TWENTY-SEVEN

Keith Hulett, call sign Hades, had only been in Europe for two days, but he was already getting the feeling he was going to very much enjoy living the life of an international hit man.

He’d never considered himself as such when working in the private military field. Even when he and his men went out to eliminate a bad actor behind the lines, he saw it as war, not assassination.

But right now he took stock of his situation. He walked through Alexanderplatz, the center of the former East Berlin, and the mild midmorning sun beamed against his face, a covert earpiece rested in his ear, and comfortable Western clothes adorned his body. An hour and a half earlier he’d eaten a good breakfast at a café near his safe house in Reuterkiez, just north of the old Tempelhof Airport, and then he’d climbed into a rented Mercedes with three of his teammates and driven to his target’s home, a small flat next to Humboldt University’s school of business and economics.

The target was a twenty-four-year-old student at Humboldt named Kamran Iravani. Tarik had given Hades the name, along with an address and a photo, and he’d told him his target was an Iranian Quds Force sleeper operative.

So Hulett and his second-in-command, Atlas, now sat at an outdoor café and had coffee and strudel while waiting for this Iranian sleeper agent to leave for school.

And this, like everything else they’d done this morning, they’d also done yesterday. Yesterday had been recon; today would be “wait and see.” They didn’t have to act immediately, but they were most definitely looking for an opportunity.

The past two mornings hadn’t exactly been typical for Hulett, an American who had been fighting in the Middle East, virtually nonstop, for many years. It seemed like no matter where he was in the sandbox, Hulett rose from a tiny bunk each morning, already stinking from the heat, ate breakfast out of a plastic bag, pressure-washed blood and grime off his equipment from the night before, and faced the prospect of death anew.

Berlin couldn’t have been more different. There was abundant food, abundant showers, an overabundance of beautiful women, and fucking air conditioning.

Hulett told himself he could get used to this, and he hoped like hell Tarik had plenty of targets for him, so he could milk this gig for a while.

While Hades had jumped on board the hit man express quickly and with little reflection, his men had needed some talking into it. Of course, everyone was worried about getting picked up by the local police here in Berlin. This wasn’t like Yemen, where they would, at least, have a chance to bust out of any Houthi-run holding facility were they to be captured by the enemy. Arrest here, whether for murder, attempted murder, or even carrying a pistol, would mean incarceration for a very long time.

But the money offered by Tarik helped mitigate the men’s fears, and ultimately, Hades had all his boys on board on this op before they touched down at Tegel.

Their target had left his building that morning at eleven a.m., same as yesterday, then headed in the direction of his university. The young man wore knockoff Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, and he did not check behind him at all. He just plowed ahead, as if he were going to class. The two Americans had already paid their check at the café, so they simply rose to their feet and followed along behind him, just as they’d done the day before. Their eyes were hidden behind shades so they could lock them on the back of the young man with short black hair, a long beard with no mustache, as he walked just fifty feet ahead of them.

Tarik had told Hades it was important that Kamran Iravani was taken off the table in a manner that didn’t draw too much attention to the act. No shoot-outs in the street. No sniper shots from across a park and, Tarik had been quite clear, no fucking bombs.

Make it look like an accident, or natural causes, Tarik had suggested to Hades.

Whatever, Hades had told himself at the time. He didn’t have a clue how to kill someone to make it look like they’d died of natural causes. No, the best thing he could pull off, maybe, would be something that looked like an accident.

They’d followed him into his school the day before, where he’d spent several hours, before leaving to go to a mosque, and then home. He’d stayed in all night, and Hades had seen no opportunity to go after him inside his residence, considering the cameras placed everywhere around the school.

His plan today was to do another follow, to maybe come up with some sort of idea of how to take him without being seen, and then to kill him by kidnapping and throwing him off a building, in the hopes it would look like suicide.

