The Jackal
When I awoke the next morning, it was one of those moments you remember for the rest of your life. Sarah leaned over and kissed me, her auburn hair tickling my neck.
"I have to go," I said. "I've got a job tonight, and I need to get ready."
"Me too," she said with a smile.
Hopping across the wall that divided our porches from one another, I entered my villa and took a shower. Once cleaned up and in some fresh clothes, I grabbed the mission packet that had been dropped off in my mailbox and walked up the way to Tailor's villa. I banged on the door instead of using the buzzer. He hated that.
He opened it, can of Dr. Pepper in one hand, cigarette in his mouth.
"What the hell? Where've you been?" I just grinned. A knowing grin appeared on his face.
"That's my BOY! C'mon, get in here, we got work to do." He tossed me a can of Dr. Pepper, and we sat down on his couch. Spreading our mission papers out on the table, we looked over a map of Adar's house, and began formulating our plan.
"This guy's a real sicko," I said, reading my papers. "Likes feeding people into wood chippers and stuff, like Saddam's sons used to."
"That's messed up," Tailor said, puffing on a Camel. "Well, let's put the sick puppy down then. Check it out. His house is a small private compound right in the middle of the city. Twelve foot walls, only one gate in or out. We can have our backup guys park across the street and friggin' light up anybody that comes out of that gate."
"Good idea. They'll need a van, and something belt-fed. See if Frank has a SAW in his inventory, or better yet, a Two-Forty. Stop a vehicle no problem."
"I think we should hop the wall here," Tailor said, pointing at the map. "There's a small shed or something here, and we'll land right behind it. We'll need a SWAT ladder. Do we have one of those?"
"We can get one. Yeah, that is the best place. How do you want to assault the house? We have no idea how many guards are going to be in there. Intel doesn't think it'll be very many, but I'm not ready to trust that."
"No ****," he agreed. "We don't have any plans for the inside of the house. It won't have a basement, probably. Or if it does, it won't have a cellar door, so we can't go in that way. Look, there's a front door here, and a side door back here. Side door is a little less obvious, I suppose. I still don't like this."
"Ever get the feeling we're expendable?"
"Maybe," Tailor replied, in a cyincal laugh.
"Should we see if we can cut the power?" I asked.
"No. It'll alert the guards. They'll call for backup, and we'll never get out of there.
"True, true. Now..." Tailor and I continued planning. Without having an interior map of the house, we were going to have to play it by ear. We'd hop the wall behind the shed and make our way to the side door. Essentially, our orders were to search the entire house and kill everyone we found inside. Seemed pretty simple.
Gear selection was more involved this time. Third party weapons were not mandated, so I dug up my UMP-45 and mounted its suppressor. My Colt, also with a suppressor, went into a drop holster on my left thigh, and my 642 snubby went onto the right ankle. I had three spare mags for the UMP in a drop-leg pouch on my right thigh, and a black kevlar vest with front and rear ceramic rifle plates. Had a camel back for water, short-sleeved black t-shirt, black fatigue pants, combat boots. Tailor was similarly dressed. Using black camo paint, I darkened my arms and face. I was ready to go. It was kind of fun dressing up like a ninja.
It was almost one in the morning when we made out move. There was a row of compounds along the street, part of a pretty nice neighborhood. Behind them ran a narrow paved alley that was primarily used for maintenance. Tailor and I made our way down this alley on foot, carrying the collapsible assault ladder that we'd need to get over the wall.
We came to the house in question, and readied ourselves. We hooked the ladder onto the wall, and he went up first. He also had a suppressed UMP-45, with an equally suppressed HK USP-45 tactical .45 on his right thigh. He had his weapon at the ready, mounted with an EoTech Holosight set on the "night vision" setting. My weapon had an Aimpoint similarly set up, for use with my (perscription) night vision goggles, and we both had weapon lights.
Tailor gave me the clear sign and disappeared over the wall. Bringing the submachine gun up with my left hand, I climbed the latter, scanning carefully.
"Clear, c'mon down," I heard him whisper over my earpiece. I hopped down, taking the assault ladder with me, in case we needed it to get back out.
I stashed it behind the shed and, with Tailor in lead, we made our way across the darkened courtyard, weapons at the ready. No guards were in sight. Strange...
We moved along the wall, and followed it until we were between the house and the wall. We came up to the side door, and Tailor checked it.
"Locked."
"Can you pick it?"
"Yeah...gimme a minute." Tailor pulled out some lockpicks and began to work on the door. It wasn't the best lock ever designed, and thankfully, the door wasn't deadbolted. He got it open, and we were blinded by light. Removing our night vision goggles, we found that the kitchen was well lit. Still, no one was to be seen.
Loud noises could be heard from the living room, like a television. We crept through the kitchen, and I peeked around the corner into the living room. There was a big screen TV set up there, and on it was a soccer game. No less than five guards were watching it intently, not really paying attention to their duties. I supposed they'd been running regular foot patrols, and goofing off in between them. Well, security routines like that are what get people killed.
