Knuckles felt the heat radiating off the black pavement like an open oven, the sweat rolling down his face in a perpetual drivel, forcing him to wipe his nose every few seconds to keep the salty liquid from hitting the screen in his lap. For the first time, he began to wonder if the sensitive equipment could withstand the punishment. After all, almost all of it was specially constructed-without the military specifications that made the equipment look, well, military.
Taskforce spends bazillions on kit and I’m in a van with no AC. Blending in is one thing, but this is ridiculous. Johnny’s going to pay.
Johnny was the team leader of the Taskforce element that Knuckles was replacing, and as such, he was the one who’d coordinated all of the in-country assets. Not that Knuckles couldn’t have done so in his sleep. He’d been to Tunisia chasing Crusty on and off for damn near eight years, always waiting on Omega.
In truth, the rotations had grown boring, with only one bit of adventure when Crusty had moved from Tunis, the capital, to Sousse, farther down the coast, after the uprisings that brought down the government in the initial salvos of the Arab Spring. Crusty didn’t know it, but the move actually fit in better for the Taskforce cover. His desire to remain anonymous to whatever new government took over had inadvertently helped them out.
A couple of years ago, Knuckles had actually gotten Omega authority while he was on rotation-on the X and ready to go-when he’d been diverted to another mission, sparing the terrorist yet again. He had begun to think that Crusty would never go. That he had some lucky charm allowing him to evade the U.S. net, even though he stomped around in plain sight. Knuckles had deployed to Sousse with his team three days ago, and while transitioning with Johnny’s team, prepping for yet another collection mission, the mythical Omega call came from Colonel Hale.
The Bluetooth in his ear chirped, the voice coming through sounding sterile because of the encryption. “Knuckles, this is Decoy. We’re in.”
“Good to go…break, break, Johnny, you got eyes on Crusty?”
“Still at the office. No issues.”
Lieutenant Colonel Blaine Alexander, the element leader for Omega operations, had decided to continue with the collection mission first, before taking Crusty down. Knuckles had fought it, wanting to do the mission and get the hell out of Tunisia, but there’d been some chatter about an assassination attempt, and while an interrogation would collect invaluable data, there was the option to simply monitor Crusty for a few days. See what he said and who he talked to. So, they were planting clandestine cameras inside his residence, imaging his hard drive and wiring the place for sound. If it didn’t provide any benefit, they’d take him down.
Knuckles couldn’t fault Blaine’s logic, especially since Crusty had evaded capture for damn near ten years. Interrogations were fine, and Crusty would get plenty of them, but you never really knew if the subject wasn’t just stringing you along, telling you a bald-faced lie to protect himself. As Blaine had said about the cameras, “one-eye don’t lie.”
A few more days won’t hurt…if I don’t melt.
He looked at his watch and called Johnny again, wondering why Crusty was breaking his pattern, today of all days.
“Johnny, this is Knuckles, what’s his status? He should have broken the box ten minutes ago.”
“Easy. I’ve got the place locked down, and a beacon on his moped. He’s still inside. If it changes, I’ll call you.”
Knuckles paused, wanting to remind Johnny who was in charge out here on the ground. He took the high road.
“Roger. Standing by.”
The call aggravated him. The light admonishment of “easy” was a direct slap in his face. Made more glaring because everyone on the net knew that he’d just spent the last eight months in physical therapy from a catastrophic wound sustained on a mission similar to this one. It was an unspoken question of whether he was still capable. Like I’m about to panic or something.
In truth, Johnny’s team should have been headed home right now, but with the additional mission tasked by Blaine, they’d stayed behind, their whole purpose to keep eyes on Crusty while Knuckles’ team did the breaking and entering. It made sense, because Johnny’s men had the most recent pattern of life on the target, but the call still grated.
His earpiece crackled, bringing him back to the mission. “Cameras and mikes in place. Going to image the hard drive now.”
“Roger. No movement on the target. Plenty of time.”
Johnny cut in, “Crusty’s on the move. Got a trigger on the moped.”
What?
“Say again? The moped’s moving? Who was the trigger on the office? Did you get positive ID that he left the building?”
“Uhh…no. No PID. But the moped’s leaving now. I’ve got the beacon track. I’m getting someone on it. I’ll have a visual ASAP.”
“How’d he get out without you triggering?”
