Operation Snowdrop

by Michelle Medhat

  “You took too much of a fucking risk following him as Magalos,” he’d said. “You should have activated one of our operatives. You’re too high-profile, Sabena. What would have happened if he’d done something?”

  “Why? I was a Greek energy researcher. I mean, that’s a real national security risk!” snorted Sabena.

  “Your foolhardiness could have compromised the whole mission.”

  “But it didn’t, and you have the intel you need.”

  “Sabena, I saw it all on the sat recon. Kinley had you dancing. He was in that side alley just waiting to jump you.”

  “I knew he was there,” retaliated Sabena defensively.

  “Like hell! You jumped. Even I could see that ten thousand miles away.”

  “I didn’t jump,” shot back Sabena, sounding like a grouchy child.

  “The car is coming for you. Your plane is at Norwood. Be on it, Sabena!” snapped Salim, and without a goodbye, he rang off.

  Sabena hated loose ends.

  And Kinley was definitely a loose end.

  She stared out into the dark as the car sped toward Norwood Memorial Airport, where her Gulfstream waited patiently for her on the tarmac, and Sabena knew Kinley was going to turn up again.

  Only next time, he’d be the one to be played.

  Chapter 13

  January 27, 2013

  The air stills. I hear the faint burr of the air conditioning unit. Many floors down, car horns beep, and outside the room, in the corridor, I hear someone stifle a cough.

  I breathe rhythmically. Slow and stable.

  When something earth shattering or life-threatening happens people say, ‘It feels like time has slowed.’ What the brain’s actually doing is writing down memory in a much denser way, so that when you retrospectively view that memory, you have many more details than normal, and it feels like the experience could have lasted longer.

  I am feeling that sense of time elongation right now.

  Sabena is caught in an incredulous stare. No one in any agency has ever dared to try to kill her.

  Not that they don’t want to.

  She knows she has cross-hairs firmly pinned on her back. But there would be a tremendous payback for her death. Secret security agencies across the world, however well-funded, just can’t risk it. They just don’t have the resources to deal with that kind of cataclysmic scenario.

  Sabena knows this.

  With the Al Nadir elite, we all walk a very fine line.

  Sabena unexpectedly starts to laugh. I look at her grimly, and tighten my grip on my Sig.

  “Think this is funny?”

  My voice is heavy and dark.

  “I think all the shit you’ve just said is funny. You fuckers wouldn’t dare attempt to kill me. You know the rules of engagement.”

  “As I said before, Sabena, your intelligence is below par. You don’t know what is happening.”

  Sabena’s face flares as anger eats her up.

  “And you’re telling me this because you want to flip? Come over to our side? You expect me to believe that? You must be fucking insane.”

  “Fine, Sabena. You don’t believe me. I’ll just go and leave you, and tomorrow you’ll be dead. You won’t see it coming. They’re good and they’re deadly. And they never miss.”

  I side-step toward the door, but my Sig stays fixed on her.

  She looks at me and a faint touch of pity creeps into her eyes.

  “You won’t live if you walk out that door alone.”

  “I know that.”

  “So why go?”

  “Why not? I’ll be reassured to know you’ll die tomorrow. I’ll see you in hell, Sabena.”

  I grab hold of the door handle and hear muffled sounds outside, and I know, I have seconds left to live.

  “Wait!”

  Sabena shouts the instruction as much for those on the other side of the door as for me. I let go of the handle and turn back to face Sabena, the Sig still on her.

  “You really mean it, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t have told you otherwise.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Sabena weighs up the verisimilitude of my statements. “But I’m not letting you out of my sights either way.”

  The door bursts open and three guys togged up as waiters, carrying Glock 18 semi-automatic pistols, enter. I could have let out a round from my Sig, but it would have been pointless. I’d have been chewed up in seconds.

  “Time, Mr. Kinley, to go for a little excursion.”

  Sabena slips off the bed and stands up straight. She sticks out her hand. I sigh and place my Sig in her palm.

  “Good boy.”

  Sabena relishes in the moment to ridicule me.

