Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition)

by Ross Sidor

  Avery only requested that he be allowed to make a private phone call first, which Ghazan granted. Avery used Poacher’s phone to call Culler, who picked up on the second ring. Avery explained the situation and requested transportation. The conversation took ninety seconds. Then Avery returned to Ghazan and Gerald.

  Ghazan next requested access to the occupants of the Forerunner, claiming that they were harboring a Russian national wanted for questioning. Gerald, to his credit, refused the request and suggested that Ghazan take up the request with the American ambassador. In response, Ghazan gave a disappointed look, pulled out his cell phone, and called the Tajik interior minister.

  No more than eight minutes later, Gerald received a call from the DCM.

  Standing nearby, Avery listened to Gerald get his ass reamed out and verbally handed to him by one irate deputy chief of mission, while Gerald stammered, stuttered, and, ultimately, disappointingly but predictably submitted.

  Gerald ended the call and turned to Darren. “We are releasing Miss Denisova into the custody of the Tajik Ministry for Internal Affairs. They will deliver her to the Russian embassy. From there, I am assured she will be sent safely home.”

  “Like fuck you are.” Avery’s eyes flashed, and he moved in on Gerald, ready to tear his throat out. Gerald flinched and jumped back. Ghazan’s men tensed, too, and a couple hands inched closer to their side arms, eyes locked on Avery, as if he were a rabid dog. “I don’t give a fuck what DCM told you. I’m responsible for her, not you. You can’t hand her over to them.”

  Darren came between them. His eyes locked onto Avery’s. His hand lingered near his pistol. “Stand down now.”

  “Stay the fuck out of my way, you prick.”

  Poacher stepped up behind Avery and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, boss. Don’t do anything stupid. My guys will keep track of things here. Just relax, okay?”

  Avery finally nodded and backed down. Satisfying as it was, sticking Gerald in the face wasn’t going to accomplish anything. When he glanced past Darren’s shoulder, he saw one of the CIA officers escorting Aleksa to Ghazan’s officers. She looked back at him, and he saw the confusion and panic in her eyes, questioning if he’d stabbed her in the back and abandoned her. They guided her into the back of one of their cars and shut the door, and it seemed as if the ordeal they had just went through aboard the Antonov had been for nothing.

  There was nothing further Avery could do here. It was a feeling that was becoming increasingly common lately, and he grew sick of it. If he intervened, he’d have both sides going after him, and the DCM would probably happily allow the Tajiks to throw him in jail.

  Gerald looked relieved when two armed GKNB officers finally directed Avery into the back of a marked car, just as the car carrying Aleksa pulled away.

  First the Tajiks took Avery to GKNB headquarters, for “processing” and for him to fill out paperwork. They held him there over two hours before finally delivering him back to the airport. The emergency vehicles and Russian military helicopters were long gone by that time. The GKNB officers sat with Avery and waited in the departures lounge for another hour before the CIA plane that had first brought him here returned. The Learjet had been staying at the Manas Transit Center, an American-leased military facility at Bishkek’s international airport, in neighboring Kyrgyzstan the past five days.

  The GKNB officers escorted Avery across the tarmac. They watched him climb the stairs into the cabin. Once he was finally in the air, they departed and reported to Colonel Ghazan that Avery was gone.

  Culler had arranged for a USAF medic stationed at Manas to make the flight. Avery refused the morphine she offered, but allowed her to examine him and apply bandages around his chest and stitch his face. He hadn’t sustained any internal bleeding or ruptured organs. She advised him to get plenty of rest and to stay off his feet, instructions Avery was confident he wouldn’t follow, at least not for the next few days. Then he reclined his seat back and slept for the duration of the flight.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Bagram Air Base

  Three hours later, Avery awoke in time for the Learjet’s jarring corkscrew landing, a hair-raising, nausea-inducing countermeasure against RPGs or SAMs in which the aircraft descends rapidly in a spiral from high altitude, almost directly over the airport. By the time the jet touched ground, Avery was fully awake and feeling like he’d just been on the world’s most intense roller-coaster ride, while recovering from the world’s worst hangover.

