by Ben Coes
“What do you need from me?” asked Dewey.
“We asked New Delhi to delay their counterstrike,” said Calibrisi. “New Delhi has given us two days to remove Omar El-Khayab from power. That was six hours ago.”
“Two days?” asked Dewey, incredulous. “That’s not a lot of time.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Have you designed the OP?”
“We’re working on that right now,” said Polk.
“Who’s running the OP?” asked Dewey.
“The concept was that it would be you,” said Calibrisi.
Dewey was silent. He’d known the answer before he even asked the question. He ran his thumb along his upper lip, which was slightly swollen from the terrorist’s punch.
“I’m flattered,” said Dewey finally. “But you need some young turks. Delta, SOG, SEAL. That’s what you need. I’m getting old.”
“You’re the one we want on this,” said Calibrisi. “As for being too old, tell that to the dead Hezbollah up the road there in Cooktown.”
“The elements are simple,” said Polk. “Infiltrate with a tight kill team. Access the one who can deliver the military leadership and infrastructure. Then remove the cancer.”
“Let some younger guys have a turn, Hector. That’s how they learn.”
“I hear you, but this isn’t an educational opportunity,” said Calibrisi. “The stakes are too high. If Omar El-Khayab isn’t removed in forty-two hours, the consequences are unimaginable.”
“We need a veteran in there who will react in-theater to what’s going to be a fluid, raw, and highly lethal operation,” said Polk.
“You’re not a very good salesman.”
“I’m not trying to sell you. We have a crisis and you’re the best solution.”
Dewey looked down at his leather boots. The left one was covered in dried blood, which he noticed for the first time.
“I’m expendable,” said Dewey. “Why don’t you just say it. If they catch me, you have deniability.”
“That’s not why we want you,” said Calibrisi. “We can get deniability in other ways if that’s what we wanted. Contractors. Even Special Operations Group can go in sanitized. But that’s not what we want. We want a highly talented soldier and a patriot, in that order. I know you, Dewey. I saw what you did after Capitana. We all did. You’re a unique young man, whether you want to admit or not. Your country needs you.”
Dewey’s mind raced as he listened to the voices coming over the phone. Calibrisi had a warm, deep voice, with a slightly Hispanic accent. He liked Calibrisi. He trusted him. After Dewey killed Alexander Fortuna, it was Calibrisi who asked him to come and work at Langley. Then, when Dewey was leaving for Australia, Calibrisi had given him covert identification, which he’d never used. But still, he remembered the gesture.
“There’s something we didn’t tell you about Omar El-Khayab,” said Calibrisi. “Something you should know.”
“What?”
“El-Khayab was created by Aswan Fortuna,” said Calibrisi. “Plucked him out of obscurity, funded his rise in Pakistani politics, and paid for his presidential campaign. The same money that paid for the bullets that killed your friend Talbot tonight got Omar El-Khayab elected president of Pakistan.”
Dewey stared at the fingers on his right hand, scratching a small flake of dried blood from the cuticle of his ring finger. Just the word—Fortuna—made his adrenaline spike. Dewey eyed the worn patina on the butt of his M1911. After a long, pregnant pause, he moved his right boot from the desk down to the ground, then his left. He stood up from the big leather chair. He glanced around the large, empty office, at the walls covered in framed photographs of old Australian warplanes. He ran his fingers through his long, sweaty hair. He picked up the .45 caliber gun from the desk and tucked it into his belt. A smile slowly appeared on his face.
“I’ll do it. But there’s one condition.”
“What is it?” asked Calibrisi.
“After it’s all over, if I survive, you give me Aswan Fortuna’s location and you let me put a bullet in his head.”
“You got it,” Calibrisi shot back.
Dewey hung up. He looked at his watch. Forty-two hours. He exited the office, walked down a dark corridor, then out onto the tarmac, still black under the night sky. He saw an F-111 in the distance, its lights on, the canopy open. “Aardvarks” they called them back home, but here they nicknamed them “pigs.” He walked quickly to the side of the plane and climbed up the air stairs.
At the top of the stairs, Dewey looked at the young Aussie pilot and nodded.
