One Rough Man (6 page)

It was already past one, and she still hadn’t picked up Angie’s birthday cake at the supermarket. Before she did, though, she needed to go to Tim’s to pick up the piñata. She had asked him to help with the birthday party when she found out Pike wouldn’t be home, and he’d readily agreed. She had an ulterior motive for the favor: She intended to convince Tim to put some pressure on Pike to retire. Or at least find a less dangerous job. She wasn’t even sure what it was that Pike did, but it had to be worse than the SMU, and that was bad enough. While not best friends, Pike and Tim got along well, and Tim was the only one with any experiences like Pike’s. The only one Pike would listen to. In her heart, she secretly hoped Tim would offer him a job at his consulting company.

She hadn’t told Angie about the piñata, but like children everywhere, Angie had picked up that there were secrets afoot and was sitting expectantly in the backseat. She rounded the corner to Tim’s house and parked on the street. She recognized Tim’s Blazer in the driveway, but not the two unfamiliar sedans behind it.

Angie asked, “Whose cars are those?”

Heather had no idea, and hoped she wasn’t interrupting a meeting Tim had scheduled.

“I don’t know. Probably salespeople.”

Before Heather could stop her, Angie jumped out, racing to the back door, shouting, “Maybe it’s Daddy!’

“Angie! Wait!”

Heather felt a pang of guilt. In keeping the piñata secret she had hoped to lesson the blow of her father’s absence. Now it appeared she had only exacerbated it, as Angie had surmised her father was the surprise. Rehearsing what she would say as she walked up the driveway, she saw that the back door was open, with shards of glass on the ground. She heard Angie shriek and felt adrenaline fire into her body.

Heather’s eyes dilated and her muscles became engorged with blood in a fight-or-flight response. She chose to fight, running into the kitchen through the back door. She saw a large man holding Angie by the hair twenty feet away.

Without conscious thought, Heather snatched a paring knife from a block on the counter and charged the man with a primal scream. She registered him flinging Angie away like a rag doll as he prepared to defend himself. Before she reached him she was knocked to the ground from behind, disarmed, and jerked to her feet. She noticed blood all over the room. Great washes of it, as if someone had slopped a bucket haphazardly about. Looking for the source, she saw Tim lying on the floor, wicked gashes all over his body, his intestines slopping out from a hole in his stomach. She felt faint, unable to assimilate the slaughter.

The man holding her said, “What the fuck are we going to do now?”

“Well, we can’t take them with us.”

She faced the voice and saw a handsome blond-haired man, his hands covered in blood up to his elbows. His eyes were purple and flat. Dead. Unbidden, a memory of her childhood dog came to mind—a large husky that had been hit and killed by a car. When Heather had found him, his lifeless eyes looked like those of the man in front of her.

The man restraining her said, “Whoa, Lucas, I didn’t sign on for killing a woman and a kid. They’re not on the target list.”

Lucas said, “No shit. I fucking get that, but we need to get out clean. I didn’t ask them to come here. Look at the bright side: It’ll help confuse the authorities. It’ll play right into our cover of random violence. They’ll have so many threads to run down, it’ll cover our tracks.”

Another man Heather hadn’t noticed, now holding Angie, said, “I ain’t doing that. No way. No amount of money’s worth this.”

Lucas snarled, “The mission takes priority. Don’t go soft on me. I’ll do the work. Just hold them still.”

Heather spoke for the first time. “Please. We won’t say anything. Please don’t hurt my baby girl.”

Lucas looked at her with something bordering compassion and said, “I’m truly sorry about this. Just the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, I can’t make it painless. It’s got to look like something crazy happened here.”

Before she could say anything else, Lucas shattered her jaw with a vicious right cross. She hit the ground on her hands and knees, feeling the blood spill out of her mouth. She heard Angie scream, “Mommy!” then felt something smash into her spine. She rolled over and surprised the men by rapidly crawling to her purse. Lucas grabbed her legs and jerked her back, but not before she had her cell phone. She hit 911 before he could stop her. He smacked the cell phone out of her hand, towering over her.

