Crusader One (Tier One Thrillers Book 3) Page 7

  “Good. Well, it’s definitely time you got to know Rami. Smart as hell and tough as nails. I have a feeling the two of you will get on like brothers.”

  “Lead the way,” Jarvis said and followed Philips to the four-seasons sunroom.

  Despite having never met Rami Sharott, Jarvis felt like he knew the man. He’d ordered his Ember analysts to prepare a dossier on the Mossad Chief, and he’d memorized every word of it. Sharott was the exact same age as Jarvis—fifty-two—and, aside from their different haircuts, could have passed as his Israeli doppelganger. They were cut from the same mold, having both served as operators before running their respective clandestine operations. While Jarvis was leading a Tier One SEAL team, Sharott was running a Sayeret Matkal unit. Tasked with intelligence collection inside denied areas, counterterrorism operations, the prosecution of enemy HVTs, and hostage rescue, Sayeret Matkal was the IDF’s Tier One equivalent of the Army’s Delta Force. Unlike his friend Levi Harel, who had spent his entire career working as a spy, handling spies, and hunting spies for the Mossad, Sharott had been an operator his entire career, rising to the rank of General two years ago. When Harel announced his retirement a few years ago, Sharott was one of three candidates considered to fill the role of top spy in Tel Aviv. Initially considered by most to be a long shot for the post, Sharott made a quick impression on the Prime Minister and won the job. Since its founding, the Mossad had been led by eleven different Chiefs—six career spies and five former IDF Generals. Just like presidential politics in America, the two-party system of governance kept Israeli’s preeminent clandestine service from homogenizing its ranks and falling victim to groupthink biases. Periodic changing of the guard was essential to the success of any organization, even when the man in charge was as capable and competent as Levi Harel. Jarvis wondered how much, if anything, Harel had shared with his successor about Jarvis over the last few years. Did Sharott know that Ember was a secret sister unit nearly identical in form and function to the one that Harel ran from “retirement”? Did he know that Harel’s “little contracting office” in Tel Aviv had been instrumental in helping Ember on more than one occasion in the clandestine war raging between Ember and VEVAK? Had Philips and Sharott compared notes and agreed to share best practices and lessons learned from their respective black ops task forces?

  Jarvis accompanied the DNI into the sunroom where the Israelis had, as Jackie had said, set up shop. The atmosphere in here was completely different from the kitchen, the word raucous coming to mind, but the good kind of raucous. It was immediately evident to Jarvis that the Israeli contingent in attendance was a tight, collegial group. And with the Prime Minister dining with the President at the White House tonight, they were partying like kids without parental supervision. No surprise, Sharott was in the middle of the crowd, drinking red wine and in the company of three women. Two of the women Jarvis did not recognize, but the third he knew—Catherine Morgan, the Principal Deputy DNI. Jarvis felt her gaze on him, and he chose not to make eye contact with her.

  “Director Philips,” Sharott called as they approached. “This is a wonderful party, but we have a small problem.”

  “What’s that, Rami?”

  “This sunroom is too small. We have too many Jews and not enough space,” he said. “We’ve decided we’re going to expand our settlement to the west. That wall over there is going to have to go.”

  This garnered a round of laughter, and even the DNI couldn’t help but chuckle at the double entendre.

  “I’ll have to bring your proposal to my governance council,” Philips said, glancing over his shoulder at his wife, who had stopped to talk with one of Sharott’s deputies. “Her vote will determine whether the resolution passes.”

  A second round of laughter ensued, and Jarvis sighed inaudibly with relief. This good-natured, friendly banter mattered. It meant that Philips and Sharott had established a cooperative and friendly working relationship during the year since Philips had taken the reins as the DNI. As far as Jarvis was concerned, Israel was America’s most important and strategic ally in the world. And continued cooperation with their clandestine service was essential to staying one step ahead of Tehran, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, and every other radical faction with aspirations of building the next Islamic caliphate and sowing seeds of fear, instability, and violence in the West. Yet with all the damage that had been done to the West, it nowhere near approached the damage the extremists had meted out on peace-loving Muslims worldwide. The extremists had killed more Muslims than any other group.

