Extreme Faction (29 page)

“Do you have an eyepiece,” Jake asked.

Nelsen reluctantly handed a small optic that photo analysts and nearly every serious photographer would own.

Jake took a closer look at each photo. In a moment he slipped the photos to the center of the table. “Interesting.”

“What do you think?”

“I think the helicopter was shot down with 50 caliber machine guns. It hit the ground pretty hard, but probably didn't kill everyone. It looked like it hit the skids first and then the rotor torque slammed it onto its nose.”

“Right. That's what I thought. What about the others?”

“What am I supposed to see? I saw the dog taking a shit, if that's what you mean.”

Nelsen laughed. “That was a nice touch, wasn't it? These photos don't tell you much about the village. They're more for orientation. We shifted a few satellites to cover Kurdistan ever since we suspected the Kurds were involved. It's a big area, as you know. The PKK guerrillas have backed off in the past few months. It's almost as if they were holding off for something big. Not wanting to make waves. The Turkish government is confused, even though they haven't been overly active in squashing the PKK in the last six months anyway. The Turks are simply counting their blessings. The Agency feels differently.”

Jake shrugged. “Makes sense to me. If you're planning something big, don't bring attention to yourself. The Kurds were most certainly involved in Odessa.”

“And in Houston, on Johnston Atoll, in Brighton, Berlin, and even Brussels. Not to mention the attack in Kirkuk, Iraq yesterday.”

“I know about everything but Brussels and Kirkuk,” Jake said.

Nelsen explained what happened in Brussels, how they had captured two of the terrorists from the Houston attack, and possibly one of the men who had assassinated the German. “And in Kirkuk,” Nelsen continued. “A small group of Kurds crashed a truck though the air base gates and spread nerve gas throughout the barracks area. At least a hundred died, including the terrorists. It seems their masks and suits didn't work.”

Jake had been staring off at the photos, but he looked up quickly. “What type of masks and filters.”

“I'm not entirely sure. We got a report from Mossad. They said the equipment was first rate.”

“My God.”

“What?”

Jake thought for a long minute. Was that Tvchenko's newest weapon? Made in Odessa, tested in Iraq by the Kurds? “That means we have no way of combating the compound. We can't even protect ourselves or our troops. The new agent must be able to penetrate standard chem and biological equipment.”

That had completely slipped Nelsen's thoughts. “The Kurds have the perfect poor man's nuke.”

“We've got to stop them,” Jake said. “Before they produce the stuff in mass quantities.”

The problem was, under ideal conditions the U.S. would have simply sanctioned air strikes to destroy production facilities. In Kurdistan that would be nearly impossible, with the mountainous terrain and the prospect of collateral damage to civilian populations. Jake knew all of this. He also knew that if the Kurds were even close to producing vast quantities of this new nerve gas, then the Kurds were in a great position of strength. They could demand respect and damn sure get it.

“Why are the Turks so willing to let us handle the situation?” Jake asked.

“Our government told them we could handle the matter discreetly. That we had chemical and biological experts willing to go in first to sanitize the area. We have forty-eight hours before the Turks hit the entire region with air strikes, followed by massive troops.”

“Experts?”

“That would be you.”

“I know what sanitize means,” Jake protested. “Nobody said shit about that.”

Nelsen nodded his head toward the other room, indicating the special forces troops.

“Great. Let's hope the Turks can tell time.”

TURKISH KURDISTAN

The boat ride from Yalta to the port in Batumi, Georgia had been rough across a stormy Black Sea. She wasn't used to traveling by boat, and had puked her guts out three times to the sound of a laughing crew of pirates. If she had had her way, she would have killed them all and left them floating on their rust bucket.

From Batumi she had picked up a small Fiat, a beat up piece of junk held together by dirt and wire, crossed the Turkish border, and traveled the hinterlands along the base of Mount Ararat.

