Deep Cover, page 7
Conley flipped open his phone and called Plante to tell their handler he might have to handle the local police.
When he closed the phone he said, “We have movement and a possible location on the target tomorrow. We should stop back at Nicosia, pick up our gear and head east.”
Chapter 10
Cyprus
Fifteen Years Ago
Famagusta was on the far eastern edge of the buffer zone. Morgan drove while Conley talked on the cell phone with Plante. It took a few hours to drive there, with a stop at their hotel in Nicosia to get their gear.
The general was planning something. There had been suspicious troop movements, as well as the movement of some heavy equipment. It could be the early stages of an invasion, or some sort of reconstruction of Famagusta.
The second option wouldn’t be much better than an attack, considering how bitterly the town was contested. Morgan’s money was on military action. The analysts at Langley were convinced that an invasion was imminent. And Morgan had seen enough of the intel himself to believe it.
The agents had less than an hour of darkness left by the time they parked the car. They grabbed their duffel bags and walked to the beach, which was in Greek territory. Low fencing separated it from the Turkish section.
On the plus side, the Greeks still had the beach. On the other hand, the beach gave them an excellent view of what they’d lost.
Famagusta was another graveyard, but in some ways it was much worse than the airport.
Transportation hubs were among the first targets in any invasion. They were simply a casualty of war. The empty airport and rusting aircraft were a symbol of the struggle between two powers.
Famagusta was different. It was a small city where 40,000 Greeks had lived and worked literally on the beach. During the Turkish airstrikes, those forty thousand had fled with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
What they left was not an unfortunate but normal by-product of military conflict. Here the ghosts weren’t planes and airport facilities.
In Famagusta, the ghosts were beachfront high-rise hotels and apartment buildings, as well as street after street of homes, shops, and restaurants that had been abandoned for forty years. This wasn’t transportation hardware or infrastructure; this was people’s lives.
Now the town was on the Turkish side of the border, fenced off and slowly decaying. The fencing was shoddy, four or five feet of a mix of chain link, corrugated metal, and plastic netting.
It was easy enough to avoid the Turkish army lookout. They simply ducked under the fencing until they were out of the line-of-sight and found their spot. Morgan tossed his duffel bag over the fence and followed it, with Conley right behind him.
With twenty minutes until dawn they hurried to the hotel that Conley had chosen based on the general’s expected route.
Officially, the general would be making an inspection tour. He would be traveling with only half a dozen soldiers and—if their intelligence was good—would be outside and vulnerable for quite some time.
Morgan and Conley found the first hotel and headed up to the fifth floor. It was just a couple of blocks from the beach. They found a broken window that had a good line-of-sight to the avenue below. They planted some light charges and a few other surprises, and then headed downstairs. Outside, they headed to the hotel across the street.
It was getting light outside as they found a fourth floor spot to wait.
There were a lot of variables here. The intelligence was new—if it was accurate, they were in business. If not, it was back to the drawing board.
Normally, Morgan preferred plenty of time to plan an operation. And they just hadn’t had time given how late this new intelligence had come in.
Within two hours, they had movement. Conley checked with Plante, who gave them a fire-at-will authorization.
They could see soldiers in the distance. Morgan scanned them through his binoculars as Conley took position behind his sniper rifle.
“Five total,” Morgan said.
“I have them,” Conley replied.
“I see a general’s uniform,” Morgan said.
“I see it,” Conley said. Then he added, “Kang’s identity is confirmed, it’s General Ketenci.”
Morgan quickly got into position behind his own sniper rifle. He found the men in his scope and chose his targets.
“Ready,” Morgan said.
“I have him,” Conley said. “On three….two…one.”
Conley fired at the general while Morgan fired at his first target, the soldier to the general’s immediate right. Without waiting, he swung the rifle and fired again. Each of Morgan’s shots hit the soldiers in the shoulder.
He had no doubt that Conley had hit the general center mass and that it was a kill shot. But Morgan was only aiming to injure, and both men went down—as did, of course, the general. The injured men were out of the fight and would distract the remaining soldiers.
The two uninjured soldiers reacted with admirable speed and drew their weapons, scanning the buildings around them, searching for the source of the gunshots.
And that’s when Conley pulled out the remote and set off the first of the charges in the room across the street. There were flashes of light and even a bit of smoke to complete the illusion.
The men were well-trained and fired at the window as Morgan and Conley threw their weapons into their duffel bags.
With their equipment secure, Morgan checked on the soldiers. They were dragging their injured friends and dead leader to cover.
Conley hit another two charges and the soldiers moved faster, dragging the three men the last few feet into a building.
Morgan and Conley didn’t wait anymore, they sprinted down the stairs. Their simple trick would only work if they got out of the building and the area before it was swarming with Turkish soldiers.
