The Widow's Strike (9 page)

I
saw the four
break from
a tight-knit walking group and spread into a fighting formation. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew Knuckles was right.

“Nung, I should’ve asked, but can you fight?”

He kept walking forward, as if he hadn’t heard. Bored out of his mind because he had snuck into a Thai prison to break out a
farang
and was now about to get his ass beat by a gang of Thai mafia.
Probably going to infiltrate Iran as a male prostitute after this.
I was beginning to wonder if he was crazy. Literally crazy, not crazy in a cool, badass way.

“Nung?”

For the first time, a grin slipped out, and he showed some emotion. “Yes, I can fight. Is that what you’d like? Remove them?”

The men were about ten meters away, baring their teeth. For a split second, I thought about flinging out an ID, claiming State Department immunity or some other shit. Anything to stop the contest about to occur. Seeing their snarling visages, I knew it would be a waste of effort.

“Oh yeah, that’s what I would like. You get the two on your left. I’ll take the two on the right. You sure you can do this? I don’t want someone jumping on my back.”

The men closed within eight feet, and he skipped a little bit, a small Muay Thai dance, raising his fists head-high, saying, “Yes, I can do this. I was beginning to wonder why my father said this would be fun.”

Father?

With that, he hammered the first guy in the upper thigh with a kick, snapping his shin forward like a whip and bringing the prisoner to his knees like he’d cracked him with a tire iron. The man barely had time to wonder why he’d lost control of his leg when Nung wrapped his left hand into his hair and punched him straight above his nose, dropping him flat-out.

I missed the rest as I focused on my own targets, both circling around to keep me off balance. I decided the State Department route wasn’t a bad idea, keeping Knuckles behind me in his chains.

“Stop this! I work for the United States. Let us pass.”

The men grinned, raising their fists. I flicked my eyes toward the wall, and sure enough, the guards ignored everything, simply looking on in interest like a gaggle of pedestrians watching a street fight in New York.

I played the pussy card one more time. “Please, don’t hit me! Leave us alone!” I gave what I hoped was an expression of absolute fear, then waited for the strike, cowering.

It came quickly, and the return was just as fast. The first guy, convinced he could get through me without issue and on to Knuckles, simply hooked a leg behind me and pushed, attempting to put me on the deck. Instead, I wrapped up his leg with my own, planted my feet for stability, and looped my arm around his neck, then gave him four straight punches to his face. He was combat ineffective after two.

The tattooed leader clocked me on the side of the head with a wild punch, then leapt onto my back, his arms around my neck, starting to choke me. I jerked upright, preparing to jump straight back and land on him with my body weight, when the arms left my neck, then the body. I whirled around and found him sitting down, legs straight out, Knuckles behind him, twisting his head around like he was Linda Blair in
The Exorcist,
the man screaming in a high-pitched wail.

I shouted, “Don’t!”

Knuckles looked at me, a ragged bloodlust in his eyes.

“Damn it! Don’t do it!”

He kept the head twisted for a moment longer, his jaw clenched. He squinted at me, begging to kill the guy. My eyes bored back into him, an unspoken command to stop. We played the stare game for a second, me feeling the pressure of time and him feeling the need for revenge, then he switched positions, looping his arm around the leader’s neck and cutting off the blood-flow to his brain. A second or two of flailing, and the leader was out cold. I whirled to find Nung and saw him standing over two prostrate bodies. Now back into bored mode. He glanced my way, then glanced at the guards, an unspoken command telling me to get this show moving.

They were finally starting to move our way, some jogging, most walking. We began shuffling as fast as we could on the thin yellow line, me shouting about the weak response from the guards, waving my black diplomatic passport in the air like I hoped a State Department guy would do. The guards acted confused, first attempting to stop us, then coalescing on the prostrate bodies.

Nung began shouting something about going to the infirmary, and they let us pass, but I knew we were now on the clock, with a lockdown coming.

We made it through control block four and into the prison, with me snarling at every guard I could see, whipping them verbally into letting us through. We shuffled past anyone giving us a question and reached the gate to exit the prison, then the alarm went off.

