The Somali Deception Episode II (A Cameron Kincaid Serial) (10 page)

“I figure thirty seconds before
downstairs looks in on us,” said Cameron.
 
He fit the facemask over his head.

“I wouldn’t worry about the
cameras.
 
I was able to rig the
elevator on a loop,” said Alastair.
 
He eased his head to the side to inspect the ocular scan from a
different angle and then reached out his hand in front of Cameron.
 
Pepe unsnapped the leather cover of one
of the front utility belt pockets.
 
From within he retrieved a hard sunglass case, a Ray Ban logo imprinted
across the top.

Alastair saw the case in a
side-glance, and then shifted his head around, “Oh you didn’t.
 
I was looking for that.
 
That’s my sunglass case.”

“I had to put them in something
safe,” said Pepe.
 
He flipped open
the case to reveal a plastic baggy filled with ice and the two plump eyes of
Taufiq Sawar.
 
“This is a good case,
strong.”

“Just hand the thing over,” said
Alastair.

Cameron sucked in his chest as
Pepe passed the cadaver specimen across the elevator.
 
He curled his lip.
 
He was not disturbed the two gruesome
jelly orbs peering up from the case, rather he was displeased with Taufiq’s
fate.

“It was necessary,” said
Pepe.
 
“You see that now.”

Cameron cleared his throat and
rolled his eyes to Pepe.
 
“I knew
that then.
 
I don’t have to like the
situation.”

Pepe was undeterred by his
friend’s suggestion of empathy.
 
“Did I hear you correct that all of the women in Abbo’s harem look like
Christine?”

“This should do fine,” said
Alastair.
 
He held the case up to
the ocular scanner.
 
The backlit LED
circle and rectangle flicked from crimson to emerald.

“Yeah,” said Cameron, “he has a
fetish for caucasian women with green eyes and chestnut hair.”

“Then I have no problem with the
situation,” said Pepe.
 
“Get ready.”

The elevator doors separated.

Outside of the elevator were two
suit dressed security men, each with a hole in his forehead before he could
draw his own weapon.
 
With a
mechanical rhythm stemmed from engrained training, Alastair stowed Taufiq’s
eyes, secured his duffel, and then entered the corridor.
 
Alastair’s comrades followed in fluent
motion, Cameron holding left, and then Pepe squat, to drag his duffel out
between the two dropped men.
 
Pepe
methodically sifted through the clothes of the corpses for radios and access
cards.
 
Alastair merely reached back
to receive the coming bounty, his gaze fixed on the door of the 105th floor
master suite.

Pepe finished rifling through
the suited dead, and then set a charge beneath the sleeve of one.
 
He snapped into formation next to
Alastair, and then gave Cameron a nod.
 
In unison the three men, as much commandos now as they ever were, edged
toward Abbo’s door.
 
They had
studied the floor layout, were beyond well trained, and had one single
objective left in their mission, the safe extraction of Christine Laroque from
the 105th floor of the Burj Khalifa.

After years focusing on building
a reputation as a restaurateur, Cameron was now executing the second direct
action infiltration and exfiltration in a week.

The three stopped at the door,
each in position to charge and indiscriminately fire.
 
Alastair pressed the muzzle of his MP-5
firmly against the surface of the door.
 
He placed three fingers on the steel latch and between his index finger
and thumb held the access card to the mouth of the slot.
 
Calmly he asked, “Ready?”

The responses were as cool.
 
“Clear,” said Pepe.

“Clear,” said Cameron.

Alastair slid the access card
into the slot below the latch.
 
The
crimson LED on the top of the access reader blinked off and the neighboring LED
lit bright emerald.

 
“Viva Legionne,” said Alastair as he
pressed down on the latch with his other three fingers and forced the door open
with the muzzle of his MP-5.

* * *
* *

Abbo’s Suite, Burj Khalifa Level
105, Dubai

The guard assigned to monitor
the close circuit video of the corridor outside of Abbo’s 105th floor suite had
his back to the door, and his feet up on the small table that made up his
makeshift security desk.
 
Rather
than watching the small screen in front of him, he was flipping through a comic
book.
 
He did not so much as flinch
when Alastair forced the door with his MP-5.
 
Too many years babysitting the secure
suite had made the man complacent.
 
Perhaps the guard thought one of the men from the corridor was coming in
to use the restroom, or perhaps he did not hear the door as he was so wrapped
up in the colored pictures of his magazine.
 
Whatever the reason the guard did not
bother to react did not matter.
 
Alastair, Pepe, and Cameron would never find out.
 
Before the door swung wide, the cheap
pressed paper of the comic book was soaked with blood and brains.

In a mindful instant, the three
men surveyed the hallway before them.
 
The commandos had studied the floor layout from an acquired set of
blueprints.
 
Abbo’s suite was supposed
to mirror the harem suite a floor below, so
far
the
entrance appeared as expected.
 
They
had entered into a hallway that opened to a larger central room.
 
Along the hall were two doors.
 
They expected one to be the bathroom and
the other, they had decided, was a room for the guards.
 
Cameron flipped the power switch for the
light.
 
The other switches were at
the far end of the hallway, past the doors, before the central room.
 
Neutralization or reduction of an
interiors primary light source is a standard commando infiltration tactic
prior to
a sweep.
 
