Page 5 of The Perfect Stranger

The four of us, two trained tac-force snipers, and two trained terrorists stood in silence contemplating the notion of one of us, me, having killed someone so young.

“You killed a good boy,” he started, his accent thick. He wasn’t taunting. Not in the sense that I expected, but in one that chilled me to the bone. “I had trained him well.”

We held each other’s stare. A mutual hatred passing between us. His a promise that there was more to come, mine a promise that we would continue the fight until their cause and victories were nothing more than a myth, a fable of the most distorted kind.

“Move.” I pushed Yusuf forward out into the stench-ridden hall.

“Suárez,” Zero’s voice came through. “Still no contact from Garner. There’s movement within rooms both sides. Enemy targets unknown. Exercise extreme caution now Alamand is visible.”

Positioning him in front, he would act as my human shield if Zero’s fears were to become a reality.

We made it down to the first floor without any interaction from other residents. We moved stealth like and in silence but still something didn’t feel right. One of our men was down. MIA.

Garner was new. I didn’t know him, but for him to just disappear entailed something far more sinister. He had served eleven years as SAS and was well versed in this sort of play.

“Careful on your right,” Zero warned, and I turned our bodies toward the apartment office. The door was closed, so I urged us toward the exit keeping my eye trained on the handle. Almost at the threshold, the door flung open, and two men engrossed in conversation made to leave, their attention not focused on what and who was in front of them. They were almost identical both in looks and dress.

Fighting against my hold, Yusuf Alamand bellowed a warning. Moments later the room exploded in a chaos of Arabic voices. Digging the Glock muzzle between his shoulder blades, my other hand tightening the hold of the cuffs, I jerked his arms high behind his back until he shut up and winced in pain.

“Engage only when engaged,” Zero said, his uncertainty of the situation making me doubt my own judgment. There was no negotiating with a terrorist on any account. There was no backing down. Words would only fall on deaf ears.

The first man out the door raised his hands in the air, eyes wide as he continued his surprised rant. The second man remained close behind his friend, and in comparison was deathly quiet and studied the scene unfolding through slit-like eyes.

“Get back inside,” I ordered. My voice was calm and steady, an order that carried a promise he wouldn’t want me to deliver on.

The first man began to back up, his attention darting around the room.

“Get out of here, Jase,” I ordered to my partner without even glancing over my shoulder.

If there was a response, I didn’t hear it. Not over the fire of an automatic Kalashnikov rifle coming from the threshold of the office. Pulling Yusuf closer, he acted as my shield while we moved out of the firing line. The glass windows behind me shattered as the bullets peppered a trail my way. It was the second man, the quiet one with the slit-like eyes. He had instantly become my new target as he pushed his friend out the way, brazen, exposing himself while he took aim. He stood tall and confident in his self-perceived glory, unfazed by impending death, his suicidal cause one that would ‘please’ his god. He looked down the eye of the barrel one last time, keen to miss the man who had no doubt been his mentor.

“Let him go,” he ordered, his accent thick and husky.

Yusuf Alamand was breathing heavy, a mumble of prayer filling the otherwise now quiet room.

“Put the gun down,” I ordered back.

“You kill me, I don’t care,” the gunman announced, and I could see by the indifference in his eyes that it was true. “We are your own personal cancer. We are among you. We assimilate with you for one reason… to do what a cancer does best. Kill.”

His finger twitched on the trigger, but before he could press down on it, I pulled my own. A neat bullet hole in the middle of his forehead appeared. The room once again fell silent as things moved in slow motion. The man’s eyes rolled until all I could see were his whites, his finger still on the trigger having lost all strength. His body became unbalanced, and just like someone was folding a piece of paper he collapsed to the ground, the rifle clattering on the tiles next to him.

The first man who had scurried away to the corner of the room, watched in horror, his legs tucked tightly to his chest, hands used as a shield as if they would protect him from me. There was a genuine fear in his eyes, nothing compared to the confidence of his friend. He wasn’t a target.

“I just deliver,” he pled, eyes darting to outside. I followed his gaze, and sure enough, there was a delivery truck with a stack of groceries bought from the local Islamic market stacked in milk crates on the sidewalk.

“Man down in the foyer,” I relayed through to Zero. “Bomb disposal to come through immediately.

“Confirm that. Preparing to lose visuals. See you soon.”

Taking the dead man’s rifle, we exited through the obliterated doors. We crossed the dirty courtyard, me pushing Yusuf to pick up speed. Jase had left during the exchange of fire, but I knew he wouldn’t be far. Traveling through the dark tunnel—the sound of puddles beneath our feet the only noise—I brought Yusuf to a grinding stop.

Mere yards away, four figures remained perfectly still, their silhouettes glimmering under the faint street lamp.

They were all silent. Three sets of eyes now watched for my reaction. The fourth set saw nothing. Even in the dark shadows of the night, I could see blood still spilling down his slit throat. Garner was slumped in a chair pulled from somewhere. The woman I’d seen earlier on entry carrying shopping bags, the same woman who had feigned shock and innocence, now wore a suicide vest over her burka, the stained knife lying at her feet.

I swallowed hard knowing my life just got a whole lot harder. Nothing about this mission had gone to plan. When the boss said this was a “quick in and out agency job,” with emphasis on ‘agency,’ I was at fault for being too trusting. I should have known when outsourced to the agency we were left with limited resources. I should have asked questions and raised concerns. But we were Special Forces, it was our job. Our risk assessment was to judge our risk on the fly. Act without fear of being court-marshalled or facing any form of retribution. But we were no longer in the Arabian Desert. We were in the pits of New York City, in peak hour—a soldier with a slit throat, a child lying dead in an explosives-filled room and a woman wearing a suicide vest about to be shot—all while holding the Osama Bin Laden in the making.

‘Agency jobs’ could go fuck themselves.

The woman’s face was hardened, the expression mirroring the man I had killed in the foyer. Jase stood opposite, his eyes debating the logistics of dealing with a heavy explosive item.

Yusuf and the woman began speaking in a controlled manner to each other, almost as if they were preparing for what was to come.

Their conversation quickly became heated, Yusuf distracted with keeping his own safety in check while the woman’s thumb twitched on the remote. Using the opportunity, I glanced at Jase who subtly winked.

Game on.

My Glock slipped up Yusuf’s back who was too caught in his rant to notice quick enough. I fired over his shoulder and watched as the women jolted from the force, her cheek exploding in a mess of flesh, blood, and bone. It wasn’t a neat kill. I didn’t have time to be precise. There were no screams—her death, instant.

Yusuf didn’t make a sound. They were so far detached from human relationships that they saw no value in life whatsoever. As the woman fell, Jase catching her in time before she hit the ground, saved the suicide vest from impact. She lay limp, face mutilated, her form added to the body count for a shit day’s work.

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