Foreign Agent: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  The one thing that didn’t stick out, though, was a building they had code-named the “saltbox.” During his interrogation in Malta, Viktor Sergun had given up both its purpose and location.

  It was part safe house, part interrogation facility. Proskurov had chosen it because it was close enough to the Russian Embassy to be easily accessed, but in a part of town known to be hostile to the Iranians. Tehran was notorious for the volume of spying it conducted. The less chance the Iranians had of stumbling onto or surveilling the saltbox, the better.

  It was a spoke in the wheel of a larger GRU operation. Proskurov had been tasked with eliminating ISIS. Using Sacha Baseyev to infiltrate their ranks had been his idea. The operation, thus far, had gone better than he had planned. Baseyev was an incredibly gifted operator.

  Which made the email he had received from Colonel Sergun very disturbing. Sergun was suddenly having doubts about Baseyev.

  Using a false American passport that had been left for him in Washington, Baseyev had flown to Rome. From there he had flown to Athens and on to Cyprus. From Cyprus, a plane was waiting to fly him to Syria. ISIS was anxious to congratulate him and celebrate his attacks on the United States.

  As long as Baseyev was going to be back in Syria, Proskurov thought it a good idea that they sit down and have a talk. He wanted to measure for himself whether or not Baseyev’s loyalty was slipping. And so, he had sent an encrypted email to Sergun in return, ordering him to set it up.

  What Proskurov didn’t know was that he hadn’t been communicating with Sergun in Berlin but rather with a little person in northern Virginia named Nicholas.

  For his part, Nicholas was on very thin ice. Getting into Sergun’s email account wasn’t a problem, nor was communicating in Russian, as it was his mother tongue. The problem was selecting the right words. That’s where Vella had come in.

  Vella worked very carefully to draw all the correct information out of Sergun. This included identifying any codes he would be expected to use to indicate whether or not he was under duress.

  Everything appeared to have gone off without a hitch. Proskurov had requested a rendezvous with Baseyev for Sunday night and had set the saltbox as the location. After that, it was all up to Harvath.

  The first and biggest problem for Harvath was Proskurov’s security detail. The only advantage he had on his side was surprise. The Spetsnaz operatives were elite, far better trained than anyone Thoman or Mathan Hadid could bring to the fight.

  They were going to get one shot at taking Proskurov. That one shot had to be so overwhelming that his detail had absolutely no hope of surviving.

  The problem, though, was how to take out Proskurov’s men without taking out Proskurov himself. For what Harvath had planned, he needed Proskurov—at least for a little while longer.

  The other issue they faced was equipment. The CIA had only made certain weaponry available to the rebels. The things Harvath really wanted were impossible to get.

  And even if he could get them, he didn’t have nearly enough money to pay for them. In the condition Syria was in, no one was taking IOUs—especially not for the kind of sophisticated shopping list Harvath had envisioned. He would have to make do with what the Hadids had been able to rustle up.

  In addition to enough radios and AK-47s to outfit the entire team, they had one 12-gauge shotgun, one Iranian Sayyad-2 .50-caliber rifle with night-vision optics, a few sets of individual thermal goggles, a box of old Soviet F-1 hand grenades, and two Yugoslavian Osas, or Wasps in English; antitank rockets with launchers.

  Harvath didn’t like having to hang the success of his operation on hand grenades from the Soviet days or rockets from the former Yugoslavia, but it was all they had.

  Their only hope of taking Proskurov was when he was in transit. And when he was in transit, it was via armored Land Cruisers. Harvath’s plan was going to have to work.

  Having seen Mathan’s helmet with its full face mask and shaded visor, he asked if he could borrow his motorcycle. He would only get one opportunity to drive by the saltbox and this seemed the best way to do it.

  Thoman, in his cab, led the way through the crowded city streets. Harvath followed behind on the motorcycle.

  When they were two blocks away, Thoman pulled over and rolled down his window. Harvath pulled up alongside him.

  “At the next intersection, make a left turn. The building is halfway down on your right. You can’t miss it. I’ll wait for you here.”

  Harvath drove up to the intersection and made a left turn. Keeping the motorcycle in low gear, he moved slowly up the street.

  He tried to take everything in. It would have been nice to have some sort of a low-profile video camera with him.

  The neighborhood was a mix of shops and residences. If they got into it out in the street, there was a good chance innocent people might get killed.

  It wasn’t Harvath’s first choice, but as he rolled forward, he was hard-pressed to see any other option. They had to take Proskurov and they were going to have to take him in the street.

  But then, as he drew even with the saltbox, he saw its pair of solid metal gates. This wasn’t just a building. It was a compound.

  The curb was cut away and there was a driveway of some sort. Courtyards were a common architectural feature throughout the Middle East. While they often had a fountain, Harvath was willing to bet that this courtyard was used for parking.

  It made sense. If you were smuggling people in or out, you wanted to hide as much of your activity as possible. And one of the last things you wanted to do, in a hostile nation like Syria, was to risk having your vehicle tampered with by leaving it unattended outside. If you could, securely storing it off the street was the best plan.

