American Operator

by Brian Andrews

  “But there must be something we can do!” Allen said, slamming his fist on the armrest of his chair.

  Jarvis nodded. “I know this is difficult, but the only thing we can do right now is wait and trust the process.”

  “I just don’t understand,” Allen continued as if not hearing him. “Why Amanda? Why murder the Ambassador and take my little girl? Is it because of me? Are they trying to get to me? Yes, I’m Chief Justice, but I’m not a rich man, at least not by Wall Street standards. I could pay a two-hundred-thousand-dollar ransom, but not much more without liquidating my primary residence. Is that what you think they’re after? Money?”

  Jarvis met the other man’s gaze. This was the confirmation he’d been waiting for. Allen didn’t know about his daughter’s clandestine service. For a fleeting instant, he considered reading the Chief Justice into his daughter’s file. As the DNI, Jarvis certainly had the authority to do it, but from a strategic perspective, he saw no benefit from going down that road. Amanda had seen fit to keep her greatest secret from her father, and this was telling. Maybe she didn’t want to worry him. Maybe in matters concerning his only daughter, paternal instincts interfered with his ability to make rational decisions. Or maybe she simply didn’t trust him with keeping the information secret.

  “No legitimate group has claimed credit for the attack,” Jarvis said, dabbing at his nose with his handkerchief. “And no ransom demand has been made. As tempting as it is to read into these two data points, a lack of information is usually nothing but that—a lack of information.”

  “But you must have some working theory as to why they killed Ambassador Bailey but took my daughter.”

  “I do,” Jarvis said, nodding. “I think Ambassador Bailey was the intended target of the attack, and after that objective was achieved, the terrorists at the scene saw a secondary opportunity. Amanda is young, Caucasian, and attractive. They might be planning to ransom her; they might be planning to traffic her into the underground sex trade. They might even want to keep her for themselves. I know that’s not the type of thing a father wants to hear, but it’s the reality of the world we live in. You need to be prepared for the worst. If they disappear her underground before we can mount a rescue, it will be extremely difficult to locate her. It could take months, maybe longer, and if we do manage to get her out, she won’t be the same woman she was before.”

  Allen shuddered at this comment. Then he sat still for a moment, staring down at his hands. After a long beat, he spoke. “I was born and grew up in a small town—Cottonwood Falls, Kansas. It’s a tiny place, not much more than a Main Street, but good people. Like most wide-eyed kids from small towns, when I grew up, I moved away. Later, when my wife, Janet, died, I fell into a dark depression. Amanda was eight, and I, uh . . . I wasn’t present for her. I sent her home to live with my parents for a year until I could get my head and my act back together. My parents adored Amanda, and they were such wonderful . . .” He paused, and a pained, nostalgic smile spread across his face. “Anyway, she was eight that year, which I think I mentioned, and I came to visit her that fall. It was late October, maybe early November, and unseasonably warm. Every year before the weather turned cold, the ladybugs engage in what’s known as a cluster-hibernation. They converge on homes and buildings looking for a sheltered place to hibernate. Sometimes there were so many, my mother would literally sweep them up with a hand broom and dustpan and whisk them back outside, but Amanda . . .”

  “Amanda?” Jarvis prompted when the Justice fell silent.

  “After every dustpan load of ladybugs was deposited outside, Amanda would painstakingly catch and hand carry the little buggers back inside. For two full days, she chauffeured ladybugs to the dollhouse in her room. When my father asked her what in blazes she was doing filling her room up with bugs, she simply replied, ‘They’re not just bugs; they’re ladybugs, and they need our help.’” Allen chuckled to himself and then met Jarvis’s gaze. “I’m telling you this silly little story because I want you to know something important about my daughter. She’s compassionate. She cares. She helps. If she finds a beetle stuck on its back, she flips it over. If she spies a turtle trying to cross a street, she stops and carries it to the other side. When she noticed that a kid in grade school regularly had no money for lunch, she took the initiative to pack an extra sandwich every day for a whole year. When she discovered her college roommate was secretly struggling with addiction, Amanda rescued her from the abyss. And when she realized that the world is run by men bent on pillaging the liberties and coffers of the citizenry, she joined the State Department to effect change. You see where I’m going with this? She’s a grown woman now, but that beautiful, compassionate spirit she had as a child still guides her in thought and deed.” He paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Over the years, I have come to realize that there are only two types of people in this world: candles and candlesnuffers. In these dark times, my daughter is a light. Please, I beg you, don’t let them snuff her out.”