  I don’t see her next move. But I feel her murderous force, and blackness engulfs me.

  Chapter 14

  GCHQ flagged use of the AI analyzer and its probability factor to Maide. It was standard practice for all Al Nadir high profile terrorists. Maide reviewed the analysis. A woman on a train with a ninety-five-point-eight probability of being Sabena Sanantoni. Kinley had reanalyzed the woman they believed before to be Sabena, and the AI produced an eighty-nine-point-two probability.

  Maide sat back and considered the intel.

  CCTV at Waterloo Station captured the woman walking behind Kinley. Street cameras on Waterloo Bridge Road and Kennington Road caught the same woman a few seconds after Kinley passed. The camera at the corner of the Park Plaza Hotel tracked Kinley entering, and the collision, Maide could see, was engineered by Kinley to confront the person tailing him.

  Maide shook his head. Kinley was always the bold one, a perpetual risk-taker who couldn’t be controlled. Maide brought up the stills of the camera surveillance and zoomed in on Eva’s face, and then the face of the woman on the train.

  What did this mean to the mission?

  Kinley wouldn’t lose this opportunity. If the woman was Sabena, Kinley would be with her. It was the place where he was always meant to be. He’d just used a different route.

  But if he informed Sam of this detour, it could jeopardize Snowdrop.

  If Kinley was with Sabena, this was, of course, a more suitable outcome. Sam would genuinely not know what was going on. Kinley’s actions would be perceived by all as rogue, and Kinley’s validity as a flipped agent would be reinforced in Al Nadir’s eyes.

  Maide requested deletion of the analysis files Kinley had accessed earlier. His order was confirmed, and several seconds later, he tried to access Kinley’s AI analyzer history and saw only Eva Morricone’s probability factor as the last entry.

  No sign of the woman on the train. Maide highlighted each still of the pretty blonde woman, and deleted all with a permanent delete command, meaning no copies would be kept anywhere.

  Pretty blond woman didn’t exist.

  Maide hoped Kinley still did.

  Chapter 15

  Team Aphrodite met at Northolt as agreed. Sam was the last to arrive in the Mess Hall. A tall, wiry young man with eager eyes, close cut blond hair, and an aura of excitement greeted Sam with an open Budweiser.

  “Pre-mission drink,” said the young man, smiling.

  Sam knew from his file that this excitable guy was Daniel Carter.

  “Thanks,” said Sam, grabbing the bottle and taking a swig. He seated himself and looked at the other two guys sitting opposite him on the square wooden table. Both veteran operatives, he’d seen their faces before, but hadn’t directly worked a mission with them.

  “Jim Stagg, and he’s Greg Selman,” said the stockier of the two men.

  Both in their mid-forties, they held the confident bearing of agents who’d seen it, done it, and didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. They also knew that when the bullets came flying, the only game in town was survival.

  Sam could see they regarded the young Dan with an equal helping of envy. The job hadn’t yet drilled out of him the excitement value. It was a pity; getting psyched up and feeling like you’re in a movie is a surefire way to e
nd up dead. Sam knew that fact the hard way. Too many new recruits he’d partnered with had danced with the wrong side of a bullet.

  The hands on the clock reached twenty hundred hours, and Sam stood up.

  “Ready to ship out, boys? We got a date with Florence!” Dan announced, almost jumping to his feet.

  Sam nodded and grabbed the bags on the floor. Sam grinned as he closed each zip in turn. Split between the two bags were two MK4 Carbines, two Heckler and Koch HK416s, two Glock 37.45 GAP with laser sights, stun grenades, L83 smoke grenades, fragmentation grenades, two tactical curved knives, night-vision binoculars with laser range finders and a set of ninja throwing stars.

  Certainly, it was enough to keep Al Nadir busy for a while.

  Sam turned to head out the door. Opening it, he saw the Embraer Phenom 300 that had just landed and now sat on the tarmac like a gigantic graceful swan. The team boarded the plane and took their positions. Sam stared out the window and thought about Ellie. He wished he could have seen her before leaving. The call he’d had with her was much too brief, but in his business, he was lucky to even allow time for that.

