One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [117]
He paced back and forth for a second. “Do you really think that such a weapon is real? Do you think these guys really found something in Guatemala?”
“I don’t know. I’m inclined to think they did, since a couple of in-digs died on her uncle’s expedition, and these guys have made arrangements to meet someone to continue on whatever journey they think they’re on. If they failed in finding a weapon, or if the weapon wasn’t real, why continue?”
“Shit, this is bad news. What’re you going to do?”
“I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to pass everything you just said to the Taskforce. Kurt should contact me tomorrow. What you could do, if you don’t mind, is simply reinforce what I’m going to say. I’ll tell Kurt everything I have, but you know what my reputation is. He might blow me off, and I wouldn’t blame him. Either way, this is a problem for the Taskforce, not for me.”
Ethan mulled over his options. Finally, he said, “Yeah, I can do that. I don’t know how soon I’ll see the boss—you remember his schedule—but I’ll certainly tell him when I see him.”
ETHAN STOOD AT THE DOOR until they drove off. Once they were out of sight he went to the telephone to call Domino’s for the second time that week. Before he dialed, he thought about Pike’s visit. He picked up the handset, calling the Taskforce duty officer instead.
71
Mason hung up the cloned cell phone. Picking up the clean duty phone, he called Lucas.
“We got a hit. Pike was visiting a guy named Ethan Merriweather tonight.”
“Is he still there?”
“No. He left. The man on the phone says that Pike talked about interesting stuff, and just wanted to relay that. Want to do anything with this?”
“Yeah. Alert the team. Tell them to get in as fast as possible. While we’re inbound, figure out everything you can on this Ethan Merriweather. Find out where he lives and do a quick analysis of the area. I don’t want to waste any time when we get to the office. Give us a target dump on both the man and his location.”
“You got it. Anything specific you want me to hone in on?”
“Yeah, figure out if this guy’s a badass as well. Check his military background. I guarantee he has one.”
“Roger that. See you in thirty minutes.”
It took Mason all of ten minutes to get a complete background on Ethan, to include his address, family members, and the last time he had paid his electric bill.
Thirty-two minutes later he was briefing the assembled team.
“The target is a thirty-four-year-old Caucasian male. His MOS is 96B, intel analyst. He is currently working in J3 Special Operations Division at the Pentagon. He’s airborne qualified, but that’s it as far as specialized schooling we care about. Basically, he’s your standard intel weenie. No known firearms, no bills being paid to ‘Johnny’s house of jujitsu,’ nothing dangerous at all.
“He has a wife and two children, both girls; ages eight and eleven. Of note, he does have a dog, but I couldn’t determine a breed. All I could find were some vet bills for various things, which leads me to believe the dog is getting on in years.”
Moving to the next slide in the presentation, Mason continued the briefing, covering the neighborhood and the house where Ethan lived in detail. When he finished, he turned the briefing over to Lucas.
Standing up, Lucas said, “This is pretty straightforward. We simply need this Ethan to tell us where to find Pike. Once we have that information, terminate whoever is in the house. Don’t do it before we have the information, since you might need to use the wife or children for persuasion on the target.”
Randy, one of the SF men, cut in. “What’s our authorized level of persuasion? What if he refuses to talk?”
“There is no limit. Make him talk. Does anyone here have any qualms about that?”
The team looked around at each other, but nobody said a word.
“If you look at the team, you’ll see the only two missing from the Fort Bragg op are Carl and Alan. When push came to shove, they didn’t have the stomach for the work. Almost caused mission