by Mark Greaney
The Jordanians would come through, Voland felt confident, but they’d need a couple of days to plan and put the assets in place.
He did not want to reach out to Dr. Saddiqi until he knew exactly when and exactly how he was going to get the girl and the baby out of Syria. But he knew he needed to have a plan by the time the Gray Man contacted him, because he’d let the American down so many times already that nothing short of imminent action was going to convince him to keep up his end of the bargain and provide intelligence about Azzam’s movements.
Voland also had contacts in the SDF, the coalition of predominantly Kurdish anti-regime groups fighting in the northern part of Syria, as well as in the Sunni-dominated Free Syrian Army. These connections came via the Halabys, but Voland knew if he did get the actionable intelligence from the Gray Man that he’d promised, the groups fighting Azzam would do anything in their power to attempt to exploit it.
Once he felt he’d done all he could for now on the Jamal Medina front, his thoughts turned to a new topic: a topic he told himself he would do well to put out of his mind, but a topic he could not, in spite of himself, force himself to ignore.
Sebastian Drexler.
Vincent Voland had spent years looking for information that would lead to the capture of Drexler. It was a job he’d begun while working in foreign intelligence; there were domestic warrants aplenty for Drexler in France, and the domestic intelligence service turned to foreign intelligence for help in locating and planning the man’s capture, since it was clear Drexler was outside Europe. But when Voland left active service with DGSE, he continued his hunt for Drexler as something of a passionate hobby. The word was that Drexler had been living in Syria for two years, and he was doing the bidding of the regime, specifically focused on the private wealth of the Azzams. The rumors had come out of Switzerland, but they were just rumors and no specific bank had been positively pegged as the location of the Azzams’ money.
When Voland had received word of the contacts between Drexler and ISIS in Brussels, he knew Drexler was indeed in Syria, indeed working for Shakira, and he came up with a plan to draw him out.
That plan had worked as far as phase one, but phase two, the capture of Drexler, and phase three, the exploitation of Bianca Medina as an intelligence source for rebels fighting against the regime in Syria, had both failed as badly as any intelligence operation could possibly fail.
And Vincent Voland put all blame for this on himself.
That was why his thoughts were now locked on Drexler: where he was now, what his next play was. With Medina dead, Voland assumed Drexler would head back to Syria.
Malik, on the other hand, was a European theater operative for the Syrian government, and he would likely stay somewhere on the continent in a safe house. He’d melt back into Europe’s massive Arab population and disappear. The Syrian assassin had probably been here on the continent for years, so finding him with the scant clues Voland had would be difficult if not impossible.
But Drexler had come here to Europe within a specific date range; he would most likely be leaving the continent soon, and this, Voland felt sure, presented him with an opportunity.
He made a series of calls to acquaintances in French domestic intelligence and pulled some strings to have them download images from French immigration control. He specified time parameters that made safe assumptions about when Drexler arrived from Syria. Voland felt sure Drexler was not in Paris until after the ISIS attack on Thursday, and he must have arrived, at the latest, Saturday afternoon, to be involved with the attack on the farmhouse late Saturday night.
He requested images and passport information of all white males between ages thirty-five and fifty-five, knowing Drexler was in his forties but might have tried to disguise himself in person, on his passport, or both.
He requested the pulls from Charles de Gaulle, Orly, Marseille, and Lyon, the most suitable airports for someone coming from abroad, although Voland didn’t even know for certain Drexler would have flown into France. He could have traveled through Brussels, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, or even farther away and taken a high-speed train.
But Voland knew he had to start somewhere, and he also knew from his study of the man over the years that Drexler was an exceedingly assured, almost cocky intelligence asset. He’d formulate and execute a plan straight up the middle of an intelligence operation. He wasn’t a risk taker, per se, but instead a man with absolute confidence in his skills, borne out by years of success.
Voland figured Drexler wouldn’t have snuck into the country on a fishing trawler in the dead of night. No, he’d fly first class with papers to back him up all the way.
At eleven a.m. he received a file with all 4,974 immigration arrival photos he’d requested. At eight minutes till noon he scrolled to the 1,303rd image. He continued to the 1,304th, but then he scrolled back.
He shouted in his office, “Voilà!”
Voland had spoken at length to Drexler the evening before, so there was no mistaking the face. Sebastian Drexler had arrived at Charles de Gaulle on Saturday afternoon under a Finnish passport carrying the name of Veeti Takala.
The scanned passport photo was in a thumbprint size below the image taken when Drexler passed through immigration, and Voland enlarged it. The picture showed a bearded man with sandy brown hair, several shades darker than Drexler’s, but noticeably so, because while Drexler’s hair was short, the Takala passport showed a man with much longer hair and a full beard.
Still, Voland could see that the passport photo was not Sebastian Drexler.
The sixty-five-year-old Frenchman picked up the phone and dialed the number of a friend in the DGSE, intending to have him run the name for any details on the passport or identity of Veeti Takala. While the phone rang, Voland spent his wait Googling the name, on the offhand chance he’d find a social media account that matched the passport photo.
