I
was debating having Jennifer climb when my earpiece chirped. “Retro, this is Knuckles. Give me a lock-on. You have Chiclet?”
I cut in, “All stations, all stations, ignore Chiclet. Knuckles, you come down south, around the turn. Tell me if there’s a car on the road. He’ll be pulled over looking at where Turbo went down. Break—break, Decoy, you still staged?”
“Yes. Got you, lima charlie. What’s up?”
“Knuckles is going to get you a description of a car. He’ll be coming down the hill shortly, after Knuckles flushes him. You still at the base, on the intersection with 86?”
“Roger.”
“Pick him up and start to follow. We’ll be right behind you.”
Knuckles came on, “Pike, I have a Renault two-door pulled over. Passenger is on the phone. Driver just tapped his brakes and is now moving downhill. That the target?”
“Yes. Get a picture and send it to Decoy. Decoy, you copy?”
“Roger all.”
Knuckles said, “Where the hell are you?”
“Vehicle out of sight?”
“Yeah, what’s that got to do with it?”
“Look to your right. Where Turbo went over.” I pointed at Jennifer, and she nodded, starting her ascent. Small rocks rained down on my head and shoulders as she crested the ledge.
I heard, “Holy shit! Is that Koko coming up?”
“Yeah. I’m right behind her.”
“What the fuck is going on? Where’s your car?”
I started climbing and said, “You used the Grolier card to pay for these rentals, right?”
“Yeah . . . why’s that matter?”
“You see the smoke coming up?”
“Uhh . . . you’ve got to be kidding.”
I reached the top and found Jennifer leaning forward, one hand on a tree root, another held out. I grasped it, seeing the knuckles were skinned and bleeding. But she was alive. She leaned back, using her weight, and I crested the top, the two of us falling in a heap. We both lay on the ground for a second, enjoying the ability to feel the sun on our faces.
She said, “Man, you were right. Carrying that grapple hook was stupid.”
I started to chuckle and heard Decoy saying, “I got a lock-on. Heading back toward Plovdiv on Highway 86.”
I stood up, pulling Jennifer to her feet. “Don’t lose that asshole. He just tried to kill Jennifer and me. And he succeeded with Turbo.”
Jogging to Knuckles’s little rental, I heard Decoy’s voice go a little grim. “Roger that.”
Jennifer got in the back, leaving the shotgun seat free for me. Knuckles started to drive, asking, “What happened?”
“I honestly don’t know. Somehow, someone managed to take control of my car. It was like being on a roller coaster on rails. All we could do was hang on as it went where it wanted.”
“And you think this car I just fingered is the one?”
“Yeah. No doubt. Was it a gray two-door Renault? Looked like a college kid’s car?”
“Yep.”
“That fucker was right behind me when the brakes failed.”
Jennifer said, “Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it just happened to be behind us and stopped when we went over. It’s a natural reaction.”
“And then hauled ass at the first sign of another vehicle? Is that what you would do?”
She said nothing more, and we hit 86, following behind Decoy, the target making a beeline for Plovdiv. Over the radio I said, “All elements, prepare for vehicle interdiction. This guy stops, and it’s suitable, we’re taking him out.”
Behind the wheel, Knuckles snapped his head to me, then returned to the road. He waited a bit, then said, “Pike, we have no Omega authority here. We’ve got nothing like that. We can’t do a V-I. We’re here on Alpha.”
The Taskforce called each phase of an operation a different Greek letter. Alpha meant an introduction of forces to develop the situation. To see if there was a reason to continue. Omega—the last letter—meant we’d determined the bad guy was out to harm the United States and the threat was so great we’d be allowed to take him down.
Here, in Bulgaria, we were nowhere near Omega. We were barely legal for Alpha, as the Boko Haram guy had done nothing sinister, and I was now chasing someone that wasn’t part of his team. But he’d done one thing for sure: He’d killed Taskforce members.
I said, “We always have the right of self-defense. That’s never taken away. We’re within our mission parameters and ROE.”
“Pike, that’s bullshit and you know it. We’re under no threat. The ROE is for a clear and present danger.”
I started to say a rejoinder when he cut me off. “You and Jennifer are good to go for working outside the wire. My team is not. We’re still in the government. I’m the one who’ll be called to task. I’m the one who’s the team leader of record. You talk a good game, but my guys will pay the price. Shit, Blood’s CIA. The rest of us will be shielded somewhat because we’re military, but he’ll be crucified when this gets out—just to prove a point.”
