True Believer

by Carr, Jack

  CHAPTER 78

  Odessa, Ukraine

  October

  UPON THEIR ARRIVAL IN Ukraine, Reece and Freddy were met by a case officer assigned to the embassy in Kiev, who was not happy to have made the six-hour drive to retrieve some bearded commando types from the Odessa airport. Steve Douglass was polite but not overly friendly as he greeted them outside the terminal. The men stowed their backpacks in the back of the small black Lada four-by-four SUV and climbed inside.

  “So, I’m assuming that you guys are here for the president’s visit?”

  “Something like that,” Reece responded.

  “I guess the Secret Service needed some extra bodies? Not sure why they couldn’t pick you up.”

  “We aren’t super close with the FSO,” Freddy added.

  “What do you mean, the FSO? I’m talking about the Secret Service.”

  “The United States Secret Service?” Reece asked.

  “Of course. POTUS is here.”

  “The president of the United States is here, in Odessa?”

  “He will be in a couple of hours. You’re telling me that’s not why you’re here?”

  • • •

  Freddy immediately called Rodriguez on the sat phone and gave him the rundown. The interagency wheels, however inefficient, began to turn in Washington as the Agency made contact with the Secret Service. Much like presidents’ recent visits to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, this visit was being kept a secret until the last moment. The White House pool reporters would not even be aware of their destination until Air Force One landed in Odessa, and as can be the case in a bureaucracy as big as the United States intelligence and federal law enforcement apparatus, the right hand often did not know what the left hand was doing.

  In the meantime, Steve Douglass made a phone call and determined which hotel the advance team was using as a base of operations. By the time the local agents were informed that a pair of CIA officers were on the ground with specific threat intel, Douglass was parking outside their temporary command center in Hotel Otrada.

  As the trio entered the hotel lobby, a petite female agent with a lapel pin on her blue pantsuit approached them. Freddy fished his green agency identification badge out of the inside pocket of his jacket. All Reece had was his black U.S. passport, which he handed over. She scrutinized both, returning Freddy’s badge before handing over Reece’s passport.

  “You look just like a guy I saw on a wanted poster, Mr. Donovan,” the agent said, staring at Reece with bright, unflinching eyes.

  “I get that a lot.”

  She slowly broke into a smile and shook their hands. “I’m Kim Scheer. Follow me.”

  It looked as though the Secret Service had occupied the entire hotel; uniformed and plainclothes agents were moving around the lobby as they readied for the arrival of their principal, the president of the United States. Agent Scheer led the way to a suite on the hotel’s highest floor. The room was packed with tables filled with computers and communications gear as well as at least fifteen agents and technicians. A tall man in his early fifties stood in the center of the room, clearly in charge. He wore a dark blue three-button business suit and his head was closely shaved, having given up the battle with his receding hairline a decade earlier. He turned to greet Reece and Strain like a man with a great deal on his plate.

  “What can I do for you two gentlemen?”

  His accent was from Minnesota or perhaps the eastern Dakotas.

  “We’re from the Agency, Ground Branch. I’m Freddy Strain, and this is James Donovan. We have reason to believe that there is a specific threat against the president of Russia and/or the president of the United States here in Odessa.”

  They had his undivided attention.

  “What kind of threat?”

  “A sniper. A sniper team, to be precise. A Georgian national they call the Shishani and a Syrian named Nizar Kattan. Last known location was across the Black Sea in Turkey. The president needs to cancel whatever public appearance he has planned.”

  “How credible is this?”

  “It’s credible,” Freddy responded.

  “I hate to break it to you guys, but a lot of people want to kill the president and we can’t shut down his schedule every time some nutcase makes a threat. I’m going to need specifics, gentlemen.”

  “Look, we have a Syrian general brokering mercenaries at the behest of a former GRU colonel named Vasili Andrenov set on a transfer of power in Russia who’s put a sniper team within a stone’s throw of Odessa at the same time the presidents of Russia and the United States just happen to be here. One or both of them are the targets.” Reece was starting to lose his temper.

