Blowback, p.11
Blowback, page 11
“About to find out,” Liam says. “Hold on.”
He puts the binoculars down, picks up a boxy viewing device that is quietly humming along. Highly classified, the system is called CLARK/K—SUPERMAN being too obvious for what it can do. He brings up the box to his eyes, blinks to get adjusted as to what he’s seeing.
CLARK/K has a variety of imaging and viewing capabilities, including thermal imaging that can go through concrete and brick walls, as well as a form of penetrating radar that can bring living shapes into view.
Liam takes a breath.
There are three men moving around in the second-floor apartment, and two sit down on a couch. Through the imaging and data processing, CLARK/K tells Liam that the shapes have a 95 percent probability of being Haji Omar al-Baghdadi, Abu Bakr, and Abd Samir Muhammad al-Khlifawi, due to height, weight, body temperature, and presence of shrapnel in two of the figures.
“Liam, all stations, targets in place.”
Mission parameters say the go order can be issued if the probability rate is above 90 percent, so Liam is feeling pretty good, considering he’s resting among rat shit and pigeon droppings, and he and his four team members are here illegally in the eyes of two countries.
Country one, of course, is France. Various political and military pressures on the government and its agencies and the Élysée Palace have proven fruitless, and now, the French being the French, Liam thinks, they’re being stubborn just for the hell of it, to show they won’t be bossed around by the arrogant Americans.
Country two is the land of the free and home of the brave. Station chiefs of the CIA jealously guard their turf, and the one here in Paris is smart, tough, and has a take-no-prisoners attitude. If she were to find out that Liam and his crew were here without her authorization, they’d be Gitmo’ed so hard and fast she’d make it a point to ship them past the International Date Line so they’d spend an extra day in custody.
Liam says, “Ferris, you have anything?”
“We’ve got angry yutes in the street, but that’s about it,” says Ferris Walton, stationed on the top of an adjacent concrete housing building. “Nothing of concern around the target building. Quiet.”
“Copy that,” Liam says. “Tommy?”
Tommy Pulaski says, “Radio traffic relatively average. A corner store four blocks away was robbed. A guy got knifed in a lobby next street over. Typical night.”
Liam says, “Copy that. Mike?”
“Exfil van fueled and ready to roll on your signal, Liam.”
He checks the time and looks through the CLARK/K observation monitor. Two of the male subjects are sitting on a couch. The third one … is in the bathroom.
Liam thinks of these three, and the videos he’s seen of them in action.
Haji Omar al-Baghdadi, laughing as he beheads four bound female UN aid workers, one after another, taking his time as the hooded workers tremble with fear.
Abu Bakr, tossing a container of gasoline into a metal cage, the cage holding the American pilot of an F-22 aircraft, and then tossing in a lit match.
Abd Samir Muhammad al-Khlifawi, firing pistol shots into the heads of four children, grandchildren of a village leader who wouldn’t bow to ISIS.
“Boyd, get the bird into position.”
“Roger, that, Liam,” he replies.
Liam keeps view through the CLARK/K.
The third terrorist is out of the bathroom. In the kitchen. Now with his two companions in the small living room, each of them with only seconds to live. Within seconds the Thrasher drone will be level to those glass windows with the closed drapes and will fire off four rockets carrying highly classified warheads—Grinder—that minimize any collateral damage in the building. But for anyone in that apartment, the four rounds will explode in shards of fast rotating razor-sharp blades that will turn the place into a slaughterhouse.
Liam knows the specs of Thrasher and Grinder quite well. Two rockets would probably complete the job, but Liam likes to go for the overkill.
“Boyd, are you there yet?” he asks.
The three figures remain in place.
“Boyd, this is Liam. Status?”
A slight trickle of static. “Liam … this is Boyd. We’ve lost the bird.”
CHAPTER 36
LIAM DRAWS IN a deep breath, remembering the “Moscow Rules” that previous officers had devised while going up against the KGB on their hard and sealed home turf, and how one rule always sticks in his mind:
Technology will always let you down.
