by David Spell
The bearded man glanced over to check on his wife, his eyes getting wide as he saw Emily holding baby Raymond, feeding him a bottle.
“Just remember, Em, no babies for us until you get through school.”
“But, he’s so sweet, Scotty! Just look at that cute little face. I think we should talk about trying to get pregnant.”
A look of panic swept across her husband’s face, eliciting chuckles from Chuck and Elizabeth. Emily tried to keep a straight face, but burst out in laughter.
“I’m just kidding, babe. I know we’re not ready yet.”
Visibly relieved, Scotty sat back in his seat. “Don’t do that to me. I’m still getting used to having a wife. Chuck will have to prep me for the whole dad thing.”
Falls Church, Virginia, Sunday, 2000 hours
Damian Sanchez gathered his team in the living room of Juan Guerra’s small home. This was it. He was going to brief them, walk everyone through the mission, and make sure their equipment was ready. They would be up at 0400 hours and out the door by 0430 hours, staging at Guerra’s warehouse.
Señor Vicente had brought Damian into his office in Matamoros two weeks earlier to discuss the possibility of taking a team into the United States and assassinating a government official in Washington, D.C. Sanchez had been impressed with the fact that Villarreal had sought out the former SF soldier’s professional opinion. The head of the Nueva Generación Cartel was tall, fit, and handsome. He was also vicious and ruthless in his desire to establish his cartel as the dominant gang in Mexico.
“This is one of the reasons that I hired you, amigo,” the cartel leader explained. “I don’t want to send some of our best people into America on a suicide mission. If you can’t tell me that you’d have a good chance of success, we can pass.”
“Who do you want us to kill, Señor?”
Villarreal hesitated before answering, then spoke quietly, handing over a manila folder. “My contact wants us to take out the Director of Operations for the CIA. Her name is Sandra Dunning.”
Damian nodded, flipping open the folder. Several photos showed a plain looking, mid-fifties woman. She would have a security team but with the right planning and equipment, he knew that he could get to her. Another photo showed the woman getting into what he presumed was an armored GMC Yukon.
The photos appeared to have been taken with a telephoto lens. Señor Vicente has some good contacts in the US, Damian thought to himself. As he continued to flip through the folder, he saw that Dunning always had three men with her. The first two were big and beefy, both sporting beards. American Special Forces, Sanchez, thought to himself. He had interacted with men like that during his training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The third man was younger, clean cut, and solidly built. From the photos, it looked like he served as the driver as well as a bodyguard. Only three men to protect her? That surprised Damian but he knew that the Americans tended to be arrogant and overconfident. Other photos showed a beautiful two-story brick home on a quiet cul-de-sac.
“As you can see from the photos, I’ve had someone watching her for about a week. The three men in the Yukon pick her up every morning at 7:00 to drive her to CIA headquarters. It looks like she lives by herself. Maybe you just break into her house and kill her there?”
“Maybe,” Damian, answered, continuing to study the photos of Dunning’s home, “but probably not. Most of these gringo officials have safe rooms in their houses. I’m sure all the doors and windows are reinforced and her security system is connected to both the CIA and the local police. By the time we got in, she’d be in the safe room and there’s no way we’re getting in there without some serious explosives.”
“What is this ‘safe room’ you mentioned?” Villarreal queried.
“A lot of the gringo big shots have these special rooms built into their houses where they can retreat if they get attacked. The walls are thick and they have heavy metal doors. They’d be almost impossible to breach before the police arrive.”
The cartel leader nodded. “Then how would you get to her?”
“Maybe we kill her on her way to work,” Damian had answered his boss.
“Okay, but if you can’t take her in the house, I want you to make it big,” the cartel leader said, a sneer on his face.
“Big, señor? What do you mean?”
“The man who hired us spelled out a list of guidelines on how he wants the job to be accomplished. He thinks he can dictate to us how to assassinate someone. If you can kill this woman in public and still get away, make it something that the gringos will be talking about for a long time to come.”
Sanchez smiled. “I understand, señor. We’ll take care of it.”
Now, as the cartel soldiers seated themselves, ready for the briefing, Sanchez looked at the men he didn’t know. Juan Guerra was providing three of his own associates for the mission. Juan and two more of his gangsters would act in a support role, ready to jump in if needed. Sanchez just hoped that Guerra’s men were up to the task.
“Amigos, tomorrow we are going to make history en Los Estados Unidos,” Sanchez began.
Georgetown, Washington, D.C., Sunday, 2345 hours
CIA Director Maxwell Sterling sat at the desk in his home office at the Georgetown mansion, nervous and excited about the message he was about to read. Maxwell lived alone in the large residence, his ex-wife having divorced him during his second congressional term. She had found him in the throes of passion with one of his young female staffers inside his office at the Rayburn House Office Building.
Congressman Sterling had asked the Capitol Police to always let him know when Mrs. Sterling arrived, but on that day she had managed to get inside without him knowing. It had been embarrassing and costly for Maxwell, but in the end, he had been glad to be single again. He was now able to enjoy all the perks that came with the power of his office without having to sneak around.
