by D S Kane
We have run out of time. Either you accept the last offer we made or we’ll go with one of your competitors with whom we’re also negotiating. Reply required no later than 4:30 p.m. today.
The competitor she referred to was the company she had broken into in Hong Kong. She didn’t want to offer them the job. But if Stillwater didn’t agree to her terms, she’d start a new negotiation with them.
She pressed the Send key with a grin of bitter determination, and checked her website for a response every five minutes. Less than fifteen minutes passed before they sent their begrudging acceptance.
“Finally!”
Tariq sat stewing in the shade of the mountain cliffs outside the tunnel entrance. He picked up the call to his satellite phone on the third ring. In eastern Afghanistan, normal cell phone service was nonexistent. It was burning hot, and though it was dry, perspiration dripped down his neck. He’d been working eighteen hours a day or more. It had been three weeks since his last bath, but he was used to the overpowering stench of his body. Tariq could hear Pesi’s fear-tinged words, and wondered how bad his younger brother had screwed it up this time.
“Tariq, uh, I’m in a small Lebanese restaurant in downtown Riyadh, uh, reporting status, both good and bad.” He heard Pesi’s rush to get the words out. “We haven’t found either Sashakovich or Ainsley. Both disappeared on the same day. They have not used cell phones since.”
He stifled a curse thinking of Pesi’s failure to apprehend Sashakovich. “You’ve been trying to find her for months. We’re out of time. We must know what she knows before we mount our plan. Send an urgent immediate message to our mole at the agency. Threaten the mole. Use the mole’s family as leverage. Unless the mole can deliver Sashakovich to us within two weeks, we’ll do to the entire family what we were going to do to the bitch.”
Tariq thought for a second. His brother had mentioned good news. “What is the other news? You have ‘good’ news?”
“Our other project is proceeding on schedule. Sultan Raman left last night with eight mujahidin. Their truck is on a ship nearing the Suez at this moment. In two weeks the ship will reach Toronto. So even if we don’t find her until then, our plan can still work. Each of the three other trucks is either now in transit or will be by tomorrow evening. The pieces shipped by airplane are being packed today for the three commercial aircraft to take them to destinations within the United States. And those parts to be taken into the United States by their own military aircraft are now in our inventory. These will go out last to the safe house in Trenton, in about a week.”
Tariq thought, finally, my brother did something right.
But they couldn’t proceed until they knew what she knew. Tariq pictured her body, slowly bleeding out and mounted against the bed frame, the broom handle lodged deep within her. The thought sent a thrill through him. He rewarded Pesi with the barest of praise: “Salaam, brother. Track these shipments closely.”
The mole sat in the basement at one of the secure terminals in the headquarters building of Gilbert Greenfield’s unnamed intelligence agency on K Street, reading the email for the third time. The mole shuddered. How could this happen? Once again the Houmaz hoodlums are threatening my entire family. The mole had done “off the wire” projects. Operations without agency knowledge. And now there were no good choices left. Where was Ainsley or Sashakovich? The mole couldn’t reassign agency resources to locate them since they were probably within the borders of the United States. If the mole was caught, a prison sentence was likely even before the Houmaz bunch came to murder the mole’s family.
The bureaucrat the mole reported to was starting to wonder what the mole was up to. To keep from giving more clues, the mole would have to go outside the agency for this project’s staff, and any help would have to be paid in cash. Another “off the wire” project. And if anyone sniffed this out, the mole would be toast.
Who at the agency was poor enough yet bright enough to coordinate the project? The mole would need to take out a second mortgage to pay for this.
The mole’s head fell in despair, torn between being forced to act with reckless speed without a plan, and the need to focus, to create the plan.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Seven
August 20, 9:23 a.m.
