Crusader One (Tier One Thrillers Book 3) Page 9

  Dempsey looked in his rearview mirror, but the cyclist was gone.

  “Saw a guy on a bike heading north. Check him out if you can.”

  “Understood,” Baldwin answered, “but I have only one drone with eyes on the explosion and I’m using the satellite to scan shoreline everywhere a boat could have made landfall in the time allotted. Do you want me to retask?”

  “Negative,” he said. “You’re doing all the right things.”

  At the next intersection, Dempsey whipped the steering wheel around and made a hard right turn to keep on Whitehall, heading south just as Baldwin had advised.

  After a beat, Baldwin asked, “Do you see smoke on the horizon yet?”

  “Negative, too dark,” Dempsey said. “What about you?”

  “Any first responders on-site we need to worry about?” Munn asked.

  “Negative. I’m monitoring the response. Annapolis Fire Department sent all their units to the DNI estate. Anne Arundel County is sending two engines to your six, but they’re at least fifteen minutes out. The state police tactical unit will arrive next, but they are still at least thirty minutes out. Local police are busy assisting at DNI estate and setting up roadblocks . . . you’re at the turn, John.”

  “I know, I know,” Dempsey growled and braked before maneuvering off road. The Chevy jarred violently as he traversed a shallow drainage ditch at a forty-five-degree angle, each wheel taking the culvert in staggered sequence. The rear differential bottomed out as he crawled up the other side. The headlight beams danced as the SUV rocked and rolled over the field and Dempsey weaved between trees trying to maintain a southwest vector.

  “Here,” Munn said, handing him a helmet with NVGs already glowing green on their bracket up top. “No sense in making our arrival too public.”

  “Thanks,” Dempsey said, switching off the headlights. With his free hand, he donned the helmet and clicked the binocular night optics down in front of his eyes. The world switched from black to gray-green, and his field of vision instantly deepened in all directions. He weaved around a large oak and then accelerated across a clearing toward a cluster of trees. Straight ahead, a fire raged bright white, flames licking skyward.

  “Shit, dude,” Munn said, his face glowing green behind his own NVGs. “That’s a fire.”

  “Target site dead ahead,” Dempsey reported to Baldwin. “We’re going in, full tactical.”

  In silent reply, Munn reached behind his seat and pulled a large duffel into his lap. Dempsey kept his concentration focused on the approach, scanning for tree stumps or deep fissures that could wreck the Tahoe and leave them stranded. To his right, he heard Munn load magazines into two short-barrel Sig Sauer tactical rifles and click PEQ-4 IR targeting lights on each. Munn laid one of the rifles in Dempsey’s lap and then fished out two Sig 229 9 mm pistols, again checking the rounds and magazines.

  The pungent odor of burning leaves was seeping inside the cabin now. Dempsey eased the SUV to a stop and killed the engine.

  “You good?” he asked, turning to Munn.

  Munn flashed him a SEAL’s grin. “Hooyah, brother.”

  “Zero, Dagger. Do you hold any thermals that could be tangos?”

  “Negative, John,” came Baldwin’s reply. “But the heat from the fire bleeds into a pretty large radius. If the bad guys are dug in close, I might not see them.”

  “Check,” Dempsey said. “We’re moving in.”

  “Roger, I see you,” Baldwin said.

  Dempsey and Munn fanned out, putting ten yards between them, their movements driven by muscle memory, habit, and operational familiarity. Two-man assaults, something they’d drilled thousands of times, came as natural as breathing. As they closed on the site, Munn drifted farther left, opening the gap between them and flanking the target site. Scanning over his assault rifle, Dempsey searched the green-gray woods for movement. After a dozen closing paces, the light from the fire was bright enough to wash out his night vision. He flipped his NVGs up and took a knee, giving his eyes a second to adjust.

  “Hold,” he whispered into his Bluetooth mike.

  Angry red-orange flames climbed the trees—licking at the canopy branches and bathing a forty-yard diameter with a golden glow.

  “Two—One—anything?”

  “No movement,” Munn reported. “Hard to see with the damn fire.”