“This is Liam. Everybody hold,” he says. “Boyd, what the hell happened?”
Boyd says, “Not sure, Liam. The bird was heading to the target building when I lost control of it. She spun up and out. Last I saw she was heading to the Seine River, damn it. If we’re lucky the damn thing will dive in and sink. No evidence we were here.”
The radio net goes silent.
The rest of the team are waiting for his insight, his orders.
On a typical op, with their main weapon out of action, an abort would be the response.
Damn it, though, this mission isn’t typical, he thinks. It’s taken weeks of surveillance and monitoring to find a time when these three ISIS terrorists would be in one place for a while on this night. An abort would let them live … and in a few hours, all three might be gone out into the darkness, preparing to sell their bloody talents to the highest bidder, either some other rogue group or even Russia or China.
Liam says, “All stations, we’re not aborting. Ferris.”
“This is Ferris, go.”
“You’re one building over. Can you make it to the roof of the target building?”
No pause.
“You got it, Liam.”
“Along the way, pick up some rope, cable wire, anything you can use to hold you up for a few seconds. You’re going to come off that roof and through one of those two windows on my signal.”
“Roger that, Liam.”
“Boyd,” he goes on. “With the bird gone, you’re with me. In ten minutes, meet me at the corner across from the building, where the bakery is located. We’ll go in from there.”
“Copy that, Liam.”
“Tommy, in fifteen minutes we need a distraction. Something to draw local and police attention away from this block. Be creative, try not to hurt anyone. But make it happen. And keep an ear on the local radio traffic, alert us if there’s anything coming our way.”
“Copy that, Liam.”
To Mike Cooper, Liam says, “Mike, your exfil is when we come running out of that building. Don’t be late, or I’ll get your ass fired.”
Mike laughs. “I only plan to be late to my funeral, Liam. I got this.”
Liam starts to pack up his equipment. “All right, on the move.”
Ten minutes later—still smelling of rat and pigeon excrement—Liam is on a dark street, alone in the darkness. Boyd emerges from the shadows around a boulangerie and says, “Liam, I—”
“Forget it, it’s done,” he says. He quickly brings up a night vision monocular and scans the front door. Heavy wood, metal hinges, and—
Damn it.
“Tommy, this is Liam,” he says. “You free?”
“Yeah.”
“I need you over here, get the front door opened. It’s got an electronic lock.”
“On my way, Liam,” Tommy says. “You’re going to get a distraction about one minute after I arrive.”
He and Boyd take a look around the narrow street. Quiet so far. The place smells of burnt food and open sewage, and there’s loud Middle Eastern music playing from a nearby flat.
Liam says, “Ferris? Location?”
He replies, “I’m up on the roof. I just took out the local HBO and Showtime, got a coaxial cable secured around me. Ready to go.”
Tommy slowly walks down the opposite sidewalk, dragging a leg, like he’s injured, and he stops at the front door for five seconds.
From his earpiece Liam hears, “Door is open. Distraction ready to roll in sixty seconds.”
Liam says, “Just like the book, gents. Surprise, speed, and violence of action. Disable the noncombatants. When Boyd and I get to the second floor, I’ll tell you to fly, Ferris.”
“Roger that, Liam.”
Liam walks briskly across the street, Boyd next to him, and up to the door. Tommy has disabled the electronic lock and it opens out easily on well-oiled hinges. In the vestibule, two young men with AK-47s in their laps, sitting in chairs, look up in surprise and Liam and Boyd spray them in their faces with small yellow canisters.
The spray is a version of CS tear gas—from which Liam and his team have been immunized—but which will disable the jihadists for at least thirty minutes. They fall from their chairs, yelping and rubbing at their eyes and faces. The wooden stairway is poorly lit, but Liam and Boyd go up as fast as they can, keeping to the side walls so their footfalls won’t cause the steps to creak.
