Direct Action - 03 (33 page)

With their in-country brief complete, Liquid Sky was led back to their vehicles and driven to a second compound somewhere within the city. They were met there by another American named Todd Perry. The compound he operated out of was a medium-sized residence that had been converted into his field headquarters. As he led the team inside, he told them how he had been the police chief of Miami until retiring a few years ago and getting hired by the Royal family as the Arab Spring picked up momentum.

“Nerve does information,” he told Bill as they walked down the hall. “I'm an operations adviser to the Bahrain Defense Force Intelligence agency, Bahrain's National Security Agency, and the Ministry of the Interior's Criminal Investigations Department. Some of these guys have proper training, some don't but none of them are at the level of American Special Operations. Not by a long shot. That is why I advised that we bring in some professional outside help.”

“We got a brief on the targets back at Nerve.”

“Good. Now I want to emphasis that I called in technicians, specialists like you, because I want the leaders of the opposition movement brought in, but I want them brought in alive. We have several contingencies, but at this stage any fatalities will only make the situation worse. Bring them in quickly and quietly and they will disappear into a state-run prison for twenty or thirty years until things have died down. Way down the line we'll spring them as a part of some future political deal. That is how these things work. Then they get to go live in exile in Iran or some other camel-fucker country.”

“No promises,” Bill insisted. “If these guys are backed by Hezbollah, things could get ugly out there.”

“I get that, but also understand that I have had significant bonuses approved for each of you if you complete this operation within the parameters I just described.”

“How significant?” Ramon asked.

“One hundred large.”

“Damn.”

“Per operator. Bahrain shares an oil field with Saudi Arabia. Money is of little consequence.”

Perry showed them into his arms room.

“Christmas comes early boys,” the former police chief said.

He wasn't joking. Money really was no object. There was rack after rack lined with top of the line carbines and rifles. Crates of ammo lined the walls. There were grenade launchers, rocket launchers, good old fashion hand grenades. None of it was American for reasons of keeping their mission sterile.

“Load up,” Bill ordered. “Looks like we're going on safari tonight.”

Liquid Sky began reaching for weapons and ammunition while Perry sat down on a stool and watched.

“Yup,” the former police chief said. “Reminds me of the good old days when we would have to have our batons weighed prior to going and breaking up protests in Miami. After they weighed in correctly we would go to the next room and drill them so we could drop lead rods down inside. Those were the days.

“Ha, better than my grandfather's time on the force. Back then, the cops would just handcuff niggers to fire hydrants and beat them within an inch of their life!”

Deckard grabbed an AK-47 and then started shoving full magazines into a chest rig he found in one of the boxes. He also palmed a handful of grenades and stuck them in pouches.

“Body armor is in another box down the hall,” Perry informed them. “Haven't tested the plates. Don't want to.”

“I'm on it,” Deckard volunteered as the team continued to arm up.

He had to scrub this mission before it ever got off the ground.

Outside the armory, Deckard hurried out the front door to the courtyard where their vehicles were parked. It was the oldest trick in the book. He pulled the pin on one of his hand grenades and then jammed it behind the tire on one of the two SUVs they had arrived in. With the spoon on the grenade held down as it was pinned between the tire and the vehicle, the grenade would remain as it was until they started driving.

He then headed back inside and went to retrieve the body armor. Locating the box in a room at the end of the hall, he first brought the ceramic trauma plates and set them down in the armory, then went back for the nylon carriers that also contained the soft body armor inside. The plates would go into pouches on the outside of the blue vests.

A few more minutes were spent squaring away their kit. Everyone had AK-47s so they would remain consistent and would be able to exchange ammunition. Everyone seemed to find a different handgun though, from Glocks to Berettas. Deckard claimed a Smith and Wesson M&P pistol for himself. With a little luck, he wouldn't have to use any of his guns this time around.

He wasn't naive. Deckard had seen enough of the Middle East to be deeply skeptical of the region's ability to join the modern world, but he also wasn't some thug for hire. It wasn't his job to suppress pro-democracy movements when people were suffering under an archaic monarchy. Now he was at the point where Liquid Sky's mission was conflicting with his own undercover operations to take down the hit team and discover who their puppet master was.

Bill had a three-ring binder with overhead imagery of the three target areas they were to hit. Opening the book, he had the team gather around for some hasty mission planning. Al-Wafiq was the first group they would target; they would expressly go after their leadership cell for a capture, and only a kill if it became necessary as per Perry's guidelines. Al-Wafiq was the group suspected to be the most deeply involved with Hezbollah and the group they would expect the most resistance from.

The al-Wafiq headquarters, their first target, was located to the south in Tabil. Then, in generally a diagonal line, target two was in Manama and target three was further north on the island of Muharraq. Bill pointed out their first target on the map. The building was not the party's official headquarters as the group had gone clandestine when the Saudi troops helped the largely Pakistani police force of Bahrain in the crackdowns. Nerve's intelligence indicated that the leadership cell of al-Wafiq was holed up in the basement
madrassa
where Shia school children were taught.