  “Check,” Dempsey said. “I’m circling around.”

  In a combat crouch, he crept toward the northeast, knowing Munn was completing his circle and would come around from the other side. As he slowly circled a large, stately oak tree in the very middle of the blaze, the charred remains of what appeared to be a boat came into view. “We may have a RIB,” Dempsey said.

  His heart rate picked up, and he flipped down his NVGs and turned back to the dark woods behind him. Scanning over his rifle, he methodically searched a 180-degree arc, but nothing caught his attention. No movement. No crouching figures. Turning back toward the light, he flipped up his night vision and said, “Clear.”

  A beat later, Munn’s voice in his ear: “Clear.”

  “What about you, Zero? Anything?”

  “I hold no heat signatures outside ten meters.”

  “Check,” Dempsey said and lowered his assault rifle to a combat carry. Staring into the inferno, he approached the charred remains of the boat. The gas from the fuel tanks was long consumed, leaving the twisted, melted mess in the center of a twenty-five-foot circle of scorched earth. The fire was moving into the canopy above now, but patches of bark on the giant oak’s trunk were still sizzling and popping, sending blue tendrils of smoke skyward.

  A gust of wind blew embers into his face. A beat later, the smell hit him—the nauseating fetor of cooked flesh. This was not the first time he’d encountered charred human remains.

  “Looks like two bodies,” Munn said, crouching down beside the smoldering remains of the boat.

  Dempsey squinted at the outline of two or maybe three smoking piles of flesh. Just past Munn, he saw a charred boot with a hunk of burned leg sticking out the top. Dozens of other unidentifiable body parts, he realized, littered the area around them.

  “Not gonna get much out of this,” Dempsey said, screwing up his face at the gruesome scene.

  “Well, I don’t think this is all of them,” Munn said. “Be pretty shitty luck to pull off the worst attack on the US since 9/11 and then get killed in a freak explosion after you pull your boat outta the water.”

  “These guys were loose ends,” Dempsey said, nodding in agreement. “Blowing up the boat is a good diversion, too—slows down the search and ties up assets here while the lead guy works his EXFIL plan.”

  “Dagger, this is Eagle. Do you see anything there? Anything at all?” It was Jarvis’s no-bullshit voice in his ear now. As he suspected, the Skipper had been monitoring the op the entire time.

  “Nothing we can use,” Dempsey said.

  “What about forensics?” Munn asked, clearing his throat and spitting.

  “FBI forensics will find whatever the terrorists meant for them to find,” Jarvis growled, his tone implying he was thinking exactly what Dempsey was.

  “Roger that, Skipper,” he said. “You want us to bug out?”

  “Yes,” Jarvis said. “Zero, find us another target.”

  “Roger, Eagle. We’re working on it.”

  “Work faster, Zero. The team leader is still out there, and we need to find him before anybody else does. I want this bastard all to ourselves. No red tape. No paperwork.”

  Dempsey met Munn’s gaze and nodded in the direction of the Tahoe.

  “I’m ready,” Munn said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  They huffed it back to the Tahoe, and Dempsey retraced their path to Whitehall Road. They hadn’t even made it back to 301 before Baldwin was on the line again: “I might have something.”

  “Talk to me,” Jarvis said, beating Dempsey to the punch.

  “With the help of our friends at Fort Meade, we’ve
been searching camera data from all accessible sources in Annapolis, but also inside the beltway,” Baldwin said. “It’s a tremendous amount of data.”

  “Get to the point,” Jarvis snapped.

  “You told me to search for known VEVAK operatives and affiliates with a fifty-one percent confidence level. We did just that, and we have a sixty-seven percent match on Behrouz Rostami.”

  For a moment, Dempsey couldn’t speak, his foot easing off the accelerator and the SUV slowing in the middle of the road. Rostami . . . in DC? How had that bastard gotten into the country undetected again?

  What the hell is wrong with security in this country?

  “You have him entering?”

  “No, better. I have him in the DC metro. A traffic-light camera got a decent image of him through the windshield of a car, believe it or not.”

  “Today?”

  “Yesterday,” Baldwin said.

