War Shadows (Tier One Thrillers Book 2)

by Jeffrey Wilson

  Dempsey nodded. “We picked him up leaving the university this afternoon. We made him a deal, immunity and protection for both of you in exchange for gathering intelligence about the attacks.”

  “Then you are the ones responsible for his death. You killed my husband!” she shrieked, her face contorting with anger.

  “No, ma’am,” Smith said, grave and stern. “The terrorists you invited into your home did that. I think you’re confusing influence with action.”

  “We don’t have time for bickering right now,” Adamo said with mounting agitation. “Our window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Either we hit the house now, or we’re gonna lose these assholes again.”

  Dempsey nodded; Adamo was right. If they were going to hit the house, they needed to kit up now. He needed an answer, right fucking now. He turned to the Persian woman. “Cut the crap, Delilah. What are the other two target locations?”

  She clenched her jaw and looked out the window in defiance.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” he said, gripping her under the chin and turning her face to look at him. “You agreed to cooperate, so cooperate.”

  “That was before I realized you were responsible for Keyvan’s death.”

  Dempsey eyed her torn blouse and ripped-open jeans. “Sounds like you’re confused, so let me clarify. We’re not the ones who tried to rape and kill you in the woods. We’re not the ones who put a gun to your husband’s forehead and executed him while you watched. We’re the good guys, lady. We protect people, even people like you. We’re out here gathering intelligence to safeguard innocent lives, but the clock is ticking. Which means you need to pick a side. But pick quickly, because if you don’t, you’re gonna lose the only friend you have in the whole world right now . . . You have five seconds.”

  She glared at him, fire in her eyes.

  He got it; he really did. She needed someone to blame, and the easiest scapegoat is always the closest one. But he didn’t have the time for Delilah Shirazi to work through the five stages of grief and come to terms with her widowhood.

  “Time’s up,” he said.

  She exhaled. “I don’t know the targets.”

  “Bullshit,” Wang said from the backseat.

  “If I knew them, I would tell you,” she answered, keeping her gazed fixed on Dempsey. “I suppose I owe you at least that for saving my life.”

  “Then what can you tell us?” he said.

  “I can tell you that there are two terrorists in my basement as we speak.”

  “Who are they?” Adamo asked, and Dempsey watched the woman carefully.

  “One is a VEVAK agent and the other is a senior lieutenant in the Islamic State.”

  “Those are not identities,” Adamo said, pushing up his glasses on his nose. “I could have told you as much—or we wouldn’t even be here with you.”

  The woman fidgeted and swallowed, her desperation growing.

  “They were careful never to use their real names. I would tell you if I knew them. What I can share is that we picked them up outside Douglas, Arizona, two days ago, after they entered the US from Mexico using an underground tunnel. And they were not alone. They traveled with four other jihadists, all ISIS youth. At the pickup, they split into three pairs, with orders to strike the assigned targets simultaneously. The two men who came with us are the commanders for the operation. And finally, I can tell you that the attacks are scheduled for the day after tomorrow at 1200 Eastern Daylight Time.”

  Dempsey looked down at his balled fists. “If these guys are the commanders, it means al-Mahajer is here.” He turned to Wang. “Hand me my gear bag from the back. I’m going in.”

  “Hold on, John,” Smith said. “You said it yourself, if we hit the house we jeopardize our ability to discover the other target locations. We have to let this play out. It’s going to come down to the wire.”

  Dempsey shook his head. He needed to know the exact locations right fucking now. He needed to know Jake and Kate were safe; he just couldn’t tell Smith that.

  “I know what I said, but that was before we knew with absolute certainty that al-Mahajer was in her basement right now. I’m going to go in there and get him. This ain’t Iraq and it ain’t Poland, bro. That motherfucker is going to hit the homeland in less than forty-eight hours. Just let me do my job. I’ll get the other target locations out of him. I promise you that.” He looked at Grimes. “You coming, Lizzie, or am I flying solo?”

  The corners of her mouth curled into a devious grin. “And let you have all the fun? Hell yes, I’m coming.”

