Covert Action (Command and Control Book 5), page 27
Don grabbed the soggy umbrella and struggled out of the car. The six paces through the rain to the glass door only succeeded in soaking his shoes for a second time. Inside, a woman waited. Late forties, graying hair pulled back into a bun, and shod in sensible shoes. By way of greeting, she nodded, then turned and started walking. Don followed, his shoes squelching in the silent hallway.
Vladimir Federov’s office was on the sixth floor overlooking the square. Silver rivulets of rain snaked down the dark glass as the head of the FSB stood up from his desk.
Although Don was the one coming in from the rain like a drowned rat, he thought Federov looked worse than he did.
The man’s bald head was the color of wallpaper paste, and the lines on his face looked like they were carved into his skin. Still, his brown eyes glittered with energy.
“Thank you for coming, Donald.” He guided Don to a pair of armchairs set close to a gas fireplace and took Don’s coat.
Probably taking it so he can plant a bug in it, Don thought bleakly. Coming here had been a terrible idea. He resolved to burn all his clothes as soon as he left Russian soil.
“Can I get you a drink?” Federov asked.
Don spied a silver samovar. “Hot tea?”
“Of course.” As Federov fussed with the tea service, Don moved his sodden feet next to the fireplace. He wondered what his host would think if he took off his shoes to let them dry.
Federov set a silver tray between them with two steaming glasses of tea in elaborate silver holders, a pitcher of milk, and a bowl of sugar cubes. The FSB chief put two lumps into his own glass and cocked an eyebrow at Don, who held up two fingers.
This whole thing is a show, Don realized. The emergency trip to Moscow, the meeting at FSB headquarters, even the tea. There was a big ask coming, Don could feel it.
“Vladimir,” Don asked, “why am I here?”
Federov cradled his tea glass between his palms.
“Our situation in the south is very delicate,” he began. “You know this already, I presume?”
The Central Asian republics. That made sense.
Don nodded, but said nothing. He was here to listen.
“What do you know of Timur Ganiev?” Federov asked.
Don sipped his tea to give himself time to think. Was it possible the Russians had discovered Operation Catbird?
“Just what we’ve shared with you,” Don said. “He preaches a message of cultural unity and he supports the rule of law. Those ideas align well with American values.”
“He’s a destabilizing force,” Federov replied. “His presence makes it very difficult for the Russian Federation to reestablish the status quo in the region.”
“Maybe it’s time for the status quo to change,” Don said.
“Is the CIA involved?” Federov asked flatly.
“You know I can’t answer that.”
“We have a saying in Russia,” Federov said. “A leopard cannot change its spots. The same in America?”
Don nodded, hoping that he hadn’t flown five thousand miles to hear a Russian proverb.
“Has the United States learned nothing from your history?” Federov continued. “Regime change is a myth. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, South America, this is a lesson you still have not learned.”
“I’m not sure what you're driving at,” Don said.
“A country is the sum of its history. Like the skin of a leopard, it cannot change. People and their customs, their way of life. We are who we are. You cannot change these things.”
“I imagine Nikolay Sokolov would disagree with that statement,” Don said.
Federov frowned, then his brow smoothed again. “Perhaps, but that is for another time. Tonight, I need you to stop supporting Ganiev.”
“You’re making a big assumption about America’s involvement, Vladimir. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
The lines around Federov’s lips deepened. “The Eurasian countries are the Russian near-abroad. Our influence there is a national security priority. These are lands rife with ethnic conflict. They will never be unified.”
“I understand your skepticism—”
“No, Donald, you do not.” Federov leaned toward Don, his eyes hard. “I need you to hear me. This path you are on will destroy us both.”
Don’s fingers tightened on his glass, suddenly angry. “I need you to hear me. There is no CIA involvement.”
Federov studied him for a long time. Don did not look away.
“I brought you here for a reason, Donald.” He gestured at the room. “This place, the things that have happened here, are the old Russia. President Sokolov is working for a different future, a better future, but he cannot do it alone. He needs help. He needs your trust, the trust of your President.”
Don wondered where this monologue was headed.
“My words may not be enough to convince you, but I want you to meet someone. He will convince you to stop this meddling in—” Don started to protest, but Federov held up his hand. “He will help you see that American involvement in Central Asia needs to change.”
Don finished his tea and set the empty glass on the tray.
“Who did you have in mind?”
“Akhmet Orazov.”
If Don had still been holding his tea glass, he probably would have dropped it. It took every bit of composure he possessed to keep his expression neutral.
“I don’t see what that would do for us,” Don said finally. His heart galloped in his chest even as he feigned lack of interest.
Federov’s voice turned earnest. “Orazov is a longtime Russian ally. He will convince you that supporting Ganiev is not in the best interest of the United States.”
“May I have some more tea, please?”
Don used the interruption to think. The CIA had been hunting Orazov for weeks without success. Was this the opportunity they’d been waiting for?
“Well?” Federov asked, handing him a fresh glass of tea.
Don pretended to be considering the proposal. “You have a lot of faith in Mr. Orazov.”
