43. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
THIS PLACE HELD memories of my own.
One deployment back in my late teens, another in my mid-twenties.
A room in a hospital ICU wing.
Pain I still had nightmares about.
Back then, I’d been convinced I wouldn’t make it through the year, so I resigned myself to the pretense of therapies and treatments for my family’s sake, falsifying hope and avoiding hard conversations because I’d never been trained to solve problems, only eliminate them.
A decade later, that hadn’t changed.
I rounded the gleaming hull of the stolen boat and untied the lines as Carletti manned the controls.
Stowing the rope, I then jumped onto the back of the stern, glancing out at the too-still water on a too-quiet night.
In the wilderness, silence was a signal for nearby predators.
In Appalachia, where parts of the national forests in Georgia were sentient and I’d been raised up to mind the spiritual as well as the physical, it served as an omen.
As of six hours ago, the primordial and primal conjoined when a Marine and a New Yorker departed from Usedom, Germany and docked at the Southern tip of the Swedish Island of ?ja.
Carletti powered up Für immer treu and within minutes, she reached forty five knots, speeding toward the deepest point of the Baltic that plunged more than four-hundred-fifty feet.
It was nightfall now and while I’d have normally appreciated the stillness of the water, after what transpired here just weeks earlier, the coast guard would be on high alert and so we would have to be, too. “How long before the lighthouse notices?” I yelled over the engine.
“None. Principal Keeper has taken over night watch and sent the assistant home. He’s cooperating.”
“ETA?”
“Eighteen minutes. You’ll have ten once we hit Landsort Deep.”
“Copy.”
I headed below deck toward my bag and slipped on a pair of black gloves, shook off my boots and socks, replaced them with a fresh pair of composite toes, and then pocketed the new burner with no stored data save for two photos in the camera album.
I nearly checked my watch but remembered at the last minute that all my personal shit was still in the borrowed SUV back at Berlin Brandenberg’s parking garage.
The water was calm, but not too still and we were on schedule.
The names, profiles, and photos Matthias had sent on the flight over, had already been memorized and destroyed.
I also wasn’t second guessing any of my moves, tonight.
And unlike all those years ago, I wasn’t shackled by the oppressive lead of duty, because this time, I held it.
Tonight, no there would be no mistakes.
“Ten minutes,” Carletti shouted as I stepped onto the deck. I tracked a glittering of stars across the water ahead, the spray and saline breeze of the Baltic whipping my bare chest.
Moving aft deck, I approached the unconscious figures slumped on the floor of the enclosed hub and kicked one of them in the back, hard.
The man whose photo I’d already verified against the one in the burner—a tall, muscular fucker with light-brown skin who’d been coked to the fucking gills on his day off when I’d picked him up at a nightclub in Berlin—jerked upright with a muffled scream that the boat engine drowned.
He woke his companion—a pilot with an olive complexion and a brand new souped-up ICON A5 complete with a fresh vessel registration in his name.
Of course, having been transferred over from an account buried so deep in shell companies, I didn’t have to guess how he’d earned it.
I was almost pissed I’d go to my damn grave owing Matthias for the intel.
“Not fun, is it?” Briny air carrying the smell of sweat and piss away, it left the fear. “Struggling to breathe, I mean.”
Bound with steel ties and gagged with saran wrap, the men jerked and attempted to scream as their bodies finished metabolizing the barbiturates.
One of them struggled to sit up but the crudely mixed cement around his lower extremities from calf to foot had dried, rendering him immobile.
The only response came from the whip of the wind as the cruiser ate up the sea water.
I dropped to a squat and locked eyes with the first man.
Tall, muscled, and relieved of his Glock G21, he no longer looked like the invincible former soldier, but rather like we all did eventually I supposed—fallible.
“…Though, admittedly more difficult while in pain,” I said.
“I tried to be thorough with the roots, but the molars were stubborn and I had to take some of your jaw. You’re lucky you weren’t awake for that. ”
The man’s chest heaving with exertion, he attempted a gargled cry. The pilot gagged before passing out.
“Did you know there are sixteen hundred kilometers between the Danish straits and the Arctic circle?” I told him.
“In July, the temperature reaches approximately fifteen degrees Celsius at night and for the untrained swimmer, that can mean shock, labored breathing, increased risk of hypothermia… Add impact trauma to that and the odds decrease with every panicked breath. A secure bet, I’m sure you thought… ”
Shaking, Dash Brooks, a disgraced British soldier turned security for one of the wealthiest, most connected German-based families stared at me, his blown-out pupils refusing to focus. He muffled something that sounded like “fuck you” but failed to lift his head.
“But that’s the problem with arrogance, Mr. Brooks. You start to believe that the ability to do something is the same thing as doing it well. Seeing as that’s far from the truth, I’ve decided to give you a masterclass of sorts.”
“Five minutes,” Carletti shouted.
Removing the Gerber tactical knife from its built-in sheath in my pants, I sliced through the soaked black T-shirt the man who put his hands on my wife was wearing and tore it from his body.
“Your first mistake, was not removing anything that could identify the body, fingerprints, dental, tattoos, even clothing—specifically, bright fabrics like the one my wife wore the night you pistol-whipped her, moved her body to a seaplane, and dumped her into these waters.” Next, I cut through his generic polyester cargo shorts and underwear.
“Your second was a geographical miscalculation. In your eagerness to dispose of her, you ended up dropping her just off the coast of Klaipéda where the depths only reach about a hundred feet, and even less when it’s a full moon, like it had been that night.
See, the tide being lower than normal, made it relatively easy for the coast guard to find her.
Which brings me to mistake number three…
” I moved onto the unconscious pilot and began sawing through his shirt and pants.
“…Overconfidence.” Stuffing the clothing into plastic bags, I sealed them to burn later and stood.
“As much as I understand the impulse to capitalize on an opportunity, and believe me I do, recon is a non-negotiable. Otherwise, you can find yourself set up by one of the most dangerous cyber operations specialists in the world.”
I waited.
Then at the eleventh hour, understanding dawned on a stupid man and I watched the last his of his ego die on the deck floor. I was pissed that I could fucking relate.
“That’s right. Bangkok. Kyoto. Seoul. Three major cities in six months.
Her real name. Her real fucking passport.
Multiple public sightings before she ever stepped foot in Berlin—She spent months laying the bait to draw you out and you didn’t even hesitate.
” I shook my head. “Fucking brilliant.” Even more so, now that I understood Nineah’s motives.
In hindsight, the voicemail had likely been set to deploy as a distress signal in the event she missed a check-in and I now knew she’d used our home as a stage because the deliberate choice in location would’ve communicated two things—trust and intent.
I wasn’t sure if I was more impressed or furious.
“Clock,” Carletti called, then cut the engine.
I sheathed the knife, set my watch, then bent to grab the cement-bound pilot who was still unconscious.
Dragging him to the edge of the stern, I pushed his body into the waters and returned to the head of security.
To his credit, he didn’t struggle or beg, but it didn’t matter.
Men like this were never going to die with pride.
“à la mort du méchant, son espoir périt. May the sea show you the mercy you deserve and God, the judgment you’ve earned,” I said.
Then dumped him into the Baltic.