The Recruit: A Taskforce Story (2 page)

Knuckles sat on his bed, fuming. Wondering if he’d made a mistake bringing Decoy into the Taskforce.

The guy had been unflappable last night, emplacing a beacon on a cargo truck in the Villa El Salvador district of Lima, Peru, the worst part of town imaginable. He’d shown real skill and a calm head, skills Knuckles already knew he possessed, but this unit took more than talent on the X. It wasn’t like a hit in Somalia or Afghanistan, with the mission ending as soon as you reached the boat or the FOB. This mission was 24/7, and the operator had to be switched on at all times. Something Decoy was showing he might be lacking.

As a whole, Navy SEALs had a pretty good history of breaking things and bringing doom, the very reason they were created, but that skill also followed on to the after-operation. Namely, that they were good at breaking things and bringing doom wherever they were, wartime or otherwise, and that was exactly the wrong mind-set for the unit Knuckles belonged to. Nuance was the name of the game, and not everyone was suited for it.

A counterterrorist organization completely off the books, it couldn’t afford any cowboys who went off the reservation. Even if off the reservation was a bar and a few drinks too many. The Secret Service had learned that lesson well in Colombia when they’d had a huge scandal involving agents and hookers, but even then, the greatest punishment was simply to the men who had transgressed. With Knuckles’s organization, it would be worse, because they didn’t even officially exist, and such a thing would mean exposure and a political firestorm. Forget about individual punishment. The repercussions would extend right to the heart of the presidency.

Because of it, each man was hand-selected, and carefully vetted. Decoy had a little bit of a wild side, but Knuckles believed in him, having conducted operations together in the SEAL teams in a previous life. He’d brought Decoy in after a little begging to the commander, putting his own reputation on the line.

And now he was wondering if he’d made a mistake.

Knuckles and Decoy had gone to Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL together—the vaunted BUD/S course that all seeking the Trident had to pass. They’d become tight then, and Knuckles believed in Decoy’s capabilities, but maybe that’s what was blinding him now.

Decoy had stayed “white” SOF, while Knuckles had gravitated to the tip of the spear, eventually serving within SEAL Team Six before being recruited for the Taskforce. Now a team leader in his own right, he had recruited Decoy—against the command’s wishes. In their mind, the special-mission world was a cutline, and if someone hadn’t passed its rigorous selection process, they were ineligible. The Trident alone wasn’t enough. Knuckles had fought that for Decoy, and was wondering whether it was worth it. Whether he’d been unable to see the faults because of a friendship from over a decade ago.

As the team leader, it was something he’d have to sort out.

He heard the doorknob turn on their modest flat in Miraflores and prepared himself for the chastisement. A conflict he wasn’t looking forward to.

Decoy entered, flustered, his brown hair askew and his clothes only marginally less so. He said, “Beacon’s moving?”

Knuckles ignored that and said, “What were your instructions about hookers? About deploying down here?”

“Hey, it wasn’t a hooker. Come on. Hookers are no challenge. No way will I pay for it.”

He smiled at his joke, but clearly it did little to diffuse the situation. He continued. “It was that same girl who was looking at me in the bar at the Ayahuasca. She works for the embassy. She’s a diplomat in the Consular Section, helping out Americans and dealing with Warden Messages. She’s cool. You left and she came over. Hell, I didn’t pick that bar. You did.”

Knuckles exploded. “You ass! You’re destroying the very reason we came down here! I’m supposed to report that you’re capable of working under cover, and you go back to screwing everything that moves like you’re on a JCET deployment to Thailand! What were you told? What’s the one thing that destroys operations?”

Sheepishly, Decoy said, “My dick.”

Knuckles leaned back, “Yeah. Yeah, your dick. I had to beg to get you here, but your man-whore ways are done. You got that?”

Indignant, Decoy said, “I did fine at A&S. I’ve got what it takes.”

Knuckles shook his head. “You got what it takes on the X, but you’ve got nothing for operations. There’s more to this than a gut check. Hell, A&S is a joke just to give people a reason to leave the SMUs. And you weren’t even in one.”

Decoy squinted and said, “Here we go again. . . . I was never in a Special Mission Unit, so I’ll never live up to your vaunted bullshit. Come on, man, why’d you recruit me if I suck so bad?”

Knuckles said, “Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder. I always thought these probationary orientation deployments were a waste of time. Now I’m not so sure.”

He grew grim and said, “No more contact with the female. None. You got that?”

“Uhh . . . well, I sort of invited her to the party at the Bolivian embassy tomorrow night.”

Knuckles exploded again. “What? That invite is close-hold! Our cover is skin-deep. We can’t have anyone checking on us. That damn party is supposed to get you used to living in cover in a controlled environment, not get you laid.”

