Without Sanction

by Bentley, Don

  “Is he the one?” Peter said, inclining his head toward the member of Beverly’s security detail they’d left in the hall.

  Beverly’s eyes narrowed, and she took a step forward, closing the distance between them so that she stood near enough to kiss him.

  “Listen to me, you smug son of a bitch.” Though she barely spoke above a whisper, the venom-filled intensity of her voice startled Peter, forcing him to fight the urge to physically recoil. “You may think that because of that paper you own me, but I can assure you nothing is further from the truth.”

  Beverly’s porcelain features twisting in anger reminded Peter of the scene from the classic C. S. Lewis novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in which Edmund inadvertently unmasks the White Witch’s true nature. Here was Beverly, unfiltered, in all of her terrifying rage. In that moment, Peter knew that his homicidal thoughts about the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency had not been one-sided.

  “Beverly,” Peter said, with more bravado than he felt, “a girl like you is never owned. She’s only rented.”

  To her credit, he never saw the slap coming. One moment, he was returning her hate-filled gaze. The next, his left ear was ringing, and his jaw was on fire. The impact of flesh on flesh sounded like the crack of a rifle in the room’s narrow confines. It took Peter a second to realize what had just happened, but after his brain sorted it out, he couldn’t help but smile.

  Beverly might have just rung his bell, but she’d also just forfeited the engagement.

  “Now that you’ve got that out of your system,” Peter said, resisting the urge to rub his aching jaw, “I want you to listen carefully. As far as I’m concerned, that paper and its contents were nothing more than a warning shot. The President doesn’t know what it says, and he doesn’t have to, providing you do just one thing.”

  Beverly stared at him in silence, her chest heaving as she fought to control her breathing. This was the moment she was dreading. The moment when she would find out how much her lapse in judgment was going to cost.

  “What?” Beverly said, almost spitting the question.

  “Appoint Charles Robinson as your liaison to Syria. He’ll function in the same manner as the old Jawbreaker teams during the initial days of Afghanistan. You’ll defer all operational decisions to him.”

  “Charles?” Beverly said. “Again? Are you out of your mind? He was the Chief of Base during the last Syria debacle. I will not agree to this.”

  “Yes, you will,” Peter said, keeping his reply emotionless, “because if you do, you’ll be able to leave this administration with the President’s blessing. In fact, your first post-exit interview will be done jointly with the President on the network of your choosing. After that, the President will throw his full support behind you as his political heir. This includes persuading Ben that seeking the nomination would not be in his best interest.”

  Beverly’s expression lost some of its anger at the mention of Ben Stevens, the Vice President. An accomplished leader in his own right, the man was popular among the party rank and file. Many of the political pundits were already salivating at the thought of watching the Vice President battle the establishment’s queen for the nomination. But a word or two from Jorge would put Ben’s aspirations to rest.

  Permanently.

  “And if I don’t?” Beverly said.

  “Copies of that paper go to Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, as well as the Attorney General. Don’t fight me, Beverly. Believe me when I tell you that if we succeed, you succeed.”

  Beverly dropped her gaze, her shoulders sagging as she took a shuddering breath. When she looked up, her eyes glistened.

  “You’re a coldhearted son of a bitch.”

  Peter nodded.

  “I’ll send Charles,” Beverly said, the words coming out in a hiss, “but I won’t forget this. Ever.”

  Without waiting for a reply, she pulled open the door and swept out of the room.

  As Peter watched her leave, he realized that for all her political insight, Beverly still didn’t understand him. His heart wasn’t cold.

  It was broken.

  FIFTEEN

  UNDISCLOSED AIRSTRIP, SYRIA

  The fading afternoon sun felt good on my jet-lagged body, but I was still grateful for my Oakley sunglasses. Shouldering my backpack, I picked my way down the flimsy metal steps sprouting from the equally flimsy private jet.

