Sniper Elite (6 page)

Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA Cletus Webb strode into the Director's office and closed the door. “We've got a problem.”

Director of Operations George Shroyer looked up from a file he'd been reviewing, his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his bony-looking nose. “How serious?”

Webb sat down in a leather chair in front of the desk, releasing an anxious sigh. “The Speaker of the House knows about Warrant Officer Brux.”

“That she was kidnapped or that she's been raped on film?”

“Both.”

Shroyer tossed the file onto his desk and removed his glasses. “How the fuck did that happen?”

Webb held up his hands. “What can I say? The bitch has more informants than a Russian political officer. One of them got word to her.”

“Who?” Shroyer demanded. “And is he over there or over here?”

“Well, how the hell do I know, George? She sure as hell wasn't going to tell me.”

Shroyer was on his feet and headed across the office to a large globe that doubled as a liquor cabinet. He opened the top and poured himself two fingers of Scotch. “What does she want?”

“She wants us to pay the ransom.”

“After we just spent the morning talking the president
out
of paying.”

“Well, don't lose your stack, George, but she knows Karzai's office has agreed to act as intermediary.”

“How goddamnit, how?” Shroyer flared. “That information's only hours old!” His face was bright red. He hated the Speaker of the House, and it infuriated him that she was getting classified information almost as fast as he was.

“I don't know, but it's nobody low on the pole. That much we can be sure of.”

“Well, damnit, somebody needs to be prosecuted—starting with her.”

“She's chomping at the bit to take this story public,” Webb assured him. “There's a ton of political points for her to score on this if she can make it look like the president is mishandling it.”

Shroyer took a stiff belt of the Scotch and set the glass down. “Does she know what kind of precedent a payoff of that size would set—that we'd be putting a bounty on the head of every US soldier from Afghanistan to Korea?”

“I tried that reasoning already, and she's not buying it. She knows we've paid before, and she's even threatening to expose that. Though don't ask me how she thinks she can do it.”

“We've never paid a ransom like what these sons of bitches are demanding.” He stood mulling the dilemma over. “Okay. Tell her
this . . . tell her we've directed Special Forces to make an evaluation of the—”

Webb was shaking his head. “Won't work. She knows about the lack of actionable intel.”

Shroyer bit back the obscenity that came to his lips, forcing himself to calm down before asking quietly: “Has she seen the video, Cletus?”

Webb considered his answer. “She told me that it was described to her . . . but I'm sure she was lying. She's too fired up, too passionate not to have seen it.”

“That does it!” Shroyer crossed the room again to retake his seat. “Ask for a meeting with Mike Ferrell over at NSA. Drive over there personally, in fact. He'll like that—us coming to him. Get him to find out who's leaking this information. Then I want whoever it is locked in a dungeon at the bottom of the Caspian Sea.”

Webb crossed his legs, wrists dipped over the arms of the chair. “I don't think we want to get back into bed with NSA over this, I really don't. It took too long to get that camel's nose out from under our tent. Besides, I was just on the phone with Bob Pope over at SAD.” Special Activities Division of the CIA, which oversaw SOG. “And from what he tells me, the rape story has spread through the special ops community like a brushfire—from DEVGRU to Delta. In other words, the informant could be anyone.”

“Including the nutty Professor Pope,” Shroyer muttered. “Okay, forget NSA.”

Webb breathed a sigh of relief. “Whoever leaked this information, the message is very clear. The special ops community wants Sandra Brux out of there—now.”

Shroyer squeezed the bridge of his nose. “If we pay, it'll be the shakedown of the century.”

“Yes, it will, but we've got nothing to go on, and we're running out of time. You saw her condition, the way she's being treated.”

Shroyer looked up, clearly troubled. “So what's happening with CID? General Couture told me there were Taliban bodies at the ambush site. We're supposed to be getting DNA evidence telling us what villages these murderers came from. The president can't make a military decision until he knows if this was the work of the Taliban or the goddamn HIK.”

