Sympathy For the Devil (31 page)

Hicks told the computer tech to pull up Omar’s photo. “I know you’ve been looking at this bastard’s photo for a few days now, but I need you to memorize his photo. He’s our main target and you wound him if you have to. Even cripple him, but don’t kill him. We need him alive so we can find out where the viruses are and what he’s done with the samples he already has. We need him to tell us where the shipment is and where the samples he already has are. And he can’t tell us a damned thing if he’s dead.”

One of Scott’s men asked, “What makes you think he’ll talk.”

Hicks flashed back to the sounds and smells he’d just left at Roger’s studio. The piece of Djebar he’d thrown in the garbage. “Don’t worry. He’ll talk.”

The computer tech said, “Then you boys better work fast because it looks like something’s going on.”

H
ICKS LOOKED
at the OMNI thermal feed on the monitor. Inside the building, he saw several heat signatures blurring into one as they massed in the hallway by the front door.

“God damn it,” Hicks said. “They’re coming out.”

One of Scott’s other men put his hand up to his earpiece and repeated, “Sir. The second team is a block out.”

“Good. Have them stay in their vehicles and stay ready.” To Hicks, Scott said, “If they move, I say we hit them in transit. It’ll be public, but it’ll be clean and final.”

Hicks asked the computer tech for the mouse and took the feed off thermal, switched it to normal vision and zoomed in on the front door of the building. His handheld began to buzz. It was either the Dean or Jason calling for a status report now that things were heating up. Hicks decided it must be Jason. Only that numbskull would be dumb enough to call just as an operation was about to pop.

Hicks watched the line of men stream out of Omar’s house into the street. OMNI automatically scanned each face and would run identity checks within a matter of moments on each man it saw. The all had the gaunt leanness of Somalis, but none of them looked like Omar.

Hicks knew if he hit them now, he could prevent everyone from getting away. Keep all the bad guys in one place. But he would risk killing Omar in a firefight and lose the one man who knew about his plan. Omar had always led a compartmentalized existence. Hicks knew no one would know enough about his plans to tell him much.

Hicks and the others watched as the men from the building piled into five cars that had been parked on the street in front of the building.

“Time’s wasting,” Scott said. “Make the call.”

Hicks knew what he should do, but decided what was best for the broader mission. “Our group is Team One and your other group is Team Two. Team Two will follow and track those five cars. OMNI is our eye in the sky but those boys are our boots on the ground. No matter what happens, they stick with the cars and report back where they go. If we’re not available, they report to Jason. Team Two stays cocked and locked unless they see something funky going on. Until then, they are to report back only.”

Scott clearly didn’t like it, but was too professional to say it, especially in front of his men. He nodded at his radio man, who relayed the instructions to Team Two. Then Scott said, “Then you still want to hit that building.”

Hicks clicked the screen back to a thermal image of the building. “I counted ten people who came out of that house. That leaves ten more still inside. Five on the top floor, many of whom appear to in bed and quite possibly sick, and five who look like they’re in the basement. Any of those men who just came out look like they were carrying any lab equipment to you?” Scott shook his head, so Hicks said, “Me neither. The samples of the virus are still in there. That’s why Team Two tails the ten men and the rest of us go in.”

Scott looked at the monitor. “I don’t like it, but I’m not paid to like it, am I?”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Hicks said, though he’d planned enough of these operations to know there were no other options.

They watched as the ten men who’d left the building pulled away in five cars. Team Two—in a Chevy Trailblazer—followed ten seconds behind.

Hicks stepped away from the computer. “It’s your team and your call, but either way, I’m going in. Alone if I have to.”

One of the other men spoke up. “Wait a minute. What about the drone strike?”

Scott answered for him. “Drone like that’s at least an hour out. Those men leaving the premises give us the best chance of going in with minimal resistance.” He reached into a supply drawer and handed Hicks a gas mask. “If you’re coming with us, you’re wearing one of these.”

Hicks took the mask. “Then let’s go.”

H
ICKS LED
the way out of the truck. Scott’s men followed with Scott locking up and bringing up the rear. The street hadn’t been shoveled and patches of ice had formed beneath the snow; making it slippery. None of the men stumbled.

Hicks led them through the path he’d staked out already; through an alley that led between two buildings that let out directly across the street from Omar’s building. The alley was a popular pass through for kids going to and coming home from school, so the snow had trampled well and made for easier travel.

When they got to the mouth of the alley, Scott’s men began to lever out the shoulder guards on their AR-15s. In the trot through the alley, Scott had managed to fall in right behind Hicks.

“How do you want to call it?” Hicks asked him. “It’s your show from here on in.”

Scott gave his men the orders. One stays behind and covers the rest of the team from the alley. Three work behind the house and come in the back door. Hicks, Scott, and the last man go in through the front.

Hicks spoke into the wireless earpiece. “Jason, you on the line?”

“I am and in position,” he said.

He’d never had Jason bird-dog an operation like this. He hoped he was a better spotter than he was a Department Head. “I’m going to need a final thermal check before we go in. Copy?”

