The first deception, p.11
The First Deception, page 11
part #1 of Jack Noble Prequel Series
Noble craned his neck and looked back once more. “It’s not him I’m worried about.”
Bear slid across the backseat, leaving Noble no choice but to join him unless he had a deep-seated desire to fend for himself in a foreign city where he hadn’t made arrangements. It wasn’t his first time overseas. Just his first where the possibility of not making it home was real.
Noble took a seat next to his partner and stared out the window at the throng of people and taxis and security guards. His mind drifted back to Crystal River, Florida. Home. He’d only been allowed a couple of phone calls since leaving for Parris Island. It had been a tough sell keeping the Colonel and his mother away when they thought Jack was graduating Recruit Training. Brigadier General Keller, the commanding officer of Parris Island, had to call Jack’s old man and tell him that due to scheduling conflicts, Noble would not graduate with his class. He had to advance to Scout Sniper school a day early.
Jack’s brother Sean was headed to law school soon. Molly’s murder had driven them in different directions. Jack had felt powerless to do something to stop the men. An intense desire to never allow that to happen again burned. He wanted to prevail over evil men who lived to hurt others. That feeling led him to the Corps, and now to the program. His brother, however, felt that justice needed a voice. As a lawyer, he could provide it.
They had been close as kids, but drifted in those final years under the same roof following Molly’s death.
Noble pictured the small hill in the cemetery where Molly’s headstone stood out like a lost soul, out of place on the mostly empty plot where the Colonel had decided to purchase five grave sites. One for each of them. Noble often wondered if his father had anticipated they’d all perish at the same time in a car or plane crash. Certainly no one expected Molly to be the first and only to find her place underground.
Bear slapped Noble’s shoulder and pointed at a café. “I heard they got the best manti in town.”
“You heard?” Jack said, welcoming the distraction. “You got family in the tour guide industry?”
“When you dozed off back at Langley. Steele told me about it.”
Jack stared at the café. “So she’s been here?”
Bear shrugged. “How should I know?”
Jack imagined himself back in the drab grey room they shared for part of the night and morning. Were there cameras in there? Had it been bugged? Steele had said the room was used as an informal meeting room. By who?
“Maybe she was trying to tell you something,” Noble said.
“About what?”
“That I don’t know. Just odd she’d point it out to you, and Serkan here drove us by it.” He caught the driver’s eye in the rearview as the man offered a slight nod. Noble paused a moment. “Let’s make sure we check it out after we get our feet back under us.”
A few miles later Serkan pulled to the side of the road. Horns blared as two other vehicles swerved to avoid hitting them in the rear.
“We are almost there, gentlemen. Before we proceed, I do need to ask you to reach into the pockets on the back of the seats and put on the black hoods you find there.”
Chapter Twenty
“The hell you talking about?” Bear yanked back on the seat so hard it jerked back a few notches. “Hoods?”
Noble reached for his door handle but stopped when he found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol. “Bear, I think we need to do what he says.”
“Screw that, man.”
“Look out your window.” Noble gestured toward the man holding a submachine gun a few feet from Bear’s door. He glanced at the rearview and spotted a third man behind them, positioned in front of a parked car. The guy didn’t look like the locals. He had sandy blond hair and a matching beard covering his fair skin. When Bear reached for the door handle, Jack grabbed his arm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
They were surrounded by a team of highly-trained killers.
“It’s just a formality,” Serkan said.
“They’re with the Agency?” Jack said.
Serkan’s head bobbed once. “Put on the hoods and we proceed to the safe house. They’ll verify you once we are there, and then you’ll have access to everything you need.”
Bear leaned back in his seat, elbow on the window. He wiped his hand down his face and tugged on the beard he’d grown since leaving South Carolina. “I don’t know about this, Jack.”
“If the plan is to kill us, we’re dead one way or another.” Noble stretched the hood open. “But if Serkan is telling us the truth, then we’ll live if we do as they ask.”
The world went black as Noble slipped the hood over his head. The smell reminded him of a pizza place he’d tried once in Miami after a game. Heavy on the garlic.
Serkan rolled down his window and said something to the man closest to him. Jack heard the guy reply back with a “Ten-four,” in a solid south-Georgia drawl. He’d run into plenty of guys from the area while camping in the north Florida woods.
Hearing a guy from the States put him at ease. He was either a contractor or part of the Agency. Either way, he was on their side.
Presumably.
The car pulled away from the curb and sped and slowed and stopped and went. They turned right and left and completely around so many times that the map Noble tried to keep track of in his mind’s eye looked more like a plate of multi-colored spaghetti than an actual route. He gave up trying to keep it going after ten minutes.
When the vehicle finally came to a complete stop and Serkan cut the engine, Noble didn’t bother to move. He expected they’d take off again any moment. When Serkan told them they could remove their hoods, he didn’t hesitate.
A dim light illuminated the space surrounding the car. They were in a garage with bare walls and a low ceiling. A string hung down from the single overhead light. There were a few feet of space in front and on the sides. The back of the car almost touched the roll-up door.