Webb straightened in the chair. “Because of the drawdown, the CID people in Jalalabad don't have access to micro-fluidic testing anymore, and even if they did, the indigenous DNA samples they would need for comparison are all kept in Kabul now. Long story short, it's going to be a few days before we get the results. And even when we do, there's no guarantee they'll lead us to any specific village, let alone the one holding Sandra Brux.”

Shroyer frowned. “The president's not going to like hearing that. I think he's seen too many episodes of
CSI
.”

“I hate to say this,” Webb continued, “but it's probably better to pay the ransom before the damn video ends up in the hands of Al Jazeera. If that happens, the president's not going to have much time to sit around watching TV.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” Shroyer said, rocking back in his fine leather chair, tapping an unsharpened pencil against the edge of the mahogany desk. “Isn't it possible such a video might put some fight back into the American people? We're losing in Afghanistan. This might be the catalyst we need to reignite the will to win.”

Webb wasn't so sure about that. “Possibly, but—”

“But the president doesn't think like that, so it doesn't matter,” Shroyer said, dismissing the idea. “I'm headed back over there after lunch. I'll tell him about the speaker's back-channel threats and see what he has to say. In light of this little development, I'm sure he'll choose to make payment. Christ, he hardly has a choice now. Can
you imagine the backlash of that rape playing out on the internet? He'd be crucified in the liberal media.”

Webb agreed that much was probably true.

“So, on to different business,” Shroyer said. “The president green-lighted Operation Tiger Claw this morning. It's going into effect immediately. The Turkish government is supplying the aircraft and crew, and Agent Lerher and his staff are already in the ATO.”

“Good to hear it,” Webb replied. “It's bold, and it's original. The Iranians will never see it coming. It's going to Delta Force?”

Shroyer shook his head. “The Joint Chiefs want to give it to the Navy. It's going to be a black operation with a single player, which puts it in DEVGRU's court.”

“A black operation? Is that necessary?”

“Well, we can't have the Iranians accusing us of an act of war in the event anything goes wrong now, can we?”

“No, of course not. Disavowing one of our own operators sounds like a much better plan.”

Shroyer shuffled a stack of papers from one side of his desk to the other. “Well, they do volunteer for the privilege, after all.”

Webb didn't like the sound of that. “I'm not exactly sure that's what they're volunteering for, George, though I guess I can see why some here in Washington may find it more convenient to see it that way.”

Shroyer eyed him across the desk. “Cletus, I sometimes wonder if you understand what the military is actually for.”

The briefer was obviously nervous. Gil had seen the fiftyish-looking man arrive in a British helo early that morning dressed in plain clothes and carrying a leather laptop bag. He now sat at a table near the wall in a folding metal chair, continuously checking his iPhone, making the occasional notation in a file, and he was careful to avoid eye contact. Though Gil initially believed him to be an advisor with British Special Forces, he was rapidly coming to suspect that circumstances were different from what he had assumed half an hour earlier, when he had unexpectedly—and somewhat urgently—been ordered to appear in this little building on the far side of the airport for an emergency mission brief.

His natural assumption was that DEVGRU had received actionable
intelligence on Sandra Brux's whereabouts, but this brief was already starting to feel like something else.

He sat down in a chair near the center of the room. “Where is everybody?”

The Brit finally glanced up from his iPhone. “Oh, I should think they'll be along forthwith,” he replied affably.

So they really did talk that way over there. “This doesn't have anything to do with Warrant Officer Brux, does it?”

The Brit looked confused. “I'm afraid I don't know that name.”

This was all Gil needed to hear. He leaned back, an eager anxiety rising up in his gut as the adrenal glands began to secrete, bringing his internal combat systems online. He stared at the Brit until his suspicions were finally confirmed by a simple tell: a knee that began to jig up and down. Gil then realized he'd been selected for a mission that had nothing at all to do with Sandra, and this briefer—now very obviously an agent with MI6—was anxious as hell about it.

The door opened and three CIA men filed briskly into the room looking very official in their well-tailored suits and subdued neckties. Gil recognized the lead man immediately, an agent named Lerher whom he had worked with once before in Indonesia.

