Omega Sanction

by Bob Mayer

  Gereg glanced over. "They look like a younger version of the mother. Petite and blond." She tapped the rest of the file. "According to this, the boys hated their mother and their father. Maybe they're taking out their hatred against Mom on these girls."

  "Maybe," Parker agreed, but something about that didn't sit quite right with her. She looked at the photo once more. "Except for Terri Dublowski," Parker noted. "She doesn't look like the others."

  Gereg nodded. "That's interesting, isn't it? Almost like someone wanted Dublowski involved—and through him, you and Thorpe. And through you," she added with a twist of her mouth, "me." She typed into her computer. "Let me check on something." A couple of seconds later, she had her answer. "The request to put Thorpe back on active duty went through the office of the reserves in the Pentagon, but it originated here. Someone here wanted Thorpe on active duty."

  "Hill is no longer national security adviser," Parker said. "He would—"

  "There's someone who was Lane's protégé." Gereg was still typing on her keyboard.

  "Who?"

  "That's who." Gereg pointed at the screen. "That's an intercept from the Direct Action operations center. We spend more time, resources and energy spying on each other here than on foreign countries. The CDA, Chief of Direct Action, is a man named Hancock. His brother was one of the CIA men killed in Lebanon by Thorpe and McKenzie. I have no doubt that Hancock blames me for the SO/NEST team being on that beach, even though he never informed me of the operation. And he definitely blames Thorpe for his brother's death."

  "Hancock was in line to be the director until Operation Delilah, which he was running for Hill, blew up in his face. He's a very dangerous man."

  There was action on the screen that diverted Parker's attention as she tried to assimilate everything Gereg had just told her. "What are they doing?"

  "Hancock has a Direct Action Team—DAT—on call in Sarajevo. He made a point of asking the director a couple of days ago to do just that."

  "Then he knew something was going to happen?" Parker asked.

  Gereg laughed without any humor, a low rumble from deep in her throat. "Knew something? He doesn't just know things, he sets things up. Cut through everything that's going on, and somewhere back there, you'll find the long reach of Mr. Hancock and behind that, Mr. Hill. Our old friend is still out there pulling strings."

  "Can the Direct Action Team stop the VZ?"

  "I hope that's what Hancock has planned. Even Hancock wouldn't go so far as to let nerve gas get loose." She paused. "At least I don't think he would."

  "What can we do?"

  "For now? Just watch. This hand has already been dealt."

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Terri woke to the sound of shouting and boots tramping down the corridor. Doors slammed open, the steel thudding against concrete. A girl screamed and Terri ran over to the door and pressed against it, listening. A man was yelling in a language she had never heard before.

  Terri fell into the hallway as her door was suddenly jerked open. A boot swung and hit her in the ribs, knocking the air out of her lungs. She scuttled away from the boot as it swung once more at her. Several men in light-colored camouflage had the other girls in the corridor. The man who had just kicked Terri reached down and grabbed her by the neck, hauling her to her feet.

  She kicked him and earned a throttling in retaliation. Terri gasped for air as the man's hand tightened down, cutting off the flow of air to her lungs. With bulging eyes she stared into his dark-skinned face.

  She realized she was going to die; that this was the last minute of her life. She kicked with weakening legs, feeling them strike his body, but there was no loosening of the hand around her neck.

  She didn't want to die. That was the only thought that resonated through her mind. Her vision was fading, the sounds becoming muted.

  A man's voice rose above the commotion, screaming something in the strange tongue.

  The hand released and Terri collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath. She felt the boot kick her once, twice, a third time, but she didn't react; she was so grateful to feel the oxygen in her lungs, to know she wasn't going to die.

  She looked up. A tall man was striding down the corridor, yelling at the men in camouflage. This man wore a dark green uniform, with numerous badges on it and gold epaulets. She could see guards kicking the other girls, all of whom were on the floor like she was.

  With a kick to get her attention, the guard who had choked her gestured for her to stand up. Terri got to her feet and the guard threw her back into her cell, slamming the door shut.