“The building is at the end of a dead-end street,” Ramon said. “Choosing that location was a tactical decision. Only one way in or out.”

“We will off set here,” Bill pointed up the block. “Leave the vehicles and move on foot for better dispersal. We don't want to get taken out by a single RPG.”

“Nerve will be feeding me intel updates in real time,” Perry piped up. “I'll then keep you guys up to date. They want to use me as a cut out to relay information so those pussies can keep their hands clean.”

“Whatever,” Rick said as he rocked a magazine into the mag well of his AK.

“What do you have around here for manual breaching tools?” Bill asked Perry.

“A whole kit in the corner over there. Battering ram, sledge, bolt cutters, hoolie tool.”

“Zach, take the battering ram. Divide the rest of it amongst yourselves and then we roll out.”

Once everyone was kitted up, Perry walked them to the door.

“Have fun bashing in some skulls,” he told Liquid Sky. “Wish I was coming with.”

“I'll have a few of the girls scream your name so you don't feel as bad,” Paul said as he walked by.

Deckard got into the back seat of the rear vehicle. The SUVs had been upgraded with an armor package that would defeat most small arms and shrapnel, but you never knew for sure.

Paul waved goodbye to Perry and got behind the driver's seat of the lead vehicle. Turning the ignition, he let the truck inch forward while one of Perry's people opened the front gate for them. No one noticed the grenade drop and Deckard made sure he kept still and didn't telegraph his knowledge.

The explosion washed out from under the lead vehicle, blowing out all four tires. A piece of flak spider-webbed the windshield on the second SUV. His ear were ringing as Deckard got out of the second vehicle and ran forward to help. Paul stumbled out of the truck followed by Bill. Ramon took one step out and tripped. Deckard ran over and helped him up.

“You okay?”

“What?” Ramon's ears were ringing too.

“Get off the X!” Bill shouted.

Deckard and Ramon ran to the open door where Perry was just picking himself up off the ground. They secured the entrance while the rest of the team flowed inside the hard point the structure. Bill was the last in and slammed the door behind him before locking it.

“We're compromised.”

“What the hell?” Perry asked.

“It had to be one of your monkeys,” Bill said to Perry. “You got a mole in your network.”

“I've had these locals on my payroll for months now.”

“That is the problem, you stopped vetting them. This operation is a fucking abortion. Over before it even got off the ground.”

Bill pulled out his cell phone and made a phone call.

“Fuck this shit,” Zach muttered.

Nerve picked up on the second ring.

“It's me. We need extraction back to the airport,” Bill said. “We're compromised.”

He paused for a minute while someone on the other end talked.

“This is non-negotiable. Perry's operation here is blown and I'm pulling my team out of the contract.”

Another pause.

“Roger, just send vehicles. We'll drive ourselves out.”

Liquid Sky continued to hard point inside the building while they waited. Several of Perry's Bahraini employees were unceremoniously tossed out the front door and locked out. When Nerve's second set of SUV's arrived from their corporate fleet of vehicles, Liquid Sky ran outside, hauled the drivers out and sped off towards the airport.

Deckard sat in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle while Zach drove. Nadi and Bill sat in the back seats. Zach gunned it, pushing ninety miles per hour as they sped south.

Everything was going according to plan.

They were just arriving outside Isa Air Base when Bill received another phone call. He listened to whoever was on the other end for a full minute before speaking.

“Zach,” their team leader said. “Turn us around.”

“What?”

“Things have changed?”

Zach slowed down and spun the wheel, rolling them over the median and then heading in the opposite direction. Deckard's hands formed fists.

Fuck.

Bill hung up the phone.

“We are not working directly for Nerve. The Royal family shat ten different kind of bricks when they found out we were canceling our contract.”

“And our rates?” Zach asked.

“Tripled. They could have brought in someone else but there is no time. The bodies are stacking up around the Pearl roundabout. Three hours ago the Saudi military fired tear gas into an alleyway and a couple teenagers died of asphyxia. The protest then turned into a massive riot that scattered those weak-kneed camel fuckers from Saudi Arabia. The counterattack happened just minutes ago. 300 protestors were shot and killed. The whole fucking country is about to be on fire.”

“Holy shit,” Zach cursed. “You ain't kidding.”

Deckard saw it, the orange glow emanating from the city ahead of them. It wasn't street lights, it was fire.

“People are finding out about the mass killing on their smart phones from social media. The Royal family is about to shut down internet access but the damage has already been done. We're up. The mission parameters just changed from capture to kill.”

“Even better,” Nadi remarked.

Deckard looked out the window as Bahrain went up in flames.

Things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.

25

“The problem is, all three of our targets are united in opposition to our employer. They want us to not just take out the leadership cells, but to turn the survivors of each group against each other,” Bill said. “Deckard and Nadeesha, you both know Arabic. I want you to hand jam some notes that we can stick into the pockets of the dead bodies we are about to make.”

“Plant some pocket litter that will make it look like the three target groups sold each other out to the regime,” Nadeesha said.

“Exactly.”

Deckard looked in the glove compartment for a piece of paper.

“This is sloppy as fuck,” Deckard said.