The Counterfeit Agent

by Alex Berenson

  “Ultimately, the choice for war or peace will be made in Tehran. If the Iranian government drops its nuclear programs and opens its doors to inspection, the United States will gladly end the threat of military action. Our goal is not regime change. It is only to ensure that the American people do not face a new threat from weapons of mass destruction.”

  The President had hardly moved during his speech. Now he leaned toward the camera.

  “But if Iran is unwilling to cooperate, rest assured that I will do everything necessary to protect our homeland. Other nations have mistaken America’s resolve before. They have always regretted the error.

  “May God bless the United States of America. Thank you, and good night.”

  28

  ISTANBUL

  Wells watched from the back left corner of the textile factory as two BMW sedans stopped at the factory’s rear gate, a hundred meters away. A man stepped out from the lead BMW, pulled open the gate, slipped back into the car as it came through. He didn’t bother closing the gate. These guys obviously didn’t plan to stay long.

  The sedans raced past an empty guard shack and across the trash-strewn lot. They stopped hard about ten meters from the factory’s rear fire exit. They parked side by side, the width of a car between them. Not too close, so the guys could cover each other if they came out under fire. Four front doors swung open. Four men stepped out. Three were compact and muscular and carried Heckler & Koch UMPs, fat, stubby machine pistols favored by Special Forces soldiers.

  The fourth was the man Wells had desperately hoped to see. The fourth was Mason.

  Wells edged backward, into the alley along the left side of the factory. They couldn’t see him unless they came for him, and he’d see them first. He had hidden the guards’ Nissan in the smaller parking lot at the factory’s front end. He’d correctly figured that Mason and his men would use the gate in back rather than the one in front, which was chained and padlocked.

  On top of the dead spy cam and unanswered calls, the missing Nissan would lead Mason to fear the worst. He would have no choice but to take his guys inside. Wells had walked the building’s perimeter, seen for himself that the fire exit was the only unlocked door. Once Mason went in, Wells would have him pinned.

  Wells had a Glock 19 and two spare mags he’d taken from the guardroom. He also had improvised a Molotov cocktail from a T-shirt, an empty bottle of raki, and gasoline he’d siphoned from the Nissan. Molotovs were poor man’s grenades, more messy than deadly. But at the right moment, they could be devastating.

  The Nissan had proven useful in one final way. Wells had broken off the car’s right-side mirror with a tire iron and bashed the plastic housing until the glass inside was free. He’d propped the mirror against the fence that marked the factory’s property line, about ten feet from the corner where he hid. The resulting view wasn’t exactly high-definition, but it let him see the men without having to poke his head out.

  Wells watched as Mason pointed at the roof and spoke to his men. Then he and two mercs ran for the back door, weapons drawn. They disappeared from Wells’s view as the door creaked open, then slammed shut. The third merc stood alone between the cars.

  So Mason had seen that Wells might be trying to trap him. Even so, Wells thought he had made the wrong play. He should either have left two men outside or risked bringing everyone inside. A lone guard couldn’t do much but get himself killed. Mason’s close-combat inexperience was showing. A twitch of a lyric passed through Wells: It was a small mistake/Sometimes that’s all it takes.

  He couldn’t remember the singer’s name. After he killed Mason, he’d look it up.

  On the other hand . . . Wells had wound up chained to a wall the last time he’d gone after Mason. Underestimating your opponent was the biggest mistake of all.

  —

  The guard tracked the edges of the building with his H&K, starting at the left corner, up and across the roofline, down to the right corner. When he was finished, he swung the muzzle across the front of the building and repeated himself. He looked like a pro to Wells, a combat veteran who would open up without hesitation.

  Wells counted twenty-four Mississippis as the guy made two passes. By now Mason and his men would have reached the second floor. Wells wanted them to be near the cell when he made his move. He needed as much time as possible to deal with the guy out here before the others came back.