  Terri sank down onto the floor, back against the door. She was hyperventilating, and with great effort she forced herself to stop. She got the breathing under control—barely—and curled up in a ball on the floor, sobbing. She could hear the other girls crying and for once she didn't call out to comfort them. She barely had the strength for herself.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Kiril positioned the SAM-9 missile with a field of fire covering the abandoned railroad tracks. Then he deployed the rest of his men around the embankment with all the hard-earned knowledge he'd gained fighting for the last decade.

  He'd already plotted the route they would take south to Sarajevo. IFOR was building up forces around the city, preparing for an offensive against the Serbs. Over twenty thousand NATO troops were now camped within a twenty-mile radius of the city. The thought of what the VZ gas, released from a hill overlooking the city, would do to both the soldiers and citizenry of Sarajevo did not weigh heavily on Kiril's conscience. He had seen too much over the years. He simply wanted it to be over and he knew this was the only way.

  He pulled back the worn sleeve of his fatigues and checked the watch strapped to his wrist. The crystal was chipped and cracked, but he could make out the hands beneath—another hour and the Saudi brothers would be here.

  ***

  Two HH-60 Nighthawk helicopters were lifting off from the U.S.S. Nimitz, blades chopping through the salty air. Sailors watched, wondering who the black-uniformed men on board were. Since arriving on the ship four days ago, the men had stayed to themselves, totally ignoring crew members, test-firing exotic weapons off the edge of the flight deck and generally acting—in the words of one chief petty officer—like "bad asses."

  An Apache gunship followed the two Nighthawks and the three aircraft headed due east—toward "Indian" country, as the pilots who overflew the Balkans called that airspace.

  ***

  In his operations center, Hancock was watching a red dot moving westward across the outline of Romania projected on the screen. A green dot was moving eastward out of the Adriatic on the same latitude.

  "Do we have satellite confirmation that we're tracking Jawhar's helicopter?" Hancock asked Dilken.

  "Yes, sir. We got a Keyhole look from the KH-14 satellite at the airport it took off from and confirmed that is Jawhar's Bell Jet Ranger. Projecting its course puts it directly on line for the same spot where it went before to meet the Serbs—just north of the Sava River."

  "Time to target?" Hancock asked.

  "Forty-two minutes for Jawhar. Our team will be there five minutes before that and hold to the west, awaiting your order for final interdiction."

  Hancock tapped a well-manicured finger against his upper lip. "I want to get them all on the ground."

  "Yes, sir "

  Hancock picked up the phone built into the right armrest of the chair and punched in number one. The line bypassed the director's secretary.

  "What is it?" The director's tone was abrupt. Hancock had no idea what he had interrupted, but he knew now was the time to cross the Rubicon.

  "Sir, we have a developing situation you should be aware of. I'm in the operations center."

  "Give me an idea." The director sounded irritated.

  "We're tracking two briefcase loads of VZ nerve gas in a helicopter owned by personnel known to affiliate with terrorists. It's heading toward Bosnia, where we believe it's goin
g to be given to the Serbs."

  "I'll be there in a minute."

  Hancock put the phone down. He leaned back in his seat and stared up at the dots moving on the screen.

  ***

  "He's made his move," Gereg said. "He must be pretty confident to bring in the director."

  Parker was still trying to process what Gereg had told her. "If the brothers kidnapped Terri Dublowski to draw her father in and then Thorpe and I, then that means they're working with Hancock. Especially if he's the one who had Thorpe brought back on active duty." She shook her head. "I can't believe all that."

  "Why not?" Gereg didn't seem in the least surprised by that assumption. "Hancock could have arranged it with the brothers through a cut-out. There are quite a few people in the covert world who exist simply to pass information from one group to another. Groups that never want it known they are talking to each other. It is a rather lucrative business for some."

  "Akil and Jawhar might not even know who requested they snatch Terri or why. Most likely it was a trade. They got something they wanted in exchange for kidnapping Terri Dublowski."