Here we go
.

Immediately, the initial guard we’d met when we’d entered the prison went into battle-drill mode, shutting down all activities except for slapping on riot gear, a Pavlovian response that potentially could keep us inside forever. I could see our prison van outside, a mere forty feet away. Behind steel bars.

I said, “Open the gate. We’re leaving now.”

He ignored me. I glanced back down the hallway and saw official bodies pouring out, like an anthill had been kicked over.

“Open the damn gate!”

He shouted something, pointing toward a row of chairs, obviously wanting us to wait. Nung stepped forward and spoke softly in Thai. The guard asked him to repeat it, and Nung waved him over. When he reached the edge of the cage, Nung snapped his hand through the small window like a snake, clamping the man’s neck.

Nung spoke slowly enough that I could understand. “This prison is run like a child’s school. We have appointments to meet. Justice to bring to the
farang
we’ve picked up. Open the gate.”

The man’s eyes bulged, and he slapped the desk, desperately trying to hit the switch behind him. He found it, and we were out, moving straight to the prison van and Retro.

W
e made it
out of
the parking lot without any trouble, the officials focused on the inside of the prison. Thirty minutes later, we met our own vehicles for transfer to our aircraft. I saw Jennifer sitting in the passenger seat and winked at her.

“Glad to see you made it out without having to use the hush puppy. Good job with the clone.”

She smiled weakly but said nothing. I knew that look. She was embarrassed about something. “What happened? Did you have to trigger Decoy? I got my thirty minutes, so you can’t be worried about that.”

Decoy turned from helping Knuckles. “Hell no she didn’t trigger me. Didn’t call at all. And yeah, you got your thirty minutes. Could have had twenty-four hours. Shit, a decade after what Jennifer did to him.”

I started to ask for the story, then said, “Okay, later, at the hotwash. Right now, let’s get gone.”

The transfer complete, I pulled Nung aside.

“Hey, I don’t know what you do for a living, but I might be able to use you in the future. You’ve got some serious skills. Can I call you?”

He smiled and said, “Yes. I can work again, if the price is right.”

He wrote his number down on a scrap of paper, and out of curiosity, because I wasn’t paying him a damn thing for his help, I said, “How much did you make for this gig?”

He said, “No money at all. I got my brother into school. A chance for a better life than I have.”

He handed me the number, then turned without another word, got back into the prison van, and drove away.

* * *

The pilot said
we were on final for Bangkok, and I waited until the wheels touched down before hitting the connect button for my “company” VPN on my laptop. I wanted to delay the SITREP to Kurt as long as possible.

I had four different missed calls from him, each one purposely ignored, and I knew he was going to be hot. Especially if the calls were to give me a direct order to back off of Knuckles.

I heard the computer going through its plethora of switches, getting rerouted about fifteen times before some algorithm decided it was safe for the computer on Kurt’s desk to start ringing. Anyone looking would think I was calling Charleston, South Carolina, instead of Washington, DC. I glanced back into the plane and saw everyone staring at me, wondering what was going to happen when Kurt found out what we’d been up to.

He came on immediately, and, as expected, he was a little ticked off, but not nearly as much as I’d imagined. In fact, it almost seemed like he was putting on an act.

“Pike, what’s the protocol for situation reports with deployed teams?”

“Sir, I know. I should have called back, but I was busy. Sorry. I mean, it’s not like I’m on a mission profile.”

“No, that’s right. Because you wouldn’t answer your damn phone.”

The statement got my attention. “You have a mission for me? Seriously?”

He leaned back in his chair, suddenly suspicious at the eagerness in my voice. “Why haven’t you mentioned Knuckles?”

“Uhh . . . well . . . would you like to talk to him?”

All I got was silence.

“Sir, they were going to kill him. I had a solid plan, and I executed. It went just like I briefed you before.”

He said nothing for a moment, then let out a breath. “I suppose I knew that was coming. So you got him out. What’s the damage?”

I succinctly gave him the CliffsNotes version of the mission, leaving out Izzy and my buddy at JUSMAG, simply alluding to in-country assets like I had when I got permission to talk to the hacking cell. He listened, then interrupted my story.

