Hard Target

by Alan Jacobson

  Inside Uzi’s pack was another low-tech solution to the ten-foot chain-link wall: a homemade device consisting of a wood dowel with protruding nails. The nails served as hooks, providing Uzi and DeSantos purchase while they positioned the fiber roll over the barbed wire.

  Three minutes later, they were grasping their makeshift claw hooks with one hand while holding the fiber roll with the other. DeSantos used a bungee cord and holes in the fiber to secure it in place, then nudged his partner. Uzi would go first. He shifted his weight carefully, trying not to cause too much shake and rattle in the chain link. Noise of any sort was their enemy.

  While Plan B would have involved using a bolt cutter to peel away a section of the fence, their goal was to leave the grounds without any physical evidence of having been there.

  Uzi hooked his homemade claw around the chain links, and boosted his right leg up and onto the fiber sheath covering the barbed wire. He maneuvered his left leg over the fence, then steadied himself while DeSantos repeated the movements Uzi had just completed.

  They had done this once before over a decade ago in Estonia, when Uzi was with Mossad. The stakes were far greater then, as they were attempting to snatch-and-grab a Russian scientist who was threatening to provide the Iranians with blueprints and enough enriched uranium to construct their own nuclear reactor. Although Uzi and DeSantos were successful, Iran eventually obtained their information and materials through other means.

  This particular mission also carried far-reaching implications: if ARM was involved in the attempted assassination of the vice president, they had vaulted onto another plane of domestic threat— with no limit to what they would try next.

  They unhooked the bungees, then lowered themselves to the ground and tightly re-rolled the fiber before covering it with pine needles and branches. If things went sour and they had to get out fast, they would use a set of mini-bolt cutters they were now burying by the fence line. At that point, leaving any physical sign would be moot, and their priorities would shift: escaping without discovery of their identity would become paramount.

  Packed up and ready to part, they gave each other a gloved thumbs-up, then set off in opposite directions: DeSantos headed for Target A, Uzi for Target B.

  UZI’S DELIBERATE MOVEMENTS made him feel as if he were watching a baseball game in slow motion. But that’s what this op demanded. They had to keep from triggering the motion sensors. While light-absorbing clothing was an advantage, defeating motion detection was an inexact science; a passing animal, or merely brushing against a branch, could set it off.

  So Uzi moved with caution, staying in the path of tree trunks—natural obstructions to the sensors. He slowed his movement in those areas where surveillance measures and other sensing devices were most likely to be placed. Ten minutes later, he came upon a clearing that contained a structure a bit larger than a modular trailer. His projected method of entry had also been determined by aerial surveillance. Though the doors were padlocked, they contained external hinges. Uzi circled to the back of the structure, shrugged off his rucksack, and removed a screwdriver. Using the back end of his knife, and limiting his movements, he used short, firm strikes that he shielded with his body. The screwdriver handle was coated in rubber, absorbing much of the noise.

  After half a dozen blows, Uzi had the oxidized brass hinge pins in his pocket. He entered the building, flipped on his quarter-size red-beamed LED flashlight, and began taking inventory.

  ACROSS THE COMPOUND, DeSantos was approaching his target, a twenty-foot-tall, flat-roofed structure that appeared to be a modestly sized storage facility of about a thousand square feet. DeSantos opened his backpack and removed a coiled length of thick rope, fitted with a grappling hook at one end. With a looping, underhanded toss, he sent it to the top of the building.

  As feared—and expected—the quick movement of his arm was more than enough to stimulate the motion sensor. A tree-mounted spotlight snapped on.

  UZI DIVIDED THE BUILDING’S INTERIOR into grids and methodically carried out his search. Thus far, he had found a cache of weapons with filed-off serial numbers, ammunition, and boxes of spare computer parts. He wished he could take photos—or better yet—that he could make arrests based on what he found. But he was there illegally, trespassing at best and breaking and entering at worst.

