by Brad Taylor
“You work at this building now?”
“Yes.”
“Can you get me in there?”
39
L
et me get this straight,” said the director of the CIA. “You want to move a team to Dubai without any cover backstopping whatsoever? A team that’s supposed to be in Tunisia and we clandestinely infiltrated into Beirut for no good reason?”
Kurt grimaced at the reaction. He’d purposely whitewashed the
infiltration of Knuckles’ men, blurring the line between when they’d reached the point of no return on their deployment and when Pike had been rescued.
“Yes. I know it sounds risky, but we can mitigate that as far as the Taskforce goes. The team from Tunis has clean passports that we can burn after this op.”
The D/CIA pointed to the presentation Kurt had just given. “And that’s the smoking gun? That’s all you have?”
“Yes, it is, but the PowerPoint doesn’t do justice to the man. Lucas Kane is a proven killer, and he’s headed to Dubai. We’ve tried to capture him several times, and failed. The risk is worth it.”
The secretary of defense spoke up. “I get that Kane’s a threat, but you’ve got nothing to go on. You couldn’t even find him in Dubai if you wanted. You said yourself that there was more to this that you didn’t understand. That there were others involved. I think you should take some time to flesh this out, get some concrete operational information, then come back. I can’t see sending a team willy-nilly to Dubai.”
“Sir, you know me. Know I don’t cry wolf. Yes, we don’t have a handle on Lucas, and yes, there’s a bunch of threads we don’t understand, but we need to go with what we know. Lucas discussed finding assassins on tape, and Pike found the envoy’s itinerary on a laptop computer held by Islamic extremists. An itinerary that hasn’t been changed, I might add.”
He saw the secretary of state bristle and hastily continued, knowing he would need the man’s vote. “I’m not making a judgment on that decision, but the fact remains that Lucas is in Dubai, and the envoy’s headed that way. We need to assume that Lucas has the itinerary and is going to target the envoy. We can stop it now or mop the blood up later.”
By the secretary of state’s expression, Kurt knew he’d hit a nerve, and was surprised at what he said next. “The itinerary was constructed with policy implications in mind. We couldn’t change it at this late date without offending a great number of people and setting back the very agenda for the trip. Given that, I’m inclined to let the Taskforce continue, if they can do it without compromise. An attack on the envoy’s party would be devastating to the peace process, setting us back to square one. We can’t be sure we would be able to get the people back to the table again.”
The secretary of defense said, “Billings, you should sit back and watch a few of these go down before you jump so quickly to approve. Your key comment is ‘without compromise,’ and I don’t see how that can be done.” He turned back to Kurt. “How are you going to infiltrate them?”
“We’ll get them in as tourists.” He saw the SECDEF and D/CIA roll their eyes, and worked to mitigate the weakness in his plan. “I know that’s not optimal, but tourism is one of Dubai’s greatest selling points, and they don’t look too hard at Westerners. We can get in and out without trouble. This is what we do.”
“Seriously?” said the D/CIA. “That’s what Mossad used to say. After their hit, Dubai is the last country in the Middle East I would
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send an operative to work without complete cover backstopping, and you’re talking about sending in a shooting team with nothing.”
Kurt held up his hands. “Hold on. Don’t confuse what we’re trying to do with that operation. The target of the Mossad hit is exactly why Dubai worked so hard to solve the crime. It humiliated them to have a bunch of Israelis come in and flagrantly kill a Hamas military commander. We’re doing nothing of the sort. We’re preventing an attack in their country, against another Westerner. As long as we don’t do anything that blatantly embarrasses them, they won’t look too hard, particularly given the target. They love McMasters from when he was an ambassador. They don’t want harm to come to him, or to their reputation. Especially after the Hamas hit.”
Alexander Palmer, the president’s national security advisor, said, “Whoa, whoa. Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves here? Missing something? Lucas Kane is a United States citizen. Does that matter? I mean, should we discuss the implications?”
