by Ross Sidor
“That’s why that tango with the suicide vest didn’t waste us,” Poacher agreed. “He could have easily, but he hesitated. He wasn’t mentally prepared to become a martyr, didn’t have it in him. He was as afraid of that vest as we were and didn’t expect us to ever make it past his friends or those grenade traps they set for us. So when we walked in on him, he panicked and froze. We’re lucky it turned out the way it did.”
Poacher spoke from experience. While he was with Asymmetric Warfare Group’s Dog Squadron, he’d gone through an intensive three-day instructional course run by Israel’s Shin Bet on identifying suicide bombers in a crowded public place and preemptively terminating them. Later, he put those skills to use in the cities and marketplaces of Iraq’s Sunni Triangle. He’d sat in on the interrogations of failed suicide bombers in Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories. He knew the vacant look when he saw it, the faraway eyes and stone cold face of the walking dead. It had chilled him to the bones, standing in the holding cell of a sixteen year old girl who had been psychologically prepared to violently end her life and the lives of those around her on a busy Haifa street.
Avery agreed with Poacher’s assessment, but he still felt no qualms about wasting the Uzbek, nor the manner in which he did it. As long as the man had his hand around the detonator, he’d posed a threat to the entire team and the mission.
“That shit sounds like Iraq,” Mockingbird observed. During his time with Task Force 145, he’d taken part in the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The al-Qaeda in Iraq leader regularly left false trails of evidence leading to safe houses wired with explosives.
“So how’d they know you were coming?” Reaper said. “We know Dushanbe station is seriously fucked, but nobody there knew about the op we ran in Gorno-Badakhshan. The leak didn’t come from the embassy this time.”
“You’re the only person we’ve been in contact with,” Poacher told Avery. “So it’s somebody on your end.”
“I’m looking into it.” Avery left at it that. He knew Poacher was right. It would be easy to narrow down the suspects. It was a very short list.
“How severe is the damage?” Mockingbird asked. “Do we need to relocate? I mean, we’re not going to have the fucking IMU visiting us tonight are we?”
Poacher glanced at Avery, interested to hear his response. “No, we’ll stay here. I can assure you that no one I’ve been in contact with knows this location.”
That put the others at ease.
“We did uncover one valuable bit of intel from the house,” Poacher said. “That crow with the spider tattoo you waxed sure as hell wasn’t IMU. The others could pass for Uzbeks or native Tajiks, but not him. I’d peg him as Slavic or maybe from the Caucasus. They were packing a lot of the latest Russian kit, too, and he was carrying an SR-2. Only professional operators carry SRs.”
“Russian operators,” Avery added.
Russia’s Central Scientific Research Institute for Precise Mechanical Engineering specially designed and produced the SR-2 (Spetsialnaya Razarbotka; Special Development) Veresk submachine gun for FSB spetsnaz units like Vympel or Alpha Group. The gun’s nickname, Veresk, is the Russian word for heather, a type of shrub. Invariably, the weapon had also found its way into the arsenals of connected Russian mafia gangs.
“Those IMU guys knew what they were doing and put up a good fight. They weren’t the typical spray-and-pray Jihadist amateurs. They had CQC training and understood the tactics an entry team would use.”
“I’ve checked out that phone we recovered from the dead tango,” Mockingbird said, with his laptop open in front of him. “They placed three calls to the same number since the time Cramer first went missing. The dialing format of the number indicates a Russian cell phone.”
“Any names or messages on the phone?” asked Poacher.
“There’s three numbers in the saved contacts, including the Russian number, but no names. The other two numbers are local.”
“Half-ass tradecraft,” Poacher observed. Knowing that a cell phone could be a huge source of intelligence, a pro would have cleared their call history and not have any numbers saved in the contacts. “But it’s another Russian connection.”
