First Strike (17 page)

Dewey wasn't trapped, but he was fucked.

Directly across from him, he saw a set of wooden shutters. He shot a hole in the bottom section, and a few more holes, widening it, then again sent cover fire in both directions, again blindly, trying to buy himself time until, at some point, the mag was spent.

He dropped the pistol from his right hand. With his left, he ripped the second handgun from beneath his right armpit as, with his right hand, he retrieved the other grenade, pulling it to his mouth, teething out the pin, and throwing it at the hole in the shutter, praying the house was empty. The grenade hit the hole and passed through—bull's-eye—and Dewey covered his head just as the explosion blasted out the lower part of the wall, sending bricks, rocks, rubble, dust, and dirt, along with a fierce kick of air, in his direction. He moved, first firing cover shots at the van, then the car, then sprinting across the dust-shrouded street. Turning as he sprinted, he saw one of the gunmen running down the street; with his left hand, Dewey swung the pistol toward him and fired, striking him in the neck, just as he leapt into the destroyed house.

Dewey was in an empty bedroom, much of it destroyed, though on the bed, stuffed animals were piled in the corner. A child's room, thankfully empty.

He heard yelling from the street as the remaining gunmen swarmed from both directions.

Dewey ran into the living room and then down a small entrance hallway, charging toward the front door, which led to the next street over. He pulled the door open. In front, three Damascus Metro Police cars were lined up, lights flashing; behind them stood a small army of SWAT-clad gunmen. Seeing the door open, and Dewey, two of the officers raised their rifles and started firing, just as Dewey ducked and slammed the door shut.

He sprinted back through the house and up a staircase. At the top, a man and a woman were on the floor, arms around each other, silent, staring at him in fear.

Dewey charged past them, pushing open doors until he found the bathroom. He shut the door, locked it, and sat on the floor. The bathroom was tiny. He put his feet against the door and his back against the toilet, creating a barrier.

He heard voices downstairs, then the ominous sound of steel-toed boots pounding the stairs.

Dewey dropped the gun.

He worked quickly. He took the cell phone from his pocket as the footsteps grew louder. He popped the SIM card from the side of the cell phone, then lay the phone on the floor. He reached into his pocket and found the SIM card from al-Jaheishi. It was covered in a layer of dried blood.

Someone shouted from down the hall. The voice was deep and furious: “
Ayn hu?
”

A woman mumbled something between hysterical sobs.

The terrorists again barked at her. She said something, a sobbing plea, then screamed. The crack of gunfire stopped her screaming. The first shot was followed by another, and still one more, as the terrorists murdered the family.

Dewey put the bloody SIM card to his mouth, wet it, then wiped it on his shirt. Blood still covered part of the circuit near the edge. He wet it again as boots thundered down the hallway, growing louder. There were at least two men. They moved down the hall to the bathroom, just outside the door. One of the killers pounded his fist against the door, yelling frantically in Arabic.

Dewey's eyes caught his blood-soaked thigh. The pain was acute, but he hadn't thought about it for several minutes. All he could think about was getting the contents of the SIM card to Langley.

Automatic weapon fire came from somewhere downstairs. Through the open window, Dewey heard the clanking of bullets ripping into the police cars as the terrorists sought to remove complications from the scene. There was a loud scream as someone was hit, then return gunfire from the police.

Dewey wiped the card on his shirt, as hard as he could, trying to scrape away the dried blood. He jammed the card into the side of the cell phone.

*   *   *

The handle of the bathroom door jiggled, followed by a sharp kick, which punched the door above the latch, splintering the wood. Another kick followed, just as Dewey found the green message icon, attached the SIM card's data files, then typed in a twelve-digit number. He hit Send just as a powerful third kick shattered the center of the door. He threw the cell phone into a straw clothes hamper near the window. The muzzle of an assault rifle appeared in the broken frame of the door, easily finding Dewey on the floor. The gunman trained the weapon at Dewey's skull.

Above the rifle, Dewey registered a set of eyes—dark, cold, surrounded by long black hair, a sharp nose, dark skin covered in a sheen of sweat, a mustache and beard.