“You Andreas?” the pilot asked.
“Yeah,” said Dewey. “I assume you know how to fly this fucking thing?”
The pilot laughed as Dewey climbed into the second seat and the canopy glass descended, the wheels bounced forward and the fearsome engines on the back of the attack jet roared to life.
34
ROUTE 81
CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA
Youssef had walked less than a half mile when the first police cruiser came barreling down the mine road. He saw its lights in the far distance. By the time it approached where he was, Youssef was lying facedown in the dirt thirty feet off the road. He waited as the police car sped by, then stood up and continued walking down the road toward Route 81. Two more times, Youssef was forced to hide. After twenty minutes of walking, he reached the end of the mine road and went right on Route 81, walking along the dirt apron ten yards off the road, ducking whenever a car approached from either direction.
His arm hurt badly, but he didn’t think about it. Youssef had been trained in pain attenuation. He knew he was lucky to be alive. He thought only of getting to Brisbane. He also thought about Dewey Andreas, picturing the look on the American’s face as he drove the car just behind the BMW. There was no fear in the man’s eyes, no emotion, just steel determination. Youssef would never forget the look.
Youssef walked south along Route 81 for more than an hour. Then he stopped. He waited just off the road, crouched, out of sight, as several cars passed by. When, in the distance, he saw the lights of a semi, he stepped toward the road and held his thumb out. The first eighteen-wheeler passed him without slowing down, as did the second and third. In between trucks, he would crouch out of sight, lest one of the cars traveling on Route 81 turned out to be a police car. The fourth semi slowed down and stopped to pick him up.
“Where ya headed?” asked the driver as Youssef climbed into the cab.
“Cairns.”
“Hop in,” said the bearded, overweight truck driver, eyeing Youssef’s leather coat and bottle-blond, spiky hair. “You a surfer?”
“Yes,” said Youssef. “Thanks for stopping.”
Youssef closed the door and the truck rolled forward, south on 81, toward Cairns.
* * *
They drove for two hours. The radio played country music and they talked only briefly, Youssef asking the driver about what he was carrying, where he was from, and other polite small talk, all of it forgotten almost as soon as the words came out of the burly driver’s mouth. When they came to a traffic light near Lake Mitchell, just north of Cairns, Youssef took his Arcus 98 DA 9mm handgun out of the pocket of the leather coat and fired a single round into the side of the truck driver’s head.
Youssef pulled the dead driver toward the passenger side of the cab, then climbed over him. Taking off the leather coat, he inspected the bullet wound in his arm. He was in pain, but it was tolerable. The bleeding had stopped. Examining the wound for a few moments, he found a hole at the back of the biceps where the slug had exited.
With his right boot, Youssef pushed the corpse down in front of the passenger seat. When the light changed back to green, he shifted the semi into first gear and started to drive toward Brisbane.
35
QANNABET BROUMANA ROAD
BROUMANA, LEBANON
Nebuchar Fortuna drove his bright orange Lamborghini Gallardo LP 550-2 “Valentino Balboni” through the w
inding hills above downtown Beirut taking the hitchbacks at speeds that caused the tires on the €180,000 sports car to squeal. He took a right down an unmarked road and was soon at a heavily fortified set of iron gates. He honked the horn twice. After an armed guard identified him, he drove through the gates. He parked in the circular driveway in front of a rambling villa, slammed the car door behind him, and went inside.
Gathered in the living room, on sectional sofas in a square, two men sat.
“What is it?” asked a small, bald man in the middle of the sofas, dressed in khakis and a green short-sleeve button-down shirt.
“None of your affair, Pasa,” said Nebuchar. “I must speak with you alone, Father.”
“He’s my guest,” said Aswan Fortuna. “Speak. Nobody’s leaving.”
“Dewey Andreas is alive.”
“So what’s new?” asked Pasa. “The son who couldn’t shoot straight.”
“Shut up,” said Nebuchar, not even looking at Pasa. “My father may abuse me. You may not unless you would like to taste blood in your mouth.”
“Big threats,” said Pasa.
“Calm down!” barked Aswan. “Both of you. What happened?”
