Crusader One (Tier One Thrillers Book 3) Read online

  “How long on that car, Zero?” Dempsey whispered, sighting over his rifle up the hill as he backpedaled.

  “Five more seconds.”

  “We don’t have five seconds,” Dempsey said, watching more flashlight beams scanning the north side of the building overhead and hearing Arabic voices getting louder.

  “I’ll try to buy you some time,” Baldwin said. A beat later, Dempsey heard the high-pitched whine of the RQ-7B’s pusher prop in overspeed as Baldwin dove the drone behind the guards. The flashlight beams changed directions and the shouting stopped.

  The sound of car tires on pavement echoed behind Dempsey as the southbound vehicle on International Court drove by.

  “Now,” Jarvis said, and he was up sprinting toward their parked SUV in a combat crouch.

  Dempsey whirled and followed Munn, running a body length behind and scanning over his rifle for threats. Jarvis’s Suburban beeped, and the tailgate opened under electric servo power. Munn flung the corpse into the cargo area with a wet thud, leaped in beside their headless cargo, and pulled the tailgate shut manually. Jarvis was already in the driver’s seat, helmet off, engine running, and transmission in gear when Dempsey leaped into the back seat. They were under way before Dempsey got his door shut, dashing toward the intersection at Van Ness. Dempsey took his own helmet off and looked back at a crouching Munn and saw the doc’s neck, hands, and clothes were smeared with blood.

  “Got a towel?” Munn said with a tight smile.

  Dempsey stuck out a fist; his friend and teammate slammed his knuckles hard into it—the Tier One equivalent of a fist bump.

  “Zero, Three—get us the hell out of here.”

  “Roger,” Baldwin said. “Sending optimal routing to your GPS now.”

  “What about the other vehicle?” Munn asked.

  “We leave it,” Jarvis said. “The priority now is EXFIL. We can send a recovery asset later.”

  “Shane, are you up and listening?” Jarvis asked over the still active comms channel as he followed Baldwin’s route out of the dark Cleveland Park neighborhood.

  “Of course, sir,” a sheepish Smith answered. “Been eavesdropping the whole time.”

  “Get back to the airport and prep the yacht,” Jarvis said, referring to Ember’s full-size Boeing 787 executive jet. “We’re leaving.”

  “We’re in the plane already,” Smith reminded him. “When and where?”

  “I’ve gotta phone an old friend first before we can set the itinerary,” the Ember Director said. “Just have her ready to go.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Dempsey swiveled in his seat and looked back at Munn. “You gonna ride in the trunk the whole way back?”

  Munn grinned, wiping his bloody neck with a towel he’d found. “It’s that or I get blood all over the Skipper’s truck.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dempsey said and then shifted his gaze to the headless corpse.

  “You really think it’s him?” Munn said.

  Dempsey nodded. Maybe he was being obdurate, or maybe it was just wishful thinking, but he could feel it in his bones. The corpse was Rostami.

  “Well, whoever this hunk of meat turns out to be, as a doctor I can promise you only one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He ain’t gonna be doing much talking.”

  Dempsey sighed, deflating with post-op decompression and disappointment. It wasn’t supposed to have gone down like this. Justice was supposed to have been his to mete out. A wave of painful imagery—the faces of his dead SEAL brothers—indexed through his mind. Tonight, he’d let them down. He felt Munn’s eyes on him, but this time he didn’t meet his friend’s gaze.

  “Well, maybe this was for the best,” he said, turning in his seat to stare out the window as they left DC behind.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because if we’d had the chance to take him alive, I don’t know if I would have had the willpower to resist pulling the trigger.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Northbound on I-95

  Approaching the Churchville Road Exit near Aberdeen Proving Ground

  May 4

  0020 Local Time

  Cyrus took his time as he drove, following all the rules and posted speed limits. It would not serve to get stopped by a Maryland state trooper; the contents of the backpack in the passenger’s seat, wobbling back and forth, would be impossible to explain.

  He smiled at the black humor of it all.