I leaned back around the corner, looking at Tailor, who was crouched behind a large refrigerator. I held up five fingers, and he nodded. Through hand signals, I told him that we had the drop on them, and that they were all clustered around the TV. He responded with what he thought we should do.
Tailor crawled up to the doorway to the living room, waiting for the guards to cheer at the game to cover his sound. He switched his subgun to the left shoulder, and gave me the high sign.
My subgun was already in my left shoulder. I switched the safety lever from semi to auto, and simultaneously Tailor and I leaned around the corner.
Tailor started on the left, and swept to the right. I started on the right, and swept to the left. We fired in short bursts. He was crouched low, and I was standing up. Our .45 caliber hollow-points cut into the guards, each one receiving multiple hits to the torso. They crumpled to the ground in a bloody pile, our muzzles following them as they went. Stray rounds blew out the television. Suddenly, the living room was quiet. We both changed magazines.
This was too easy, I thought to myself. We moved from our position and, doing our best to cover all the angles, cleared the living room. The house was big, though, and we had to find Adar. Figuring his bedroom wouldn't be on the first floor, we moved up the stairs to the second, Tailor in the lead.
He peeked around the corner at the top of the stairs. The upstairs was filled with classical Arab music, but it was muffled, probably coming from the master bedroom at the end of the hall. That's where we guessed Adar was. There was one guard at the end of the hall, standing outside of the door, looking half asleep.
Once again, complacency kills. Tailor, his UMP set on semiauto, put a single round into the man's head, and he fell to the floor with a thump. The loud music, sounds of men singing and chanting in Arabic, muffled the noise.
We snuck down the hall, trying to keep all of the angles covered. There were several doors on each side, most of them open. A bathroom, and office, some kind of study. All empty. Finally, we made it to the end of the hallway, to the large wooden door that led to the master bedroom. Sounds of movement, barely audible over the music, could be heard from inside.
Moving quickly but cautiously, Tailor opened the door, and I entered, weapon at the ready. Tailor followed me in, and moved to the left, his muzzle never sweeping me. There was a large, four post bed directly in front of me, but it was unoccpied. Glancing to the right, I saw Adar. I was shocked.
Adar was looking at me, a startled expression on his face. He seemed frozen into place. He was naked, and was holding a bloody scalpel. Hanging from the ceiling by bound hands was a woman, Filippina, by the looks of her...dead, covered in blood, slashes and cuts all over her body.
I felt cold on the inside. Tailor had turned at that moment, and he too froze at what he saw.
"GET DOWN!" I screamed at Adar. He hesitated. I put a round into this left shin. SOB got down on his knees then, let me tell you.
"What are you doing?" Tailor asked me. Adar was on his knees, with his hands over his head.
"Look at what this sick **** did!" I said.
"Who are you?" Adar asked, suprisingly calm, in accented English. "You are Americans?"
"SHUT THE **** UP YOU PIECE OF ****!" I screamed, kicking him between the shoulder blades. He slapped to the cool concrete floor.
"Let's do this right," I said, putting my UMP on safe and letting it hang on its sling. I drew my Colt from its holster and pointed it at the back of Adar's head. Tailor did the same with his USP.
We stood side by side, me on the right, him on the left, Adar on all fours on the floor in front of us. Both of our pistols were cocked & locked, and we swiped off the safeties at the same time.
Two muffled pops resonated through the lush bedroom as two .45 bullets crossed paths inside of Adar's skull, and exited out of his face. He collasped to the floor in a pool of blood.
Tailor safetied and reholstered his pistol, but I hesitated. My hand was shaking. I looked over at that poor girl. Feeling dizzy, I turned and threw up.
"We can't leave her like that," I said, wiping my mouth and recomposing myself.
"Look, she's dead, man. We gotta go."
"WE CAN'T LEAVE HER LIKE THAT!" I yelled. Tailor, still complaining that we needed to go, and worrying aloud that there might be more guards around, nonetheless helped me cut her down. We laid her on the bed and wrapped her in the sheets. I honestly don't understand how people can do things like that. The image of that girl hanging there will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Scanning Adar's bedroom for anything useful, we noticed a small safe in the corner. It was open. We moved over to it, and Tailor's eyes grew wide as we saw probably a hundred thousand dollars worth of American money, in crisp new one hundred dollar bills. Looking at each other briefly, we stuffed as much money as we could into every pocket we could spare. There were also documents listing things like account numbers and other vital intel.
Jackpot. After cleaning out the safe, we left the room. As I went through the door, I glanced back, one last time, at the figure wrapped in bloody sheets.
Doing a final sweep of the house, we found no more guards. We did find a creepy, hellish den of sorts. It contained stacks of photographs of people that Adar had tortured and killed, taken before, during and after his sick process. The world was better off without this monster.
In another room, we found a huge walk-in safe. Unfortunately, we couldn't get that open.
Our mission accomplished, we simply walked out of the front door, weapons slung, and to the gate. We opened the gate and waved to the van across the street. It pulled a u-turn and came around to the curb. We hopped in and drove off into the night.
It had gone well, and much more smoothly than I could've hopped. Still, I started to shake, and couldn't stop for a long time...
TO BE CONTINUED