Independence Day: A Dewey Andreas Novel

by Ben Coes

  Al-Medi jumped down from the flatbed to greet the visitors. As he walked, he looked at the six men aboard the ship.

  “Get ready to cast off!” Al-Medi barked. “Tarp the crate. Now! Faqir, come with me.”

  One of the men jumped off the boat and walked with Al-Medi toward the visitors.

  “Cloud,” Al-Medi said as he stepped toward the parking area to greet him.

  Cloud was wearing black jeans and a leather jacket. He had on white-framed sunglasses. His Afro of blond curls stuck up in an unruly pattern. In his right hand was a small duffel bag.

  Al-Medi put his hand out as Cloud approached, but Cloud made no effort to return the gesture.

  “Is it ready?” asked Cloud, with urgency in his voice.

  “Yes,” said Al-Medi. “They will push off within the hour. This is the captain, Faqir.”

  Cloud scanned the other man.

  “How old are you?” asked Cloud.

  “Twenty-seven,” said Faqir.

  “And you are capable?”

  “I have made six transatlantic crossings in my life,” said Faqir. “Yes, I believe I am ready, sir.”

  “Have you ever been at the helm when making those crossings?”

  Cloud stared into the Arab’s eyes. He already knew the answer to his question, but he wanted to hear what Faqir would say.

  “No, sir, I have not.”

  Cloud nodded impassively. But Faqir’s answer pleased him. He was not a liar.

  Cloud handed him the duffel bag.

  “This is a VHF radio,” said Cloud. “It was bought in Nova Scotia and is registered to a Canadian citizen. Its AIS beacon will indicate that it is a Halifax cod dragger. When you get to Georges Bank, initiate contact with whatever vessel you can find. Do not send a distress signal. You simply are having engine problems. Inform whoever you can raise that you’re in need of engine filters. When they come close, do what you need to do to take over the boat. No witnesses. Move the bomb, then sink the dragger.”

  “I understand,” said Faqir.

  “Dr. Poldark has potassium iodide pills for the crew. You’ll want to start taking them today. They won’t stop the radiation sickness, but they’ll delay it. After that, you know what to do. The specific maps and time lines have already been sent to you.”

  “Yes, I have studied them.”

  Cloud nodded to the older man with him.

  “This is Dr. Poldark,” said Cloud. “He’ll inspect the device and connect the detonator. Give him whatever assistance he needs.”

  Faqir nodded at the older man.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” he said.

  “Is my equipment here?” asked Poldark. “Lathe? Soldering devices? Explosives?”

  “It arrived last night. It’s been placed aboard.”

  “Very good,” said Poldark. “What about hazmat suits?”

  “Yes, they’re on board.”

  “And did you cover it in the tarp I sent?”

  “Yes, sir. What is it for?”

  “The Americans measure radiation from satellites in the sky,” said Poldark. “Uranium depletion emits a signature that enables them to pinpoint and track the bomb from stationary locations in outer space based solely on molecular level air characteristics. Soon, the United States will know the bomb is moving. They will scan the coast. If their Milstar satellites attempt to find the radioactive signature that matches the bomb, the covering will obscure the readings and cause them to lose track of the bomb for several hours. By then, we will be out of their imprint lines. Hopefully, they won’t know where it’s gone.”

  “If the Americans somehow find us—” said Faqir respectfully.

  “There are too many boats and the ocean is too busy and too wide for you to be caught,” said Cloud, interrupting. “However, if the Americans catch you, tell them whatever you know. There’s no glory in trying to protect me. They will torture you to get at the truth. I am deeply grateful for your service and your sacrifice. I wouldn’t want you to suffer torture. Now get going. I’ll be in touch after you’re through the Strait of Gibraltar and are free and clear.”

  He turned to leave, then reached into his pocket and removed a small remote.

  “Faqir,” he said, tossing it in the air. “The detonator.”

  Faqir caught the device, a panicked look on his face.

  “It’s not connected yet,” said Poldark, shaking his head.

  Cloud moved up the driveway. Al-Medi followed him. He stepped close, so that Poldark and Faqir couldn’t hear him speak.

