Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport
Newport News, Virginia
1930 Local Time
Jarvis clasped his fingers together behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “You’re gloating.”
“Am not.” Smith shut the office door and took a seat across the desk from Jarvis. “Besides, what do I have to gloat about? I’m not the one who walks on water. That’s Dempsey’s job.”
“What he pulled off in Iraq was a miracle, but last time I checked his initials were JD, not JC. This is exactly the kind of goat rope I want to avoid.”
“It’s not like he crashed the helo on purpose, boss. We’re damn lucky he and the others made it out alive.”
“I realize that, but you’re missing the point. You and Dempsey made a case for this op, and so I backed you with the DNI. But I can’t afford to have Dempsey running wild, kicking doors so he can make good on old vendettas from his days in the Wild West.”
“Are you saying that Dempsey did something wrong?”
“No, what I’m saying is managing perceptions is a part of every mission. I don’t want the DNI to think that our Special Activities Director is more interested in settling old scores than pursuing the mission objectives.”
“You picked up on that, too?”
Jarvis nodded. “Dempsey’s got history with al-Mahajer.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t think to ask.”
Smith flushed.
“It’s all right, Shane, I’m not trying to bust your balls. I signed off on nabbing al-Mahajer because you made a good case and lobbied with conviction. Unfortunately, it went the other way on us and now al-Mahajer knows we’re hunting him. God only knows when he’ll surface again. If we had made the decision to monitor, we might have been able to gather intel and track his proxy back to wherever he’s hiding. The DNI is a patient, pragmatic man, but that patience and pragmatism has its limits. When Philips took the reins as Ember’s sponsor, he gave us enough rope to hang ourselves. Let’s not tie our own noose. Be sure to convey the message to Dempsey.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“But?” Jarvis could see in Smith’s body language that there was a but.
“Permission to speak frankly?”
“Always.”
“The only difference between this mission and Dempsey’s previous engagements is that this one went south on us. So, if I read between the lines, what the DNI seems to be saying is, we have his support, as long as everything goes right.”
“No, Shane, that’s not the message. The message is ‘stay objective.’ Focus on the big picture. For the rest of his life, Dempsey is going to be haunted by the demons of his past. To be effective, he’s going to have to learn to compartmentalize. None of us can afford to let our remorse or need for revenge sway our strategic and tactical decisions. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Now for the real reason I called you in here.” Jarvis slid a brown file folder across the table. “Meet the newest member of our team.”
Smith eyed the folder as if it were radioactive. Finally, he opened it. Jarvis watched his pupils dart back and forth as he scanned the personnel file inside. Smith sighed, closed the folder, and looked up.
“Simon Adamo, career CIA. Please tell me you’re fucking with me, sir.”
“’Fraid not, Ops O. He was hand selected by the DNI himself.”
“Why?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, our operations are creating friction with the CIA. Adamo’s role is to serve as liaison between us and OGA so everybody plays nice together.”
“And how, exactly, does a unit that doesn’t even exist need a liaison with anyone, much less the CIA?”
“Due to the very small footprint our charter requires, we’re forced to rely on support from the other intelligence communities. Agreed?”
“Of course.”
“So we can’t always come in and out with a wave of a hand and a warning that ‘we were never here.’ This is not some Hollywood action movie.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
Smith narrowed his eyes. “An outsider, handpicked by the DNI, thrust into our unit after a screwup—gimme a break. Adamo isn’t a liaison; he’s a mole. Just like Kittinger forced Grimes onto our team, Philips is doing the exact same thing with this guy.” He swallowed and added, “Sir.”
“Now that’s what I recruited you to do—think above your pay grade,” Jarvis said, making no attempt to temper his satisfaction. Smith had made the deductive leap without prompting. When he’d poached Smith from Delta, the young officer had been tactically impressive but strategically unsophisticated. Like most SOF operators, Smith had been focused on execution and efficiency, and didn’t give a shit about the political gamesmanship going on in the command and control echelon. Now, as the Ops O, Smith needed to worry about motives and power grabs, backstabbing and sandboxing—all the crap operators hated to think about. Someday, Smith would succeed him as Director of Ember, and when that day came, his prodigy needed to be proficient in the tactics of winning inside the Beltway, not just on the battlefield.