  The rent, even by Syrian standards, must have been very expensive for this property. There were some things, though, that even the notoriously cheap Russians were willing to spend money on.

  Harvath continued his slow tour past the saltbox and then around the block before circling back to Thoman.

  The next thing he wanted to do was to get up onto one of the nearby rooftops.

  After finding a place to park, they identified a building six doors down from the saltbox that appeared abandoned. With Thoman standing guard, Harvath went to work on the lock. In less than a minute, he had it open and they slipped inside.

  The interior of the empty structure was coated in a heavy layer of dust. The unventilated air was stagnant. It was four flights of rickety wooden stairs to get to a narrow door that led out onto the roof.

  Here he had an amazing view over the rooftops of Damascus. It was an ocean of satellite dishes, hot water tanks, and solar panels as far as the eye could see.

  The buildings leaned right against each other, so he and Thoman were able to move from rooftop to rooftop until they got close enough to have a perfect view of the two-story saltbox.

  Peering down, the first thing Harvath noticed was that he had been correct. There was a paved courtyard right in the center and it was just big enough to hold two, maybe three SUVs, but no more.

  He noticed something else. There was no back door, at least not for the vehicles. They would have to go out through the gates, the same way they came in. People, though, were a different story.

  No safe house had only one way in or out. There was always an additional exit. Sometimes more.

  It could be through a neighboring property on either side. Through the building that abutted the saltbox in back. It could be through a tunnel or sewer system underground that people weren’t aware of. It could also be via the rooftops where Harvath was right now. It could be any combination thereof. There was no way to be absolutely certain. They would have to cover all their bases.

  The effective range of their shoulder-fired missiles was 350 meters. Harvath turned in a slow circle, looking at the other buildings around them. Once he spotted the perfect po
sition, he pointed at it and said, “That’s where we’re going to put the Wasps. The shooters will have a perfect view of the courtyard from there and should be able to take out both of Proskurov’s armored SUVs.”

  Thoman looked at the building he was pointing at and then back at Harvath. “There’s just one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “None of my people have ever fired a Wasp before.”

  CHAPTER 55

  While the operation of the Wasp wasn’t exactly idiot-proof, it had been designed to be as close to it as possible. It made no difference how powerful a weapon was if the operator couldn’t hit his target.

  Under the stress of combat, there was a lot that could go wrong. Everything came down to training.

  Two of the Hadids’ men had extensive experience firing RPGs. Those were the men Harvath chose for the Wasps.

  Normally, a Wasp team was made up of two people—one to load and one to fire. They couldn’t afford to sacrifice that much manpower.

  In addition to the two men who would be firing the Wasps, the Hadids’ best sniper would be their loader. After the missiles had been fired, he would take up position behind the single-shot, .50-caliber rifle. One of the Wasp operators would pick up a pair of binoculars and act as his spotter.

  The remaining Wasp operator would leave the overwatch position and close on the saltbox, staying back just far enough so that he could ambush any reinforcements that might arrive faster than anticipated.

  Harvath was a big believer in the old saying that anything that could go wrong would go wrong, so plan for it.

  Proskurov and his security detail wouldn’t be calling the Syrians for help, they’d be calling their own people back at the Russian Embassy. That didn’t mean, though, that the Damascus police and the Syrian military weren’t going to come running as soon as explosions and gunshots were reported. It was going to be like kicking a hornet’s nest.

  Now, fully assembled in the abandoned building, Harvath went over the plan, while Mathan translated into Arabic.

  Each man was given a printout of Proskurov’s picture. “This is our target,” Harvath said. “He is no good to us dead. Rule number one—do not shoot him. Is that clear?”

  All of the men nodded.

  Harvath looked at Mathan and said, “Make each one of them say it out loud.”

  Mathan did as Harvath instructed. He made each of the eight men they had assembled, plus his brother, pledge not to injure Proskurov.

  “Rule number two,” Harvath continued as Mathan translated. “Do not shoot me.”

  The men chuckled, but stopped as soon as they saw how serious he was. He didn’t care how long they had been fighting and what kind of combat they had seen. They were not professionals. He hadn’t come this far to be killed by “friendly” fire.

  Harvath looked at Mathan, who then looked at each of the men and had them repeat rule number two. When that was done, he dove into the meat of his plan.

  The saltbox had a rooftop entry similar to the building they were in now. Harvath expected the door to be bolted shut.

  Back at the Hadids’, he had shown the brothers how to superheat candle wax, stir in buckshot, and reload several of their shotgun shells with the mixture to create breaching rounds. Done correctly, a door could be blown right out of its frame.

  The plan was for six men to enter via the rooftop stairwell. Harvath and the Hadids would make up one team. Three more men, selected by Thoman, would make up the other.

  Harvath and the Hadids were the lead assault force. The second team had only one job—to hold the stairwell and make sure Harvath and the Hadids didn’t get flanked.

  The more Harvath thought about it, the more he believed the roof was Plan B for the Russians. If they couldn’t get safely out by the front gates, that was how they’d make their escape. So, as he and the Hadids moved toward the ground floor, he expected them to be coming up—especially considering how they were going to kick everything off.

