by Isaac Hooke
Dressed in full kit, everyone present was former JSOC. Members of hunter killer teams. Riley himself had been part of 1st Special Forces Operation Detachment-Delta, also known as Delta Force.
Ruts in the road jolted the vehicle occupants. Magazines rattled. Helmets scraped the ceiling.
Riley impatiently glanced out the windshield. In the dim moonlight, he could barely discern the porcupine-like shape of the cellphone jammers mounted to the front of the vehicle. The comm man on each fire team carried a similar jammer in his gear. Their own encrypted radios were designed to work in tandem with the devices. The electronic warfare signals weren't strong enough to saturate their receivers, allowing the advanced DSP tech in the radios to cancel the effects. The jammers meanwhile reduced power output when RF signals matching the frequency band of the encrypted radios were detected.
The vehicle behind them stopped in front of the mansion. Meanwhile Riley's Renault continued on toward the winery outbuilding.
In moments the SUV pulled in front of the building.
Riley gave the signal to unload.
So far, everything seemed quiet enough.
His squad split into two fire teams. The mansion squad would be doing the same. The second fire team in each group would take the rear of their respective targets, while the first would perform a more direct, head-on assault.
Riley approached the left side of the door, Wilkes the right.
Wilkes tried the door. Locked.
Riley waved the breacher forward.
UNDER THE DIM illumination given off by the screens of the battery-powered laptops, Jalal and his wife donned their martyrdom vests.
How had they found him? He had taken so many precautions. Network cabling. I2P. Living like a hermit. He had even randomized the Western Union locations the cells used when cash payments were needed. He had a man in Bergerac who acted as the mule: dispatch a simple I2P message and the man would retrieve the money, later passing it on to the delivery driver. Was it possible the man had been apprehended by the Police Nationale? Maybe he had succumbed to the temptations of Western society and was caught spending the latest pickup at some evil casino or strip club, and the police had wrung the source of the funds from him.
Such a terrible turn of events would have never transpired in a country ruled by Islamic law. First of all, a man would never steal from another man in such a country. Second of all, there were no casinos. This was why it was so important that Al Sifr's vision of a world-wide Caliphate came true. Once everyone converted to Islam it would be the end of all wars. A true era of peace would descend upon the world. It was what Jalal fought for. What he would die for.
As he secured the harness and powered up the trigger mechanism, he realized that the more likely explanation to their discovery was the delivery truck. The driver had probably been compromised while delivering the wine crates to one of the cells. He had betrayed them all and led the gendarmerie right to his doorstep. He hoped the man suffered an eternity of hellfire for his crime.
Somna was ready first.
"Send a message," Jalal said, finishing. "The Green Garden has been lost."
A loud bang from the winery lobby made him jump.
It wouldn't be long now.
Somna bent over one of the laptops and minimized the security camera view. The laptop batteries were at almost one hundred percent, as were the batteries of the satellite Internet device.
She quickly typed a message.
"It is done," Somna said. "Wait! I just lost the satellite connection."
Jalal glanced at her urgently. "Did the message get through?" He mentally cursed himself for not sending the message immediately.
Somna clicked the mouse a few times. Then she nodded. "It went through."
Jalal slumped in relief, then grinned. The infidels were too late.
He focused his attention on another laptop beside her. "Now delete everything, my Moonlight."
He launched Roadkil's Disk Wipe utility. He chose the option to overwrite the drive with random data and clicked the "Erase" button.
He doubted the utility would run to completion. That was why he had prepared an alternate, foolproof deletion method.
He turned toward the third laptop.
"Freeze!" came a cry. Someone had stepped around the destemmer machine behind him. More than one person, judging from the footsteps.
Jalal exchanged a look of loving adoration with his wife. She nodded very slightly, and together they detonated their martyrdom vests.
21
Bergerac, France
ETHAN AND BRETTA met with the members of support team Four-Blue at a room in the Citotel Verotel hotel. The analysts were poring through the blast-damaged hard drives and paperwork salvaged by teams Six-Blue and Three-Blue.
