Reaper: Drone Strike: A Sniper Novel

by Nicholas Irving

  * * *

  Sassi willed the motorcycle to move faster. The trucks had moved too fast for her to snag a ride on the back of one, but she had rummaged the two guards and scored a set of keys for what turned out to be a red Ducati Monster 821.

  Approaching the airport gate—because where else would they be going?—she saw the second container being loaded. The gentle slope down the hill toward the airport gave her enough of an elevated position to be able to see the top of the container as a strange-looking vehicle lifted it and slid it into the back of the airplane. She wasn’t 100 percent sure, but she thought she saw a green figure on top of the container and maybe a backpack in front of it. Surely that couldn’t be Harwood. But who else could it be?

  She slowed as the ramp door closed and the airplane began taxiing soon thereafter. She admired the drive of the man who so desperately wanted to save his friend. Just as she had an intangible motivation to care for displaced families, this man had a palpable connection with his comrade. She respected that more than she’d expected. She had never seen a soldier exhibit this type of selfless sacrifice before. In her United Nations world, most of the military she had operated with were either trying to cheat on their wives with her or were somehow on the take.

  She straddled the bike and clumsily walked it onto the side of the road. The trucks and SUVs would be exiting, and she didn’t want to risk anything, even though she doubted anyone could place her at the port aside from the two guards who were no threat at the moment.

  The pistol and knife in her cargo pockets reminded her of the ordeal she’d been through. The adrenaline rush was beginning to dump like a receding ocean tide, laying bare the memories as rocks in the sand.

  From Turkey to Syria to Lebanon to Cyprus, she had been running on fumes. She and the Ranger had finished the combat rations he carried and sucked his hydration system dry. He had been generous with both his food and water. He had rescued her from perhaps an unspeakable fate. Certainly, she was in a better position today than she had been in yesterday in the cell of the basement at that compound.

  Now Sassi felt she had to do something for Sergeant Harwood. She had no idea what that was, but knew where a good place to start might be.

  She fired up the Ducati and took the road away from the airport, looped around to the north on the Turkish side of the island, and found a mobile phone store. She bartered with the manager to allow her to wire him the money from her online banking account. He refused to allow her to take the phone until she logged into her bank account, a decidedly dangerous move anywhere in Cyprus on an unsecure Wi-Fi, and wired €990 to the store, which included the iPhone and service provider.

  Another hour was spent setting up the phone and pulling in her email and text messages from her previous phone. She didn’t believe she was important enough to worry about anyone tracking her. As far as she knew, her kidnapping was opportunistic, not planned or intentional.

  She sat on the curb and removed her hiking boot. The musty smell made her wince, but she’d smelled worse before. From her boot with the Beretta knife she removed the battered card General Cartwright had given her. She punched in the number he had written on the back of the card. The phone buzzed in soft muted European tones.

  After the fifth ring, a voice answered. “This line is not secure.”

  “I need to talk to General Cartwright,” she said.

  “Who is calling?”

  “Alessandra Cavezza from the United Nations.”

  “What is your business?”

  “I saw two of his men shot in al-Ghouta yesterday.”

  “Stand by.”

  That had to be his communications guy, Franklin, or something like that, she remembered.

  “Cartwright.” His voice was commanding and authoritative. It was definitely Cartwright.

  “This is Sassi Cavezza. I’m calling from Cyprus about two items. The first is two of your men were shot in al-Ghouta.”

  Cartwright said nothing.

  “I was kidnapped by Russians or Hezbollah at the same time your men were shot by a Russian tank.”

  “Prove it.”

  She grimaced, understanding his reluctance at hearing such terrible news and years of battlefield skepticism.

  “A U.S. Army Ranger, Sergeant Vick Harwood, is pursuing his teammate, Sergeant Ian Nolte, here on Cyprus.”

  Silence again. She imagined he was processing.

  “Those are my men. What are they doing in Cyprus?” His voice didn’t change inflection.

  “Nolte has been taken prisoner by a man or company named Tankian. Nolte and I were both in captivity there.”

  “Where are Ranger Nolte and Ranger Harwood right now?”

  “Sergeant Harwood is on an airplane that just took off from the airport here. It was a large airplane. Maybe the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

  “And Nolte?”

  “We think he’s on the airplane also, but I can’t confirm that.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, I was working with Sergeant Harwood.”

  After a long pause, General Cartwright said, “Sounds like I need to get to Cyprus. Tell me where you are.”

  She told him and noticed a car fishtail into the parking lot next to the Ducati. Two men jumped out. Sassi ran to her bike, raced the engine, and knocked one of the men down as she wobbled into traffic and sped away.

  CHAPTER 23

  Valerie Hinojosa

  Valerie Hinojosa stared at a map of downtown Milwaukee. Next to her was Colonel Darryl Dawkins, affectionately known as “D-Squared” by his Wisconsin National Guard soldiers. He wore the army combat uniform with its camouflage olive-and-tan patterns. He stood at an even six feet, which put him at her height when she was wearing heels. He had thick brown hair fading to gray on the edges. He looked more like a businessman than a hardened army soldier.

  “How many troops are you going to have on-site during the convention, Colonel?”

