The Callsign Read online

  "Sir, we need an overarching assessment and selection process. Something we all agree on and nobody will argue is unfair. We don't get that, and we can throw all this away." I said it while sweeping my hand around the room, then said, "Well, I can't wait to throw this away, but you know what I mean."

  We were inside a rented warehouse near Falls Church, our makeshift team room while the construction went on at the permanent Clarendon facility. The warehouse was set back in the woods, with a gated entrance, and it was swept daily for listening devices or other electronic monitoring. Other than the elaborate security and surveillance systems in place, it didn't have a whole lot of amenities. A concrete floor, some metal wall lockers, and a one-hole toilet. But it would do.

  "So you're saying he's a total shit-bag? Does nothing right?

  Didn't he do well on the surveillance aspects?" I grudgingly said, "Yeah. He's pretty switched on with all the spy stuff." Kurt smiled. "And that's our biggest weakness."

  "But he always tries to go commando when it isn't necessary. It's like he wants the spy stuff to go wrong so he can start doing something stupid. You'd think he would be the last person to do that, but he's always the first. The worst part is, he won't listen to me. I can't trust him."

  "You couldn't trust him before. I think you got your point across in Charleston. And you're going to need his skills."

  He paused, looked me in the eye, and said, "Because that's the entire mission profile for Yemen."

  It took a second to sink in. "The mission is a go? Oversight Council gave approval for Omega on the computer?"

  He held up his hands. "No, no. Just Alpha. Introduction of forces and preparation of the battle space. Get an assessment of whether we can gain access to his data; then we'll go back for Omega authority. So you don't have to worry about Kranz going commando. It'll just be the spy stuff."

  I tried one last time. "Let me leave him here. I've got Jesse and he's switched on. He knows tradecraft skills inside and out, and he's cool under pressure."

  "No. Just keep Kranz under control and leverage his skills. It's more important than you think, beyond just the mission. We get this done and we'll earn some credibility. Afterward, if you still want to ditch him, I can thank him for a job well done and send him off as a hero."

  I knew it was a no-win situation. I'd either say we weren't ready or take him along, and there was no way I was going to say we weren't ready and let the other team take the first mission we'd ever done. Even so, I decided to leverage my capitulation.

  "Okay, on one condition: You give me an OPFUND and let me buy some gear."

  Kurt said, "Gear's no issue. I can get you anything you want."

  "No. I want to buy my own. The CIA is giving us old-school crap. They aren't opening up the double-oh-seven vault, because they don't want to compromise what they've got. The directorate of science and technology is giving us equipment that looks like it came from an Austin Powers movie set. Retro thinks he can do better by shopping on the Internet. Shit, we were using his personal kit in Charleston. And off-the-shelf stuff won't spike customs, since we'll be flying in commercial."

  "I can get George Wolffe on it. He can break through the red tape at Langley."

  "That might work but not for this mission. We don't have the time. What we really need to invest in is our own DS&T. Our own shop that does research and development instead of relying on the support of others."

  "How much do you want?"

  "Twenty thousand should do it."

  "Twenty-thousand? What the hell are you going to buy?"

  "Come on, sir. You spent more than that on the infrastructure in your office. If I don't need all of it, I won't use it."

  He considered, then said, "I'll give you a line of credit of ten thousand, but you itemize what you want and run it by the logistics section first. If you need more, you'll get more, but no buying a bunch of gee-whiz gear just because you have the money. Only get what you think you need."

  I agreed, knowing that what I thought I would need was a pretty big door to walk through. I could buy just about anything with that guidance.

  * * *

  Five days later we were ready to go. We'd been through the pre-deployment package of intelligence and cover development, and I was confident in the team. Even Kranz, who had seemed to take my Charleston threat seriously.

