Clean Kill (16 page)

INDONESIA

JUBA POPPED A VALIUM
and slugged back a stiff Cragganmore single-malt Scotch, hating himself for being weak. It was not really a weakness of the ravaged body, but an invisible curse: He was claustrophobic.

In his home on the mountain, the windows were always open to usher in steady breezes, even on the hottest days. Overhead fans and plenty of shade trees kept the place cool. Long, overhanging eaves blocked the rain out except during typhoon blows. Air-conditioning was allowed only in the servants’ quarters and the hot kitchen, because maintaining a chilled temperature meant closing doors and windows. Wide doorways led into spacious rooms and onto the open verandah. The light and airiness kept him calm. In the house, he could work and exercise and eat proper food and feel good.

So there was an unusual tightness in his throat and chest as he climbed into the small executive helicopter for the journey to Jakarta. When the hatch closed, Juba felt chained, and as the bird lifted away from the ground, the feeling grew into one of total imprisonment. He broke into a sweat and released his knuckles from the grips of the seat only long enough to take another Valium. It did little good. He was glad to be alone in the passenger compartment so no one would hear him groan as the panic pecked at him.

In the British Army, he had learned to control his nerves, and by the time he became a terrorist, his heart had grown too hard to accept emotion. That singular ability had abandoned him in his new life. He looked out the window of the helicopter, through the rolls of clouds and down to the verdant green of the islands and the sun-stroked waters, wishing there was some way out of the buzzing bubble that confined him in the sky. He no longer held any belief at all in any Higher Power of any name, so there would be no spiritual comfort. He felt truly alone.

On the mountain, Juba did not even own an automobile. To squeeze into one made him feel like he was climbing into his own coffin. Now he was faced with a monstrous endurance test, flying 4,500 miles from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, trapped inside a tight little cocoon of an airplane for hours on end. Juba bit his lip.

His manner was already curt when the helicopter reached the private terminal in Jakarta and he was immediately shuffled aboard a luxurious Bombardier Challenger 604 twin jet. It was larger than he thought and he was surrounded by comfort and treated with respect by the three crew members. Still, Juba could think of nothing but the ordeal that lay ahead and he seized up, feeling old and crippled.

When the slim hostess pulled the door closed and the tube shut around him, it was as if he was being held in a fist. There was no space, no room to move, no ocean vista, no air, no way out, and no real air to breathe.

“Get me a drink,” he snarled. “Not any of that piss in a bottle in your bar. Some good gin out of my valise. Ice and a slice.”

The uniformed young woman found the bottle, made a double martini with a slice of fresh lemon and gave it to him. The passenger had a mane of totally white hair, was horribly scarred, and wore a white patch over his left eye. He shot her a defiant glare.

“Why are you staring, you ugly cow? Go away!” Juba took a deep swallow and fished around in his shirt pocket for the green plastic bottle of medicines. He hurt, dammit! The mental fear was changing into sharp physical manifestations.
The tunnel! Oh, it hurts. Somebody help me!
He gobbled two Percocet and drank some more of the strong martini as the engines whined. His stomach churned as the plane lifted into the air.

The nervous hostess called the flight cabin and a tall, neat man in dark trousers and a starched white shirt bearing golden wings above his left chest pocket came down the aisle and sat across from the lone passenger. The flier had a look of concern on his face. The one-eyed man looked like hell and for a moment, the copilot thought they might have to return to the terminal and get him to a hospital. “Are you all right, sir?”

“No, I am not all right!” The single eye rolled wildly. “Get me another damned drink, bitch.”

“Sir, please. Calm yourself.” The copilot reached out his left hand to touch the man’s shoulder in sympathy. Juba grabbed the wrist in a lightning-quick move and twisted over hard, pulling the flier out of the seat and throwing him into the aisle.

“Try to touch me again and I’ll kill you. I’m stuck up here with you fools and you will do only what I tell you. You get your ass back into that flight cabin and I want to hear the door lock behind you. Then fly the fucking plane and if I want you, I’ll call.” He twisted harder on the wrist and jammed his thumbnail into a pressure point.

The copilot screamed in agony.

Juba laughed and stomped the ribs before releasing the arm. “Get out of here. And you. Get my drink!”

IT WAS NOT A
straight line trip, for the aircraft had been forced to take a more circuitous route to stay out of harm’s way and avoid discovery. Hour after hour droned past in the sky and there were three refueling stops at strategic points along the way. At each one, the crew crept silently out onto the tarmac to take a breather from the plane which seemed to crackle with a horrible menace from the passenger that had grown obnoxious under the influence of booze and narcotics. They watched in silent disgust through a cabin camera as he drank himself into oblivion, with a detour into roaring anger, until he passed out somewhere over Pakistan.

JUBA WAS IN THE
tunnel, his body and face torn by a sniper’s big bullet and the tight hideaway collapsing beneath the thundering explosion of a huge bomb. Blinded and unable to breathe, the weight of the falling dirt crushing the final sparks of life from him, lost in blood and pain and darkness, badly wounded and trapped underground with dirt in his mouth and eyes.
Oh, it hurts.

