Halon-Seven (16 page)

As they approached Ahmed’s home, Cyrus’s eyes scanned the surrounding area for signs of observation or ambush. They passed a few cars parked along the street. Each of the cars had dew on its roof and windows, a clear sign that they’d been stationary throughout the night. The morning sun was not yet in a position to burn away the moisture. She could tell Cyrus was eyeing the passenger compartments of each car as they went, but if she weren’t watching his mannerisms closely, she would’ve missed his attention. It was striking how he could appear so at ease while remaining so on edge.

He stopped. She realized he was looking at three cigarette butts lying spent and extinguished in the street. He only gave them a moment’s consideration before moving on. She wanted to ask what he was thinking, but they were approaching Ahmed’s yard and the opportunity was lost.

Without pause, Cyrus stepped off the sidewalk and into Ahmed’s front lawn. As he went, he snatched up the morning newspaper from where it lay, having been delivered before dawn. He pulled the paper from its plastic bag, wadded the bag up, and stuffed it in his back pocket. Without missing a stride, they mounted the short set of stairs leading to the front door.

Very briefly, Cyrus showed Reese where to stand, just off to the side of the door’s frame. Casual and unassuming, but out of the line of fire in the event someone started shooting from the other side of the door. He quickly pulled his gun and slid it under the folded morning paper.

It was staggering how matter-of-factly he’d facilitated all of this. It hadn’t required any planning on his part. He just knew what to do.

—————

Cyrus pressed the
doorbell button and double checked Reese’s position. She was at the corner of the door. It was the best possible position, should someone opened fire from the other side. It seemed unlikely, but he’d seen it happen. They heard the bell ring on the opposite side of the door, but they couldn’t hear anything more. Just when he was about to ring the bell for a second time, approaching footsteps became audible.

The door opened, and a small, dark skinned man stood before them. He was dressed in pajama pants, a wrinkled white t-shirt, and a pair of crooked glasses. “Alfie!” Reese exclaimed, putting Cyrus at easy. “Are you alright?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Cyrus double-checked the street. They were still clear.

“Of course, I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be?” Alfie Ahmed spoke with a mild British accent. He was a slight man, no more than 5’ 9” at most, and maybe 130 pounds, if Cyrus was generous. The man had tangled, dark, curly hair and olive skin.

“You haven’t answered your mobile,” Reese explained. “I sent an emergency message this morning. You’re the only one who didn’t respond.”

Ahmed looked at Cyrus as if noticing him for the first time. He patted the pockets of his robe as he searched for his phone. “Let me find it. Please, come in.”

Cyrus cast a weary eye into the dimly lit interior of the single story house. All the shades must’ve been drawn. It was dark, given the time of day. He stepped through the door first with his gun leveled beneath the fold of the newspaper. Reese cast him an apprising glance, but said nothing. She followed him through the door.

Cyrus had been correct. Throughout the house, blinds were drawn. The house consisted of an open floor plan, so the entryway, kitchen, living room, and small dining room were all visible from where he stood. He could hear Ahmed muttering to himself as he moved from room to room in the back of the house, presumably looking for his phone.

Other than the shades being drawn, there was nothing unusual or off-putting. The furnishings were sparse. The living room had only a large ratty couch and a threadbare La-Z-Boy recliner. Both were parked before a massive flat-screen television. The television had no receiver or DVD player. Only an Xbox One game console. Judging by the array of snack food wrappers spread between the couch and the TV, Ahmed had recently been on a gaming binge. It would explain the drawn shades and his somewhat nonplused manner. He had likely been up all night.

Ahmed returned from the back bedroom holding up his smartphone. “Battery’s dead. I’m sorry to put you through the trouble of coming out here.” He thought for a moment, as if hearing what Reese said for the first time. “You said there is an emergency?”

“Yes! Please get dressed,” she said with some impatience. “Something’s happened. I’ll fill you in when we meet with the rest of the group.”

“I don’t understand.” He looked at Cyrus suspiciously. “Who is this?”

“Later! Get dressed! We have to go. The others will be waiting, and we don’t have time to waste.”

