Brothers In Arms (15 page)

“Nice thing about country living,” Charley said. “You can go right out in your front yard and bust some caps.”

Greg Ford and his partner laughed. Dale grinned.

“Oh, yeah,” Charley said.

They rolled slowly by the outbuildings and then stopped in a cloud of dust in front of the house. A screened-in porch ringed the house. Standing on the front porch in bib overalls, an olive-drab T-shirt, and combat boots was a big man, stocky and built like an oversized fireplug.

“That’s the man?” Charley said.

“That’s him,” Dale said. He opened the door and got out and called to the man, “Hey Rhino! What say?”

The big man grinned and came forward, his hand extended.

“How the hell are you, Dale?” he said.

Dale turned to Charley who followed him to the stairs. “Charley Payne, meet John Onofrey, best known as Rhino to his friends and enemies alike.”

Charley shook the big man’s hand; his hand was lost in the shovel-like mitts of the other man.

“Good to meet you, Rhino,” he said.

“Likewise, Charley,” the big man said. “Welcome to the Double O Farm.”

“Seems like you’ve got all the comforts of home: gun range, plenty of privacy . . .” Charley said. “Where do you keep the bikini-clad beauties and the booze?”

Rhino laughed. “I’m a bachelor farmer,” he said. “There’re some girls in town, but I don’t think you guys will have much time for that.”

“I can only dream,” Charley said.

“Let’s get you settled,” Rhino said.

After showing Charley and Dale their room—right beside a fully equipped operations room complete with radios and television monitors that covered the approaches to the house—the range, and the outbuildings that served as dormitories for the rest of the team, Rhino introduced them to the new members of the team. There were twelve gunfighters including the drivers and Charley and Dale. Rhino didn’t count himself in the number as his job was, as he said, to oversee the overseers.

“You do a lot of this?” Charley asked.

“I’ve put some people up before,” Rhino affirmed. “And some of the folks I’ve had out here for training had special security needs. Those gigs pay for the equipment . . . I’ve got my pension and these gigs, and I don’t eat much, so most of what I make goes back into the facility. I had that range built last year, told the contractor I wanted a place to shoot my guns. Illinois is not the most gun-friendly state, but out here is the sheriff’s country, and I know that old boy and we leave each other alone . . . the old ways still apply out here.”

“People are good out here, then?” Charley said.

“Yep,” Rhino said. “This is the last bastion of civility in an uncivil world. Folks around here mind their own business, help out when you need it, and leave you alone unless you feel like company.”

“I envy you,” Charley said. “You got good living out here.”

“Well,” Rhino said, “I’ll leave you two alone and make sure our guest Uday is all set up. Do you want to keep the nurse? Two of these young shooters are SF medics and they can do anything that nurse can.”

“He’s used to the nurse, and the nurse to him,” Dale said. “We’ll let them be, Rhino.”

“Right-o, then,” Rhino said. “I’ll be out on the porch later. If you’d like, the early evening is good whiskey-sipping time.”

Dale and Charley watched the big man go inside and shut the door behind him. They pulled two chairs together and sat out on the porch and watched one of the team walking along the range and then around to the side of the house.

“Are you going to put patrols out?” Charley said.

“We’ve got the video coverage,” Dale said. “I’ve got a ready team standing by. We’ll put light patrol coverage out at night and enhance the video coverage with the infrared equipment Ford and Harrison brought.”

“State of the art,” Charley murmured. “So what do you think about what Uday said on the plane?”

“Smallpox? That’s a scary thought. Uday was an associate of Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law. He was in charge of the biological warfare program and we know that Iraq got smallpox samples from the old Soviet Union’s Biopreparat organization.”

“I thought smallpox was wiped out.”

“In the world at large, it has been. It was the first disease the World Health Organization considered eliminated by aggressive vaccination and surveillance. Supposedly the only two samples left in the world were in the Soviet Union Biopreparat and our Center for Disease Control. But that’s what makes smallpox such a danger . . . there’s no pool of immune people since we haven’t vaccinated against it since the seventies. It’s highly contagious . . . you only have to get within six to ten feet of an infected patient to pick up airborne pathogens, and there’s over a thirty percent fatality rate in the standard bug. That doesn’t take into account any improvements that the genetic engineers might want to make.”

“I hate the thought of that.”

“You and me both. I’ll pass that on to Callan; I’m sure he’ll want to look at that angle. I wish we could make more sense out of Uday when he has these clear spells. Keep on it, and see if you can get anything else out of him.”

“Of course, dude. I’ll do what I can, take my meals with him and all that.”

“That would be good, Charley.”

Charley nodded and propped his feet up on the railing, the soles of his SWAT boots resting against the fine-mesh screen that did nothing to hide the view of the sprawling cornfields.

“What do you want to do about the Twins?” he said.

“I’ve been thinking about that very thing,” Dale said. “I’m wondering if you’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking.”

“Those two have had two fair whacks at us. One for them, one for us. They’re too damn good for us to sit around and wait for them to come back.”

“This isn’t the same situation as the Torture Center,” Dale said. “We’ve got information security buttoned up tight here. There’re no leaks and no exposure to the public like there was at the center. There’s no way they could have tracked us here. And even if they did, we could fight off a reinforced company with these guys. This is a real good crew.”

