Direct Action - 03 (22 page)

“Interesting.”

Aghassi brought up another picture and showed it to him.

“Rick.”

“Rick Teague. A half dozen DUI's. Got pulled over with automatic weapons out of the armory and C4 explosives in one case. Naval Special Warfare swept it all under the rug. I talked to one of his teammates as well. Rick went through a messy divorce. For years he was on the outs with her. He kept volunteering for deployments because he thought it would save his marriage by giving him and his wife some time apart.”

“He never struck me as the type. He is the most narcissistic of the bunch.”

“Not always. He tried hard to save his marriage, but of course he was trapped in a vicious cycle. Deploying in a misguided attempt to save his marriage, going back to the 'stan over and over again. Loaded up with PTSD, the only one of them in this Liquid Sky group who actually sought help at one point, there was no hope for him. His wife took their kids and bailed. He left the Navy with fifteen years in and found work with GRS.”

GRS or Global Response Staff, was the CIA's para-military force that acted as a security detachment for their case officers and targeting officers. They also did static security and occasionally worked operations.

“That gig ended for him when he was speeding around Kurdistan in an up-armored SUV and ran over a kid. No one knows for sure if he was drunk or not. GRS tried to cover it up, but the case officer dropped dime and got him booted. Bill must have picked him up sometime after that.”

“God damn,” Deckard said shaking his head. “These guys were a train wreck before they even left the military.”

“Big time. That guy Nikita whacked in Pakistan-”

“Henderson.”

“Yeah, him.”

“I'm wearing his clothes right now.”

“Well, that's special.”

“Isn't it.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Henderson was on meth, coke, and hard liquor pretty much every day from what I understand. Suspected of stealing weapons from the unit a few times, but that got covered up as well.”

“Of course. He had a girl?”

“Back at Virginia Beach. She doesn't know where the fuck he is.”

“And she never will.”

They had dumped the body into the Indian Ocean.

“Next up,” Aghassi said, changing the subject back to the living. “Paul.”

Aghassi showed him the picture he had.

“That's him, but without the Taliban beard he has now.”

“Guess he really liked Leonidas in 300, huh?”

Deckard rubbed his forehead urging Aghassi to continue.

“Okay, so his name is Paul Paul.”

“Paul Paul?”

“For sure.”

“Who the fuck were his parents?”

“Mormon missionaries, actually. He was holy roller back in the day. That's actually how he got his job in Dev. The commanding officer of one of the squadrons in Dev was also a holy roller, into all that crusader shit. He hand picked Paul from Green Platoon because they were both taking Jesus pills.”

“What happened?”

“Don't know when he fell off the wagon. It sounds like greed got the best of him, though. He ordered a lot of individual components for night vision goggles while he was overseas and then legally brought them back to Dam Neck with him. Once back in America, he had all the parts, but they were not on the property books because they were not assembled and had no serial numbers. He put them together and was selling them for 500 bucks a pop. He was also suspected of shipping captured Taliban weapons home in ISU-90 shipping containers. The real kicker is the gold.”

“They told me a little about that.”

“Yeah, they had it down to a science, apparently, from raiding so many compounds. Put a gun to the wife's head and make her open the safe. They would get the shit back to Kabul on their own private airline. From there they would convert the gold into U.S. dollars and deposit the money into overseas bank accounts. The bank accounts then fed into mutual funds managed by brokerage firms on Wall Street. Firms where former SEALs are employed. They have a cute cover story within Dev that the money was a black ops slush fund, but that's bullshit. It is war loot, plain and simple.

“But some red flags started going up when these guys came home from overseas and started buying brand new Land Cruisers and in-ground swimming pools in the backyard for their kids. They asked him to leave before someone initiated an investigation.”

“What the hell was going on in that unit?”

“Here is the thing, Deck, all these guys served in the same squadron in SEAL Team Six. That is how they all know each other and why Bill brought all of them on board. It is the other members where things start to get really interesting.”

“Yeah, I was wondering how Bill got a girl on the team.”

Aghassi pulled up the picture.

“That's her.”

“Hotter than a pistol.”

“I don't have to be told.”

“Nadeesha
Senevirathne,” Aghassi said pronouncing the last name syllable by syllable. “She came into the Army with very high test scores and got brought into Counter Intelligence. She worked in a couple different top secret programs in Iraq, most of them I'm familiar with because I had to liaison with these guys when I was with ISA. She did real work. Ten deployments to Iraq and Kurdistan, two to Colombia, one to Bangkok, one to Egypt. She was assigned to a special cell of female intelligence operatives within JSOC who would be drawn from as needed. Sometimes that cell of women is known by a nickname: The Harem.”

“She's pretty young to have that many deployments. She must have been drawn out every day.”

“Thirty one years old actually, and you're right. They run roughshod over these women because there are so few of them. When I called my buddies back at Ft. Meade they told me that she was for real, pulled her weight operationally, did her job. I don't know why, but she separated from the Army on her own. Probably, it was just burn-out from being deployed so often without time to decompress.”