  Wells imagined Mason would stay behind as the mercenaries cleared the catwalk. He’d watch for movement on the empty first floor, nervously tapping the phone in his pocket as he wondered what to tell his boss. In their short acquaintance, she hadn’t struck Wells as the type to tolerate mistakes. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, bullet in your head . . .

  Even as he pictured what was happening inside, Wells watched the mirror. The guard swept his machine pistol over the roof of the building for the third time. Wells slid to the corner, peeked out. The guard was a hundred feet from Wells, maybe one-twenty. Back in Kenya this distance had given him problems, but he’d spent a lot of time practicing his shooting since then. Plus the H&K wasn’t as big an edge as it seemed. Short-barrel, short-stock machine pistols tended to bounce. Shooting accurately with them took years of practice. Wells would find out soon enough how well this guy was trained.

  The guard looked at the top-right corner of the factory now, as far from Wells as he would be. Wells stepped out, pistol high in his hands, took a quiet step. The guy stood at a slight angle to him. He extended his arms, a shooter’s stance, squeezed the trigger twice. Two loud cracks echoed off the factory behind him. The shots thumped true—

  Too late Wells realized the guy was wearing a bullet-resistant vest. Not the ceramic plates that infantry wore, those would have been obvious. A thin Kevlar vest like the ones cops hid under their uniforms. They weren’t much use against an assault rifle, but Wells didn’t have an assault rifle. The Glock fired a medium-velocity 9-millimeter round, and Kevlar could stop those. Wells knew what had happened because the guy didn’t crumple when the round hit, didn’t go down all at once with blood spurting. Instead, the impact of the rounds pushed him sideways and he stumbled back against the BMW farther from Wells.

  Wells put himself in the mercenary’s position. He would feel like he’d been punched hard. He might even have a broken rib. But he’d realize quickly that he wasn’t seriously injured and that he had a huge tactical edge. He had the vest. He had a better weapon. He had reinforcements coming. He’d see that all he needed was to hold Wells at bay until his buddies got out of the building.

  Wells had two choices. Both lousy. Run for the front of the building, where he’d left the guards’ Nissan, and hope he could drive out before Mason’s men trapped him. Or kill this guy before the others showed up.

  He’d never much liked to run.

  —

  Wells raised the Glock, fired three times more, aiming high on the chest. If he was lucky he’d catch the guy with a head shot, but he didn’t expect to be lucky. He wanted to force the guy down, make him go to ground between the sedans. One round hit the guy square in the chest and knocked him backward off the second BMW. All those hours at the range had paid off. Too bad Wells had picked a target he couldn’t kill.

  The merc dove out of sight. He’d gather himself, decide to quit playing defense. He’d crawl or crab-walk toward the BMW that was nearer Wells, use the hood for cover while he lit Wells up. That’s what Wells would do, anyway. He hoped the guard was reading from the same playbook.

  Wells jammed his pistol in his waistband. He pulled the lighter he’d stolen and the Molotov. Making a Molotov was art, not science. Wells had torn a thin strip of cotton from a T-shirt, doused it in gas and stuffed one end in the bottle, which was three-quarters full of fuel. If the T-shirt was too soaked, the bottle would explode before Wells could throw it. Too dry, and the flame would die in midair.

  Wells flicked the light
er alive, touched flame to fabric. The fire roared instantly. Wells threw the Molotov in a high slow spiral like he was looking for a receiver on a fade route. The BMWs were parked maybe eighty feet away. Wells figured if he landed the Molotov within five or six feet of the merc, he’d have a chance. The pavement would shatter the bottle, spread burning gas in every direction. As the bottle left his hand, Wells grabbed his pistol and angled toward the back of the BMW. He wanted the merc to look at him, not the Molotov. He hoped that the merc had been so focused on getting into position to counterattack that he hadn’t even seen Wells throwing it.