They took the stairs at a run and hit the east exit of the hotel. They kept running until they had put a few blocks between them and the general’s team. Morgan could hear commotion behind them as they cut toward the fence. In another two blocks they were there. They found a section of chain link that was nearly falling down and simply stepped over it. Then they hopped down from the short cinder block wall and were standing on the beach.
They were now safely on the Greek side…with four older Greek men staring at them.
Without hesitating, Conley glanced over his shoulder, shouted something in Greek, and made a hand gesture at the Turkish side: he opened his hand, splayed the fingers and shoved it, palm out, toward the occupied territory.
The Greek men nodded approvingly and then mimicked the gesture.
That done, the agents didn’t tarry. They headed down the beach and back to their car. They kept their pace to a casual stroll to keep from drawing attention to themselves.
Morgan allowed himself to relax a bit when they reached the car. It was surprisingly quiet around them. Whatever commotion there was in the occupied city, he couldn’t hear it over the morning din of activity around them.
They headed back to the hotel and stowed their gear in the room. They called Plante, to confirm that they had completed the mission, and then made sure they were seen having breakfast at the hotel café.
Morgan realized he was tired. It had been a long night and the adrenalin that had kept him going from the fight at the inn until now was wearing off. The smart thing to do was to sleep before they left, but Morgan found that he didn’t want to wait.
“I’m heading to the airport,” he said.
“I’ll go with you,” Conley said.
“I thought you were going to make another visit to the west coast, hit those beaches.”
“This place has lost its allure for me,” Conley said. “Maybe I’ll come back another time.”
Morgan understood. Then he decided to bring up a subject that he and Conley very rarely discussed.
“Do you think it will do any good?” Morgan asked.
“One less bad guy, who was on his way to being a very bad guy with a lot of power. Yeah, I think it will do some good. It won’t fix much over here. And we’ll see about Turkey, but I think things will be a little better.”
“We did take out the trash, but that’s the problem with garbage. As soon as you take it out, it starts piling up again,” Morgan said.
Chapter 11
Erdoğan Prison, Present day
The guards hadn’t beaten Morgan too badly before they tossed him into one of the yellow rooms. He suspected their restraint was because if they injured him, he might end up in the infirmary and miss out on solitary, which was the real punishment.
He saw why they called these ‘sponge cells.’ They were padded with yellow foam mattresses. Theoretically, the foam made it harder for prisoners to injure themselves if the isolation got to them.
That was a real danger, and Morgan knew it from experience. He’d developed his own ways of dealing with that kind of isolation but he’d seen tough men crack in a relatively short time.
He hoped Dr. Erdem was holding out.
Hitting a guard would get him at least a week in solitary, if not more. But Morgan knew that this time, he wasn’t going to need any of his strategies for coping with isolation.
Because this time he wouldn’t be staying.
The door was solid and it had opened with a key card. If he was on the other side of the door and had all day, he couldn’t break into the room without a card. On this side, it would be even tougher.
Fortunately, he had a guy.
Morgan focused on the lone security camera in one corner of the room. It covered almost the entire cell. The only way to avoid its gaze was to stand straight under it in the very corner.
It was not something your average prisoner could do for long, especially since it wouldn’t get you anything except a few minutes of privacy.
Fortunately, a few minutes of privacy was all Morgan needed.
He stood in the corner and reached straight up to the camera. He grabbed the housing and snapped it off on one side. He brought it down and found what he wanted, two small metal discs exactly the same size as a hearing aid battery.
He popped them out and quickly replaced the camera cover.
The discs replaced the batteries in his “hearing aids,” adding some clever electronics. The new batteries not only lasted much longer than the ordinary ones, but they also transformed the more or less standard heading aids into full-featured Zeta ear comms.
These were only one of the many surprises that Zeta had built into President Shakir’s new prison system through multiple contractors operating under international shell corporations.
Using the security cameras had been a nice touch. Ironically, security equipment got even less scrutiny than other materials that went into constructing a prison. All a Zeta agent had to do was get himself thrown into solitary and he’d have access to the tech.
Morgan thought about some of the other goodies that Shepard’s division had built into the equipment that now sat in the prison laundry. It really was a remarkable and elegant plan. Morgan was almost sorry that he and Conley wouldn’t be able to execute it.
Morgan hit the switch on one of the devices. “Cobra here. You there Shepard?”
* * * *
“Cobra?” Shepard said into his phone with more than a little surprise in his voice. Alex put down her coffee and headed over, signaling Shepard to put her dad on speaker.
“How are you calling us?” Shepard said.
“I’m in solitary,” Morgan said.
“That’s a little early,” Alex said. She had to force herself to add, “Cobra.”
“Change of plans,” her father’s voice said.
