Tom Clancy's Op-Center--Dark Zone

by George Galdorisi

  “Yes,” McCord agreed. “Peace through intimidation.”

  An occupation force that doesn’t destroy infrastructure isn’t compelled to put down resistance—in effect, a Vichy arrangement. When the Germans occupied northern France in 1940—by armistice, not warfare—the French were required to pay for the three hundred thousand German troops. That came to twenty million Reichsmarks a day, more than fifty times the real cost.” McCord leaned forward, his blue eyes fixed on his superior. “Since the Russian treasury does not possess the resources to finish the job they started, the last thing they would want is people checking up on their very specific, very particular capabilities on the ground.”

  Williams shook his head. “Political games,” he said. “Christ, they’re more dangerous than war games.”

  The blond-haired intelligence director cleared the screen. “Soldiers are soldiers, but politicians are an amalgam,” McCord said. “Soldiers have one goal, to survive a winning battle. Politicians bring too many disciplines, too many objectives, and too many advisers to the table.”

  Williams was listening, but he was also thinking. “Roger, should we talk directly to someone in Kiev or at the SZRU about this?”

  “Two of their embassy employees were just killed,” McCord said. “We probably know way more than they do at this point. They’re probably finding out everything they can from their handlers, and then they’re going to want to hit back somehow. Is Op-Center prepared to help? They’ll press for that.”

  “Of course not,” Williams said. “But that’s not what I was thinking.”

  “What, then?”

  “During the call before, I asked the ambassador if he knew who Galina wanted the intel for,” Williams said. “He said he assumed it was paramilitary. There was some sketchy logic attached, but if it was regulars why wouldn’t the Ukrainian armed forces have gotten in touch with their own contacts in Washington to ask about this? We’ve got private cooperative agreements that everyone knows about.”

  McCord thought for a moment. “Because it’s black ops. Possibly rogue ops.” The intelligence director took a moment to chew over what he had just said. “No, definitely the latter,” he decided. “Operating outside known channels.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s been how many hours since the first murder?”

  “Nearly four,” Williams said.

  “Right,” McCord went on, having checked the time himself. “And there hasn’t been an RFA from the SZRU. Meaning Ukrainian intelligence may not be sure what they’re dealing with. Black ops would be on their radar, at the very least.”

  An RFA was a request for assistance. That was a pro-forma, almost involuntary request from allied intelligence services when they had any kind of “unfolding situation.” If none of the U.S. intelligence services had heard from the SZRU—and McCord had already checked the in-box they all shared via the Homeland Security National Network of Fusion Centers—it was because the Ukrainian agency wasn’t sure what to ask. This latest killing wasn’t likely to clarify anything.

  “Recommendations?” Williams asked.

  “I want to go over that virtual-reality program with Aaron,” he said, rising. “It was created to reflect a very specific target. The Russians wouldn’t have posted images of an under-construction base online but, obviously, they had to come from somewhere.”

  “I like it,” Williams said as McCord turned to go. “Thanks, Richard,” the director said as he departed.

  McCord half turned and nodded as he left.

  Williams opened their online channels to the NYPD and the FBI in New York to see if there was any additional information in real time. He found McCord a tough man to know, a challenge even to like, but something about the man’s analytical style seemed to force the others to up their own games.

  Anne sent him a text:

  I’ve given Brian the ambassador’s home and office info. He says to tell you “the garlic’s on the window.” I don’t see it in the code list.

  Williams chuckled and wrote back:

  You won’t. Private. Thanks.

