Targets of Opportunity (4 page)

He would set off his charges immediately after theirs, and they would be allowed to flee. They would be unlikely to notice the additional conflagration as they ran from the scene, but Jaber’s bedroom would certainly be vaporized and any chance of positive identification of the body inside would then be impossible, unless the government spent the time and effort to recover body fragments and do DNA testing. Even if they were so inclined, he would be far gone by then.

Jaber watched with a sense of morbid detachment as the three men went about the business of placing explosives around the base of the walls to his home. When they had completed their work they met at the bottom of the hill, where one of them suddenly pointed upward. Jaber crouched down, his pulse quickening. He waited a moment, then peered out into the darkness from behind the rocks. He felt his heart pounding even harder as they began climbing in his direction. He drew back, weighing his options. He realized his handgun and limited physical resources were no match for these three younger men. He had no time to run; the rocky hillside would give him away as soon as he moved.

Then he thought about setting off his own charges. The distraction might give him enough time to get away. It might even trigger their explosives, which would surely create enough mayhem to provide him an opportunity to get to his car.

Before he acted he risked one more quick look and was amazed to see that they had stopped halfway up the steep incline. As one of them pointed off to his right, Jaber understood. He had not been spotted. Apparently they had only been looking for a better position.

Jaber drew a deep breath as they clambered to a spot a hundred or so yards off to his right. He slumped down with his back against a large rock as he tried to control his heavy breathing. He stared at the detonator in his hand and prepared to wait.

He did not have to wait long. As soon as the three men settled in at a safe distance from the house a booming noise rocked the night. Seconds later Jaber hit the red button on his remote, and a combination of fire and noise lit the sky and filled it with a deafening thunder and a spray of stone and dust.

People in the homes all around them were jolted from their sleep, rushing to their windows to see what had happened. The damage was confined to Jaber’s home, but the explosions propelled debris into the dark sky.

Jaber held his ground, not moving until the three men had stolen away over the hill. He allowed himself a final look at the flaming remnants of the place he had called home for so many years, feeling a sadness he had not expected. Then he turned and began his journey to safety.

CHAPTER TWO

ONE WEEK LATER, AN ESTATE OUTSIDE LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

A
N IMPOSING STONE
house sits amid a rolling lawn on a large tract situated some forty miles southwest of Langley in suburban Virginia. Once jokingly referred to by an agent as the House of the Seven Gables, the estate had since become affectionately known to insiders simply as the “Gables.” The property rolls on for more than a hundred acres, the perimeter marked by a wood fence inconspicuously braided with enough high-intensity electrical wire to stop a charging bull moose in its tracks. The fortifications at the gatehouse and outbuildings are also well disguised, giving the place the look of a stately manor while concealing tracking devices, day and night surveillance, a full complement of armed guards, and enough weaponry and communications paraphernalia to stand off an assault by a well-equipped battalion.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s most elaborate safe house, it is used only for the most distinguished and valued guests, such as Ahmad Jaber, until recently a senior officer in Iran’s state-supported terrorist network, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Jaber’s defection from the IRGC was greeted by considerable skepticism within the CIA unit devoted to countering Islamic terrorism. In the long history of counterintelligence gambits, practices of disinformation, false flag deceptions and other similar ploys had created a healthy level of paranoia whenever an enemy agent appeared on the scene claiming to bear unexpected gifts. Jaber was known to have been involved in the attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the training of operatives for the IRGC in Lebanon. He was also presumed to have been instrumental in planning the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that left 241 American servicemen dead. Deputy Director Mark Byrnes endorsed the suspicion that Jaber’s sudden departure from a career orchestrating murder and havoc might be a ruse of some sort. That view was shared by senior officials up and down the line, including the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence, and the President’s National Security Advisor. Byrnes, for his part, was intimately familiar with the carnage caused by Jaber and his minions, and he was charged with the responsibility of rooting out whatever scheme was being hatched by the Iranians.