  Late autumn in Syria was a lot like late autumn in Austin—temperatures in the sixties during the day, while at night the air cooled down to the forties. But that’s where the similarities ended. Syria had a unique smell composed of equal parts car exhaust, stale smoke from countless open fires, and poverty. Its exact nature was hard to put into words, but was unmistakable all the same.

  For better or worse, I was back.

  The last time I’d arrived in-country, it had been in the cramped confines of a retrofitted Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter with a pair of U.S. Army Night Stalker aviators at the controls. I’d competed for cabin space with an eight-man Special Forces A-team and untold crates of weapons and equipment as we’d hurtled through the absolute darkness of a moonless desert night, barely fifty feet above the ground. This time, I’d flown in the relative comfort of a private jet, in broad daylight, with only one other passenger for company.

  Given the choice, I’d take the Russian helicopter and darkness any day of the week.

  “I’m gonna throw up.”

  The statement was made in the matter-of-fact manner I’d come to expect from my traveling companion of the last several hours. Her name was Virginia Kenyon, and she was a PhD chemist on loan to the DIA. In the short time I’d known her, I’d come to the conclusion that, while Virginia didn’t talk much, when she did, her words were worth heeding.

  After moving the rest of the way down the steps, I offered her a hand, but she ignored it in her rush to solid ground. Without acknowledging me in the least, Virginia ducked behind the skeletal staircase and emptied her stomach with two long retches.

  I could empathize. Our pilot, Mehmet, much like his airplane, was more than a bit past his prime.

  The DIA Gulfstream I’d boarded at Andrews Air Force Base was not equipped in any sense to fly into Syria. Instead, we’d landed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, where I’d linked up with Virginia, who was also waiting on a transport flight into country. Together, Virginia and I had connected with a pilot the DIA had on retainer to fly personnel discreetly in and out of Syria.

  Mehmet and his crew seemed to know the airfield I was targeting, and since some DIA bureaucrat had contracted the pilot’s services, I assumed the smiling Turk’s aviating skills had been vetted.

  This had been a grossly invalid assumption. In the future, I would Uber my way out of Syria before allowing myself to be a passenger in any type of motorized conveyance with Mehmet at the controls.

  “Is the lady all right?”

  Mehmet asked the question while standing at the top of the stairway, anxiously peering down at Virginia. By the sound of the wet spatter hitting the concrete apron behind me, the DIA chemist was far from all right.

  “I think the lady wasn’t expecting such a rough ride,” I said, since Virginia was clearly indisposed.

  “The lady,” said Virginia, “would rather be dragged across the desert behind a team of horses than ever get back on an airplane with you.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Virginia had a bit of a Southern accent—East Tennessee if I were to guess—and it seemed to grow stronger when she was angry. Right now, her drawl was becoming more pronounced by the syllable. But that was okay. The girl had grit, and in my experience, grit overcame a host of shortcomings.

  It was obvious that this was Virginia’s first operational rodeo. Though her short red hair was tucked behind a faded Yankees ball cap, the rest of her outfit screamed government contract
or—5.11 pants and tactical boots, a short-sleeve REI shirt, and a Blackhawk backpack. She couldn’t have looked more American if she’d been wearing a T-shirt with the Stars and Stripes emblazoned across the front.

  Still, I had to hand it to her. When the DIA had called with an opportunity to travel halfway across the world to identify a deadly chemical weapon developed by a rogue terrorist cell, she’d taken them up on their offer. For her gumption alone, Virginia had my respect.

  “Sorry,” Mehmet said with a shrug. “Radar showed multiple aircraft. Adjusting our flight plan was necessary.”

  Apparently adjusting our flight plan translated into zipping across the border at an altitude only slightly higher than the sporadic power lines. That close to the ground, the heated afternoon air rushed skyward in a series of invisible spiraling vortices, forming hurricane-force updrafts in the process. Flying through them had been the equivalent of windsurfing across a tsunami. I’d ridden broncos that had bucked less, and that was before our pilot had begun evasive maneuvers in the form of gut-wrenching banks that slammed us against our seat belts.