  “Please, call me Darryl. And we will have five hundred soldiers working in three shifts of one hundred and fifty with a twenty-five-soldier quick-reaction force on hand at all times. We call it a platoon. They’ll rotate as well. Every twelve hours, they’ll switch. We will have static security at every entry point and every possible way into the arena. We will have plainclothes soldiers roaming the streets outside. They will be armed with pistols and nonlethal weapons. On the deep interior, we will have both fixed and roving teams. I’ll be here in the command and control center with you.”

  “Okay. What threats are you contemplating right now?” she asked.

  The colonel smiled. “I’m glad you asked. We have a list of fourteen white supremacist groups that we’ve identified from chat groups like 8chan. We’ve got Antifa, which we think is more supportive of this, and we don’t really consider them a threat. There is some random chatter in the Islamist extremist chat rooms. Something about attacking the convention to make it look like the president is attempting to wipe out his competition. Plus, the usual tinfoil hat conspiracies.”

  Valerie was glad the colonel provided his analysis devoid of politics. Even though they were covering a political convention, her duty was decidedly apolitical. Her job was to protect the people in the arena from any criminal or terrorist activity. She had at her disposal an entire battalion of national guard soldiers.

  “Other than around the arena, what kind of early warning do you have?” Valerie asked D-Squared.

  “Good question. Everything starts tomorrow, right? We’ve been collecting for months. Establishing patterns on the highways and in the airports, transit, even seaports. The big hitters don’t show up for a few days, but because this is still undecided, they’re still campaigning in all these important states. So, we’ve got undercover CID agents in Chicago, Detroit, Des Moines, Moline, Minneapolis, and here in Milwaukee. They’re checking all modes of transportation. Then we pull back in and look at the axes of advance into the arena. We’ve got roving patrols and Jersey barriers blocking anything moving.
Immediately outside the arena, we’ve got more roving patrols and the same on the inside, like I said.”

  “I want to be plugged into any anomalies. Tell me more about this ISIS or Hezbollah plot.”

  “Not a whole lot to tell you. We picked up on some DoD intel from Syria. The timing of the fight over there is pretty suspicious to us. There was no real precursor event. It seems calculated to us, so we’re looking at it. There are reports of a group of Hezbollah fighters missing, and there are reports of some fighting in the Beqaa Valley. None of that is particularly interesting in its own right, but it doesn’t take a fiction novelist to put together different elements of the plot and see something real.”

  “Keep pulling that thread. It would be some pretty large muscle movements to have Syria attack Israel so that some Hezbollah fighters can infiltrate the U.S.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Iran and Russia are in Venezuela. Are we tracking that?”

  “We are. Nothing right now. On the upside, there’s no indicator or warning out there right now. Just random chatter like we’ve seen a million times.”

  * * *

  As Hinojosa was scouring for clues of any threats to the political convention, the convention’s most prominent attendee, Andrea Comstock, watched the monuments and memorials slide beneath the General Motors executive G5 as it made its final approach into Reagan National Airport.

  She shook her head at the name. Reagan. Of all the presidents she most disliked, Reagan was at the top. Some had romanticized his legacy to the point that people forgot all the scandals such as Iran-Contra, the arms trade debacle that had made Ollie North famous. What a travesty. She guessed it wasn’t so bad to have the hard edges of reality softened when someone passed, but Reagan?

  She had vowed that when she was president, she would lead the country with purpose in a direction that was accommodating for all Americans. Reduced college tuition. Not free, because that was unsustainable. But if you made a half million dollars a year, you could pay a little more and help the less fortunate in society attend college or a trade school. Single-payer health care was the only way to get past the for-profit world of health care. She’d visited homeless shelters and was appalled by what she had seen. To be sure, she’d seen similar issues at the border with Mexico, but what made candidate Comstock stand out was the fact that she prioritized American citizens over those that were undocumented. When she’d made that clear, she nosed into first place in a field that was mostly promising the world to people who couldn’t even vote … well, weren’t supposed to, anyway. A woman could dream, couldn’t she?

  Still, her nearest competitor was closing in on her, and the overnight trip from Munich had given her time to think about Max Wolff’s offer. Wolff was a first-class hustler, but it was a reasonable gamble. On the upside, she could separate herself from the field going into the nominating convention, which was in two days. Polling showed the nomination was essentially up for grabs—41 percent for her, 40 percent for her competitor, and single digits for the rest of the field. If she were to “secure the release” of Corporal Nolte, son of the opposing party’s senior senator, she could not only catapult herself to her party’s nomination but also win over enough independent votes that she could upset the incumbent president.

  The downside, of course, was someone finding out and exposing her plan with Wolff. There was no electronic or paper trail that she knew of, but that could be exactly what Wolff had in mind. She had snatched away a billion-dollar deal from him through some heavy-duty lobbying and negotiating with Congress, Senator Nolte included. While she didn’t exactly owe him anything, it had been a rare moment of bipartisan support in the insanity of today’s political environment.

