Target Deck - 02 (63 page)

Deckard jolted backwards, his body having a sympathetic reaction that dumped him onto his backside as the PVS-15 night vision goggles were torn from his helmet in an explosion of glass and plastic. Thankfully, his clear lens Oakley glasses saved his eyesight.

Rolling away, he found cover behind an old air conditioning unit.

“
Shloonkum il-yoom?
” a voice called out to him. “
Intu laazim ta baaniin.
”

Deckard blinked, ignoring the superficial cuts caused by his night vision goggles getting shot off. Using the EO Tech holographic sight mounted on his AK-103, he squeezed off several shots in the direction of the voice.

“
La-tutluq in-naar!
” The voice said with a laugh.

It took Deckard's mind a few seconds to catch up. He was speaking in Iraqi dialect Arabic, another language that he had a passing familiarity with. The Arab let off a couple shots of his own which rattled into the air conditioning unit he was behind.

Getting of fix on the death squad leader's position, Deckard returned fire before quickly bounding behind the rear landing gear of the 747 he was under.

“Listen to me you white devil,” The Arab continued to taunt Deckard in his native language. “You wanted me and now you have found me but what is it that you are really looking for out here in the desert tonight? Are you sure you want to find what you are looking for?”

Deckard understood the words but was barely listening. His adversary's strength was not as a fighter but rather as a cunning manipulator. He was the battlefield's landscaper, making both sides of conflicts believe what he wanted them to believe.

“We have never met, I am sure of it, but I know your work and you know mine. I've seen the way you move. You move like those commandos in Iraq. I bet you never considered that it was me doing the cutting in so many of those beheading videos did you?”

Sticking to the shadows, Deckard kept low and attempted to circle around by taking cover under another aircraft. The Arab fired a few probing shots, a recon by fire to elicit a response so he could pin point Deckard's position. He didn't take the bait.

“Listen, you need me as much as I need you. I create the nightmares you need American! You could not exist without someone providing these horrors. Men like you are only switched on when your nightmares are clear, like now, like tonight you see?”

Deckard moved silently around The Arab's flank. If he could take him alive, there was no end to what they could get him to confess to on camera. They could blow the entire conspiracy wide open.

“America needs these nightmares,” The Arab lectured. “Your country needs these monsters even as it denies that they exist. Without these fears they would have to look in the mirror and confront who they really are. Without me, you would have to confront what you really are. Then you would see that you are just like me. Blood for blood. I take a head and you set out to take a dozen. I play my games and you play yours.”

Looking down, The Arab saw a subtle shift in the shadows.

Pivoting on one foot, The Arab spun to confront Deckard. He attempted to bring his rifle into play but Deckard was a blur of motion as he parried the weapon aside with his own. A low kick connected with The Arab's inner knee causing an explosion of pain inside the joint. A butt stroke from the American rode right down his forearm and stripped the AK-47 out of his hand.

“Not as easy as cutting the head off unconscious women is it?” Deckard asked him.

Against a professional soldier, a butcher like The Arab was simply out classed.

With a guttural scream, The Arab moved with surprising speed. Reaching out, he grabbed the barrel of Deckard's AK-103 and attempted to muscle it away so that it was no longer pointed at him. Deckard simply took a knee, using his leverage to his advantage as his opponent attempted to push the gun barrel up and away. By dropping to a knee, the gun barrel was now realigned with The Arab's torso.

Three shots cracked out in the night.

The Arab stood there for a moment, his hands exploring his stomach and finding his palms suddenly slick with blood. Calmly, he sat down in the desert sand before laying down on his back. As blood poured from his wounds, he accepted that he was going to die.

Deckard stood over him, his face expressionless.

“Who are you?” The Arab asked with blood splatter around his lips.

“Nightmare's end.”

Now Deckard could recognize the scars that ran down the arms and legs of the bleeding man as he only wore a t-shirt and shorts. Lifting his shirt he saw that they extended in deep lines across his stomach and chest as well.

“Who did this to you?”

“I did,” he said, his voice growing faint.

Deckard let his rifle hang by its sling and rotated it to his side. Drawing the Sub-Saharan combat knife, he knelt down beside The Arab.

“Do it,” the dying man gasped. “I would do the same and worse to you.”

Amid the killing and the violence, Deckard could feel himself spinning out of control. The drug cartels had escalated the level of bloodshed to levels that even the Iraqi insurgents had difficultly matching. Once they starting killing, they then started creating massacre after massacre to try to one up each other. Once you started down that path, it seemed that there was no end to it. The only future in that cycle was mass graves filled with bloated, rotting corpses. Now he was a part of that as he had cut off Jimenez' head just to get his point across.

