Omega Sanction

Chapter Twenty-eight

Kiril positioned the SAM-9 missile with a field of fire covering the abandoned railroad tracks. Then he deployed the rest of his men around the embankment with all the hard-earned knowledge he'd gained fighting for the last decade.

He'd already plotted the route they would take south to Sarajevo. IFOR was building up forces around the city, preparing for an offensive against the Serbs. Over twenty thousand NATO troops were now camped within a twenty-mile radius of the city. The thought of what the VZ gas, released from a hill overlooking the city, would do to both the soldiers and citizenry of Sarajevo did not weigh heavily on Kiril's conscience. He had seen too much over the years. He simply wanted it to be over and he knew this was the only way.

He pulled back the worn sleeve of his fatigues and checked the watch strapped to his wrist. The crystal was chipped and cracked, but he could make out the hands beneath — another hour and the Saudi brothers would be here.

Two HH-60 Nighthawk helicopters were lifting off from the U.S.S. Nimitz, blades chopping through the salty air. Sailors watched, wondering who the black-uniformed men on board were. Since arriving on the ship four days ago, the men had stayed to themselves, totally ignoring crew members, test-firing exotic weapons off the edge of the flight deck and generally acting — in the words of one chief petty officer — like "bad asses."

An Apache gunship followed the two Nighthawks and the three aircraft headed due east — toward "Indian" country, as the pilots who overflew the Balkans called that airspace.

In his operations center, Hancock was watching a red dot moving westward across the outline of Romania projected on the screen. A green dot was moving eastward out of the Adriatic on the same latitude.

"Do we have satellite confirmation that we're tracking Jawhar's helicopter?" Hancock asked Dilken.

"Yes, sir. We got a Keyhole look from the KH-14 satellite at the airport it took off from and confirmed that is Jawhar's Bell Jet Ranger. Projecting its course puts it directly on line for the same spot where it went before to meet the Serbs — just north of the Sava River."

"Time to target?" Hancock asked.

"Forty-two minutes for Jawhar. Our team will be there five minutes before that and hold to the west, awaiting your order for final interdiction."

Hancock tapped a well-manicured finger against his upper lip. "I want to get them all on the ground."

"Yes, sir "

Hancock picked up the phone built into the right armrest of the chair and punched in number one. The line bypassed the director's secretary.

"What is it?" The director's tone was abrupt. Hancock had no idea what he had interrupted, but he knew now was the time to cross the Rubicon.

"Sir, we have a developing situation you should be aware of. I'm in the operations center."

"Give me an idea." The director sounded irritated.

"We're tracking two briefcase loads of VZ nerve gas in a helicopter owned by personnel known to affiliate with terrorists. It's heading toward Bosnia, where we believe it's going to be given to the Serbs."

"I'll be there in a minute."

Hancock put the phone down. He leaned back in his seat and stared up at the dots moving on the screen.

"He's made his move," Gereg said. "He must be pretty confident to bring in the director."

Parker was still trying to process what Gereg had told her. "If the brothers kidnapped Terri Dublowski to draw her father in and then Thorpe and I, then that means they're working with Hancock. Especially if he's the one who had Thorpe brought back on active duty." She shook her head. "I can't believe all that."

"Why not?" Gereg didn't seem in the least surprised by that assumption. "Hancock could have arranged it with the brothers through a cut-out. There are quite a few people in the covert world who exist simply to pass information from one group to another. Groups that never want it known they are talking to each other. It is a rather lucrative business for some."

"Akil and Jawhar might not even know who requested they snatch Terri or why. Most likely it was a trade. They got something they wanted in exchange for kidnapping Terri Dublowski."

"And," she continued, "my report from Tel Aviv says that the brothers were forewarned of the Mossad attempt to interdict the VZ. I'm not the only one who has a contact in Israel."

"Are you saying Hancock tipped off Jawhar and Akil about the ambush?"

"It wouldn't surprise me. He wants the glory for himself. It's the way things work in the covert world."

"But Hancock is betraying the brothers now," Parker noted.

" 'Betrayal' is a strong word," Gereg said. "It indicates loyalty in the first place, something I would say our friend Mr. Hancock has never had with anyone or anything except his own interests."

Gereg pointed at the screen. The two dots were closing on a spot along the border between Bosnia and Croatia. "He uses everything for his own purposes. If his DAT team takes down these people and the VZ, he'll be a hero. Plus he'll solve several other problems at the same time. He's already tied me to these brothers and set it up so that I get blamed for tipping Jawhar and Akil off about the Mossad ambush in the Ukraine." She proceeded to tell Parker of the death of Welwood.

