Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

I received no response. Instead, an SUV jumped the curb from the Corniche road. It raced across the grass, chewing up the perfectly coiffed landscaping, and exploded into the parking lot, reaching a speed of forty miles an hour.

It veered right at the cab, homing in like a laser-guided missile. The cab swerved left to avoid an impact, to no avail. The SUV collided head-on into the rear passenger door, both vehicles grinding to a stop.

Through the rising smoke, I saw Lucas crawl out the far side and drop to the ground. He rose unsteadily, grabbed the briefcase, and began jogging across the parking lot. The SUV door opened, and Jennifer sprang out, moving much faster. She leapt across the hood of the cab, closed the gap to Lucas, and threw herself into his body, hitting him in the backs of his thighs and bringing him to the ground.

Sprinting as fast as I could, I saw Jennifer wrap her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck in a submission hold. I saw Lucas’s arms swinging wildly at the demon on his back, to no avail. Brett reached them first, and I heard him shouting something. He then began to pull Jennifer’s arms away from Lucas’s neck.

I was close enough to see that Lucas was already unconscious, his tongue lolling to the side, eyes half open, and still Jennifer torqued her arms back, bending his neck farther and farther. Brett shouted again, and I realized what was happening.

Jesus. She’s trying to kill him.

The doorknob to the conference room rattled, and we all snapped our heads toward it. Blaine Alexander entered and went from face to face until he saw me.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Me? What the hell for?”

“Don’t know, and you don’t have to do it.”

I thought for a minute. About the costs and the rewards. “Would it help with the interrogation?”

“Yeah. We give him something, now he has to give back. He knows a ton about Hezbollah operations, but he’s playing coy. We’ll get it out of him eventually, but this would make it easier. So far it’s his only demand.”

I looked at Jennifer. She said, “I don’t think you should do it. It’s not worth the price. It’ll eat you alive, and…and you might not be able to hold back.”

“I’m okay with that. I won’t kill him. I’m just not sure I want to hear what that fuck’s got to say.”

Blaine said, “I’ll be there as well. I’ll make sure Pike stays cool.”

“You don’t want to go, I’ll take your place,” Brett said. “Give Mr. Kane a little love.”

Which was a damn sight different from what he was spouting in the SUV headed back to Al Udeid Air Base.

Decoy had rolled into the parking lot as Brett and I were wrestling Jennifer off of Lucas. He’d monitored the radio transmissions and had abandoned the bomb damage assessment to help us apprehend him. Jennifer had fought like a wildcat, but eventually given up. We’d thrown Lucas’s rag doll body into the back and hauled ass out of there.

I’d called Blaine, giving him the situation as I knew it, and telling him we had the diamonds and Lucas. After I’d hung up, I’d given Jennifer a questioning look. Her wild eyes were gone, now filled with what looked like shame.

I said, “What was that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want you to get near him. To be forced to kill him. I was afraid of what it would do to you.”

“So you were going to kill him?”

From the driver’s seat, Knuckles said, “It’s not too late.”

Brett, in the back watching Lucas, said, “Nobody’s going to kill him. Not with me in the vehicle. It’s not what we do.”

Knuckles said, “He’s a DOA target. Doesn’t matter.”

“It sure as shit does matter. It’s dead or alive. We got him alive, and that’s how he’s going to stay.”

Knuckles looked at me, and I said, “Let it go.”

Blaine had managed to set up a no-search entrance onto Al Udeid Air Base using a back gate. From there, we’d taken over a segment of the CIA station on the airfield and were now locked in a conference room until we could fly out. The first thing we’d learned was that the two “State Department” couriers were actually CIA operatives from Brett’s old organization, the Special Activities Division, which had caused him to have a change of heart on the whole DOA thing.

Blaine said, “Nobody’s going to give Mr. Kane any love. He’s a detained asset like any other. Get your emotions out of it.”

He looked at me. “Can you do that?”

“Yeah. I can do it.”

Jennifer reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Don’t talk about your family. Don’t go there.”

I gave her what I hoped was a look of reassurance and left the room with Blaine. To keep my mind off of who I was facing, I asked him where we stood.

“So far, not too bad. The bombing at the Four Seasons has pretty much consumed the entire police force here. We’ve fed them the porter, and he’s now in custody. Odds are he doesn’t know anything, but he makes a pretty good scapegoat, since he worked at the hotel.”

“What about the chase and the wrecked vehicles?”

“Well, luckily you were smart enough to rent them with Knuckles’ ID. That thing’s been no good since Beirut anyway. We’ll pay for the damage through a cutout the ID’s tagged to and burn that company as well. It’s a hole, but given the mess going on with the bombing, and the peace conference, a hit-and-run isn’t going to get a lot of police attention. I’ll be here playing cleanup for a while, but I think we’ll be good. The key is getting your party out of here and on U.S. soil. The sooner the better.”

“When’s that?”

“The bird I came in on is gassed up and ready to go. The trick is working it into the flow without drawing attention. CIA has two aircraft leaving in a couple of hours to Iraq. We’ll insert into their package to confuse the issue, using false tail numbers until we get to Germany.”

We reached a single steel door at the end of the hallway. Blaine said, “You sure about this?”

“Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”

He swung open the door, and I saw the back of a man sitting in a single chair. No other furniture in the room. No pictures on the walls, no windows, the room illuminated with harsh overhead fluorescent lights. The only thing in view besides the man was a digital video camera on a tripod to his front.

I circled and saw they had Lucas flex-tied tightly to the chair. Each wrist and ankle cuffed to the metal arms and legs with a thick plastic zip-tie. The chair itself was bolted down. Looks like we’ve learned a lesson.

Lucas saw me and said, “Well, well. Marshal Dillon finally gets his man.”

“What do you want?”

“Just to talk. That’s it. I’ve missed talking to someone who knows what it’s like. But I want to talk alone. That was the deal. No cameras and nobody else in the room.”

Blaine said, “Tough shit. Here’s Pike. You have five minutes.”

I said, “I’m good with it. I’m okay. I can do this.”

Blaine gave me a hard look, trying to determine if I was a loose cannon or not. I nodded, and he grudgingly left the room. I turned off the camera.

“Okay, Lucas. Here we are. Say whatever it is you have to say.”

“Come on, Pike. Don’t give me any sanctimonious bullshit. You and I are the same. Three years ago, it was almost you in this chair.”

“Three years ago you murdered people all over the country trying to get to me. We are not the same.”

“So what? You kill people all the time. You just think it’s because of some bullshit patriotic reason. I used to be the same way. When I got out of the Navy, I hated the private sector, but after a while, I saw it wasn’t any different. I say I’m doing it for money. You tell yourself you’re doing it for the country. In the end we both do it because we like it.”