Black Flagged Apex

by Steven Konkoly

  “Let me keep this as simple as possible. If you call the police, we will kill your friend and then kill you. We’re monitoring all police channels and have another team watching the building. Don’t leave your apartment either. You didn’t see a badge tonight because there are no badges. Your friend may be involved in something really nasty. Something you want to stay as far away from as possible. Mazari will likely end up floating in the Main River tomorrow…without a head. You do anything to alert the authorities and it’ll be a busy day for the Frankfurt central morgue. Understood?”

  They all nodded, and he had little doubt that the message was received.

  “Does Mazari have a laptop?”

  They all nodded, and their eyes shifted toward the counter separating the kitchen from the family room. Four laptops were stuffed onto the crowded Formica counter.

  “Get his laptop. Does he have a security token? Something that generates a password?”

  “It’s on his key chain. In his pocket. Can I put the beer down?”

  He grabbed the laptop out of the man’s hands, aiming carefully at his head.

  “I’d finish the beer first. Remember what I said about ending up in the river.”

  Petrovich stepped out and closed the door, listening intensely for movement inside. Nothing. Perfect. He sprinted down the stairs to rejoin the team.

  Chapter 5

  1:52 PM

  CIA Headquarters

  McLean, Virginia

  Audra Bauer paced through the “Fishbowl” in the CIA operations center, anxious to hear from Sanderson’s team in Germany. Mazari’s abduction had gone smoothly. The team hadn’t attracted any law enforcement attention grabbing him from the apartment, and they were now on the way to a small, privately accessed home north of Frankfurt. She was always amazed at how easy it was to make someone disappear, especially an enemy of the United States. She couldn’t say for sure what would happen to Mazari, but one thing was certain, if he was connected to the virus canisters, he would never taste freedom again.

  The operations center’s watch officer turned her head and nodded to Bauer.

  “The director is inbound. Just passed through ops center security.”

  “Thank you, Karen. Is Manning with him?”

  “No. Just the director.”

  The last thing she needed was the director watching over her shoulder. Whatever Farrington and Petrovich had in store for Mazari was very likely not on the CIA’s menu of acceptable prisoner handling techniques. Then again, the president himself had sanctioned the continued use of these assets to prosecute the leads uncovered in Stockholm, so perhaps a little high-level visibility would help ease some of the tensions in the operations center. She had a full complement of analysts and technicians rotating through the center in twelve-hour shifts. Too many eyes and ears in her opinion. The director’s presence during this critical phase might reinforce the fact that this operation came from the very top.

  She saw Director Copley’s face on one of the screens near the watch officer’s station. The watch officer typed a code into a small keyboard, which was immediately followed by a pneumatic hiss from the door cut into the center of the obscured glass wall separating the “fishbowl” from the rest of the operations floor.

  “Director Copley, glad you could join us,” she said, walking over to meet him.

  “No, you’re not, but I figured with Berg on a field trip, you could use some extra company. For a few minutes at least,” he said.

  Berg’s mission to retrieve Anatoly Reznikov was a secret shared by very few at this point. The scientist’s miraculous survival at the hands of Petrovich and Farrington had been kept offline. As far as she knew, everyone within the operations center thought Reznikov had died in the Stockholm safe house. Petrovich and the attending physician had confirmed his demise to the entire operations center via satellite phone, leaving little doubt that Sanderson’s team had killed Reznikov while torturing him for information. Despite the value and importance of the information gained, they were all well aware that the House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees were unlikely to sweep aside the methods used to gain the information. She had seen a few tense looks when Farrington announced that they would start Mazari’s interrogation in the van, on the way to the safe house. Twelve long minutes had passed since that report.

  “What’s the status of our team?” Copley asked.

  “Sanitary pickup of Mazari. The team is transporting him to the safe house. Interrogation in progress.”

  Copley nodded. “Good. The team understands the stakes?”

  “Without a doubt. This crew works fast. Very efficient,” she said, resisting the temptation to look at one of the more nervous analysts.

  “So I’ve heard,” Copley said.

  “Call coming through from the team in Frankfurt. Speaker or private?” the watch officer announced.

  “Speaker,” Bauer said.

  “You’re connected,” the watch officer said into her ear microphone.

  “I think we have the wrong guy,” Farrington’s voice said over the line. “Mazari’s been crying like a bitch ever since we stuffed him in the van. He says that the frequent travel to Pakistan was to visit his sick grandfather. Congestive heart failure. He traveled back with his cousin on two occasions to visit. He’s scheduled to travel again in two weeks, without the cousin. He said that they don’t get along very well, mainly because the cousin is…I quote…‘pushy with the mosques.’ If Mazari’s an extremist, he’s at the very low end of the totem pole.”

  “Can he provide information to help us verify his story?” Bauer asked.

  “I just fired off a secure email with everything he provided. I got tired of typing. He was about to provide his entire life story. When we busted into his apartment, he was playing video games and drinking beer with three other equally soft-looking techies. My gut says he’s a dead end. I think we should cut his throat and dump him on the side of the road. Minimize our losses.”