Fort Hunter Liggett, near Camp Roberts, Big Sur, California
Adam Mahee pushed up his thick glasses. He held a cell phone containing a microSD card attached to a small beachball antenna. Only five-foot-six, Mahee had been a corporal during Viet Nam. And like many of the other African Americans he’d served with, being smart had helped him survive in an army that—years ago—hadn’t offered blacks equal opportunity. “Uh, it seems to work, though I haven’t tested it except very briefly this morning. So far, it doesn’t cause the cell phone to crash and it transmits across the room quite well.” He handed it to Cassie.
She looked at the unit. “Adam, does this work if they actively try jamming?”
His eyes focused on some distant spot inside him. “Theoretically, you can’t jam this GNU radio the way it’s installed.”
“What do you mean by ‘theoretically’? Our lives will depend on this. If it doesn’t work, we’ll never be able to complete the first operation and still be able to surprise them at the second op. So tell me, why are you sure this will work?”
His eyes seemed to become unfocused as he stared at the unit he held in his hands. He spoke swiftly. “What Stillwater did was build an enhanced USRP with analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog, up-and-down converters, coupled to a low-noise filter within a modified Xilinx Vertex Floating Point Gate Array. It’s a smart design. They connect on one side to a sixty-four-gigabyte microSD card hooking into the cell phone and on the other side to an embedded micro-beachball antenna. The custom-built card has enough memory to hold all the programs and communications functions.”
“It has a what?”
Seeing Cassie’s confusion, Mahee smiled. “I’ve never seen anything this well designed. It’ll work reliably in open sky.”
He placed the unit on the coffee table and waved his hands to punctuate his words. “In reality, of course it is still possible to jam us, and the agency knows how and has the equipment to do it. But your garden-variety Muslim extremists just don’t know how as yet. Of course, there are other factors that could render this setup ineffective. The canyon landscape might wreak havoc with communications, for example.”
He pointed to the larger unit. “And it won’t work at all inside the cave tunnels. There the mercs will need to drop landlines behind them like bread crumbs. Remember what we wanted this for was an untraceable version of a satellite phone to connect Riyadh and Afghanistan. For the specific assignment you have, it’s not just a good choice. It’s the only choice.”
She thought for a few seconds. “Uh, right. Well, you need to test this setup. As we find situations where it fails, I’ll ask you to find and fix the problems. As we agreed, your payment will be ownership of all the patents and copyrights with the only outstanding agreement being Stillwater’s nonexclusive resale license, and even there you’ll receive commissions.”
“Okay.” His eyes bulged, excited. “You don’t have to sell me. I’ll be dressed for the desert in ten minutes. Get me ten field grunts with GNU radio-equipped cell phones, satphones, and one micro-beachball server antenna, and I’ll get started.”
The mole thought that Bob Gault looked like the kind of middle-aged man who sold used cars: pear-shaped body, greasy hair, with a sleazy-looking leer. No wonder the man was a confirmed bachelor, married once for less than a year. Women must run in the opposite direction as fast as they could. But the man had his uses. No one who spent any time with him ever suspected he was a covert ops manager.
The mole reviewed the man’s dossier to ensure that the best person for the assignment had been selected. The file stated Gault was in his late forties and had run hundreds of ops, always posing as the “coach,” working from the outside in. Bob never had to earn
anyone’s trust but still managed to get people to give him what he wanted. The mole’s last review included a comment that manipulating people was his single prime skill in operations. Gault always posed as the friend with worldly experience.
The mole met with him for less than three minutes, telling him, “This operation will be ‘off the wire.’ I need to know the location of one former NOC operative and one missing director at the agency. If I get the intelligence I require, Bob, I’ll have you short-listed for promotion.”
As the mole described the assignment, Gault realized he had no option but to take it. The mole had made sure sure Gault knew that this was a private contract. If he declined the assignment it would ensure a bad and early end to his career. “This isn’t going to be easy,” Gault said.
The mole handed him a folder. “That may be, but it’s still the job. Here’s the intel. Read it and leave it. The two targets could be anywhere. They may be traveling together or separately. There isn’t any evidence they’ve had any more than a casual passing knowledge of one another. Sashakovich seems to have morphed into a master of disguise. Since her dismissal from the agency, she’s also become a model hacker. That development isn’t really a surprise. We know she’s bright. If the two are traveling together, they’ll be especially hard to track.”
