Crusader One

by Brian Andrews

  “With the shit storm we have brewing in Iran, you’re really here to talk about Ember?” he said.

  She hesitated a beat. “Yes, sir,” she said, this time without trying to elaborate.

  He shook his head and sighed with exasperation. “This better be good . . . Go on. I’m listening.”

  “As I was saying, sir, under my predecessor’s watch, Task Force Ember has been permitted to evolve into something larger and more dangerous than I believe was intended.”

  “Dangerous to who?” Warner said.

  “To you, sir. To this Administration. This task force operates with no oversight whatsoever. Captain Jarvis and his men run roughshod over the other agencies they are tasked to work with and then share almost nothing with them in return.”

  Warner abruptly stood. “You weren’t present when Ember was formed, were you, Catherine?”

  “No, sir, but—”

  “You were not; that’s correct. I was. I remember. Ember was born out of the ashes of an attack that decimated the Tier One Navy SEALs—the most lethal and reliable weapon I had in my arsenal in this never-ending war on terror. Ember’s charter, a charter dictated by me, by the way, was to prosecute this new threat to our counterterrorism operations and function in parallel with the intelligence community. This arrangement was by design, unshackling Captain Jarvis from the chains of bureaucracy that presently paralyze the CIA. As the acting DNI, I assume you are now read into Ember’s past successes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I ask you, Ms. Morgan, how are victories such as these dangerous to my Administration?”

  The fact that he had just dropped the more intimate Catherine was not lost on her. She swallowed and said, “Sir, with all due respect, Ember is a loose cannon. It is only a matter of—”

  “I don’t have time for this,” the President said, cutting her off yet again. “Despite the immediate denial of responsibility from Iran, Persian military forces are massing along Iran’s borders. Their Air Force is flying patrol sorties and they’re repositioning mobile missile launchers around the country. In my mind, and in the minds of the Joint Chiefs, this uptick in activity is an overt admission of guilt for the attack on DNI Philips and the Israeli contingent three days ago—the hell with their denials. I just gave the Secretary of the Navy permission to move one of our SSGNs into the Persian Gulf and reposition the Fifth Fleet carrier strike group from the Indian Ocean into the Arabian Sea. Dialogue is already under way with Jordan to stage conventional assets in preparation for war, and I’ve given authorization to JSOC commanders to deploy Special Operations contingents along the Iranian borders in Afghanistan and Iraq to begin operations to prep the battlefield. Instead of worrying about Ember, Ms. Morgan, you should be working closely with the Pentagon on conflict scenarios and the aftermath, because if you’re not scared shitless, you should be. The number crunchers tell me that conflict scenarios with Iran where the US allies with Israel are likely to escalate into a nuclear world war. Whatever Ember is doing, rest assured it’s serving America’s best interests. I promise you that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The President stood and walked back to his desk, a signal her audience with him had come to an end.

  She stood and turned to leave.

  “I recognize, however, that not everyone’s brain works like mine,” he added, as if in afterthought. “So my parting advice to you is this: if Ember’s operational autonomy is making you feel out of control, Catherine, then take fucking control.” He pushed a button on the black phone beside him on the desk and said, “Get Peter and Claire back in here.”

  The President grunted and opened a folder on his desk. A beat later, the door to the Oval Office opened, and Warner’s staffers hurried back in. She left through the same door without a backward glance.

  “Have a nice day, Ms. Morgan,” the woman at the oak desk said as she walked out of the most powerful office in the world.

  Was this woman mocking her? Was it obvious she’d just had her ass handed to her by the President of the United States? Morgan said nothing in reply and headed down the hall, her mind raging. Jarvis was probably in Israel. In fact, she was certain of it. He was definitely up to something, undoubtedly working with the Mossad on some covert action against Tehran. God, she hated the fucking Israelis. So self-righteous. So impetuous.

  She exhaled through her nose.

  Take fucking control . . . That is what the President had said.

