Chapter 8:
The Intern
LORENZO
April 16
The house was too quiet.
I should have known something was wrong as soon as I saw the compound’s front gate left open. After doing a quick pass by, we had modified the plan. Carl had parked a klick down the road, and I had snuck up on the isolated compound, consisting of a single large house surrounded by a ten-foot brick wall, on foot. It had been purchased by Al Falah as a safe house for his associates.
Approaching as quietly as possible, I had paused and scanned the gate repeatedly. The plan had been for both of us to sneak in, kill Adar and anybody else there as quickly as possible, grab the box, and get the hell out, but now that situation looked fishy. So I’d snuck in to take a quick peek. I was wearing body armor, covered with ammo and explosives, and had a short AR-15 carbine, and even weighed down that much I was far stealthier than most. Not trying to brag, but I would have made a damn good ninja.
The compound had appeared utterly dead, so I had sprinted right up to the door. Lights were on but nobody was home. Sweeping inside, I paused as I saw the first perforated corpse. “Somebody beat us to it,” I said into the radio as I surveyed the destruction in the living room. Brass casings rolled underfoot and the room stank of the recently dead.
“What do you mean?” Carl’s voice said in my ear.
“I mean that the guards are dead and the place is shot to hell. Somebody’s been here already.”
“Did they get the box? If those no-good thieves got the box, I swear I’m gonna—“
“Dude, we are no-good thieves. Chill.” I moved quickly through the room, careful not to step in any of the spreading puddles. Empty extended Glock magazines were on the carpet. Could this be the work of the same hitters that had screwed up Phase One?
I kept my rifle up as I moved through the house. It was dead silent, but there could still be somebody here.
“I bet it was those guys that almost botched the Falah job.” There was a single body half in the bathroom with a cloverleaf of bullet holes in his chest. I approached the bedroom door quietly, my suppressed 5.56 carbine at the ready, the red dot of the Aimpoint sight floating just under my vision, though I had a sneaky feeling that Adar wasn’t going to be a problem. The bedroom door slowly swung open. Adar was obviously dead. There was a second form under a blood-drenched sheet. I lifted it slowly.
I must have made some sort of strange noise into the radio.
“Lorenzo? What is it? Are you okay?”
“Better than the residents. It’s a bloodbath in here.” I hadn’t seen anything like this since Chechnya. That girl had been mutilated, dissected. Somebody had shot the hell out of Adar, too. I did a quick once over of the room, discovering that the stories about the Butcher of Zubara hadn’t been exaggerated. “Carl, Adar cut this girl . . . like . . . I don’t know what.”
“No time for that. Find that box. Hurry before somebody else shows up.”
Blood was everywhere. Adar hadn’t just been dropped, he’d been methodically taken apart. There was a blood-stained Ace of Spades playing card left on the perforated corpse. What the hell? Then I noticed a discarded revolver speed loader, five spent cases, and a single live .44 magnum cartridge. I picked up the round and examined it.
“Clint Eastwood was here.”
“Huh?” Carl responded. “Quit screwing around.”
Shoving the cartridge into my pocket, I kept searching. The safe had been cleaned out, Adar’s belongings had been rifled through, and I felt a sinking feeling in my gut that what we had come for was already gone.
The shooters had missed something.
“One second.” Having years of experience looking for bugs and planting them, I knew that most people would have missed Adar’s hidden camera. Apparently he liked to record his torture sessions. I followed the wire back behind the bed and found the recorder. It was still running. Maybe this would tell me who our mystery shooters were. I took the DVD out of the machine and hurried back down the stairs.
“I can’t find the damn box.”
Carl swore over the radio again. “Someone took it already, you think?”
“I think so. I’m leaving the duplicate anyway. Odds are whoever took it doesn’t know what it’s for, but the prince’s people have to think it’s been destroyed.” I took a small box from a pouch in my armor. It had been carved to very exacting specifications from some very specific pieces of wood. Pressure on some hidden indentations caused the intricate box to slide open, revealing the delicate key inside. I pulled the duplicate out and held it up to the light. This part had been trickier, since there were no recorded measurements for the actual device, but I was about to melt it into slag anyway, so it didn’t really matter. I twisted the base of the key, and dozens of tiny pins moved freely down the sides of the shaft. I placed it in the safe and started setting the bomb.
The incendiary device would immolate the entire room, burning a hole through the floor in seconds. This whole house would be nothing but ash and bones in a matter of minutes, and it was all so Adar’s extended family would think his box was toast. I set the timer for five minutes. Plenty of time to be down the road.
“Hurry up,” Carl said. “I’m getting nervous.”
“I know,” I answered, already heading for the exit, knowing with dread certainty that the box had probably been taken from the upstairs safe by the shooters. I made sure the DVD was still in place. Those shooters had my box, and I had to get it back, no matter what.
“Lorenzo, you better hurry.”
“What?”
“Two cars full of bad guys pulling into the compound. Run!”
I ran downstairs and crouched near the rear exit. The door was open, and the arriving headlights illuminated the back wall of the compound. The cars pulled to a stop and doors opened. Someone began to sing, drunken and off key. Adar must have been planning a homecoming party, and more guests had just arrived.
Not wanting to find out what kind of people a terrorist invited to a torture party, I tried to think of a way out, something, anything. If I made it to the back wall, I would surely be spotted before I could scale it. I could try to Rambo my way out, but from the noises coming from the yard, there were several bad guys.
“Carl, how many we got?”
“Couldn’t tell. It was too dark when they pulled in. Want me to come in shooting?”
“Hold on that. I’ve got an idea.” I moved quickly back into the home. The doorbell rang, long and raspy, and someone on the other side laughed. I had seen the fuse box in my search. The bell continued, the user obviously becoming frustrated. I pulled my pack off, removed my night-vision monocular, and strapped it onto my head. In another pouch was a small Semtex charge, and I squished it against the circuit breakers.
The ringing quit, and loud knocking started. The laughter was gone, and now voices called out with some concern. The radio initiator blinked green in my hand, we had contact. The charge would only kill the lights in the house, but hopefully this would be enough of an edge. I moved back toward the side entrance.
Now they were pounding on the front door. I pulled a frag from one of the MOLLE pouches on my armor and, staying low so as to not blot out the light coming through the peep hole, slid up to the door. I pulled the pin but carefully kept the spoon down until it was wedged tightly against the door’s base plate. The grenade had a five-second fuse, and it would be one heck of a surprise for our party guests. It’s those little touches that show you care.