Hades and his team weren’t real assassins or surveillance experts. No, they were ex–special operations soldiers and mercenaries. They’d had some tradecraft training, and they’d followed targets in the Middle East a few times, when the intel provided to them had not been actionable without further reconnoitering. But still, he and his men were not a team of spooks. This was going to be new to them, tough for them, but for what Tarik was paying, Keith Hulett told himself he’d figure out how to make this work.

This morning their target revealed himself to be a creature of habit. He’d left his flat at the same time and walked the same route, more or less. Hulett had sent two men ahead to walk the path he’d taken yesterday, looking for cameras and dead areas where cameras couldn’t reach. A further pair were in a chase car, moving slowly through traffic a few blocks to the south.

And the last two men on the team were also on foot, also looking for cameras, but on nearby streets, in case Hades and Atlas had to make a quick getaway. These men had a car of their own, parked in a garage near the old, East German, spire-like TV tower.

Fifty feet in front of Hades and Atlas, their target passed a tram stop on Alexanderplatz, and a long yellow streetcar heading in the opposite direction pulled up to a stop next to him. He did not board, he only kept walking, and soon enough the streetcar rumbled off.

Atlas leaned a little closer to Hades and said, “We could knock his ass in front of one of those?”

“Maybe,” Hades replied softly. They closed on him, then held back to about twenty feet.

His route took him right alongside the tramway, and another big yellow streetcar approached in the distance. Thor said, “Say the word, boss. I’ll do it.”

But Hades replied softly. “No way to do this here without cameras catching it.”

“Probably right about that. Do we abort?”

“Let’s just keep following him, see what we see.”

They continued on another ten minutes, crossing a bridge over the Spree River, remaining behind their quarry while he talked on his phone, listened to his headphones, and seemed to be in no special hurry.

Soon they began trailing their man through the urban maze of Humboldt University, down Kronenstrasse. There wasn’t much foot traffic here, but a lot of cars and trucks and buses rumbled by at speed.

A large double-decker bus appeared ahead, moving towards them, and both Atlas and Hades picked up the pace to close on Iravani.

As they moved forward, Hades spoke softly for his ear mic. “Hades for Thor, how copy?”

“Five by five.”

Thor was on the advance team looking for cameras; he should have been just a block or two ahead. “You have five seconds to tell me if I’m clear to execute on the corner of Kronen and Charlotten.”

“South side has a cam at the Avis, but it doesn’t look like it’s hitting the street. North side has multiple angles of the sidewalk covered. Middle of the street is clear.”

They were on the north side; Hades muttered “shit,” but then, just twenty feet in front of him, Iravani turned to his left, moved between a pair of parked cars, and then stopped to let the bus pass before continuing across the street.

Hades saw a Starbucks a half block ahead on the other side, and wondered if the young Iranian sleeper agent had decided to get a cup of coffee before class.

Atlas and Hades picked up the pace and moved between the parked cars behind their target.

Thor came over both men’s headsets. “That bus will cover the Avis camera, and the cams on the north side of the street can’t see you off the sidewalk.”

Hades replied. “Roger.”

Atlas said, “I’ve got this, boss.”

“He’s yours.”

When the big red double-decker bus was less than ten feet away, Atlas shouldered hard into the smaller man, sending him stumbling forward, out into the street.

The bus slammed into him at thirty-five kilometers an hour, killing Kamran Iravani instantly and then running over his body. It slammed to a halt, tires screeching and smoke billowing from them.

Both Atlas and Hades turned away, walked back onto the sidewalk on the northern side of Kronenstrasse, then headed east.

Forty-five seconds later they were picked up by Mercury and Mars, heading south, back in the direction of their safe house. Their chase car picked up the other men and then stayed back behind Hades’s vehicle to make sure no one was following them.

By one p.m. the eight men sat in the tiny walled-in backyard of their safe house on Albertstrasse, drinking Berliner Kindl pilsners and complimenting one another on a job well done. Hades had already called it in to Tarik, and much to his pleasure, Tarik told him he’d have a new target for him shortly.

The men were proud of themselves. They’d killed a piece-of-shit terrorist on the streets of Europe, a dream mission for them all, and they couldn’t fucking wait to do it again.