  Wells took three steps. He looked over his shoulder just as the Molotov landed on the edge of the nearer BMW’s front hood. It struck on the passenger side, close to the windshield, and exploded in a ball of fire that seemed half gas, half liquid. A river of flaming gasoline poured off the hood—

  The merc screamed and jumped to escape the flames engulfing him. The sweater he wore over his vest burned wildly. The vest itself was fire-resistant, but it couldn’t protect the merc’s head or arms from the flames coming off his clothes. Worse, glass from the exploding bottle had raked his face. He screamed and clawed at his eyes. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have realized his facial injuries were agonizing but not life-threatening. He would have run to dry pavement and rolled to put out the flames. But of course he wasn’t thinking clearly. He was desperate, half blind, and in shock, his hair and skin burning with an acrid choking scent.

  The moment screamed for mercy, but Wells only had a pistol. He fired, moved. Two shots, two steps. He needed to end this before the others came through the fire door for him. Two more shots. Two more steps. Wells was working his way through this magazine in a hurry. No matter. With two spares, his biggest concern right now was a tired trigger finger. Out of ammo, an instructor at Ranger school had told him once. The three saddest words in the English language. You know what’s worse? Dying with leftover magazines on your belt. Two more shots. Wells was hoping to manage a head shot through sheer repetition.

  He did. The guard stopped screaming as suddenly as he’d started. His body dropped like a marionette free of its strings and thumped down insensate. Nothing left of him but flesh already cremating. Maybe Wells had been merciful after all.

  How many seconds since his first shot? Twenty? Wells ran for the BMW. As he reached it, the fire door swung open. Mason. Wells fired twice. Mason disappeared like a groundhog who’d misread the calendar. The door slammed shut behind him. Just in time, too, because the Glock’s slide snapped open to reveal an empty chamber.

  Wells thumbed the release. He shook out the empty mag as he grabbed the replacement in his pocket. In one smooth motion, he slipped the fresh mag into the well. It clicked home and Wells released the slide. He fired off two quick shots to be sure the door would stay closed long enough for him to consider his next move. If he could consider anything over the smell of a slow-cooking corpse.

  He could keep the guys pinned inside for a few minutes, but they’d find a way out. If nothing else, one of them would shoot his way through the factory’s front door. Wells couldn’t depend on the police to arrive in time, either. The plant was far enough from the nearest occupied building that anyone who heard the shots might mistake them for engine backfires, at least at first. And Wells didn’t necessarily want to be at the factory when the cops showed. They would stick him in custody for days or weeks, until they sorted out what had happened. By then, the war might already have started.

  Wells poked his head into the BMW to see if Mason’s men had left a key in the ignition, then realized his mistake. Like many new cars, the BMW didn’t use an actual key. It had a push-button starter that worked when its sensors detected a fob with the correct encryption. Maybe Mason or his men had left the key in the center console for a quick escape. Nope.

  Then Wells realized. If the dead merc on the other side of the sedan was carrying the key in his pocket, it would be close enough to trigger the BMW’s sensors. If the heat from the fire hadn’t cooked it. Wells slid inside, pressed the starter.

  The car hummed alive.

  Wells set the seat back as far as it would go and crouched behind the steering wheel, getting as low as he could. Even if the tires were ruined, he was sure the rims were all right. The fire hadn’t burned long enough to melt steel.

  For his purposes, running on rims would be fine. He put the car in drive, rested his foot on the brake pedal. Ten seconds passed.

  The door swung open. A burst of fire followed, an H&K on full auto. Covering fire, the guys inside trying to figure out if Wells had run for the gate or disappeared around the side of the factory. Wells guessed Mason and one merc were back here, as the other tried to shoot his way out the front door. A second burst, this one from the far end of the factory, confirmed the theory.

  Another covering burst, and then Mason stepped into the doorway. He fired twice in the general direction of the sedan, then turned toward the Dumpsters and fired twice more. The merc stepped out from the door behind him and moved toward the corner where Wells had first hidden, firing a five-shot burst.

  They were shooting blind, spraying rounds in the broadest possible arc. Not the best strategy, but then they were a wee bit jumpy after seeing what Wells had done to the others. They hadn’t figured out yet that he was directly in front of them. The BMW’s engine was nearly silent at idle, and the puddle of gasoline was still smoking, providing extra cover. Even so, Wells knew they’d see him soon enough.

