Drone Strike: A Joe Matthews Thriller

by David Austin

  Before Joe could get his legs back up into a guard position, the second attacker was on him. With the skill of a professional MMA fighter, the man straddled his waist and sent a flurry of fists and elbows whirling around Joe’s head. Damn, this guy is fast, he thought, bringing both arms up to absorb the blows. The thought had no sooner flashed in his mind when the tip of an elbow slipped through his defenses and caught him on the left side of the head. The skin above his eyebrow split open and blood flowed into his eye. With his vision obscured, Joe brought his left arm up to protect his blind side as the Russian feigned another strike to the bloody wound. The fake exposed his chin and the Alpha man took advantage of the opening, pounding it with a quick right cross instead, causing a galaxy of stars to erupt in Joe’s head.

  Wanting to get back into the fight, the man Joe had kicked into the dresser regained his footing and grabbed the forty-two-inch flat screen by each end. Ripping the TV from its mount on the wall, he raised it above his head, snapping the power cord and coaxial cable out of their ports, and waited for an opportunity to piledrive it into the American’s bloody face.

  Joe heard the man say something in Russian but had no idea what it meant. It wasn’t until the operator on top of him leaned back that he was able to get a clear view of the man’s partner with the TV held high. And vice versa. The beginnings of an evil grin tugged at the corners of the man’s mouth as he prepared to bring the TV down for the deathblow.

  Stepping over the unconscious body in the doorway, John entered the room and saw the man about to guillotine his team leader with a television. You can’t make this shit up, he thought. No one would believe it. Clear of the cameras in the hallway, he raised his suppressed pistol, aligned the sights on the executioner’s forehead, and pressed the trigger. The kinetic energy of a one-hundred-forty-seven-grain jacketed hollow point blew out the back of the man’s head. He released his grip on the TV and crumpled in a heap next to Joe.

  Stunned by the unexpected death of his teammate, the man straddling Joe turned to see where the shot had come from. He was greeted with a roundhouse kick to the face and his world went dark. John rolled the man to the side and offered Joe a hand, helping him to his feet. Still a little wobbly from the shot to the jaw, Joe eased himself down onto the corner of the bed to give the world a chance to stop spinning.

  John moved to the bathroom door and knocked three times. “Eli, it’s John.”

  The door cracked open and a single eye peered through the opening. “You sure it’s safe to come out?”

  Exasperated, John said, “Would I be standing here talking to you if it weren’t?”

  Thinking it over for a second, Miller agreed, “Point taken.”

  “Grab me a towel, then get your shit together. It’s time to go.”

  He handed John a towel from the rack, then stepped out into the room to get his messenger bag and rolling duffle. But when he saw the carnage around the room and the brain splatter on the wall, he made an abrupt about face back into the bathroom and vomited into the sink.

  Handing Joe the towel, John asked, “You good?”

  Joe wiped the blood from his eye, then pressed the terrycloth against the gash to try and stop the bleeding. “Yeah. How’s Eli?”

  “He’s puking his guts out. But other than that, he’s fine.”

  Looking up to make eye contact, Joe said, “Thanks, John. I owe you.”

  “No sweat, man,” John replied, as if it were just another day at the office. “You’d do the same for me. It’s how we roll.” Then he pointed to the trio of Russians on the floor. “What do you want to do about them?”

  Joe thought it over for a second. “Leave ‘em.” He knew the Russians would have to spend a lot of time and energy explaining why one of their operatives was dead and two others were in jail. They were already behind the eight ball in the court of public opinion after the botched attempt to kill a defector and his daughter in the UK a few years ago. And the thought of heads exploding in the Kremlin over another international embarrassment brought a smile to his battered face.

  After searching the Russians and collecting their pocket litter and cell phones, Joe led the way down the stairwell with Eli and John on his heels. They stopped on the ground floor landing and waited for Chris to give them the all-clear before bursting out of the side door and piling into the rental.

