by Brad Thor
“It’s sensitive, Jack.”
“That’s why we all have top-secret clearances,” replied Walsh. “C’mon, what do you know about this guy?”
There was a pause on the other end as Farnsworth’s attention was diverted once again. Finally, he said, “What’s your interest in Abressian?”
Walsh had assumed he’d ask, so he had his story prepared. “We’ve got some unconfirmed intel that he might have provided a couple of Taliban factions with material support in southern Afghanistan.”
“Hmmm,” replied Farnsworth distractedly. “Why don’t you write up what you’ve got and send it over? I’ll have our guys take a look at it and see what they can come up with for you.”
“I was hoping you could do a little more than that for me, Phil.”
Suddenly, the CIA man was interested in the conversation. “I find it heartwarming that you finally want to work with us.”
Walsh shook his head. “Let’s not do this.”
“Hey, you’re the guys with all the money who are out there running around hiring away our best people.”
“You’ve got plenty of excellent people at Langley.”
“But when the best of them retire and get into contract work, they’ve all been signing up at your shop,” stated Farnsworth.
Walsh really didn’t want to get into this with him. “You’re talking to the wrong guy, Phil. I’m just a cog in the wheel, trying to make it to Friday. You know that.”
Farnsworth laughed out loud. “That’s priceless. It’s a total load of BS, but it’s definitely priceless.”
“Are you going to share what you’ve got with me or not?”
“I told you to write it up—” began Farnsworth.
“And send it over,” replied Walsh, finishing the man’s sentence for him. “Yeah, I got that. And I’m asking you, not your people, to help me out right now.”
“What do you know about an Italian arms dealer named Bianchi who was ghosted in Venice a couple of days ago?”
Walsh leaned forward in his chair and lied. “Nothing. Why? Are they connected?”
“Maybe,” said Farnsworth. “Listen, I shouldn’t be going into this with you.”
“You haven’t gone into anything. Come on, Phil. What do you have? Please.”
“Hold on a second.”
Walsh heard Farnsworth get up from his desk and shut his door.
“You still there?” he asked when he returned.
“I’m still here.”
Farnsworth took a deep breath. “The arms dealer out of Venice was named Nino Bianchi. Anything, anywhere, anytime was his reputation; and he was that good.”
“Who grabbed him?”
“We don’t know. All we’ve heard was that it was an all-female team. We think it might have been the Russians.”
“Any idea why they would have wanted him?” asked Walsh.
“This guy Bianchi double-crossed a lot of people,” replied Farnsworth. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”
“You said there was a connection between Bianchi and Abressian?”
The CIA man took in a deep breath and exhaled. “This is not for dissemination and you didn’t get this from me, okay?”
“Understood,” said Walsh.
“We believe Abressian has built a sophisticated shadow intelligence network. From what we can tell, it’s filled with former and even current spooks and special operations types. Kind of like the stuff you’re running.”
Walsh let the remark slide.
“Anyway,” continued Farnsworth. “Abressian began by contracting his merry band out to wealthy individuals and corporations. Then he moved on to small countries with limited intelligence agencies that needed to improve their capabilities and their reach. He provided training and his people even helped plan and conduct operations.
“Right out of the box, that was bad enough. Then, we started hearing they were taking jobs for larger countries that didn’t want their fingerprints on certain, let’s say sensitive, undertakings like assassinations, kidnappings, terrorist attacks, and other various ops that would draw international condemnation. Abressian’s group guarantees complete anonymity, which brings us back to Nino Bianchi.
“We began taking a serious interest in Bianchi when a source of ours in Pakistan told us he was looking to buy whatever he could get his hands on there. He was particularly interested in nukes and EMP devices. He bought two shipments of the latter, allegedly for Armen Abressian.
“Now, Abressian wasn’t mentioned by name. He normally uses cutouts to do his business. The name of the person Bianchi was buying these EMP devices for was some character named Sanders. Thomas Sanders.”
“You’re sure about all of this?” asked Walsh.
“As sure as we can be,” replied Farnsworth. “But it gets more troubling. From another source, completely unrelated and outside of Pakistan, we heard that Abressian’s group was looking to help facilitate some sort of spectacular attack on the United States with those same EMP devices.”
Walsh’s worst fears had just been confirmed. “Do you know who Abressian’s group was supposed to be helping?”
“No, we don’t,” said Farnsworth.
“Do you know what the targets were?”
“We had hoped Bianchi might lead us to those, or at the very least Sanders and Abressian. We were in the process of trying to put something together with the Italians when Bianchi got taken.”
Walsh didn’t know what to say. “That’s it? You don’t have any other leads?”
“We’re chasing down a rumor right now about a hit that happened yesterday in Croatia.”
“Croatia?”
“Yeah,” replied Farnsworth. “A former KGB official and his three-man bodyguard detail were ambushed. Lots of AK47s and an RPG were used. The hitters appear to have been imported for the job.”
“What’s this got to do with Bianchi?”
“It doesn’t. This is about Abressian. Supposedly, he and this deceased KGB man, a Viktor Mikhailov, had some sort of falling out.”
“Over what?” asked Walsh.