  "And," she continued, "my report from Tel Aviv says that the brothers were forewarned of the Mossad attempt to interdict the VZ. I'm not the only one who has a contact in Israel."

  "Are you saying Hancock tipped off Jawhar and Akil about the ambush?"

  "It wouldn't surprise me. He wants the glory for himself. It's the way things work in the covert world."

  "But Hancock is betraying the brothers now," Parker noted.

  " 'Betrayal' is a strong word," Gereg said. "It indicates loyalty in the first place, something I would say our friend Mr. Hancock has never had with anyone or anything except his own interests."

  Gereg pointed at the screen. The two dots were closing on a spot along the border between Bosnia and Croatia. "He uses everything for his own purposes. If his DAT team takes down these people and the VZ, he'll be a hero. Plus he'll solve several other problems at the same time. He's already tied me to these brothers and set it up so that I get blamed for tipping Jawhar and Akil off about the Mossad ambush in the Ukraine." She proceeded to tell Parker of the death of Welwood.

  "It's a lose-lose situation," Gereg said. "Which is the position Hancock likes to put those he views as enemies in." She pointed at the screen. "We have to hope his DAT team succeeds in stopping the nerve gas, but if they do, then he succeeds."

  "He gets away with kidnapping and killing?"

  "It isn't the first time and it won't be the last," Gereg said. "Don't you think now that he was behind Takamura's murder? Takamura was killed when he got too close to identifying Jawhar and Akil too quickly."

  "If Hancock set all this up, then that makes sense. But who did he use to kill Takamura?"

  Gereg frowned. "He wouldn't have used one of his people for that. Not in the States. That would be going too far, even for him."

  "Who would he use, then?" Parker pressed.

  Gereg stretched out her long legs and leaned back in her chair. "I've been asking myself the same question ever since Welwood was killed in what the police are labeling a traffic accident last week."

  "Takamura's was made to look like an accident!" Parker said.

  Gereg nodded. "I know. There are a lot of players who would do such a job either for money or an exchange of favors." She pulled another file out of her desk. "Here's my choice. He's used the car accident method several times before on other jobs we know of overseas."

  Parker picked it up and opened it. "James O'Callaghan?"

  "IRA, but he's been known to freelance to keep his traveling options open."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning he likes to be able to come and go as he wants, and to do that, he needs someone like Hancock pulling some strings in the background."

  "Jesus!" Parker exclaimed. "You people are in bed with terrorists everywhere!"

  "Not this person." Gereg uncrossed her legs and sat up straight. "This is a nasty business, but I always try to do the right thing, the right way. A lot of people around here don't like that, and—" she stopped as her phone buzzed and she picked it up. She listened for a few seconds, then put it down. "The director's joined Hancock in the CDA operations center. He's making his play."

  ***

  "Where is Nabi Ulmalhamah?" Thorpe demanded.

  They were waiting on Yaron. Rotzinger was seated at one end of the table, appearing even more unhappy than his usual dour look.

  "We have been checking on that," Esdras said. "All we have managed to come up with is confirmation that it is one of Prince Yasin's palaces. We don't have a location."

  The door opened and a young man came in. He leaned over and whispered in Esdras's ear, then left without looking at either of the other men in the room.

  Esdras looked at Thorpe. "Your people have launched three helicopters to interdict Jawhar and Akil. Also, your Delta Force team here in town has gone on alert."

  "I don't understand," Thorpe said. "Why a team here in Tel Aviv?"

  Esdras shrugged. "Who knows?"

  Thorpe stood. "Can you hook me up with them?"

  Esdras waved at him to sit down. "They can do nothing staging out of here without our permission. Let us see what develops before we go off, as you Americans, say, half-cocked."

  ***

  Kiril heard the helicopter long before it flew by, barely twenty feet above the rail line. It was the same type as last time. A Bell Jet Ranger with IFOR markings. He climbed up the embankment as the helicopter banked a quarter mile away and headed back.

