First Strike

by Ben Coes

  Allawi stood and moved to the overhead compartment above Raditz’s seat. His own leather bag was stowed inside. He unzipped it with his right hand as, with his left, he felt for the zipper on the canvas duffel he’d seen Raditz holding in the first-class lounge. He unzipped it, just as the faint whoosh of the toilet flushing could be heard. As Allawi was about to stick the piece of plastic into Raditz’s bag, as far down and out of the way as he could, his hand found something even better: Raditz’s wallet.

  The lock on the restroom door clicked.

  Allawi lifted the wallet. He inserted the small plastic wafer inside one of the unused pockets.

  The door to the restroom opened.

  Frantically, he put the wallet back in the bag and zipped it up just as he heard Raditz’s footsteps coming down the aisle.

  Allawi lifted out his bag and removed a book from it. Raditz stepped to his side, waiting for him to get out of the way.

  “Pardon, monsieur,” Allawi said in a French accent.

  “Take your time,” said Raditz.

  Allawi shut the overhead compartment. After putting the book on his seat, he went to the restroom. Inside, with the door closed, he stared into the mirror. His heart was beating fast.

  He pictured Nazir.

  “He must not know he’s being followed. After the ship has left with the weapons, follow him for a few days, then kill him.”

  “I understand, Tristan.”

  22

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Calibrisi was picked up at his house in McLean ten minutes after hanging up with O’Flaherty, his hair still wet from a quick shower. With few cars on the road, and the speedometer pushing 80 mph, the drive to CIA headquarters took less than five minutes.

  He entered PRE TAC a little before four in the morning. O’Flaherty was seated at a workstation in front of his computer. Polk was standing next to him, looking over his shoulder at the computer screen.

  Calibrisi scanned the cavernous room, counting a dozen other people in addition to O’Flaherty and Polk.

  “I logged the room,” said Polk. “We’re sanitized.”

  “Where’s Anson?”

  Polk gestured toward the far corner. Britt was seated next to Mary Moseley beneath a plasma that showed grainy video of Damascus.

  Anson Britt, a forty-two-year-old former member of the Marine’s Force Recon, was in charge of reconnaissance operations for the National Clandestine Service. Britt’s NCS unit was responsible for retrieving Langley assets who were trapped or lost behind enemy lines. Britt noticed Calibrisi and walked quickly across the room.

  “Well?” asked Calibrisi.

  “There’s not a lot to go on. There’s no UAV feed.”

  “Call RAF and see if they have anything.”

  “Already did. I also reached out to my source inside Damascus Metro. He’s calling me back in a few minutes.”

  “Get hold of Kohl Meir. See if he and Dewey arranged meet-up.”

  Britt nodded.

  Calibrisi stepped to Polk. He was looking over O’Flaherty’s shoulder at a computer screen filled with numbers.

  “How bad is it?”

  “How bad? On a scale of one to ten, it’s a hundred and fifty-eight. It’s a shit show.” Polk pointed to O’Flaherty’s screen. “Those are spreadsheets detailing weapons shipments to ISIS over the past three years. RPGs, guns, ammo—massive amounts of all three. More than a billion dollars by my rough math. They used a down-market Mexican arms manufacturer, then moved the weapons by boat to the Syrian coast.”

  “Did you establish the link to the United States?” asked Calibrisi.

  Polk looked up. His face was expressionless. He glanced back at O’Flaherty.

  “Show ’em.”

  O’Flaherty tapped his keyboard a few times. One of the plasmas on the wall lit up with a large color photo of two men, both dressed in button-downs and khakis, standing on a pier before a medium-size rust-covered container ship that towered above them. Tristan Nazir stood to the left. Next to him was Mark Raditz.

  O’Flaherty tapped again and another photo appeared. It was taken from the deck of the ship and showed a close-up of a stack of containers. Several were open. They were loaded with steel boxes that Calibrisi immediately recognized: RPGs.

  “My God,” whispered Calibrisi, disbelief and fury in his voice. “That son of a bitch.”

