I see eyes all around go murderous.
“It was not voluntary, obviously. It was limited strictly to being photographed, front, left side, rear, right side. I was not touched in any way. But it was done at gunpoint.” She pauses again. “I’m only telling you this for one reason, and this is the reason I need you, Lear: when the photographs were taken, they were uploaded to a cloud storage system so Spaulding could access them remotely.” Another pause. “I spoke to Spaulding on the phone. He is going to disseminate those photographs of me to the public, to the media, to leak sites like 4Chan and Gawker. Just to hurt me and embarrass me.”
“Over my dead goddamn body,” Lear snaps. “Say no more, I’m on it.”
“Overhisdead body, preferably,” Rin says. “Not just mine, but all of them.”
Lear’s fingers are flying one-handed across the keyboard, typing faster with one hand than most can with two. “Oh, no worries there, honey. I’m going to find and destroy his shit one line of code at a time. And I’m going to have help.” He whips out a phone, finds a contact, dials, waits. “Artem, it’s Lear. Remember that pedo ring we took out a while back? Well, I’ve got a job that’s gonna make that look like a church picnic. Sex trafficking, on a global scale. Yeah, I’m serious. This shit is going to make your blood boil, my friend. I’ll throw in money if needed, but you’re gonna do this pro-bono out of pure rage, once you see what we’re dealing with. Get all the guys, Artem. All of them. White hat, black hat, I don’t give a shit. We’re going nuclear on this…great. I’ll send you what you need to know to get started. Thanks, buddy.”
We’re all watching him.
“Artem is the high-tech version of Anselm,” Lear explains, putting the phone away. “He scares the shit out of me, and I’m not even kidding. I have to be pretty judicious in how, when, where, and why I use him, though, because setting him onto a project like this is akin to launching a nuke.”
Puck, chewing on the unlit plug of a thick cigar, scratches at his long, thick, black-and-white beard with the stump of a middle finger. “Point him at the bad guys, then, and let’s watch the fireworks.”
Lear looks at Rin. “The photographs I’m expunging myself. There won’t be a trace of them by the time I’m finished.” He turns away, typing too rapidly to follow, his attention already homing in on the job at hand. “Don’t worry, I’ve got your intel all squared away, and I’ll check it again before it’s go time.”
“The photographer and his equipment,” Harris says. “We need to make sure there aren’t any extant hard copies of the photographs.”
Rin laughs, and it’s a darkly amused sound. “No problem there, Uncle Harry. After I made my move on the inside, the other women were not idle. By the time I got Yelena and Apollo and made for the exit, Anh and the others had already taken care of the photographer and his equipment.” She eyes him. “You ever see what twenty-five pissed-off and scared women can do to one unarmed man?”
Harris nods, stoic. “I have, in fact. I hunted down a known child molester in Manila once—instead of turning him over to the authorities, I left him bound hand and foot with the mothers of the girls he’d hurt. When I went back to check on him, later, there was…he wasn’t recognizable as a human being.”
She nods. “Exactly.”
Harris gestures at the table. “Let’s go over the plan.” He glances at Rin and then me. “I’m assuming there’s no point in trying to get either of you to stay back and let us deal with Spaulding?”
Rin shrugs. “Sure, I’ll stay back…with a sniper rifle and a promise that I get to pull the trigger with that asshole’s head in the crosshairs.”
Anselm has his rifle with the butt in the sand, leaning against his shoulder. “Sniping is not like hunting a deer or hitting a target at the range.” He taps the barrel of the Barrett. “It requires years of experience and training, as well as extensive knowledge of the math involved in calculating windage and drop and such things as this.” He meets Rin’s eyes. “I could teach you these things, but not in time to do you any good. I think maybe it is best for you to be on the ground with the kill squad.”
Rin laughs. “Yeah, Uncle Anselm, I know. That was my point.”
Anselm frowns. “Oh. I missed the joke, it seems.”
