Red Deception

by Gary Grossman

  “And what will you do to me, Mr. President?” she said producing a gun.

  Brutka lowered his shoulders. Defeated.

  “You are a coward and a thief. Abandoning your troops and your country.”

  “How much do you want?” Brutka said.

  “We’ll see how the flight goes,” she replied.

  Brutka had the sinking feeling it wasn’t going to go well at all.

  A payoff. A bribe. A toll. As far as Reilly was concerned, they could call it anything they wanted. Divide it anyway they saw fit. However, the danger of handing over money to men with guns is that they might think you had more. Two things could happen at that point: a temporary standoff leading to more cash, or an escalation leading to some of players being permanently eliminated. Reilly had gotten through one negotiation already. Now?

  There were four soldiers. One in particular who did the talking and the deciding. He seemed to show some respect for Volosin, but he looked at Reilly suspiciously. This was clearly different. Not the case where a simple homily was going to get them out.

  Volosin waved Reilly forward. He knew the drill. A disarming smile, which only sometimes served to actually disarm. The conversation was in Ukrainian. Volosin showed patience, experience, and control. What Reilly heard sounded calm, no raised voices, no animus. Then, “Hi,” from Volosin. Not a greeting. They’d gotten past that. Hi in Ukrainian meant no. Volosin’s no was tough, definitive. No meant no.

  One soldier’s hand gripped the barrel of his rifle. He began to raise it. The one who spoke for the group put his hand out across his comrade’s body. The soldier brought his weapon down.

  Reilly noted it was a good decision because he’d seen the driver of bus two getting out the back door and circling around to cover Volosin. He would be able to dispatch all four soldiers before they fired a shot.

  “Okay,” the lead soldier said. This time he used English for Reilly’s benefit. Volosin waved his left hand for Reilly to step forward. He never took his eyes off the men. Reilly handed the young soldier the money.

  “We’re good?” Reilly said. The soldier didn’t understand.

  “My dobre?” Volosin repeated.

  “My dobre.”

  Volosin backed away. Dan Reilly did the same. The last to leave was the unseen driver. Two minutes later, the soldiers removed their armored vehicle and waved the buses ahead.

  “More expensive than the New York Thruway toll,” Savannah Flanders quipped when Reilly returned.

  “Definitely,” Reilly replied.

  Reilly rejoined his bus hoping there’d be no other delays. At the same moment, a private jet was taking off from Zhytomyr and a Jordanian charter was thirty miles out on final approach.

  An hour later on the runway, with Flanders beside him, Reilly counted yellow shirts. Everyone had made it. He personally shook the guests’ hands as they climbed the portable stairs to the plane. But because of the pilot’s insistence over weight, some handheld bags were left at the airport. Volosin said he would get them to London…for an additional fee. Reilly smiled.

  “Of course.” They settled up with the money brought in from Dubai.

  “As agreed, my friend.”

  “My dobre. We’re good.”

  “One question for you.”

  “Oh?” Volosin replied.

  “How ex-Spetsnaz are you?”

  Volosin laughed heartily.

  Reilly had his answer. He was targeted from the beginning at the airport. Volosin was undercover, tasked with spying, and was now better off for it.

  “I’ve got a couple of questions, too, Major,” the New York Times reporter stated.

  “Yes, Ms. Flanders.”

  “What was it that you had Reilly tell the two soldiers in Kiev? It made the difference.”

  “‘Boh stvoryv nas yak vil’nkykh stvorin’. A simple quotation by a beloved Ukrainian, Cardinal Lyubomyr Husar, revered throughout the country. The quote translates as ‘God created us as free creatures.’ Meaning, everyone has the freedom to make the right decision. And considering the gun Reilly had, they made the right one.”

  “And one last question,” the reporter asked. “What will you do now?”

  “We’re going to fight the Russians. We’ll fight them until we drive them out, whether or not NATO and the United States stand by us, whether it takes a month or a year or ten years. Then we’ll elect a new president. We’re going to need one.” He now spoke with some knowledge. “I’ve gotten word that our last president, how shall I say, took an unexpected fall tonight.”

