Crusader One

by Brian Andrews

  The sky began to brighten.

  Movement on the shoreline . . .

  He squeezed the trigger.

  A figure stumbled, but didn’t fall. It turned, and then a muzzle flash lit up the night, wrecking his night vision. Reflexively, Jarvis juked right, and a bullet that had been on a trajectory to hit him square in the face whizzed past his ear. He ducked, took cover behind a stump, squeezed his eyes tight for a three count to restore his night vision, and then scanned the beach. The shadow was on the move, heading toward the RIB. Jarvis shifted to one knee and fired five rounds, but none hit their mark as the shadow rolled into the RIB. Cursing, Jarvis popped to his feet and sprinted through the trees, darting and dodging low-hanging branches and tree roots. By the time he reached the water’s edge, the RIB was screaming away.

  He skidded to a stop, took a bent-knee firing position, and emptied his magazine—firing at the craft as it sped away, spraying a rooster tail and leaving white wake trailing behind. He swapped magazines and sent another volley of rounds into the night . . . powerless to do anything else but watch as the boat sped away into the black.

  “Zero, where the hell are my eyes?” he demanded.

  “I’m coming up real time on the satellite now and have a drone en route.”

  “Ping on me.”

  “Just another forty-five seconds,” Baldwin said softly, a professor speaking to his class.

  “Hurry, they’re getting away.”

  “We’ll get them.”

  Jarvis could no longer see the RIB or its wake. A beat later the night went quiet. Clutching his pistol, he contemplated the attack. Clean. Fast. Efficient. This was no half-baked homegrown terrorist event.

  “What’s taking so long?” Jarvis barked, staring out into the night.

  “Coming up now,” Baldwin said in his ear.

  “Their escape vector was north-northeast from my position.”

  “I’m looking . . . I don’t see a boat. Is it possible that they—”

  “Fuck,” Jarvis seethed, cutting Baldwin off. “Look across the inlet. Scan the shoreline. It’s a short hop by water but a long haul by car. These guys were professionals, Ian, which means they would have planned for satellite and drone coverage. If this was my op, I’d ditch the boat, egress on foot under tree cover to a vehicle, and then get lost in Annapolis or DC.”

  “Copy that, sir. We’ll keep looking.”

  “Spin up the team and get them heading north.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Baldwin,” he said, as a color-coded probability matrix began to take shape on the whiteboard in his mind.

  “Sir?”

  “This feels like a false-flag terrorist attack. It was too well planned and executed to be ISIS or some other extremist terror outfit. Work with our friends at Fort Meade and start mining facial recognition for all known VEVAK assets and contractors. Low threshold. Fifty-one percent match or better.”

  “Already in progress,” came Baldwin’s reply.

  “This has Modiri’s signature all over it,” Jarvis said, talking more to himself than Baldwin now. “VEVAK is here, and we’re going to find them.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “I’m going back to the house to look for survivors. Update me immediately with any new information.”

  “Copy. Zero out.”

  Jarvis checked his watch. More than eight minutes had passed since the explosion and now three minutes since the RIB had escaped, but there was still time. Whoever the attackers were, they were good. But he had something they didn’t . . .

  He had John Dempsey.

  CHAPTER 6

  Galway Bay Irish Bar

  Annapolis, Maryland

  May 3

  2030 Local Time

  Dempsey sipped at his ginger ale and sighed.

  A year running operations at a breakneck pace had earned the team this night of revelry, but somebody had to play parent, and when he saw things begin to digress, he’d naturally slid into the job. Thank God Jarvis had thought to book everyone a room at the Flag House Inn Hotel just a few blocks away. Corralling these guys and flying home in this sloppy, sorry state would have been a complete pain in the ass.

  Jarvis had arranged for Ember’s Special Activities Division to meet and share strategy with a tactical contingent from Mossad. After joint training with the Israelis at the Farm for two days, they had concluded with a best-practices swap summit of their own in Annapolis today. His team had been professional, and their Israeli guests had seemed impressed—although maybe a little more interested in gaining than sharing information. Now, as he watched his teammates bust up with sophomoric banter, he couldn’t help but feel a little jealous.