  “I must tell you something,” he said in a low voice. “At dinner last night, there was talk. Chatter. Everyone is talking about the next nine/eleven. They know something.”

  “This is because of your jihadists,” said Cloud, nodding toward Faqir. “We need them, but they have big mouths.”

  “What if the Americans—”

  “You seem worried,” interrupted Cloud. “Do you remember nine/eleven? Do you remember coming to me after school and asking for my help? You didn’t have any fear back then, did you?”

  Cloud stepped forward so that he was only inches from Al-Medi’s face. He glared into Al-Medi’s eyes.

  “Let me worry about the CIA,” continued Cloud. “You have one job to do. Get that boat moving, then get back to Moscow.”

  He handed Al-Medi a cell phone.

  “Keep this on you,” said Cloud. “I want to be able to reach you.”

  “What about my payment?”

  Cloud moved up the hill. He climbed into the Porsche and started it, then revved the engine as he looked at Al-Medi, standing in front of the car. He stared at the cell phone as Al-Medi stuck it into the pocket of his jeans.

  He lowered the window.

  “You get paid when the boat is through the strait,” said Cloud. “That should be Friday or Saturday. Saturday I’m having a dinner party at the dacha. Come by. It will be fun. I’ll pay you then.”

  Cloud cranked the wheel hard clockwise, then slammed the gas, burning a fiery, dust-choked cloud into the air behind him.

  5

  IGUALA, MEXICO

  A white Chevy Suburban, windows tinted sunglass silver, ripped along a decrepit, pothole-rutted road at a hundred miles an hour. It was just past midnight.

  The vehicle sent a simple, ominous message to the locals as it cruised by: Stay the fuck out of the way.

  Everyone assumed the shiny white Suburban was from the Sinaloa cartel, or someone having to do with Sinaloa. The locals feared the psychos who ran the cartel. Gunning down a local was not only possible, it happened all the time, often without provocation or explanation. No one dared even look at the vehicle as it moved along Iguala’s winding roads.

  Sinaloa was Mexico’s largest criminal enterprise. It was a drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and organized crime behemoth believed to rival the Moscow mafia in its size and scope. Both groups had tentacles deep inside the United States, Europe, and Asia.

  But the Suburban wasn’t from any cartel.

  Inside the vehicle, two men sat quietly, one driving, the other in the backseat. They hadn’t spoken since departing Mexico City two hours before.

  “We’re five klicks out,” said Pete Bond, glancing in the rearview mirror at Dewey.

  Dewey didn’t look up. His eyes were focused on the window and the passing countryside.

  “Hey, Dewey?”

  Dewey gradually moved his eyes away from the window and toward Bond. He remained silent.

  “I need you briefed up,” continued Bond.

  “Sure,” said Dewey. “Take me through it.”

  Bond was Central Intelligence Agency; a senior officer inside the National Clandestine Service’s Political Activities Division. He was dressed in clothing that could only be described as ostentatious: black Lanvin slacks, white Givenchy button-down, gold chains, Prada shoes. His hair was long, black, and slicked back. He had a mustache. Bond’s get-up was highly planned, in case they were stopped along the way. He looked like a
high-level capo inside, or affiliated with, Sinaloa, come to pay a visit to the refinery.

  Dewey had on jeans, a black synthetic shirt that clung to his chest, arms, shoulders, and torso, a flak jacket, and a Lycra ski cap. His face was camouflage black.

  Across his lap was an unusual-looking assault rifle: HK MR762A1-SD. Dewey had selected the gun based on his experience as a Delta fighting cartel gunmen. It was a stealthy, very powerful piece of killing hardware, a gun that could silently take out a guard from two hundred yards without being seen or heard, then, a minute later, could be used to mow down a dozen of that guard’s colleagues after they discovered the corpse on the ground and went to guns.

  The refinery was located in remote territory several hours south of Mexico City, technically part of the sprawling city of Iguala but twenty miles from the city’s decaying urban edge. The roads leading to the refinery were bordered by squalor. Shacks were scattered every hundred feet or so. Old steel oil barrels tossed flames into the sky from gasoline fires. Front yards were overrun by chickens and mongrel dogs.

