Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition)

by Ross Sidor

“It’s supposed to look like IMU, no doubt about that, but the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan did not orchestrate this. I’d bet money on it.”

  “You just saw it with your own eyes. What more do you need?”

  “Come on,” Avery scoffed. “You’re going to tell me IMU blew one of your covert ops, penetrated a CIA station, systematically rolled up a whole agent network, assassinated an officer, and then grabbed the station chief? This Babayev asshole might be the new terrorist threat in the region, but he’s not that good. We annihilated IMU’s forces and took out their leadership when we first went into Afghanistan. They’ve just recently started putting themselves back together. They couldn’t pull off something this sophisticated without significant outside help. The IMU’s also more interested in smuggling heroin.”

  “Maybe, but they still lend their operatives out to other regional militant and terrorist groups all the time—Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, Haqqani Network, Hezbi Islami, take your pick—for the occasional bombing or assassination. Outsourcing terrorism. Anyone of them would love to get their hands on one of our station chiefs.”

  “And that may be the full extent of IMU involvement here,” Avery conceded. “You said yourself that Babayev is a freelancer, a mercenary. The operations against your network were the work of professional intelligence operators. Maybe IMU assets were used or involved as smokescreen or to provide muscle, but it was at the direction of another player. I think we’re looking at a false flag op.”

  “Iran?” asked Gerald. “We’ve investigated links between Babayev and Qods Force. We know they’ve met on at least two occasions within the last six months.”

  “Possibly,” Avery said. “The Iranians are capable and have the resources.”

  Iran was also known to covertly meddle in the affairs of the poor, unstable Central Asian republics, having previously launched a terrorist campaign to undermine the government in Azerbaijan, and maintained ties to a wide variety of terrorist groups around the globe. Iranian intelligence also maintained an active presence in Tajikistan.

  “Frankly, it’s not worth the time discussing it until we learn more. Otherwise, it’s just speculation, conjecture, wasting time, and I’m not here for that. I’ll leave that to the analysts.”

  “Hey, I was originally an analyst,” Gerald said defensively. “After Georgetown I started out in the Directorate of Intelligence, Near East Division. Then someone discovered I spoke Farsi and Pashtu like a native. There was a shortage of fluent speakers on the Operations side, so they put me through the Farm and sent me to Kabul as an interpreter. So here I am.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, what are you going to do from here?”

  “The first thing I need is my own safe house. No way am I working out of the embassy.”

  “Sideshow has already established a safe house.”

  “Sideshow?” asked Avery.

  “Codename for your back-up from the Point.” The designation for Poacher’s team changed with each deployment, and this was the first Avery heard of their current cryptonym. “They’re here on Canadian passports, and GKNB doesn’t give a shit about Canadians, especially if they’re writers and photojournalists researching a travel book on the Stans.”

  That would work. Avery wanted to stay close to Poacher’s team in case he needed them.

  “I can provide you with a vehicle and security escort,” Gerald offered.

  “Like the shiny black tank with USG plates that picked me up from the airport? I’ll pass. I’d like to not have Ghazan’s goons watching my every move or give the IMU an easy target.”

  “I’m sure we can arrange for more discrete transportation,” Gerald said.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “What about the security officer?”

  Avery frowned. “What about the security officer?”

  “New order from the director’s office. No Agency personnel are to leave the embassy or travel anywhere in the country without an armed security escort until further notice.”

  “Yeah, see, I don’t go in for that kind of stupid shit.”

  Avery had been in Iraq at the height of the insurgency war. Case officers meeting and recruiting agents travelled in Hummvees with an entourage of bodyguards in flak vests carrying assault rifles, sometimes with a helicopter escort if they were going into a really bad part of town. As a result, insurgents easily identified Iraqis collaborating with the American-led occupation.

  “You may not have a choice,” Gerald said. “DCM and RSO want to meet with you to discuss your assignment here before you undertake any action.”

