by Brad Taylor
Kurt paced outside the Oval Office, hoping to catch five seconds of the president’s time. He had never done anything like this before, only coming to the White House when summoned. The phone call from Cambodia had changed that.
He knew it was incredibly frowned upon to attempt to ambush the president, but he really didn’t have a choice. He was about to divert the next Taskforce mission for personal reasons, and he needed the president’s approval. He also needed a little of the president’s big stick to cut through some Army bureaucracy.
“You sure he’s coming back here before his meeting with the finance committee?”
Sally, the president’s secretary, smiled. “Yes. He always comes back here before heading out again. Gives him a breather without interruption.”
Kurt inwardly winced. “I won’t be long. I promise.”
“What I can’t figure out is how you got past the chief of staff in the first place. Nobody else gets to ambush the president.”
Nobody else runs an organization that can bring down his entire administration with one mistake. “I don’t know. Just lucky, I guess.”
Sally was rolling her eyes when President Payton Warren entered the reception area, talking with a scrum of people bringing him up to speed for his budget meeting. He did a double take when he saw Kurt. Without waiting for Kurt to speak, he said, “Okay, everyone have a seat out here. I’ll be back in…”
Kurt said, “Five minutes, tops.”
After closing the door and shaking hands, President Warren said, “This must be bad news. Did Jennifer get sent to the hospital or something?”
When Kurt had agreed to let Jennifer attempt Assessment, the biggest obstacle had been that she was a civilian. They could camouflage the death or injury of any military or CIA member simply by claiming a training accident, but a civilian would be exponentially harder. Friends and family would have to buy the story, something that would be very, very difficult to control.
“No. Nothing like that. Believe it or not, she passed with flying colors.”
President Warren smiled. “Good for her. I’ll bet that’s caused a little barking.”
“Yea, it has, but they’ll get over it. In the end, they all respect ability, and she has it. Actually, she is part of the reason I’m here.”
“Okay. What do you have?”
“Well, Pike’s taking her, along with Knuckles’ team, on a cover development trip to Cambodia in two days. Get the business ready for operations. I need to divert them.”
“And you came to me? Sounds like Oversight Council business.”
President Warren was referring to the council that supervised Taskforce activities. Made up of thirteen people, including the president, they were the only ones who knew of the Taskforce’s existence, and they approved every mission as a single body. All the council members were either in the executive branch of government or private citizens. None came from the legislative branch.
“It’s personal. And not worth the council’s time. I got a call from the defense attaché at the embassy in Cambodia. He’s a friend of mine.” Kurt paused a second, then continued. “Apparently, someone turned in some artifacts that belonged to my father. It may lead to his body.”
Because of the Taskforce bond, the president was as close to Kurt as to any of his advisors. In some ways closer, since Kurt wasn’t part of the political machine. The president could relax around him, be himself without being on stage as the head of the most powerful country on the planet, or worrying about leaks for political gain. After getting used to being in the president’s presence, Kurt had relaxed as well. One night, late, after an Oversight Council update, Kurt had told him the story of his father becoming MIA on a secret mission during the Vietnam War. The Army had recovered the remains of the entire team minus Chris Hale, the team leader. No one knew why he wasn’t among the others in the wreckage of the helicopter. Kurt had been ten years old at the time. It had eaten at his soul every day since. He knew the president would understand.
“That’s great news… isn’t it,” President Warren said. “What did they find?”
“It’s not great news yet. Just good news. They found a rucksack pretty much destroyed by the elements. Inside was a Nikon SLR camera, a recon journal, some rotting Army T-shirts, and other odds and ends. The Nikon and the journal were packed in a waterproof rubber sack. They were the only things marginally serviceable.”
“What makes you think they were your father’s?”
“They were able to make out his name written in one of the T-shirts.”
The president nodded. “Okay. Sounds like it might be real. What do you need Pike’s team for?”
“Sir, I’d like to send him to the embassy to get the stuff. I know it’s breaking the rules, getting his team involved with a defense attaché who has nothing to do with his cover, but he’s headed there tomorrow, and JPAC is going to take forever. The equipment won’t help them find my father. Whoever turned it in will do that. I really want that camera and journal before it ends up lost in bureaucratic limbo.”
Kurt knew that the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command would do everything they could to recover his father, as they did for all investigations into MIAs from America’s wars overseas. He also knew that they were understaffed, and that for every person’s remains recovered by the command, there were probably three hundred bogus stories to investigate. Chris Hale was now at the bottom of that heap, with the camera and journal — the only thing left of Kurt’s father — tied up waiting its turn.
President Warren said, “That’s it? You just want Pike to swing by the embassy while he’s in-country?”
“Uhh. Well, no. My buddy can’t release the gear to Pike. There’s a huge trail of custody that has to be followed. Eventually, it ends at me, but I was hoping you could make some calls and cut through the red tape.”
The president smiled. “That’s easy. I’d be glad to do it, but I think you’re a little paranoid. Nobody’s going to give a shit about a camera from 1970.”