She had dumped the car ten kilometers after passing through the city of Van, just before dark, and now she was trudging along an old dirt road dressed in dark, Muslim clothing from head to toe, her newly black hair tucked discreetly under her scarf.

When she had made her way along the winding road, and had climbed high above Lake Van, she slipped off into the low bushes and extracted a small instrument from a pack. She turned on the global positioning device and took a reading. She was only ten kilometers from her target. She could take her time in the darkness, rest for a while to regain her strength, and still be to the tiny village before dawn. She was right on schedule.

●

Farther up the road in the Kurdish village, there was a small stone building that looked like a barn. In fact it had been a barn until four months ago, and the smell of sheep and goats still permeated the air.

But now the barn was a laboratory.

Two men in white lab coats stood before a stainless steel table, one looking into an electron microscope, and the other held a petri dish and watched his boss.

“Has it mutated?” the man with the dish asked.

“Just a moment.”

The man at the microscope had picked up his degree, a master's in biochemistry, at Johns Hopkins University the previous May. His assistant had nearly finished himself, before they were both called back to Kurdistan. They were needed far more here.

Finally the man at the microscope removed his eyes from the optics and looked at his assistant. “It's no wonder the masks didn't work in Kirkuk,” he said. “As the compound turns to gas, it splits and shrinks but maintains its total structure.”

“Is that possible?”

“I've read of such things, but I've never seen anything like this. It will be too dangerous to handle. Suicide.”

“Does it matter?”

The head chemist thought about that for a moment. Would his boss care how unstable the compound was? Even for them to mix it? Probably not. Results...that's what counted.

“It's even more deadly than the Ukrainian said. He must have known. Why didn't he tell us?”

His associate shrugged. “Maybe he didn't have time to. But we have all of his notes translated. Does he talk about controlling the molecular structure or guarding against inadvertent exposure?”

The head chemist stared off into nowhere. He was sure he had read through every last piece of data. Yet there was nothing definitive about collateral exposure. Perhaps the Ukrainian had died too soon. Maybe Carzani should have brought him to Kurdistan until they had produced all the nerve gas they needed. Now, the question was, who should know what they had found?

He glanced off to the storage tank that held over 50 gallons of the nerve gas in liquid form. They were about to go into full production and then ship off the product to storage sites across Kurdistan in villages similar to this one. No government would be able to find all the nerve gas after that.

“What have we done?” the chemist said.

●

Less than a kilometer up the road, in the darkest confines of the mosque, Sinclair Tucker lay on a bed of straw, his lower leg aching where the fibula nearly protruded from the skin. He had managed to block most of the pain from his mind by thinking of times he had been worse off. Like when he was shot in the stomach in Bucharest by the overzealous security agent. Or when he broke his shoulder from the thirty-foot fall from the building in Sofia while chasing a double agent who had just given up his cover. But in the end, the swelling and piercing pain came back. He had ripped his undershirt into thin strips and tied off rolled cardboard around his calf in a makeshift splint. If nothing else, he no longer had to look at the bone and the disjointed leg.

Not that he could see anything at this hour. Since they had taken his watch after the crash, he wasn't entirely sure of the time. The last call to prayer was hours ago just after sunset, and the chiming bells had even ceased at ten. He guessed it was nearly midnight. Maybe even one. But he couldn't sleep. The co-pilot lay four feet away on a small straw mattress, something maybe large enough for a small child. Tucker had insisted the co-pilot take the softer bed. He was in much worse shape, slipping fast into delirium. Tucker could find no real visible signs of injury, except for bruises on his chest and abdomen. And he knew that was a bad sign. He suspected the co-pilot had broken ribs and maybe even ruptured his spleen. He had a fever now and would mumble incoherently. Death was trying to lift the man from pain.

