Enemy of Mine (20 page)

His criteria was simple: First and foremost, the target needed to bear a fairly close resemblance to himself. Other than that, the target needed to be traveling alone and not necessarily here on business. Someone who wouldn’t be missed for a few days at least. He had decided on Sanaa’s old city for this reason, as most of the people here would be tourists, although he knew the pickings would be slim given the upheavals Yemen had been going through.

He wandered the souks in the darkening gloom, beginning to think this mission might need to wait until after he’d conducted his business. Using Hezbollah’s contacts, he had established a meeting with Khalid al-Asiri, a technical bomb-maker. A member of al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, the man was reputed to be a master at camouflaging explosives and was responsible for constructing the ingenious printer-cartridge bombs that almost brought down two cargo aircraft in 2010, along with underwear-bomb devices splashed all over the news. The meeting was the following day, in Zabid on the coast of Yemen, and not something he could miss.

If he found nobody tonight, he would have to spend an extra day in Sanaa after his meeting, a day he couldn’t afford. The alternative was to use the tainted Saudi passport. A passport that too many people knew about.

As he stopped in the middle of a spice souk, the smells made his stomach rumble. He was about to leave and search out a restaurant when he noticed a man haggling over a bag of spices. He was younger than the Ghost and didn’t wear glasses, but was slight of build with the same facial characteristics. Unlike the locals in the souk, he was wearing a full-length dishdasha without the ubiquitous sport coat over the top. The Ghost edged closer until he could hear snippets of conversation. His interest picked up when the man, attempting a harder bargain, stated he was leaving in two days and couldn’t come back tomorrow.
Not from Sanaa. Good sign.
When he heard the man say he wished to mail the spice to his mother in Jordan, he backed off and waited, ignoring his stomach.

He followed the target for another three hours, until it was completely dark. Finally, carrying all of his purchases, the Jordanian entered a hotel, an economic step above his own, but still on the cheap side. The Ghost stopped short in the small lobby and surveyed the establishment. It had a few chairs, a table, and one lone staircase. If he went up, the clerk at the counter would surely see him. Difficult to do what he needed and get away.

The hotel maintained an old-fashioned keyboard behind the counter, and the Ghost took note of the key number handed across, debating his next steps.

He went back outside and surveyed the street. He circled the hotel,
looking for a side entrance he could use, but found none. He did find a group of young boys playing in the dirt and came up with an idea.

He approached them and said, “I’ll give you each two hundred rials if you’ll play a joke on my friend inside the hotel.”

The boys were skeptical, but when he produced the money, they eagerly stepped forward.

“All you have to do is tease him until he chases you out. Get him to chase you down the street. I’m going to slip in and surprise him on his birthday.”

Now all smiles, they took the money and began jabbering among themselves, coming up with a plan as they circled around to the front. When they entered, the Ghost waited to the side.

In short order, he heard a commotion, followed by the desk clerk shouting. Something rattled to the floor, bringing on more shouting. Seconds later, the boys came flying out of the doorway, laughing and shouting. The clerk was a few steps behind them, but a lifetime of tobacco ensured he’d never catch up.

As soon as his back was turned, trotting down the street, the Ghost slipped inside and bounded up the stairwell. He quickly looked at doors, finding the one that matched the key he had seen. Not wasting any time on an elaborate ruse, he simply knocked. When it was opened, he pushed the target back, entered, and closed the door.

The man got out one exclamation of surprise before the Ghost hammered his windpipe with the knife-edge of his hand. The target collapsed to his knees, holding his throat. The Ghost threw him on his back, straddled his body, and trapped his arms to his side.

He placed a hand over the man’s mouth and nose, and rode the bucking body until it quit moving. The Ghost held on for an additional minute, then checked for a pulse. Finding none, he searched the body, pulling out the man’s travel documents from a pocket. He opened the passport and was relieved to see the man was indeed from Jordan. The picture looked passable as well.

