Enemy of Mine (15 page)

He watched the boy for any signs of what was being said, but nothing registered in his body language until about an hour into the tape. Then, the boy stopped writing and looked at him, his eyes wide. When the assassin did nothing but give him a hard look in return, he went back to the page, scribbling furiously. Soon enough, the tape was done.

“Well, what do you have?”

“Abu Infidel, it’s not good. You need to stay away from these people. Tell the Resistance what they’re doing.”

“Spit it out. What’s on the tape?”

“Well, there’s apparently an assassination being planned, but not here in Lebanon. Somewhere else. The assassin was at the meeting with your computer. Someone attacked the meeting, and there’s something about an American intelligence agent, who’s now dead. There’s a lot of the talk that I couldn’t understand because it was garbled, but the assassin lived. He called the person on this tape, and he’s going forward with his plan. He asked for help.”

“Who is it? What’s his name? What’s his target?”

The Infidel quietly seethed.
He
was the chosen one for this work, the professional used when it was something delicate with strategic implications, and they’d hired someone else. The fuckers had actually gone to another player when he had a
perfect
record.

“They didn’t say. They seemed pleased that he was continuing, but
didn’t say anything specific, except the target was bringing money and they wanted that money to go away.”

“Money? For what? Who’s bringing money?”

“I don’t know.” The boy put his hand on the assassin’s forearm. “Your name came up. They said they were going to kill you to keep you from affecting the operation because of something else you’d done.”

The news didn’t really upset him. Deep inside, he knew his time here was coming to a close. Hezbollah was just too damn paranoid to let him run around forever. He knew they’d try to kill him sooner or later. The issue now was stopping that order before it got out to the Hezbollah chain of command. He’d last five seconds in Beirut if that happened, looking over his shoulder at everyone who walked behind him.

The second issue was this new assassin.
Kill me, huh? How about I kill your whole fucking plan?
It was a matter of pride now.

He didn’t know the man’s name, but he knew where to find it. And he’d need the computer the boy was supposed to pick up. He looked at his watch and saw he had about forty minutes before the meeting with the Druze.

“Come on. I need you to read something else.”

“What? I don’t have time for that. I have to meet the Druze, then pass the computer to someone else.”

“Who?”

“Abu Aziz.”

That computer is important.
Abu Aziz was one of the guys on the inner circle protective detail of Majid and Ja’far. It would work out well that he wasn’t in the
Dahiyeh
, because he was a giant of a man and the most competent. Of all the inner circle that the assassin had met, Aziz was the only one with combat experience, having earned his position through skill in the 2006 war with Israel.

“I’ll pay for you to get to that meeting. I have as much interest in this as you do.”

He stood up and flagged a cab. The boy mistook his irritation at what he had translated as an urgent need to inform the Resistance. He entered the cab as well. He said nothing until they entered the outskirts of the
Dahiyeh,
then said, “You have something for me to read here?”

The assassin saw his face twist in confusion, and said, “Just a quick stop. Nothing for you here. You take the cab to the meeting. When you get the computer, come back here. Don’t worry about taking the computer to Aziz. Bring it right back here. I’ll be upstairs with the leadership. Give me a call, and I’ll let you know if it’s okay to come up.”

Infidel smiled. “I’ll introduce you to the power brokers. The real people of the Resistance. Forget about Aziz. He’s an errand boy.”

The boy’s eyes glowed at the thought. He nodded vigorously. “I’ll come right back here. You’ll tell them to call Aziz?”

“Yes.”

Infidel paid the cab driver up front, then walked to the café, glancing to make sure his car was still parked where he’d left it. He was fairly sure he’d need a rapid mode of exfiltration, and waiting on a cab wouldn’t cut it.

Two men were at the entrance. Walking up to them was incredibly dangerous, but he had one card to play: He supposedly had no idea Hezbollah wanted him dead. If these guys didn’t either, then he’d be allowed into the café just as he had been before. If they did know about the order, they’d be smirking behind his back, thinking they were now saved the trouble of hunting him down. Either way, they’d let him into the inner sanctum, with no idea that he knew what they’d planned for his fate. A little thing, this bit of information, but something potentially decisive for a man of his skills.