  And then the merc looked at the BMW. He turned, swinging the H&K around—

  Wells twisted the steering wheel with his left hand, raised the Glock with his right. He stamped the gas and the sedan roared ahead. The merc got the machine pistol up and shattered the windshield with a half-dozen rounds. But Wells kept coming until the BMW slammed him against the wall and tossed the H&K out of his hands.

  The brick behind the merc propped him up and channeled the blow into his lower body. His hips and the big bones in his legs shattered. Only the fact that the BMW was pinning him kept him upright.

  Wells wasn’t wearing his seat belt. He flew at the steering wheel, but its airbag exploded out and smothered him. He had expected the crash. Even so, he was disoriented. In television commercials, airbag inflation looked pillow soft. In reality the bag came out hard enough to snap a toddler’s neck, the reason that child seats were always put in the rear. Two seconds passed before Wells pushed himself away from the bag wrapped around his face. He looked up—and saw the merc leaning forward, his face white and stretched in agony. He clawed at the BMW’s hood like he wanted to tear the car apart. Wells followed the merc’s eyes down to the hood and the Heckler & Koch. It had landed close to the windshield. The merc got a hand on it—

  Wells raised his Glock, fired through the windshield, again, again, until the back of the merc’s head exploded. The machine pistol fell from his hands and clattered against the hood. His corpse sagged off the wall, his upper body leaning forward, his legs still pinned. Wells shoved the BMW into reverse, feathered the gas. And went nowhere. He reached for the starter and then remembered that deploying airbags automatically killed a car’s battery and cut its engine. He was stuck in a dead car.

  The front and back passenger-side windows exploded almost simultaneously, kicking glass through the car like a burst piñata. Mason. Wells had forgotten him. He couldn’t be more than twenty feet away.

  Get out. Wells popped open his door and twisted his body onto the pavement so that he faced the BMW. Mason was somewhere on the other side, though Wells couldn’t see him. The driver’s-side window exploded in a rain of glass over Wells’s head.

  He grabbed the machine pistol, lifted it sideways, squeezed the trigger, firing blindly across the car, five shots and then five more, anything to force Mason away. Wells didn’t know how big a magazine the H&K had, probably thirty- or forty-round. Most of them had to be gone. He still couldn’t see
Mason, but he heard a grunt and wondered if he’d scored. Then footsteps backing off, and more shots.

  Wells edged to the back of his ruined BMW and peeked out over the trunk. Mason was crouched maybe fifty feet away behind the other BMW. Wells wondered why he hadn’t simply taken off and then realized he must not have the key.

  Mason saw him peeking. And waved.

  In answer, Wells popped off a single shot with the Glock. He felt like one of those dumbass jihadis he’d trained beside in Afghanistan, pistol in one hand, H&K in the other. All he needed was a sword strapped to his belt.

  Mason appeared content to wait. He crouched silently, his pistol propped on the trunk, almost daring Wells to come at him. He raised his head long enough for Wells to see that he was smiling. Enjoying himself. Somehow the smirk made Wells think of Evan and Heather. Maybe Duto had messaged him. Maybe they were safe. But Wells couldn’t afford to take his eyes off Mason long enough to find out. The thought of the phone in his pocket maddened him. He forced himself to forget it, focus on the problem at hand.

  Mason’s grin widened. Like he knew exactly what Wells had just done. Like he’d read Wells’s mind. “What now?” Mason said.

  “Put the pistol on the ground, walk out where I can see you, and lie prone. It’s over.”

  “Please.”

  Shots echoed from the front of the building.

  “He’s out now,” Mason said. “Coming around the building. He comes up my side, we’ll get in this car and drive away. He’s got the key. He comes up your side, he’ll be behind you and we’ll have you.”

  “Whatever happens to me, this game you’re running, it’s done.”