Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (15 page)

Litvin
maintained close connections to the Kremlin. His former commanding officer in
GRU now served as a deputy defense minister under Putin and publicly maintained
that Litvin was an air transport entrepreneur turned humanitarian, providing
aid and medical supplies to impoverished nations. Russian agencies overtly
impeded investigations and operations by American and European law enforcement
agencies into Litvin’s organization. He was one of dozens of Putin-affiliated
Russians and Ukrainians sanctioned by the West after Russia annexed the Crimean
Peninsula. NATO and European Union members banned GlobeEx employees from
travelling to their countries and froze Litvin’s assets.

Mockingbird
flipped his computer around so Avery could see the screen. Aleksander Litvin
was tall and built, with a head of messy black hair and a bushy mustache. Dressed
in rumpled, ill-fitting clothing, he looked more like the regular at a dive bar
than a multimillionaire. He looked to be in his early fifties and had a long,
narrow face with deep-set intelligent, predatory eyes and an oversized nose
laced with thin, red veins.  

  “Is there any
way we can track that Antonov?” asked Avery.

Mockingbird explained
that while normally it’d be simple to track a commercial or private aircraft by
its registration number, Rosaviatsiya—Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency—did
not make GlobeEx flight data, plans, and records publicly accessible.

 This wasn’t a
problem. NSA would start snooping and try to obtain audio recordings or
transcriptions of radio communications between control towers and pilots during
landings and take-offs, and target airports frequented by this aircraft. Information
from other sources Mockingbird utilized indicated that this particular jet had
been recently spotted at Minsk National and Chelyabinsk International airports,
in Belarus and Russia, respectively.

“We don’t have
time to sit around waiting for NSA,” Avery said impatiently. He didn’t need to mention
that trying to obtain anything from No Such Agency, as the National Security
Agency was colloquially known, was slightly worse than pulling teeth. NSA would
be grateful for the lead, and then they’d keep everything they gathered to
themselves.

But Mockingbird
had alternative avenues to pursue, turning to open source intelligence.

“There are
websites where aviation enthusiasts keep track of planes coming in and out of
airports all over the world. Some also monitor aircraft with blocked flight
plans. These are usually private jets belonging to politicians, diplomats,
corporations, celebrities or anyone else journalists have an interest in,
including less savory characters. I’ve put in requests to look out for a
GlobeEx An-22 with the RA8564G tail number. Let’s wait and see if anything pans
out.”

___

A half hour later, as Avery started
drifting to sleep, his cell phone vibrated with an incoming text. His eyes
snapped open, and his hand lashed out to scoop the cell phone off the floor
near his cot. In response to Avery’s earlier inquiry, the message from Jack
simply stated: “FOB Chapman; 2007.”

Forward
Operating Base Chapman was an old airfield in Khost, Afghanistan, near the
Pakistani border, turned into a CIA base. In 2009, one of the CIA agents, Humam
Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor who was really an al-Qaeda double agent
sent to infiltrate American intelligence networks, detonated a suicide vest at
FOB Chapman. The base chief there didn’t want to offend al-Balawi by appearing
to not trust him, so security never searched al-Balawi. Consequently, seven CIA
officers and contractors, an Afghan agent, and a Jordanian intelligence officer
were killed.

Cramer was base
chief at Chapman from 2007-2008.

It was 8:35PM Tuesday in Washington, DC,
5:35AM Wednesday in Dushanbe. The Op Center on the seventh floor of the George
Herbert Walker Bush Center for Intelligence’s Old Headquarters Building
flourished with activity. Over a dozen men and women sat around the long,
glossy conference table, their attention fixated on the multiple wall-mounted, high
definition flat-screen monitors. The monitors displayed the real time feed from
the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) the air force had tasked to this operation.  

The UAVs focused
close on the convoy of four Kamaz Ural-4320 trucks travelling down a strip of
dusty, potholed Afghan highway. Another monitor displayed a digital map of
southeastern Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan, with moving colored dots
representing the positions of the various assets in play, identified by chyron
labels.

For many of the Agency
staff present, it made an exciting diversion from their normal daily routine of
manning a cubicle or shared office space, and writing or reading reports. They
just hoped it wouldn’t take too long. Most of the CIA headquarters staff worked
a routine nine-to-five shift, and had anticipated returning to their upper middle-class
suburban homes and families in time for dinner and their preference of evening
television.