He allowed himself to be frisked, telling them he’d simply come back for his camera and backpack. The two guards radioed into the inner sanctum. He hoped that Majid and Ja’far would be upstairs and not inside the café. Killing everyone there would be difficult. He needn’t have worried. The radio call came back, and a conversation
ensued, with both guards surreptitiously stealing glances at him. They finally told him he could enter, and led him through the café to the stairs, one in front and one behind.

So it’s option number two. Good. Rather have them know why I’m killing them.

The guard in front opened the door to the office and stepped inside. The assassin caught a glimpse of Majid and Ja’far inside, both with insincere smiles. The door swung outward, toward him. In one fluid move, he swung the door closed on the lead man and pulled the carbon-fiber push dagger from his belt, the blade sticking out between the second and third finger of his clenched fist.

Four inches of plastic in the shape of an arrowhead with a handle perpendicular to the blade, it looked like the T-bone of a porterhouse steak, with four ridges that ran from the handle down to the tip. None of the ridges held much of an edge, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t made to cut, but to stab.

The assassin turned to the guard behind him, tied up the hand holding the pistol grip of his AK, and punched the man three times in the neck with the push dagger. He grunted twice, and a fountain of blood jetted out of his neck, spraying the walls like a garden hose dropped by a child.

The assassin let him fall to the ground and swung open the door. As expected, the first guard was coming through it to find out what had happened. His eyes went wide at the slaughter, but his brain wasn’t quick enough to react.

The assassin punched him three times in the fold where his neck met his shoulders, and another fountain of blood erupted, spraying the hallway in an obscene amount of crimson liquid.

The assassin let him drop, picked up his AK-47, and entered the room.

L
ike some bloody apparition
from a horror movie, the Hezbollah leadership watched Infidel close the door.

“I understand you guys have some issues with my work.”

To their credit, they showed no fear.
Because they still think they’re in control.

Majid spoke first. “Abu Infidel, I have no idea why you chose to seal your fate, but you are done now. Your choice is how you die. Put down the gun, and it will be quick.”

“Shut the fuck up. I have no time for bullshit Arabic bravado. You hired another assassin, and I want to know who. There’s also the matter of money going out. A great deal of money. I want to know where.”

Ja’far said, “The other killer is none of your concern. It isn’t Hezbollah business. Leave us now and we may reconsider your fate.”

The assassin walked over to Ja’far, grabbed a fistful of hair, pulled his head back, and punched him deep with the push-blade. Ja’far’s arms swung wildly. He leapt to his feet, clamped his hands over the wound to his carotid artery, and ran in a circle like a decapitated chicken, finally slamming into a wall and sliding to the floor, the blood still pumping out of his destroyed neck.

The assassin looked at Majid. “I understand you plan on killing the Druze like you were planning on killing me. You guys just don’t give a shit who you fuck over, huh?”

Majid’s eyes were wide, but he said nothing.

“You’d better start talking, you raghead piece of shit. You wanted me dead, and now you reap what you sow.”

Majid said, “Abu Aziz will be here any time. You can kill me, but he will kill you. Make no mistake, you are dead.”

“Abu Aziz? The guy bringing the computer from the Druze? Is that who you mean? Actually, I don’t think he’s going to show up. At least not anytime soon. Maybe a little later. With a fucking mop to clean this place up.”

Majid showed his first sign of fear. “What do you want?”

“I want to know who the killer is. That’s it.”

“I don’t know his name. He calls himself the Ghost. That’s all I know.”

“Really. What alias did you give him? How’s he traveling?”

“I don’t know. He got his identity from a Palestinian group. We had nothing to do with it.”

“Bullshit. You gave him something.” He saw a computer at the back of the room, and went to it.

“Is it in here? The information?”

“That computer is nothing. Just a desktop work machine for the coffee shop.”

“Really? Okay, then type in the password. Now.”

Majid did as he asked, and the screen filled with Arabic.

“Can you read that, Infidel?”

