Assassin's Strike

by Ward Larsen

  “We can’t send them back empty-handed. It will be a dead drop … so to speak.”

  “And this demonstration—you don’t know exactly when it will take place?”

  “That remains one of the few variables.”

  Petrov looked at his guest sternly.

  “I couldn’t exactly ask for volunteers, could I? The way things are designed … it’s rather like fishing. I have no doubt the bait will be taken.”

  “And you put everything in place yourself?”

  “Technically, it wasn’t difficult,” the man said. “The fewer who are involved, the less chance of failure.”

  “Will the results be convincing?”

  “It will take a day, perhaps two to be discovered. In the end the Western intelligence agencies will have no doubt as to who is responsible.”

  “And nothing to forewarn of our true target?”

  “The dispersal hardware would be the only clue—it has a unique design. There are only eight units like it in the world. But without understanding its true function, no one could guess our employment method.”

  “What of your Saudi contact?”

  “He remains in position … under the radar, you might say.”

  Once again, Petrov’s measure of the man shifted. He could jest against the backdrop of a chemical weapon attack. With nothing more to ask, he said, “Very well. We should not meet again.”

  “Oh, we will,” said the visitor.

  Petrov didn’t reply, his gaze going to its stony best.

  “And next time, we will not have to be so secretive.”

  Petrov watched him get out of the car and walk away. The hitch in his gait was almost imperceptible, no doubt something he’d been masking since he was a child. A minor imperfection that had transformed his life—and, as it turned out, also saved it.

  He saw Vasiliev waiting a discreet distance away. Petrov spun a finger in the air, and Vasiliev repeated the gesture. The driver and his partner returned, and soon the garage was reverberating under the snarling engines of eight armored vehicles. The convoy began crawling toward the exit.

  Petrov remained deep in thought, so much so that he never noticed a dutiful wave from Vasiliev. He stared blankly at the passing concrete walls. A great many people came to him with schemes. The oligarchs were the worst, but at least they were predictable, wanting nothing more than to enrich themselves at the expense of either the state or a rival. A few foreigners came begging, mostly for weapons to be leveraged in the overthrow of political enemies.

  But this man was different. Very different.

  Petrov played his favorite internal game, distilling him to a single word. The one that came to mind was patient. Given his lineage, that seemed preordained. Yet it came without the usual serenity. More of a doggedness, he thought. A terrier with a rat in its jaws. It wasn’t really surprising. He had researched the man’s background exhaustively, and knew beyond a doubt that he possessed the one thing that could not be bought or learned: a blood lineage.

  The convoy burst into sun-blanched streets, plowing north toward the airport. Petrov took solace that Russia’s part in the scheme was now complete. He had only to sit back and watch. Wait to reap the rewards. The matter of Ludmilla Kravchuk remained, but surely that was manageable. More critical was that the delivery of the precursors was imminent, the target confirmed.

  It occurred to him that only a handful of people in the world knew the lame’s true identity. Over the course of the next week that would change. They would come to know a man who had been born in Iraq, but who’d spent the bulk of his life in Jordan. The name on his documents was Ahmed Sultan al-Majid, and for forty-two years that had sufficed.

  Yet others had recently bestowed the lame with another name. He would become the new Rashidun. In Islamic legend, the Rashidun were the caliphs of the rightly guided, four ancient rulers who steered the faith after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. It had always mystified Petrov how Muslim leaders looked back thousands of years for guidance. He himself kept to an operating model that was far more assured. He selected carefully a crew of loyal oligarchs from a populace who’d grown up hungry under the old Soviet system, men who would trade their very souls for a pipeline contract or a bauxite mine. The two business models could not have been more different in their inspirations, yet he supposed the same result was had: control of the masses.

  And that was where the lame was headed. With Petrov’s help, a Fifth Rashidun would soon rise.

  And he was going to start a war.

  FIFTEEN

  Hours later, as the president of Russia sped northward in his private jet, Slaton was high above Italy on a scheduled commercial flight. According to the monitor before him, his destination, Amman, Jordan, was four hours ahead. He’d just finished a surprisingly tasty seafood pasta dish, and had even allowed a glass of Chardonnay as an accompaniment—the last drink he would have for the foreseeable future. With the food service complete, the flight attendants dimmed the cabin lights to promote a period of restfulness among their charges—and with any luck, also for themselves.

  Slaton was traveling business class—Sorensen’s idea, not his—and he motored his lie-flat seat back until he was staring at the ceiling. He clasped his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He’d been riding airplanes for the better part of a day, using the reprieve to fine-tune his plan: how to snatch a fugitive Russian interpreter from the heart of Damascus. His strategy for getting in was simple. For getting out he saw nothing but contingencies.

  His mind saturated, he decided to let his thoughts drift elsewhere. Perhaps it was the wine, or too many variables in mission planning. Whatever the case, Slaton found his thoughts drifting away from the mission to the question of why he’d accepted it in the first place.

