End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(41)

I’d told Wolffe my plan about the mugging to get the thumb drive, then the follow-on hit in Bahrain, and, for the first time in my Taskforce career, he had stunned me. Instead of the usual mealy-mouthed Oversight Council pushback whenever I wanted to do something, he took it to the next level, telling me to drop the mugging idea and go with a full-on takedown. He wanted me to extract the target from the middle of Zurich—a metropolitan city—in broad daylight, then get him on the Rock Star bird and evacuate him to Aviano Air Base in Italy, a U.S.-controlled facility where Taskforce interrogators would be standing by.

The idea held merit, because clearly this guy knew a lot of what was going on, so when he’d asked me if I could accomplish the mission, of course I’d said yes. After all of my bitching on other missions about being held back because the Oversight Council were a bunch of cowards, there was no way I was going to say no. But it was going to be a little tight.

I had Shoshana as the trigger at the apartment, but we were going to rely on his habitual pattern from there. Knuckles would pick him up at the hotel, leaving Brett, Aaron, and me to take him down. Jennifer would be up the street with a Land Rover for exfil. Once the action had occurred, and we’d loaded him up, Shoshana would use the other Land Rover to evacuate the team. Easy day, except it left nothing for contingencies. If it went the way we planned, there would be no problem, but like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

At 11:43, Shoshana came on the net, “Professor is on the move. Same direction as yesterday.”

I said, “Roger. Knuckles, that means about fifteen minutes until he breaks the door of the Kindli hotel.”

He said, “Roger all. Standing by.”

Shoshana came back on and said, “He’s got his laptop with him this time.”

Shit. While we intended to take this guy off the board, the original plan was still in play. We’d get the thumb drive information and still have the option of executing my original mission, if that’s what the Oversight Council thought was best. That plan required us to take the Professor before he had a chance to transmit the linkup information to the mysterious Bosniak, allowing the Taskforce to set up their own trap. If he had the laptop, he had the ability to extract the message and resend in one trip. But maybe he had it just to surf porn after he had the message.

One could hope.

I fidgeted on the bench, watching some elderly gentlemen playing chess on permanent tables set in the park for that purpose. Still wearing masks, they refused to let a pandemic alter their routine. I envied them in a way, wondering about each of their life stories. As usual when seeing someone that age, I wondered if maybe they’d been dropped behind enemy lines in France or were Swiss spies in the Reichstag, but given the march of time, probably not. Those gems were leaving this earth every single day.

My radio came alive: “All elements, all elements, this is Knuckles. I have eyes on. He’s at the computer.”

I said, “Roger,” and waited, feeling the adrenaline rise. If he followed his pattern of life, he would leave the hotel and travel up a ramp to the hill in the park, the ramp itself cut into the side of the hill and lined with cinder-block walls until it reached the top. It was a perfect surveillance detection route because it would highlight anyone behind him.

If he kept true to form, he would exit the park on a similar ramp, dropping down off the hill to the streets below with walls on his left and right growing as he sank back down. As before, it was a perfect use for an SDR, but unfortunately for him, it was also perfect for a hit.

Once he started down that ramp, he would be lost to sight from anyone who wasn’t actually using the same walkway, and that’s where we were going to take him. Brett was at the bottom, prepared to walk up. I was at the top, coming from that end. Knuckles would provide rear security, locking down the back door, while Aaron would do the same from the bottom, both prepared to react. But I really didn’t think that would be necessary. He was an old dude, and I was sure the sight of a suppressed pistol would gain us compliance.

The streets around here were pedestrian only, so Jennifer was parked about a block away on an avenue called Kuttlegasse. All we had to do was walk him there, and we were done. I didn’t have any real qualms about the mission, because we weren’t dealing with a hardened terrorist who had seen combat and would rather die than be caught. We were interdicting a money guy, who would probably soil himself when he saw my pistol.

But there was always Mike Tyson.

Knuckles said, “Bad news. He’s got the message, and he’s plugging it into his computer.”

Which was something I didn’t want to hear. I said, “Is he going to transmit the message out?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. No other reason to bring the laptop.”

I said, “Can you interdict? Force him to leave before?”

“You want me to make a scene here? Pull out my pistol and start ranting about Muslims or something?”

I realized I was grasping at straws. I said, “What about cutting the hotel computer? Can you do something to interdict it? Maybe walk to it while he’s on his laptop and make it crash?”

“Too late. He’s done. He’s put the thumb drive back into the computer, and he’s typing.”

Damn it.

I said, “Okay, okay, we got a Mike Tyson punch. Continue the mission. We get the next punch.”