On Scope

26

The Lizard was running on caffeine and curiosity as he rippled through his humming network and the lights from multiple screens bathed his glasses in flashes of different colors. The Seville op was under way, and the new information from the SEALs in Virginia Beach had changed the situation with the senator from a bothersome bit of Capitol Hill chatter to outright treasonable offenses. Freedman’s machines had snared the National Security Agency’s latest alert that the tagged words of “Task Force Trident” and “Kyle Swanson” had again shown up in telephonic communications.

It was like backtracking a trail of crumbs deep into a loaf of bread. First, the words had popped up in a call that was identified as being between this television action hero named Ryan Powell and Douglas Jimenez, the administrative aide for Senator Jordan Monroe. Soon thereafter, a JAG legal officer named Captain Howell Andrews had drafted a memo about his meeting with that same assistant and sent it up the chain of command to Brigadier General Alfred Coleman of the Pentagon’s Congressional Relations Office. The reaction ball began to roll. Now the SEALs raised a new red flag, saying Jimenez had tricked an air traffic controller down at Pope Field, and almost immediately these new mentions had fallen on the NSA Big Ears. Big Brother was indeed listening, and had been for quite some time.

He was about to text General Middleton when the general, Lieutenant Colonel Summers, and Master Gunny Dawkins all returned to the Trident offices after an early dinner. Commander Freedman had settled for a cold turkey and cheese sandwich, unwilling to leave his electronic world because of his total fascination with the quick-moving events. He was ready with an updated report by the time the others walked in, and put it up on the big screen, his palms wrapped around a cup of coffee and his foot tapping fast with joy as he waited for Middleton to go ballistic.

“A goddamn United States senator spilled this information? Who the hell did he call?”

“Don’t know that, sir. Only that it was someone in France. Whoever it was probably used a burn phone and tossed it when he was done. The cell tower triangulations pinned down the number on this end with great accuracy, and the number belongs to Senator Monroe of Missouri.”

The general rubbed his wrinkled brow. “Anything unusual in Spain?” They all had been expecting only to oversee that operation tonight.

“No, sir. They remain right on schedule.”

Dawkins was on his feet, pacing, then pounded his big right fist into his left palm. His face was angry. “We’ve got to stop it, sir. Bottom line is that our team is now compromised.”

Sybelle Summers disagreed. “I don’t see that. If Liz just picked up this information, no one could possibly be in Seville right now to block them.”

“We cannot be certain. Whoever he called in France may have some immediate way to warn the target or to intervene. We know they have guards on the premises, and they have radio communication. A warning may have gone out, or be on the way. We must consider that our own people are in danger.”

“Our people usually go dark on comms once things are under way, right?” Freedman looked at the experts, and they nodded confirmation. “We may not be able to reverse course now, even if we wanted to.”

The general agreed with Dawkins. Middleton would not chance letting his team walk into a trap. “We have to try. The guards and even the local cops may have been alerted. Freedman, get on the horn and tell them to abort. If they don’t answer, try something else, go directly through CIA. Bring them home, like right now.”

He swung around to face Sybelle. “Summers, you get in touch with our friend David Hunt at the FBI. I want the pair of you to meet me in the office of the chief of staff at the White House. Brief him in the car on the way over, and I’ll arrange for the Secret Service to clear you through the East Executive Drive gate. Double-Oh and Commander Freedman can continue trying to stop the Seville operation. Go, people. The clock is ticking.”

“The president’s chief of staff, sir? What about the Joint Chiefs?” Sybelle asked.

The general walked over to the windows that looked down on the memorial park outside the Pentagon. He had a hard time believing that a senator in good repute would sell out to murderers such as the kind who struck on 9/11 and violently ushered America into the Age of Terrorism. “In due course. Right now, we have to go all the way to the top.”

The team had terminated outside communication five minutes earlier, when Zombie One left the hacienda grounds for the long trudge up to the crest of the hill, a walk that he made every hour. The dark van was parked near the top.

Beth Ledford had begun walking downhill on the sidewalk, measuring her steps so that she and the Zombie would pass each other at the vehicle. “They’re both on the way,” said the CIA man in back, watching his two cameras and the overhead drone feed.

