Tier One (Tier One Series Book 1)

by Brian Andrews

  “He’s a sadist,” Grimes said. “Someone needs to end this sonuvabitch.”

  Dempsey felt his throat tighten. He failed to see how the behavior of the Mossad—or Ember, for that matter—was any better than that of the enemy. The idea of capitalizing on the continued ruination of this girl at the hands of a known terrorist was repugnant. Their moral obligation was to rescue Effi Vogel, not exploit her weakness.

  “I agree with Grimes,” Dempsey heard himself say. “Rostami is a monster; the dude needs to die.”

  Jarvis exhaled with exasperation. “Look, I appreciate where you’re coming from. Really, I do. The story of Effi Vogel is wretched, but I need you to keep several things in mind. First: Vogel is not our asset. The longitudinal surveillance of Rostami in Frankfurt is not our operation. How the Mossad chooses to manage their assets and their operations is not our business. Second: Vogel volunteered for the job, and in doing so she’s taken control of her destiny. She is no longer alone. She is no longer powerless. She has the full backing and support of one of the world’s most elite counterintelligence agencies behind her. And third: It is because of the courage and sacrifice of Effi Vogel that we have access to Behrouz Rostami. Make no mistake, Rostami will have his day of judgment, but until you hear otherwise from me, you will leave Vogel, and the Israeli operation, intact.”

  Jarvis flicked his gaze back and forth between Dempsey and Grimes, making sure he had their complete submission. The situation took Dempsey back to another life, when SEAL commander Captain Jarvis had used a similar speech to put Dempsey in his place. He held Jarvis’s gaze only long enough so as not to challenge the man, then dropped his eyes to his fingers on the desk.

  Jarvis tapped his pen on the desk. “That being said, our friends from Tel Aviv are giving us full access to this target. By that I mean they understand the importance of our mission and are willing to sacrifice Mr. Rostami if doing so is vital to our success.”

  “Are you saying we can snatch him?” Smith asked. “Time is our enemy on this one, boss. We don’t have weeks to sit back and hope Rostami says something interesting.”

  “Indeed,” Jarvis said with a nod at his Operations Director. “If we decide to take him, it must be in a way that can’t be traced back to us or Israel. How are you and the Dream Makers coming along on your story lines?”

  “They put together something that I think you’ll like,” Smith said.

  “Good, because our advance SIGINT team has turned over data indicating Rostami may be planning a trip, possibly leaving Frankfurt for a significant amount of time. Once he’s in the wind, he takes everything he knows with him. I do not intend to let that happen. Be ready. This mission could transition to a snatch-and-grab on a moment’s notice.”

  Jarvis paused and scanned the faces around the table—for more than just dramatic effect. He was reading the expressions, assessing confidence levels, and hunting for indecision.

  Grimes raised her hand. “Are you taking questions now?”

  An odd grin spread across Jarvis’s face, and Dempsey realized that Jarvis enjoyed these little games with Grimes. “Yes.”

  “Let’s say we take Rostami, and we successfully move him to a black site for questioning. Then what? Do you think he’ll simply rat out VEVAK?”

  “We’ll be persuasive,” he said flatly.

  “Translation—you plan to torture him.” It was a statement. Based on her expression, Dempsey couldn’t tell if she found the idea objectionable or preferable.

  “There are many forms of enhanced interrogation, Ms. Grimes, including techniques that don’t appear in the classified briefings on the Hill or in the OSTP. Some of these techniques were invented by, and known only to, members of this team who served in the JIRG. Do you have a moral issue with enhanced interrogation techniques? If so, I need to know your objections now.”

  “No,” Grimes said. “I just want to make sure that the risk matches the reward. No point in risking lives and an international incident to grab Rostami if our leadership doesn’t have the stones to harvest information from an uncooperative target.” The ice in her voice sent a shiver along Dempsey’s spine.

  The corners of Jarvis’s lips curled into an almost imperceptible smile. “It appears we’re on the same page on this matter,” he said, tabling the discussion. He turned to Smith. “Shane, why don’t you tell the team what to expect when we arrive in Germany?”

