Operations Compromised

by Warren Conrad

“Please understand there have been complications. Return my men, and we can work things out.”

  “I will call with a time and place.”

  Stryker left his truck in Rawlins to deal with later.

  *****

  From his place of concealment in the trees, Stryker watched the trailhead. When Rachel’s truck pulled up, she had a man in the cab with her. He dialed her number and told her to get out alone and move forward into the trees. She did as instructed, and he told her to place her gun and knife on the ground, walk forward twenty feet, and lie face down. She obeyed again without question. Keeping his gun trained on her, he slipped out from the trees and tossed a zip tie to her.

  “Tie your hands,” he said.

  She slowly sat up and secured her hands with the tie, using her teeth to pull it closed. “Keep still.” He tucked his gun away and checked her for additional weapons but found none. He took her phone and asked for the number of the man still in the truck. “I’d like to have another conversation, just me and you,” he told her. He held the phone to her ear as it rang.

  “Victor, stay put, all right? Stay in the truck.”

  Stryker ended the call and knelt beside her. “Tell me about Kaesar.”

  “We picked him up as planned and took him up the hill. The rest of the team followed me with Kaesar in a SUV, but they suddenly veered off and rolled into a ditch. I ran back and found a dead deer on the side of the road. The car was smashed up, and my team was half-conscious and tangled in air bags.”

  “And Kaesar?”

  “Gone. He’d managed to escape out the back.” He stared at her.

  “I’m telling the truth!”

  “Could be. What did you do next?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “We searched the area, but we weren’t able to find him. He knows the trails around here better than we do. So we set up surveillance at the airport and his house and waited. I was too wrapped up in finding Kaesar to keep our meeting, and I had no way to contact you.”

  “Maybe you should get to the part where you tried to have me killed.”

  “They weren’t trying to kill you. Just locate you. We kept a low profile in case Kaesar was still in the area somewhere, and we tracked down where you had been camping. We were told you had packed up and left, so I told my men to go to Rawlins to try to find you.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you might have a lead on Kaesar.”

  Stryker watched her for any signs of dishonesty but saw only a mixture of sincerity and irritation. Either she was telling the truth, or she was very good at keeping it hidden. “Stand up,” He cut her zip ties with a knife. He stepped back, gun in hand, while she rubbed her wrists.

  “Still afraid of me?”

  “You might throw a pinecone.”

  She smiled. “Where are my men?”

  “Move twenty yards to your right, beside that big tree.”

  She walked the way he’d indicated, and Stryker went to the truck back at the trailhead.

  There was sufficient cover to creep nearly up to it. He waited for the man inside to look the other way and rushed to the open window, his gun barrel striking the man’s temple before he could bring his own fully up. He grabbed the man’s wrist and slammed it down on the window frame, and the gun fell to the ground.

  “We’re just going to wait here,” Stryker said.

  In a few minutes, Rachel and the two other team members came out of the trees—one of them supported by the other—and found Stryker standing by the truck, one gun in hand and the other tucked away. He figured she had picked up her gun and knife on the way back. Stryker looked at her, gesturing with his gun the same way she had with her knife in the restaurant.

  “How can I trust you?” he said.

  Rachel drew out her pistol using two fingers and laid it on the pine needles covering the ground. She did the same with her knife. To Stryker’s surprise, she pulled out a small derringer and put it down as well.

  “How did I miss that?”

  “Don’t feel bad.” She tucked her hair back, fighting another smile. “I palmed it when I lay down.”

  No doubt he would be a dead man if she wanted to kill him, he thought. He might be a master at killing from a distance, but she obviously killed up close and personal. He could learn from this woman.