  Wang heaved Dempsey’s gear bag over the bench seat. Dempsey grabbed it and set it on his lap. He cracked his knuckles, the anticipation and adrenaline ramping up, and then he unzipped the main compartment to begin the combat preparation ritual he’d done thousands of times.

  “Are the other teams being supported by Suren assets in Seattle and Atlanta?” Adamo asked Delilah, the words tumbling out of his mouth so quickly they practically blended together.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Dempsey shrugged on his Kevlar vest.

  “Do you know the addresses where the other teams are staying?” Adamo continued.

  “No.”

  “What are the identities of your Suren counterparts in Seattle and Atlanta?”

  Dempsey clipped his radio to his kit and plugged in his headset. He was only half listening to the conversation now.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit!” Adamo snapped. “Give me the identities of the Suren hosts in Seattle and Atlanta!”

  Dempsey looked past Delilah at Grimes and spoke as if Delilah’s interrogation wasn’t happening. “I say we cut the power to the house, and go in on night vision. Whadaya think?”

  “Agreed,” she said, fishing her helmet out of her bag.

  “The Suren Circle is an enigma, even to its own members,” Delilah insisted. “Communication between members is prohibited, except in the case of emergency or compromise. In such cases, we utilize a hierarchical chain of command based on seniority. Keyvan and I are second in that chain.”

  Adamo nodded. “The senior couple is located in Chicago?”

  “Yes, how did you know this?”

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is finding the identities of the Atlanta and Seattle cells. Would the senior couple in Chicago know this information?”

  “Possibly, but they would never share it down the chain without explicit instructions to do so.”

  “Instructions from who?”

  “From Tehran.”

  Dempsey double-checked the extra magazines on his vest and looked at Grimes. “Ready?”

  “Check,” she said.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Wang, come up on channel—”

  “Stop,” Smith barked, his voice like a gunshot. “We have to leave these guys in play.”

  “I only agreed to that before I knew who was in there.”

  “Don’t you mean before you knew one of the targets was Atlanta?” Smith said more softly.

  “Yes, goddamn it!” Dempsey shouted.

  He felt the curious stares of Grimes, Adamo, and Wang on him but refused to look at any of them. “I won’t let him hurt my family. I can’t let him . . .”

  Smith reached back and put a hand on his shoulder. “I understand. Believe me. But going in there guns blazing is not going to get us what we need. This is Qa’im all over again. You go in now, and we lose any chance of identifying the other teams. These guys are sophisticated and determined. They intend to martyr themselves, so wiping out command and control here doesn’t stop Atlanta and Seattle. In two days, those other teams will execute, regardless of what happens here tonight. Our best hope is that al-Mahajer recognizes he’s being surveilled, feels the pressure, and contacts the other cells to advance the timetable.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m with Dempsey on this one,” Adamo said, stepping in. “This could very well be our one and only shot to take out al-Mahajer before he kills hundreds
of people in Omaha. There’s no guarantee we’ll learn the other target locations by waiting. Squander this opportunity, and we risk lives here.”

  “True, but if we don’t leave him in play, we are guaranteeing that hundreds of innocents will die in Seattle and Atlanta. If al-Mahajer communicates with the other cells in the next twelve hours, we’ll be able to take out all three cells,” Smith said.

  “And if he doesn’t, then what?” Adamo said, shaking his head at Smith. “Leaving him in play is insane.”

  Smith blew air through his teeth. “I know, but that’s the world we live in now.”

  “So you’re making the call?” Adamo said.

  “No. This is a capture/kill operation, which means Dempsey’s in charge, but before the decision gets made, we each have an obligation to speak our minds and make a case for what we think is right,” Smith said. “That’s the Ember way.”

  Dempsey suddenly felt the yoke of responsibility settle back on his shoulders. Technically, Smith could overrule his decision, but Dempsey knew that wouldn’t happen. He clenched his jaw. Like Adamo said, if they hit the house now they would stop one team for sure. But what if Smith was right? What if by intervening now, his action guaranteed that the two other attacks were executed? He was lying to himself and his teammates to guarantee he could take al-Mahajer alive and get the bastard to talk.

