Special Forces: The Operator

by Cindy Dees

  “You’re assuming the Iranians will go for the biggest, most visible target,” Avi retorted. “It’s just as possible they’ll pick a smaller target with less security in a bid to ensure a successful attack.”

  “Fair point,” Gun answered. “Why don’t you work up a list of targets based on the amount of security at each one? Half of us will work on the size-based list, and half of us will work on the security-presence-based list. Any locations that duplicate, we’ll cross off the other list as soon as one team inspects it. Piper, Zane, Rebel, Lynx, you’re with me. Tessa, Beau, Gia, you’re with Avi.”

  Avi didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed that he didn’t get to work with Rebel. Inspecting facilities with her might have given them a chance to talk. But they both needed to focus 100 percent on this search. Thousands of lives might depend on not missing something important.

  They all spent about a half hour with their heads together in the conference room, sorting out possible target locations into the two lists. When they’d categorized every building and gathering place in or around the Olympic venues and village, they adjourned to start the search.

  He headed out with his team, a print copy of the 3-D diagram in hand. It was harder than it looked to match an image on paper to actual places, full of people, signs, posters, kiosks, vendors and other distractions to obscure the actual structures behind them.

  They drove from one location to another, painstakingly searching each one for a possible match to the diagram. After a while, he had the diagram memorized cold and could pace off the distance between pillars or walls or stairwells in buildings without even having to refer to the sheet of paper in his hand.

  The two teams worked all afternoon, but nobody came up with a match. Avi’s team grabbed sandwiches from a vendor at the big basketball field house and continued working as they gulped down the food.

  At about 7:00 p.m. his cell phone vibrated, and he noticed that his companions also reached for their phones at the same time. He read the message scrolling across his screen.

  Bomb threat at boxing venue. Evacuation in progress. All Group B security personnel report to Sydney Convention Centre, south entrance, for bomb sweep.

  Group B personnel constituted about half of all the people assigned to any given event at any given time. Group A personnel wouldn’t leave an assigned venue under any circumstances, but Group B’ers could be moved to help out in an emergency.

  He immediately called Gunnar. “What’s up at the Convention Centre?”

  “Bomb threat. Deemed credible, and the venue is being evacuated as we speak. Then they’ll sweep the building, and if it’s all clear, they’ll rescreen the spectators and let everyone back inside.”

  “What event’s running in there, tonight?”

  “Men’s semifinal in basketball. USA vs. Russia.”

  “Packed house, then,” Avi commented.

  “Packed to the rafters. Standing room only. I’m guessing it’ll take a half hour to clear the place out, another half hour to run the bomb dogs through, and another hour to get everyone back in their seats. The IOC says it wants the event to go on tonight, though. It’ll throw off the overall event schedule too much if the game doesn’t happen.”

  “You already checked out the Convention Centre for matches to our mock-up, right?” Avi asked.

  “Affirmative. No match.”

  Dammit. Avi’s team was nearly done with its search list. Only small targets with crowds measuring in the hundreds or a few thousand at most remained. His gut said Mahmoud would go for a significantly more spectacular target than anything that small. He asked, “Hey, Gun. How are you guys coming on your list?”

  “Most of the way through it. You?”

  “Same. We’re scraping the bottom of the target barrel. I think we missed something. Regroup at Ops and form a new plan?” Avi suggested.

  “Maybe we check out the Convention Centre again—” Gun started.

  Avi interrupted. “You guys were thorough and didn’t miss anything there. Don’t second-guess yourself, brother. You and I both know we’re on the right track. We have to keep going with this line of investigation.”

  They had missed something. He just couldn’t figure out what.

  “My conference room in ten?” Gun responded.

  “Make it five,” Avi replied grimly.

  Chapter 18

  Rebel didn’t relish seeing Avi twice in the same day. It had been hard enough briefing him in before. It had been all she could do to maintain a professional demeanor when her heart was shattering into a million pieces.

  She waited nervously in the conference room for him and his team to arrive. Cripes. Her palms were damp, and she was breathing too fast. She knew better than to let him have this kind of an effect on her. But as it turned out, she had no control over her reactions to him, like it or not.

  Which was both frustrating and informative. No matter how hard she wanted to deny it, she had fallen for him hard. And walking away from him was turning out to be much harder than she’d anticipated.

  It was the right thing to do. They had no future together living and working halfway around the world from each other, let alone the fact that their worldviews were diametrically opposed, or that he had never taken her seriously as a Special Forces operative.

  No. There were just too many obstacles for them to overcome.

  Maybe if one of them wasn’t in the military, if they could find a way to be in the same place at the same time, maybe then she might have been willing to give the whole notion of life as a happy experience more serious consideration. But if the past couple of weeks with Avi were any indication, the pursuit of happiness directly interfered with her ability to do her job.

  The conference room door burst open and Avi, Gia, Tessa and Beau stepped inside.

  Torsten said briskly, “Where are we, Rebel? Give us a quick summation.”

  She appreciated him trusting her intelligence analysis skills enough to ask her to lead this critical meeting.