Serkan opened his door. Warm air fragranced with used cat litter filled the cabin. “Come on, let’s not hang out in here too long.”
Jack pushed his door open and stepped out, forcing his tight calf muscles to stretch all the way. Too much sitting over the course of the past day.
Serkan stood at the top of four stairs in front of an oil-and-grease stained door. He left it open after exiting the garage. Bear followed right behind. Noble took his time, listening for conversation or any other distinctive sounds. The whirr of a fan overhead in the attic was all he heard.
He caught a whiff of seared meat as he entered the house. Lamb, probably. They were in Turkey, after all. He glanced around the kitchen and took note of the bamboo knife block. Every blade in its place. The fridge was small and old and mint green with a chipped chrome handle and a badge on the freezer door to match. The open shelving housed a half-dozen plates and bowls and cups and mugs. The safe house received few visitors.
Serkan ushered them into the dining room and told them to sit on one side of the rectangular table. It showed its age, like everything else in the place. A sanding and a fresh coat of stain would do wonders for the table.
The sandy-blond guy entered the room. “Name’s Schofield.”
“Noble,” Jack said. “The big guy’s Bear.”
Scofield nodded and took a sip from a white mug with streaks of dried coffee running down it. “Get you guys some coffee?”
“None for me,” Bear said.
“Extra strength,” Noble said.
“Serkan, can you take care of that?”
Serkan exited and left the three men alone.
“I’ve verified you two with Langley,” Schofield said. “And I’m guessing you guys have figured out who I am by now.”
“You run this safe house,” Noble said. “The other two guys stay here with you to protect visitors that need protecting. Other than the safe house, you manage a few local informants and assets, and keep tabs on who comes and goes from within your community and its associates.”
“Our community, friend.” Schofield leaned over his arm resting on the table. “And enemies. Never forget about our enemies. They are many, and we are few. Can’t even trust some of our allies these days. They’re always trying to pick through our intel, and the bastards never reciprocate. More than ever I feel like I’m fighting everyone off.”
“Who stays here?” Bear asked. “I mean, how often do you get visitors?”
Schofield crossed his hairy arms over his chest and shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a schedule people follow. Sometimes we know a day or two ahead of time. Other times, we get an hour’s notice. Occasionally one or two of us will have to go out and recover someone, bring them back here.”
“Dead?”
“Not usually. Stranded, mostly.” He leaned back in his chair and tipped it a couple inches and looked up at the ceiling. “We’re in a funny place here. The cusp of hostility, I like to call it. Not many people in this section of the world like us. Istanbul lets us get about as far as we can before they—the generic they—start getting suspicious. You’d never find me at a safe house in Mosul, that’s for sure. Got guys that look more like Sarken to run those.”
“Right, make them fit in so they draw less attention,” Noble said. “Dad always talked about SEALs being the masters of disguising their looks to fit in wherever they operated. They could take someone who looked just like you and have him pass for an Iraqi.”
Schofield lit a cigarette. “We’ve got guys like that, too. From what I gather, you two are gonna fill a similar role.”
Neither of the men spoke. It’d been drilled into their heads not to offer more information than necessary, especially with Agency personnel. The full extent of their job had never been outlined by Cribbs and Steele. They knew enough to know officially the job did not exist.
Schofield smashed out his smoke on a plate that still had some of that morning’s breakfast on it. A few pieces of egg and crumbs remained. “Let me show you around the mansion.”
The level they were on consisted of one more room that spanned the width of the structure, a living area with two couches, a chair and a television.
They hiked up a set of solid stairs that didn’t bow even a millimeter under their weight. Upstairs, Schofield pointed out his and his men’s rooms, then showed Noble and Bear to theirs. The room was a ten by ten box with three bunk beds, one against each wall that didn’t have a door. There was no closet in the room. The carpet was sea-foam green and stunk like a three-day old bag of stale Fritos. There were two black bags on two of the bunks. They were not the bags the men had flown with, which still remained in the trunk of the car.
“That’s everything you should need here,” Schofield said. “If you think something’s missing, let me know. I’m your point of contact from here out.” He picked something out from between his teeth and flicked it on the carpet. “But let me make something clear to you. I am not your handler. I don’t want to know why you’re here. I don’t want to know any details before or after your job. I might see something on the news I think is related. I am not gonna talk to you about it. The less I know, the better the chance is I get to go home and procreate one day.”
“Plausible deniability,” Noble said. A concept his father had drilled into him. Perhaps he realized early on how much trouble Jack would get into later in life.
“You could say that. But I’ll tell you, these pukes out here, they don’t play by normal rules. They get ahold of you, say goodbye to your fingernails. Get ready for three days of having alcohol poured on those festering wounds. Then, when you think you can’t take it, or your blood’s about to boil because infection is gonna set in due to the open wounds and nasty conditions you’re being held in, they’ll just start lopping off digits.” He held up five fingers and closed them one by one.
Noble held the man’s gaze for a second and spotted a slight smile on Bear’s lips.
“Now, I’m a man who’s been through enough training I can handle most things. But once they start cutting digits off, I’m gonna sing. So the less I know, the better.”