Commandos thrive in little to no light and excel in the darkness.
 
Even Pepe, forced to wear glasses to
read, was at home in the dark.
 
The
three edged forward.
 
Light music
rose from another far off room in the suite, as well as deep bellowing
laughter, the unmistakable laughter of Abbo Mohammed.
 
Cameron slipped into the first side
door, a darkened bathroom, and then, confident no one was hiding inside, eased
back behind Alastair.
 
Pepe ducked
into the room on his side of the hall and then returned with a nod designating
that space also clear.

Each planted small charges along
their path.

The three stopped at the end of
the hallway.
 
Mere meters away from
where they stood, the edge of the suite met the Dubai night.
 
The Middle Eastern horizon beyond was
crystal clear
from this height.

Cameron had already been through
the harem suite below.
 
Level 104
had not been modified from the layout they had read.
 
Since the entrance hall and the two side
rooms matched the plans, Cameron was confident that Abbo’s suite would be
similarly unchanged.
 
From the
blueprints, they learned that a central room encompassed a large area of the
suite.
 
To the left would be the
kitchen, dining room, and a few small bedrooms, similar to where Mary led him
to Babette in the floor below.
 
Wrapping to the right, would be another small bedroom, and then Abbo’s
master bedroom.
 
The Burj Khalifa
tower utilities and other elevators made up the rest of the floor on the
opposite side of the corridor.

The number of guards in the
suite was an unknown factor and a major risk.
 
Striking the lights in the central room
could signal additional guards and unwanted issue.
 
There had been no immediate response the
clack of Alastair’s spent MP-5, loud even with the attached suppressor.
 
That was a good sign, yet the burnt odor
already filled the confines of the hallway and would shortly be spreading
through the suite, demanding attention.

The bellow of Abbo’s laughter
echoed again.
 
The warlord’s
laughter paired with images of Christine shot a pang through Cameron he did not
recognize.
 
He wanted to charge the
master bedroom regardless of the plan.

A greater will seized him.

The tactician within Cameron
introduced a scenario.

Cameron had deduced the warlord
must be in the master bedroom, in the bedroom with Christine.
 
That was the direction Abbo’s laughter
was coming from.
 
Cameron had been
in the master bedroom below with Mary.
 
The room Abbo used on his visits to the harem.
 
Cameron figured an easy gamble, for
Abbo’s own comfort, the harem suite and this floor, would share roughly the
same decor.
 
He tapped Alastair’s
shoulder and then eased himself as forward as he could without entering the
central room.
 
Directly outward from
their position at the end of the hall the glass walls formed a corner.
 
Relying on the reflective surface of the
wall
they surveyed the room.
 
From the
reflection
they could see two large sofas to their right.

Cameron’s suspicions were
correct.

Cameron calculated there would
be at least one guard in that direction.
 
Somebody more important than a guard, somebody Abbo could call on to
fetch something.
 
There had been a
bodyguard in the restaurant, a dark Somali the size of a titan.
 
Abbo had called the bodyguard
Theal.
 
That bodyguard had not gone
down to the harem and was not one of those the three shot upon entering the
suite.
 
Cameron tilted his head out
a bit farther, wary that reflections show two ways.

On one of the sofas, Cameron
could see a man reclining, facing out into the night.
 
A large black man with his eyes closed,
possibly sleeping.
 
The man was
Theal.
 
Cameron signaled to
Alastair.
 
Alastair understood there
was a man sleeping around the corner.
 
Cameron also gestured to Pepe that he would march out around toward the
kitchen.

The three matched eyes and nods
and then flowed from the hallway.
 
The three filed from out in a well-rehearsed formation, three bulldozers
clearing the space.
 
Alastair circled
around Cameron to cover the right side of the room where the giant slept while
Cameron launched from the shadowed hall into the opposite direction.
 
Behind him followed Pepe, scanning from
the left and then settling next to Alastair.
 
They found no confrontation.
 
The only guard in the central room was
the man on the sofa, and he would never wake again.

Cameron continued to sweep his
wing of the suite, the kitchen, dining room, and other bedrooms.
 
All were clear, no guards, no Christine.

Christine was the woman in the
master bedroom with Abbo.

Cameron spun back toward that
end of the apartment, his MP-5 forward, and his steps wide and swift.
 
He recounted the rooms in fleeting
checks, deck clear, walls clear, ceiling clear, check, check, and check.
 
Departing gifts for each room, charge
engaged with a twist, apply to the inside of the door jam, and then go.

Cameron’s heartbeat was in his
neck, closing his throat.
 
His body
and action were truly autonomous.
 
He crossed the central room and pressed down the hallway toward the
master bedroom.

Alastair and Pepe waited outside
of the slightly open bedroom door, set to pounce.

The hallway was long and the
last steps eternal.

From the bedroom Abbo laughed
again deeply, sickly, and there was the sound of another, of a woman, breathing
in heavy rhythm, fornicating.

Cameron’s eyes were locked on
Alastair and Pepe.
 
Their heads
subtly nodded in a rhythm to his steps, timing his entry, their launch.

The door burst open to let
Cameron cross the threshold.

“Don’t move!” screamed Alastair
as he and the other two commandos stormed the room and surrounded Abbo, naked
on the master bed, beneath the woman he was enjoying an instant before.