Swanson just sat there, trying to stay calm. Coastie, Mark Dixon, and Bob Smith would handle the takedown while the third spook stayed on the surveillance electronics inside. He was in the streetside passenger seat to avoid the fight, because he could not afford an errant gush of blood spoiling his makeup.

Spain was six hours ahead of Washington time, so since it was two o’clock in the morning in Seville, it was eight the previous night back in D.C. He knew the Tridents were in the office back there, nervously awaiting word from the strike team. So far, so good; the assault team went black on comms except among themselves.

Through the front window, he watched Coastie walking in her fancy dress, her hips making the big skirt fan side to side. That made him think of some other women, and he banished them from his mind. Torreblanca had a wife down there with him, and her mother and father, and their children. There was always the chance of collateral damage. He knew that. Innocent people die in combat all the time. His job was to go in and kill the guy and get out clean, without awakening anyone else in the house. But what if one of the kids was still up, or if the mother was watching a movie, and what if Torreblanca and his wife were making love? What if a hundred things? Coastie was a lot closer, and she had a flirtatious smile that was directed down the sidewalk at someone moving toward her. In the big side mirror, he saw the shape of the Zombie lumbering forward.

Swanson took a few deep breaths. He could not control everything. All he could do was his job. Do not rush. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, and stop beating yourself up over things that have not happened! With that, he wiped his mind clean as Coastie, the little Spanish temptress in the lacy gypsy dress, sauntered past.

Zombie One had been watching his shoes as he went one step after the other up the sloped sidewalk. He knew the route by heart. All the way to the top, where the fountain was, check that area on both sides for thirty minutes, then return in time for a brief break, and do it all again. Any sniper would have to have a hide up high, and he was familiar with all of the possible spots along this route. He was tired. He had drunk too much raw wine that afternoon, and although the noise of the fiesta had calmed a great deal, the Spaniards partied late. He still heard music and shouts and the clack of flamenco castanets. He was passing a line of parked vehicles. When he lifted his eyes, there was a beautiful young woman almost right in front of him. Dark hair, dark eyes, beautiful body beneath a fancy frock, and apparently a little drunk.

She locked eyes with him and missed a step, falling forward. Zombie One leaned over to catch her. Coastie knocked his hand aside and dropped all the way for a single-leg takedown as Mark Dixon rolled from beneath the van and piled on before the guy could even react. Bob Smith was right there, his right hand tight around the rubberized hammer grip of a mountain climber’s ice ax. He grabbed a handful of the Zombie’s hair to steady his target, then drove with a powerful swing that buried the steel point deep through the guard’s skull. Smith had to twist to yank the curved blade free from the tight bone, and it exited with a gush of blood and thick brain matter. Then he struck again with a wide swipe into the exposed temple.

Kyle Swanson opened his door and stepped carefully onto the sidewalk and around the tangle of bodies, then walked away, slowly assuming the shambling, disinterested gait of the dead guard. In the dim light, they would have seemed identical.

Behind him, the team worked quickly to finish with the lifeless body, first pulling a thick plastic bag down over the bleeding head wound, then stretching the corpse out flat and rolling it into a body bag. With the corpse wrapped up, all three of them lifted the Zombie into the rear of the van, where it was pushed to one side like a rug and almost immediately forgotten. It would be dumped on the way out.

“No reaction below, and no witnesses around here. We’re good,” said the spook on the cameras. “Swanson’s on his way.”

“My dress is ruined,” said Coastie, looking at the stains. She pulled a curtain across the space behind the seat for some privacy and wrestled her way out of the clothes, stripping down to a sports bra and running shorts. A black sweater, jeans, socks, and sneaks were on the floor at her feet. “OK, Mark. I’m ready now. Get up here and rake this goop off my face.”

Dixon slid into the driver’s seat and went to work with creams and towels to clean her up, pretending not to see the tears forming in her eyes. She dabbed them, but in a low voice told him, “That was horrible.” She yanked off the long-haired wig and replaced it with a black combat beanie.