Now, an open laptop lay in front of him. He logged into the Islamic dating site and saw that he had a message waiting. He anxiously clicked to see what ‘Lara’ had to say.
“It won’t be long until we meet.”
This was it, Sterling realized. The hit was finally on. The mystery man did not tell the CIA head when or how the cartel was going to carry out the assassination, just that it was going to happen soon. Maxwell typed in a reply.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
After sending the message, Sterling logged out of the site, erased his browsing history, and shut down the computer. He was so ready to be done with this, he thought, finishing off his tumbler of scotch. Was he really setting up one of his own directors to be murdered?
Three weeks before, he had shared his dilemma with Saleem during a private meeting and his friend had promised to help. Of course, the CIA Director had to wait until both Nicholson and Knight were dead. Bashir had offered to go ahead and get the wheels turning so that they could act quickly after the producer and the actress were dealt with.
A day later, Maxwell received a cryptic text from a number that he did not know, instructing him to set up an account on the dating site, providing him with an alias and fake photo to use. Within minutes the text had disappeared from his phone. He had followed the directions, even though he felt uncomfortable setting up an account on the Muslim singles website.
The next day, Sterling found that several women had sent him messages, but ‘Lara’ was the only one who used the code that his contact had specified. The dating site was set up with private chat rooms. Maxwell and Lara had moved their conversation there where they could talk a little more freely. They were able to work out some of the logistics of what Sterling wanted done and Lara let him know that it was going to cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The mystery man let him know that their mutual friend was covering half of the expense. Maxwell wired one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to the account number given and then sat back to wait. Evidently, his wait was about over.
He sigh
ed, climbed to his feet, and walked across the room to his bar where he poured himself another healthy dose of Macallan 25 Year Scotch. Hopefully, the issue would be resolved soon and he could appoint a more suitable person as his Director of Operations. Then he could get on with preparing himself for his next step up the political ladder.
Sterling thought through the events leading to this moment, feeling certain that he had covered his tracks. On his orders, both Alfie Nicholson and Erin Knight had been eliminated. That arrogant Hollywood prick would never threaten him again. The CIA Director felt a surge of power at having ordered the deaths of the producer and actress.
Sandra Dunning was another matter, however. Maxwell did not have any personal animosity towards her. Of course, she was one of the Agency’s Cold War dinosaurs but that didn’t make her a bad person. She was simply a loose end that needed to be tied up. With Dunning gone, there was no one who could point back to him for having Nicholson and Knight killed. If anyone ever tried to link the CIA to their deaths, Sterling would just say that Dunning had conducted the operations without his approval.
The CIA head had also considered targeting the two teams that had undertaken the missions in LA and in Honduras. That, however, would have been extremely messy and counter-productive. They were just soldiers following orders and would not ask any questions.
Sandra’s two assistant directors, though, might be a problem. Chuck McCain and Kevin Clark had both shown themselves to be resourceful, talented, and possibly, too smart for their own good. He had a plan for dealing with them that would remove them from the picture, while not creating another news headline. Time would tell as to whether or not more extreme measures would need to be taken.
The other loose end that still concerned Sterling were the videos that Nicholson had recorded of his time on Alfie’s island. As a congressman, Sterling had hooked up with a twelve-year-old and a thirteen-year-old girl a few years earlier, before he had come to work for the Agency, not knowing that the Hollywood mogul had cameras in his suite.
During Nicholson’s trial, the producer contacted the CIA Director, asking for some dirt on two of the witnesses set to testify against him. Maxwell had balked at the request, but Alfie had threatened to release the videos of Sterling having sex with underage girls if he didn’t help him. He even sent Maxwell a thirty-second clip of the movie to show that he wasn’t bluffing. Nicholson got the information that he wanted but also created an enemy in Maxwell Sterling.
The CIA chief had not contacted Ethan Sharpe yet. Sharpe was a close friend, as well as one of the most talented computer hackers in the world. Maxwell liked the idea of having all of Nicholson’s files, knowing that if he had been recorded, so had everyone else who had visited the private island. Having those movies would give him so much leverage in DC, and even around the world. Of course, his own videos would need to disappear, but he was looking forward to seeing who else had starred in some of Alfie’s home movies. At the same time, even though he trusted Sharpe, the fewer people who had knowledge of the files, the better.
Maxwell wondered how the cartel hit team would eliminate Sandra Dunning. Hopefully, they would take her out quietly in her home. He had asked the mystery man to instruct the Mexicans to keep the murder as low-profile as possible. This peace of mind was costing the CIA Director a lot of money which had already been wired into an account in the Cayman Islands.
Sterling could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Once all this was behind him, he could focus on helping his friend gain the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. Saleem Bashir had a very good chance of becoming the first Muslim-American President. Saleem had promised to add his college roommate, Maxwell Sterling, to the ticket as his Vice-President.
The election was less than six months away and Bashir was consistently polling as one of the top three Democratic contenders. He was young at forty-eight years of age, handsome, articulate, and presented himself as a moderate. The Democrats had long been fascinated with Islam and Sterling believed that, with his help, Saleem would gain the nomination and easily win in the general election. After eight-years as the VP, Maxwell Sterling would be in line to succeed his friend as the next President.