  Bagram Air Base is located about thirty miles north of Kabul. In 1999, the Northern Alliance seized control of the base from the Taliban, later allowing it to be utilized by the Americans during the Afghan war. It has since become the largest American military base in the country, accommodating aircraft of any size and housing numerous units from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. CIA also maintained a presence here.

  Wrecks of Cold War-era Soviet aircraft lined the main 10,000 foot long runway on either side, as the Learjet rolled in.

  As he deplaned, Avery was surprised to be met on the tarmac by Matt Culler. The CIA officer wore unmarked camouflage fatigues to better blend in, since civilian dress would quickly identify him as a spook.

  “Good Christ, Avery, you look like complete shit,” Culler observed without humor.

  Avery ignored the remark and shook the proffered hand. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “D/NCS needed me in-country on something unrelated,” Culler said, and didn’t elaborate. Avery knew Culler juggled multiple ops at any given time, and Afghanistan and Pakistan remained the primary focus of the National Clandestine Service. “I arrived yesterday morning, and good thing that I did. I’ve recalled Sideshow from Tajikistan. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

  That caught Avery’s attention. As if reading his thoughts, Culler said, “Something’s come up.”

  “Is there an op?” Avery asked. He tried not to sound eager.

  “I’ll explain when everyone’s here,” Culler said. Avery knew better than to persist. “But I need to know more about what you found in Minsk.”

  They loaded into a Humvee driven by an Agency contractor who took them across the base. Along the way, Avery brought Culler up-to-speed on everything he’d seen in Belarus and Tajikistan, and relayed the information from Aleksa Denisova. Practically a human tape recorder, Avery was able to recount his encounter with Cramer almost word-for-word. It left Culler with the same uneasy feeling Avery had experienced.

  “Basically he feels disrespected and unappreciated, and he’s pissed off about it,” Avery concluded, glibly dismissing Cramer’s motivations. “He’s no different than any other fucking traitor or sell-out.”

  “It’s just so hard to believe that someone like Cramer could do this,” Culler thought out loud. “It just feeds into all the bullshit from the media and congress about CIA being the bad guy and a rogue agency. You weren’t kidding when you said this could be the end of the National Clandestine Service if word gets out.”

  Camp Cunningham, Bagram’s local CIA compound, was located behind blast walls, razor wire, and sandbagged machine gun emplacements. Security contractors with mirror sunglasses, beards, and tattoos lingered around, cradling rifles in relaxed positions and caustically watching the approaching Humvee. Avery recognized a few faces from the Global Response Staff from jobs in Libya and Iraq, but there was no acknowledgment between them.

  Past the security checkpoint, Culler led Avery into a plywood hut converted into an office space. Culler took a plate of goat meat and rice out of the mini-fridge, microwaved it, and handed it to Avery with a bottle of water. Avery wasn’t hungry, but he knew his body needed sustenance—it had been well over a day since he’d eaten, plus his body needed to repair itself and refuel—so he forced every bit of it down his throat until his stomach was full.

  “I tasked a Predator to Dushanbe shortly after you had your earlier excitement there,” Culler said. He replayed the recording of the Predator footage on his comp
uter. It showed the Russian Mi-8 helicopters taking off from Dushanbe International, after taking unknown cargo held in massive wooden crates removed from the GlobeEx Antonov. Although the choppers quickly out-flew the Predator, the drone later spotted the helicopters at Ayni Airbase. There, the cargo was loaded onto three heavy Ural trucks. “Shortly before you landed, we tracked those trucks to the TCIDC factory Dushanbe station investigated last year. Your intuition paid off.”

  Avery wasn’t surprised.

  Dushanbe station’s file on the innocuous-sounding Tajikistan Cement Investment and Development Company, or TCIDC, contained scant information, which wasn’t surprising since Cramer had called off all inquiries into the company and placed a tight reign over the flow of any and all information pertaining to the plant. According to publicly available sources, the firm worked on infrastructure development projects in Gorno-Badakhshan, but there was no available information as to who owned TCIDC or managed the factory. TCIDC was based in Dushanbe and had close financial ties to a Russian-based NGO that was a known front company for Aleksander Litvin’s GlobeEx.

