by Connor Black
“Embassy services is sending up dinner as well.”
“Beautiful,” I said. “By the smiles in here, looks like you’re celebrating.”
“Not celebrating exactly. But we feel like we settled a score for Boone, Monkey, Cush, and Jaws. Justice might be a better word.” Cush and Jaws were Angels One and Two.
Clark brought me a drink and returned to his regal chair.
“To the men we lost,” I said.
We raised our glasses in salute.
I took a hesitant sip. Wonderful. It seemed to wash away the pain of sliding across the streets of Bangkok.
We sat in silence for a while, each sipping our drinks.
Chen eventually leaned forward. Looking at me, she said, “We’ve been doing some thinking.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Yes?”
“We think you’re right to be suspicious of Slater saying ‘You’re too late’ before he died. You wouldn’t say that about the team in Afghanistan. It’s a phrase you’d use referencing something in the future.”
Sterba then said, “We have that, plus Boone being very surprised to hear that Slater was on the op in Afghanistan.”
“Yeah. We cut him off, but he started to say something along the lines of ‘it was Slater I saw ... ’. What he saw Slater do I have no idea,” I said.
“Or where he saw Slater,” Sterba added.
“Or with whom,” added Chen.
Thinking about this, we had two loose ends. “So, we have the following. First, Boone gets captured after seeing Slater in some way that causes alarm. More than ‘I saw him at the Company picnic’. Second, we have Slater gloating that we missed something before he died.”
Their heads nodded, so I went on.
“We dealt with this as justice for Slater taking out our men. But it seems like something else is going on. My sense is that we need to find out exactly where Boone was and what he was doing when he was nabbed. We also need to see if Slater left any hints of what he was up to.”
Clark replied first. “I can get Boone’s last daily reports and see what he was working on. I’ll do the same for Slater.”
Chen followed. “Landon had DS agents take Slater’s keys and grab any papers or computer they could find in his apartment. They should be back soon. I will go through those to see if any thing is there.”
“Jackson?” I barely heard someone say.
But the pain in my shoulder and the jet lag had just caught up. I passed out right there on the couch.
28
I awoke in a beautifully appointed bedroom to the smell of bacon. Reluctantly, I extracted myself from the bed. Staying wrapped in the luxurious sheets was tempting. But, hey, there was bacon.
Cleaned up and dressed, I entered the kitchen to find Sterba preparing a hearty morning breakfast. A dish towel was over his shoulder, and he was adding a handful of asparagus to a sauté pan filled with water.
“Ah, the sleeping beauty has arrived!” he said.
“Sorry to have missed the party last night.”
“Well, I have to say you looked like hell.” He leaned towards me, checking my eyes. “Seem to be a bit better today.”
He bent down and retrieved a pan of bacon from the oven, placing it on the empty burners.
“Well, the smell of that certainly helped,” I said.
“Ah, prepare to enjoy Mama Sterbs’ specialty!”
He removed the asparagus to dry, and placed some slices of fresh bread in the oven. Several eggs then made their way into another pan of water, and he deftly swooshed their edges with a slotted spoon.
Satisfied, he removed the toasted bread, and added a hearty pat of butter to each.
He gestured towards a stack of plates. “Plate up the bread, will you?”
I set about my task, and Sterba proceeded to add a poached egg to each slice, followed by two stalks of asparagus. A little salt, a strong twist of pepper, and a tiny bit of lemon zest were added before two slices of bacon were placed on top.
Just as he finished the last plate, Haley and Landon emerged from their bedrooms.
“Good morning! Perfect timing!” Sterba bellowed.
We took the dishes to the open dining area, where Sterba had already set out juice, coffee, and slices of fresh fruit.
“Magnificent, Joe!” said Landon, coming to the table.
And it was quite a sight. Who knew the big, burly SEAL was so good in the kitchen?
We each took a seat and passed our compliments to the chef. Since I had slept through dinner, this was positively perfect.