“We’ll give the phone to Gerald at the embassy for NSA to examine,” Avery said. “Gerald also needs to get in contact with whoever the FBI has at the embassy and get a crime scene unit to Yazgulam ASAP to comb that place for prints, DNA, whatever they can find. At the very least, maybe they can confirm if Cramer was ever at the house. Maybe the Tajik or Uzbek services can identify those bodies we left behind.”
Poacher almost laughed. “How the hell is the Bureau going to pull that off? They can’t go into Yazgulam without going through the Tajik authorities and getting all sorts of Interior Ministry and ambassadorial permissions.”
“Their problem, not mine,” Avery said. “They can tell the GKNB they received an anonymous tip. It’s almost true.”
“Cramer had to have been at the house,” Reaper said, thinking out loud.
“That intel came from Gurgakov’s IMU prisoner,” Avery said. “It doesn’t make sense that the prisoner would have been aware of the ambush. That would mean he was intentionally captured to plant disinformation and lure us into a trap. By the time we arrived in Yazgulam, they’d gotten word from an as-of-yet unidentified third party that we were coming and either executed Cramer or moved him.”
And only one person knew that he was going to Yazgulam, Avery thought.
“Speaking of Gurgakov,” Poacher said, “what’s the deal with his IMU prisoner?”
“Gurgakov’s offering his prisoner for twenty grand,” Avery said. He thought it over. “How much did SAD put in your expense account?”
Poacher groaned and squirmed uncomfortably.
“I’d do it myself, but buying an Uzbek’s a bit out of my budget.”
“Shit,” Poacher finally said. “Langley’s going to be pissed. Culler wasn’t prepared for us to leave Tajikistan with a goddamned Uzbek national in our custody. I mean, what the fuck are we going to do with this guy when we get back to the States? I’ll have to go through Culler on this first.”
“Negative,” Avery said. “I’ll deal with Culler. After I get what I need from the Uzbek, we can leave him for the FBI or GKNB, or Culler can tell Langley he was captured in Afghanistan and throw him in Guantanamo.”
“All right,” Poacher replied, unconvinced. “I’ll take care of the money.”
“Next: Ayni airfield, our third Russian connection,” Avery said. “I want everything Dushanbe station has on the place, especially satellite imagery, and information on troop placement there, numbers, and what kind of firepower they’re packing. We’re going in for a sneak and peak, but be prepared with a full combat load. If Cramer is there, it can only mean they’re going to fly him out of the country, if they haven’t already.”
“Who? The Russians?” asked Reaper.
“Maybe,” Avery said. He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and stretched his arms out behind his back. “The Russian connections are starting to add up. I’d even go out on a limb and posit that the IMU action is a Russian false flag job. Regardless, we need eyes on Ayni ASAP. M-Bird, can you head out there today? Make note of every aircraft coming in or taking off, get registration numbers if you can.”
“No problem.”
“Reaper, you go with him,” Poacher instructed.
“Sure thing,” the former SEAL said, glad to finally have something to do.
“When do you want to get started on prepping the Ayni job?” Poacher asked Avery.
“I’d like to do it immediately, but I don’t think we’re in condition to do that at the moment. Best we rest now and wait for night. According to Babayev, Cramer is being moved out early tomorrow morning, possibly before first light. Babayev also said Cramer was dead. Maybe that’s bullshit, maybe it’s not. There’s easier ways of disposing of a body in a country like this than flying it out. It could be more false leads, but we have to check it out.”
Avery paused and glanced across the room. Flounder lay passed out on his cot, temporarily shut off from the rest of the world. “Let’s let Reaper and M-Bird get the wheels rolling on this one. Flounder has the right idea. We need a few hours to re-charge. Let’s talk again in five.”
They broke it up.
Avery reached into his pants pocket for his cell phone. He texted Dagar Nabiyev and told him to return to Dushanbe late tomorrow afternoon. In the interests of saving time, he planned on having Dagar deliver the money and bring in the Uzbek prisoner. The thought also prompted him to send Jack, who had put him in contact with the Tajik, a quick text: “How do you know Dagar?”