  American intelligence agencies regularly tracked construction activity in rogue and terrorist states, looking out for projects that were larger than they should be, had unusual levels of military or police presence, didn’t correlate with known projects, or had the potential to manufacture dual-use equipment. They also closely monitored the firms involved in these projects and their purchase orders.

  This was how CIA and Mossad were alerted to the existence of Syria’s North Korean-built nuclear reactor, which had been capable of fueling two bombs a year, at the al-Kibar facility in Deir ez-Zor in 2007. Israeli Sayerat Matkal operators, dressed in Syrian army uniforms, later infiltrated the facility to obtain samples of weapons grade materials, prompting Tel Aviv to launch Operation Orchard, the Israeli Air force strike that demolished al-Kibar.

  It was common practice to disguise WMD facilities as legitimate civilian operations. The IAEA had inspected Iraqi and Libyan industrial plants possessing dual use infrastructure. A fertilizer plant in Rabata had been the centerpiece of Gadaffi’s chemical weapons program. In Malaysia, AQ Khan used a legitimate industrial plant to manufacture centrifuges for sale on the black market.

  But if Cramer had reported to Langley that Dushanbe station thoroughly investigated the TCIDC project in Gorno-Badakhshan and found nothing to warrant suspicion and found no connection to missing Pakistani nuclear scientists, then that would be sufficient for CIA’s analysts to lose interest and close the file.

  From the satellite photos the TCIDC plant looked exactly like what it claimed to be: a medium-sized cement factory, complete with a rotary kiln, cement mill, pre-heater tower, remix silo, and exhaust stack. Until the 1970s, the plant had been fully operational, later becoming one of numerous ex-Soviet assets acquired by Litvin and then upgraded over the past year, ostensibly for humanitarian and developmental assistance in Tajikistan.

  There was no indication of military usage or enhanced security measures, or anything else that the satellite analysts looked out for, although there was a pair of men atop the network of scaffoldings mounted around the pre-heater tower, which would make for an ideal guard post. The only feature that really stood out was the landing pad capable of receiving small helicopters atop the pre-heater tower, but in an area as remote as this, it made sense to have helicopter accessibility, and TCIDC owned helicopters provided by GlobeEx Transport. Other than a tall perimeter fence, there were no visible defenses around the plant. No guard posts at the gates, machine gun encampments, trenches, or military vehicles. None of the visible personnel carried weapons.

  But that also wasn’t unusual, and it didn’t mean that the factory was as innocent as it seemed.

  In the vast desert surrounding the al-Kibar facility, Syria had operated an extensive air defense network of Russian Tor-M1 missiles, which had been easily jammed by the Israeli Air Force, but there’d been no heavy military equipment or troop concentrations at the site itself. Missiles, radars, and armored vehicles can quickly attract the attention of aerial surveillance platforms. Usama bin Laden’s compound in Abottabad also had practically non-existent security, which was partially why it had gone unnoticed for as long as it did.

  “So this is why Wilkes was killed,” Avery thought out loud. “He must have connected the nuclear smuggling pipeline to this place. Then he sent CERTITUDE to check it out. So Cramer set-up a fake meet in Khorugh between Wilkes and CERTITUDE, and they were ambushed by that Chechen asshole I tossed into the Caspian.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Fuck, I lost Cramer, Matt. I don’t see how we’ll pick up his trail again from here. He’ll know how to make himself disappear.” He supposed that CIA and the FBI would need to take over. Then it’d only be a matter of time before the inevitable scandal exploded across the headlines and the congressional investigations began, placing the National Clandestine Service on the chopping block.

  “Don’t worry about Cramer for now,” Culler replied. “We’ll catch up with him at some point. Right now, our first and only priority is a terrorist nuke factory operating right under our noses.”

