by Brad Thor
The good news, though, was that the United States knew exactly where the Grimaldi Lines’ Grande Senegal was and a U.S. Navy SEAL Team had already launched from a ship in the western Mediterranean.
Sitting on the rooftop of the ROS safe house in Villa San Giovanni, Harvath and Argento watched as a video feed of the interdiction was beamed to Harvath’s laptop via his satellite phone.
A drone had been dispatched to shadow the ship and send back reconnaissance information.
Once the SEALs launched, they did so via two Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk helicopters.
All of the SEALs were wearing miniature cameras that would provide real-time video of the assault.
Half of the team was responsible for locating the weapons, including any chemical components. The other half of the team was responsible for securing all crew and passengers. After which, they would conduct an investigation to determine if anyone aboard was an ISIS member or sympathizer.
Knowing what was at stake, the SEALs went in, not only expecting the chemist to be on the ship, but also expecting that he might be traveling with protection.
When the teams fast-roped out of the helos, Harvath’s screen split in two and he received video feeds from each team leader.
As Alpha team—armed with an RFID scanner that let them zero in on the frequencies of Vottari’s tags—headed for the containers, Bravo team headed for the bridge.
It took about twenty minutes for the bad news to start flooding in. First came a report from Alpha team. They had found the RFID tags, all thrown together in a plastic grocery bag. There were no weapons and no chemicals in the container.
Then came Bravo’s SITREP. All passengers and crew were accounted for. Unless there were stowaways that nobody knew about, they were it.
Bravo team’s leader held the passports up to his camera, so everyone watching the feeds could see them. Back at Langley, the CIA ran the names and photos through all of their databases. None of them were on any lists, nor were they affiliated with any known or suspected terrorist, terrorist supporter, or terrorist organizations.
The entire interdiction—all of that work—had been a bust. Harvath was back to square one.
But then, reflecting on the RFID tags, he abruptly realized that being back to square one was exactly where they needed to be.
CHAPTER 82
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* * *
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” Nicholas said over the secure uplink, “I never would have believed it. In addition to having their own covert servers, they’ve hidden an entire SCIF right inside Cedars-Sinai.”
“How the hell is that possible?” Ryan replied.
“They won a legitimate contract to encrypt patient medical records. As part of the agreement, they have office space at the hospital. Inside that office space is a raised-floor computer room. Except the floor wasn’t raised just so cables and a cooling system could run underneath. The entire room has been shielded to TEMPEST specifications.”
TEMPEST was the code name for the NSA’s data security guidelines. It set the standard for protecting highly sensitive information from being intercepted.
“You said ‘they’ won a legitimate contract. Who are they?”
“In putting out the contract for bid, priority was given to veterans, women, and minority-owned businesses. The winning bid came from a company called Blue Pine Technologies.”
“Never heard of them,” replied Ryan.
“Me neither. I had to work my ass off to track down their bid package. Apparently, they ticked all three boxes. Blue Pine is owned by two women, both IT whizzes. One of them is of Asian descent. The other is an Army veteran.”
“And?”
“The Army veteran worked in Army Intelligence. Then she went to work for the NSA.”
It just so happened that the CIA contracted a certain amount of off-the-books surveillance to a group run by a woman who had worked both in Army Intelligence and at the NSA. Ryan didn’t believe in coincidences.
“What’s her name?” she asked.
“Susan Viscovich.”
• • •
Doing jobs for the branch of the CIA responsible for clandestine intelligence collection meant taking meetings at interesting times in interesting places. A lockhouse in the C&O National Historical Park on a Friday night definitely ranked toward the top of Susan Viscovich’s “most interesting” list.
Upon arrival, she saw a lone Lexus sedan parked outside. It seemed a little bit odd, but then again, what had she expected? A column of blacked-out Suburbans? That probably wasn’t how the Director of the Clandestine Service rolled—especially not when he was meeting to discuss such a sensitive surveillance case.
She figured the meeting had to do with her surveillance of Lydia Ryan and Reed Carlton. Was she going to get her ass chewed for the fact that the cameras, microphones, and vehicle trackers had been discovered? Maybe.
She had reached out to Andy Jordan to get a heads-up on what was going on, but her calls went right to voicemail. He hadn’t responded to any of her texts either. Whatever.
Sometimes surveillance assignments got blown. It happened. She had, though, delivered on the emails, and maybe that was what she was being asked in to discuss.
Nevertheless, it was weird for her to be having a Director-level meeting. Perhaps they had discovered something highly sensitive and they wanted to dot all their i’s and cross their t’s before confronting Lydia Ryan. There was only one way to find out.
Parking her Volvo next to the Lexus, she got out, walked up the short flight of steps, and knocked on the blue door.
A moment later, it opened. But instead of seeing the Director of the Clandestine Service, she saw the Director of Central Intelligence.