  He’d accepted her meeting today based upon the tenuous relationship they had developed and because she had received information about a classified mission in Lebanon. She had to be careful on many fronts. She didn’t want to expose Wolff, for fear that he might turn on her, and she didn’t want to give up the opportunity to attack the president on his lack of foreign policy in the Middle East. She needed to thread all the needles: safe return of a soldier, keep her contact with Wolff secret, and use this as a platform to score foreign policy points.

  As a mother of two grown children and a wife to a rock-solid husband, Comstock tried not to think too hard about the fact that she ought to have reported her conversation with Wolff to the FBI, CIA, DoD, or all of the above, immediately. But she hadn’t, and she knew well enough that she had to live with decisions and execute them as pristinely as possible.

  Her driver delivered her to the Russell Senate Office Building, where one of the senator’s aides—a young woman dressed in a white blouse and black slacks wearing low pumps—escorted her through a little-used door that led to an elevator, which opened into a service entrance.

  The aide escorted her to the senator’s office, where he waited in the rear chamber behind his desk. He stood and greeted her. He was a tall, white-haired man with kind eyes and an easy smile. Part of her wanted to dislike him because his affability made it harder to pigeonhole the rest of his party as white supremacists, racists, or warmongers, or whatever the outrage of the day might be. Dressed in a light gray suit, he gripped her hand and said, “I would give you an embrace as friends should do, but I don’t want any of my staff to see my toxic masculinity up close.”

  She chuckled, shook her head, and said, “We’re in a pickle nowadays, aren’t we?”

  “How’s Bob? The kids?”

  “All good, Senator.”

  He probably knew better than to discuss the primary race with her. Even politicians knew that politics made for uncomfortable conversations.

  He motioned her to a seat and said, “What is this about a mission in Lebanon? I’ve done as you asked and not inquired with SecDef or any of the usual suspects, just yet.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the senator’s chief of staff, who was poised at the doorway and prepared to enter or exit, a play they had done thousands of time, she was certain. Nolte picked up the cue and nodded at the chief of staff, who promptly left and closed the door behind her.

  “Better?”

  “Yes. I’ve been traveling on a foreign policy fact-finding mission,” Comstock said.

  “Otherwise known as Bilderberg. Let’s not play duck and cover here, Andrea. We’re both too busy for any of that nonsense.”

  Well, damn.

  “We both tend to speak in subtleties, but I’ll be more direct. I did couple my trip with some foreign policy activities. NATO and such. I received a briefing that we have a Special Forces mission in Lebanon. Something about helping the Israelis in the current conflict in the Golan.”

  “I know we have supported Israel politically but was unaware of any boots on the ground. That would be highly unusual and irregular. Israel doesn’t normally ask for our help.”

  “That’s what I thought, but my source provided details that are compelling.”

  “Such as?”

  “For the moment, that’s unimportant. What is important is that your son, Corporal Ian Nolte Jr., has been captured.”

  “What!?”

  His response was genuine surprise. Not even an Oscar-winning actor could have pulled that off with more authenticity. Part of her concern had been that he might already know what was happening with his son, but it was clear he did not.

  His chief of staff stuck her head back in the door at her boss’s outburst. “I’m fine, Claire,” he said, “but stand by for when we’re done here.”

  When the door clicked shut, Comstock continued, “My sources tell me that he was part of a two-man sniper team and his partner abandoned him. He’s alive and, I’m told, in good condition. There’s a market, it seems, and he’s in the supply chain, so to speak.”

  “Supply chain? What are you talking about? I’m the chairman of the Intelligence Committee! I’ve not received any word of this!” Nolte leaned forward, hissing through his teeth. All pretense was gone. Concern f
or his son removed any camouflage that might have led to a more nuanced discussion.

  “My sources don’t want to deal with the official government, so we’re treading on slippery ground here. Logan Act and all. I’m not violating it, because I’m coming to you so we can do something about it. Get your son back.”

  “We need to get the National Command Authority involved. Now.”

  “That’s the quickest way to never see him again. We’re being giving a onetime shot at a miracle here. One of my friends in Europe is on the periphery of this, and he has agreed to intervene.”

  The senator leaned back in his chair. “Under what conditions?”

  “None. It’s a favor to me. And it’s a favor from me to you.”

  “I can’t endorse you,” he said sharply.

  “Nor would I ask or expect you to. I’m a mother of two boys. I can’t imagine how I would react if one of my children were in this situation. I’m frankly put off that you said that. I have come to you out of courtesy.”

  “Do you have any proof or evidence? Andrea, you seriously can’t expect me to just leap right in here.” He ran a hand across his face. His head lowered a bit, though. He understood.

  “Yes. Of course. I have a picture here,” she said. She lifted her iPhone and tapped the screen. The picture that Wolff had provided her was on the top of her album. Ian “Clutch” Nolte was standing in a dark cell, face bruised, uniform dingy, cinder blocks behind his head, staring into the camera with flat, expressionless eyes. She pressed that one and flipped the phone toward Nolte, who took it from her. He pinched and spread his fingers, enlarging the picture. His eyes moistened.

  “That’s him,” he said. “How did he get there?”

  “I don’t have all the details,” she said. “But what’s important is that you know, and now you do. I’m going to work with my point of contact to secure his release. Nothing is guaranteed, as he is being held by a hostile group.”