Gault knew this was true. It would be harder to find them than finding a stealth bomber using World War Two radar. But if this was so important, how come funding was so tight? And why so clandestine?
Gault shrugged to himself. He needed to create a plan for the assignment as soon as possible. As he left the mole’s office he wondered how he could succeed.
The mole had given him only three days to complete the task. Gault shook his head. It would be tough. He took the elevator up to the agency library. He loved this room’s wood paneling, so soothing, and the maps of every trouble spot, glowing within large LCD screens.
He stopped at the snack dispenser and fed it money, taking candy bars, potato chips, and breath mints, stashing them into the pockets of his suit jacket. He bought a cup of imitation latte as well, and made it to a library cubicle without spilling the hot liquid. His favorite cubicle was secluded within the northwest corner of the building. But it was occupied. He searched for one far away from those that contained other agency employees. This one was “need to know.”
Gault found a quiet, private space. He sat down, spread the consumables across the desk and thought about this assignment he’d code-named “Shit Bag.” He took a sip of his latte and scratched his head. Where were they? How could he even determine that? Was anyone helping them that could lead him to them?
He left the cubicle and walked to one of the large mounted wall maps, this one depicting the world. He traced his finger along several areas, including the Middle East and the east coast of the United States. No ideas came to him.
Back at his cubicle, he sat and bit into an almond nougat bar, chewing until he reached its creamy sweet interior. The coffee complemented the feeling in his heart, bitter and hot.
This was a low-probability search. He cursed his fates. Soon he might be out of a job.
He wondered, where would I go if dangerous people were hunting me?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
August 21, 6:43 p.m.
Highlands Inn, Carmel Highlands, California
From their table in the dining room of the Pacific’s Edge restaurant, Cassie watched the sun reflect on the ocean waves as they pounded the rocks directly below them. The food she’d ordered emitted wonderful aromas. She used a hand to wave their essence into her nostrils. She’d been hungry when they arrived, and her lobster bisque and duck breast in a raspberry sauce were just the right touch on the sweet side, and delectable.
She was aware that Lee and she had each put on at least five pounds in under three weeks. There was no exercise room at the hotel. The paths up and down stairs were too busy to use them for exercise. And even the heated swimming pool wasn’t keeping weight off them. They spent over $5,000 per week at the hotel, paid for courtesy of the funds she’d stolen from Muslim extremists. And since those funds had originally come from the United States government, Cassie felt they were her separation pay.
Lee was speaking about his parents’ many visits to the area, but she hardly heard him, relishing the flavors of the meal, her mouth slowly chewing. Lee remarked that his knowledge of California mirrored her own. She smiled when he said, “The Highlands Inn is one of the best hotels in America, hands down.”
She gazed from their table overlooking the Pacific Ocean cliffs. She’d always had a weakness for luxury hotels—the perfumed soaps, jetted bathtubs, plush terrycloth robes—and now she could afford the best. She hoped their forged identity documents would keep them safe.
He said something else, but she wasn’t listening. His expression bore concern, as if he’d read her mind. “We’ll need to keep checking out and then back in so no one gets suspicious of us. But maybe the best way to do this is for you to just hack into the registration desk’s computer and keep switching the identities we use at the hotel. Okay?”
Lee could see the happiness in her face and stopped complaining.
His cell phone vibrated with an incoming email. Intoxicated from having emptied a rare bottle of Pavona Pinot Noir Reserve 2009 at dinner, he read Major Shimmel’s message twice to ensure that he understood its implications. Shimmel had proposed twenty new tactical moves and each could be combined in over seventy-five sets into unique strategies, every one having a different and descriptive code-name. Each one counteracted some specific problem, such as lack of information about enemy forces, fighting against sudden flanking forces, or bad weather. Lee had been overwhelmed by the simplicity of the approach. Here was something that he could finally be happy about.