  The people of the United States deserved transparency. They deserved accountability . . . and that is exactly what she intended to give them. Kelso Jarvis would bow to her will, whether he wanted to or not.

  CHAPTER 20

  Seventh Order TOC

  Nechushtan Pavilion, Eretz Israel Museum

  Ramat Aviv Neighborhood, Tel Aviv, Israel

  May 7

  1050 Local Time

  This was it.

  The Head Shed was finally going to man up and give them their tasking.

  Thank God, Dempsey thought, because the waiting was making them all neurotic. Across the table, Grimes was chewing her nails, which she’d gnawed down to the quick on both hands. Adamo must have pushed his glasses up on his nose ten times in the past five minutes. Smith was on his fourth cup of coffee for the morning. Wang was bobbing his head to the beat of some song only he could hear. And Munn, well, Munn had shaved this morning.

  Yes, it was time.

  “I’m ready for game on,” Munn said beside him, with a definitive tap of his index finger on the tabletop.

  Dempsey looked over and smiled, happy to see that Munn’s eyes had fully regained the fire he remembered from their days together in the Teams. For Munn, this operation would be cathartic—a much-needed return to the saddle as an operator. “Me, too. Enough with the foreplay,” he agreed in a hushed whisper. “It’s time to get it on.”

  The door pushed open, and Jarvis strode in with Elinor in tow. The Ember Director was wearing his game face today and instantly commanded the room.

  Thank God, Dempsey thought, the old Jarvis is back.

  Gripping the sides of the podium, Jarvis said, “For those of you who have been living in a hole, not reading the message traffic, or having entirely too much fun at the range, then it might come as a surprise that over the past forty-eight hours, both Israel and Iran have been busy preparing for war. Also, I think all of you should know that Prime Minister Shamone has authorized the IDF to conduct a retaliatory strike on Persia for the attack perpetrated at the DNI’s estate.”

  “Sir, if I may,” Adamo interjected. “The evidence we’ve connected linking VEVAK to the attack is hardly substantive enough to justify a military strike. The media will have a feeding frenzy with this.”

  “This is Israel, Mr. Adamo, not America,” Elinor said, stepping in, “and Prime Minister Shamone is of the mind that we do not need the media’s permission to protect our sovereignty. Rostami’s body is not the only evidence we have. Mossad has HUMINT collected from sources inside Iran, we have our own signal intelligence program, and we have reconstructed signals intelligence still coming in from your own Ian Baldwin as we speak. The assassination of Rami Sharott is but one of hundreds of operations perpetuated by VEVAK against the state of Israel. Taken together, it’s all the justification we need.”

  Adamo nodded, but Dempsey could see that Elinor had failed to change his opinion, and he understood why. Adamo’s CIA career had been derailed because he’d been unable to produce sufficient hard evidence for the existence of an Iranian sleeper-cell program in the United States. Adamo had been convinced of the Suren Circle’s existence, but after spending millions of agency dollars and burning man-years of agency time, he had not been able to build a case strong enough to convince his superiors. As part of Ember, Adamo was vindicated and proven to have been right all along, but his career at Langley had been sidelined. Adamo wasn’t debating the merits of an Israeli first strike; what he was debating was the paper trail. Whether Shamone liked it or
not, history always judges the acts of men, and without substantive, irrefutable proof, the people of Israel would pay for the verdict.

  “So when is this going to go down, and what does the IDF plan to hit?” Munn asked, getting straight to the point.

  “Neither myself nor Elinor has been read into the IDF’s plans,” Jarvis said. “We don’t know when the attack is going to happen. We don’t know the targets. We don’t know the scope. But what we do know is that regardless of the specifics, there will be an attack, and there will be significant geopolitical repercussions.”

  Munn kicked Dempsey’s boot under the table and whispered, “Told you there was gonna be a war.”

  Dempsey grunted in acknowledgment but kept his gaze locked on Jarvis.

