Force Recruit
Page 7
One of the officers standing alert near the grand door lifted his right hand to his earpiece and then glanced at Henrique. It was time.
As Henrique fell in step with his escort, he coughed twice, attempting to relax the lump in his throat. It didn’t work. He took his hands out of his trouser pockets to reduce the sweating; that didn’t work either. Then the big gates opened before him and it was too late to do anything. He took a deep breath and hoped for the best.
The President was standing at the royal desk, his fingers resting on a folded publication. Henrique walked in and stopped at a respectful distance, carefully observing the President’s face to gauge his mood. The man was not just upset; he was seething with anger.
He glanced at the publication in the President’s hand and recognized the font. It was a copy of the New York Times. He said nothing. The President’s laser-focused stare was unsettling, making him unsure of his next steps.
“Venezuela is a mess, a bloody mess.” His boss read out the front-page headline, looking straight at him. He jerked his hand, and the newspaper slid across the table to Henrique who stopped it, with a swift gesture, quickly glancing at the columnist’s name—Carlos Cruz-Díez. “You know why he can so boldly accuse us of these baseless charges?”
Henrique appeared alarmed by the anger but maintained a stoic silence. It was a rhetorical question.
“I should have killed him. I should have killed him and hanged him for others to see and learn, instead of letting him leave the country.”
“We can still do it.” Henrique finally had something to offer.
“How?”
“He visited our consulate in Vienna a few days ago.”
“Why did no one tell me that?”
“It was in the PDB,” Henrique said, referring to the President’s daily brief sent by his office.
The President considered it for a moment.
“How soon?”
“He is going to visit again. We can take care of him then if you want.”
“How?”
“It’s better if you remain unaware of the modalities.”
The President weighed this momentarily-Plausible deniability-before a slow smile appeared on his lips. Henrique smiled too. This was his birthday present to the President.
CHAPTER 2
Task Force-77 SAFE HOUSE, LUXEMBOURG
Team Vesuvius was already in the briefing room when Sam Wick arrived. The three Vesuvius members - Jessica, Stan, and Mac - looked up as he entered. Their tense postures relaxed slightly at the sight of a familiar face. Wick scanned the space. It was a boardroom kind of setting with a long wide conference table at its center, surrounded by twelve mid-back mesh desk chairs. The wall opposite to the door doubled up as a projector screen. He instinctively walked towards the chair that had clear visibility of both the projector screen and the exit. Sitting down, he observed the others in the room.
Team Vesuvius was one of Task Force 77’s (TF-77) support teams. TF-77 was a black ops team jointly created by the NSA and the US Army - an off-the-books team that comes into play when the diplomatic solutions failed. Powered with US military might across the globe and NSA’s intel, the team was well equipped to handle anything and that made it the one to go for the toughest missions on the most dangerous locations using means that any government would never authorize yet expect it to get done. During these deadly missions the TF-77’s assets, like Sam Wick, were supported by small on-the-ground teams like Vesuvius. These teams typically comprise three to four members—made available to field operatives depending on their mission.
Jessica led the Vesuvius. She was the logistics liaison and an expert in close combat. Stan was a former marine and an Olympic-level shooter. Mac was the go-to guy for anything remotely associated with technology. Together these three represented one of TF-77’s ace support teams.
Wick knew of the Vesuvius team and each one of its members. Though nothing in his expression showed it, he was glad he would be going into this mission with them.
CHAPTER 3
Vesuvius knew of Wick too. His reputation in the field preceded him. At 5’11”, he had a weather-beaten face that had a rugged attraction, not least because of his unreadable sea-blue eyes, bright with intelligence. With his slicked-back black hair and athletic build, he seemed like a man on a mission. He’d been born in Kansas, but he spoke with a neutral accent, due to his extended stay in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
He was the man to whom TF-77 assigned its most insane and impossible missions and, so far, he had emerged from each in one piece. He talked less, absorbed more, and did his job with brutal competence. He had gone from ninety successful extractions to over three hundred in just over half a decade. Just twenty-seven years old, he was not flamboyant in the way many other operatives his age were. He [vb1] preferred simple, time-tested tactics over ones that dropped jaws, but he kept pulling off incredible feats - no matter the opposition, no matter the conditions, no matter the situation. His strategies and tactics were already turning into TF-77 mission case studies on whether brilliance could be achieved without being adventurous. Team Vesuvius—Jessica, in [AU2] particular—had seen all this in a few of her past missions with Sam. She was content that for this mission he was the chosen one.
The door opened, and Andrew McAvoy entered. He was the keeper of this safe house and part of the mission control team of TF-77.
“Good morning everyone.” McAvoy greeted them, walking straight to the laptop sitting at the end of the table. There were muted responses all around.
McAvoy keyed in his password and the wall lit up with an image of a middle-aged man looking at them through a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses.