  “Rami,” Philips said, stealing the beat, “I’d like to introduce you to a good friend of mine, Captain Kelso Jarvis. Captain Jarvis retired from the SEALs and now he works in the private sector as one of our key security contractors.”

  Sharott smiled broadly and extended a hand to Jarvis. “A pleasure to meet you, Captain Jarvis. Any friend of Director Philips is a friend of mine.”

  “The honor is all mine, General,” Jarvis said, shaking hands with Sharott, noting the other man’s rock-solid grip. His own grip, however, seemed to falter during the exchange from a sudden flare of weakness in his fingers. He resisted the urge to frown at this, keeping his smile up and genuine. “I had the privilege of working with the 269 during several occasions when I was down range. In fact, I had the great honor of serving as an exchange officer with Shayetet 13 earlier in my career and learned more than I can say.”

  Sharott’s gaze sharpened, and he looked at Jarvis with a shared appreciation. “I am sure they learned much from you as well.”

  “Maybe,” Jarvis said. “But I can tell you I have great respect for both S13 and the 269. Earlier in the Iraq War we worked very closely together. Hell, I might not be standing here if it wasn’t for you and your brothers.”

  The left corner of Sharott’s mouth curled up. “You are referring to 2003?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I heard stories,” Sharott said. “Wish I could have been there.”

  “No—you don’t,” Jarvis said, and both men laughed.

  “I’d be interested in learning more about the company you work for,” Sharott said. “Contract security operations, is it?”

  Jarvis nodded. “I have a small team, but we stay busy.”

  “No doubt . . . I’m not sure if Director Philips has told you, but the Mossad sometimes utilizes the services of private contractors. There is a small Israeli security company that does work for us from time to time. Maybe there could be some synergies all around. I could put you in touch with their Director if you’re interested.”

  “Thank you. I would like that,” Jarvis said, studying the Mossad Chief’s face for information beyond the words. He would confirm his conclusion with the DNI later, but this exchange seemed to indicate that Sharott did not know about Ember, nor did he know about Jarvis’s history with Harel.

  “Excellent. When can you come to Tel Aviv?” Sharott said.

  “Hey, hey, hey—don’t think I don’t see where this is going,” the DNI interjected. “I invite you to DC, throw you a party at my house, open a case of wine from my private collection, and you’re already trying to steal my talent.”

  “Never,” Sharott said with a sly chuckle.

  “Don’t worry, Director Philips,” Catherine Morgan said, slipping her arm inside Jarvis’s elbow to link arms. “I’ll keep him on a tight leash.”

  Jarvis turned to her, meeting her gaze for the first time since joining the circle. She was staging a little coup, extracting him from the budding conversation at the worst possible time.

  “See that you do,” Philips said.

  “If you’ll please excuse us,” she said, shifting her attention to Sharott. “I have a few pressing matters to discuss with Captain Jarvis.”

  “Of course,” the Mossad Chief said with a nod. “It was an honor to meet you, Kelso. I look forward to continuing our dialogue in the future.”

  “The honor is all mine, sir.”

  Morgan escor
ted him wordlessly out of the sunroom. When they reached a door leading to the backyard, she released his arm and gestured for him to step outside. The hair on the back of his neck bristled, but he complied. Outside, the aroma of barbecue hit him once again, making his mouth instantly salivate, but he knew better than to think she’d led him here to lay claim to a slab of ribs on the grill.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he asked, knowing full well he had not.

  “No,” she said, shaking her feathered silver bangs at him. “But I didn’t want Ed to give Rami the wrong impression about you.”

  “And what impression is that?” he asked, silently noting how she referred to the two most powerful men in the global clandestine war on terror by their first names.

  “The impression that you and your organization are important,” she said without a hint of humor.

  Multiple acerbic retorts to this unprompted slap to the face populated his mind, but he simply said, “Excuse me?”