  The refinery was situated at the end of a weed-covered, mile-long dirt road. A hundred years ago, the road led to a sugarcane mill, but the buildings had long since been boarded up, abandoned, then burned to the ground by vandals. Now the site was occupied by a neat-looking corrugated steel warehouse. Inside, a small state-of-the-art cocaine and heroin refinery turned out street-ready narcotics that left in semitrucks bound for the United States.

  For the Sinaloa cartel, the refinery was neither important nor valuable. It was one of more than one hundred such coke fabs that dotted the Mexican countryside. Portable, tremendously profitable, totally expendable.

  Bond was a highly trained operator, but his true métier was in-theater intelligence acquisition, synthesis, analysis, and strategy. The operation was his design.

  Dewey was there to execute that design.

  “Beneath the seat,” said Bond, “grab the scans.”

  Dewey reached down and found a manila folder, placing it on his lap. He took his SOG combat blade from his vest and triggered a small light built into the hilt. He put it in his mouth and aimed it at the photographs inside the folder.

  “Those are fresh off NGA SAT an hour ago,” said Bond.

  NGA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was a key CIA operations support agency, providing real-time imagery of areas of operation, looking primarily for signs of unexpected enemy manpower.

  Several of the photos were taken during daytime. They showed a rectangular warehouse, along with a few semitrucks backed up to a loading dock. There were also night shots, from the sky, using advanced holographic-imaging technology. They looked like X-rays. One of the photos displayed a close-up of the side of the building; a red circle had been stenciled around a door.

  Dewey finished looking at the photos and tossed them on the seat.

  “You’ll approach on foot in a northeast pattern, coming at the building through a side door. The location is on the scan. Eliminate anyone you see, then hit me up on commo. I’ll get down there, we’ll set munitions, then split. We’ll detonate it remotely. We should be able to fly Air America out of Acapulco. SEAL Team 4 is prepared to exfiltrate if things get nasty.”

  Dewey stared out the Suburban’s back window. As hard as he tried to listen, Bond’s words sounded like they were coming from a thousand miles away. As hard as he tried to concentrate, he couldn’t.

  “Cartels your first desk?” asked Dewey, willing himself back to the present.

  “Second,” said Bond. “I spent five years in Russia.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was part of a team that was trying to destabilize Putin before he got elected. Obviously it didn’t work too well.”

  Dewey closed his eyes and pictured Jessica. It was the afternoon she was killed. She was on a horse, riding in Argentina. He was riding behind her. For some reason, this was the image that popped into his head as he stared out at the moonlit Iguala countryside.

  It had been almost precisely six months to the day since she was killed. He and Jessica would’ve been married. The first bump of a child might’ve appeared on her stomach by now.

  He shut his eyes for several moments, then opened them, steeling himself against the sadness he knew would soon come on like a fever.

  “I heard you spent some time chasing down the North Valley cartel,” said Bond, referring to one of South America’s most notorious cartels, a group that was now largely gone.

  “Yeah,” said Dewey, meeting Bond’s eyes, forcing himself back to the present, to the Suburban, to Bond’s words, to Iguala.

  “What was the biggest coke fab you hit?”

  Dewey stared at Bond in the mirror. He remained silent.

  Stop thinking about her.

  “I don’t remember,” said Dewey. “They all sorta blend in.”

  “I studied how North Valley was taken down. You were right in the middle of it.”

  “If I was, I didn’t realize it,” said Dewey.

  Dewey looked at Bond in the rearview mirror.

  “Can I ask you something?” said Dewey.

  “Sure.”

  “And not have it leave here?”

  “It stays between us.”

  “You know someone at the Agency named Gant?” asked Dewey.

  Bond’s eyes flashed in the rearview.

  “The new deputy director,” he said. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  Bond paused.

  “Steer clear of him,” he said. “I don’t trust him. Politicians are bad enough, but the guys who get them elected? They’re assholes.”

  Bond slowed the Suburban.