  Chapter 7

  New York City, New York

  September 2009

  Stryker felt the familiar tug as the wheels left the ground, that instant of displacement between earth and sky. There was no one shooting at him this time, no RPGs trailing smoke as they seemed to seek him out like bloodhounds on the scent. The plane left the runway in Jackson Hole uneventfully, en route to New York, yet he still had trouble relaxing in his seat. Maybe it was the Israeli Intelligence agent in the seat next to him, a highly trained killer who gripped her armrests white-knuckled and had not stopped talking since they reached their gate.

  “I fly all the time,” she said. “I still hate it. It’s completely irrational. I’m more likely to die from a bullet to the brain or a knife to the gut—hell, by a lightning strike—but I can’t help it. Does flying bother you? Of course it doesn’t. You’re about as emotional as a pile of bricks.”

  He looked at her. “Do you need a bag to breathe into?”

  “Don’t patronize me. Are we almost there yet?”

  “We just took off.”

  They had made arrangements to dispose of Stryker’s truck and the camping equipment before leaving town. Most of the gear she put in her condo. The truck would be sold, and Stryker signed over the title. The rifles, knives, and pistols would go to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. Rachel’s team had been closely monitoring the airlines, checking for all of Kaesar’s known aliases, and they were confident that he had decided to drive away from Wyoming. He was sure to be spooked after his capture and escape, and Rachel thought there was a better than even chance he would fly to Europe to meet with one of his contacts there and investigate who might have been after him. Either way, she figured he was likely to go by his condo in New York for money and supplies and to check if someone had broken into his computer. Stryker and Rachel had scheduled airline flights using false papers, and they hoped to arrive in time to set a trap before Kaesar finished his long drive from Jackson Hole.

  “Maybe you need a drink,” Stryker said. He waved over the flight attendant.

  “I knew I liked you,” Rachel said. “Wine. Red.”

  Stryker ordered Crown with a splash of Coke for himself. After their drinks arrived, she relaxed somewhat, her eyes even closing. Stryker took the moment to study her. She was beautiful, with a small face that belied her age. In fact, she looked more like a college girl. Her hair was a soft brown, cut just below her ears. She had the build of a swimmer or runner, lean and strong. What appeared to be a knife cut ran diagonally along her left forearm and tell-tale scars from bullet wounds pocked her right arm and lower calf.

  Her eyes were open now, watching him observe her. She did not look displeased, only curious. “What is it?”

  “Tell me your story.”

  She canted her head and then looked out the window at the thick cloud bank they were passing through, and he didn’t think she would open up. Maybe it was the wine, but she began to speak, slow and soft at first, and then faster and more assured.

  “I grew up in Buenos Aires. Have you ever been? It’s beautiful. I have two sisters, one older, one younger. They have normal lives.” She took a sip of wine. Liquid courage. “My father was Mossad. He died in the bombing at the Israeli Embassy in 1992.” The softness of her face hardened into harsh lines, and she stared at the window for so long that he once again thought she was finished. He was about to close his eyes and rest when she spoke again.

  “We moved from Argentina to Israel. I finished school there and went to do my required military service. I eventually became an instructor in hand-to-hand combat. Even after I could have gotten out, I stayed in, wanting to perfect my skills. I knew I’d need t
hem one day when I found the person who planned the embassy bombing.” She released a slow breath. “After a while, I went to university in England. Studied languages. After graduation, Israeli Intelligence recruited me to work as an analyst. I’d been with the agency several years when I asked to test for field training. At the time, Mossad needed female agents. They still told me I had only a twenty percent chance of completing the training. It’s not that it was difficult—difficult is saying goodbye to your family and everything you know. No, this was borderline impossible. I almost quit after the first month, but I kept thinking of my father.”

  “And you made it through.”

  “My martial arts training gave me an edge. I got to the point I could take out all of my instructors, and finally I became one myself. I trained with everything I was able to get my hands on. I worked with teams all over Europe, mostly intelligence gathering and surveillance. In recent months, we’ve been following any lead we can find to track down an Iranian of interest. One of those information trails led to Kaesar, and here we are.”