What he said was technically true. I
was
a civilian, but Kurt had put me in charge. Hard to say how that would work out legally, but the legal stuff was already outside our boundaries, since our very existence was illegal.
When we’d built the unit, we’d had to construct a method of punishing people inside our organization without burning it to the ground from the outside. In effect, create a disciplinary system we could use that wouldn’t compromise the unit. We knew we weren’t perfect, and eventually someone would do something wrong.
We ended up developing a way of filtering transgressions, then using the military’s Uniformed Code of Military Justice or the CIA’s civilian infrastructure for the punishment. Basically, you’d get charged with something comparable on the open-source side, then suffer the consequences. No description of the real-world action would be documented, but your record would reflect the punishment of the fake crime.
So far, we’d never had to use the system for any catastrophic mission actions. Only for minor things. Knuckles was now worried about being the first example of a mission mistake.
I said, “Are you serious? I understand where you’re coming from, but these fucks just tried to kill Jennifer and me. They
did
kill Turbo and Radcliffe. Murdered them in cold blood.”
I saw Jennifer in the backseat, torn by my words. On the one hand, she was dripping blood from her knuckles, a stark reminder of what had just happened. On the other, she’d caught a glimpse of the darkness in me, and I could tell she was worried about my reaction. Worried because she’d seen me do some pretty horrible things to people who’d harmed what I held dear.
Decoy came on after my last transmission, but he wasn’t talking to me, even if he pretended to be. “I copy prepare for a V-I. Who’ll trigger? Pike or Knuckles?”
He wasn’t asking
who
. He was asking
if
we would trigger.
He’d gone through the same mental calculations as Knuckles and was now questioning whether we were pushing things outside the bounds of my authority. Outside the bounds of a civilian on Alpha, now demanding Omega.
I didn’t give a shit, since this question had been brewing for a while.
Time to figure it out.
Initially, at the inception of the Taskforce, we’d had to work through utilizing an organization that didn’t officially exist, always within the confines of legacy military or intelligence architecture, like an old analog clock. It was now time to figure out how to utilize it in the digital age, with folks like me who weren’t in a legacy organization like one of DOD’s special mission units or the CIA’s Special Activities Division. Kurt had put me in charge as a civilian, and that was a good call as far as I was concerned. It was time to push that decision. I was sick of pretending to be an infiltration platform only to get tagged running missions “off the books” because we hadn’t thought through how it would work.
I waited on Knuckles’s response.
Decoy came back on. “Pike, Knuckles, I say again, who will trigger?”
Knuckles looked me in the eye for a long pause, then keyed the mike. “Pike will trigger. I say again, Pike will trigger.”
He’d just given me command, and all on the net knew it. He pulled the Bluetooth transmitter from his ear, ensuring his next words stayed in our car.
“I did that for the current mission, but you and I need to talk. We can’t keep executing this half-assed command authority.”
I nodded and said, “I agree completely.”
Jennifer said, “Pike, maybe it’d be better for Knuckles to run this one. I’m not sure you’re in the right frame of mind for this.”
Knuckles said, “What? You don’t trust Pike anymore?”
I ignored them, hearing Decoy on the radio. “Entering Plovdiv. Need a change-out.”
Retro came on. “I got the eye. Pull off and reposition.”
On the radio I said, “Everyone get ready for assault. That car’s going to stop here in Plovdiv, and if we can interdict successfully, we do so. No killing. I want one of them alive. Keep an eye out for another vehicle. These guys probably aren’t operating alone.”
I turned off the mike and said, “You two stop it. I’m not going to slaughter someone just because I can.”
Jennifer leaned forward, her words truculent, surprising both Knuckles and me. She said, “You sure about that? I saw the killing machine you became the last time something like this happened.”
Remaining calm, I said, “Yes, you did. And so will these guys if they push the issue. I didn’t bring this fight, but I’m going to finish it.”
O
nce inside the city, the car became harder to track in the dense traffic. I told Knuckles to stay back, afraid of the target recognizing Jennifer or me. We passed by the Trimontium Princess Hotel on Obedinitel Boulevard, then went through the tunnel under the old town. Eventually Retro called that the target was staged for a U-turn.