  I wasn’t an aviator, but I was willing to bet that our relatively safe arrival had had little to do with our pilot’s aviation-related prowess. In all likelihood, any Russian fighters patrolling the skies had taken one look at our erratic flight path and concluded that we were destined to crash without their help.

  From the feel of our bone-jarring landing, that sentiment hadn’t been too far off the mark.

  “Now that the lady and the sir have arrived, it is time for us to depart. Yes?”

  The worry on Mehmet’s face was evident. Maybe the Russian presence had been more aggressive than I was giving him credit for. Or perhaps he’d made a call to a friend or two during the flight and offered to exchange a pair of Americans for a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills.

  Neither possibility was particularly reassuring.

  “Take a drink,” I said, handing a water bottle to Virginia. “It’ll help your stomach.”

  I stalled for time as I looked across the shimmering asphalt, searching for the vehicle that should already have been here. Instead, all I saw were the crumbling remains of an airport that had fallen victim to the endless Syrian civil war.

  The hangar behind me was pockmarked with bullet holes, and its steel sliding door hung slightly askew. The crumpled hulk of a Russian-built transport plane sat at the end of the cratered runway, while the taxiway we’d used as a runway had cracks spider-webbing across its surface. The rest of the airfield looked even worse. The control tower had been reduced to a chunk of concrete sprouting rods of rusted rebar, and the cluster of buildings near the field’s access point at the other end of the runway seemed similarly abandoned.

  In short, this was the perfect place for a clandestine meet, assuming, of course, my former asset actually showed.

  “Where’s our ride?” Virginia said after taking a long pull from the water bottle.

  And that was the million-dollar question. I searched the crumbling remains of the airport for a vehicle but found nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  “My copilot would like me to tell the sir that a car is approaching,” Mehmet said.

  I glanced up from my phone, on which I’d been scrolling through the chat log on the encrypted Telegram app, reviewing the last text from my in-country contact, which described the car that would be meeting us. I couldn’t see anything from my vantage point on the ground, but perhaps the flight crew had a better view.

  “What color’s the car?” I said.

  Moment of truth.

  “Gray.”

  Not good.

  “No. No gray. White. White with orange roof.”

  Thank you, Baby Jesus.

  “All right,” I said, waving to our pilot, “you’re free to go.”

  Mehmet ducked inside the jet’s cabin without answering, the stairs retracting behind him with a speed that belied their decrepit appearance. Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I grabbed the two kit bags at my feet and yelled to Virginia.

  “Follow me. We’re out of here.”

  At the far end of the airfield, a white car with an orange roof nosed through a hole in the cyclone fence and turned past the abandoned guard shack onto the runway. The vehicle sped toward us even as our jet headed in the opposite direction, howling engines blasting us with exhaust.

  The inherent strangeness of the situation wasn’t lost on me. Here I was, standing on the tarmac of a bombed-out Syrian airport as my getaway plane lifted into the sky and a mystery vehicle raced toward me with the same reckless abandon. This was one of the many aspects about being a spy that HR tended to gloss over during the recruiting process.

  Placing myself between Virginia and the approaching car, I reached under my shirt and slid the Glock 23 out of the Don Hume inside-the-waistband holster tucked against my right hip. I held the pistol along the length of my leg, using my body to shield the weapon from the car’s occupants.

  “That our ride?” Virginia said.

  “I think so.”

  “Then why the gun?”

  “Because thinking so isn’t the same as knowing so.”

  “That’s lovely. Just lovely.”

  East Tennessee was back.

  And that was about the time I realized that, although the car hurtling toward us was indeed white with an orange roof, the two following it onto the airfield were definitely not.

  Welcome to Syria.

  SIXTEEN

  Are we waiting for one car or three?” Virginia said as the convoy raced toward us.

