The Enemies of My Country

by Jason Kasper

  “Cancer, good canopy.”

  Ian was next. “Angel, good canopy.”

  Then Reilly. “Doc, good canopy.”

  Worthy was last, his transmission revealing why I’d sighted three parachutes instead of four.

  “Racegun, good canopy, but I had a thousand-foot streamer.”

  Looking down, I located his parachute far below as the result of a prolonged opening. He was already circling to enter the landing pattern.

  I said, “Good copy, Racegun. Lead us in.”

  We flew into our slots to make a tight canopy formation, then shut off our blinking infrared strobes—while we didn’t anticipate any observation out here period, much less by enemy scanning with night vision, there was no need to take any chances.

  I ended up in the high position, watching Worthy enter the downwind leg of our landing pattern, passing a thousand feet over our landing area.

  Then he turned ninety degrees to the base leg of his pattern, with the next man following in short order. By the time I initiated my own approach, Worthy had already turned to the final leg of his landing.

  I watched him touch down lightly and pull his canopy to the ground as I reached 750 feet above ground level and carved a turn. A second man alighted a few meters away from Reilly, and a third was drifting toward the far edge of our landing area—Ian, no doubt.

  Braking to maintain separation from the canopy to my front, I followed it through our final turn. Then I was facing into the wind, watching two men gathering their now-collapsed parachutes on the ground while a third did the same from a distance of fifty meters. Reaching down to grasp a fabric quick release handle, I yanked it from its housing and felt my rucksack fall free, tugging at my parachute harness a moment later as it dangled from an eight-foot lowering line.

  The man in front of me touched down near the first two team members.

  By then I was about two hundred feet off the ground, letting my canopy accelerate to full flight in order to build airspeed. At fifteen feet over the desert I pulled both toggles down to flare, hearing the whistle of wind against my face quiet as the sand rose up to meet me, and the thump of my rucksack making landfall resonating from the end of its lowering line.

  Then my boots hit the ground, and I staggered to a standing position before grabbing a parachute riser to pull my canopy to the dirt.

  “Suicide good,” I transmitted. “Any injuries?”

  I listened to my team check in, huffing breaths as they conducted the post-jump sequence: putting weapons into operation, stripping off the parachute harness, bagging canopies in preparation to cache them before we conducted our foot march to the objective.

  “Cancer good.”

  “Angel good.”

  “Doc good.”

  Worthy was last, his transmission confirming a successful infiltration.

  “Racegun good. Looks like we all made it here in one piece, boys. Let’s go get him.”

  8

  Angling his rifle upward, Worthy took his final measured steps to the rocky crest above him. Through his night vision, the sky was a dazzling green starscape flecked with innumerable points of light.

  But his attention was focused on the ridge he approached at a crouch, and once he reached the top, Worthy took a knee to scan the landscape beyond.

  The ground to his front fell away in a gentle slope, the buildings of the small village pooled among the landscape’s curves and sliced by a single dirt road. He recognized the scene at once, and not just from his review of satellite imagery—this was the same village they’d fought in to kill Bari Khan, and the last time he’d seen that road, his team was speeding west to their exfiltration point.

  Worthy scanned for immediate threats: observation posts, stray vehicles, figures strolling the periphery of the village.

  But he saw no movement as a gentle dusty breeze crossed his sweaty face. He could hear a dog barking somewhere in the village, see a few exterior lights and illuminated windows among the buildings below him.

  Slipping the shoulder strap of his ruck off one arm, Worthy rolled sideways to remove it and then assumed a prone position to continue watching for anything out of the ordinary. As point man, that was his responsibility as much as leading his team to their objective, and Worthy knew that the other four men would remain stationary behind him until he was satisfied.

  After caching their parachute equipment near the landing zone, they’d made a swift four-kilometer foot movement across largely flat ground. It had been an easy hike; with the adrenaline from the jump, they probably could have covered twice that distance without breaking stride.

  Scanning the outskirts of the village, Worthy located their target building: a squat one-story warehouse, the rear door closed and unlit. He knew from their mission planning that the opposite side held two rolling doors and a second pedestrian entrance—Duchess’s sole intelligence asset in the area had done some daylight drives past the building, texting blurry cell phone snapshots of the building exterior to his Agency handler.

  Satellite imagery and high-altitude drone passes had likewise revealed no notable enemy presence or fortifications outside the building. Bari Khan was lying low, having successfully evaded detection until an NSA algorithm had picked up his voice on intercepted cell communications from a new phone. Duchess had pinpointed his location using a range of intelligence assets at her disposal, placing him at this building beyond any reasonable doubt—at least, they hoped.

  Speaking quietly, Worthy transmitted, “I’ve got eyes-on the target building. No movement in the village.”

  David replied, “Stand by, I’m coming up to take a look.”

  Worthy keyed his radio twice, indicating that he’d received the transmission, and continued watching the village. Now that he’d established visual of the target area, he had to maintain it—the slightest distraction could cause him to miss some critical change in the situation, and that wasn’t going to happen on his watch.