As we dug in, Clark and Chen brought me up to speed.
“I was able to get Boone’s most recent dailies from Langley,” he began. “The day he was abducted, he was acting on a tip from one of the assets he ran in Kandahar. He had a young man that worked as an errand boy for some of the Taliban. We've reduced the number of Taliban to a great degree. But plenty of them simply went into the hills to wait us out. And it is working. They’re coming back, bit by bit.
“Apparently, the young man got wind of a meeting between Mullah Zahir and someone called the Bear. The last note in his dailies indicated he was going to surveil the meeting to see if the Mullah really was going to come out of hiding.”
“So it goes higher than Baraki. Mullah Zahir’s the presumed leader of the resurrected Taliban. We’ve been searching for him for a few years now. Why wasn’t this escalated?” I remarked.
Landon made a calming gesture with his hands. “Because, Jackson, we get at least half-dozen ‘the Mullah will be here soon’ messages each year. We simply have to have more sources of input before committing resources.”
“Understood,” I replied.
“Odds are Boone was planning to get a picture. Maybe even get a tracker on him,” Landon continued.
“Picture would be good. I think we only have one of him, and it’s got to be at least five or six years old,” said Sterba.
“Were you able to place Slater there from his dailies?” I asked.
“His reports for a couple of months before Boone was taken had become thin. There are a lot of holes. It’s in his general area of operations, but we can’t say with certainty. Not reporting your movements is one of the signals we look for that an officer has turned, and frankly someone should have noticed this.”
“So Slater is a ‘maybe’ at the meet. How about the Bear?” I asked.
The name Bear was familiar. But I couldn't think of why. But it was a very common nickname for just about anything.
“No idea. Could be the code name of another Taliban leader, a group of them. Who knows.”
Chen decided to move back to Slater. “DS searched Slater’s apartment for us. No computer. But they found two IDs.”
“Anything on them?”
“Yes. No hits on one. But the other had a bank account in the Cayman Islands. I was able to get in and go through his activity.”
“Were you conquering the world again, Commander?” I said with a smile.
Sterba gave me a perplexed look.
“In the interest of defending people this time, Lieutenant,” she replied with a demure smile.
“Ok, sorry to interrupt.”
“The day Boone went missing, there was a $100,000 deposit. Another came through four weeks ago for twice that.”
“Selling information, you think?” I asked Clark.
“Lot of money for intel when, for the most part, the US has pulled out. Could have been brokering a deal for something else,” Joe said.
Brokering a deal. Now I remembered.
“The Bear. He’s an arms dealer,” I said.
“Ah, you’re right,” Clark said, raising his finger to the air like a professor who just remembered an assignment. “I remember hearing about him. Former Soviet Army, looking to make his fortune cleaning out the motherland’s bunkers.”
“We need to find out what he sold,” said Chen. “And what it was for. Does this Bear have a specialty? Guns, planes, heavy armaments?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I can find out.”
I retrieved my phone. Time to call a family friend.
I selected a contact and listened as the line clicked a few times. On the second ring, it was answered.
“Jackson! Hello!” Came the voice of Uncle Avan. He’s not properly an uncle, but in the many years we’ve known one another, that’s exactly what he’d become.
“As salam aleikum, Uncle Avan!” I said.
“Wa aleikum ah salam, Jackson. How are you, son?”
“I’m fine, Avan. I am looking for a little help. Work related.”
“Anything for you, Jackson,” he said.
“I am working with some American colleagues, and we’re trying to find out about one of the Bear’s deals. One that likely took place four weeks ago in Kandahar.”
“Ah, the man is a barbarian,” he said with contempt. “I can’t stand him. Always stinks of bad breath and vodka.”
I chuckled. “What does he focus on? Guns, or heavier items?”
“Small things, mostly. Man portable rockets, guns, mortars, and the occasional armored truck. Nothing big like tanks or planes. He only has an An-12 transport plane, and they can’t move anything much larger than a truck.”
