The Ericksen Connection

by Barry Becker

  Besides those issues, Porterfield faced many geopolitical risks around the world: China’s emerging military threats, North Korea’s erratic, unpredictable dictator and their nuclear arms proliferation threats, the Russian prime minister’s long-term strategic vision for the Russian Federation, containing Iranian nuclear arms ambitions, global terrorism, and a gridlocked Congress.

  “We intercepted a call placed to Khalid’s Swiss smartphone. Voice analysis confirmed it came from Abdullah. He discovered our opera- tion. They’ve shut down their communications,” Campbell said.

  President Porterfield looked around at his senior intelligence directors and key cabinet heads. “Shit. We don’t have much time. According to the DOE, three kilograms of fissionable plutonium material would kill everyone within a half-mile to a mile radius. What are our options?”

  “Mr. President, we have a call into Saudi Intelligence right now,” Sullivan said.

  The president stood up and slammed his hand down on the conference table. “God damn it, we don’t have the luxury of time. We

  don’t even know what their targets are in Vegas and Houston. Find those terrorists before they hit us again.”

  “We’ll find them, sir!” I need to send the Special Operations Group to Jeddah immediately.

  Zurich

  Ericksen and Delgado left their car near the Marina in Zurich, where two CIA officers met them. One of them gave Ericksen the keys to a 25’ Bayliner. They loaded their equipment and weapons onboard and left at ten in the evening. At eleven, they slowed down and cruised to a boat ramp two hundred yards from the Russian safe house. There were tall hedges separating one mansion from the targeted Estate.

  In the living room of the Russian safe house mansion in Kusnacht, Ryzhkov and Kupchenko looked at Caldwell, her hands tied behind her back and her face bloodied and swollen. “Tell me what you know!”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Take her downstairs,” Ryzhkov said in Russian.

  The Russian guard #1 opened the basement door and took her downstairs. Ryzhkov turned to Kupchenko, “I’m going to Moscow to meet with Sasha. After you extract the information, kill her.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Kupchenko kicked Caldwell in the back and punched her in the face, bruising her left cheek. Blood flowed down from her mouth. He removed her clothes and shoved her down on the chair. “You better start talking.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  He slapped her across her face. The Russian guard #1 lifted Cald- well up. Kupchenko grabbed her by the hair and held her head under the bathtub water for thirty seconds. After dunking her two more times, he lifted her head up from the water. She gasped for air.

  “You’re a fucking CIA pig!”

  Two men guarded the front of the mansion, and three men

  guarded the rear, near the boat ramp along the lake. Both Delgado and Ericksen were in full combat attire: dark green camo clothes, night vision goggles, headsets, assault rifles with scopes and suppres- sors, sharp Special Operations Forces’ knives, and handguns.

  From one hundred yards out Ericksen spotted Russian guard #2 in the front and fired: zap, zap, hitting the Russian in the head. From seventy-five yards out, he aimed his M4 rifle at Russian guard #3 and fired: zap, zap, another killed. Russian guard #4 heard something near the water, and from fifteen yards out a burst of bullets from Delgado’s handgun killed the Russian. Ericksen spotted Russian guard #5 and cut him down with three bursts to the head.

  Delgado made a move toward the house with Ericksen trailing behind.

  They reached the back door of the Russian safe house and heard some sounds coming from the basement. Their handguns at the ready, they opened the door, and a Russian started firing at both of them. They returned fire, and the Russian somehow managed to get to the side door, opened it and ran toward the boat ramp. Ericksen charged in hot pursuit after him. He stopped, took aim, and fired two shots, killing the Russian guard #1.

  A woman’s screams could be heard yelling, “Bastard!”

  “Shut up, bitch,” Kupchenko said in Russian. He heard the racket, put his pants back on, and climbed the steps with his gun in his right hand. As he opened the door to the main floor, Delgado shot his gun out of his hand. He punched and kicked Kupchenko, and both men exchanged blows. After Delgado grabbed his gun and struck Kupchenko’s jaw knocking him out, he dragged him to the wall and tied his hands behind his back with flex cuffs.