“Happens more often than anyone wants to admit.”

“The connection to Bill comes from a counter-terrorism operation that SEAL Team Six ran in Colombia. Bill was the team leader and Nadeesha was attached to them to run intel. That must be where they first met.”

“What happened to her?”

“Don't know, but her test scores are off the chart. It freaked the people out at the JFK Special Warfare Center. She almost maxed out their IQ test. Speaks like a half dozen languages.”

“And she is of the right ethnicity. She can blend in with dozens of cultures. No wonder why JSOC jumped all over her.”

“It is this last guy that really bothers me.”

“Ramon?”

“Yeah, Ramon Pascua.”

“He is the most solid of any of them. They sent him forward to prepare the battle space. He's a former 1st Special Forces Group guy from what he told me.”

“That's true. After growing up in the Philippines, he came to the United States with his father. He was a Warrant Officer in 1st Special Forces Group and deployed with the CIF Team to Baghdad. He was a good operator by all accounts. Aside from running direct action missions with the CIF, he did low-vis work all over Southeast Asia.”

“So what is the concern?”

“That he appears squeaky clean. A guy like that would never work with a team like Liquid Sky. Are they blackmailing him or something?”

“No idea.”

“It is bizarre because the only other thing I can think of is that whatever he fucked up, wherever he stepped out of line, it had to be so bad and so sick that the entire chain of command buried it and simply asked him to leave for the sake of all their careers. I can't find shit for dirt on this dude, but he is black-balled in the contracting world. No one will touch him.”

“I will probe the wire a little more. I have good rapport with him.”

“Do that, because this creeps me out. Nadeesha should be working for DARPA or JPL, but I get why she is here after being abused by her command for so long. Ramon doesn't make sense to me at all.”

“I'll get another burner phone and text you whatever I find out. Keep Samruk on standby. If you can pre-stage in Madagascar that is great, but no further than that. Not yet.”

“I'll let Pat know. But there is one other member of Liquid Sky we haven't covered yet.”

“Oh?”

Aghassi looked across the table at him as their Chinese food arrived.

“So what's your deal?”

16

Morning PT crushed the entire team. To warm up, the team ran barefoot two miles down the beachfront and then back. It was a slow, comfortable pace, but everyone knew what was coming next. With a barbell they took turns doing three repetitions of the power snatch which involved lifting the weight above your head and squatting it. They increased the weight every three reps until failure.

Then they did the same for the power clean, which was a similar exercise, but the barbell was only brought up to under the chin with a reverse grip. The power jerk was done for the same repetitions and was also similar, but from under the chin, the barbell was then snapped above the head in one popping motion. Next was the clean pull. From the squatting position, the lifter snapped up with the bar held in an overhand grip until he was standing on his toes, and then lowered the bar back to the ground.

Repetitions were increased to five for the front squat. Again, more plates were added after each repetition. Holding the barbell under the chin, they did five squats for one set. Last but not least was Bill's favorite, the bench press. About half of the Liquid Sky team puked this time around. Deckard managed to hold it down but had to wonder what the point was. They could probably take turns kicking each other in the balls and get the same result. They wrapped up with a two-mile cool-down run. Most of them took water bottles and tried to rehydrate as they jogged up and down the beach.

After dragging ass back to his pad, Deckard took a shower, tried to pound down some more water and stretch out. He found it funny that Liquid Sky was so careful about their operational security, but six physically fit men running and swimming around a residential area was a signature in of itself. Apparently the guys just told the locals that they participated in adventure racing around the world, sponsored by some jockstrap company or something.

Sitting down on the couch, Deckard began to plan his next move. He didn't have any time to waste. Bill had mentioned during PT that he would be reviewing a series of new contracts to bid on that afternoon. A comment like that made Deckard wonder how many other teams might actually be out there. He would have his hands full taking this enterprise down as it was.

Deckard had to hand it to Liquid Sky. These guys were not fighting some one-sided firefight against chicken-shit terrorists in Tikrit or Ballad. They were skating the edge, almost for the sport of it. And they were winning. They were good, but the lack of discipline would catch up with them. Back to the operational security again. The war crimes were not just unprofessional, they also violated OPSEC by creating a signature. If they were scalping or canoeing bodies on every objective, then eventually someone would put two and two together and realize it was the same team conducting these hits all over the world.

He knew that more than likely, some intel agency somewhere had already done just that and had Liquid Sky on their radar because of it.

The next phase of Deckard's operation was to find out who this retired General was that Bill was getting his contracts from. Once he had that name, he could call in the cavalry and get this job over with. In the meantime, he tried to kick back and relax. Making the hard sell didn't work in human intelligence operations. If he came off as over eager and overplayed his hand, then Bill would figure out what his game was. He had to take his time, build rapport with each member of the team, and slowly gather each piece of the puzzle. It was frustrating, but necessary. Their odds of taking Bill alive in a direct confrontation and forcing the information out of him were slim to say the least.

Deckard just hoped he could run this charade long enough, because sooner or later, this whole house of cards was going to come crumbling down.