  PART THREE

  SHOCK WAVES

  65

  LONDON

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Secretary of State Elizabeth Matthews arrived in London to talk with her former employee. She met Reilly in one of the Kensington Royal conference rooms, the Montgomery, often referred to as The Monty. The room, like others in the hotel, was named for great British military tacticians. This one honored Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, a decorated general who served with distinction in both World Wars.

  The staff had put out coffee and pastries. Reilly poured coffee for both of them.

  Matthews, dressed in a gray suit, black blouse and freshwater pearls, opened with a comment Dan Reilly couldn’t quite categorize as a compliment or a criticism. But it certainly was the truth.

  “Dan,” she said almost affectionately, “you’re a constantly moving target.”

  “Apparently with a bullseye on my back,” he replied. “And I assume that’s the reason for your unexpected visit.”

  “Smart as ever.”

  “You’re late. The FBI gave it their best shot. And Agent Moore and I are becoming fast friends. Once he got past me being on his most wanted list, we’ve had a number of solid conversations on the Three Ts.”

  Terrorists. Targets. Timing. The Three Ts had also been Matthews’ work for twenty-five years. From the time she was an Air Force fighter pilot to her four terms in Congress, her distinguished State Department career, to serving as the nation’s Secretary of State—Crowe’s Secretary of State. Matthews didn’t know if she’d last long if Battaglio remained in office.

  “You know there are people around D.C. who don’t trust you, Dan.”

  “There are people all around the world who don’t trust me. Is that why you’re here?” She smiled. “Elizabeth, you’ve come a long way to talk. How about you make it easy for yourself. Straight out.”

  “Okay, straight out. It’s not exactly about you; I don’t know if Crowe will make it. If he doesn’t, we’ve got Battaglio for the next two years. And to be perfectly honest, he’s doesn’t have enough experience behind the wheel. He’s impulsive and prone to tirades, and can get irrational. I saw it in Congress. So far, he’s kept it under control in the White House, but soon he’ll slip. And this is no time for slips. I’m afraid he’ll make the wrong decision and fuck up bigtime.”

  Reilly reacted in a way she expected. With a direct question.

  “What are you really saying?”

  “How about coming back in?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Battaglio is dangerous.”

  “He’s no Crowe, but he could rise to the job.”

  She ignored the comment, instead trying, “I could use you.”

  He said nothing.

  “At least think about it.”

  The last comment had the weight of an order.

  66

  TRACY, CA

  THE SAME TIME

  Pak Yoon-hoi checked into a motel along North Tracy Blvd. under a new name, Tom Pond. He had a driver’s license and credit card to support his new identity, and a smile that might have earned him an upgrade in another property. But at the Motel 6 all the rooms were basically the same. He put his team of eight men in three rooms at the nearby Microtel Tracy.

  Yoon-hoi avoided hotels and motels near airports and at city centers. The cheaper ones were often off the country’s Interstate highway system and further away from FBI a
nd Homeland Security scrutiny. Tracy was just 56 minutes from the Oakland Bay Bridge in normal traffic—rush hour would take longer. Yoon-hoi’s team would be leaving at 0350, ahead of the commuters but in time for the 0600 crunch.

  They had their weapons. They had their explosives. Yoon-hoi was confident that they’d succeed, escape to San Francisco, board waiting fishing boats, and quickly disappear in eight different directions. They’d run the maneuver nearly a hundred times on a military base in Russia and twenty-five times, all at dawn, on the Kerch Strait Bridge, also known as the Crimean Bridge, an 18.1 km span built by the Russian Federation between the Taman Peninsula and the Russian-annexed Kerch Peninsula of Crimea. It was the longest bridge in Russia or Europe, and served as a perfect model for the North Korean squad. American satellites overflew the Crimean Bridge most mornings. Of course, Russia followed the orbits. But the bridge’s anchor rooms were covered in canvas, which raised eyebrows in Langley, but never rose to the level of actual concern for CIA analysts.

