American Operator Read online

  Ember had been tasked to bring him in.

  Dempsey lowered the scope and glanced inside the hotel room at Elizabeth Grimes’s lean, muscular frame stretched prone on the dining room table. She had one knee pulled up and her cheek pressed against her sniper rifle as she scanned the horizon through the open sliding glass door. A part of him would have preferred to be on sniper duty rather than quarterbacking the op, but he was only average on the .300 WinMag, as the M91A2 was known in the SEAL Teams. How Grimes would perform was still an unknown. According to Shane Smith, Ember’s current Director, her marks at sniper school had been shit hot, but this was her first mission manning the long gun. There was a world of difference between plinking targets and exploding heads. Not everyone was cut out to be an angel of death. Was Elizabeth?

  Looking at her, body and weapon merged as if a single organism, he wondered why she’d wanted to go down the sniper path. He thought he knew, but they’d never actually talked about it. The brutal terrorist sleeper attack on the Midrachov in Jerusalem a year ago had affected all of them, but Grimes most profoundly. The AK-47 round she’d taken to the chest had almost killed her. In fact, technically, it had. She’d been flatlined when they’d reached the OR at Jerusalem Medical Center. He remembered her head lolled to the side; her skin gone gray; and her glassy, lifeless eyes. He remembered telling Dan Munn that she was dead and how the SEAL-turned-surgeon had whirled to face him and growled, “She’s dead when I say she’s dead.” By God’s grace, Munn’s will, or possibly a combination of both, Grimes had pulled through.

  On the outside, there was no mistaking Grimes 2.0. She’d always been fit, but over the past year she’d packed on at least fifteen pounds of lean muscle. In fact, that fifteen pounds was probably more like thirty because she’d lost fifteen pounds during her stint in the hospital. She’d cut her postrecovery convalescence short with the most aggressive PT program he had ever seen. The gray tank top she wore tonight advertised the results: defined, muscled arms propping up a lean triangular torso. Her recently trimmed auburn hair was pulled back in a stubby ponytail, except for a too-short strand she had tucked behind her left ear. She was focused—locked on. She should probably be the least of his worries, but she wasn’t.

  “What the hell are we doing?” Grimes murmured, barely audible.

  His stomach went sour at this double-edged sword of a comment. Was she referring to Ember and this op, or was she referring to the wedge between the two of them that had formed over the past year? Dempsey treaded cautiously. He didn’t do emotions well—they were just too much damn work, and history had proven there was no return on investment.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

  “I mean, it’s been a year, JD.” She sighed, her eye still on the scope. “A year since Operation Crusader. Amir Modiri is dead. Justice was meted. We fulfilled our charter.”

  “Yeah, what’s your point?”

  “That this is mission number, what, twenty-two, since Crusader? And here we are, chasing down another random dirtbag. This is not Ember. There are plenty of other groups—groups specifically chartered for these activities—that should be out here instead of us. This is not what Ember was conceived for.”

  “Snatching al-Fahkoury is not the type of op you give to the B-team. This is a direct action mission—exactly what Ember was conceived for.”

  She disengaged from her rifle and looked at him. “How is taking al-Fahkoury related to surveilling Trugga two weeks ago in Nigeria? Or Mali Haswani in Qatar before that, or Din Tuluk Amin in Malaysia before that?”

  “They’re all terrorists, Elizabeth,” he said, his irritation rising. “That’s what we do—we find and stop terrorists.”

  She shook her head. “They’re all unrelated terrorists. Can’t you see it? Jarvis is running Ember ragged chasing flies. Go here, check on this guy. Now stop, pack up, and go over there and check on that guy. Hold on, change of plans, go watch this other new guy instead. Okay, now shoot him. Thanks. Hurry up, pack your bags, time to surveil the next guy . . . It’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s what counterterrorism is,” he said, exasperated. “That’s how it works in the IC.”

  “That’s how it works for the intelligence community as a whole, but that’s not what we do—or not what we used to do. It’s not why Ember was conceived.”

  He sighed. “Okay, fine, I’ll play along. Tell me, what is it that we should be doing?”