  Entering the basement, Ericksen spotted Caldwell stripped naked on the bed with her hands tied to the bedposts. He rushed over and worked as fast as he could to untie her hands. “My clothes are on the chair in the corner.” He picked up her clothes and handed them to her.

  “Give me your gun,” Caldwell said, her face tensed and red, filled with anger. Ericksen gave her his handgun, and with a firm grip on

  the weapon, she moved towards Kupchenko, who regained consciousness.

  “Don’t do it! He might have important information,” Delgado yelled.

  She walked up to Kupchenko, who rested against the wall with his hands tied behind his back. “You scumbag. I hope you rot in hell!” Caldwell squeezed the trigger and shot four bullets into Kupchenko’s head and chest.

  Tears flowed down her cheeks. Ericksen extended his hand out to her and she hugged him. He held her in his arms for several seconds. She turned to Ericksen. “Thanks.”

  “The nightmare is all over,” Delgado said.

  Monday, August 31, 2009

  They arrived at the Auerbach Emergency Clinic in Zurich at 0600. Over the next two hours, the doctor and nurses treated and patched her up. By 0830 hours they were on the road heading toward the Agency’s safe house in Bussingny.

  “I received a text from Jacobson’s smartphone. He and Scharz checked his office thoroughly and couldn’t find anything of substance to prosecute them on,” Caldwell said.

  Ericksen shook his head. Caldwell sat in the front passenger seat, her face black and blue with bandages over her right eye, forehead, and neck, and sporting a split lip.

  Moritz approached Khalid in the cafe. “I’ve got bad news.” He tensed up and whispered in Khalid’s ear, “Oleg and several of the Russians are dead. Their Russian maid found their bodies this morning. They were all shot to death. Ericksen apparently rescued Caldwell.”

  Khalid shook his head in disgust. “Shit!”

  An hour later Dawkins picked up his secure smartphone. “Iron Fist.”

  “I’ll be leaving today for Jeddah. Can you meet me at one in the afternoon at the café Richemont in Nyon?”

  “See you there.”

  The Mercedes sedan with Swiss plates pulled up to Café Richemont in Nyon. Khalid got out and walked into the café. He spotted Dawkins who pulled up a chair and joined him on the terrace overlooking the lake. “I have a job for you. It’s worth three hundred thousand dollars. I want you to find Mark Ericksen and his girlfriend and kill them.”

  “Consider it done.”

  He took out an envelope. “This is a down payment.”

  Dawkins handed a piece of paper to Khalid. “This is my new bank in the Cayman Islands.”

  “Call me when you have completed the job, and I’ll wire the balance of the money to your new bank account.” Khalid stood up, shook hands and left the restaurant.

  59

  Tuesday, September 1, 2009

  iad knocked on the door to Khalid’s office in Jeddah. “Come in,” Khalid said, motioning with his hands. “In ten days the American Satan will feel Allah’s revenge.” He got up from

  his chair and walked toward the photograph of Falcon Dancer. He slid the photograph to the left, revealing the wall safe. He placed his right index finger on the optical scanner and pressed it. The safe opened up and Khalid put a USB drive into it.

  He looked at Ziad. “You’ve earned my trust. The red-marked one has our American operations, and the blue-marked one has a list of our Red Sea Brotherhood members. The one I’m holdi
ng is the third USB flash drive. Its contents detail the nuclear warhead Faisal purchased from leaders of a Pakistani Al-Qaeda and Taliban group. We’re going to load a tactical nuclear warhead on a container ship in Karachi the first of January bound for Jakarta and reload it to another container ship with a final destination of the Port of Los Angeles.” He closed the safe and slid the photograph of Falcon Dancer back.

  “Khalid, that is great news. The Great Satan will feel our thunder.”

  “This land belongs to the Caliphate, not Royal Bluebloods.” He looked at the report Ziad had in his hands.

