Olivia looked surprised, and then intrigued. Until a few days ago she had never heard of Michael Garin. Now this killing machine presumed to point out flaws in the national security advisor’s analysis of the implications of Russian-Iranian cooperation in the Middle East. And not just any national security advisor, but the famed Oracle. This Garin character clearly didn’t suffer from lack of self-confidence.
“Just how big, then, should we be thinking, Mr. Garin?”
Garin discerned that Olivia was a bit nettled by his presumptuousness. James Brandt and his brilliant aide were used to being the ones who came up with the novel theories and who found answers to questions no one else had even considered. They weren’t accustomed to being accused of thinking too small—and by some pit bull from the bowels of the country’s clandestine forces, no less. Garin resolved to be more tactful.
“Dan Dwyer told you that a man by the name of Taras Bor may be running the Iranians in the US, right?” Garin asked.
Olivia nodded curtly in acknowledgment.
“Taras Bor is a Russian agent,” Garin continued, “who operates at the direction of President Mikhailov. Why would the Russians send one of their biggest guns to ensure the elimination of the US counter-WMD team? Why make such a bold move if all they’re interested in is helping Iran hit Israel?”
“Well, first of all,” Olivia answered, “we aren’t sure it’s Taras Bor.”
“Ms. Perry, humor me for a moment,” Garin interjected. “The man who gave us that information is as good as they get. So let’s assume he’s right and it’s Bor. The Russians don’t need to pick a fight with the US to help Iran hit Israel. Helping Iran pass a UN resolution that inflames tensions to the point of war is all Russia needs to do to help Iran. Yet that’s not all they’re doing, is it?”
“Maybe assassinating your team was an insurance policy. If Iran is going to hit Israel with, say, a nuke, then it makes sense to clear the path by taking out America’s counter-WMD team—to ensure you don’t take out Iran’s nukes first.”
“Plausible,” Garin conceded. “But unlikely. Russians play the odds. Wiping out my team is an extremely risky operation that doesn’t guarantee the safety of Iran’s nukes. Israel is more than capable of taking out Iran’s WMD on its own.” Garin shook his head. “No, the risk isn’t worth the reward for the Russians.”
“Maybe they’ve also disabled Israel’s counter-WMD capabilities.”
“If they had, then we would’ve heard about it, wouldn’t we?” It was more statement than question.
Olivia sighed. “Yes, right away.”
“Killing my team was not about Israel. If it wasn’t about Israel, it must’ve been about the US.”
“Utter speculation,” Olivia retorted, and then immediately felt sheepish. Of course it was speculation. That’s precisely what this exercise was all about. “But even if you’re right—that it’s got something to do with the US—the questions remain: What are they up to and why?”
Garin studied the patterns on the carpet as if he was trying to decipher a hidden code. Olivia was right. He was engaging in pure speculation. But it was speculation informed by experience and instinct. And by adherence to Clint Laws’s maxim that there are no such things as coincidences.
Olivia studied Garin as intently as he studied the patterns in the carpet. She still felt somewhat intimidated by him but was becoming increasingly comfortable in his presence. Something about his demeanor and the way he carried himself imparted a sense of security. She also believed Brandt was right. Garin held a key to figuring out what the Russians and Iranians were planning. And she could tell he was on the verge of providing that key.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
Garin looked directly at Olivia, contemplating what he could and couldn’t tell her. The two stared at each other for several seconds before Garin spoke. “There is something else,” he confirmed. “I’m just not sure what it means.”
—
The midday thunderstorms had done little to diminish the heat of the day. The rain falling on the city’s blistering pavement had steamed into the air and had remained into the night.
Robert Congo Knox was oblivious to the suffocating humidity, just as in past operations he’d been oblivious to the cold or the snow or the rain or the mud. The only thing to which he was never oblivious was the wind. Wind was the enemy. Wind could affect the mission. But tonight the air was still.
Knox had taken a position on the roof of the Washington Square Building at a diagonal from the entrance to the Mayflower. The range was less than a hundred yards. As he had in Spencer, New York, and at the Crowne Plaza, he worked without a spotter. Given the ranges and conditions, he had no need for one.
Knox had a sober understanding of his capabilities. His superiors considered him one of the best in the world at what he did. Reliable, efficient, and deadly, he was a problem solver.
An al-Qaeda leader inciting an insurgency in Ramadi? Deploy Knox. One shot, problem solved. A heavily protected Serbian war criminal defying capture in a mountain redoubt? Deploy Knox. One shot, problem solved.
He often operated at ranges of eight hundred to twelve hundred yards. The shots had been taken on moonless nights, in rainstorms, and during fierce firefights. In jungles and deserts, on mountains and oceans, in villages and metropolises. The results seldom varied. One moment the target’s head appeared in the scope. The next, just a puff of scarlet mist where the head had been.
Knox understood that to deploy someone of his caliber to take out a target at a mere hundred yards meant that the assignment was of unusual importance; there was no margin for error. Other elite snipers might have considered the task an insult to their skills. Knox gave little consideration to such matters. As always, his focus was solely on the successful completion of the mission.
