by Ben Coes
The four CIA mission theaters occupied an entire floor two stories below ground level. Echelon was the largest, but Polk liked the intimacy of Targa. He wanted to be able to glance into the eyes of the dozen or so case officers, field experts, tactical support specialists, and analysts on his team.
A double chime sounded on the speaker, then Jim Bruckheimer came on.
“We have something and it’s live.”
“What is it?” said Polk.
“The phone he called Malnikov with is still on. I’m sending you the coordinates. He’s in Moscow.”
Polk moved behind one of his analysts, seated at the computer in front of a large black screen.
“Give me Moscow grid with all Langley assets,” said Polk.
The large plasma screen lit up. A live satellite image of Moscow came into sharp relief. A few seconds later, green lights began appearing on the screen, showing all CIA personnel available for deployment in or around Moscow. There were two CIA assets in the city.
“Put the coordinates of the target up,” said Polk.
In the lower left-hand side of the screen, a bright orange light, then the words “15 Prospekt Vernadskogo.”
“He’s near Moscow Polytechnic,” said the analyst.
Polk pointed to one of the green lights—a CIA agent who was close by.
“Highlight it,” said Polk.
The analyst hovered a cursor above the light and double-clicked it. A photo appeared of a young male with black hair and a mustache. Beneath the photo, an empty box appeared, asking for a password. The analyst turned to Polk.
“Sir?”
Polk glanced around the room, making sure every person present had requisite security clearance.
“553 dash TS dash 7,” he said.
When the analyst typed it in and hit Enter, the man’s biography spread in block letters beneath:
NOC:
344K-6T ALPHA
LTK:
4 OCT 2011
PDS:
MAYBANK, JOHN BRAEBURN, Lt.
DOB:
04/14/88, Charleston, SC
REW:
U.S. Navy SEAL Team 10 (SO1)
RANK:
4 V.E.X.
Polk pulled a small device from his chest pocket. It was an earbud, approximately the size of a gumdrop. He stuck it in his ear.
“We are now live,” said Polk. “I have control.”
“Roger, control,” came a voice of a woman on speaker.
“Protocol.”
“Roger, protocol is on-screen ‘IVY,’ over.”
“Alpha 344K dash 6T,” said Polk.
“Roger Alpha 344K dash 6T. Hold for shadow.”
* * *
Johnny Maybank heard the buzzing noise, then felt it at his wrist. The wrist phone had five distinctive beeping patterns. This one, a dull monotone, was a call out from one of Langley’s mission theaters. It meant a live operation was under way and Maybank was being pulled in.
Maybank lay in the darkness of his Moscow apartment, giving himself one extra second, then he practically jumped from the bed. As he charged across the room to the bathroom, he typed a code into his wrist phone.
“Maybank,” he said.
“Control 344K. Go commo.”
Next to the sink, Maybank found a small pill bottle, flipped it open, and removed a transparent object the size of a Tic Tac—his earbud. He peeled a strip of covering from the adhesive on the side of the object, then stuck it in his ear.
“Commo, affirmative,” he said.
“You have Mission Theater Targa, control leader Polk,” said the woman.
“Roger.”
“Morning, Johnny, it’s Bill.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, reaching for a pair of cutoff shorts that were clumped up on the floor.
“The photograph you’re about to see is a Russian computer hacker known as Cloud,” said Polk. “He’s also a terrorist, running a live, high-target operation inside the U.S.”
Looking at his wrist, he saw a photograph of a Caucasian with blond, curly hair.
“The target is less than one mile from you,” said Polk. “His coordinates will be punched into the GPS on your wrist. He is moving, could be guarded, and should be considered very dangerous. You are to take whatever actions necessary to capture him and prepare for in-theater real-time interrogation. Do not kill him; we need him alive.”
“Roger, Bill.”
“We’re gonna try and get some backup, Johnny, but don’t count on it. Now get moving. Out.”
