All Necessary Force (14 page)

He handed a sheet of paper to the congressman. “The deceased have a line through their name. The wounded have an asterisk. The Americans are fourth from the bottom.”

Ellis looked at the list and felt his bile rise. There were annotations
next to every name but two. Nephilim was one of them.
Jesus. He’s still alive
.

This early in the morning, the Kentucky Fried Chicken was closed, forcing Rafik to hide in an alley with a view of the coffee shop. He had originally planned on giving the details of his operation to the Muslim Brotherhood contact no earlier than the day the aircraft arrived, but with Noordin dead, he would need to go to Cairo himself, forcing him to give out the information early. There was a risk the man would leak the information, but Rafik couldn’t see a way around it.

At precisely nine, he watched the contact go through his ritual of signals, this time correctly. He approached and took a seat. The first words out of the contact’s mouth brought him up short.

“The plane’s on the way. It will be here tomorrow night.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes. They called and asked for more than three hours. They’ll be on the ground for the night, but will leave before dawn.”

Well, that’s something anyway. I should be able to make it back from Cairo in time.

“Did you get the uniforms?”

“Yes. Five like you asked. And the side gate is my post. That’s where you’ll enter. Nobody else will be there.”

“I’ll also need a vehicle to get to the plane.”

The contact looked alarmed. “You never said that. Nobody is allowed to approach the plane. It’s going to land and stay out on the runway. It’s not coming into the terminal.”

“I never said it because I didn’t want to give you any aspect of my plan. You’ve already shown me your accident-prone skills. Can you do it?”

The man nervously glanced left and right, refusing to meet Rafik’s eyes. “I’m just letting you in. I don’t want to be a part of your plan.”

“I didn’t ask you what you wanted. I asked if you could do it. You are
already
part of the plan.”

The man said nothing. Rafik leaned forward, forcing the contact to meet his eyes. “Can you do it?”

The contact hesitated, then nodded. Rafik smiled. “Can you remember my instructions without writing them down?”

The contact nodded again. Rafik gave him the bare minimum of information he would need to accomplish the mission.

Getting back to his hotel, he accessed his Skype account and called the one man on earth he trusted. When his face appeared on the screen, Rafik felt a calm settle over him. Kamil had bled with him in Algeria and was the touchstone he needed to keep going.

Rafik said, “Peace be upon the prophet. It’s time.”

“Thanks be to Allah,” Kamil replied. “The men are ready.”

“Did you get the weapons?”

“Yes. You were right. Al-Fayoum was the perfect place to wait. We had no trouble finding weapons.”

An old oasis a couple hours southwest of Cairo, al-Fayoum had some of the strictest security restrictions in all of Egypt. In 1997 a group of terrorists had massacred more than sixty foreign tourists at the Luxor archeological site. Most of the terrorists had come from al-Fayoum, and the town itself suffered the repercussions. It was a counterintuitive choice to place his trusted friend and the team in the heavily patrolled area, but Rafik didn’t worry about the security. Instead, he had leveraged the reason the security was there in the first place; the town was ripe with sympathizers.

Rafik said, “There’s been a complication, old friend. I’m afraid I must put more on your shoulders than I wanted. In addition to your requirements in Europe.”

23

K

nuckles looked like a caricature of someone injured. He was covered in bandages from his head to his waist, with irregular red polka dots splotching through where the wounds were still seeping, like oil spots trying to join together. In the twenty-four hours he had been in the hospital, he hadn’t gotten appreciably better. But he hadn’t gotten any worse, either. The doctors kept marveling that he was alive at all, which was something I didn’t need to hear.

The hospital in Alexandria turned out to be pretty damn good, as far as foreign hospitals go. It was very clean and modern, and handled the trauma of the terrorist attack efficiently. We had been given the presidential suite because they’d run out of room, which was small compensation. It gave Knuckles an anteroom he wouldn’t use with a TV he couldn’t watch.

I had been conducting a vigil since we’d arrived, not for any emotional reasons, but because I was petrified the staff here would miss something if an alarm went off on one of the plethora of machines hooked to him. So far, we’d been okay.