He slowly stood, feeling shame at what he had done. He glanced at
the corpse and consoled himself by remembering the cause he was serving. The fact that the target was Jordanian helped, as the Hashemite Kingdom had a long history of persecuting Palestinians.

He was about to place the passport into his own pocket, when he noticed something that made him feel ill. There was no Jordanian national identification number. The target lived in Jordan, but wasn’t a citizen. Which meant one thing: He was a Palestinian, from the West Bank or somewhere else.

The Ghost had killed one of his own.

Lucas finished packing his possessions, deciding what he would take and what he would be leaving behind forever. He got it all down to a backpack and one duffel bag. It left him no room for any specialized equipment, but with any luck he’d be able to get that in Dubai.

He had a list of Hezbollah contacts all over the world, and routinely used them as cutouts to get hotel rooms and operational equipment. He’d have to be careful setting up any meetings, but with the secrecy of the Martyrs Battalion and his little ploy with the forger, he was fairly confident he could leverage assets outside of Lebanon without them turning on him. It wasn’t like Hezbollah sent daily updates around the globe, and most of the contacts were simply part-time help with a specific skill-set. Hezbollah wannabes, as it were.

He was sure the Ghost had gone to Yemen, but was equally confident he was headed to Dubai next, and he had the location of the
hawaladar
there, giving him a handle. At first, he’d worried that the assassin would attempt his attack in Yemen, but a review of the envoy’s itinerary showed Yemen wasn’t on the agenda. No, the Ghost was going to attack in Dubai, and that’s where Lucas would stop him. He was pleased at the Yemen delay, as it would give him time to travel to Qatar and begin building his own trap, before the inevitable clampdown in security for the peace conference.

Finished packing, he toyed with the idea of going out on the town. He was leaving Beirut tomorrow, never to return, and hadn’t ever sampled the nightlife here. He’d seen it, of course, the loose women and brash men partying the night away, but had never entered that realm due to the secrecy of his job. In no way could he be entangled with a female inside Beirut. Although he’d often dreamed about it. Snooty little bitches from rich sugar-daddy Lebanese. He would have loved to show one a good time instead of the whores he’d had to pay while on assignment outside of the country.

Why not tonight? It’s not like you’ll be here in the morning to worry about the consequences. And Hezbollah stays so far removed from the discos they’re no threat.

Fuck it.
He left the hotel and headed to Rue Monot in the Ashrafieh district. He looked for a disco that was dimly lit and not too loud. Dim, because he’d been told time and time again that his eyes were a deal breaker, and he didn’t want to scare away any potential partners on first glance. Years ago, a date had said they reminded her of a bruise—purple and rotting.

He returned two hours later, a statuesque young Lebanese woman in tow. He’d convinced her to have a nightcap of coffee, although she’d said she didn’t have time to stay long.

As soon as the door closed, he leaned in and kissed her. When she tried to pull away, he clamped a hand on the back of her neck. She broke free and slapped him hard across the face.

He rubbed his red cheek, getting aroused at the exchange. Wanting to push it further. “That’ll cost you a little foreplay. Fuck the coffee. Take off your clothes.”

She attacked him in fury, using her nails as claws. He blocked her amateurish attempts and slapped her hard enough to knock her down.

From the floor, her anger dissolved into abject fear.

“A fighter,” he said. “I like that in a woman.”

J
ennifer flipped through the channels
on the ancient television, but without cable all she picked up were local Beirut stations speaking Arabic. She turned it off and glanced at her watch for the umpteenth time.
Still a half hour before hit-time.

Footsteps in the hallway outside her door caused her to quit breathing. She glanced at the
abaya
dress she’d carelessly thrown on the bed, calculating how long it would take her to get it back on. When the footsteps receded without a knock on her door, she exhaled, wondering yet again how she had been talked into this. Pike had said there was no way they’d do a frontal assault into the Hezbollah communications node, but he hadn’t mentioned that the alternative was Jennifer infiltrating the place by herself.