CHAPTER FOUR
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, MONDAY, 0645 hours
Sandra Dunning sat at her kitchen table, sipping coffee and scrolling through the headlines on her iPad as Fox News played in the background. After waking at 0500 hours, the Director of Operations for the CIA had spent thirty minutes on the treadmill in her spare bedroom, checking emails on her secure, agency-issued smart phone. Dunning had never enjoyed exercise, but she also did not enjoy the extra thirty pounds that she had been carrying around. In the last six months she had dropped fifteen of those pounds and loved the feeling of her looser fitting clothes. I’ll have to buy another wardrobe before long, she thought.
The Ops Director would have much preferred to drive herself to work, but Agency protocol dictated the daily pickup in an armored SUV by her driver and bodyguards. As if on cue, her phone vibrated with an incoming text from Tim, a former Delta Force operator.
“Good morning, ma’am. Traffic is rough this morning. We’re about 20 minutes out.”
“Thanks Tim. See you then,” she answered.
The only thing she had on her calendar this morning was a 10:00 meeting with Director Sterling. She had spoken to him briefly over the phone about the previous week’s missions, letting him know that they were a success. She would give him a thorough debriefing in their face-to-face meeting. There were no written records of assassination missions. Everything was conveyed verbally and anything transmitted electronically was done over encrypted phones or using code words.
Sandra planned on asking the Director for a little more context on why he had ordered the hit on Alfie and Erin. She was glad to have them removed from the land of the living but those were not normally the type of missions that the CIA took on. Most of their sanctioned hits were related to terrorism, regime changes, or the elimination of foreign spies. Killing criminals and perverts, while satisfying, wasn’t the Agency’s style.
Director Sterling was a bit of an enigma. He had been a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts for three terms before being asked to serve on the prestigious House Intelligence Committee. Despite his liberal leanings, he had been one of the CIA’s primary advocates on the committee, and by his fifth term he was the chairman.
It was only natural that President Benjamin Asher appoint Maxwell Sterling as the Director of the CIA when the position became open. Although the President was a Republican, he felt that appointing Maxwell to the cabinet-level position sent the message that he was concerned with creating a bipartisan cabinet.
Dunning’s predecessor, Jonathan Williams, had never trusted Sterling, calling him ‘a snake.’ Williams had brought Sandra over from analysis to be one of his assistant directors along with McCain and Clark. Almost immediately after doing so, however, Williams discovered that he had advanced prostate cancer. Because of the zombie virus crisis, Williams had not found out about the cancer until it had spread throughout his body. Knowing his time was short, he made it clear to the CIA Director that Sandra was his choice to replace him. Maxwell had gone with Williams’ recommendation and Dunning had succeeded him after he died.
Now that the zombie virus crisis had passed, she was beginning to get more of a measure of Sterling’s true character. He was the consummate politician and it was even rumored among the Agency hierarchy that Maxwell could be on the short list for the vice-presidential slot for Saleem Bashir. I’m sure he had his reasons for having the producer and actress taken out, she thought. Maybe he’ll share them with me.
Arlington, Virginia, Monday, 0655 hours
Shaun Taylor guided the heavily armored GMC Yukon through the thick Metro DC morning traffic to pick up his boss, Sandra Dunning, at her home. Taylor served as her administrative aide, driver, and bodyguard. Shaun knew, however, that the other two men in the SUV were th
e primary security for the CIA’s Director of Operations.
Tom, a former SEAL Team Six member, sat in the front passenger seat. Tim, who sat behind Shaun, had been recruited from the Army’s top-secret Delta Force. The two spec ops warriors were not related but could have been brothers. They were both heavily muscled and sported thick beards. They even wore matching Ray-Ban shades under their black ball caps.
While Taylor wore a blazer over his 9mm Glock 19 pistol, Tim and Tom covered their sidearms with black windbreakers. Both of the bearded men also held a Colt sub-compact M4 rifle in their hands, the barrels pointed at the floorboard. They never expected any problems but their job was to protect the Ops Director and they took that responsibility seriously.
Shaun had graduated from Georgetown with a degree in Political Science, intending to join the Army as an officer. His goal was to become a Ranger and eventually attend Special Forces Selection. The Army physical, though, revealed an irregular heartbeat that the young man had not known existed. While not life-threatening, it was enough to disqualify him from military service.
His dream of a military career shattered, Taylor now had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. All he had ever dreamed of was serving his country as a Green Beret. As he sat in his bedroom at his parent’s Fairfax home, Shaun tried to fight off the depression that he felt creeping in. It was days like this that he wished he was a drinker, he thought, sipping from a can of Diet Coke.
The cell phone on the bedside table rang, startling him out of his introspection. The screen showed the caller’s number was blocked. The young man assumed it was someone trying to sell him an extended warranty for his car. A few minutes later, however, it rang again. When he swiped to answer, an unfamiliar voice spoke to him.