War Shadows (Tier One Thrillers Book 2)

by Jeffrey Wilson

  Dempsey stared at the zoomed-in image of the house in Seattle. This is good, he told himself. Very, very good, but . . . it wasn’t enough. He looked at his watch: almost 0800. The attacks were scheduled for 1:00 p.m. in Atlanta, noon in Omaha, and 10:00 a.m. in Seattle. That gave the tech weenies four hours to figure out the target locations. He watched Wang work for several minutes, until he decided that him hovering wouldn’t help the process go any faster.

  He walked over to the map of the Old Market and began running tactical scenarios in his head, laying them on the map with his mind. It wasn’t long before thoughts of al-Mahajer intruded, derailing his concentration. He’d been beaten twice by the bastard, and both times because he’d made the same mistake—he thought he’d gained the upper hand, let down his guard for an instant, and then paid dearly for it. There was nuance to how al-Mahajer utilized his suicide bombers . . . but Dempsey couldn’t articulate what it was. Like a forgotten question, impossible to answer without first being recalled. To beat al-Mahajer this time, he would have to solve this strategic puzzle before the terrorist’s vest went boom.

  CHAPTER 42

  Ember TOC

  Newport News, Virginia

  Jarvis paced the TOC, tapping the side of his stainless-steel coffee tumbler with his thumb. For the hundredth time, he glanced at the center display and the static blue dot superimposed over the target address in the upscale Broadmoor neighborhood north of Seattle. The dot had not moved on the map for hours, and now he was beginning to worry. He resisted the urge to sigh. He resisted the urge to clench his jaw. He resisted the urge to curse his adversary, and the limits of technology, and everything else in the universe that seemed to be conspiring against them. Events were not unfolding like he had anticipated. Soon, he would start second-guessing himself, and that was a road he did not want to go down. He looked up at the row of digital clocks above the screens, each giving the time in a variety of US and international time zones: 1215 EDT / 1115 CDT / 1015 MDT / 0915 PDT. They were forty-five minutes from showtime with no fix on the terrorists in Atlanta and no intelligence on the target locations in either Atlanta or Seattle.

  “Where are we with Atlanta?” he asked Baldwin, who was sitting at a computer terminal in a row of terminals along the wall.

  “No change,” Baldwin said. “I can put the drone imagery up, but it’s just circling downtown.”

  “You still have Wang trying to interrogate the phone?”

  “Yes, but with no success. We believe they removed the battery. In which case, our next and only window of opportunity to get a fix will be when al-Mahajer makes the ‘Go, No-Go’ call just before the attack.”

  Jarvis nodded gravely. “Any other ideas how we can—”

  “We’ve got movement,” Baldwin interrupted.

  Jarvis looked up at the monitor left of center as the aerial imagery from an MQ-9 Reaper drone slowly rotated and began to zoom in. He watched as a silver sedan pulled out of the garage and backed down the driveway. A beat later, a red triangle appeared in the middle of the high-resolution image, indicating that the target had been acquired. Then, the zoom accelerated dramatically until the crystal-clear image of an Infinity Q70 sedan filled most of the screen. The targeting system on the MQ-9 Reaper drone matched the movements of the vehicle perfectly. On screen, the sedan appeared motionless, the only indication of movement being the asphalt slipping by underneath as the drone tracked the target with miraculous precision.

  “Thermals?” Jarvis said.

  “Standby . . . one signature,” Baldwin said. “Just the driver.”

  Jarvis slammed his coffee tumbler down on the conference table, causing Baldwin to jump. “Damn it!”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “We need to track the Infiniti and keep eyes on the house. They are supposed to be two-man teams.”

  “You think the Infiniti could be a decoy?” Baldwin asked

  “Yes. What are my coverage options?”

  “Satellite for the next twelve minutes; after that we’re going to have problems. There’s weather moving in.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “I wish I were. It’s raining in Everett and creeping south.”

  “Bravo One, did you hear that?” Jarvis said on the open channel.

  “Copy,” came Smith’s voice back over the TOC speakers. “Want me to send a vehicle to the house? Bravo Two could be there in ten mikes, but be advised it could impact our response once the target location is identified.”