  “One,” I said, trying to see through the dark tint that shielded from view the front passengers in the first sedan. “What do you have in these kit bags?”

  “My portable lab. Instruments, glassware, protective equipment. Nerd stuff.”

  “No rocket launchers?”

  “Surprisingly, they weren’t on the DIA-approved packing list. Do we need one?”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Interesting. Are we in trouble?”

  “We’re in Syria.”

  The first car, a white Korean sedan of questionable lineage sporting an orange roof like some Syrian version of the Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee, bore down on us like a hound dog on the scent. The sound of its straining engine echoed across the airfield. Behind it, two Toyota SUVs swung back and forth, sometimes on the taxiway, sometimes on the cracked ground baked concrete-hard under the sun’s constant assault.

  For a moment, I entertained the hopeful notion that all three cars were part of our welcoming party. Maybe the second two were an escort for the first. But that idyllic dream vanished about the time the lead SUV’s passenger-side window rolled down, revealing an AK-47.

  “That’s our signal,” I said, grabbing Virginia and pushing her toward the open hangar behind us.

  “My gear!”

  “We’ll buy it back on eBay,” I said, scooping my go bag off the concrete with one hand as I kept the Glock trained on the convoy with the other. Out in the open, my pistol was about as useful as a cap gun, but inside the hangar, the close confines might just even the odds.

  Assuming, of course, we made it inside alive.

  We’d closed half the distance to the hangar when a flash of light streaked from an adjacent building. I had just enough time to register an RPG’s telltale smoke trail before the warhead detonated and the first SUV burst into flames.

  To his credit, the driver of the second SUV reacted with admirable tactical soundness. He slammed on the brakes and threw the vehicle into reverse.

  He didn’t get far.

  The Toyota’s engine had just begun to rev when a second flash of light and corresponding puff of smoke ended in a second explosion. Then there were two burning chassis littering the taxiway.

  This turn of events did not seem to bother the driv
er of the car with the orange roof in the slightest. Instead of fleeing, the driver tooted an emasculated horn twice before making a sharp left turn toward us. The driver’s window rolled down, and a friendly hand waved hello. At least I hoped it was hello. It very well could have been You might as well run before I shoot you to make it more sporting, but at this point, I was trying to keep a positive attitude.

  Or something like that.

  “Did the good guys win?” Virginia said.

  “I’m choosing to believe yes.”

  The car rolled to a stop, and the driver hopped out, his trademark cigar dangling unlit from his lips.

  “Allah be praised. My American friend has returned. And in the company of a lovely woman, no less.”

  “Hello, Zain,” I said, accepting an enthusiastic hug.

  Though Zain’s head came barely to my shoulder, the body beneath his unbuttoned shirt was hard, almost desiccated. It was as if the Syrian sun had melted away any superfluous tissue, leaving only sinew and bone.

  “Good to see you,” I said. “Seems like you had a bit of trouble?”

  “Ah,” Zain said, dismissing the burning hulks with a half wave of his hand. “This is Syria. Everywhere is trouble.”

  That was undoubtedly true. Still, I would have preferred an explanation with perhaps a tad bit more detail, so I tried again. “Who were those men?”

  Zain replied with an exaggerated shrug. “ISIS? Assad loyalists? Bandits? This is Syria, my friend—one never knows. Much has changed since you left, but much more remains the same. The important thing is that I remember your training—always secure the meeting site beforehand. I knew that lesson. They did not. Now they are dead, and we are not. What else is there to say?”

  Volumes as far as I was concerned. Still, that conversation could probably be better had in the safety of Zain’s car.

  “Okay, my friend,” I said, “thank you again for coming. This is Virginia, and we need a ride to the CIA safe house. Do you know it?”

  Zain answered with a roll of his eyes. “Everyone knows it. Bags in the trunk, if you please. You’ll find body armor and weapons on the seats. Come, come—we must be going. My friends in the hangar will only stay for another hour.”