Mission Compromised (2 page)

C & C.
Command and Control

CRAF.
Civil Reserve Air Fleet

CTG.
Counter Terrorism Group

CTOC.
Counter Terrorism Operations Center

CT OPS.
Counter Terrorism Operations

DCI.
Director of Central Intelligence; the head of the CIA

Delta.
Elite special-operations unit of the U.S. Army; its existence has never been officially confirmed

DIS.
Distribution

DOD.
Department of Defense

Drone.
Remotely piloted aircraft; also RPV or UAV

DSC.
Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest decoration for valor in the Army and Air Force, equivalent to the Navy Cross for sailors and Marines

DZ.
Drop Zone, the spot on the ground designated for a parachute
drop of personnel, equipment, or supplies.

E and E
Escape and Evade

EmCon.
Emission Control

E/T.
Emergency Termination

E-PRB.
An emergency radio beacon that begins to transmit when an aircraft or vessel has suffered a catastrophic event; e.g., a crash or sinking

EWO.
Electronic Warfare Officer

FAC.
Forward Air Controller

FLOTUS.
First Lady of the United States

GCHQ.
British Signals and Intelligence Agency, similar to U.S. National Security Agency

GPS.
Global Positioning System

GRU.
Soviet Military Intelligence Service

GSA.
General Security Administration of U.S. government

Gulags.
Soviet-era labor prisons

Gunner.
Slang for Marine Warrant Officer

Gunny.
Slang for Marine Gunnery Sergeant

Gutra.
Arab headdress

HA-HO.
High Altitude-High Opening parachute deployment.

HARM.
High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile

HQMC.
Headquarters, Marine Corps

HM.
Hospitalman or medical corpsman, the Navy and Marine equivalent of a medic in the Army and Air Force

IAEA.
International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations organization

Igal.
The black, braided cord that holds the Arab
gutra
or headdress

ISEG.
International Sanctions Enforcement Group; a thirtyeight-man, joint U.S.-UK unit

ISET.
International Sanctions Enforcement Team; each joint U.S.-UK team has seven men

IT.
Information Technology

JCS.
Joint Chiefs of Staff

JSOC.
The Joint Special Operations Command

KIA.
Killed in Action

Klicks.
Military slang for kilometers

LIMDIS.
Limited Distribution

LTD.
Laser Target Designator

MEU.
Marine Expeditionary Unit; a reinforced Infantry Battalion of approximately eighteen hundred men

Mishlah.
Arab clothing, a long cloak worn over the
thobe

MOS.
Military Occupational Specialty, the codified list of military job classifications

Mossad.
Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service

MoveRep.
Movement Report

NCO.
Non-commissioned officer

NIC.
Nicaragua or Nicaraguan

NMCC.
National Military Command Center; located at the Pentagon

NODIS.
No Distribution

NOK.
Next of Kin

NSA.
National Security Agency

NSC.
National Security Council

OEOB.
Old Executive Office Building

OPSEC.
Operational Security

OSD.
Office of Secretary of Defense

OTH Imaging.
Over the Horizon imaging technology

PAO.
Public Affairs Office(r)

PCS.
Permanent Change of Station

PFC.
Private First Class

PFLP.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

PM.
Prime Minister

POTUS.
President of the United States

PRI-1.
Priority One, the highest priority assigned for the assignment of personnel or the acquisition of military equipment or material

PT.
Physical Training

QRF.
Quick Reaction Force

R/F.
Radio Frequency

RP.
Rendezvous Point

RPG.
Rocket Propelled Grenade

RPT.
Repeat

RPV.
Remotely Piloted Vehicle, UAV, or drone

S.
Secret

S and R.
Search and Recovery

SAM.
Surface to Air Missile

SAR.
Search and Rescue

SAS.
Special Air Service, elite unit of the British Royal Army and Air Force

SEALs.
Naval special operations unit: “Sea, Air, Land”

SEAL Team 6.
U.S. Navy's crack counterterrorist unit

SecDef.
Secretary of Defense

SG.
Secretary General (of the United Nations)

SitRep.
Situation Report

SOCOM.
Special Operations Command

Solidarity.
Polish labor and political movement that was
opposed to the Communist regime during the 1970s and '80s

SOP.
Standard Operating Procedure

SOT.
Special Operations Training

SSS.
see Amn Al-Khass

STARS.
Surface-to-Air Recovery System

SWO.
Senior Watch Officer

S-1.
Administrative and Personnel function on a military staff or command

S-2.
Intelligence and Counterintelligence function on a military staff or command

S-3.
Operations and Training function on a military staff or command

S-4.
Logistics and Supply function on a military staff or command

S-5.
Communications function on a military staff or command

Tagia.
Small skull cap that keeps the
gutra
(headdress) from slipping from the head

“The Tank.
” Secure conference room adjacent to the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their deputies meet

Thobe.
Arab traditional dress, a long, sometimes hooded, sleeved over-garment

TOW.
BGM-71 TOW, a short-range, wire-guided, air-to-surface missile.