* * *
Maybank stepped out the front door of the building and broke into a hard run. He had on orange Puma running shoes, no socks, cutoff khaki shorts, a T-shirt, and a blue windbreaker. He sprinted down a side street until he reached Prospekt Vernadskogo, then went right. He charged along the sidewalk for more than a mile, checking his wrist, whose small map guided his movements. Maybank, who’d played football at the University of Texas, was running at a 4:30 pace.
When Maybank’s wrist PDA told him he was within ten feet of the cell phone, he stopped. There was only one store within ten feet, a small coffee shop. He caught his breath for a minute, then opened the door and stepped inside.
A dozen tables were filled with students, looking at their computers, talking on phones, reading, and sipping drinks. He scanned for the man with the blond Afro. He wasn’t there. He checked the restroom, then went behind the counter. Nothing. Maybank could have imagined almost any one of the customers in the restaurant being a terrorist. Half were Middle Eastern, the others a mix of long-haired Russians.
He got in line, studying the GPS signal. According to his wrist device, Cloud was within four feet of him. He reached his hand to his ear.
“Target isn’t here.”
“Are you sure?” asked Polk.
“Yeah.”
“Control,” said Polk, “I need you to dial that tracker cell.”
“Roger, NCS.”
“You ready, John?”
Maybank stepped toward the counter, reaching his right hand into the windbreaker. He found the butt of his SIG Sauer P226. He felt the suppressor sticking into the side of his torso.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Go, control,” said Polk.
“Roger, NCS. In five, four, three, two, one…”
“May I help you?” asked a girl behind the counter, in Russian, as Maybank heard the low ring of a cell phone behind him.
“Espresso, please,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.
A tall, thin, young-looking man was holding the phone, his eyes darting about. He was Middle Eastern, his face covered in a beard and mustache, his skin olive.
Maybank watched as the man lifted the ringing phone to his ear.
“Someone answered it,” said Maybank. “Arab.”
“We need a photo.”
Maybank removed his hand from his windbreaker, then nonchalantly hit a button on his wrist, taking a photo of the man answering the phone.
* * *
Inside Targa, the photograph shot up on one of the screens.
A crosshatch of red grid lines spread across the man’s features as CIA facial recognition software quickly synthesized his face into a precise block of metadata, or code, then pushed it across a whole library of CIA, FBI, NSA, Interpol, and other databases. In less than one minute, the screen burst into a profile sheet, with a series of photos of the same individual along with a biography:
Interpol Flash: Terror Stk: Wanted Dead or Alive
ALERT:
AL QAEDA [LEVEL 2 COMBATANT]
WANTED:
AL-MEDI, Zhia
CIT:
Chechnya, RUSSIA
DOB:
26/02/85
HOME:
Grozny, Chechnya
LKS:
LAST KNOWN SIGHTING: 11/01/12—Damascus, Syria
I case L87-34-00K
ACTIONS:
Madrid, Spain + [CTU FILE WAW45] 11/3/2004 + Madrid train bombings
191 casualties: Al-Medi believed tertiary
to Atocha Station attack
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia + [CTU FILE S09U] 12/5/2003 + U.S. embassy compound bombing
36 casualties: Al-Medi driver of pre-fuel truck from Lebanon (later converted by Al-Houri into bomb) Khobar Towers (U.S. DOD—67T el-forte)
Polk tapped his ear.
“Johnny, his name is Al-Medi,” said Polk. “He’s AQ with a laundry list of hostiles. Be very careful. He could be wearing some sort of suicide vest. Also, do not let him reach for his mouth; we don’t want him munching a cyanide pill before we can grill him. We need him alive.”
“Roger that, Bill.”
Polk pointed at a separate green light on the screen.
“Highlight it,” he said.
The analyst moved the cursor above the second green light, then double-clicked. The face of a female agent appeared. She was black, with closely cropped hair.
SAD:
55007 ZEBRA
PDS:
BRAGA, CHRISTINA CATHCART
DOB:
09/03/88, Los Angeles, CA
REW:
Recruit: RUS language desk
Juilliard (2002–4) Ballet/modern dance
Yale University, Russian Studies
(D.Phil 2009) summa cum laude
“She’s your best option?” asked Calibrisi.