  She was surprisingly open, which he found refreshing, especially in this line of work. Still he sensed that she was holding back, that there was more to her story. From the way she drank her wine and looked at him over the rim, though, he knew that now she was done.

  “Your turn,” Rachel said.

  Stryker shared with her about growing up in Berryville, his time in college, and his parents’ deaths after rolling off a slick country road at night. He talked about how September 11, 2001, changed his life. He startled himself by telling her about Emma, something he didn’t share with many people. He saw recognition in her eyes when he spoke about the driving need both to punish those responsible and to stop these things from happening again. Perhaps that was the reason he could be open with her; he did not need to explain.

  He told her about his tours, Ranger training, and time with Special Forces, though he did not mention becoming a Delta Force Operator. He told her of his belief that traitors had given the information that resulted in the deaths of his men and the children in the village.

  “Do you want revenge?”

  He paused. “What I want most, I think, is to put fear into those who would do harm to innocents or to our military.”

  “I can get behind that.” She drained the last of her glass and closed her eyes again.

  Stryker had learned to rest when he could, and he settled back to sleep for the remainder of the flight. The vibration of the plane and the lull of white noise from the engines made it easy. He woke up at one point to find Rachel sound asleep with her head resting on his shoulder. He couldn’t help smiling and soon drifted back to sleep.

  Once they reached New York, a man waiting at the curb drove them to a Mossad safe house about ten minutes from the airport. Inside they found cell phones, radios, a computer, weapons, maps, clothes, and food and drink. Stryker inspected the impressive array of firearms while Rachel examined an assortment of knives. He liked the way the Israelis did business.

  They received the location and photographs of Kaesar’s condo. The surveillance team had disabled the security system. The issue was not getting into the house but rather what to do with Kaesar after he arrived.

  Stryker suggested they turn Kaesar into an informant by scaring him enough to become the asset they both needed. Rachel agreed to keep him alive, but she needed to remain unknown for operational and security reasons. After they left the safe house, they were dropped on a street one block from the condo by the same man who picked them up at the airport.

  The street was mostly dark, with warm halos of light around the major building entrances, including Kaesar’s condo. Stryker and Rachel were dressed in black from their caps to their boots. Other Mossad agents hidden on the street advised them by radio when the street was clear, and they entered the condo. It was empty, with no sign that Kaesar had returned. They reactivated the alarm and waited for Kaesar to arrive.

  They waited in silence until almost dawn. The hours dragged on, and Stryker began to wonder if Kaesar had decided his home was too risky. At about 5:30 a.m., the agents radioed that a cab was approaching. It stopped down the block, and a man got out and walked in the opposite direction from the condo. The agents saw the man go around the block before approaching, looking around and behind. He hurried up the steps and entered.

  Rachel and Stryker heard the door open and saw the man pause to disarm the alarm.

  Rachel moved out of the shadows, but Kaesar’s reflexes were better than she had expected, and he swung a strong right cross that caught her squarely in the face. The impact sounded like a slab of beef getting struck with a sledgehammer, and Rachel fell. Before she even hit the floor, though, her left foot lashed out and struck Kaesar in the knee. As he crumpled, Rachel caught herself and pivoted, her right foot shooting over to connect with the side of his head. Kaesar hit the carpet unconscious. Rachel’s double move happened so quickly that Stryker had no time to come to her aid before Kaesar was taken out.

  “Remind me never to piss you off,” he said.

  Stryker bound Kaesar’s hands and feet with tape and pulled him to a chair in the dining room. They had screwed it securely to the wood floor. Once Kaesar was strapped to the chair,

  Rachel placed a sleeping mask over his eyes and wrapped tape around his head to keep the mask in place. She poured a glass of water over his face. It took several glasses before Kaesar awoke, sputtering and yelling before they stuffed a gag in his mouth.

  “We’re going to remove the gag,” Stryker told him. “But if you shout, we will put it back.”