The Arab was not a soldier, a mercenary, or really even a terrorist in the conventional sense. He was an artist. He manipulated and destroyed biological life wherever he went, all to advance someone else's political agenda. Someone else. Some player with no name.

“Who do you work for?” Deckard asked.

“None of us really know the names behind these wars we fight,” The Arab answered. “I am no more enlightened then you are.”

Reaching into a pouch on his plate carrier, Deckard pulled out a black marker and began writing across the top of The Arab's shirt collar.

“What...what are you doing?” His eyes were slowly closing.

“Making sure that whoever you work for gets my message.”

Finished writing, he put away the marker and balanced his knife in one hand. Flipping it over into a reverse grip, Deckard plunged the blade into his fallen enemy's chest cavity, slicing through his heart. With a final heave of his chest, The Arab settled to the ground and died.

Deckard left the knife sticking out of the dead man's chest and began walking back towards the runway.

Behind him, he left a river of corpses, demons, and ghosts in his wake.

Four men walked across the airfield.

Deckard unclipped his helmet and held it under one arm, watching and waiting as the mercenaries approached him. Behind them, the hints of dawn were peeking from behind the distant hills. As his men grew near, he could see that Kurt wore a tourniquet around one arm where he had been shot while manning the machine gun. Pat had the lower portion of one pant leg cut away where a bloody bandage had been secured in place. Nikita had his sniper rifle slung and carried the weapon of a fallen terrorist. Aghassi limped forward.

They stopped short, looking at him expectantly.

“It's over,” Deckard confirmed.

Kurt nodded. Pat smiled. Aghassi frowned and surveyed the carnage all around them. Nikita's expression was neutral. They were tired, but ready for whatever came next. It was just then that Deckard noticed that Kurt and Aghassi were carrying plastic bags that had been thrown over their shoulders. The documents from inside the command center.

“You guys thinking what I'm thinking?” Pat asked.

“Is the beer light on?” Aghassi wondered aloud.

“What is beer light?” Nikita questioned.

“Not a bad idea,” Kurt said, looking toward Deckard for approval.

“Find a vehicle that is still running so we can get the hell out of here.”

“Then?” Pat asked again.

Deckard shrugged his shoulders.

“Vegas is only an hour away.”

Epilogue:

Bodyguards led the way through the secret back entrance into the exclusive Others Club in the upper east side of Manhattan. Behind them, their principal ambled up the steps and into the elevator. With a 60,000 dollar initiation fee, membership in the Others Club was one of the most coveted, and expensive, in New York City. The principal, flanked by two former Secret Service agents as he rode the elevator, would know as he was one of the founding members.

When the doors pinged open the old man went to his favorite room in the clubhouse, walking past servers and staff preparing for the coming day. Nearly ninety years old, his humble beginnings in Europe continued to hold him back among the city's elite circles. He was denied entry into several of the older, stuffier clubs for New York socialites, one of the reasons why he started his own.

A server greeted him at the door and had him seated at a table that had been arranged specially for him and his guests in the library. While the Yale Club and the Century Club were filled with blue bloods sitting on overstuffed antique leather chairs underneath hundred year old glass chandeliers that would have sunk with the Titanic, the Others Club was modern and vibrant. The morning light shined through the windows and glowed amongst the white book cases and modern art work hanging on the walls.

He established the club for a new kind of wealth, and a new kind of man. The Others Club boasted a membership consisting of not just Ivy League alumni, diplomats, and politicians but also of actors, film producers, media personalities, artists, and writers. Those who could pass the thresholds for entry anyway.

It wasn't long before another set of bodyguards showed up and his guests entered the room. The old man rose to shake their hands. The twin brothers were movers in shakers in business as well as domestic politics. The Biermann brothers jetted all over the country during the year, held their own conferences, and chaired political organizations not to mention running candidates for elected office. They were major players in the game. They were also one of the old man's primary antagonists which made them perfect for membership into his club.

The closer they were, the easier it would be to develop a consensus when the time came. A time like today. Like it or not, Manhattan was where finance met and influenced power brokers in government.

“You mentioned something about,” one of the brothers began with some hesitation. He was the younger of the two by eight minutes. “Complications?”

“Don't worry. My people swept this room for bugs before we got here,” the old man said dismissively. “Yes, I've gotten word about the destruction of a Mexican military base early last night. I've delayed them, but the media will be picking it up eventually. I've been assured that we have some time to prepare our mitigation strategy. Meanwhile, my people are looking into this situation in a discreet fashion which ensures that we are all protected.”