Oath of Office

50

Clark stood across the room, breaking the news about Jack to Gerry Hendley when Ding’s cell phone began to buzz. The voice on the other end made Chavez feel like all his blood drained into his legs.

“We thought you were dead,” he said, and then snapped his fingers to get Clark’s attention.

Clark held up a hand to tell him to wait.

“It’s Jack,” Ding said, getting an immediate response.

“I’m going to call you right back,” Clark said into his phone. “Sounds like we have a call from Junior… Yeah. I’ll get you a sitrep as soon as I find out what’s going on.”

Chavez put Ryan on speaker and the two men went into a back bedroom, out of da Rocha’s earshot.

“Speak to me, kid,” Clark said. “You all right?”

“We’re all alive and free,” Ryan said, his voice disembodied, slightly garbled. “But it was touch and go for a while there.” He paused, sounding like he was getting choked up. “Listen… I have bad news.”

“Dom’s fine,” Clark said. It was one thing to joke, but never about the life of a teammate and friend. “He called us about a half-hour ago from an Afghan Army hospital near Herat. He’s got some serious burns but he assures us nothing life threatening. Adara talked to him and threatened to kick his ass if he died. I’d imagine he’ll be on his way to Ramstein any minute now.”

The relief in Ryan’s voice was audible.

“Listen,” Clark said. “We’ve had a couple of significant developments in this end. What kind of a line are you on?”

“VoIP,” Ryan said. “I’m anonymized, and I think encrypted, but we’re on a satellite link so I have to hurry.”

“You think?” Chavez said.

“I can’t read Farsi,” Ryan said. “But I’m pretty sure.”

“That’ll have to do,” Clark said. “NSA’s probably the only ones listening in anyway and they’ll know all this soon enough…”

Clark gave Ryan the full rundown on the Gorgon missiles, and their last known location in Iran.

“The Russians… or at least some Russians, are complicit in this caper,” Chavez said. “See if your guy knows anything about where these Gorgons are supposed to go.”

“He’s right here,” Ryan said. “And he looks as stupefied as I am.”

“I thought as much,” Clark said. “Our guy says they were delivered to an airfield in northeast Iran, near the city of Mashhad. Makes sense. IRGC rocket forces have a missile base there.”

“Mashhad…” Ryan paused for moment, then said, “That’s only a hundred and fifty miles from where we are. We’ll check it out.”

“Go to Iran?” Chavez said with an emphatic shake of his head. “Not a chance.”

“John,” Ryan said. “I’m here and ready to go. If the Iranians have nukes then we have to find out where they—”

Ryan stopped abruptly while someone, likely the Russian, talked to him in the background. It was difficult to tell with the latent lag of the VoIP/satellite connection. He came back on a few seconds later.

“My friend on this end says he has a list of Iranian scientists with the potential to use as assets. A couple of them are in Mashhad.”

Ding said, “Russian assets won’t do us any good.”

“He says these guys are vulnerable,” Jack said. “It doesn’t sound like they have any love for the Russians — just a price. Won’t matter to them which way they turn.” Ryan paused, listening again. “One of them has a sick kid in desperate need of Western medicine.”

“That is promising,” Clark said, conceding that much. Leveraging a child’s illness was nasty business, but intelligence coups often hinged on just that sort of leverage.

“Then give me permission to go talk to him,” Ryan said. “We can be in Mashhad by sunrise.”

“I’m sure Iran has methods in place to deter the free flow of people across their border.”

“No doubt,” Ryan said. “But opium smuggling is big business here. According to Ysabel a large portion of the heroin going into Europe passes through Iran.”

Chavez was unconvinced. “That just means the Iranian dope cops will be putting more pressure on the border. Last I read they’ve increased patrols and are even using drones.”

“Shaheds,” Jack said. “Ysabel just told me. They’re basically knockoffs of our Predator. Her work for the UNODC gave her substantial insight into drug interdiction methods. So she knows the weaknesses.”

“And what would that be?” Chavez asked.

“The wind,” Ryan said. “And not just any wind. This is nasty, dusty stuff, but it’ll give us good cover. It blows here all summer, making border surveillance with UAVs problematic. It’s called ‘the wind of one hundred twenty days.’”

“Let’s get off this line,” Clark said. “Use your best judgment, but do me a favor and check in with me before you do anything rash. I don’t need to tell you what kind of a shit storm you will stir up if you’re caught in Iran without an entry stamp in your passport.”

“Roger that,” Ryan said. “Listen. I’m going to e-mail you a photo. It’s from our Russian friend.”

“All right,” Clark said. “I have something else, but it’s for your eyes only. Check your messages when you send the pic.”

“Roger that,” Ryan said. “Outa here.”

Ryan logged on to his encrypted e-mail when he ended the call, adding another layer of security to the anonymized virtual private network. He included the link to the photograph of General Alov and the protesters Dovzhenko had put on eBay. A new message arrived from Clark as he was typing. Ryan read it twice, then put it in a virtual burn bag. Information was never really gone, but it could be overwritten so many times as to render it useless — until someone came up with a new program, or the person who invented the original revealed a back door at some hacker conference.

Ryan disconnected the sat phone and looked at the clock on the computer. “Six minutes,” he said. “We should get on the road.”

“Let me guess,” Dovzhenko said. “Your people think I am a dangle and want to put me on the FLUTTER?”