“Do you have a way of finding out what he brought to Kandahar?”
The older man laughed. “Bear and I don't exactly travel in the same circles, Jackson.”
That was certainly an understatement.
“I know, Avan. But I also know that you have a lot of folks that pass whispers along, keeping you informed.”
“You know me too well, Jackson. Let me make a few calls. Can I ring you back on this number?”
“Yes, Avan. Thanks for your help.”
“I shall call you shortly,” he said and closed the line.
Clark looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Speaking Arabic to an uncle named ‘Avan’.”
It really wasn’t a question, so I didn’t respond.
He continued, “Avan, being, perhaps, Avan Amiri, the arms dealer who ranks among the richest men in the world? Who is a person of interest in a number of investigations?”
“Those investigations are years old, Landon, and have no legs to stand on other than chasing after the rich. Avan is legitimate,” I said.
“I see. And how on earth is he your uncle?”
“It’s complicated. A story for another day. Let’s just say he’s a customer of my family’s business and leave it at that.”
Clark looked at Sterba and Chen. Finally raising his hands in acquiescence.
I took the opportunity to move on. “What else did you find on Slater’s aliases, Haley?”
Picking up where she left off, Chen continued, “I used the date of the last transfer as a reference point and ran the names through Afghan immigration. He was in Kandahar that same day. In and out in less than 12 hours.”
“If we put together the first meeting, the payments, and the dates, we get Slater involved in a transaction with the Bear and the Mullah,” I said. “Boone must have seen them at the first meeting, and one of the Mullah’s guys must have grabbed him.”
“When Langley got the lead on where Boone was being held, Slater must have panicked that his deal would be exposed. He would have said ‘I’ll go’, and taken the opportunity to silence Boone,” said Chen.
“So fear of exposure drove him to kill Boone and our boys,” I said. “The bloody bastard.”
The ringing of my phone stopped the shadow of our thoughts from darkening further. It was Avan.
“Hello, Avan.”
“Jackson, I was able to learn what the Bear has been up to. I'm afraid it’s more than his usual crates of AKs.”
“I'm going to put you on the speakerphone, Avan.” I pressed the speakerphone button, and set the phone on the table.
“I trust you’re with friends, Jackson?” Avan asked, a little suspicious to be on speakerphone.
“Yes, Avan. I am here with a Navy SEAL and two intelligence officers that are tracking your location as we speak,” I joked.
“Ha!” he laughed. “I will save them the trouble. I am at a wonderful restaurant in Tokyo. I can have a few place settings added if they would like.”
I chuckled. “What did you find out?”
“So the Bear, or more precisely Victor Isaykin, loaded a BM-21 Grad in Chelyabinsk four weeks ago. The flight plan filed was for Omsk, but he put on a full load of fuel. So I assume it was a red herring.“
“Mr. Amiri, this is Commander Haley Chen. What exactly is a BM-21 Grad?”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Chen, if only by phone. You must not be as old as I am! A BM-21 Grad is a rocket launching platform from the cold war days. Essentially, it is a big Ural six-by-six truck chassis fitted with a box of 40 launch tubes that fire 122mm rockets.”
“Ground-to-air?” asked Landon.
“And who is this, Jackson?”
“Sorry, Mr. Amiri. This is Landon Clark, CIA.”
“Ah, Mr. Clark. Your name is familiar. Did you spend some time in the Middle East some years ago?”
Landon smiled, impressed. “When I was a bit younger, yes.”
“We should share some stories about those years someday, Mr. Clark. But to respond to your question, the Grad was designed to fire ground-to-ground, typically short ranges. Perhaps ten or twelve miles. The rockets are unguided, and the idea was that a 40-tube launcher could saturate an area with explosive ordinance, turning everything to rubble.”
“Will something that old maintain it’s effectiveness?” I asked.
“The launcher would last indefinitely, Jackson. The Soviets built those vehicles to last.”
“How do you defeat it?” I asked.