“Cut to the chase. What’s the risk to compromise? Do I need to go into damage control with the Oversight Council?”

“There was a little drama, but we got out clean. There’s only one guy who really cares about investigating, but he’ll be in the hospital for the next few days. On top of that we found some incriminating information on him. The indig helping me is going to pay him a visit.”

Song, the man who’d portrayed Piggy with Retro, had found a ton of bad stuff on Piggy’s cloned PDA, which explained why he took it home with him every day instead of leaving it at the jail. It had an absolute treasure trove of illegal shenanigans that would have put him in prison pajamas overnight. I’d called Nung before leaving Chiang Mai and given him some instructions to give Piggy a little visit in the hospital. He’d either let Knuckles ride or start practicing how to shower with his back to the wall.

“Will that be enough?”

“Yeah. No way is he going to want to admit to getting his ass beat by a woman he was blackmailing for sex. Especially when he sees the evidence we have about his other activities.”

“What about the local help? What do they know?”

“Nothing. Let’s just say they’re used to working without information.”

“How’d you get them? What’s the cost?”

I said, “That’s the beauty of it. It didn’t cost any money.” I told him about the school admissions problem. As I recounted the story, I saw his demeanor shift.
Guess he’s not seeing the beauty of it. . . .
I finally saw some real anger.

“Damn it, Pike, you want me to go to the Oversight Council and have someone interject into a foreign boarding school’s admission process?”

I became a little indignant as well. “Yeah. I do. Get the SECSTATE to make a call. Hell, it’s because he wouldn’t interject on Knuckles’s behalf in the first place that we’re in this situation. I’m sure he knows someone who knows someone who can help.”

Kurt said nothing for a moment, then shifted gears. “How’s Knuckles?”

“He’s pretty beat-up, but mostly just bumps and bruises. We’ll get him a checkup in Germany, but my bet is he’ll be running fine in a couple of days. What he really needs is a dentist.”

“And the team?”

“Good to go. Jennifer and I are the only ones who have done anything overtly operational. Everyone else is still clean. What’s the story?”

I knew he wasn’t asking to be polite. He wanted to know if we could go operational after the prison bust.

“Knuckles’s bug turned up some interesting information, and we got clearance to investigate. I need you to get eyes on. Nothing more until I can relieve you with the original team we pulled out. You’re just there to get a handle until we can reinsert the team, then you come home.”

In fifteen minutes, he gave me a rundown for an Iranian Quds Force general currently in Thailand, and the mission to track him—which immediately raised some flags.

“You want me to hunt a foreign intelligence asset? The council gave Omega authority for a state-sponsored target?”

The Taskforce called each phase of an operation a different Greek letter. Omega, the last letter, meant we had authority for a takedown, but we’d never targeted anyone from a sovereign government. We dealt strictly with substate terrorists.

“No, no. Don’t get eager beaver. We’re nowhere near Omega. We just want to get eyes on this guy, that’s all. See if we can find out what he’s up to.”

“Good enough. You got an anchor we can start with?”

“Yeah. I’ll send you a complete package, but you need to play this by the numbers. I understand getting Knuckles out. Shit, I practically dared you to do it. I’m glad you executed, but this target is too sensitive for any freelancing.”

“Because he’s an Iranian general?”

“Because he’s very, very good. And he’s more than likely doing something very, very bad.”

H
aving arrived forty
minutes early
for his meeting with the scientist, Malik began to feel the Singapore humidity sink into his clothes.

He’d caught the first flight out after the capture of the son and had spent the majority of yesterday afternoon getting familiar with the area. The Biopolis complex had been little trouble to find, and even less trouble to get to, as it sat right down the road from the Buona Vista LRT metro stop. That hadn’t made him any more confident, because he knew the trouble would be located within the complex.

A campus of over a dozen buildings, all named with a biological tint such as “Helios” and “Genome,” it was festooned with cameras and security. It seemed every single building had an entrance guarded by uniformed men, along with a phalanx of biometric badges and scanners. This would have been bad enough on a normal day but was made much worse on a Sunday. The place was mostly deserted, making him feel like every guard was eyeballing him.