Had the guy said that? Jack blew it off as dramatics, but made a note not to trust Schofield with anything.
Ever.
“I’ll give you guys a few minutes to go through your gear. Lunch’ll be served soon. Got a nice lamb roasting. Only good thing about this country. The meat is fresh and off the chain.” He pulled the door shut and stopped an inch short. “Oh, and the whores are damn cheap.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Noble inspected the bag on his bunk. The tough exterior looked like it was made from a ballistic material. He gave it a yank at the seams. It didn’t tear. The zipper glided on its track. The smell of fresh lubricating oil greeted him. The 9mm H&K resembled the one he’d used throughout training. He’d become intimately familiar with the pistol over those ten weeks.
He stripped the sidearm and inspected it. Satisfied it had been well taken care of, Noble reassembled it and inserted a full magazine into the hilt. He chambered a round and set the pistol off to the side in a location where only he could access it.
He found various items of clothing and a flak vest. Underneath a divider was a satellite phone with a string of coded numbers and letters taped to the back. He instantly recognized the code as one Cribbs had taught them in the final week of training. It must’ve been a universal code for the team to use. That explained why Cribbs had waited until the end after the other trainees had washed out. The final week had pushed them, but not like the previous ones. It was about ironing out the kinks rather than building up the armor.
Also in the bag were short range comms units, presumably meant for Noble and Bear to communicate. The small square packs were attached to tiny ear pieces with wires.
At the bottom of the bag was a folder. Noble glanced across the room and watched as Bear finished inspecting his duffle.
“You get one of these?” Jack held up the folder.
Bear nodded as he produced a red folder that matched Jack’s. “Guess they figured one of us might not make it here.”
“Let’s see.” Noble slid off the bed to the floor and stretched his legs out. He placed the folder on his lap and opened it.
Bear joined him and did the same.
The first item in each folder was a black and white photo of an attractive woman with short blonde hair and dark eyes.
“Mary Margaret O’Neil.” Bear traced the angle of her jaw with his thick forefinger. “She doesn’t look like a killer.”
“Not everyone in the Agency is a killer,” Noble said.
“You really believe that, man?” Bear looked him dead in the eye. “Whether they pull the trigger, spot a target, or dig through someone else’s mail and trash for that single nugget of intel that leads the field guys to an encampment, they’re all killers. They got us here, right? What do you think we’re gonna do at the end of this job? Play patty cakes with the guys that took her?”
The big man lived with a healthy dose of cynicism. Noble knew it’d be good for some of that to rub off on him. The world wasn’t as black and white as he wanted it to be.
Bear flipped to the following photograph, an image taken at the time of abduction. Two men with their faces wrapped in black accosted O’Neil on the sidewalk. One had her by the arms while the other was swinging his fist toward her stomach.
“Bastards,” Noble said. “Who do you suppose took that photo?”
“Good question. Maybe from security footage?” Bear flipped to the next page. They studied the satellite imagery of a ten square block area. “Must be where they think she is.”
“All well and good,” Noble said. “But if we don’t know where that is, we’re not gonna get very far. See what’s next.”
Someone had placed the images out of order. The next showed the entire city of Aleppo, approximately twenty-five miles past the Syrian border.
“Well, this should be fun,” Bear said.
“They didn’t hire us to bake Girl Scout cookies.”
“You buy them in front of Lowe’s, man. Who the hell would bake them?”
Noble waved him off and shuffled back to the previous image. He held them side by side.
“Where do you suppose that is?” Bear said.
“Look at the large circle in the bottom corner,” Jack said. “And that bare strip of land next to it. That looks like this on the large map, doesn’t it?”
Bear held the two photos in front of his face and studied them. “What is that at the top of the strip? A mosque?”
“Hell if I know. Could be a park. A market. Doesn’t matter right now, but it might in a day or two. For now, I think we’ve got our area nailed down.”
“Yeah, but there’s gotta be at least fifteen thousand people living in that section. Maybe more.”
“I’d bet on more.”
“Right, so how are we gonna find a woman no one wants found?”
“Why do you say it like that?”
Bear set the images down on his thighs. “Like what?”
“No one wants found. We want her found, don’t we? Our employers want her found. That’s why we’re here.”
“I meant those who have her in their possession. No one’s gonna advertise she’s sleeping in their building.”
“We need to know more about this area.” Noble read through the next few pages, which contained more personal information about O’Neil, as well as a list of her contacts in Istanbul.
“What about the police chief?” Bear said. “I don’t see anything here about that. Think they’d let us bust his balls?”
“They’ve got people who are better trained for that than us. Plus, I’m betting they want us to stay as far away from the local authorities as possible.”
“Why’s that?”
“For one, they did nothing to prevent O’Neil from being abducted, despite knowing what her fate would be. I think that makes it pretty clear they hate us. Not necessarily the American us, but the Agency us. We’re either meddling in their affairs, or we’re screwing with people who don’t want to be screwed with. And when they are screwed with, they are more apt to come after the government who harbored the screwers since these terrorists don’t have the fire or man power to take on the U.S.”