  “I could circle the drone?” Baldwin said.

  “No, keep the drone on the Infiniti,” Jarvis said, then louder, “Bravo One, send a vehicle to Broadmoor Drive.”

  “Copy,” said Smith.

  “Where the hell is he going?” Jarvis said, pointing to the blue dot, which was now moving on the map in sync with the Infiniti’s real-time position as tracked by the Reaper.

  “He’s heading north on Foster Island Road,” Baldwin said.

  “Yes, I can see that, Ian. But why is he getting onto 520 East?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What in Christ’s name is going on?”

  A phone chirped beside Baldwin, and he picked it up. “Yes? Okay, then walk over and tell us.”

  Jarvis looked at Baldwin.

  “Chip and Dale have a theory where he’s going,” Baldwin said and then focused back on his screen.

  “Zoom out on the Reaper. Half-mile radius,” Jarvis said, and immediately the Infiniti began to shrink on the screen. He watched as the sedan took 520 East across Lake Washington, away from Seattle, toward Bellevue.

  A second later, the TOC doors burst open and Chip rushed in, nervous excitement on his face. “I think I know where he’s going. Central Park East Apartments, located south of 520 and just east of Highland Crossroads.”

  “Where is that?” Jarvis said.

  “Right here,” Baldwin said, as a digital pin materialized in the center display, approximately halfway between Bellevue and Redmond.

  “How did you get this address?” Jarvis asked, turning to face the analyst.

  “The browser history we pulled from the hacked phone showed several Google queries. One of the queries was for this apartment complex. We also see they used the map function several times, zooming in and scrolling around; they generated two different route maps to the apartment complex from the residence on Broadmoor Drive.”

  Jarvis allowed himself a slight smile. “Nice work. We’ll know in the next few minutes, but I think you just ID’d the pickup location for the shooters.”

  “But we still don’t know the target,” Baldwin said.

  Jarvis walked to the conference table and picked up a stack of printed probability distributions—each for a different target location and each calculated using Ember’s Monte Carlo simulation software. He had run thirty-seven simulations to generate a list of probable target locations—twenty for Atlanta and seventeen for Seattle—based on a specific list of factors, including accessibility, visibility, crowd size, crowd density, native security presence, financial value, name recognition, social significance, and distance to closest law enforcement first responders. The highest-probability target for Seattle had been the Space Needle. The iconic structure satisfied multiple criteria, and it had been Jarvis’s instinctive first choice before running any stats. But the time of the attack, 10:00 a.m., severely impacted crowd size. The Waterfront also scored high marks across all criteria, but took a similar hit on crowd size and density at the target time. Now, with the driver heading east away from downtown, the probability distributions were changing rapidly in real time.

  He didn’t have time to rerun the simulations, but as a synesthete, he possessed certain gifts when it came to numbers and figures. As he flipped through the pages, he perceived the ink changing colors: red, red, red, red, red, blue, yellow, red, yellow, blue, red . . . When he was finished, he pulled the blues and set the others aside; as he scanned the new short list, connections formed in
his mind. Al-Mahajer was not hitting a single target; he was hitting three. His goal was not to simply maximize civilian carnage but to send a powerful message of fear. That message was: Americans are not safe anywhere. Whether you live in Boston or Boise, Orlando or Omaha, big city or small town, whether you’re going out to shop, to dine, to play, or to work, you’re not safe . . .

  Jarvis looked up to find both Baldwin and Chip staring at him. He selected the page with the brightest blue font—color that only he could perceive—and slammed it down on the table. “They’re not hitting downtown,” he said. “The target is the Microsoft campus in Redmond.”

  Baldwin’s eyes went wide, and then he whipped around in his chair to face his terminal. As his fingers flew across his keyboard, he began rattling off information: “Eighty buildings spread out across a five-hundred-acre campus, serving thirty thousand employees. On-site dining. On-site gym. On-site post office. On-site day care—”

  “It’s the perfect target,” Chip chimed in. “It’s a microcosm of Seattle.”