Kurt, fearing he was losing ground, said, “Lucas Kane was designated a DOA target a couple of years ago, and it’s still valid. We just quit chasing him because he no longer posed a threat to national security. No longer fell into the Taskforce mandate. We don’t need to plow over that ground again. We discussed the implications when he was designated.”
Palmer said, “I appreciate your input, Colonel Hale, but I was speaking to the Council, not to you.”
President Warren spoke for the first time. “Lucas Kane gave up any constitutional protection when he decided to attack national interests. No different than al-Awlaki. As far as I’m concerned, his citizenship has no bearing.”
He waited for a rebuttal. When none came, he said, “Gentlemen, we have an unprecedented opportunity with this peace process, beyond whatever solutions we can gain at the bargaining table. The Palestinian Authority has requested certain things that, if we provide them, may very well give us great leverage in the future. I understand this deployment is risky, but damaging McMasters’s mission would be catastrophic to future peace in the region.”
Kurt knew the president was talking about the taste of American greenbacks he was providing to the Palestinian Authority. A carrot of money that would invariably be asked to grow, with a commensurate increase in the size of the stick behind it. He had been ambivalent before, but now was grateful for the president’s decision, as it would be the deciding vote.
The secretary of defense leaned back with a resigned expression, coming to the same conclusion. “You can give assurances that they can get in and out without compromise?”
“Sir, you know I can’t give absolutes, but they’ve done pretty good so far.”
“Yeah, right. I’ve seen a few operations run by Pike go down. What’s he doing right now? Shooting out streetlights for fun?”
Kurt smiled, knowing he had won. “No, sir. He completely understands the importance of this meeting. He’s been given direct orders to stand down from anything until the Council has decided. He’s just soaking up the Beirut sun right now.”
40
P
eeking through the small gap in the curtain behind the front seats of the van, I could see Samir inside his car three rows over, nervously fidgeting and glancing at his watch. Probably wondering if he’d made the right choice. I knew how he felt, because our plan had about a hundred different opportunities for going sideways.
Immediately after talking to Samir in the house, I’d held a war council of our own, and the team had decided that getting his niece back was the right thing to do. At first, the idea seemed suicidal, because not only did the six of us have to find the niece, but also assault what was sure to be a stronghold. The only way we could see doing it successfully was to force them to come to us, then attack them while on the move. Something that was much easier said than done.
Hollywood notwithstanding, a vehicle interdiction is one of the hardest operations to successfully accomplish. By its very nature, the purpose was to stop the vehicle without harming those inside. If that wasn’t the case, a simple anti-tank rocket could be used, destroying the vehicle and killing everyone aboard. The problem with a surgical interdiction was that while the team was focused on stopping the vehicle, the occupants would be focused on the team, and they usually had a very strong desire to evade capture, along with weapons they had no compunction about using. About fifty percent of the time, the operation ended in an assault anyway, with the targets getting injured in some way or another.
The difficulty was compounded here by the fact that we could in no way allow this to end in a gunfight. I couldn’t be responsible for starting a shooting war between Hezbollah and the Druze. We needed to stop the vehicle and close on the men before they had a chance to react, which posed significant challenges. It was Decoy who’d come up with the idea of popping a tire with a suppressed sniper shot.
At a distance of two or three hundred meters away we could potentially disable the vehicle without the occupants knowing what had happened. The suppressor would muffle the sound of the gunshot, and while the bullet would still break the sound barrier with an audible crack, the noise was omnidirectional and would be camouflaged by the exploding tire. From there, a van driven by a Druze friend of Samir’s, with Jennifer in the passenger seat dressed in her stylish black sack, would pull over to help. Once they were engaged in conversation, we’d come boiling out of the van.
That was the plan, anyway.
I saw a sedan with two men approach and said, “Get ready.” The vehicle continued on, then exited the parking lot.
Brett said, “Jesus. Where are those guys?”