  The man put up a hand. “I’m sorry, guys, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m up to my eyeballs here and now I’ve got two scraggly-looking Agency guys telling me about some plot to kill the president. Let’s start over. I’m Lee Christiansen.”

  The taller man shook both their hands and his demeanor changed appreciably.

  “Lee, the president needs to cancel this speech or move it inside,” Freddy said.

  “If it were up to me, we’d never let him leave the White House, but that’s not how a republic functions. We can’t cancel his itinerary every time there’s a threat.”

  “This isn’t some whacko posting threats on Twitter from his mom’s basement. This is a trained sniper team,” Freddy stressed.

  Christiansen sighed. “Here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to pair you guys up with one of my agents so you’ll have full access to our resources. Agent Scheer, you’re going to be our point person on this. Whatever these guys need, you make sure they get it and call me directly if someone gets in your way. I’ll talk with the White House and fill them in. Will that work for a first step?”

  “That works for us,” Freddy answered.

  Agent Scheer led them down the hallway into a smaller room that had been set up with a conference table. A whiteboard stood in the corner on a tripod stand. All three took seats with Scheer at the head of the rectangular table.

  “So, what do we have, guys?”

  Reece spoke up first. “We’re going to tell you some things that you’re probably not cleared for, so hopefully your memory isn’t the greatest.”

  “I drink a lot.”

  “Perfect. Here’s what we know: a former Russian intelligence officer, with a history of planning coups and assassinations, is living in Switzerland. He is on the outs with the current Russian administration led by President Zubarev and would love to have his hard-liners in power. Through an intermediary, he contracts with a Syrian general to hire a sniper team whose last known location was in rural Turkey near the Georgian and Armenian borders.”

  Freddy passed his iPad to Scheer and pointed to the spot.

  “Looks like a good place to train,” she observed.

  “Our thoughts exactly.”

  “May I?” Scheer asked rhetorically as she zoomed out of the image so that the entire region was visible. “I don’t like it that they’re so close to the Black Sea, and the presidents are going to speak on the coastline near a major port.”

  “Where’s the speech?”

  “Here.” Scheer scrolled the map to center on Odessa and zoomed in on a site near the coastline. “It’s called the Boffo Colonnade. It’s located on the grounds of the Vorontsov Palace. It’s a tourist attraction and major landmark.”

  The curved narrow structure was lined with ten massive columns on each side and sat like a raised amphitheater in front of a cobblestone pedestrian area that led to a wide set of stone steps, framed on either side by elevated statues of full-maned African lions.

  “What’s the sniper risk at the site?” Freddy asked.

  “We evaluated it as moderate. To the front there are buildings that block the line of sight to the lectern and we have them secured and covered with our own countersniper teams. It’s all low ground behind the colonnade all the way to the sea. There are some structures on the port with exposure, but
we’ll have everything there secure out to two thousand meters. The entire harbor will be shut down during the speech and we’ll have eyes out that direction.”

  “Is that the president’s only public appearance in Odessa?”

  “Other than the airport tarmac and the route to the speech, that’s it.”

  “Tell us about the route.”

  “Nothing ideal for a sniper, especially not in the Beast,” Scheer said, referring to the president’s heavily armored Cadillac limousine.

  “Anything else peculiar about this site?”

  “Yes, there are catacombs underneath used during World War Two, but they existed well before that. The partisans used them to fight the Nazis. The plaza was a restaurant in the 1800s. The owner would supposedly drag drunk customers down into the tunnel system, bring them straight down to the docks, and sell them to the slave ships waiting in the harbor.”

  “Really? Rough way to wake up. I’m assuming you’ve secured the tunnels?” Freddy asked.

  “Correct, but they have three levels and they’ve never been fully mapped. We’ve secured all known entry points, but people are discovering new ones all the time. There’s an entire industry built around exploring them, discovering new passages, new artifacts.”

  “Terrific.” Freddy checked his phone and saw an email from Andy Danreb.