“We finally found him. They saw him at a bar and moved on him. But somehow he killed most of the cell.”
“How?” whispered Aswan, incredulous. “How could this happen?”
He sat back, staring icily at Nebuchar.
“You manage to fuck up everything,” said Pasa from the sofa.
“It was your men, Pasa, you fucking Hezbollah midget,” said Nebuchar, turning to his father. “Half of the cell Pasa here delivered from Bekaa. So we can start pointing fingers or we can just figure out what to do next.”
“What to do next? They’re all dead! The cell is dead and you’re asking what to do next?”
“They’re not all dead. Youssef survived.”
“What would you do next?” asked Pasa.
“Build another team. A clean team. Send them back to Australia to dig for information. This is a long-term struggle, and we can’t give up.”
“Another team?” said Aswan, as bitter laughter erupted from his mouth. He sat back and ran both hands through his long, silvery hair. His tan shirt was unbuttoned, and he placed his hands nonchalantly across his chest.
He stood and walked calmly around the square sectional sofa. On the wall hung a photograph. It was a photo of a handsome young man in a lacrosse uniform, the word Princeton on the jersey. The player’s hair was wet with perspiration. Eye black was painted in stripes beneath each eye. The photo was of his dead son, Alexander; the chosen one, the one he had loved; the one Dewey Andreas had killed.
Aswan stared for a moment at the photo, then stepped slowly back toward Nebuchar.
Pasa laughed as he watched Aswan.
“What’s so funny?” asked Nebuchar.
“You are,” said Pasa, still laughing. “Both of you. You’re in love with a dead man. You spend your life chasing ghosts.”
“I told you to shut the fuck up, Pasa,” warned Nebuchar, his eyes flaring in anger.
“Perhaps you should shut the fuck up now,” said Pasa. “If I had handled this little project, Andreas’s skull would have been stuffed and mounted above the fireplace long ago.”
Nebuchar pulled out his Glock .45 G.A.P and aimed it at Pasa’s head.
The pistol cracked loudly as a single bullet tore into Pasa’s right eye and ripped a hole through the eye, kicking his entire body backward.
“I warned you.”
Aswan looked, stunned, at the dead man on his couch, then at his son.
“You do realize that is the number three man in all of Hezbollah, yes?” asked Aswan.
“Was,” said Nebuchar.
“I can’t guarantee your protection.”
“Since when have you ever protected me?”
36
PAYA LEBAR AIR BASE
ROYAL SINGAPORE AIR FORCE
REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE
The F-111 swooped in and landed on the main runway at Paya Lebar Air Base. The jet taxied to a stop next to a large, black windowless plane with a Frisbee-like object on top, the CIA’s E-3 Sentry AWACS.
The sun was out. Dewey looked at his watch: 7:15 A.M.
A set of portable air stairs was rolled quickly to the side of the F-111.
“Thanks for the lift,” said Dewey.
“Anytime,” said the pilot. “Good luck.”
Dewey climbed down and walked fifty yards across the cement tarmac, where a bald man in a coat and tie stood, holding two Styrofoam cups filled with coffee. As Dewey approached him, he extended one to him.
“Hi, Dewey,” said Polk. “I’m Bill Polk. Welcome to Singapore.”
Dewey took the coffee cup, but said nothing. He ascended the air stairs into the A-3, followed by Polk. The jet’s door closed and within two minutes the mysterious-looking black plane was barreling down the runway at Paya Lebar.
At the conference table on the big plane, Dewey was joined by Polk, who sat across from Dewey, and two other men, Will Drake, an operative within the CIA’s Political Action Group, and Van Bradstreet, an operative from the CIA’s Strategic Operations Group.
Both Political Action Group and Strategic Operations Group were divisions of the CIA’s Special Activities Division. The two divisions were the Kevlar-tipped front edge of the CIA bullet. Its members were the elite of the elite. PAG managed political, cyber, and economic analysis as well as covert offensive activities involving the manipulation of various political, economic, and technological systems within foreign countries. PAG’s members were drawn heavily from elite graduate programs at Ivy League schools. They tended to be brainy, multilingual, highly intellectual, out-of-the-box thinkers who enjoyed solving problems—and causing them.