  “Bravo One, are you copying this?” Jarvis asked into the ether.

  “Copy,” Smith said. “Be advised, we’re downtown and Bravo Two is arriving on station at Broadmoor.”

  “We know your locations, Bravo.”

  “Then you understand that our tangos have a big head start. Prosecution could be difficult.”

  “Copy that, Bravo One.” Jarvis turned to Baldwin, who read his mind and nodded. “We’re working on a backup solution just in case.”

  “Do you want me to reposition now, or hold until you confirm the pickup?” Smith asked.

  Jarvis considered the question for a beat. “Reposition to intercept. Hold Bravo Two in position as a backup in case I’m wrong and we need quick reaction downtown.”

  “Roger that,” Smith said. “Bravo One ready for coordinates.”

  While Baldwin transmitted real-time routing guidance to Smith’s vehicle, Jarvis returned his attention to the monitor with the drone footage. But instead of seeing the Infiniti, all he saw was gray haze.

  “Goddamn it,” he barked. “We’re going to miss the pickup. Baldwin, get me lower. Now.”

  “Be advised, sir, radar shows the cloud base for this system at eight hundred feet. At that altitude, everyone, including our shooters, will see the Reaper.”

  “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” he murmured, running his fingers through his hair.

  “What’s that, sir?” Baldwin said, looking up at him expectantly.

  “Nothing.” He took a deep breath and then gave the order. “Coordinate with the pilot and take her down. Whatever it takes, Mr. Baldwin. Do you understand? We cannot miss this pickup.”

  “Understood.” Baldwin picked up a handset and called the drone pilot seventeen hundred miles away.

  The conversation lasted only twenty seconds.

  “We can stay at cloud base and pop in and out,” Baldwin said after hanging up the phone. “Hopefully catch the pickup but minimize exposure of the drone.”

  “Not hopefully,” Jarvis growled. “We need visual confirmation of the pickup.”

  Baldwin pursed his lips.

  Jarvis shot him a look. “You disagree?”

  “Well, no—not entirely,” Baldwin said. “Visual would be nice, but this is an all-weather drone. The new tracking system allows it to maintain the target designation it already achieved on the Infiniti.”

  “Your point, Ian? I’m sorry but we have a time issue here.”

  The middle screen was still filled with only dense gray clouds.

  “My point is that, regardless of the clouds, we’ll continue tracking the Infiniti. We’ll see it stop and confirm the location that Chip identified from the map display. Thermal imaging will cut the clouds and confirm the number of people in the vehicle.”

  Jarvis considered this, but he wanted to see the shooters enter the vehicle. Three decades’ experience of hunting shitheads was worthless if his eyes were stuck in the clouds. Yet, Baldwin had a point. If the two or three signatures were added and the vehicle resumed track toward Redmond . . .

  “All right. Circle in the cloud base. When the vehicle stops, I want a short drop out of the clouds to try and get a visual. If the thermals confirm a pickup, we follow the Infiniti with the drone and continue Bravo One to the intercept and leave Bravo Two at Broadmoor as backup for downtown.”

  Baldwin nodded and spoke again into his handset, coordinating with the drone pilot.

  And they waited. It was minutes but felt like hours.

  Jarvis checked the feeds from Dempsey in Omaha and Adamo and Grimes in Atlanta, but no new information was available to him to distract his racing mind. He tapped his metal thermos. He paced and watched the blue dot on the map display and the clouds on the center screen.

  “They took the exit for Highland Crossroads—they’re a minute or so from Chip’s projected pickup point.”

  “Stand by to dive the Reaper.”

  Seconds dragged, and dragged, and dragged . . .

  “Okay, they’ve stopped,” Baldwin said. “On your mark.”

  Jarvis closed his eyes and pictured men moving swiftly from the apartment to the car on the street. He watched them in his mind and counted off their steps . . . “Now,” he said, opening his eyes.

  “Roger.”