  “Which brings us to the question of the hour: Why are we here?” Jarvis continued. “To answer that question, I will begin by telling you why we are not here. We are not here to collect intelligence in preparation for war. We are not here to conduct covert actions to facilitate war. We are not here to aid our brothers and sisters in arms in fighting a war. We are here, in fact, to prevent a war.”

  Eyebrows arched and incredulous dialogue erupted around the table.

  With a tight grin, Jarvis waved them to be quiet.

  “Now, I know what you’re thinking: the old man must have hit his head, but I assure you my wits are fully intact. Regardless of whether retaliation is justified, war between Israel and Iran is not a path we want to go down. If Israel and Iran go to war, US participation is inevitable. Moscow has yet to release an official statement, but Petrov is shifting assets south and flying air patrols on the Syrian side of the Iranian border, signaling an intention to support Iran. We’re all big boys and girls around this table; we all know that a full-scale Persian-Israeli conflict could quickly escalate into World War Three. I won’t let that happen. No, strike that. We won’t let that happen.”

  “While I appreciate the unbridled confidence you have in our capabilities, I’m not sure I understand how anything we can do stops this war,” Grimes said with her characteristic contradictory flair. “You just said that the decision has been made; the IDF is going to hit Iran. What can we possibly do to derail the train?”

  “Thank you, Elizabeth, for the perfect segue,” he said. “To stop this war, someone needs to be held accountable. And when I say someone, I don’t simply mean Iran as a nation. As primitive and dubious as this might sound, the only way to stave off this war is with a blood debt. Eye for an eye. For killing the DNI and the Mossad Director, the Persian responsible must be punished and punished on the world stage. Only by giving Iran a scapegoat do the Supreme Leader and President Esfahani have an opportunity to save face. Only by giving the United States and Israel possession of one of Iran’s most powerful and dangerous men do we achieve both justice and the ability to harvest vital intelligence otherwise inaccessible. It is a long shot, but in my mind, it’s our only shot.” He turned to Elinor. “I’ll let you do the honors.”

  The Seventh Order’s acting Director traded places with Jarvis at the podium. She clicked a button and a Persian face—a face known to all of them—appeared on the screen behind her. “Amir Modiri,” she said simply. “This is our target.”

  Dempsey leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes laser beams locked on to the face on the screen. Amir Modiri. This was his white whale. Like Captain Ahab’s quest for revenge, hunting down Modiri had become Dempsey’s obsession. There was nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice to kill the beast. Hell, I’ve got nothing left to give, he thought, except the heart beating in my chest.

  “Modiri has single-handedly done more to destabilize the region than any other foreign intelligence adversary since the creation of the Jewish state. One of the greatest challenges we’ve faced is penetrating his inner circle, an inner circle that he keeps incredibly tight. His recruiting practices are—in a word—intimate. He has a history of luring trusted friends and colleagues from his university days and even family members into service: the ultimate example being his brother, the former Iranian Ambassador who he employed to help facilitate the attack on the UN in New York last year.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Grimes interrupted, sitting up straight in her chair. Her eyes went from Elinor to Jarvis, who shook his head with an admonishing don’t go there look that Dempsey knew by heart. But that only seemed to add gas to the redhead’s fire. “How did you know that? Did we provide you with after-action intelligence?”

  Elinor met Grimes’s gaze, but she didn’t answer.

  “That’s what I thought—we didn’t,” Lizzie continued. “And as I recall, you guys bowed out after Frankfurt . . . We didn’t connect the dots between Amir and the Ambassador until the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute.” Red-faced, she turned to Dempsey, looking for backup.

  “She’s right,” he said. “It came down to the wire. We were working the connection in real time as the players were already in motion.”

  “That intelligence would have been invaluable for us,” Grimes said. “We could have intercepted the Ambassador before he cleared security and put the UN on lockdown. We could have foiled the attack before it started. Nobody had to die that day.”