“Nice to see you’re so happy about turning me into a cynical bastard.”
“DC ain’t Neverland, Shane. To survive, you gotta grow up.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Pretend the new guy’s not trying to undermine us at every turn, when I know otherwise?”
“Just because Adamo is not one of us doesn’t mean he can’t add value. Just look at Grimes. She’s fully integrated now and has proved her value time and again.”
“That’s only because Kittinger’s dead.”
Jarvis shook his head. “Not true. A month in, she was one of us.”
“Except Elizabeth wasn’t career CIA; there’s a big fucking difference between her background and loyalties and this jackass’s.”
“Well said,” Jarvis agreed. “But Philips, unlike Kittinger, isn’t a traitor. I trust him, and so we accept his man Adamo without complaint. You and Dempsey will simply have to figure out how to work with him.”
Smith shook his head. “Dempsey’s gonna blow a gasket. You do realize that?”
“Dempsey works for you, Shane. Make it work, end of discussion.”
“Roger that,” Smith said, pushing the folder back across the desk and getting to his feet. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, you have two days to get me a plan to find al-Mahajer. Something doesn’t smell right about this whole thing, and I want to know why.”
CHAPTER 12
Signals Analysis Lab
Ember Operations Center
October 19, 1140 Local Time
Colored lines danced across the computer screen.
They meant nothing to Dempsey, just as they hadn’t for the past four hours. If one stared hard enough, was it possible for data to burn a hole in a man’s brain that would lead to his eventual, and merciful, death? Baldwin was standing behind him, one hand on his left shoulder and one on Chip’s right shoulder. Or maybe it was Dale’s. Dempsey really wasn’t sure who was who; they seemed virtually interchangeable, so perhaps it didn’t matter. Sitting next to Dempsey and his considerable bulk, the techno whiz kid looked like a middle schooler.
“There, there, do you see it?” Baldwin asked.
Dempsey blinked. No, he did not see “it.”
“See how they merge?” Chip-or-Dale asked.
He raised an eyebrow. He actually did see that.
There were seven different lines, each a different color, and they danced around on the screen, each with a very different shape and pattern. As he watched, the green line merged on top of the red line behind it, and for a moment they seemed . . .
“Identical,” Dempsey said.
“Nothing is identical,” Chip-or-Dale said, and he double-clicked a box at the bottom and began inputting numbers. “But this is a ninety-two percent match.”
Dempsey scrunched up his fa
ce and stared at the lines. “So this is like a voice match on two different phone calls or something?”
Baldwin sighed. “It’s not a voice, John. These are encrypted data streams.”
“Right,” Dempsey said, frustrated. “But for the hundredth time, I don’t know what the fuck ‘matching segments of encrypted data streams’ means.” He leaned back in his chair and pulled at the sides of his face with flat palms. It was like talking baseball with an alien from another planet.
“Okay,” Baldwin said and sat down next to him. “Think of these streams as patterns of information. We don’t have sentences; we don’t even have words, because the data is still encrypted. But the encrypted data yields a pattern nonetheless. Sophisticated encryption systems, like the ones our adversaries use, employ revolving algorithms so even the appearance of the encrypted data from a single source varies over time. Do you understand?”
Dempsey nodded. He didn’t really understand, but he thought he had the gist of it: The encryption changed the data—voice, SMS, or e-mail exchanges—into unrecognizable bits of data. On top of that, the encryption itself was ever changing.
“But if you have a library of old data streams, especially data collected from the same adversary using a standardized encryption protocol, you can use a computer to hunt for matching segments of encrypted data to see if they come from a common source.”
“That’s a leap,” Dempsey grumbled.