The men were grim-faced. Ethan didn't blame them. Though they hadn't been part of the assault force, another team had lost three members that night, and it hurt them all. Plus they'd been up most of the night ever since. Ethan wished he had been part of the raid, but he doubted things would have turned out any differently.
Ethan and Bretta introduced themselves under their code names, Copperhead and Maelstrom. Though he knew the room would've been swept clear of bugs—that was the first thing personnel of their caliber did—it was a personal preference of his to use a codename when interfacing with support teams.
The acting commander of Four-Blue, one Charles Wilkes, was seated off to one side. Though obviously dead tired—his bloodshot eyes had puffy, raccoon-like bags underneath, and he slouched like there was no tomorrow—he had remained awake to supervise the intelligence gathering, and to brief Ethan and Bretta. Despite his weary appearance, Ethan doubted the man would have been able to sleep even if he wanted to. The survivors of his team were probably lying awake in their individual rooms, bawling their eyes out. That was what Ethan would be doing. He wanted to do it right then, in fact.
"Sorry about what happened," Ethan told Wilkes, meaning it from the heart.
Wilkes nodded. "We lost some good people last night."
Ethan pressed his lips together. He didn't know what to say. Never did at times like that.
He decided to break the uncomfortable silence the easiest way he knew, by getting down to business.
"So what do we have so far?" Ethan asked.
Wilkes seemed relieved. He wanted to work, not dwell on the deaths. Ethan would've wanted the same.
"Are you talking equipment confiscated or intel collected?" Wilkes said.
"Both."
"From the winery outbuilding, we retrieved three laptops, two servers, a Xerox machine, fifty thousand in Euros, and several weapons caches. Mostly American and Russian assault rifles, a few Chinese, and a couple of Russian RPGs. There were no diamonds, surprisingly enough."
Ethan glanced at the analysts. One of them had what appeared to be a hard drive connected externally to his laptop. "All the drives survived the blast?"
"Four of the hard drives were damaged beyond recovery. The fifth survived, though a small amount of data was randomized, including the boot sector. Nothing our forensic recovery software couldn't handle, though."
"The drive wasn't encrypted?" Bretta said.
"Nope."
"What about the enemy combatants?" Ethan said. "Any survivors?"
"Other than the male and female suspects who blew themselves up, no. Judging from the data we've collected from the hard drive, the man seems to be Al Sifr's accountant, or one of them, anyway. The woman was his wife. We apprehended the unarmed caretaker from the mansion, and a man in Bergerac who acted as the accountant's Western Union mule. Interrogations are ongoing."
Ethan nodded. "Okay. Intel collected so far."
"We have the addresses of all the cells the accountant dispatched diamonds to."
"Good," Ethan said. "You got that from the truck driver's smartphone?"
Wilkes glanced at the analysts. "Bonaparte, would you mind?"
One of the analysts looked up from his
laptop. Olive skin, Roman nose, beard groomed into a thin sliver that accentuated the jaw line. Relatively fit for someone who sat in front of a computer all day.
"We retrieved the delivery addresses from the GPS on the driver's smartphone, yes," Bonaparte said in a thick French accent. "And the data on the seized hard drive corroborates the addresses. In addition to the Râmnicu Vâlcea apartment you already took down, there were two more cells in northeast Romania, along with multiple destinations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Moldova and Hungary. We're seeing notes in the spreadsheets that imply other vineyards supplied diamonds to unknown cells throughout the rest of Europe, but unfortunately we haven't found any addresses for these additional vineyards. It's an elaborate money siphoning scheme, manned by one to two person operations throughout Europe. Based on the data we're finding in these financial logs, Al Sifr must have made upwards of ten million dollars last year alone."
"Nice," Ethan commented. What else could he say to that? Shitty?
Wilkes was the one who continued. "The Black Swan tipped off the governments of Bulgaria, Serbia, Moldova and Hungary, sending them the addresses of the cells we do have. A few police take downs have already occurred this morning, but apparently all the apartments hit have turned up empty so far."