  Chris looked his friend over in the illumination from the SUV’s dome light. The left side of Joe’s face was caked with blood and was beginning to swell. “Well, it looks like that went according to plan.”

  Wincing as he touched his battered face, Joe said, “You should see the other guys.” The mere mention of the carnage in the hotel room caused Eli to dry heave in the back seat. “Let’s beat feet before their friends come looking for them.”

  The drive to Chiévres was uneventful and Joe used the time to brief headquarters on the events of the last hour. While Director Sloan and the others on the call weren’t thrilled about the contact with the Russians in a European capital, they understood the nature of such operations. The DCIA considered calling his counterpart in Belgium’s State Security Service, but the organization was so dysfunctional he doubted it would do any good. Besides, the team had gotten out clean for the most part, and there were no recordings of the encounter with the Russians. The only footage on the hotel’s DVR system would be of the team entering the hotel, transiting the hallway to Miller’s room, and using the stairwell for their departure. Fred Jackson was already at work, hacking into the hotel’s security system to delete the video.

  The Air Force C-21A Learjet was waiting for Joe’s team as promised. After a quick thirty-minute flight, the plane touched down on the runway at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany and taxied to a pad at the far end of the runway. The pilots brought the small business jet to a stop next to a much larger Gulfstream G650, and Joe thanked them for their hospitality before stepping out into the cool night. He led Eli and the other members of the team across the tarmac and bounded up the air-stairs into the cabin of the Gulfstream.

  Chuck Jamison, perhaps the most well-known and respected pilot Air Branch ever produced, stuck his head out of the cockpit to welcome his passengers aboard. Having worked with Joe and his team on a variety of operations from clandestine insertions to hot extractions, he said, “Jesus, Joe. Tell me you got the plate number?”

  Falling for one of the oldest jokes in the book, Joe asked, “What plate number?”

  The guys started cracking up, but Jamison somehow managed to keep a straight face as he delivered the punch line. “The license plate number of the Mack truck that ran over your face.”

  Joe would have joined in with the laughter, but his face hurt too damn much, so he dropped into a plush seat and grinned at the good-natured ribbing.

  Barb, the flight safety attendant, was an experienced hand, having worked for the Agency’s air operations wing for nearly twenty years. She was also a trained medical officer and had treated everything from food poisoning to gunshot wounds on her flights. Without batting an eye at Joe’s battered face, she went to the galley, filled a zip-lock bag with ice, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and handed both to Joe.

  Seeing the ice-cold beer, Chris asked, “Hey, Barb, can I get one of those?”

  Not missing a beat, she said, “From the looks of things, Joe did all the work on this op. He earned his. You know where the fridge is. Grab it yourself.”

  This set off another round of laughter as Jamison’s voice came over the jet’s intercom. “We’re cleared for take-off. Flight time home is about nine hours.”

  Joe looked across the aisle to his right where Eli sat, looking a little shell-shocked as he contemplated the events since he first set eyes on the red-headed operator in the SCIF earlier this evening. “Try and get some sleep. People at home are going to want to talk to us when land. It’s going to be a long day.”

  But the NSA encryption specialist didn’t think sleep would be coming anytime soon. He felt as if he had just l
ived through an action scene in a Jason Bourne movie, except Joe Matthews and his team were real. The Paladin analogy used back in the SCIF popped into his head, and he realized Joe was right. He had fought and bled, literally put his life on the line, to protect him from harm. Eli turned to thank the man sitting across from him, a gesture that didn’t seem like nearly enough, given the magnitude of what he’d done for him over the past few hours, but Joe was already sound asleep as the Gulfstream’s wheels left the ground.

  CHAPTER 28

  The final shimmers of sunlight slipped below the horizon as night fell over the runways Bassel Al Assad International Airport shared with Khmeimim Air Base. Lights flickered to life around the airport’s grounds, illuminating the main terminal building, hangars, and tarmacs acting as parking lots for the variety of Syrian and Russian military aircraft lined up in neat rows, awaiting the next day’s sorties.