  The rifle in his grasp was an HK416, the smaller, 5.56mm version of the weapon his team had carried on their previous incursion into Syria. The lighter bullets were a tradeoff in range and velocity, but the 416s fired much more quietly with a suppressor, allowed the team to carry more ammo—a key consideration given they’d had to jump in all their equipment—and allowed for faster shooting in the tight confines the team was about to enter in their hunt for Bari Khan.

  He heard footfalls whispering up the rocky slope behind him, and then David crouched beside him, setting down his rucksack and slipping into the prone at whispering distance.

  Worthy said nothing, allowing David a chance to take in the scene while the remaining three men maintained rear and flank security.

  After thirty seconds of silence, David whispered, “Looks good.”

  “Yeah,” Worthy agreed, trying to sound assured.

  But David picked up on something in his tone. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  And while that was true, at least in the tactical sense, Worthy had his own reservations about this mission—namely, what was Bari Khan still doing here?

  It didn’t make any sense. After nearly being killed in the canyon, then being recovered from the village, returning to the area should have been the last thing he’d ever do. The fact that BK had done exactly that was deeply troubling to Worthy, who in his previous career had been privy to more mercenary assassinations than he cared to admit. When an attempt on someone’s life failed and they fled the area, they stayed gone. But Bari Khan had done the opposite, and the fact that he wasn’t an Arab at all, but a Chinese dissident who’d mysteriously appeared in Syria only for ISIS to roll out the red carpet, made this discrepancy all the more unsettling.

  But no one on his team seemed terribly concerned about it besides, perhaps, Ian. The others were simply happy that their target had surfaced again, glad they’d have a chance to finish the job before Bari Khan achieved sufficient notoriety via a body count of innocent civilians.


  Which, Worthy supposed, was noble enough—he just hoped his nagging gut suspicion was wrong.

  David said, “Worthy, this isn’t the time to hold back. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “It’s nothing,” Worthy responded. “Just the fact that BK came back here after what happened, is all.”

  “It’s weird, I agree. But keep in mind that by definition, terrorists aren’t always rational actors.”

  Worthy considered a response, but before he could reply, David keyed his radio and transmitted to the team.

  “Cancer, bring everyone up to my location. We’re proceeding to our objective rally point.”

  9

  CIA Headquarters

  Special Activities Center, Operations Center F2

  Duchess looked across the large room, surveying her kingdom with the full court present for the mission ahead.

  The operations center was known in shorthand parlance as an OPCEN, the center of the universe for a raid-in-progress. It looked like a small movie theater more than anything else, with a few key exceptions.

  Instead of a single screen, there were several—a large central monitor surrounded by smaller flatscreens, each broadcasting black-and-white surveillance footage from various aircraft and unmanned platforms. The largest screen was committed to broadcasting the main act, the feed from an Agency UAV, offset from the objective as it angled its camera toward a low crest adjacent to the target building. Descending from the crest were five tiny, shadowy figures that advanced with their rifles raised.

  And instead of spectator seating, the ascending floor tiers around the screens were lined with desks and workstations, staffed by the myriad support personnel involved. At the front, paradoxically, were the least important personnel: the LNOs, or liaison officers, who existed to provide the CIA with a personal link to the many organizations capable of supporting the current effort.

  Duchess’s gaze flitted to them in sequence, their ranks representing ties to the Joint Special Operations Command, United States Special Operations Command, Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, among others. Her LNOs had a difficult job, as nearly all of their partner organizations were denied information until the very second their assistance was required, at which time the liaison would leverage—and very possibly, at the same time burn—a long-held professional contact required to administer support.

  Then she glanced to the higher tiers, both literally and metaphorically. These were the main staff shop representatives, each corresponding with their military equivalents. J1, joint personnel. They possessed the name, next-of-kin information, and pay status of everyone involved at the immediate and peripheral levels. If an Agency operator got shot in the face in the next six minutes, the S1 staff would have a car arriving at the parents’ or wife’s doorstep in a matter of hours, quietly explaining how their beloved had just perished in a training accident.

  Then there was the J2, or joint intelligence. These fine representatives were wired into every Agency asset at all levels of intelligence whether HUMINT—human source, ELINT—electronic, SIGNINT—signals, or COMMINT—communications. Their real-time analysis would be critical unless everything went according to plan, which it very rarely did.

  Next up was J3, joint operations. Their personnel held a direct link not only to the operational assets required to execute the mission—the local driver serving as her team’s primary exfiltration method came immediately to mind—but also to military and other governmental agency assets at every level of the chain of command, up to and including Duchess’s direct representatives in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

  Beyond them was the J4 section, made up of supply personnel who could administer emergency airdrops for resupply, as well as the J6 staff, who maintained communications with the ground team and everyone they’d need to speak with in order to accomplish their mission. Which, at present, consisted primarily of Duchess herself.

  Which was why, she knew, the concentric arrangement of desks was set up in increasing order of importance relative to their shouting distance from her. She presided like a judge at the highest point in the rear of the room, a throne from which she wielded the ultimate authority as far as this operation was concerned.