"The cell members had already evacuated?" Bretta asked.
Wilkes nodded. "The suspects apparently had time to send a warning before they blew themselves up. There was nothing of any intelligence value at the take-down sites, at least nothing the police have reported yet. Actually, that's not true. There was one thing at an apartment in Chişinău, Moldova. Police found a logbook forgotten between the mattresses of the master bedroom. In it was a list of names, many of them fugitives associated with human smuggling rings."
"So Al Sifr is profiting from the illicit sex trade between Moldova and Ukraine?"
"It would appear so," Wilkes said. "Though 'sex trade' is a euphemism. A more accurate term would be sex slavery."
"I won't argue with that," Ethan said.
"Yes," Wilkes said. "Our Al Sifr is an exemplary example of the one True Faith."
Ethan forced a smile. "All it takes is one man to make an entire religion look bad. Honestly, I doubt Al Sifr is even a believer in Islam. Oh, he might pretend, and perform the motions, but deep down he doesn't really believe. For him, religion is merely a means to manipulate his followers. True believers would never do what he is doing. Never." He hadn't meant for his voice to sound so gruff.
Wilkes gave him an appraising look. "I forgot, you were embedded in Muslim countries for years. I meant nothing by my comment. If I've offended you, I'm sorry. It's been a long night."
"No need to apologize," Ethan said. "I probably understand the Middle East and the people who live there more than the average Westerner, and random comments like that get to me. I'm the one who should apologize. It's been a hard night for you. So. There's no other intel then?"
"Actually, there is." Wilkes paused for dramatic effect. "We believe we've found the diamond supplier. According to the invoices we retrieved from the hard drive of the old model Xerox machine, a shell company based out of Hong Kong was responsible for the shipments."
"An old model Xerox? That's what the Romanians were using out in the U.S. for identity theft. You'd think the terrorist accountant would know better."
"You'd think," Wilkes agreed. "But apparently someone forgot to tell him. I don't think much information sharing, let alone tradecraft, was exchanged between cells. Bonaparte, would you mind telling the operatives what you found?"
"We matched the photocopied invoice numbers to data on the laptop," Bonaparte explained. "And put together a complete crime profile. The Hong Kong company faxes a purchase order. The accountant calls in another driver to deliver wine crates to Marseille for further transport to Hong Kong via container ship. The accountant throws in a false invoice with the shipment—conveniently scanning it with his Xerox beforehand. The HK company returns half the crates a few months later, also by ocean freight, and hides diamonds in with the returns.
"It's a simple scheme, really, when you look at it. We've sent a team down to the port warehouse in Marseille to intercept the next return shipment when it arrives. Hopefully we'll also nab the other driver the accountant employed."
"What do we know about this Hong Kong shell company?" Bretta asked.
"The Swan pulled the info for us," Bonaparte told her. "It appears the company is a part owner of the infamous Lán Quān."
Ethan crumpled his brow. "The Lán what?"
"Lán Quān," Wilkes said. "The name means Blue Circle. It's a nightclub. Very exclusive, very hard to get into. Frequented by celebrities and the very rich. Apparently it's a known front for the Sun Yee On Triad. You can find drugs, weapons, girls, boys, you name it, for sale in the back rooms. All of exceptional quality. A black market for the rich. And—you're going to love this—it's a favorite destination for Arabian sheiks looking to add a few dancing boys to their portfolios."
"That's disgusting," Bretta said.
"It is what it is," Wilkes countered. "But you can see why Al Sifr might have taken an interest in the place."
"He doesn't strike me as the kind of man interested in boys," Bretta said.
"How would you know, have you met him?" Ethan asked.
Bretta's bright blue eyes had a strange, defiant gleam to them. It faded an instant later. "No you're right, what do I know? So what else do we have on this front club?"