  Kiril frowned as the chopper gained altitude.

  ***

  Four miles away, the two Nighthawks and one Apache were hiding below the tree line, hovering just above the Sava River. They were linked by SATCOM to an IFOR AWACS surveillance plane, circling two hundred miles to the south.

  The AWACS had the entire area "painted" with radar, as well as having its own uplink to a KH-14 reconnaissance satellite that was feeding it live images of the area. The location of the Jet Ranger was being updated every tenth of a second with an accuracy of within two meters.

  Those in the waiting helicopters had no doubt they could run down the Jet Ranger easily. Their orders, however, were to wait until the meet was made and the VZ transferred, then to bag the whole lot.

  On board the Apache, the gunner armed his missiles, while on the Nighthawks, the men dressed in black locked and loaded their weapons.

  ***

  "Hold in place," Kiril ordered into his radio, keeping his men under cover in the swamp. The Jet Ranger was now overhead, a hundred feet up.

  Kiril looked up into the rotor wash. He was growing weary of these games. There was plenty of room for the helicopter to land where it had before.

  A spasm rippled down his throat. His nose burned. His hand grabbed for his radio mike as he realized he was already as good as dead.

  His fingers squeezed the send button, but no words came out of his mouth, only the gagging reflex as his lungs refused to work. He felt pain rip up his spine and he staggered back two steps, then dropped to his knees. His head was still angled up, staring at the chopper overhead, but everything was moving in slow motion now. He could even see each blade turning, so slowly, it seemed.

  Kiril pitched face forward into the gravel between the rail lines, dead. The SAM-9 man managed to arm his missile before he too was hit by the VZ. He died, desperately trying to pull the trigger and failing as his nerves seized up faster than his mind could issue the order. Kiril's entire patrol was dead within thirty seconds.

  ***

  "Chopper is still airborne," the voice of the radar operator on board the AWACS repeated.

  "What are they doing?" The Director had taken over Hancock's chair, relegating the CDA chief to a position standing next to him.

  "Probably checking the area out," Hancock answered.

  "Sir!" Dilken's alert was unnecessary, as they could all see the red dot moving east.

  "Did it land at all?" t
he director asked.

  "No, sir," Dilken answered.

  "They might have done an airdrop of the VZ to the Serbs," Hancock said, but he knew as the words left his mouth that they were ridiculous. Only a complete buffoon would do such a thing to such a deadly cargo, when they could just as easily land the helicopter to off-load. He caught Dilken's attention. "Tell the DAT to go!"

  Dilken relayed the order.

  ***

  "What the hell is going on?" Parker demanded.

  Gereg was watching the action on the display and listening to the orders being given with growing alarm. "I think it's not developing exactly the way Hancock planned."

  ***

  As the Apache and one of the Nighthawks raced off to the east, running down the Jet Ranger, the remaining Nighthawk halted above the place where the other chopper had hovered. The body of a man was clearly visible on the tracks below.

  "I've got more bodies in the swamp." The copilot had a pair of thermal goggles on and he was scanning the area.

  "Oh, shit," the senior man in the rear of the helicopter muttered. "Suit up!" he ordered. He keyed his radio. "We've got bodies here. Looks like a bio or chem weapon was used."

  ***

  The director turned the seat slightly and stared at Hancock. "What's going on? I thought you said this was to be a transfer of VZ."

  "It was." A nerve twitched on Hancock's left temple. "We've got it under control."

  "Under control?" The director stared at Hancock. "If that report is right, VZ was just used!"

  "The Apache will take out the chopper and the Nighthawk with it will secure the VZ. My other team will clear the site," Hancock said. "We can keep a lid on this."

  "You'd better," the director warned.

  ***

  One the blue-suited men peered through the plastic face mask at the display of the machine in his hand. The reading, along with the nature of the bodies, left no doubt about what had happened here. He had only seen this in a training lab at the army's Chemical Warfare Center on Johnston Atoll. And then the bodies had been monkeys.