“You don’t defeat it electronically, Jackson. There is no fire control radar, GPS, or any navigational signal on them. They are what you would call ‘old school’, much like a mortar. They are optically aimed. Look through a scope and crank the wheels to adjust the angles.”
“Thank you, Avan.”
“It was wonderful to hear your voice, Jackson. We must visit soon.”
I said my goodbye and rang off.
“What a charming old fellow,” Clark said.
“He is that,” I said.
“Ah, guys?” said Chen.
She had brought her laptop up on the table.
“The Mullah is a quiet one, and mostly stays in the shadows. But look at this.” She pointed to the screen. “I checked Langley’s profile on the Mullah, again, focusing on the meet dates. Two days after the Grad was delivered, he was quoted as saying that they would ‘rain fire on Karzai and his fraudulent government’.” The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, had been the target of multiple assassination attempts by the Taliban. They’d been after him for years, even trying hand-held rockets once or twice.
“Nothing sounds more like ‘raining fire’ than a battery of 40 rockets launching,” Sterba concluded.
“I agree. But listen to this. Karzai hasn’t met with the National Assembly — which is somewhat like our Congress — in months. But they are meeting tomorrow in Kabul.”
“Tomorrow?” confirmed Joe.
“Tomorrow,” Chen said. “But it’s bigger than a meeting of the full assembly with the president. They’ve been working for years to renovate the Darul Aman Palace south of the city, to make it the new home for the National Assembly.”
“Like our Capitol building,” Joe said. “I’ve read about that. It’s a real source of national pride.”
“Exactly,” replied Chen. “And tomorrow, after years of waiting, Karzai will cut the ribbon opening the palace. It’s being viewed as a symbolic step for the future of Afghanistan. A day for the history books.”
“Bloody hell,” I said. “What a perfect target.”
29
“Joe,” I said. “Get on the horn to JSOC and let them know. They can push it up the chain to ISAF”. JSOC was the Joint Special Operations Command that ran special forces, which included SEA
Ls. The ISAF was the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO coalition force that ran the allies’ ever-shrinking involvement in Afghanistan.
“We don’t have too many guys left there, Jackson. And they’re spread pretty thin. We might want to think about this a minute.”
I know why Joe wanted to pause. The situation in Afghanistan was different these days. We had truly passed the baton to their defense force and local police, and it was their job to defend the country. During the course of the US drawdown, they had essentially said thank you, but we can do this for ourselves now. And that meant it wasn’t our place to trample about telling them what to do. Add to that the growing tension between the US President and Karzai himself, and you had a situation where they could tell us to simply get lost.
“Joe,” I said, “I understand that it’s complicated. But we have knowledge of a possible attack on the president of a sovereign nation. It’s our responsibility to inform them, despite the frosty relationship. We need to do just that, and give them the choice to adjust security or not.”
Sterba nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I turned to Clark. “Can you get word to the right people at the Agency?”
“I can, but this might not be solid enough for them, or the Afghans for that matter.”
“Maybe not, but we have to try.”
“Agreed.”
I turned to Chen. “What’s the best way to find this truck?”
“If it isn’t giving out any targeting signals, very little.”
“How about visually? Can we look at satellite imagery, or something like that?” I asked.
I pointed to her computer, where she had a picture of the Grad on the screen. “I mean look at that thing. It’s positively gigantic. Surely we could use that.”
Chen thought for a second, and then began tapping on her computer.
“Maybe there is a way. Facial recognition software looks for geometries, certain angles and proportions, and calculates them against preset formulae. There are ways we can use that, to take the dimensions of the truck and make it recognizable.”
I thought for a second. “It’s going to be disguised. If the full National Assembly is meeting with the president, there will be plenty of security. Hell, the Taliban have tried to take out Karzai a half dozen times already. The disguise for the truck would need to be simple, something they can remove quickly. If they gave it a wrapping - maybe to look like a bread truck - the geometry should be really close.”