  Jarvis held the other man’s impassioned gaze. He opened his mouth to speak, but a knock came at the door.

  Tap, tap . . . tap.

  Jarvis looked past Allen to his office door. The handle turned, the door opened, and Petra appeared in the gap.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have your coffee,” she said, walking to his desk and setting down his tumbler. “Oh, and I should probably mention, everyone has assembled in the conference room. They’re ready for you, sir.”

  “Thank you, Petra,” he said. “Please let them know I’m on my way.”

  She nodded and walked out, shutting the door behind her.

  Jarvis returned his gaze to Allen. Despite the simplicity of the characterization, the man’s words had resonated with Jarvis. His own personal view was that most people were unwitting agents of entropy—some bumbling circuitously, others sprinting headlong—but always ignorantly spreading discord and disorder within the system. For every Amanda in the world working tirelessly to right fallen dominos, toppled by moral and natural entropy, there were ten others knocking them over. A woman like Amanda Allen needed rescue, not because she saved ladybugs but because she was like John Dempsey, and Levi Harel, and Petra Felsk, and every other trusted friend and colleague Jarvis held in high esteem. They were cornerstones, pillars, tent poles; they were the men and women who bore the weight of the fragile yet immensely heavy structure built and maintained by society to hold chaos at bay. So yes, Amanda Allen needed rescuing, and that was why he was sending the best operator he had to complete the mission.

  “I’ve tasked my most trusted and capable covert operations task force with Amanda’s recovery,” he said, leaning forward. He then let the long pause after communicate the unspoken rest of the message: that the operation was underway, that revealing the operation to the media would undermine its effectiveness, and that Amanda’s rescue was a top priority.

  “I understand,” Allen replied with a nod to the unsaid and got to his feet. He made a move to extend his hand but was stopped short with a well-timed sniff from Jarvis. And with that, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court walked out, having transferred responsibility for his greatest treasure in life to Jarvis.

  Petra escorted Allen out but was back a beat later. Jarvis shared Allen’s ladybug story with her. When he’d finished, he said, “Pass the details on to Ember—validation material for when Dempsey finds her.”

  “Roger that,” she said, and then catching his eye, she added, “Director Morgan has requested a meeting. Your calendar is full, but I can make room.”

  “All right. Make it happen,” he said, resisting the urge to grimace.

  She nodded and turned to go, but when she got to the threshold, she paused and looked over her shoulder at him.

  “It’s just a head cold,” he said, beating her to the punch. “I’m fine.”

  She responded with a hesitant smile before shutting the door behind her. The time was coming when the proverbial elephant in the room betwee
n them would have to be addressed openly, but he wasn’t ready.

  Not yet . . .

  CHAPTER 11

  Turkish-Syrian Border Checkpoint

  Elbeyli, Turkey

  May 6

  1540 Local Time

  Dempsey sighed and shifted in the front passenger seat of the white Toyota Land Cruiser, trying to find a comfortable position. To his surprise, Adamo had come through, arranging his NOC and obtaining the necessary paperwork in record time. Now here he was, sitting with his three companions in the second SUV of a five-vehicle convoy—each a different white SUV with a large blue “UN” stenciled on the side. A large square of paper with the number “2” hand-printed in marker rested on the right corner of the dashboard beneath the windshield. In the back seat, sitting directly behind him, was his DIA counterpart, traveling as UN inspector Dr. Robert Theobold, a NOC the man had operated under for quite some time. Beside Theobold rode an actual UN inspector, a French Canadian named Dubois. The fourth occupant, the driver, was simply that, a German with war-zone experience who had contracted with the UN for the past eighteen months and regularly drove on Syrian excursions.

