer, and he led the way into his house. We settled into a small, comfortable den, the girl from earlier now teamed with a younger boy, both clinging to the armchair Samir was sitting in.

“You’ve been busy,” I said. “You were single the last time we talked.”

“Times change. Sooner or later, you realize what’s truly important. You don’t have a wife? Children?”

“No.” Not anymore.

He laughed and said, “You’re going to die a greasy, dirty old man. You should try it, Pike. I think you’d like the lifestyle.”

I barked a fake laugh and awkwardly changed the subject, not wanting to make him feel bad. His brow furrowed at the abrupt shift, but I pressed on, talking about our business interests instead. How we loved the travel and adventure. Jennifer helped out by asking questions about the Druze. As usual, she knew more than I did and had never even been to the country.

At a natural pause in the conversation, he whispered to his kids, then watched them scamper away and disappear into the back of the house.

“What can I help you with?” he asked, “Surely you didn’t drive into the mountains just to banter about your lack of commitment or your love of travel.”

About time.

“Well, I was hoping to run something by you. Your unit, actually. See if that intelligence fusion cell you always bragged about can corroborate anything. Surely that thing is wired throughout the country by now. Pride of the Lebanese Armed Forces. Isn’t that what you said it would be?”

He glanced at the floor, then said, “I’m not in Special Forces anymore.”

“Oh…well, can you still get access? As a regular grunt?”

“Pike, I’m not in the Army. I quit after the 2006 war.”

“Really? You would be the last guy I thought would leave the Army. What happened?”