  O’Flaherty tapped his keyboard again. The line of plasmas filled with various pictures of Raditz and Nazir.

  Calibrisi stepped slowly in front of the plasmas, staring in astonishment. Finally he turned to Polk.

  “When was the last shipment?”

  “According to the files, a year ago.”

  “Start looking for him.”

  Polk nodded.

  “I have two forensics teams already on it. His office and his home are clear. He hasn’t been at either in at least a week. His cell is shut down. I should also mention that we put a tracker on his family. He has an ex-wife and a teenage daughter. They’re gone too.”

  “We need to find him,” said Calibrisi. “How about the manufacturer?”

  “It’s a contract shop called MH Armas,” said Polk.

  Calibrisi was quiet for a few seconds.

  “Don’t get too close,” he said. “I don’t want to tip him off.”

  “It might be too late for that. He has to know. Nazir must’ve tipped him off about the files.”

  “You said he’s been gone a week. It doesn’t add up. Al-Jaheishi had yet to even make contact.”

  “I see your point,” said Polk. “There’s something else. Either it’s a coincidence and he’s been planning his escape, or there’s something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Polk shrugged. “Could be anything. Maybe he’s in danger. Maybe the stress just got to him.”

  Calibrisi walked to the door. He looked once again at a photo of Raditz and Nazir, this one showing the pair seated on a couch in a hotel lobby.

  He picked up his cell and hit Speed Dial. As he waited for his call to go through, he turned. “Anson, upstairs. You too, Bill. Get your ISIS C.O. and Mexico teams up there too.”

  Calibrisi put the phone to his ear as he pushed his way through the door.

  “This is Hector Calibrisi,” he said. “I need Jim Bruckheimer. Tell him it’s urgent.”

  23

  NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA)

  SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE (SID)

  FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

  On the third floor of an office building a short drive from Washington, D.C., Jim Bruckheimer reached for his ringing cell phone.

  The building was one of four ominous-looking black-glass structures off a private exit from the Baltimore–Washington Parkway. The buildings were referred to as the Big Four and were the headquarters of the National Security Agency, America’s code breakers, cybersleuths, eavesdroppers, and watchers from afar. Bruckheimer was the forty-seven-year-old head of the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, whose job it was to process all foreign signals intelligence. SID’s powerful computers, cameras, and satellites were America’s primary electronic signature collector and aggregator. Its tentacles spanned the globe: e-mail, credit card transactions, cell phone activity, and, in general, any activity in which human beings came in contact with computers. This so-called SIGINT—electronic signals intelligence—was then processed by the NSA’s massive computers and winnowed down to meaningful intelligence for use by the president of the United States, the Pentagon, CIA, and other intelligence and national security officials.

  Bruckheimer didn’t recognize the number on caller ID.

  “Bruckheimer.”

  “Jim, it’s Hector.”

  “Hey, Chief. What’s up?”

  “I need to find someone,” said Calibrisi.

  “That narrows it down,” said Bruckheimer. “Can you at least tell me if it’s male or female?”

  “It’s Mark Raditz.”

  “Mark Raditz as in the deputy defense
secretary?”

  “Yeah, that one. I’ll brief you later, but right now I need your best people on this. We need to find this son of a bitch. Get any credit cards, aliases, passports, and run them against PRISM. Look at his ex-wife and daughter too. I’m sending you some photos. I need you to run them through any facial recognition applications you have out there. Look domestically as well as abroad.”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Hector, I know you said you’ll brief me later, and I trust you, of course, but if I start slamming PRISM against Raditz inside the U.S.—”

  “Raditz gave ISIS more than a billion dollars’ worth of guns and missiles, Jim. It was a secret program he ran out of a Pentagon dark pool. We need to find him.”

  “Any guess as to where he might be? It would save us time.”

  “Middle East,” said Calibrisi. “Mexico. Maybe Central America or South America. Raditz has visited pretty much every country in the world. That said, he’s not an operator. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “Hector, not that I care, but will there be a trial?”