“Of course,” Baldwin said with a chuckle. “I’m giving you the CliffsNotes version.”
In other words, Baldwin was explaining chaos theory to a three-year-old.
“But you get the idea?”
“Sure, I guess,” Dempsey said. “So you look to match the recently collected patterns to those you have in a database of previously collected transmissions.”
“Basically, yes.”
“Sounds like you’d need one hell of an archive.”
“That database is maintained off-site by a friendly three-letter entity.”
“And it sounds like you’d need one hell of a computer to sort through all that data.”
“That computer is also maintained off-site by the same friend.”
“So what is it that you actually do here?”
Baldwin and Chip-or-Dale shared a conspiratorial grin.
“We create the algorithms, statistical models, and analysis software that does the heavy lifting.”
“Ah, the spooky genius math shit.”
“Precisely,” Baldwin said. “The spooky genius math shit that finds needles in haystacks.”
Dempsey rolled his head in a circle, cracking the vertebrae in his neck. Then he twisted his shoulders right and left to crack his back. Baldwin winced as he watched. “So, Professor, now that I understand your flying spaghetti monster on the computer screen, can you please tell me what, if any, actual intelligence you’ve been able to glean from all this?”
“We confirmed that one of the data streams is indeed from Rafiq al-Mahajer,” Baldwin said with a victorious smile.
“So the green line we isolated is al-Mahajer?”
“No,” Baldwin said. “The orange line is al-Mahajer. The green line is a new match between that and a source, probably a mobile phone, that communicated with al-Mahajer’s proxy’s Blackberry.”
“Then who the hell is the green line?”
Baldwin shrugged, and Dempsey resisted the urge to turn around, rise from his chair, and strangle the genius. “No idea, but we have a confirmed match in the database.”
“A ninety-two percent confidence interval,” Chip-or-Dale added.
“Yes,” Baldwin echoed, his voice getting excited now. “We have archive data from this source all over the place: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, but also inside Iran.”
Dempsey’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you telling me this is Amir Modiri?”
“No, no, no,” Baldwin said. “It’s definitely not Modiri. We have his signature locked down from the Kittinger calls. No, this source is someone else. Very active. Very mobile.”
“Wait, I’m confused. Are we talking about al-Mahajer’s proxy?”
“No, someone who was in communication with al-Mahajer’s proxy.”
“Someone present at the meeting in Qa’im?”
“Impossible to tell. I would need all the mobile phones confiscated from all the terrorists in attendance. We only have the proxy’s mobile and laptop to work with.”
“Shit,” Dempsey said, and slammed his hand down on the desk. I should’ve grabbed every phone from every crow.
“Hey, John.”
Dempsey turned and saw Smith in the doorway.
“Anything?”
“Yes and no,” Dempsey said with a sigh. “We confirmed al-Mahajer was in communication with his proxy, and we found a match with another shithead who has been talking to al-Mahajer’s proxy but also has been recorded inside Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.”
“Iran?” Smith’s brows rose. “Did you check the source against anything we intercepted in Yemen before Crusader?”
“I didn’t check that,” Baldwin said. “But that’s a very good idea.”
“I’m on it,” Chip-or-Dale said, his fingers flying across the keyboard at his terminal.
“And how is Wang coming on our decryption problem? Any chance we can see the actual messages soon?” Smith asked.
“The decryption is slow going,” Baldwin replied.
“Well, go faster.” Smith shifted his gaze to Dempsey. “Can you break away?”
Dempsey popped out of his task chair like a rocket. “Thanks for the class, Professor,” he called as he bolted for the door. “What’s up?” he asked as he followed Smith to his office.
“Not sure. You have a call.”
“Here?” Dempsey asked, confused.
“Remember that blind that we set up—the comm line that routes through dozens of nodes in Europe and Asia to prevent traces?”
“Yeah.”
“Someone called in on that line and asked for Agent Dempsey.”
“Agent Dempsey?”
“Actually he said, ‘that jackass agent, John Dempsey.’ He said his name was Chunk? I was about to hang up on the clown, but something in his voice sounded legit.”