  He took no satisfaction in what he’d done. He did not relish killing a fellow Persian, even one as vile as Rostami, but he felt no remorse, either. It had been a necessary and strategic part of this operation. Yes, the American DNI and the Israeli Mossad Chief had been eliminated, but the mission had a second component as well—to draw the American devils who had killed his father and brother into action. To activate this covert cell, Iran needed plausible deniability on the public stage regarding the attack on the DNI. His uncle had been explicit on this point. They had been careful to leave no concrete evidence—even the burned corpses, if identified, had no relationship with Iran’s covert operations. Without proof, the White House would not be able to justify overt military retaliation. To punish Iran, the American President would have no choice but to task his elite black ops unit to find the responsible party and deliver justice. This was the genius of his uncle’s plan. The American spies needed to think Iran was responsible, while lacking the necessary proof to broadcast it to the world. Killing Rostami and leaving the body inside the Iranian mission meant that tomorrow morning, the Iranian diplomatic proxy would arrive at work to find a naked, dead body in his office. Proxy Hadid would phone Tehran immediately, and the call would be routed to Amir Modiri. Since the Pakistani embassy was sovereign soil, the American police had no jurisdiction on the premises.

  As for him, Cyrus would continue north on I-95 to a safe house in Perryville, just outside the fishing village turned yuppie suburb of Havre de Grace. He would rest there for the night. The backpack and its gruesome contents he would store in an ice chest in the garage should a contingency occur in the coming weeks that would necessitate its recovery by VEVAK. That responsibility would fall to others, a member of his uncle’s Suren Circle sleeper cell most likely. Cyrus’s tasking was to travel to Amsterdam, then begin the long trek south back to Persia, where his fate—God willing—would intersect with the American assassin whom he held responsible for the murder of his entire family.

  He took a long, deep cleansing breath and said a short prayer—asking for stealth, patience, and most of all, for vengeance.

  CHAPTER 12

  Office of the Director of Ember Corporation

  Ember Hangar, Newport News International Airport

  Newport News, Virginia

  May 4

  0630 Local Time

  It happened again.

  Jarvis had no sooner finished filling his coffee tumbler than the damn thing slipped out of his hand. At least stainless steel doesn’t shatter, he thought, looking down at the mess on the floor. Time to say good-bye to ceramic mugs. Time to say good-bye to glasses. He picked up a wad of napkins from the counter by the coffee mess and dropped them on top of the puddle.

  “Let me get that for you, sir,” a voice said beside him.

  He looked over and saw Munn taking a knee. Ember’s newest recruit handed Jarvis his tumbler off the floor and then proceeded to blot up the liquid with the napkins.

  “What are you doing?” Jarvis growled. “You’ve known me long enough to know I’m the kinda guy who cleans up his own damn messes.”

  “I do,” Munn said. “But I also know that you’re the Director of this dog ’n’ pony show and you’d be better off leaving the grunt work to the grunts.”

  “It’s been a while since you rated the rank of grunt . . . Commander.”

  Munn shrugged. “The way I see it, as the new guy here, I’m at the bottom of the totem pole.”

  Jarvis shook his head. Munn was already start
ing to look like his old self. The lumberjack was back—a two-week beard, untucked plaid shirt, and hiking boots completing the look. It was going to be nice having med on the team. Dempsey had made a good call.

  “How close were you to the DNI’s house when it blew?” Munn asked, standing and tossing the soggy mess of brown napkin into the trash. “Any ringing in the ears? Lingering vertigo? Headache?”

  Jarvis reached out and gave the combat doc a squeeze on the shoulder. “It’s good to have you on the team, Dan.” Acutely aware of Munn’s scrutinizing gaze, he set his coffee tumbler down on the counter with a definitive thud. “You saw me on the op. I’m fine, so instead of trying to diagnose me, if you really want to make yourself useful, you can refill my damn coffee tumbler.”

  Munn studied him for a beat. Then, he flashed a crooked smile, grabbed the coffeepot off the warmer, and refilled the tumbler to the three-quarter mark.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Jarvis said and this time held the damn thing down on the counter while he screwed on the lid. “I’ll be in my office if anybody needs me.”

  Munn hesitated, clearly something on his mind.

  “What is it, Dan?”

