by Larry Bond
“We’re just under the roof.”
“All right. I’m at the stairwell,” said Ferguson. “Let me see if I can sneak onto the roof. When I’m ready, you draw his fire. Don’t forget: we want him alive if we can take him that way.”
“You sure?”
“No, but let’s pretend I am.”
He reached for the doorknob, turning it slowly with the hand that held the small pin grenade. He pushed into the space, once more throwing himself to the ground, ready to fire; once again there was no one there.
Third time is going to be the charm, he thought, grabbing his night glasses and putting them on awkwardly as he went up the steps to the roof door.
~ * ~
T
hera reached through the blouse of the long Arab dress and took two smoke grenades from the webbing sewn inside. As she gave one to Monsoon, the Delta trooper gave her a slight nod.
Something in his face at that moment attracted her. It was hard for her to say later on exactly what it was, but she could always pin it to that look, that one moment.
“Ferg says ‘go’,” said Monsoon.
They threw the smoke grenades over the top. Monsoon raised his rifle, fired to the side, then ducked.
~ * ~
F
erguson opened the door slowly as soon as Monsoon began to fire. He was facing away from the end of the edge of the roof where Thera and Monsoon were.
He didn’t see the Russian.
The smoke spread from the other side as he crawled out. He moved a few feet to the right, then farther, almost to the edge. Still nothing.
“Vassenka! Listen to me,” he yelled in Russian. “Listen, I’m here to make you a deal. We’re not the Syrians. We want to do the deal with you. One hand washes the other.”
There was no answer. Ferguson told him again in Russian that he wanted to make a deal and that they would pay him twice what the Iraqis were willing to spend.
“I have references,” he added. “Good ones.”
Still no answer.
“A deal?” he said in English.
Silence.
“Monsoon?” said Ferguson.
“We’re on the roof. Don’t see him.”
“All right, be careful. This is me, here.” He waved his arm.
“We see you.”
“Guns, you got anything down there?”
“Negative.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
Twice Ferguson saw shadows he thought were Vassenka; both times they were nothing. Finally he began looking over the side and found an open window.
“Guns, he’s off the roof,” said Ferguson. “We’re coming down.”
~ * ~
G
uns stood about twenty feet from the entrance to the hotel in a shadow cast by the light from the front. He saw the doors open and raised his weapon as two women in long black robes with heavy veils came out.
Perfect disguises, he thought.
“Wait,” he said in Russian, running after them. “Wait.”
The two women turned to see a man with a large gun running after them. One fainted; the other stood frozen in fear. Guns tore the scarf from the head of the one who remained standing, then stooped to pull the veil off the other one, sure he had found Vassenka. He felt a twinge as he reached, a warning. He jerked away, pulled his gun up, almost firing point-blank at the prostrate body. At this range, the force might very well have killed her.
Her, not him. The fabric fell away from the woman’s face. It was a woman, not Vassenka.
Guns heard footsteps and looked up. Someone was running from the front of the hotel toward a cab that had just stopped to let out a passenger.
“Stop!” he yelled. Guns leveled his weapon to fire, but Vassenka grabbed the man who had just gotten out of the cab and held him as a shield, pulling him into the car. As Guns began to follow, the cab backed up wildly, made a quick U-turn, and began driving in the other direction. In desperation, Guns leveled his grenade launcher and fired. The plastic bullet blew out the back window, but the cab didn’t stop.
~ * ~
C
orrigan’s voice usually hit a higher octave when he was excited, and he was excited now.
“Israeli liaison says he knows of no operation,” he told Van Buren.
“Do this,” said the colonel calmly. “Tell them that my fighters have two aircraft in their sights. They will shoot them down if they are not Israeli aircraft. Give them their location.”
Before Corrigan could acknowledge, the controller in the EC-130 broke into the line. “Colonel, the cars are approaching the gates to the airport. They’re a mile away. Very light traffic at the moment. Police still haven’t responded your way.”
Van Huron turned to the communications sergeant, “Tell the teams the caravans are a mile away.”
“Israeli aircraft have turned into an orbit,” added the controller. “Some sort of holding pattern just offshore. In Syrian airspace, but apparently undetected by the radar. No radio signals from them that we can detect.”
“I have Ms. Alston on the line,” said Corrigan.