Then he got up from the table and walked across the floor. Still wearing his cargo pants and boots, still smelling of sweat, cordite, and death, Avery collapsed onto a cot, shut his eyes, and fell asleep within seconds.
___
When Avery awoke six hours later, he took a cold shower. At its coldest, the water here was still a bit warmer than what he could get back home, but it did the job of shocking his body out of its fatigue. Then he chugged bottled water and ate a couple energy bars. The sleep did him good. Although still drowsy, he felt functional, and his mind was at least capable of thinking again. As there had been no updates from Reaper or Mockingbird, Poacher had decided not to wake Avery, and instead allow him the extra time to sleep.
During that time, Poacher ventured into Dushanbe to meet up with Gerald Rashid, who was accompanied by Darren, the station’s ops officer, at a pre-arranged location. As requested, Gerald provided a briefing docket on the Ayni air force base, and Poacher gave Gerald the IMU cell phone and told him that there was a house and five dead bodies in Yazgulam that the Tajiks might be interested in checking out. He also arranged to have Gerald and Darren deliver the $20,000 cash to Dagar in Gorno-Badakhshan. Dagar was then to await further word from Avery before returning to Dushanbe with the Uzbek prisoner.
Avery and Poacher sat now in the Dayrabot safe house with the satellite imagery and maps spread out over the surface of the table.
Located several miles west of Dushanbe, Ayni Airbase was currently under Russian lease, but the Russian military stationed only a small force at the base. Ayni had zero strategic value for Russia. The Kremlin simply wanted to prevent Dushanbe from leasing it to anyone else, especially the US or India. India was keen to expand its reach in Central Asia, Tajikistan in particular.
Ayni Airbase looked more like a desolate air strip than a modern military base. It supported two 10,000-plus foot long runways angled diagonally northwest to southeast capable of supporting flight operations for cargo planes or MiG and Sukhoi fighters. Off the west side of the runways were large aircraft hangars. Vast open wheat fields surrounded the base on the east side, with a lightly forested area of planetrees directly west and behind the hangar. The trees would provide a perfect spot from which to observe and possibly infiltrate the base, but they would still need someone across the way, more vulnerably positioned in the fields, to get line of sight into the hangars.
The nearest town, Ayni, where Reaper and Mockingbird were currently positioned and watching the skies, was over four miles away. The base was accessible from the M34 Highway, with Russian army checkpoints and barriers positioned at the entry and exit ramps leading onto the airfield itself.
Avery considered and decided against bringing Culler up-to-date for the simple reason that Matt might tell him to stand down. While Culler allowed Avery a certain degree of autonomy, running an op with an Agency asset like Sideshow against a Russian military base, and creating a potential international incident if anyone was caught, was the type of thing to make him uneasy.
But as far as Avery was concerned this was a straight forward recon, not a direct action assault.
After all, even if they did spot Cramer, what could they do about it? The answer was absolutely nothing. They couldn’t charge across the airfield, waste a platoon of Russian troops, grab Cramer, and make a clean exfil. And it was extremely unlikely they would simply get lucky and find Cramer within easy reach, where they could covertly slip him off the base.
This wasn’t a movie. In real life, you didn’t wing it. That only got people killed. Direct action required planning and preparation. They hadn’t even barged into the IMU safe house in Yazgulam blind.
The best Avery could hope for was a sighting of Cramer, possibly in Russian custody, and the jet they put him on, photographic proof to provide Langley. Then Culler and D/NCS could take it from there.
THIRTEEN
Ayni Airfield
Black non-glare grease paint was smeared over Avery’s face and any other areas of exposed flesh. He lay prone in the tall, dry grass. His rifle rested in front of him, on its bipod legs, the stock nestled comfortably against his right shoulder.
Nearby, he heard crickets chirp, and eight feet away, a rabbit lazily chewed on the ends of grass, oblivious to the human’s presence.
