E
lina awoke early,
feeling more
tired than she should have given the opulence of her room. The anxiety inside her had only increased after meeting her contact the day before, keeping the needed sleep at bay.
A young man with a thin mustache, he had given no information on her mission. Not the location, the purpose, or the target. And she’d tried hard to find out. Instead, he’d provided her with an Apple iPad, a cell phone, and several prepaid SIM cards. He’d then given her instructions for the meeting today, admonishing her to be alert for anything suspicious, which did nothing but increase her unease.
She hadn’t left her room since checking in, the masses of foreign people swarming around the city making her feel light-headed and lost. The thought of someone hiding inside the crowds, looking for her, made her want to forget the mission. To flee back to the comfort of Chechnya, where the beast was easy to see. Easy to fight.
She banished the fears through willpower alone, remembering who she was and why she had been chosen. Bringing forth the iron forged by the enemy she now fought. She collected her new phone and left the room.
Exiting from the south, she moved through Hong Kong Park, stopping to survey the pond in the center, as she had been told.
A group of old men and woman were executing a delicate ballet of tai chi, and she paused a moment longer, watching the symmetry and enjoying the peacefulness.
She prayed again that she wouldn’t be asked to attack people such as this, wherever she was directed. Prayed for a target worthy of her sacrifice.
She had begun again on her instructed path when a placard set into stone caught her eye. She moved close enough to read it, curious about the history of the park.
Underneath the Chinese Hanzi, in English, was nothing more than an admonishment to avoid contact with all birds in the park and to immediately wash your hands if contact was made.
On a brass plaque set in stone?
Elina couldn’t make sense of it, then remembered the temperature check in the airport, designed to prevent “bird flu” from entering the country. Clearly, it was already here and was dangerous enough to warrant permanent warning markers.
She reached the Peak Tram station a hundred yards farther, a funicular railroad leading to the highest point on Hong Kong Island. She opened the door to the ticket counter, seeing a sign declaring that the handles were disinfected every hour.
She purchased a ticket and loitered at the end of the station platform, taking note of any Caucasians as instructed, but only seeing obese westerners with rowdy kids. She tried to focus on them, to spot if someone was paying her any particular attention, but was drawn to the locals sprinkled on the platform. About half were wearing surgical masks.
Apparently, the people here lived in daily fear of this bird flu. She began to suspect the very air she was breathing, her xenophobia spiking again. How had she not heard of this before? Was this why she had been instructed to buy the same masks? Should she have been wearing one now?
The tram arrived and she took a seat in the back, keeping everyone in front of her and in sight. It chugged up the slope, grinding along like it had for over a hundred years, the spectacular view being recorded by a plethora of tourist cameras. Elina ignored it all, concentrating on maintaining calm.
Eventually, it ground to a halt at the top of Victoria Peak, with the tourists spilling out and entering the viewing platforms. She ignored them and continued with her instructions, crossing over the shopping area to the Pok Fu Lam Country Park, a huge expanse of woodlands that ran from the peak all the way to the ocean below, covering the back half of the island. She entered the walking path, getting passed by joggers and hikers on their way to the summit.
As she became lost in the forest, the path reminded her of home and brought some measure of peace. She found herself alone and picked up her pace down the slope. She counted picnic shelters, and when she passed the third one, she slowed, looking for her sign that the meeting was on.
A few feet past the shelter, scribbled in chalk on the path, was a marker stating
MILE THREE
, ostensibly for someone jogging, but in reality the signal for her. She felt the tension return. She rounded a corner and saw a man sitting on a bench. As she got closer, she recognized the contact from yesterday. He studiously ignored her, focusing on the path to her rear, and she continued on.
She reached the fourth picnic shelter and took the path that led to it, walking beyond the tables and continuing into the tree line. The path ended on a knoll buttressed by a brick wall. A set of stairs led to a picnic table hidden by the wall. Sitting on it was a swarthy man with a full mustache.
He smiled and said, “Hello, Black Widow. Come, have a seat.”
She did so, and waited on him to continue.
“What’s your name?”
“Elina.”
“Elina, you may call me Malik, and first let me tell you how pleased I am to meet you. You will strike a great blow against your enemies and will be remembered long after you have become a martyr.”
“Who? What enemies do you speak of? Nobody will tell me anything. It’s always something I will learn later.”
He appeared surprised at her response, but not angry.
“The supreme enemy against Islam in the world. The Great Satan itself.”
He smiled as if she should feel honored. Instead she felt disappointment, her fears confirmed.
“Why do I care about America? They’ve done nothing to me. To my people.”
Taken aback, Malik seemed to consider his next words carefully. “Your people are persecuted by a power that is propped up through the West, much like all the other infidel Muslim regimes around the world. The Arab Spring has caused many to fall, forcing the United States to pretend it supports the change, but they cannot hide their backing for despots, including your Russian Federation. The West allows Russia to call you terrorists, and the Russians in turn use the United States’ own attacks as proof that they are no different. The Great Satan kills innocents with Predator drones under the guise of counterterrorism, and Russia assassinates your people using the same mantle.”