SOG was the CIA’s front-edge paramilitary force; the first guns into foreign land. SOG operatives were drawn primarily from Delta and SEAL, and were smart, secretive, and brutally tough. During missions, SOG operatives carried no identification or articles of clothing that could identify them as American.
Drake, a senior-level case officer, was leading the analysis of who to replace El-Khayab with. Only twenty-nine, Drake had been pulled away from his honeymoon in Morocco. Drake knew the Pakistani military hierarchy, and Polk needed him.
Van Bradstreet, the SOG operative, was designing the operation along with Polk, as well as handling logistics for getting the team in place and supporting them once they were in-country.
“We have three hours to Bagram,” said Polk. “Let’s talk about your team first.”
One of the CIA operatives on board brought a plate with a turkey sandwich on it over and placed it in front of Dewey.
“Thanks,” said Dewey. “Give me a rough summary of the time line, will you?”
“Sure,” said Polk. “Van, what do we have?”
In front of Bradstreet was a laptop. He punched a few keystrokes. At the end of the conference table, a large plasma screen on the wall lit up. On it was a map of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
“It’s six A.M.,” said Bradstreet, pointing at a clock on the cabin wall. “We have until noon tomorrow to take out El-Khayab. That’s thirty hours.”
“Okay,” said Dewey.
“We’ll get you to Bagram by noon,” said Bradstreet, pointing to a red marker on the map where the U.S.’s Bagram Airfield was located. “From Bagram, we’re going to chopper you to Gerdi, a little shithole near the Afghan-Pakistan border, here.”
Bradstreet pointed to another marker, just to the left of the bright yellow line that ran through the mountains demarcating the two countries.
“Gerdi to Rawalpindi will take anywhere from six to twelve hours depending on border searches, traffic on the Khyber Pass, and other unforeseen shit. Let’s call it nine hours. By late evening, you’ll be in Rawalpindi, next door to Islamabad. From there, you’ll have twelve hours to find El-Khayab’s replacement, move troops into position, and take out El-Khayab.”
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“Chopper to the border?” asked Dewey. “Daytime? Have things calmed down up there?”
“No, they haven’t,” said Bradstreet. “Taliban are everywhere. But we should be okay.”
“The main concern during the chopper ride is getting hit by a surface–to-air,” said Polk. “Joint Special Operations Command is running a border incursion to the north. JSOC has two separate platoons from the 101st Airborne working across the border twenty miles above Gerdi, hopefully dragging any Taliban in your flight path out of the area. You should be safe.”
“What about the border crossing?”
“It’ll be tricky,” said Bradstreet. “But so will the ride down the Khyber Pass. In addition to the main checkpoint at Torkham, we’ll need to worry about the ad hoc checks the Terries are doing along the highway to Peshawar.”
“‘Terries’?”
“Taliban. They’re stopping trucks with increasing frequency. If they find you, they will kill you. With your eyes, your looks, we’re gonna need to conceal you. Let me take care of that.”
“How?”
“We have a relationship with a trucking company owned by a midlevel Taliban. I recruited him myself. You’ll be hidden in a compartment in the back of the truck. I’ve done it. I was the first to ride the route, and I’ve ridden the route now six times.”
“So the same guys America’s been fighting for a decade are going to deliver us to Islamabad?” asked Dewey.
“The Taliban’s like any organization,” said Polk, smiling. “There’s always some bad apples. It’s just that their bad apples are our good apples.”
Dewey raised his eyebrows.
“Not every Taliban is a fuckhead,” said Bradstreet. “This guy’s not bad, just corrupt. I’ve been to his house. He’s a survivor. As for the run down the Khyber Pass, we have an understanding: if he ever once fucks me, I will light him up from the sky with one of our Reapers.”
“How much do you pay him?”
“Fifty thousand bucks a load. If we stay on schedule, you’ll be in Peshawar by dinnertime, and Rawalpindi sometime late tonight. What happens next is somewhat dependent on who we install as president.”