by Larry Bond
Rankin, watching the shells hit through his night optics glasses, had Grumpy adjust to the south; the Delta sergeant got the white phosphorous shell precisely in the middle of the roadway about twenty yards behind the SUV.
“They’re taking cover,” said the controller in the EC-130K, interpreting the images from the Global Hawk.
“Start the tape,” said Rankin.
A crewman aboard the aircraft turned off the jamming gear. In its place, he began broadcasting a prerecorded set of radio signals that made it sound as if a platoon-sized group was maneuvering outside the walls. The voices were in Arabic, and the frequency was the same as that used by the Syrian army. “Commander Suhab” was mentioned several times in the brief conversation, just distinct enough for anyone recording to make out.
“Ready on the machine guns,” Rankin told Grumpy. Two men with automatic rifles had come out, crouching near the entrance.
“Sure I can’t hit them?” asked Grumpy, hunching over the weapon’s tripod.
“No,” said Rankin.
“Shame,” said the marine, firing at the road.
* * *
Ferguson and Guns rolled off the hill on the sturdiest bikes he’d bought.
Even thirty yards away they could feel the heat.
“How long is it going to burn for?” Guns asked.
“Not sure. Guess I should’ve brought a fire extinguisher, huh?”
The flames settled for a moment but then flared into a fireball. Ferguson got off the bike and reached into the oversized knapsack he’d taken with him for their small chain saw.
“Going to be hot as hell, Ferg,” said Guns as the flames died down.
“Yeah. But I’m kind of in a hurry.” Ferguson walked around the truck, trying to figure out where the briefcase would be.
A flare shot up from the castle, illuminating the night. The gunfire there intensified.
Ferguson triggered the saw blade and started in on the roof and then the door. Rather than pulling it out he was able to kick it to the side and down, singeing but not burning his boot. The scent of burned flesh hung over the car, overpowering all of the other smells, even the exhaust from the buzz saw.
The briefcase was right near the rear door, attached by a handcuff to the guard’s charred wrist. Guns grit his teeth together and grabbed hold of the briefcase, pulling on the chain hard enough to snap several bones in the dead man’s hand and free the case. He dropped it on the ground and spun to his knees, his stomach suddenly queasy.
The briefcase was barely a foot and a half wide and less high, no thicker than a large paperback book, Ferguson picked it up, examined the lock, and look out his picks. The lock took some work — forty-five seconds — and Ferguson had to balance the small case upright on his knee. When the clasp snapped open it fell, spilling most of its contents to the ground.
A jumble of gold chains, watch bands, necklaces, and loose jewels spilled out. There were sapphires, a number of small diamonds, emeralds. Most were fairly small, but that would only make them easier to sell. There were some gold rings and chains as well. Ferguson guessed conservatively that they must be worth close to three million dollars, maybe considerably more.
It was also a lot more than Khazaal would need to travel in Syria or to hire Vassenka.
Ferguson scooped them back into the case, then took a quick snapshot with his digital camera. Guns got his stomach settled and came back.
“Wow, that’s a lot of gold,” said the marine.
“Yeah. Hang on to it for me,” Ferguson told him, handing him the case.
“Me?”
“Don’t trust yourself?”
Unsure what else to do with it, Guns stuffed the briefcase beneath his shirt.
“We have to get out of here,” said Ferguson.
“Hey, you forgot that,” said Guns, pointing to a bracelet on the ground.
Ferg scooped it up with one hand and grabbed the chain saw with the other. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
* * *
Van Buren secured his seat belt only a second or two before the 737’s wheels hit the cement runway. The plane settled with a jerk, the pilot fighting a rush of turbulence as he brought the plane onto the unfamiliar runway. His official flight plan had him landing at Damascus, but they’d been rerouted with the help of an agent there who had bribed a controller to order the pilot to hold pending a military investigation of another plane on the runway. The 737 pilot had then declared a fuel emergency and been rerouted here. The fact that Damascus had ordered the rerouting meant no questions would be asked about the plane’s sudden arrival.
If questions were asked, any one of the forty-two heavily armed men in the rear of the plane would gladly provide an answer, complete with explosive punctuation.
Van Buren threw off his restraints as the jet trundled onto a taxiway. He went forward to the cockpit, where the copilot told him that the controllers had directed them to a hangar area near the terminal ordinarily used by Syrian National Airlines for its weekly flights to Damascus and Cairo.
“They say we can refuel there. It’s about a mile from your target,” said the copilot. He showed Van Buren the location on a simplified diagram of the airport they had prepared before the mission. The plane’s crew were contract workers on retainer for the CIA.
“We want to get out before we get there,” Van told him. “Just in case they have any people working at the hangar. Can you swing it?”
“Not a problem. There’s a holding area just up ahead,” said the pilot. “We’ll stop there long enough for your people to slip out, and claim we’re getting our bearings if anyone asks. You’ll be a half mile from your target.”
“Let’s do it,” said Van Buren.
* * *
Grumpy fired through half the box of belted ammo before stopping. “Nice gun,” he said of the H&K machine gun, picking up a second to fire from the hip.
