Final Winter

‘Very good,’ Adrianna said. ‘Fedayeen who martyred themselves outside Kabul last year, by driving their pickup trucks into Bradley fighting vehicles. Score, Bradley fighting vehicle one, fedayeen pickup trucks nil. And we appreciated their martyrdom valor so much that we froze their bodies for later and decided to honor them by setting up a return engagement.’

The helicopters lifted off. Brian knew that he wouldn’t have to wait long, and he didn’t.

Another, larger flare of light. When the wind finally cleared away the smoke there was a crater in the desert floor, and scraps of blackened metal and what had once been bodies.

Adrianna reached over to her laptop, pressed a button. The plasma screen went blank.

‘Yemen?’ he asked.

‘Doing well today, Brian. Yes, Yemen.’

‘And when whatever Yemeni authorities get to the wreck-age, all they’re going to find are some scraps of metal and charred bits of flesh. They’ll eventually figure out whose Mercedes-Benz that is, and they’ll count up the body parts and make an educated guess as to what happened. They won’t be in a position to do a DNA analysis of whatever’s left.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And the evil nephew and his cohorts…their comrades will think that they’re up in heaven, sipping strawberry smoothies and banging seventy-two virgins, when in fact they’ll be in Gitmo, getting sweated out, offering up leads and other intelligence.’

Adrianna nodded. ‘Exactly again, Brian.’ She gave him a large smile and Brian had felt good, having made that cool and composed woman smile. He suddenly decided that he needed to see her smile again.

Then he had a thought. ‘The old woman. His aunt. Is she Gitmo-bound?’

Adrianna closed the laptop cover, shook her head. ‘Why pick on an old Yemeni woman? No, we’ll leave her be. But she will have to pay the price for her actions.’

‘And what price is that?’

Adrianna looked at him, her gaze fixed and composed. ‘Her lawn will probably die in the near future. You got a problem with that?’

‘Not a bit,’ he said.

‘I thought you’d say that. Brian, welcome to the team.’

That comment nailed him, and he clenched his hands, just for a moment.

‘A setup? A test?’

‘No, no,’ Adrianna said quickly. ‘Not a setup. We just knew something wasn’t right with that woman. Scores of interviewers had gone in and out of there without anything substantial. But you did, my friend. Went in there with your detective’s eyes and detective’s suspicions, and because of that five bad guys have been taken off the board. Permanently.’

Brian thought about that for a moment, and said, ‘Okay. Not a setup. But a test.’

She shrugged. ‘It could be said like that.’

‘Any other tests out there for me?’

There, again, that damnable smile that seemed to light up something inside him.

‘Brian, every day is a test. Every goddamn day.’

~ * ~

So now, on this testing day, the Predator was following the white Toyota with rust stains on its roof in Damascus traffic. Adrianna said, ‘Darren?’

Darren said, ‘A couple of months ago, somebody in Damascus made a mistake. One phone call. That’s all it took.’

Monty laughed. ‘Man, one phone call sure can fry your ass. What happened?’

‘It was from a satellite phone that we’ve been monitoring in a neighborhood near Suq Hamadiya in Damascus. It was one of a parcel purchased by al-Qaeda members or supporters. The phone had not been used much, and when it was used the chatter was brief and low-key.’

Monty said, ‘What’s the mistake? Somebody use it to order some couscous?’

Darren managed a smile. ‘Close. Somebody used it to call a local garage. Said he was tired of waiting for the transmission to be fixed. Wanted it fixed that afternoon or the mechanic’s head would be on a pike, and his children would be forced to beg from the streets. So that was the break we got. Easy enough from there to find out who the car belonged to, and what it looked like. Put a tracking device in one of the tires. Easy enough again to put the car in the daily tasking orders for the Predators deployed in that area. And then…well, Adrianna?’

‘Just watch,’ she said. ‘Just watch.’

Brian rubbed at his eyes, looked at the car, inching its way through traffic. Then it stopped at an intersection. A cop or traffic guy, standing on a little concrete island, tried his best to direct traffic, and it looked like he was being ignored. Then, strangely enough, vehicles in front of the Toyota moved, but it stayed still, just for a second. Then a hand appeared from the front passenger window, just for a moment, as it dropped something onto the sidewalk.

The car moved. Brian said, ‘Can you freeze that, right there?’

Frozen. The car, the traffic, the frantic white-gloved hands of the traffic cop. Not moving.

Brian said, ‘Play it back, slow.’

Like some comedy newsreel from the 1930s, the traffic moved backwards, and Brian stood up, leaned into the plasma screen, tried to see what was happening. Something flew up into the outstretched hand, and—

‘Reverse it, right now.’

And the object was dropped.

Brian sat down. ‘Okay. You can keep playing it.’