Dempsey smiled. “Chunk is Lieutenant Keith Redman from SEAL Team Four. I gave him that number to call me if he found anything he thought I might be interested in from the other crows they pulled off the X near Qa’im. Maybe he found something.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he just misses you,” Smith said, smiling sweetly. He pointed to the phone on his desk. “I transferred the call in here. Line two.”
Dempsey reached over and hit the speaker button so they could both hear what the SEAL officer had to say.
“Hey, Chunk,” Dempsey said. “You keeping your head down?”
“Nah,” the SEAL said with a chuckle. “If I was smart enough for that I don’t guess I’d be here.”
“Right,” Dempsey agreed. “What’s up?”
“I’m not usually one to share intel with you OGA types—but we kinda shared some crazy in the suck.”
“Just doing my bit to make the earth a safer place for decent people.”
“Amen to that,” Chunk said. “So listen. Most of the crows we got were usual ISIS shitheads, full of piss and vinegar until the real interrogators come. But this one dude—a guy who we pulled out of that conference room in the house where you grabbed the German proxy—”
“You mean my mission objective who you shot in the head,” Dempsey interrupted.
“Right, the guy I shot saving your goat-herding ass. That’s the one. Anyway, this other crow turns out to be solid, you know. Iron-sphincter stoic. Wouldn’t give up nothing. But the Agency guys got real excited because they got a hit in the facial-recognition database.”
Dempsey pursed his lips. “Is he ISIS leadership?”
“No,” Chunk said, savoring the moment. “They think the dude is fucking Hezbollah.”
Dempsey shot a look at Smith,
whose eyes widened. “The CIA guys told you that?”
“No, of course not. Those dickheads wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire, but my combat medic was in the room and heard them talking. They told him to say nothing to no one. But he’s a SEAL, you know, so he passed it to me. And now I’m passing it to you.”
“Is he still in Irbil?”
“I doubt it, bro. They left in an unmarked civilian jet an hour ago and took him with them.”
“No idea where, I’m guessing.”
Chunk made a pffft sound over the line. “C’mon, Dempsey, they’re fucking CIA, what do you think?”
“No problem, we’ll find him. I owe you one for this, Chunk, thank you.”
“Yeah, well, hooyah and all that. You were locked on when that helo went down. Fucking Rambo, bro. Keep me in mind if you ever need anything down range.”
“Will do, Chunk. Stay low.”
“Won’t be a problem. They’re shipping me back to Virginia tomorrow for leave. Something about a helo crash.”
Dempsey laughed and ended the call. “Hezbollah?” he said, turning to Smith. “What the fuck? Are all these shitheads cooperating now?”
“We gotta find out where they took that crow,” Smith said. “I’ll go brief the boss. Hopefully he can convince the DNI to get us in the loop. I’d like to take a turn with this guy.”
Dempsey leaned back against the edge of the desk. “Me, too, bro. Me, too.”
CHAPTER 13
Covert Hezbollah Training Camp
Cuchumatanes Mountains, Guatemala
October 20, 1730 Local Time
Rostami cursed and smacked the back of his neck.
Something had just bitten him and it hurt. He looked at the red smear in the palm of his hand, littered with unrecognizable insect parts. He wasn’t sure which he hated more, the biting flies or the mosquitoes.
“Fuck the jungle,” he muttered, wiping his hand on his pant leg as he made his way to the training camp’s command tent.
It was ten minutes until sunset, which meant two things: Maghrib and mosquitoes. Last night he’d been eaten alive during the prayer ritual. The buzzing bloodsuckers had gotten him everywhere he’d left exposed skin—neck, ears, face, hands, and ankles. He’d even gotten a mosquito bite on his eyelid, which had swollen up and tormented him all day. Before lunch, he’d doused himself from head to toe in insect repellant. So far, it had kept the mosquitos at bay, but it hadn’t stopped the biting flies from trying to take chunks out of him.
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