  “No way. This would do a lot of damage if it ever got out. That doesn’t mean we’re going to kill him, though. Frankly, he might be useful. Thanks for your help. Someone in our counsel’s office will get you the FISA warrant.”

  “I’ll call you when we have something.”

  24

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Anson Britt, Margaret Lyne, Stacy Conneely, and Fernando Rocha were seated on a pair of red leather Chesterfield couches in Hector Calibrisi’s glass-walled corner office.

  Britt sat next to Lyne, the CIA’s assistant director for intergovernmental affairs. Lyne was Langley’s chief lobbyist and primary interface with Congress and other governmental agencies. Her main role was working with the Pentagon.

  Conneely, a linguistics prodigy, was the agency’s top ISIS analyst.

  Rocha was a Special Activities Division deputy director. His main area of focus was finance, including money laundering and currency manipulation.

  All four had received the flash brief on the Raditz files.

  Calibrisi and Polk entered the office. Calibrisi looked visibly upset. He took off his coat and tossed it onto the floor near the window. He pulled his tie off and did the same. His face was bright red. Sweat dripped off his forehead.

  Polk appeared to be slightly calmer.

  Calibrisi stood behind his desk for several quiet moments.

  “Before we get into this clusterfuck of a situation, I want to know what’s going on with Dewey and Rick. Anson?”

  Britt paused. He looked at Polk and then Calibrisi, a serious expression on his face

  “Rick is dead,” he said. “Dewey’s status is unknown, though in all likelihood he’s dead too.”

  “Who’s your source?” asked Polk.

  “Damascus Metro Police,” said Britt. “I also spoke with IDF. Dewey had a tracker on him. It moved in sync with the activity in the square. They had him a few blocks away. Then it went dark. Either they captured him and ripped it off or—”

  “And Metro?”

  “Mallory is confirmed dead. He was shot in the back, bled out on the street. My source at Metro also says Dewey is presumed dead. There was a pretty intense gunfight involving him and some guys from ISIS. Metro was there too. Apparently, Dewey was cornered by a contingent of ISIS gunmen. The location corroborates with the Israeli tracking device. Based on the time lines, ISIS cornered him immediately after the transmission of the files. My source has no further intel.”

  “They didn’t see the body?”

  “No, sir. The ISIS contingent engaged Metro. They killed several policemen. At some point, Metro dropped a shitload of artillery on the location from a chopper. It’s rubble. If he’s there, they’re not going to dig him out for days.”

  “What if he’s not there?” asked Calibrisi. “What if ISIS got him out?”

  “It’s a possibility,” said Britt.

  “Can Metro help us find out?”

  Britt shook his head.

  “No fucking way. Metro lost nine men. According to my source, Dewey killed at least five of them. They’re not about to cooperate. In fact, they’re pretty pissed off.”

  “How do they know it was us?” asked Polk. “Mallory was untraceable. Dewey is non-official cover.”

  In other words, Polk was questioning why Britt even divulged Langley’s involvement.

  “If we want the bodies back, I had to tell them,” said Britt.

  “All I’m saying—” Polk began.

  “Take it off-line,” snapped Calibrisi, cutting him off. “Who the hell cares if they know? Get Mallory’s body out of Syria so he can be given a proper burial.”

  “Already done, Chief. He’s being flown to Baghdad. He’ll be on a flight to Andrews by dinner.”

  “What about Dewey? How do we find out if he’s alive?”

  “We moved some high-altitude UAVs into the theater,” said Britt. “Looking at movements out of Damascus for the past hour, there are a couple of noteworthy convoys. We’re talking vans and pickups. If they haven’t killed him, they took him somewhere. We have the end points for those convoys locked and under S8 surveillance. One’s Aleppo, the other is a camp out in the middle of desert nowhere.”

  Calibrisi looked at Conneely.

  “Stacy?”

  “My guess would be Aleppo,” she said. “Since ISIS took the city, they turned the hospital into a central staging area. It’s the closest nexus point for them. Garotin is there. If Dewey’s alive, that’s probably where they took him.”