“His ties with Mother Russia go back decades. He’s an honorable man. All I ask is that you listen to what he has to say.”
Don sipped his tea. The liquid was sweet and hot, the taste of victory.
“I’m always willing to listen, Vladimir. Please. Set up the meeting.”
38
CIA Special Activities Center
Langley, Virginia
In her twenty-year career with the CIA, Case Officer Anne Hart had surreptitiously entered sovereign nations at least a dozen times. She’d jumped out of airplanes, planted listening devices in the home of a Russian FSB officer, and run an influence operation inside a South American country to sway a close election. For the most part, she’d avoided violence, but she did have a scar on her right side from a knife fight in Bulgaria.
At her rank, Anne didn’t do as much field work these days, but she had a reputation as a solid operator with excellent attention to detail who got results.
She supposed that was the reason she’d been assigned to lead this kill operation in Uzbekistan. Deputy Director of Operations Don Riley had offered her the assignment in person.
She said yes, but now she was thinking that maybe she’d been a little too hasty.
On the face of it, the operation was simple. A CIA case officer on the ground in Uzbekistan would lure a target to a meeting location. With the terrorist positively identified, her team would track the target when he left the meeting and eliminate him with a drone strike once the CIA friendly was in the clear. The meeting site was outside major population centers, which minimized the risk of collateral damage—always a factor in these types of operations.
While the mechanics of the kill chain were simple, the logistics of the operation were brutally complex. To get armed drones on station, she needed to violate the sovereign airspace of at least a half dozen countries, none of which were especially friendly to the United States. The kill operation was taking place only fifty miles away from a major Chinese ceremony in Samarkand. She didn’t know exactly what the Jade Spike ceremony was and she didn’t much care. What she did care about was the dramatically increased security profile of PLA forces in the area, which amplified the possibility of detection of her assets to an uncomfortable degree. To aggravate matters, there was a contingent of Americans at the Samarkand event, including Don Riley and the U.S. Secretary of State.
Once she moved the drones on station, she was on the clock. There was no way to refuel the UAVs while they were inside enemy airspace.
You play the hand you’re dealt, she thought. Success in this case was all about logistics and timing—and a whole lot of luck.
Her handpicked team was small, only twenty people, with five operators on duty at any given time. They sat in a row behind six workstations facing a configurable wall screen.
From left to right, she had a comms stack that could put her in touch with anyone on the planet in the space of a few seconds, two stations each monitoring one of the advanced MQ-9 Reaper drones, one stack on the RQ-180 White Bat UAV, and a final workstation devoted to monitoring local EM traffic such as social media, news sites, and police scanners, for anything unusual. That system employed a CIA proprietary AI program that continually searched the full spectrum of human communication for anything related to their operation. The sixth workstation served as a configurable backup that could mirror or supplement any other operator.
“God’s Eye has a link with Hornet One, ma’am,” reported the operator on the White Bat UAV station.
The RQ-180 was called God’s Eye for a reason. The Air Force’s latest UAV surveillance drone was a platform of astounding capabilities. The stealthy flying wing design, loitering thirteen miles above the country of Uzbekistan, maintained continuous laser communications with a satellite network, providing Anne a constant tactical picture over a link that was not susceptible to detection or jamming. In addition, the RQ-180 had both optical and synthetic aperture radar which could see through even the densest cloud cover. Although God’s Eye had enough onboard computing power to maintain communications with hundreds of ancillaries, Anne needed only three nodes for this operation: Hornets One and Two, the MQ-9 Reaper drones, and their man on the ground, Case Officer Harrison Kohl.
The entire operation had begun some twenty hours before, when Anne ordered the God’s Eye launched from Thumrait Air Base in Oman. Although the Royal Omani Air Force base was over five thousand kilometers south of the target, it was still the closest and most secure point from which to launch this high-value air asset.
The UAV flew east, then turned north making landfall over Pakistan and refueling over Afghanistan before arriving in Uzbekistan airspace. Hours later, the MQ-9s, each carrying two StormBreaker smart bombs, launched from a forward air base in eastern Turkey. Normally, she would have staged the Reapers from their home base in Incirlik, Turkey, but the added flight time would have limited their time on station or added a refueling evolution. She’d made the call that the added security risk of launching from an FOB was worth the operational flexibility.
The Reapers, Hornets One and Two, separated shortly after takeoff. Hornet One flew north, passing over Armenia and Azerbaijan. It now loitered over the northern end of the Caspian Sea. Hornet Two took a southern route and was in a holding pattern at the south end of the Caspian.
These were the G variant of the MQ-9 Reaper family. They carried external fuel tanks for extended range, the latest sensor package, and radar-absorbing skin for added stealth. Anne wanted every possible advantage on her side for this operation.
All the logistical pieces were in place. There had been no mechanical failures, no sensor outages, no jammed communications, no detection by hostiles. Everything was working exactly as planned and the clock was running . . .
And now she was waiting on the human element.
Anne hadn’t touched a cigarette in over ten years, but she experienced a sudden craving for one. She paced behind the row of workstations, using the cadence of her footsteps to calm her nerves.
