Project StrikeForce (25 page)

“It’s him,” John said. “These guys have beards,
it’s their religious duty. Remember the razors and hair samples in Germany?
It’s only been a few days, not enough time for him to grow anything but
stubble. It’s him.”

“There were
two
sets of DNA,” Clark said.

“Fine, then it’s the other guy. He’ll know where Abdullah
is.”

There was a long pause.

“John has a point,” Eric said. “Mission is a go.”

John nodded to himself.
One way or the other,
it will soon be over.
He grabbed his HK and started to approach.

“Redman,” Eric said, “I’ll take the left guard.
You take the right. Then, hit the truck engine. John, all hell’s going to break
loose. You ready?”

“I’m activating the Implant,” Clark said.

John felt the rush of adrenaline, like electric
fire, coursing through his veins. His blood sang and his doubts and fears fell
away. He wanted to shout to the heavens. It leveled out momentarily, but he
still felt sharper, stronger, and quicker. He ran, his legs propelling him
across the loose rock and dirt like a marathon sprinter.

He was coming up on the building, the guards on
opposite sides. He thumbed off the safety on the HK. “I’m going in.” He covered
the at break-neck speed, his feet practically flying over the sand and loose
rock. He saw the men fall, then heard the faint double report of Eric and
Redman’s sniper rifles.

“Both targets down,” Eric confirmed.

The truck in front of him shook and holes appeared
in the hood, then another double report. The .50 caliber bullets had blown
completely through the engine block, rendering the truck useless. He was
running toward the door when it opened and an older man with a scrabbly beard
appeared, his AK-47 rising. John pulled the trigger at a dead run and put three
bullets through the man’s chest. The man registered surprise and he collapsed
as John ran past, practically exploding into the main room of the building,
tossing a flash-bang as he cleared the door-frame.

He had a moment to register the occupants. Three
men sat at a low wooden table, the beardless man with the cap at the head. Two
young men sat on wooden stools on the far side of the room and an older man
stood in front of a small tin stove, warming his hands. They looked shocked,
then blinked and yelled as the flash-bang went off.

The VISOR attenuated the sound and light, which
gave John time to stitch fire across the two men on stools, dropping them where
they sat. The old man at the fire grabbed at his AK-47 and started firing
wildly as the three men at the table stood. He ducked and came up shooting,
catching the old man in his chest. The old man dropped, dead before he hit the
floor.

He wheeled around and saw the three men at the
table turn it over and cower behind, the beardless man in the middle. He turned
the HK to the right of the table and cut loose. The bullets punched holes
through the wooded top and he heard screams from the other side.

The fighter on the far left of the table came up
and fired, catching him high in the chest. He stumbled back but the liquid body
armor did its job, spreading the kinetic energy of the 7.62mm rounds across the
large meaty part of his chest. He emptied the rest of the magazine and the man
fell, his eyes already sightless.

He dropped the empty magazine from his HK and put
in a fresh one, cycling the bolt. He heard the beardless man gasping for air
and knew that he had once chance to get him to surrender.

“Drop the weapon and stand up,” he commanded.

There was no response.

“I said drop the weapon!”

The man came up with his AK47, smiled, and
shouted, “Allahu Akbar.” The man did not fire, but glanced down. John realized
he was buying time and turned to run from the room, the beardless man cutting
loose with his AK, screaming.

He just cleared the room when there was an
explosion and he felt the impact in the back, like a giant pillow, slamming
into him. He hit the dirt and rolled up, turning back to the room.

The stillness was absolute. The VISOR struggled to
filter the stench of cordite from the air as he entered the room. The beardless
man’s legs were blown completely off and pieces of shrapnel had shredded his
arms and chest. His face, though, remained untouched, the empty eyes staring at
him.

He
’s too young. It’s not him.

Eric’s voice came through the VISOR. “What’s the
sitrep? Do you have him? Is he secure?”

John sighed and left the room, motioning for Eric
and Redman to approach. The bodies of the two guards that Eric and Redman had
shot lay no more than five meters from him, their bodies blown completely in
half by the 50 caliber rounds.

“He’s dead,” John said. “Blew himself up. And it
wasn’t Abdullah. This guy’s my age. Was my age.”

Eric cursed and John knew their mission had
failed.

* * *

Bagram AFB Afghanistan

John turned away in disgust at the
remains of the man, his trunk in one bag and the rest of him in another. “What
do we do now?”

The smell from the corpse was thick in the stifling
heat of the tent. “I don’t know,” Eric said. He stood quietly next to John,
waiting for the results of the DNA analysis. “You killed the one man who could
give us Abdullah’s location.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” John protested. “What was
I supposed to do, shoot him and hope he didn’t set off the IED?”