  “We’ve pretty much exhausted the interiors of any venues as the target, assuming the mock-up we’re working off of is actually a representation of the final target. Are we still in agreement that this is a rational working assumption?”

  Nods all around the table.

  Gunnar’s cell phone beeped and everyone looked at him as he read the message. He announced, “A device was found in the Convention Centre. Crude, not powerful, and a dud to boot. The IOC is still having a bomb unit remove it from the building, but it’s been made safe.”

  “Where was it planted?” Rebel asked quickly.

  Gunnar typed into his cell phone, and a moment later answered, “Main concourse, tucked in a Food Services supply closet. It would not have caused any structural damage to the building. Just a lot of noise and concrete dust.”

  “What kind of bomb was it?” Avi asked.

  “Less than a kilogram of C-4. Blasting cap. Simple detonator. Cell phone activated. No backup detonator in case someone tried to disarm the device.”

  Wow. That was crude. Even the most rudimentary training in bomb-making would produce a more sophisticated device than that.

  She commented, “I’m confused by this whole bomb threat at the Convention Centre.”

  “Why’s that?” Avi asked quickly.

  One thing she had to give him credit for. He’d never questioned her intelligence or thought process. She answered, “Why put a tiny device in such a huge building? It would cause chaos, but no damage. If we’re also working on the assumption that Mahmoud Akhtar is planning something spectacular, that bomb was anything but. Easily found. Easily disarmed. And why call in the bomb threat in the first place? Who made that call?”

  Gia jumped in. “Maybe someone on Mahoud’s team got cold feet and made the call.”

  Zane shook his head. “When I was undercover with
him, Mahmoud didn’t let any of us have cell phones of any kind, and he continuously monitored us to make sure we didn’t sneak away and call anyone or even use the internet. Given the degree of preparations he’s gone to for whatever he has planned here, I have to believe he handpicked fanatics like himself. They’ll have intense military discipline, and nobody will deviate from his plan.”

  Rebel nodded. “Fair enough. That means if Mahmoud’s guys are behind this little bomb at the Convention Centre, it was part of their plan to call it in.” She continued, “The timing of the call is suspect, too. Why call it in before the basketball game starts? Why not wait till everyone is settled in their seats, maybe late in the game when many people have been drinking and are half-sloshed? Olympic security would have a much harder time evacuating the place, and if chaos was the goal, you’d get much more of it by waiting.”

  Torsten said, “Good point. We have to assume Mahmoud is more interested in pulling off security from another venue at a specific time than he is worrying about the effect that calling in the bomb threat will have.”

  Avi lurched in his chair and blurted, “Which means it’s a diversion. Whatever Mahmoud has planned is going down tonight. Maybe right now!”

  Rebel nodded grimly. “I have to concur.”

  Gunnar said, “Our next guess has to be right, then. We’ll only get one shot at this. Mahmoud has pulled off half the security personnel from whatever venue he plans to hit. What did we miss, Rebel?”

  She gulped. This was what she’d signed up for. To be the pointy end of the sword, to live on the firing line, handling the toughest crises imaginable.

  “I thought about that this afternoon as our search of venues kept coming up negative. I think we have to go back to the drawing board in our assumption about the kind of attack Mahmoud is planning. If he’s not planning to do something up close and personal like wade into a crowd with a bunch of guys wielding automatic rifles, he’s probably planning something more hands-off, but that will affect more people.”

  “Go on,” Torsten murmured.

  “Given that Olympic security were pulled off of event venues by the bomb feint, I think we can rule out civilian targets. He’s planning to hit something in the village or at a venue.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement, and she pressed on. “The only kind of attack that’s guaranteed to result in mass casualties that doesn’t involve bombs or guns is some sort of chemical, biological, or nerve agent style attack.”

  That elicited a low groan around the table.

  “What if the mock-up is of the roof of an event venue? Those could be air conditioning units and ventilation fans. What if, instead of looking inside the buildings, we should be looking on top of them?”

  Torsten leaned forward to speak, but Gia was already typing on the laptop in front of her. She said, “I’m pulling up satellite imagery of the Olympic village and venues, now.”

  An image of Australia from space came into view, and she zoomed in quickly on the east coast of the continent, then on Sydney, and then on the Olympic cluster of facilities. Rebel and Gia stared at the images in silence, and everyone else said nothing, letting the photo analysts do what they were best trained to do.

  Gia muttered, “I’ll start on the right. You start on the left.”

  Rebel nodded, never taking her eyes off the large screen.

  “There!” she exclaimed. “What’s that building?”

  Avi was first to reply. “That’s the new Addison Field House. The gymnastics venue. Women’s individual event finals are running there, tonight. They get underway in about ten minutes and will run till after midnight.”

  “Capacity?” Torsten asked.

  Avi’s answer sent a chill down Rebel’s spine. “In excess of thirty thousand. And the women’s gymnastics finals will fill every seat in the place.”

  Gia zoomed in on the big arched-roof building with futuristic ribs stretching across it, clamshell fashion. Puffy sections rose between the ribs.