After getting picked up at the marina by Samir, they’d conducted a complete mission analysis of the communications facility from his house. Using all of the data the case officer could supply, which was considerable, they searched for a weakness.

Situated above an electronics store that took up the whole bottom floor, there was only one way to access the top three floors: a stairwell in the back. The store operated as a legitimate business, but all of the people working there were Hezbollah, and half were armed.

The computer in question was in an office on the third floor, surrounded by other offices. The server farm occupied the second floor, and the case officer was unsure what was on the fourth floor.

The building had a small alley on the left and right that ran about seventy meters deep before dead-ending into a wall. The case officer had assured them that there was no secondary entrance. The building to the left was an apartment complex, the one to the right some sort of mix of residences and offices.

Initially, it had looked like there was simply no way to infiltrate the place. Anyone entering the electronics store would be under immediate scrutiny and completely unable to enter the offices in the back that accessed the stairs. Trying to skip the first floor and enter through the second, using a ladder in the alley, was out as well, since the server-farm windows were all heavily barred. They kicked around the idea of bringing a ladder in that would reach the third floor, then realized they were talking insanity.

They toyed with a concept of coming through the roof, but since the asset could give no information on the fourth floor, they tossed it aside. That option would simply be blind.

In the end, it was Pike who’d made the connection. Jennifer remembered his question, and the chill it gave her.
What about going from building to building? Work your way around the ledge on the third floor?

The men had all started analyzing the photos of the exterior, seeing the six-inch shelf that went from the buildings to the left and right, around through the alley wall, and across the target. She had known where this was going. With her acrobatic skills, they would expect her to make the climb. She silently waited for someone to say this idea was also insanity. Instead, Samir read a sign in Arabic on the apartment building and stated they were advertising openings.

Pike had looked at her then, a question on his face he didn’t need to verbalize. She said, “I can’t get in an apartment there! Come on, I’m a Caucasian female.”

Samir said, “Nobody would know if you wore an
abaya
with a
niqab
veil covering your face. Just keep your eyes downcast to hide their color. You’ll look like every other pious Muslim woman.”

“Who’ll get me in? What if someone asks me a question?”

Pike said, “One step at a time. Let’s contact the case officer and see if his asset can rent an apartment on the third floor facing the building.”

She felt sick to her stomach at the thought of the mission, but the pieces had rolled relentlessly into place. The asset had managed to rent a suitable space, had given the key to the case officer, who had passed it to the team at a hastily established dead-drop. From there, she’d dressed from head to toe in a black
abaya
, hidden her face with a
niqab
, and walked into the building behind Samir, moving straight up to the apartment.

They’d passed another male on the stairs, and staring at the steps as she walked, she was certain the man could hear her heart thumping like a bass drum.

Samir had left her there, waiting on nightfall, and had loaded Pike and the others into a panel van, parking it on the street outside the target. They were her only means of rescue should things go wrong.

She looked out the window at the target building, dimly lit by streetlights, running through her mind the thousands of things that could go wrong and how she would counter them. She felt her cell phone vibrate and saw a text from Pike.

She’d sent a status report every ten minutes, per their plan, but knew Pike was worried about her.
As he should be. Asshole.

She replied,
Fine.

She really didn’t need that reminder, and simply sent back
K
.

Soon, much, much too soon, it was time to go. She texted that she was going off cell and onto radio comms, then prepped for the mission.

Dressed in a black Under Armour second-skin top and bottom, she cinched her hair into a tight ponytail, affixing the covert earplug into her ear canal and the small transmitter/receiver to a nylon belt around her waist. After getting a communications check with Pike, she did one final scrub of the cloning device and mini-computer she would use to crack the system in the target, getting a green light. She placed it, two flashbang grenades, a lockpick kit, and a thermal imaging device into a backpack. Once she was satisfied at how the equipment was weighted in the backpack, she strapped on a shoulder holster with a suppressed Glock 30, her only means of defense. The last thing she did was place a circular glass cutter inside the neckline of her Under Armour shirt, trapped against her chest by the material.