“Corrine, the Israelis—”
“I heard. Jack, put me through to the liaison.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Van Buren heard Corrine tell the Israeli—a duty officer for Mossad— that he had exactly five seconds to acknowledge that the aircraft were his, or they would be shot down as a threat to her operation.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes, they’re yours?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” said Corrine. “Jack, get me Mr. Stein. Colonel, please pass the word that the aircraft are friendly. As long as they don’t interfere, they should be permitted to proceed.”
“Thank you.”
“At the gate,” said the controller, referring to the cars.
“Here we go,” said Van Buren.
As the words left his mouth, an explosion rocked the western end of the airport near the entrance. It was followed by a larger explosion and then two more. The ground under Van Buren shook as badly as if he were in the middle of a California earthquake.
“What was that?” asked someone on the shared radio channel.
“Our target,” said Van Buren, even though he wasn’t close enough to see.
~ * ~
~ * ~
1
BAGHDAD
“There’s been an explosion outside the airport at Latakia,” Wu told Corrine from the Cube. “I’m looking at an image of it now. Several vehicles have been destroyed. It looks like there may have been a large truck bomb near the vehicles.”
“Was it the convoy we were targeting?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Give me Mr. Corrigan,” said Corrine.
“Uh—”
“Now.”
The line clicked.
“What’s going on?” Corrine demanded.
“We’re working it out. We don’t know, exactly.”
“Did we do this?” said Corrine.
“No.”
“Where’s Ferguson?”
Corrigan hesitated, but then said that Ferguson and the other members of the First Team who had gone into the city to rescue Thera were still at the hotel.
“They’re still there?” Corrine asked.
“I’m trying to figure it out. This is all happening right as we speak and—”
“Connect me to Colonel Van Buren.”
“With all due respect—”
“Do it, Jack.”
Once again the line clicked. The connection now had a slight buzz of static, and there were background sounds.
“Ms. Alston?” Van Buren sounded subdued.
“What’s the situation?”
“All of the vehicles in the caravan were destroyed. Khazaal appears to have been among them. There were no survivors.”
“You’re sure? This isn’t a trick?”
“It isn’t a trick. Someone came and checked al
l of the vehicles.”
“It had to be the Israelis,” said Corrine.
“Wouldn’t be a bad guess,” said Van Buren. “The Syrian army has responded from their part of the base, and I’ve been told by the EC-130 to expect the local police force. We’re going to get out. My men are boarding the 737.”
“What about Ferguson?” asked Corrine.
“Our contingency called for them to find another way out. I think it would be safer for them to stay away from the airport at this time.”
“What happened to those two Israeli planes? Were they involved?”
“The last I checked, they were still offshore. Ma’am, at the moment—”
“Yes, I realize you have a lot to do. Please proceed.”
“Thank you.”
Corrine leaned back in her seat.
It had to be the Israelis.
Or Ferguson.
Certainly it had been the Israelis: they had aircraft offshore, a deeply covered agent in the city, . . .
So why was she so mad at Ferg?
~ * ~
2
LATAKIA
“There was an explosion at the airport,” Corrigan told Ferguson. “The caravan with Khazaal was targeted. There was at least one bomb, probably several.”
“The Israelis,” said Ferguson. It was a statement, not a question. He finally understood what Ravid was doing here, what had been going on all around him. It was the sort of puzzle he should have figured out, could have figured out, if only he’d taken a step back.
“Why would they hit Khazaal?” Corrigan asked.
“They didn’t. They wanted Meles,” Ferguson said. “He hit the Israeli airliner bound for Rome, remember? Just like we were willing to take him if he went along with Khazaal for a ride, they got our guy, too. They’re probably going to want to be thanked.”
“I don’t think Corrine liked it much.”
“Tell me about those planes we spotted off the coast. Where are they?” Ferguson shouldered his backpack and picked up his bike. Thera and Monsoon were standing next to him. Guns had grabbed his bike and ridden after the Russian. Ferguson switched the radio to Rankin’s direct channel and told him what was going on. “Don’t go to the airport. Meet us back at the hotel.”
According to Corrigan, the Israeli aircraft had stopped orbiting and were now flying southwestward, back out to sea.
“They were backups in case the bomb missed,” Ferguson told him. “We probably messed up their timing. Ravid must have figured out somehow that Meles was going with Khazaal on the airplane. Pretty good work. They must have a bunch of people sprinkled around, enough to spot the caravan and ignite the bomb.”
“Why didn’t they tell us, Ferg?”
“Maybe they did, and we just didn’t understand.”
“When?”