"It's a lose-lose situation," Gereg said. "Which is the position Hancock likes to put those he views as enemies in." She pointed at the screen. "We have to hope his DAT team succeeds in stopping the nerve gas, but if they do, then he succeeds."

"He gets away with kidnapping and killing?"

"It isn't the first time and it won't be the last," Gereg said. "Don't you think now that he was behind Takamura's murder? Takamura was killed when he got too close to identifying Jawhar and Akil too quickly."

"If Hancock set all this up, then that makes sense. But who did he use to kill Takamura?"

Gereg frowned. "He wouldn't have used one of his people for that. Not in the States. That would be going too far, even for him."

"Who would he use, then?" Parker pressed.

Gereg stretched out her long legs and leaned back in her chair. "I've been asking myself the same question ever since Welwood was killed in what the police are labeling a traffic accident last week."

"Takamura's was made to look like an accident!" Parker said.

Gereg nodded. "I know. There are a lot of players who would do such a job either for money or an exchange of favors." She pulled another file out of her desk. "Here's my choice. He's used the car accident method several times before on other jobs we know of overseas."

Parker picked it up and opened it. "James O'Callaghan?"

"IRA, but he's been known to freelance to keep his traveling options open."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning he likes to be able to come and go as he wants, and to do that, he needs someone like Hancock pulling some strings in the background."

"Jesus!" Parker exclaimed. "You people are in bed with terrorists everywhere!"

"Not this person." Gereg uncrossed her legs and sat up straight. "This is a nasty business, but I always try to do the right thing, the right way. A lot of people around here don't like that, and—" she stopped as her phone buzzed and she picked it up. She listened for a few seconds, then put it down. "The director's joined Hancock in the CDA operations center. He's making his play."

"Where is Nabi Ulmalhamah?" Thorpe demanded.

They were waiting on Yaron. Rotzinger was seated at one end of the table, appearing even more unhappy than his usual dour look.

"We have been checking on that," Esdras said. "All we have managed to come up with is confirmation that it is one of Prince Yasin's palaces. We don't have a location."

The door opened and a young man came in. He leaned over and whispered in Esdras's ear, then left without looking at either of the other men in the room.

Esdras looked at Thorpe. "Your people have launched three helicopters to interdict Jawhar and Akil. Also, your Delta Force team here in town has gone on alert."

"I don't understand," Thorpe said. "Why a team here in Tel Aviv?"

Esdras shrugged. "Who knows?"

Thorpe stood. "Can you hook me up with them?"

Esdras waved at him to sit down. "They can do nothing staging out of here without our permission. Let us see what develops before we go off, as you Americans, say, half-cocked."

Kiril heard the helicopter long before it flew by, barely twenty feet above the rail line. It was the same type as last time. A Bell Jet Ranger with IFOR markings. He climbed up the embankment as the helicopter banked a quarter mile away and headed back.

Kiril frowned as the chopper gained altitude.

Four miles away, the two Nighthawks and one Apache were hiding below the tree line, hovering just above the Sava River. They were linked by SATCOM to an IFOR AWACS surveillance plane, circling two hundred miles to the south.

The AWACS had the entire area "painted" with radar, as well as having its own uplink to a KH-14 reconnaissance satellite that was feeding it live images of the area. The location of the Jet Ranger was being updated every tenth of a second with an accuracy of within two meters.

Those in the waiting helicopters had no doubt they could run down the Jet Ranger easily. Their orders, however, were to wait until the meet was made and the VZ transferred, then to bag the whole lot.

On board the Apache, the gunner armed his missiles, while on the Nighthawks, the men dressed in black locked and loaded their weapons.

"Hold in place," Kiril ordered into his radio, keeping his men under cover in the swamp. The Jet Ranger was now overhead, a hundred feet up.

Kiril looked up into the rotor wash. He was growing weary of these games. There was plenty of room for the helicopter to land where it had before.

A spasm rippled down his throat. His nose burned. His hand grabbed for his radio mike as he realized he was already as good as dead.

His fingers squeezed the send button, but no words came out of his mouth, only the gagging reflex as his lungs refused to work. He felt pain rip up his spine and he staggered back two steps, then dropped to his knees. His head was still angled up, staring at the chopper overhead, but everything was moving in slow motion now. He could even see each blade turning, so slowly, it seemed.

Kiril pitched face forward into the gravel between the rail lines, dead. The SAM-9 man managed to arm his missile before he too was hit by the VZ. He died, desperately trying to pull the trigger and failing as his nerves seized up faster than his mind could issue the order. Kiril's entire patrol was dead within thirty seconds.

"Chopper is still airborne," the voice of the radar operator on board the AWACS repeated.