Polk paused an extra half second, studying the Moscow grid on the wall.
“She’s our only option.”
He tapped his earbud.
“Control.”
“Roger, NCS.”
“55007 Zebra,” he said.
“Hold, NCS.”
* * *
Christy Braga was typing into her laptop in her third-story office at the U.S. embassy when her wrist phone made two small beeps. She stood up, shut the door, then hit a button on the side of the watch.
“Go commo,” came the voice of Polk. “We’re live.”
“Roger, NCS,” she said, reaching for a silver locket around her neck, popping it open, and removing an earbud and affixing it inside her ear. “I’m commo, Bill.”
“We’re downrange in an operation near you, Christy,” said Polk. “I need you to move to a set of coordinates with tactical weapons and escape options. Coordinates will be on you in a few seconds. Move by car.”
Braga shut her laptop and moved to her office closet. She pulled out a steel weapons case and unbuckled it. Inside, held in place with Velcro straps, were several combat blades, a few suppressed handguns, and a pair of HK MP7A1 submachine guns. She removed a suppressed Colt M1991, a SOG SEAL Pup knife, and one of the MP7A1s, slamming a mag into it and then threading in a suppressor. She left her office and ran down the service stairs three at a time. In less than a minute, she was at the wheel of a red BMW M5, moving toward a steel gate at the back of the embassy compound.
“Can I get some intel, Bill?”
“This is an Emergency Priority recon,” said Polk. “Agent Maybank is in active pursuit of a known Al Qaeda operative and will likely need support.”
“What do we do when we get him?”
“Vernacular House,” said Polk, referring to a CIA safe house in Moscow. “This is a do not kill. He’s a tertiary to a planned terror attack we believe is now live. We need to talk to him.”
* * *
Maybank paid for the espresso, keeping Al-Medi in his range of vision. He stepped to the end of the counter and waited for his drink. He watched Al-Medi without looking.
Maybank took the espresso from the counter and left the coffee shop. He glanced in through the window. Al-Medi held the phone to his ear, then hung up. He scanned the coffee shop suspiciously.
Maybank crossed the street. He stood behind a parked car and waited. A little while later, Al-Medi stepped through the coffee shop door.
“He’s moving,” said Maybank. “He suspects something.”
“We have him on grid,” said Polk, “as long as he doesn’t throw the phone away.”
The street was crowded. The neighborhood was filled with students from Moscow Polytechnic University, a few blocks away.
Al-Medi went left. From a distance, Maybank watched him, gulping the espresso, then tossed the cup into a garbage can. He walked ten feet behind him, keeping pace, but on the opposite side of the street.
* * *
As Al-Medi walked down the sidewalk, his head swiveled slowly back and forth, searching calmly around him. His laid-back demeanor was an act. The chase was on and he knew it.
The call changed everything. Had it been Cloud, he would’ve called back. But he didn’t, and right now Al-Medi knew he was being hunted. He’d been thumbprinted the moment he answered the phone.
Al-Medi came to an abrupt stop. He peered into a storefront window, pretending to look at something. Instead, he studied the reflection for signs of a tracker. He studied each and every person as they moved past him. Nobody looked even remotely suspicious. Then, across the street, he saw a tall black-haired man staring at him from behind a Citroën.
Al-Medi started to walk casually down the sidewalk. He stopped at a mailbox, opened it, tossed the cell inside. He saw the man, moving now, running directly at him. Shielded by the mailbox, Al-Medi pulled out a gun—Helwan 9mm semiautomatic, made in Egypt.
* * *
“He tossed the cell,” said Maybank. “He’s moving.”
“Stay on him,” said Polk. “It’s imperative you stay with him, Johnny. He is our only connection at this point.”
Maybank charged back into the traffic-filled street, barely dodging a van whose driver didn’t see him. But as he came around the van, he was trapped in the crosshairs of Al-Medi’s gun.