  “With all due respect, sir, I know I’m new here, but everybody’s wound up pretty tight from last night. A debrief from you might go a long way to settling nerves.”

  Jarvis ran his fingers through his hair, which recently seemed to be going silver on him at an alarming rate. “I appreciate the feedback, Dan, but I’ve got some calls to make before I’m ready to do that. Everybody’s just gonna have to percolate in hot standby until then. This is a delicate situation, and until we get an ID on our tangos, there’s not much to be accomplished by bullshitting at the round table. Why don’t you go find Baldwin and the boys and familiarize yourself with the type of work they do? Whoever hit the DNI left electronic fingerprints, and our Signals department won’t stop until they find them all.”

  “Roger that, Skipper,” Munn said and went about pouring a mug of joe for himself.

  Jarvis walked back to his office and shut the door. He sat down in his task chair, set the tumbler on his desk, and stared at it. Looks like I’ll be drinking coffee out of adult sippy cups for the foreseeable future. He balled the fingers of his right hand into a fist and squeezed. After pumping his grip several times, he flexed his fingers straight, but the weakness and tingling did not abate. Jarvis repeated the exercise with his left hand, which he quickly assessed as normal. Only the right hand was giving him trouble at the moment.

  I don’t have time for this shit.

  He took a deep breath. The two most powerful intelligence Chiefs in the world were dead, assassinated on American soil. Yes, technically the attack was terrorism, but unlike other recent terror events, this had incendiary geopolitical implications. Both Israel and the United States would retaliate. If the perpetrator was aided by a state actor—which Jarvis fully suspected was the case—then both governments would likely classify the attack as an act of war. The conclusion was premature, but this had Amir Modiri’s fingerprints all over it. Persian-Israeli conflict scenarios played out in his head:

  David’s Sword: Upon confirmation that Iran has possession of nuclear warheads, Israel launches preemptive first strike with nuclear EMP detonated in the atmosphere over Tehran. IDF conducts air strikes on key Persian military bases and hard target munition (HTM) bombardment of nuclear facilities. With its military crippled, Tehran responds by tasking regional allies to retaliate. Hezbollah and Hamas launch rocket barrages across Israel. Iron Dome underperforms, leading to significant civilian casualties. Israel launches retaliatory cruise missile strikes against Gaza and Lebanon. Ultimate outcome: neighboring Arab nations pulled into a protracted war with Israel, destabilizing the Middle East and leaving hundreds of thousands of dead.

  Jaffa Scenario: Hezbollah and Hamas launch full-scale rocket offensive against Israel. Hezbollah uses precision-guided munitions obtained from Iran to strike IDF and government targets. Iron Dome is overwhelmed by a barrage in excess of fifty thousand rockets. Israel attacks Lebanon and invades Gaza. Iran declares war on Israel and responds with missile attack and mobilizes the Persian Army. IRGC leads full ground invasion of Israel . . . Ultimate outcome: occupation of Israel, Jewish genocide.

  Son of Saladin: Iran declares Tehran the head of a new Islamic caliphate upon declaration of the imminent return of the Twelfth Imam. Supreme Leader declares Iran’s intention to conquer and eliminate the Jewish state. With its regional partners, Iran launches full-scale first strike, overwhelming Israeli defenses and crippling IDF air assets. United States mobilizes to defend Israel and launches operation Blue Crush against Iran. The attack on Iran prompts the formation of an Arab state coalition, which engages American military assets, leading to escalation and eventual Russian intervention. Ultimate outcome: World War Three and global thermonuclear war.

  Persian Noose, Rogue Wave, Trojan Horse . . . The list went on. Probabilities for every what-if scenario populated the white space in his head. His mind’s eye traced the colored lines and logic gates for a myriad of US, Israeli, and Iranian moves and countermoves. Strike, retaliate, escalate. Strike, retaliate, escalate. Every path was different, but the river of falling dominos always led to the same ultimate outcome: catastrophe. Early intervention was the key to preventing everything from spiraling out of control. Israel, not the United States, was the linchpin in this grenade. And whoever would replace Sharott as Director of Mossad was a critical unknown who would have tremendous influence on the timetable and manner of Israeli retaliation. He needed to talk with Levi Harel, and it was a conversation he was not looking forward to having.

