The Land Cruiser’s doors opened, and four men, presumably bodyguards, piled out. They were all dressed in cheap-looking suits without ties. As I watched, the driver got out of the Hummer, hurried to the other side of the vehicle, and opened the passenger’s side door.
“There he is,” Tailor said as a short, heavyset man in traditional Gulf Arab garb climbed out of the large yellow SUV. Tailor and I laid eyes on Ali Bin Ahmed Al Falah for the first time. We’d been coming to the same spot for days, watching the social club, waiting for him to make an appearance. Today we finally got lucky.
We were on the second floor of a half-completed building that stood directly across a divided street from the social club. It was going to be an office building of some kind, but construction had been halted. The second floor had large floor-to-ceiling windows on the sides. The glass wasn’t installed yet. We lay on the floor, side by side, shrouded in the darkness the unfinished building provided, watching our target. The sun was low in the western sky behind us. People passing by on the narrow street had no idea we were there. Our vehicle was parked in the narrow alley behind the building, concealed from view.
Tailor reached into his backpack and pulled out a handheld device that looked like a satellite dish. He put on a set of headphones. “Let’s see if we can hear what they have to say.” Neither of us spoke Arabic, but we could connect the parabolic microphone to our radios and transmit the intelligence back to Control.
Al Falah made his way toward the glass front doors of the establishment, with his driver walking just behind. The other bodyguards fanned out and did a half-assed job of observing the area. As Al Falah approached, another man in similar Arab attire appeared from inside. The two men greeted each other warmly, grasping each other’s right hands while putting their left hands on the other man’s right shoulder. They then exchanged kisses on each cheek.
“That must be Khalid.” I squeezed the transmit button on my tiny microphone. “Control, Nightcrawler. We have eyes on the primary, secondary, and tertiary targets. Intel was correct. This is the place.”
“Copy that, Nightcrawler,” Control replied, all business. Anita King was on the radio instead of Sarah.
“Control, Xbox,” Tailor said, “I’m transmitting now.”
“Copy that . . . receiving,” Anita said. I could hear Al Falah and Khalid speaking in Arabic in the background. We observed Al Falah and Khalid for several minutes, until they disappeared into the club, followed by Al Falah’s entourage.
“Did you get all that, Control?” Tailor asked.
“Uh . . . roger that,” Anita said. “They were just greeting each other. Said something about a chess game, and that they were going to discuss a proposal.”
“What kind of proposal?” Tailor asked.
“They didn’t say. Observe the area for as long as you can, then withdraw without being detected.”
“Roger that, Control,” I said. “Out.”
Tailor looked over at me, then back through his binoculars. “I’m hungry.”
“So, what do you think?” I asked. “How you wanna do this?”
“I say we get a scoped rifle and just pop him from here.”
“Sounds easy enough. Do we have a scoped rifle?”
“There’s an SR-25 in the safe house we can use. It’s got a suppressor, too. From right here, we can lay down some fire, drop a bunch of these guys, and then bug out through the back.”
“Did you get a good look at the bodyguards?” I asked. “I think they’ve got sub-guns.”
“Probably little MP5s or something under their suit coats,” Tailor agreed. “Probably can’t shoot for shit. We should be okay.” It was about sixty yards from our position to the front door of the club.
“Cripes, we should’ve brought the rifle with us. We could’ve popped him just now and had it over with,” I said. We’d been ordered to observe the club and try to get a feel for Al Falah’s routine. We knew where Al Falah lived, of course, but it had been deemed too risky to attempt to hit him there.
“Yeah,” Tailor said, not really listening to me. “Can’t see much in the windows. They’re tinted. Al Falah won’t sit by the windows out front anyway. He’s a big shot, right? He’ll have a private room in the back or something.”
“Worse comes to worst we could enter the club,” I suggested, even though I knew that wasn’t a good idea.
“Hell, no. Not with just the two of us. No, we’ll have to hit him here. We’ll only get one shot. If we fuck this up he’ll go underground and we might lose him.”
“You’re right.” I set my binoculars down. “You wanna take the shot, or you want me to?”
“You take the SR-25,” Tailor said. “I’ll grab a carbine and provide cover fire.” Tailor wouldn’t come out and admit it, but I was a more accurate shooter than he was. He was correct in his assertion that we’d only have one shot, too. There wouldn’t be much room for error.
“I don’t like it,” I said. “Just the two of us versus five bodyguards—”
“That we know of,” Tailor interjected.
“Right. Next time he could have more. One shot, maybe two, since the rifle’s an autoloader, before his bodyguards can get him behind cover. A rifle I’ve never shot before, and who the hell knows who zeroed the scope or when.” We didn’t have access to any kind of a shooting range, and I doubted they’d let us risk taking the rifle out into the desert someplace to test-fire it.
“You’re right,” Tailor agreed, setting down his binoculars as well. “If they get Al Falah into that club, we’ll have to go in after him. So you better drop him on the first shot. That’s the best chance we got.”
“Why are there only two of us? We could really use Hudson and Wheeler for this.”
“I don’t know,” Tailor said. “I don’t like it, either.” I could only wonder what kind of operations the others were involved in if they could only spare two of us for a job they insisted was so important. As I continued to watch the social club, I couldn’t help but worry that things were going to get ugly, fast.
LORENZO
March 26
The disassembled pieces of my pistol were strewn on the kitchen table of our rented apartment. I wiped the slide down with a rag while my crew slept. I found that I always woke up early on game day. Nervous excitement, I suppose.
It never hurts to recheck your equipment. I put a few drops of Slipstream lube on the frame rails of my STI 4.15 Tactical 9mm before fitting everything back together. The gun was a stubby work of lethal art. Phenomenally accurate and reliable, it was the pistol I used when performance was more important than deniability. I had a few Bulgarian Makarovs and old Browning P35s for that. I worked the slide back and forth quickly, feeling the familiar slickness of oiled metal on metal. I checked the chamber before aiming at Al Falah’s picture that had been taped to the wall. The tritium sights lined up perfectly on the bridge of his nose as I pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a snap.
Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah dies today.
The old terrorist bastard had dropped by the club yesterday. He was still distraught, but he wasn’t going to let that get in the way of business. Our meeting was on.
An eighteen-round, flush-fit magazine went into the STI. I pulled back the slide and let it fly, feeding a Hornady hollow point into the chamber. If everything went according to plan, that same bullet would end up in one of Al Falah’s bodyguards by the end of the night. He’d beefed up the number on his security detail since his nephew’s murder. Sure, Al Falah was still calling it a kidnapping, but at this point I knew that was wishful thinking.