Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

The second part of the message I had to read twice before the words sank in.

No Omega for the Saudi. Lucas only. Work it, then send back status. I’ll re-engage for further operations with what you find out.

I couldn’t believe it, wondering if they got the SITREP about the shaped-charge IED. If they understood the implications of that little device. Whoever made it was imaginative and ruthless. The fact that he hadn’t pinged in any databases until now told me he had been very, very successful. He didn’t wake up with the knowledge of how to create that IED. He’d done it before. Probably many times, and in such a manner that he hadn’t ever come up as a threat. The Council was playing checkers against a man who was a wizard at chess.

And they were betting the envoy’s life on the outcome.

The room’s mounting heat caused the Ghost’s thin veil of sleep to dissipate. He fought it, knowing he needed the rest. He threw off the threadbare sheet in a final attempt, but it did little to help. The seedy hotel had no air-conditioning, and the fan in the room was doing nothing to overcome the swelter of the rising sun.

Yesterday afternoon, after getting across the river on a dhow, he had returned to his friend’s flat and waited to hear the news of the car bomb. After four hours, he’d heard nothing, either on the television or on the streets outside. He’d decided to relocate. He knew that simply because he hadn’t heard anything didn’t mean there wasn’t an explosion, but he was taking no chances. If he had been under surveillance, they probably knew where he’d been sleeping. He’d found a small hotel nearby and urged his friend to move as well for the next forty-eight hours. Hamid had said he’d think about it, then had gone to work, apparently unconcerned, showing the Ghost how little experience he really had.

He padded barefoot to the small sink in the corner of the room and splashed water on his face, then peeked out between the shutters of the window. He could see an alley below him, with various wholesale stores selling dry goods. Nothing appeared to be out of place. No one standing around without a purpose.

He placed the batteries in his final IMSI grabber and turned it on. Within seconds, it began registering dozens of numbers. He shut it off immediately, knowing he’d just disconnected quite a few phone calls. He was pleased that it worked as advertised, but didn’t need any anomalies in the cell system to generate suspicion.

He placed it and the WiFi booster he’d purchased yesterday into his knapsack and glanced at his watch. In two hours the envoy would be landing. If all went well, in five he would be dead.

Getting Jennifer in place inside the lobby of the Al Bustan Rotana turned out to be the easy part. Dressed nicely, she blended in well, drinking coffee at a small table next to an espresso bar that afforded a view of the entrance and both banks of elevators.

Finding a place to conduct the ambush had been damn near impossible. The hotel itself looked more like a high-end prison, with metal detectors on all doors and roving men in suits wearing sunglasses and wired earbuds. This, in addition to the cameras all over the place.

Initially, I had planned for Jennifer to walk to the parking garage, getting inside to some corner that was dark and scary, where we could thump Lucas unimpeded. When we arrived, we saw the garage entrance had been converted into a search-and-quarantine section, with every vehicle getting inspected bumper-to-bumper. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be very pleased with the armament we had brought.

This, coupled with the fact that Lucas’s phone had been stationary outside a spice souk in Deira for the entire morning, had almost caused me to change my mind and simply execute the mugging using the vehicle. Just follow and rip him off the street at the first opportunity.

I really didn’t want to do that given the variables of location and time. I wanted-needed-to control the kill zone, so we kept looking. Eventually, we ended up behind the hotel at a back entrance that led to several attached restaurants. The restaurants were only open for dinner, and the hallway between them ultimately ended up back in the hotel lobby. Even better, the hallway had a single camera at the lobby entrance for the hotel and a single camera at the exit, outside the door. The kicker had been that instead of a metal detector at the exit, it was simply locked. The hotel had decided to shut it down for the duration of the envoy’s visit.

Sitting next to me in the van, staring at his Taskforce smartphone, Knuckles said, “Target’s on the move.” I looked at my own phone, brought over in the support package Jennifer had received, and saw Lucas was crossing the Dubai Creek and headed to us. Or the airport.

Moment of truth.

The envoy’s party was due to land in about thirty minutes. If Lucas bypassed the hotel and made any indication that he was headed to the airport, we would be forced to take him down with the vehicle whether we liked it or not. I was betting he wouldn’t, though. He’d had the time to come up with something ingenious, and with the Saudi unknown helping him, I didn’t think he’d do some ghetto drive-by. He’d want to get away clean.

I keyed the push-to-talk on my radio. “Everyone set?”

Brett said, “Roger. I got the line of sight down the hallway.”

Decoy said, “Yeah. I got the front door and the roundabout outside.”

Jennifer said, “I’m still good. No change.”

“Remember,” I said, “he doesn’t bite on the way in, we recock and try again on the way out.”

Knuckles did a functions check on the new EMP gun we’d received in the drop, making sure it was ready to take out the camera above the door. I busied myself with my electric lockpick gun, mentally rehearsing in my mind the sequence I would go through.

Our part of the mission was the one big risk to discovery. I had to get the door open before Jennifer reached it, which meant Knuckles would have to kill the camera before Lucas committed to the trap. If he didn’t, we’d have to cross our fingers that someone wouldn’t come out and investigate why the camera wasn’t working while we waited on round two.

Knuckles said, “He’s made the turn on the road to the hotel.”

I felt the adrenaline rise, knowing we were about two minutes out. Knuckles shut off the phone, slid open the door to the van, and said, “Decoy, your target.”

“Roger.”

Decoy was the trigger. The minute he saw Lucas, we’d be in motion.

Sooner than expected, I heard, “Target at entrance. Held up with security. They’re searching his backpack.”

That was one good thing about this location. We’d know positively that Lucas had no firearms. Knuckles handed me his radio and cell phone, then exited the vehicle, me right behind him. We slid down the wall of the hotel, doing whatever we could to stay out of the camera’s field of view.

He reached within forty feet of the ball hanging above the door and began sighting. I backed up a few yards to prevent any backsplash from destroying our electronics. Especially my lock gun.

The EMP hummed and Knuckles said, “Go.”

I raced to the lock, taking a knee and sliding in the thin needle. I inserted the tension wrench, then began pulsing the lock gun. It rattled like crazy, much louder than I remembered.

Decoy said, “Target’s passed. Jennifer, your show.”

I continued to work the lock and told Decoy to give me a play-by-play. Jennifer had done a timing run, and I knew the hallway was two minutes from the lobby to the door. Unfortunately, the last bend, right in front of a Chinese restaurant, was only one minute and thirty seconds away. From it someone would have a view of the door and me behind it through the plate glass.