Matt Culler had
already called his wife to let her know that it would be another late night.

The director of
the National Clandestine Service was present, along with the director of the
Counterterrorism Center, and the Near East Division chief. So was the
president’s national security adviser, digitally, by way of video
teleconference from her West Wing office. The national security adviser was
unwed, practically lived out of her office, and, despite her lack of experience
with intelligence matters, liked to micromanage everything on behalf of the
president.

The pair of MQ-9
Reaper unmanned combat aerial vehicles had been on the Taliban convoy for the
last twenty minutes. The GPS tracker Avery had planted on the truck was still
transmitting, allowing the Reapers’ pilots and sensor operators to locate the
target.

When the Reapers
caught up with the convoy, the trucks had been stopped near the Tajik town of
Kulob, about fifty miles north of Afghanistan. Here, one of the Reapers also
spotted a man getting into the lead truck. The variable zoom feature on the
Reaper’s DLTV 955mm Spotter provided a remarkably close-up and clear image that
had allowed for positive identification of Mullah Adeib Arzad. His face was
well known to everyone watching in the Ops Center and to the airmen operating
the Reapers. He’d been at the top of the White House’s kill list for the past
two years.

But the fervor
died quickly out. When the trucks started rolling again, Mullah Arzad was no
longer with them. He stayed behind with two bodyguards.

It was briefly
debated whether or not one of the Reapers should kick-off a rocket into the
house Mullah Arzad had gone into, but this option was shot down by the national
security adviser. They had no intelligence on this place, and she wasn’t going
to authorize a strike on Tajik soil that could result in civilian casualties.
The administration was already taking plenty of heat for collateral damage from
drone operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

The Op Center,
which had been tracking the GPS signal even before the Reapers were put into
the air, reported that the convoy had stopped here for an hour. Analysts took
note of the farm, for future reference. It was obviously a safe house for
Mullah Arzad, and the Taliban didn’t have much of a presence within Tajikistan,
so that likely meant the property belonged to a trusted ally, like the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan. This information would be passed to Colonel Sergei
Ghazan of GKNB’s counterintelligence section at the appropriate time.

The four Ural
trucks now continued south on the highway in the direction of the Afghan
border.

The weather was optimal
for drone flights. The sun had risen early and shined brightly over Tajikistan,
and the sky was clear, with high cloud coverage. If someone on the ground
looked up and concentrated their attention, it was possible they’d see a tiny,
glimmering object hovering in the sky and think it not quite large or fast
enough to be an airplane or they may hear a feint buzzing sound. By this point,
with over a thousand drone strikes conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Taliban
and al-Qaeda were alert for the signs of UAVs in the sky.

Al-Qaeda and
Taliban feared drones the most, even more than they did JSOC search-and-destroy
teams breaking into their huts or caves in the dead of night. Like any
extensive ongoing counterterrorism operation, the drone strikes resulted in a
survival of the fittest situation, whereby the dumb or lazy terrorists were
immediately located and killed, and the smarter ones learned from the mistakes
of their predecessors and continuously adapted and survived and became ever more
challenging prey. Mullah Adeib Arzad definitely fell into the latter category,
and he’d likely disappear once he received word of his close call.

Arrangements
were already being made to task the next available drone to the Tajik farm
providing Mullah Arzad sanctuary. But it would be two hours before the air
force would be able to put a Predator on target, and by that time, there would
be no further sighting of the Taliban commander at this location.

 The Reapers,
two of them, were deployed from Bagram Air Base near Kabul, where CIA still
maintained an active base for launching drone missions against targets in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. USAF technicians at Bagram had performed a pre-flight maintenance
check on the drones. Then, locally-based air force pilots had steered the
Reapers down the runway and put them into the sky and transferred control of
the drones to the 432
^nd
Wing’s Reaper command-and-control center at Creech
Air Force Base, in Indian Springs Nevada, near Las Vegas. Here, airmen with
identical command stations piloted the Reapers by way of Ku-band satellite
link.