  But since the outset of the Agency’s targeted killing program, Duchess had to share her workstation with a second chair, one that held almost as much power as her own—and that seat was filled by Jo Ann’s tall and bulky frame.

  Jo Ann chose that moment to speak, her Northern accent ringing out with particularly choice words to commemorate the occasion.

  “This never gets old, does it?” she said. “Watching our shooters terrorize the terrorists.”

  Duchess sucked her teeth, considering that Jo Ann had never actually been in the field. She replied, “‘The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.’”

  “Isn’t it a little early in the day to be quoting Shakespeare?”

  “Marcus Aurelius,” Duchess corrected her, looking over to see Jo Ann appearing lost in thought watching the screens, as if she hadn’t heard at all. She was methodically spinning her class ring around one finger, the garnet stone glinting as it turned toward the light.

  Duchess sighed.

  How a farmgirl from the Midwest had managed to choose the US Naval Academy was beyond her, but Jo Ann had done just that to begin a military intelligence career that had taken her to the staff offices of SEAL Team Six. Then she’d had a staff slot at the Joint Special Operations Command as the Intelligence Chief for Current Operations, overseeing operations from the Fort Bragg OPCEN that served as ground zero for every high-profile US military special operations raid in the world.

  Her entire career progression defied logic—intelligence people were virtually second-class citizens in the Navy, with little influence over their career paths. They were considered lucky to get a single two-year tour with special operations. To make it to the Tier One level followed by a stint at JSOC implied some heavy-hitting personal connections that Jo Ann seemed outrageously incapable of establishing much less maintaining.

  And as if that weren’t enough, once her JSOC assignment was done, Jo Ann had been handpicked—not by Duchess, of course—to serve as the head military liaison to the CIA for Project Longwing, the codename for the upstart targeted killing program that was entering its third mission execution without a single dead target to show for it.

  Yet even as Duchess chafed at the presence of military oversight by Commander Jo Ann Brown, she had to admit the Navy officer had not just stood her ground on the matter of arguing against a drone strike, but also delivered the C-17 support for a HALO infiltration of her shooters. For the time being, that put her in Duchess’s good graces.

  The UAV representative called out, “Ma’am, we’re about to lose coverage if I don’t bring it closer.”

  Jo Ann was shaking her head before Duchess could get the words out.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said. “Turn it around, but don’t break the lateral boundary—we are not risking audible.”

  Duchess tapped her chin in momentary disbelief. The UAV community seemed to think their low-altitude drones were much quieter than they actually were, and the last thing she needed was for the faint buzzing noise to alert the quarry, causing him to flee their grasp a second time.

  The UAV rep nodded, turning back to his workstation without a moment’s hesitation. No one contradicted the OPCEN chief, who required instant compliance lest the mission devolve into chaos at the first complication.

  But Duchess knew that her authority, while considerable, was relative rather than absolute.

  That latter distinction belonged not to Duchess or Jo Ann but to one Thomas Gossweiler, the aging but very powerful senator chairing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In addition to mandating the checks-and-balances arrangement of Jo Ann’s presence, his current position allowed him a few abilities that served as a potential hindrance to her. Namely, he could invite himself to
Agency ops provided they occurred while he was not in session, a technicality that she was currently circumventing by virtue of timing the assault with his weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Of secondary importance was his ability to impact her career or, worse yet, funding for special programs.

  It wasn’t that the senator was an insurmountable obstacle. The real problem, Duchess thought, was that Gossweiler wasn’t stupid. Her ability to tap dance around the fringes of logic while pushing for a necessary tactical end was extremely limited with him, and for all the fervor with which he extolled his faith in Jesus and forgiveness, he was remarkably shortsighted with Agency leeway during the conduct of paramilitary operations.

  Beside her, Jo Ann said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About why BK would return to the area, based on what you saw in Yemen.”

  Duchess canted her head to the side, curious about what conclusions her colleague would have reached in that regard.

  “And?”

  Jo Ann said, “He’s tethered. There’s something in that area he can’t leave behind without forsaking his purpose. Some cargo, something he can’t function without. Was that the case in Yemen?”

  “That’s right,” Duchess said, mildly impressed. “It was a cargo that the terrorist wasn’t willing to abandon.”

  “So, what was it?”

  Duchess swallowed, feeling her face go slack.

  “A bomb.”

  Then the J2 turned toward her, relaying information from a man in headphones beside him—a native Arabic speaker, kept on hand for just this eventuality.

  “BK just activated his phone; looks like he’s making a call.”

  Before she could reply, David spoke over the radio intercom.

  “Raptor Nine One, this is Suicide Actual. No movement on the objective, target phone location has been confirmed with ground scan. Request clearance for early execution.”

  Duchess replied first to the J2.

  “Record full transcript for the duration.” BK’s call was about to get cut short, she thought as she lifted the hand mic and transmitted, “Suicide Actual, be advised target is using his phone at this time—he may have received early warning and be preparing to squirt. You are clear to execute.”