Target Omega

by Peter Kirsanow

The buzzing in Olivia’s ear persisted.

  The United States was one of the few nations that stood by Israel’s use of force. President Marshall issued a statement of unequivocal support for Israel’s right to defend itself and caused a minor tempest when he demanded the UN investigate possible Hezbollah culpability for the deaths of the civilians.

  Of course, the president’s demand went nowhere. In contrast, the draft resolution condemning Israel for the strikes and demanding no further incursions by the IDF into southern Lebanon rapidly picked up support.

  Carole Tunney, the US ambassador to the UN, had spent the last two days trying to prevent the resolution from being brought up for a vote of the General Assembly. For a while it appeared the resolution might be tabled, but by midafternoon on Friday, momentum began to shift in favor of the draft.

  Olivia was monitoring developments for Brandt from Washington. At approximately one thirty in the afternoon Tunney’s assistant informed Olivia that the UN would indeed vote to condemn Israel. Far worse, the resolution was expected to call for Israel to pull back all forces to its 1967 borders, to be enforced by threat of economic sanctions.

  Olivia was disgusted. This was not simply a diplomatic insult to the United States. It had the potential to be a national security debacle for Israel. Requiring Israel to pull back to its 1967 borders would give Israel’s enemies command of the Golan Heights, exposing much of Israel’s population to rocket attacks. Olivia thought it highly unlikely that Israel would comply with the resolution and that an economic boycott would strengthen the hands of Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, encouraging them to become even more aggressive and increasing the possibility that Turkey and even Egypt might join the fray. Israel could find itself in the ultimate dilemma: either face possible annihilation or unleash its nukes.

  And the buzzing became louder.

  Olivia had called Brandt to relay the developments at the UN. Brandt, who was with the president when Olivia called, received the news with his typical reserve. He agreed that the proposed resolution was breathtakingly irresponsible but was fairly confident the United States and Britain would prevail upon Egypt to stand down.

  Olivia ordered an iced coffee and pondered what Brandt would recommend to the president if the resolution passed in the next seventy-two hours. She probably knew how his mind worked better than anyone, but despite his orderly and precise thought process, he was sometimes unpredictable—which was when he often came up with his best ideas.

  Taking a long sip of coffee, Olivia finally yielded to the buzzing. Despite the urgency of the Middle East crisis, her mind kept returning to the puzzle of the Russian economy. In the midst of an economic downturn, they kept producing commodities no one wanted. It was as if the laws of supply and demand had been suspended. It made no sense, especially with the decline of their energy sector.

  The buzzing came to a crescendo and abruptly stopped. The energy sector.

  While world energy markets were struggling and energy prices were volatile, something peculiar was going on with Russian energy production. Olivia had first noticed it when scanning some unremarkable satellite surveillance photos of industrial sites. Nothing exotic in the photos, just fuel storage depots, tanker trucks, and pumps. But there were multitudes of them. And that was a problem. An as yet undefinable problem.

  Olivia had no idea how big that problem was about to become.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DUMFRIES, VIRGINIA

  JULY 13 • 3:35 P.M. EDT

  Garin drove his Jeep onto a gravel access road about a quarter mile east of Jefferson Davis Highway. A shallow, heavily wooded ravine separated the access road and the backyards of the houses in Gene Tanski’s development.

  Garin parked in the tall, reedy grass on the side of the access road so that the Jeep wouldn’t be readily visible to passersby, although it appeared the road was rarely used. He headed cautiously down the side of the ravine and through the woods toward Tanski’s backyard; in brown cargo pants and a tan T-shirt, he could’ve blended better into his surroundings, but at least he didn’t stick out.

  He held the SIG at his right side. Crossing a small creek at the bottom, Garin ascended the opposite side of the ravine and could hear the sound of a lawn mower somewhere over the crest. It was unclear whether the sound was coming from Tanski’s yard or that of one of his neighbors, but as Garin climbed closer to the top of the hill he allowed himself to hope that Tanski was still alive. He’d known Tanski longer than any of the other members of the team. They had been on numerous deployments together in some of the most hostile territories imaginable. A former Delta staff sergeant, Tanski was one of the toughest and most resourceful operators in the nation’s covert arsenal.