  Smith nodded and turned to the group. “The Signals and Surveillance team, who’ve been deployed in Frankfurt the last two weeks, is waiting for us at the airport. As soon as we land, they’ll brief us on their findings and Rostami’s current status. Based on that briefing, we’ll develop our mission plan for the next thirty-six hours. My preliminary thinking is that we’ll deploy Dempsey’s tactical team immediately for additional surveillance and to vet the extraction scenarios. By the end of day two, we should be in hot standby waiting for a green light on the grab.”

  “And the girl?” Dempsey blurted out, unable to help himself. He needed to know they weren’t so fucking cold that this girl was disposable, or whatever term spooks used for innocent collaterals.

  “Is to be protected at all costs,” Jarvis said firmly. “Not only as a courtesy to the Israelis, but also because it is the right thing to do. Okay?”

  Dempsey nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Jarvis looked at his watch. “That’s enough for now. Those of you in the Special Activities Unit have been in the field for nearly twenty-four hours. I want you in your racks, lights out in ten minutes. Six hours of sleep, and then we eat and reconvene here when the wheels are on the ground.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Smith said with a good-natured chuckle. Turning to the group, he said, “Rest is a weapon, people. If your mind is racing, grab me for some Ambien now. No point wasting the few precious hours we have tossing and turning.”

  Everyone stood.

  Jarvis disappeared through a door into the executive office. Dempsey watched the door swing shut, then he shifted his gaze to the picture of Effi Vogel—the “before” picture on the right, the one of the young, pretty girl with blue eyes and an infectious smile.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder—a light touch.

  A woman’s touch.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Grimes said.

  “How’s that?” Dempsey said, keeping his gaze on the screen.

  “Because I’m thinking it, too.”

  He looked down at her. “Ambien?”

  She nodded. “Ambien.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Frankfurt, Germany

  May 21, 1510 Local Time

  “Hold on,” said Dempsey, certain he must have misheard. “Did I just hear you say that the plan is to run over Rostami with an automobile?”

  “Yes,” Jarvis replied, his expression deadpan.

  “Seriously? Hitting the target with a car is the best plan your Dream Makers could come up with?” Dempsey shook his head. “Who are these Dream Makers anyway?”

  Of all the principals packed into the tiny flat serving as their temporary TOC in Frankfurt, only Smith raised his hand.

  “You’re a Dream Maker?”

  “I’m the head Dream Maker for Ember.”

  Dempsey screwed up his face. “Then who are the others?”

  “The original Dream Makers are a TS think tank funded by the CIA. We used them regularly when we were the JIRG. When we disbanded the JIRG and stood up Ember, I had to sever ties. Jarvis wants to replicate their methodology in-house. So, I put together a little group,” Smith said. “Quinton Thomas is a Dream Maker.”

  “QT?” Dempsey laughed. “The guy with a neck as big as my thigh?”

  “That’s right,” said Smith. “Don’t let his looks and demeanor fool you. Quinton is intellectually gifted.”

  “He’s a grunt.”

  “A grunt with a one hundred and thirty-seven point IQ.”

  “Aw, shit,” Dempsey said with an incredulous huff. “Don’t tell me I’m the dumbest guy on the tea
m?”

  Smith looked at Jarvis, who cracked a smile so wide that everyone else in the room started to chuckle.

  “So it’s true,” Dempsey muttered. “I’m the dumbest guy on the team.”

  “Not every day,” Smith said. “For example, on Tuesdays when the cleaning crew shows up . . .”

  “Oh, screw you, Smith,” Dempsey said, trying to sound angry, even though he, too, was now laughing.

  “Sounds like fun,” Grimes said. “Brainstorming crazy scenarios and then trying them out in the field.”

  “Fun? Really? Have any of you ever actually been hit by a car?” Dempsey scanned their faces. “No, of course not. Members of MENSA are too smart to be hit by cars. Well, I’ve seen plenty of unlucky bastards get hit by all kinds of motor vehicles, and guess what—it doesn’t end well. The vehicle always wins.”

  “Relax, Dempsey,” Jarvis said. “This is a controlled scenario, and Shane will be driving. We’re going to hit Rostami with just enough force to require his evacuation by ambulance—our ambulance. Besides, I don’t see what the big concern is. By the time we’re done with that sonuvabitch, he’ll be in the hurt locker anyway. What’s a few more cuts and bruises?”