“Carlos Cruz-Díez,” he said, pointing to the image on the screen. “Born and bred in Venezuela, Carlos is a prominent human rights activist and a columnist for major publications. For decades he was close to the Venezuela leadership, serving as a government adviser, but fell out of favor and went into self-imposed exile in the U.S.A. last year. From there, he has been writing monthly columns in the New York Times and occasionally for the Washington Post, criticizing the policies of the Venezuela President. Tomorrow morning, he is scheduled to visit the Venezuela Consulate in Vienna to get certain documents certifying that he has renounced his Venezuelan citizenship. His appointment is with Ana Sofía, Minister-Counsellor at the consulate, who helped him during his last visit too.” He paused. “According to our source, this time Venezuela is planning to do something major in the consulate involving Carlos. He has been extremely vocal against the regime of his country, and that’s why he is important to us in our support for the human rights groups in Venezuela. All this means his country’s President isn’t happy with him. Also, we have been trying to bring the Venezuela President to the negotiation table for months now. Till now he’s been a tough nut to crack. POTUS is not very happy with the way they are summarily turning down our requests for talks. We believe intercepting this planned act can give us an opening to bring them in the same room. Your job is to find everything about this plan and if there is a danger to Carlos’ life, then get him out of there, preferably alive. Any questions?”
Hands shot up. McAvoy pointed at Stan to go ahead.
“When was his last visit?”
“He visited the consulate seven days ago along with his fiancée, Karina Anez, when he was asked to come back again in a week to collect the signed documents.”
“Did anything suspicious happen during the last visit?” Stan asked the follow-up question.
“According to our source, he walked into the consulate quite confidently because he believes nothing untoward can happen to him on Austrian soil. He reportedly told his friends he had been treated “very warmly” on his first visit and reassured them he did not face any problems. During his last visit, however, he gave Ms. Anez, his fiancée, two cell phones and told her to call someone close to the Austrian President if he did not come out within a reasonable timeframe. So it seems he does harbo
r some doubts.”
“How long has he been in a relationship with this woman?” Mac asked next.
“Just over a year.”
“Who are the usual suspects here?”
“The Venezuela intelligence agency, specifically its director, Henrique Arias Cárdenas. His team had been surveilling Carlos and Karina for the last three months.”
“So why are we acting now?”
“This time their President seems to have lost his patience. He is pretty riled up by the negative publicity he is attracting because of Carlos’ articles on his government’s repression of dissent, often through violent crackdowns on street protests, the jailing of opponents, and the prosecution of civilians in the military courts. His columns have consistently raised concerns about poor prison conditions, impunity for human rights violations, and harassment by government officials of human rights activists and independent media outlets. Even Russia, Venezuela’s closest ally, has asked them to take remedial measures. This seems to have blown their President’s fuse. He met Henrique two days ago and has been assured by Henrique that Carlos will be taken care of. How and why? We don’t know for sure yet.”
McAvoy tapped the keypad. A new image appeared on the screen of a rugged face with a deep scar running from the right side of the temple to the jaw. There was no name on the photo. “This is one of the best-known operatives of the Venezuela Intelligence Service and we suspect that he will be leading this.” McAvoy clicked again, and a new grainy image showed the same man walking past a large signboard of the Vienna International Airport. He wore a large brown hoodie and military boots, his hands in his pocket. A small carry bag was slung over his shoulder. “This photo was taken at eight this morning outside the departure gate.” He clicked again. The next image showed the same man getting into a Toyota. “We have run the license plate.” He clicked again. “This is the photo of the car’s driver who picked him up from the airport.” McAvoy paused and let the team absorb the details of the second man on the screen: clean shaven, trimmed hairs, no visible scar marks. There was a mole just under his right eye. “His name is Felipe Massa, a known operative of the Venezuela Intelligence Service in Austria who works under the cover of a travel agency.”
“How reliable is this Venezuela source of yours?” Jessica asked.
“He is someone deeply rooted in Venezuela political circles and has been a critical asset for us in the past too.”
“How do you want this to go down?” Wick asked.
“Venezuela has been a blow-hot, blow-cold ally for quite some time now, so this has to be dealt discreetly. No big bang please.” McAvoy clicked and the image on the screen changed. “This is the front of Venezuela Consulate in Vienna. The building is at the Prinz Eugen-Straße. The number of personnel of Venezuelan descent are somewhere around fifteen, including the Ambassador. The rest of the staff consists of locals. Names, addresses, and photos of everyone on the staff are in the manila folders in front of you. You’ll also find the blueprint of the building in there. In Vienna, Jakob is our asset who will be your driver and the single point of contact for ammunition, cash, id proofs and anything you need. He will also get your things transported into the consulate. In case anything goes wrong, he is the man you can rely on to get you out.” McAvoy paused to see if anyone had any questions. “A private jet will take off from the Spangdahlem Air Base at 1200 hours. That gives you fifty-three minutes from now,” he continued. “Any questions?”
There were none.
“People, ideally we would like you to get in and out as quickly as possible. We’d like to be able to play this off as a minor skirmish rather than a full-blown operation,” he added, looking at Wick. “All the best.”
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DEDICATION
To My Readers
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Special thanks to Janet L., Kenneth Einselen, Garth M., Cindy Murphy for your help in making this a better story.
And to my advance readers group who are nothing but supportive of my writing and extremely helpful in rectifying mistakes that could have ruined the experience of reading this story.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Copyright © 2019 by Chase Austin
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