The Last Line

by Anthony Shaffer

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  For Alex—my oldest son, who has helped me see, as he has grown, the world through his eyes, with wonder and appreciation.

  —Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer

  As ever, for Brea.

  —William H. Keith

  Acknowledgments

  Mr. Shaffer would like to acknowledge the following individuals directly:

  Curt Weldon—a former Congressman and outspoken leader who sacrificed a great deal in his personal and professional life in maintaining his support for me and who convinced me to come forward to tell the truth and change an inaccurate rendering of our nation’s history. He has boldly worked to find solutions to challenges that have plagued this country’s national security for decades.

  Curt—you sir, are a patriot and I am sure our Founding Fathers would be proud of your legacy.

  —You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

  —John 8–32

  Walter Jones Jr.—Congressman. A man who’s soul and integrity is more important to him than political party or reputation. I am awed by the grounding in honor of his actions and his ability to focus on what is real and important, while those around him focus on the temporal and banal.

  Walter—The good grace of honor you bring to your office has served your constituents well, brightened the gray halls of congress, and has made our nation a better, stronger place for your efforts. God bless you, and your family, in all things.

  —Send me.

  —Isaiah 8

  Mark Zaid, Esquire. One of the best lawyers on the planet. When it come to the First Amendment, it is clear that freedom of speech is often not so, and that in the battle, between the government’s wish to control information and the right of the individual to exercise their right of same, he has become a fierce warrior.

  Mark—the road to truth is full of potholes of process, boundless rules, and roadblocks of government bureaucrats. Thank you for your hard work to keep the traffic flowing.

  Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

  —Winston Churchill

  Lt. Col. (Ret) David Johnnson and Dr. Newton Howard—the executive director and founder of Center for Advanced Defense Studies, respectively.

  You have both been the foundation of rock in a world of shifting sands. Thank you for your undying support.

  Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

  —General George S. Patton Jr.

  There are others, field operatives, brave men and women of the intelligence and defense community who do the hard and often thankless job of defending this great nation in shadows and always at great political risk and physical danger. They are all too often only held up when it is convenient for politicians to use them to score political points, who often have to be creative and dynamic well beyond their training to accomplish real things and to protect us all. These brave men and women sign up not for glory or for recognition; they sign up for honor and the simple but highly satisfying accomplishments in doing real, often impossible things. It is in simply being able to accomplish those things they find their reward. It is to their efforts we hope this novel will help bring some light and entertain them (and the public) in homage to the necessity of protecting the American people from its enemies—both foreign and domestic.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Also by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Prologue

  U.S.-MEXICAN BORDER

  2 MILES EAST OF NOGALES, ARIZONA

  1650 HOURS, MST

  12 APRIL

  Even here, the screams were too loud to allow him to pray.

  Saeed Reyshahri remained kneeling, facing east, trying again to recite the Surat al-Fatiha, the seven opening verses of the Koran. “In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful, all appreciation, gratefulness, and thankfulness are to Allah alone, lord of the worlds…”

  A dry wind whispered across the sere and barren landscape. Behind him, on the other side of the ridge, a woman was begging, desperately pleading. Reyshahri did not speak Spanish, but he could guess easily enough what she was saying.

  “¡No! ¡No! Por favor … ¡Lárgate! ¡No me chinge! ¡No me chinge!”

  Filthy dogs. No respect for women—but worse, far worse, no concern for the importance, the urgency of his mission. Why had Colonel Salehi insisted on using these … these animals for Operation Shah Mat? The Sinaloa Cartel’s coyotes were … ruthless. Mercenary. Reliable enough if you met their price, but vicious and dangerous.

  They had their own agenda.

  Reyshahri was an officer in the Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniyat-e Keshvar—VEVAK as it was commonly known, the state security service of the Republic of Iran. His rank was sarvan, equivalent to a captain in the U.S. Army; he’d been a member of the Sepah for ten years, and with VEVAK for three more. For most of that time he’d helped train Hezbollah militias for their struggle against the Zionists.

  VEVAK was known neither for sentimentality nor for squeamishness when it came to operations in the field. There were times when raw brutality was absolutely necessary—to fulfill a mission, to make a point, to send a message.

  This, however, was not one of those times.

  The other women were screaming now, pleading, sobbing.

  He sat up straight. It was no use. He’d hoped to combine that day’s Dhuhr prayer at noon with this one, a practice called Jam’bayn as-Salaatayn allowed on long journeys. Instead, today he would miss both.

  Ernesto Jesús Mendoza topped the rise, grinning, full of swaggering machismo, his thumbs hooked in his belt, his assault rifle slung carelessly muzzle down behind one shoulder. “Hey, Arab! You want some of this?” He spoke English, the only language they had in common. “You’d better hurry!”

  Reyshahri scowled, despising the man. Reyshahri was Persian, not Arab. The trafficker knew the difference, he was certain; either the pig was deliberately goading him or he simply did not care.