I assumed that he was attempting to spot surveillance, but it wasn’t the best place to do a rolling reverse because the thoroughfare we were on had a concrete median down the middle for miles. Everyone had to do a U-turn if they intended to visit anything on the left side of the boulevard, so someone following wasn’t a strong indicator that he or she was surveillance. Even still, Retro pulled off of the eye and continued straight, leaving Decoy and Blood as the sole follow.
We stopped adjacent to them but three lanes over, keeping vehicles between us to block the view. The light went green, and we continued north, crossing the Maritsa River. Decoy followed the U-turn four cars back, barely making the light, and called that the vehicle had penetrated the narrow alleyways of Kapana, an ancient neighborhood from Ottoman times.
Retro pulled into a parking garage on Septemvri Boulevard, then turned around and headed south again, rushing to get back into the follow. Once across the river I had Knuckles execute our own U-turn, then pull over to the side of the road, letting the situation develop before committing. The Kapana area was very tight, so they had to be going there for a reason. It wasn’t a shortcut. I hoped it also wasn’t for the name of the neighborhood, which meant “the trap.”
Decoy said the vehicle had stopped, and I saw my chance slipping away. I didn’t want to execute with a parity of forces, and Retro wasn’t in play yet.
Damn it. No way can we conduct a V-I two-on-two.
I wanted at least double their forces before I committed.
I said, “Retro, status?”
“I’m fifty seconds out.”
Decoy, reading my mind, said, “Not here, Pike. Not going to work. They’re dismounting. Both out and walking.”
Shit. Gotta get them today.
If I didn’t, I’d have to go back to Kurt, asking for permission and going through the entire Oversight Council. Claiming self-defense now was pushing it, but doing it tomorrow would be ridiculous.
“Okay, okay. All call signs dismount. Track where they’re going.”
Four minutes later I was told that they were strolling south on Daskalov Street, a brick-lined shopping promenade. I traced the road on my map, trying to anticipate their intentions, and recognized the small park with the fountain that I’d been at earlier in the day. The one in front of the Efbet Casino.
That’s where they’re going.
I relayed my suspicions, then got a call saying they’d split. The driver was headed uphill, over the tunnel and into Old Town, and the passenger was continuing on Aleksandar Street, closing in on the casino.
I looked at Knuckles, then Jennifer, hoping a decision would magically appear. Of course, it didn’t. I studied the map, then pointed to a street on the east side of Old Town, away from the Kapana neighborhood. “Knuckles, get here.”
As he put the car in drive I began giving instructions, “Decoy, Blood, track the passenger to the casino. If he gets inside like I think he will, don’t penetrate. Hold fast and just keep eyes on. Retro, you stick with the driver. We’re going to come in from the east side. You vector us in and we’ll meet in the middle.”
Retro said, “Roger that. Then what?”
“Not sure, but be looking for exfil locations that’ll support extraction with a body.”
We raced around the ring of hills that was Old Town, finally getting to a street called Lavrenov that went steeply uphill from east to west, into the maze of the ancient settlement. Knuckles took it, and we began to bounce along the cobblestones, the Hyundai’s frame getting tortured. I was pretty sure no traffic was supposed to be in this area, but I kept seeing an occasional parked car and figured we could pretend we lived in one of the houses that lined the street, only an arm’s length away. As we passed one I saw it was a museum of some type.
So much for acting like we live around here.
We reached the top in time to hear Retro say the target had entered a beer garden that overlooked the exit of the tunnel on Obedinitel Boulevard.
So he’s just waiting on the passenger. Killing time. A flunky.
I directed Knuckles to pull off the road through a stone gate, into what appeared to be a car park area for an art museum. Up the street I could see an ancient church surrounded on all sides by stone or wood houses. It looked exactly like a set from
Robin Hood
. If the sheriff of Nottingham had appeared to give us a parking ticket, it wouldn’t have surprised me.
Knuckles killed the engine, and I said, “Come on. Let’s recce a kill zone. He comes up this way, we need to take him quickly and get him back to the vehicle.”
He looked at me for a moment, then glanced around at the cobblestone streets and museum houses. He exhaled and said, “You planning on taking him out of Bulgaria? Or just interrogating and getting his electronic signature for the Taskforce, catch-and-release style?”
“What do you think? I’m for taking him, but he’s not some raghead terrorist. I’m pretty sure he’s working for the Bulgarian state. Might cause a few issues with the Council.”