  The most obvious answer was that he felt, in spite of Sorensen’s insistence otherwise, an obligation to the CIA. He was confident that Davy and Christine were safe in the wilds of northern Idaho, protected by their new identities and, for the time being, a crack security detail. For that he was grateful. He’d been tempted to call home, if only to hear their voices. Any traveling salesman would have done so, any conference-bound doctor. In the end, Slaton knew better. When he was away, operating, surveillance could never be completely discounted.

  An old saying came to mind: The measure of anything’s worth is to imagine yourself without it. When it came to his family, that simply wasn’t possible. Without them he would be lost.

  Yet his arrangement with the CIA was only part of the equation. The second factor was one he never would have considered himself—something Christine had brought up recently in an off-the-cuff way. She’d suggested that as much as he detested his former work, there was some part of him that needed it. Perhaps even craved it. Slaton had never considered himself any kind of adrenaline junkie—he was an operator who accepted measured risk in order to achieve a desired outcome. But even at that moment, relaxing in a plush recliner six miles in the sky, he could not deny the heightened state of his senses. He was no longer checking fence lines in the Rockies. He was hurtling headlong into Syria.

  The airplane rocked momentarily in a pocket of turbulence. It seemed to shake the idea from his head, and a third possibility arose. The recovery of Ludmilla Kravchuk, at least as presented by Sorensen, was as near a noble mission as he’d ever been assigned. He was being asked to save someone who claimed to have information that might forestall a terrorist attack.

  The dim lighting, along with too many time zones, began to have its effect. Travel weary, and with organized thought faltering, the third case kept running through his head. Going forward, he decided to make it part of his calculus: using his skills for the betterment of the world. A high bar for an assassin.

  As the turbulence faded away, Slaton drifted into the deepest sleep he’d had in seventy-two hours.

  SIXTEEN

  An illegal entry into Syria was Slaton’s first objective. By the time the cityscape of Amman began filling the ova
l window, his initial plan was set.

  From a purely geographic standpoint, there had been no shortage of options. Syria had fourteen hundred miles of land border. Of that, only the fifty-mile frontier shared with Israel was monitored with any sense of urgency, a watch kept partly by Hezbollah guerillas. For that reason, he’d decided that entering Syria by way of his homeland was off the table.

  Everywhere else Slaton saw opportunity. Over the course of the long-running war, Syria’s borders with Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon had become the most porous in the world. Literally millions of refugees had fled outward during the conflict. Running in the other direction were tens of thousands of fighters yearning to join ISIS, Al-Nusra, and the volatile stew of militias that made the war what it was—a horror with no end. If that wasn’t enough, smugglers had for years hauled in arms and spirited out human cargo. Now, with the war winding down, all those exoduses had slowed, and some even reversed. The upshot of it all was over a thousand miles of desert boundary that existed as little more than lines on a map.

  Slaton had briefly considered an approach by sea, crossing the eastern Mediterranean from Cyprus. He’d hired a smuggler there some years ago to successfully insert himself into Lebanon. Unfortunately, that relationship had ended when the Nicosian tried to double-cross him—leading to considerable pain for the fisherman. Slaton supposed he might find another boat, run by another duplicitous sea captain, but a greater problem loomed: the Syrian coastline was simply too narrow and well monitored. Worse yet, such an approach would leave hundreds of miles remaining to reach Damascus. The same could be said for entering from Turkey or Iraq—those borders were simply too far from his objective. Lebanon was closer, but traveling there was a risk in itself.

  For all these reasons, Slaton decided Jordan was his best option. Using the identity Sorensen had given him, he was sure he could enter the country with minimal chance of being noticed. And while Jordan’s western border with Syria, separating Amman and Damascus, the largest population centers, was closely guarded, the shared border farther east was little more than sparsely populated desert. There would be occasional patrols, the odd bands of smugglers and refugees, but with over a hundred miles to work with, Slaton was confident he could find a gap.

  These calculations had all been made yesterday, after leaving the farmhouse in Uruguay. He’d given Sorensen a list of exactly what he would need upon his arrival in Amman. There hadn’t been a great deal of time, but she’d promised everything would be in place.

  Now, looking down at the city with all its sharp angles and tawny shadows, Slaton felt the uncomfortable twinge that came before every mission: the realization that all the easy choices were behind you.

  * * *

  The Boeing 787 landed at Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport backdropped by a deepening sunset. Slaton quickly cleared immigration under the guise of a Canadian businessman, the CIA’s identity package holding up faultlessly. Keeping in character, he took a taxi into town and, with the sun throwing its final burnt embers on high stratus clouds to the west, was dropped under the main portico of the Intercontinental Hotel.

  Slaton settled with the cab using cash—a credit card had been included with his travel legend, but he preferred not to use it. When the taxi pulled away Slaton ignored a welcome from the hotel’s doorman, instead setting out along the street with a small carry-on in hand. He followed the simple directions Sorensen had given him, and two blocks later, in a public parking lot, he found the vehicle precisely where it was supposed to be. Third row, fourth spot. It turned out to be a modest work van, not new, not old. The color could best be characterized as off-white, and faded lettering on the side advertised something called Hasina Construction Services. Beneath the name was a phone number that, were anyone to go to the trouble of calling, would lead to a vaguely worded recording.

