Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (7 page)

The next time
Avery’s and Poacher’s paths crossed, in Iraq two years later, Avery was with
Special Activities Division and Dalton was a private contractor with
Blackwater. With a wife back home and two teenagers who needed to be put
through college, Poacher had accepted Blackwater’s lucrative contract. But
after spending two years in Iraq as a hired gun and going through a divorce, he’d
decided he wanted to be something more than just a mercenary and went to work
for CIA.

Avery already
knew Flounder and Reaper, too.

The name Reaper
came from the fact that Ted Collins had originally gone to school to become a
mortician, but he’d dropped out at the age of twenty to enlist in the navy. Two
years later, he completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL School and was
assigned to SEAL Team Four, tasked with Central and South America. Four years
later, he passed selection and was accepted into the navy’s Special Warfare
Development Group, or DEVGRU, the navy’s counter-terrorist unit. From there, he
hunted Serbian war criminals in the Balkans and saw action in Afghanistan and
Iraq. In 2008, when an RPG took down his Chinook in Afghanistan’s Kunar
Province, he suffered severe wounds to his leg and back and was invalidated out
of the navy. After a year of physical therapy, he completed training at the
Farm and became a case officer before joining SAD. He still moved with a slight
limp to his gait, but it hadn’t slowed down his run times or his performance at
Harvey Point’s Kill House.

Physically,
Flounder was the most distinctive member of the team and always stood out. He
was short and squat, with the thick, muscled body of a power lifter. A shaved,
bullet-shaped head sat on his wide shoulders. He didn’t look like a SEAL. SEALs
tended to have the lean physics of competitive swimmers or runners. He came
from Team Three, the SEAL unit tasked with the Middle East. After leaving the
navy, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department’s Metro Division, before
being recruited by the Special Activities Division when the Agency needed
experienced Middle East operators to stick in Libya during ODYSSEY DAWN.

The only
unfamiliar face to Avery was a former air force combat controller who Poacher
introduced as Larry Rollins, aka Mockingbird, or M-bird for short. M-bird came
to the Agency from USAF’s 24
^th
Special Tactics Squadron. He did
tours with Task Force 145, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) unit
that hunted high value targets in Iraq. His role included directing and coordinating
helicopter operations and air support for the assault teams on the ground. The
handle Mockingbird was bestowed upon him as a result of friendly inter-service
rivalry and the fact that his counterparts in Delta and the SEALs thought it a joke
that the “air farce” fielded its own special operations troops. Although being
one of the only airmen on the task force invariably made him the subject of
jokes, the other Task Force 145 operators valued his contributions and treated
him as an equal. Given his skin color, CIA naturally used him for assignments
in Africa, including stints in Nigeria, Mali, and Somalia.

The team had
just returned from southern Turkey, where they’d equipped and trained the Free
Syrian Army rebels with optically-tracked TOW anti-tank rockets. Rumor at the
Point had it that Poacher and the guys slipped across the border to give the
rebels a live-fire demonstration against a Syrian armored convoy.

Avery and
Poacher discussed business and brought each other up-to-date. Sideshow’s orders
were to remain in place, on standby, in the event that actionable intelligence developed
on Cramer’s location. Or as Poacher cynically described it, sit on their asses
until Cramer’s body was found, and then slip back into Afghanistan and fly back
home.

Avery recounted
his conversation with Gerald and explained his next moves for the night. Then
he shaved his two-week old beard and changed into jeans and a black t-shirt.
Colonel Ghazan had only gotten a good look at him with his facial hair and
sunglasses.

Avery used
FalconView to find the locations where he was to meet SCINIPH and Dagar Nabiyev,
because the CIA street maps Gerald provided dated back to the 1950s.

He also searched
Google News. Associated Press ran a story about a murdered American tourist but
did not identify the victim. Regional newspapers and Russia’s Interfax went
with the story, too, but not in any significant detail, and neither Wilkes nor
Cramer was named. It didn’t look like CNN, FOX, or any of the other American
corporate news-as-entertainment services even mentioned it, which wasn’t
surprising. Everyone was more interested in the latest congressional sex
scandal, missing blond teenager, and the pop singer arrested for cocaine
possession, and most Americans had no idea Tajikistan even existed.  

At nine, Avery
took Sideshow’s Lada to his appointment with CK/SCINIPH.  

Like a good case officer, Avery arrived
early at Cinema Jami on Gorky Street to conduct basic area familiarization, to
scope out the meet site, to assess the surrounding area and security risks.

Twenty-five
minutes before the movie started, he purchased his ticket. As instructed by SCINIPH,
he took the third seat left of the center aisle in the last row in the
darkened, musty-smelling, run down theater. Three families and two couples had
already taken their seats. He left his cap on, the recognition signal for SCINIPH.

