by D S Kane
“Gil, I want this taken care of before I leave office in January.” The man’s anger was audible.
Greenfield winced. There were three things of which he was certain. The first was that if they attempted the executions after the President left office it was virtually certain there’s be a leak. So the black op must be done before mid-January. The second was that—given the Ben-Levy leaks—the Congressional oversight committee would appoint a special prosecutor within days. Even riskier to run executions from an impeachment hearing. And the third point was that Sashakovich seemed to be a champion at evading death. If Navy SEALs couldn’t do it, how could it be done at all?
He tried to ignore the bad taste in his mouth.
Chapter Thirty-Two
November 4, 1:56 p.m.
Agency headquarters building, K Street, Washington, DC
Mark McDougal sat at his desk, staring out the window at a gray sky blowing rain in a sudden storm. Clouds moved toward the agency’s headquarters. Hail rattled the windows, falling on startled people, most without umbrellas, trotting down the street or huddled under overhangs of buildings.
He was caught in a tempest of emotions and indecision, torn between telling Gilbert Greenfield, the agency’s director in chief what he’d done with Achmed Houmaz or just keeping quiet.
So much of the information Sashakovich had blackmailed them with had already found its way into the newspapers. Soon they’d all be in prison cells, or possibly even executed for treason. But if he did tell them, they’d want him dead as well. Achmed Houmaz had threatened him, just as his brothers had done the year before this. And Mark McDougal had done what he hoped would best protect his wife and son.
Either way he was fucked. Sashakovich told him when they last met that if he didn’t perform to her specs she’d have his wife and son assassinated along with him, but that she’d have him done last.
He’d pondered this for over two weeks while he watched the drama unfold in Maui, eventually making its way to the major television stations and cable news networks.
Was she now dead? He hoped she was. If she’d somehow escaped Hawaii and simply disappeared, McDougal was certain she’d somehow return wanting vengeance. He prayed she’d not survived her Maui vacation.
He was in a foul mood when the phone on his desk began to buzz. The display on the receiver blinked “Unknown Caller.” Someone he hadn’t coded into his address book. A rare event.
Cautiously, he drew the receiver from its cradle. “McDougal.”
“It’s Sashakovich. And you know you’re going to die soon. This isn’t a threat. Count the days and enjoy each breath. And also know that your wife and son will die before you do. That is, unless you can convince me that I can still make good use of you, which isn’t very likely. Start by telling me why you did it.”
McDougal sighed. He wondered how she’d discovered everything. “Achmed Houmaz threatened me, my wife, and my son. Why should I also react to your threat? If I aid either of you, then whoever kills the other will still kill me and mine.”
“I understand, but I owned you first. You could have told me and I might have been able to protect you. But you didn’t rely on me. Shame on you. Now I’ll have you broiled to ashes. Whether I live or die, we’re not finished yet. If I survive, I’ll make you a sorry man. If I die, I just won’t be there to watch you die. But die you will. When Houmaz calls you next, consider your fate. Figure out some way to get me out of this, Mark.” The line went dead.
Both subs headed toward Punta Arenas, the southern tip of Chile, making good time. Traveling silent, deep, and fast under the sea during daytime and slowly on the surface while recharging the ancient batteries at night.
Shimmel thought it unlikely they’d been detected, even by the intelligence agencies. As they neared their closest objective he realized it might take another week at most before the subs would close the distance to the United States and, once again, be in the teeth of the storm. He’d completed planning the two missions. He’d selected two teams. One consisted of mercenaries intimately familiar with the Middle East and knowledgeable about undetectable poisons, and the other consisted of mercs who were specialists in combat, including a sniper and a few who could pass for Japanese and spoke the language.
The Middle Eastern team would go in under cover as management consultants for Brewster Jennings, the economic consulting firm that had been Cassie’s cover during her years working as a NOC—non-official cover—at the agency. Their goal was to make the death of Achmed Houmaz look like an accident. This mission looked easier than Shimmel expected it to be, since he suspected that if they were caught, their beheading deaths at the hands of Saudi justice would follow after torture, slow and cruel. With all the mercenaries aware of this, they might be anxious, and the tension they felt would increase the probability of mission failure.