8
The man testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade droned on and on about some obscure prohibition against a technology transfer that was destroying the GDP of some obscure country, of which, apparently, the United States had some obscure but important reason to remain engaged. It was all Congressman Richard Ellis could do to even pretend to care. He had much more important things on his mind. At least important to him. He was thankful that this hearing was taking place in the Rayburn House Office Building, where his workplace was located, instead of the secure compartmented information facility buried underneath the Capitol Visitor Center, where the House Intelligence Committee met, his other committee obligation. It meant he could steal away to his office on the breaks.
A large, jovial man, he had a classic patrician’s face. He looked like a politician should, at least from the left. The profile on the right was marred by a three-inch birthmark that rose from his right eye and ran up into his hairline, like he’d smeared lipstick on his brow. He did his best to cover it with hair, and was always particular about camera angles.
Ellis was well liked on both sides of the aisle, but this conference was testing even his patience. He must be breathing from his ears. Finally, the man shut up, allowing Ellis time to whisper some nothings into the chairman’s ear and bolt.
As he arrived at his office, his secretary handed him a list of calls he’d missed. He thumbed through them until he found one that simply said Oakpark Industries with a number. The number was new, as expected. Every time he called Oakpark, he would dial a new number. Those were his rules, not theirs. Rules learned from a lifetime of practice. It was why he was still around.
He told his secretary to hold all calls and closed the door. Pulling open a drawer, he withdrew a brand-new pay-as-you-go cell phone. His number would be new as well. After this call, the phone would go in the trash. Ellis knew that the only way anyone was listening to phone calls either from h
im or from Oakpark was through a court order, which would dictate in no uncertain terms the number to be monitored. There was no way they could monitor a new phone every time he dialed the company. Well, they could, but nobody would let them. Call it a business expense.
A man answered on the third ring. Ellis wasted no time on pleasantries, not wanting to remain on the line any longer than necessary.
“Did you get the cargo?”
“Yeah, we got it. No issues.”
“Is it properly packaged? Like you were instructed?”
“Yes. I told you, no issues. Nobody will be able to tell what it is. We broke all the kits down into separate components, then lumped the like parts together. It looks like a bunch of metal plates and plastic containers. Just like the bill of lading says.”
Ellis relaxed a little bit. He’d facilitated the game many times, but this would be the first time he was a player.
“What about the landing on the far end? For the transfer. Is the coordination complete?”
“Hey, come on, we’re leaving tomorrow. Do you think I’d fly if I didn’t have it squared away?”
Yes, for the money you’re getting, I think you would. Ellis wished the man on the other end knew he was dealing with a United States congressman, but a little impertinence was worth the security. “Last time we spoke, you had mentioned complications. Have they been resolved?”
“We’re good. It wasn’t a complication. It was just a matter of finding the right guy. We’ve got the airport to ourselves for three hours. Plenty of time. It’s not in Cairo, but it’s close enough.”
Ellis couldn’t believe the man had just said a location. He wanted to scream into the phone, but he knew that would only attract attention to the mistake — should anyone be listening. He let it ride.
“All right. Go ahead and stage. When I contact you, you need to be on the ground in the following forty-eight hours. Don’t get boozed up on European beer with my per diem.”
Rafik left his hotel room and exited onto the crowded streets of Alexandria, Egypt. It was hot here, but the breeze off the ocean made it much more bearable than the heat around Cairo. He walked north along the shore, passing a coffee shop just off El Gaish Road and entering the Roushdy food court. He cared little about eating at one of the Great Satan’s hegemonic restaurants, but the food court allowed him to watch the café unimpeded, looking for threats before his meeting.
Taking a seat in a Kentucky Fried Chicken, he grimaced at all of the Egyptians waiting to scarf down the infidel’s recipes. He turned toward the window facing the café, disgusted.
Already crowded, the coffee shop had several small round tables underneath an awning, all holding men smoking the ubiquitous shisha water pipe. His contact was a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Once an underground organization that had been hunted relentlessly by the Mubarak regime, it was now the strongest political party in Egypt, torn between an old core responsive to its radical roots and a new, egalitarian base. Even as the party struggled to decide its vision of the future, the radical elements continued. They cherished their heritage as the umbrella group that had spawned and connected just about every Islamic terrorist organization in the world, including Rafik’s own organization, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Originally called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat — or GSPC — al Qaeda in the Maghreb was formed during the civil war in Algeria, a particularly brutal conflict.
Rafik had decided to join the GSPC at the young age of fourteen, when he and his parents had been ripped off the streets by Algerian authorities in a random cordon and search. He was tortured unmercifully for four days, then released. He never saw his parents again. Consumed by rage, all he wanted was revenge. The GSPC provided that outlet.
As he grew older, he proved himself for higher training. In 2001 he was sent to Afghanistan, where he met the sheik himself, Osama bin Laden. He was there for the glorious strike on September 11, and also there for the fire that followed. Rounded up by the Northern Alliance and the Special Forces team with them, he was on his way to Guantanamo Bay when the prison he was in outside of Mazari Sharif — called Qala-i-Jangi — erupted in a riot. While most of the prisoners satisfied themselves by cowardly beating a CIA man to death and generally running around like lunatics, Rafik escaped, knowing how the riot would finish. He found out later that most of his brethren had died in the massive retaliation of U.S. firepower that followed.
