The Enemy

CHAPTER 47

Winnfield, Louisiana, USA

The American was forty years old — average height, average weight, brown-haired, brown-eyed, skin tanned. He wore sneakers, jeans, a white T-shirt. A ball cap covered his quarter-inch-long hair. Sunglasses hid his eyes. He had shaved that morning but already he could use another. His watch was a Casio G-Shock. His arms were hairy and hard with lean muscle. A faded tattoo was visible on his outer left bicep, half-covered by the sleeve of his T-shirt. A hilt of a dagger sat between the fletches of two crossed arrows. Across a banner beneath ran De oppresso liber.

He was in the garden of his Winnfield ranch, enjoying Johnny Cash on the radio and the smell of the twenty-ounce steak sizzling over a charcoal grill. The sun was hot and his white T-shirt was damp beneath his arms. In his kitchen, he mixed up a jug of Kool-Aid and added some to a waiting glass of Jim Bean on the rocks. Back in the garden, he sipped his concoction and turned the steak. Juices hissed.

The cell phone in his back pocket beeped. He had a new email. He read it, then read it again.

At his study computer, he opened up an internet browser to check the balance of an offshore bank account. He was pleased to see a very large donation had recently been made. The American loaded up another web page and entered an alphanumeric password into a dialogue box. He waited for a few seconds before the details of a shipment appeared. He entered a destination and was glad to see the shipment would arrive at the new location in adequate time. On a third website, he booked the flights.

By the time he returned to his steak he found it was overcooked. He liked it rare, but he ate it well done regardless. He wasn’t a wasteful man.

In his garage, he pushed aside the refrigerator and entered the nine-digit code into the digital lock face of the safe sunk into the concrete floor. He reached inside and removed two pre-packed sports bags and threw them into the passenger side of his pickup. He climbed behind the wheel and took out a charged cell phone that had never been used before and never would be again.

The American composed a message and sent it to two numbers.