Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (13 page)

 Avery
considered and decided against bringing Culler up-to-date for the simple reason
that Matt might tell him to stand down. While Culler allowed Avery a certain
degree of autonomy, running an op with an Agency asset like Sideshow against a
Russian military base, and creating a potential international incident if
anyone was caught, was the type of thing to make him uneasy.           

But as far as
Avery was concerned this was a straight forward recon, not a direct action
assault.

After all, even
if they did spot Cramer, what could they do about it? The answer was absolutely
nothing. They couldn’t charge across the airfield, waste a platoon of Russian
troops, grab Cramer, and make a clean exfil. And it was extremely unlikely they
would simply get lucky and find Cramer within easy reach, where they could
covertly slip him off the base.

This wasn’t a
movie. In real life, you didn’t wing it. That only got people killed. Direct
action required planning and preparation. They hadn’t even barged into the IMU safe
house in Yazgulam blind.

The best Avery could
hope for was a sighting of Cramer, possibly in Russian custody, and the jet
they put him on, photographic proof to provide Langley. Then Culler and D/NCS
could take it from there.

Black non-glare grease paint was smeared
over Avery’s face and any other areas of exposed flesh. He lay prone in the
tall, dry grass. His rifle rested in front of him, on its bipod legs, the stock
nestled comfortably against his right shoulder.

Nearby, he heard
crickets chirp, and eight feet away, a rabbit lazily chewed on the ends of
grass, oblivious to the human’s presence.

Although his
finger was poised over the trigger guard, he was relaxed and not looking for
targets, at least not with the intention of shooting. The Trijicon advanced
optical scope allowed him to see out to two thousand-plus feet. At the moment,
however, there was little to observe. Other than a couple Russian troops
occasionally wandering by or stepping out of a hangar for a smoke, there’d been
no activity.

Avery didn’t use
night optics. There was ample lighting around the airfield at 10:00PM. The main
hangar, a tall, wide building large enough to hold four MiGs, and the control
tower were both well lit. The runway itself was illuminated, too, by high
floodlights.

Poacher and
Flounder were positioned almost half a mile southwest on the opposite end of
the airfield. Mockingbird was setup on the other side of the runway, in the
wide field of wheatgrass, across from Avery’s position, with clear line of
sight into the open hangars. Reaper was two miles away, sitting on the shoulder
of the highway in the van, with his lights turned off and listening in on the
comms. From here, he also had eyes on the north and south exit ramps leading
from the highway to the base.

Security at the
airfield was non-existent. Tajikistan was probably regarded as an easy, if not
boring, post for Russian troops. There weren’t even watchtowers, which Russians
were always fond of putting up at their bases. The biggest danger came from
someone in the high control tower spotting the CIA intruders.

Seventeen minutes
after midnight, Avery heard aircraft engines coming in overhead. He saw external
lights blinking in the dark sky, and the engines soon grew louder as the
aircraft lost altitude on its final approach.

The jet’s wheels
struck the surface of the runway, screeched, bounced, and carried the giant
aircraft forward out of the darkness and under the glow of the high floodlights,
the four turboprop engines mounted beneath the wings screaming.

As it travelled
down the runway and continued past the hangar, Avery identified the plane as a Russian-made
Antonov transporter, weighing over two hundred thousand pounds empty and
capable of carrying over twice its weight in cargo. Maybe two hundred feet
long, he estimated, with a slightly longer wingspan. He couldn’t pinpoint the
model, but that didn’t matter. He knew Mockingbird already had.

There was no
carrier or national markings on the plane, only a small identification number,
RA8564G, in black letters near the tail-end of the fuselage. Avery produced an
old, bent notepad from a pouch on his vest, scribbled down the identifier, and
replaced the notepad in his vest. He wasn’t an aviation expert, but he knew
enough to recognize that the “RA” prefix signified that the aircraft was privately
owned and registered inside the Russian Federation.

The pilot reduced
speed, steered the Antonov left onto the tarmac in front of the hangar, and
powered down the engines.

A couple figures
stepped out from the open hangar and approached the Antonov. Their voices
carried across the dead air toward Avery. He trained his scope on them. Two
wore civilian clothing and didn’t appear to be armed. One was short and stocky,
the other tall with wide shoulders and a shaved head, but their backs were to
Avery. He also spotted a couple soldiers lingering about, keeping their
distance.