“Copy. I still count ten heat sigs remaining inside. Four in the basement. Six clustered upstairs from what I can tell. Sigs all register calm colors. Doesn’t look like you’re expected. First floor reads clear. Copy?”

“Copy,” Hicks said. “Go team is ready. Scott is assuming command of the breach.”

Hicks glanced back at Scott. “Just make sure Omar stays alive.”

Scott tapped Hicks on the shoulder, signaling him to break from the alley. Hicks sprinted out fast and low. He didn’t bother going for the Ruger until he got to the side of the front door.

Hicks had been conducting raids since he was eighteen years old, but the speed of Scott’s team impressed even him. They’d already broken around the back by the time Hicks turned to see where they were. He pulled the Ruger from his hip holster and looked to Scott for what he wanted to do next.

“Since the first floor shows blue on thermals, the two of us will clear out upstairs,” Scott said. “You take care of the basement.”

“That’s four on one,” the other man said. “That’s a lot for one man to cover.”

“But he ain’t just another man, now is he?” Scott grinned. “He’s Faculty and that makes all the difference. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hicks?”

Hicks pulled on his gas mask and reached for the doorknob. “Goddamned right it is.”

T
HE DOOR
swung in silently and slowly. It didn’t creak or bang into the wall.

Scott went in first; his AR-15 leading the way. He paused at the foot of the stairs. His second came up behind him and began sweeping the first floor. Hicks trailed in after him and went for the basement stairs.

The first floor was covered with area rugs, so there was minimal chance of the men downstairs hearing a cracking floorboard above their heads.

Hicks found the door to the basement beneath the stairs was open and headed down; the Ruger at his side. The stairwell was well lit by a single yellow bulb; the basement just as dark.

The stairs were flimsy and creaked beneath his weight as he descended, but he kept moving at a good clip. He heard the din of excited chatter coming from deep within the basement so he doubted any of them could hear him anyway.

The landing at the base of the stairs was dark and the windows were boarded over. The only immediate light came from the broken wooden walls on his right.

Despite what he’d seen of the official building plans on the city’s database, the basement looked as if it had been sectioned off into rooms some time ago. But now, the plaster was cracked and all of the walls had gaping holes.

Hicks took cover behind a fractured wall and looked through the holes at what was happening in the center of the room.

He saw Omar holding a syringe as he stood in front of five men lined up in a row. All three men were black and short and painfully thin; probably Somali. Their clothes were faded t-shirts and cheap jeans that didn’t fit them right. Not baggy in a fashionable gangbanger way, but in a poverty way. Like a missionary handed out a garbage bag full of clothes from the back of a truck in a village a long time ago.

One of the men moved off to the side, rubbing his right arm. The other three held their right arms, veins-side out, waiting for Omar to inject them.

Hicks braced himself against the wall. The son of a bitch was injecting them with the virus. Making them carriers. Signing their death warrant and the death warrants of anyone who came in contact with them.

Through the cracked wall, Hicks scanned the room for guns or guards. He saw neither. He came around the wall and stepped into the light behind the others. He brought up the Ruger and aimed at Omar’s chest.

Omar saw him and froze; the needle and vial still in his hand.

The other men turned to face him and slowly backed away.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Hicks said. “Just set it down on the table, nice and easy and we can all walk out of here alive.”

Omar gave him that crooked, gaping smile Hicks had seen in countless surveillance images, but had never seen in real life. He still held the syringe and needle. “Walk out of here? And walk into what? A cell? Guantanamo? One of your black sites?”

“I’m not with the CIA and neither was Halaam,” Hicks said, using Colin’s cover name. “No Guantanamo and no jail cell. Just the two of us working this out as soon as you put that shit on the table and step away.”

Omar surprised him by laughing. “How do I know?”

“Because if I wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be talking.”

He caught the glint in Omar’s eye; the quiver of the needle and vial in his hand. If he dropped that vial, everyone in the room would be infected, including him. For his own sake, he added, “I don’t want to kill you.”

Omar wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes flat; committed. “How wonderfully American of you. As if the choice is your own. But it isn’t. It’s mine. A purposeful death is glorious and far better than a life spent in…”

Hicks fired.

The round tore into Omar’s right shoulder; the impact lifting him off his feet and spinning him back. The syringe stayed in the vial and flew out of his hand. Both the vial and the syringe hit the floor, but neither of them broke. Hicks remembered what Djebar had told Roger: the vials were plastic.

The five men bolted through a doorway on the other side of the room. Hicks brought his gun around as he called for them to wait, but they were too panicked to hear him and ran up a flight of stairs. He stepped over Omar’s body as he ran to see where they were going.

He watched them trip over each other as they scrambled up the back stairway that led to the small yard behind the house. Where Scott’s men were already in position, waiting for them.

Hicks heard the muted coughs of the silenced AR-15s as the men hit daylight. The poor panicked bastards ran right into a wall of lead fired at eight hundred rounds a minute. They never had a chance.

One of the Somalis scrambled back down; the same man he’d seen Omar inject with the virus. He might’ve been the first he’d injected or he might’ve been the last. It didn’t matter. He looked at Hicks, then at the stairway up to the house. Hicks was standing between him and that doorway.