  “We’re here,” he said as he pulled on a set of thermal night optics, killed the lights, and banked left into the driveway, accelerating down an empty dirt road. After a minute, he came to a stop.

  Dewey reached to the seat next to him. He lifted a half-moon-shaped mag and slammed it into the gun. He opened the door and climbed out. He reached to his ear.

  “Commo check.”

  “Roger,” said Bond. “See you in a few.”

  Dewey started a quick-paced run off the driveway, into a low field of brush and dry scrub grass.

  He had night optics, but he kept them strapped to his weapons belt, preferring to let the moon guide him. After several minutes of running, he came to a crest of a hill and for the first time saw the lights of the refinery, just a few hundred feet down a steep slope.

  Dewey paused, catching his breath. He checked his weapon one last time. He skulked down the hill toward the near side entrance, raising the rifle as he moved.

  At the bottom of the hill, he moved to the side door that had been circled on the scans. He felt his heart racing. He could barely breathe. His hand reached out to grab the door handle. He felt paralyzed, watching as his hand reached for the door. In the dim light, he could see what he already knew was happening, the trembling of his hand as it reached out for the handle. Dewey stared for more than a minute at the warehouse. The minute became two, then three. Yet still he didn’t move.

  Suddenly, he heard a faint whisper in his ear.

  “How we doing?”

  It was Bond.

  Dewey reached for his earbud. His arm remain paralyzed, extended toward the door, shaking like a leaf.

  “Dewey, you okay?” whispered Bond.

  “No.”

  “I’ll be right down. Stay where you are.”

  Dewey took a step backward, then another, moving slowly away from the warehouse. He heard the engine. His eyes turned to the driveway. The Suburban barreled toward him, skidding to a stop. Bond climbed out, submachine gun raised, and charged toward the front door of the warehouse, around the corner from Dewey.

  Bond glanced at Dewey just as he was about to open the front door. He flashed Dewey a smile. Then he raised the SMG and pulled the door open.

  The staccato of automatic weapon fire thundered from inside the warehouse. De
wey stood still, not moving, for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Bond emerged. He walked to Dewey. When he came to within a foot, Bond reached out for Dewey’s rifle, pulling it from him.

  “You think you can help me carry the bomb?” asked Bond.

  Dewey nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Bond stared for one last moment at Dewey.

  “You’re not the first,” said Bond reassuringly. “You won’t be the last. Now let’s torch this place and get the fuck out of here.”

  6

  SOVETSKYA AVENUE

  ELEKTROSTAL, RUSSIA

  Cloud parked the Porsche on a side street, behind the Elektrostal train station. He had on dark black sunglasses. Behind the lenses, his eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed from a lack of sleep. He wore black leather pants, boots, and a green T-shirt. He was gaunt, so thin he appeared unhealthy. He walked quickly, stopping at a building several blocks from the station. Glancing in both directions, he made sure he hadn’t been followed, then inserted a key into a large steel door.

  The building was four stories high, constructed in mustard-colored brick. Like most buildings in Elektrostal, it long ago took on a look of dilapidated resignation, its exterior stained in rust and mildew. It had once contained the administrative offices of a steel pipe manufacturer who’d gone bankrupt in the 1970s. It was the fourth location over the course of a ten-year period for Cloud.

  The locations shared certain characteristics. Each was inside a city large enough to provide a level of anonymity and infrastructure, yet small enough to be off the radar screens of intelligence agencies. Each was within a few hours of Moscow and accessible by train. All the cities were economically depressed, guaranteeing plenty of vacant office buildings.

  Elektrostal was a small industrial city located an hour’s drive east of downtown Moscow. A handful of heavy equipment manufacturers, metallurgical plants, and chemical processors were located in the grayish city. The streets of Elektrostal were laid out in a mathematical grid, with straight, sweeping blocks of concrete apartment buildings and half-empty strip malls that ran in precise lines for miles. Other than an underground nuclear waste storage facility at the northern outskirts of the city limits, Elektrostal was unimportant, a minor place that produced little of great consequence. At least a quarter of the city’s low-rise concrete office buildings were dark and empty. There wasn’t a single warehouse that wasn’t partially covered in rust.