“It goes against my nature to let them get away with just a little bruising,” Charley said.

“So what are you thinking?” Dale said.

“I’m thinking you got a world-class crew in a hardened facility . . . I think Uday will be just fine here. I think you should have Callan bring in his medicos and have them on-site, buttoned up just like the shooters, and have him wring what he can out of Uday. The kid-gloves treatment is fine and humane and all that, but I’ve come to believe that Uday is sitting on something else . . . something operational. And I think you and I should go pay the Twins a visit and put them off.”

“Take them out?”

“That’s a bit personal,” Charley said. “Though it wouldn’t cost me any sleep. I’m thinking more of bracing them in their home territory, let them know they’re vulnerable, too, and warn them off. They’re pros, they know they’ve missed their chance.”

“Why bother to warn them off?”

“Well, if Callan’s people have such deep pockets, maybe we could just pay the Twins to find out just who is putting up such big bucks to have Uday whacked.”

“I doubt they’d go for that . . . they work all over the board as it is and they wouldn’t want it out that they turned over a client to the US for money.”

“Why not? It’s done all the time. That could be part of the package, our silence on the matter.”

Dale nodded in thought. There was merit to the idea, and he too chafed at the passive role called for in close protection. He didn’t want to sit around in the cornfields and wait for trouble to come his way. He wanted to take the fight to his opponents. He knew who they were, and they were formidable women. But they were women with a base in a city that was known to the special operations community, and they were professionals.

Therein might be the key.

Ray Dalton held a secure cellular phone to his ear while he rested in his golf cart on the Sunnyside Golf Club course. Mike Callan’s voice was slightly distorted by the encryption equipment that ensured that their conversation remained private.

“So what do you think, Ray?” Callan said. “A little direct action? Is that what you were herding Dale toward?”

Ray was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed softly. He looked out over the golf course at his next lie. “I’ll say this . . . I wouldn’t be disappointed if the Twins were taught a lesson, even taken off the books.”

“So what’s it going to be, paymaster?” Callan said. “Time to cry havoc and let slip the leash on the dogs of war?”

“Yes,” Dalton said. “I think it’s time.”

“I think you’ve been playing me, Ray. I don’t like that.”

“I haven’t been playing you.”

“This is a different game now, you give Dale his hunting license. That’s putting him out there as a deniable operator. That’s not running a protection detail.”

“Dale can handle it.”

“It’ll be him and Payne.”

“Payne was a good operator.”

“You’re going to have to let your cover slip, Ray. They’ll need assistance that doesn’t come easily from any security company—even us.”

“You have all the necessary information, equipment, and resources to make this happen . . . after all, we’ve made sure of that, haven’t we?”

Callan was silent. There was only the hum of the phone in Ray’s ear.

“Yeah,” Callan said finally. “I guess we have made sure of that.”

“Then let’s get it done,” Dalton said.

At night, the proud pillars and colonnades of the Acropolis are lit like a beacon atop the hill it stands on in Athens. Picking out the lights of the ancient temple from the sea of lights that lap around it is a pleasant way to spend a few moments. The air on this night was, for once, clear enough to lend sharpness to the battered old pillars gleaming from the powerful lamps that illuminated them. In a high hotel room near the Plaka, a man stood and looked out his window and thought of the old English poem about Ozymandias, and the line, “How mighty are the fallen.”

That line would soon apply to the Americans.

His face was long and saturnine, dominated by a hooked nose that gave him the look of a regal bird, a raptor of some kind. He stood at his window, his hands clasped behind his back, and looked out at the myriad points of light. It reminded him of his first trip to the United States, to New York City. He had gone with trepidation, as though he were going into the belly of a great beast. But there was much to admire in America, though the excess of western culture found its apex there. He was especially taken with the public libraries with their wealth of books on every possible subject; it was possible to be entirely self-educated if one could read and had a New York City Public Library card.

Athens had once been like that, a bright and shining beacon in a
sea of darkness and ignorance. But its time had passed, and now it was the polluted capital of a third-rate state that made its living hawking the tarnished remains of its former glory. The government of Greece, while not entirely sympathetic to the cause of the handsome man, looked the other way at his coming and going. As long as no operations were conducted against Greek citizens or on Greek soil, the state security apparatus was content to keep a casual eye on the terrorist organizations that came and went. That made Athens a good place for the man, whose name was Ahmad bin Faisal, to do his business.

His business was terror.

Ahmad bin Faisal was the equivalent of a corporate vicepresident in the Al-Bashir terrorist organization. He had only one specific tasking, a single job given him by the clerics that made up the board of directors of his organization, and he was here to meet with the single operative who comprised his tasking. After his flight from his home in Damascus, and after checking into his favorite Athens hotel, he’d enjoyed a walk around the Plaka before he returned to his room, where he waited for his guest.

There was a knock at the door, and he turned away from the window and went to greet his visitor.

“Hello, Youssef,” bin Faisal said. He embraced the younger man, who stood stiffly, then returned the embrace. “You are well?”