by Dalton Fury
“Can you pinpoint the time and cause of death?” Raynor asked.
Shaft and Hawk looked back at him with raised eyebrows, but the medical examiner seemed unperturbed by the question. “He was alive when the explosion occurred, if that is what you are asking. I think we can infer the rest.”
Raynor nodded, but in his head he was already working out how Miric might have kept his body double alive: sedated perhaps, or maybe just tied up, wearing a bomb vest.
Shaft held his gaze. “Seems cut and dry, boss.”
Kolt wondered if he was losing perspective, obsessing on one remote possibility and ignoring the obvious evidence to the contrary. But if Miric was still alive, every second spent trying to prove it was letting him slip farther and farther away.
He shook his head. “Let’s get out of here.”
As they headed for the exit, his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Webber. Raynor took a second to order his thoughts, composing his argument for continuing the hunt for Shiner, but Webber didn’t give him the chance.
“New orders,” the colonel said without preamble. “The state funeral for the prime minister will be happening in four days. The current threat condition won’t allow POTUS to attend, so he’s sending VPOTUS in his place. In the interest of maintaining regional stability and assisting our NATO partners, you are to coordinate with EKAM and assist in eradicating the terrorist group responsible for the assassination of the Greek prime minister. ASAP. Revolutionary Struggle is now Noble Squadron’s gig.”
Raynor’s nostrils flared at the mention of the vice president, but he kept his ire out of his voice. “Understood, sir. We’re all over it.”
“And, Colonel Raynor, just in case you missed my last inference,” Webber said, “I’m serious. This is your squadron’s mission, not Kolt Raynor’s personal mission.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Take care of the vice, get through the funeral, and get back to Bragg. No international incidents!”
“Yes, sir,” Kolt said. “Clean op on our end.”
SIX
The close call, coming as it did on the heels of the perfectly executed assassination, had left Rasim Miric rattled.
He had, of course, prepared for the possibility … no, the inevitability of discovery. The police were not stupid. He had known they would realize where the killing shot had come from. They would find his rifle, and the fingerprints on it would lead them to the apartment of Nikos Roupa, and a body double with thirty kilos of ANFO on his lap. Ammonium nitrate fuel oil, an improvised explosive compound favored by terrorist organizations worldwide, including his partners of the moment, Epanastatikos Agonas—Revolutionary Struggle. Everything that had actually transpired was according to his plan, but it had all happened much more quickly than he had anticipated.
It had been a close thing. From the moment when he had connected the trigger wire to the door of his flat until the subsequent blast, there had been only about fifteen seconds. He had barely cleared the window, dropping to the ground a fraction of a second before the shock wave knocked him flat. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, he was just one more victim staggering away from the scene, seeking medical attention.
Now, in the relative safety of another apartment flat, a safe house established by his handler, an officer of the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı—the Turkish national intelligence service—he was able to give thought to the man who had almost caught him on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus, appearing out of nowhere as if magnetically drawn to him, and then relentlessly pursued him across half the city.
How did he know?
It did not matter now.
The man who had killed the prime minister was dead—at least that was what the news reports were saying. Miric had no idea how long that fiction would endure; hopefully long enough for him to get out of the country.
His phone began vibrating on the tabletop. He took a breath, then opened his eye and answered the call. “Yes?”
“You called for a ride?”
“I’ll be right out.”
He rose from the table and headed outside to where a black Toyota Prius was waiting. He opened the door and settled into the passenger’s seat. The driver, his MIT handler, who went by the name Mehmet, waited until they were moving to speak. “Well done, my friend.”
Miric did not think of Mehmet as a friend, but they had known each other for a few years and spilled the blood of their enemies together, which was probably as close to friendship as Miric would ever get. He also knew he would never be anything more than an asset to the Turkish intelligence officer. “Save your congratulations until we are across the border.”
“We have already won,” Mehmet said, and even though Miric couldn’t see him, he knew the Turk was grinning. “The Golden Dawn nationalists will sweep into power, just as we predicted. They will reject the EU and NATO, reject all Western influence. No matter what else happens, that much is a certainty.”
Miric was not as sanguine about this perceived victory, but then he was not an ideologue like Mehmet. It was a game of chess to the Turk, and Miric was his knight, able to leap across the board in order to strike a blow deep in enemy territory.
Ideologies aside, Miric was proud of what he had accomplished. Mehmet was correct in his assessment of the geopolitical fallout.
The death of the Greek prime minister would not merely create a vacancy at the top. It would enrage the already polarized populace. The assassination would be seen as the ultimate failure of the moderate government to protect its citizens from Marxist terrorists and Muslim extremists. Pro-nationalists—men like the radio personality Miric had listened to earlier in the day from his hide—would demand a new government, a strong government, no longer beholden to the European Union or NATO.
Nor was there anything those Western governments could do to stop it from happening. A wildfire of right-wing nationalism was sweeping across Europe. The United Kingdom had already voted to leave the EU. America was a house divided, on the verge of internal collapse, weaker than at any time in modern history, a superpower in name only.