  Once, on a mission in Yemen a little more than two years earlier, Garin had been momentarily stunned by an RPG that had exploded only a few feet away from his position. He was conscious, barely so, but immobile. The concussion from the same explosion had knocked Tanski off his feet and blown his M4 from his grasp. Tanski and Garin’s defensive position just inside a vacant storefront was charged by four screaming combatants who believed one or both of the pair to be either dead or disabled. As the combatants stood over Tanski and Garin, ready to administer a coup de grâce, Tanski pulled his combat knife from his boot and in one motion sliced the femoral artery of the assailant closest to him, and as the man fell in agony, Tanski pulled him on top of his body, using him as a human shield. He then took the man’s AK-47 and, with smooth precision, shot the remaining combatants dead before they had even processed what was happening. Garin had passed out shortly thereafter. When he regained consciousness moments later, the combatant with the severed thigh was also dead. Garin never asked Tanski whether the cause of death was bleeding or something else. There was little need.

  Unsure of the exact boundaries of Tanski’s property, Garin headed in the direction the lawn mower sound was coming from. When he got within twenty feet of the top of the hill he knelt down and crawled slowly until he was only a foot or two from the crest. There, he paused and then looked behind him and to each side for signs of any other human presence. He was alone.

  The noise from the mower was fading gradually as Garin, flat on his stomach, looked over the top of the hill. The property was about two hundred feet wide and bordered on either side by rows of towering pines.

  Garin could see the back of a man on a riding mower heading toward the rear of the house about seventy yards away. The red cap he was wearing was pulled down low over his head, making it difficult for Garin to tell whether it was Tanski or someone else, but as the tractor began to turn around on the return pass, the man’s profile, dominated by a bulbous nose broken in countless bar fights, left no doubt it was the former Delta operator.

  Garin rose from his stomach and got to his feet, relieved to see his friend unharmed.

  Seeing Garin, a puzzled look came over Tanski’s face. What the hell was his boss doing coming up from the ravine with a weapon at his side, looking as if he had been doing some weekend recce? Hadn’t he just gotten enough of that crap in Pakistan? As it would for any operator with Tanski’s experience, the unexpected fired his synapses, prompting his eyes to dart about the vicinity.

  Garin returned the SIG to his pocket holster and raised his hand to wave when he saw a strong gust of wind blow Tanski’s cap off his head. Tanski began to wobble drunkenly in his seat and then collapsed off the tractor, the pressure sensors in the seat automatically shutting the machine off and bringing it to a halt. Tanski’s cap lay several feet from his body. There was, however, not even the slightest breath of wind.

  Garin dove to the ground, pulled out his pistol, and crawled quickly backward into the tree line at the top of the ravine. He should’ve been able to hear a rifle shot over the drone of the tractor and concluded that the sniper must have used a suppressor. Blood was now covering Tanski’s entire face and it was clear that the top of his head had been torn o
ff. Garin scanned the surrounding area and listened for movement. By the direction in which Tanski’s cap was blown off, Garin estimated that the sniper was positioned somewhere to Garin’s left, the vector suggesting no more than eighty to one hundred yards away.

  Garin resisted the temptation to run toward Tanski’s body. There was nothing he could do for him, and the sniper would be able to cut him down easily in the open field. Instead, he continued to listen for sounds of the assassin making his retreat—branches snapping, the crunch of leaves underfoot. He heard and saw no signs whatsoever of the gunman. Had the sniper seen Garin stand up a split second before shooting Tanski? Garin thought it unlikely. The sniper had probably had Tanski in his scope for several seconds before taking the shot and with his concentration on his target wouldn’t have seen Garin. Garin wondered, however, whether the sniper had noticed the confused expression on Tanski’s face just a moment before the shot. He should have, and if he was good, he wouldn’t dismiss it. If he was good, he would wait a moment. He would try to determine if Tanski had spotted something—a person, an animal—or if his target had just remembered a forgotten errand. He would wait until he was reasonably certain there was no one else in the vicinity before making his exit.