  He knew there was a reason they liked their operatives single. It kept the mind focused. Slowly, Sam closed his eyes and breathed deep, forcing a relaxed state of mind. Compartmentalization was the only way to keep it together.

  Once the plane was airborne, Sam took the lead around the oblong Smart Table that had been retrofitted inside the plane to go through mission operations with Dan, Jim and Greg. Opening the file for the Four Seasons Hotel schematics, Sam zoomed in on the floor plans of the Presidential Suite De Medici in La Palazzo, the Royal Suite Palazzo della Gherardesca and the Garden Suite near La Villa.

  “Ok, so the Royal Suite is where we believe Miss Sanantoni has shacked up. The Presidential Suite De Medici is where Ilya Cain is. They are both in the main hotel, La Palazzo, which is accessible from Viale Matteotti via the garden’s entrance. I’ve worked it with their chief gardener, Giocomo, for you to gain access. So you’ll both be gardeners,” said Sam, looking at Dan and Jim, who shrugged.

  “I will be an investment banker in town for a convention, and you, Greg, are an art lecturer taking a sabbatical.”

  Dan stared at Sam, annoyed. “Hey, why are we the gardeners and you’re an investment banker?”

  “Because I look like a wanker,” replied Sam without a glimmer of a grin.

  Dan sniggered. “Right there, mate.”

  “Can we get back to this?” snapped Jim, not relishing in the tomfoolery.

  “Of course,” said Sam, returning to the schematics. “Entry into the suites is only through security-encrypted key cards, but we have embedded a frequency override on these. They cover hotel-personnel-only areas too.”

  Sam handed out three keys.

  “The auction will be in the Garden Suite tomorrow from twelve hundred until thirteen hundred hours. That’s our window. Only those qualified to attend will gain entry to the private Garden Suite. I’ve already been prequalified through one of our FSB assets close to Ilya, and I’ll be one of the bidders on behalf of an interested third party in Turkey.”

  “When do we expect Sabena to turn up?” asked Greg, staring intently at the blue prints.

  “She may not attend at all. She may leave the dirty work to the twenty or so fancy boys she’s brought in tow. I’m sure in those Mercs there’ll be some serious firepower. The Royal Suite has its own garage and gun cabinet, and they’ll be storing the hardware in there until it’s needed.”

  “So Summanus is with Ilya?” said Dan.

  Sam could see he wanted to understand more about the weapon.

  “Yeah, Summanus is with Ilya.”

  “How big is it?” said Jim.

  “Watch this,” stated Sam.

  He clicked on a play button on the interactive table, and a video ran.

  An open expanse with a concrete floor and steel girders with hanging light bulbs came into view. The vision was stark and cold. It could have been a hanger or a warehouse. A man carried a gun-metal gray, rectangled box about two feet high and the same in width and depth. The box comprised of two sections. The top section was covered in the same elastic webbing material that covers home speakers. The bottom section housed a small drawer, and a series of buttons and a dial. It looked very unassuming, but as the team watched, they felt its boring structure held a sinister inference; something more dangerous lurked within.

  Three more men, all with guns, dragged a fourth man into the frame. The third carried a steel chair. All the team recognized the third man as Dr. Ilya Cain. The fourth man was told to sit in the chair. One of the men ring tied the fourth man to the chair by his wrists and ankles.

  Jim suddenly recognized the man tied to the chair.

  “Is that Philippe Barnier?”

  “Yes,” said Sam, not wanting to detract from the demo.

  Jim, with his background in France, would be the one most likely to recognize the Interpol agent who’d sailed too close to Dr. Cain’s operation, and was about to pay the price.

  “Where did you get this?” asked Dan.

  Sam shot him a terrifying stare, and Dan knew to keep quiet.