  Don’t let family cloud the decision, a voice said inside his head. The odds of them being at the target location at the time of the attack are probably a million to one.

  But even if his family wasn’t there, someone’s family would be. Someone’s son. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s mother, wife, father, husband . . .

  “Fuuuuuuuuck!” Dempsey bellowed, shaking his clenched fists in the air.

  The inside of the Yukon fell so quiet he could hear the thump of his pulse in his ears. All eyes were fixed on him, waiting for the decision that would determine the fate of hundreds, possibly thousands of American lives.

  Dempsey closed his eyes and imagined what Jarvis would say if he were present: The difference between operating for Ember and operating as a Tier One SEAL is delayed gratification. We’re playing the long game, John. And to win the long game sometimes requires making decisions that in the heat of the moment seem counterintuitive. Making those decisions requires courage. Without courage, leadership can’t exist. Without leadership, the bad guys win every time.

  He took a deep breath and opened his eyes and looked at Wang. “So Keyvan’s phone is deep-sixed?”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  “Okay, so how else can we track these guys?”

  “At a minimum, one of them needs to power on a phone—and by that I mean a phone that they are taking with them,” Wang said. “So far, that hasn’t happened.”

  “What about hacking into Keyvan’s BMW? Can you use the Lojack or built-in GPS to track it?”

  “Yeah,” Wang answered. “I hacked it already, when we were following the professor here from the university.”

  “Perfect.”

  “But that won’t do us any good if they EXFIL on foot or take another vehicle.”

  “True, so we observe their exit. If they take the BMW, we’re golden. If not, we tail them old school,” Dempsey said.

  “So we’re not hitting the house?” Adamo asked with incredulity.

  Dempsey shook his head. “Believe me, dude, I want to. I want to so bad I can taste acid in my mouth. But we can’t. These guys are too good. Despite what I said, even if we manage to take al-Mahajer, I can’t guarantee he’ll talk. He’s planning to martyr himself in two days; he’d rather die than crack. And after what we saw in Poland, I think any intel we extracted from the VEVAK operative would be questionable at best. I promise, we’ll take these fuckers out before they can execute here in Omaha. But we have to give them a chance to communicate with the other teams; it’s our only hope of saving Seattle and Atlanta.”

  Adamo nodded, accepting the decision without further debate.

  “The priority now is getting tactical teams en route to the other targets.” Dempsey’s personal need to go to Atlanta was almost overwhelming, but he fought it back. He needed to stay in Omaha. Al-Mahajer had beaten him twice; he wouldn’t let it happen a third time. “I’ll remain here as team leader with Wang. To round out our team, I want an HRT unit here ASAP. Wang, let Jarvis know I want a name request for Hansen and his guys from our New York City UN op six months ago.”

  “Typing the request now,” Wang said.

  “Adamo and Grimes, you’re team Atlanta. Chunk and his SEALs are on standby at Ember; I want them to be your augment.”

  “Agreed,” Adamo said to his surprise. “It’s the right play.”

  “We won’t let you down,” Grimes added, and in her gaze was an unspoken promise to safeguard more than just the city.

  “Which leaves Seattle,” Smith said. “And me.”

  “You good with that?” Dempsey asked. “We can augment you with West Coast SEALs or some of your old Delta buddies.”

  “A couple of names come to mind,” Smith said with a nostalgic grin. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of my own augment. You just focus on Omaha and Atlanta. I’ll brief Jarvis en route, and get the TOC stood up back home to start lining up eyes and ears for us. God knows we’re going to need it.”

