Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

Kurt knew the president was talking about the taste of American greenbacks he was providing to the Palestinian Authority. A carrot of money that would invariably be asked to grow, with a commensurate increase in the size of the stick behind it. He had been ambivalent before, but now was grateful for the president’s decision, as it would be the deciding vote.

The secretary of defense leaned back with a resigned expression, coming to the same conclusion. “You can give assurances that they can get in and out without compromise?”

“Sir, you know I can’t give absolutes, but they’ve done pretty good so far.”

“Yeah, right. I’ve seen a few operations run by Pike go down. What’s he doing right now? Shooting out streetlights for fun?”

Kurt smiled, knowing he had won. “No, sir. He completely understands the importance of this meeting. He’s been given direct orders to stand down from anything until the Council has decided. He’s just soaking up the Beirut sun right now.”

Peeking through the small gap in the curtain behind the front seats of the van, I could see Samir inside his car three rows over, nervously fidgeting and glancing at his watch. Probably wondering if he’d made the right choice. I knew how he felt, because our plan had about a hundred different opportunities for going sideways.

Immediately after talking to Samir in the house, I’d held a war council of our own, and the team had decided that getting his niece back was the right thing to do. At first, the idea seemed suicidal, because not only did the six of us have to find the niece, but also assault what was sure to be a stronghold. The only way we could see doing it successfully was to force them to come to us, then attack them while on the move. Something that was much easier said than done.

Hollywood notwithstanding, a vehicle interdiction is one of the hardest operations to successfully accomplish. By its very nature, the purpose was to stop the vehicle without harming those inside. If that wasn’t the case, a simple anti-tank rocket could be used, destroying the vehicle and killing everyone aboard. The problem with a surgical interdiction was that while the team was focused on stopping the vehicle, the occupants would be focused on the team, and they usually had a very strong desire to evade capture, along with weapons they had no compunction about using. About fifty percent of the time, the operation ended in an assault anyway, with the targets getting injured in some way or another.

The difficulty was compounded here by the fact that we could in no way allow this to end in a gunfight. I couldn’t be responsible for starting a shooting war between Hezbollah and the Druze. We needed to stop the vehicle and close on the men before they had a chance to react, which posed significant challenges. It was Decoy who’d come up with the idea of popping a tire with a suppressed sniper shot.

At a distance of two or three hundred meters away we could potentially disable the vehicle without the occupants knowing what had happened. The suppressor would muffle the sound of the gunshot, and while the bullet would still break the sound barrier with an audible crack, the noise was omnidirectional and would be camouflaged by the exploding tire. From there, a van driven by a Druze friend of Samir’s, with Jennifer in the passenger seat dressed in her stylish black sack, would pull over to help. Once they were engaged in conversation, we’d come boiling out of the van.

That was the plan, anyway.

I saw a sedan with two men approach and said, “Get ready.” The vehicle continued on, then exited the parking lot.

Brett said, “Jesus. Where are those guys?”

The time for the meeting with Hezbollah had come and gone, and we were all getting a little antsy. You always had in your mind’s eye exactly how a plan would go down, but we were attempting to take out thinking human beings with a penchant for survival, and make no mistake, they had their own ideas of what would happen.

Decoy said, “You think they’ve got eyes on Samir right now?”

Meaning, have they already scoped us out and were we now about to be on the receiving end of their own brilliant plan.

“I don’t know. Let’s give it a few more minutes, then break out. If they don’t show, we’ll have Samir call them from his house.”

I keyed my radio. “Knuckles, you still good?”

“Yeah. It’s getting hot as hell, but it won’t affect my shot.”

While I was most assuredly the better sniper, I’d given the task to Knuckles, wanting to be on the assault to contain whatever curveballs came our way. Of course, he’d say my assessment was most assuredly incorrect, and truthfully, he might be right. Although I would never tell him that.

Samir had come up with a beat-up Dragunov SVD, and Knuckles had test-fired it in the mountains behind Samir’s house. He’d come back and said that it held a little under two minutes of angle in accuracy, meaning he could put a round just inside a two-inch circle at a hundred meters, and it would work for the operation.

The only thing that had remained was finding a place for the exchange of Samir and his niece, then the follow-on ambush. After some searching, we’d decided on the Beirut airport parking lot. The area had enough security to prevent the Hezbollah thugs from trying anything right off the bat, allowing the niece to get in Samir’s car and get away, and was close enough to Hezbollah-land that they’d feel secure. It was only a half mile from the airport to the heart of their territory.

A half mile was all we had to play with. Not a whole lot of time for me to relay the description of the vehicle to Knuckles, then have him take it down from the roof of the warehouse he was lying on.

Brett said, “You still want to parlay with them?”

“Yeah. We might get something more than just rescuing Samir and his niece. Something we can use to track Lucas.”

The end-state of the operation had been the biggest bone of contention, with most of the team wanting to chalk up a win once we had Samir and his niece freed. I thought that was just postponing the problem for Samir. In order to truly get him free, we needed to convince Hezbollah that he had nothing to do with the murder of their leadership, and I was fairly sure the tape we had of Lucas killing the Hezbollah courier would accomplish the goal-if I could get them to watch it. Best case, they lay off Samir, a civil war would be averted, and they’d give us some thread we could use to find Lucas.

Jennifer said, “White four-door sedan approaching with three men and a woman. Moving way too slow.”

It took a moment, but the vehicle eventually came into my little sliver of view, stopping in front of Samir’s sedan. Something verbal was exchanged, and Samir slowly raised his hands. The men exited, one holding a woman. Samir followed suit, and the woman was released, running to him. He placed his arms around her and whispered something in her ear. Only after she was safely in his car did he walk toward the men, his arms outstretched. He was roughly searched and thrown into the backseat.

“Showtime.” I said.

Knuckles heard the call and settled in behind his weapon, staring unfocused at the rooftop to rest his eyes while waiting on the description of the vehicle. After it came, he said, “Anything unique? Any identifying characteristics?”

“Yeah,” Pike said. “Front right quarter panel is dark blue or black. It’s a replacement and stands out. We’re going to roll in five. You ready?”

“Roger. I got the ball.”

Knuckles raised his head to the scope, focusing on the exit from the airport. He’d meticulously constructed his nest to allow the weapon to rest on its own, naturally aiming into the kill zone. He wanted to take out as much human error as possible, leaving the weapon alone to work within its capabilities. Any twitch of muscle, any forcing of aim he worked to diminish. Even his heartbeat. The Dragunov wasn’t the most accurate rifle to begin with, and he couldn’t afford to miss by compounding the built-in error.