He got no response and knew there’d been a screwup. He saw no reason to drive the blade home a second time, and simply waited. He was in a position to react, should he have to.
Still plenty of time. Let it play out.
Knuckles called Blaine in the Ops Center, giving an update and letting him know they were in motion.
Retro, the other operator with him, analyzed the beacon track and said, “He’s doing the usual pattern. No issues there, but how the hell did he get out of the building without Johnny seeing him? Something’s not kosher.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t trust this tech surveillance bullshit. All we know is that his moped is moving. No idea if he’s on it or not.” Knuckles thought about it for a second, then said, “We’re still good. He’s either in the building or on the moped. We got that track, and he’s still a good twenty minutes away from his house.”
Knuckles was about to check in with Decoy, when he was beaten to the punch. “We got an intruder. I say again, we got an intruder.”
What the hell? In all the time they’d tracked Crusty, he’d gone to this apartment alone.
“Say again?”
Decoy’s breath came in pants as he sprinted somewhere Knuckles couldn’t see. “His mistress just entered the building. We’re moving to the roof. We’ve got the cameras operational on WiFi. She’s on the ground floor, and searching. I don’t know what she’s searching for, but it had better not be us.”
“Get out of sight. Get gone.”
Seconds later, Decoy came back, no longer out of breath. “She’s packing up. She’s got some luggage and she’s shoving things in.”
“What do you mean? She’s packing his clothes? How’s she acting? Is she taking a trip with a friend, or running from the law?”
“She’s definitely running from the law. She’s packing like someone’s going to kick the door in. And it’s all of his shit. There isn’t any women’s stuff in here. She’s on the second floor now, and ripping his laptop apart from the docking station.”
Knuckles remembered the mission. “Did you image it?”
“No time. She came in before we could.”
It took a moment for the full ramifications to hit home. He knows he’s being hunted. He’s going to run.
He called Blaine and gave a SITREP, getting authority for an in-extremis takedown of a fleeting target. It was risky, because they weren’t set for a perfect hit, but they did know his habitual route. Knuckles was positioned to intercept if necessary. The only problem was that Crusty was now going to pick the kill zone. Not optimal.
Retro gave him a location of the beacon track, and he saw it was only a few blocks away, on a street headed to the P12 highway. Still inside the residential area where the roads were no more than alleys, ribbons that wandered aimlessly, hemmed in by wall-to-wall buildings on either side.
Got to get to him before he hits the thoroughfare.
He gunned their van, swinging it around the narrow street, ignoring the bleating horn from the vehicle behind him as he hopped the curb to complete the U-turn.
“Retro, give me a lock-on.”
“Two blocks back. He’s on a one-lane road right now. Take a left, and we’ll intersect his line of march behind him. What’s the play?”
Knuckles thought for a moment, driving like a madman, then said, “Push his ass over with the van. If anyone’s on the road, let him go.”
“Vehicles aren’t the only threat. You can’t predict who’ll see this from the buildings. You sure?”
“No. But he’s running, which means we’ve been blown somehow. We need to get his ass for that as much as anything else.”
They made the left and entered a narrow one-way road with barely enough room for the van, the uneven cobblestone surface rattling Knuckles’ teeth. In front of them was a moped, the man on it having a bald top with a ring of ragged hair blowing in the wind, a Bluetooth headset in his ear.
Crusty.
Knuckles looked down the street and saw nothing but the occasional garbage bin. No vehicles or pedestrians. He inched the van forward, saying, “Check our six. Anything?”
Retro said, “Nothing I can see, but that don’t mean shit.”
“Good enough for government work.”
Knuckles floored the van, closing in behind the moped. He brought the nose adjacent to its rear tire, then gently swung the bumper over, just enough to kiss the rubber. The contact caused Crusty to panic, jerking the handlebars in an overreaction. The moped skipped onto a pile of trash, he hammered the front brake, and the front wheel locked up. The moped swung sideways, launching the terrorist out of the saddle. They both skittered to a halt twenty feet in front of the van.
Retro was already out of the door before the bike stopped its slide, Taser at the ready. He hit the juice as Knuckles pulled abreast, the door of the vehicle open and waiting.
Retro threw him in the van, slamming the door shut and giving Knuckles a look of utter amazement. Knuckles floored the gas, getting out of the area, feeling physically sick.
He called Blaine in the Ops Center.
“We took down the moped. But it isn’t Crusty.”