  It was a joke that dated back several years, when a new team, with a fresh global outlook and a powerfully diverse skill set, took over the dormant Op-Center. Every boutique government agency had a high incidence of burnout and attrition, and former director Paul Hood and his number two, Mike Rodgers, had experienced theirs. When Williams came aboard—hired by Hood himself—he sought to change the role the Critical Incident Response Group and SWAT element played in overall operations. The original military component, code-named Striker, was a dedicated arm of Op-Center. For the new incarnation, the CIRG/SWAT team was seconded to Op-Center. That meant the transfer was for temporary duty, and it gave the military leader—Mike Volner—greater leeway in go/no-go decisions. That wasn’t an easy partnership for Williams, which was where the garlic reference came in. It came after Dawson’s first long, boozy meeting with the twenty-nine-year-old at a sports bar in Richmond. Impressing the kid with his fluency in Arabic, Dari, Pashto, and other Middle Eastern tongues, Dawson had effectively convinced him that his rise through the ranks would be a “sure thing,” with high-profile Op-Center assignments instead of the pick-a-number promotions at the Department of Defense. Volner seemed to agree, which prompted Dawson to send Williams the text:

  Garlic’s on the window, DOD vampires kept at bay!

  While there had been trying times when Volner felt the pull of the big, institutional family at the Pentagon versus the cadre of retired brass at Op-Center, if nothing else the phrase had stuck.

  Noticing the apple that remained untouched on his desk, Williams picked it up and took a bite just as an alert came through from the NYPD. He punched a number on the office phone and hit speaker.

  “Yes, boss?” Aaron Bleich replied after a brief delay.

  “Got a project for you and your biometrics people, top priority,” Williams said. “I’m sending it over—will be there in a minute.”

  “At the ready,” Bleich said, even as Williams finished typing and ran from his office, the apple left doing a lonely dance on the desk.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  June 2, 3:55 PM

  It had made real-world sense—not, as is frequently the case, backward military logic—for Brian Dawson to take the circuitous route that Anne Sullivan had laid out for him.

  It began with an hour-and-forty-five-minute helicopter flight south to Fort Bragg before heading north. His ride was a UH-72A Lakota, a helicopter with aerodynamic skin like molten copper, a hingeless main rotor system, and composite rotor blades. It always gave Dawson a smooth, quiet ride conducive to work—in this case, reading up on Ambassador Flannery and studying a map of Manhattan. Dawson knew every street in Washington, D.C., many in Philadelphia, but New York was relatively new to him. His experiences there had primarily been at meetings and in hotel rooms. The hotel visits weren’t always for work.

  Volner was waiting on the tarmac when Dawson arrived. The men were scheduled to board a C-17 that was headed to Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, New York. From there it would be a quick helicopter ride to Manhattan. The skies were dark and menacing. A storm was coming, and departure status was SONG: soon or no go.

  Coordinating a commercial departure from the D.C. region would have saved some time … but then there would be no way to bring even a Swiss Army knife for protection.

  Volner looked like a man who was less bothered by long flights than by rules he knew should never be applied to him, especially by the TSA. Standing five feet ten inches tall and weighing a deceptively lean 160 pounds—all of it sinew, no body fat—Volner had short-cropped brown hair, brown eyes, and a look of serenity that came from his strong Lutheran faith. He was dressed in civvies: jeans and a short-sleeved button-down white shirt. He looked like a soldier on leave, but there was no getting around that.

  “Hello, Mike,” Dawson said, his grip thrown over his left shoulder, his rig
ht hand extended. He looked the man over as he approached. “Where’s your pacifier?”

  He was referring to the slim Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9 mm. the officer carried when he was off duty. The slim-cut clothes didn’t allow for either a shoulder or an ankle holster.

  Volner patted the laptop case he carried. It was made entirely of Kevlar and doubled as body armor in a pinch; it, too, would never have made it through airport screening.

  Only now did Dawson notice the slight bulge created by the handgun. It had a one-inch profile, but its light weight allowed for swift tracking and consistent multiple-round placement. Dawson had fired the weapon and was envious of its proficiency. At the same time, though, he was sorry for Volner: he would never know the challenge of having to choose between power and low profile in concealed carry weapons. The only two guns Dawson owned were a fairly nonlethal 22 Derringer, which he could keep in his pants pocket, and a blow-your-head-off .38 snub nose that he wore in a shoulder holster. For the past seven or eight years, they had been in a safe in his bedroom closet; there were too many traffic checkpoints, too many metal detectors, too much scrutiny of good and honest citizens to make it convenient to bear private arms.