“Thank you for coming,” said Bob McGee.
Shocked, she looked deeper into the room and saw the Deputy Director, Lydia Ryan, sitting at a table near the fireplace.
Opening the door the rest of the way, the Director motioned for her to come inside.
What the hell was going on? For a moment, Viscovich thought about turning around and leaving. In fact, a voice in the back of her mind told her not only to leave, but to leave as fast as she could.
The rational part of her, though, maintained control. She wanted to know what this was all about. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside.
• • •
Two hours later, realizing she had been lied to by Andrew Jordan, and that he had even forged the finding from the Director authorizing her to surveil Lydia Ryan and Reed Carlton, Viscovich exited the lockhouse, climbed back into her Volvo, and headed home.
The Director of Central Intelligence had given her a new directive. Until she heard from him personally, she was to do nothing and to speak with no one, including Andrew Jordan.
Before she had even exited the park, McGee and Ryan were formalizing what their next step would be.
The only question was whether it should be run through the CIA or whether they should use the anonymity of the Carlton Group to carry it out.
CHAPTER 83
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* * *
ROME, ITALY
Argento had a private jet waiting for them at the Reggio Calabria airport. The flight to Rome took less than an hour. A pair of helicopters was on the tarmac when they arrived, rotors hot, ready to take them the rest of the way.
From a public safety standpoint, the ROS wanted to hit the warehouse in the port at Civitavecchia as quickly as possible. From a media standpoint, Harvath wanted to hit it while it was dark and everyone was still asleep. The last thing they needed was a TV news crew showing up, or someone with a camera phone posting video to the Internet. The less the bad guys knew about what they knew, the better.
Patching Nicholas directly into Vottari’s phone via satellite, they had been able to retrace where the RFID tags had been.
La Formícula’s men had handed over the weapons near Cerveteri—a town northwest of Rom
e. From there, the ISIS men had driven to a warehouse in Civitavecchia, where there had been no movement since the tags were placed upon the cargo ship Grande Senegal shortly before it headed out to sea.
Harvath had no doubt that the target was somewhere in Rome. If ISIS had been planning on using the weapons someplace else in Europe, they would have had them, and Mustapha Marzouk, delivered much farther north—possibly Turin or Milan. What good is an illicit underground railroad if you don’t follow it as far as it will take you?
The helicopters landed well north of the target, where an additional ROS team met them.
As the team leader spoke to Argento, Lovett translated for Harvath.
“The warehouse has been under surveillance for the last hour and a half. There have been no signs of any activity. The lease is only a couple of months old and, according to the landlord, is held by a trading company out of Panama. Probably a shell corporation.
“The ROS Hazmat unit out of Rome is two blocks away from the target. They have been watching the surveillance feeds and are ready to make entry as soon as Argento gives the order.”
There was some back and forth between the men that got somewhat heated. Lovett waited until it was resolved before explaining it.
“Apparently, there’s some disagreement about whether the neighborhood should be evacuated. It’s largely an industrial area, but some of the businesses run overnight shifts.”
“Argento won the argument?” Harvath asked.
“For now.”
Once Argento and his colleague had finished going over the plan, everyone climbed into waiting vehicles and they took off for the target.
The command post had been established three blocks upwind of the warehouse. If sarin or any other hazardous chemicals were present, they wanted to be outside the immediate zone.
In addition to the ROS team outfitted with respirators and CBRN suits and prepared to make entry, hazardous incident response units from the Italian Department of Civil Protection had also been activated and were staging nearby.
Argento had taken great pains to keep the operational footprint as small as possible. Unfortunately, with so much at stake, this was as small as the situation would allow.
Pulling up at the staging area, Harvath and Lovett hopped out and followed Argento into the mobile incident command post, which was housed inside a climate-controlled tractor-trailer.
Staff in military green flight suits sat in front of computer screens, while large monitors bolted to the walls fed back a series of images, including footage from two drones that were observing the warehouse from overhead.
After a quick discussion, Argento gave the order to send the ROS team into the building.
Moments later, two black vans appeared on two different monitors. One approached the warehouse from the front, another from the rear. Each came to a stop only long enough to drop off its occupants before moving on.
Even wearing the bulky chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear protection suits and respirators, the armed men moved with speed and dexterity. At both entry points, the lead operatives used fiber-optic cameras to make sure the doors weren’t booby-trapped before calling up their breachers.
Just like the SEALs who had raided the cargo ship, the ROS operators were wearing individual cameras. When the breachers opened the doors and the teams flooded in, all eyes in the command post went from watching the drone footage to the individual POVs coming off the teams’ helmet cams.
The men crowded in, their weapons up, scanning for threats. In the center of the empty warehouse was a large shipping container.
