“Preempt?” Kelly asked.
Turcotte gave a short, nasty laugh. “Yeah. When we were getting held hostage by every two-bit terrorist or wacko with a bomb, someone high up in the workings of NATO got the bright idea that instead of sitting around and letting the terrorists hit us, we’d seek them out and hit them first. The only problem was that it wasn’t quite legal.” He looked down the street and spotted a cafe. “Let’s get some coffee.”
They walked over and took a corner booth. Turcotte sat with his back to the wall, watching the street outside. There was a constant clatter of dishes and utensils overlaid with the murmur of conversation from the other patrons. After the waitress had brought them a cup each, he continued, speaking in a low voice. “So, anyway, we fought fire with fire. To stop the law-breakers we broke the law. I was on a joint U.S.-German team. Handpicked men from the U.S. Special Forces DET-A out of Berlin and the Germans’ GSG-9 counterterrorist force.” Turcotte poured a load of sugar into his coffee and stirred. “Ever hear that slogan: We kill for peace?” Kelly nodded. “Well, that’s what we did.
“I didn’t mind doing it either. We were wasting people who’d put a bomb in a train station and didn’t care who got caught in the blast. We pretty much broke the back of the remnants of the Baader-Meinhof gang in less than six months. I was in on six operations.” Turcotte’s voice was flat. “I killed four people on those ops.
“Then we got word that some IRA fellows were in town, trying to buy surplus East German armament that some former members of the army had stashed away for a rainy day when the wall came down. The word was these Irish guys were trying to get some SAM-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles.
“We don’t know what they were going to do with them, although the best guess was they’d sit outside Heathrow and take out a Concorde just after takeoff. That would make the news, which is all those scumbags want. I know they signed a peace accord and ceasefire and all that happy shit, but that don’t stop the guys who pull the trigger. They have to be on the edge. A lot of those people do what they do because they like it. They couldn’t give a shit about the so-called goals they shout at the cameras. It’s just an excuse to be a sociopath.”
He paused when the waitress came by to take their order. Kelly ordered a bagel, Turcotte a glass of orange juice.
“Anyway, everything about the mission was rushed because the intel was late. The IRA had already purchased the missiles and had them loaded in a car and were heading for France when we were alerted. We were airlifted ahead of them and picked up some cars. The terrorists were taking back roads — staying away from the autobahn — which played right into our hands.”
The angry undercurrent in Turcotte’s voice grew. “We should have just stopped them and taken them into custody. But we couldn’t do that, you see. Because that would have caused too much controversy — the trial and all. And it just compounds the problem to put them in jail, ’cause that gives every blood relative they have a reason to grab some hostages and demand their release. And the whole cycle starts again. So instead we were supposed to kill them. Make it look like we were terrorists ourselves, and that way no one looks bad except the local cops.
“So.” Turcotte took a deep breath to steady his voice. “We were all set to hit them outside a small town in central Germany. They were heading up to Kiel to load the weapons on a freighter for transshipment to England. But the IRA guys — they were Irish after all — they had to stop in a Gasthaus for a few brews and lunch before making it to their rendezvous at the port.
“I was the team XO — executive officer. The commander was a German. We set up on the north side of the town — the way they would have to leave. We had a good spot on a curve in the road.
“When the car didn’t show after an hour, my CO — let’s call him Rolf — got spooked. Surveillance told us they’d stopped in town. But maybe they’d left by another way. Rolf asked me what I thought. How the fuck was I to know?
“So Rolf and I went into the village and spotted the car outside a bar. We’d been told there were three of them. So old Rolf he decides, hey, fuck it, let’s take them out right now and right here. You and me. He was still worried that they might have spotted the surveillance team that had been following them and that they might take a different route out of town to lose the tail and bypass the ambush our team had set up. Or that they might even be doing a dead drop with the missiles in the town and we might lose track of the ordnance.
“So I said, hey, yeah, sounds good to me. We had MP-5 silenced subs slung inside our long coats and pistols in our shoulder holsters. Rolf ordered surveillance to close up tight around the bar to make sure no one escaped and to pick us up when we were done.”
The waitress brought the bagel and orange juice.
Turcotte took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled as she walked away.
“We walked right in the front fucking door. The place is packed, people eating dinner and drinking. Must have been twenty, twenty-five people in there. But we spot our suspects right away and guess what? There’s only two of these bozos seated in a booth, drinking. So Rolf looked at me like, hey where’s number three? So again, like how the fuck do I know? Probably taking a piss. I started to the bar to order a brew, scanning the room as I went, but Rolf hesitated.
“I can’t blame him too much. Shit, we had silenced submachine guns under our coats and we were there to kill.”
Turcotte gave Kelly a twisted grin. “Contrary to popular fiction and what they show on the movies, we weren’t stone cold killers. We were good at our job, but we were also scared. Most people are in that situation. If you aren’t, you’re crazy — and I have met some of those crazies. Anyway, one of the IRA guys in the booth he looks at Rolf standing there with his thumb up his ass and you could just tell that the Irish guy knew who we were. Rolf wasn’t exactly the greatest actor in the world, and I’m sure I wasn’t giving off the best vibes either.
“So the guy reached under his coat, and Rolf and I hosed the two of them down lickety-split. We each fired half a magazine — fifteen rounds each — and there was nothing left in that booth but chewed-up meat. And the most amazing thing was that after the first shot there wasn’t a single sound other than the sound of our brass falling to the floor. Everyone in the place just fucking froze and looked at us, wondering who was next. Then someone had to scream, and everything went to hell.”
Turcotte’s eyes had taken on a distant look as he went back into that room. “The smart ones just hit the deck. That’s what Rolf and I yelled at them in German to do after the scream. But about half the people rushed for the doors, and that’s when we spotted the third guy. He was in the middle of a group of four people, running for it. He might have been taking a leak. He might have been around the corner at the bar. I don’t know. But there he was.”
Turcotte shook his head. “And Rolf — fucking Rolf — he just fired them all up. I don’t know what short-circuited in his head. Hell, the third guy couldn’t have gone anywhere. Surveillance had to have been sitting on top of his car outside by now and could have taken him out once they got an open shot outside the Gasthaus. But Rolf just lost it.”
Turcotte’s voice briefly broke.
“The only good thing was he just had fifteen rounds in the mag. He got the IRA guy, but he also hit some civilians. I didn’t know how many at the time. There was just this pile of bodies; at the very least the three that had been around the IRA man, plus some others who’d been in the line of fire. Rolf was even flipping his taped-together magazines, putting a fresh one in when I grabbed the gun out of his hand.” Turcotte pulled out his right hand and put it in front of Kelly’s face. The skin on his palm was knotted with scar tissue. “You can still see where the suppressor on the barrel of Rolf’s sub burned my hand. At the time I didn’t feel a thing, I was so freaked.