Before becoming operational on a Taskforce team, every potential recruit completed Assessment and Selection, then went through a crash course on being James Bond. No guns, just technology and tradecraft. The killing aspect was taught from the units they’d been recruited from, but the tradecraft part was a new ball game, and something that was a no-fail event. If a guy couldn’t believably pass himself off as something he wasn’t, the potential for violence was wasted.

As a final check, before becoming operational, the candidate was deployed to a country and given a mission. Not a live one, but one with risk nonetheless. Knuckles had brought Decoy to Lima, Peru, for just that reason. Their sole purpose was to conduct selected operational acts while living a cover as cellular infrastructure technicians working for the embassy. If Decoy failed, it would be little risk, and they could flush him without exposing the Taskforce. And it was looking like he might fail.

Decoy said, “I only had good intentions. I’m not here trying to screw things up.”

Knuckles said, “Your arrogance amazes me. Your best intentions come from below your waist, and it’ll get us compromised.”

The laptop computer on the desk beeped, causing Knuckles to whip his head toward it.

Decoy said, “What’s up?”

“Your damn beacon is on the move. I’ve written about half of your report, but I’ll be damned if I’m giving Colonel Hale the briefing. You’d better get up to speed if you want to get off probation.”

The culmination of the deployment was a briefing to the Taskforce Commander, Colonel Kurt Hale. Decoy would provide the operational report, and Knuckles would provide the final assessment on his status.

Decoy leaned into the screen and said, “He’s on the move toward the embassy. Toward La Molina.”

Knuckles sat up. “On the side streets? Or on the highways?”

“He just left Highway 1S. Now on Avenue Javier Prado. Headed east.”

For the first time, Knuckles’s aggravation subsided, the puzzle of their target piquing his interest. “What the hell is a Sendero Luminoso guy doing out there?”

The area surrounding the United States embassy, called La Molina, was very, very upscale, and completely different from the gutter slums of the Villa El Salvador, where they placed the beacon, which made him curious.

Sendero Luminoso—the Shining Path—was a Marxist/Leninist insurgency that had been fighting for decades. At its height, in the late 80s and early 90s, it had almost toppled the government of Peru, operating in Lima with impunity, but had since been decimated and pushed back to the deep jungles.

Even with its diminished capacity, it was still operational and still listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States, and thus within the Taskforce charter for targeting. Its members posed no direct threat to the United States but were useful for these orientation deployments. The Taskforce could operate against them, gaining live experience with fledgling members, and not worry about tainting real operations in other parts of the world. When the deployment was complete, the Taskforce simply fed any information gleaned into the intelligence architecture, which would then make its way to the Peruvians through liaison services, if warranted.

And a suspected Shining Path member moving to the upscale area of La Molina would probably be warranted.

Knuckles said, “Grab some recce kit. We’re going for a closer look.”

Decoy began digging through a Pelican box, pulling out surveillance cameras and other items. He said, “I thought this was beacon only? No direct targeting?”

Knuckles opened the door, saying, “That was before you slept with the chick, leaving me with all the beacon work. I need another look at you.”

Decoy pulled higher into the driveway and said, “This guy’s got surveillance cameras. He’s going to see us.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m getting out with the engineer handset. I’ll hold it in the air, looking like I’m doing something important. You find a vantage point for a photo.”

They’d left the boutique hotel in Miraflores and driven as fast as practical to the beacon location, figuring the target would be gone, but he wasn’t. He’d sat out front for fifteen minutes, the covered truck just ticking in the heat. As soon as they’d rounded the corner in the upscale neighborhood, Decoy had seen it, and they’d immediately pulled off, circling around the neighborhood.

Knuckles exited, a laptop over his shoulder and a large device in his hands—something that looked like a scientific calculator but was really a fine-tuned cell phone, designed to determine the exact signal strength between associated towers.

He wandered about for a bit, taking readings, then entered the truck again.

“Well?”

“We can loop around the golf course. The mountains rise on the back side. We’ll be hell and gone from the house, but I should be able to pick something up with the lens.”

“Let’s go.”

The house in question, like all the houses in La Molina, fronted the street with foreboding walls and a short driveway. Past that was a large expanse of terrain, the construction spilling out into neatly landscaped lawns and a swimming pool. The trick was getting a vantage point above the walls.

Decoy put the truck into drive and circled, going farther away from the target, but also higher. He paused on a section of road that was overgrown, no houses. He said, “We’ll park here and go through the brush. We get on the edge of the ridge, and we’ll look right down.”

“And the truck?”

“Screw it. Just a technical survey going on. Take your engineer shit with you.”

Knuckles smiled and said, “Okay, but the answer isn’t always ‘Screw it.’”

Decoy rolled his eyes and said, “I got that. I’m trying to do the mission. You going to second-guess everything?”

Knuckles grabbed his kit and said, “Not as long as you realize the difference.”

Decoy opened the door and said, “You know me better than that.”

Knuckles was halfway out before Decoy got his attention. He said, “You do know better than that, right? You’ve been doing this top secret shit for a while. Has it messed up your ability to see what’s in front of your face?”