  “Looks like the analyst team is up and running. Let’s see if they have anything for us.” He dialed into a secure conference number and put his phone on the center of the table with the speakerphone engaged.

  “Danreb here.”

  “Andy, it’s Freddy and James. We’re in Odessa with Agent Kim Scheer from the Secret Service.”

  “Agent Scheer, I’m Andy Danreb here at Langley with Nicole Phan and Fabian Brooks, our computer whiz.”

  “Appreciate you all pulling this together on short notice. Anything new?” Reece inquired.

  Nicole spoke up. “We are exploring anything and anyone with a connection to Vasili Andrenov, Jules Landry, and General Yedid. Andrenov’s political connections and charitable giving have muddied the waters since there are so many paper trails to follow, but we are working it through. It looks like Landry’s network was pretty slim. Yedid is connected to just about every radical Islamist refugee in the Middle East and southern Europe.”

  “In other words, we don’t have shit,” Danreb chimed in.

  “Keep on it, Andy, we have . . . how long, Kim?” asked Reece.

  “Three hours and thirty-two minutes until Umbrella lands. Four hours until he goes onstage.”

  Every protectee, or “principal,” had a Secret Service code name: “Umbrella” was a reference to the 187th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, nicknamed by the Japanese as Rakkasans, which meant “falling-down umbrella men.” The president had commanded the Rakkasans during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 before being selected as vice president by the previous administration.

  “We have less than four hours, so do what you can. I know you’ll come up with something. Out here.”

  Freddy ended the call and turned to their Secret Service liaison. “Can you take us to the site?”

  “Let’s go. I’ll drive. And let me get you two some lapel pins.”

  CHAPTER 79

  Odessa, Ukraine

  October

  REECE AND FREDDY RETRIEVED their gear bags and weapons from the back of the Agency SUV and thanked Douglass for the ride. Agent Scheer led them to a white Hyundai minivan that was obviously from a local rental agency’s fleet.

  “No Suburban?” Reece teased.

  “Please! The advance team gets the shaft. All the cool guys on the PPD, ah, that’s the president’s detail, get their vehicles flown in on C-17s for game day and we get whatever Avis can’t rent out that week.”

  Kim pulled out of the hotel and navigated the local streets like a native. She’d obviously spent some time in the area as part of the advance team.

  “What’s your background, Kim? Did you come straight to the Secret Service?” Freddy asked.

  “No, I went to Annapolis. Then the Marine Corps. Got out as a captain, tried to go to work in the family insurance business, but that made me want to blow my brains out. Applied for this job five years ago and have been here ever since. I love it.”

  “What did you do in the Corps?” Reece asked.

  “Intel, mainly. Supported some high-speed units but didn’t leave the FOB much.”

  “MARSOC?”

  “They call them ‘Raiders’ now but, yeah, I was attached as an intel officer.”

  “That’s right, ‘the artists formerly known as MARSOC.’ Hard to keep up with all of the name changes. I was attached to DET ONE in 2004 for a couple of months,” Reece responded. “That was a solid group. I really learned a lot from them, especially Major K. He used to run their mountain warfare training center. Great guy!”

  “He was squared away,” Kim remembered.

  “Was Gunny Gutierrez still around when you were there?” Reece asked.

  “He sure was. Small world.”

  “It is, indeed.”

  After showing her credentials to local police and making her way through the roadblocks, Agent Scheer parked the minivan on Prymorskyi Boulevard and led the men toward the site of the speech. They walked along the gray cobblestone driveway past an impressive nineteenth-century columned building that had, at some point, been the residence of someone important. The gated perimeter had already been set up and the temporary fences funneled pedestrians into a tent with several airport-style magnetometers and package scanners. The uniformed personnel recognized the Secret Service agent and waved her through. As they cleared the checkpoint and rounded the building, the colonnade they’d viewed on the iPad imagery was directly in front of them.