“You bitch. You just lost any sympathy from me.”

He hammered her broken jaw again. Everything went black.

Three hundred miles away, inside the Taskforce Headquarters, a computer started bleating.

T
he Tbilisi police car remained where it had stopped.

“Knuckles, this is Pike. Stand by for a FRAGO. Azzam’s about to deviate his line of march.”

“Roger. You want me to stand down?”

I thought for a second. Ordinarily, unlike our training exercise, this would be an automatic rollover, as the chance of compromising the team far outweighed any hasty plan that we came up with. But with the Georgians taking out the Chechen tonight, a rollover wasn’t possible. We would take him tonight, or start all over, waiting another six months to a year to get him—if we could even track him again.

“No, don’t stand down. I’m going to pick up a follow. We know he’s headed to his hotel. We just don’t know the route. Keep the same plan. Pick your guys up and get ready to drop them off somewhere else. I’ll see what road he commits to. Once I give you that call, do a map analysis and see what the most logical route would be to the hotel. Position on that route. If he takes it, take him down. If he doesn’t, we’ll wait for another day. You copy?”

“Yeah. I got it. I’m moving the assault team now.”

I should have called Blaine before changing the plan, but things were moving quickly, and we didn’t have time for a bunch of questions going back and forth. I knew the intent: Get the terrorist without compromising the team. I didn’t need a call to HQ to confirm that.

I watched Azzam out of the corner of my eye. He rounded the turn in front of the café, paused for a second or two when he saw the police car, then began walking again. I threw some money on the table and left the café, holding thirty feet behind him. Before I reached Rustaveli, Azzam turned left.

“Knuckles, he’s headed south down Rustaveli. I’m betting he’ll cross at the next light—the street we couldn’t figure out the name. You remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. It had that kindergarten school on it?”

“That’s it. I’m thinking he’ll walk up the street past the school, then head east toward the hotel.”

“Got it. Doing the map reconnaissance now. Looks like he’ll come straight up that street and get on his original route at the top, hanging another left. The only place to get him is at that turn. The road does a little zigzag up front, allowing us to snag him without anyone seeing the action from down the street.”

“Sounds good to me. If there is any chance of compromise, let him go. Understand?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

I looked at the kindergarten street, the one Azzam would use after crossing Rustaveli, hating what I was about to say. I said it anyway. “I’ll trigger him crossing Rustaveli, but I’m going to have to stay on the west side or I’ll get burned. From there, he’s your target.”

This was a major flex. I was supposed to follow Azzam up to the planned kill zone. That road was a well-traveled thoroughfare, the sidewalks on both sides used extensively by the local population. In the original plan, once he had committed to the shortcut, away from the pedestrians, I would prevent him from escaping the way he had come and provide command and control for the team during the assault.

The new road he was on was a thin, narrow hardtop without sidewalks and devoid of anyone at this time of night. I stood a good chance of compromising the operation by attempting to follow him, especially since his antennae were probably up looking for a threat. I would miss the assault, which sucked beyond words. It also put the entire assault in Knuckles’s hands.

There was a pregnant pause before Knuckles responded, “Good to go. Standing by.”

I knew Knuckles was now feeling the pressure, but decided that saying nothing conveyed more trust in him than any hokey attaboy I could give.

I watched Azzam stop at the next intersection, waiting for the light to change. I kept going, passing within five feet of him and continuing south down Rustaveli as if I had a different destination. I found a sidewalk food vendor about seventy meters away and got in line, awaiting my turn and watching Azzam.

I waited until Azzam was across Rustaveli and committed to the school street before calling Knuckles. I stepped out of line and brought my cell phone to my face so I wouldn’t look like a nutcase talking to the air.

“Knuckles, Hedgehog’s across. He’s about five minutes out. I’m headed to my car.”

“Roger all. We’re set. If he takes this route, we have him.”

“Roger. Once you have him, revert back to the original plan. Link up with me at my car and I’ll run interference back to base.”