The time for the meeting with Hezbollah had come and gone, and we were all getting a little antsy. You always had in your mind’s eye exactly how a plan would go down, but we were attempting to take out thinking human beings with a penchant for survival, and make no mistake, they had their own ideas of what would happen.
Decoy said, “You think they’ve got eyes on Samir right now?”
Meaning, have they already scoped us out and were we now about to be on the receiving end of their own brilliant plan.
“I don’t know. Let’s give it a few more minutes, then break out. If they don’t show, we’ll have Samir call them from his house.”
I keyed my radio. “Knuckles, you still good?”
“Yeah. It’s getting hot as hell, but it won’t affect my shot.”
While I was most assuredly the better sniper, I’d given the task to Knuckles, wanting to be on the assault to contain whatever curveballs
204 ⁄ BRAD TAYLOR
came our way. Of course, he’d say my assessment was most assuredly incorrect, and truthfully, he might be right. Although I would never tell him that.
Samir had come up with a beat-up Dragunov SVD, and Knuckles had test-fired it in the mountains behind Samir’s house. He’d come back and said that it held a little under two minutes of angle in accuracy, meaning he could put a round just inside a two-inch circle at a hundred meters, and it would work for the operation.
The only thing that had remained was finding a place for the exchange of Samir and his niece, then the follow-on ambush. After some searching, we’d decided on the Beirut airport parking lot. The area had enough security to prevent the Hezbollah thugs from trying anything right off the bat, allowing the niece to get in Samir’s car and get away, and was close enough to Hezbollah-land that they’d feel secure. It was only a half mile from the airport to the heart of their territory.
A half mile was all we had to play with. Not a whole lot of time for me to relay the description of the vehicle to Knuckles, then have him take it down from the roof of the warehouse he was lying on.
Brett said, “You still want to parlay with them?”
“Yeah. We might get something more than just rescuing Samir and his niece. Something we can use to track Lucas.”
The end-state of the operation had been the biggest bone of contention, with most of the team wanting to chalk up a win once we had Samir and his niece freed. I thought that was just postponing the problem for Samir. In order to truly get him free, we needed to convince Hezbollah that he had nothing to do with the murder of their leadership, and I was fairly sure the tape we had of Lucas killing the Hezbollah courier would accomplish the goal—if I could get them to watch it. Best case, they lay off Samir, a civil war would be averted, and they’d give us some thread we could use to find Lucas.
Jennifer said, “White four-door sedan approaching with three men and a woman. Moving way too slow.”
It took a moment, but the vehicle eventually came into my little sliver of view, stopping in front of Samir’s sedan. Something verbal was exchanged, and Samir slowly raised his hands. The men exited, one holding a woman. Samir followed suit, and the woman was released, running to him. He placed his arms around her and whispered something in her ear. Only after she was safely in his car did he walk toward the men, his arms outstretched. He was roughly searched and thrown into the backseat.
“Showtime.” I said.
41
K
nuckles heard the call and settled in behind his weapon, staring unfocused at the rooftop to rest his eyes while waiting on the description of the vehicle. After it came, he said, “Anything unique? Any identifying characteristics?”
“Yeah,” Pike said. “Front right quarter panel is dark blue or black. It’s a replacement and stands out. We’re going to roll in five. You ready?”
“Roger. I got the ball.”
Knuckles raised his head to the scope, focusing on the exit from the airport. He’d meticulously constructed his nest to allow the weapon to rest on its own, naturally aiming into the kill zone. He wanted to take out as much human error as possible, leaving the weapon alone to work within its capabilities. Any twitch of muscle, any forcing of aim he worked to diminish. Even his heartbeat. The Dragunov wasn’t the most accurate rifle to begin with, and he couldn’t afford to miss by compounding the built-in error.
He saw a red vehicle exit and immediately dismissed it. Relaxing his left hand on a sock full of sand underneath the buttstock, he raised the scope a smidgeon and focused on the next vehicle. A white sedan.
