Black Operations- the Spec-Ops Action Pack

by Eric Meyer

  He's still waiting, for what? It's weird.

  He was about to go and inspect the truck when he heard another vehicle approaching, this one a civilian SUV, a big Nissan Patrol. As it drew nearer, he relaxed. He could see Jeffrey Petersen in the driving seat. The Nissan stopped next to the truck, and Petersen stepped out. He beckoned to the civilian in the other truck, and the man climbed down. Petersen walked up to him, his face grim.

  “I guess you know what you’ve stirred up in Tehran?”

  “Yep.”

  The Brit stood there silent for a few moments and looked around the site. He turned back to Talley and indicated the driver of the truck.

  “This is Ramin. He does odd jobs for me. Don’t worry; he can’t understand a word of English. He drove the truck out for you, and I’ll take him back in the SUV. You like it?”

  “I thought they were only used by the military.”

  “They are, so it’s the perfect camouflage. No one will suspect it’s being used by the enemy.”

  “They’ll see our uniforms. That’ll give it away.”

  “In that case only use it at night.” He looked annoyed. “I can’t think of every damn thing for you, Talley. If you want Iranian uniforms, go and shoot some soldiers. I gather you’re pretty good at that.”

  Talley was about to snap back, but he realized he was tired, too tired. It had been a long night.

  “Okay, we’ll manage with the truck. Did you bring the laptop?”

  “I thought it would be best if I took the hard drive back to my station. I could take a look at it and let you know what I find. It may need some work decrypting the contents.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll just take the laptop.”

  The man pursed his lips. “Don’t trust me, is that it? Listen, Talley, you’re in enough trouble. Just give me the hard drive and I’ll get it analyzed.”

  When Talley didn’t reply, he shook his head, went to the Nissan, and took an aluminum case from the trunk.

  “This is state of the art, and I’d appreciate it back when you’re done. Anika knows how to use it. She seems to have attached herself to you.”

  “Okay, is there anything I need to know? Any special security precautions in place that may make our movements difficult?”

  Petersen gave him a skeptical look. “You mean apart from half the Iranian Army and the Revolutionary Guard hunting down the men who attacked their atomic facility? Not really, no.”

  “Do they know it was us, I mean a NATO unit who was involved?”

  “No, they think it was a combined Israeli air and ground attack.”

  Talley nodded. “Good. We’ll contact you if we need any more help. We have to make a start on that hard drive.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to help you with that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I have to know what you find on it. You will contact me as soon as you know what you have? It’s important I know straight away.”

  “I’ll keep you informed.”

  Why is he so agitated about that hard drive? It’s almost as if he’s worried about something we might find on it. Or is he one of Javeed’s boyfriends?

  Petersen stared at him for a few moments, then called to the Iranian. Ramin turned on his heel and walked back to the Nissan. He drove away in a cloud of dust, disappearing to the south in the direction of Tehran. As Talley watched them, he realized the spook hadn’t spoken to Anika.

  Now that's interesting. They're supposed to be colleagues, both working for MI6. I wonder what the story is behind that?

  “He’s not too happy with me, right now.”

  He looked around. Anika had come up behind him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I haven’t been reporting in as ordered. There are a lot of odd things happening with this operation, Abe. I don’t know who to trust, so I figured it would be best kept to the people putting their necks on the chopping block.”

  “You think he’s selling us out?”

  It wouldn’t be the first time a British spy worked for the people he was supposed to spy on. Ever since the Kim Philby affair, when the MI6 intelligence operative had defected to Moscow during the cold war, there’d been a stream of Brits who’d gone over to the other side.

  “I doubt it, no, but it’s better to be safe rather than sorry. I’ll take the laptop and get started. Heinrich has removed the drive, and inside the laptop case there are a selection of cables to hook it up.”

  “You think you can decrypt it?”

  “The laptop is loaded with the latest decryption software, so it should be possible. I’ll let you know later.”