  Avery shook his head. Everything was fully sinking in now, sight of the bigger picture and not just a narrow-sighted desire to run Cramer down. “The Taliban have the materials, infrastructure, and the personnel now to produce nuclear weapons. It’s probably only a matter of months. This target needs to be taken out, Matt.”

  “No can do,” Culler said. “Sure, we have the airpower right here at Bagram, but Washington won’t risk the fallout and environmental damage. An F-16 drops a couple smart bombs on that place, and it’ll turn into a giant dirty bomb, dispersing HEU all over eastern Tajikistan.”

  This was the same reason the US Air Force hadn’t taken out Serbia’s Vinca Institute of Nuclear Science, which had been on the target list in 1999. America’s restraint spared Belgrade from glowing in the dark, but German BND later reported that Slobodan Milosevic sold quantities of Vinca’s nuclear material on the black market to Russian organized crime.

  “But this isn’t a populated city,” Avery protested. “This is the middle of nowhere. The nearest village is a dozen miles away with a population of fifty.”

  “There may be low risk of civilian causalities, but the White House still can’t risk turning a former Soviet republic into a radioactive wasteland. High winds can easily carry the fallout into neighboring countries, including India and Afghanistan. The White House would also prefer that this matter be handled discretely, to use as leverage against the Russians in the future. The Kremlin will know damn well what happened here, and they’ll want to keep it quiet.”

  Of course, Avery thought. If the air force bombed the site now, America would take the blame for the fallout and for conducting offensive military operations violating the sovereignty of a former Soviet republic. But if they could covertly and safely extract the HEU, then the White House would have the upper-hand against the Kremlin.

  “There’s something else, Avery, something that may change your mind about bombing the site. Sideshow reported that the GKNB handed Aleksa Denisova over to Oleg Ramzin.”

  Culler continued playing the recording of the Predator footage of the TCIDC plant. The time stamp indicated that this clip was barely two hours old. Avery watched a Russian thug help a female down from one of the trucks. He couldn’t see her face, but he recognized Aleksa from her size, hair, clothing, and gait. He wondered if they were intentionally holding her there as a human shield. Probably not, he decided. Most likely they were going to question her and then kill her.

  “What about a ground operation?”

  “The intel’s not strong enough to green light a JSOC retrieval mission,” Culler said. Avery sensed where this was going. “I need proof that there’s HEU onsite.”

  ___

  Overnight, while Avery slept on an undersized cot at Bagram, the members of the Sideshow unit, after thoroughly sanitizing the safe house and l
eaving nothing behind, left Dayrabot in two separate vehicles, travelling south on the A384 highway into Afghanistan. They entered the country through an unmanned border crossing. Five miles into Afghanistan, they were met by a US Army MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The team boarded the Black Hawk with their gear and was off the ground en route to Bagram three minutes later. Culler was on hand to personally meet them when the Black Hawk deposited them at Camp Cunningham at 10:23 AM.

  Given Avery’s current condition, Culler and Poacher agreed to be charitable and allow him additional time to sleep before they held the briefing session. They’d give him until noon, if he wasn’t already up by that time. Culler wouldn’t receive the latest satellite data until later that day anyway, and in the meantime, the TCIDC factory remained under constant surveillance by Predator drones and KH-13 reconnaissance satellites, so they could afford to wait. Unlike Avery, though, the members of Sideshow were rested and ready for their next mission.

  Avery was awake by eleven, still feeling drowsy and fatigued after ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, and the pain was more evident, as if it was just now fully registering with his nerves after his body was finally allowed to relax and slow down after the adrenaline hangover.

  They conducted the briefing in a secure, cipher-lock compartmental information facility; Culler, Avery, the four Sideshow members, and an army officer dressed in digital fatigues with a Special Forces patch who Culler introduced as Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Arkin from Joint Special Operations Command. Culler didn’t immediately explain what component of JSOC Arkin represented or why he was in attendance, and Arkin barely said a word. Instead he listened intently with the others as Culler conducted the briefing and fielded questions.