  He handed the report to Khalid. “Here’s the latest financial state- ments from Herr Steiner. Our balance is one hundred ten million Swiss francs left in our Zurich bank.” He took a minute to browse over the statements. “Good. On Thursday, September 10, I’ll be trans- ferring about forty million dollars to my personal account in Dubai. I’ll need you to fly to Dubai on the 10th to complete a joint venture deal for me with Moosa Al-Dhaheri’s company.”

  “I’ll put it on my schedule,” Ziad said.

  Two hours later, Ziad entered a Jeddah bookstore. He went to the history section, and the dentist made eye contact with him, twenty feet away. He picked up a book, looked around, and then he placed a piece of paper in the middle of the book. He laid the book flat over several books in the section. When he turned the corner of the history section, his face froze in shock as his eyes met by the sudden presence of Faisal. “What a coincidence seeing you.” Ziad regained his composure.

  “Yes. I was thinking the same thing. What brings you to the book- store?” “I’m looking for a spy book,” Faisal said in a serious tone.

  “Most of the good ones are in English,” Ziad said, smiled and exited the bookstore.

  The dentist approached the section, picked up the book, and proceeded to the cashier. Moritz signaled two men in the car outside the bookstore to take photos of the stranger who just left the bookstore.

  FBI Headquarters

  Lucas walked into FBI Director Geiger’s office at eight-thirty in the morning. The Undersecretary of the Treasury for Financial Intelli- gence and Terrorism handed Lucas a photo of Campbell and Dawkins together with the Swiss banker Jurgen Reiter in Dubai around February 2005.

  “The DOJ is getting ready to arrest both of them for graft, fraud, and corruption,” she said.

  “Nothing would surprise me about Dawkins, but Campbell, I can’t believe it,” Lucas said as he tensed up and tossed around in the chair.

  “A sniper shot and killed Marwan Haidar on Highway 95 traveling south in Virginia.”

  “One less spy to worry about. How’s Elizabeth Caldwell?” “She’s recovering from her ordeal.”

  “Thank God. Where’s Caldwell and Ericksen now?” asked Lucas. “They’re safe for the moment. Caldwell is awaiting information

  from Jacobson on certain Swiss numbered bank accounts Campbell and Dawkins maintained at Banque Matthias Reiter in Geneva,” the Undersecretary said.

  Lucas’s face tensed up and sweat formed on his forehead.

  CIA Headquarters

  Sullivan was holding the President’s Daily Briefing in his hands when he heard a beep. He glanced at his laptop computer monitor and checked his encrypted email messages.

  “What’s this,” he said under his breath. An urgent email from General Al-Jabr, requesting me to call him immediately. He picked up the secure landline phone and made the call.

  “Al-Jabr here.” “Phantom. What’s new?”

  “Our operative informed me today that Khalid has the complete nuke attack plans hidden in a wall safe in his office and protected by a fingerprint scanner. They reside on a USB flash drive. He also added another plan, a container ship set to sail with a tactical nuclear warhead, destination Port of Los Angeles. We believe it is going to carry an eight-kiloton explosive yield. The targeted date of the ship- ment from Jakarta is sometime in January.”

  That’s right.

  “General, I can arrange to have a black ops team up with your special operations forces and Ziad by Friday to do a surprise attack on the headquarters.”

  “First of all, we don’t know the names of the traitors within our armed forces’ ranks, and I suspect they would tip off Khalid and he would hide the flash drives or destroy them.”

  “This is his last mission. He will only work with Ericksen, whom he trusts with his life.”

  “All right, we’ll get Ericksen. I’ll need to get back to you on the details.”

  Sullivan returned to his Great Falls home early after a meeting with the President, Lucas, and Geiger. His smartphone rang. Sullivan glanced at his watch, which read two o’clock.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Bill. Given the urgency of the mission, I could assemble a four-man Delta team immediately. They could join up with the Saudi spy in Jeddah,” Lucas offered.