And then he put down the phone.
The name Voland entered into Google appeared in a Reuters article that had posted the previous day. Veeti Takala was a photographer for ITN who had disappeared in Damascus two days earlier. The photo of the man clearly matched the passport photo that Drexler used.
It occurred to Vincent Voland that if he were a betting man, he’d bet against Veeti Takala ever making it back home to Helsinki.
Curious as to how Drexler could have entered Europe using a false passport, he scanned through all the immigration data in the file sent by his intelligence agency contacts and saw that the fingertip reader recorded a match for the fingerprints on record for the Finn. Voland did not understand this at all, but he did realize it didn’t matter.
Drexler wouldn’t be leaving the continent going through immigration control or using the passport of Veeti Takala. No, he’d used that means once, and he’d surely burned the passport as soon as he got into the country.
For Voland, this wasn’t about finding out what name he was traveling under. This entire exercise was simply to acquire the one thing Voland needed above all else to find Sebastian Drexler before he left Europe.
A close-in, high-resolution, color photo of his face. The photograph taken by immigration at Charles de Gaulle was perfect, and it was of Drexler, not Takala. Drexler would have no time to change his appearance much or at all before he left the continent again.
Voland had two missions now, and he was fully engaged in both. He told himself he would not rest until he got the kid and the nanny out of Syria, and he would not rest until he found Sebastian Drexler and made him pay for what he’d done.
CHAPTER 57
From a dead sleep the sounds and the movement of the infantry fighting vehicle came to him in a rush, and then Court’s eyes opened as he woke with the taste of grease and fuel in his mouth.
He wiped his sweat-drenched face with a towel he had jammed in his load-bearing vest, swigged warm water from a plastic bottle in his pack, and splashed more onto
his face and down the back of his neck. He looked down at his rubber watch and synchronized the bouncing of his head with the swinging of his arm so he could focus on the numbers on the display. It was noon; he figured he’d slept on and off for close to four hours, which meant he’d really needed it, and it also meant the Desert Hawks Brigade convoy should be getting close to their destination.
The BMP drove along a poorly maintained road; this Court could tell from the jarring bumps, but he couldn’t see anything from his position. He looked over closer to the rear hatches and saw that Van Wyk was on the headset that allowed him to communicate with the vehicle’s three-man crew, and he was struggling to write something down on a notepad propped on his knee.
Saunders was awake next to him, and he caught Court’s eye. The two men looked at each other but neither spoke.
Just then Court heard a boom outside the vehicle, and he looked around to see that the other men in the back of the infantry fighting vehicle were all reacting to the same sound. It was either a large weapon firing or a shell detonating, and though it wasn’t much louder than the noise of the machine surrounding him, he figured it had to have been pretty loud for them to hear it at all.
Another boom, then another.
Van Wyk shouted to the men around him. “That’s outgoing! One hundred millimeter.”
The main weapon of the Russian-built BMP-3 was the 2A70 launcher, a 100-millimeter gun that could fire high-explosive or antitank missiles. Court found himself hoping Ali Company of the Desert Hawks, the company he and his team were embedded with, had not come into contact with tanks, because the Gray Man had no magic ninja fighting solution to avoid getting blown up the same as everyone else.
If the BMP Court was riding in was hit with an antitank round, Court’s body would just turn into canned beef stew along with the other eight guys in the vehicle.
Seconds later Court heard the unmistakable sound of heavy machine guns firing, and his feeling of helplessness and claustrophobia only increased.
“Outgoing,” Broz confirmed.
The 30-millimeter gun on Court’s BMP joined the fray, and the sound was deafening.
The team leader put his hand on his headset to press it closer to his ear, and he spoke to the driver of the vehicle for several more seconds. He looked up and said, “Look alive! We’re heading into an oil refinery, one kilometer square. Two dozen buildings in all, all either partially damaged or completely destroyed. Opposition presence is unknown, but Ali Company is taking some small-arms fire from some of the structures. Our target is the central control building in the middle of the complex. It has been used as an SAA command post in the past. Daesh took over the refinery last month, and SAA intel is guessing Daesh will be using the same building as their HQ. We’re being sent in to clear it so the Hawks can use it as their battalion CP for the clearing operation.”
Saunders said, “Why don’t the Hawks do this shit themselves?”
“They are sending Bashar and Chadli Companies one klick north to hit an enemy encampment in the hills. Ali Company is with us, but they will secure the other refinery structures while we clear the central control building.”
Broz said, “This is grunt work, boss!”
“And you’re getting paid fifty times what any of those grunts are getting paid, so put on your helmet and deal with it! Ali Company only has one platoon of special forces, and they are hitting the three pumping stations.”
Court could see on the faces of the others that none of the KWA men seemed interested in this fight, but they all tightened straps, took last swigs of water, and hefted their weapons.
Van Wyk said, “Our crews will deploy smoke ahead. Both of our BMPs will get us up to the building. We will go out the rear hatches and continue straight on for twenty-five meters to the door of the target building. From there we will clear the building bottom up.”
