The Return Of Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  Three Humvees were parked off to one side, in the shade. A tempting proposition. Any or all might hold weapons or radios or both. And they offered escape from this gallows hilltop. But they were a fair piece away. Prester could die in the time it took for Steve to go down there and return.

  The Humvees could be a kind of trap, too. Someone like, say, Debbie Lynn, could be thinking the same thoughts, waiting for any survivors to show themselves by trying to reach the vehicles. He scanned the brush behind the Humvees at the rim of the hollow, the logical place for an ambusher to lurk. He saw nothing out of the ordinary there, but still . . .

  Prester, restless, was stirring. Steve went to him. “No sign of her,” he said.

  Prester said, “I didn’t think there would be. She’s tricky.”

  “She’s not here now. Have your say. I’m listening.”

  Prester focused his pale-eyed gaze on Steve. “Ever heard of the Dog Team?”

  Steve said, “I’ve heard the legend.”

  “It’s no legend, it’s true.”

  Steve nodded, a gesture indicating that Prester should go on with what he was saying, not that Steve was buying into it yet. If ever.

  “I know it’s true,” Prester said, “because I’m a part of it.”

  Steve’s face must have shown his disbelief.

  Prester said, “I’m not raving, dammit! This is not the delirium of a dying man. I’m dying, but I’m not delirious.”

  “I believe you.” That much of it was true. Steve did believe him, when he said he was not delirious. Prester was clear, lucid, in possession of his wits.

  That didn’t mean the rest of his story was true, though.

  Prester said, “I told you I don’t have much time left. Maybe not even enough to get it all in. Which would be too bad for you. You need to know this if you want to live.”

  Steve said, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  Seventeen

  The Dog Team was deactivated around 1965, even before the Vietnam War had really gotten rolling. It had been in existence for close to twenty years. There may have been other outfits of a similar nature in existence in the past, maybe even all the way back to the Civil War, maybe even dating back to the founding of the Republic. Indeed, it seemed likely that given the nature of the American experience, and human nature, the Dog Team or something like it must have extant since Colonial days and the Revolutionary War.

  But the Dog Team in its midtwentieth-century incarnation had begun in the post–World War II era. By 1965, the Dog Team had become too hot to handle.

  The Dogs did assassinations in all kinds of places, including friendly and allied countries and neutral ones. Needful work, those liquidations, but it would have created an international scandal and a super propaganda defeat if it could be proven that an arm of the U.S. military had been carrying out killings in other countries, no matter how much those who got shot needed killing to promote vital national security interests.

  There was more, and worse, from a public-relations standpoint. The Dogs carried out certain domestic ops as well. Military hitters terminated men—and sometimes women—on U.S. soil. They were nicely motivated, those executions, but try telling that to headline-hunting media and political types.

  The Dogs were the last resort in certain ultrasensitive spy cases, cases that couldn’t be officially prosecuted without risking the exposure of vital information, such as the identities of double agents; deep-cover penetration agents; contacts in foreign embassies; or consular, diplomatic, or foreign military sources. Better that such cases never came to trial.

  But malefactors and traitors could not be allowed to continue their subversive work, could not be allowed to go unpunished. That ultimate sanction of termination was reserved only for U.S. citizens or nationals who had turned traitor. Foreign spies were different. There was a protocol worked out between the professionals, a balance of terror. Kill foreign spies in your country, and the offended sponsoring nation kills your spies in its country. Bodies start piling up fast. It’s wasteful and bad for morale. After all, despite the business of “if you’re caught, the government will deny all knowledge of your activities” notwithstanding, spies expect to be imprisoned if captured for eventual exchange with the captured spies of other nations.

  But your own traitors, you have a right to kill. A duty, some might argue. The Dog Team’s domestic assassinations were a potential political land mine in the context of the escalation of the Vietnam War and the corresponding rise of domestic antiwar protest groups. The coalition between business, government, and the military that had been spawned by World War II was starting to come undone in the Sixties.

  There are secrets, and then there are secrets. The Dog Team’s existence was a real secret closely held within the ranks of the Army and jealously guarded from other branches of the service. Not that there wasn’t some overlap. Informal alliances between Army and Air Force elements allowed the Dog Team to carry out occasional assignments for the USAF. Similarly, the Navy had an apparatus similar to the Dogs, in their case staffed mostly by Marine Corps action operatives.

  Army top brass broke up the Dogs, hid their traces as best they could, and hoped like hell that nobody would blab to Congress and the media. But even while the Army’s premier assassination arm was being put down, the Vietnam War underlined the need for just such a clandestine assassination capacity.

  Elements and concepts from the original Dog Team were put into practice during the Army/CIA counterinsurgency Phoenix Program, part of which included targeted assassinations of suspected members, enablers, and sympahtizers of the Viet Cong infrastructure. The killings were often the product of CIA and Army Special Forces teams working together in conjunction with members of the government of South Vietnam. Phoenix was carried out and nobody ever went before a congressional investigating committee or went to jail because of it. Its existence was an open secret for those who knew where to look.