He had lived several lives and despaired that this was the way it would all end, dying slowly in an underground tomb.

The plane hit an air pocket, dropped momentarily, and the sudden jolt caused the passenger to moan loudly and shift in his seat until the aircraft steadied and droned on. His mind spun with a mixture of hallucinations and true memories as the drugs and booze played him—letting the British army train him to be a terrorist, fighting for al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq before going out on his own with deadly biochemical weapons that he used to strike both London and San Francisco. Those acts had made him the most dangerous man in the world, a terrorist with a price on his head, a fortune in the bank, and a secret weapon that commanded respect and support from political and religious fanatics.

Then everything had been taken away in an instant. Juba still tried to convince himself that it had been only a fluke shot, an unfortunate accident, just bad luck, one of life’s more unfair moments, for no other man possessed his rare skill with a rifle. He changed positions in his seat again. Could not get comfortable. Heard noises. Even felt the wrinkles in his trousers, hard as rocks.

He remembered it all—the duel of single sniper bullets, the explosion, being buried alive in the suffocating tunnel, and, after giving up all hope, pinpoints of light breaking through the dirt. Frantic Iraqi villagers digging with their hands freed him from the grave. That bastard Kyle Swanson somehow got off that lucky shot. Tears leaked from his right eye and creased his face.

Two strong men came aboard the plane when it landed in Saudi Arabia and propped the limp, sniffling passenger between them, got him down the short staircase and into the rear of a waiting limousine. The copilot followed with the valise and threw it into the vehicle’s trunk, slammed it closed, and stalked away, glad to be done with him.

A young man in a dark suit and a white shirt open at the neck was also in the rear of the stretch limo as it drove away toward downtown Jeddah. He studied the figure plopped across from him. The man was disheveled, stinking and grunting like a filthy animal.
This is the hero to whom we have paid so much? This lump is the mastermind?
He extended his index finger and pushed a button to open the window beside him. It was still humid and hot, but he needed to flush out the foul odor.

KUWAIT

CRAAACK!
THE BIG SNIPER
rifle kicked back hard against Kyle Swanson’s shoulder and 800 meters away the .50 caliber bullet gouged out a hole in the paper target. The three other Marines with him also were running rounds downrange into the great nowhere in a mad fusillade designed to keep their muscle memory sharp.

The four of them had taken a Humvee from the special ops camp, loaded it with ammo and an assortment of weapons, from light machine guns to pistols, and ventured into the heat wearing full body armor. They would spend some time making sure every tool they had, including themselves, was in top working order. Training never stopped, no matter how good you were.

Staff Sergeant Darren Rawls, a tall African-American from Alabama, ripped through a thirty-round magazine with an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, the faithful 5.56 mm air-cooled, belt-fed, gas-operated SAW. Sergeant Travis Stone, a sweaty bandana covering his stubble of red hair, chunked away with an XM203 40 mm grenade launcher, blowing up fountains of dirt. Staff Sergeant Joe Tipp was testing a small-grip SIG SAUER P250 combat pistol that he had liberated from a Navy SEAL in a poker game. It sounded like a small war.

After an hour, they took a break and retreated to a rectangle of shade provided by the Humvee, where they shucked the heavy helmets and body armor, drank bottles of water, and sat on the dirt. The land all around was flat and hot and brown, nothing to see all the way to the horizon.

Rawls studied it, squinting into the bright sun, then raised his eyes to the crystalline blue sky. “Space ain’t the final frontier. This is.”

Joe Tipp raised his nose and sniffed the air. “Anybody else smell another Rawls scam?”

“Fuck you. Just listen. Space tourism! Rich assholes are paying millions of dollars to go into space and even want to go to the moon. Now what’s up on the moon?” He pointed to the bleak horizon of Kuwait. “Same shit as out there.”

Kyle Swanson finished his second bottle of water, feeling the cool wetness all the way down to his toes. “Brilliant analysis. You got a point?”

“We’ve got all those freako tourists who show up at the edges of a war, thrill-seeking motherfuckers who think combat is some kind of paint-ball game. So how about we form a little company, sell escorted trips out here. Get the muthas all armored up, ride around in civilian Humvees, let ‘em pop off some rounds like we’ve been doing. Like a safari in Africa.”

Travis Stone stopped eating a pouch of peaches and tossed the sticky plastic spoon at his buddy. “Again with the money schemes. Remember the reality TV series for Elvis impersonators? The golden treasure of the Spanish kings in Memphis? Drill an oil well in Harlem? At least the soft porn movie idea had naked women involved.”

“Those movie people lied to me! I wrote a damned good script!” Rawls shrugged away the criticism.

“And lost your investment. Again.”

“You never want to expand your mind, try nothin’ new. When I put in my twenty years with the Corps and get that retirement paycheck, I’m gonna invest, man. We gotta think ahead if we want to be rich in our old age.”