The immediate effect of a Greek exit from the EU and NATO would be an end to opposition to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. The long-standing rivalry between Greece and Turkey would end with a whimper rather than a bang as the former, unable to pay its debts and completely isolated from the international community, slipped further into irrelevancy.
Yet that was only the first move in a far more ambitious endgame. The Turkish government, under the leadership of the charismatic and openly pro-Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, would step forward as the economic and political savior of the EU, and the undisputed regional military leader of NATO. After enduring a century of exile, the Ottoman Empire would rise from the ashes.
It was an ambitious game, and the Turks were playing to win. They would not hesitate to sacrifice their knight if it suited their needs, particularly since Miric was both a foreigner and a mercenary. He understood his place in their schemes, but he was a survivor. He wanted … no, he needed to live long enough to see America brought to her knees.
Mehmet laughed again. “Don’t worry, my friend. We will not be discovered. Nobody is looking for you now.”
Miric thought again about the man on the motorcycle. If anyone was looking for him, it would be that man. Had he been one of the three police officers the news reports said had been killed in the bomb blast?
The Turkish intelligence officer said nothing more as he navigated out of the city, but a few minutes later, as they joined the flow of traffic heading north on Motorway 1, he reached over the center console and pointed to the glove box. “Your new identity is in there.”
Miric thumbed open the compartment and took out a yellow envelope. He tore it open and shook out the contents: a burgundy-colored EU passport, issued by the government of Croatia; a folded sheet of paper with the biographical details of his legend; and a wallet with credit cards in the name of Dusan Juric and snapshot
s of people Miric had never seen before.
He flipped open the passport and examined the picture. His picture, taken several months earlier. It showed him with his prosthetic eye instead of the eye patch he now sported, and he self-consciously touched his face, wondering how much the vacancy in his eye socket would alter his appearance. He could certainly feel the difference. Not the absence of his sight—that was something he had mostly come to terms with—but the emptiness.
He wondered when, if ever, he would get a chance to replace the lost prosthetic.
He pocketed the passport and wallet, then skimmed the legend. Dusan Juric was a Bosnian Croat who had relocated to Zagreb following the Balkan conflicts. His mother and sister—presumably the faces in the photographs—still lived in Sarajevo. He would have plenty of time to memorize the details before they reached the border with Macedonia, though it was unlikely that he would need to call upon that knowledge. Dusan Juric would soon be discarded, just as Nikos Roupa before him, albeit in a less dramatic fashion.
He would have many more identities in the days ahead as he made his way to the homeland of his enemies, where he would have his final revenge.
SEVEN
As he reviewed the police files for Revolutionary Struggle and its suspected members, two things became apparent to Raynor.
First, like so many other left-wing groups that popped up across Europe like mushrooms in a cow pasture, EA was a bush-league terrorist outfit. Even that description was overly generous. They were more like an after-school club for home-grown revolutionaries. They had big dreams but only enough in the way of resources to be a nuisance, particularly since 2010, when the police had raided the homes of several suspected members—six were in prison, including the man believed to be the leader of the organization, and one was in the ground. The 2010 raids had also turned up a small arsenal of guns, grenades, rockets, and more than a hundred thousand euros, which indicated they were getting limited financial support from somewhere, enough at least to hire the services of someone like Rasim Miric if he was feeling charitable, but nothing major league. Since then, there had been only a single attack attributed to the group—a car bomb detonated outside the headquarters of the national bank. Raynor was having difficulty accepting Drougas’s narrative that EA had masterminded the assassination plot.
The second realization was that it didn’t matter what he thought. Drougas was going to move on the group regardless of whether they were actually involved, and Delta was going to have to help him do it.
The EKAM colonel wasn’t any happier about the partnership than Raynor. The joint operation felt like an affront to him and his operators, especially in the wake of the assassination they had failed to prevent. For his part, Raynor knew that EKAM had the capability to get the job done without outside assistance, but had concerns about their temperament. Nevertheless, he understood the political motivation behind the partnership, and figured Drougas did as well. Both POTUS and the interim prime minster wanted to give the Greek people a demonstration of international cooperation, proof that the NATO alliance still meant something.
In other words, it was fucked up as a football bat.
“You feeling it on this one, Racer?” Slapshot asked.
Kolt looked away from the eight-by-ten color mug shots of a dozen Revolutionary Struggle dirtbags pinned to the wall, gave a long spit of Red Man into an empty water bottle, and licked his lips. “I’ll feel better about it once Kilo gets eyes on.”
“No, boss, I’m talking about this joint-op crap JSOC shit us,” Slapshot shot back. “These guys seem to have their act together. We seem to be the ugly sister at the party.”
“At least we have separate targets and don’t have to worry about their CQB skills,” Kolt said.
“This is their show, Racer, not ours. Why are we even on deck?”
“That’s not what you were saying after the Paris attacks or the Brussels attacks,” Kolt reminded his mate. “You were bitching up and down the Spine about not getting deployment orders to help out.”
“Touché, Racer, touché,” Slapshot said with a smile. “But these Revolutionary Struggle yo-yos are amateurs.”