“We don’t know. Like I said, this just happened yesterday. I’m getting it all out of a source in Moscow. We’ll probably have more in a week or two.”
“Do you think Abressian was behind it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Farnsworth. “Mikhailov was no choir boy. I’m sure he’s made more than his share of enemies.”
“Interesting.”
“Yup,” said the CIA man, wrapping up the call. “Listen, don’t forget to get me anything you’ve got on Abressian and the Taliban. The more I hear about him, the more I don’t like him.”
“Me too,” replied Walsh. We’ll get something over to you as soon as we can.” With that, the two men said their good-byes and hung up.
Jack Walsh then immediately dialed Rob Hutton at Fort Bragg.
CHAPTER 53
PREMANTURA
ISTRIAN PENINSULA
CROATIA
Armen Abressian had planned his ambush of Viktor Mikhailov down to the very last detail. He had kept it all a secret, even from Thomas. The only person who knew the full scope of what was going to happen was his head of security, Marko.
Both Armen and Marko knew that Viktor would leave word with his men that if anything happened to him, they should assume Abressian had done it. That was why Marko arranged to have a team of contract killers brought in from the Ukraine.
After the Ukrainians successfully ambushed Viktor’s Audi and killed all of its occupants, Marko and his men killed the Ukranians. Two of the hired killers then had cell phones planted in their pockets that showed calls back and forth with several members of another organized crime network very hostile to Viktor’s. As corrupt as the local police were, they weren’t stupid.
It wouldn’t take long for this information to get to Viktor’s men. With their boss dead, they would follow the carefully laid trail of money transfers Armen had put together. There were a couple of other
clues he had buried so deep that no one would probably ever find them, but if someone did, they would never suspect anyone had gone to that much trouble. It was the kind of orchestration that Abressian was very talented at.
When Sanders was brought in on the plot, he was quite relieved. He had no problem with the Bratva going to war, as long as it wasn’t with them. His boss never ceased to amaze him. The man always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else. He assumed it was the result of exceptional analysis and thorough planning, but figured there had to be just a bit of good luck thrown in as well. Somewhere at some point in his past, Abressian must have done something right to have stored up such a trove of good fortune.
That was the thought that came back to Sanders’s mind when he was combing the email accounts he used as electronic dead drops and found a note left in one of the draft folders. This was the modern version of how spies used to leave messages hidden for each other in parks or under bridges, except now it was a much simpler process. An email account was created and two parties had the user name and password. Instead of sending messages across the internet to each other that could be intercepted or traced, they simply read and erased messages left in the account’s draft folder.
It was in just such a folder that Sanders found a wonderful piece of news. Getting up from his desk, he walked into Abressian’s office. “I have good news, Armen.”
Abressian turned from where he had been looking out the window. Despite the hour, he already had a drink in his hand. “What is it?”
“The shipment has arrived.”
“What shipment?”
“The shipment,” said Sanders. “From Bianchi. I just heard from the man in Ljubljana. As soon as the money transfer is confirmed, they’ll make the shipment available. He wants to know is if we want it packaged the same as last time.”
Abressian wasn’t sure how to react.
Sanders studied his employer. “You don’t seem pleased.”
“I don’t like it. Bianchi was taken four days ago.”
“You think this might be a trap?” asked Sanders.
Abressian bowed his head in thought.
“This isn’t any different from the way the deal unfolded last time,” continued Sanders. “Think about it. We gave Bianchi a substantial down payment just like before. The process was probably in the works before he was grabbed. Just because the railroad boss gets hit by a train doesn’t mean all the trains stop running.”
“Perhaps. But I’m still concerned.”
“So what should I do? Tell the guy we don’t want them? Tell him that he should just keep our deposit?”
Abressian held up his hand. “I’m trying to think.”
Sanders knew not to press his boss. Laying his hands on another shipment of EMP devices was all Abressian had been thinking about. He was under a tremendous amount of stress over it, as evidenced by the cocktail he currently held in his hand.
Abressian looked out the window for a long time. Finally, he said, “We’ll do it, but I want you to double our security precautions. I don’t care how much it costs. I want to make it impossible to follow this shipment.”
CHAPTER 54
LJUBLJANA
SLOVENIA
WEDNESDAY
In the eastern warehouse district of Ljubljana known as Smartinska, Gretchen Casey, Alex Cooper, Julie Ericsson, and Megan Rhodes sat in a nondescript vehicle watching a steel garage door a half block away.
“Nino Bianchi knows we’re coming back and taking him for another swim if this is BS, right?” asked Cooper.
Casey smiled. “If he’s lying, I’ll drown him myself.”
“You girls are so dang violent,” stated Rhodes from the backseat. “It’s no wonder neither of you can ever hang on to a man.”
“Please,” replied Casey. “I have no problem hanging on to men.”
“Handcuffs don’t count, Gretch,” offered Ericsson.
Cooper pointed at Casey. “I knew it. It’s always the quiet ones. The freak runs deep in them.”
“You’re looking at the wrong sister, sister,” stated Casey, pointing over her shoulder at Megan and Julie. “You want to talk freak, talk to them. They run the Freaky Town Rotary Club.”