Carefully, the team approached. The lead operators stepped forward, fiber-optic cameras in hand, and attempted to snake the thin devices inside. There was just one problem. The container was so tightly sealed they couldn’t find a way in.
Knowing it would take forever to get a portable X-ray machine on site, the team leaders made a decision.
Sending their men out of the building, they decided to risk opening the container’s doors.
After unlocking the hardware, they counted to three, and then swung the heavy metal doors outward.
CHAPTER 84
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* * *
Inside the container was a rough but fully functional laboratory. In addition to the chemistry area, with all its beakers, tubes, and Bunsen burners, there was a workbench with large vises and shelves full of tools.
It was the empty jugs of chemicals, though, that Harvath was most interested in. As the ROS operatives picked them up, Harvath read the labels aloud.
“Methylphosphonic dichloride. Hydrogen fluoride. Isopropyl amine. And isopropyl alcohol,” he said. “They’re making sarin.”
Sarin was a tasteless, odorless nerve agent that was banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, but that had been used in the Tokyo subway attack in the 1990s and, more recently, in horrific attacks in Syria that garnered international condemnation.
Sarin was considered a weapon of mass destruction. Just a drop of it could kill a healthy person. It was easily transformed from liquid to gas and could remain on clothing for over a half hour, thereby creating additional casualties by affecting many of those who came in contact with it.
Because sarin was so dangerous and had such a short shelf life, ISIS had purchased what were called “binary” artillery shells. The shells were essentially a delivery device with two separate compartments. On one side, methylphosphonyl difluoride, made from reacting methylphosphonic dichloride and hydrogen fluoride, was added. On the other, a mixture of isopropyl amine and isopropyl alcohol was added. In between them was a “rupture” disk that broke down in flight and allowed the compounds to mix and become sarin.
When the device detonated, it sent a cloud of sarin gas into the air, killing everyone who breathed it in or whose skin it touched. Sarin was considered twenty-six times more lethal than cyanide. Whatever attack ISIS had planned, it was going to make everything up to this point look like amateur hour.
“I need to go to the building,” Harvath said.
Argento looked at him. “What for?”
He held up his phone. “I need to identify the nearest cell tower.”
The Italian asked one of the containment specialists if it was safe to go in. Until testing had been completed, he warned them against it.
Argento, though, came up with a compromise. Hopping in one of the ROS vehicles, they drove the three blocks to the warehouse.
After pulling up in front, turning his phone off and then on again, Harvath and Argento drove around to the back and did the same thing. Harvath then reached out to Nicholas.
A half hour later, back at the command post, his cell phone rang. “Six brand-new phones were turned on last night for the first time. All six pinged off your tower in Civitavecchia,” the little man stated. “Then they were all turned off.”
“What about since then?” asked Harvath.
“They all popped up just once more. Each sent a one-word text later in the evening. It was likely a code of some sort. The texts all went to the same number.”
“Do we know where they are now?”
“Negative,” said Nicholas. “After the one-word text, they all went dark. Whether the signal is purposely being blocked, or they tossed them in a bathtub, I can’t tell.”
“When they did pop up that one time, where were they?”
“I’ll text you the coordinates.”
“And the number that received the text messages?” Harvath asked.
“That one also went dark, but I’ll send you its tower location as well.”
Asking Nicholas to keep an eye out for any activity on the phones, Harvath hung up and waited for the text to come in.
When it did, he read the information to Argento, who had one of his people pull the locations up on a map. All were in random spots around Rome.
The maximum effective range of a comparable American mortar was almost sixty-five hundred yards, or nearly six kilometers. With that kind o
f reach, you could hit anything in the city, regardless of which cell tower you were closest to.
“Connect the towers,” said Harvath.
Argento relayed the command and everyone watched as a red circle appeared on the screen.
At that moment, everyone’s eyes were drawn to what sat right in the middle—the Vatican.
CHAPTER 85
* * *
* * *
ROME
It was a beautiful morning, sunny and warm. Tursunov had risen early, performed his ablutions, recited his prayers, exercised, and showered.
As he had done in Santiago de Compostela and Paris, he wanted to pay a preattack visit to the site he would strike next.
Dressed in a pair of khaki trousers, a white shirt, and blue blazer, he looked every inch the upscale Western visitor to the Eternal City. Not a single person he passed had any notion of the hatred he harbored for Rome and everything it represented.
It was the heart of Christendom. It was the enemy not only of ISIS, but of all true believers of Islam worldwide. Its conquest was a key ISIS objective.
The Prophet Mohammed himself had prophesied that two great Roman cities would one day fall to Islam—Constantinople and Rome. Constantinople, now Istanbul, had been conquered by Muslims. Rome was next.
And after Rome, Israel would fall. And after Israel, the United States and the rest of its allies. Armageddon would descend and a final battle between good and evil, Muslim against non-Muslim, would take place. With the help of the Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, Islam would emerge victorious.