I saw him come to a decision. “Screw the Council. If these guys killed Turbo, we need to deal with them. We can go straight to Sofia, board the rock-star bird, and fly out with him. Leave Decoy and Blood to police up our luggage and check out, then they fly out commercial from Sofia.”
I nodded, liking the thought. Glad that he was on board with the capture, because it was certainly going to raise a stink back home.
Jennifer finally spoke up. “Are you two serious? You want to take down an unknown target in broad daylight with no other plan than driving him to the capital for escape? The city that’s the heart of his intelligence and security apparatus? No support team? No execute authority?”
I looked at Knuckles, and he nodded. I broke into a grin and said, “Yes. You’re the one driving.”
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish on the dock, no words coming out. I said, “Come on. Follow us so you know the plan.”
She said, “Pike . . .”
I ignored her. We continued on foot about seventy-five meters uphill, the cobblestone street intersecting the main thoroughfare of Old Town—
main
being a relative term. The immediate issue was that our road had a couple of large stone barricades set into it right at the intersection. Someone had wanted to make sure a car couldn’t get onto the main avenue, leaving it safe for pedestrians. Which meant Jennifer would have to pull up here and do a forty-two-point turn to face back the other way. And we’d have to coerce our captive to follow us across the road to the vehicle, without any weapons for leverage.
We hadn’t planned on an Omega operation, so we hadn’t brought a full assault package. In fact, we hadn’t brought anything offensive at all because the odds of it being found and causing an issue were way higher than the odds of us needing it. No way could I have predicted some Bulgarian trying to assassinate us, especially since we were following a guy from Nigeria. Nothing we could do about it now, although our weapons inventory was pretty damn weak.
Knuckles had this cool ninja watchband that released a strip of nylon, allowing him to use it for a carotid artery choke, and which he’d been dying to employ since I’d known him. I had a couple of carbon-fiber two-finger loops—a modern-day brass knuckle that fit onto the first two fingers of each hand—but that was it.
We surveyed the street, seeing most of the houses were either souvenir shops or historical venues of some kind. To the left I saw an archway of stone leading off the street, the inside strewn with bits of trash, unlike the other houses. I investigated and found it led into an abandoned home, falling apart past the portico. Amazing, since the house itself was probably seven hundred years old.
I went down the walkway, seeing a broken stone stairwell leading to an upper deck of grass overlooking the valley of the town. Apparently, the house had been built into the side of the hill. On the right side of the stairwell were the eves to the roof, like the ribs of a skeleton.
Further inspection showed the ravages of a fire, the walls between the rooms crumbling with ash and soot, the beams within charred.
So it wasn’t abandoned.
I said, “Here’s where we’ll take him. We’re about two hundred meters from the beer garden. He comes up here, and you push him past the portico. I’ll jerk him inside, tap his ass a couple of times, then feed him back to you, tag team. You use your super ninja watch, and we take him down.”
Knuckles nodded, grinning. I wondered if using the watchband had now superseded the mission. I’d always made fun of that thing, but I’d be buying some beer if it worked as advertised.
Jennifer looked around the burned-out house and punched me in the arm. “Pike, you have lost your mind. This is at least fifty meters from the connecting road. We need to back off.”
I said, “Go to the car. When Retro triggers, get it in position.”
Her voice turned cold and she braced me, her back to Knuckles. “Pike, you’re going to kill this guy. You’re not fooling me. You know you can’t get him out of here to my car.”
That comment took me aback. “What the hell are you talking about? I can’t get any information from a dead man. Why would you say that?”
“Egypt. What you did in Egypt because of what happened to Knuckles.”
Knuckles, previously looking away to let me sort out this mess, snapped his head back. “What’s she talking about?”
“Nothing, damn it. When you almost died I had a little breakdown.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Jennifer, go get in position. I’m not going to lose control.”
“Pike, I saw your face on the cliff. You were losing control right
then
. You’re not so good at the control thing. You know it.”
She turned to Knuckles and said, “He was questioning a guy that was involved in the VBIED that hit you, and he went batshit. He killed the man.”
I held up my hands, saying, “Wait, wait, wait, it wasn’t like that. . . .”
Our radios chirped, “Pike, Knuckles, target is out of the garden and headed deeper into the tourist section.”