He’d first met the colonel in 2006, after it became obvious that America was losing the war in Iraq. The president was looking for a win, and it was up to the Department of Defense to bring it to him. Their answer was the Anvil Program, an old concept ripped out of the CIA’s playbook.
During Vietnam, it was called the Phoenix Program, and it had used Green Berets and the CIA’s Special Operations Group, or SOG, to conduct asymmetrical warfare against an insurgency outside the military’s legal boundaries of war. In the Middle East, all the CIA needed was the right man on the ground, and that’s where Barnes came into the picture.
Barnes was a freshly minted colonel at the time of his appointment, and his marching orders were simple: Train a team to fight like the enemy, and then set them loose on the insurgency. Forget the rules of engagement, forget the media, just start stacking bodies — and that was exactly what they did.
Barnes was given the authority to handpick any soldier from any unit to accomplish his goals, and finding the right men was paramount. He pulled the file of every Delta operator, navy SEAL, and Green Beret he could get his hands on, and when he came across Mason Kane, he knew he’d found an operator born for this type of mission.
Mason had taken pride in being a soldier. He’d come from nothing, a half-breed who’d grown up on the streets, surrounded by pimps and dope boys. But the army didn’t care that his mother was a drunk or that his father had abandoned him and had later blown his brains out with a cheap Walmart shotgun. The only thing the army cared about was whether he was good at his job, and Mason had been one of the best. There was a box somewhere filled with awards, and they all had citations that read, “For selfless service and bravery under fire,” but Mason didn’t care about that.
When the colonel found him, Mason was using his particular skill set to conduct deep-cover operations in Iraq. His ability to blend in with the civilian population and his mastery of Arabic made him a critical piece of the Joint Special Operations Command’s eyes on the ground. He was everything the colonel needed and more.
Like the rest of the soldiers on the team, Mason had his demons, and it was only later that he realized the colonel sought out broken men.
Mason scanned the street. He knew he couldn’t stay out in the open for long; too many foreign agents used Morocco as a base of operations. North Africa wasn’t as stable as it had been fifteen years ago, and after the Arab Spring, many intelligence agencies were still focused on the region.
Slipping into one of Marrakech’s many nameless narrow alleys, he pulled his Glock 23 from its holster and quickly screwed on a suppressor. It was bulky and made the pistol heavier, but it was better than the alternative. After jamming the Glock into his jacket pocket he headed to the three-story apartment building he’d been watching. It reminded him of East Los Angeles, where he’d grown up and learned to blend in. Being the only non-Latino boy in the barrio had taught him the value of keeping a low profile and that, combined with the dark complexion he’d gotten from his mother, helped him blend in among the natives of North Africa.
His feet scuffed over the worn cobblestones as a woman appeared at the edge of a balcony. She shook a threadbare rug over the metal railing and Mason shot her an annoyed glance as he stepped out of the way of the dirt shower. The woman ignored him and began to beat the tightly woven fabric on the metal railing with titanic blows that caused the rusted metal to shudder.
With a final disdainful snap of her wrist, the woman turned and disappeared into her apartment, allowing the American to continue to his destination.
Mason ducked as he walked under the low archway of the apartment building. Keeping a firm grip on the butt of his pistol, he carefully ascended the exterior stairs. The apartments were old and brown, just like everything else in the city. Chunks of flaky concrete had fallen out of the walls and masonry dust littered the cracked brickwork of the stairs.
Once he reached the third floor, he pushed open the thin metal door that led into the hall and made his way to a nondescript wooden door. Thick gray paint peeled beneath the flickering light, which struggled to draw power from the overworked grid.
Mason used a bump key to force the lock and stepped quickly through the door. The apartment was small and cramped and smelled like saffron and cooking oil. A small couch sat in the main room next to a neat pile of sleeping mats, while an overhead fan turned lazily above his head.
No one was home, and the American shut the door behind him and walked over to the sliding glass door. He slid it open and stepped out onto the balcony, looking down over the tightly packed neighborhood to see if anyone was watching before shaking the metal railing to see if it would hold. The bolts securing it to the wall were rusted but seemed to be in decent shape, so after a final check he climbed up and jumped over to the next apartment.
He pulled the pistol from his pocket and peered through the glass into the apartment. A cursory check around the edges of the door frame didn’t turn up any wires, and once he was sure it wasn’t booby-trapped, Mason slipped out a knife. He was about to pry it open when he realized the sliding glass wasn’t locked.
The pungent smell of kif drifted out into the air, alerting him to the presence of his target.
So much for tradecraft, he thought to himself as he stepped through the window.
Mason brought the pistol up and quickly cleared the main room. Moving to the bedroom, the smell of hashish grew stronger, and he followed the smell to its origin before stepping into the small room.
“What’s up?” he asked in Arabic.
The Algerian sitting on the bed looked up from the large hookah, his eyes wide with surprise. He reached across to the table for his pistol and Mason raised his Glock and said, “Don’t do it.”
The man ignored his warning, and just as his fingers were about to touch the weapon, Mason shot him in the hand. The suppressor didn’t make the pistol silent, but it did muffle the report to a dull thwack.
The bullet hit Karim’s hand below the knuckles and sprayed the wall with blood. He instinctively snatched his hand back to his torso and began to scream in pain.
“I told you,” the American said with a shrug as he snatched the pistol off the table. It was a Russian Makarov and had been freshly oiled.
“Mason, I–I…,” he stammered in Arabic.
“I’ll never understand you people. You clean your gun, then get high and forget to lock your back door. I guess you figured I wasn’t coming back.”
The man just stared at him blankly.
“Karim, I thought we had a deal. I mean, that’s why Ahmed paid you, right? To make introductions and watch my back?”
Mason adopted a casual air as he scanned the room for any more weapons that the spy might have lying around. He thought he knew why Decklin wanted him dead, but he couldn’t figure out why the Algerian had betrayed him.
“For the last six months, I’ve been running around every shit hole in Africa, dodging the Americans, the French, and your jihadist friends. Hell, everyone wants to kill me, and all you had to do was take the money and keep your mouth shut.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing, believe me,” the man begged.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but then I ran into an old friend in Kona. How the hell did Decklin know I was there?”
“Mason, there has been a misunderstanding, let me explain—”
The American cut him off by holding the pistol in the air and slowly pointing it at the man’s knee.
“C’mon, Karim, a mistake? You’re going to sit here and tell me that Barnes’s triggerman just happened to stumble into Kona and try to put a bullet in my head? You know how this works; we’re both pros, so do me the courtesy of not lying to my face. I’m going to give you one more chance to tell me the truth, and then I’m going to put a bullet in your kneecap.”