One terrorist pulled away the broken door and stepped into the bathroom. The other man followed. He removed a knife from a sheath and jammed it toward Dewey as the first gunman kept the muzzle of his AK-47 aimed squarely at Dewey's head. He put the knife beneath the GPS tracker given to Dewey by Kohl Meir. He tore the knife up, severing the tracker cord. He dropped the device to the floor and stomped on it with his boot.

More gunfire continued between the terrorists and the police, a steady
rat-a-tat-tat
cloaking the only sound Dewey cared about at that moment—the faint, high-pitched monotone from the cell phone at the bottom of the clothes hamper, indicating his message was going through.

 

20

CIA HEADQUARTERS

NATIONAL CLANDESTINE SERVICE (NCS)

PRE-TACTICAL OPERATIONAL CONTROL (PRE TAC)

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

At three in the morning, Bill O'Flaherty stared into an ocular scanner at the same time as he placed his hand beneath a red fingerprint reader, both of which were outside a large unmarked steel door. After a couple of seconds, the locks clicked and the door opened. O'Flaherty, cup of coffee in his free hand, stepped inside.

Pre-Tactical Operational Control was a cavernous, windowless, dimly lit room, its eighteen-foot ceilings accommodating three walls of large plasma screens. Two lines of workstations faced the screens, each offering a different view of CIA activities throughout the world.

The room was eerily quiet, all audio having been routed through headphones and earbuds.

PRE TAC's mission was to monitor the activities of NCS operators and agents in various parts of the world and keep key members of the NCS and CIA hierarchy apprised of developments. This included activities of the Political Activities Division, usually agents working in hostile territory to advance America's foreign policy goals in nonlethal ways, such as currency manipulation and political destabilization. Its main focus, however, was Special Operations Group, the paramilitary arm of the CIA.

PRE TAC was the air traffic control system for covert operations conducted by the CIA. It was not where operators were managed out of—that was one floor below, in the Tactical Command Center—TACCOM—but it was always PRE TAC's analysts who knew when developments were reaching crisis point. Whereas TACCOM could sit unused for days or even weeks, PRE TAC was always teeming with activity, always in near silence. PRE TAC provided live support, real-time third-eye analysis, and, when necessary, coordination of on-the-ground exigencies with the Pentagon and ally intelligence services, such as MI6 and Mossad.

Most important, the highly trained analysts inside PRE TAC were responsible for maintaining chain-of-command protocols, meaning that they had to know when to elevate matters if something was going sideways.

O'Flaherty stepped into the room and the door shut behind him.

“Morning, everyone,” he said, a big smile on his face.

O'Flaherty was the senior Middle East analyst inside PRE TAC.

Mary Moseley, a black woman with headphones on, turned from one of the workstations and smiled. “Hi, Bill,” she said. “How was your weekend?”

Such was the arbitrary nature of the schedules of the PRE TAC analysts that words like “weekend” and “vacation” and even “morning” had long ago lost all meaning. It was the middle of the night on a weekday, but for O'Flaherty it was Monday morning.

“It was awesome,” he said, putting his coffee cup down and taking a seat next to her. He popped open his briefcase and removed a white wax paper bag with
Krispy Kreme
scrolled in red along the front. “Brought you a donut, gorgeous.”

“Jelly?”

“Yup.”

“Lemon?”

“Raspberry.”

“Aw,” said Moseley. “You're the best, kid.”

“No, you are,” said O'Flaherty, his eyes moving to one of the plasmas on the front wall, his expression becoming businesslike.

The plasma showed a frame from a video, Arabic writing below. In the frame, a man was seated, a woman was standing, they were in a large steel cage. Flames could be seen on the ground at the man's feet.

Moseley saw his look—though a pro, he couldn't hide his horror.

“Yesterday,” she said.

“Who are they?”

“Americans. He's a freelance photographer on assignment for
National Geographic,
Ben Sheets. That's his wife. Do you want to see all of it?”

“No,” whispered O'Flaherty. He tried to smile. “I'll look at it after you leave. You've probably seen it a hundred times by now.”

“Actually, a hundred and one.” She stood up. “Don't ever stop being that way,” she said, patting O'Flaherty on the shoulder as she pushed her chair in.

