Drone Strike: A Joe Matthews Thriller

by David Austin

  The dot representing Tariq’s rental began moving across the tablet’s screen, so Scott pinched his thumb and index finger together to minimize the zoom and expand the map’s field of view. As he did, two more dots appeared on the screen, revealing Chris and John’s positions along the surveillance detection route. “He’s on the move,” Scott informed them, and both men acknowledged the call over their encrypted mobile phones.

  Tariq turned left onto the access road that separated the rental lot from short-term parking, then entered the roundabout near the main terminal. He took the first right to leave the traffic circle and followed the road to the airport’s exit.

  Joe put the SUV in gear, backed out of the space, and left the short-term parking lot. They were second in line at the stop sign when Tariq’s silver Renault passed by. The car in front of them made the left onto the access road and Joe eased up to the stop sign, the tracking beacon and GPS link affording him a bit of patience. Scott kept a watchful eye on the cars trailing behind the Syrian as Joe looked for an opening in the traffic. A gap appeared a moment later, and he merged into the flow of vehicles leaving the airport’s grounds.

  The route they had created for the SDR took them up the A3 past plots of farmland with dark, rich soil, to the Domolaxia Junction. They snaked their way around the junction’s large traffic circle, taking the exit onto the B4. The terrain turned industrial as the highway led them back past the airport, paralleling the runways, cargo terminals, and a large flat tarmac that served as a parking lot where a mismatched variety of private and commercial aircraft baked in the sun.

  As instructed, Tariq took the first opportunity to leave the highway and entered the Makenzie section of Larnaca. Located at the southern tip of the city, Makenzie was a popular tourist destination that offered a half-mile stretch of sandy beach dotted with umbrella-shaded lounge chairs and an ample supply of coffee shops, bars, and restaurants. Tariq had memorized the route before leaving Damascus but consulted the Renault’s GPS to be sure, before turning off Piale Pasa and finding a spot in the large parking lot that ran the length of the strip.

  Joe negotiated the traffic and found his own parking space in the lot just in time to see Tariq enter a small convenience store. The Syrian reappeared five minutes later with a plastic bag in hand. Containing several bottles of sparkling water and a tube of sunscreen, the items would seem completely innocuous and reinforce the appearance that he was just another tourist visiting the island for a couple of days. With his purchases made, this next leg of the SDR would be conducted on foot, so he headed for an alley between a nightclub and a restaurant.

  Joe was out of the vehicle and on the move before Scott closed the tablet’s cover and slid it back into the rucksack’s zippered compartment. With the tablet stowed, Scott moved around the SUV and took Joe’s place in the driver’s seat. He would keep an eye on the Renault while Joe trailed Tariq at a discreet distance.

  Exiting a similar alley two shops down, Joe turned left onto Mackenzie Beach’s concrete-tiled promenade. Bars and restaurants offering sidewalk seating lined the left side of the spacious walkway while the right was dotted with umbrella covered tables interspersed among a lengthy line of palm trees to shade customers from the sun. Twenty yards past the tables and palms was the white sand of the beach and the blue waters of the Med. Joe thought the area would be a good spot for a vacation, although he had no idea when his next opportunity for some time off might come around.

  He kept Tariq in his peripheral vision, using him as a reference point while observing the people around him, looking for threats or anyone paying any undue attention to the man on a casual stroll along the promenade. So far, so good. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

  Playing his role as the tourist, Tariq would stop every now and then and pull out his phone to snap a photo, photos that, unlike those taken by most of the people on the promenade, would never be posted to Instagram or any other social media platform, for that matter. He placed the smartphone back in his pocket, then entered the next stop along the route.

  The interior of the Caffé Nero looked less like a coffee shop and more like a reading room in a well-appointed library. Leather upholstered chairs and distressed wood coffee tables provided a warm, welcoming vibe that encouraged patrons to hang around, read a book, or surf the web on the shop’s free WIFI all in the hopes that they would order a second or even third round of coffee while passing the time. Tariq approached the barista, placed his to-go order, then scrolled through the photos on his phone while he waited.

  There was no need for Joe to enter the coffee shop to keep an eye on Tariq because Chris had it covered. The former SEAL had been inside for the past hour, seated against the back wall in a spot that afforded him a view of the entire shop. Wearing board shorts and a tank top from a local surf shop, his shaggy, sandy-blond hair and perpetual year-round tan did not fit anyone’s image of what a highly trained American operative might look like. With his laptop out, and ear buds in, no one would ever imagine he was anything other than a surfer on a coffee break.

  Glancing over the top of its screen, he watched as Tariq received his order from the barista and headed for the door. As he did, Chris made a show of speaking into the mic on his earbuds even though the communication was going out through his covert earpiece. “He’s coming out. All clear in the coffee shop.”

  The SDR continued for another forty-five minutes, culminating with a visit to a dive shop where Tariq inquired about a scuba diving trip the following day. With his guided dive booked for ten o’clock the next morning, he meandered back to the parking lot and retrieved his rental car. Next stop, the hotel.