“It’s always the dog without the bone who barks,” teased Rhodes.
A chorus of oohs rose inside the car over that response.
“Thank you,” said Rhodes. “I’m here all week. Try the veal.”
“By the way,” replied Ericsson. “If I had known we were going to be spending so much time in Eastern Europe, I would have stopped shaving my legs and threaded my eyebrows together.”
“Some women will do anything to get laid,” said Cooper.
The car erupted again.
“You’re really coming into your own on this trip, sweet stuff,” said Rhodes.
“Jules, I was only kidding,” offered Cooper, afraid that maybe she had hurt her teammate’s feelings.
Ericsson laughed. “It’s cool, Coop. We all give as good as we get.”
“Speaking of which,” said Casey. “Let’s all get ready. The door’s going up.”
Down the block, the faded metal garage door rolled up and the first truck pulled out of the warehouse.
“There’s number one,” said Cooper.
They watched as the semi trailer exited the warehouse and headed west.
“And here comes number two,” replied Ericsson, as the second truck exited and headed in the opposite direction.
Suddenly, the unexpected happened. “Wait a second,” said Casey. “Number three?”
Rhodes looked behind it and said, “And four?”
“I thought Bianchi said this guy Abressian only used two trucks before; the real deal and a decoy.”
“I guess we’re seeing how serious they are,” stated Casey.
Cooper looked at her and then down at her cell phone. “Why is that not ringing?”
“It’ll ring.”
“Gretch, there’s four trucks. There’s no way we can follow them all,” said Rhodes.
“Everybody calm down,” said Casey. “It’s going to be okay. Just be calm.”
Seconds later, Casey’s cell phone rang. “Yes?” she said. “Thank you.”
Hanging up, she put the car in gear and said, “Truck number three,” and pulled out into the street after it.
“I still think we ought to drown the guy just on principle,” said Rhodes, referring to Bianchi.
“So far, so good,” cautioned Gretchen. “He said his warehouse manager would alert us to which truck and that’s exactly what he did. I think Bianchi is a scumbag and I’m going to be first in line to sign up for his firing squad, but the verdict is out of my hands.”
“I’m getting real tired of all your law and order lip, missy,” Rhodes joked from the backseat.
“Your mom and I,” said Ericsson as she indicated she was speaking about Rhodes, “are very disappointed in you. Aren’t we, dear?”
Megan nodded. “Absolutely. I didn’t raise any daughter of mine to be such a softie. Do you want us to take your Glock away? Is that what you want? Because we’ll do it.”
“What I want,” said Casey, calling for some decorum, “is for everyone to pay attention. We’re on the clock.”
The team didn’t need to be told twice. They all focused on the truck that was several car lengths in front of them.
Casey decided to fall back a little farther. The semi was a big, easy target that wouldn’t be hard to follow.
It led them through stop-and-go traffic across the Slovenian capital. Though Casey had requested professionalism when the pursuit had first started, Ericsson and Rhodes couldn’t help themselves, and eventually a stream of jokes poured from the backseat. It broke the tedium and a couple were actually funny, so Casey allowed them.
When the semi slowed down and pulled into another warehouse, she didn’t need to ask her team to look sharp. They were already with her.
Casey kept driving, turned around two blocks dow
n, and then came back and found a parking spot where they could monitor the building without being observed.
This was now the part that was completely out of their hands. Whereas they had Bianchi’s warehouse manager inside from the first location, here they had nobody. This location had been of Abressian’s choosing. The Athena Team could only imagine that the three other trucks were pulling into similar warehouses at different points around the city.
“Did anyone get a look at our driver or the man riding shotgun?” asked Rhodes.
“I saw a little bit of a face in the passenger mirror,” replied Cooper, “but not enough to make a positive ID.”
“Then we’d better hope we don’t screw this up,” said Ericsson.
The women waited in silence, their eyes glued to another rolling garage door.
After about four minutes, Rhodes said, “So, Gretch. What was it like seeing Scot Harvath again?”
“Yeah,” added Ericsson. “Has he dumped Riley yet?”
Casey didn’t bother turning around to look at either of them. She just took two fingers, pointed at her eyes, and then turned the fingers and pointed out the windshield toward the warehouse. They got the message and the car fell silent once again.
Ten minutes later, the garage door rolled up.
“Whoa,” said Cooper as four trucks poured out and went in different directions. “This guy Abressian is taking no chances at all, is he?”
“No, he’s not,” replied Casey as they watched the trucks exit and the garage door roll down.
Minutes passed and Casey could sense anxiety out of the backseat. Before the peanut gallery could say anything, she said, “Wait for it.”
It was the longest twenty minutes of their lives, but sure enough the garage door rolled back up and out drove a silver G Class Mercedes SUV. Bianchi had been telling them the truth. He’d also been right that they would very likely run the same scam they had the first time they’d accepted a shipment from his Ljubljana warehouse.
“Those sneaky bastards,” said Rhodes.
“What a shell game,” admitted Cooper, a little awe in her voice. “Load the bombs in the SUV and load the SUV in the back of one of the semis and then keep people guessing.”