Eric started to speak, then stopped. “You did your
best. It’s just bad luck.”

John left the tent and headed for the Gulfstream.
Greg was performing his preflight checklist and John watched the soldiers give
the plane a final once over. The morning sun baked down, well on the way to
another hundred plus degree day, and the sweat stained his shirt he loaded the
Battlesuit cases in the Gulfstream.

Eric approached. “They matched the DNA from the
corpse to hair samples from Germany. He was the other man with Abdullah.”

John grunted.

“What’s your problem?” Eric asked. “You haven’t
been right since Germany.”

“It’s this,” John said, pointing at the runway.
“We’re in Afghanistan and what did we accomplish? We killed some Mujahideen. We
saved General Azim, who we don’t give a shit about. How did we help anyone?” He
kicked the case to the VISOR in frustration, knocking it over.

“Not true,” Eric said calmly. “We stopped whatever
this man had planned, but it wasn’t to help Azim. We did it to find Abdullah.”

John shrugged. “We didn’t find anything.” Then,
before he could stop himself, he rushed ahead. “I know.”

Eric blinked. “You know what?”

“Who I am and what I did. I remember everything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Stop lying! It’s probably the drugs they gave me.
I remember Iraq, the IED. I remember coming home and the Red Cross.” Tears
streamed down his face.
One way or another, it’s over.
“I’m responsible
for all those people. And Deion? I remember what he did to me in Guantanamo.
They should have shot me. It would have been better for everybody!”

Eric faced him, expressionless. “You’re not
thinking clearly.”

John shook his head. “You can’t lie to me anymore.
If you’re going to shoot me, just do it. I won’t resist.” He sat down on the
hot tarmac and stared at Eric.

Without warning, Eric grabbed him by his shirt and
hauled him to his feet. “You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to go
back and you’re going to help me catch Abdullah. What you did can’t be
forgiven. All you can do is try and make it right. You’re going back and you’re
not going to say a word about this to anyone, because if you tell anyone about
this, they’ll kill you.”

John nodded. The weight had lifted, and he was
flooded with relief. He understood the risk Eric was taking for him. Eric was
giving him a second chance.

He wasn’t sure he deserved it.

* * *

Eric shook Redman’s hand. “Thanks
for the backup.”

Redman pulled a wad of stringy chaw from a pouch
and put it in his mouth, chewed a few times, then stuck his hand out. “Anytime,
brother. I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but that boy was damned
impressive. Whatever you been feeding him, it sure as hell worked.”

Eric smiled, but it faded quickly. “Yeah, he’s
something else.”

Redman nodded. “You need any help, you know where
to find me.” He turned to spit out a mouth of juice, then strolled away.

For a moment, Eric envied him.

The fight in Afghanistan was easy. He knew the
players, he understood the politics. The OTM was different. He headed back to
the Gulfstream where John waited.

He was taking a big risk. His first instinct was
to put a bullet in John’s head. Smith would understand, and Nancy had wanted to
do it from the start.

He couldn’t. Doc Barnwell was right. He was more than
just John’s mentor. He was John’s friend. It was hard to separate the feelings
he had for John the terrorist versus John the man who desperately begged for
his approval.

They needed him. That was the simple truth. They
needed the project to succeed and John proved that it did. Sure, back in his
Delta days Eric could have taken that stone building with his own team and air
support, but John had blown through the building like an avenging fury.

He boarded the plane and took the seat across from
John. John was different than the broken man he met in Guantanamo. John was a
real human being, who felt pain and sorrow. John felt remorse.

No, John would live. For now.

* * *

Europe

The Gulfstream was fifty-two
thousand feet above Europe when Eric answered the secured video conference.
Nancy, Karen, Clark and Deion sat in the briefing room in Area 51, and he could
tell by their excited faces that they were finally catching a break.

“We’ve got a lead,” Deion said.

Karen joined in. “I had a trace on cell phones
associated with the American Patriot Revolution. We got a hit. His name is
Jimmie Jakobs, a long-term member of the APR, and he just turned on his cell
phone and called his wife. Nothing important, just that he was set to finish
his trip and be home soon. We’ve tracked him to a Motel 6 on the outskirts of
Dallas. Jakobs is a dim bulb, he can’t possibly be planning anything on his
own. He’s probably passing the caesium off to someone else, someone smart
enough to know how to use it.”