The Japanese team would use OPEC as its cover. This, on the face of it, was a much more dangerous operation because there was no one at OPEC to corroborate their identities and especially since Yakuza were trained killers. There was no way Shimmel could think of to make Maru’s death look like an accident, so instead he’d have this team leave evidence that could shift the blame to Houmaz. Not easy, but he’d thought hard and finally formed a plan.
The trick for the Japanese team would be to conceal their cover identities until they’d lured Maru out. Then, they’d use the sniper to terminate him. The team would leave traces of OPEC’s guilt as they left after completing Maru’s assassination.
The overall intention was to draw the Yakuza and OPEC into fighting a war neither could win.
As the plans for both missions were completed and the missions staffed, Cassie canceled her bets against the assassinations of Phillip Watson and Achmed Houmaz.
Shimmel finished making notes on his planning pad. He held his head in his hands and took a deep breath. It was time to act. The game had escalated from dollars to flesh. The name of this new contest was “You Bet Your Life.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
November 4, 11:55 p.m.
Twelve miles off the Coast of Buenos Aires
As the mercenaries checked their gear for the final time, General Avram Shimmel used his cell to research tides and winds off the western coast of South America. He found that, in the turn of the seasons, the winds often rise up off the coast, especially at night, blowing hard toward shore. At midnight the hot humid air softened and a strong breeze gusted cool over the conning tower of the relic submarine where he stood.
He raised a finger to measure the gusts, coming at about fifteen knots steady and peaking at twenty, good for the team that would guide the rafts. He looked over at the other sub, anchored to his bigger one by a series of winch cables.
He faced Cassie. There was so much he’d never said; so much she needed to hear. He sighed and brushed the hair blowing into his eyes. “Cassandra, both of these missions are risky and may not go well. Either could fail.” He reached out and pulled her toward him. Shimmel gently hugged her. “I may never see you again.” He let her go and continued. “If that is so, please know that you are like the family I lost to terrorists. Like the daughter I lost.” Without waiting for her to respond, he jumped from the tower and climbed into one of the rubber rafts that lay portside of the larger sub. Four rafts filled with mercs pulled away from the subs. Their motors roared as they headed off into the night, toward the lights barely visible from the beach twelve miles away.
Cassie wiped her tears. Now, she finally understood her place in his world. And suddenly, she felt a deep affection for him, as if he was her father.
For as long as they remained visible she watched the rafts bouncing on the waves toward Buenos Aires. When she could no longer see them, she climbed the metal ladder to the peak of the conning tower and dropped back down through the hatch, closing and sealing it. She walked onto the bridge. Captain Rogov awaited her with JD in the ready room.
She faced the bulkhead as she examined her checklist and, to keep a
nyone from seeing the tears glistening as they dropped from her cheeks, she began shouting orders to Rogov. “I need all my remaining men off the small sub and onto yours. Leave a skeleton crew on the other sub. I want the small sub on the most direct route to Boston, sitting in international waters about 12 miles from the harbor, detectable, with the periscope up. Take this sub toward Baltimore harbor, no periscope or other indicator that we exist. Let me know when we’re in international waters at the closest point to the harbor.” She turned away and stared at the pipes that hung from the sub’s plated ceiling and walls.
No one could see her face.
Rogov replied, “Da, Sashakovich.” He disappeared from the ready room.
Cassie thought about all the things that might go wrong, all the things she and Avram had discussed, starting with the large possibility that the missions might both fail.
JD waited, but she waved him away. She sat in the ready room, reviewing the operations plan that called for surgical strikes with specific, coordinated timing. Her gut shivered with a desperate fear. The plan was too complex, too fragile.
She had faith in Shimmel and his two teams. But would faith be enough?