Throughout the
week, Darren had been trying to setup a meet with SCINIPH. The Russian agent
had already ditched him two days earlier. An agent always got nervous when he
was turned over to a new handler he’d never met before. Since SCINIPH didn’t
know Darren, Avery arranged with Gerald to go in Darren’s place.

The movie
started. It was a Bollywood film, not Avery’s first choice, but that didn’t
matter. He looked straight ahead at the screen, but his attention was concentrated
on his right peripheral, through which he monitored the aisle and the people
still coming in through the set of double doors seven feet away. He didn’t know
what SCINIPH looked like, and it was now too dark to make out any visually
distinguishing features anyway.

SCINIPH was in total
control here. He’d picked the time and location of the meet, set the rules, and
would be the one to make contact. The fact that he was the last person to have
seen Cramer and was therefore possibly complicit in his abduction wasn’t lost
on Avery. Either way, even if he wasn’t involved, SCINIPH would have still seen
the IMU video with Cramer by now—there was no way he’d miss it since Russian
intelligence would be very interested in this matter— and he’d be on edge,
wondering if he’d been outed by Cramer under torture.

Avery carried
his Glock 17 with a spare magazine in a BDS Tactical Gear holster beneath his Columbia
windbreaker, which he kept zippered just less than halfway. The windbreaker was
baggy and loose enough to conceal the Glock and not reveal any unnatural
bulges. The evening temperature outside had dropped to the low seventies, with
a cool breeze, so the lightweight jacket wouldn’t look out of place.

Twenty minutes
into the movie, while the audience laughed, Avery heard the first set of double
doors, those going into the vestibule, then the second leading into the theater
proper. Through his peripheral, he saw a smallish figure step down the aisle
and drop into the seat at the end of his row. The newcomer reeked of Turkish
tobacco.

Avery continued
looking ahead at the screen and didn’t turn his head. Neither did the man two
seats away.

He sat through
the next fifteen minutes of the movie. He didn’t have a clue what it was about,
but the Tajiks thought it was hilarious.  And SCINIPH was good. Avery didn’t
even see him get up to leave and didn’t know how long he was gone. He shifted
his eyes periodically to the right. One second the silhouette of the man was
there, and the next it wasn’t. The scent of Turkish cigarettes still lingered
in the air.

Avery turned his
head and found the end seat empty. In the seat immediately next to him, there was
a paper bag of popcorn that had been left behind. He grabbed the bag and palmed
the note that had been left inside.

Five minutes
later, Avery quietly left the theater and examined the note. It instructed him
to go to Casa Labriola where there was a reservation for him in the name of Darren.
He didn’t know where this was and didn’t have the time or means to find out, so
he hopped in the nearest cab.

He knew SCINIPH
was giving him the run around, running countersurveillance to see if he came
alone. Although he couldn’t blame him under the circumstances, it raised
questions in Avery’s mind because this was exactly what the handler directed
his agent to do before a meet. It also indicated that SCINIPH likely had
watchers along the route. But if SCINIPH was an FSB traitor spying for the
Americans, then who were his backup? This was starting to feel more like a
legit FSB op.

The cab ride lasted
ten minutes.

Avery tipped the
driver, exited the vehicle, and strode inside the restaurant. The hostess spoke
poor English, so he just repeated the name of the reservation and was soon
shown to a corner table in a back corner near the kitchen and handed a menu. He
hadn’t eaten since leaving DC, and the hunger was suddenly sinking in. He
opened the menu and had only enough time to realize it was an Italian
restaurant before he was aware of someone approaching his table.

The man was
short but thickly built. He had a badly receding hairline trimmed close, with a
stubble beard and strong Slavic features. He pulled a chair out and sat down
across from Avery and placed both hands on the table, but he could easily, and
likely did, have a gun beneath his half-opened leather jacket, just like Avery.
SCINIPH was FSB, and Avery had no doubt that he was armed. He looked to be in
his mid-thirties, too young to be a KGB hold-over, but his 201 file indicated
that he’d seen plenty of action in Chechnya, the Balkans, and Georgia, ran
anti-mafiya ops in the former Soviet republics, and had more than a couple
kills under his belt.

“Sciniph,” Oleg
Ramzin said in thickly accented English by way of introduction.

“Darren,” Avery
replied, holding eye contact. He returned his attention to the menu and was
aware of the Russian’s eyes on him. Ramzin was a pro. He’d know how to read
people. “Thanks for coming. I know you’re taking a risk being here.”

“Robert was a close
friend of mine,” Ramzin said. He took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. It
was the same scented tobacco Avery smelled in the theater. “He is a good man. I
am most concerned.”