  Cain took a hypodermic needle and stuck it into Barnier’s vein. Quickly and precisely, he drew a vial of blood. Cain then walked over to the rectangular box and pressed on the second section, and a drawer came out with a weird sphere in the center. The man took the syringe and pressed out a blob of Barnier’s blood onto the sphere. It looked a bit like a Petri dish, but its formation was integrated into the drawer. A cover came over the dish, and lights started to illuminate underneath. The drawer slid back into place. Cain flipped a switch, and an LED read-out showed a specific number. Cain input the number on the keypad and turned the dial.

  Suddenly, Barnier started to scream and pulled against his ties. Cain and the other men had no reaction at all. They watched with inquisitive expressions, impassive to the agony of the Interpol agent. Barnier’s body pulled up as if he was trying to move away from something, and he started to shake violently. His eyes bulged and he opened his mouth wide and howled.

  Sam held back a shudder. It was an eviscerating howl, animalistic in its intensity. He lifted his eyes to assess the reactions of his team. They were open-mouthed in shock but glued to the screen, curious to see what would happen next.

  Barnier continued to howl. His shaking had descended into convulsions so harsh he’d tipped the flimsy metal chair on its side. The camera zoomed in on Barnier’s face. Blood dripped from his eyes, ears and nose. He pressed the soles of his feet against the concrete and tried lamely to push himself away from whatever was causing his pain. One of Cain’s men grabbed hold of the chair and put it upright again then placed it closer to the innocuous grey box.

  Barnier thrashed wildly and howled insanely. Blood constantly dripped. His eyeballs enlarged like golf balls as the pressure in his head increased. Without warning, they exploded, leaving bloody dark holes in his white face.

  Barnier’s head pitched forward and his body slumped.

  The agents around the Smart Table could see he was dead. But how had he died? That was the question.

  “Summanus is named after the Roman god of dark thunder. It’s an appropriate name. It could not be seen, but the force of Summanus stormed Barnier’s brain. The force used was infrasound.”

  “My God! I thought infrasound weapons were a myth,” muttered Jim, still stunned by what he’d witnessed on the video.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Why did Barnier die but the others didn’t?”

  “Genetic targeting using the body’s resonance pattern. It’s as individual as your fingerprint or optic nerve configuration. That’s why the blood sample was needed. Summanus uses an artificial intelligence chip to run bioanalytic software to narrow in and pinpoint the genetic resonance of the blood cell. Once the resonance is identified, the infrasound device is then set to home in and target its infrasound energies directly onto the cells with t
hat resonance. You’re basically shattering a person to death with sound.”

  “It’s hideous,” spluttered Dan, feeling a tad queasy.

  “It is, and that’s why our mission is to see Al Nadir never gets their hands on it.”

  His team nodded solemnly.

  “Right. So, mission tactics.” Sam closed the video app and brought up the hotel schematics again. “Jim, you speak Italian, don’t you?”

  “Si, parlo bene l’italiano,” answered Jim, smiling.

  “Great. You’re going to be Dan’s boss, and you’ll stay in the garden, tending to plants near the private plot. As you know, the auction will take place in the Garden Suite.”

  Sam expanded the schematics to focus on the Garden Suite.

  “It’s a standalone building on the right-hand side of La Villa Conventino. It has its own private garden entrance. I will already be inside. We know only two other bidders, apart from Sabena, who’ll be there physically, but others could bid online. The bidders are Arjan Leka, an Albanian drug baron, who’ll have his Spetnaz-trained team on standby to protect him, and Jian Hui, a former Ministry of State Security, MSS, agent turned capitalist money man dabbling in everything from drugs and prostitution to people smuggling. He’ll have his MSS buddies in tow. Ilya himself will have his ex-FSB guys on retainer guarding him. Bodies in the suite could be as many as twelve with maybe the same number outside guarding the perimeter. The moment I text, Sabena’s arrived. Jim and Greg, you enter through the bedroom access here.” Sam pointed on the schematic. “Take out everyone in the room, including Ilya. And you, Dan, will remain low in the garden and take out the perimeter guys when they start to pour in.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Dan.

  “I’m going to take out Sabena, along with anyone else who gets in my way, and grab Summanus. I’ll be heading for the Via Gina Capponi exit where I’ll have a car waiting. You guys follow me, and don’t stay back for anything.”