  “We should be tasked to longitudinally prosecute whoever is the greatest threat to US national security until that threat is dead and neutralized. Just like we did with Modiri and VEVAK in Iran. I didn’t sign on to swat flies, JD. I signed on to slay dragons. What happened to our autonomy? What happened to our focus? We should be hunting tomorrow’s bin Laden, tomorrow’s Modiri . . .”

  “How do you know this guy’s not the next bin Laden? In five years, al-Fahkoury could become the type of guy you’re talking about. Are you suggesting we leave him in play and wait and see if that happens?”

  “al-Fahkoury is definitely not the next bin Laden,” she said, screwing up her face at him. With a huff, she turned her attention back to her scope. “Never mind.”

  He watched her for a beat. On the one hand, he understood her frustration. When you were operating at the tip of the spear, sometimes it was hard to see the big picture. Maybe al-Fahkoury wasn’t the next bin Laden, but taking him out of the game made the world a safer place by removing a well-oiled cog from the global terrorism machine. Like it or not, “swatting flies,” as she’d called it, was part of an operator’s job description. And besides, if there was another mastermind of proxy warfare like Amir Modiri out there, then Jarvis would give Ember tasking to take him down. If there was one thing in the universe that Dempsey had learned he could trust with unwavering confidence, it was that no matter how complex the problem, no matter how convoluted the details, the DNI saw the threat and knew how best to prosecute it.

  He shook his head, not sure what else to say to her, and forced his thoughts back to the mission at hand. Intelligence indicated the meet was scheduled to happen at sea—a prerequisite demanded by the other party. They didn’t know who al-Fahkoury was meeting on the inbound yacht, but the mere fact that al-Fahkoury was not controlling the logistics was informative. Dempsey had already concluded that the unknown party in this meet-up was a “money guy.” Of course, the money guy himself wouldn’t actually be on that yacht; that’s not how they operated. Money guys hovered above it all, conducting their nefarious business via proxies and lieutenants. Arm’s-length separation and layers of obfuscation were the name of the game—these were methods the bad guys had figured out a long, long time ago.

  Never do your own dirty work.

  The half-moon hanging in the clear night sky provided enough light that he could see the Bilgin 156 luxury yacht without night vision. Even without the moon, it wouldn’t have mattered. These guys were operating without stealth in mind—purple mood lights illuminated the main deck, and the green-blue glow of the yacht’s Jacuzzi emanated from the stern. Dempsey was surprised he couldn’t hear bass speakers thumping. It never ceased to amaze him how often men’s carnal desires undermined their OPSEC.

  “La Traviata, crossing one nautical mile inbound,” said a voice in Dempsey’s earpiece. The voice belonged to Richard Wang, Ember’s resident “all things cyber” boy wonder who was camped out in a room two levels below them. Dempsey pictured the young cybernerd genius tapping away on his computer: a large-diameter parabolic dish sitting beside the sliding glass door, a pile of energy drink cans strewn across the carpet, and a cold mocha cappuccino on the desk.

  “Yes, Bronco, we can all see them,” Dempsey growled. “But when are you going to have comms up so we can hear them?”

  “Damn, you’re grumpy tonight,” Wang came back.

  “He’s always grumpy these days,” Dan Munn chimed in from a third location—a corner room on the second story with a view of the beach and the access road le
ading to the marina. Munn had been tapped to lead Charger team—a three-man assault force rounded out by Ember’s two new SAD recruits. The plan was to intercept al-Fahkoury’s convoy on the access road prior to its reaching the marina parking lot. Taking al-Fahkoury on land was more covert, simpler, and less dangerous for the Ember assault team than conducting a maritime operation. Once they’d positively confirmed the target ship, they could leave it in play. Yachts weren’t submarines. They were easy to track and hard to disappear. Plus, it would be interesting to see what the yacht did in reaction to al-Fahkoury’s no-show. What communications would follow? Where would the yacht go next? Disappearing al-Fahkoury right before the meeting would incite a reaction, and every reaction was an opportunity to collect intelligence . . .

  Shit, Dempsey thought, Ember has me thinking like a spook all the time now.

  “FleetBroadband, just like I suspected,” Wang announced in a victorious tone.

  “Say again?” Dempsey asked.