  The intel itself seemed pretty solid, but I wanted a second opinion from someone I trusted. I'd seen plenty of "solid" intelligence turn out to be nothing but a string of coincidences. After the clinical slide show, I'd flagged Ethan Merriweather for some inside skinny. Ethan was an intel weenie like the rest of that department, but only because he'd broken his back on a parachute operation, which forced him out of the infantry and into military intelligence. He was someone who had hunted terrorists with a gun before being relegated to briefing others to do the same. Someone who thought like me.

  "Ethan, what's the story on this guy? How good is the intelligence?"

  "You saw the brief. That's the best we've got. He's bad, no doubt."

  "No doubt?"

  He paused for a moment, considering his words. "Look, in my opinion, he isn't a global jihadist. He's just making some money on the side, but he's doing it for global jihadists, and he knows that. He's no innocent dupe. He'll give us some serious leads."

  That had been good enough for me and was the final confirmation I needed to feel comfortable about the mission. The team was clicking, and, thanks to Retro, we were now equipped with the latest technology that he could find.

  He'd managed to run up a twelve-thousand-dollar bill on various widgets we "might" need. We'd packed everything into innocuous boxes that would support our cover of salesmen from Advanced Surveillance Solutions. The hardest part had been the guns, but we'd had the CIA's concealment shop build us some inert cameras, which were now stuffed with six Glock 30 .45 caliber pistols. We'd done a test run through an X-ray machine, and short of someone opening the box and physically pulling the cameras apart, we were good to go.

  We were due to deploy the following morning, and I was running the operation through my mind while I packed, thinking of the myriad things that could go wrong and feeling the added pressure of being the vanguard for our fledgling little unit.

  Whatever I did would set the tone for everything to follow. I had the chance to establish standard operating procedures for the following ten years, as well as the opportunity to ensure we'd only exist for the next ten days.

  I took one last look at the pictures of my wife and daughter, wondering what they were doing right this moment, and a little tinge of melancholy hit me the usual feeling I had before deployment.

  My being gone was nothing new for my family. I had married Heather after I was accepted into the special mission unit, so she was used to constant deployments. But it still tore at me right before I left each time.

  These feelings had become old hat after close to a decade in combat. I didn't want to leave, but once I was gone, I quit thinking about my family, instead focusing on the mission until I was allowed to make a phone call. Then I wanted to get the hell out of whatever shithole I was in and go home. With this new Taskforce, there would be no phone call. No contact whatsoever.

  I remember seeing Apocalypse Now as a teenager. There's one scene where Martin Sheen is talking to himself about the war and his life in America. He says, "When I was there I wanted to be here. When I was here I wanted to be there." I had no idea what he was talking about then, but I now understood completely.

  Reaper startled me out of my thoughts, plopping down in front of his wall locker next to me. I hastily shoved the pictures into a shoebox, hoping he wouldn't notice.

  He did.

  "Your wife?"

  "Yeah." I went on the offensive before he could start in on my family. "You married?"

  He started pulling out kit and said, "Nope. Was once, but it didn't last, which is too bad. She was an absolute hammer. Huge rack, tight ass, everything a man could want, but
she was a career woman. Her job took precedence over the marriage."

  A little bit taken aback at how he'd described his ex-wife, I said, "Yeah, I know how that goes. Heather was a financial analyst and doing really well, but she had to give that up because of my deployments. What did your wife do?"

  "She was into the performing arts."

  I had a hard time seeing him with some artsy-fartsy woman, but you just never knew. He did have the sissy haircut.

  "Wow," I said, "that's worse than a financial analyst. Not too much call for that career path in the shithole towns surrounding military bases."

  He shoved some boots into a bag and said, ''That wasn't it. She could have found a job at any of the posts I was stationed at. I just didn't want her to keep working."

  "Why not? I mean, if it made her happy?" "Well, I was nineteen, fresh out of BUD/S and full of piss and vinegar. The marriage lasted about four months." "Huh," I said, at a momentary loss for words. "Would you change that now? After serving as long as you have?"