  After finishing his survey, he returned to Grid 3 and stuck the flashlight in his mouth. He was looking for ammunition with Russian markings—a potential link to Bishop’s murder.

  Uzi finished rummaging through the cartons, taking care to replace everything the way he’d found it. If he had the time, he would’ve used his phone to take photos of the interior after breaching the shack. That way, he could replace everything the way it had been with reasonable precision, then reformat the memory card to delete the pictures. But he had to be quick and be gone. No time to be perfect—and he could not afford to make any blatant errors, either. He had to hope that no one would notice a book or box slightly ajar.

  Frustrated at not finding what he came for, he turned to make one last sweep of the area. As he pivoted, he noticed a removable floor panel that shifted under his weight. He knelt down and studied the seams of the metal plate, then removed the knife from his thigh holster. Using the sharp tip, he pried up the edge enough to get his fingers underneath.

  When he lifted the panel, he saw four steel steps leading down to... What? A basement? A crawl space? After descending the stairs and lowering the hinged plate back into place, he took his flashlight and shone it around his immediate vicinity. Not a basement. Not a crawl space.

  “Holy shit.” Before he could take another step to explore, the storage building began rattling, followed by a rumbling deep in his gut.

  DeSANTOS STOOD WITH HIS FACE and body pressed up against the side of the building, the dark stealth clothing protecting him from detection. If a guard was watching his security monitor, he’d see the light snap on—but, theoretically, would not see a black-clad male figure trespassing on their property. DeSantos had been told that in such a situation, if he remained absolutely still, he would probably appear to blend into his surroundings. He had told his DARPA buddy that he didn’t like the “probably” part of his comment, but knew that with so many variables and limited field testing of the new technology, he would have to hope for the best.

  As he waited for the lights to turn off, he realized he was wasting valuable minutes. One thing they couldn’t determine from satellite reconnaissance was the length of time the motion sensors were set to burn. And with each second he remained pinned to the side of this building, the less time he would have to look around inside it. If he could just move his left hand a few feet, he’d be able to click his squelch key and signal Rodman to make his approach.

  As he debated what to do, he felt the thumping of the rotors followed by the roar and whir of the Black Hawk’s engines. The chopper blades’ pounding of the air was intense, vibrating deep in his throat and hammering away at the inside of his chest like a heart stimulated by a massive adrenaline infusion—which wasn’t far from the truth.

  As if his airborne team had read his mind, Rodman was beginning a zigzag descent over the compound, stirring up all sorts of shit in wind buckets and dramatically lighting up the night sky with black and gray smoke spewing from the chopper’s tail. DeSantos had hoped to be inside the structure by this point, as the strong wind generated by the Black Hawk would set off the motion sensors all over the compound. Instead, he counted to five, allowing all the members of ARM’s security detail to get a good long glimpse at the noisy chopper putting on its show over their land. Then he grabbed the rope, and with catlike quickness, pulled himself up.

  RODMAN WIGGLED THE CONTROL STICK, giving the appearance of substantial instability in the chopper’s flight path, then lowered the bird with lurching movements toward the ground. The performance was spectacularly frightening, particularly if you were a group of paranoid militia members who spent every waking moment obsessing about this very e
vent. In some ways, it was a dream come true for them—a chance to grab their high-tech rifles and semiautomatic submachine guns to defend their property from an onslaught of invading black-helicopter Feds.

  In another sense, it was their ultimate nightmare—for the very same reasons. They had powerful weapons and a common conspiracy-laden mind-set that kept them banded together, aligned against an overwhelmingly virulent enemy—ingredients for a potentially explosive environment. Rodman knew this. Trained or not, it was the inability of these men to properly analyze a situation under duress that made this situation so volatile.

  Yet the same factors that infused this mission with risk were precisely the things that each of the OPSIG operatives craved. Whether on foreign or domestic soil, adrenaline was a drug for them.