When Jaber made his way out of Iran and into Iraq he promptly surrendered to the Allied Forces—which essentially meant American soldiers backed by the encouragement, and little else, of United States allies—and sought asylum through a back-channel connection he claimed to have in Washington. Jaber’s contact turned out to be someone in the State Department he had met only once, at a peace conference in Paris ten years before, and the American quickly disavowed having had any communication with the terrorist since then. Learning this, Byrnes insisted that Jaber be transported stateside and turned over to Central Intelligence for vetting, which was quickly agreed to by the President’s National Security Advisor as well as the Agency’s Director. The CIA medical team began by subjecting the Iranian to a complete physical. One of Byrnes’s theories was that Jaber, now almost sixty, might have contracted some fatal illness, and was intending to play out his final days doing as much additional damage as possible by feeding the Agency a giant helping of disinformation.

The DD was mildly surprised when the tests revealed Jaber to be in excellent health.

When the Iranian was placed under a mild anesthesia for his exam, he was also treated to a cocktail of so-called truth serum. Once he had regained consciousness he was still under the influence of a pharmacological mix far more sophisticated than sodium pentothal. The ensuing discussion, which is admittedly never as fruitful as an unfettered interview, was at least intended to determine if his defection was genuine or part of an IRGC mission.

While a regimen of intense psychological programming might have prepared Jaber to withstand this sort of drug-fueled colloquy, he said nothing to suggest that his presence was any sort of hoax. Moreover, Jaber seemed to have information about a planned attack that was coming from someplace other than Iran, a compelling bit of information if any part of it turned out to be true. The specifics were muddled, which is often the case when confessions are chemically induced, and Byrnes looked forward to a further inquiry, once his prisoner was fully alert.

And so, notwithstanding the DD’s continued misgivings, he had Jaber transferred from the CIA infirmary to the Gables for a formal interrogation. Then he called Jordan Sandor.

CHAPTER THREE

NEW YORK CITY

I
T WAS JUST
after dawn, and Jordan Sandor was in his Manhattan apartment, grinding through the last sequence of his daily exercise routine. Not yet forty, he worked hard to keep in shape, his current regimen including some rehab moves intended to bring him back to top form after the injuries suffered during his recent mission in Europe.

He was in the middle of a series of sit-ups, working each elbow to the opposite knee in turn, twisting hard in alternating directions, when he heard the ring on his BlackBerry that told him he had a text message. He finished the cycle of crunches, stood, wiped his face with a towel, and grabbed the PDA from the table. The coded message instructed him to call on a secure line.

He went to his bedroom closet, reached inside and unlocked the overhead panel, took down the metal box he kept there, and brought it to his desk. He removed the satellite phone reserved for these communications, turned it on, and, as he waited for it to power up, entered a series of numbers on his computer keyboard that emitted a frequency that blocked any eavesdropping in the room. Then he picked up the phone, which was now at full signal, punched in the familiar number, and said, “Sandor encrypted.”

Sandor had not spoken with Deputy Director Byrnes since the debriefing at Langley that followed the mission he completed in Italy. He worked several weeks at rehabbing his leg, first at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland and then back home. He also spent time in the New York office, monitoring the work being undertaken by the Counter-Terrorism Task Force to undo the residual damage caused by the rogue agent Vincent Traiman, whom Sandor had successfully dispatched in Portofino. Now Sandor felt he was nearly back to full strength, regardless of what the Agency doctors had to say. He wanted clearance to return to action and so was not unhappy to receive a message from the Deputy Director. After a few moments he heard the familiar voice.

“Good morning, Sandor.”

“You’re up early, sir.”

“We have a situation I’d like you to have a look at. I need you here, pronto.”

“I can get to LaGuardia, be down to you in a few hours,” Sandor said.

“No, I’ve already arranged transport. There’s a car waiting for you downstairs.”