  “Sure. And thanks.”

  “No problem. I’ll grab Javeed, he knows the passwords they used to protect the drive, and find somewhere quiet to go to work.”

  “How is he holding up?”

  “He’s terrified. He knows there’s no going back, so I guess he’ll want us to get him out of the country when this is all over.”

  He grinned, “I’d like someone to get us out of the country.”

  She smiled back as she walked away.

  He spent some time with Guy, going over their next moves, but it all depended on the hard drive. He arranged for them to sleep in shifts so there’d always be two men on sentry duty. Anika refused to take a break, not until she’d made progress with the emails. So far, she was still locked out of the hard drive, and Javeed’s regular passwords were useless once the machine had been removed from the facility.

  “Apparently, it looks for an administrator password across the network,” she explained. “Until we have it, we can’t read anything.”

  He took the first watch. The sky was a vivid blue as the heat of the sun seared down on the ancient ruins. The only excitement was when Heinrich fired the charge that buried the truck they’d used in the raid. It was now beneath a tumbled pile of rocks that was once part of the inner defensive wall of the palace. A sacrilege, if you were a historian, but a lifesaver for his men. Eventually, he was relieved, and he fell instantly into a deep, dreamless sleep. When he awoke, it was because he’d heard someone talking loud, as if in argument. Anika was nearby, speaking on a satphone. He waited until she’d finished and walked over to her.

  “What’s up?”

  He could see she looked drained with tiredness. Her eyes were red, and her face still bore the smudge marks of the action the night before. She’d obviously been too busy working to clean up.

  “That was Jeffrey. I managed to decrypt the hard drive and pull off some of the emails that looked promising. Javeed told me they’re from someone he only knew as Archer, that’s obviously Arash. This guy kept asking him pointed questions about the logistics of the operation at Amir Abad and the logistics of handling nuclear warheads. When he didn’t like it, the Director overrode him and told him to give this Archer what he wanted. It has to be him, I’ve looked at the emails, and he continually asks for information. It’s all to do with fission warheads and associated trigger mechanism, types of materials, quantities, and so on.

  “That’s not much help,” Talley grunted. “What else?”

  “I lifted the IP address from the emails. Unfortunately, it’s a hard one to trace. I asked Jeffrey Petersen to run it through the Station systems, but he refused point blank.”

  “He what?”

  “He said it was a waste of the department’s resources, and that a search would reveal nothing.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  She shook her head. “No, he’s covering something, but I don’t know what.”

  Yet again, we've hit a wall. Instead of the operation driving forward on the information we extracted from Amir Abad, we're once more at a standstill, waiting for the Iranians to uncover our hiding place, and it won’t take them forever to work it out. They're not total fools. Unless…

  “Petersen, you think he’d sell us out to the Iranians?”

  “No, I don’t believe it. There’s something, some reason for him refusing to
run that IP address, but he brought the truck out to us, remember?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “There must be another way, someone who’ll run that address through their computers.”

  She thought for a few moments. “There is one possibility. A guy I know in London, Adrian Featherstone. We were at Oxford together, and we used to, you know, date. Yes, I’ll try him. Give me a few minutes. What time is it now?”

  He checked his wristwatch. “0925.”

  “Right, that’s just before one o'clock in London. Perfect, I’ll try and get through to Adrian at Vauxhall Cross.”

  He recalled the odd shaped building in the heart of London on the south bank of the River Thames close to Vauxhall Bridge. Known locally as Legoland, or even Babylon on Thames. It was the home of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

  She was away almost twenty minutes on the satphone link, and when she came back, she looked thoughtful.

  “What is it?”