  “Walk with me,” she replied and set off across the lawn toward the swimming pool. “Of all the troubling reports that filter across my desk,” she continued, her voice oozing with bureaucratic superiority, “the ones that trouble me most always seem to concern the activities of a particular entity operating right in our own backyard down in Newport News.”

  Resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the hyperbole, he simply said, “Oh really? I would have thought as the Principal Deputy Director you would find the reports concerning terrorist activity aimed at slaughtering Americans the most troubling . . . not my little group, which devotes all of its resources to counterterrorism operations.”

  “You might think that, but you’d be wrong,” she said, stepping off the lawn onto the wide concrete pool deck. “Would you like to know why that is, Kelso?”

  “Yes, Catherine,” he said, matching her tone. “I’m dying to know.”

  “There is a multibillion-dollar apparatus powered by thousands of highly skilled people using highly developed technology and carefully harvested human intelligence to prosecute the terrorist threat. And all of that activity is reported to and managed by us—all activity, that is, except for yours.”

  “I’m sure you are aware that my organization is tasked directly by the DNI,” Jarvis said, his eyes narrowing.

  “Perhaps,” Morgan said. “But he allows you an unprecedented—and in my opinion, dangerous—degree of autonomy.”

  Jarvis felt anger rising and swallowed it down. His lips curled into a wry smile. “You yanked me out of a conversation with the Mossad Chief and the DNI, your boss, to talk about oversight?”

  Her face hardened. “Yes, Captain Jarvis, I did, and it does not appear you appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

  “With all due respect, I understand the gravity of the situation all too well. The multibillion-dollar intelligence and clandestine apparatus you’re touting is the reason that Ember exists. The old expression ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ applies in this case. Ember was born from necessity, and we—” He stopped midsentence, his gaze fixed on the back of the house.

  “What is it?” she asked, turning to see where his attention had relocated.

  “Why is that vehicle backed up to the house?” he asked, eying a catering van that was parked right next to the back patio, a mere ten feet from the kitchen.

  “That’s the caterers’. It’s a full-on mobile kitchen. They even have a grill inside,” she answered. “Apparently, it’s the newest catering meme—keep the caterers and the mess out of the kitchen so the guests can mingle there. If you’ve ever thrown a party, you know that everyone gravitates to the kitchen whether you want them in there or not. Why fight the inevitable?”

  His pulse picked up. “Yeah, but that vehicle is violating the safety setback. Just like out front, all vehicles should be parked outside a fifty-foot radius of the house.”

  “Every vehicle was inspected at the gate,” she replied.

  “I don’t care. It shouldn’t be there,” he huffed. “If you’ll excuse me, Catherine, we can continue our conversation after I get it moved.”

  He turned his back on her, not giving her an opportunity to rebut, and set off toward the house. He only managed two strides before the explosion drove him backward. Muscle memory took over. He spun in midair and dove on top of the Deputy DNI, shielding her body with his as a fireball four stories high engulfed the house. Pieces of slate roof tile, glass shards, and chunks of wood and brick rained down over a four-hundred-foot radius, pelting him on his back and legs. Jarvis absorbed the shock and the pain with the expertise from years in the field and far too many explosions. He kept his chin tucked, protecting his head as best he could—the only body part that could not recover from a direct blow from a brick. He felt something heavy hit him in the back of the right thigh with the impact of a sledgehammer, and he raised his shoulders beside his head even more. Finally, he felt only the pelting of the smaller particles and then only dust. He rolled off the woman beneath him.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” he said, the SEAL in him now in complete control.

  “I think so,” she said, wiping her right cheek and then inspecting the blood smear on her fingertips.

  “It’s just a scratch,” he said. He quickly inspected her head, neck, and torso for any legitimate impalements. Finding none, he said, “Do you see that grove of trees over there?”

  She followed his eyes to a stand of birch trees behind the pool house. “Yes,” she said, her voice quavering on the brink of panic. The Deputy DNI was not a former field agent, and he guessed this was much closer than she had ever come to dying before. But despite surviving the blast, they weren’t safe yet. In theater, explosions were inevitably followed by sniper fire. Relocating her to safe cover was imperative.