  The sniper would be the first to move. He had no evidence that anyone was around, and he held the weapon that killed Tanski. When someone came looking for Tanski, they would come looking for him, too. So Garin kept his head down and waited for a moment. And listened.

  It took less time than Garin expected. Within a few minutes his trained ear heard the barely perceptible sound of fabric against underbrush. He looked in the direction of the noise and saw movement approximately one hundred yards down the ravine. The sniper was good—he had moved an appreciable distance through dense woods making nary a sound. Garin crawled back behind the tree line and rose to his feet. He couldn’t get a clear visual on the sniper but detected a slight movement of branches and leaves. He momentarily raised his weapon in the direction of the movement but considered the noise the discharge would make reverberating through the ravine and stopped. Given the distance, and with all the trees and brush in the way, the odds of hitting the sniper with a pistol were poor. If he was going to alarm the neighbors and alert law enforcement with gunfire, he’d better make it worthwhile. He decided to pursue the sniper and see if he could get a clear shot.

  Garin scrambled down the ravine toward the creek as fast as he could while making as little noise as possible. At the same time he kept his eyes trained in the direction where he’d seen movement and prepared to hit the ground if he saw a raised rifle or heard a shot.

  A minute later Garin crossed the creek and paused to listen for movement. He saw and heard nothing. He climbed the other side of the ravine rapidly, once again feeling the sensation of being in a sniper’s sights. If the sniper had gotten near the crest, he might easily be able to pick Garin off.

  He emerged from the ravine about sixty yards north of where he’d hidden the Jeep. As he turned toward the vehicle, he heard tires spinning on the gravel access road, as if someone was trying to leave in a hurry. Sprinting through the tall grass, he could see a cloud of dust billowing upward approximately one hundred yards south of the Jeep. Upon clearing the grass, he leveled his weapon at the receding car, the rear of which was completely concealed by a curtain of the chalky dust kicked up from the gravel.

  Garin held his fire. He couldn’t shoot what he couldn’t see. For the moment, Tanski’s assassination would go unavenged.

  And Garin’s predicament had worsened.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  NORTHERN VIRGINIA

  JULY 13 • 5:42 P.M. EDT

  Tanski’s assassination confirmed Garin’s initial suspicion that someone had taken out his entire team, but part of him insisted on remaining in denial. After all, how could seven of the most skilled operators in the world, plus, apparently, their support, be eliminated so effectively? Who had that kind of capability? What was the motive?

  So after leaving Tanski’s he drove quickly to the residences of each and every member of Omega and its support team to confirm whether they were dead or alive. First, Cal Lowbridge’s, where an inconsolable Jerri gave Garin the news. Then to Manny Camacho’s, where an ambulance crew was in the process of taking his wife, Miriam, to the hospital and a neighbor hovering nearby explained that the cops had found the bodies of Manny and someone named Calhoun. Garin made an anonymous call to the Prince William County Sheriff’s Office after finding Rod Mears lying on his side on his kitchen floor, the back of his head blown away.

  And on it went—Joe Calabrese, the members of the support team—yet after each confirmation, Garin held out hope that someone had escaped the slaughter.

  But any remaining doubt evaporated when he drove to John Gates’s house in Dumfries, to check the last member of Omega. Garin stopped a block from his destination. The place now consisted only of a brick fireplace and damaged chimney surrounded by smoldering embers that had once been Gates’s home. Much of the yard was surrounded by yellow police tape. Two yellow fire department SUVs were all that remained of the crew that had extinguished the blaze several hours earlier. Several arson investigators and technicians were picking through the rubble. Garin knew, if they hadn’t already done so, they would soon find the remnants of Gates’s body. And he knew that he was now the only surviving member of Omega.

  Garin turned the Jeep around and headed back to his apartment in Dale City. He needed to tend to the grim matter of body disposal. He considered dispensing with the chore—in the big picture, neatly getting rid of the corpses of two killers didn’t exactly qualify as a high-priority item. On the other hand, in the summer heat the bodies would begin decomposing and the stench would lead to their quick discovery and yet another problem Garin didn’t need.