“We’ve got a surveillance team on the way,” Deion
said, “but if the deal is about to go down, we need someone there.” He leaned
towards the video camera, the anticipation evident. “I’ll take Nancy, Martin,
and Johnson and we’ll wrap this up before you get back.”

Eric turned to John, asleep in his reclining
chair, oblivious to the conference call. “Can it wait? I want to be on that
mission.”

Deion shook his head, his grin bigger. “Not enough
time. You’re ten hours out. We can be there in two. Authorize it. The plane is
already loaded, we’ll be wheels up in twenty.”

“It makes sense,” Clark said, nodding. “Surely
they can handle one man?”

“It’s not one man I’m worried about,” Eric said.
“You’ve no idea who he’s meeting.”

“You won’t make it in time,” Nancy said. “We have
this.”

He hated to admit it, but she was right. Deion was
a fine operative, and Nancy could hold her own in a firefight. Plus, he trusted
Taylor Martin and Roger Johnson. They were good Operators. They could handle
themselves. “Fine, but keep me looped in. Get Jakobs and get that caesium.”

Ft. Worth, Texas

hey touched down at Carswell AFB,
on the outskirts of Ft. Worth. Deion rubbed the bullet wound on his arm. It
didn’t make him unfit for duty, but he took another pain patch from his pocket,
peeled the old one off, then pressed the new one in its place. The lingering
pain eased by the time they taxied to the hangar and unloaded the vans.

Nancy, Martin and Johnson waited, eager to go.

“Look, we all know what this is about,” Deion
said. “Don’t make any mistakes. It’s one racist redneck from Colorado. He’s not
much of a threat. The important thing is to keep that caesium out of the wrong
hands, which is anybody but us.”

He paired up with Nancy in the first van while
Martin and Johnson followed them east through the city. They eventually found
the restaurant parking lot, across from the Motel 6, and met up with their
surveillance team, Brad and Nikki.

Deion gave them the once over as they entered the
van. Nobody would mistake them for agents. Brad wore jean-shorts and a faded
Iron Maiden t-shirt, and his wife, Nikki, was dressed in white denim shorts and
a stained pink halter top. They looked no older than twenty, but Deion knew
they had worked deep undercover for the Dallas PD before the Office recruited
them, and dozens more like them, in each major city.

“The target left, went to Denny’s behind the
motel, then returned to his room,” Brad said.

“No phone calls since the last one?” Deion asked.

“No,” Nikki said, “he’s kept the curtain shut, we
can’t get eyes inside.” She pointed across the street to the Motel 6 parking
lot. “See the brown F-150 with the dirty topper? He’s got cardboard over the
back windows. Whatever’s in the back, he doesn’t want anybody to see.”

“Did you put a tracker on him?” Nancy asked.

“Yeah, we tagged his truck while he ate,” Nikki
said.

“What’d you use?” Deion asked.

“An XB-10,” Brad said.

Deion knew the unit, no bigger than a silver
dollar. It had a day of battery life. He dismissed the couple who quickly left.
“Here’s the play,” he said to Nancy. “We follow him wherever he goes, wait to
see who shows up, then take them down.”

Nancy shook her head. “I disagree. We go in now,
take him, and get the caesium.”

“Relax,” Deion said. “We can take them all at
once.” He settled back in his seat, watching the dumpy blue motel. “We’ll take Jakobs
and be home before the sun goes down.”

Nancy grunted.

“How long before he leaves?” Martin asked through
the ear-piece. “This bar and grill across the street smells good.”

“Quit your bitching,” Deion said. “You’ve got a
thermos full of coffee, I saw Roger load it. That’ll have to do.”

Martin snickered and Deion grinned. He watched
Nancy out of the corner of his eye. She was staring at the motel room, her body
tense. He reached up and turned off the mic on his ear-piece, then pointed for
her to do the same. “What’s up with you?” he asked.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

He could tell she had no interest in pursuing the
conversation, but he had to try. “We haven’t spoken about Afghanistan, and now
you’re wound tighter than a clockspring. What’s up?”

“I’m not….” She turned to him. “Look, I’m kind of
fucked up, emotionally. Maybe it was my childhood. That’s always the easy
answer. Maybe it’s because I’m not even thirty but I feel like an old woman.
Maybe I just need to get laid. Who knows.” She turned back to the motel. “I’ll
do the job.”

He considered his words, then went for it. “You
scare me. You’re not like any woman I’ve ever met. You’re a trained killer,
like John, but at least Eric watches out for John. You don’t have anybody to
protect you, except your dad. It couldn’t have been easy. I mean, he probably
low-jacked you at birth.”

Nancy’s icy blue eyes softened. “You have no idea.
There’s something else, though. I think my father asked Eric to keep an eye on
me.”