  Farrington’s voice rose as he made the last statement, turning nearly every head in the operations center, including Copley’s.

  “If you think he’s a dead end, then dump him in the river,” she said.

  “Understood. We’ll snip his fingers and cut off his face to buy us some time,” Farrington said.

  “What the fuck?” one of the analysts near Bauer said.

  Bauer held out a finger to the analyst and cocked her head. They could all hear some pleading and fast-talking from the Frankfurt end of the connection, followed by an angry, muffled voice. Ten seconds later, Farrington’s voice echoed through the operations center.

  “He thinks he knows the group we’re looking for at DBM, and I don’t think he’s connected with them. He seems more concerned that the group will retaliate against him,” Farrington said.

  “You can assure him that the group won’t be a problem. Give me some time to verify Mazari’s story. Can your team work with Mazari to identify the others?”

  “Affirmative. We have full access to DBM thanks to Mazari’s laptop…hold on a second…we have an address. All four of them are listed at the same location.”

  “How far away are you?” Bauer said.

  “Not far. Ten minutes,” Farrington replied.

  “Excellent. Do whatever it takes to secure information regarding the shipments. Keep in mind that the FBI has tracked down two of the shipment batches, accounting for thirty-eight of the fifty-eight canisters Reznikov claims to have produced. Reznikov used two canisters in Russia, leaving eighteen shipped to an unknown location. You might be able to leverage the fact that several Al Qaeda cells in the U.S. were terminated by an unknown group. No canisters were recovered at any of the locations,” Bauer said.

  “Understood. I’ll advise when we are in position. What do you really want me to do with Mazari?” Farrington said.

  “Let me verify enough of his story to justify his release. I’m not sure how our system missed the fact that one of the Al Qaeda travellin
g companions is his cousin. Be prepared to drop him off with cab fare.”

  “Sounds like a plan. We’re headed to the new target location,” Farrington said, ending the call.

  Copley muffled a laugh. “You had me worried there for a few seconds.”

  “I’m starting to gain a better understanding and appreciation for how Sanderson’s people work,” Bauer said, wondering if that statement would ever resurface in a congressional hearing.

  “Keep a tight leash on that crew. Get the information required and pull them out. Their presence on foreign soil is a major liability for us, and it’s only a matter of time before Stockholm catches up to them…and us,” Copley said.

  “I understand, sir.”

  Copley nodded his approval before turning to the watch officer, who quickly authorized his departure from the “fishbowl.” Bauer let out a sigh of relief. She could feel the tension ease in the room as the door hissed shut, sealing them off from their director. His visit had been perfectly timed, leaving no doubt in her mind that it had been purposely planned. She constantly updated the director’s digital feed from her computer terminal, so he would have known that Manning was in a separate meeting, and that the operation was in a critical phase requiring an enhanced level of accountability.

  His presence had assured everyone in the room that he directly approved the methods employed by Sanderson’s team, thereby diverting the undercurrent of doubt that had started to rise within the operations center. Like static electricity, this undercurrent would slowly build up again and be discharged by another well-timed visit. Even as the deputy director of the National Clandestine Service, she didn’t have the clout or seniority to diffuse it herself. She just hoped that her boss, Thomas Manning, could do it. She didn’t relish the prospect of frequent visits from Copley.

  Chapter 6

  8:32 PM

  Niederrad District

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Reinhard Klinkman turned the van off Goldstein Strasse and eased into a parking space just past the corner of Schwarzwald Strasse.

  “Drop him off here,” Farrington said, glancing behind them at the intersection.

  Petrovich opened the right-side sliding door and gestured to the open pavement.

  “Here? We’re south of the river?” Mazari said, hesitant to step out of the van.

  “Would you prefer we dump you in the river?” Petrovich said.

  “Fuck you guys,” he said, hopping out of the van. “I don’t suppose I’ll be getting my laptop back?”

  Petrovich slid the door shut in the middle of Mazari’s sentence.

  “I’d get as far from here as possible. Remember, the river is always an option if you decide to contact the police. Take the train back to your apartment and stay there until it’s time for work tomorrow. Fuck with me on this and you’re a dead man. Got it?” Farrington said through the front passenger window.

  “Yeah, I understand,” Mazari said, barely raising his head to display a combined look of contempt and fear. “Not every Muslim is a terrorist.”

  “No. But every terrorist seems to be a Muslim,” Farrington said, tossing Mazari’s wallet out of the window onto the sidewalk.

  The van sped away toward the new target building a few blocks west, which would prove to be a more complicated operation than Mazari’s abduction. They now possibly faced an organized, highly trained Al Qaeda cell. Using Mazari’s laptop as a breach point, the electronics warfare team based out of the second van had gained full, permanent access to DBM’s computer network. Database records showed that the three men identified by Mazari lived in the same apartment on Jugenheimer Strasse. Two of them worked in the same department. Shipping. The third held a late-shift job in the medical specimen packaging department.