Rankin grunted. So far, the pseudobattle belonged to the attackers, who had clearly caught the small force inside the castle by surprise. But that wasn’t going to last forever; the defenders had very powerful motivations, beginning with the briefcase of jewels. The two men at the gate to the old fortress had been joined by six or seven more. As soon as Monsoon’s gunfire stopped they sprinted down the road, sprawling on the ground.
“Give them another blast, and let’s get out of here,” Rankin told him. He pulled up his mike as the gun spat shells at the road. “Jammers still off?” he asked the controller in the EC-130.
“Roger that.”
Rankin had prepared a series of improvised explosive devices and rigged them to detonate with the help of the radio controllers in the toy cars, a simple but effective trick he’d learned from hajji slime in Iraq. When the wheel on the control unit was turned all the way, the signal on the other side closed the circuit and flashed the igniter, detonating the small block of explosives he’d placed by the road. The units had a limited range — three hundred feet was pushing it — but in this case it was the idea and flash that counted.
“Here they come,” said Grumpy, jumping up from the now bulletless gun. He ran and grabbed the bike, kick starting the small engine.
Rankin was already rolling down the hill. When he got to the road he slapped the switches on and detonated his bombs. The hillside began popping as if it were the Chinese New Year.
* * *
As the attack on the castle wound down, Thera and Monsoon launched a raid of their own. It began with two garbage cans hauled innocently down the street by Monsoon, who placed them near the mosque wall and walked away. Thera, having doffed her jilbab to reveal black fatigues, drove a stolen pickup truck down the block, stopped near the entrance to the mosque compound, and ran back up the street. One of the men watching the mosque shouted at her to stop, but the explosion of a small bomb in one of the garbage cans persuaded him not to press the issue.
A moment later, a fire in a box at the rear of the pickup truck began cooking off bullets. Fed by oily rags and
a collection of gasoline-drenched cardboard and wood, the fire in the truck worked itself into a bonfire, igniting the thousand or so rounds of ammunition scattered in the back like firecrackers.
When Thera reached the end of the block, she unfolded the stock on the AK-47 she’d been carrying and aimed it at the power transformer on the nearby pole. It took her three shots to find exactly the right spot on the device to make it arc and explode. The night flared white, and then the entire block and mosque went dark.
* * *
They’ve called over to the Syrian police, trying to figure out what’s going on,” the controller on the EC-130E told Ferguson. “They think it’s a robbery.”
“It is,” Ferguson said. “Make the call to the army Tell them that radicals have attacked the president’s hotel. Give them the castle location.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ferguson and Guns had ridden their bikes back up the hill, where they could see the men in the castle regrouping. He picked up one of the Russian radios he’d gotten from Birk and began improvising a one-sided conversation about a pickup truck approaching behind the team making the attack, addressing “Commander Suhab” and asking for directions on what to do next. He pressed down the talk button and fired his AK-47 right next to it, then threw the radio down.
“Jam all their communications,” Ferg told the controller in the EC-130E. “Jam everything within fifty miles. Rankin, you out of there?”
“We’re clear.”
“Get to that turnoff and wait.”
“You think I forgot what I was supposed to do?”
“You never know, Skippy. This stuff is so much fun even I forget what I’m doing sometimes.”
* * *
Van Buren had split the assault group into three elements, each named after their primary task. “Field,” composed entirely of Rangers, had been charged with securing the area near their target plane and then preventing an escape by the subject in the second phase of the operation. “Plane,” a team of Delta troopers drilled in taking over aircraft, had been assigned to secure the aircraft itself. They would also take Khazaal after he arrived. “Support” would cover contingencies as well as provide scouting and security around the planes during the operation.
The men fanned out across the airfield. Van Buren and a communications sergeant stayed with Support, moving into position about twenty yards from the tarmac where the target aircraft, a Rockwell Commander, was being fueled. The flight crew had not taken the precaution of posting guards, and the only complication was the tanker truck, which had just arrived to deliver fuel. But even this worked to the assault team’s favor; the truck and its driver occupied the pilot and copilot as the attack team shifted forward.
Captain Melfi snuck around the driver’s side of the fuel truck with three of his troopers. As the man who had come to fuel the plane spoke to the pilot, Melfi and the others sprang out, shotguns point-blank at the men. The guns were loaded with nonlethal rubber shot. As the pilot started to turn to the aircraft, Melfi and one of his men fired, sending the man in a lump to the ground. The copilot and fueler surrendered without a struggle.
“Plane is secure,” Melfi told Van Buren.
“Roger that,” said the colonel. It had gone even easier than he had hoped. “Now all we have to do is hope the rooster comes back to the hen house.”
* * *
Guns and Ferguson had cycled about five miles south when the controller in the EC-130 warned that two police vehicles were heading their way. The Americans pulled off the road, hiding in the brush until the vehicles had passed. Then Ferguson pulled out the laptop and got the feed from the Global Hawk, taking stock of the situation.
Realizing they were no longer under fire, the men in the castle had swarmed over the burned-out SUV; several cars and trucks, including Khazaal’s, were parked near it on the road. One well placed bomb there, Ferguson thought to himself, and a dozen of the world’s worst scumbags would be sent to their final reward.