She just smiles at him. “You can handle the sniping. I’ll be boots-down with the kill squad.” Her eyes go to her father’s. “And no, you can’t talk me out of this, either.”
“Talk you out of it?” He shakes his head. “I’m going with you. Kidnapping me, kidnapping my wife, even kidnapping my daughter—” here, his eyes go to me, briefly, and I look at my toes, “I can…not forgive or understand. But all that is one thing. Kidnapping a totally innocent four-year-old girl?Thatearns you a special place in hell, in my book, and I’ll be there to make sure he gets a one-way ticket down there.”
Her expression, as she hears him say this, turns nearly worshipful. She wraps him a hug. “You’re the best, Daddy.”
I can’t help a cackle. “When most girls say, ‘you’re the best, Daddy,’ like that they are talking about a new Mercedes or a fancy condo or something. Not accompanying her on an operation to assassinate a sex-trafficking underworld kingpin. I’m sorry to laugh, but it’s a little amusing.”
We’re clustered around the table, then, with Duke going over the tactics for our assault.
“He’s holed up in the Alborz Mountains in Iran,” Duke says. “Not far from Alamut, actually, for you history buffs.” When no one replies, he shakes his head. “Look it up later. Anyway, we have satellite imagery of his caravan reaching a stronghold. Like the fortress here in Tunisia, this is old ruins that our intel says he’s since renovated into a refuge. His last resort, I suppose. The imagery shows six vehicles, Suburbans or Tahoes or the like, from the looks of it, which means he’s got at least six, if not eight men per vehicle. Do that math, we’re looking at anywhere from fifty to sixty men with him, assuming he doesn’t have more stationed there as well. And he’s likely expecting us. So, this isn’t going to be a straightforward assault.”
Thresh eyes the topographical map on the tablet, pinching to zoom in and out, examining the lay of the land. “The terrain is going to pose a hell of a challenge.”
Puck elbows him aside—or attempts to—in order to get a better look. “Move the fuck over, you giant damn rhinoceros.”
Thresh just rumbles laughter but edges sideways to allow Puck closer; Puck does his own examination of the topography. “You ain’t kiddin’, big buddy. Mountainous as fuck. One road in or out. Thick forest. Even a HALO insertion isn’t really feasible. And if they know we’re coming, they’ll have lines of approach dialed in with SAWs or whatever the fuck. Assuming he’s as smart as we are, which is the safest assumption.”
“It’s a damn smart location for a last stand,” Duke says.
Harris takes over the tablet, stares at it a long while, making a musing sound between his front teeth. “Okay, I’ve got it. I’m not usually one for trick plays, but I think this scenario calls for it. I’ll get some buddies and we’ll confuse them. I’m thinking five, six, maybe more helos, all coming from different directions. While not every helo will be carrying personnel, each one will descend to a section of road or a clearing as if to let troops fast-rope down. We’ll be working in fireteams of six each, one per helo, and we will be approaching from multiple angles—the point of the extra helos, in case it isn’t clear, is to obscure our numbers and angles of approach. We’re going to have to descend pretty far down the mountain and just hoof it up the hard way, slow and quiet.” Harris glances at Anselm. “Can you find a spot where you can provide sniper support?”
Anselm takes the tablet, then, and searches. “Very tricky, indeed. The nearest neighboring peak is quite some distance. Hmmm. I would need to infiltrate ahead of time and create a few nests in various positions. I think my best wager is to position myself in a tree. This is tricky with so large a rifle, but the distances involved certainly preclude anything smaller.” He mutters under his breath—I think I hear German, Russian, and Finnish—the latter I am only guessing at. “Ja, it will work. To find the right perch, carry in the correct materials, create a disguised nest to support my weight and that of my rifle, as well as factoring in the back-blow and kick, while allowing me a useful field of vision on the target compound….it will be a difficult assignment, indeed, but a challenge such as I have not faced in many years.” He glances at Harris, nodding. “I will need a scout. The best sniper, who is capable at fieldcraft, knows the work of sniper scouting, and can act as my protection while I do the shooting work.”