  “They’re using FleetBroadband on AlphaSat,” Wang continued. “You know, if I wanted to be rich, all I’d have to do is quit this rodeo and become a private IT contractor for these dumbasses.”

  “Get to the point, Bronco,” Dempsey growled.

  “We’ve got an arrangement with Inmarsat Maritime. FleetBroadband is their satellite internet service, and AlphaSat is the satellite covering Europe and the Mideast,” the kid explained. “And by ‘we,’ I mean the NSA and me, and by ‘the NSA and me,’ I mean the NSA.”

  “And what arrangement is that?”

  “That Inmarsat Maritime’s encryption protocols are not as awesome as they advertise.”

  “I take that to mean you’re in?”

  “Of course I’m in. They’ve got five computers and a half-dozen mobile phones on the shipboard Wi-Fi network. What a bunch of knobs. I’m just going to turn all their phones into live mikes,” Wang said, chuckling. “In principle, we should be able to listen in wherever anybody goes. Even belowdecks. Hell, by the time I hijack all their shit, we won’t even need the directional mike I dragged up here.”

  Despite himself, Dempsey cracked a smile at that.

  “Stable, this is Charger One. While we wait on Bronco, has there been any chatter or movement from the primary target?” Munn asked, referring to the al-Fahkoury contingent staying at a guesthouse a few miles away.

  “Nothing significant, Dan, or I would have reported it,” Ian Baldwin—Stable—answered from his workstation in Ember’s Tactical Operations Center in Virginia. Dempsey pictured the tall lanky mathematician turned Ember Signals Director standing behind his two young analysts, Chip and Dale, monitoring feeds from the satellites tasked for the op.

  “That’s a good indicator that despite the boat’s arrival, they’re probably not meeting tonight,” Dempsey said into the thin mike boom beside his mouth.

  “I did predict the meeting would occur after sunrise, if you recall,” Baldwin said.

  “We all remember, Stable,” Dempsey said.

  “That prediction was based on what again?” Munn chimed in.

  “I’ve tried to explain how the algorithms work, Dan,” Baldwin said, using his only-mildly-exasperated voice and eschewing code names as usual. “It’s just math.”

  Dempsey shook his head. It wasn’t that Baldwin was undisciplined or sloppy; rather, he was so supremely confident in Ember’s comms gear and their encryption protocols that he made a habit of chatting in the clear. On the one hand, Dempsey got it. He’d been more than used to playing by big-boy rules in his Tier One unit, but on the other hand, it just bugged him. Call-sign protocol was born from blood, like so many of the operational methodologies they employed.

  “Stable, this is Mustang. Let’s try to keep it tight tonight. Call signs only,” Dempsey said.

  After a cool beat, Baldwin came back: “Copy, Mustang.”

  “I’ve got good visuals now,” Grimes said to Dempsey, her right eye glued to her scope. “One tango walking the port rail . . . two dudes on the stern, one smoking and one holding a rifle. They look like security.” He watched her switch the high-tech scope from night vision to thermal. “On thermal I’ve got two, no, three tangos on the bridge—ship’s captain perhaps sitting in the middle and two others facing him. Belowdecks I have four tangos. Wait, hold on a second—”

  The tension in her voice and the way her body stiffened told him something unexpected had caught her attention.

  “Make that five bodies belowdecks. Two of the five appear to be captive.” She switched her headset to hot mike, and Dempsey heard her talking beside him and then half a beat later echoing in his left ear. “Stable, this is Mustang. Thermals suggest we might have hostages on the boat. Do you have any intel suggesting this meeting could be a prisoner swap?”

  “There’s been nothing in the previous comms between the parties to suggest that,” Baldwin said. “Some of the data suggests a transaction is scheduled for this meeting, but we assumed it was financial . . . I suppose we could revisit the raw data with this new insight in mind.”

  “Translation—the Professor doesn’t know,” Munn growled, interpreting for the team. “What do you see, Mustang?”

  “Two seated bodies on thermal,” Grimes said. “Look like they’re bound to chairs.”

  Grimes adjusted her scope and then looked up at Dempsey.

  “Want me to take a look?” he asked.

  “Yeah, please,” she said, rolling onto her side, away from the rifle scope.