  “So do we head toward DC?” Dempsey asked, turning to Munn. “It’s certainly possible that Rostami was running command and control from the city for the shitheads in the field.”

  “Or he could have staged there last night and led the op himself. This is all guesswork unless your signals guru can find us something real time, or at least close to real time.”

  “God, I want to catch this bastard,” Dempsey said through gritted teeth.

  “I may have something else . . .” Baldwin said.

  Painful second after painful second ticked by, and Dempsey pictured Baldwin hunched over a computer screen flanked by his twin prodigies, junior analysts Chip and Dale, looking at facial-rec images annotated with colored dots and zigzagging lines.

  “We’re waiting, Zero,” came Jarvis’s voice, ripe with the same impatience and irritation Dempsey was feeling.

  “Well, isn’t this interesting,” Baldwin commented, as if browsing for a dinner reservation on OpenTable. “Convenient, too.”

  “What’s interesting?” Jarvis said, his temper clearly at the ragged edge of control.

  “Rostami’s in Cleveland Park.”

  “Now?”

  “I have him in a car at a traffic light at 1612 hours this afternoon.”

  Dempsey punched the accelerator and screamed toward the 301.

  “Anything after that?” Jarvis asked.

  “Not yet. We have a lot of raw data to run, but this will narrow it. No sign of the car leaving the area,” Baldwin said. “Now if I can just get a hit of him on foot . . .”

  “What’s special about Cleveland Park?” Munn asked as Dempsey accelerated up the ramp onto westbound route 301. A new magenta line had already appeared on his map display, showing the route from Annapolis into the upscale residential district.

  “Sorry,” Baldwin said. “I should have explained before. Cleveland Park is home to a number of international embassies.”

  “But I thought Iran didn’t have an embassy in the US,” Dempsey said.

  “They don’t,” Jarvis chimed in. “But the Pakistani embassy maintains an Interests Section for the Islamic Republic of Iran, where they process visas and the like.”

  “And where is the Pakistani embassy?” Dempsey asked, but he was looking over at Munn, tight-lipped. Munn arched his eyebrows as they waited for the answer they knew was coming.

  “In Cleveland Park,” Baldwin said.

  “Motherfucker,” Dempsey hissed at Munn. “Running a terrorist op out of the fucking Pakistani embassy right under our noses.”

  “Hold on a second,” Munn said. “We’re not gonna hit the Pakistani embassy, are we?”

  “If Behrouz fucking Rostami is hiding inside, we sure as hell are.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Everybody settle down,” Jarvis chimed in, his voice having regained its operational composure. “I’m en route now, ten minutes behind Dagger. If you see him, you prosecute; otherwise we do this together. Understood?”

  “Roger that,” Dempsey said.

  “We don’t even know if he’s still there,” Munn cautioned.

  “I’m working on that,” Baldwin said. “Just need a little more time.”

  Dempsey’s heart quickened at the thought of putting his red targeting dot on the Iranian operator’s forehead. Four times he’d been within yards of nailing the bastard, and four times the slippery snake had slipped away. Frankfurt, Geneva, New York, and Omaha . . . he would not let it happen a fifth time here on his home turf of all places.

  “Dude, if he’s in the embassy . . .” Munn said, just soft enough not to resonate over the open channel.

  “Then we take him,” Dempsey said tersely.

  “That’s like attacking Pakistan.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve violated Pakistan’s sovereign territory to take down an enemy of the United States. I don’t see how this is any different.”

  Munn shook his head but didn’t say anything.

  Dempsey glanced over at his friend. “Rostami was the key operator on the attack at the UN, and we’re certain he played a role in facilitating the massacre of our brothers during Operation Crusader. The only way this bastard is getting away this time is over my dead body.”

  CHAPTER 9

  West Parking Lot of University of DC near the Pakistani Embassy

  Cleveland Park Neighborhood of Northwest Washington, DC

  May 3

  2155 Local Time

  Cyrus sat in the driver’s seat of the gray Infiniti and tapped his thumb on the leather steering wheel. This is not doubt, he told himself. This is preparation.