  “Are they always like this?” Munn asked, his gray eyes sharp and clear. The doc took a sip of his drink and then smiled. “Tonic sans gin.”

  After two beers each, they’d both switched to the light stuff.

  “Actually, no,” Dempsey said, shaking his head with a smile. “This is the first time in months the entire gang has been out together. Everyone’s been burning the candle at both ends since, well, since I got here.”

  “Then it’s all good,” Munn said. “Apparently they needed to blow off some steam.”

  Wang suddenly snorted loudly, and Grimes, who was still giving him the cold shoulder, giggled along and elbowed Smith—who actually fell out of his chair onto the floor with a howl. The one-time CIA agent, Adamo, had his forehead on the table and was either asleep or passed out. Either way, the spook was dead to the world.

  A double-chirp from his left cargo pocket gave Dempsey a start and his pulse quickened. He looked at the drunken rabble that was his team and shook his head.

  Not a great night for a call on the secure phone.

  He popped his tactical earbud into his left ear canal.

  “JD,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the din in the bar.

  “We have a serious problem, John,” came Baldwin’s voice.

  Dempsey’s throat tightened, despite the calm, almost hypnotic voice of Ember’s analytics guru. Serious problem from Baldwin translated to fucking crisis. He got to his feet, motioned for Munn to follow, and headed for the exit.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “I tried Shane’s phone, but he didn’t answer,” Baldwin began.

  “I know. Just give me the SITREP,” Dempsey said, his jaw tightening with worry.

  “There’s been an attack,” Baldwin said. “The boss made it out, but the DNI and the Israeli contingent are gone . . . completely wiped off the face of the earth.”

  “The DNI is dead?” Dempsey asked, shock settling in. Then he glanced quickly around, glad that only Munn was in earshot, and switched into operational mode. Using Philips’s Ember call sign, he asked, “Do you have positive confirmation that Condor is an angel?”

  “No, but—” There was a pause and then a sigh. “The estate is in ruins, John, razed to the ground by an explosion. It seems unlikely there could be any survivors at all. The boss was on scene . . .”

  “Is Eagle hurt?”

  “No. He was a safe distance. He and the Deputy DNI, Catherine Morgan, are trying to coordinate the casualty response on the ground.”

  Dempsey glanced around, the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

  “Are we secure?”

  “Completely,” Baldwin said.

  “Get me on with Eagle.”

  “Until Annapolis Fire and Rescue arrive, Jarvis is OIC on-site. He’s unavailable at present,” Baldwin said. “His instructions were to spool the team and prosecute. How long until you can be ready to move?”

  Dempsey glanced back at the bar where he could still hear the howling of his drunken teammates inside. “I’m one hundred percent operational,” he said. “Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the rest of the team.”

  There was a short pause and then, “You’re the only one sober, John?”

  “Me and Munn.”

  “Okay. We don’t have a
target yet, but we need to get you two moving north as we shrink the uncertainty radius.”

  “What about the rest of the team? We need to get them clear.”

  “I’ll send a car service to pick them up and take them back to the plane.”

  “Roger that.” He clicked off with a tap on his earpiece but left the device in his ear. Then he turned to Munn, who was staring at him expectantly.

  “What happened?”

  Dempsey shook his head and started jogging toward the Tahoe. “I’ll brief you en route. But Dan . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s bad,” he said solemnly.

  “Time to kit up?” Munn asked.

  Dempsey nodded. “Looks like it’s you and me tonight.”