  “Fine,” Dempsey said. Turning to Smith, he added, “Just make sure you don’t kill the dude.”

  “I’ll limit my speed of impact. Any other concerns, John?”

  “Actually, yes. Why are we waiting until after Rostami meets with Vogel? It puts the girl at unnecessary risk. We should nail him while he’s en route to meet her.”

  “Too many variables,” Jarvis said. “Rostami could be early; he could be late. He could approach from the north; he could approach from the south. The BMW and the ambulance have to be perfectly positioned and waiting. Our ambulance has to be the first responder on the scene. Effi will signal her Mossad handler the moment Rostami leaves the hotel room. Then we’ll have three minutes to get into position.”

  Dempsey nodded. He knew Jarvis was right. It was the best way to make sure they controlled the scenario. But it still felt wrong to put the girl at risk. And it bothered him that Jarvis seemed unperturbed by this.

  “You on board?” Jarvis asked.

  “Of course I’m on board. It’s not the worst plan I’ve ever been tasked to execute. Just the most absurd.”

  “Any other comments or objections?” Jarvis said.

  No one spoke.

  “All right, moving on. The ambulance will stop here, en route to the hospital.” Jarvis pointed to a waypoint on the map displayed on the computer monitor. “We swap out Rostami for our dead John Doe—provided compliments of our friends in the Mossad—and we egress directly to the airport. Wheels up upon arrival. By the time anybody figures out Rostami is missing, we’ll be back in Virginia.”

  Smith checked his watch. “Field team, you have ten minutes to gear up and check comms, then it’s showtime.”

  Twenty minutes later, Dempsey was sitting on a bench in one of Frankfurt’s hipster districts, sipping a steaming cup of Starbucks coffee. Like McDonald’s, Starbucks had become ubiquitous. Tampa, Dubai, Newport News, Frankfurt—it didn’t matter. The little green mermaid was always beckoning him. Drinking Starbucks abroad was very American, but that was okay. As Smith had aptly pointed out this morning, trying to pretend he was anything but an American was a fool’s endeavor. Better to embrace the idea and make it part of his cover. For the next hour, he would walk, talk, and behave very American. He shook the page of the Financial Times he was reading—loudly vocalizing his displeasure with an article criticizing US foreign policy. With a huff, he folded the paper, tucked it under his arm, and pretended to be irritated while simultaneously surveying his surroundings.

  The bench where he sat was located next to a fountain in a square lined with shops, cafes, and bars. The fountain was only a short walk from Luna Bar, where he and the team had watched Effi Vogel sling fancy drinks to German yuppies for the past two nights. Luna Bar’s signature pounding techno music was not to his liking, but the German doppelbock on draft certainly was. John Dempsey, like Jack Kemper before him, was a beer man. To drink the fufu martinis favored by the club’s hipster patrons would be a violation of Man Code.

  The first night of surveillance had been a bust—no Rostami—but last night the dirtbag had finally made an appearance. With great difficulty, Dempsey had resisted the urge to drag Rostami into the men’s room and choke the life out of him. Patience, he’d silently reminded himself. Complete the mission, and the time for choking will come soon enough. Besides, the men’s room at Luna Bar was completely unsuitable for choking someone to death. It was more like a woman’s day spa, replete with burning candles, soft music, and a woman—yes, a woman—handing out hand towels and splashes of cologne from small glass bottles. The night had passed predictably, with Rostami lingering in the bar until the end of Vogel’s shift, then the two of them departing together.

  Dempsey adjusted his suit coat, propped an ankle across his knee, and took a sip of coffee. He checked his watch twice in the span of three minutes—sighing audibly to complete the portrait of the impatient American businessman waiting for a colleague. The time was twelve past three. Vogel should be on the move and headed toward the Hotel InterContinental, where she would meet Rostami for their biweekly tryst. According to the Mossad report, Rostami would reserve a room the day before, always in her name. She would arrive first, pick up the key, and order coffee service to the room. While Rostami rambled about his made-up business, he required her to give him an hour-long massage followed by fellatio and then sex. Afterward, Vogel would feign sleep until Rostami slipped out of the room, always without a good-bye. Once her Mossad watcher confirmed Rostami had left the hotel, Vogel would furiously thumb-type every detail she could remember from the conversation on a note-taking app on a burner phone. Upon departing the hotel, she would proceed to one of seven rotating locations—a local café, bar, or bookstore—and drop the burner in a restroom trash can for retrieval by a female Mossad asset. Then Vogel would go to her apartment, scrub herself clean of the animal she’d shared her bed with, and cry herself to sleep before heading to work at Luna Bar for the night shift.