  As the chopper neared the ground, Rodman positioned the cockpit as close as he dared to the main gate without risking danger to his craft from the surrounding trees. He landed parallel to the fence line, clearly outside their property, taking care not to antagonize more than necessary. He sat there calmly in his seat, throwing switches that needed to be thrown, and some that didn’t. Drawing out the moment and soaking up as much time as he could until he received the squelched signals from his land-based team indicating they had achieved mission success.

  Like famished ants finding food, guards poured out of the nearby structures, Kalashnikov assault rifles slung over their shoulders. They hit the ground in choreographed fashion, dropping to one knee and pointing their weapons with practiced precision. Perhaps DeSantos had misinterpreted their level of expertise. Rodman’s heart beat furiously as his outward calm belied his sudden sense of anxiety. He tried to ignore the troop maneuvers taking place in front of him as he spoke into his encrypted headset. “Uh, boys, we’ve made contact. They’re well armed and seem to be itching for us to make a hostile move. Stand by.”

  Rodman engaged the external speakers. Phase two of their charade was about to begin—a bit earlier than planned.

  UZI HAD FELT THE CHOPPER approaching before he heard it; the vibrating rumble in his gut told him he needed to get moving. But he couldn’t, not yet—not after finding this hidden chamber. He walked down a long, narrow tunnel that led to another set of steps—and what appeared to be a larger, deeper room. After assuring himself that no one was there, he stepped down into the darkness.

  Beyond a fire door lay an area that stood in stark contrast to the environs of the building he had just left. Rows of polished stainless steel racks held computer modules stacked neatly one above the other, color-coded cables feeding each of the units. Uzi knew exactly what he was looking at, having played a role in developing the earlier generation microchips running these very servers.

  The chill of air conditioning and metal honeycomb flooring told him that whoever designed this facility for ARM clearly knew what he was doing. According to Ruckhauser, Lewiston Grant was a self-made computer expert. Looking at this subterranean setup and its advanced technology, Uzi had to agree. Unless they hired a contractor who could be trusted with their secret—or unless ARM had another networking guru in their ranks—Grant was alive and well, and keeping his knowledge base sharp.

  Uzi did a quick walk-around, his knife clenched in his right hand, ready to be thrown or thrust should someone challenge him. He made his way to the end of the room, looking for the administrator’s desk. It could be anywhere, really, but Uzi had a feeling they would have someone down here overseeing the equipment. He turned down a corridor created by the rows of shelving, and saw a free-standing PC resting on a desk against the bunker’s cement wall.

  He didn’t have much time. But the thought of poking around and hacking the server was so tempting he would almost be willing to risk getting caught to see what he could find.

  On the desk was a half-empty Styrofoam cup of coffee. He removed his glove and stuck his index finger into the drink. It was relatively hot. Whoever had left it had done so to respond to the chopper out front. They could return at any moment.

  He rummaged through the desk drawers and found standard office supplies and various computer peripherals: a mouse, networking cables, a discarded hard drive. He reasoned that ARM used a RAID setup, which stored data redundantly, spread out over multiple disks. If one failed, a replacement could be slipped in and the system would automatically recover, without any data loss. While the drive in his hand had likely been trashed, he was certain CART could retrieve its information. But if he got caught, his cover would immediately be blown. There could be no excuse for having it in his possession.

  He gave one last look around the desk and was about to close the drawer when he saw a small yellow notepad tucked beneath a book. He scanned the pages, which contained scribbled notations at varying angles. Whoever took these notes had no use for ruled lines. As Uzi read the various entries, he realized it was a scratch pad, kept by a phone, where reminders, names, and events could be scribbled, transferred later to their respective repository: a calendar, a contact list, a database program.

  While it would not be something someone would miss, he played it safe nonetheless. He removed the second and fourth pages, figuring Tim Meadows could use alternative light sources and other forensic techniques to raise the imprinted notes taken on the pages directly above them.