  Mendoza and his gang were coyotes, human traffickers skilled in smuggling human cargos north across the border into the United States. They were also, he knew, members of the dangerous Sinaloan drug cartel, but this day they were escorting fifteen migrants north—nine men, six women—plus Reyshahri. An hour ago, they’d stopped here beside a dry arroyo. Mendoza’s men had herded the immigrants into the gully at gunpoint, separated out the three pretty, younger women from the rest, and dragged them to a patch of bare ground beside a huge ve
lvet mesquite tree nearby, leaving one of their number to guard the rest and keep them quiet.

  The coyotes had used this place before. The mesquite tree was festooned with women’s underwear—a rape tree, they’d called it. Reyshahri had heard the term before but thought it was either exaggeration or anti-Mexican propaganda.

  Reyshahri had not been able to watch what had happened next. It had been time for Asr, the afternoon salah, or prayer, so he’d found a private place behind the ridge, ritually washed himself with sand, and attempted to pray.

  It had been useless. Those poor women …

  “We should keep moving!” Reyshahri said, angry. “We could reach Phoenix tonight! If the Americans find us here they—”

  Mendoza spat on the sand. “The American gilazos could not find their asses with their hands. Don’t worry about them!”

  It was Reyshahri’s duty to worry about the Americans, though. Mendoza’s cavalier attitude was not helping.

  “Leave me alone,” Reyshahri growled. He listened to the screams a moment more. “You … shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Hey, the boys just want a little fun, you know?” Mendoza laughed, an unpleasant sound, and then shrugged. “We needed the halt. We have a long way to go after sunset.”

  Reyshahri wished he could pray, wished that God could give him the guidance he so desperately needed.

  The obligatory daily prayer was called namaz in Reyshahri’s Farsi, a word that meant roughly “to bow.” In Arabic, however, the word was salah, meaning “connection,” a believer’s connection with Allah. Here, on the desolate international border between Arizona and Mexico, Reyshahri knew that he’d lost that vital connection, that he was cut off now from his God.

  Perhaps it would be better once he reached the American capital and Operation Shah Mat had properly begun.

  He listened to the screaming in the distance and hoped so.

  Chapter One

  SECTOR CHARLIE 1-1

  SECRET CIA TRAINING FACILITY

  0225 HOURS, EDT

  13 APRIL

  Night—as impenetrably black as only a moonless and overcast night in the woods can be. Captain Chris Teller lay full-length on the ground, probing the smothering darkness around him, every sense alert. There’d been no sound to warn him, nothing but the usual chirp and whir and peep of insects and lovesick amphibians at the pond just up ahead, but there was something …

  There, he caught it again as he inhaled—the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke just perceptible above the mingled scents of leaf mold, earth, and stagnant water. His pursuers wouldn’t be stupid enough to smoke in the darkness; he was probably smelling it on someone’s uniform.

  Someone very, very close now …

  Yes … just ahead, a shadow against shadows. Using averted vision, looking to one side of the figure instead of straight at it, he could make out the shape of a man leaning against the trunk of a massive tree. The head was heavy and misshapen beneath the brim of his boonie hat.

  A Klingon, wearing NVD—night-vision device.

  Teller waited, not moving, scarcely breathing, not even looking at the man standing nearby. Play sneak-and-peek with the bad guys long enough and you became convinced that the opposition could feel you staring at them. The answer was not to stare at them, and to make the mental noise of a rock.

  Patience. Steady nerves. He was prepared to outwait the guy, however, to lie on the chilly ground for an hour if need be. He’d done this before …

  Christopher Thomas Teller had been with the Department of Defense for eight years now, as a case officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Intelligence Directorate. A captain in the U.S. Army Reserve, he’d seen action in both Afghanistan and Iraq, in combat zones where it was sometimes tough to figure out who were the good guys and who wore black hats.

  Since he’d started working for the DIA, that was more of a problem than ever.

  A sharp hiss of static and a burst of unintelligible words sounded from the tactical radio holstered on the man’s combat harness. “Yeah,” he said. “Red Three.”

  More crackling mutters, and then the man said, “Negative. Nothing here. Sector Charlie one-one is clear.”

  While Red Three was distracted by the radio call, Teller, wraith silent, rose and eased forward. The man was angled away from him, his field of vision sharply restricted by the night-vision device over his face. Teller knew he would get just one chance …

  “Copy that,” Red Three said. “Out.”

  Teller took the last three quick steps and struck, using the heel of his hand.

  Karate chops to the neck are pure Hollywood, all for show and largely useless. What knocks a man unconscious is not the blow itself but the force of the brain slamming against the inside of the skull. Strike high and from the side, aiming just above the temple, and if the target is relaxed his head will jerk sharply enough to rattle the brain and induce immediate unconsciousness.