She considered his words, seeing the truth they held. She knew of the Predator strikes, of course, precisely because she had heard the Russian president use them as an excuse to conduct brutal purges in Chechnya. She had assumed the statements to be simply more lies, but maybe they weren’t.
One thing her short trip to Hong Kong had taught her was precisely that she knew nothing of people beyond the borders of Chechnya. Neither did the chain of command of the Chechen insurgency—especially the Islamists who came and fought for religion under the guise of nationalism. They preached a rhetoric that sounded stale even to her naïve ears. Unlike the man sitting in front of her. Maybe she should learn about the world before deciding.
“What would you have me do? What can a single Black Widow do in the United States that isn’t just a pinprick?”
“You will become a weapon unlike any other the earth has ever seen.”
He pulled out a syringe, causing her eyes to widen.
“This is a vaccine. You will take it once you are back in your hotel room. After twenty-four hours, I will give you a virus. The vaccine does not kill the virus, it only makes it dormant. The virus will live inside of you without hurting you. The only way you can spread it is through your bodily fluids. When the time is right, you will martyr yourself in such a manner that your bodily fluids are spread over a great area.”
At first, his words made no sense. She wrestled with them in her mind, and then it became clear: She would do exactly what she had attempted in Chechnya, only instead of ball bearings, the death would be in her blood. The thought made her queasy.
“But when I trained as a
shahid
, it was against a specific target. The killing started and ended with the explosion. This will be the same way? This virus will only kill those who contact my . . . who touch the . . . who clean up what remains? That’s who it will kill?”
“No. Once outside of your vaccinated body, the virus will kill everyone who contracts it in a wave of infection greater than any seen by modern man. It will overwhelm the United States’ medical systems and cause a wholesale collapse of their economy. It will destroy the Great Satan. All you have to do is unleash it.”
Destroy the Great Satan. By killing innocents.
“But we aren’t at war with civilians. I don’t want to kill women and children. That’s what the Russians do. I want to attack the enemy.”
He grasped her hands in a kind gesture that was soothing. His words were calm and seemed born from some truth she had yet to experience. “There are no innocents. Trust me. Do you think the United States feels that way when it bombs women and children in Afghanistan? You mention Russian tactics. Did Russia take such precautions when it destroyed Grozny? They call it collateral damage to hide their culpability. Unlike them, I call it what it is: war. They chose the method of combat. We only return the favor. I was told you were the strongest Black Widow ever seen. Remember the fire that led you down this path.”
She took the syringe, conflicted. He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about killing infidels, no matter their age or gender. They may not all carry a gun, but they want to destroy Islam, be it in Chechnya or Iran. Their hearts are black. Given the chance, they would kill you for nothing more than your religion.”
She said nothing. He continued. “Did you set up an e-mail account as instructed?”
“Yes.” She gave him the account and password, then asked for his e-mail.
“Don’t worry about sending something over the Internet. We’ll use the drafts folder of your account to pass any messages. Otherwise, I’ll use the cell phone you were given. If you switch out the SIM card, put the new number in a message.”
“When will I get the virus?”
“The vaccine takes twenty-four hours to become effective. I’ll contact you for a further meeting.”
“Where will I go once I’m infected? Where is the target?”
He smiled and patted her hand. “All in good time. This is the point where you hear ‘I’ll tell you that at a later date.’ You have no need to know that now, but trust me, the target has been specially selected. Before you reach it, you must be extra cautious in everything you do. You can’t easily spread the virus through the air, but according to the doctor who gave it to me, you
can
spread it. And that’s something we don’t want prematurely.”
“What do you mean, cautious?”
“Wear the surgical masks you were instructed to buy. Use a hand disinfectant regularly. Only drink from bottled water, and dispose of the bottle in a manner so that someone else will never retrieve it. Don’t eat in restaurants with silverware. That sort of thing. A premature infection would give the United States time to work on mitigation. We need multiple points of infection simultaneously to overwhelm the system. One point won’t work.”
“But I’m only a single person. Are there other Black Widows out there?”
He looked her in the eye. “No. You are the only one. The target itself will facilitate the spread. Once you are infected, you are our single hope. Remember that, and the reason you were chosen.”
L
ooking through the
plate-glass doors
from across the street, I saw two security guards sitting at the desk in the middle of the office complex. Two. Not one.
I passed the monocular to Blood and said, “Take a look. What the hell are we going to do now?”
His eye to the scope, he said, “We just need to get them both out of the way. A little harder.”
“
Little
harder? A lot harder. We need an additional man, and everyone’s committed.”
After identifying the Island Shangri-La hotel as an area of interest, we’d wasted a good six hours trying to figure out why, only to come up completely empty. Nobody remotely in the ballpark of our targets was registered, with just two other men of Arabic descent in the entire hotel. Both came up clean as having flown in from Saudi Arabia a week earlier. Knuckles wanted to squeeze them dry, but we had little time available, and in my mind there was only a small chance an IRGC general from Shiite Iran would be doing anything with businessmen from Sunni Saudi Arabia. Except trying to kill them.