  “That corresponds with one of the convoys,” said Britt. “The hospital was the terminal point.”

  Calibrisi shot Polk a look.

  Polk was usually a quiet, unemotional man, yet today his face looked pained. He shrugged helplessly. He moved to a map on the wall that showed the Middle East.

  “We have assets in the theater,” said Polk, gesturing to the map. “We have operators in Baghdad and southern Turkey. That’s before we even talk to JSOC, who could ready up a strike team very quickly. The issue is mission vulnerability. It doesn’t matter who we send in or what size the team is. If he’s in an ISIS stronghold—Aleppo or anywhere else, for that matter—all we’d be doing is sending those men to their deaths. Our only hope is some sort of ransom, though I highly doubt Nazir would forgo the opportunity to do something very dramatic and very public with an American agent.”

  “They’re going to behead him,” said Conneely. “Then they’ll put it on YouTube, Al Jazeera, et cetera.”

  Calibrisi glanced to the window, which looked out on a picturesque stand of birch trees.

  “Anson, I want you to elevate it to JSOC. Call Joe Terry. DEVGRU, CAG, 24th STS—tell him it’s emergency priority. Have him come back with a recon scenario or two. In addition, reach out to GID,” said Calibrisi, referring to Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate. “I’ll call Menachem Dayan.”

  “And what do I tell them?”

  “We need an entity that has channels of communication with ISIS. We’re going to negotiate with them. If they’re willing to ransom Dewey, the president can decide whether to actually do it, but at least it’ll buy us time. Focus on proof of life.”

  “I can reach out to Lee Gluck at 60 Minutes,” said Conneely.

  “And say what?” asked Polk.

  “My guess is Lee has better contacts into ISIS than we do. I’ll ask him to facilitate a message into Nazir’s inner circle.”

  “Do it,” said Calibrisi.

  Britt stood up and gave Calibrisi a nod as he rushed to the door. Conneely followed him.

  “What are the parameters?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” asked Calibrisi.

  “What if we establish a direct line of communication?”

  “No parameters. Take it if you can get it.”

  Britt and Conneely left.

  Polk was standing next to a bookshelf near the door. He gave Calib
risi a long stare but said nothing. He didn’t need to. After so many years working together, Calibrisi understood that Polk thought Dewey was probably dead already.

  “Let’s talk about Raditz,” said Calibrisi.

  He moved around to the front of the desk and took a seat in one of the chairs. He was quiet for several moments as he looked at the faces of the people in the room.

  “I’m not sure where to begin,” said Calibrisi, looking at Lyne. “This is such a fucking mess. Have you spoken with anyone yet?”

  “Yes,” said Lyne. “Harry Black and Josh Brubaker.”

  Black was the U.S. secretary of defense, Raditz’s boss. Brubaker was the National Security Advisor.

  “What did they say?”

  “Josh wanted the files. He’s going to brief the president. He also wanted to know what we’re doing to rescue Dewey. He said you would already know this, but to tell you to do whatever you have to do to get him out of there alive. He wants you over at the Oval as soon as you’re done here.”

  Calibrisi nodded.

  “What about Harry?” he asked.

  Lyne crossed her legs. “His exact words were, ‘When I find Raditz, I’m going to cut off his balls and stuff them down his fucking throat.’”

  “How the hell did this happen?” said Calibrisi, addressing Rocha. “Where did he get the money?”

  “It came out of a Pentagon dark pool,” said Rocha. “This is so-called program money, outside the Pentagon budget, allocated by Congress specifically for activities they agree to give DOD that will not be scrutinized. It’s never a big number, but Raditz aggregated it over a four-year period. We’re still poring through it, but it appears Raditz succeeded in sheltering around two billion dollars. I should probably mention that each dark pool allocation requires both the secretary and deputy secretary to approve. Harry Black signed off on all of it.”

  “Did he know where it was going?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Rocha. “We were able to access the charters. There were four in all. Under the program description, they all said the same thing: ‘An Initiative to Fight Terrorism.’”