  Dempsey would take great pleasure in excising Rostami from Vogel’s life.

  He glanced again at his watch. He should have heard from Grimes by now, which meant Vogel was running a few minutes late. If Vogel followed her usual pattern, she would cross this square before walking east toward the Hotel InterContinental, which sat a block off the river. Grimes was in trail now, and she would follow Vogel until the handoff to him in this square. He unfurled his newspaper, resumed reading, and waited.

  Grimes’s voice sounded in his earpiece less than a minute later. “Echo Victor moving south,” she said, all business. “Approaching Victor-two.”

  Echo Victor was Effi Vogel. Victor-one was Vogel’s shitty little apartment three blocks north. Victor-two was Luna Bar. Victor-three was the Hotel InterContinental, and so on for the six marker positions for the op.

  The earpiece transceiver buried in Dempsey’s left ear was the latest technology. According to Wang, the device utilized both sound waves and bone-conduction vibration for transmission and reception functions, generating crystal clear sound quality. Even more remarkable, the transceiver’s minute size and clear plastic construction made it nearly invisible. It was so small Dempsey wondered how he was going to fish the damn thing out of his ear. Every time he moved his jaw, it seemed to migrate deeper and deeper into his ear canal, like a squirmy little bug burrowing toward his brain. Resisting the urge to probe for it with his fingertip was torture, but he knew sticking his finger in his ear repeatedly would defeat the purpose of the stealth technology, reminiscent of spies talking into their sleeves in the old spy films he secretly loved.

  Dempsey stood and stretched. He slung his leather bag over his shoulder by the strap and shoved the folded copy of the Financial Times into the outside pocket. He looked again at his watch, sighed impatiently, and dialed a number on h
is mobile phone.

  “Hallo? Guten Morgen. Wie geht es Ihnen?” said the voice on the line.

  “It’s Jim Purcell,” Dempsey replied with great annoyance. It was distracting to hear Smith speaking German in his earpiece and in the phone speaker with a half-second delay. “I’ve been waiting twenty minutes for you. Did I have the time for our meeting wrong?”

  “Nein—No, Herr Purcell. My apologies, I am running a little late. I should be there in fifteen minutes or so. Do you wish to reschedule?”

  “No, no,” he said with mock irritation. “I’m only in town for another day. Let’s make it thirty minutes. That will give me time to grab another coffee. I’m still on East Coast time and feeling pretty tired.”

  “Of course,” Smith said with a thick German accent. “May I suggest you try World Coffee by Gross Rossmarkt? It is very good and quite close to the property I wish to show you on Kleiner Hirschgraben.”

  “That’s quite a walk,” he said, and looked again at his watch. As he did, he saw Effi Vogel heading toward him, walking south on Stiftstrasse, her small leather backpack pulling her tank top tight across her braless chest while her unbuttoned denim shirt flapped open immodestly in the breeze. If not for the piercings, tattoos, and partially shaved head, the girl would be smoking hot. “Don’t you Germans drive anywhere?”

  Smith laughed. “The traffic is terrible in Frankfurt; it is much quicker to walk. But if you prefer, I can pick you up?”

  “No,” Dempsey said, and began to walk toward the intersection at Stiftstrasse and Zeil. “Perhaps we can chat about the property while I walk?” A man talking on a cell phone about a possible real estate deal seemed far less suspicious than one trolling along behind a young girl. As Vogel turned right on Zeil, he fell in among the thin crowd of pedestrians a few yards behind her. Grimes was still in trail somewhere behind him, and he resisted the urge to look back. In a half block, she would peel off into Pohland Exklusiv—a very upscale clothing store—her part of the tail and handoff complete. They had practiced the exact technique over and over in Williamsburg during their Farm training, but Dempsey still had to concentrate. It would take months in the field before it became second nature. He could breach and clear a room while picking out guitar chords in his head for a new country song, but this simple technique required all his attention.