  CHAPTER 22

  Contemporary in its design, the eight-story Sun Hall Hotel faced Phinikoudes Beach and offered guests a view of the Larnaca Marina. The hotel’s prime location meant it was no more than a ten-minute walk from museums, the open-air market, or historical sites like the Church of Saint Lazarus or the Medieval Fort.

  John Roberts closed the door that connected the two suites on the hotel’s sixth floor. With the help of a logistics officer who had made the one-hour drive from the embassy in Nicosia with a technical-security-countermeasures package, John had swept both rooms for eavesdropping devices. Satisfied they were clean, he set up three covert wireless cameras that would allow the team to monitor the encrypted feeds of Scott and Tariq’s discussion next door.

  In addition to the TSCM gear, the logistics officer had brought the team a gift. John walked over to the coffee table and popped the latches on the black hard-sided case. What he saw when he lifted the lid brought a smile to his face. Four Glock 19 semi-automatic pistols, along with three magazines for each, rested in foam cut-outs. And as an added bonus, he found the logistics officer had included four suppressors. It was a nice touch, and John told the man so.

  Using the suppressors to dampen the sound of gunfire was certainly effective, but they presented a unique set of challenges. First, the can, as the suppressor was called, became hot to the touch after the weapon was fired. That left the shooter with two options, either wear gloves or wait for it to cool before removing it. And second, with the suppressor attached, the pistol was absurdly long and difficult to conceal, not ideal when trying to move through a city without attracting any undue attention. However, if all went well, and at this point they had no reason to believe otherwise, the team wouldn’t need to use the pistols or the suppressors. Still, John appreciated the gesture and felt it was always better to have a piece of equipment and not need it, rather than need it and not have it.

  While they waited for Tariq and the rest of the team to arrive, John stripped down each weapon and performed a functions check. Approving of their condition, he went to work inspecting the ammunition and magazines. He began by thumbing the nine-millimeter, jacketed hollow-point rounds onto the bedspread, then disassembled the mags and inspected their springs before reassembling and reloading them.

  “Looks like he’s here,” the logistics officer said as
he monitored the laptop.

  John finished with the weapons and placed three of them back into their respective cutouts inside the case. He tucked the fourth Glock into the rear waistband of his jeans before moving over to where the man was sitting. Leaning over his shoulder, John saw Tariq’s image on the screen.

  The sound of a keycard sliding into the locking mechanism on the outside of the room’s door caught John’s attention and he reached over to close the lid of the weapons case. If it was someone from housekeeping or the hotel’s management team, he didn’t want to have to explain why he had a small arsenal in the room. With the pistols concealed from view, John’s right hand slid behind his back and his fingers wrapped around the Glock’s familiar grip. The rest of the guys were supposed to be returning to the hotel any minute, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  The lock clicked and he saw a sandaled foot push the door open. Recognizing the beat-up footwear, he relaxed, then walked over and grabbed the door handle, pulling it the rest of the way open. He was greeted by Chris Ryan’s smiling face.

  Looking like a beach bum in his tank-top and board shorts, Chris entered the room holding a carry-out tray of coffees in one hand and a white plastic bag filled with bottles of water in the other. “Thanks, man. For a minute there, I thought I was going to dump the whole damn tray in the hallway.”

  “Excellent!” the logistics officer said, a little too enthusiastic for either man’s taste. “You brought coffee.”

  Chris gave the guy a strange look as he set the tray with four cups on the desk. “That I did, my friend.” Confused, he glanced at John, then back at the man savoring the coffee as he monitored Tariq on the computer’s screen. “If you don’t mind my asking, who the hell are you?”

  John made the introductions, then reached for one of the coffees and twisted it out of the cardboard tray. Approving of Chris’s choice of blends, he pointed to the desk and said, “You only brought four? I know you joined the SEALs because the Navy recruiter told you there’d be no math, but including our new friend here,” referring to the logistics officer, “there are five of us.”

  Ignoring the slight, Chris grabbed a bottle of water out of the plastic bag, spun the lid off, and downed half of it in one long pull. “Dude, I was in that coffee shop forever waiting on Tariq. Trust me, I am fully caffeinated.” He finished off the bottle and tossed it into the recycle section of the divided trash can next to the desk. Spotting his North Face duffle sitting against the wall, he unzipped the top flap, and rummaged through it for a change of clothes. Time to swap the board shorts, tank top, and sandals for some jeans, an untucked shirt, and his favorite pair of Salomon X Ultra hiking boots.

  John’s phone chimed, and he read the text bubble that appeared on the screen. “Joe and Scott just entered the lobby. They’re on the way up.”

  Five minutes later, the team was back together, going over the game plan for the meeting with Tariq when the secure video conferencing program on a second laptop began ringing. Joe took the computer off the desk and set it on top of the hard-sided case on the coffee table. Taking a seat on the couch, he checked to make sure the encrypted VPN was engaged, plugged in his earbuds, then hit the button to accept the video call.

  While it was not at all unusual to get a call from Langley with status updates or changes to a mission’s requirements, it was, however, odd for it to be coming in from the director’s conference room. The image of Carl Douglas, Joe’s boss, appeared on the screen, but his presence was overshadowed by the DDO, Katherine Clark, and Director Sloan himself.