The assassin felt his phone vibrate. He smiled. “No, but I think I know someone who can.”

He spoke briefly into the phone, then turned to Majid. “That’s the Druze computer coming up. Last chance. You help me now, and you live. You don’t, and you die.”

Majid closed his eyes and began rocking slightly, chanting in Arabic. The assassin shook his head.
Fatalistic sons of bitches, that’s for sure.

He walked around the chair until he was behind the chanting man. He circled Majid’s neck with his forearm, cinched it tight, and twisted
harshly. He let go and watched the body hit the floor, the right foot twitching.

He went quickly to the door and dragged inside the bloody body he’d killed on the threshold. He placed both of the dead guards’ bodies against the near wall, hiding them from first view. He was moving to the dead Hezbollah leadership, intent on hiding them as well, when he heard a knock at the door. He cursed, took one look around, then walked over and pushed it open.

The boy stood on the threshold, looking wide-eyed.

“Abu Infidel, what is all of this blood? What’s going on?”

The assassin smiled. “Nothing now. We had some issues. But it’s taken care of. I told you I’d get you in to meet the party faithful. Come on in and say hello.”

The boy nodded hesitantly and crossed the threshold. When he saw the massacre inside, he balked, attempting to back up and escape through the door.

The assassin stopped him, trapping his elbow joint in a come-along and forcing him to drop the computer he’d brought.

“I didn’t say they’d talk back. Be happy you get to see them at all.”

When the boy calmed down enough to assimilate his surroundings, the assassin continued.

“What I need you to do is go through these computers and tell me the identity of the target and the identity of the forger helping out the assassin. Do that, and I’ll let you live.”

I
pulled up the geolocation software suite
one more time and was rewarded yet again with a null ping. I began to think we’d made a mistake giving the computer back to the enemy.

Probably not any free WiFi in this whole damn country.

We’d made it out of the Ain al-Hilweh camp surprisingly easily. It had turned out that the building wasn’t heavily occupied, and since Jennifer and Samir had killed everyone above us, we only had a small contingent below, which had been effortlessly sandwiched between us and Samir’s men out front. No issues whatsoever, except I would have liked to make them suffer a little more.

We had split up and searched, with me giving guidance to focus on computer equipment. I knew we had plenty of time, since the “police” wouldn’t respond to a firefight here in the camps until they were sure it was over, but I didn’t want to push my luck by digging through terrorist sock drawers. We’d come away with a single laptop and some thumb drives.

We’d fled to Samir’s house in the Chouf Mountains. I had wanted to gut every single one of the Druze militiamen in the back of the van, but Jennifer held me back. Eventually, Samir had managed to convince me that he wasn’t Dr. Evil and hadn’t set me up. Which meant that someone else had an agenda. It remained to be seen who.

Going through the computer, we’d found the itinerary for Jeffrey McMasters, the new Middle Eastern envoy from the United States,
along with a bunch of tangential information about the meeting that occurred today, including the bona fides for the two sides.

What caught my eye was the description of the assassin. It was nothing like the guy I had seen, with the exception of the coke-bottle eyeglasses. The person who was supposed to be at that table was a small, frail man. Instead, the man gutted by my computer bomb was a six-foot-three-inch bruiser. Which left a huge gap in our knowledge of what the hell was going on. McMasters was targeted for assassination, that much I was sure of, but we had no idea by whom. Forget the specific individual, we didn’t even know which ideological group, which was a necessary precursor to stopping the attack.

The first order of business had been to contact the Taskforce and feed them everything we had. Unlike Syria, Lebanon was still a free-for-all of Internet access, so we managed to get our “company” VPN up and running fairly easily, using the Internet from Samir’s house. I made Samir wait in another room and got Kurt on the line. Samir didn’t fight it, knowing full well by now that we did a little bit more than archeological work.

I gave Kurt a very succinct account of what had occurred. I let him know that Jennifer’s call of Prairie Fire was a good one, but downplayed my time in captivity, sticking to the mission. I didn’t mention what had happened to me, or the fear that still lingered, a rotting sore I pretended not to notice.