Any Means Necessary

The elevator reached the top floor. A warm tone sounded, and the doors slid open.

They stepped into a wide hallway. The floor was polished stone. Directly in front of them, ten yards ahead, two men stood. They were big men in suits, dark-skinned, perhaps Persian, perhaps some other ethnicity. They were blocking a set of double doors. Luke didn’t really care.

“Looks like our doorman called ahead.”

One of the men in the hall waved his hand. “No! You must go back. You cannot come here.”

“Federal agents,” Luke said. He and Ed walked toward the men.

“No! You have no jurisdiction. We refuse your entrance.”

“I guess I’m not going to bother showing them the badge,” Luke said.

“Yeah,” Ed said. “No reason to.”

“On my go, okay?”

“Sure.”

Luke waited a beat.

“Go.”

They were five feet from the men. Luke stepped up to his man and threw the first punch. He was surprised at how slow his own fist seemed to move. The man was five inches taller than Luke. He had the wingspan of a great bird. He blocked the punch easily and grabbed Luke’s wrist. He was strong. He pulled Luke closer.

Luke raised a knee to the groin, but the man blocked it with his leg. The man put a big hand to Luke’s throat. His fingers clenched like an eagle’s talons, digging into the vulnerable flesh.

With his free hand, his left, Luke jabbed him in the eyes. Index and middle fingers, one in each eye. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it did the job. The man let go of Luke and stepped backwards. His eyes watered. He blinked and shook his head. Then he smiled.

It was going to be a fight.

Then Newsam was there, sudden, like a ghost. He grabbed the man’s head in both hands, and banged it hard against the wall. The violence of it was profound. Some people banged an opponent’s head against the wall. Ed Newsam did it like he was trying to break through the wall using the man’s head.

Bang!

The man’s face winced.

Bang!

His jaw went slack.

Bang!

His eyes rolled.

Luke raised a hand. “Ed! Okay. I think you got him. He’s done. Let him down easy. These floors look like marble.”

Luke glanced at the other guard. He was already sprawled out on the ground, eyes closed, mouth open, head leaning against the wall. Ed had made short work of them both. Luke hadn’t made a dent.

Luke pulled a couple of plastic zip ties from his pocket and kneeled by his man. He bound the man’s ankles. He trussed them tight, like a prized pig. Eventually, someone would come and cut these things off. When they did, the guy probably wouldn’t have any feeling in his feet for an hour.

Ed was doing the same with his man.

“You’re a little rusty, Luke,” he said.

“Me? Nah. I’m not even supposed to fight. They hired me for my brains.” He could still feel the place on his throat where the man’s hand had been. It was going to be sore tomorrow.

Ed shook his head. “I was Delta Force, same as you. I came in two years after the Stanley Combat Outpost operation in Nuristan. People were still talking about it. How they dropped you guys up there and you got overrun. In the morning, only three men were still fighting. You were one of them, right?”

Luke grunted. “I’m not aware of the existence of…”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Ed said. “Classified or not, I know the story.”

Luke had learned to live his life in air-tight compartments. He rarely talked about the forward fire base incident. It took place a lifetime before, in a corner of eastern Afghanistan so remote that just putting some troops on the ground there was supposed to mean something. It was ancient history. His wife didn’t even know about it.

But Ed was Delta, so… okay.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was there. Bad intelligence put us up there, and it turned into the worst night of my life.” He gestured at the two men on the floor.

“It makes this look like an episode of Happy Days. We lost nine good men. Just before dawn, we ran out of ammo.” Luke shook his head. “It got ugly. Most of our guys were dead by then. And the three of us that made it… I don’t know if we ever really came back. Martinez is paralyzed from the waist down. Last I heard, Murphy is homeless, in and out of the VA psychiatric ward.”

“And you?”

“I have nightmares about it to this day.”

Ed was binding the wrists of his man. “I knew a guy who was on the clean-up detail after they cleared the area. He said they counted 167 bodies on that hill, not including our guys. There were 21 enemy hand-to-hand combat deaths inside the perimeter.”

Luke looked at him. “Why are you telling me this?”

Ed shrugged. “You’re a little rusty. No shame in admitting that. And you might be smart. And you might be small. But you’re also muscle, just like me.”

Luke barked laughter. “Okay. I’m rusty. But who you calling small?” He laughed, looking up at Ed’s enormous frame.

Ed laughed back. He searched the pockets of the man on the floor. In a few seconds, he found what he was looking for. It was a key card to the digital lock mounted on the wall next to the double doors.

“Shall we go inside?”

“After you,” Ed said.

Chapter 12

“You can’t be in here!” the man shouted. “Out! Get out of my home!”

They were standing in a wide open living area. There was a white baby grand piano in the far corner, near floor to ceiling windows with more spectacular views. Morning light streamed in. Nearby was a modern white sofa and table set, with accent chairs, clustered around a giant flat-panel TV mounted on the wall. On the opposite wall was a massive canvas, ten feet high, with crazy splotches and drips of bright color. Luke knew something about art. He guessed it was a Jackson Pollock.

“Yeah, we’ve been all through that with the guys out in the hall,” Luke said. “We can’t be here, and yet… here we are.”

The man was not tall. He was thick and stubby, and wearing a white plush robe. He was holding a large rifle and sighting down the barrel at them. It looked to Luke like an old Browning safari gun, probably loading.270 Winchester rounds. That thing would take down a moose at four hundred yards.