  “By the way, Moore has sworn to kill you,” Volner said, cracking the barest hint of a smile as he shook the other man’s hand.

  “I’ll buy him a beer when we get back,” Dawson replied.

  “I think a round-trip plane ticket may settle him,” Volner countered as they ran up the forward stairs of the massive 174-foot-long aircraft. “Nothing less. He has a new niece.”

  “That’s why FaceTime was invented,” Dawson said, aware that he had sounded crankier than he intended.

  Volner’s already tentative smile vanished. Old sewage rose to take its place, all of it pinned to one event—

  The two men sat side by side in one of the narrow black fold-down seats that lined the aircraft’s cavernous interior. They were surrounded by ninety-eight troops of the XVIII Airborne, who were headed north for a joint training operation with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

  Dawson shut his eyes and sat back as the rumbling, screaming giant rose into a clear sky. It was always white daylight inside, as rows of fluorescent lights provided unchanging illumination in the windowless interior. It was really the first chance he’d had to catch his breath, and take a step back from the mood that had prompted a bank shot at Moore and compelled him to request this mission. It wasn’t just feeling trapped behind a desk, though God knows that was a big part of it. When Chase Williams recruited him, the deal was to “try Op-Center out for size.” That trial period was past its one-year expiration date, and Dawson had gotten—itchy? Bored?

  No, it’s full-on cabin fever, he decided.

  He liked and admired the Op-Center team, and he never felt underutilized. But everyone had a function, and while job descriptions were never strictly enforced, everyone was careful not to bump shoulders. Dawson preferred a strict chain of command … where he was on top.

  It also wasn’t just Carolina who had fired up his need to go, even though he’d plugged back into her like a phone charger the moment he saw her. And the attraction—at least from where he sat, as lunch rolled on—was still strong. But she had moved on. Though she hadn’t said much about her new man, his stink was all over her in a way that only a former lover could detect: checking for his texts and smiling, smiling differently from the way she did with him; wearing a new scent that he must have bought her—

  “Stop!” he told himself. He didn’t have time to nurse a new hate. Not now.

  All of that was a trial. Not quite Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains in the winter but, in its own way, worse: he had no real training for the dynamics and realities of Op-Center … or for Carolina’s moving on.

  Yet, as he thought about it, neither of those was the outstanding reason he had wanted to make this trip. This was—and he knew it now, as he elbowed those other two things out of the way—this was goodbye. This was the vacation you take before you quit. This was the perspective you take to make a major change. The fact that he didn’t know what that next step would be was the reason he had to get away.

  Shit! Dawson thought. He hadn’t realized his mood was that sour until he let it out to breathe. They were at thirty thousand feet and beginning to level off before he opened his eyes.

  “Headache?” Volner asked, speaking louder than normal to be heard above the four roaring Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofan engines.

  “Huh? No,” Dawson replied. “Why?”

  “You were wincing.”

  “I was thinking,” he said. “Tougher to push that boulder up the slope these days.”

  “Prayer,” Volner said. “I know you don’t put much faith in it, so to speak, but you should try it now and then for what ails you.”

  “Yeah,” Dawson said—though, by inflection, he meant “No.”

  Volner shook his head slightly—not where Dawson could see—and dug for the tablet he carried in a shoulder bag. Dawson retrieved his own iPad and the men began reviewing what they knew and didn’t know and how they should deploy at Flannery’s building. They had decided not to let him know they were there, not at first. Volner suggested that Dawson watch the ambassador while he did recon of the perimeter.

  “Chances are we won’t be facing a sniper but a close-proximity assailant,” the JSOC commander said. “Someone is autographing these kills for a reason, and isn’t likely to stop now.”

  “Not until the cease-and-desist message is acknowledged,” Dawson agreed.

  “We working line-of-sight?”

  “I think that’s best.”

  That meant neither would ever go anywhere the other couldn’t see him. They brought up a map of the area around Flannery’s office and overlaid the NYPD “ring of steel” graphic: the location of every public and privately operated surveillance camera in the region, which were indicated in blue, and both permanent and mobile radiation detectors. There was barely a square foot of ground space that wasn’t covered.

