Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

I leaned forward, trying to identify if it was my imagination or real. He kept going, but it wasn’t a trick of my deja vu. Some small piece of metal was sticking out from underneath his car.

I hit redial, and it went straight to voice mail. Shit. I dialed Brett. When he answered, he was whispering.

“Pike, I can’t talk. Lucas is moving my way.”

“Fuck him. Dial Knuckles right now. Tell him to stop his car. Now .”

“What?”

My phone buzzed with an incoming call from Knuckles. I hung up on Brett without another word and switched over.

“Knuckles, stop your car. Get out of your car. I think it’s rigged with something.”

“Huh?”

“Get the hell out of your car!”

“Okay. Next intersection I’ll pull into an alley. I can’t stop on this road.”

“No! Get out now! It might be an IED.”

“Jesus Christ! I thought you meant a beacon.”

I heard a car door slam, then the sounds of him breathing as he moved away.

“I’m in an alley now. Vehicle’s shut down. I’m out. Now tell me what the fuck’s going on.”

I told him about the left rear quarter panel, leaving out the premonition that had made me look. He’d think I was nuts. While he checked it out, I called Decoy.

“You near your car?”

“No.”

“When you get to it, do a thorough scrub for IEDs. Knuckles has something he’s checking out now. Whatever you do, don’t just get in and crank it up.”

My other line buzzed with Brett.

“What’s up?”

“Lucas is on the move and I can’t stick with him. My heat state’s getting bad.”

“Forget him. Let him go. Link up with Decoy, but don’t start the car.”

“Why?”

“He’ll let you know. Lucas may have set us up.”

I hung up, thinking of the implications of an IED placed on Knuckles’ car. If it was real, then this whole day had been a charade. We thought we were the predators, when we’d been the prey. And Lucas had much more help than a simple driver. I prayed it was just my overactive imagination, with the biggest cost being me getting reamed at the after-action review and owing a case of beer for stopping the operation.

Knuckles called, and I found out I wouldn’t be driving all over Dubai searching for alcohol.

“It was an improvised shaped charge. Pretty ingenious. Most of it is homemade parts, but the detonator’s pretty damn sophisticated. No anti-tampering on it, though. A couple of snips, and it was rendered safe.”

“You got a plastic bag or something you can put it in?”

“Yeah, why?”

“We should have a biometrics kit in the equipment bundle. I want to print it and see if it’s Lucas who built the thing.”

“And?”

“And if it is, I’m done pussyfooting around. I’m putting a bullet in his head.”

Decoy looked over my shoulder at the computer screen and said, “Who the hell is that guy?”

“I have no idea.”

It had taken about an hour, but eventually we’d determined that all cars were clean, with me scrubbing mine just to be on the safe side. On my command, we’d let Lucas go, intending to find his bed-down site through his phone. After coming back to the hotel and helping Jennifer smuggle in the kit, we’d printed the funnel, sending everything we could back to the Taskforce. There ended up being four sets of fingerprints: two complete unknowns, Knuckles, and this guy, who had pinged in the database.

I unmuted the VOIP, with the entire team hovering around me. “Okay, one of you fifty-pound heads tell me what this is. Give me his history. Is he Hezbollah or what?”

“Well…uhhh…he’s a complete mystery. He came up in a BATTS sweep in Yemen three days ago. He was in an AQAP torture house getting brutalized, along with fourteen or fifteen other guys. The house was hit by an American-trained CT force looking for Khalid al-Asiri. It was a dry hole, and they scanned him just as routine SOP. He wasn’t the target, and he didn’t pop after the scan as anyone of interest.”

“Is he Yemeni? Or Lebanese?”

“Saudi. And we ran an airline data search. Nobody by this name and nationality has left Yemen since the hit.”

Saudi? What in the hell is going on?

“Any chance of a mistake?”

“Zero.”

I glanced at my Timex and saw it was closing in on four P.M. So it would be almost seven A.M. there. Kurt would be working out right now, and I needed some guidance before I did something that caused serious heartburn.

“Go to the gym and find Colonel Hale. I need to speak to him ASAP.”

I heard nothing but silence. I switched windows on the computer, hiding the picture of the Saudi and bringing up the camera. I saw two analysts looking at each other, neither of whom I recognized. New hires since I had left operational status.

“What are you doing? Did you hear me?”

One said, “Yes, but the section chief told us we had to go through him before seeing Colonel Hale. We aren’t allowed to hit up the boss directly.”

Behind me, Decoy said, “Who hired that ass-clown?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but he’s working on a short career.”

I knew Kurt very well, and there was no way he would want to be cut out of the loop like that. Filters were fine, and even necessary, but a blanket edict was stupid. That’s how bad things slip through the cracks, because decision makers don’t have the information they needed.

“One of you go to the damn section chief and the other one get Colonel Hale.”

“He’s not at work yet. He’ll be here in a couple of hours. Eight thirty, along with the dayshift guys.”

“Look, I know that most of your stuff is slow-burn, but I have a crisis going on. I realize I’m far away from you right now, but I’m a much bigger threat than your stupid-ass section sergeant. Now go get Colonel Hale or I’m going to rip off your fucking head.”

The threat of violence seemed to do the trick. One of them scurried off while the other looked sick. I blacked the camera and microphone on our side, grinning at the results. I turned around and saw everyone else grinning too. Until I got to Jennifer. She was scowling at me, shaking her head.

“What? Come on. That was a little bit funny, wasn’t it?”

“Nobody likes a bully, Pike.”

That comment hurt a little bit, because I really did get along great with all the support folks. I just didn’t like little Napoleons preventing me from doing my job. I started to say something back to her when the computer squawked.

“Pike, you there?”

I saw Kurt and opened the mike and camera.

“Yes, sir. And I have a little issue I need some guidance on.”

“Yeah, I got the rundown from the analysts. So you think Lucas has a posse over there?”

“What else could it be? And not an amateur one either. That IED was well constructed. He’s had training.”

“What do you want to do?”

“It’s not what I want, it’s more what you’ll let me do. I’ve got Omega authority for Lucas, but I’m not sure he’s the primary threat. He could just be the handler, and taking him out only cuts the leash on this Saudi guy.”

“So you want Omega for an unknown? A target we can’t identify? I agree on the threat, but I don’t think that’ll fly. The Oversight Council will see right through this request to the next one, worried about the precedent.”

“Yeah, that’s my point. I hope they do. Remember when we set up the Taskforce? Your initial take was for a primary target and the authority to flex to a secondary target on any perishable intel we got from the first hit. That thought was right then, and it’s right now. No telling how many unknown bad guys Knuckles could have rolled up once he had Crusty, but he had to send all that bullshit back to the rear, then go through this huge vetting process. It’s not the best way to run a railroad. Especially after you’ve put all the time and effort into developing the cover to get in-country.”