From outside there’s a muffled thump thump, as Tony’s distractions—whatever they are—have lit off. As they get up to the second-floor landing, another armed jihadist peers over. In Arabic, Boyd yells, “It’s an emergency! The police are coming!”
The jihadist hesitates long enough for Liam to spray him in the face, and with a cry he crumples to the floor. At the door now, Liam and Boyd take out their 9mm Ra’ad pistols with sound suppressors.
Just before shooting at the doorknob and two hinges, Liam says, “Ferris, go!”
No answer, but as their gunshots thump out—there is no such thing as a true silencer in the world—he hears glass crashing and shouts.
He and Boyd hammer through the door with their shoulders. A man only wearing dungarees is in front of them, and he and Boyd cut him down with two shots apiece. Another man is on the ground, Ferris standing over him, bits of broken glass sticking to his clothes.
From the other corner of the apartment, behind an overturned couch, gunfire wildly erupts, the bullets whizzing overhead. He and Boyd take quick cover behind kitchen chairs and tables, and with Ferris firing from near the broken window, their pistol fire erupts in hard fashion for less than a minute.
Liam gets up, the smoky apartment lit only by a lightbulb dangling by a cord, and he says, “Finish it, and let’s go. Mike, this is Liam, we’ll be ready in a minute.”
“Roger that, Liam,” Mike says through his earpiece.
No prisoners, no captives, nobody left alive, and six shots later—two bullets in each terrorist’s head—they go through the apartment door, passing the moaning jihadist on the floor, and take the steps down two at a time. The two guards they had earlier encountered are still writhing on the ground, rubbing at their faces, moaning in pain.
Outside, now.
Speed, surprise, and violence of action.
A battered black van comes to a halt. Doors fly open and Tommy gets out from a doorway, jumps in. Down the street two cars are merrily burning along. Ferris goes in, then Boyd, and Liam brings up the rear as gunfire breaks out behind them. Liam whirls and one of the two jihadists is weaving on his feet, shooting randomly out into the street. Liam takes him down with two shots to the chest.
He pushes Boyd into the van and the door slides shut. Liam says, “Mike, haul ass.”
Mike puts the van into Drive, they take a right, speed by two burning cars with a crowd of young men around it, dancing, laughing, and Tommy says, “No worries, Liam. I wrote down the license plates. We can compensate them later.”
Ferris laughs, and so does Mike, their driver, as does Liam. Then he says, “Boyd?”
Boyd doesn’t say anything.
Liam gets his mini light, turns it on.
Boyd is smiling, but his eyes look confused.
Liam says, “Boyd?”
Boyd opens his mouth and a spray of blood comes out.
Liam and others frantically go to work.
He’s dead by the time they pass the next intersection.
CHAPTER 37
IN A 7-ELEVEN parking lot north of Charlottesville, Virginia, Noa Himel is in a white van bearing the logo of a floral delivery service from nearby Shadwell. Driving this day is one of her team members, Aldo Sloan, a thick, big man who reminds her of the Thing from the Fantastic Four comics, except his complexion is smooth and pale, with a lot of muscle underneath. An ex-FBI agent, Aldo once told her he came to “the other side”—to the Agency—because it had a better dental plan.
Each of them fitted with radio earpieces, pistols hidden in plastic shopping bags on their laps. Two other vehicles belonging to Noa’s team are out there in this area of Charlottesville. Nearby is the hum of the Seminole Trail, also known as Route 28.
The 7-Eleven is busy, with lots of vehicles coming and going, most drivers picking up coffee, snacks, and other handheld meals as they head south to Charlottesville.
Noa says, “Aldo, I need a favor.”
“Go for it.”
“You were assigned last year to the Agency’s Counterintelligence Division, to give a seminar on surveillance techniques.”
“Yeah.”
“You still got friends there?”
“Of a sort.”
“What do you mean, of a sort? I need to know, can you go to them, looking for information, and they’ll be okay with it? Not complain to any higher-ups?”
Aldo says, “This is about the Otterson case, right? The suicide?”