  The night before the mission, Yoon-hoi toasted his comrades’ courage with beer in the traditional manner, holding the bottle with two hands, pouring it into their glasses all the while looking away so when they drank, he didn’t see them consuming the alcohol. A long-held tradition.

  “Goenbae!” Pak Yoon-hoi declared.

  “Goenbae!” the men replied.

  The toast literally meant ‘empty glass,’ a Korean equivalent to the English ‘bottoms up.’ They drank and laughed until Yoon-hoi called an end to the revelry. His killers looked like they belonged in the North Bay; tan slacks, blue shirts, and loose-fitting jackets. Jackets because it was chilly at the early hour even in California, and loose-fitting to hide pistols and knives. Over their jackets they slipped on orange vests similar enough to standard Caltrans wear to pass as the real thing.

  Outside the motel, in the dark, they removed magnetic white horizontal stripes on their rented and repainted Dodge pickup trucks, revealing orange Caltrans stripes and the state transportation agency logos. They screwed on fake license plates and fastened caution light panels above each cab. To anyone’s eye, they were legitimate state vehicles. The last thing they did was load the four vehicles with supplies they had stored in their rooms, the most important being C4 for blasting open the steel doors leading to the bridge cables.

  They had practiced the task in Russia until they were fluid and fast. Their best time from exiting the truck to blowing the door was forty-two seconds. That was without obstacles, human or otherwise, thrown into the mix. With obstacles—reinforced doors or guards—it would take longer. Yoon-hoi counted on his men’s adrenaline pumping, but he didn’t discount the unexpected. CCTV cameras also had to be dealt with swiftly. But at this hour, before the morning shift change, overnight eyes would be straining to stay open.

  Getting through the steel doors was only the first step. It was step two that would take real time. That’s where two of the faux Caltrans trucks with programmable electronic signs would come into play; they’d light up with alternating warnings: Stop and Accident Ahead. This would block all traffic, quickly giving the teams in the second trucks time to fire up and use gas cutters to sever the cables.

  Yoon-hoi sent his crew off with a wave. He would not hear from them again until a designated time two days later. But their accomplishments would be heard around the world. They would be reported in Russia and celebrated back home in Pyongyang, where he longed to return and be honored as a hero. But that would not be after this attack; he still had one more assignment to complete.

  LONDON

  Savannah Flanders filed the article on the Kiev evacuation she’d written on the plane. 2,251 words including her byline; descriptive without revealing Dan Reilly by name, and detailed without giving away the identities of the Ukrainians. Promises made, promises kept.

  Her Times editor agreed to the deal she struck and said the story would break first on the paper’s web edition before hitting print. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NPR, AXIOS, and AP would immediately pick it up. She’d be quoted for the next news cycle. Not a bad day for her career.

  “You’re nothing if not persistent, Ms. Flanders,” Reilly said when he took her call.

  “Really, I think we can graduate to first names.”

  “Okay, Savannah.”

  “My story’s going to hit in an hour. Everyone’s protected,” she said, “as agreed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have time for a drink?” she proposed.

  “Can’t. Heading out again.”

  “The NATO Summit?” Flanders noted.

  He said nothing.

  She continued, “I hear Stockholm’s nice this time of year.”

  “Savannah, there are far more important stories than me,” he replied. “Go after them.”

  “No chance. I’ll see you there.”

  THE OAKLAND BAY BRIDGE

  Tolls on the Bay Bridge are only collected from westbound traffic. There were two choices: cash or the automatic lanes, which required the state’s FasTrak transponder on the car dashboard. The four fake Caltrans trucks didn’t have transponders, but it didn’t matter to the lead driver, at least for the next half-hour. He steered into a FasTrak lane. What he didn’t know was that vehicles without transponders were still seen, in technical terms, by the bridge’s toll sensors. In a fraction of a second, multiple cameras snapped pictures of the trucks’ license plates and their drivers and passengers. It was a computer-mechanized program designed to ultimately send evidence to the registered vehicle owner that they owed the state money, and would face penalties if they didn’t pay promptly. The process usually took more than a month. In this case, the cameras would provide additional evidence of a crime in the making.

