Page 40 of End of Days

“You can call me Splinter.”

She said, “My name is—” and he cut her off, saying, “I don’t want to know.”

He walked her to the car, making small talk. She was from Senegal and had been in Italy for close to two years. She lived with a group of women, but had no pimp. She was here illegally, but wanted to get a work permit to let her quit this life. Endless chitchat, making Garrett sad.

He was convinced he was doing her a favor. She would never leave this purgatory, and he was giving her a second chance for the afterlife. She would be a brick in the wall of the second coming. Like Rahab, it was probably the greatest thing she could ever aspire to.

He drove east, winding through the neighborhoods, eventually passing the park next to his rental complex. He stopped his car in the shadows of the west end of the building, leading her through the darkness to a side door away from the security cameras and streetlamps from the primary entrance. When they continued in the darkness instead of moving to the light of the main entrance, she became suspicious, saying, “Why aren’t we going in the front?”

He said, “My apartment is right above us. It’s just quicker.”

She nodded and he opened the door to a stairwell with a flourish of his hand. She entered and they went up two floors, then exited into a hallway. He led her forward, reaching the apartment door.

He punched in the code to the door, heard it unlock, then swung it wide for her. She smiled again and entered.

He followed behind, pulling a red cord out of his jacket pocket, each end having a piece of wood threaded through to make it easier to use.

Chapter 26

I checked my watch for probably the fortieth time, seeing it was now 11:30a.m.Almost showtime. I was sitting on a bench in Lidenhof Park, right smack-dab in the center of Zurich’s old town, this time all by myself. I got on the radio and conducted a comms check with all of my bumper positions, making sure they were prepared to execute, and each one acknowledged they were set and ready to go. That was small comfort, because this operation was running the ragged edge of my team’s capability.

The mission had changed, and we were nowhere near the size needed for the new scope, but after the Taskforce call last night, everything had ratcheted up.

It had been George Wolffe on the phone, and the situation had morphed drastically from me being on a boondoggle with the Israelis, out in the wind on my own. A U.S. diplomat had been executed in Italy, with the same type of note the Israelis had found on their deadRamsadcrammed in her mouth. Keta’ib Hezbollah had claimed credit, and the president of the United States was now out for blood. Which was good for me, but bad given the size of my team.

I’d told Wolffe my plan about the mugging to get the thumb drive, then the follow-on hit in Bahrain, and, for the first time in my Taskforce career, he had stunned me. Instead of the usual mealy-mouthed Oversight Council pushback whenever I wanted to do something, he took it to the next level, telling me to drop the mugging idea and go with a full-on takedown. He wanted me to extract the target from themiddle of Zurich—a metropolitan city—in broad daylight, then get him on the Rock Star bird and evacuate him to Aviano Air Base in Italy, a U.S.-controlled facility where Taskforce interrogators would be standing by.

The idea held merit, because clearly this guy knew a lot of what was going on, so when he’d asked me if I could accomplish the mission, of course I’d said yes. After all of my bitching on other missions about being held back because the Oversight Council were a bunch of cowards, there was no way I was going to say no. But itwasgoing to be a little tight.

I had Shoshana as the trigger at the apartment, but we were going to rely on his habitual pattern from there. Knuckles would pick him up at the hotel, leaving Brett, Aaron, and me to take him down. Jennifer would be up the street with a Land Rover for exfil. Once the action had occurred, and we’d loaded him up, Shoshana would use the other Land Rover to evacuate the team. Easy day, except it left nothing for contingencies. If it went the way we planned, there would be no problem, but like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

At 11:43, Shoshana came on the net, “Professor is on the move. Same direction as yesterday.”

I said, “Roger. Knuckles, that means about fifteen minutes until he breaks the door of the Kindli hotel.”

He said, “Roger all. Standing by.”

Shoshana came back on and said, “He’s got his laptop with him this time.”

Shit. While we intended to take this guy off the board, the original plan was still in play. We’d get the thumb drive information and still have the option of executing my original mission, if that’s what the Oversight Council thought was best. That plan required us to take theProfessor before he had a chance to transmit the linkup information to the mysterious Bosniak, allowing the Taskforce to set up their own trap. If he had the laptop, he had the ability to extract the message and resend in one trip. But maybe he had it just to surf porn after he had the message.

One could hope.

I fidgeted on the bench, watching some elderly gentlemen playing chess on permanent tables set in the park for that purpose. Still wearing masks, they refused to let a pandemic alter their routine. I envied them in a way, wondering about each of their life stories. As usual when seeing someone that age, I wondered if maybe they’d been dropped behind enemy lines in France or were Swiss spies in the Reichstag, but given the march of time, probably not. Those gems were leaving this earth every single day.

My radio came alive: “All elements, all elements, this is Knuckles. I have eyes on. He’s at the computer.”

I said, “Roger,” and waited, feeling the adrenaline rise. If he followed his pattern of life, he would leave the hotel and travel up a ramp to the hill in the park, the ramp itself cut into the side of the hill and lined with cinder-block walls until it reached the top. It was a perfect surveillance detection route because it would highlight anyone behind him.

If he kept true to form, he would exit the park on a similar ramp, dropping down off the hill to the streets below with walls on his left and right growing as he sank back down. As before, it was a perfect use for an SDR, but unfortunately for him, it was also perfect for a hit.

Once he started down that ramp, he would be lost to sight from anyone who wasn’t actually using the same walkway, and that’s where we were going to take him. Brett was at the bottom, prepared to walk up. I was at the top, coming from that end. Knuckles would providerear security, locking down the back door, while Aaron would do the same from the bottom, both prepared to react. But I really didn’t think that would be necessary. He was an old dude, and I was sure the sight of a suppressed pistol would gain us compliance.

The streets around here were pedestrian only, so Jennifer was parked about a block away on an avenue called Kuttlegasse. All we had to do was walk him there, and we were done. I didn’t have any real qualms about the mission, because we weren’t dealing with a hardened terrorist who had seen combat and would rather die than be caught. We were interdicting a money guy, who would probably soil himself when he saw my pistol.

But there was always Mike Tyson.

Knuckles said, “Bad news. He’s got the message, and he’s plugging it into his computer.”

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