“Yes, it is,” she says. “I want the source documents for the investigation, including photos and videos and any and all surveillance documentation.”
“But you already had that before we went in.”
“No,” she says. “I got a report. That’s all. It might have been sanitized, might have been changed. Not good enough. That woman suicided for no good reason. I want the originals. Can you get them?”
Aldo says, “I’ll try.”
Noa says, “Screw I’ll try. You either can or can’t. If you can’t, I’ll try somebody else.”
He says, “Target vehicle in sight, Noa.”
“Answer the damn question.”
He says, “I’ll get it for you.”
“Good,” she says. Toggling the microphone of her encrypted Motorola radio, she contacts the other members of her team: Wendy Liu, Phil Cannon, and Juan Rodriguez.
To Wendy and Phil, who are traveling together, she says, “Target vehicle has arrived. Juan, you copy?”
Juan is traveling alone and says, “Got it, Noa,” and Wendy also chimes in, “Ready to roll.”
Noa watches the target vehicle—a red Chevrolet Impala—pull up to the 7-Eleven, as it has several times during the past three weeks. Three young men step out, laughing and talking to each other on their way inside. Supposedly they are Iraqi refugees, going to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical Education Center, about a half hour drive south. One is studying automotive repair, and the other two are studying HVAC systems.
But there are hints the three are not Iraqi refugees, and Noa and her team are about to confirm that today. A quick daytime burglary of their apartment showed nothing of apparent interest, and audio surveillance has them talking about work, girls, and European football.
It’s perfect.
Too perfect.
The three come out of the 7-Eleven, paper bags in their hands as well as coffee cups, and get back into the Impala. They all wear hoodies and baseball caps, so facial ID software and imaging hasn’t helped in determining their real identities. The Impala backs out and Aldo starts up the van’s engine and slides in behind them.
If these three were indeed heading south to their technical school, they would turn right onto the Seminole Trail.
Instead, they turn left, to go north.
Noa whispers, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. That’s what Ian Fleming once wrote.”
Aldo laughs. “This is at least the fourth time you’ve quoted those lines. What would you call that?”
“I don’t know, but give me a few minutes.”
Back to her radio. “Wendy, Juan, our gang is on the move. Prepare to respond.”
And twice in a row comes: “Roger that, Noa.”
Aldo speeds up the van. For reasons unknown, the president had suggested this op take place tomorrow. But they have all the intel they need and Noa isn’t going to hesitate.
The van is advertising a floral delivery service, but there are no flowers in the back.
Just three mattresses and the gentle jingle-jangle of chains and handcuffs dangling from the van’s interior roof, ready for the three men, whoever they are.
CHAPTER 38
UP NORTH ALONG the Seminole Trail, the Impala makes a right turn onto a narrow side road called Watts Passage. As Aldo previously noted, these three Iraqis have made this long detour at least five times before, and Noa has a pretty good idea why.
Today she wants to confirm it.
She glances behind her, sees the traffic light quickly go from green to red.
It will remain red for as long as she needs.
The Impala continues along Watts Road. So does a dark-blue Honda CR-V containing Wendy Liu and Phil Cannon, just in front of Noa and Aldo. Juan Rodriguez is approaching them from the other end of Watts Passage, driving a black extended Ford F-150 pickup truck. She checks her watch, and then the SIG Sauer pistol in the bag on her lap.
It’s a few minutes from getting very interesting.
“Noa, this is Juan,” comes the radio call.
“Go.”
“We’ve got company near the rendezvous site.”
“Say again?” Noa asks, looking to Aldo, her driver, who suddenly hunches his shoulders forward, like he’s getting ready to be tossed into a football game in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter.
“I’ve got a Lincoln Town Car, Virginia plates, windows tinted, near the dirt access road. I can’t tell if anybody’s around.”
Noa sees the idle countryside pass by, beautiful and rural Virginia farmland and isolated houses, except for one large government facility, over there to the west and expertly hidden by the trees and brush.