Ainsley had never seen anything like it and thought it mirrored the organization of a football playbook. He approved of Shimmel’s approach. It exceeded his expectations by a wide margin. He thought for a few seconds while Cassie finished her crème brûlée.
Lee keyed a reply into his cell phone and hit the Send key:
Thanks and congratulations, Major. Consider accepting my offer of promotion to General-in-Charge of Swiftshadow Consulting Group, with total responsibility for all of military operations. This position is not a merc assignment. I plan it to be a full-time board-level, Director-level position in our new company. If you agree, please reply. I’d like to meet with you in person to discuss our offer.
He terminated the email transmission and pocketed the cell. Then he touched Cassie’s cheek and turned her head to watch the sunset, dead center above the rocky Carmel Highlands shoreline.
They strolled to the bar for drinks and then headed back to their room for the evening. She turned on the faucet to their Jacuzzi tub, stripped off her clothing, and splashed into the hot water.
Shimmel’s reply came back twenty minutes later, as Lee sat in a plush chair in their room:
I’ll accept under these conditions. First, my primary interest is wholesale slaughter of Muslim extremists. Don’t waste my time with corporate intrigue or simple drug cartels. Second, when you can’t occupy me with my heart’s delight, I must be free to accept assignments from those who can supply me (on a temporary basis). Third, I will have a vote at board of directors’ meetings to ensure Swiftshadow maintains a direction that continues to please me. Should you agree, please reply.
Lee knew he’d need Cassie’s approval for any change in Swiftshadow Consulting. After all, she’d created it. He undressed and entered the Jacuzzi tub at the opposite side from her. “Whoa, that’s hot.” He thought about how best to present his proposal for Shimmel’s involvement. Her eyes opened as he sat there.
He’d never been in a jetted tub with her before.
Her brows rose. “Well? What’s up?”
He could see the focused expression on her face, her naked body deep within the tub. “Why does there have to be something up?”
She swung her
foot, her toes batting his penis. “No games, Lee. Just tell me.”
“Sheesh. Okay. Well, see, I’d like to promote Shimmel to general, on a full-time basis with Swiftshadow Consulting Group. Give him stock and a board seat.”
“You want to what?”
Lee shrunk as far away as he could, into a tiny corner of the tub. He reached outside its lip and handed her the paper copy of the email he’d printed and placed there for this exact moment. “Cassie, the deal he proposed is quite reasonable. The only question is, if we live through this, what do we do for the rest of our lives? Will we run a real consulting company or is this just a self-defense vendetta?”
She took a deep sigh. She didn’t want to admit it, but if they survived this, there was always the issue of what she and Lee would do for the remainder of their lives. “Okay. You’re right. I’ll meet with him as soon as you can arrange it. As for the future, should we survive this, yes, I want there to be a Swiftshadow Consulting Group, so I suppose we’ll need a corporate organization and a board of directors.”
She frowned. “Next time, though, I’d appreciate your discussing with me in advance what you intend with my creations. This wasn’t fair.”
Lee grinned back. “Okay, then.”
It took over two hours the next day for Avram Shimmel to drive forty miles from the bivouac near Camp Roberts, down the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road to Highway One, then north up the highway to the Carmel Highlands.
As he entered their hotel suite, he saw her watching him, taking stock of him, and hoped what she saw was a bright man, walking stiff, aged beyond his years, six-foot-seven-inches tall, huge in every way. But he wondered if she caught the darkness behind his eyes, as if he were haunted.
Before he sat, he introduced himself, shook Lee’s hand, and kissed the top of Cassie’s wrist. “Lieutenant Ainsley offered me a generous proposal, and I’m quite inclined to accept.” With an Israeli accent, he pronounced the word, “left-tenant.” “I’ve met with the lieutenant several times and I’m sure he’s read my dossier. But I believe meeting you face-to-face is essential, Ms. Sashakovich. Before we discuss his offer, I want us to come to an understanding.”