I decided to forget the hotel and focus on the cell phones Ernie had purchased. Initially, I only wanted the numbers associated with each, but that had gone out the window when Ernie purchased preloaded SIM cards. Since he’d bought at least ten, we had no idea which SIM we should track, as he could simply switch them out at any given moment. The SIM, or subscriber identity module, was what contained the “brains” of the cell phone and was where the phone number, call logs, contact list, and everything else about the phone were stored.
Well, almost everything.
Every cell phone also has what’s known as an International Mobile Equipment Identity, or IMEI. Basically, it’s nothing more than a large, unique number that identifies the handset every time the phone talks to a tower. It’s the same regardless of the cell service provider or SIM card used and was what brought us back to the original store Ernie had used to purchase the phones. If we obtained those numbers, we could track him and anyone else he provided the phones to.
“Koko, this is Pike. You moving yet?”
“Yes. I’m walking to my start point now. What’s up?”
“I have an additional mission. There are now two guards in the office complex. Decoy will take care of one, but I need you to get the other one out of the building.”
“What on earth are you talking about? I’m dressed like Catwoman. All I’ve got as camouflage is a cheesy cotton cover-up. On top of that, I’m supposed to be on the roof before you enter.”
“I know, but I can’t enter with the guard there, and Decoy is the only other guy on the ground. He’s going to trigger the first guard to move. I can’t have him do both. You’ll just look like a crazy homeless person. Go in and ask him to show you where the subway is located. Get him on the street and pointing the way.”
“What about Blood?”
“It’s a two-man climb through the air-conditioning duct. I can’t do it myself. And he’s the only one who’s been inside the store.”
After abandoning the hotel as a start point, we’d turned the formidable research capabilities of the Taskforce onto the office complex and the little shopping promenade located on the ground floor. Luckily, the building had been constructed before Hong Kong was turned over to the Chinese in 1997, so they were able to find some British floor plans, which showed us how to get in.
While the stores were locked tight with roll-up steel doors, the crawl space in the roof above was wide open. All we needed to do was get to that, and we could simply drop into the store without worrying about penetrating the door. It never ceased to amaze me how people could spend a fortune on the obvious access routes such as doors and windows and yet ignore everything else.
After gleaning everything we could from the Taskforce, we’d conducted on-the-ground reconnaissance, starting in daylight to identify cameras and alarm leads, then at night, when we were going to conduct the break-in, for atmospherics. Yesterday morning, at two
A.M
., there had been only one guard.
Decoy came on. “Pike, I can trip the camera, then head your way. I can be in and out before the first guard returns.”
The guards were stationed at a desk in the center of the cul-de-sac, in front of the elevators, with the shops ringed around them. Their primary focus was two monitors on the desk with feeds from the cameras throughout the building. Decoy was simply going to short out one camera located outside the western exit, which would send a signal the guard would have to explore. As soon as he did, we were going to slip inside and head straight to the men’s room adjacent to the elevator shaft and then access the ceiling. That, of course, was back when there had only been one guard in the plan.
“Too much risk. You might still be inside when the first guard gets back. Besides, I need you on-site in case we have to ramp it up. If the first guard doesn’t bite on the camera, I might need you to trip the door alarm.”
Both side exits were armed with a silent alarm, but, as the office complex had twenty-four-hour access, the front door was wide open.
Jennifer cut in. “I’m here and ready. On the corner to your south. But don’t blame me if your exit isn’t set. That’s a four-story climb and will take me some effort.”
“Good to go. We can burn the time inside. All stations, give me an up.”
“This is Retro. System is running. Standing by for the camera feed.”
“This is Knuckles. Exfil route is open. Just waiting on the word to shoot.”
“This is Decoy. You want me to trip?”
I took a deep breath and glanced at Blood, his ebony skin hidden in the shadows, contrasted starkly by the teeth of his smile.
I said, “Execute. Koko, stand by until I trigger you.”
It would have been more fun if something sexy had happened at the word
execute
, like a door breach going off or gunfire. Instead, all I got was, “Camera’s shorted. Standing by.”
Both guards fiddled in their seats, obviously bored. Then one leaned in and pointed at a screen. The other one said something and stood up. Seconds later he was out of sight, headed down the hallway to the side exit.
“Koko, go.”
She must have inched up as I got the final check, because she was at the door immediately, and she was right. She looked ridiculous. Black skintight shirt and leggings, wearing Vibram FiveFingers shoes, all covered by a shapeless orange smock. She fit the bill of a crazy homeless person. An attractive crazy homeless person, maybe, but crazy nonetheless.
We watched her talk to the guard, then begin waving her arms around, pointing this way and that. I knew what the problem was instantly.
That bastard doesn’t speak English.
He picked up a phone and called someone, then led her out of the building. We waited until they separated from the entrance and then scurried through the front door, running straight into the bathroom.