Unfortunately, another dozen would eagerly take their place.
Meles’s Mercedes and several other vehicles were still inside the compound.
“What do we do if they stay there?” Guns asked.
“Eventually they have to leave,” said Ferguson.
“You think he’ll go without his jewels?”
“If he thinks Suhab Majadin has them, he may, because he’ll figure he knows where to find them,” said Ferguson. “But we’ll have to see.”
“Hey, look at this,” said the controller.
Ferguson and Guns hunched over the screen. The Syrian police vehicles that had passed him had driven right up to the burned-out SUV and were now enveloped in tracers. There was a flash: one of the visitors had used an RPG on the police car.
“The odds on his bugging out just improved considerably,” Ferguson told Guns. “Let’s get into position for phase two.”
* * *
Thera threw her gray jilbab over her shirt and pants, and donned a two-piece scarf. Then she and Monsoon headed toward the Riviera, intending to see how the rest of Meles’s contingent had handled the situation. But they found the streets near the hotel filling up with police and Syrian soldiers. They drove around the area, made a report, then went over to the hotel where the Russian weapons expert had been staying. He didn’t appear to be in his room. Thera decided a little reconnaissance was in order. She left Monsoon on the street and went inside, walking through the lobby briskly as if she were a guest. She got off the elevator on the first floor and took the stairs to the third. By the time she reached the Russian’s room she had slipped a set of lock picks from her pocket.
A hard rap failed to get an answer. Thera rapped again, saying she was from housekeeping and had been sent up with an extra pillow. When she didn’t get an answer, she slid a pick into the lock, nudging upward with a flair of body English. The lock gave way but the door didn’t; she took a wedge-shaped pick and opened the fifty-year-old dead bolt above it. Picks back in her pocket, Thera pushed the door open and stepped in, scooting it closed behind her and locking the door.
As she turned around, the light went on, and she found herself staring at the curved barrel of a Czech-made CZ52. Though a reasonably large pistol, it looked rather small in the big, beefy hand of the Russian weapons expert Jurg Vassenka.
* * *
Rankin and Grumpy rode their bikes to a strip of storefronts three miles north of the castle area. Two of the three stores here were empty, but the third housed a Syrian convenience store where customers could buy a variety of fast foods, groceries, and even clothing and hardware items. Unlike in America, the store’s hours were highly irregular, and the owners who manned it had gone home long ago. This was fine with the Americans, who took their bikes around the back and caught their breath.
“They’re mounting up,” the controller in the aircraft said a few minutes later. “Looks like they’re going south in one big convoy: Khazaal’s truck, Meles, the whole lot of them.”
“You got that, Rankin?” asked Ferguson.
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Hang loose until they clear past the police. If you can get into the castle to take a look around without too much trouble, do it. Otherwise, bag it and meet us back at the airport. Don’t cut it too close.”
“Not like you, huh?”
“Not like me.”
* * *
The Russian held the gun in both hands as he approached Thera. There was no question of reaching for one of her weapons under the long Arab dress; at this range, the 7.62mm rounds in his gun would make her look like Swiss cheese long before she could return fire.
The Russian said something to her; she replied in Arabic that there must be some sort of mistake. The Russian yelled at her, and after pulling the chain across the door, slapped her across the face with the pistol. The blow sent her to the floor. While Thera could have done without the pain, she was able to slide her hand to her waist, where she had a small Smith & Wesson. But as she tucked her thumb und
er the button on the jilbab to get at it, the Russian hauled her up by the hair and tossed her against the wall, this time hard enough stun her.
“What’s going on?” said the Russian in broken English. “What are you? Police?”
“My room,” said Thera, her brain too scrambled to give her a better alibi.
The Russian grabbed hold of the back of her jilbab and pushed her toward the door. He pressed his gun against the side of her face and told her, half in English and half in Russian, to open it. When she did, he pitched her head into the hall as if dunking her into the water, obviously intending that anyone outside shoot her before him.
“We go,” he said.
Thera coughed. “Where?” she said in English.
He said something in Russian that didn’t sound very promising.
“Where are we going?” she asked again. She wanted the others on the radio circuit, including the EC-130E and the people back in the Cube, to hear.
“Move,” he said, propelling her into the hall. She started for the elevator, but he grabbed her, pointing her toward the far end of the hall. “Move.”
“Outside, yes. I’ll do as you say.” A large window sat at the end of the hall. Thera walked to it. The window had a fire escape outside, but it was also wired to sound an alarm if opened. A small sign in Arabic and English warned of this; Thera pointed to the sign and tried to explain.
The Russian didn’t buy it. He yelled at her, pointed the gun at her head, and opened the window himself. As the alarm began to sound, he cursed and threw her out onto the grate, quickly following.
31
CIA BUILDING 24-442, VIRGINIA
Corrigan hated this part of an operation. He had literally a world’s worth of information at his fingertips — feeds from the Global Hawk and the U-2, near real-time transcripts of intercepted transmissions from the EC-130E, the First Team’s radio chatter from the scene — but it served mostly to remind him how far removed from everything he was. All he could do was sit and watch.