  The trucks continued slowly across the bridge in the right lane. The last truck illuminated the digital left arrow sign for traffic to move past. Nothing out of the ordinary—just as they trained: calm, methodical. Timing was key. So was surviving. No active radio transmissions in this phase, only concentration on the job at hand and all the variables that could get in their way. The terrorists drove to their objectives: two targets fifty yards apart at the midpoint over the bay. They were on schedule.

  Terrorists. Targets. Timing.

  The two lead trucks each slowed to a stop. The following trucks triggered their pre-programmed electronic arrows for traffic to merge left into one lane. It took thirty seconds to create the necessary gridlock, precisely as planned. Next, the teams exited their trucks with the tools they had smuggled into the country. Cars began to honk, but the terrorists ignored them.

  While one man held up traffic, another patrolled back and forth between the vehicles. Two others from each team simultaneously put out work cones and flags, and began to jackhammer multiple holes in the cement. They would accomplish that in just under four minutes, to the annoyance of hundreds of cars backed up. They were still on schedule.

  Using only hand signals, they returned to the trucks for the C4 and the timers. Once the detonation was set for three minutes, they’d leave the cones around the worksite, get back into their vehicles and head to solid ground. The gap in the traffic flow in front of their trucks would guarantee their safety—at least, it had in all of their run-throughs.

  Through the process, few took notice of the ostensible Caltrans workers who had guns slung over their shoulders. They were formidable weapons: CMMG MK47s, nicknamed The Mutant, with 30-round magazines. Reliable enough to dispatch any annoying commuters who might approach. None did.

  Now for hooking up and starting the timers.

  “Junbidoen?” radioed the team leader over the car horns.

  “Junbidoen,” confirmed his counterpart behind him.

  The terrorist in front checked his watch. All was good. They were only twenty seconds off their pre-established timetable. Satisfied, he held up five fingers and began a loud countdown. At one he yelled another“Junbidoen!” Ready! Ready to trigger the timer, to get back into their fake Caltrans vans, and to dri
ve off as patriotic heroes. Not ready for the booming, ear-rattling pressure that preceded the blast of wind as a pair of MH-60M helicopters from 160th SOAR, the Army’s Special Operations Aviation Unit, rose from below the bridge to the deck.

  Of all the things the saboteurs were trained for, this was not one of them. Not the Black Hawk Helicopters that came out of nowhere. Not the nine FBI HRT (Hostage Rescue Team) operators rappelling from each bird. Not the warning shots from the door gunners.

  The terrorists were prepared to fight, but the birds that had been idling below, adjacent to the bridges on Treasure Island, completely surprised them. So, the armed men fired their Mutants on the attackers because surrendering was not an option. Surrendering would bring shame to their families. Shame would bring death to loved ones.

  The onboard FBI marksmen opened up with their M-240H machine guns to cover the teams rappelling onto the bridge. Two terrorists were cut down instantly; the rest found cover behind their trucks. Once the FBI HRT operators were on the bridge deck, the helicopters pulled back to avoid taking direct fire. The battle was now between the remaining six terrorists and eighteen FBI agents.

  One of the terrorists made a decision—a suicidal decision. He ran to the nearest timer to re-set the C4. But before he could enable the device, an agent cut him down from behind. The timer’s countdown never moved past the new five second mark.

  Within two minutes the terrorists were all dead. It was time for mop up.

  Another two Black Hawks dropped additional teams, including trained EMTs out of the Washington Field Office’s OpMed Program. Six FBI Tactical Mobility Teams converged from the San Francisco side in armored LENCO BearCats and Humvees. Behind them, four EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) trucks and their teams would examine, defuse and remove the explosives.