TS.
Top Secret

UAVs.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, also Drone or RPV

UN OPS CTR
. United Nations Operations Center

UNHCR.
United Nations High Commission for Refugees, a refugee relief agency

UNSCOM.
United Nations Special Commission for weapons inspections in Iraq

USO Club.
United Services Organization, an arm of the Salvation Army devoted to serving the U.S. military

USG
United States Government

Vetted.
Cleared, as in security clearance

VPOTUS.
Vice President of the United States

“Wally World.
”Slang for Delta Force HQ at Fort Bragg, N.C.

WHCA.
(pronounced “wha-cah”) White House Communications Agency

WHDB.
White House Data Base, euphemism used to describe the White House computer systems in the 1990s

 

PROLOGUE

 

 

Paris, France

________________________________________

Friday, 14 November 1986

2130 Hours, Local

 

W
hen the tiny dart hit Pierre Sirois behind his right ear, his right hand reached up as though to swat an insect. His arm never made it past his shoulder. A terrible gagging sound came from the young Frenchman's throat as the cyanide-toxin mix shut down his central nervous system with lightning speed. His fiancée's smile turned to horror as she watched her husband-never-to-be slump to the sidewalk. Maria Therndola screamed at the top of her lungs.

It did no good. Pierre Sirois, age twenty-nine, a successful multinational investment banker and engaged to one of the most beautiful women in France—and former unilateral asset of the CIA—was
already dead. By the time Maria's pitiful cries summoned the apartment building's aging concierge, the nimble, shadowy figure hidden in the boxwood trees twenty feet from the apartment door had already slipped silently into the darkness of the alley behind the building. In another twelve seconds the black-clad perpetrator was in the backseat of a dark gray Citröen, pulling off his ski mask and coveralls. Two other men sat in the front seat with the engine idling.

Well before the discordant warble of the ambulance siren could be heard plying its way on a fruitless mission, the Citröen sped east out of the alley, turning on its lights only when it reached the side street. The auto raced south, down Boulevard de Sebastopol and onto the St. Michel Bridge. At the span's midpoint over the Seine, the car squealed to a stop in the dark space between the pools of light from two street-lamps. The man in the backseat got out, walked calmly to the rail, and dropped a bundle—the coveralls and ski mask, along with a compressed air pistol and the remaining six poison darts—into the water, seventy feet below.

Two young lovers heard the muffled splash and paused in their embrace just long enough to see the faint ripple from the object thrown into the river, but they thought nothing of it. The lovers never knew how close they had come to dying that night. But it didn't matter—the Paris police would never question the couple.

After disposing of the evidence, the shooter quickly rejoined his two comrades in the Citröen, and the car again sped off to the south, past the Montparnasse Cemetery where Pierre Sirois would be buried, and headed onto the
autoroute
for Troyes.

Shortly before noon the following morning, the three arrived in Marseilles, and by early afternoon were on the afternoon ferry to Algiers. Just after 4:30 P.M., the Marseilles Prefecture Police discovered
the still-smoking, burned-out hulk of a 1986 Citröen, reported stolen from a pharmacist in Reims. They dutifully wrote out their report that the vehicle was a total loss and that the Citröen had been “presumably stolen by drug dealers.”

At the hospital where they took Pierre Sirois in a futile effort to revive him, the medical examiner found in the young man's wallet a business card for “William P. Goode, National Security Company” with an American post office box address and a telephone number in the state of Maryland.

The tiny dart that killed Pierre had fallen out of his neck while his body was being loaded into the ambulance and was never found. Nor was the microscopic puncture wound on his neck. There was no redness or swelling around the entry site, so the medical examiner concluded that based on the apparent symptoms, the death was from natural causes.

When Maria came to claim his body, the medical examiner gave her the contents of Pierre's pockets. In the plastic bag were his wallet, some franc notes and coins, a ring that his father had given him, and a tiny metal fish, less than an inch long. He always had the fish with him, and he'd had an identical one made out of gold that Maria wore on a gold chain as a necklace. She had asked him about the significance of the little metal fish, but all he would ever say was, “Someday I'll tell you all about it.” Now he never would.

 

Lisbon, Portugal

________________________________________

Friday, 14 November 1986

2200 Hours, Local

 

As he did every night at this time, five days a week, Sr. Alvaro Cabral got up from his desk, closed his office door, bid his receptionist
boa noite
, and walked out the front door of the Cabral Shipping Company building that his family had owned on Rua Miradouro for nearly three centuries. Alvaro Cabral, age sixty-two, was a man of precision. His family had made its fortune by delivering the goods of a once-proud empire—where they were wanted and when. And he carried on that legacy from his office overlooking the port of Lisbon. From his windows he could see his company's piers and warehouses on the Rio Douro.

Those who thought they knew Alvaro Cabral described him as a careful man, a person of character with no known vices who kept to himself. Few people even knew his political leanings. He steered clear, they would say, of the political firestorms that had swept his country, from autocratic rule to socialism, in the 1970s. Sr. Cabral had no enemies, only competitors. And even his competitors admired how Cabral had somehow saved the family holdings in Angola when the former Portuguese colony was torn apart by civil war in the early 1980s.