  “What’s the delay?” Dempsey said, catching the driver’s eye. “We’ve been idling for over ninety minutes.”

  The man at the wheel laughed out loud at this—a real belly laugh. “This must be your first crossing with an inspection team,” the heavily bearded man said in a thick German accent. “First, we wait on the Turkish bureaucrats. Then, we wait on the Turkish military authorization. Then, we wait on the Syrian Army escort—if there is one, which we usually discover at the last moment. Then, we wait on a smoke break, or a shift change, or maybe the rain. There are so many reasons to wait. I have waited to cross for almost one full day before.”

  Dempsey clenched his jaw and forced a thin smile.

  “So . . . what is this new technology you are bringing with us today?” the German driver asked, fixing Dempsey with a curious smile.

  “You’ll have to ask the scientist,” Dempsey said, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder at Dr. Theobold. “I’m just the security for the equipment.”

  “And for the equipment operator, I hope, Peter,” the DIA man said with a good-natured chuckle. Dempsey relaxed a little in his seat. The spook was a natural in his NOC, a skill that was more innate than acquired.

  They all chuckled as Theobold fielded the question. “The device is a chemical sniffer not unlike the last generation of detectors, but what makes it different is that we don’t search for residue signatures alone. Instead, we sample air and soil looking for changes in the organic signatures that would be present even after the concentration of the target chemical residuals has dropped below a conventional detection threshold. What we have discovered is that the overall organic chemical signature of, say, soil will change after it has been exposed to, and therefore reacted with, chemical weapon agents. In this way, using baseline samples taken in expanding concentric circles, we can generate a fingerprint for any region. Any future variations from the baseline fingerprint would suggest exposure to a chemical agent. These changes are measurable for many weeks after the residue from the chemical may have degraded. As such, delays in sampling become much less important when using this instrument.” Then, with a broad smile, he added, “But don’t tell the Syrians this.”

  The German was smiling still, but his glazed-over stare told Dempsey he’d already lost interest.

  “Fascinating,” Dubois said in accented English. “How long after exposure can you accurately predict the prior presence of the chemicals?”

  “It is highly variable,” Theobold said. “It depends on the target chemical, of course, but also on the local background signature. This is our first real-world test. On the average, we anticipate we’ll extend the detection period by around twenty to thirty days, but with the right background, it could be up to sixty days.”

  “Very impressive,” Dubois said.

  “Scientists,” the German said, grinning, and winked at Dempsey.

  In his peripheral vision, Dempsey saw that the lead vehicle in the convoy, a white Toyota Hilux SUV, was pulling away.

  “Oh, we’re moving now,” the German said, putting the Land Cruiser’s transmission into drive. Two heavily armed Turkish soldiers were waving them forward and through the border gate nestled between two sloping gray walls with guard towers atop. The driver kept their SUV in close single file and stopped briefly to receive their stack of four passports—two American, one German, and one French—from a guard. A moment later, they were through the gate and driving over freshly poured asphalt that funneled them past a fence barricaded with concertina wire and onto the southbound spur of a four-lane highway. Two minutes later, the five-vehicle convoy was in Syria, speeding south toward al-Bab.

  A CB radio sitting on the console between them burbled something incomprehensible, and the German driver answered the transmission with an equally incomprehensible retort. Then he chuckled and glanced over at Dempsey. “A short wait today. Much shorter than usual. And no Syrian escort, which is good. But don’t be surprised when they are checking us constantly during the inspection.”

  Dempsey nodded and said, “Can I get my passport back?”

  “Oh yes, my apologies,” the driver said, slipping his own passport into his breast pocket and then handing the remaining three passports to Dempsey. Dempsey pulled the blue passport with his picture and the name Peter Marks inside and handed the other two over his shoulder. He looked briefly at the stamp that had been added to the visa for entry into Syria for this diplomatic mission.

  “Thanks,” Dempsey said. “How long until we get to al-Bab?”