Ferguson started to pedal without answering. The most likely scenario, he guessed, was something along these lines: Mossad had been targeting Meles and stumbled across Khazaal. They felt an obligation to tip off their American allies but withheld enough information—which meant just about everything—so they wouldn’t jeopardize their own show, which was a takedown of Meles. They tracked Khazaal first, or tried to—the First Team operation probably crossed them up then, too—then came here and got him.
Parnelles had probably been informed or at least given some sort of indication.
And Corrine?
Corrine had probably told him everything they had told her. Whether she should have been able to read more into it or not was another question.
He rode up toward Souria, where the taxi had stopped. Guns was waiting; the Russian was long gone.
The driver and the man he’d grabbed were not. Both had rather large bullet holes in their heads.
“I lost him, Ferg. I’m sorry,” said Guns.
“It’s all right.” Ferguson unzipped his backpack and fished out the small attaché case. “Take this back to our hotel,” he told Thera and Monsoon, who’d ridden up behind him. “Guns and I are going to ride up to the train station on the traffic circle. We’ll meet you in the room. Be ready to rock. You can pack the nonlethal stuff away.”
Ferguson handed the briefcase with the gems to Thera but didn’t let go.
“Give us exactly two hours,” he told her. “You don’t hear from us, you leave. The blue boat at the Versailles Marina is ours. You go fifty miles due west, exactly due west, and there’ll be a cruiser waiting for you. That’s our lifeboat. Corrigan knows. You got it?”
“Two hours,” she said. “Blue boat.”
He could tell from the way she was looking at him that she wouldn’t go. He turned to Monsoon. “Two hours. You got me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You drag her if you have to.” He turned back to Thera. “If something goes wrong and you don’t leave, I’m going to personally smack that pretty cheek of yours, you got it?”
“Suck an egg,” she said, grabbing the briefcase away.
~ * ~
3
CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
Thomas replayed the Global Hawk imagery at his workstation several times, watching again and again the destruction of the caravan. He was not so much interested in the event itself, a rather conventional, if spectacular, remote detonation of very large bombs in tractor-trailers parked along the road leading to the airport gate. What fascinated him, even unnerved him a little, was the fact that the Mossad operation had proceeded in parallel to the First Team’s without being detected.
In retrospect there would certainly be plenty of clues. They had practically tripped over it several times: Ravid, the airplanes. But they’d been so intent on their own operation that they hadn’t seen what was in front of their faces.
It was not, he reasoned, a bad thing from their point of view: while politically it would have been better to capture Khazaal and put him on trial, the ultimate goal was to eliminate him as a threat. And he had been eliminated.
But was there more to the picture now that they weren’t seeing?
The Russian hadn’t been at the meeting. Had he not been invited? Had his deal already been set?
Corrigan, who’d been standing over his shoulder for several minutes, became exasperated that he couldn’t get the analyst’s attention. “Thomas!” he said, practically screaming.
“More important, what was the deal supposed to be?” said Thomas, finishing his thought out loud.
“What are you talking about?”
“Why wasn’t the Russian at the castle?”
“Maybe he was due later. Listen, there are going to be all sorts of questions about the attack on the caravan. I need you—”
“Too busy,” said Thomas, waving his hand.
“What?”
“I have to go check something.”
He turned and left the area on a run. Corrigan shook his head, once more ruing the day he had recommended the eccentric for his job.
~ * ~
4
LATAKIA
Vassenka wasn’t at the train station, or anywhere nearby. Ferguson decided it wasn’t worth spending any more time at the moment looking for him. As they rode back to the hotel, Guns berated himself for letting the Russian get away, angry that he had gone after the women rather than hanging back and waiting.
“Could’ve been a brilliant guess,” offered Ferguson. “And you could’ve ended up like the taxi driver.”
“Nah.”
“Even marines don’t win every battle,” said Ferguson.
“Yeah.”
“I can hum a few bars of ‘Halls of Montezuma’ if it’ll make you feel any better.”
Guns laughed, but it was a forced laugh, and Ferguson gave up trying to cheer him up.
By the time they got back to the hotel, Rankin and the others had gotten an update from Corrigan. Van Buren and the assault team had taken off, successfully eluding the Syrian authorities. Intercepts from the EC-130, still orbiting offshore, indicated that the Syrians’ preliminary guess was th
at the Israelis were responsible. There had been as yet no mention of the incident on Syrian TV, which was not unusual; the media was government controlled.