  “Right here.” Rebel pointed at the screen. “Gia, can you superimpose our diagram of the mock-up on top of the roof and slide it around to see if we get a match?”

  “It’ll take me a minute,” the analyst muttered.

  While she did that, Avi spoke up. “The Addison’s roof is held up by air pressure. To get in or out of the building, spectators have to pass through revolving doors that hold in the air. It has a giant ventilation system that cools and pumps air through the facility. It would be a perfect target for some kind of gas attack. Dispersion rates would be lightning fast because of the building’s need for constant airflow.” He continued, “There’ve been complaints among various security teams that it’s too slow a building to evacuate. Not enough exits to move out a large crowd quickly.”

  Gia started moving around her image, revolving it and trying it over different segments of the building’s extensive power and air units standing around the edges of the roof.

  It took several minutes, but everyone yelled, “Stop!” at the same time as, suddenly, the drawn image matched up almost perfectly with a collection of air conditioners and ventilation fans.

  Torsten said quickly, “Before we barge over there and climb up on the roof, I want everyone to gear up in full tactical kits. These guys will be violent, armed and prepared to die. I’ll put in a quick call to our superiors to get an emergency green light, but barring that, I’m willing to operate under the Israeli green light. Are you willing to take responsibility for the operation, Avi?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “Rules of engagement?” Rebel asked.

  Torsten responded, “This is going to be a political hotcake no matter how it goes down, particularly if Mahmoud and an Iranian sponsored hit team show up on that roof, tonight. We’re going to have to make an effort to stop them with nonlethal force.”

  Avi retorted quickly, “And when that fails, then we’ll operate with extreme prejudice.” Which translated to, shoot first, ask questions later.

  Torsten responded, “I know you want these bastards, Avi. We do, too. But we have to cover our asses in this operation or all of our careers will be dead in the water after tonight. We need to record everything we do for evidence after the fact because we will be called out on the carpet for whatever we do.”

  His implication was clear. Without ironclad evidence that Mahmoud and his team were doing something illegal, any attack on them would cost the Medusas their careers.

  Torsten looked around the table grimly. “If any of you prefer not to participate in the mission, I release you now. It’s entirely possible that the bureaucratic fallout from this will be toxic to anyone who participates.”

  There was no question in Rebel’s mind what was the right thing to do. If they could stop an attack that might kill thousands of people, and once and for all take out an international terrorist, her career was a small price to pay. “I’m in,” she declared.

  One by one, everyone else at the table echoed her sentiment.

  Torsten took one last, hard look around and nodded. “I’ll do everything in my power to protect all of you, and if necessary to take the fall for you. Don’t let concern about what might happen after tonight affect your performance on that roof. I’ve got your backs.”

  And that was why the Medusas loved him. He was a hard teacher, a hard taskmaster, a hard man. But he was a good leader and his honor and loyalty to his team were ironclad.

  “We’re clear on the battle plan, then?” Torsten summarized. “We will collect photographic evidence of wrongdoing. Rebel, I’m going to put you in charge of that because you know what needs to be in the images to justify our mission.”

  She nodded and Torsten continued, “When Rebel has the imagery she needs, we’ll attempt to arrest Mahmoud and his team. If they fail to surrender, we shift to a strictly take down–take out operation. Kill everyone up on that roof who isn’t a good guy.�
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  Everyone around the table verbally acknowledged their understanding of how this engagement would go down.

  Avi asked, “Do you have a kit for me, or do I need to head over to my ops center to gear up?”

  Torsten eyed Avi. “You’re about my size. I’ve got what you need.”

  Rebel moved over to a printer where Gia had sent images of the actual roof for everyone to study in the next few minutes. Normally, they liked to spend hours or days planning a mission, but they didn’t have that luxury, tonight.

  Torsten said, “We’ll access the roof from the nearest stairwell and make our way across the roof in a standard clearing operation. Form a line, walk forward, challenge anyone we find. Improvise as needed. Rebel, get me the nearest roof access point and a building schematic. I’ll have one of the Medusas bring your gear to you while you do that.” He looked around the table. “Questions or comments?”

  Verbal negatives sounded around the table.

  As everyone stood up to go get ready, Torsten said, “Avi, I know you’ve operated with Americans plenty of times, but buddy up with Rebel just to be safe. She may need some extra cover while she records the situation as we encounter it.”

  Avi glanced over at her and asked quietly, “Are you okay with that? No harm, no foul, now’s the time to speak up if you don’t want to work with me.”

  Rebel winced as Torsten looked sharply back and forth between them. “We’ll talk about this later,” Torsten bit out. “What say, you, Rebel? Good or not, with Avi?”

  “I’m good.”

  “All right. Get me that stairwell location.” With that, Torsten and Avi left the room, leaving her in silence to pull up a quick building schematic, print out the relevant portions of it and spot a roof access point about two hundred feet away from the air-conditioning units in question.

  She gathered the paperwork just as Lynx, the team’s junior member, arrived in the room carrying a large duffel bag of Rebel’s tactical gear.