  When the gag was removed, Kaesar drew a few deep breaths and then spoke rapidly. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  “We only want information,” Stryker said. “I’ll make it simple. You cooperate with us and live, or you don’t, and I promise you’ll suffer the consequences.”

  “You’re making a big mistake, let me tell you right now. I have powerful friends.”

  “You need to worry about yourself. We’ll discuss it in the next twenty-four hours. Think about cooperating while we’re gone.” Stryker stuffed the gag back into his mouth.

  He and Rachel picked up their gear, set the alarm, and left through the front door. When the agents outside told them it was clear, they moved through the gate and down the steps. At the corner, a car picked them up and took them back to the safe house.

  Once inside, Stryker had his first good look at Rachel’s face. Her lip was split, and the left side of her face and her eye were swollen. The eye would close unless ice was applied quickly. He wrapped a towel full of ice and gave it to her. “Can you eat?”

  “Maybe a little.” She pressed the ice to her eye. “I moved and missed some of the blow, but he hits like a freight train.”

  Stryker found some canned soup and crackers and brought it to her at the table. After she finished, he brought her some tea. He tried a few times to start a conversation, but Rachel did not talk very well with her lip hurting, so he left her alone and turned on the news. She finally joined him on the couch and lay down with her feet in his lap. It wasn’t long before she was fast asleep.

  He awoke to a hand nudging his arm. “Get up,” Rachel said, leaning over him. Her lip had swollen more during the night, and her eye was almost closed. “We need to go back and finish the job.”

  Kaesar remained as they had left him but barely breathing. At first, Stryker thought he might be dead. He removed the gag, and Kaesar began to breathe more noticeably. Stryker got a glass of water and let him sip until he could talk and then took it away.

  In a raspy voice, Kaesar said, “I will kill you for this.”

  “But you won’t. Because at the first sign you’re even thinking about crossing us, we’ll visit your mother at 1342 Briarhill, who will sadly have her head blown off during a break-in. Your father, at 2217 Park Circle, will suffer a heart attack working in that pitiful vegetable garden of his. Here’s a nice photo of him watering—what are those
—bell peppers?”

  Rachel slapped a stack of glossy photos against the side of Kaesar’s face, and he jumped.

  She dropped them on the floor in front of his chair.

  “Your sister-in-law at 445 Seventeenth Street is a trusting soul who doesn’t even lock her front door, did you know that? Sadly, she’ll break her neck coming down the stairs. And your niece and nephew at Little Creek Elementary will last be seen getting pulled into a van on the way home from school. They’ll find what’s left of them in a drainage ditch.”

  Rachel hit Kaesar in the face with more photos and dropped them at his feet. He let out a shaky cry. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  Stryker turned on the recorder and asked him to repeat his full name, which he did. Next Stryker asked him for the name of his main client in the Middle East, which he said was a Palestinian named Abdullah Seif, who worked for a wealthy Pakistani named Prince Turki Assiri. Stryker gave the list of information that he needed from Kaesar. He asked for details about how much money was being transferred into the United States and the entities used for the transfers. He wanted to know the banks and account names. Next he wanted names of politicians getting payoffs, as well as those in the military. Finally Stryker pressed him for knowledge of information leaks.

  “I don’t know any details about information leaks,” Kaesar said. The only thing he knew was that for many years his client had been transferring large amounts of money into the United States to be placed into investments. The money was then sent out of the United States to accounts in the Caymans and Geneva. Kaesar promised to give them the information, names, lists of his clients, and banks involved, if they would let him live and leave his family alone.

  Stryker met Rachel’s eyes, seeking assent. She nodded. Stryker replaced the gag. “Good news, Herman. You’re not going to die today, and your family is safe. Instead you’re going to become our informant. You will find out the names of groups and individuals connected to your client. You’ll need to obtain this information within a week, and if you try to run or warn your client, you’ll live only long enough to hear about your family on the news. Nod if you understand.”