  The area was smaller than Reece had expected it to be. The site had obviously been chosen for television viewing rather than its ability to accommodate a large physical audience. A stage had been built in front, with two lecterns a few yards apart from each other. Last-minute preparations were being made by a variety of workers while security personnel from the United States, Russia, and Ukraine moved busily about.

  They walked up onto the stage and looked around. The site of the speech sat on a high bluff, with the ground falling off sharply toward the sea below. From the land side of the colonnade, the site left very few options for a sniper. Tall trees and buildings surrounded the structure, leaving no discernible line-of-sight shooting lanes that wouldn’t be locked down by the Secret Service. A long and modern pedestrian bridge connected the area from stage right to a more built-up area of the city, but only the rooftops and high windows of those buildings offered a shot toward the stage, and all would be occupied by authorities. Each member of the team spent several minutes taking in the scene, looking for something that had been overlooked by the other dozen sets of eyes that had studied it as part of the overall security assessment.

  Reece broke the silence first. “I’ll be honest, Kim, this is a good spot.”

  “I agree,” Freddy added. “The only thing that bothers me is the port, but you’re saying it’s been locked down?”

  “Yep. Everything within two thousand meters has been searched and secured. We have drones up looking for IR signatures and dog teams have been working it all night and morning. The port is secure.”

  “What are we missing?” Reece asked himself as much as the others.

  Far out on the horizon, past the closest set of docks and through a forest of dock cranes, sat a massive green and red tanker-style vessel with a handful of colorful shipping containers stacked on the deck. Strain pulled a laser rangefinder unit from his pack and aimed it toward the ship, bracing it against one of the columns for stability.

  “Twenty-one hundred meters. Technically, you could make a shot from that far pier but it would be a long one.”

  “Sure would, especially in this wind. You think that’s a legitimate threat, Freddy? What’s the world-record shot these days anyw
ay?”

  “These records are changing every year or two but the longest confirmed real-world shot was taken in Iraq by a Canadian sniper in 2017, went 3,871 yards. He used a McMillan TAC-50 like the ones we used to use. The shot took ten seconds to reach the target.”

  “That’s crazy,” Reece said, shaking his head.

  “It’s damn fine shooting, buddy.”

  “No, I meant that you can remember all that stuff.” Reece smiled. “How about on a controlled range?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, a shooter out of Texas hit a three-mile shot with a .408 Chey Tac in 2018. Before that, one of our old sniper instructors had it at 2.8 miles with the same round. Keep in mind those are not under combat conditions and were done with the best rifle-scope combinations available, shot by the most highly trained and capable snipers on earth.”

  “So, from those cranes and that ship,” Reece said, gesturing to the distance, “it’s a low-percentage shot but not out of the realm of possibility. With the guns and optics that are out there now, it could be done. Could you have some people take a look at that far pier, Kim?”

  “It’s outside of the perimeter but, sure, I’ll have someone check it out.”

  Agent Scheer walked off a few steps and made a phone call. Gesturing with her hand as she spoke, she tried to describe the exact location of the tanker, before hanging up and rejoining the group.

  “That’s the oil terminal, so it’s not open to the public. It’s gated, and local police are manning it. They’re sending some of our people over there to look around and will do a sweep with the UAVs as well.”

  “Okay, good, let’s keep looking. I still feel like something is off.”

  “The Secret Service does extensive research into the threats to POTUS,” Kim explained, “at every location on every itinerary. Ever since President Kennedy we have been extremely sensitive to sniper threats against the president, for obvious reasons. No one wants to relive the nightmare that was Dallas, so ever since 1963 we’ve kept data of every military and law enforcement sniper, and with the advent of social media we’ve kept tabs, using open-source information, on civilians going to shooting schools run by former military snipers. Anytime POTUS makes a stop, we’ve cross-referenced everyone in a given area, including incoming travelers whose names we get from TSA, to those former MIL/LE and civilian-trained long-range shooters. They each get checked out, and any in the vicinity of a POTUS stop are flagged. Facial recognition technology helps a lot.”