  The deputy chief of mission was the second-in-command at the embassy, after the ambassador. And the ambassador was the president’s personally appointed representative and had authority over all US Government employees in the country, including CIA officers. The regional security officer came from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was the senior most law enforcement officer in the country.

  Avery had no intention of speaking with either one. They would try to put him in his place, as they saw it, and control him, try to shoot him down before he even got off the ground, the way they likely did with any CIA officers on their turf. He was just surprised that they’d already been tipped off about his arrival.

  Gerald seemed to read his thoughts. “Hey, I didn’t say anything, but it’s a small post, you know. Word gets around fast.”

  “Yeah,” Avery said. “You think maybe that’s why we’re in this mess in the first place?”

  SIX

  Dushanbe; Dayrabot

  Getting around the GKNB watchers didn’t prove to be terribly difficult, but it still cost valuable time. When Avery asked Gerald if the station had a JIB, he wasn’t surprised by the younger officer’s befuddled expression. Avery knew CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology made its own jack-in-the-box and provided them to stations where officers were likely to encounter heavy surveillance from a hostile agency.

  The CIA-manufactured version of a jack-in-the-box is a two dimensional cut-out of a man or woman’s upper torso and head that fits into a medium-sized briefcase and could be quickly erected inside a car. From a distance, it looked like a passenger. The purpose of a JIB was to allow someone to slip out of a car while in transit, so that the watchers won’t notice a missing head in the car.

  But Dushanbe station didn’t have a JIB, so Avery improvised. Following a walk through the embassy, he was able to procure various odds-and-ends to assemble his own custom-made JIB. These items included a toilet plunger, wire coat hangers, packing tape, and glue, plus various articles of clothing from Gerald’s cooperative and amused colleagues.

  The station kept various accessories for disguises, including a wig roughly matching the color and shade of Avery’s black hair. He trimmed the wig down to match his own close buzz-cut and used the scraps to shape together a short, unkempt looking beard. He assembled these hairpieces around a white balloon, which would serve as the head.

  It didn’t matter that Avery’s decoy didn’t exactly look like a human being. It had the general appearance of one matching his description. Plus the GKNB watchers would be observing from a distance, and the Forerunner’s tinted windows would further help conceal his JIB.

  Next, Avery sat down in the embassy’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, or SCIF, literally a room within a room, with Gerald Rashid, an ops officer named Darren, and two marines from the security detail. Avery laid out what they needed to do.

  They looked over a street map of Dushanbe and discussed what routes to take and where best to make the slip. Darren’s input was especially valuable here, as he knew the streets, traffic patterns, and layout of the city. However, this became overly confusing, because most Dushanbe streets do not have names. To navigate Dushanbe, you went by landmarks, not streets.

  The biggest hurdle was going to be Avery’s equipment. He could easily take his backpack and duffel bag with him, but his two cases of gear would be cumbersome and pot
entially slow him down or even blow the whole maneuver. So these would be dropped off at a secondary location and quickly retrieved by one of Sideshow’s operators.

  At 6:45PM, as the sun began to drop behind the mountains, they exited the embassy through a rear service door. Two identical Toyota Forerunners waited there, engines rumbling. The Forerunners sat one in front of the other and had pulled up a couple minutes earlier, so they surely had the GKNB’s full attention now. A marine in civilian clothing sat behind the wheel in each vehicle.

  The Forerunners were behemoths and parked so that they blocked any view of the open service door. The GKNB officers sitting in the car across the street were unable to see exactly who was emerging from the embassy. They couldn’t even get complete descriptions and could barely get an accurate head count. To add further confusion, Avery and the others were dressed similarly, in windbreakers and black baseball caps.

  Avery and Gerald slipped into the first Forerunner. Avery carried his backpack and duffel bag and took the spot behind the driver’s seat. Gerald carried the briefcase containing the components of their jack-in-the-box. Darren took Avery’s gear into the second Forerunner, and they were soon on their way.

  The GKNB car slipped into traffic behind them, following them three blocks north to Shohtemur Street. There, the Forerunners split ways, the first going west, and the second east.

