Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

“Bullshit. You gave him something.” He saw a computer at the back of the room, and went to it.

“Is it in here? The information?”

“That computer is nothing. Just a desktop work machine for the coffee shop.”

“Really? Okay, then type in the password. Now.”

Majid did as he asked, and the screen filled with Arabic.

“Can you read that, Infidel?”

The assassin felt his phone vibrate. He smiled. “No, but I think I know someone who can.”

He spoke briefly into the phone, then turned to Majid. “That’s the Druze computer coming up. Last chance. You help me now, and you live. You don’t, and you die.”

Majid closed his eyes and began rocking slightly, chanting in Arabic. The assassin shook his head. Fatalistic sons of bitches, that’s for sure.

He walked around the chair until he was behind the chanting man. He circled Majid’s neck with his forearm, cinched it tight, and twisted harshly. He let go and watched the body hit the floor, the right foot twitching.

He went quickly to the door and dragged inside the bloody body he’d killed on the threshold. He placed both of the dead guards’ bodies against the near wall, hiding them from first view. He was moving to the dead Hezbollah leadership, intent on hiding them as well, when he heard a knock at the door. He cursed, took one look around, then walked over and pushed it open.

The boy stood on the threshold, looking wide-eyed.

“Abu Infidel, what is all of this blood? What’s going on?”

The assassin smiled. “Nothing now. We had some issues. But it’s taken care of. I told you I’d get you in to meet the party faithful. Come on in and say hello.”

The boy nodded hesitantly and crossed the threshold. When he saw the massacre inside, he balked, attempting to back up and escape through the door.

The assassin stopped him, trapping his elbow joint in a come-along and forcing him to drop the computer he’d brought.

“I didn’t say they’d talk back. Be happy you get to see them at all.”

When the boy calmed down enough to assimilate his surroundings, the assassin continued.

“What I need you to do is go through these computers and tell me the identity of the target and the identity of the forger helping out the assassin. Do that, and I’ll let you live.”

I pulled up the geolocation software suite one more time and was rewarded yet again with a null ping. I began to think we’d made a mistake giving the computer back to the enemy.

Probably not any free WiFi in this whole damn country.

We’d made it out of the Ain al-Hilweh camp surprisingly easily. It had turned out that the building wasn’t heavily occupied, and since Jennifer and Samir had killed everyone above us, we only had a small contingent below, which had been effortlessly sandwiched between us and Samir’s men out front. No issues whatsoever, except I would have liked to make them suffer a little more.

We had split up and searched, with me giving guidance to focus on computer equipment. I knew we had plenty of time, since the “police” wouldn’t respond to a firefight here in the camps until they were sure it was over, but I didn’t want to push my luck by digging through terrorist sock drawers. We’d come away with a single laptop and some thumb drives.

We’d fled to Samir’s house in the Chouf Mountains. I had wanted to gut every single one of the Druze militiamen in the back of the van, but Jennifer held me back. Eventually, Samir had managed to convince me that he wasn’t Dr. Evil and hadn’t set me up. Which meant that someone else had an agenda. It remained to be seen who.

Going through the computer, we’d found the itinerary for Jeffrey McMasters, the new Middle Eastern envoy from the United States, along with a bunch of tangential information about the meeting that occurred today, including the bona fides for the two sides.

What caught my eye was the description of the assassin. It was nothing like the guy I had seen, with the exception of the coke-bottle eyeglasses. The person who was supposed to be at that table was a small, frail man. Instead, the man gutted by my computer bomb was a six-foot-three-inch bruiser. Which left a huge gap in our knowledge of what the hell was going on. McMasters was targeted for assassination, that much I was sure of, but we had no idea by whom. Forget the specific individual, we didn’t even know which ideological group, which was a necessary precursor to stopping the attack.

The first order of business had been to contact the Taskforce and feed them everything we had. Unlike Syria, Lebanon was still a free-for-all of Internet access, so we managed to get our “company” VPN up and running fairly easily, using the Internet from Samir’s house. I made Samir wait in another room and got Kurt on the line. Samir didn’t fight it, knowing full well by now that we did a little bit more than archeological work.

I gave Kurt a very succinct account of what had occurred. I let him know that Jennifer’s call of Prairie Fire was a good one, but downplayed my time in captivity, sticking to the mission. I didn’t mention what had happened to me, or the fear that still lingered, a rotting sore I pretended not to notice.

Jennifer had watched me closely on the ride back and on the VPN. I could feel her eyes on me, sensing my trauma like some rabbit detecting a coming earthquake.

We had never spoken about it, but we had a connection that was a little strange. Some sort of innate bond that defied explanation. From the very first time we had met, I had been able to intuit her pain, plugged into her being in some visceral, subliminal way.

In the past, it had been helpful because it had always been me bringing her through some traumatic event. Serious combat actions she had been exposed to for the first time, death and destruction the average person could only imagine that almost crushed her ability to continue. I had sensed when she was on the edge and had pulled her through every event, then patted myself on the back when it was done. After all, I was the commando.

Now, I was subconsciously hurting. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was undergoing an unhealthy dose of post-traumatic stress, and she could smell it as well as I could. The connection apparently worked both ways, which did nothing but piss me off. I could handle the issue and didn’t need her starting in on some self-help bullshit.

I’d ignored her stare and gotten Kurt on the line through the VPN. I told him what we had and demanded a team.

He said, “I’ve got one moving now. Well, not a full team, but I can get you Knuckles, Decoy, and a new guy named Brett.”

I was surprised to hear he’d alerted anyone at all, but when I heard it was Knuckles and Decoy, I didn’t give a damn about anything else. Those two were worth an entire Taskforce team as far as I was concerned.

I said, “Perfect. What’s the story on the new guy?”

“Just came over from the Special Activities Division. I’m going to swim them in after launching them from Tunis by rotary wing. He was the only other guy who had subsurface infiltration experience. Don’t worry, he’s solid. He’s a former Force Recon guy.”

“Great. A jarhead. No issues here, as long as he knows who’s in charge. Which is something I need to know as well.”

I was a civilian, and Knuckles was still active duty. Technically, he should be in command, but I was the man on the ground who understood the situation.

Kurt smiled and said, “You’re ground force commander. Like you would have it any other way. I’ll let Knuckles know.”

I knew Knuckles wouldn’t care, but would have to make sure this new guy from SAD-which always had a tendency to push things-understood the chain of command.