He scanned for the quarter panel and saw it was dark. A different paint scheme. He felt his pulse quicken and took a long, slow breath like a yoga student, willing his adrenaline away.
“I have the target.”
He heard Pike acknowledge, but wasn’t listening, his mind moving
to a different plane.
He squeezed the sock sandbag, forcing the barrel to drop and track on the right front tire. It was counterintuitive, but the farther away he took his shot, the better the chances of success. At this range, the vehicle was moving almost perpendicular to his line of aim, meaning he could aim at the tire head-on. The strike of the round would be a little high as the vehicle traveled forward and the tire gained ground from the time he pulled the trigger until the time the bullet struck, but he wouldn’t have to worry about leading from left to right, like shooting skeet.
The longer he waited, the more the vehicle would be moving parallel to him, and the greater the chance of error. Worst case, he would have to take the shot right in front of his position, where the road curved, leaving him to actually aim ahead of the tire in order to hit it. A recipe for introducing enormous human error.
As the barrel lowered something ticked in his brain. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew he couldn’t ignore it. He relaxed the hand, raising the scope. He focused on the driver. And saw what it was.
“Pike, Pike, the vehicle is not correct. I have one man. A lone driver.”
“Okay, okay. Stand by. Target will be exiting soon.”
“No, I mean it’s the right vehicle, but there’s now only the driver. Nobody else. The vehicle fits. How many white sedans with a repaired right front quarter panel could be exiting the airport at this time?”
He heard Pike say something in his earpiece, but ignored it. He knew what had happened. They’d switched vehicles before leaving the airport to confuse any surveillance.
He tracked to the right, swinging the weapon in an arc, reaching the edge of his sandbag nest. He saw nothing but a large panel truck coming down the road, facing him head-on. Could that be it?
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He focused on the cab, seeing two men. He knew the truck had never exited the airport. His mind working in overdrive, he sorted through the data, and remembered the flash of red he had ignored
before.
He scanned back to the left and saw nothing. He swung back to the right and saw the panel truck was now in front of his position. Behind it was a red SUV that had been hidden by the panel truck, now revealed by the curve in the road.
He focused on the passengers and saw four, straining now to keep the scope centered on the vehicle as it traveled parallel to his position. The target.
He heard Pike requesting a SITREP, but didn’t have time to give out a detailed report. The vehicle would be out of range and into the Dahiyeh in a matter of seconds.
Rising to a knee, he rapidly dragged a sandbag to the right and slapped the stock of the weapon on top of it, now facing ninety degrees away from where he had planned. He settled behind the weapon and lowered the scope to the rapidly diminishing vehicle, sighting in on the right rear tire.
Due to the curve in front of his position, the road going away wasn’t as ideal as the road coming toward him. He would have to lead the tire some. The question was how much. The longer he waited, the less he would be forced to do so as the road began to wind perpendicular to his line of aim. But the longer he waited, the farther the vehicle moved and the greater the chance it would be outside the accuracy envelope of his beat-up Dragunov. Especially now that he would be introducing human error as he locked the scope onto the tire with muscles alone in his hastily reconstructed sniper nest.
All of these facts flitted through his mind in a nanosecond, none achieving any dominance. They were simply instinctive, like the millions of inputs a hawk receives diving at a mouse. He focused on the task, calming his body down and manipulating the rifle so he was working with it instead of forcing the shot, seating it as best he could into the sandbag.
He settled the crosshairs just inside the rear tire’s rim, giving him the largest cross section to work with as a margin of error for the vehicle’s forward travel. Watching it shrink with each passing second, he took a deep breath and let it out, the air escaping like a pinhole in a balloon. He was conscious of the reticle slightly bouncing in time with the pulse of his blood. Conscious of a steady breeze against his cheek. Conscious of all the outside influences on the path of his bullet, but he trusted his subconscious to adjust, minutely correcting his aim to ensure success. It was a skill cultivated over a lifetime. He caressed the trigger, lightly pulling it to the rear with a feather touch.