  The Dog Team apparatus lay in limbo for over sixteen years, from 1965 to 1981, though the Army had never lacked the ability to carry out targeted assassinations of deserving individuals. The capacity was always there, under different names and places. But it lacked the well-organized, efficient, smoothly relentless efficiency of the original Dogs.

  The present-day Dog Team was first reactivated by secret order of President Ronald Reagan during his first term, prompted by the terrorist group Hezbollah’s bombing of the Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, and the kidnapping of that city’s CIA station chief and his subsequent torture, brainwashing, and execution.

  The organizational infrastructure of the new apparat was conceived by CIA Director William Casey and a cadre of clandestine ops Army Intelligence officers. The secret was closely held by Casey and a handful of trusted associates who insulated the project from the rest of the CIA. The eccentric but canny Casey well knew that the agency had been penetrated and compromised during the years of post-Watergate drift and official sanctimoniousness.

  Onetime OSS operative Casey used the big-business expertise that had earned him a fortune on Wall Street to establish a Dog Team entity that was an off-the-shelf, privately funded, self-sustaining enterprise.

  Casey worked with several like-minded patriotic plutocrats to endow a private foundation that existed solely to provide continuing funding for the new Dog Team’s ongoing operational expenses. A proprietary company was set up: the Mercury Transport System. It, in turn, was controlled by a holding company that was chartered via a Cayman Islands offshore-banking-type deal.

  Casey had compartmentalized and insulated the Dog Team apparatus in a way that would drive potential investigators crazy, should any such appear. Tracing the Dog Team through its different financial and corporate entities would be like peeling an onion, revealing layers within layers.

  Mercury Transport Systems held some contracts with ultrasecret military and civilian intelligence agencies and departments. It had a platinum-level security clearance. Its cloudy no-bid military and intel
ligence business contracts enveloped it in secrecy, fending off casual investigation. It was so entangled in hush-hush trappings that those few key legislators who were aware of its existence were too hampered by security conditions or clearances to probe it. Congressional investigating committees and their permanent staffs and high-maintenance solons would have to hunt for publicity somewhere else.

  Besides, for the really investigation minded, for those few who couldn’t be diverted by appeals to their patriotism or self-interest or both, probing Dog Team doings could be unhealthy, if not downright fatal.

  The Dog Team had been in operation ever since. Personality profiles of all Army recruits and personnel were scrutinized and computer analyzed for qualified candidates. An informal but extensive network of active-duty and officially retired Army personnel existed throughout the land, its members keeping an eye out for the rare personalities who would make first-rate Dog Team assassins.

  That’s how Joe Kilroy had made the team. Born Sam Chambers, he was the bastard son of Terry Kovak, the top assassin of the original Dogs. Heredity alone argued that he was a candidate to watch. The youth took to Army life like a duck to water, and took to the Dog Team track even better.

  Dog work took a special breed, even among the highly motivated achievers who volunteer for Rangers, Delta Force, Special Forces, and suchlike elite military outfits. Psychologically, snipers came the closest to the Dog Team optimum personality profile. Candidates must be self-starters and be self-directed, able to work alone behind enemy lines for long periods of time.

  But a Dog’s tasks could be more hands on than those of the sniper. Sometimes the target was taken out at a distance by a high-powered scoped rifle, all clean and clinical, but other times, the action got a whole lot wetter. A Dog might have to shoot his man (or woman) at point-blank range, run them over with a car, stab them with an ice pick, throw a victim off a roof or out a window or in front of a speeding train, or dispatch them in any one of a number of lethal ways. These skills were needed now more than ever as the curtain rose on the War on Terror, a show that was destined to be a long running one.

  All this was ancient history to Steve Ireland, Prester knew, and he disposed of it in a few sentences to bring him up to speed. The Dog Team was real, it was a clandestine Army assassination unit, and it was up and running today, in Iraq and elsewhere. That was all Steve needed to know for now. If he lived, he’d find out the details, the nuts and bolts of the organization.

  Now, Prester told where he came in. “I’m Army,” he said. “Always have been. I was officially separated from the service twenty years ago, but that was part of my cover for when I joined the CIA. I was part of a Dog Team intelligence component running a long-term penetration project. Our mission was to penetrate rival intelligence agencies, domestic intelligence agencies. We targeted the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the like. Not naval intelligence, though. Those Navy SOBs were too smart to let anyone Army establish more than a liaison role with their outfit. Nobody from the Army could get anywhere in the Navy, and vice versa. They’re two separate breeds, like dogs and cats.

  “Sorry. I’m rambling.”

  Steve Ireland wanted to make sure he was getting it right. “You were spying on the CIA?”

  Again that thin smile from Prester, thin as a paper cut. “Not I—we. We, the Army. Which includes you. You’re Army, too.”

  “I know it. I know what I am. What you are is what puzzles me.”

  “It was a natural progression,” Prester said. “First, you spy on the spy agencies of hostile nations. Then neutrals, and finally, your own allies. How else are you going to know what they’re up to? A nation has to guard itself against its friends as well as its enemies.