  “I told the ambassador we’d make contact when we got to the city,” Dawson said.

  “Right. We’ll do a perimeter sweep before we bring him out,” Volner said. He reviewed the data on the Lytvyn murder. “We’re dealing with at least two assassins, possibly a spotter.”

  Dawson nodded. “Doubles or triples our chances of seeing someone who doesn’t belong.”

  “The enemy has that advantage, too,” Volner pointed out.

  “The enemy,” Dawson repeated. “I think I’m tired of having enemies.”

  “I’ll stop fighting if they will,” Volner said.

  “Maybe that’s not what I mean, then,” Dawson said, reconsidering. “I’m thinking—my folks grew up afraid of the Russians. Then we had Reagan, Gorbachev, détente. After that—Putin, and we’re back passing ‘Go’ again. Maybe I’m tired of the merry-go-round that doesn’t seem to get anywhere.”

  “There’s a simple solution to that,” Volner said.

  “I know. Get off. How’s the line go? ‘What, and give up show business?’”

  Volner regarded his companion. “Sir—I do my duty and save the thinking for downtime and God,” he said. “If I drilled down like you’re doing, I think I’d never get out of bed.”

  “You want to talk about the eight-hundred-pound gorilla?” Dawson asked.

  “Not particularly, sir,” Volner replied. “I wrote a report that was solely factual. We made a mistake, a man died.”

  “Op-Center made a mistake, you mean,” Dawson said.

  “I never said that anywhere,” Volner said.

  “No,” Dawson told him. “But there is a fine line between ‘accident’ and ‘mistake,’ and, in my judgment, you crossed it.”

  “There was no fallout that I’m aware of,” Volner replied.

  “The thin blue line,” Dawson said. “We defend each other because those like us is all that stands between civilization and anarchy. Politicians don’t need to know every detail as lo
ng as we do.”

  Volner fell silent, not in acquiescence but in recognition of the fact that the ammunition on both sides had been spent without a victory.

  Dawson envied the ability of the JSOC cell leader to segregate like that. Dawson could do that, too, when there was something urgent—but then he would slip back into trying to comprehend the plate tectonics behind and below it.

  The forced air of the cavernous interior, and the subtle vibrations of the cabin, caused Dawson to grow drowsy and fall asleep. The white noise of the engines helped keep him there. He didn’t wake until they were wheels down in Newburgh. A Bell 412 was waiting to fly them to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, a sixty-three-mile trip that set them down on Pier 6 in the Battery at precisely at 5:57. The men walked separately to the faux Art Deco terminal, where Volner went to the counter to ask questions about schedules—and to keep an eye on the six people waiting for flights—while Dawson phoned Flannery. They weren’t expecting anyone to be here, watching for them, but they also didn’t know if Flannery’s communications devices had been compromised in any way.

  When Flannery didn’t answer his cell phone, Dawson called the main number of the York Organization for Peace. He used his private phone, not one that would show the Op-Center connection.

  A male answered the phone. Dawson asked to be connected with the ambassador.

  “I’m sorry,” the man informed Dawson, “but Mr. Flannery has left for the day.”

  Before Dawson could ask anything more, an icon signaled that he had an incoming call. He ended the conversation with the York office and took it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Op-Center Headquarters, Fort Belvoir North,

  Springfield, Virginia

  June 2, 6:01 PM

  One of the great skills of Chase Williams—which was the primary reason Paul Hood had hired him—was the man’s ability to not compartmentalize. Most military, active and former, were like university PhDs: they knew what they knew exceptionally well within a narrow field. His old friend Chuck Bridger, commander of U.S. AFRICOM in Stuttgart, Germany, wasn’t expected to be knowledgeable about activities overseen by Colonel Eugenie Bundy in the Defense Information Systems Agency in D.C. There was no crossover connecting of dots. Information went vertically up and down the chains of command, not horizontally, across strictly defined lines. The bridges between them were few.