Returning to Algeria, he was a different man. The sheik had shown him that their fight was global. He now saw that the Near Enemy, like the government in Algeria, existed at the pleasure of the Far Enemies of the West. That’s who needed to be destroyed. They were the ones crushing Islam all over the world. Even now, with the shifting landscape of change sweeping the Middle East, the Far Enemy continually thwarted any attempts to return to the one true faith, instead championing a system of debauchery cloaked as democracy.
Try as he might, he couldn’t convince the GSPC leadership. By 2006 he had at least convinced them to pledge loyalty to al Qaeda and change their name. He knew they did it for the publicity and that they had no desire to enter the global fight. They preferred pinprick strikes against the government of Algeria to any strategic global attack in the name of Islam.
He had set out on his own, bringing with him a select number of trusted men. He’d worked nearly five years, patiently building his plan, while al Qaeda in the Maghreb remained somewhat of a joke in the fight for Islam. During that time, Osama bin Laden had been martyred, and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had become the prominent group. That was okay by him. In less than two weeks, he would make sure that al Qaeda in the Maghreb would cause more damage to the Far Enemy than all other attacks combined.
9
Jennifer came into the office as I was digging through a scattered pile of outdoor gear, looking for my neck light. I was hoping to be done packing before she arrived because she’d just give me shit about procrastinating. When I looked up, she was leaning against the doorjamb with her arms crossed.
I said, “Did you put my neck light back in my duffel after you borrowed it?”
We both knew she hadn’t touched the neck light, but it was worth a shot. As usual, I was packing on the fly. She, of course, had packed her stuff perfectly in one small suitcase before she even left for Assessment in North Carolina.
“Pike, if you’d plan ahead more than five minutes, you wouldn’t be flinging stuff all over the office tonight.”
Yesterday afternoon, we’d flown straight back to Charleston, South Carolina, to our little business called Grolier Recovery Services. Situated in an office complex on Shem Creek just outside of Charleston, we specialized in facilitating archeological work around the world. Jennifer had the anthropology degree to talk scientist, and I had the military background to talk to anyone who had an issue with the scientists. We did everything from laying the groundwork with the host nation and U.S. embassy to providing security on-site. A one-stop shop, so to speak. Just add pencil necks. It was a great cover, because it gave us a plausible reason to travel anywhere that had something of historical significance. Which was just about anywhere on earth.
You’d think that a business plan with those parameters would be dead on arrival — I mean, really, how many Indiana Jones expeditions could there be at any given time? — but we already had real requests for quotes. Our splashy publicity hadn’t hurt.
We had started the business with the proceeds we earned from finding an ancient Mayan temple in Guatemala. For about sixty seconds, we were all over the news, but much longer for people who actually cared about such things. Because of it, we now had respectable people beating a path to our door. Not that we needed the work, since we could count on a Taskforce paycheck.
I quit trying to find the neck light and shoved everything back into the duffel bag, slinging it into the closet on my side of our small office.
Jennifer came inside and took off her sunglasses, exposing the b
ruise around her right eye. The sight caused a confusing mishmash of emotions in my gut, making me feel guilty, angry, proud, protective, and shameful all at the same time
I said, “Want me to screen your bag? Make sure it’s clean?”
She knew what I was asking, saying, “Yeah, I guess, but this is my first trip. How could it have anything compromising in it?”
“Good point. Just force of habit. I’ll have to get used to a permanent cover. You could check my bag, though, just to be sure there’s nothing left over from my past.”
She took the backpack and zipped it open, going through the pockets, looking for receipts, business cards, or anything else that could cause a question on this trip. Our purpose was to camouflage Taskforce activities, so everything on us had to support our business, with nothing leading to the unit. It would be bad form to have an ATM receipt from a military post when you were claiming to be a civilian. When I was operational, the hardest thing was making sure my real life didn’t intrude on my cover. I couldn’t believe the clutter I’d accumulate. Just check your wallet to see what I mean. I no longer had to worry about that, because my life and cover were now the same. I was no longer ping-ponging back and forth pretending to be something different every mission.
The people who came with us were different. We would be the skeleton that the Taskforce would fall in on. We had a roster of TF operators who were included as our “employees,” but we’d only see them when we were tasked with an operation. Knuckles and Bull — our employees on this trip — would be the ones with the risk. Lord knows where they had been in the last six months.
In a nutshell, that was the purpose of our travel. As a company, we had to build a record with Taskforce personnel acting as employees, so we were doing what we called a “cover development” trip. Otherwise known as a “boondoggle” or “vacation on the government dime.” Basically, we just wanted to start populating air travel databases, getting our passports stamped, and collecting business cards from overseas, all of which would support that we were who we said we were. It was a really sweet gig because we’d be forbidden to do anything that wasn’t part of our cover. And it was truly necessary if we wanted to fool anyone with an Internet connection for more than five seconds. Jennifer, who was really into what our business did, had picked the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, so that’s where we were going for a week, with Knuckles and Bull as our employees.
