First Strike (18 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“If there's anyone else in PRE TAC with you, tell them they're not to leave until I get there. This is a sanitized ‘black' event. No one comes in or out of that room until I say so.”

 

21

UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 234

IN THE AIR

The man in seat 5B was young and obviously wealthy. He looked sophisticated, even elegant. He wore a tan suit and a red-and-white gingham shirt. A small navy blue handkerchief stuck up from the chest pocket of the blazer, which he kept on for the entire flight from Dallas to Mexico City. He had on stylish white-framed eyeglasses and John Lobb wingtips that looked freshly shined. His hair was blond, his skin light olive. He looked like a European returning from vacation. His French passport was tucked into the inside chest pocket. The hair dye had worked wonders.

The steward approached.

“Mr. Lagrange, would you like another champagne?”

Allawi looked up. The name Lagrange was fake; a cover name on a forged passport provided by a contact of Nazir's.

“Yes, that would be perfect.”

His eye shot briefly to a man in the row in front of him, across the aisle.

Raditz.

He was still asleep.

“
Mal yanam qabl ‘an yatimm dhibhah,
” he said under his breath.

The lamb sleeps before it is slaughtered.

“How long until Mexico City?” he asked when the steward returned with his champagne.

“Approximately one hour.”

As if Raditz had heard Allawi's thoughts, he suddenly stirred. His arms went over his head in a waking stretch. Then he stood up. Raditz looked around, though Allawi had already turned toward the window, pretending to stare out at the sky while his left hand reached into his pants pocket, removing a paper-thin object the size of a stick of gum.

A few moments later, the soft chime of the restroom door being locked.

Allawi glanced around, making sure nobody was looking. He peeled a strip of yellow plastic covering from the object. What was left was transparent unless held under the light, its circuitry embedded in a thin layer of polycarbonate. It was a tiny transmitter, capable of emitting a localized signal that someone with the proper equipment could track, as long as it was within about a square mile.

Allawi stood and moved to the overhead compartment above Raditz's seat. His own leather bag was stowed inside. He unzipped it with his right hand as, with his left, he felt for the zipper on the canvas duffel he'd seen Raditz holding in the first-class lounge. He unzipped it, just as the faint whoosh of the toilet flushing could be heard. As Allawi was about to stick the piece of plastic into Raditz's bag, as far down and out of the way as he could, his hand found something even better: Raditz's wallet.

The lock on the restroom door clicked.

Allawi lifted the wallet. He inserted the small plastic wafer inside one of the unused pockets.

The door to the restroom opened.

Frantically, he put the wallet back in the bag and zipped it up just as he heard Raditz's footsteps coming down the aisle.

Allawi lifted out his bag and removed a book from it. Raditz stepped to his side, waiting for him to get out of the way.

“
Pardon, monsieur,
” Allawi said in a French accent.

“Take your time,” said Raditz.

Allawi shut the overhead compartment. After putting the book on his seat, he went to the restroom. Inside, with the door closed, he stared into the mirror. His heart was beating fast.

He pictured Nazir.

“
He must not know he's being followed. After the ship has left with the weapons, follow him for a few days, then kill him.
”

“
I understand, Tristan.
”

 

22

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

Calibrisi was picked up at his house in McLean ten minutes after hanging up with O'Flaherty, his hair still wet from a quick shower. With few cars on the road, and the speedometer pushing 80 mph, the drive to CIA headquarters took less than five minutes.

He entered PRE TAC a little before four in the morning. O'Flaherty was seated at a workstation in front of his computer. Polk was standing next to him, looking over his shoulder at the computer screen.

Calibrisi scanned the cavernous room, counting a dozen other people in addition to O'Flaherty and Polk.

“I logged the room,” said Polk. “We're sanitized.”

“Where's Anson?”

Polk gestured toward the far corner. Britt was seated next to Mary Moseley beneath a plasma that showed grainy video of Damascus.