  He needed to be ready for anything and everything. He needed to have a plan for any, and all, deviations from the script he’d prepared in his mind. Meticulous scenario planning was a technique taught to him by his Russian tutor, but also by the Persian he was going to rendezvous with. He was parked in a commuter lot at the rear of the campus and knew he had only a few minutes to complete the exercise before a campus security officer drove by and noticed him loitering. The sight lines around the embassy were poor from most angles, including his current position. He had hoped to observe Rostami, to see him pacing in front of a window, or talking on the phone. Just a single glance at the man’s face before the encounter would tell him much. One could learn volumes by watching someone who did not know they were being watched. If Rostami suspected what Cyrus planned to do next, his face would betray that.

  He raised the Nightforce NXS scope from his lap and quickly scanned the brick courtyard beyond the closed iron gate at the front of the Pakistani embassy. The courtyard was deserted. Despite the hour, lights were on inside the embassy, but he saw no movement. The administrative and security building to the right of the gate was also well lit, and inside he could see two uniformed men, chatting while a TV played in the background. He scanned up and down the street for signs he’d been followed, but traffic was nonexistent. No loitering pedestrians. No patrolling police vehicles. No idling black SUVs.

  Cyrus lowered the scope.

  Rostami was not expecting him, but even so, Cyrus would not be able to use the element of surprise to his advantage. Rostami was safe inside a citadel, while he was in the position of needing to storm the castle. Thankfully, there were protocols in place he could leverage. The last radio call with Rostami was supposed to be his final communication with VEVAK personnel until his safe return to Tehran, but meeting here was an authorized contingency plan in the event something interfered with Cyrus’s ability to exfiltrate the United States. Exfiltration was supposed to be his own responsibility—his uncle had made that clear. Arkady had once explained that veteran operators rely heavily on a personal network of trusted underground contacts to leverage in times of need. A robust and reliable network, the Russian had said, takes decades to develop. But Cyrus was only a few months into this new life, and for now he had no one he could count on other than himself. Rostami understood this, and it was this lone vulnerability that Cyrus intended to exploit.

  He removed the ceramic blade from the sheath strapped to
his calf and shifted it to a secondary sheath sewed inside the left sleeve of his jacket. He was about to get out of the car when the feeling of impending doom washed over him. He scanned the street in front of the embassy again. Something suddenly felt wrong, like a dark force closing in on him. As a civilian, he’d dismissed the notion of a sixth sense, but Arkady had insisted that sharply honed instincts were the difference between life and death in their profession.

  He tried to articulate the emotion. Either I’m being watched by the Americans, or I’m afraid that Rostami will see through me.

  It was hard to imagine that Rostami would risk killing his boss’s nephew, but Rostami had been playing this game much longer than Cyrus had. It was only the two of them left now. If Rostami detected even the slightest threat, he might be inclined to draw first blood. Afterward, Rostami could simply lie to Amir and say that Cyrus had martyred himself in the explosion. His uncle would not be able to prove otherwise. He doubted the American intelligence community would let the details of the explosion reach the media, but even if that were to happen, the reporting outlets would spin conflicting tales. The only reliable aspect of the media was its unreliability.

  I will have to act quickly, he told himself.

  He tucked the scope under the driver seat and grabbed his backpack from the passenger seat. After four deep, cleansing breaths, he slipped the pack over his shoulder and climbed out of the Infiniti. He crossed the lawn at the back of the campus, angling north, before making his way across the street to the west side of International Drive. From there, he passed the Nigerian embassy, heading south, all the while scanning the street, sidewalks, and adjacent buildings’ windows for surveillance threats. It was then that he noticed the lights and heavily fortified perimeter of the Israeli embassy on the other side of Van Ness Street. The irony of this made him smile as he circled around. He jumped the iron fence and cut across the lawn between the Malaysian and Pakistani embassies. When he reached the main gate, he pressed the buzzer on the call box. Set back from the gate by about one hundred feet was a small administrative wing, connected to the main building and extending out at a ninety-degree angle, where he presumed the security staff had an office. A blue light came on in the right upper corner of the call box.