“Oh, shit!” he groaned, lurching left just as the unmuted crack of gunfire ripped the streetscape. Al-Medi’s slug missed him, and Maybank pulled his right arm up, grabbing the butt of his P226, just as a second gunshot tore the air, hitting him in the thigh.
“Fuck!” yelled Maybank as he continued to sprint after Al-Medi, who had gone down a side street called Baku.
“Johnny?” asked Polk, urgency in his voice.
“I need support,” barked Maybank, still running, despite the slug lodged in his thigh. He glanced down. The bottom half of his left leg was drenched in blood.
“Almost there,” came a female voice.
* * *
Braga had the M5 weaving in and out of traffic as she drove through the narrow, clogged streets that surrounded Moscow Polytechnic University. She glanced between her wrist piece, which showed her position relative to Maybank on a small map, and the road, trying to navigate.
“Control,” she said, “I need third-party navigation.”
“Control, over,” came a voice. “Hold.”
She shot a quick glance at the speedometer: 77 mph.
“Take a sharp right in approximately one hundred feet. Get over.”
Braga ripped the BMW hard right, hit the brakes, then moved the car onto Baku.
“He’s coming right at you,” said CIA control in her earpiece.
* * *
At the corner of Baku, Al-Medi ripped off his jacket. He sprinted down the small side street. In two blocks, there was a metro station.
He looked back. The man now had a gun, which was swinging up and down in his left hand as he tried to catch up with him. But the shot to the man’s leg slowed him.
Al-Medi kept glancing back, at first fearful he might get shot but soon realizing that his tracker, whoever he was, wanted him alive.
* * *
Maybank was falling behind as the blood now sopped his running shoe and the pain became intense.
He saw Braga’s red sedan far in the distance, at the end of the street. Al-Medi was now between the two of them, running toward her.
“You need to stop him,” Maybank yelled.
* * *
Al-Medi moved as he’d been trained, in a zigzag, dragging in behind pedestrians, making it hard for his pursuer to catch him.
&nb
sp; In less than a block was the metro station. He would lose the man there.
* * *
Braga stopped the car at the end of the street, watching in the distance as Al-Medi raced toward her. She could also see Maybank, well behind him, limping as he ran, his leg covered in blood.
Braga slouched down in the seat. Her head was just high enough to peer through the opening in the steering wheel.
Al-Medi came closer, sprinting along the line of parked cars. She put the car in reverse and cranked the steering wheel counterclockwise. Then she waited.
He was a dozen cars ahead, then ten, then just a few. A savage, angry look was in his eyes. When he reached the car in front of her, she glanced up, watching as he ran by her door, oblivious of her presence. He was drenched in sweat. She waited one last moment, then took her foot off the brake and floored the gas. The M5 burst left, its back end lurching into Al-Medi’s legs, slamming him violently, pummeling him to the tar. He landed, both legs broken, and started to scream.
Braga climbed out and opened the back door just as Maybank arrived. Maybank wrapped flex-cuffs around Al-Medi’s wrists as Braga handled his ankles. Maybank finished with a wrap about his head, muffling his screaming. They lifted him into the back of the car, then climbed in, Maybank in back, Braga driving.
Maybank unsheathed his combat blade and jammed it into Al-Medi’s mouth as Braga turned around, then floored it. Propping his mouth open, Maybank searched Al-Medi’s mouth. He found a fake molar and ripped it out. Inside was a small white pill: cyanide. He opened the window and tossed it to the street.
Maybank grabbed Al-Medi’s T-shirt and ripped it down the front, tearing it in half. He took the cloth and wrapped it around his thigh and tied it tight over the wound, creating a tourniquet.
Braga had the M5 scorching along Baumanskaya at 80 mph, weaving skillfully between cars and pedestrians as she sped toward the CIA safe house.
Maybank hit his earbud.
“We have him,” said Maybank, breathing hard. “I need direction.”
“Get him back to Vernacular House and prepare for immediate interrogation,” said Polk.