  But one section of the airport remained shrouded in darkness. The heavily guarded hangar’s doors slid open, and a three-man ground crew pushed the MQ-9 Reaper out onto the ramp. Having gone through the pre-flight procedures inside the structure, there was nothing left to do but arm the Hellfire missiles attached under the wings and give the pilot the all-clear for engine start. As it had on the test flights the previous two nights, the engine purred to life and the pilot taxied the UAV onto runway Three-Five Right. Using only a fraction of the runway’s nine thousand feet, the Reaper lifted into the air, taking off to the north and gaining altitude before the pilot eased the joystick to the right and pointed the nose toward the Iraqi border.

  After Anna Kovaleski had reeled in the victim of her phishing scam, it was only a matter of time before she found what she was looking for. It took a couple of days to sift through General Atomics’ servers, but the instructions for accessing the backdoor to reboot the UAV’s systems was there for the taking once you knew where to look. Armed with that knowledge, it was just a matter of following the steps in the maintenance guide to wipe the system’s memory and install the encryption and communications protocols of her choosing. With the satcom link connecting to satellites under the control of the GRU, the stolen Reaper was flying its inaugural mission on behalf of the Russian Federation.

  Three hours after taking off from the darkened runway, the Reaper was in a holding pattern above a mosque in the Al Tamim section of Ramadi, Iraq. Located in a neighborhood south of the Euphrates River, the call to prayer from the minaret towering above the Great Mosque of Badr echoed through the working-class development of high-rise apartment buildings three miles north of the University of Anbar. All vestiges of sunlight had faded from the western sky, and it was time for the Isha, the final prayer of the day.

  Looking over the pilot’s shoulder, Vasily Zubkin, the lead aerospace engineer, marveled at the clarity of the images displayed on the ground control station’s monitors. He checked the console’s altimeter and saw it read twenty thousand feet. Even at that altitude and in the darkness of the moonless night, the UAV’s electro-optical infra-red camera system allowed the sensor operator to zoom in on individuals entering the mosque and read license plates on nearby parked cars. Simply amazing, Zubkin thought.

  When it appeared that everyone was inside the mosque and the service had begun, Colonel Teplov tapped an entry in his phone’s contact list. After identifying himself to the operator, he was put on a brief hold while the call was transferred.

  Inside the Kremlin’s version of the Oval Office, President Yaroslav Polovkin sat in a high-backed leather chair and stared into the flames crackling in the hearth of a massive stone fireplace. Two identical chairs were arranged on either side of him. Anton Shubovich, whose official title was Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation and General of the Army, sat to the president’s right. He was a short man who, regardless of his mood, seemed to have a perpetual scowl on his face. His demeanor stood in stark contrast to the third man in the room. Vice Admiral Evgeny Mishkin, the head of the GRU, had the appearance of a doting grandfather. But behind that kind-looking countenance was a ruthless intelligence officer who would have been right at home in Stalin’s NKVD during the Great Purge. A coffee table separated the men from the fireplace and held a tea service and the speakerphone.

  Since the man on the other end of the line was under Vice Admiral Mishkin’s command, he initiated the conversation. “Good evening, Colonel. What news do you have for us?”

  Hearing the head of the GRU’s voice, Teplov felt himself snap to attention while still holding the phone to his ear. “Sir, the drone is in position and we are ready to initiate the attack.”

  Mishkin looked to President Polovkin, who gave his approval. “You are authorized to commence with your mission, Colonel. From this point forward, there is no need to call back for authorization. Prosecute the target packages at your discretion. We will contact you if there are to be any changes to the missions’ profiles.”

  Teplov acknowledged his orders. “Yes, sir.”

  “And Colonel,” Mishkin said, “any more fuck-ups like the debacle in Brussels and you and that embarrassment of an Alpha Group officer will be wishing for a quick death at the hands of those Islamic militants you’re fighting in Syria.”