  It was a martial arts technique that Teller had practiced long and exhaustively. You didn’t actually need to use much force—in fact, too hard a blow to the temple could kill—but your accuracy had to be perfect, especially when the bull’s-eye was covered by an NVD harness and the brim of a boonie hat.

  Red Three slumped; Teller caught him as he fell and silently lowered the body to the ground. Swiftly, he dragged the night-vision device from the man’s head, checked the man’s pulse, then pulled a penlight from his pocket and peeled back the eyelids, first one, then the other, making sure to shield the light with his hand. Both pupils were the same size, thank God. If Teller had misjudged and fractured Red Three’s skull, it would not have been good.

  Again Teller smelled cigarette smoke, stronger now, and grinned. Most smokers had no idea just how much their clothing and breath stank to nonsmokers. A good thing, too; he’d very nearly walked into this one in the darkness.

  The night would no longer be an obstacle, however. Putting away his light, Teller slipped on the night goggles. Sweet. The unit was an AN/PVS-21, one of the newer Gen III Omni IV systems that let the operator see both with direct vision and with light intensification, as well as by infrared. He flipped the left-side monocle aside; he wanted to keep his night vision in at least one eye. As he switched the unit on, the surrounding forest seen through the right-eye optics became twilight-bright in green monochrome. He could see still black water thirty meters ahead—the millpond. The heads-up display projection overlaid the image with a compass bearing, waypoint, GPS data, and other useful tidbits. To the left, a bright white star bobbed slightly as it moved through darkness.

  An infrared target—another Klingon wearing an infrared wand on his utilities about fifty meters off. Teller was going to have to be careful if he wanted to stay unobserved.

  He still had a long way to go.

  AIRFIELD COMMAND POST

  SECRET CIA TRAINING FACILITY

  0234 HOURS, EDT

  Marine Lieutenant Colonel Frank Procario glanced at the big clock on the wall, then back at the computer screen. “Face it, Clarke,” he told the older man seated at the monitor. “Your people have lost him.”

  “Not freakin’ likely,” James Edward Clarke replied. He was staring at the monitor as though willing the screen to provide him with more information. An airstrip, running southwest to northeast, appeared at the bottom; the sprawl of the pond was above, to the north. A half-dozen points of light described a rough circle in the woods southwest of the pond, and Clarke pointed at the circle’s heart. “We know he’s in this area, right here. He can’t manage more than a half mile an hour or so, not in the dark over uneven ground, not unless he wants to break an ankle. We’ll get him.”

  Procario gave a humorless grin. “We’ll see.”

  Officially, these woods were part of a highly classified training facility, so secret that the government wouldn’t even allow it to be named. To anyone in the know, however, it was “the Farm,” a rural base tucked away out of sight within thousands of acres of thickly wooded lan
d, close by a broad and slow-moving river. On the other side of a busy interstate running past the perimeter fence, a popular tourist center celebrated America’s heritage. A million tourists wandered that historic site each year, never guessing that the main entrance to the covert CIA training facility even existed nearby. Case-officers-in-training routinely used the downtown area of the tourist site as a classroom where they could practice shadowing, brush passes, mail drops, and the other esoterica of tradecraft.

  Since the early fifties, some eight thousand acres of the Farm had been given over to woodland, with isolated buildings and training facilities scattered across the property, all but lost among the trees. In the past few years, though, trees had been coming down by the hundreds, and earthmovers had been carving out acre upon acre for new buildings and roads. The War on Terror had been causing the black-ops budgets to boom, and the Klingons had been making the most of it.

  Plenty of woodland and swamp remained, however, more than enough for training classes such as this one.

  The session was a fairly standard E&E exercise, escape and evasion. They’d driven Teller out in a Humvee and dropped him off at the side of a road three hours earlier. This night’s objective was straightforward—orienting alone across three miles of woodland and swamp with a compass. Teller’s goal was the 5,000-foot airstrip located a little more than a mile south of the millpond. The catch came in having to make the trek in pitch blackness while evading a half-dozen CIA instructors, all of whom were wearing high-tech AN/PVS-21s and coordinating their movements by tactical radio.

  Still, Procario had known Teller for a long time. “I’ll put my money on Chris Teller anyway,” he said after a long moment.

  “Bullshit. We’ve got the bastard boxed in.”

  “That,” Procario said, his grin broadening, “is exactly when he’s at his most fucking dangerous.”

  SECTOR CHARLIE 1-1

  SECRET CIA TRAINING FACILITY

  0240 HOURS, EDT

  Teller watched the moving infrared target a moment in silence. Getting caught didn’t bear thinking about. Farm instructors had been known to zip-strip trainees they caught, put them through a mock interrogation, even beat them up in the sacred name of verisimilitude. Classes like this one weren’t just about proving you could avoid contract security bully-boys like Red Three. They were to demonstrate means of surviving after you were caught.