Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

“You miserable fuck. If I had the time, I’d carve you up like your buddies did to me.”

His eyes were wide and rolling left and right. He tried to talk but couldn’t because of the pressure I was putting on his head. I jammed the barrel of the AK right behind his ear and put my finger on the trigger.

Jennifer, who’d been jerking on me in an attempt to get me off of Samir, saw the move and stopped her attempts lest they caused me to fire.

She pleaded with me. “Pike, don’t do this. He saved your life. He and his men assaulted this place. Move your finger off the trigger.”

I didn’t hear a word. All I felt was the ultimate betrayal of the man at my feet and the terror of the last few hours. I itched to squeeze. Seven foot-pounds of pressure, and it would all be over.

Jennifer leaned in, no longer pleading. She whispered into my ear, her voice steel. “Pike. Stop right now. Back off. We still have to get out of here, and you’re screwing up the mission. You’re going to get us all killed. We need him to get out of here. We need his weapon and his men.”

The words penetrated my rage, snapping me back to the present.

“Kill him later. After we get out.”

She was absolutely right. Get the mission done. I removed my foot and pulled back the AK, but I kept the barrel pointed at his head. “What’s the plan?”

“Get out through the top, away from the fight downstairs.”

“What about site exploitation?”

Samir sat up and spoke for the first time. “Pike, I had nothing to do with that bomb. I was used just like-”

I snarled, “Shut the fuck up. Don’t open your mouth. You can keep the weapon, but if that barrel goes anywhere close to Jennifer or me, I’m gutting you.”

I returned to Jennifer. “What about SSE?”

“Have you lost your mind? We came here to get you. Mission accomplished. Now we’re getting the hell out. We don’t have the time to search this place. Even if we did, we don’t have the manpower to clear it first. You think I came in here with a Taskforce element? I’ve got a bunch of guys I just met who claim you trained them. Let’s get out of here while we still can.”

I went to the door, listening to the rhythms of the firefight a floor below. “You guys clear the upper floors?”

Jennifer snorted and stomped to the back of the room, ratcheting on the same door I had tried, looking for another way out. Samir said, “Yeah. Upstairs is clear.”

Jennifer came back over. “Jesus, Pike, stop what you’re thinking. We’re lucky to be standing here talking. Get your ass moving up those stairs.”

“Jennifer, I’m not leaving without some intel. I’m cleaning this place out of computers, passports, and anything else I can find.”

She tried to appeal to my sense of mission again. “Pike, think about it. We’ll have to clear and secure the entire building for site exploitation. We’ll have to kill everyone here first.”

I wiped the blood seeping out beneath the makeshift bandage on my left hand.

“Yeah. That’s a definite fringe benefit.”

Infidel chose to park the car on the outskirts of the Dahiyeh and walk in. He had some equipment within the vehicle that he’d more than likely be leaving behind, and he’d prefer that nobody in Hezbollah saw how he’d arrived.

His summons had been uniquely brusque, and he was fairly certain his Hezbollah paymasters were a little upset at the computer bomb. He hadn’t bothered to ask their permission, but since they were so paranoid anyway, he was sure they’d applaud his initiative. Well, almost sure.

He turned the corner to the cafe and saw three men standing at the entrance-where there was usually one. Not a good sign. He continued on, the only indication of his concern being a subtle caress of a carbon-fiber push dagger hidden parallel to the leather on the inside of his belt. A subconscious reassurance that he wasn’t without some means of self-defense.

He reached the men and smiled, holding out his backpack to be searched. Instead, the men motioned for him to raise his arms. He did so and was subjected to a thorough pat-down, while his backpack was ripped apart.

That had never happened before either. He assumed that he was being punished for his little handiwork and not yet actively suspected of anything. Although with Hezbollah, you never knew. They were as paranoid as the Nazi faithful at the end of World War II, seeing assassins in the shadows everywhere. Being paid as an assassin probably didn’t help his image. Especially with the call sign Infidel.

The search finished, he entered the coffee shop, finding it empty. A man followed him in and nudged him forward with the barrel of a rifle. He thought about resisting, but didn’t. It crossed his mind that he might remain compliant right up until they put a bullet in his head. How far was too far? Where was the line when he would need to fight back? Impossible to know. Seeing a stairwell at the back of the cafe, he wondered if he’d already crossed it.

He paused for a second, knowing if he entered the stairwell there was really no turning back. He’d be trapped by a man with a gun inside a shooting funnel. The man nudged him again, and he started to climb.

Reaching the top, he saw Majid and Ja’far at a table, both looking at him sternly. Almost comically. He inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.

“You two upset about something? What’s with all the new security?”

Majid motioned to a chair. “Please. Sit down. We have something to discuss with you about your latest assignment. And the one before.”

He sat, the tension coming back at the last statement. The one before? Something go bad with the investigator? He knew the rules of the game. He’d seen what happened to people who were no longer useful. In 2005, the head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon had committed “suicide” right after speaking with the U.N. about the Hariri assassination. A valuable asset had become a potential liability overnight, and Syria had liquidated him. The assassin knew he was only as good as his last job. The minute he was a threat, he would be gone.

He decided on the confused approach. “Okay. You’ll have to start, since I have no idea what this is about.”

Majid smiled. “Really? Infidel, we use you because of your skills, not your judgment. We tell you what to do, and you do it. That’s why you’re paid. To do things that we cannot accomplish on our own. Don’t tell me you have no idea. Tell me why.”

He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, you can’t be mad about the bombing in Sidon. Is that it? You guys pay me to take care of problems, and that’s exactly what I did. You told me to provide a covert camera to the Druze contact, but you didn’t do any investigation on the asset he was using, did you?”

When Majid and Ja’far said nothing, he felt on more solid ground. He continued. “The asset wasn’t some garbage man. He was a United States intelligence operative. He was setting you up. I recognized him and took him out. Like you pay me to do.”

Majid said, “We didn’t tell you to kill anyone. We wanted to see the outcome of that meeting. Make sure they weren’t doing anything that could harm us. Now, you’ve very likely set us into a fight with the Palestinians in the camps, something we have tried to avoid. You blunder around like every other American, without any understanding of the consequences.”

“Hand me my bag,” he said. Majid nodded to the guard who held it, and the assassin pulled out a digital camera. He flipped to a series of photos and held the camera out. Ja’far took it.

“That man you see with the Druze is Nephilim Logan. He was a U.S. counterterrorist commando. One of the best they had. I know this because he almost killed me a couple of years ago. Now, I’m sure he’s working with the United States against you. That’s why I sent in the bomb. Trust me, he is not your friend, and he deserves to be dead. I’m sorry if the other deaths might cause you issues, but it wasn’t your meeting. You never said protect it. What I did was protect you. Like you pay me to do.”