Jennifer had stayed as well. I could tell she wasn’t sure what to do, and was probably traumatized by the carnage she had witnessed. I knew I was being an asshole by letting her flounder, but I didn’t have the energy to help her cope. It was all I could do to deal with my own emotions. Seeing Knuckles’ torn body was eating into me like acid. I felt a darkness coming back.

After the murder of my family, I had lived in an abyss, full of rage and hatred. The senselessness of their deaths had consumed me, bringing
on a blackness that wanted to take over my soul. Those days were now a distant memory. I had tricked myself into believing they weren’t even that, but just a bad dream that had no substance. The terrorist strike that had ripped my friends apart had also awakened something, a small sliver on the edge of my consciousness asking to grow. Reminding me that my past was all too real.

Had my friends been killed or injured on an operation, in combat, I would have been able to handle it differently. I had had many friends die that way, and it was something I inherently understood as the price of my job. This was different. This was just as senseless as my family’s death. A random killing of people I cared deeply about, and I could feel the beast wanting back out. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hold it back.

“Pike,” Jennifer said, “you should eat. You haven’t taken a break since we got here. Let’s go take a walk.”

I thought about it and decided she was right. I needed to get out of here.

“Yeah. Okay. I want to stop by the nurses’ station, though, let ’em know we’re leaving.”

We exited the hospital onto a tight, busy street, the buildings crammed together without any space and the sunlight blinding me. Looking around, all I saw was a small industrial area with metal workers shaping fenders on cars, and lathes shooting out sparks into the alleys.

Jennifer asked a cab driver for directions and we headed out. Four blocks later, we had left the industrial area and entered a congested shopping district. We stopped at a roadside stand and ordered some local food.

Sitting down at a coffee table, Jennifer said, “Pike, I think someone’s following us.”

I didn’t alter my demeanor. Just asked, “Who and where.”

“There’s an Asian guy at your nine o’clock. He was outside the hospital when we left, and now he’s across the street at the other café. I only noticed him because he
was
Asian. He stuck out.”

“Can you see him by looking at me?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t bother to try and ID him. “Let me know if he leaves.”

If Jennifer had called it, he was probably surveillance. She had an uncanny eye for this type of thing, and I had never seen her call a ghost. We ate our lunch at an unhurried pace, staying longer than any ordinary patron would. When the man didn’t leave, the chances of a mistake became smaller and smaller. We finished up and began walking away from the hospital. The man followed. We entered a pharmacy and bought some aspirin, just as an excuse, then began walking back in the direction of the hospital. The man reappeared on our tail. The glimpse of him brought irrational anger.

Dumb motherfucker’s going to follow me when he sticks out like a whore in church?

“Jennifer, I’m going to find out what this guy’s doing.”

She looked at me sharply. “How?”

“There was an empty warehouse in the industrial section. When we turn the corner to it, I’m going to stop and jerk his ass inside.”

She became alarmed, seeing where I was going. “Then what?”

I stopped and locked eyes with her. “Then he tells us what the fuck he’s doing. Don’t you think it’s strange that we’re following a guy from Indonesia who gets killed in a terrorist attack, and now we’re being followed by an Asian guy? He’s probably fucking Indonesian.”

“Pike, let’s call the police. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

We turned the corner and I stopped. “Tough shit. We’re here. Go inside and see what’s there.”

“Pike—”

“Get inside. Now.”

She opened the door and disappeared. I squeezed inside the door frame and waited on our tail, my fists clenching and unclenching spasmodically, the blackness spreading.

He came around the corner and reacted instantly, throwing his hands up and stumbling backward. I batted them away and grabbed him by his throat, slamming him against the brick wall. Then I threw his ass through the doorway. All one hundred and thirty pounds of him.

I stepped into the gloom of the warehouse and smacked him in the
head, stunning him again. I ripped off a satchel he was wearing and opened it, finding a beat-up Chinese Type 67 semiautomatic pistol. The barrel had a built-in suppressor, and the caliber was unique to the weapon. It wasn’t something you could buy on eBay.