With the tide working for them, it took less than thirty minutes for the four rafts to reach the shoreline beach. Teams bounded onto the shore and deflated their rafts, then dragged them off the beach. Four men—two from each team—found large trash dumpsters near the beach rest rooms. They deposited the rafts, with their tiny self-contained motors within, and regrouped. Shimmel and every person on his teams began to re-dress into casual Western clothing from their satchels, using the rest rooms as their cover.
Then they reassembled into two teams. Shimmel led them under the roadbed that crossed over Avenida Costanera Carlos M. Noël. They walked toward the city center, with its extensive subway system. It took them another twenty minutes until they reached the Estación Retiro stop on the Blue line. It was not yet dawn and the subways hadn’t started working. The men milled around in the station, sitting on benches, silent, waiting.
Corporal Charles Isley said, “I hear a train.” The groups formed as one and entered the closest Metro subway car. They rode in silence for almost a half hour. At Ministro Pistarini International Airport in the Ezeiza suburb of Buenos Aires, they walked to the terminals.
Each merc entered the airport and sent their disassembled plastic guns and ceramic cutlery weapons via FedEx to the hotels at their respective destinations. Then they carried their satchels through security to the private jets terminal, where Wing had hired planes to take them to their destinations. Shimmel nodded approvingly; the mercs looked like bored businessmen and women as they sat chatting very quietly with each other.
He gave a copy of the handwritten operations plan to Major Alister McTavish. “Al, as we discussed, we must to stay in constant contact, and no event can occur without both of us in readiness. From here, our two teams will take separate jets. Remember to use the GNU Radio for all communications while Riyadh is unable to receive or send. Good luck. I’ll see you in Baltimore when the missions are completed.”
McTavish smiled and shook Shimmel’s hand. “Good luck to you as well, old friend.” He rounded up his team. Both men led their teams to the two waiting aircraft, small groups in dark suits, white shirts, and neckties.
When the two corporate jets were fueled and ready, they boarded.
As his jet took off from the landing strip, Shimmel considered the risks he faced in assassinating a Yakuza kingpin on his home turf of Tokyo. While the aircraft made its way toward Japan, he ran over the plan again and again, trying to find ways to mitigate its holes. At least one critical point would be taken care of: Drapoff and Giondella would have all communications into and out of Riyadh blacked out, keeping Omasu Maru from discovering that the team of assassins were not helpmates aiding the Yakuza in bidding procedures for Saudi building projects.
But the other aspects of the plan were weak at best.
Shimmel commanded the Japan mission team himself, not ever wanting to be in Riyadh. He brought two snipers with him. Corporal Billie-Jo Casselton had survived Maui without a scratch. A tall, slim woman with the accent of a Southern belle, she’d spent time with Special Forces. Corporal Charles Isley was a stocky, quiet man from the Deep South. Neither spoke Japanese. Captain Eric Cassavilla, a former instructor of Asian Languages and Psycholinguistics at Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, was fluent in Japanese, and so was Sergeant Ina Boric, in her early fifties, built short and squat like a fire plug. Her father had married a Japanese national and Boric was born in Tokyo.
All of his team’s identities depicted them as consultants working for the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning. But as soon as Maru was dead, that identity would be the mark of death for anyone who held it. Each of the mercs also had two other identities, one to be used when the assassinations had successfully been completed. It described them as business consultants from Brewster, Jennings and Associates. And the other identity stated they were tourists, for use in the event that something in the mission went terribly awry.
As dawn broke, Shimmel’s jet landed at Narita International Airport, sixty kilometers away from Tokyo. He told them, “We’re going to check into two hotels. One hotel is for our cover identities, the other is our operations base. We’ll go now to the one close to the airport, where we’ll stay the night after we complete the mission. We’ll leave some of our things there; mostly clothing we can use to assist in changing our identities when we’re about to leave Japan. The hotel will have record of us having been there for a few days while the assassination takes place. A decent alibi.”