  He zipped up his bag and stood, giving it thought. "No, I don't think so. I didn't mind the dancing so much, but her not wearing clothes while she did it really ate at me. I don't think that would change no matter how long I served."

  He walked away, leaving me with my jaw hanging open.

  Chapter 9

  I kept an eye on the front door of the office while Retro used one of his widgets to crack the password that was denying him access to the computer hard drive. If the passport data was on it, this would be the easiest mission I had ever done. But I didn't think it would be, since we were inside Khalid' s office at the water desalinization plant. The chances of him putting terrorist in.formation on his work computer were about nil.

  We'd been in Aden for a little over five days, and the mission itself had gone swimmingly. As fate would have it, our point of contact with the plant was none other than one Muhammad bin Qasim, aka Khalid, aka our target. While he worked in engineer.ing as a CAD/CAM designer, he had a solid grasp of English and was given to us as a sort of guide-slash-interpreter.

  Khalid himself looked to be about twenty-eight and was an affable man, friendly and engaging. He asked a ton of questions about the United States, as if he were genuinely interested, and showed no sign of disliking our nationality. In fact, he'd invited us to his house for dinner after we were done tonight, which would make our development of his pattern of life incredibly easy.

  He didn't appear to be some mastermind terrorist, but looks could be deceiving. I had noticed that he'd closely followed our plans to upgrade the surveillance systems. He probably thought it was perfect justice to be our POC, since he would have inside knowledge of how the desalinization plant was protected should he or his comrades be inclined to do anything to it. I'm sure he went home each night smugly laughing at how he had tricked the Americans into revealing protected secrets, not realizing that the joke was on him.

  When we'd first arrived at the plant I figured it would be about a week just to track down Khalid' s location inside the task organization. My eyes almost popped out of my head when he was introduced, thinking we'd just burned the entire team. Luckily I'd left Kranz, Reaper, and Bull out of the first meeting, so he knew only Retro, Jesse, and myself.

  While we were most definitely out of the mix for any follow.on surveillance, the partnership had proved more of a plus than a minus, as it allowed us access to his office and, after tonight's work, access to his house for dinner.

  "How much longer?" I asked. "You promised a five-minute deal."

  Retro said, "Yeah, well, I forgot that the password would be in Arabic. This thing is designed to go through statistical results based on the English alphabet. None of those are matching up. But no matter what language is used, it's all ones and zeroes in the end. It'll crack. It'll just take a little longer."

  We'd convinced Khalid and the head of security that we need.ed to see the structure at night to determine ambient lighting for the emplacement of the cameras, as well as gaps that were currently not covered due to darkness obscuring the video feed. Jesse was currently out with Khalid and security, taking pictures of the potential camera locations, leaving Khalid' s computer open for us to data mine.

  In truth, getting in there had been easier than getting approval for the operational act from the Oversight Council. Those hand.wringers seemed to think I was asking to assassinate the president of Yemen. Eventually, they'd relented.

  I saw Jesse and Khalid on one of our temporary "test" cam.eras, which were actually security for tonight's operation. They were entering a stairwell on the first floor, which meant that they were headed back.

  "You got about five minutes."

  Retro said nothing, simply watched the screen. I turned back to the camera, seeing the group disappear from view. I heard "Yes!" and turned around.

  Retro was stroking the keyboard. "I got it. But everything's in Arabic. I was hoping for at least the file names to be English." He disengaged his little brute-force cracking device and plugged in a cloning gadget to the USB port.

  "What's that mean for time?" I asked

  "Well, I can't do the entire hard drive. I'm scanning for encrypted files. It should also clone the system bios, capturing any passwords that have been saved."

  He kept stroking the keyboard, grunting every once in a while. He said, "I got about forty encrypted files. Transferring now."

  I heard distant footsteps in the hallway and looked at a mirror I had positioned in the crook of the door. I saw Jesse, which meant Khalid was on the way.

  "Shut it down. Khalid' s thirty seconds out. We'll have to take what we have."