It was a suffocating feeling for Court to have someone relay secondhand info about the area right outside the armor from where he sat. An area he was about to attack into. He couldn’t see a thing now, and he didn’t imagine he would see the location he was hitting at all until he crawled out through the rear hatch.
Anders shouted to be heard over the thirty-cal firing above his head. “Are the BMPs taking fire from the control building?”
Van Wyk spoke into his mic, then addressed the team again. “Unknown, but the gunner reports possible movement on the third floor of the building.”
Fun, Court thought. After rolling for hours with his knees to his chest, he was about to bound out through a smoke screen and race into a building that might be full of ISIS fighters.
But the movement reported could also have been noncombatants. Court eyed the men around him and told himself he wouldn’t put it past any one of them to commit an atrocity or two before nightfall today.
Court heard the outgoing pops of smoke being deployed via the grenade launchers on the turret of the BMPs, and then the vehicle stopped so violently that at first Court thought it had taken a hit from an RPG. The BMP then turned 180 degrees on one of its tracks, lurched backwards a few feet, then stopped roughly again.
The main gunner began firing the PKT vehicle-mounted machine gun. At what, Court had no idea.
“Go!” Van Wyk shouted. Anders opened the left rear hatch and Broz opened the right. Court was the third man out on the left. His boots crashed down into broken bits of concrete big enough to break an ankle if he didn’t watch what he was doing, but he ran on through it, into thick gray smoke spewing from the grenades fired from his BMP. It was hard to tell with all the machine-gun fire from his vehicle, but Court didn’t detect any incoming rounds as he made his way through the smoke. Soon all he could see was Saunders’s back and helmet ahead of him, and in seconds he slammed with Saunders and the others against the wall of the building, flattening their backs out so they couldn’t be seen by a shooter inside any of the shattered windows.
They were next to the door, or at least next to where the door used to be. Instead there was a massive hole where it looked to Court like a main gun round from a tank had blown the door and a good portion of wall away.
But Court hadn’t heard any of the Desert Hawks’ T-72s firing, and he didn’t see any tanks around now. So if this had been from a tank, it had been in a battle fought earlier.
This was Syria, so for all Court knew, the destruction could have been seven years old.
Court stacked up at the back of the six-man team, and seconds later the half dozen KWA mercs from the other BMP appeared through the smoke and arrived at the other side of the big hole. Together the team breached the building—Van Wyk’s six went right and the other KWA unit went to the left.
The first few rooms downstairs were empty other than tons of trash and broken bits of concrete and glass, but Court saw sleeping mats, teakettles, clothes, and other evidence that someone had been living here in the rubble. He didn’t see any weaponry or ammunition, or even anything in the clothing that gave him the impression there was some sort of military unit encamped here.
Anders took point as the team moved up a set of cement stairs. Court was still in back, but at the top of the staircase, Van Wyk sent Saunders, Broz, and Anders on to continue straight down the hall towards an open room ahead, while he directed Court and Brunetti to follow him down the hall to the right.
Court liked Van Wyk’s thinking from a tactical aspect. There were few people on Earth with more close-quarters battle experience than Court Gentry, and he knew that when room-clearing a building, if you don’t have the manpower to leave an operator in each room you clear, you must consider the room enemy territory as soon as you leave it behind. With only six men clearing this wing of the building, it made sense to clear close-proximity open spaces simultaneously to reduce the risk of the enemy backfilling the rooms they’d already been through.
The hall to the right led to an office with a broken door tha
t wasn’t completely detached, so Brunetti shouldered it down while Court and Van Wyk flooded in to the left and right respectively. Court found the left side of the office to be nothing but a wrecked collection of filing cabinets and broken desks, but before he could call “clear,” he heard gunfire right behind him.
He spun around, dropping to his left kneepad as he did so, and he saw a man with a sniper rifle at the wrecked window of the office. He’d been shot multiple times already by Van Wyk, but somehow he was still on his feet.
Gentry, Van Wyk, and Brunetti all fired into the man, throwing him back into the corner of the room. He spun against the wall and fell forward onto his face.
Court had no idea if he’d just killed a Free Syrian Army soldier or a member of ISIS. Just like the day before on the highway, his survival instincts superseded everything else.
They cleared the rest of the room, a hall that ran off the back to the bathroom, and then the bathroom itself. On the way back through the office, Court stepped over to the body and rolled the man over. He was bearded, with long hair and a black T-shirt. An old brown sling full of rifle magazines hung around his neck. Court said, “Looks like ISIS.”
Brunetti re-formed tight behind Van Wyk to continue clearing the rest of the building. At the doorway he said, “Everybody looks like ISIS around here to me.”
Court re-formed at the back of the group and the three moved along the western end of the second floor of the control center building and prepared to go up a metal staircase to rejoin the other three men, but just as they started to climb, a burst of automatic gunfire erupted at the top of the stairs.
Quickly Van Wyk, Brunetti, and Court moved up in a tight three-man stack. They found a hallway with a pair of doorways at the end. Van Wyk called out, “Coming in!”
Saunders replied instantly. “All clear! We’re on the right.”