  Slaton scanned a full circle as he approached the van. No one seemed to be watching. He set his carry-on down near the driver’s-side door, knelt down, and unzipped the bag’s main compartment. While one hand foraged inside, the other curled beneath the inner lip of the rocker panel—bumpers and wheel wells were far too obvious. It took two swipes back and forth to find the small box secured with tape to the underside. In the old days it would have been a magnetic box, but plastic trim had taken over.

  The engine cranked right to life and held a smooth idle. The gas tank was of course full. Before setting out, Slaton turned on the dome light in the van’s cargo compartment. He maneuvered between the seats and performed a quick inventory. All the main components he’d requested were there.

  Sorensen had done well.

  From this point forward, the op was his to run. He’d been given a sat-phone for critical communications, but no one at Langley knew his plan. In truth, he himself knew nothing beyond the first steps. The next two days—his best-case estimate—would adhere to no blueprint. It would instead unfold as a series of decision points. Options taken, others discarded.

  Which was exactly how Slaton wanted it.

  He left the parking lot without referencing a map. He’d memorized the route out of town during his long journey from South America—at least, enough to put him on the correct outbound road. He steered onto King Hussein Street, then merged onto Queen Noor Boulevard—the kind of royal procession so embraced in the Mideast.

  Night took hold as he cleared the city, the van’s headlights cutting into featureless desert. Slaton drove at a reasonable speed and saw few other cars. In the rearview mirror, the gently rising terrain gradually cut off the lights of Amman. No city, no oncoming headlights, no people. He was as alone as he could be.

  Only after forty miles did Slaton consider his next move. He began searching the endless void of desert to his left.

  SEVENTEEN

  For Sorensen, compliance with the oversight requirements of the special authority through which Slaton had been deployed felt like a kind of predictive confessional. In a cloistered setting, she would engage in a one-on-one meeting with the high priest of her agency and, in effect, plea for forgiveness for impending sins.

  Weary from two days of travel, she was ushered straight into the CIA director’s suite. Thomas Coltrane was waiting.

  “Good afternoon, Anna.”

  “Good afternoon, sir.”

  Standing behind his desk, the director was framed by a great window that looked out across a glade. The maple and hickory trees were nearing the peak of their seasonal color, and the blustery wind brought shimmers of red and orange. Coltrane’s perfectly groomed hair and eternal tan looked out of place against the backdrop of an onrushing winter. The director was not a political appointee, but a born-and-bred CIA man who’d hit the pinnacle. He’d also had no small hand in Sorensen’s rapid rise at the agency.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  “It’s been a busy few days. Thanks for making room in your schedule to see me.”

  “Is this about what I think it’s about?”

  Sorensen paused. “It is—I’ve activated Corsair.”

  The director nodded. “This has been a long time in the making.”

  Slaton’s code name had been chosen by Sorensen, drawn from the seafaring Mediterranean bandits who’d thrived trafficking for both sides when the Ottoman Turks battled the Christians for supremacy of Europe. It seemed a natural moniker for an operative who was not only lethal, but who shunned affiliations.

  “You’re not having seconds thoughts, are you?” she asked.

  “Of course not. You?”

  “Constantly.”

  Coltrane smiled. “Then I’ve trained you well. I might make a director out of you yet.”

  Sorensen didn’t dignify that with a response. “So … how much do you want to know?”

  “Honestly? I want to be fully briefed in until it’s over. At that point, I’ll wish I never knew anything, especially if things don’t go to plan.”

  “For what it’s worth, there is no plan. At least, none that I know about.”

>   “You are not instilling me with confidence, Anna.”

  The legal ice they were traversing could not have been more thin. But then, that had long been the problem: the country had lost far too many opportunities to strike terrorist organizations because agency or DOD attorneys bogged down response times on perishable intelligence. Verbal quicksand, as one Delta Force commander had put it.

  The newly elected president, Elayne Cleveland, wanted a fresh approach. She had called Coltrane to the Oval Office soon after taking charge, and over gin and tonics he’d floated the idea of using outside assets for delicate agency operations. The ever-astute Cleveland sidestepped, neither approving nor disapproving of the notion, but saying that she had “all confidence in the agency to keep America safe.” The final product of that meeting was given the most insipid name possible: National Security Presidential Memoranda 14.

  It was, Coltrane knew, as close to a green light as he would ever get. The directive gave the CIA authorization to conduct “offensive operations in time-sensitive circumstances” without the president’s express approval. Within certain parameters, the decision of who, what, and where to strike was delegated to the head of the Special Activities Center—at that moment, Anna Sorensen. Sorensen, in turn, was obliged to provide operational updates to the director of the CIA. Attorneys at both the White House and CIA had rebelled against the concept, but to no avail. The president was determined to cut the red tape.

  And SAC was happy to oblige.

  From there Sorensen had taken over. She’d waited patiently for a mission that would test her new authority, not to mention her new operative. The rescue of Ludmilla Kravchuk seemed an ideal opportunity. The chance of collateral damage was low, and Sorensen had been reasonably sure Slaton would accept. If he succeeded in getting Kravchuk out of Syria, the concept would be proved. And if not?

  She didn’t want to think about that—for Slaton’s sake.