Although his finger was poised over the trigger guard, he was relaxed and not looking for targets, at least not with the intention of shooting. The Trijicon advanced optical scope allowed him to see out to two thousand-plus feet. At the moment, however, there was little to observe. Other than a couple Russian troops occasionally wandering by or stepping out of a hangar for a smoke, there’d been no activity.
Avery didn’t use night optics. There was ample lighting around the airfield at 10:00PM. The main hangar, a tall, wide building large enough to hold four MiGs, and the control tower were both well lit. The runway itself was illuminated, too, by high floodlights.
Poacher and Flounder were positioned almost half a mile southwest on the opposite end of the airfield. Mockingbird was setup on the other side of the runway, in the wide field of wheatgrass, across from Avery’s position, with clear line of sight into the open hangars. Reaper was two miles away, sitting on the shoulder of the highway in the van, with his lights turned off and listening in on the comms. From here, he also had eyes on the north and south exit ramps leading from the highway to the base.
Security at the airfield was non-existent. Tajikistan was probably regarded as an easy, if not boring, post for Russian troops. There weren’t even watchtowers, which Russians were always fond of putting up at their bases. The biggest danger came from someone in the high control tower spotting the CIA intruders.
Seventeen minutes after midnight, Avery heard aircraft engines coming in overhead. He saw external lights blinking in the dark sky, and the engines soon grew louder as the aircraft lost altitude on its final approach.
The jet’s wheels struck the surface of the runway, screeched, bounced, and carried the giant aircraft forward out of the darkness and under the glow of the high floodlights, the four turboprop engines mounted beneath the wings screaming.
As it travelled down the runway and continued past the hangar, Avery identified the plane as a Russian-made Antonov transporter, weighing over two hundred thousand pounds empty and capable of carrying over twice its weight in cargo. Maybe two hundred feet long, he estimated, with a slightly longer wingspan. He couldn’t pinpoint the model, but that didn’t matter. He knew Mockingbird already had.
There was no carrier or national markings on the plane, only a small identification number, RA8564G, in black letters near the tail-end of the fuselage. Avery produced an old, bent notepad from a pouch on his vest, scribbled down the identifier, and replaced the notepad in his vest. He wasn’t an aviation expert, but he knew enough to recognize that the “RA” prefix signified that the aircraft was privately owned and registered inside the Russian Federation.
The pilot reduced speed, steered the Antonov left onto the tarmac in front of the hangar, and powered down the engines.
A couple figures stepped out from the open hangar and approached the Antonov. Their voices carried across the dead air toward Avery. He trained his scope on them. Two wore civilian clothing and didn’t appear to be armed. One was short and stocky, the other tall with wide shoulders and a shaved head, but the
ir backs were to Avery. He also spotted a couple soldiers lingering about, keeping their distance.
The Antonov’s aft cargo ramp dropped slowly open on its pylons. Six men stepped out onto the tarmac. The Russian with the shaved head approached the group and spoke with someone who Avery presumed to be the man in charge of the flight.
Avery removed the miniature camera from the padded pocket in his vest. Developed by CIA’s Directorate Science & Technology, the no-flash digital camera fit inside the palm of his hand and could take quality, long-distance pictures or close range pictures of documents.
Avery recognized one of the Russians from when the man finally turned around. It was Oleg Ramzin, CK/SCINIPH. Avery snapped shots of him and his friends in case Langley could identify anyone else. They all looked alike to Avery, with their round faces, square jaws, shaved heads or buzz cuts, wearing out of fashion leather jackets, jeans, and boots, and generally looking ready to kick someone’s ass.
Another ten minutes passed with no activity. The Antonov remained sitting untouched on the tarmac, and the Russians looked as bored and impatient as the CIA soldiers felt.
At 12:45AM, Reaper reported that four trucks had just made the turn off the highway and were approaching the airfield. Five minutes later, Avery heard the vehicles coming from the south. His eyes followed a pair of headlights cutting through the cloak of darkness around the road leading from the highway to the airfield.