  “Thanks, but the Saudi spy will only work with Ericksen. Anyway, we’ll have backup while the mission is in progress.” He walked toward the dining room. “The Swiss intel officer and Jacobson have a flash drive with the information on the numbered bank accounts at Banque Matthias Reiter. He’ll email the data in a Word document soon, once he gets confirmation on a wire transfer to a Cayman Islands Bank.”

  “Great job,” Lucas said.

  Sullivan picked up his secure landline phone and called Ericksen at nine-thirty in the evening. “Hello Gold Eagle, this is Phantom. Sorry to wake you.”

  “It’s three-thirty in the morning. What’s up, sir?” asked Ericksen. “Khalid has a hidden fingerprint biometrics wall safe which holds

  his operational plans on two USB flash drives – one drive has the nuke attack plans for Las Vegas and Houston, and the other has a

  plan to ship an eight-kiloton nuclear warhead on a container ship bound for the Port of Los Angeles.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Wolverine will pick you up in two hours from the safe house and drive you to the Geneva International Airport. He’ll give you Khalid’s copied fingerprints on a latex glove. Place your right hand in the glove and use your index finger to gain access to the safe. Our Gulf- stream jet will be ready for take-off to Jeddah to meet Ziad at 0730 hours. Our medical team will insert a GPS-implanted micro-chip into your shoulder before take-off. America is counting on you for this mission.”

  “Hooyah, sir!”

  “Glad you got that SEAL spirit. We’re having a special reunion of old spooks in December at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. You’ll be my personal guest.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  60

  t nine in the morning Ericksen heard the Gulfstream pilot’s voice on the jet’s intercom, “Mark, pick up our satphone.”

  “Gold Eagle.”

  “Where are you?” asked Ziad.

  “I’ll be landing in four and a half hours. Where are Moritz and Khalid?”

  “Khalid is in Riyadh. Not sure about Moritz. I received your bank information. Call me when you arrive at the Sheraton.”

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Ericksen said.

  “It’s a small measure of the damage I’ve done.”

  Sullivan mentioned Bellagio. The painting. Yes, yes. Ericksen jumped up and approached a staffer. “Can you get me one of your satphones. It’s urgent.” Two minutes later, the staffer gave him one of the Agency satphones. He called Caldwell.

  “This is Gold Eagle.” “Venus here. What’s up?’

  “I recalled something odd about the bank’s conference room. Maybe it’s nothing. There is a beautiful stained glass painting of Bellagio, Italy, on the wall to the right of where I was seated and to the left of where Reiter sat down. I glanced at the artwork several

  times. Something about it didn’t seem right. The painting captured Bellagio on the right side, the center, Lake Como, and on the top, the Swiss Alps. The rays of the Sun depicted in the scene appeared bright and surreal. But in the middle of those rays, in a small rectangle, were dull.”

  “What’s the si
ze of the painting?” asked Caldwell. “Probably ten-feet in height by seven-feet in width.” “What is the size of the rectangle?”

  “About two-inches by four-inches.”

  “Mark, I think this could be the break we need. I’ll call Dave right now. Be safe.”

  Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

  Ziad placed his tape recorder next to the speakerphone and made a call. At Monch and Schneider Private Bank, Zurich, Hans Christian Scharz’s phone rang. “Herr Scharz speaking.”

  Ziad activated the recorder. “Khalid Al-Bustani, Account number MSPB8880076/OS,” said Ziad, impersonating Khalid’s voice.

  “Mr. Al-Bustani, please type in your code.”

  He keyed in Red Sea on the computer. “What is your employee ID number Herr Scharz?” asked Ziad.

  “477, sir.”

  Ziad took a drink of water. “I would like to make a wire transfer to VikingMercerIslandDK, account number#BMR0534986JR/1 – Banque Matthias Reiter, Geneva, for thirty million Swiss francs.”

  “Is this correct, Mr. Al-Bustani?” asked Herr Scharz. “Yes.”

  “The total comes to thirty million Swiss francs. We’ll put the wire transfer through within the hour. That leaves you with a balance of eighty million Swiss francs, sir.”