  Uzi grabbed a pen from the drawer, unscrewed the two halves, and removed the refill. He deftly rolled the two sheets of paper into a tight tube, then slid it into the hollow case. He slipped the pen into his backpack, then checked to see how much time had elapsed. He was three minutes behind schedule. Patience. The easiest way to find trouble is by cutting corners.

  He positioned the chair the way it had been before he sat, then retraced his steps toward the tunnel, moving swiftly. Rodman and crew were now doing their thing. He needed to do his.

  THE MILITIA MEMBERS began pouring out of a pedestrian gate several feet to the left of the guard house. The men fell into position encircling the grounded chopper, with several peering into the cabin glass. But the windows were deeply tinted, and with the near total darkness inside and the security spotlights brightening the front of ARM’s compound, they would be staring into mirrors.

  Rodman waited, drawing it out, not making a move until forced to do so. Finally, one of the men walked up to the cockpit and rapped on the front side window with the muzzle of his assault rifle.

  Rodman keyed the mike. “Back the fuck away!” He needed to establish authority without delay. Although he was accustomed to relying on his size, in this case broadcasting his deep baritone voice over the external speakers served as his sole means of intimidation, leaving him less confident of success—particularly considering the neutralizing roar of the copter’s turbines and rotors. But the sooner they realized they didn’t have a pushover in the command chair, the less likely they would be to aggress. Yet he had to be careful not to incite them. It was a fine line.

  The man behind the submachine gun quickly dumped his own testosterone into the mix by bringing his Kalashnikov up to his cheek and taking aim through the side window, in the general location of Rodman’s head.

  Rodman knew his chopper was made to fly soldiers into combat. It had a built-in tolerance to small-arms fire and most medium-caliber high-explosive projectiles. His team could withstand an assault, but he doubted the cockpit glass was impervious to a high-powered round fired at such close range.

  He flipped the commo to the internal channel and informed his crew of the situation and ordered them to stand ready for countermeasures: the release of more smoke from the specially-installed exhaust pipes near the tail. The parasoldiers would likely back off for fear of explosion or asphyxiation.

  Rodman switched back to the external speakers. “We’ve got problems with our bird. Didn’t mean to land in your front yard, but we didn’t have much choice. We’re making repairs, but there’s still danger of explosion. Keep back.”

  He kept his explanation and warnings incomplete and cryptic, to make them think—and waste time while they
debated what to do. But at some point his friends would become frustrated with one-sided communication. How long did he have?

  He got his answer faster than he had hoped: ten more armed men moved into position and brought their weapons to eye level. Beads of perspiration oozed from Rodman’s forehead. Their sudden and unexpected reaction made him feel weak—an emotion he did not often experience. Whoever was calling the shots for this group was either a battle-tested military commander, or a decisive and impulsive individual. Either scenario was not good.

  Rodman’s eyes stung from dripping sweat. He scraped a shirt sleeve across his face and tried to remain clear-headed. He told himself it wasn’t fear so much as nerves—the lack of control over an unstable situation with an unknown, and unpredictable or underestimated, adversary. If he was only free to deal with these yahoos the way he’d been trained to do, he’d feel much better.

  But for now, he had to stare the enemy in the eye and refuse to blink. Action was his strength, not diplomacy. He silently urged DeSantos and Uzi to hurry—then dabbed at the pimples of sweat, and waited.

  DeSANTOS LOWERED HIMSELF into the small building through the roof vent. He landed on the floor with both feet, leaving his rope dangling in midair as he started his search. He was aware of the time limitation but pushed it out of his mind, focusing on his mission objectives: searching the interior’s contents as quickly as possible, without leaving trace evidence behind.

  He turned on his mini flashlight and moved through the storage building, which he estimated at twenty by fifty feet. Large, free-standing rusted shelves were arranged end to end and back to back, dividing the space into aisles. He took mental inventory of the shelves’ contents—primarily sequentially numbered boxes stacked atop one another—then pulled down one of two unmarked cartons. After slicing through the tape with his knife, he lifted the flaps— and froze.