Knuckles paused at the door, wanting to project the attitude of a team leader trusted with determining whether a candidate had the capability to succeed. Wanting to say something profound. Instead, he couldn’t shake the memory of this man pulling him through his worst night in Hell Week. A brief moment in time when he thought about quitting, and had been prevented from doing so by the man in the cab. For no other reason than he thought it the right thing to do.

Knuckles caught his eye and said, “I haven’t forgotten. It’s why you’re in this truck.”

Decoy smiled, and Knuckles continued, “You get through the next few days without screwing someone and we’re good.”

Decoy’s smile faded, and Knuckles slipped out, carrying a Nikon D4 camera with a lens that dwarfed the body.

He lined it up into the backyard of the house in question and heard, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He zoomed in, seeing the cargo truck in jerky hyperdetail, and said, “It means you don’t understand what we’re doing.”

“Bullshit. That girl works for the embassy. Hell, she might help in this mission. If anything, I’ve used my skills to get an in. I’m sick of all you guys talking about me like I’m a walking penis.”

Knuckles looked away from the viewfinder and said, “The beacon went off this morning. You weren’t there.”

“So what? You were. I was working my cover.”

Knuckles returned to the viewfinder and said, “Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter. Get something straight. We’re friends, but I’m the team leader. You mess with me, you mess with the beast. Period.”

“All right. All right. I screwed up. But it wasn’t catastrophic.”

Knuckles said, “This time. It’s the next one I’m worried about.”

Decoy started to protest, when Knuckles said, “Movement. Get another lens out here.”

Decoy began digging through his rucksack as Knuckles watched the target exit the truck and walk to the front of the house with a manila envelope. The door opened and a Caucasian woman with brown hair entered the stoop. She shook his hand and took the envelope, and Knuckles began recording, firing the camera on automatic, the snaps from the shutter sounding like a fluttering of pages, ten per second.

The woman stood for a moment, talking, then opened the door, holding her arm inside. The canvas tarp covering the pickup flipped open in the back, and four or five men jumped out, running inside the house. Knuckles continued pressing the button, digitally engraving the scene for posterity.

By the time Decoy had his binoculars out, it was done. He said, “What did you see?”

“I don’t know, but it didn’t look good.”

The truck began to back up, with only their target at the wheel, and Knuckles said, “Let’s see where he goes.”

They scrambled back into their truck, Decoy saying, “What happened?”

“A bunch of guys exited. Peruvians. It looked like a damn clown-car convention. Take a look at the camera. He passed a manila envelope. I got the pictures, and they’re in sixteen megapixels. Expand it. See what you can see.”

Knuckles headed down to the highway, driving faster than was necessary, rocking Decoy back and forth and causing him to say, “You want me to see these things, or is this another damn test? Slow down!”

“I don’t want to lose him. I want to see where he’s going.”

Decoy slapped the laptop between them and said, “Did he remove the beacon?”

Knuckles slowed, chagrined. He wanted to say something to indicate that he’d been aware of the beacon but that he was afraid of losing it because of his extensive experience. He opted for honesty.

“Shit. I forgot about that.”

Decoy grinned. “I understand. You’re just trying to make me feel good.”

Knuckles shook his head and said, “No. That would be me setting you up for a couple of double Ds. Zoom in to that envelope.”

Decoy did and said, “I got a name on it. Linda Devoire. The next shot shows her pulling money out of it. American greenbacks. One-hundred-dollar bills.”

Knuckles entered Highway 1S and said, “Send that name to the Taskforce. See if they come up with anything.”

Decoy said, “Got no signal. You need to get back into the city.”

They drove for a bit longer, then Decoy said, “What happens if they do come up with something?”

“Nothing. It’s an Oversight Council call. We just execute.”

“Isn’t that a little stupid? I mean, leaving the call to a bunch of civilians? We just saw a known Shining Path guy drop off a squad of fighters at a house within spitting distance of our embassy. Why are we going to let a bunch of hand-wringing civilians make a call? Someone should hit that place.”

Knuckles exited Highway 1S into the slums of Villa El Salvador and said, “Don’t feel so special in your superiority. I felt the same way when I was in a war zone, but it’s different here. They provide an oversight that’s proven its worth. They’ve prevented a ton of mistakes. I trust them.”

Decoy leaned back. “If you say so.”

The roads went from asphalt to dirt, the buildings left and right crumbling brick, graffiti sprayed on the mortar. Knuckles said, “Get the laptop up. Where’d he go?”

They started working their way through the streets, dodging trash cans and sprinting children, the stares from the men less than charitable.

Knuckles said, “Don’t these kids have to go to school?”

Decoy brought the laptop to life and said, “He’s at the same location I emplaced it. That little shithole clapboard house.”

He looked up to see four men blocking the road. He said, “I don’t think we need to confirm it.”