  “From there, it was only logical to spy on the rival agencies of your own country, even if only as an act of institutional self-defense. The national budget is only so big. It’s not the Chinese military or the Pakistani ISI or the Russian army that is in competition for funding with the Department of the Army; it’s the CIA, ONI, NSA, and all the other alphabet outfits.”

  Steve nodded. It wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened. When the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, was formed in World War II, a number of veteran FBI agents quit the Bureau to join up with the new civilian spy outfit. When the war ended and OSS morphed into the Central Intelligence Agency, they moved over to top positions there. But some of them were plants. Their ultimate loyalty lay with legendary Bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover, and as the years turned into decades, they continued to faithfully report to him on Agency doings. That was something Steve Ireland could understand.

  “Politics,” he said, saying it like it was a dirty word.

  Prester was unflinching. “Maybe so, in part. But the project I was in was about more than politics. Bill Casey was worried by what was going on in the CIA. A clique had established itself in the hierarchy, a self-appointed conspiratorial elite whose policies weren’t necessarily those reflecting vital national security interests. A secret inner circle.

  “Some of it dates back to Vietnam. We know that much. There was a lot of funny business there with Golden Triangle opium warlords flying their product to heroin refiners on CIA-owned airplanes. The Agency’s end was used to finance the mountain tribes’ war against the Viet Cong. A vital cause paid for by dirty means. With all that drug money flying around, some of it was bound to stick to CIA fingers or wind up in numbered Swiss bank accounts.

  “The pattern repeated again during the eighties in Central America. Planes would fly weapons to the Contras and return with their holds loaded with drugs. The trade paid for the weapons but helped fuel the crack epidemic that hit U.S. cities. The war in El Salvador ended, but the trade went on and continues to this day. Those profits were too good to pass up.

  “The conspiracy is still going on, stronger than ever. The Clique, that’s what we call it. A secret elite group, planted deep in the heart of the agency, complete with its own aims and ambitions that don’t include the rest of us.

  “There’s nothing glamorous about it despite the James Bond trappings. It’s like a ring of crooked cops planted in a big-city police department. It’s a good place to be to generate real money and covert power.”

  Steve said, “The same bunch has been around for the last thirty years; they must be getting old or dying out.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Prester said. “The Clique doesn’t sit still. They’re constantly recruiting new members to replace the old. Senior members may officially retire from CIA, but not from The Clique.”

  He paused, resting, catching his breath. His head sagged, with his chin resting on his chest. His eyes closed. A wisp of pink froth hung down from the corner of his mouth. Steve Ireland began to fear that Prester had passed out. Or, worse, died. That would be a hell of a note, for him to expire before delivering the punchline.

  Steve started to reach out for the other to take hold of his shoulder and gently shake it to see if that would bring him around. Prester’s eyes opened, as if he’d sensed the motion. “Drifting . . . sorry,” he said. “May not be much time left. What I’ve told you is the result of two decades of work—mine, and a lot of other people, some of whom were murdered by The Clique along the way.

  “Here’s where the modern era comes in. Iraq now is where the action is—where the money is. Billions of dollars are being pumped into the country to handle every aspect of rebuilding and reconstruction. For everything to supplying the troops with privately contracted mess halls and PXs, to massive construction projects, to training and equipping the newly created Iraqi police and national guard units.

  “It’s a big job, with a price tag to match. All those billions floating around, and not much accountability—hell, the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority has roughly ten billion in expenses that can’t be accounted for—The Clique’s going to be here. There are all kinds of opportunities to make money, including dealing with insurgents and foreign fighters.

  “Counterintelligence i
s a two-way street. While we were trying to penetrate The Clique, they were trying to penetrate us. They’re particularly interested in the Dog Team. Not only is it a potential lethal threat to them, it’s also an opportunity. They’re itching to get their hooks into the Dogs, to get some kind of leverage over them, and by extension over the Army.”

  Steve said, “What is this Clique? A global dope ring with pretensions, or one of those New World Order things?”

  “Maybe both or neither. I don’t know. I wish I did,” Prester said feelingly. “It’s too late for me to find out. Maybe you will. But I can tell you what they were doing here in Azif. They were doing deals with the Iranians. Debbie Lynn Hawley was the spotter. She’s the expert on the Razeem process, and which Iraqi scientists have the know-how to deliver on the electron coupler. She put the finger on the scientists for Akkad’s kidnap gang. Her access to intelligence records allowed her to detail the location, routine, and security precautions of each victim to Akkad.

  “She’s good. She was a suspect, but never a serious one. I didn’t know it was her until she shot me. Now I’m able to put it all together. Debbie Lynn Hawley is the traitor. Kill her if you can. Get word to Kilroy or Vang Bulo.”

  Steve said, “Why me?”

  “It has to be you. You’re the last man standing. I can’t do it. I’m dead,” Prester said. Then he was. Dead, that is. It was like the clockwork mechanism keeping him going had finally run down. He just stopped. He was motionless, eyes open.

  Steve reached out, touching the other’s neck, feeling for a pulse, knowing it was futile. There was no pulse. Prester had withdrawn from the field. Steve sighed, letting out the breath he’d been holding. He closed Prester’s eyes.