Shepard looked stricken. “Um, there’s no changing this plan. The schedule is essential—”
“Okay, so it’s a whole new plan,” her father said irritably. “My cover was nearly blown. I recognized the warden. We have history.” Then before Shepard could speak, he added, “Wasn’t your fault. His name wouldn’t have kicked up on any search. He was military; it was fifteen years ago, and I never even knew his name. But if he sees me…”
“I take it you didn’t part on good terms?” Alex said.
“His men were injured. And he lost an eye—he blames me,” her father said, his voice remarkably calm.
“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” Alex said.
“Oh, not at all, and he’ll want to kill me if he sees me. Plus, he’ll figure out pretty quick that I’m an agent of some kind,” Morgan said.
“So we’ll have to abort and get you out of there,” Alex said.
“I don’t want to leave without Dr. Erdem. We may not get another chance,” Morgan said.
“We’d need weeks to come up with a new operation,” Shepard said. “And it sounds like you may not have days.”
“Cougar and I are prepared to work quickly,” he replied.
“Would you care to share this remarkable new plan with us?” Alex asked.
“We’re working on the details. We’ll firm them up when I get back up in the general population. For now, can you get me into Erdem’s room? Then I need you to arrange his release back upstairs.”
“What about you?” Alex asked.
“Give me a day in here to make it look good and then do the same.”
“We have nearly complete control of the prison computer system. I can place the orders, but any check or audit will show breaks in protocol. You might only have a few days, maybe less, and that’s if your one-eyed friend doesn’t recognize you.”
“Your new escape plan must really be something. We can’t wait to hear the details,” Alex said.
“Me too,” her father said, with a hint of humor in his voice.
“The door will open in a few seconds,” Shepard said.
“There it is,” Morgan replied.
“Go outside and check for another open door. That will be Erdem’s cell. Don’t worry about the security cameras, I’ll adjust the feeds.”
“Thanks Shep, I’ll report when I get topside. Cobra out.”
Alex and Shepard gave each other a look.
“What just happened?” the young man asked.
* * * *
Morgan found Dr. Erdem lying on the ground, facing the wall. The cell was cool and there was no furniture other than a toilet—no bed or mattress.
Of course, the floor was padded, so that was something.
“Dr. Erdem,” Morgan said.
The man slowly turned and saw Morgan standing over him in civilian clothing. The scientist was in his mid-thirties and in reasonably good physical condition. “Are you okay, Dr. Erdem?” he asked.
The scientist got to his feet and Morgan could see that he was alert, much sharper than Morgan would have expected after so long in solitary.
“You’re American,” Erdem said.
“I am. I’ve also come to help you. To get you out of here, but I’ll need your help to do it,” he said.
“You don’t seem like a lawyer,” Erdem said.
“It’s not that kind of help,” Morgan said.
“State department? CIA? They threw me in here because they said I was a CIA spy. Are you here to trick me? To get me to agree to something so they can accuse me of whatever they want?”
“Frankly, Dr. Erdem, I don’t see that your situation could get much worse. However, I’ve been authorized to tell you that your wife says the dog won’t stop getting into the garbage since you left,” Morgan said.
Genuine surprise registered on Erdem’s face. Then it took him several seconds to compose himself. “Okay, what’s going on?” Erdem asked.
“I’m part of a private organization that provides assistance to the U.S. Government from time to time. My organization has been asked get you an…unofficial release,” Morgan said.
Erdem sized him up and said, “You mean some sort of an escape?”
“Yes, but my partner and I have run into a snag. We’ve had to accelerate the timeline.”
“Will this be dangerous?” Erdem asked.
“Almost certainly,” Morgan said.
“I see. I assume this will be my only chance?”
“Yes.”
“What do I do?”
“Right now, just follow the guards who will come later. You’re going to be released back into your cell upstairs. After that, we’ll have to act quickly and I will contact you when it’s time.”
“What do I call you?”
“You can call me Dan,” Morgan replied.
“Okay Dan, it appears I only have one option,” Erdem said. Then the man added, “Is that some Boston I hear in your voice?”
“It is. Your file says you grew up in New York, until you headed to NASA.”
“I’m Queens,” he said. Then he added “Go Yankees,” almost reflexively.
Silence hung in the air between them.
“Ah, I see. You’re a Red Sox man. Is that a deal breaker?” Erdem said seriously.
Morgan waited a few seconds before answering. “We’re trained to look past things like that. I’ll do my job. Plus, I don’t want to add to your problems,
considering the fact that you weren’t able to sign a single decent free agent during the break and your bull pen might as well be a geriatric ward.”
With that, Morgan stepped out of the cell, closed the door and headed back to his own cell.
Chapter 12
“They let you out early,” Conley said as the guards shoved Morgan back into his cell.
“Place was a dump. Didn’t even have turn down service,” Morgan said.
Tunca was sitting at on his bed, reading. He lowered the book and greeted Morgan with a nod.