Bonaparte answered. "The majority shareholders of Lán Quān are shell companies that have been buying up resource-rich land in Africa. Our guess is that those lands help facilitate the smuggling of conflict diamonds—the underworld currency of choice. We've traced the owners of these shell companies to various aliases senior Triad members have used in the past. Dead-end aliases, I should add."
"The owners would have probably received some kind of warning, too, by now," Ethan said.
"Probably," Bonaparte agreed. "Even so, apparently it's business as usual at the Lán Quān." He rubbed his eyes. "You know, a few years ago we had assets attempt to insert tracking malware onto the computer systems of the club offices, but unfortunately the Triad is notorious for keeping paper records—there were no computer systems for our assets to infect."
"All right, I see where this is going," Ethan said.
Bonaparte shrugged.
Wilkes smiled wearily. "The Swan wants you and Maelstrom to infiltrate the club covertly, as rich patrons. Find a way to introduce yourselves to the local Triad boss in charge of the club. Isolate him, find out what he knows. Either that, or get access to his records."
"Why not stage a raid?" Ethan said.
"The Swan tried to get permission from the Chinese," Wilkes said. "But the government refused to allow it. They have, however, promised to perform a police search at their earliest convenience."
"Which means never, most likely," Bretta said.
"Most likely," Wilkes agreed. "And if they do, they won't find anything—the Triad has bought off the police. Hell, the commissioner is a regular at the club."
"I see why you want us to go in covertly," Ethan said.
"Yes. The Swan has already chartered a Gulfstream. It'll be waiting for you at the Bergerac-Roumanière airport. You'll find a change of clothes and new identities aboard the jet. We've already cleared you with airport security, but if anyone asks for your passports before you board, show them these intermediaries." He handed them travel documents containing fresh aliases.
"This charter jet," Ethan said. "It's one of our own? Operating under a DIA front company?"
"Not this time," Wilkes said. "The Swan doesn't want to risk tipping off the Chinese. Which brings up another point. Once you land, there won't be a support team waiting for you in Hong Kong. I petitioned the Swan to let my team go, but she says we're needed here. She's paranoid about blowing your cover. The Chinese apparently have assets all over the Hong Kong International Airport, especially the Business Aviation FBO termina
l. By themselves, two foreigners dressed as a power couple won't draw much attention, not in ultra-rich Hong Kong. On the other hand, a team of men looking like they stepped out of an action movie will attract tails like a blond woman in Cairo. You'll be on your own."
"That's fine," Ethan said. "In fact I prefer it that way." He glanced at Bretta. "Looks like we have a plane to catch." He stood, and shook Wilkes' hand. The man had a firm, lingering grip. "Thank you Wilkes."
"Good luck," Wilkes said, finally releasing him to shake Bretta's palm. "We'll keep the Swan posted on any new intel we uncover. She'll share anything of relevance to your current operation."
"I'm sure she will." Ethan could tell from Wilkes' yearning expression that the operative wished he was going with them, so Ethan added: "Don't envy us, Wilkes. We're about to infiltrate the black underbelly of a notorious crime syndicate. Without lifelines. We make one mistake, we're dead."
"I know," Wilkes said. He smiled wanly. "But I'm long past caring about my own safety. Right now all I want is vengeance for the men I lost. Cruel, raw, revenge."
Ethan almost invited him along, but he knew Sam wouldn't approve. Probably for the best. He didn't need a man hellbent on vengeance on his team, a man who might throw away his life and those of his team members in an effort to satisfy his own bloodthirst.
"One time in Iraq," Ethan said. "I lost a good friend while on overwatch. The rest of us fled to the forward operating base, and once there, we gathered up more of the boys and went out again, seeking revenge. We didn't get it. We lost two more men instead. Vengeance. It's never worth it."
Wilkes seemed torn up inside. "Don't lecture me on Iraq. I lost good friends there, too."
Ethan nodded. "Then you know exactly what I'm talking about."
Wilkes pressed his lips together. His eyes teared-up and for a moment Ethan thought the man was going to cry, but he finally got himself under control.
"We'll give them hell for you, Wilkes," Ethan told him. "I promise."