Not surprising.
“The Old Man thinks you
need protected?”

“He won’t say it. Actually, I think he wants me to
fall for Eric.”

Deion considered it. Eric was a straight-shooter,
a good looking guy if Deion had to admit, and maybe the Old Man thought he would
be a stabilizing influence. “Sounds cold. You gonna let that happen?”

“There’s no
letting
it happen,” Nancy said.
“It’s like being set up on a date. I resent it. I told Eric what my father
intended, there’s no way he would have anything to do with me now.”

Deion shrugged. “You both got your heads on
straight. It could be trouble if you two were involved, giving what we do.
Might make things…complicated.”

Nancy looked wistfully off in the distance. “That’s
one thing I’m not. I don’t have a life. Just the job.” She flicked on her
ear-piece and focused her attention back on Jakobs’s motel room.

Deion nodded. He understood. The same focus cost
him his relationship with Val. He turned on his ear-piece and sank back in the
van’s seat, waiting for Jakobs to leave.

* * *

Dallas, Texas

Abdullah directed Manny through the
McDonald’s parking lot. Manny circled the building and Abdullah saw Ahmed
waiting patiently in a Toyota Camry. “There,” he motioned.

Manny eased the Taurus next to the Camry. Abdullah
turned to him. “I would like to thank you for your help. I am sorry for your
loss.”

Manny turned away, face flushed. “I promised to
get you here. There’s your ride. We’re done.”

Abdullah wanted to comfort Manny for his loss, but
nothing he could say would ease the pain. He knew that better than anyone.

He gathered his bag and watched the young man
speed off, then got in the Camry and shook hands with Ahmed. He had last seen
Ahmed as a young boy, no older than thirteen, the wisps of hair just appearing
on his chin, but the boy had finally filled out, lean and wiry, now sporting a
dense black. “It is good to see you again.”

 “I am glad to see you, too, sir, but I have bad
news. We received word this morning. Naseer is dead.”

His heart sank.
Dead?
He had said goodbye
to his student just two days before, sending him back to Kandahar to lead the Mujahideen
in a battle against Azim. “How?”

Ahmed started the car and pulled out of the
McDonald’s parking lot, heading east. “No one knows. Just that he was killed by
Americans.”

Abdullah felt the anger rise. He took a deep
breath which caught in the back of his throat. Naseer was the closest thing he
had to a son. He knew that he was risking his life, but Naseer’s? “We must
fight on,” he said. “We must kill the Americans.”

Ahmed nodded. “The Brotherhood have been waiting
for such an opportunity. Muhammad has grown soft. This caesium will be our
weapon. With your leadership, we will strike them down.”

Abdullah nodded his agreement. “What about the
meeting?”

“We will meet him in a junkyard. He believes he is
selling it to a street gang from Los Angeles.”

“Does he know what we actually plan?”

“Of course not. We will have to kill him once we
have the caesium.”

Abdullah nodded. “The man would betray his own
people. Allah will find no fault with us.”

He stewed as Ahmed drove. The cost of revenge
inched higher, taking the lives of good young Muslims. The Americans were to
blame. He thought about what Naseer said, about there being no innocents in
America, and he thought about his one-time home in New York City.

It is madness.

He did not believe in killing innocents.
How
innocent are they, really? Any of them?
And, Allah did say that innocents
killed during battle would know the mercy of Allah—they would become martyrs.

It was unthinkable the week before, but now?

They had just reached Hutchins when Ahmed spoke
up. “We will be there soon.” He pointed in the back. “There are guns under that
blanket.”

Abdullah stretched back and lifted the corner of
the plaid blanket. “Do you expect trouble?”

Ahmed shrugged. “This is America. There is always
trouble.”

* * *

Deion kept pace with Jakobs’s Ford F150,
maintaining a hundred yard distance through Hutchins. He glanced back in his
mirror to make sure Johnson and Martin were still following.

“He’s slowing down, looks like he’s turning,”
Nancy said, monitoring the GPS tracker on her laptop.

“You got a location?”

“A junkyard,” Nancy said. “Pull over.” She pointed
to a stand of trees.

He pulled the van to the side of the road, Taylor
following suit. To the south he saw a rusty chain-link fence that marked the
property line. Beyond lay a maze of rusted automobile frames of every make and
model, waiting to be crushed.

“Roger, get the quadro-copter airborne and get us
eyes on Jakobs.”

“You got it, boss,” Roger said.