The Antonov’s aft
cargo ramp dropped slowly open on its pylons. Six men stepped out onto the
tarmac. The Russian with the shaved head approached the group and spoke with someone
who Avery presumed to be the man in charge of the flight.

Avery removed
the miniature camera from the padded pocket in his vest. Developed by CIA’s
Directorate Science & Technology, the no-flash digital camera fit inside
the palm of his hand and could take quality, long-distance pictures or close
range pictures of documents.

Avery recognized
one of the Russians from when the man finally turned around. It was Oleg
Ramzin, CK/SCINIPH. Avery snapped shots of him and his friends in case Langley
could identify anyone else. They all looked alike to Avery, with their round
faces, square jaws, shaved heads or buzz cuts, wearing out of fashion leather
jackets, jeans, and boots, and generally looking ready to kick someone’s ass.

Another ten
minutes passed with no activity. The Antonov remained sitting untouched on the
tarmac, and the Russians looked as bored and impatient as the CIA soldiers
felt.

At 12:45AM,
Reaper reported that four trucks had just made the turn off the highway and
were approaching the airfield. Five minutes later, Avery heard the vehicles
coming from the south. His eyes followed a pair of headlights cutting through the
cloak of darkness around the road leading from the highway to the airfield.

Under the bright
floodlights, Avery recognized the new arrivals as Kamaz Ural-4320 6x6 trucks,
four of them, powered by V-8 diesel engines and capable of carrying up to
thirteen thousand pound cargos, or up to twenty-seven soldiers, for long
distance hauls across nearly any terrain. Canvas tarps covered the cargo platforms
of the trucks, which parked on the apron near the Antonov’s open ramp.  

The cab doors on
the trucks swung open, and the drivers and passengers climbed down. There were
nine of them and a few had rifles slung at their sides or holstered pistols. They
were darker skinned and smaller than the Russians, and each was thickly bearded,
clearly of Central Asian descent. They wore loose fitting white or brown
kameez
tunics and
shalwar
pants. Some had scarves covering much of their faces,
leaving only their eyes and noses visible, and others were draped in shawls or
wore bandoliers filled with ammunition. But it was their matching black turbans
that gave them away.

Avery knew what
black turbans meant. These guys were Taliban.

The presence of
Mullah Adeib Arzad confirmed this. There was no mistaking the distinctive
crooked scar running down the left side of his face, over the limp eye that was
all whited out following an untreated trachoma infection.

Mullah Arzad was
one of the most wanted high value targets in Afghanistan. Any CIA or JSOC
operator who’d done time in the Afghan-Pakistan would recognize him on sight.
The mad mullah gained certain notoriety when a video appeared on the Internet
in which he slit the throat of a twelve year old Afghan girl who committed the
crime of being raped, shaming her family and village in the eyes of the Taliban.
  

Avery’s blood simmered.
He reserved a special hatred for the Taliban. They were a dirty, cowardly,
duplicitous, and savage gang who dealt in drugs, blew up schoolhouses full of
children, decapitated women, and used the mentally impaired as unwitting
suicide bombers. Their power came from fear and intimidation. And it didn’t
matter how many you wasted, there were always more crawling out of the
mountains and caves.

Mullah Arzad
yelled out some angry, rapid fire Pashtan, and the Taliban started unloading heavy
burlap sacks from the trucks’ beds. Ramzin and his friend with the shaved head watched
them, and then the latter stopped one of the Afghans as he passed. The Russian produced
a knife from his pocket and opened the blade. He slit one of the sacks in the
Afghan’s arms, parted the tear with his fingers, and peered inside.  He nodded
his approval and the Afghans continued loading the Antonov.

Heroin, Avery
thought, had to be.

Heroin, now
produced in the Taliban’s own refineries and labs in Helmand Province and Kandahar,
was the only thing the Taliban had of any value to bargain with. The Taliban generated
up to half a billion dollars a year from drugs, making them one of the world’s
top five richest terrorist groups. Many Taliban commanders became personally rich
by skimming the profits and owned high-rise luxury condos in Dubai.

On the black market,
one pound of heroin alone was worth thirty AK-47 rifles. Each of the four Kamaz
Ural-4320s could carry a load of about twelve tons. One ton of heroin went for
at least $15 million. Avery was looking at possibly $180 million worth of the
shit. The street value would be over ten times that.