“Ma’am,” reported the God’s Eye operator. “Gandalf is approaching the meeting point.”
39
40 kilometers west of Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Harrison unclenched his right hand from the steering wheel of the Chevy Captiva and shook his fingers out. He placed his right hand back on the steering wheel, then repeated the process with his left.
It did absolutely nothing to lessen his stress level.
He cast a glance to the screen of the mobile phone clipped into a holder at eye level. The red pin that marked his destination was ten kilometers away. The kill team back at Langley had reported that the location was a gas station with an attached bar positioned at a crossroads. The place had zero social media presence, so there were no interior pictures available. Since the geo-location pin for his meeting with Akhmet Orazov had arrived in his phone less than an hour ago, that was all the prep he was going to get.
His gaze snapped up to the rearview mirror. Over the course of the last hour, he’d done everything he could think of to discover a tail. He’d changed his speed, gone around blind curves, and pulled off to the side of the road, all for nothing. If Akhmet’s people were following him, they were good.
He knew there was a drone miles overhead watching his every move, but all it could do was watch. If something happened, he was on his own.
His mobile reported he had five kilometers to his destination.
Harrison tried to steer his thoughts back to Akhmet Orazov.
You have a job to do, he told himself. Focus. When this is over, you will take Tim’s body home. Be with his family, grieve with his family. Just this one last thing to do.
Sunlight glared on the dusty dashboard and his mind wandered back to a broken corpse on a remote hillside. What sort of person threw another human being out of an airplane?
Harrison tried to imagine Tim’s last moments on this earth. The animal fear that must have consumed his best friend as he fell to his death. What were his last thoughts?
The car tires shuddered on the rough berm and he swerved back into his lane. His knuckles were bone white and he gripped the steering wheel so hard that he could hear the plastic cover cracking. Worse yet, he couldn’t remember any landmarks from the last five kilometers of road. Harrison controlled his breathing and shook out his fingers again.
Focus, dammit.
He hadn’t told Jenny how her husband died. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he made up some bullshit about a robbery gone wrong and Tim getting shot. He didn’t suffer, Harrison assured Jenny. It was a quick death, but the killers had buried the body. That’s why it took so long to find him.
His mobile reported he had one kilometer to his destination.
Harrison wasn’t sure whether she believed him or just wanted to believe him, but it didn’t matter. Dead was dead. In another twenty-four hours, he’d be on a plane headed home with his best friend’s remains in the cargo hold.
He’d fulfilled his promise to Jenny. Somehow, he’d put this all behind him and get back to living. He owed Tim that much.
He topped a rise in the road and saw his destination ahead. Harrison let the car coast into the cracked asphalt parking lot.
The place had seen better days. The gas station was abandoned, but the bar had lighted neon signs in the window and two cars parked in front. The highway he’d driven might have been a major travel route in the past, but he hadn’t seen another car pass him in the last thirty minutes. The crossing highway didn’t look any busier. All this place needed was some tumbleweeds to complete the picture of desolation.
He backed into a parking spot, shut off the engine, and sat there.
Outside, he could hear the wind sighing against the car. Another thing he wouldn’t miss about this damn country. He breathed in a four count and blew it out. He cracked his knuckles and let the rage bubble in the pit of his stomach.
You can do this, he told himself. Meet Orazov, listen to whatever bullshit he wants to tell you about the SIF, then you make the phone call that wipes him off the face of the earth.
Bada-bing, bada-boom. Another piece of human terrorist filth departed from this earthly place, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Don was worried about blowback from the Russians, but that was all background noise to Harrison. He’d seen firsthand what the SIF had done to this part of the world. The best way to stop that kind of terrorist organization was to take out their leader. Orazov had to go. There was no other option.
Harrison popped open the car door. Loose asphalt ground under his feet. In the distance, the snowcapped mountains gleamed in the sun and a bank of angry-looking storm clouds rolled across the open grasslands.
He paused for a minute. There were some things he would miss. Despite the circumstances, he’d grown to love this region and the people. They had a complicated history of invasion and reinvasion, partition and subjugation. But that was changing. Men like Timur Ganiev were making a difference, while men like Akhmet Orazov were losing their grip on power.
Today, he was going to make that transition go a whole lot faster.
He pushed open the door to the bar and stepped inside. He paused, letting his eyes adjust.
The interior continued the story of decay that he’d seen outside. The sheet metal bar had probably been modern once upon a time, but now it was scarred and dented. The half-dozen metal and Formica tables scattered over the checkerboard floor looked sad, the seat cushions worn and cracked. The decorations were all neon signs: Sarbast beer and three different Russian vodkas. The collection of bottles on the shelf behind the bar was meager.
The only life in the place was a muted TV in the corner, tuned to a Samarkand channel.
Two men rose and approached Harrison. Neither of them was Orazov, but they were both armed and looked like they knew how to handle themselves.
“Where is he?” Harrison asked in Russian.
They ignored him. One hung back, while the other searched Harrison. Harrison did not resist. All he had on him were the car keys and a burner phone.