Anson Britt, a forty-two-year-old former member of the Marine's Force Recon, was in charge of reconnaissance operations for the National Clandestine Service. Britt's NCS unit was responsible for retrieving Langley assets who were trapped or lost behind enemy lines. Britt noticed Calibrisi and walked quickly across the room.

“Well?” asked Calibrisi.

“There's not a lot to go on. There's no UAV feed.”

“Call RAF and see if they have anything.”

“Already did. I also reached out to my source inside Damascus Metro. He's calling me back in a few minutes.”

“Get hold of Kohl Meir. See if he and Dewey arranged meet-up.”

Britt nodded.

Calibrisi stepped to Polk. He was looking over O'Flaherty's shoulder at a computer screen filled with numbers.

“How bad is it?”

“How bad? On a scale of one to ten, it's a hundred and fifty-eight. It's a shit show.” Polk pointed to O'Flaherty's screen. “Those are spreadsheets detailing weapons shipments to ISIS over the past three years. RPGs, guns, ammo—massive amounts of all three. More than a billion dollars by my rough math. They used a down-market Mexican arms manufacturer, then moved the weapons by boat to the Syrian coast.”

“Did you establish the link to the United States?” asked Calibrisi.

Polk looked up. His face was expressionless. He glanced back at O'Flaherty.

“Show 'em.”

O'Flaherty tapped his keyboard a few times. One of the plasmas on the wall lit up with a large color photo of two men, both dressed in button-downs and khakis, standing on a pier before a medium-size rust-covered container ship that towered above them. Tristan Nazir stood to the left. Next to him was Mark Raditz.

O'Flaherty tapped again and another photo appeared. It was taken from the deck of the ship and showed a close-up of a stack of containers. Several were open. They were loaded with steel boxes that Calibrisi immediately recognized: RPGs.

“My God,” whispered Calibrisi, disbelief and fury in his voice. “That son of a bitch.”

O'Flaherty tapped his keyboard again. The line of plasmas filled with various pictures of Raditz and Nazir.

Calibrisi stepped slowly in front of the plasmas, staring in astonishment. Finally he turned to Polk.

“When was the last shipment?”

“According to the files, a year ago.”

“Start looking for him.”

Polk nodded.

“I have two forensics teams already on it. His office and his home are clear. He hasn't been at either in at least a week. His cell is shut down. I should also mention that we put a tracker on his family. He has an ex-wife and a teenage daughter. They're gone too.”

“We need to find him,” said Calibrisi. “How about the manufacturer?”

“It's a contract shop called MH Armas,” said Polk.

Calibrisi was quiet for a few seconds.

“Don't get too close,” he said. “I don't want to tip him off.”

“It might be too late for that. He has to know. Nazir must've tipped him off about the files.”

“You said he's been gone a week. It doesn't add up. Al-Jaheishi had yet to even make contact.”

“I see your point,” said Polk. “There's something else. Either it's a coincidence and he's been planning his escape, or there's something else.”

“Like what?”

Polk shrugged. “Could be anything. Maybe he's in danger. Maybe the stress just got to him.”

Calibrisi walked to the door. He looked once again at a photo of Raditz and Nazir, this one showing the pair seated on a couch in a hotel lobby.

He picked up his cell and hit Speed Dial. As he waited for his call to go through, he turned. “Anson, upstairs. You too, Bill. Get your ISIS C.O. and Mexico teams up there too.”

Calibrisi put the phone to his ear as he pushed his way through the door.

“This is Hector Calibrisi,” he said. “I need Jim Bruckheimer. Tell him it's urgent.”

 

23

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA)

SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE (SID)

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

On the third floor of an office building a short drive from Washington, D.C., Jim Bruckheimer reached for his ringing cell phone.

The building was one of four ominous-looking black-glass structures off a private exit from the Baltimore–Washington Parkway. The buildings were referred to as the Big Four and were the headquarters of the National Security Agency, America's code breakers, cybersleuths, eavesdroppers, and watchers from afar. Bruckheimer was the forty-seven-year-old head of the NSA's Signals Intelligence Directorate, whose job it was to process all foreign signals intelligence. SID's powerful computers, cameras, and satellites were America's primary electronic signature collector and aggregator. Its tentacles spanned the globe: e-mail, credit card transactions, cell phone activity, and, in general, any activity in which human beings came in contact with computers. This so-called SIGINT—electronic signals intelligence—was then processed by the NSA's massive computers and winnowed down to meaningful intelligence for use by the president of the United States, the Pentagon, CIA, and other intelligence and national security officials.