  The driver of the GKNB car was forced to react immediately. He impulsively made the left-turn, going after the first Forerunner and swearing out loud as he did so. The GKNB officer riding shotgun struck a fist against the dash, and then called in the situation and requested a second vehicle to find the first Forerunner heading west.

  Avery’s marine driver announced that the tail was still with them. At least if the GKNB had gone east after the second Forerunner, it would have been a simple matter of slowing down, so Avery could simply step out of the SUV with his gear. The guys in the second Forerunner would have to be alert now and identify their new tail before they dropped off Avery’s gear.

  Avery assembled the pieces for the jack-in-the-box. He affixed the coat hanger to the end of the plunger and taped the balloon to the top of the hanger. Then he taped pieces of cardboard around the coat hanger, to give the upper body a bit of mass. He slid out of his jacket, fit it over the hanger, and zipped it up. He took off his cap and gently fit it on top of the balloon.

  Gerald gave it a once-over and nodded his approval. He was too tense and anxious, having never done anything like this before outside of training. He didn’t want to be picked up by the GKNB. Avery told him to relax, breathe, and remember what he needed to do, and Gerald straightened his back and composed himself.

  Four minutes later, the marine up front alerted Avery that they were very soon coming to the turn. Avery acknowledged the marine, even though he’d been keeping track of where they were going the whole time and was already aware of this. The GKNB vehicle was five car lengths back, with a taxi and a trailer-truck between them.

  The left-turn onto Karamov Street would provide them several seconds completely out of sight of the GKNB chase car, while the Forerunner made the turn and before the GKNB car reached the intersection. That’s where Avery would make the slip.

  Avery leaned up against his door, unlocked it, and gripped his left hand around the latch. He leaned forward to look over the driver’s shoulder, his eyes fixated on the road ahead, looking out for what was around and potential obstacles. Gerald was getting into position as well, to shut the door and move the JIB into position as Avery exited the vehicle.

  The marine decreased speed, rolled through the intersection, and steered the Forerunner through the left-hand turn.

  Avery scanned the street ahead and looked for an area to land, a spot clear of street signs, holes, curbs, and parked vehicles. The ground was all pavement or concrete, so there was nothing softer like grass or soil to aim for, but there were plenty of trees up ahead—planetrees with long and thin stumps were everywhere in Dushanbe—that would make good cover.

  The Forerunner was doing twenty-five miles per hour. That meant Avery’s body would travel approximately two-hundred feet at the same speed when he left the vehicle before hitting the ground. It was going to hurt. There was no way getting around that. He came prepared. He wore two layered t-shirts beneath a heavy sweatshirt and had on kneepads underneath thick utility pants.

  He sat on the edge of his seat and leaned his weight against the door and angled his body forward, so that when he left the Forerunner, he’d roll away from the vehicle and the direction of traffic.

  The marine decelerated as much as he could without interfering with the flow of traffic and drawing attention, maybe twenty miles per hour. A complete stop would be ideal or just a slow roll or pulling over to the side, and then quickly stepping out of the car, but that wasn’t feasible with KGB-lite wanna-bes less than a hundred feet behind and seconds away from turning and having eyes on the Forerunner.

  Avery locked eyes on his intended landing spot and waited until the Forerunner was a five-second count away. Then he yanked the latch and pushed the door open, keeping one hand on it so that the thing wouldn’t swing back and smack him as he jumped. He lifted his ass off the seat, lowered his head, and crossed his arms across his chest, hugging his duffel bag tight against his body, with his knuckles pressed into his shoulders. He sprung off his feet and out of the Forerunner, facing in the direction in which the SUV travelled.

  He struck the pavement hard, letting out an involuntarily grunt, and rolled, directing his body away from the oncoming trailer truck, off the street, and toward the line of trees. He kept his arms tucked around him, chin down and neck tight so that he didn’t bash his head against the concrete. He rolled through the pain of the impact and didn’t stop moving until he reached the copse of tall planetrees.