Raynor couldn’t argue that, but regardless, Revolutionary Struggle did pose some kind of real threat, so Kolt had no objection to taking them out. Political opposition to capitalism or globalization was one thing, but acts of violence that endangered innocent civilians automatically voided all philosophical or moral arguments, and as far as Raynor was concerned, the revolutionaries’ right to keep sucking oxygen. The only real concern was what Slapshot elected not to mention: that Drougas, in his eagerness, might put the lives of Kolt’s operators in unnecessary jeopardy.
From the EA member Kolt had taken down outside Shiner’s last known position, Drougas’s investigators had produced two targets. EKAM would be going after Dmitris Xiros, a known anarchist and suspected senior leader of Revolutionary Struggle. Delta’s target for the night was the home of Angelos Souri, another EA suspect and a known associate of Xiros.
EKAM would be taking point on the operation, calling the shots strategically, but tactical decisions were the jurisdiction of the assaulters on the scene, which also left Raynor out of the process. He was the squadron leader now, overseeing the big-picture stuff, which Hercules had already pretty much laid out. Major Barnes would be designing and leading the assault while Raynor would have to settle for listening to it all live on comms in the JOC with Slapshot and Digger.
“Residential neighborhood,” Barnes reported in. “No good spots for Kilo team to set up, so we made a couple of drive-bys. The target building is quiet. Maybe vacant. Looks like a bust to me.”
The memory of the explosive device that had been waiting behind Shiner’s apartment door was still foremost in Raynor’s mind. “The suspect in custody might have been intentionally steering us into trouble. Could be a trap.”
“Or just a dry hole.” Barnes made no attempt to hide his disdain for Kolt’s gut feeling. “We’ll be careful going in, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s really only one way to know for sure.”
Raynor had to fight the impulse to offer any more unsolicited advice. He had already provided his commander’s intent and directed some courses of action to consider, but it was Barnes’s show now.
Even though the troop commander was slavishly devoted to the sync matrix, Raynor knew that the plan for the hit had been developed with significant input from Stitch, Shaft, and other more experienced operators. They would evacuate and occupy the neighboring apartment, insert fiberoptic cameras through the walls to get a look inside, and then, at 0230—H-hour, when Drougas’s people initiated their assault plan at the residence of Dmitris Xiros—Barnes’s crew would utilize multiple entry points to take control of Souri’s apartment in one fell swoop. The neighbors wouldn’t be happy about the disruption, but it was nothing some plaster and a coat of paint couldn’t fix, which was more than could be said for the mess Shiner had left behind.
It was an unconventional plan, well thought out, and required the skill sets Raynor knew his operators possessed. The only thing wrong with it was that he would be watching from the sidelines.
* * *
Cindy “Hawk” Bird rapped her knuckles gently but insistently on the door. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder at the door to the apartment on the opposite side of the landing, the home of Angelos Souri, the actual target for the impending hit. After a few seconds, she knocked again, a little more forcefully, stopping only when a mumbled voice was audible from inside.
She threw a questioning glance at the Greek police officer dressed in dark blue coveralls complete with a name tag on one side of his chest and the logo of a local carpet company on the other. The officer stood just a few steps to her right, on the second-to-last tread of the descending stairwell and just out of view of the peepholes inset in the doors. He returned a nod to indicate that she was doing fine.
Outside, holed up in a gray panel van adorned with the same
logo, Shaft, two other assaulters, and the squadron communicator were in blue coveralls under full kit, with weapons cocked and locked, ready for a hasty assault if things went pear-shaped.
Hawk was in street clothes, unarmed. Her gear and weapons were in the van, stashed in a large black hockey bag.
The apartment door opened to reveal a heavy middle-aged man in a stained undershirt and boxer shorts. The smell of stale tobacco and garlic assaulted her nostrils, but she managed a warm smile and threw her arms wide invitingly. The tenant’s mouth was open, ready with a question, but when he got a look at her, his questioning expression became a welcoming smile. But as he stepped out onto the landing, ready to accept her embrace, she drew back and touched a finger to her lips, urging him to silence. The man’s smile slipped as he realized that she was not alone, but the ruse had already achieved its intended purpose. Without uttering a word and at minimal risk of exposure, she had gained access to the apartment from which the assault would be launched.
That, Hawk thought, was why the Unit needed more female operators.
She didn’t like thinking of herself that way—as a female operator. She had earned her status with Delta, survived selection and OTC the same as every one of the men standing on the steps below. If anything, she had been held to a higher standard by men who were convinced that a woman was physically and emotionally incapable of performing the tasks of a Delta assaulter. She was a better shot than most, and excelled in language acquisition and other critical skills. Ironically, she had seen a lot more action during her time as a candidate in the training program than she had as an operator. But no amount of hard work or valorous sacrifice would ever remove the qualifier. Just like Neil Armstrong would always be “the first man on the moon,” she would always be the first female operator in Delta Force. She just hoped she would not be the last.
The police officer flashed his credentials, spoke sternly to the man in Greek, and gestured for the man to follow him. After another quick exchange in Greek, the officer handed the man a rolled-up wad of euro banknotes before ushering him back to the front door. The officer turned to Hawk, whispered in English, “He lives alone. You can go in.”