Bruckheimer didn't recognize the number on caller ID.

“Bruckheimer.”

“Jim, it's Hector.”

“Hey, Chief. What's up?”

“I need to find someone,” said Calibrisi.

“That narrows it down,” said Bruckheimer. “Can you at least tell me if it's male or female?”

“It's Mark Raditz.”

“Mark Raditz as in the deputy defense secretary?”

“Yeah, that one. I'll brief you later, but right now I need your best people on this. We need to find this son of a bitch. Get any credit cards, aliases, passports, and run them against PRISM. Look at his ex-wife and daughter too. I'm sending you some photos. I need you to run them through any facial recognition applications you have out there. Look domestically as well as abroad.”

There was a brief pause.

“Hector, I know you said you'll brief me later, and I trust you, of course, but if I start slamming PRISM against Raditz inside the U.S.—”

“Raditz gave ISIS more than a billion dollars' worth of guns and missiles, Jim. It was a secret program he ran out of a Pentagon dark pool. We need to find him.”

“Any guess as to where he might be? It would save us time.”

“Middle East,” said Calibrisi. “Mexico. Maybe Central America or South America. Raditz has visited pretty much every country in the world. That said, he's not an operator. He doesn't know what he's doing.”

“Hector, not that I care, but will there be a trial?”

“No way. This would do a lot of damage if it ever got out. That doesn't mean we're going to kill him, though. Frankly, he might be useful. Thanks for your help. Someone in our counsel's office will get you the FISA warrant.”

“I'll call you when we have something.”

 

24

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

Anson Britt, Margaret Lyne, Stacy Conneely, and Fernando Rocha were seated on a pair of red leather Chesterfield couches in Hector Calibrisi's glass-walled corner office.

Britt sat next to Lyne, the CIA's assistant director for intergovernmental affairs. Lyne was Langley's chief lobbyist and primary interface with Congress and other governmental agencies. Her main role was working with the Pentagon.

Conneely, a linguistics prodigy, was the agency's top ISIS analyst.

Rocha was a Special Activities Division deputy director. His main area of focus was finance, including money laundering and currency manipulation.

All four had received the flash brief on the Raditz files.

Calibrisi and Polk entered the office. Calibrisi looked visibly upset. He took off his coat and tossed it onto the floor near the window. He pulled his tie off and did the same. His face was bright red. Sweat dripped off his forehead.

Polk appeared to be slightly calmer.

Calibrisi stood behind his desk for several quiet moments.

“Before we get into this clusterfuck of a situation, I want to know what's going on with Dewey and Rick. Anson?”

Britt paused. He looked at Polk and then Calibrisi, a serious expression on his face

“Rick is dead,” he said. “Dewey's status is unknown, though in all likelihood he's dead too.”

“Who's your source?” asked Polk.

“Damascus Metro Police,” said Britt. “I also spoke with IDF. Dewey had a tracker on him. It moved in sync with the activity in the square. They had him a few blocks away. Then it went dark. Either they captured him and ripped it off or—”

“And Metro?”

“Mallory is confirmed dead. He was shot in the back, bled out on the street. My source at Metro also says Dewey is presumed dead. There was a pretty intense gunfight involving him and some guys from ISIS. Metro was there too. Apparently, Dewey was cornered by a contingent of ISIS gunmen. The location corroborates with the Israeli tracking device. Based on the time lines, ISIS cornered him immediately after the transmission of the files. My source has no further intel.”

“They didn't see the body?”

“No, sir. The ISIS contingent engaged Metro. They killed several policemen. At some point, Metro dropped a shitload of artillery on the location from a chopper. It's rubble. If he's there, they're not going to dig him out for days.”