  The Saturday evening traffic on I-95 North was moving slowly. Garin, normally impatient, barely noticed, consumed by the events of the day. As he drove, it occurred to Garin that perhaps the only person he could trust now was Clinton Laws. The old soldier’s counsel and assistance might be essential to staying alive. So while the traffic inched along, he punched Laws’s number and waited. The phone rang but there was no answer, unusual for Laws. He disconnected and hit redial. Again no answer.

  Garin took the Dale City exit and proceeded west on Dale Boulevard toward Minnieville. It didn’t take long for him to determine that body disposal wasn’t going to be on tonight’s agenda. Well before pulling into the apartment complex off Minnieville, he could see a number of official-looking vehicles surrounding his building. When he drew closer he could see more than a dozen individuals in distinctive blue FBI jackets standing on the grass immediately outside the open door of his apartment. Several floodlights shone on the entrance. Milling about just beyond the circle of FBI agents were dozens of apartment residents. Several Dale City police officers were standing next to cruisers occupying the parking spaces where Garin’s Jeep had been just a few hours earlier.

  Flitting about the perimeter of the crowd was Emilio, searching for gaps in the ranks of the curious for a view into the apartment. Unsurprisingly, it took the hyper-vigilant Emilio only a few seconds to notice Garin’s Jeep seventy yards away in the drive off Minnieville. Garin put a finger to his lips, and Emilio, barely able to contain himself, gave a slow conspiratorial nod in response. That act alone would assume mythic proportions in the next Señor Lofton tale Emilio would tell his friends.

  Garin carefully examined the scene for anything amiss, anything that might provide insight into who was behind the attack on his team. No one seemed out of place. Everyone appeared to be either law enforcement or residents of the complex. But one thing seemed obvious: Whoever had directed the attempt on his life, having failed, was now setting him up to take the fall. No one had seen him kill his two assailants. No one had cause to call the police, let alone the FBI. And no one had cause to enter his apartment. Yet the place was overrun with
law enforcement. Someone wanted the authorities to know he had killed the two men whose bodies were now being carted out of the unit.

  Fortunately, a search of his apartment would yield nothing related to Michael Garin. The apartment was leased to Thomas Lofton, and any identifying information found inside—credit cards, bills, passport, were in that name. All of his neighbors knew him as Lofton, and any check on the description of his Jeep or its license number would return Lofton as the owner.

  In hindsight, Garin knew it had been a mistake to leave the Makarov in the apartment while he checked on Tanski, but even so, any fingerprints the FBI lifted off the weapon, or anything else in his apartment, would belong to Thomas Lofton. That would be fine if the matter were confined only to the local police and the FBI. But when his prints were checked against the BCI database, alarms would be triggered in certain quarters. There was a select group of individuals who would immediately know that the FBI’s suspect was Michael Garin, and it was unclear how those individuals would react; they were, after all, the only ones who knew the identities of the Omega team and where they could be found. As Clint Laws would say, there were no coincidences in this business.

  The thought of Laws prompted Garin to punch the old man’s number into his cell phone again. Still no answer. Laws not answering once was happenstance. Failing to answer twice was unusual. Three times signaled an emergency. Garin’s mind reflected back to a man in gray slacks and a blue blazer nursing a tonic water in the lounge of the Diamondback.

  At the moment it appeared everyone who had a close association or recent contact with Garin was now dead or unreachable. Which made Garin’s stomach plummet when he realized he hadn’t thought to call his sister, Katrina.

  Garin knew he should go dark. Whoever was methodically finding and executing some of the finest operators in the world had impressive capabilities. Garin’s phone was supposedly secure, but he had to assume that whoever was responsible for today’s carnage had the ability to intercept and track his communications. US intelligence agencies could easily do so, and it was certainly possible that someone within the community was involved. Regardless, he had to take the risk of contacting his sister. Then he would make sure to disappear.