Page 38 of End of Days

I considered his words, nodded my head, and said, “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying. We need to interdict him after he gets the instructions tomorrow, but before he transmits them. Make it look like amugging. Rough him up a bit, steal his watch and wallet, and get the thumb drive. We get that lead, and we continue on.”

I looked at Aaron and said, “The point of this is to prove or disprove Iranian involvement, right? This guy that’s doing the linkup isn’t Iranian. He’s sketchy, and he’s sounding like what your Mossad skeptics think—somebody else pulling the strings. We need to sort that out. He’s the guy we ultimately want.”

Aaron said, “So how does our interdicting the Professor before he has the ability to transmit the plan help us? The guy won’t get the instructions.”

“No, he will, butwe’llbe controlling the information. I say we roll up Professor, get the message, and then craft our own linkup plan—make him think we’re the cell. We go to Bahrain, roll up his ass, and squeeze him. That’s where the answers will come. And we’ll short-circuit anything they had planned as well. It’s a win/win.”

Aaron nodded, saying, “Yeah, that sounds good to me. Shoshana?”

She said, “I agree. We have a hit time tomorrow for him to retrieve the message, and we know his route. We’ll actually get two shots at it, since he’ll have to retrieve the message, come home to use the stego program to decode, then shack up his own message to the Bosnian guy, and finally return to the hotel to send it. We can hit him after he leaves the hotel, and if that fails, after he leaves his apartment again. We could do it.”

Knuckles tugged his ear, then glanced at me. I said, “What?”

“You’re forgetting we have no sanction over here. We can’t just go ripping people off the street because Israel thinks it’s a good thing. We can’t do it. Or more specifically, Brett and Iwon’tdo it. You guys are civilians, so go ahead and get your jihad on, but we’re standing down.”

Knuckles was still an active duty Navy SEAL, and Brett was officially part of the CIA’s Ground Branch paramilitary division, unlikeJennifer and me, who were civilian owners of an archeological research company. I understood where they were coming from.

I said, “Come on. This is what you do. We’re derailing their ability to assassinate our allies—or maybe our own guys. You know what’s in Bahrain? The Fifth Fleet. You don’t think that’s a juicy target? They’re going to killsomeonein Bahrain. We can stop it. And maybe stop a war with Iran if the hits are truly a false flag.”

He said, “That may be the case, but I’m not conducting an Omega operation without sanction. This ‘being an Israeli’ thing only goes so far, and you’re stretching it.”

I glanced at Jennifer. She pursed her lips and shook her head, telling me Knuckles was right. I turned to Brett and he said, “You know where I stand. Need some authorization for this.”

Shoshana said, “Pike, we can do this on our own. Just you and us. I don’t need authorization. I already have it.”

I looked at Aaron, and saw he was torn. He wanted my help, but understood my restrictions.

I took a deep breath and then let it out. I said, “I’m sorry, Shoshana, but my team’s right. I’d love to tag this guy, but we’re going to need authorization. Let’s take a look at what we can do without ripping the Professor off the street.”

Knuckles exhaled at my words, the act letting me know he didn’t want to go against me, but was going to do what he thought was right. It made me smile, because the worst thing a team leader could ever become was convinced he alone was correct.

I glanced at Jennifer, and she winked, letting me know she thought it was the right decision as well. Shoshana became incensed, springing up and saying, “We’ll do this on our own, then.”

I said, “Calm down, Carrie. We’re still going to help, but just within the charter we have. Which is surveillance only.”

She hissed, saying, “Yourside is next.Yourpeople are going to get killed next. And we could prevent that right now.”

I said, “I’m sorry, but until Wolffe gives me sanction to conduct offensive operations, I can’t do it.”

And then my phone came alive, with the distinctive Taskforce ringtone telling me to go encrypted.

Chapter 25

After finishing the establishment of his kill zone during daylight, Garrett sat in his car in the fading twilight, waiting on the darkness to fall, a precursor required before the streetwalkers began plying their trade like nocturnal animals digging through a trash can. Parked in the EUR neighborhood next to a small man-made body of water called Lago Dell’Eur, waiting on darkness to fall, his mind drifted unbidden to the ramifications of what he was about to do, kill an innocent solely to protect the mission.

Leonardo was going to get the linkup information for Bahrain tomorrow, but that still left about three days for the female police inspector to hunt him down, and he had no idea how close she was. For all he knew, they were within twenty-four hours of knocking on his door and asking for his DNA or fingerprints. He knew he’d left both at every crime scene.

The murder of Gabrielle Hernandez, the United States diplomat, had certainly generated the news he wanted, with the U.S. press’s endless cycle of cable talking heads demanding the obliteration of Iran. But the female inspector had nothing to do with that, and he was sure the investigation was going full speed ahead. He’d tried mightily to find out her identity or where she lived, but had so far failed. The police had held several news conferences discussing a “ripper” type character on the loose in the EUR neighborhood, but that story had now been overshadowed by the spectacular death of the American—but even before, the woman detective never took the microphone, was never introduced, and nobody ever referred to her by name. She apparently preferred to operate in the shadows, which concerned Garrett a great deal.

He needed to remove her from the equation to short-circuit the investigation, which necessitated him first discovering her identity. After he’d repeatedly come up empty using every investigative technique he could think of, wasting hours on the web trying to find her and calling various people he knew from his past, he’d decided on a different tack—instead of him searching for her, bring her to him.

The quickest way to do that would be another killing, but unlike the other three, this one would be premeditated. No rage, no sexual frustration, just a goat staked to a tree for the tiger to come find. When that happened, he’d learn who she was because he’d ensured that he would control the space where the body would be found.

At night, the streetwalkers were all over the EUR neighborhood, the majority clinging to the alleys that surrounded the park around the lake, but, as he’d learned, most had no place to go, with some wanting to offer their services in the darkness of the park itself, and others simply using the patron’s car. Earlier, when he was genuinely searching for sexual gratification, he hadn’t liked either choice, forcing him to solicit multiple women before he’d found one who had a place to stay. He wasn’t going to do that tonight. He couldn’t take a chance on another trailer encounter. He needed to prepare the location prior to arrival, and so he’d rented a VRBO apartment on the east side of the neighborhood, away from the lake.

That in itself had been a chore, because he had very specific requirements. The biggest hurdle was finding a host who didn’t require verified identification to rent. That cut his choices in half, as Airbnb not only required an official government ID, they also did a background check on the identification submitted before giving the renter “verified” status.

VRBO recommended verification, as some hosts wouldn’t rentwithout it, but didn’t actually require it, allowing him to use a fake driver’s license from the United States. The license had been bought off the internet just like any underage college student had the capability of doing, but he figured unlike a bouncer in a college town bar in the United States, nobody in Italy would know what to look for to prove it false. That, coupled with the complete collapse of rentals from COVID, made Garrett sure the host wouldn’t even attempt to verify. He or she would just want the money.

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