  “Roger that,” Dempsey said. “All right, everyone, that’s the battle order. The mission is simple: locate and eliminate.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Well, what the hell are you waiting for?” he growled. “Get the hell out of my Yukon and get your asses to the airport. We have work to do and the clock is ticking.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Embassy Suites Downtown/Old Market Lobby

  540 South Twelfth Street, Omaha, Nebraska

  November 4, 0615 Local Time

  Special Agent Scott Hansen walked into the lobby looking exactly like Dempsey remembered—big, confident, and his face creased with a permanent scowl. The kind of scowl like a man trapped in an elevator with a flatulent stranger. Even in civilian clothes—cargo pants, a black sport shirt, and a cheap gray sports coat bulging around the pistol on his hip—Hansen oozed “operator.” Hansen was a team leader in the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. Like Hansen, the vast majority of the nearly one hundred operators who made up this Quick Reaction Force were former military Special Operations. Dempsey pegged Hansen as Army SOF, the same unit Smith hailed from, but he’d yet to confirm this.

  Dempsey extended his hand in greeting, and Hansen shook it with a grip like a hydraulic press.

  “Was there something I did in New York that made you think I was okay with being OGA’s on-call bitch? Because I don’t remember giving you that impression,” Hansen said. Impossibly, the scowl on his face deepened, but Dempsey knew this ruse. Hansen’s dark-green eyes sparkled with the look of a man glad to be turned loose outside the wire after a dry spell.

  “Sorry,” Dempsey said, releasing Hansen’s thick, calloused hand. “We’re in a real shit storm here, and I really needed someone I could trust.”

  “By that you mean someone who’s already seen your super spooky ass in action and kept his mouth shut after,” Hansen said. “That’s the real reason I pinged on a ‘by-name request.’”

  Dempsey laughed. “Yeah, well, there is that. Let’s go upstairs and brief. You have a team setting up?”

  “Roger,” Hansen said. “I have the same tac leader you met at the UN—former frogman like you, plus a six-man team, all senior. Just like you requested. Two are combat medics—retired Eighteen Deltas. They’re set up at the airport, waiting for instructions.”

  “Very good,” Dempsey said, leading him to the elevator. “We need to present a really low profile on this one. Our target will spook easily, and if that happens, we’re screwed.”

  Hansen pursed his lips. “You know we’re not really set up for that kind of thing. Our operations at HRT are, by design, obscenely overt in signature.”

  “I understand,�
�� Dempsey said. HRT was deployed for tactical strikes when the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group needed big guns and special operators. Power projection was a tactical component of most HRT operations. “Our situation here requires operators of your caliber, but we’ll need more of a stealth presence. Adapt and overcome, right?” he added, mimicking the Special Forces mantra.

  “Right,” Hansen said, both his voice and expression dubious.

  They rode the elevator to the sixth floor. As they were stepping off, Dempsey asked, “You got the brief from our guys?”

  “We got the grainy pictures of the two guys you ID’d as your bad guys, but the report was vague on specifics. Can you share more details about the operation?”

  “Unfortunately, not much,” Dempsey confessed as they walked down the hall to the king suite they were using as an op center. “We know the principals, but we’re unclear on the other players. We know the general target and the time, but no specifics on the attack itself or precise location.”

  “Awesome,” Hansen said through a sigh as Dempsey swiped them into the room.

  Inside Wang sat hunched over one of six laptops he had lined up on the table in front of him.

  “Special Agent Hansen, this is Dick Wang, our tech genius and field SIGINT guy,” Dempsey said. “Wang, this is Special Agent Hansen.”

  Wang glanced up, gave a campy wave, then hunched back over his laptop.

  “Where are we?” Dempsey asked.

  “Same,” Wang said and combed his thick black hair out of his face with his fingers. “They’re still holed up in the hotel near Twenty-Fourth Street. No one has left.”

  “Based on mobile GPS, the Lojack, what?”

  “Nah,” Wang said. “Their phones are still off. The BMW is sitting in a lot a few blocks away. Right now, we’re stuck with a single channel—eyes in the sky.”

  “Satellite?”

  Wang shook his head. “That’s my backup. Degraded resolution, because Ian is using the same satellite for us in Seattle. So, he gave me overlapping drones—super high-res shit—streaming real time from their command center in Colorado. Nobody’s left the hotel all morning. When they do, I’ll be able to tell how much change is in their pockets.”