  Looking over the tree trunk, he saw the taillights of the Forerunner, and the door was already pulled shut.

  Avery sat up on his haunches and leaned his back against the tree. He turned his head left and soon saw the taillights of the trailer truck, followed seconds later by another pair of lights, belonging to a mid-size sedan and thought that was the GKNB car. Traffic continued down the street. He waited and didn’t observe any of the same vehicles coming back around or making a second pass.

  As the effect of the adrenaline diminished and his sensory input returned to real-time, Avery became aware of blunt pain in his lift side and the ache in his right shoulder and the stinging sensation of the little cuts and scrapes in his knuckles and the backs of his hands, and he felt suddenly exhausted.

  He hopped onto his feet, brushed off his pants and sweatshirt, and started walking. Two blocks later, he hailed the first cab he saw. He gave the driver directions to the rendezvous point where he was to be picked up by one of Poacher’s crew. Along the way, he switched cabs twice, taking a few walks in between, satisfied that he wasn’t being followed.

  He hoped the drop with his kit went as smoothly.

  Following Avery’s instructions, Darren’s Forerunner would drive around the city for thirty minutes or so before returning to the embassy. At that point, as he and Gerald exited the vehicles, the GKNB would do a head count and realize they’d been given the slip.

  On Shestopalov Street, Avery spotted the ugly beige Lada with one gray fender and a plastic bag taped over the missing left rear window. The car blended right in with the other vehicles in the city.

  Avery greeted the former navy SEAL sitting behind the wheel and slipped into the passenger seat

  The ex-chief petty officer was Matt Monroe, who went by the unfortunate call sign of Flounder. Operators didn’t choose their own handles. Their teammates picked them, and there was often a story behind it. Avery knew better than to ask Flounder the origin of his handle. He supposed that he’d lucked out with Carnivore.

  Near 8:30PM, they reached the safe house in Dayrabot. This is a small residential area surrounded by farms, about three miles east of Dushanbe, between the M41
highway and the Kafirnigan River. Sideshow had established their little base of operations inside an apartment in a three-story building with multiple entrances and exits.

  Poacher had paid for two months’ rent up-front, explaining in advance that his team was here to research a book and may keep odd hours or be out of town for days at a time. They rarely crossed paths with their neighbors, but to maintain cover, they’d take turns leaving the building in pairs with their photography equipment and visited tourist attractions in and around Dushanbe.

  The safe house was sparsely furnished. Other than the two bedrooms, it had one large living room and a small kitchen. Cots were set up in the bedrooms, with the cases or bags containing the Sideshow operator’s personal belongings, most of it still packed. In the living room, there was a desk with two laptop computers, a SATCOM communications unit, a few folding chairs, and cases containing the team’s weapons and kit. The shelves in the kitchen contained mostly canned food and freeze-dried packaged MREs—meals ready to eat; known colloquially as meals rejected by Ethiopians—with energy drinks and bottled water in the fridge. The shades were drawn over the windows at all times. There was no air conditioning, and the apartment was uncomfortably dry and hot. Two ceiling fans whirred at high-speed, uselessly pushing the air around.

  Poacher greeted Avery with a handshake and the typical exchange of pleasantries and joked that Tajik KGB better not have tracked him here. He also reported to Avery that Reaper had already picked up his equipment from the second drop and made it back without any issues.

  Formerly a master sergeant in the army’s Combat Applications Group, the cover name for Delta Force, and in the Asymmetric Warfare Group, Poacher’s real name was James Dalton. Tall, lean, muscular, tattooed, and bearded, Dalton was thirty-nine years old and came from Arizona. He first met Avery during ANACONDA, when his Delta troop and Avery’s Ranger chalk assaulted al-Qaeda strongholds in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan. Shortly after, Poacher put in a recommendation for Avery to Delta’s recruiters, but Matt Culler, then an Agency insertion element leader in Afghanistan and later head of the Counterterrorism Center, recruited him first, for SAD.