He was again staring up at the screen.

“What way?” he asked, taking a bite from a glazed donut.

“A gentleman.”

He turned, mouth full. “Get out of here,” he said.

A plasma at the far side of the room suddenly cut from an Al Jazeera reporter, volume muted, discussing the execution of the American couple, to bright red, which flashed. Three loud alarm bells rang out.

A computer-generated female voice—calm, officious, and slightly futuristic—came over the intercom:

Special Activities Division, Section Q, 03:07: We have a CRISIS DISPATCH: Immediate Priority: Switch Protocol: Alpha—Bravo—Epsilon. N.O.C. 2—4—9—5. Repeat: Switch Protocol: Alpha—Bravo—Epsilon. N.O.C. 2—4—9—5 …

The pause lasted less than three seconds before the alarm bells rang again and the computer-generated voice came over the intercom:

Special Activities Division, Section Q, 03:07: We have CRISIS DISPATCH: Immediate Priority: Switch Protocol: Alpha—Bravo—Epsilon. N.O.C. 2—4—9—5. Repeat: Switch Protocol: Alpha—Bravo—Epsilon. N.O.C. 2—4—9—5.

O'Flaherty looked at Moseley, who hadn't left and stood now by the door.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

“I got it.”

O'Flaherty reached forward, pulled on a headset, and hit his keyboard, stopping the woman's voice, then started typing.

“Roger, Control,” said O'Flaherty, speaking into his mike. “Give me an origin point on that transmission, please.”

The computer-generated female voice wasted no time answering:

Origin point: Damascus, Syria.

“Thank you, Control,” said O'Flaherty, continuing to type.

The red screen cut to a photograph of a document. The top page showed a black-and-white photograph. Two men were seated in a hotel lobby somewhere.

“Control, do you have any diagnostics on the device?” asked O'Flaherty.

Device is tracing to a live Non Qualification: Andreas, Dewey.

O'Flaherty immediately recognized the younger man, with neatly combed dark hair, dressed in a business suit, Middle Eastern. He stiffened in his chair, unnerved by the sight of the most wanted man in the world. It was ISIS's leader, Tristan Nazir. Slowly, O'Flaherty's eyes moved to the man seated next to him. He didn't recognize him at first, not because he didn't know who the man was, but because it was so stunning, out-of-context, and shocking.

“I need a non-SIM UCC read, Control,” said O'Flaherty.

His request was greeted by several moments of silence, then came the voice:

Device is Yemeni, batch 11889AF4556.

“Batch trace, Control, come on,” he said, impatience in his voice.

Registration 49AS5 dash 3. Al-Jaheishi, Marwan.

O'Flaherty put the next few pages on the screen directly in front of him, quickly reading through the transcript of the conversation between the men in the photo.

“Control, I want a remote erasure procedure on that SIM card and I want transmission reprovision. Get this off any servers that it passed through.”

Erasure procedure commencing. Estimate completion in six … five … four …

Moseley stood behind him, staring at the screen. She lifted her hand and pointed.

“Billy,” she said, a horrified look on her face, “is that—?”

“Mark Raditz,” interrupted O'Flaherty as he typed. The remaining pages of the document spread like cards across the other plasmas.

“You need to get this to Polk,” she said, referring to Bill Polk, the deputy CIA director who ran NCS.

But O'Flaherty wasn't listening. Instead, he tapped the wireless headset three times.

“Control, I need DCIA, this is PRE TAC O'Flaherty, over.”

“Protocol?”

“Alpha. Bravo. Epsilon.”

“Hold, please.”

A few moments later, O'Flaherty heard ringing in his headset, then a deep voice.

“Yeah.”

“Director Calibrisi,” said O'Flaherty, an emotionless look on his face, “it's Bill O'Flaherty. I'm sorry to wake you, sir, but we just received a crisis dispatch.”

“Where's it from?”

“Damascus. It's a non-official cover protocol.”

Calibrisi was silent.

“Do you want the ID on the NOC, sir?”

“I know who it is,” said Calibrisi. “Call Anson Britt and tell him to start looking at recon scenarios. Then call Bill and tell him to meet me in PRE TAC in fifteen minutes.”