  “There was no problem checking out the IP address. He put it through our experts at GCHQ in Cheltenham, and they got right back to him. The emails were sent from a coffee shop near the Gandhi Center in Tehran, the Café Yusef. Javeed says he knows it quite well, but he wasn’t aware that emails came from there. They have an internet café in the rear, and that’s where the emails were sent from. But it’s the rest of the information Adrian uncovered that worries me. GCHQ, the Government Communication Headquarters, listens to and decrypts message chatter from all over the world. He told me something interesting. They’ve intercepted messages to and from VEVAK, that’s the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. They’re starting to check out all known archaeological sites around Tehran.”

  “So they know about us.”

  “That’s not certain, but they suspect something. They’re sure to come and check this place out.”

  “Shit! We need to get out of here. Any ideas where we can hide out until nightfall?”

  “There’s a derelict industrial estate to the east of Tehran about ten klicks from here. Plenty of empty buildings.”

  “That’ll do.” He stood up. “Guy!”

  A few seconds later, the SAS man appeared. “What is it?”

  “Could be trouble. We’re out of here. Two minutes.”

  “Copy that. I’ll get them moving.”

  They piled into the Naynava truck and headed out. It was a risk driving the military transport in broad daylight. They’d only just turned onto the main highway a few seconds earlier when they saw a military convoy roar past at high speed and take the turn for the ruined palace they’d just abandoned. But they reached their destination without hitting any road blocks and drove into the scarred wasteland that had once been a thriving industrial complex. Talley chose a likely derelict factory, driving into the yard. The gate had been removed at some time in the past, as had much of the buildings, leaving only a ghostly skeleton of rusting steel, clad with broken panels. It turned out to be a disused brick factory, and when they drove inside the main building, there was sufficient cover to hide the vehicle behind the old kilns. Stairs led up to the second floor where they could rest and establish a good OP. They set up the two Minimis with a field of fire that could sweep anyone approaching the building. Vince found a narrow staircase leading up to the roof. Out in the sunshine, there was a rotting platform that had once held a crane. It overlooked the courtyard and several streets beyond, a perfect sniper stand. When he was satisfied, Talley started to work out their next move. Anika, Guy, and Domenico joined him.

  “We have to get to that café and take a snoop around. With any luck, it’ll take us a step nearer to identifying this guy Arash, the Archer.”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult,” Anika said. “We can call a cab and arrange for it to pick us up a couple of blocks from here. I’ll use my satphone.”

  “Not yet, we need to wait until nightfall. Guy, you’d better come into town with us, and we’ll take Buchmann as well. It’ll keep him and Valois apart for a while. Domenico, you’ll be in command while I’m gone, and make sure you all stay out of sight.” They all grinned. Every time the Frenchman and the German were together, there was trouble, and it was getting worse as they came under increasing pressure. Each seemed to blame the other for every misfortune that hit the unit. Domenico nodded emphatically.

  “I’ll take care of things, Abe.”

  “Good.”

  They managed to get some rest while they waited for nightfall. There were no alarms, no patrols, and no unwelcome visitors. It reminded them of just how large Iran was. More than a million and a half square kilometers, a fifth the size of the US, much of it mountainous, and vastly bigger than its neighbor, Iraq; a difficult country to search for fugitives, but also a difficult country in which to fight a war. Talley was reminded of the importance of his operation. If they failed, and invasion became the only way to stop the Iranians getting nuclear weapons, there was the potential for a war that would devastate not only the country itself, but also the military and economies of those combatants who took part. He found a quiet piece of shade in the lee of a stone wall and dozed. Anika soon found him. She looked anxious.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Me?” Her eyes opened in surprise. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  “Something’s on your mind.”

  She grinned wanly, “Not really. It’s not easy, this operation. There’s so much that can go wrong. I just wish, well, if I could, I’d like to do more to help.”

  She took his hand and kissed him softly on the lips. He returned the kiss, and then let her move in close to him so she could use his strength as the illusion of protection. Soon, her breathing became regular, and he knew she was asleep.

  What did that mean? She’d help if she could? What help, and what is stopping her? There's something I don’t understand here, and if I ask, she’ll clam up. What is bugging her?