That characteristic made him virtually automatic, a quality that inspired terror in US adversaries around the globe. The bad guys had no inkling of his actual identity. Only that when he arrived in a particular theater, enemies began dropping. He had spent enough time in the wild west tri-border region of Paraguay-Brazil-Argentina that South American drug lords referred to him as El Diablo Negro—a descriptive coincidence since they had no inkling if he was black, white, or some shade in between. Once, when the Colombian Ministry of National Defense spread a rumor that El Diablo Negro was operating in the southwestern region of that country, two leaders of the Cali cartel surrendered to the authorities rather than risk certain assassination. Knox hadn’t even been in the Western Hemisphere at the time.
It had been slightly more than an hour since Knox had received the order to take out Michael Garin at the Mayflower. Although Knox didn’t know the details, apparently someone had been surveilling a woman with a connection to Garin. The woman had checked into the Mayflower and, sure enough, a short time later Garin was observed entering the hotel also.
Knox was staying at a Days Inn on Connecticut only five minutes away. A quick recon of the area surrounding the Mayflower had yielded a few promising sites for a hide. He had gained access to the roof of the Washington Square with the use of a proximity card descrambler and a pair of bolt cutters.
After the Crowne Plaza fiasco, Knox was pleased that someone had at least verified that Garin was actually inside the Mayflower. When first told that Garin had checked into the Crowne Plaza, Knox had dutifully reported to work, found a hide opposite the hotel entrance, and prepared to waste a few hours of his life. Knox knew full well that a fugitive with the skills and experience of Michael Garin wouldn’t check into a hotel—whether under his own name or any of his traceable aliases—unless he wanted to elicit precisely the reaction that had occurred the previous morning. In fact, Knox was fairly confident that while he was lying atop the PNC building, waiting for Garin to emerge, the target was somewhere nearby watching the pandemonium he had produced.
&n
bsp; Knox didn’t know Garin personally, but he certainly knew of him. What he knew he respected. The tier-one special operator community was tiny, and the man had a reputation as an exceptional warrior. He must’ve committed a spectacular sin to be targeted for elimination by Delta, especially on US soil. He knew federal law expressly forbade the use of armed forces personnel within the United States except in extremely limited circumstances, such as restoring order after a terrorist attack, an insurrection, or a national disaster. The secretary of defense could, however, pursuant to the discovery of a nuclear threat on US soil, direct the use of military personnel to eliminate the threat. Knox could only conclude that Garin was involved in some pretty nasty stuff.
Knox was unaware of anything that permitted the assassination of an American citizen on US soil, but he assumed that the legal i’s had been dotted and t’s crossed. Knox’s job was not to analyze the legalities. Knox’s job was to kill Michael Garin.
And that’s what he would do. He had a clear view of the entrance to the Mayflower. He had a comfortable, undetectable hide. Sometime soon a head would appear in his scope. Then just a puff of scarlet mist where Michael Garin’s head had been.
—
Olivia watched as Garin paced the length of Room 546. The gait was familiar to her. She’d seen it often as a little girl when her father’s former Alabama football teammates visited, some of whom had been in the NFL. It was the stride of the well-conditioned athlete—smooth, balanced, controlled.
Olivia suspected that the intensity never left Garin’s eyes, but his face, incongruously, was calm and his body relaxed. Olivia couldn’t help imagining how she would be carrying herself if she were being hunted like Garin. An ordinary person, any sane person, would be tempted to curl into the fetal position in a corner of the room.
Just a few days ago, Brandt had teased Olivia about having a crush on Garin. Although she found him attractive in the dated photo and was fascinated with the history Dwyer had provided, Brandt had been wrong. Even as a schoolgirl, Olivia had never had anything remotely resembling a crush. Not that there hadn’t been any handsome, accomplished men in her life. Her looks and accomplishments ensured that successful, handsome, and wealthy men, even the occasional minor celebrity, pursued her. None had ever held her interest. Too often the successful were boring, the handsome vain, and the wealthy shallow. The minor celebrities were usually all three.
Garin, on the other hand, had been in her presence for barely thirty minutes, and she found herself wanting the meeting to continue indefinitely. But any attraction she might have felt was overshadowed by the insistent knowledge that this man was a killer.
Garin turned and faced Olivia, who was still seated in the armchair. The look on his face was a curious mixture of calculation and indecision. He needed her cooperation and for her to understand his theories, but he was unsure how much to tell her.
He examined her face for several long seconds. Dwyer trusted her. And although he liked to cultivate a frat-boy image, Dwyer was a shrewd analyst of character. Garin’s own preliminary sense of the woman was more wary. But then, his default mode was wariness. He especially distrusted civilians. Their innocence about malevolence was hazardous. All that was almost beside the point, however, since Garin had no better options than the woman sitting before him.
“My team was involved in an operation a week ago,” Garin began before pausing. “Look, you’re going to have to fill in certain blanks regarding what I’m about to tell you.”
“Michael.” Olivia caught herself. “I’m sorry. May I call you Michael?”
Garin nodded as another recess of his brain noted the length and shape of her legs. She was much taller than he had imagined.