  “Go there, stay low, and get small,” he said, pulling the Sig Sauer 226 from the holster at the small of his back. “I’ll come back for you.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, wiping her face again and looking at the back of her hand.

  “This might not be over,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. Then, struggling for control, she swallowed hard and closed her eyes tightly for a beat. When she reopened them, her face became stone. “But first, I’m going to call this in.”

  “Do it,” he said, scanning around them over his Sig Sauer.

  Three hundred feet away, what had been Jackie Philips’s one-hundred-year-old family estate was now a raging inferno. The devastation was simply tremendous. There would be few, if any, survivors. Was this terror, or was it a hit? He retrieved a wireless earbud from a pocket inside his suit coat and pressed it into his right ear canal. The earbud automatically synced with the mobile phone in his pocket. He tapped the end of the earbud three times, a preset that triggered the phone to dial the Tactical Operations Center at the Ember hangar in Newport News, Virginia.

  In a low crouch, he moved in an arc around the rear perimeter of the house, first scanning the grounds between the pool house and the main house and then surveying the property’s southwestern-facing shoreline.

  The call connected.

  “Zero—how’s the party, sir?” The voice in his ear belonged to Ian Baldwin, Ember’s signals guru and head of data analytics.

  “The DNI’s house just got nuked. From the looks of things, no one inside survived. Mobilize everyone, get eyes on my location, and scan for comms.”

  “Yes, sir,” Baldwin answered. “But first I have to inquire, are you injured?”

  “No, don’t worry about me. Just find me a trail to follow.”

  “Roger that. I’ll try to hijack some time on the satellite. Maybe I can task a drone. And of course we’ll start looking at cellular traffic. Who am I looking for exactly?”

  “Just do it, Ian,” he barked. Baldwin, as usual, was just thinking out loud. Jarvis moved toward the east end of the house. If the attack had been perpetrated by operators rather than martyrs, then a water egress across the bay to the adjacent peninsula was
tactically superior for their getaway.

  Sirens wailed in the distance as Jarvis scanned over his weapon left and right, moving toward the tree line in a low tactical crouch. He entered the woods, wishing for both younger eyes and night vision goggles. The sliver of moonlight and the glow from the raging fire were stolen by the foliage around him. His body was a weapon now, all thoughts of aging and aches and pains a distant memory as the SEAL that would never die inside him took over. He moved quickly but quietly through the woods, acutely cognizant of the terrain and each footfall. He glimpsed movement ahead, a shadow skirting along the shoreline. He squeezed both eyes shut to sharpen his night accommodation and then looked again. He tightened his grip on his weapon and trained the muzzle toward what looked like a hunched figure on the beach. Before squeezing the trigger, he needed to be sure he wasn’t stalking a roving security guard who, like him, was searching for attackers. He didn’t dare call out and forfeit his tactical advantage, which meant he needed visual confirmation.

  The low rumble of a gasoline engine, barely audible, pricked his ears. He pivoted left, toward the sound, and scanned the dark waters of the Chesapeake to the horizon. Twenty-five meters offshore, a small wake bubbled white in the moonlight. A RIB, his mind told him, from the way it displaced the water—and it was moving toward the shore. This had to be the pickup team, the EXFIL for the attacker or attackers.

  He tapped his earpiece again, his voice a soft whisper.

  “Zero, we have a watercraft approaching the east end of the property. Get eyes on it now.”

  “Working on it, sir,” came Baldwin’s response.

  Where was the fucking perimeter security team? Was this the water patrol? Surely the DNI’s protection detail had arranged for that. Jarvis advanced, growing more and more convinced with each passing second that these were not the good guys. His mind drew the approach vector for where the RIB would intersect the shore and he shifted his gaze there. A cloud drifted in front of the moon. He squinted and scanned the beach, having lost the hunched figure in the darkness. He held, statue still, and waited.