Contrary to
common misconceptions and poor journalism, CIA does not own or operate the
drones it utilizes, and CIA staff does not fly Predators and Reapers from the
Langley headquarters building. The drones are owned, operated, and maintained
by the air force. Through the CIA Office of Military Affairs, headed by a USAF
general, the Agency is able to relinquish operational control over drone missions.
CIA also maintains covert bases across Africa and the Middle East from which
drones are deployed.

The possibility
of intercepting the trucks and seizing the cargo and taking Mullah Arzad’s
entourage alive had been considered and turned down. Thanks to Avery obtaining
the registration number of the aircraft that delivered the weapons, it was now
clear who supplied the weapons. The GPS tracker would only continue
transmitting for another twenty hours or so before its Iridium battery died,
and it would take time to organize the ground troops and prepare an assault,
especially as US military forces were in the process of withdrawing from
Afghanistan and had all but ceased offensive operations.

And any American
military op had to first be approved by a committee of senior Afghan military
and security officials. Not coincidently, the Taliban often had advance warning
of American military offensives.

So with a cargo
of SA-24 missiles, the national security adviser and intelligence chiefs decided
to take no chances and simply eliminate the threat outright, and also deliver a
significant blow to the Taliban by eliminating one of its top commanders.

The convoy
reached the Afghan border crossing at 9:14AM, Tajik time. Culler and the others
assembled in the Ops Center and at Creech AFB watched unsurprised as the four
Ural trucks passed through the border checkpoint without being stopped by the
Afghan troops manning the border crossing.

“I think this is
as a good an opportunity as we’re going to get,” the USAF general who headed the
CIA Office of Military Affairs observed several minutes later, barely hiding
his impatience.

And D/NCS
agreed.

The targets were
well within the borders of Afghanistan now. There was little civilian traffic
on the highway, so collateral damage wasn’t a concern. But there were nearby
villages, and the Reapers would wait for the convoy to reach a more desolate
area, so that there would be no one to witness the strike.

D/NCS, under
Culler’s urging, hadn’t elaborated but had stressed to the national security
adviser the importance of keeping the operation quiet. There would be no
statements or press releases after this. If Cramer or his accomplices learned
the convoy had been hit, they might realize that they’d been compromised.

The pilots at
Creech AFB were ordered to fire their missiles.

On the main
monitor in the Ops Center, a cross hair was centered over the lead truck, which
did about sixty miles per hour on the highway. An abrupt white flash suddenly filled
the screen, briefly blinding the camera’s photoreceptors. The image was
restored a second later, in time for the observers to watch the Hellfire
missile streak into the Ural truck and transform it into a smoldering, twisted
heap of wreckage. A thick black cloud of smoke spiraled into the sky as the
diesel burned.

The truck’s
passengers were likewise reduced to microscopic residue that would later be
scraped off pieces of scorched debris for examination. The only shame, Culler
thought, was that these Taliban never knew what hit him, and they likely never
felt a thing, which was far better than what they deserved.

Two MQ-9 Reapers
were overkill, but Reapers never travelled alone on a strike mission. Each
drone carried four AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, doubling the
armament of the Reaper’s predecessor, the infamous Predator. Each Reaper’s
multi-spectral targeting system was capable of tracking and taking out multiple
ground targets simultaneously. But like any piece of technology, malfunctions
did occur, however rare in the case of the Reapers, and intelligence indicated
that the Taliban were in possession of surface-to-air missiles, which would
have little trouble knocking a drone out of the sky.

The Hellfire
missiles, originally designed to bust armored battle tanks, made quick work of
the Ural trucks. It was almost anti-climatic for those anxiously watching from
the Langley Ops Center. For the pilots, it was simply a routine sortie, one of
a half dozen such strikes they would carry out that week.

The Hellfires
bored into their targets at over nine hundred miles per hour, at which point
their twenty pound HEAT warheads detonated. One second the trucks were cruising
down the highway, the next they were obliterated wrecks and piles of mechanical
and human debris scattered across the Afghan landscape. The explosions were
more spectacular than the usual targets of Toyota Land Cruisers, the preferred
vehicle of Taliban and al-Qaeda, or mud brick huts, given the combustible cargo
the trucks carried.  

Watching the attack, Culler hoped it
wasn’t too little, too late.