Lerher was an agent attached to JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, and he was an ice-cold professional, long desensitized to the fact that he was moving live human beings around on the game board.

Gil stood up as Lerher crossed the room to offer his hand.

“Gil,” Lerher said, his demeanor crisp and impersonal as always. “Good to see you again.” He placed his briefcase on the table and watched in silence as the other two agents set up a digital photo projector on a desk at the back of the room.

Gil retook his chair to wait, pushing Sandra from his conscious
thoughts. There would be no more room for her until mission complete.

“Lights,” Lerher said.

The lights dimmed and the photo of a thirty-five-year-old Middle Eastern male appeared on the wall. He had a neatly trimmed beard and chiseled features. A white kufi covered his closely cropped black hair, and a battered 5.56 mm AK-74 with a folding stock hung from his shoulder.

“Okay,” Lerher began, resting against the edge of the table. “This mission has been designated Operation Tiger Claw. The man you see before you is Yusef Aswad Al-Nazari—your primary target. He's a Saudi national, age thirty-five with no known relatives. He is also a Sunni. He studied physics at the University of Stuttgart, and he has managed to fly completely under our radar until last month when Mossad brought it to our attention that he is personally responsible for three different bombings in Tel Aviv and at least half a dozen here in Afghanistan over the past two years . . . killing at least one hundred twenty people.”

During an intentional pause, Gil glanced at the Brit, now realizing he wasn't British at all, but an Israeli Mossad agent, very probably educated in London. His arrival in the British helo must have been a precaution against anyone knowing there was an Israeli operative roaming the base, a risky prospect in a Muslim country.

Lerher continued. “Recent electronic surveillance has revealed that Mr. Al-Nazari is presently working to construct a radiological weapon, strength unknown, for use against Israel. Next photo.”

The photo of a woman with long black hair appeared on the wall.

“This is your secondary target. Her name is Noushin Sherkat. She's a native Iranian. Next—”

“Hold there a second.” Gil sat forward on the chair, studying
her face. She had fierce dark eyes and was no more than thirty years old. He had never been ordered to hit a woman before. “What's her story?”

Lerher's reply was noncommittal. “Her story is that she will soon be joining Mr. Al-Nazari in the afterlife.”

Gil caught Lerher exchange a furtive glance with the Mossad agent before saying, “Next photo.” There was a tentativeness about the JSOC man that hadn't been there the first time Gil had worked with him, and this told Gil the other shoe was yet to drop.

A satellite photograph appeared with a map overlay. Lerher took a laser pointer from his breast pocket. “You will make the hit here approximately ten miles southwest of the city of Zabol in the northern reaches of Sistan-Baluchistan Province.”

Seeing the map, Gil felt a sudden surge of adrenaline.

He leaned forward, studying the overlay. The selected target area was twenty-five miles over the Afghan border into Iran, not much more than a couple of hundred miles north of where Operation Eagle Claw had ended in a humiliating failure during the hostage rescue operation back in November 1979, resulting in the loss of eight US Marines and Air Force personnel.

After pausing long enough for this reality to sink in, Lerher continued. “Al-Nazari has no idea that he's been compromised, no idea that we're listening to his telephone conversations. He doesn't even vary his schedule. It's not that he's careless as a general rule, rather, we believe he's simply grown complacent, living within the relative safety of Iran's borders.”

Gil scrutinized the topography of the terrain, barren and largely deserted. He turned to Lerher in the dim. “So he's operating inside of Iran with or without Ahmadinejad's approval?”

Lerher seemed to vacillate for a moment. “Well, as you know, the right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing within
the Iranian government. Our impression is that the Iranian president has been kept out of the loop on this one. We may safely assume, however, that someone with significant influence is supplying Al-Nazari with the necessary materials and logistical support. It is extremely important for this man to be eliminated before he constructs a radiation bomb or begins to pass his skills along. For the most part, he seems to be guarding his secrets at the moment, but we can't expect that to last.