This was a massive
transaction, and the important question in Avery’s mind was what were the
Taliban getting in return?

While tanker
trunks refueled the Antonov, the Russians used a forklift to transfer huge
wooden crates from the Antonov’s cargo bay and onto the beds of the Ural
trucks. The Taliban, apparently equally mistrustful of the Russians, watched
them closely and selected random crates to open and examine.

From where he
lay, it was impossible for Avery to tell what was inside the crates, but there
was no mistaking what the long, rectangular, gray, metal cases now being loaded
onto one of the Ural trucks contained. The US Army packaged and stored
shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles in almost identical transit cases.

As the transfer
of cargo continued, the Russian with the shaved head spoke some more with
Mullah Arzad through translator. The Taliban commander nodded his head, and the
Russian’s entourage started across the tarmac with Mullah Arzad and his
lieutenants. Two nearby talibs noticed this and followed, not wanting to leave
their commander alone with the Russians. The group walked to the airfield’s
operations building, on the opposite side of the hangar, while those left
behind continued emptying the Antonov and loading the trucks.

It occurred to
Avery that he wore the same pants he’d had going into Gorno-Badakhshan. He
reached down and shoved his hand into a deep pocket, felt around, and found the
GPS receiver Poacher had provided.

However,
slipping the receiver onto one of the trucks presented much the same series of
problems as getting a look at the cargo. Namely, slipping across the tarmac and
getting that close to the trucks, and then getting away, unseen. The lighting
around the airfield, so ideal in the previous hours for observation, now
suddenly became an enormous source of compromise.

And there was
still no sighting of Cramer.

The Taliban,
closely allied with the IMU, had him and were going to turn him over to the
Russians, Avery realized. It was the only logical connection, but it still
didn’t make much sense.

Three more
minutes passed.  

The tanker
trucks topped off the Antonov and departed. The Russians carried a couple final
boxes out of the Antonov, finished loading the trucks, and retreated back into
the hangar. The four Russian soldiers were left standing around, looking bored.
 

And the tarmac
suddenly looked invitingly empty.

Avery immediately
tapped his throat mike and said softly, “Carnivore for Mockingbird.”

“Go for
Mockingbird,” the voice responded.

“Do you have
eyes inside the hangar?”

“Partially, that
Russkie trash hauler’s blocking my view. It looks like everyone’s huddled
around a fridge, smoking and drinking. Everyone else headed into that building,
I reckon to grab some chow and empty their bladders before they get moving
again.”

“I’m going
around the back to get to the north end of the hangar. I’m going in for a
closer look at those trucks. I’ll need a diversion, something to distract those
soldiers still standing around. Think you can manage that?”

“Roger. That
shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Wait for my
word.”

Avery expected
to hear Poacher butting in at any second, to ask if he’d lost his mind, but it
never came. Poacher didn’t like winging shit like this. Neither did Avery, but
under the circumstances, he felt it warranted the risk.

Avery crawled
back through the dirt and grass, scanned his surroundings to make sure it was
clear, and then maneuvered onto his feet. He took careful, deliberate steps, so
as to maintain silence and not alert the soldiers to his presence. It was a
quiet night, and any sound from stepping on a stick or kicking a rock would
travel far through the air.

Once he reached
the rear wall of the hangar, Avery replaced his night vision goggles over his
eyes. There were no light sources here, and it was almost completely black. He
proceeded cautiously forward, moving quickly and quietly.

About
three-fourths of the way down the hangar’s length, Avery stopped dead in his
tracks.

He heard voices up
ahead, around the corner of the hangar, speaking Russian. He sidestepped to the
left, behind the cover of a thick tree. He lowered his body into a squat,
descending into the darkness, and rested on his haunches.

Seconds later, a
soldier turned the corner of the hangar. He looked ahead and walked forward
into the dark behind the hangar. A lit cigarette hung between his lips. The
Russian moved slowly, his eyes not yet acclimated to the darkness here,
stepping on twigs and leaves and anything else in his path. He kept one hand
against the wall of the hangar, to help guide himself. His other hand held the
AK-12, which was slung around his shoulder, barrel angled toward the ground. He
looked past Avery without seeing him.