  One of the two men, Naeem Hassan, worked in a supervisory role within the shipping and distribution department, which identified him as the most likely leader of the suspected terrorist cell. Of the three Egyptian men, he was the only one that had finished college, earning an engineering degree in Cairo. Six years later, he moved to Hamburg and started work on an advanced degree in construction engineering at “Terrorist U,” but discontinued studies upon accepting his current position at Deutsche BioMedizinische.

  Hassan’s travel pattern didn’t raise the same red flags as Mazari’s, but a search of Egyptian databases showed that Hassan had bounced around from one unemployment line to the next during his six years in Egypt. Six long years of social humiliation, no doubt blamed on the West by the dangerous proliferation of radical Mullahs preaching jihad. Plenty of time to be radicalized by Al Qaeda recruiters and sent forth into Europe.

  At this point, Hassan had been in Germany for nearly three years, while the other two men had been issued student visas last summer to attend Frankfurt Technical College. A quick search through the college’s registrar database showed that the two had been dropped from student rolls after they failed to register for classes by mid-September. Notifications had been sent to German immigration authorities, but little would be done to track them. Petrovich wondered how many of these thirty-year-old college “students” simply disappeared into Europe, never to attend a single class. Too many, according to Audra Bauer.

  Based on the information available, they would focus on Hassan. Ozier el-Masri worked in the same department as Hassan and would serve as their secondary focus. That left them with Hanif Akhnaten, who worked in the medical specimen packing department, which was a subsidiary of the Laboratory Group and a separate department altogether. His role had likely been limited to providing the appropriate packing supplies and medical labels to properly camouflage the shipments.

  Working together, Hassan and el-Masri were perfectly situated to manifest and hide the shipments among the thousands of deliveries transported daily to the FedEx hub on the outskirts of Frankfurt International Airport. Nearly two thousand shipments had been delivered to the United States on the day in question, and FedEx delivery records for the seven known Al Qaeda cell locations didn’t provide the FBI with a discernible package manifest pattern. Each of the addresses had received four separate shipments over the course of the day, giving them twenty-eight shipping records to examine.

  Unfortunately, the twenty-eight shipments had originated from twenty-eight separate batches, which had been received by the Frankfurt FedEx hub over a forty-eight-hour period. The deliveries had been scheduled to leave DBM’s shipping facility in a manner that had kept most of the canisters on separate planes while crossing the Atlantic, which appeared to be no easy task. FBI investigators concluded that this kind of timing would require a detailed level of information only available within the FedEx hub, suggesting the presence of another Al Qaeda conspirator.

  Given that neither FedEx nor the FBI could discern a pattern in the shipments, Task Force Scorpion would rely on “overseas assets” to help them connect the dots. Petrovich glanced back at the black nylon bag sitting against the wheel well. He could definitely see using the contents of this bag within the next thirty minutes. He reached back and pulled the bag closer. Once again, they wouldn’t have much time on-site, but he would make that time count. Whoever left the apartment alive with them would be taken to the safe house, where they could go to work extracting detailed information. He wasn’t hopeful that they would unravel the entire shipping pattern.

  So far, the task force could officially account for the suspected delivery of only twenty-eight out of fifty-eight canisters, but they had no further leads. They just needed to extract enough information to get the FBI into the game. Even one more shipment location might tip the balance. It was all a numbers game. One link leads to the next. So far, the FBI had no links, which was an extremely frightening thought.

  The team drove in silence for several minutes, arriving in front of 31 Jugenheim. Petrovich found himself once again staring down a long courtyard at what seemed like an endless sea of apartment blocks. Unlike Mazari’s Gallus residence, the trees and shrubs on the street and in the courtyard b
locked much of their view. Farrington talked with the surveillance team as Klinkman found a questionable parking space one building down from their target building. Farrington disconnected the call as Klinkman wedged the van into a parallel spot on the Jugenheim.

  “What are we looking at?” Petrovich said.

  “Luke says all three of our guys are inside. They ran traces on cell phone numbers recorded in DBM’s HR database. GPS trace confirms that the phones are located about 70 meters from our current position. Fifth floor,” Farrington said.

  “Not good. We’ll have to drag at least two of them down to ground level, and I doubt either of them will come along willingly,” Petrovich said.

  “Maybe we should tranquilize them upon entry. Klink can move the van up to the door through the courtyard. There’s plenty of room to maneuver the van on the grass,” Hubner said.

  “If we drive the van up, we’re going to attract a lot of attention, and Herr Klinkman will not be able to help with the takedown. We’re talking about three guys up there, all likely Al Qaeda operatives. If we hit them with the neurotoxins, we’ll have to wait a few hours to start the interrogation. We’ll need some immediate shock and awe to impress this crew. From my experience with interrogations, the most useful information comes in the first few minutes, before the subject gets their shit together. It’s either that or weeks of isolation and subtle mental games. We don’t have a big window of time here. We go in hot,” Farrington said.

  Daniel couldn’t have said this better himself. He agreed completely. They needed to jar the information out of them within the next few minutes. Even taking them to the safe house would decrease the likelihood of producing timely, accurate information. Daniel had witnessed some terrifyingly cruel torture-based interrogations during his two years in Serbia, but most of these sessions had been designed to force a confession. Easy work compared to extracting truthful information.