  "Almost done."

  The footsteps grew louder.

  "Shut it down. They're outside the door."

  "Hang on."

  "Damn it, Retro."

  I saw a shadow and blocked the doorway, smiling.

  "We're almost done with the network assessment," I told them. "How did the stroll go?" Jesse picked up on the tension and said, "Fine. You want to come see the biggest problem area?"

  "Yeah. As long as we're here."

  Khalid said, "No, no. My wife has prepared dinner. Another time." He pushed past me into his office.

  Chapter 10

  I felt the adrenaline spike, flooding through my veins, and wait.ed to hear Khalid ask what the hell Retro was doing. I glanced at Jesse and said, "Block the door."

  I entered the office to find Retro packing his bags and Khalid shutting down his computer. Nothing amiss at all. Retro glanced at me with a grin and said, "We going to follow you, Muhammad? I'm looking forward to some home cooking."

  * * *

  An hour and a half later, we were all stuffed and going into food comas. Khalid's wife had been the epitome of hospitality, and, truthfully, Khalid himself was growing on me. It probably wasn't the correct thing to think given my line of work, but I was glad this mission profile explicitly prevented us from harming him, as we didn't want to spike al-Qaeda about their compromise.

  His wife brought out tea, and I felt my phone vibrate. I risked a surreptitious glance and saw a text that the GPS tracker was in place.

  Retro had purchased international smart phones for all of us and had embedded an application that tracked each one. I'd given instructions to Kranz, Reaper, and Bull to wait until we were stationary, then to drive to our location and emplace a civilian tracker on Khalid's vehicle. It wouldn't transmit, but it would record every bit of movement that Khalid made for three weeks, including changes in elevation and temperature, and it was seamlessly integrated with Google Earth. The only bad thing was we would need to recover it to get the data, but when we did, we'd know everywhere he had gone. And would have our pat.tern of life with little work.

  It was another Retro purchase, and it made me wonder what the hell the CIA was keeping hidden from us. If this could be bought open source, they had to have something that would do exponentially more.

  I relaxed after reading the text, feeling the anxiety
that had been a slow burn for the last two hours disappear. I saw Khalid answer his phone and turned my attention to his wife, taking a small cup of tea from her.

  Khalid left the room, then returned in a few minutes with a sense of urgency and his laptop. "Mr. Logan, I'm sorry, but something has come up at the plant. I have to return to meet my boss."

  "Something with security? Should I go?" I asked.

  "No, no, it's just a mechanical error. I hope you enjoyed tonight." He motioned us toward the door. "I'm sorry to hear that, but I definitely enjoyed the meal. Thank you." We headed to the driveway and I smelled something rotten.

  What does a CAD/CAM designer have to do with any mechanical issues?

  The city of Aden was on a spit of land that jutted out of the coast of Yemen like the head of a golf club. The city was on the shaft of the club, which is where the desalinization plant was located, just southwest of the airport. Khalid lived on the top edge of the face of the club and should have followed us up the coast road before turning off to the plant.

  Instead he turned south, heading into the heart of the peninsula, through a desolate area of desert. The only thing at the south end of the peninsula was an industrial zone and a bunch of shantytowns.

  In the car with Retro and Jesse, I called the other part of the team. "Kranz, you got eyes on? You see that? We'll get the golden egg off tonight's data. He's going to meet someone."

  "Yeah, I'm on it. Right behind him."

  What?

  "What do you mean you're behind him? Let him go. I say again, let him go. We'll get the data and analyze it later." "He's got a laptop with him, and he's on a road in the middle of nowhere. This is our chance." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I said to Retro, "Turn this thing around. Catch up to them." I keyed my radio again. "Kranz, back off."

  He didn't reply. I looked at the map and saw he was right: the road Khalid was on was a deserted strip through the desert, not that it mattered one iota. Maybe later, if we got Omega for a takedown, but not now.