Well, well. Not a coincidence he’s behind us
.

I checked the chamber, saw it was loaded, and pointed it at his head. “Empty your pockets.”

He sat up and did nothing, just stared blankly at me. He looked familiar, and it clicked.
One of the tourists from the catacombs.
I cracked him in the head with the barrel, splitting open his scalp and knocking him to the ground again. I heard Jennifer say my name, but ignored her.

“I said empty your fucking pockets.”

He still did nothing. I raised the pistol again and Jennifer moved to him, pulling on his pockets.

“Get the fuck away from him!”

She did, but said, “I don’t think he speaks English. Pike, don’t hurt him.”

The man was now emptying his pockets onto the ground.

“Bullshit. That’s the first line of defense. Play like you can’t understand. He was at the catacombs when the strike happened. He knows something, and he speaks fine. I promise.”

I looked around the warehouse, seeing a table and chair. I pointed the pistol at him and said, “Take off your clothes.”

“Pike,” Jennifer said, “what are you—”

“Quit questioning me in front of the detainee.” I wanted to get the man feeling as vulnerable as possible, and being completely naked was a quick way to get there, but I couldn’t tell Jennifer that in front of him.

I repeated, “Take off your clothes.”

He didn’t move until Jennifer mimicked unbuttoning her shirt, then he began to undress.

“Jennifer, quit playing into his hands. Let me deal with this. Go find something to tie him up with.”

She paused for a second, then began exploring the warehouse.

I picked up his belongings and found a passport. To my surprise, he wasn’t Indonesian but Chinese. And he had an exit stamp from Indonesia the day after I had left. I flipped a page and saw that he’d entered Indonesia a day after me as well. I motioned him over to the chair, making him sit down. His face was completely blank, without a trace of emotion. The fact that he was completely naked didn’t seem to faze him. Jennifer returned with an old lamp that had about a four-foot electrical cord. I ripped it out.

“Tie his hands behind his back and behind the chair. Make sure it’s good.”

When she was done, I moved the table until it was about five feet away and put the pistol on it. Then I picked up a length of hose lying on the ground. It was heavy rubber, and would hurt a great deal.

I rubbed his chest with it. “You’re lucky in one respect. I’m not going to beat the shit out of your face. I don’t want to give you the excuse that you can’t talk. And I
know
you can speak English, so save yourself the pain. I’m going to find out what you know about the death of my friend. That’s just a fact.”

He looked at me with that blank stare, making my rage grow. I slammed the hose against his stomach, causing him to scream. I picked up a rag and shoved it in his mouth, then swung three more times. His eyes squeezed shut and he screamed again, but only a muffled sound came out.

Jennifer shouted, “Pike! Please stop.
Please
.”

She looked sick to her stomach. I said, “Go to the door and watch for someone coming.”

“Pike…”

“Go.”

She left and I returned to the man. He was sweating profusely and breathing hard.

“I’m not going away. You nod your head and I’ll remove the rag. We’ll start with an easy one. What’s your name?”

I waited for him to nod. When he didn’t, I striped his thighs, feeling the rage build. Blaming him for making me give him pain. Taking out
my grief over a dead friend. Taking out my rage over another friend who would probably die today. My vision blurred and I hit him again and again, almost missing him nodding. I removed the rag.

His head sagged for a second, then he whispered, “Camera.”

What the fuck?
Speaking gibberish to get me to stop?
His pathetic attempt to act like he didn’t understand broke through the small bit of sanity holding back my blackness. The beast came out, looking for pain.

Jennifer kept her eyes glued to the street through a crack in the door, not wanting to witness what Pike was doing. Not wanting to be a part of it in any way. She flinched every time she heard the hose strike flesh, her conscience screaming at her to stop it, but a fear of what Pike might do overweighing her impulse.

She had never seen him like this. She’d watched him sit in Knuckles’ room, morose and brooding, and somewhere during the wait, he’d crossed a threshold. For the first time, she feared him. Feared what he was capable of.