Checkmate

49

When Marjani finished talking, Fisher had some answers and a lot more questions.

He darted Marjani, bound his hands and feet with flexi-cuffs, then fireman-carried him down to the garage, where he found a gleaming-white H1 Alpha Hummer. He shoved Marjani in the back, bound his feet to one of the tie-down eyelets, then climbed into the front seat. The keys were in the ignition.

Thirty seconds later, he was rolling the down the driveway, the air conditioner blowing at full blast. He turned left at the arch and headed northwest, headlights off as he kept to the depressions and used the moonlight to guide him. He drove for fifteen minutes until the hills began to smooth out into the fringe of the Garagum Desert. He coasted to a stop and shut off the engine. He keyed his subdermal.

“Pike, this is Sickle, over.”

“Go ahead, Sickle,” Bird replied. After refueling at Kabul, Redding and the Osprey had followed an hour behind the Gulfstream, slipping across the Turkmenistan border and setting down sixty miles from Ashgabat in the desert.

“Request extraction, break; two passengers, break; map coordinates one-two-two-point-five by three-two-point-three; beacon is transmitting, over.”

“Roger, Sickle, en route.”

The Osprey appeared twelve minutes later, skimming low over the ground, its rotor blades glinting in the moonlight.

“I have visual on you, Pike,” Fisher said. “Confirm same.” He flipped the Hummer’s fog lights on and off.

“Confirm, Sickle, we have you.”

The Osprey put down a hundred yards away atop a small hillock, and Redding came down the ramp to help Fisher with Marjani. “Friend of yours?” Redding asked.

“He doesn’t think so, but he’s going to come in handy.”

While Redding took care of their passenger, Fisher walked forward to the cockpit. “Bird, how’re we looking on radar?”

“Fine. Hell, Turkmenistan hasn’t got a military radar station for a thousand miles. We could sit here for days.” He glanced at Fisher. “We’re not going to sit here for days, are we?”

“No. Just keep an eye out.”

Fisher walked aft and sat down at the comm console. Lambert came on the monitor and said, “What’s your status?”

“Out and safe. Marjani was paid by Zhao through Heng, but he doesn’t know who was behind the money. He’s never heard of Zhao. I don’t know if I believe that, but there wasn’t time to press him further. He says Heng’s meeting was with an Iranian named Kavad Abelzada. He’s from a village called Sarani, right across the border. He was born and raised there.”

Before Lambert could ask her, Grimsdottir said, “I’m looking… ”

Lambert said, “I’ve got Tom Richards here. I’ve filled him in on the Zhao angle. I think he’s got the piece we’re missing.”

“Let’s hear it.”

The screen split and Richards’s face appeared. “You already know this, of course, but yes, we’re running an op against Zhao — us, the Brits, and the Russians.”

“Let me guess: Jagged.”

Richards nodded. “Three years ago, the President signed a top-secret executive order declaring the spread of Jagged was a clear and imminent threat to national security. Moscow and London were seeing the effects in their countries as well, so it didn’t take much convincing to get them to sign onto the operation. We code-named it Jupiter.

“For the past twenty-eight months, we’ve been waging war against Zhao along with the Russian SVR and British MI6. We started with his peripheral operations, cutting off the money, attacking the transportation, snatching low-level operators — that kind of thing.”

“Does Beijing know about this?”

“Hell, no. Zhao has so many politicians and generals in his pockets we’ve lost count.”

“Go on.”

“Once we’d made a dent in his side businesses, we took the fight straight to him,” Richards said. “Starting with his key personnel.”

“How key?” Fisher asked.

“Very. Most of Zhao’s empire is run by family members — brothers, cousins, uncles. We began eliminating them, one by one.”

“Say again?”

“Each country put specially trained teams on the ground. There was no choice; we’re at war as surely as if bombs were exploding.”

Fisher wasn’t shocked by Richards’s admission that the CIA had fielded assassination teams, but rather that the President had made such a bold move. Right or wrong, if Jupiter ever became public knowledge, the resulting scandal would end his career and the careers of everyone attached to the operation.

“How many so far?” Fisher asked.

“Sixty-two. Twenty-three family members and thirty-nine non-family subordinates.”

“And his empire?”

“It’s running on fumes. Another six months and he’ll topple. The flow of Jagged will slow to a trickle and then stop.”

And there was Zhao’s motive, Fisher realized. Revenge and self-preservation. Twenty-three members of his own family murdered; tens of billions of dollars at stake. Zhao had answered the U.S./Russian/U.K. declaration of war with his own, but knowing he couldn’t win a head-to-head fight, he’d devised a strategy straight out of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

Launch the most devastating attack on U.S. soil in history and implicate Iran, which is already the world’s new boogeyman; the U.S. responds in kind and begins marching toward war; then drag Russia into the fiasco using nuclear material stolen or sold from its own backyard. From there, momentum, world outrage, and Iran’s own defiance would do the rest. The U.S., the U.K., and whatever coalition they managed to gather would be sucked into a protracted and possibly unwinnable third war in the Middle East; Russia would be a pariah on the world stage, having caused the deaths of five thousand or more innocent civilians through neglect and/or corruption. Lives would be lost on all sides, and for years to come the last thing on the minds of U.S., Russian, and U.K. politicians would be Kuan-Yin Zhao.

At worst, Zhao has his revenge; at best, revenge and a chance to rebuild his empire.

Fisher said, “Colonel, this is it. This is Zhao’s game.”

“Agreed,” Lambert said. “But do we have enough evidence to prove it?”

“With Kavad Abelzada, we might,” said Richards. “He’s the missing link. He had to have supplied Zhao with the crew for the Trego and the men at Slipstone.”

Grimsdottir came back on the line. “And I think I know why. Up until eighteen months ago, Abelzada had spent the last nine years in a Tehran political prison. He was tried and convicted of ‘inciting radical insurrection’ and ‘plotting to overthrow the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.’ When he was sent to prison, he had a rabid following that numbered in the thousands. The day he was convicted, there were seventeen suicide bombings throughout Tehran.”

“Given its own track record, for Tehran to label Abelzada as a dangerous radical is saying something,” Fisher said. “Grim, do we know what his problem was with the government?”

“I’m looking… Okay, here: He was demanding they declare open war on the U.S., Israel, and all their allies. And I quote: ‘We must burn the civilizations of the West out of existence and scatter the bones of the infidels to every corner of the globe. Anything less is an insult in Allah’s eyes.’ ”

“Very nice,” Lambert said. “So, Zhao somehow becomes aware of Abelzada’s leanings; he makes contact and offers him a chance to not only bring down his own government, but also drag the U.S. into a bloodbath — all for providing a few loyal fanatics.”

“The blue-light special of wars,” Fisher said. “I can see why he couldn’t resist the deal.”

“So how do we get him?” Richards asked. “I can put together a team, but that’ll take—”

Fisher cut him off. “I’ll tell you how we get him. We’re twenty miles from the border. Another five miles beyond that is Sarani. We fly in, land on his damned house, and snatch him.”

“That easy, huh?” Richards said.

“Not easy at all,” Fisher replied. “But it’s the best chance we’ve got. Colonel?”

On the screen, Fisher watched his boss squeeze the bridge of his nose and close his eyes for a few moments. He looked up. “Go get him, Sam.”