  The first thing they needed to do was deny them access to the armored vehicles. Those things were rolling safe rooms. They were extremely difficult to breach without harming the occupants. And, knowing the Russians, their cars came equipped with some very nasty countermeasures.

  That was why Harvath had decided to destroy both vehicles with the Wasps. As soon as he heard the detonations, they would come out from behind cover, hit the door, and make their way down into the saltbox.

  On the very off chance that Proskurov’s protective detail interpreted the destruction of their vehicles as the result of rebel mortar fire gone astray, Harvath had the Hadids’ remaining two men posted outside. Once the fireworks started, they had been told to shoot any Russians they saw, except for Proskurov.

  With their SUVs destroyed and gunmen outside on the street, the Spetsnaz soldiers would hustle their protectee to the roof. They’d leave a couple of men to engage the shooters to help give the rest of the team a head start, but they would definitely be going to Plan B.

  There was just one last thing Harvath needed. Pushing his earpiece in a little further, he asked, “Am I going to have what I need?”

  “I think so,” Nicholas replied from back in northern Virginia.

  “I think isn’t good enough. I need you to be one hundred percent.”

  “I’m at ninety-nine point nine,” the little man said. “Give me a few more seconds.”

  Even if Harvath was taking on just one Spetsnaz soldier, he’d still want every advantage he could muster. The only way he was going to win, taking on four of them, was to cheat. That was where Nicholas came in.

  “We good?” Harvath asked, prodding him.

  “One more second.”

  Harvath could picture him in his SCIF back in the United States furiously moving his tiny fingers across his keyboard.

  “Got it!” Nicholas finally responded.

  “Got it you think? Or you’re sure you’ve got it?”

  “Dinner on me if I’m wrong.”

  “Easy bet for you,” Harvath replied. “If you’re wrong, I’m not going to be around to collect.”

  “Then for your sake, I’d better be right.”

  Harvath smiled and shook his head. Graveyard humor. The SEALs had been merciless with jokes. The more intense the situation, the more the jokes flew. It was the same thing with the Army and the Marines, even cops he knew. It was a coping mechanism, a relief valve.

  Staring the possibility of death in the eye created more than a little stress. Humor helped get operators through.

  With Nicholas online and all of the Hadids’ men fully briefed, they went over everything once more.

  They were as ready as they were going to be. Looking at his watch, Harvath then turned to Thoman and Mathan and speaking in a heavy Russian accent said, “Let’s go burn neighbor’s barn.”

  CHAPTER 56

  General Oleg Proskurov was a careful man, a planner. He understood that even the smallest, most insignificant detail could throw off the greatest of undertakings. History was replete with brilliant men undone by seemingly minuscule factors.

  And so, Sergun’s concerns about Baseyev troubled him. Baseyev was too important to lose.

  Perhaps they were leaning on Baseyev too heavily. Perhaps he was feeling the stress of being too long in the field. His operations tempo had been excruciating. He had been asked to pull off not one spectacular feat but several. It would have taken its toll on anyone.

  Proskurov had been thinking about the right way to deal with him. If Baseyev was beginning to crack, should they keep him in the game? Would a couple of days off help him catch his breath? Would he need more than that? A week? Could they even afford to take him out of play at this point?

  The Americans were on the edge of getting in. He knew it. He could feel it in his bones. It was only a matter of time.

  The a
ttack on the White House was a national affront to their overinflated sense of honor. The United States could launch a thousand cruise missiles, but it wouldn’t assuage the anger and humiliation felt by its citizens.

  For the last two weeks, Proskurov had been watching American television news. He knew what Americans were thinking and feeling. Even the most dovish among them was admitting that ISIS had grown into too great a problem to be ignored. They were clamoring for ISIS to be dealt with once and for all.

  The American President, though, was weighing his options. Proskurov understood why. This was nothing to rush into. United States citizens would be baying for blood. They would demand a quick, decisive engagement. Shock, awe, and carnage. That’s all. No nation-building. Come in, kill all the vipers in the pit, and go home. They had no stomach for an occupation.

  That was good. Russia didn’t want an American occupation either. It needed an exterminator, not a roommate.

  As soon as ISIS was defeated by the Americans, Russia could fully crush the Syrian opposition. Then, with the Syrian regime back on its feet, Russia could extend its territorial ambitions in the region. As America receded, Russia would take center stage.

  General Proskurov was in his late sixties. Up until this point, he hadn’t known if he would live to see such a thing in his lifetime. The idea of an ascendant Russia was beyond anyone’s imagination just a few short years ago. Then came Ukraine, and now Syria. Instead of shrinking, Russian influence was growing.

  But Proskurov knew that as it grew, it was important to maintain stability at home. One of the greatest domestic threats Russia faced was from Islamic radicals. That was why it was so important to keep Sacha Baseyev in the game.

  His penetration of ISIS and its inner core was a great accomplishment of the GRU. But his mission wasn’t over yet.

  The GRU still needed him to secure the intelligence on all the Russian speakers who had come to train and fight with ISIS.