  CHAPTER 7

  West Bank of the Whitehall Estate

  Less Than a Mile North, across the Inlet from the DNI Estate

  May 3

  2020 Local Time

  Cyrus grunted as he strained and heaved the heavy inflatable boat out of the water. His two accomplices—Lebanese jihadis with a thirst for blood and money, but not for martyrdom—helped him drag the boat up the embankment toward the tree line. Air hissed from the bullet holes along the port side of the RIB. He leaned hard, using all his weight and strength to help move the boat nearly fifteen meters from the water to the base of a large oak tree. Here, beneath the tree’s stately canopy, the boat would be hidden from the satellites and drones that would be—if they hadn’t been already—tasked to scour the waters and coastline of the Chesapeake for them. The boat would ultimately be located by the Americans, but the how and the when were the variables he needed to dictate, which was why his exfiltration from the DNI’s residence had been little more than a quick jaunt up the peninsula.

  Evade, distract, evade—that was the plan.

  “This is good enough,” he huffed and let go of the boat.

  The two men followed his lead and squatted next to the RIB, panting.

  Cyrus pushed his eyeglasses—thick, gray frames with heavy, clear glass—back up on his nose and resisted the urge to scratch at his face. The glue holding the fake beard he wore was itching like mad. He scanned left and then right for threats, the long fake ponytail tapping him on each shoulder as he did. He prayed the disguise—engineered to obscure the bone structure of his face and make his eyes appear closer set—would defeat any facial recognition they might run post facto on the security feeds from the DNI’s home. While working as one of the catering staff, he’d actively managed his exposure to the house’s visible surveillance net, but cameras were small and easy to conceal. It was impossible to know how many he’d missed.

  “Praise Allah!” the younger of the two men said, having fully recovered his breath. Then, clamping a congratulatory hand on Cyrus’s shoulder, added, “We did it. We actually did it.”

  Cyrus pulled away, recoiling from the man’s touch. He’d noticed, over recent months, that he’d come to find unsanctioned human touch repulsive. A side effect of Arkady’s training, he surmised.

  “How many rich American capitalists do you think we killed tonight?” the other mercenary asked.

  “Enough and more,” Cyrus whispered. “Now, be quiet.”

  He wondered if they knew they’d killed as many—if not more—high-ranking Jews as Americans tonight. In a single attack, they’d wiped out the Mossad’s leadership echelon, crippling the Zionists’ famed intelligence and clandestine operations entity. The irony was, the Jews had no one to blame but themselves—undone by their own hubris and unbridled faith in the Americans. This was the brilliance of his uncle’s plan; it achieved multiple goals simultaneously. Not only would it send both the American and Zionist intelligence communities into tailspins; it would undermine Israeli-American trust and confidence. Cyrus would scrub any and all signatures overtly linking the operation to Iran, leaving behind only a single clue—one that only the ultrasecret American counterterrorism unit responsible for killing his father could pick up. The trap had been baited; now all they had to do was wait. If his uncle was right, this would draw the American ghost team to Israel and eventually into Iran itself. He would avenge both his father and his brother and, in the process, put an end to the deadliest threat to Persia’s covert operations.

  “Both of you, help me scuttle the boat,” Cyrus said. “No trace can be left behind.”

  The older of the two men mumbled something in Arabic, making no effort to hide his annoyance at being bossed around by Cyrus, a Muslim ten years his junior. He stepped into the boat and began rigging the gas tanks to blow while the other man gathered their gear. While they busied themselves, Cyrus reached into his satchel and palmed the suppressed Strizh 9 mm pistol. In one fluid motion, he raised the weapon, took careful aim, squeezed, resighted, and squeezed again. The pistol burped twice, and the two men slumped dead, one on top of the other—blood, brains, and bits of bone spattered all over the inside of the boat.

  Cyrus tucked the pistol in his waistband and returned his attention to his satchel. From the bag, he pulled an unsophisticated but effective IED—constructed of three grenades fixed in place by a strand of soldering wire triple-wrapped around the circumference, holding the handles in place. He pulled the three pins and hit “Start” on a timer device clipped to the wire. When the timer clicked to zero—fifteen minutes from now—a magnesium charge would ignite and burn quickly through the solder, thereby releasing the grenades. The grenades would explode, igniting the RIB’s fuel tanks, resulting in a fireball that would be visible for miles. If the investigators managed to obtain salvageable DNA from the burned corpses, his uncle assured him they would not find a match in any American or Zionist database.