“Please, calm down. I’ll just change my clothes. Why are you acting like this? We can be back in the office in seconds!”

Reese took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Cyrus could tell that the thought of her team being in danger had started to erode her patience. “I’m sorry, Alfie. You didn’t get my text. I sent a code 1412. We won’t be using the platforms. We’re meeting at a fallback location, and we must get there quickly.”

Judging by the mention of the code 1412 and the wrinkles it produced on Ahmed’s forehead, the man finally had a glimpse of the situation’s gravity.

“What’s happened?
And who is this man?
”

Reese only responded by glaring at the young man. The wrinkles returned to his forehead. Finally, he turned and hurried down the hall. Clearly Reese was accustomed to dealing with such idiosyncrasies.

“He’s a good lab tech,” she said to Cyrus, as if reading his mind. “He’s just young. And now I think he’s more than a little frightened.”

“What exactly does a code 1412 entail?” He tossed the newspaper on the kitchen counter and holstered his gun.

“Professor Meade had an entire binder full of these codes. He required the team to memorize them. Some of the information was rather verbose. But the gist of 1412 was to drop what you’re doing and get your ass to a specific, secure location. In this case, it’s a building to the south, along the coast. We can’t tell anyone where we’re going, and we don’t bring anyone or anything with us. We just drop everything and go. Until now, I had no idea why he’d devised such severe contingencies.”

Cyrus understood why. He also knew that the fallback location would be someplace safe that had no ties to the project or any of its members. It would be a safe house that Meade set up long ago. Such procedures were not uncommon in espionage circles. And from what Cyrus was learning about this project, Meade had more than a little cause to be paranoid.

Ahmed returned wearing a fresh set of clothes. His hair was still disheveled. At least he finally understood the urgency of the situation. They all filed out the front door, Ahmed locking it behind them.

Reese told Ahmed they were parked further up the street and instructed him to meet them at the fallback location. Cyrus and Reese crossed the yard and started up the street, while Ahmed headed for his truck.

When Cyrus reached the spot at the curb with the three extinguished cigarette butts, he stopped cold. He turned around and watched Ahmed step up to the side of his truck. The man tapped the button on his key fob and the car alarm chirped as it disarmed.

“Whoa!” Cyrus bellowed and started running toward Alfie Ahmed. “Alfie! Don’t touch the truck!”

Though Ahmed looked up at Cyrus with a slack-jawed expression, at least he stopped short of grabbing the door handle. As Cyrus came around the truck, Ahmed seemed to realize something was wrong. He stepped away from the vehicle with a confused expression on his face.

Reese rounded the truck as Cyrus started making a circuit of the vehicle, looking carefully through each of the windows. “What do you see?” she asked.

“Nothing yet. It’s just a bad feeling.” He had completed a trip around the truck but found nothing out of the ordinary. Ahmed was standing about ten feet away, watching the exercise with an expression one might have after finding a dead bug in their salad.

Cyrus slid out of his jacket and pulled his gun, holster and all, from the back of his waistband. He wrapped the gun in the jacket and handed it to Reese. At the sight of the gun, Ahmed’s expression became more extreme. Cyrus ignored him. He didn’t have time to coddle the kid. Alfie did seem a rather dramatic lilting flower.
Thank God, Reese has more fortitude.
She was holding up remarkably well, given the strain of the circumstances.

Dropping to the ground and rolling onto his back, Cyrus slid under the front of the Toyota. It was dark. He pulled out his phone and launched the flashlight app. It wasn’t as good as a real flashlight, but it brought the vehicle’s undercarriage into crisp detail. Moving slowly around the underbody, he found the leads snaking up to the battery. While the underbody was filthy with dirt and grime, two clean wires were spliced into the truck’s
 
electrical system. It was not a good sign.

He followed the new wires back toward the passenger compartment, where he found what he feared. A rather sizable wad of plastic explosive was jammed up between the firewall and the engine block. The wires led right to the bomb’s ignition cap.

Shit.

This meant Reese wasn’t the only target. The rest of the team was in danger as well.