  He reached for the receiver just as the secure line rang. There were only three people in the world with knowledge of this number. One of them was dead, one was sitting in the TOC, which left only one other possibility.

  He took a deep breath and answered the call. “Kelso Jarvis.”

  “Director Jarvis, this is the White House. Please hold for the President,” a voice said.

  The line clicked three times, and then he was greeted by President Warner. “Kelso, this is President Warner. I understand from Catherine Morgan you were at the DNI’s house when it got hit.”

  “Yes, sir. I was.”

  “She also indicated that you left to pursue the bastards that hit us.”

  “That is also true, sir.”

  “And?”

  “We have three dead suspects. The first two were taken out with headshots and then burned to a crisp near the scene, but not by my people. We believe this was a result of the operation lead cleaning house after the hit.”

  “And the third?”

  “A corpse we recovered,” he said, hesitating a beat, “at another location with his head and hands chopped off. This last guy we believe was running command and control.”

  “Any positive IDs?” Warner asked.

  Jarvis exhaled, dodging the Pakistani embassy bullet for now. “CIA forensics is working on it. Hopefully we can get a positive ID on one or more from DNA because that’s all we’ve got to work with.”

  “Did you lose anyone on your team?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good, good. Who else knows about the bodies you recovered?”

  Jarvis paused. He suspected he and the President were in agreement on keeping this circle tight—incredibly tight. That’s why they had taken the last body with them. The only people who knew anything had been handpicked by Jarvis within the other agencies. Still, the President had clearly spoken with Catherine Morgan—and he knew how she felt about Ember, didn’t he?

  “The circle is tight, sir,” he said. “I am controlling the access to information myself and involving only critically necessary people—like the forensics experts that are running this in the black for me at CIA.”

  “Look, Kelso,” the President said with a heavy sigh, “the Israeli PM just left the Oval Office. He’s not taking this well. Christ, none of us are. The audacity of this attack bog
gles the mind. We kept the incident on lockdown for as long as possible, but the press is all over it now. The entire world now knows that we lost our Intelligence Director to a terrorist attack at his private residence mere miles from the capital. What message does that send our adversaries and our allies about our security? What message does that send our foes about our readiness? What message does that send the American people about our ability to protect them if we couldn’t even protect the DNI?”

  “Yes, sir, I understand—”

  “I’m not finished,” Warner barked. “Whoever did this will be held accountable. Prime Minister Shamone and I have agreed that our two governments will share any and all intelligence and cooperate fully to hunt down and capture the bastards responsible. Now I know your theory on the matter; you don’t have to remind me. If this was a false-flag operation, masked as an act of terror, I will consider it an act of war and respond accordingly. But I cannot act without proof.”

  “Understood,” Jarvis said, wondering how he should interpret respond accordingly.

  “Catherine Morgan has assumed the mantle of acting DNI until we can get Philips’s successor confirmed.”

  “Have you made a decision on who that will be, sir?” Jarvis felt his jaw tighten. The wrong person at the helm as DNI could mean the end of Ember, or worse, its emasculation to just another bureaucratic, ineffective tool for the politicians.

  “I have a short list—a very short list—and both you and Ms. Morgan are on it.”

  The President’s words took him by surprise. He couldn’t possibly be the DNI. Who would lead Ember? Smith wasn’t ready for the chair, and Dempsey wasn’t ready to be Ops O yet. The team needed him at the helm. Besides, he didn’t want to be the DNI. The position represented everything he loathed in their line of work: bureaucracy and red tape, politics and gamesmanship. As DNI, he would be batted and buffeted a million different directions, never able to focus on seeing any single operation through to completion. As DNI, he’d constantly be fending off efforts to undermine his authority, denigrate his effectiveness, and diminish his reputation. But worst of all, as DNI, he would be forced to delegate work he was best qualified to do to lesser men who would achieve lesser results. In Jarvis’s mind, becoming the DNI was a demotion, not a promotion. He simply could not afford to accept such an offer. And neither could the country.