  “Not long to al-Bab,” the German said. Then, over his shoulder to Theobold, he said, “We will have less than twenty-four hours on-site to see if your device works. After that, our diplomatic visas will expire, and we must return to Turkey.”

  “That should give us plenty of time,” Theobold said. “And even if we find nothing, every real-world fingerprint we add to the database will aid future collections, so the trip is a worthy endeavor regardless of the outcome.”

  Ahead, Dempsey spied a lone truck traveling south. The vehicle looked at least forty years old, chugging along in the left lane. As they closed the distance and prepared to pass, he tensed. Were they in western Iraq, this would be the classic setup for a vehicle-borne IED ambush. He had no reason to believe that a UN convoy in this area of Syria would be targeted, but weirder shit happened. Only once their Land Cruiser had sped past the truck without incident did Dempsey exhale in relief.

  “You were a soldier,” the German said.

  “Yes.”

  The man nodded. “I spent many years driving trucks in Iraq as a contractor, so I recognize my own fears in you.” Then he slapped Dempsey on the shoulder and laughed his big belly laugh. “But we are in the peaceful paradise of Syria, yes? So what could possibly go wrong?”

  Dempsey flashed him a wry smile and shook his head; he liked this German dude.

  The miles clicked by until Dempsey recognized a turnoff from the northbound lanes on the other side of the median, a gravel and dirt road that turned to the east and disappeared over a low rise. It was the access road to the target compound, which was less than a mile and a half away from their current position. The urge to commandeer the SUV and head there now, kill the bad guys holding Amanda Allen, and get her safely home was almost overwhelming, but he forced himself to take a deep breath and slip deeper into his NOC.

  “Dr. Theobold, do you have a sampling plan?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Of course, Peter,” the DIA man said, reminding Dempsey of the real-life Baldwin, who was probably eavesdropping at this very moment via the micro-earpiece deep in Dempsey’s left ear canal. “I want to begin with taking some baseline readings in central al-Bab with the rest of the group, especially around the hospital and government complex where the fighting is said to have occurred. Then I would like to head north of the city;
there are several olive groves which might prove excellent areas to collect residuals.”

  “I am not a scientist, but I would concentrate on the hospital area, as this is the block where the chemical attack was reported after the last skirmish,” the German said. “We will have precious little time for our inspection and interviews as it is, so I would focus on urban collection.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” Theobold said. “But it is important to sample in multiple locations. I can travel to the areas in the north after the curfew tonight.”

  “I would not recommend this,” the German said. “It is still very dangerous here. Many factions secretly vying for control. It’s two years since Operation Euphrates drove ISIS from the city, but not all the terrorists have left, and some sneak back to al-Bab. It is a big town, over a hundred thousand people living here—it is quite easy for terrorists to hide, and not just ISIS. And be careful going on the farms. A farmer might try to shoot you, confusing you for a thief or mercenary opportunist.”

  “I will be quite safe with Peter, I assure you,” Theobold said. “And I need only one of the interpreters with us.”

  Dempsey shrugged at the driver, adopting the air of a put-upon foot soldier who had been through all this before.

  The German nodded but looked worried nonetheless.

  As they entered the city, the lead convoy vehicle stopped before two parked trucks angled to partially block the road ahead. The German pulled in behind the lead SUV as Syrian soldiers encircled the convoy. Dempsey felt the Sig Sauer P226 pressing into the small of his back, a subconscious reminder of his tactical disadvantage. With feigned disinterest, he watched the Syrian soldiers through the windshield as they interrogated the lead SUV. After checking papers and inspecting the interior of the vehicle, the lead soldier barked something at the driver and waved them through the checkpoint. Wearing a cross expression, the soldier turned to face their Land Cruiser and beckoned them forward with a curt wave. The German driver idled forward and eased to a stop. He rolled down his window, but the soldier jerked open the door anyway. Dempsey noted that the German kept both hands firmly on the steering wheel, and Dempsey followed suit by placing his own palms on the dashboard. It would be tragic for Amanda Allen to die because a nervous soldier got the wrong impression and started a gun battle at a checkpoint.