“Please call me Olivia. If it makes any difference, everything you’re telling me is at the direct request of James Brandt.”
“Olivia, we both know that’s not really how Washington works. If things blow up, the fact that I spoke to you about a classified operation will be just one of the paragraphs in the multicount indictment that will be brought against me. And it won’t matter what a great guy James Brandt says I am.”
“I don’t dispute that. But if you can help James Brandt and the president avoid a catastrophe, no one will care that you told me about a classified operation. And believe me, Jim Brandt would go to bat for you. Now, what was it about the mission that makes you think the Middle East crisis is about more than Israel?”
“Something that at the time didn’t quite compute. Let me give you a little background. The conventional wisdom is that Shiite Iran and Sunni al-Qaeda won’t, and don’t, work together.”
Olivia shook her head. “That may be the media’s conventional wisdom, but not James Brandt’s.”
“Brandt’s right. They work together against their common enemy—the US. Are you familiar with the CIA’s program to track al-Qaeda operations in Iran?”
“Yes,” Olivia replied. “RIGOR, I think it was called. Established after the invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda operatives were fleeing from Afghanistan into Pakistan and Iran. Iran claimed that it was ‘detaining’ the al-Qaeda operatives. We had our suspicions about what that meant, so we began satellite, drone, and ground surveillance.”
“Right. The agency found that ‘detention’ actually meant ‘support.’ Turns out Shiite Iran had no problem providing assistance to Sunni al-Qaeda. In fact, intel from RIGOR showed that the Ansar Corps of Iran’s Quds Force was actually running al-Qaeda operations. They—Iran and al-Qaeda—were working joint operations.”
“When and where?”
“You name it,” Garin replied. “Iraq, Afghanistan, anywhere they found the enemy. Anyway, a week ago a nuclear facility in—you fill in the blanks—is compromised by al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.”
“Rhymes with Baluchistan, I suspect.”
“You didn’t hear it from me. The intelligence services in that country are supposed to be on our side. Don’t get me wrong—lots of them have taken great risks to assist us. But there’s an element within the nation’s intelligence services sympathetic to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That element assisted al-Qaeda in gaining access to a nuclear facility. Dangerous stuff. They could’ve gotten control of nuclear weapons—al-Qaeda’s holy grail.”
Olivia looked both perturbed and irritated. “That was a major threat. An off-the-charts threat. All I knew was that there was an attempt, not that they had actually gained access. Why didn’t I hear anything about it?”
“Because we neutralized it just as they were gaining access.”
“How? Why you? Why not the ISI or Pakistani military?”
“First, we weren’t sure of the allegiances of their military and intelligence services. This was a bet-the-farm situation. We couldn’t take any chances.
“Second, Omega was specifically created and designed to handle such circumstances. We are—were—not just trained for combat, but to dismantle and destroy WMD of every type imaginable, most often without the host country’s knowledge. We were airborne within two hours after RIGOR—more accurately, RIGOR’s successor program—even had a hint of a problem.
“As to how, what I can tell you is that al-Qaeda fighters had breached a nuclear facility in the unnamed country and had established control over a portion of it before my team arrived. It’s likely they would’ve gotten their hands on the nukes had we not intervened.”
It was Olivia’s turn to look down at the carpet. “Nuclear weapons in the possession of terrorists.” She shook her head. “I didn’t hear about any of this, Michael.”
“And you wouldn’t. Only a handful of people in the country knew anything about it—the president, SecDef, DNI, DCI. It’s not the kind of stuff that gets broadcast. Markets tanking and all of that. I’m pretty sure James Brandt knew about it but couldn’t share it with you. In fact, my guess is the reason the Oracle put you on my case is because he thinks there could be a connection bet
ween what happened in that unknown country and what the Russians and Iranians are up to.”
“He sometimes says that the people who call him a genius do so because they only see the end product. They don’t see all the plodding work that precedes it. The endless days, nights, and weekends sifting through mundane data . . .”
“The Thomas Edison quote. But I bet even Brandt didn’t expect that I’d have much information that would prove truly useful. He probably thought he was just making sure he wasn’t leaving any stones unturned.”
“He’s excruciatingly thorough.” Her tone indicated her disappointment about being in the dark about the situation at the Pakistani nuclear facility. Garin tried to soften the letdown.
“Olivia, Brandt couldn’t tell you. That’s not a reflection on you. That’s just the way things are. If he didn’t have the utmost confidence in you, he wouldn’t have assigned you the job of ferreting out the information from me.”
Olivia straightened and brushed back her impossible abundance of hair. “I’m a big girl. But thanks.” Her eyes locked on Garin. “Back to your operation. How did you stop them?”
“We destroyed the assault force and secured the facility. We fed real-time video of the dead Tangos to Langley. Some were al-Qaeda. But they ID’d at least one of the dead as Iranian Ansar Corps.”
“And what do you conclude from that?” Olivia asked.
“Nothing more than what we’ve just discussed. The Iranians and al-Qaeda work together whenever it’s in their mutual interests to do so,” Garin replied. “The Ansar Corps officer who was there isn’t what’s important. What’s important is what was on his laptop.”
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