One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [158]
We got in the car with Jennifer. Having heard the gunshot, she gave me a questioning look.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t kill him. If he’s smart, he’ll come out alive.”
She said nothing.
I headed back to Tuzla, the other car following. “Before I begin, give me a rundown on what you’ve got here. What are the assets available?”
“Well, we were at Omega in Tunis, so we’ve got the total package on the ground. You saw the 427. We can use that in a pinch, but only to exfil whoever we get. We have no cover for status here, so I can’t let that thing be seen doing anything operational. Dropping in here was pretty damn risky, but the gunfight sort of overcame that. It’s supposed to only be passing through. Obviously, we have the team you just saw, but we have the same issues. We’re all employees of Epeius, supposedly exploring for oil in Tunisia. We’re really hanging it out here. There’ll be no plausible deniability if this falls apart.”
Knuckles was gently reminding me of the potential sacrifice should things go wrong.
“Sounds like you guys were about to pull the trigger. Sorry for the change of mission, but, trust me, it’s worth it.”
Knuckles said, “You’ll be sorrier about it when I tell you who the target is.”
“Who?”
“Your old pal Crusty.”
“Crusty? That bastard’s still around? You guys haven’t taken him off the board?”
“Yeah, he’s still around, and he’s moved up in the world. He’s no longer just a low-hanging fruit to whack for the hell of it. His security ain’t getting any better, though. We can fall right back into it, as long as we don’t blow our cover over here.”
Shit. He’s not going to like what I have to say. “Well, it’s going to be sticky. Our target knows he’s being hunted. It’s going to be very hard to take him off the board without a firefight. Whatever happens to your cover, it’ll be worth it.”
“Let me guess, you’ve found Bin Laden and he’s here with a nuke on his back.”
“Close. It’s not Bin Laden.”
He didn’t need a map drawn out. “You’re tracking someone with WMD? For real?”
“Yeah. He’s going to deploy it soon. Maybe in the next few hours. And I don’t know where the fuck he went.”
94
We planned our next moves in a parking lot a block down from Carlos’s hotel. It had been a little strange at first, since out of the five folks on the ground, four of them had been my guys—including Knuckles. I could tell he was unsure how to handle the situation, so I had deferred to him and simply fallen in as a team member. He didn’t say anything, but I knew him well enough to see he was greatly relieved. I also knew he’d let me take over the team if I’d asked. But I wasn’t ready. These men had worked and trained relentlessly for a very long time to hone their skills to a razor’s edge. Part of that was individual, and part was teamwork. Either way, I was on the low end of the stick for both. Taking charge would just be an ego trip. Knuckles is the man now.
And he had grown quite a bit while I was gone. I watched him with the team and could see they were clicking. It was painful to admit, but my taking over would just make them less effective. I was satisfied with providing the intelligence, letting Knuckles handle the assault. I knew he’d defer to me if it came to that.
Knuckles finished giving instructions, wasting little time on fancy planning. “All right, remember we’re dealing with WMD. Take that seriously. Pike’s going to lead the way. We get to the room and scan it for heat. If we see a source, we go in hard. If the room’s clean, we take it slow. No sense alerting the rest of the hotel if we don’t have to.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of the mission brief. It was like nothing had changed, and I was sitting on the patio at Tbilisi. About to save the world. Maybe that’s a bit much, but it was a good feeling. Knuckles finally got to us. “Jennifer, I want you to engage the man at the front desk. Keep him focused on you until we’re in the stairwell. We’re going to enter