“Got it. Next call will be jackpot or dry hole.”

K
nuckles sat in his van, his mind working at warp speed. He was parked on the zigzag road just to the east of the kindergarten street, facing the kill zone, the three-man assault team in position, but the plan was now going to shit. He had picked the zigzag road as the perfect kill zone based on Pike’s following Azzam and triggering the assault as the team leader, something that was crucial to prevent the team from taking out the wrong person. They wouldn’t have the time to identify Azzam before assaulting. They needed to positively know that the next man in the kill zone was the target, and Knuckles was now the man who would have to make that call.

Unfortunately, the zigzag road worked for the actual hit but caused problems with the trigger. From where he was parked, Knuckles couldn’t see through the kill zone to the school street to alert the team, hidden in the shadows. The first he would see of anyone was when they were through it and in front of the van. He cursed silently.
Fucking Pike. Always winging shit.
He could abort, but the thought never crossed his mind. He turned to the teammate driving the van.

“Where’s the Remington ball? We’re going to have to trigger with remote video.”

“In the small Pelican case right behind my seat.”

Knuckles reached behind the driver’s seat and found the box. Opening it, he pulled out what looked like a black, rubberized baseball. They called it a “Remington ball” because it was sold by the Remington Arms Company, the same people who make firearms. Invented and built in Israel, it was basically a hardened camera that could be rolled, dropped, or thrown. Knuckles had absolute faith in it, mainly because he had tried very hard to break it in the past. No matter how roughly he had treated it, the ball faithfully transmitted video to a handheld screen up to one hundred and twenty-five meters away—farther than he could throw it. What he found really unique—in fact a little creepy—was that the ball would right itself after it stopped rolling, putting the camera into operation as if it had a mind of its own. Once it did that, Knuckles could make the camera rotate a full three hundred and sixty degrees, seeing anything in the vicinity by remote control. In this case, they would only need to see down the street Azzam was walking up, allowing him to trigger the assault team when Azzam turned the corner.

But they’d need to get the ball into position. They drove as fast as they dared, hitting the street and doing a U-turn. Knuckles dropped the ball against the curb as the driver headed back to their original spot. Before Knuckles could orient the camera, Pike called and said Azzam was across the road and five minutes out. Knuckles cursed Pike again, taking a deep breath. Success or failure now depended on his actions alone. He didn’t dwell on it. He confirmed the linkup plan with Pike and banished any fears, mentally preparing for the assault. He got the camera under control and began peering at the video screen, patiently waiting. Eventually he saw a fuzzy figure advancing on the camera ball.

“Two minutes out.”

“Roger.”

He watched the man get closer and closer, until he took up the entire display. The picture was clear enough for him to recognize Azzam. Knuckles rotated the ball as he passed, now watching the target’s back moving into the first hitch.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Roger.”

Knuckles nodded to the driver, who started the van, pulling into the street at a slow pace. He rounded the first hitch in the road and saw Azzam bathed in the glow of the headlights. They were late. The driver inched the gas pedal forward just as the assault team deployed.

Knuckles saw one man move to Azzam’s front, while the other two advanced from the rear. One held a Taser X26 stun device. He pulled the trigger from a distance of five feet. Firing two projectiles attached to wires, the Taser caused Azzam to instantly lose neuromuscular control. He fell to the ground with only a sharp exhale of breath, quivering, unable to move. The other men from the assault element fell on him, flex-tying both his hands and legs with zip ties much like those used on garbage bags, only much, much thicker.

The driver pulled the van up parallel to the downed terrorist, while Knuckles threw open the sliding side door. Two men outside heaved the terrorist into the van while the third kept the voltage going, preventing Azzam from doing anything but twitch. They climbed in behind him, sliding the door shut. Knuckles breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the clammy sweat on his body for the first time. They’d been working toward this moment for what seemed like years, but the entire operation had taken less than the planned five seconds. The van sped out of the area, only stopping momentarily to allow Knuckles to recover the Remington ball.