Tucker felt bad for the man. It was his fault he was here. Sure he was a soldier and had known he could die for the queen when asked, but it was Tucker who had gathered them to this rendezvous. The chopper pilot had already given everything. The worst part of all is he didn't even know the man's full name. Since they had been on a special operation, the pilot and co-pilot had not worn name tags. But Tucker had caught the pilot slip up once on the helo flight from Diyarbakir. He had called the co-pilot, Jet. A nickname probably. All flyers had them, as if they had been issued one with their wings.

He only wished he had told Jake Adams what he was up to.

Tucker shifted and tried to find a more comfortable position. But there was none.

Suddenly there were footsteps on the bricks outside, and they stopped outside the large wooden door.

Jet stirred and mumbled something, then went quiet.

The door opened and a bright light shone in, blinding Tucker.

He could hear feet shuffling closer, with the light shaking slightly, and then whispering.

“So, Mr. Sinclair Tucker,” came a sharp accented voice. “It seems your government doesn't want you back. They say they have no idea what you were doing in Kurdistan. Perhaps you can explain it to me?”

Tucker leaned up on his elbows, squinting his eyes away from the light. This was a new man, not the same one who had beaten him after each bogus answer he gave for the first twelve hours after his capture. Not the man who had discovered he had a broken leg, and would kick it just for the hell of it. Who was this one?

“I told your friend. I work for the foreign ministry in Ankara. We were looking for a British tourist who has been missing for five days.”

The man with the light laughed boisterously. “You're sticking with that story?”

Tucker tried to shift his stiff leg, but he couldn't even budge it. It was if the leg had a mind of its own, and wouldn't let this new man know it was broken. “I cannot tell you any more than that. That's what my government sent me out of the office for. I didn't want to come here.”

The light shook as the man moved closer. “You have a problem with Kurdistan?”

“No, no. Not at all. I just feel that tourists have become a pain in the royal ass. We've told them to stay out of the area, and they defy our requests. They should suffer the consequences.”

“If this was the case,” the man said, “then why didn't your government simply call our leaders and ask us if we had seen the man.”

Tucker had thought of this himself. A lie should be ironclad. “We didn't want to offend your leaders by suggesting they had had something to do with the tourist's disappearance. For all we knew, the person had simply run his rental car off the side of a mountain.”

There was whispering again.

Tucker didn't see it coming, but a foot swung and smashed directly into the broken bone. Without even a scream, Tucker passed out immediately.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

Sitting back in his comfortable leather chair in his lavish apartment overlooking the night lights of Tel Aviv, Mikhael Chagall, the director of Israeli Intelligence, was somewhat disturbed being awakened at such an hour by his assistant, Yosef.

His assistant had poured himself a drink and was working up the courage to speak freely.

“Well, Yosef,” the Mossad director said. “What's so important?”

“When we had not heard from Omri in the past few days, I started asking questions through other sources. The Kurds have cleaned house in Odessa.”

“That's what we figured they would do,” the director said, put off by the obvious.

“True.” Yosef took another sip of cognac. “But the Americans are on the move. Jake Adams is heading toward Kurdistan.”

Chagall knew not to ask how his assistant knew this, but he wanted to. He also knew that information was power, and the more he had of one, the more he'd have of the other. “One man. How much damage could he do? What about Chavva? Have you heard from her?”

The assistant shrugged. “She could be in place already.”

“She's one of our best. She must be protected when this is all over.”

“I understand,” Yosef said. “But what if she is...” He wasn't sure how far he could go with the director, even though they had been friends and allies for years.

“She will do what is right, Yosef.” Chagall thought for a moment. “And I only hope Omri has completed the equation and is there for her. He better hope so.”

ODESSA, UKRAINE

Quinn Armstrong was on hold. He had been for the past ten minutes, waiting for the Director of Central Intelligence himself to pick up.

Checking his watch again, Quinn realized it was closing in on seven p.m. in Washington. The Director would be in his evening security briefing, discussing what the Agency would brief the president on the next day, baring events of the evening. Pulling him from that meeting would be nearly impossible, yet he had tried nonetheless.