  “I understand your frustration, Elizabeth, and it is warranted. But please understand, and I mean no disrespect when I say that Ember and the Seventh Order are separate, autonomous clandestine activities, serving different masters with different sovereign agendas. We have assets inside of Iran, longitudinally developed assets with long histories of providing us critical data. These individuals are irreplaceable—people whose identities and reputations we must safeguard at all cost. With respect to the specific case of Ambassador Modiri and his role in the UN attack, I was not privileged to this information at the time, nor do I know the source inside Tehran who provided this intelligence. All I can promise you is that the decision not to share this information with you was not made lightly, and it would have been a decision made only by the Director himself at that time.”

  Grimes opened her mouth to speak, but Jarvis beat her to the punch. “Hindsight is painful in our business, but now is not the time for divisiveness. When it comes to this operation, Ember and the Seventh Order are joined at the hip. There are no secrets being kept between us on this matter. So let’s move on.”

  Grimes and Elinor both nodded in agreement, although Dempsey could see Lizzie’s jaw muscles ripple as she clenched her teeth.

  “As I was saying,” Elinor continued, “the objective of this mission is to take Modiri.”

  “Take him?” Adamo interrupted, his eyebrows raised. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Dead serious,” Elinor replied.

  “And just how do you propose we do that? Do you have reliable intel on Modiri’s movements? Is he planning a trip outside of Iran to a location favorable to such an operation?”

  Elinor shook her head. “This will be a capture/kill mission inside Iran.”

  A stunned silence enveloped the room.

  “Inside Iran?” Munn whispered, both to himself and everyone.

  “Inside Tehran, in fact.”

  “Are you insane?” Adamo said, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “What you’re proposing is impossible. Infiltration will be hard enough, but kidnapping VEVAK’s functional number two and exfiltrating the country with him is nothing short of a suicide mission. And that’s a cold fact.”

  Dempsey leaned back in his seat. A capture/kill operation inside Iran? Adamo was right: it was insane. Even with his old Tier One unit, with everyone in perfect mental and physical condition and with unlimited resources and support, he never would have dreamed of running such an operation. It was, quite simply, the most dangerous mission imaginable for a special operator. And yet despite the sirens going off inside his head, and despite the big bright-yellow sign depicting a road going off a cliff, he wanted this. This was why he had joined Ember in the first place. He hadn’t known it at the time—bandaged and broken in the belly of a C-130—but this
was the opportunity he had traded his life for. He had traded Jake and Kate for Amir Modiri. Completing this operation wasn’t just Ember’s charter; it was his.

  This was the mission Jack Kemper had died for.

  This was the mission John Dempsey was born to complete.

  “. . . impossible alone, but with the support of Ember and her assets, it can be done.”

  Dempsey shook his head, snapping his attention back to the present. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Say that last part again.”

  Elinor nodded and then said, “I was simply saying that this type of covert operation is what the Seventh Order was born for, but this particular mission would be impossible without Ember’s support.”

  “What do you mean support?” Dempsey said, sitting up in his chair. I didn’t come all this way, and sacrifice so much, to be support.

  She didn’t answer immediately but instead began clicking through a series of slides—which Dempsey recognized first as Irbil in northern Iraq, and then the rugged terrain of the northwest corner of the country, north of Soran, where the Iraqi border converged with Turkey to the north and Iran to the east.

  “The United States has a robust Special Forces presence in northern Iraq. Although the bulk of your operations are to the west and south against ISIS forces, we know that your Special Forces also support covert operations along the Iranian border. Israel does not, for obvious reasons, have a strong military presence in the Iraqi conflict. The one thing that even warring radical Islamic factions can agree on is that Jews need to be exterminated. We do, however, have mature assets on the other side. In addition to a developed network in Tehran, we run a variety of assets in other Iranian cities. We’ve had past success facilitating border crossings from the inside. The trouble now is getting there. The recent Persian military activity and the massing of conventional forces along the borders will greatly curtail our ability to move in and out of Iran for this operation.”

  She paused and looked out across the room, locking eyes with Dempsey again. She continued, as if now speaking directly to him.