He scanned the site through his binoculars, but
the trees and stacks of cars obstructed his view. He joined Nancy in the second
van as Roger took out the quadro-copter, a device three foot square and painted
light blue. Roger checked the battery pack, then set it on the ground and
activated the powerpack. The four sets of blades whirred to life and the
quadro-copter shot up and was soon out of site, the whir of the electric
powered blades fading to a quiet whisper.

Deion looked up, squinting, but there was no sign
of the quadro-copter. He turned to Roger. “Nice.”

Roger grinned. “Can you imagine what I would have
done with this in college? The mind boggles. Anyway, video is up.”

They gathered around the laptop and saw the
birds-eye view from the drone. The junkyard appeared deserted, except for
Jakobs’s F-150 threading through the aisles of junk, stopping roughly in the
middle.

“Must be the meeting point,” Martin said.

“I don’t see anybody else,” Deion said.

Roger activated the thermal imaging, but the
summer heat made the entire junkyard a wash of red. “That’s no help. Can’t tell
if he’s alone in there. What’s the plan, boss?”

Deion put on his combat vest, opened the weapons
locker, and withdrew an MP5SD. “Roger, stay with the drone and get Wise on
comms. Nancy, you and Martin are with me.” The others put on their combat
vests, grabbed their weapons, and headed south. They hopped the chain-link
fence and started threading their way through the piles of junked cars.

Eric’s voice came through comms. “What’s the sitrep?”

Deion was explaining when Eric interrupted him.
“Why are you going in? You don’t even know who he’s meeting.”

“We got this, Eric. Roger, how we doing?”

“You’re within thirty yards of the truck,” Roger
said. “We got a car entering to the east.”

“Occupants?”

“Can’t tell from this angle.”

He motioned for Martin to take the entrance. The
big man nodded and headed to the entrance, his MP5SD at the ready.

“Nancy,” Deion said quietly, “Be ready. I’m going
to flank him.”

Nancy gave him a thumbs-up and he worked west
until he could see the F-150 through a crack in the wall of cars.

“Car is in the lot,” Martin said over comms.
“Crown Vic. Two black males.”

“Let them pass,” Deion said.

They waited until the Crown Vic eased into the
narrow clearing. Two black men got out, one short and wiry and one with a
shaved head. The driver, the short man, approached Jakobs, who climbed out of
his truck. Deion was close enough to hear their conversation.

“Darrell?” Jakobs asked.

The bald man nodded. “You got the stuff?”

Jakobs hitched his thumb to the F-150’s tailgate.
“In there. You got the money?”

Darrell pointed to the Crown Vic. “Blue bag in the
back seat.”

“People, we got a problem,” Roger said over comms.
“There’s another car pulling in. Silver Camry.”

Shit.
“Martin, do you have eyes on the
car?”

There was a pause. “Two men. Middle-Eastern.”

“Deion, you need to call for backup,” Eric said
over comms. “Call in the locals.”

“We got this. Roger, we need you.”

“On my way,” Roger answered.

Jakobs opened the door to the back of the Crown
Vic, grabbed the black duffel bag, then spun at the sound of the approaching
car. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Just some friends,” Darrell said, arms
outstretched, palms up.

The car slowed, its tires crunching on the loose
rock, then stopped. Both men got out.

Jakobs drew back, his face red. “Nobody said
anything about any towel-heads. Bad enough I got to deal with you two.”

The passenger, an Arabic man with a clean-shaven
face, stepped forward and spoke in lightly accented English. “There is no reason
for concern. You have your money.”

Jakobs backed away. “No way.” He turned to
Darrell. “I was told to sell it to you. Dyer didn’t say nothing about their
kind,” he said, pointing at the Arabic man.

“No problem, man,” Darrell reassured. “It’s cool.
You got your money.”

Jakobs shook his head. “Forget it,” he said,
pulling a chrome revolver from the back of his pants.

The black man produced his own gun and the two
stared each other down, the situation tense.

Time to introduce ourselves.
Deion stepped
through the cramped space between the cars and yelled, “Federal Agents, lay
down your weapons!”

All five men turned to face him. On the other side
of the clearing, Nancy burst through a crack in the junkpiles. “Federal
Agents!”

Jakobs fired his pistol wildly and the bullet
zinged off the car next to Deion. Deion ducked and fired at the same time as
Nancy, the muted bark of the MP5SD’s echoing among the cars. He caught Jakobs
across the chest. Jakobs crumpled forward and he saw Nancy’s weapon catch the
bald man in the stomach. The bald man pitched forward, a look of shock on his
face. The wiry black man jumped in to the car and came up with an AK-47,
cutting loose, forcing Deion to take shelter behind a crumpled SUV.