Cyrus reached up and carefully removed the pencil-like, short, metal stub that was stuck into the plastic explosive. That was the detonator. He took care not to touch the metal with his fingers. Not because it could cause detonation, but because there was a chance of pulling fingerprints from it. Once the detonator was out, he jerked the wires free of the splice that linked them to the electrical system. The bomb now disarmed, he reached up and pulled the wad of explosive free from the frame of the vehicle and crawled out from under the truck.

Cyrus held up the explosive in one hand and the wire and detonator in the other. Reese’s eyes went wide. The little bit of pink to her normally pale complexion drained away. Ahmed faired less gracefully. He looked like he was going to be sick. It took only seconds for his face to transition to a horrible gray pallor. His eyes were wide, and he’d lost the ability to blink. He dropped to his knees and wretched into the grass.

Reese finally found her voice. “Is that what I think it is?”

Cyrus only nodded. He was holding the wad of plastic explosive up in the sunshine. It was a malformed wad. Once in the shape of a block, someone had squished it into a misshapen mound to better stick to the truck’s undercarriage. And, as he’d hoped, there were fingerprints evident in the surface of the pliable clay material. It was odd that they were dealing with someone with the skills to set a bomb but not intelligent enough to avoid leaving trace evidence behind. It wasn’t very professional. That was the part that confused him most. Maybe it would make more sense once the fingerprints were run.

But first things first. They needed to meet with the rest of the team and get everyone into protective custody. Cyrus looked at Ahmed who was still horking in the grass. The guy was on his hands and knees, trembling.

“Maybe you better ride with us, Alfie,” Cyrus suggested. “Come on. We’ll get you something to drink on the way. Maybe some breath mints, too.” After the words came out, he realized they were his first to the kid since they met. Until now Reese had done the talking. He decided that the words could be construed as insensitive. It was not what he’d intended. “It’s okay, Alfie. The first time someone tries to blow you up is the hardest.” He waited a beat. “It gets easier.”

Alfie stopped where he was, on his hands and knees in the grass. He sat back on his haunches and looked at Cyrus. His expression read as if he were trying to decide whether Cyrus was from another planet or not. Then, after several long beats, Alfie’s face turned into a small smile for the first time. The small smile spread into a broad grin, as the absurdity of the situation and Cyrus’s comment sank in. “Maybe some gum would be good,” was all he managed to say. But he climbed wearily to his feet and followed Cyrus and Reese back to their car.

Payton Street, Santa Barbara, California

Wednesday, 8:08 am (9:08 am Colorado Time)

One of the operatives walked across the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. He looked at Dargo and raised the pot, in question. Dargo simply shook his head and glanced down at his half-empty styrofoam cup. Surveillance locations changed, it was the shitty coffee that remained constant. It didn’t matter what continent or what country, the coffee was always terrible. He wondered how many cups of the swill he’d swallowed over the decades. As the younger operative walked back across the room and sat down at the surveillance station, Dargo wondered how many similar young soldiers he’d worked with in that same time. It was not lost on him that there were few he encountered on follow-up missions. This was not a profession that allowed many to grow to old age.

At the age of fifty-eight, in this game, Dargo was considered an old man. These days he felt it, too. Though, to be fair, it wasn’t the years so much as the mileage. But for his part, Dargo had suffered the mileage far better the most. He was still strong and healthy. He still towered over many of the younger men he commanded. Six foot six, he still tipped the scales at two-twenty. And while youth was a valued resource when recruiting foot soldiers, his services had only come into greater demand as of late. Soldiers were in ready supply. Experienced operators—men who knew the right and wrong times to pull the trigger—were in increasingly short supply.

All the same, Dargo sensed his time in the game was running short. His enthusiasm for the profession was not what it had once been. But, if he were honest with himself, that was only part of his malaise. Sure, these thoughts had been on his mind for some time. But last night’s revelation that Cyrus Cooper was part of his current mission had put things into a new perspective. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the kid’s involvement. He still couldn’t decide whether he wanted to crush the kid’s windpipe or warn him of the impending danger. Complex feelings had never been a part of the job, and Dargo felt equally compelled toward both options.