  He pressed the “Start” button again, and the numbers on the counter began to count down. Then, he zipped the satchel closed and placed the bag between the RIB’s twin gas tanks, careful not to step in the blood now pooling at the stern. He removed his wig, fake beard, eyeglasses, and black waiter’s shirt and tossed them into the boat. If the Americans had somehow recorded an image of his disguised face at the DNI’s estate, facial-recognition software wouldn’t be able to match it to his real face were he to be picked up on surveillance video in the days to come.

  He took a deep breath and checked his watch—two minutes behind schedule. At a brisk clip, he set off north through the woods. In a hundred yards, he would drift east and make his way to the bend in Whitehall Drive, where he’d hidden a bicycle in a ditch along the road. A quick pedal north to recover the BMW motorcycle he’d stashed, then he would head west on 50.

  He pushed a tiny earbud into his ear and tapped it twice.

  “This is Alpha; it’s done,” he whispered.

  “Well done. Go black, Alpha. See you on the other side. Omega out,” said Rostami’s voice in his ear.

  Cyrus felt a sudden surge of anxiety as he reached the roadside ditch and began searching for the bicycle. The element of surprise was gone, and so soon would be his head-start advantage. The next hour would be the most dangerous of his young career. He needed to get to Route 301 before they shut down the highway. Where he was heading next, they would never suspect.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ember SUV

  Route 301

  Annapolis, Maryland

  May 3

  2050 Local Time

  “Dagger, this is Zero,” Baldwin’s voice said through the Chevy Tahoe’s speakers as Dempsey and Munn sped east across the Severn River Bridge. Dempsey loved his call sign tonight. With any luck, he’d be afforded the opportunity to sink his own dagger deep into the heart of the asshole responsible for blowing up the DNI and fifty other innocents.

  “One—Dagger, go ahead,” Dempsey said, his phone synced to the Tahoe’s infotainment system.

  “Comms are now secure.”

  “Understood. Please tell me you have something?”

  “Yes. I’m diverting you to the scene of an explosion that just occurred across the inlet north of the Philips estate. The location is inside th
e escape radius the attackers could have traveled by boat before I got eyes in the sky.”

  “Give me coordinates or an address.”

  “Syncing with your nav system . . . I have you coming off the Severn River Bridge now. Take the Whitehall Road exit in three and a half clicks.”

  The console screen refreshed and a magenta line appeared on the map, highlighting the route Baldwin wanted them to follow.

  “Copy.”

  “After you exit, head east on Whitehall Road. There’s a confusing intersection where Whitehall runs into Skidmore—just past a Motel 6. Skidmore continues east in a straight line, but Whitehall doglegs south. You want to stay on Whitehall Road and head south toward Whitehall Manor. Do you see the route highlighted in magenta?”

  “We know how GPS works, Zero,” Dempsey said, laying the sarcasm on thick. “No need for the play-by-play.”

  “At Whitehall Manor, I will be routing you off road,” Baldwin continued, unfazed. “No time for confusion or wrong turns, John.”

  Dempsey glanced at the nav screen and saw that their track would indeed diverge from the paved road and take them across the grounds of an estate property. “Copy all, Zero.”

  A beat later they reached the exit, and Dempsey piloted the Tahoe down the ramp and onto Whitehall Road eastbound. With the clock ticking, Dempsey pressed the accelerator to the floor. As they zoomed past the entrance to a strip mall, Munn shouted, “Look out!”

  Dempsey hammered the brake and swerved to avoid rear-ending a turning Lexus that had abruptly stopped in the middle of the street. In his peripheral vision, he saw a figure on a bicycle pedaling furiously across the road at the mall entrance.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dempsey barked over squealing tires as he wrangled the big Chevy back under control. “Fucking idiot.”

  Then something occurred to him.

  “Baldwin, do you have eyes on me?”

  “No, John,” Ian replied. “I am working to get more eyes on, but I am focused on the target site. What can I do for you?”

  Dempsey looked in his rearview mirror, but the cyclist was gone.