He wandered around a little bit, then took a seat at an outdoor café that served Peranakan cuisine. It was located behind the Chronos building, underneath a laboratory for tropical diseases—with the usual guard force at the main entrance.

Not liking the menu a single bit, he’d ordered a cup of tea and surveyed the area. The food selection notwithstanding, he did like the multiple escape routes the café afforded, so he’d decided to stay to use it as the initial contact location. He dialed his cell, letting the scientist know where to find him.

This meeting, he knew, had the greatest level of risk. He hadn’t had time to personally show the scientist the danger he posed. No chance to reinforce the fear necessary for total compliance. If the scientist had taken his initial phone call from Thailand and immediately called the police, he would be caught like a fish on a line. He hoped the man hearing his son begging on the phone would be enough.

Although that mission in and of itself had been fraught with risk.

Malik couldn’t help but smile at the memory. Kavi’s eyes bugging out of his face in confusion just before the hood descended.

Kavi would have spotted a Thai scam four miles away. Would have instinctively known when to turn away from an alley with Thai danger. But like a mouse sniffing the nose of a foreign snake, he’d had no sense of the peril.

Until they pulled the hood over his head.

His men had operated perfectly, even considering their disobeying of his orders to leave the dessert café. Actually, that, in itself, showed an ability to assess. To analyze and succeed.

Malik had rented a villa near Soi 3, a few blocks off of Sukhumvit Road, as the safe house to store Kavi, and when the team had finally relaxed after the takedown, they’d begun patting themselves on the back and praising Allah, the fervor of their mission intertwined with the revolution. With the need to identify and associate their life with something greater than themselves.

Malik had joined in, of course, but he had long since lost the sheen of the revolution. He no longer ran about chanting everything that spouted from the ayatollah’s mouth and rarely even prayed, using the proclamations from Muhammad himself about the exertions of the jihad allowing him forgiveness from this task. He knew he was stretching his job as an excuse, but he’d seen beyond the curtain and understood how the world really worked.

As he’d grown up in the IRGC, he’d learned a hard truth: Allah didn’t help those in need. They helped themselves, or they perished. Praying made no difference whatsoever. He’d seen that up close in the brutal fighting with Saddam Hussein. Thousands of mere boys thrown into the breach and slaughtered, their skulls used to create a shrine to Saddam Hussein. Even as his faith faded away, his loyalty to the state had become entrenched.

He despised the West for what they did to his country. The sanctions and other punishments. For nothing. Iran hadn’t done anything the West hadn’t perfected first. In fact, they’d learned from the West how the game was played. Israel’s killing of Iran’s nuclear scientists. The United States’ drone attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere. It was the same in effect. The difference was the hypocrisy.

Why was it okay for the United States and Israel to have nuclear weapons, but not okay for Iran? When did Allah proclaim that to be the way of the world? They were just afraid of his country becoming a power. Becoming a threat, where they no longer had the monopoly on violence. A goal he was willing to die for. Which he might, depending on this meeting.

The mullahs had sanctioned the mission but had stated that the repercussions of failure would be profound. In their obtuse way, they had sent him a veiled threat: If the Great Satan connected who was behind the attack, he would be forfeited.

Because they are afraid to fight.

They would rather have shouted “Death to America” from their knees while allowing the West to cripple them. Too afraid to strike back. As an original Islamic revolutionary who had overthrown the shah and shown the Great Satan’s impotence when he’d helped capture the US embassy and its personnel, holding them hostage for over a year, he found it ironic. How could you brag about the revolution, then fear retaliation in the same breath? Where had the audacity gone?

He snapped out of his reverie when a man rounded the corner. A short Asian, deeply tanned, with a flat face that barely held the glasses on his nose. The man glanced around nervously, scanning the restaurant and skipping forward in stuttered movements. Like the same mouse sniffing for the snake. Only this one recognized the danger.

Malik stood and said, “Dr. Sakchai Nakarat? Please have a seat. We have much to discuss.”