Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

“Yeah, yeah, but that’s all water under the bridge. I didn’t get what I wanted, and now we operate within a different framework.”

“That’s what I mean. This is the perfect opportunity to show them you were right. The perfect justification.”

“Well, maybe perfect on the enemy side because of the envoy’s visit, but they’re not going to be keen on turning you loose to dig around. Especially you.”

“What the hell does that mean? Me? I’ve put more terrorists away than anyone-without any compromises.”

Kurt laughed. “Calm down. You just tend to scare people.”

“Bullshit. If they think my operations are scary, they can sit on their hands and see what’s really frightening: a YouTube video of this unknown terrorist standing over the body of a dead American envoy.”

The director of the CIA started the rock-throwing first. “Colonel Hale, do you really expect us to give you a blank check? You brief that you ‘think’ there’s a bad guy in Dubai in addition to Lucas, and you ‘think’ he’s working with Lucas, and that’s enough? I’ve seen no evidence at all to indicate that, either in your brief or through my station assets in UAE.”

This was stupid. No way am I going to win this fight.

He’d called the emergency session right after hanging up with Pike-only the third time he’d ever done so. He knew he had little chance of getting a quorum, but he had hoped the president would override the veto. Unfortunately, the president was unable to break away from a previous engagement.

Before he could respond, the secretary of defense cut in. “Last time we met, you said I knew you and that you never cried wolf. That may have been true a year ago, but lately it seems you do that every few days.”

“Sir, I can’t control the threat. I don’t make this stuff up. It’s real, and it’s in Dubai. I understand the need for vetting so we don’t go off half-cocked. I’m the one that asked the president to create this body for that very reason, but sometimes you need to throw out the rules. I’m not talking about setting a precedent. I’m talking about saving the envoy’s life.”

“Get Lucas, and I think you’ll be doing that. Get him into interrogation, find a new thread, then come back to us to assess whether we want to go Omega again.”

“Sir, the envoy’s going to be in Dubai in less than twenty-four hours. There’s no way we can do that swiftly enough to protect him.”

The D/CIA addressed the secretary of state. “John, what’re your thoughts? It’ll be your mess to clean up if this goes to shit.”

The secretary of state leaned forward. “I talked to McMasters last night, and he’s completely comfortable continuing to Dubai. He said he didn’t even care if we let Lucas run free. He’s sure that the Dubai authorities can protect him, and I tend to agree.”

Kurt said, “With all due respect, I don’t think he’s got the same information we do. He’s not the man that should be making judgments on whether Dubai can protect him. He has no idea how dangerous Lucas is.”

“Not the man to make judgments on Dubai? He spent four years there as the ambassador. If anyone should know, it’s him. Anyway, Dubai’s not Yemen or some other country going through a volcano. They’re wired pretty tight.”

Kurt started to say something else, and the SECSTATE held up his hand. “Look, Lucas I’m still okay with. If there’s any fallout from taking him down, I’m sure we can contain it. I’m not so sure about this unknown. We have no idea who he’s connected with or how it will unravel. I’m not willing to risk it.”

I awoke before dawn, having gotten little sleep. The impending operation against Lucas had run continuously in my mind, with my subconscious trying to assess where the curveballs would come from. When we’d have to flex.

Lucas was no ordinary target. He was a predator at the top of the food chain and deserved respect. He’d come close to killing me a couple of years ago, something that few men could claim. I’d decided to keep the plan simple, assuming risk on compromise instead of risk on him turning the tables on us. It wasn’t the usual way an Omega operation went down, because we ordinarily placed Taskforce exposure above all else, but in this case we were pressed for time, and I could only leverage the few facts we had.

We knew two solid things about him: the make and model of his vehicle, and, thanks to his phone, his bed-down location. Which is where we would take him down.

Not much of a surprise, he was staying in the same hotel as the envoy. I’d sent Brett and Decoy out on a recce, and they said the place was now a fortress, leading me to believe he wouldn’t strike there. He just wanted to get close for surveillance purposes. The hotel gave him a perfect staging point, complete with a parking garage that, as a registered guest, he could use without raising a signature.

The plan was a template we used as an in-extremis solution. A battle drill we called a mugging. Basically, we’d simply hide in the shadows waiting for our prey. When he arrived, we’d thump his ass, giving him a little wood shampoo with some clubs like a couple of muggers from New York. It wasn’t imaginative and was usually used as a last-resort, snap-decision thing when the original plan went to pieces. In this case I liked the simplicity. Fewer things to control, like the variables on Samir’s rescue, so fewer things Lucas could manipulate.

The key to the template was getting him to come to us. I didn’t want to crouch in a corner like a Peeping Tom, only to have him head the other way. In this case, I figured we had an ace in the hole with Jennifer.

Lucas had tried very hard to kill her a couple of years ago and would recognize her on sight. An irresistible lure. She would position in the lobby, with eyes on the elevators. When he appeared, she’d simply get up and walk through his cone of vision. I had no doubt whatsoever that her appearance would cause a reaction.

He’d either beeline to his vehicle or try to follow Jennifer, assuming she had something to do with the envoy’s visit. I was betting on the follow-Jennifer option. He’d want to know what the hell she was doing there, a complete wrench thrown into his operation. He’d want to interrogate her, then plug the holes in whatever plan he had created.

Decoy and Brett would position in the lobby to give early warning of his intentions, since Jennifer couldn’t look behind her. She had to act like she didn’t know he was there. Knuckles and I would take him down.

The choice wasn’t random. We hadn’t drawn straws. Lucas had come close to killing both Knuckles and me and had tortured and killed a friend of ours, along with his entire family. His capture was a little personal, to put it mildly.

I rolled out of bed and turned on my laptop, logging into the hotel’s Internet. Lucas was the twenty-five-meter target, but he wasn’t the endgame. We still had the Saudi to contend with, a threat that would have to be removed as well, like stomping out all the embers in a fire to prevent a flare-up.

I pulled up our encrypted “company” e-mail and saw a message from Kurt. The first part was something I should have expected; especially since Kurt had said me running around loose gave the Oversight Council irritable bowel syndrome.

Blaine and support package on the way. ETA eighteen hours.

LTC Blaine Alexander, the element leader for Omega operations, was a pretty good man. He’d been working Omega for a few years, and we got along fine, although I hadn’t done anything with him since I’d left the Taskforce. He’d probably wonder how I would act, since the last time he’d seen me I was literally a catatonic mess. He was the one who had the job of telling me my wife and daughter had been murdered. The one who brought the stalker to my dreams.