  Wondering what was going on, Joe said, “Good evening, sir.”

  Getting straight to the point, Director Sloan replied, “Is Scott there with you?”

  “Yes, sir. He is.”

  “Please have him join you on screen.”

  Joe unplugged his earbuds and motioned Scott over to the laptop. “Sir, the rest of the guys are in the room, along with a logs officer from the station in Nicosia. Any problem with them hearing what you have to say?”

  Sloan thought it over for a minute. “No. Let them stay. You and Scott would have to brief them after we spoke anyway, so this will save you the trouble.”

  Scott took a seat on the couch and slid next to Joe so both of their faces were visible on the video teleconference. He turned up the volume so the guys could hear the conversation.

  “Have you had your meeting with Mr. Kabbani?” Sloan began.

  “We were making the final preparations for it when you called,” Scott answered.

  “Good. There have been some developments, and I’m hoping he may be able to shed some light on them.” Sloan spent the next ten minutes detailing the attack on the drone base and finished by summarizing the discussion in the White House Situation Room.

  “So the consensus is that the Russians were responsible for the attack and launched the mission out of Syria?” Joe asked, mulling over the logistics of such an operation in his mind. It made sense. Their military bases in Tartus and Latakia would be a great jumping off point and provided all the infrastructure and support a unit would need to carry out such a mission. And if the Russians did have teams from Alpha Group in-country, they would have the training and expertise to take down an airfield, not to mention the ruthlessness necessary to kill everyone on the base.

  “That’s correct,” Sloan agreed. “Ever since Russia’s entry into the Syrian civil war, President Polovkin has been looking for a way to increase his influence in the Middle East. But to do that, he needs to undermine or marginalize our presence in the region. I’m sure he has a plan to do just that, but we’re still working to figure out exactly what it is. Stealing the Reaper was not the ultimate goal of the mission, just his opening move. I’m afraid it’s the beginning of something much larger, something more sinister.”

  A nightmare scenario was running through Joe’s head, and from the looks on the other guys’ faces, they were thinking along the same lines. “Sir, what’s our level of confidence that the Russians won’t be able to fly the drone? I mean, we’ve owned the skies on every battlefield for the last twenty years and our forces have been able to operate without worrying about airstrikes from our enemies. But if the Russians could get that Reaper operational, they could turn the tables on us, or worse, attack our partners in the region and make it look like we did it.”

  A slight smile spread across the DCIA’s face. This was exactly the reason it was so important for him to have many of his best people in the field. There were plenty of smart people at headquarters who would be drafting analytical papers on what they believed to be the most likely scenarios. But Joe had just come up with perhaps the best explanation yet. It was an idea Sloan had been mulling over but hadn’t shared with anyone up to this point.

  “To answer your question, we don’t think it’s very likely.” He went on to describe the briefing General Rodriguez had given the president, and that new encryption keys had been sent out to all stations and drone bases around the world. “That being said, the Russians have some exceptionally talented computer scientists and aerospace engineers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually figure out some workaround to get the Reaper airborne. But I think you hit the nail on the head with your second point. If they can get the UAV operational, it would open up the possibility of conducting aerial strikes with all the evidence pointing back to the United States.”

  “Scott,” Katherine Clark said, “we need you to task Tariq with finding out everything he can about the attack and what the Russians did with the Reaper. And please impress upon him that time is of the essence. We need to get a handle on this situation before the Russians get our bird in the air.”

  The secure video call ended, and Joe closed the laptop. He looked at Scott sitting next to him on the couch. “Well, it looks like your meet and greet with your new asset just took on a whole new level of importance.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Bassel Al-Assad International Airport was located fifteen miles south of Latakia and sh
ared runways and facilities with the Syrian Air Force’s Khmeimim Air Base. Tariq Kabbani marveled at the hive of activity as his plane taxied to its parking spot. Under a mutual agreement similar to the one allowing the Navy to control significant portions of the port in Tartus, the Russian Air Force had set up its headquarters at Khmeimim. MiG and Sukhoi fighters and ground attack aircraft littered the tarmac, preparing to conduct strikes against the remnants of ISIS extremists and the myriad rebel groups attempting to overthrow the regime.

  Ground crews refueled and rearmed the sleek jets, many with what Tariq recognized to be cluster bombs. The weapons, outlawed in 2008 under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, dispersed small bomblets or submunitions over a wide area. Although these types of bombs were an effective tool against ground forces, they caused just as much if not more damage to innocent civilians. Drawn to the shiny, unexploded ordnance, children were especially likely to be maimed or killed, as the bomblets would detonate when they were picked up. He knew his people would be paying for the use of the weapons long after the rebel groups had been eliminated from the battlefield.

  It had been a week since Tariq had returned from Cyprus. The initial face-to-face with his new handler, Scott Garrett, had gone well, and he felt their relationship was off to a good start. Armed with a laundry list of taskings, most of which related to finding out more about the attack in Jordan, Tariq had flown up to Latakia under the auspices of conducting meetings at the local General Intelligence Directorate’s office. But he was really in town to see what, if anything, he could find out about the Russians’ involvement in the theft of the Reaper, and what was going on in the hangar complex across the runway.