"What are they doing?" The Director had taken over Hancock's chair, relegating the CDA chief to a position standing next to him.

"Probably checking the area out," Hancock answered.

"Sir!" Dilken's alert was unnecessary, as they could all see the red dot moving east.

"Did it land at all?" the director asked.

"No, sir," Dilken answered.

"They might have done an airdrop of the VZ to the Serbs," Hancock said, but he knew as the words left his mouth that they were ridiculous. Only a complete buffoon would do such a thing to such a deadly cargo, when they could just as easily land the helicopter to off-load. He caught Dilken's attention. "Tell the DAT to go!"

Dilken relayed the order.

"What the hell is going on?" Parker demanded.

Gereg was watching the action on the display and listening to the orders being given with growing alarm. "I think it's not developing exactly the way Hancock planned."

As the Apache and one of the Nighthawks raced off to the east, running down the Jet Ranger, the remaining Nighthawk halted above the place where the other chopper had hovered. The body of a man was clearly visible on the tracks below.

"I've got more bodies in the swamp." The copilot had a pair of thermal goggles on and he was scanning the area.

"Oh, shit," the senior man in the rear of the helicopter muttered. "Suit up!" he ordered. He keyed his radio. "We've got bodies here. Looks like a bio or chem weapon was used."

The director turned the seat slightly and stared at Hancock. "What's going on? I thought you said this was to be a transfer of VZ."

"It was." A nerve twitched on Hancock's left temple. "We've got it under control."

"Under control?" The director stared at Hancock. "If that report is right, VZ was just used!"

"The Apache will take out the chopper and the Nighthawk with it will secure the VZ. My other team will clear the site," Hancock said. "We can keep a lid on this."

"You'd better," the director warned.

One the blue-suited men peered through the plastic face mask at the display of the machine in his hand. The reading, along with the nature of the bodies, left no doubt aboutwhat had happened here. He had only seen this in a training lab at the army's Chemical Warfare Center on Johnston Atoll. And then the bodies had been monkeys.

"It's VZ!" he reported over the FM radio to the commander in the chopper hovering above. Two ropes, one from each side of the helicopter, dangled to the ground, where a half dozen men in environmental suits were combing the area.

"How hot?"

"We're clear now," the man reported. "VZ has a time on target of less than a minute."

"Stay suited and sealed," the commander warned.

"No shit," the man on the ground muttered as he dug the plastic toe into one of the bodies, noting the obvious signs of a painful death on the man's face. He pulled a small plastic container off his combat vest and sprinkled the powder inside over the body, covering it from head to toe. Then he pulled a thermite grenade off his vest, pulled the pin, and dropped it onto the body. With a hiss, the grenade began burning, igniting the powder, consuming flesh.

Twenty miles to the east, the Apache was closing on the Bell Jet Ranger, the Nighthawk right behind. The Apache pilot slid his finger over to the transmit button on his radio and the signal was relayed through the AWACS to Langley.

"We have visual on the target," he reported.

"Put it down," Hancock ordered.

The gunner, seated in front of the pilot, had several options with which he could follow out that order. Slaved to his helmet, the 30mm chain gun under the nose of the helicopter followed each movement of his head. He also had Hellfire missiles loaded in pods under the short, stubby wings that he could lock on target, fire, then forget about as they tracked whatever they had locked on to.

A small flip-down sight was over the gunner's left eye on which his firing data was displayed along with the crosshairs for target designation. He put the center over the rear of the Jet Ranger, his finger curling around the trigger for the 30mm cannon.

The gunner pulled back and the Apache vibrated from the recoil of the gun located just below the nose of the craft. A string of rounds crossed the distance between the two helicopters and ripped into the rear of the Jet Ranger.

"Target is down," the pilot reported as the Jet Ranger nosed over and smashed into the ground. A fireball consumed the wreckage and the Apache and Nighthawk came to a hover two hundred feet overhead.

Gereg turned off the computer feed from the Direct Action operations center. "He did it."

"What can we do?" Parker asked.

"The only thing we can do is throw ourselves on the mercy of the director," Gereg said. "With no proof, it isn't the recommended course of action." She shrugged. "But if we do nothing, you can be sure Hancock has more cards to play and I'd rather upset his timetable than let him play them when and where he wants."

She pointed at the folder. "If Mr. O'Callaghan is involved, he is the one who took a shot at Sergeant Major Dublowski at Camp Mackall. You can be sure that Hancock won't leave any loose ends."

"He's killed people," Parker said.

"We have no proof of that," Gereg reminded her. "I don't trust Hancock and I'm not even sure he's behind any of what has happened."

"I'm not going to sit by and do nothing," Parker said.