The mercs each nodded and they drew US passports that described them as tourists for the week they’d be in Japan. They all checked into the Mercure Hotel Narita at 818-1 Hanazaki-Cho, leaving their counterfeit tourist passports with the front desk until they completed check-in. The hotel was perfect for travelers and included a complimentary bus that would take the mercs back to the airport the morning after they completed the kill. The mercs picked up their FedEx packages and visited their rooms, unpacked a small subset of their clothing, messed up the bathrooms, and then put a “Do Not Disturb” hanger on each room’s door. They met up in the hotel lobby with a subset of their possessions in their satchels, including their weapons.
It was far too early for the bar to open and since it was empty Shimmel thought it safe to use as a staging ground. “Now we go to the city and here we’ll use our Saudi Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources identities at the Hotel Tokyo Station.” He handed each a counterfeit Saudi passport Wing had sent to the hotel via FedEx, and once more they headed off on the subway.
At Tokyo Station, each walked alone into the lobby of the hotel at 1-9-1, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, near the Otemachi subway station. The station would provide them with easy transport and wouldn’t keep any personal record of who they were or where they went. The hotel was also near the multiple high-speed Shinkansen lines, the Japan Railway (JR) Yamanote Line and various other busy, urban, suburban, and subway lines, all of which passed through either Tokyo Station or the nearby Otemachi subway station. If something went wrong, they’d flee in separate directions from this stop.
The hotel was upscale and close to good restaurants.
Shimmel inspected his crew. Everyone seemed jet lagged. He told them, “Better get some sleep before we began our work.” Separately, each merc disappeared to settle in for the night.
Alone, Shimmel walked to a sushi bar in the hotel’s lobby and pulled out his smartphone. While he waited to be seated for lunch, he opened and reviewed the document he called “TIMELINE” and scribbled additional notes on its screen for both missions:
TIMELINE:
Shimmel team calls Maru for meeting in Tokyo.
Giondella and Drapoff suppress telecommunications into and out of Riyadh.
McTavish team assassinates Houmaz in Riyadh, making it look like an accident.
Shimmel team assassinates Maru, using a sniper. Both kills must occur within seconds of each other.
Shimmel team leaves behind evidence pointing to Saudi Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.
War is declared by Yakuza against Saudi Ministry, especially Houmaz.
Soviet submarine S-13 arrives in Boston and S-56 arrives in Baltimore.
We either return the big rented one (S-56) to Vladivostok, or we purchase it for future use.
The first few steps of the plan followed logically, but the last two were non sequiturs, providing no solutions for the problems of the GrayNet website, Phillip Watson, and all the hitters. The first five steps would remove the cause but leave the effect. And, it seemed unlikely that both the Tokyo and Riyadh missions—with their need for such close coordination—would succeed. And even if they did, what could they do to end the outstanding contracts on Sashakovich? It was a badly flawed plan, but the best one he could think of. When the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails. Shimmel gobbled up the last piece of hamachi on his plate and paid the bill in cash. He shook his head and returned to his room, weary and walking slowly, his huge shoulders slumped. He dropped between the sheets, hoping to get some sleep. Or if he couldn’t, possibly a better idea might emerge within his mind.
Over the next two days Eric Cassavilla and Ina Boric used common tools like Google to find links on Maru and his habits. They found that Maru’s office was located on the thirty-fourth floor of the Marunouchi Building, called the Marubiru, which had opened in 2002 just in front of Tokyo Station. The Marubiru was Marunouchi’s iconic landmark, across the street from them. Shops and restaurants were located on the lower floors B1 to 6, as well as on the two top floors 35 and 36, while office and business space occupied the floors in between. From the photo on the Japanese Building Society’s website they could see the picture windows fronting Maru’s desk. Examining the photo, Shimmel realized the widow gave Maru a view of the Roppongi district below him, a few kilometers north. Their hotel was the tallest building, but, unfortunately, facing in the wrong direction. Nothing on the other side was tall enough, so they couldn’t snipe him from a neighboring building.