  Night fell, and they walked over a kilometer from the hideout before Anika called a cab. The company was suspicious being asked to come out to an area they knew to be derelict, but Anika persuaded them that they were surveyors. That, and the offer of double the fare swung it. Twenty minutes later, they were seated in a white Mercedes taxi, speeding toward the center of the city. When they asked for the Café Yusef, the man turned in his seat and gave them a leering smile.

  “If you’re out for a good time, I can find anything you want. Girls, boys, alcohol, drugs, whatever.” He handed Talley a card, “Just call me on my cellphone, and I’ll fix up it up.”

  “That’s okay, buddy. We just want to relax, nothing too exciting.”

  “Then why do you go to the Yusef? It is neither quiet nor relaxing…oh, I see. You are there for the show. I can take you to better places. You wouldn’t believe what they…”

  “Just take us to the Yusef. If we need anything else, we’ll call you.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He lapsed into silence, and they looked at each other. They were beginning to get an idea of what kind of café they were headed to. The doorman stopped them, insisting they each had to pay an entrance fee of a hundred thousand rials, and then they walked into the café. In the strict, Islamic society of Iran, where women could be beaten and even imprisoned for not wearing a headscarf, where men and women could be stoned to death or hung from a crane for adultery, the Café Yusef turned the rules on their head. Put simply, it was a nightclub where the theme was sexual debauchery. They stared around in astonishment.

  “This place is fucking depraved,” Guy said in wonderment. “Look at them!”

  Men and women in all stages of undress haunted dimly lit booths, where little was left to the imagination. It was obvious that in the darker corners, the patrons had no inhibitions about performing the sex act in a public place. It stank, of perfume, musk, stale booze, and sex. But the worst part was the young people serving the booze. There was clearly no age limit, and many looked to be no more than twelve years old, a couple of them even younger. They were all toples
s, girls and boys.

  “It could explain why Jeffrey Petersen didn’t want to identify the place,” Anika breathed. “It’s obvious he’s a customer. If his bosses found out, he’d be sent home in disgrace.”

  “You’re sure he’s a customer?” Talley looked at her in surprise. “It doesn’t seem like him.”

  “Hmm. He has a reputation in the Tehran Station. Some of them say he’s a pervert. I’ve never believed it, but now I’m not so sure.”

  They avoided a boy who could have been no older than twelve and was trying to get them to buy him drinks. Anika led them through to a back room where the walls were lined with computers rather than copulating couples. The music was quieter, and the atmosphere cleaner. A couple of men were tapping at keyboards. The place was almost deserted. Inside a booth set just inside the door, a sad-eyed young Arab boy waited for them to rent one of the machines.

  “Guy, wait here and cover us. Make sure no one comes in.”

  “Copy that.”

  He drew his pistol from under his shirt, holding it low down at his side.

  “Heinrich, the two guys using the PCs. Get them down on the floor. Make sure they don’t contact anyone, and tell them to keep quiet. You’d better take their cellphones.”

  The German nodded, his disgust with the place evident. “With pleasure.”

  “Anika, I want you to translate. Let’s have a quiet chat with our friend in the booth, see if he’s amenable to helping us.”

  He eased out his Sig, kept it out of sight, and pushed through the half-height door that led into the booth. The Arab looked at him, at first startled, and then his face turned to anger.

  “You cannot come in here. This is for staff only. You must leave.”

  “Yeah, sure. Son, I want you to help us with a problem we have.”

  “I will call security, and you will be thrown out! Now get out of here.”

  His hand snaked toward a telephone, and Talley smashed the barrel of his Sig on boy’s wrist. He yelped in pain.

  “Now listen to me, pal. We only want a peek at your system, that’s all. You cooperate, and you won’t be hurt. If not…” He looked into the room where Buchmann had the two customers face down on the floor. “You can join them. And that man, he’s a killer. Hates Arabs.”