Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

“Jennifer’s up and looking sexy, giving Lucas an eyeful. Come on, baby, show him some skin.”

Asshole. I grinned in spite of the seriousness of what we were doing. Decoy was busting my balls because of a fight we’d had last year in a similar situation involving Jennifer. He’d made some inappropriate comments, and I’d about taken his head off. Now, he was poking me in the eye for the fun of it.

“Okay, Lucas has lock-on, and he definitely recognized her. He stopped for a second. He’s now staring at her back, but headed to the elevator. Target unsighted. Brett, it’s your ball.”

Shit. Come on. Follow her.

Brett said, “I got him. He’s at the elevator. Jennifer’s about fifty feet from the hallway. He’s still looking.”

I continued working the lock, having trouble getting the pins to the shear line. One seated, then another, but slower than my rehearsal earlier in the van.

“Bingo. He’s coming her way, walking fast. Jennifer, pick it up or he’s going to catch you.”

I heard Jennifer acknowledge, and I started to sweat. “Time?” I asked Knuckles.

Knuckles said, “Easy. You still got over a minute. Slow and smooth.”

I felt another pin reach the shear line, realizing I was going to make it with half a minute to spare. The next call popped that illusion.

“Shit, he just started running. Jennifer, get moving! He’s not going to follow. He’s coming hard to take you out. Jennifer, you copy?”

I heard silence for a second, then, “Target unsighted. I say again, target unsighted.”

I looked through the window, but saw nothing. At a sprint my time went from a minute and a half to about twenty seconds. I returned to the lock, the tension wrench having moved about forty-five degrees, which meant I had about two or three pins to go.

I seated another pin and heard Knuckles say in a monotone, “Got her in sight. You’re out of time.” I looked up to see Lucas right behind her, bearing down like a bull in full charge, both running flat out. Jennifer caught my eye, and I shook my head left and right in an exaggerated motion.

She glanced over her shoulder and Lucas struck, attempting to wrap his arms around her in a full-body tackle. She rotated and drove her foot straight into his stomach, his forward momentum increasing the power of the strike.

I heard his grunt and exhale of breath all the way outside as I frantically stroked the remaining pin.

“Come on, Pike!” Knuckles shouted. “He’s getting back up!”

Jennifer was in a fighting crouch, dancing out of his way, slowly using up her remaining space to the door, attempting to give me time.

He swung a roundhouse at her head, hard enough to knock her out completely. She parried and redirected the energy away from her, then slipped inside his reach and gave him a palm strike to his nose, snapping her hip and driving her body behind it. His head popped back like he’d run into an unseen pole, and she danced back out of his reach. I could see the look of shock on his face, her skill completely taking him by surprise.

He bellowed and rushed, wrapping her in a bear hug and trapping her arms. He slammed her full-force into a wall, and the last pin broke free.

I ripped open the door, Knuckles flying through and running straight at the pair. Lucas heard the movement and turned, still holding Jennifer. Knuckles hit him full-force on the side of his head with a closed fist, rattling him enough to lose control of Jennifer. She rotated out and kicked him hard in the genitals. He shrieked and fell to his knees, attempting to control the pain and continue to fight. He started to rise, and Knuckles gave him an uppercut to his face, knocking him back into me. I put him in a rear naked choke, and in ten seconds his arms quit windmilling. He was out.

Panting, I said, “What the hell happened to using the Taser?”

“I didn’t have a clean shot with him holding Jennifer. And he deserved a little punishment.”

“Jennifer, you all right?”

Leaning against a wall and breathing heavy, she said, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Staring down at Lucas’s battered face, I radioed Brett in the follow car. “Any activity?”

“None. We’re clean so far.”

I’d left him and Decoy within sight of the rear door to give me a feel on whether we’d been compromised or not, while Knuckles, Jennifer, and I had tossed Lucas in our van and driven a couple of alleys away from the hotel, giving Blaine in our makeshift hotel tactical operations center a SITREP. Satisfied we were good to go, I addressed Lucas for the first time.

“Been a while. I’ll bet seeing me walking around was a big fucking surprise.”

He said nothing, his face a blank canvas showing neither fear nor anger.

“Look, I appreciate how tough you are, so I’m not going to go through a bunch of threats. Here’s the deal: The United States Middle East envoy is landing in minutes. I can afford to talk right now, but once that envoy hits the ground, I’ll be out of time. I know you’re out to kill him, I just don’t know how. Tell me that and you’ll spare yourself some pain later, I promise.”

I expected all sorts of stalling tactics. What I got completely surprised me.

Looking relieved, he said, “Pike, I’m on your side. That’s what I’m doing here. I know there’s a hit planned on the envoy, but it’s not me. It’s another guy from Lebanon called the Ghost. He’s the one targeting the envoy. I’m trying to stop him.”

Surprised or no, I lightly slapped his face twice, saying, “Cut the crap. What’s the plan? The clock’s ticking and I’d rather not destroy the envoy’s itinerary by putting him back on a plane.”

Which, of course, was a lie. I had no control over McMasters’s activities, but I didn’t want Lucas to know that.

“I have no idea. That’s the truth. I was tracking the assassin, but I haven’t been able to figure out what he’s up to. I have a bed-down site I was using as an anchor, but he didn’t sleep there last night. Or if he did, he found another way out of the souk. If you guys can stop him, so much the better.”

He saw me starting to get pissed and said, “Look, I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’ll tell you everything I know. I work for pay, but I don’t kill U.S. government officials. I have my limits, and that’s one. Up until a few days ago I was working for a group in Lebanon. I found out about this hit and we parted ways. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to track this guy down. He went to Yemen, then came here.”

Despite myself, I found his words credible. I could confirm everything he had just said, to include the slaughter of the Hezbollah guys.

Bullshit. This guy’s nothing but snake oil.

“Why the hell did you try to blow me up then? In Lebanon with that computer bomb? If you were so fired up about protecting the envoy, you had to know I was doing the same thing.”

“Blow you up? I didn’t even know you were in Lebanon! I gave an IED to a Hezbollah contact. They thought it was a camera to record a planning meeting about this hit, but I intended for it to kill the assassin. Somehow it missed, and he’s still running around loose.”

I took that in and said, “So I suppose you thought Jennifer was part of the assassin’s master plan as well? That why you were about to kick her ass?”

“I wasn’t going to hurt her. I recognized her and was trying to make contact. I was just going to talk to her. Yeah, I had to subdue her to do it because I know you guys want to kill me. It wasn’t like I trusted her for a nice sit-down conversation. I’ll admit I was going to prevent her from getting me in the crosshairs, but if I’d have hurt her, I wouldn’t have been able to get any help on protecting the envoy. Shit, she’s the one who kicked me first.”