  His eyes flicked to the scar below her armpit—still thick and red, but healing up nicely. He leaned in from the other side of the table to peer through the scope.

  “I see your five tangos belowdecks—three walking with weapons slung on shoulders, and two seated hostages, side by side . . .” As he studied their postures and the shapes of their thermal signatures, his heart sank. He clicked the zoom detent up a notch on the scope. “And they both appear to be female.”

  Damn.

  Hostages . . . the one and only complication guaranteed to throw their entire operational playbook into the garbage can. He straightened and began to pace. Disappearing al-Fahkoury was the mission objective, not hostage rescue. Hitting the yacht had never been part of the plan, yet his brain had already started working the problem anyway. Revised mission scenarios began populating his mind.

  No, he thought, cutting himself off. We can’t let the mission get derailed.

  “Listen up, everybody,” he announced on the comms channel. “I realize this changes things emotionally, but it doesn’t change the mission. Stay on task. al-Fahkoury is our objective.”

  “Hold on,” Munn barked. “Are you saying we’re going to do nothing? We can’t just let these assholes keep those girls and float away.”

  “I’m not saying that, but I’m also not saying we’re going to change the OPORD, either,” he said, trying to soften the blow. “We need to analyze the situation. I need options and risk assessment.”

  “Hang on . . . They’re moving the girls,” Grimes said from beside him, back on her rifle scope. “Five glowing bodies coming up a ladder well . . . the two women, two armed escorts with rifles, and a third dude . . . They’re passing through the middeck salon, heading aft to the party deck and the hot tub, I presume.”

  “Bronco, do you have ears?” Dempsey asked.

  “Good ears,” Wang said, ditching his trademark sophomoric banter and now all business. “They’re talking fast . . . laughing . . . That’s not Arabic . . . I’m not sure what language they’re using.”

  “Stream it to me, Bronco,” Baldwin said calmly.

  Dempsey raised his spotter scope and focused on the party deck. The women stood with stooped postures, heads down, arms hugging themselves. The man in the hot tub tipped his head back as if laughing at something.

  “They’re speaking Chechen,” Baldwin reported.

  “Chechen?” Wang asked, his voice tight. “That’s weird.”

  “Stable, can you translate?” Dempsey asked.
/>   “None of us speaks Chechen, but we’re running the stream through a real-time translation program. Don’t expect better than seventy percent accuracy.”

  “Fine, just give me the play-by-play,” Dempsey barked.

  “They look cold. Maybe they need to be warmed up,” Baldwin said, relaying the translated audio from the yacht with a several-second delay. “But they don’t be having swimsuits . . . That is okay. This we can fix . . .”

  Through the scope, Dempsey watched as one of the laughing guards began to rip the clothes off the woman standing on the left.

  “No, not that one, the pretty one . . .”

  The guard shoved the woman to her knees, while the girl on the right swatted at the other guard pawing at her clothes—choosing instead to undress herself voluntarily.

  Smart and brave. Better to get functional clothes back than shredded rags when this is all over, Dempsey thought as she climbed into the hot tub, covering her topless chest.

  “Stable, can you get facial recognition from the bird?” Dempsey asked.

  “The satellite is overhead now, so the angle is bad,” Baldwin said. “Perhaps Elizabeth could—”

  “Sending imagery to Bronco now,” Grimes said, leaning into her scope, her body visibly tense at the scene unfolding. The scope was wirelessly connected to the tablet on the table beside her and would send digital pictures she snapped to an encrypted file on Wang’s computer.

  “Got it. Relaying . . .” Wang said.

  The girl in the hot tub was sitting opposite her tormenter, as far away as possible. To Dempsey’s relief, the heavily muscled dirtbag in the tub was not making a move toward her, just laughing, smoking, and drinking. If he had to guess, Dempsey would peg this jackass as the ringleader.

  “Don’t tell me we’re letting this happen, Mustang,” Munn said, his voice a wet fire.

  “I could put a fucking round right through his fat face—even from here,” Grimes murmured.

  “Stay on task, people,” Dempsey said, working to keep his voice calm despite feeling the exact same aggravation as Munn and Grimes.