If they only knew
, thought Kyle.
These guys will never have to worry about a job if I go into Excalibur.

Joe Tipp spoke. “You keep on thinking, Darren. I kind of liked the porn idea. Just watching some of the interviews with the actresses was worth my thousand bucks.”

Darren Rawls started cleaning his SAW, fighting the ever-present talcum of desert dust that could foul a barrel or jam a magazine. “So I’ll do another script. This time, the four of us will do the whole thing. How difficult can it be? Joe does the camera, Trav does the sound, Kyle directs, and I’ll be the star! You white rabbits don’t have the qualifications that I do for a good sex show. Sell it on cable or on the Internet.”

Travis looked over. “What about the combat safaris?”

Rawls gently stroked the automatic weapon with a soft, oily cloth. “No hurry. That can come next, after the movie. The Middle East ain’t goin’ nowhere. And writin’ is hard, so I can’t even think about it now. Anyway, got something else on my mind.”

“What?” Joe Tipp asked.

Rawls smiled broadly. “Killin’ terrorists.”

WHEN THE BANTER AND
insults quieted and they were reluctant to leave the square of shade, Kyle spoke: “Okay, guys, listen up. I hauled your asses out here for more than just some shooting. Needed to get away from curious ears back at the base.”

The other three locked their eyes on Swanson. He had been back for less than two days and had been withdrawn and curt with everyone except Major Summers.

“I need to bring you up to speed on the situation next door, over in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “Top secret.”

“We see it on TV every night and it’s all over the Internet,” said Joe Tipp. “What else is there, really?”

“A lot. It’s pretty complicated,” Swanson said, stretching out his legs and closing his eyes, reciting what Sybelle had briefed him on last night. “You probably know that the president and the new Saudi king are friends, but they really had it out during a meeting in the Oval Office a few days ago, when Abdullah was still the ambassador in Washington. He told President Tracy that any American movement to protect the oil fields would be considered an unwarranted military intervention by a foreign power and would be resisted.”

Travis Stone doodled in the dirt with an empty brass cartridge case. “You think there’s a chance that our good buddies might actually fight us?”

Swanson’s eyes blinked open and he stared at them, each in turn. “That was the implied threat, but nobody wants it to go that far. Then things happened fast and, bingo, next thing we know, Ambassador Abdullah becomes King Abdullah.”

Darren Rawls stood, brushed off his pants, and stretched his six-foot-two frame. Loose and lanky with a shrewd mind, Rawls had been a star high school basketball player and a better student in Alabama. When his brother was killed in Iraq, Rawls walked away from the college scholarships and joined the Marines. He was tough, an excellent sniper, and a voracious reader who carefully sheltered his intelligence beneath a homeboy speech pattern. “That was kinda weird. The crown normally would go to another old relative. It’s a family thing.”

“Way our intel people piece it together, installing Abdullah in the position represented an internal, bloodless coup. With both the king and the crown prince dead, there was no clear line of succession. The country was, and still is, on the verge of falling apart. So the real movers and shakers in Saudi Arabia apparently got together, flexed their muscles, and chose the toughest, smartest member of the bloodline to take the reins. Abdullah was jumped over a whole generation but the monarchy remains absolute.”

Swanson paused to drink some water, then continued, “Let me get to the point. I met this Abdullah dude in England.”

“You know the new king?” Stone was surprised.

Swanson nodded. “He was wounded during the terrorist attack in Scotland and was a patient at the clinic where Sybelle and I took out those tangos.”

“Sweet,” said Travis Stone.

Swanson’s eyes blinked open and he stared at them, each in turn. “Not so fast, Trav. Just as the rebellion cooked off, we found out that the Saudis had five nuclear missiles. Only bargain basement nukes, but the threat is huge.”

Rawls said, “Ghetto nukes? Civil war. Oil. Terrorism. Can this get any better?”

Swanson peered up at him. “Sure. One of their missiles has gone missing.”

Rawls groaned. “You’re shitting me.”

Swanson smiled. “When King Abdullah learned about that, he did a flip-flop on refusing all American help. He wants to turn the remaining four missiles over to the United States and asked the White House specifically to name me as the U.S. liaison during the handover. Like I say, he knows me.”

“So what’s our mission?” Travis Hughes asked.

“I leave for Riyadh tonight to meet with King Abdullah and finish setting up the transfers. You guys will be in charge of removing the four missiles that are still scattered around the country. You each will command a plane that will fly in to do the pickups, personally take charge of the warheads, and stay with them until they can be safely stored on a ship. A platoon of MEUSOC Marines will provide overall security. Your only concern will be the nukes. Sybelle will oversee things from here. You report only to her. This is a Trident show all the way.”

Tipp asked, “Uh, what about that fifth one?”

Kyle Swanson gave them his special, meaningless smile. “Not to worry about that one. I snatched it while I was visiting over in Khobz and it’s already aboard a navy carrier.”