  Once they had regained consciousness, Anton and the other Alpha man had reported in. Captain Kalugin had managed to get them and the body of the third man out of the room, but there was no way to clean up the mess left behind. Local media was reporting on the mystery after a member of the hotel’s housekeeping staff found the gore as she was going about her normal routine the following morning. But so far, there was nothing in the stories implicating any Russian involvement. Without any bodies or eyewitnesses, Belgian authorities were stumped.

  Gritting his teeth at the failed operation to capture the NSA encryption specialist, Teplov vowed that if he was going down, he was going to take Captain Gennady Kalugin with him. “Understood, sir.”

  With that, Mishkin leaned forward to disengage the call on the speakerphone and retrieve his cup of tea. “Well, Mr. President, you are about to take the first step to driving the Americans out of the Middle East.”

  “Fitting that their own weapon will be the key to their undoing,” General Shubovich added.

  *

  The executive dining room was just down an inner hallway from his office, but Lawrence Sloan preferred to have lunch in the first-floor cafeteria with the dedicated men and women under his command. He would often find a table occupied with one or more of his officers and ask to join them. Sloan enjoyed the informal discussions and thought they gave him a good feel for the pulse of the building. With the long hours and inherent stress of the job, keeping morale high was an important ingredient to the success of the organization.

  Jeanne Emerson, an agent on the Director’s Protective Staff, scanned the large room and spotted the boss sitting at a table near a window overlooking the inner courtyard between the two headquarters buildings. In between bites of salad, he was carrying on a conversation with two young officers. From the looks on their faces, Jeanne couldn’t tell if they were excited or terrified to be having lunch with the veteran spymaster.

  Sloan saw her heading his way and leaned in close to his dining partners. “Well, it looks like lunch has just come to an end. Thank you so much for sharing your table with me.” He excused himself, then stood and dropped off his tray by the trash cans.

  Five minutes later Sloan entered the conference room on the seventh floor. His senior staff had been rounded up by other members of the protective detail and were arrayed around the highly polished table. Dana Criswell, an analyst from the Operations Center one floor below, stood at the front of the room waiting for permission to start the briefing. Sloan took his seat at the head of the table and asked her to begin.

  “At approximately 8:50 pm local time,” Criswell glanced at her watch and did the math in her head, “roughly one hour ago, the Great Mosque of Badr, in Ramadi, Iraq, was attacked.” She pressed a button on the remote to activate the large screen o
n the wall behind her.

  The images appeared the be a live feed from Al Jazeera. In typical form for the Qatar-based network, the video on the screen was horrific. Only a crater and burning piles of debris remained of what was once a place of worship. Unafraid of broadcasting grisly images that networks in the West would never air, the cameraman panned across the gaping hole in the ground showing battered and broken limbs protruding from the rubble. Spotlights illuminated the scene revealing torn bodies lying in pools of blood that appeared black in the artificial light. Large chunks of concrete had been turned into projectiles and damaged surrounding buildings. The force of the impacts had caused the police station next door to collapse, killing four officers and six prisoners who happened to be inside at the time.

  “What do we know about the method of attack?” asked David Brewer, the deputy director for intelligence. As the CIA’s top analyst, he was intimately familiar with conducting bomb damage assessments, or BDAs.

  The chief of CTC, Harold Lee, was curious as well. “The blast pattern doesn’t look like a car bomb, and there’s no way a suicide bomber could carry in enough explosives to create that much damage.”

  “I agree,” Brewer added. “It looks more like an airstrike to me.”

  “Yeah,” Lee concurred. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Criswell confirmed their suspicions. “Preliminary reports from people in the area said the attack did, in fact, come from the sky. Residents claimed to have seen two streaks of light emerge from the clouds. They were followed immediately by bright flashes and thundering booms seconds later.” Activating the picture-in-picture function on the monitor, the live Al Jazeera footage shrunk to the bottom left corner of the screen. The larger portion now displayed three still images of what appeared to be fragments of a projectile. “As I’m sure you’re aware, there are often pieces of the casings that are not destroyed when a bomb or missile detonates. These fragments were reportedly found at the scene.”