Sandor nodded at the phone, knowing that meant a few things. Urgency, of course. Also that Byrnes might want him armed, not wasting time with the security issues he would face on a commercial flight. And, most important, this was not going to be a meeting at Langley, it was likely going to be a private audience at the Gables, hopefully with Ahmad Jaber. “Am I going for a drive in the country?”

“You are.”

“I’m on my way,” Sandor said.

————

Sandor had heard the rumors of Jaber’s defection while spending time in the Company’s Manhattan office a few days before. He was surprised he had not already been contacted by Byrnes but hoped that was the reason he was being summoned to Washington.

He quickly showered and dressed, choosing gray slacks, black loafers with rubber soles, and a crisply pressed white shirt. He had a look in the mirror, his uneven nose a reminder of too many close-action battles, his complexion tanned and a bit weathered. His dark hair was cut just long enough to allow him to run his fingers through the thick waves, front to back—which he habitually did when he took time to reflect on something important. He was doing that now as he continued to stare ahead, his intense eyes no longer seeing his reflection, instead visualizing Ahmad Jaber. It was a confrontation he had looked forward to for a very long time.

Back in the bedroom he pulled out his black leather “go” bag, already packed with two changes of clothes, toiletries, and other sundries. Then he returned to the metal container. He removed his bulky Smith & Wesson .45 semiautomatic with two magazines, his passport—and a spare passport with a NOC, or non-official cover, in the name of Scott Kerr, one of his favored aliases—and tossed all of them in the bag with the secure cell phone. After he replaced the box in the overhead safe, he checked the magazine of the smaller, Walther PPK .380 he always carried with him, placed it in its leather holster, and shoved that inside his belt at the small of his back. Then he pulled on a navy blazer, headed downstairs, and climbed into the Town Car that was waiting to take him crosstown to the East River heliport.

————

Sandor figured Byrnes would eventually call him in for these debriefings. Ahmad Jaber was a major force in an area where Sandor had been involved in several operations. More than that, Sandor guessed that the DD would share his doubts about the authenticity of the defection. Byrnes might also want him to participate in the interrogation since there was some personal history there.

Sandor suspected that Michael Walsh, Director of Central Intelligence, might be the reason he had not been contacted earlier. Walsh was not Sandor’s biggest fan, and he particularly disliked anything that reeked of vendetta. Sandor took no offense. He had long ago concluded that Walsh was just a typical executive at the top of a large corporate structure. The higher up the food chain, the more conservative the approach. The Director’s job was not only to run the Central Intelligence Agency, it was also to cover the President’s ass. It was the President, after all, who had given Walsh the job and who was, in the final analysis, Walsh’s boss.

It was therefore inevitable that Walsh would worry about field agents who were constantly on the brink of skirmishes that could create international tensions, embarrassing incidents, or outright disasters. The DCI did not want those risks multiplied by anything personal that might pollute the decisions or actions of his men. On top of those concerns, Walsh felt that the more proactive and insubordinate the agent, the worse the risk.

Sandor smiled to himself. He knew that, on some days, he was the Director’s worst nightmare.

Fortunately, Deputy Director Byrnes had the ability and integrity to balance the risks and rewards of having men like Sandor out in the world, handling the necessary dangers inherent in covert operations. Byrnes was a career intelligence officer, not a political appointee or someone running for office, and even if he shared an Ivy League background and club membership with Walsh, he was willing to stand up to the Director for what he knew was right. He and Sandor sometimes disagreed about missions, and frequently about tactics, but they always had the same goal—to keep America safe by fighting her unseen enemies.

————

As Sandor boarded the Sikorsky chopper that would take him across the Hudson to the private airport in Teterboro, he reviewed what he knew about Ahmad Jaber, an enemy who had dwelled in darkness for the past decade. They knew that Jaber had been involved in the planning of several devastating attacks throughout the Mideast, South America, and Europe. He had engineered these murders in the name of an extreme Islamic vision that the governments of Iran, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia refused to publicly acknowledge, even as each of them provided undisclosed support.