  Jarvis watched the white-gray mist dissolve and become green foliage bisected by the black asphalt of Route 520. The image refreshed and he was looking at the Infiniti, dead center in the large screen. The right front passenger door was swinging closed, and he glimpsed a ponytail, trailed by a thin forearm. Definitely female. A larger body, sporting a mop of black hair, jumped into the rear seat. The door closed, and he got a short glimpse of a black boot as it disappeared. On the far side, another male was stepping into the car. He was hurrying, and Jarvis noted the unnatural bulge between the shoulder blades under the jacket he wore.

  A beat later, the image turned gray and then white as the Reaper pulled back into the cloud base.

  “It’s them.”

  Baldwin looked at Jarvis with a frown and then down at his screen.

  “We have four thermals in the vehicle. The target is pulling away from the curb,” Baldwin said. “I didn’t see weapons.”

  “It’s them,” Jarvis said again. “The Suren couple in the front and two ISIS jihadis in the back.”

  He looked at the map and saw the blue dot move in step with the Infiniti as it pulled away from the curb and then made a U-turn. He watched the blue dot head north and take the ramp onto Route 520. He noted the green dot, Bravo One, was also on Route 520, but only now crossing Lake Washington.

  “You need to haul ass, Bravo One,” Jarvis said. “Pickup confirmed. The shooters are en route to Microsoft.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Old Market

  Omaha, Nebraska

  1120 Local / 1220 Atlanta / 0920 Seattle

  Dempsey needed to get his head in the game. The more time he spent worrying and wondering about Kate and Jacob, the less effective he’d be. This was exactly the reason Jarvis had Baldwin segregating comms and information flow for all three target operations out of the TOC. It was unrealistic to think he could prosecute his own target while coordinating Bravo and Charlie teams.

  And I can’t prosecute al-Mahajer while I’m worrying about Kate and Jacob.

  Hansen sat beside him in the passenger’s seat. The other six HRT agents—uneasy with their street clothes and gym bags holding their rifles and gear—were assembled at the rear of the SUV.

  Dempsey pulled his mobile phone out of his small backpack on the floor beside Hansen’s foot, entered his pass code, and then tapped the Facebook icon.

  “Checking something?” Hansen asked.

  Dempsey thought of three lies simultaneously, but went with the truth.

  “Yeah,” he said, as the app opened, “I have a wife and teenage boy in Atlanta. I’m just checking to see where they are. Not sending anything.”

  “Didn’t ask,
” Hansen said. “I sure as shit would let my family know if there was an attack coming to my hometown.”

  Dempsey nodded. Direct communication was impossible for him. He was dead after all, and unlike in Stephen King novels, the dead did not speak to their spouses and children, via Facebook or any other form of social media. The air caught in his throat as he read Kate’s last status update from less than an hour ago.

  Teacher in-service day. Taking Jake downtown for lunch and an afternoon of shark watching. Great kid. Great day.

  She’d posted a selfie of the two of them standing in front of a town house. His son looked insanely tall—no longer the little boy Dempsey still pictured in his mind’s eye. Jake was looking sideways at his mom, smiling awkwardly but with adoration.

  Fuck.

  “Everything okay?”

  Dempsey turned to Hansen, who wore a look of concern that he imagined pertained to Dempsey’s role in the mission more than anything else.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Everything is five by.” He turned on the radio in the inside pouch of his black jacket and spoke into the air, the comms picked up by the micro-Bluetooth in his ear. “Mother, any data on the Charlie Team target?”

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

  “Negative, Alpha One. Charlie Team is in hot standby, ready to go. Stay focused.”

  “Copy,” Dempsey said with pursed lips. Did Jarvis know something, but wasn’t telling him? Doubtful. Atlanta was hundreds of miles away and he was here. His thoughts went to Grimes and Adamo, and he said a little prayer that they’d keep his family safe. Then he reminded himself that there were wives, and children, and husbands at the Old Market he needed to worry about. He owed those families his undivided attention.

  Dempsey let the SEAL inside him take control, and he slipped into his familiar tactical routine. He checked his gear—pistol in the waistband of his pants, the extra magazines on his left belt, and wireless earbud. He exited the truck and met Hansen at the rear of the vehicle, where the other four agents milled about, hands in pockets, looking awkward.