Jack gave an amused nod. FLUTTER was the CIA code name for a polygraph. A dangle was an enemy intelligence officer who volunteered to work as an agent, but was, in reality, a double. All sides used them, so everyone was wary — which made for a tedious process when trying to discern if someone was truly going to switch sides or was merely being dangled by his own government to gauge intelligence capabilities and methods.

“They are wise to think so,” Dovzhenko continued. “I would not trust you if the circumstances were reversed. Believe me, I would be glad to take a polygraph test.”

“That’s exactly what they had planned,” Jack said. What he did not say, was the CIA, through Mary Pat Foley, had assigned Erik Dovzhenko the cryptonym — GP/VICAR. Ysabel was already on the books as SD/DRIVER. Each country had a two-letter digraph that changed periodically. At the moment, Russia’s digraph was GP. Iran’s was SD. These two-letter prefixes were attached to a code name, usually computer generated, and helped keep the individual cryptonyms categorized geographically. It did not matter that VICAR was helping Ryan on matters relating to Iran. He was Russian, so his cryptonym began with GP. It was a rare thing that an agent acting on behalf of the U.S. government ever knew his or her own cryptonym.

“So,” Dovzhenko said, “what did they direct you to do? Pull out my fingernails?”

“I told them you’d fought beside me,” Jack said. “If you wanted me dead, I think you could have let that happen already.”

“Perhaps I wanted to interrogate you first,” Dovzhenko pointed out. “And then kill you.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“There you go, then,” Jack said, checking his watch. The shock of the accident and the fight was beginning to wear off enough that he could think a little more clearly. He thought he heard a car door, and looked up at Dovzhenko. “Hey.” He hissed, grabbing one of the Kalashnikovs. “Where’s Ysabel?”

Major Sassani hated to backtrack, but sometimes the fastest distance between two points was not a straight line. He ordered his lieutenant to drive him straight from Fatima’s hovel to the main Afghan Border Police offices in Herat.

Just as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had agents in Mexico, Colombia, and Europe, NAJA assigned members of their antinarcotics squads and border guard to the Afghan National Police. The Iranian Cyber Police, more routinely occupied with cracking down on dissidents who attempted to circumvent government oversight of the Internet, also had a technician embedded in the Herat antidrug task force. If nothing else, Iranian law enforcement upset the Americans.

There was a good deal of friction between the regular Army and the IRGC inside Iran, but the Sepah were a powerful force that held a tremendous amount of sway over NAJA and, to a slightly lesser extent, the ANP. It took some time due to the late hour, but Sassani was eventually able to get the commanding officer to loan him five men, giving him a ten-man team, counting the three Iranian antidrug task force personnel and him and his lieutenant. Omar Khan was a known bandit, and everyone in the group was jumpy by the time they made the hour-and-a-half drive through a soot-black night to the smugglers’ stronghold near Ghourian.

They met no resistance, and it soon became clear why. The officer from Iran’s Cyber Police vomited on his own shoes when he saw the shard of lamb bone protruding from Omar’s mutilated throat.

Sassani squatted at the edge of the blood-sodden rug to study the carnage. “Ysabel,” he said.

The Afghan police captain’s face screwed up in disbelief. “How can you be sure?”

“This man has been killed many times over,” Sassani said. He stood up and wiped his hands on the front of his trousers, though he’d touched nothing. “Females are emotional creatures. They routinely find it necessary to overkill someone they hate or fear.”

The leftover food laid out on the carpets was cool, but not yet too infested by insects. The ashes in the fire pit still gave off heat when stirred.

“They have not been gone long,” Sassani said. “Places set for four… I wonder who else besides Kashani and Dovzhenko. Surely none of these bodyguards.” The major thought on this while he walked through the house. “Seven dead,” he muttered as he stepped over the body of what he suspected was the cook. The Russian was more of a man than he’d thought. He turned to the Iranian antinarcotics liaison, a swarthy little man named Malik with arms that looked powerful, if a bit too short for his body. “Please speak to your contacts at the airport,” Sassani said. “These fugitives are extremely dangerous.”

“Of course, Major,” Malik said, but he made no effort to make the call.

“At once,” Sassani prodded. “They could already be there.”

“Yes,” Malik blustered. “I will have to use the satellite phone from the truck.”

“Satellite phone…” Sassani mused. He nodded to the desk in Omar’s office. There was a letter opener, what looked like a functional Soviet F1 hand grenade, and several other knickknacks arranged around the edge of the desk. There was a clear space in the center where there had once been a laptop computer. “He would have used a satellite connection for the Internet. Would he not?”

The cybertechnician looked as if he was about to vomit again, but he’d regained enough of his wits to follow the rest of the group on the search of the house.

“There is no landline,” he said. “So he must have.”

“Very good.” Sassani searched through the desk drawers until he found a file with instruction pamphlets for a Thuraya XT-Pro satellite phone and a Wi-Fi hotspot of the same brand. He turned to the Afghan captain. “Do you have Flying Fish or some other satellite-monitoring capability?”

The man shook his head. “We rely on the Americans for that technology.”

“I do,” the Iranian cybertech offered. “Not Flying Fish but something similar. We run it continuously, but due to manpower issues do not monitor it unless we are actively hunting someone.”

“Outstanding,” Sassani said. “Because I am.”

“You are what, Major?” the Afghan captain said.

“Actively hunting.”