“So are we.”

“These Uzbeks
are a nasty lot. I’ve spent time in Tashkent. I have seen firsthand what they
do to their enemies. They are savages, worse than animals.”

“What do you
know about what happened to Robert?” Avery decided that Ramzin, if he was on
the level, could be a valuable source. Naturally, FSB would take an interest in
Cramer’s abduction, and the Russians had better sources here than CIA did. The
problem was Ramzin couldn’t do anything unnatural like express too much
interest in the American hostage, without arousing the Russians’ suspicions.  

“You are aware
of my position, yes? I have my sources, too. I work closely with Tajik security
services. I heard the early reports of a missing American from the embassy and
another found dead. But I didn’t know it was Robert until I saw the video they
put on Internet earlier today.” He shook his head sadly. “You know, my country
hunted IMU long before America invaded Afghanistan. These Uzbeks are vicious,
far worse than the Arabs or the Afghans, especially this fellow Otabek Babayev.
He was in GRU once, did you know that?”

Avery didn’t.
That bit of information hadn’t been in the dossier CIA had on Babayev.

“He was a
lieutenant of
vozdushno desantnye
voyska
,
airborne forces, assigned to Military Intelligence Directorate. His father was
white Russian, his mother an Uzbek and a devout Muslim. In Afghanistan, his
patrol searched a village after a Soviet chemical weapons attack. The
commanding officer ordered Babayev’s troops to execute surviving villagers.
There was a young Afghan girl there, badly burned and suffering. Babayev tried
to comfort her. He held her in his arms, but her skin peeled off. He shot her
through the back of her head so that she never saw the pistol. Then he executed
his commanding officer and killed the two soldiers and the KGB political officer
who attempted to apprehend him. He wandered into the mountains alone and joined
the Afghan mujahedeen. After the war, he returned to Uzbekistan and learned
that his mother was imprisoned and tortured by the Russians in reprisal for his
actions. He met up with that lunatic Namangani and joined the IMU.” Ramzin
shook his head again. “Babayev killed many of my friends. Now I am afraid he
has another.”

“Your country is
confident that the IMU is responsible for what happened to Cramer?”

“
Da
, we
know IMU is responsible. This has been confirmed by our Tajik and Uzbek agents.
 Unfortunately, my service will not openly cooperate with you, you understand, but
I will pass along anything that I hear. Do you think I may be in danger? Have
you heard anything? It would create trouble for me if my people were to learn
of my association with Robert.”

So it’s your own
safety you’re concerned about
, Avery though, but he understood why.
If the IMU posted Cramer’s interrogation, and he named agents, Oleg Ramzin
could expect a long and unpleasant stay at the Lubyanka. He probably hoped that
Cramer was already dead. “I’ve heard nothing to indicate that you personally
may be in danger, but you know how the game’s played. If Robert is under
extreme duress and drugged, it’s a possibility that you’ll be named. Hey, just
be careful and smart.  If we suspect you’re compromised, we’ll bring you out.”

That seemed to
placate Ramzin, though Avery realized he’d just made a promise he didn’t know
if CIA would keep. It depended on how valuable he was to the Agency. He
suspected the answer was not very much. The joke was that agents, except for
the rare highly placed one, were like mushrooms. They were best kept in the
dark and fed shit.

“When was the
last time you spoke with Robert?” Avery asked.

“Last month. We
meet once a month.”

“You were
supposed to see him this past Sunday, in Ayni.”

“This is true.”

“What happened?”

“He never came.
I arrived at the café, our meeting place for this month, at three that
afternoon. I wait another ten minutes, and he never arrives, never contacts me.
So I leave. It happens sometimes that he may not be there, but he leaves the
signal, a chalk mark, so that I know. This time, there was no chalk mark, and
later there was no communication from him to reschedule.”

The gears turned
in Avery’s head. Cramer left the embassy at 2:34PM. If he never made it to
Ayni, then he must have been nabbed within an extremely short time-frame.
According to Gerald, it was maybe a twenty minute drive to Ayni from the
embassy.

That meant
Cramer allowed himself twenty-five minutes to make a twenty minute drive.
That’s nowhere near sufficient time to do a proper surveillance detection run and
then make it to Ayni, signal SCINIPH they were clear, and get to the designated
meeting site. That was just sloppy and lazy tradecraft. That definitely wasn’t
Cramer.

Avery’s
instincts also told him that SCINIPH was omitting something. Maybe not
necessarily lying outright, but he was almost definitely withholding something.
Avery checked his watch. He didn’t have much time left. He continued chatting
with the Russian for another several minutes, then placed some money on the
table to cover his dinner and left Ramzin alone in the restaurant.