“Up close, it always is,” the former Ranger said in a comforting tone. “Just let it go, Beth. We’re still on a mission. These tears are just a normal reaction. No prob.”

“I know.” She sniffed and wiped her nose, then was out of the van door again, climbing the ladder attached to the back. Up top, she gave a kick to a rolled sleeping bag and sprawled out on her stomach to face the hacienda some 250 meters away. From a cushioned box, she removed an M-40A3 sniper rifle and adjusted the cheek piece and the recoil pad to her comfort. She slid an AN/PVS-10 nightscope onto the rail, and added a clip of M-118LR rounds, working the bolt to put one of the 7.62 mm bullets into the chamber. When she finished adjusting the weapon, the nightscope illuminated the target area, and she swept it back and forth.

If things went sour, Coastie would give precision covering fire to Kyle. This was better, and she was back in her zone as the familiar weight and smells of the big weapon helped clear her mind about the savage death of the Zombie. She concentrated as never before, remembering the lessons of controlled breathing and almost hearing Kyle’s advice on the practice range. Her heart rate slowed and her vision sharpened, and she listened to the night and the faraway music and shouts of people still out having a good time. She touched a little microphone attached to the earbud. “Ready upstairs,” she reported.

“Ready down,” came a flat voice from within the van.

Smith was now at the wheel. “Ready front.”

Swanson, who had a similar bud in his ear for internal communication within the strike team, acknowledged, “I’m gone.”

A few minutes later, he plodded by the van at the same lethargic pace, eyes down at the sidewalk and not giving any sign that he even saw the vehicle. The broad sidewalk seemed like a shimmering thin tightrope in the sparse moonlight, and every step had to be exact to get him where he needed to go. A long stiletto blade, razor sharp on both sides, was in a leather case attached beneath his left forearm by a simple strap of Velcro. The pistol was in his belt and the silencer in a pocket. Halfway between the van and the hacienda, he clicked the transmit button on his radio twice, the signal to ask if everything was clear. He heard two clicks in response from his partners. Go.

The drone was in the air at only five thousand feet, flying lazy loops over the house, and its infrared cameras had identified the positions of the remaining guards. Zombie Two, as usual, was also on countersniper patrol about a mile away on a different patch of high ground, and was therefore not a factor. Zombies Three and Four were in static positions at the front and rear, and Five, the team leader, roamed the grounds. All was quiet, and the protectees were asleep, which made it harder for guards on such routine duty to stay awake, much less keep sharp.

The specter that was Kyle Swanson reached the edge of the grounds, walking in the deep darkness of the big pomegranate trees and putting on a pair of soft black gloves. He tightened the cylindrical sound suppressor onto the barrel of his pistol. He pressed the transmit button only long enough to say, “Location Zombie Five.”

The van observer who was flying the drone had seen the flare of a cigarette lighter and whispered, “Z’s Five and Four are in back. Just lit up smokes.”

Kyle moved forward. That bored pair would be back there swapping lies for a while. Good luck improves any plan. Swanson kept his face tilted down to further hide his features as he approached the front plaza, where the guard designated as Zombie Three was leaning back with his chair propped against the wall, hands behind his head beside the entry. Zombie Three saw exactly what he expected to see: the dark shape and general appearance of Zombie One, back early from his patrol. The man grunted. Kyle grunted. The garden was redolent with the scent of flowers.

Swanson covered the distance in three quick strides, pinned the man’s neck in his left hand, and used his right to stuff the pistol against the heart of the seated guard. He fired twice. The noise was quashed by the sound suppressor. The body bucked on the impact of the big slugs, but Kyle held him in place. Had stealth and time not been factors, he would have also delivered a head shot. He looked into the dim eyes. This guy was dead. Kyle left the body balanced on the chair, so a quick look from a distance would give the impression that the man was asleep, which would also explain why he would not answer a call. That would buy a little time. Every second mattered now.

He keyed the mike. “Zombies Four and Five?”

“No change.”

The front door was made of huge planks of oak that had darkened over many years and were held together by forged bolts. Heavy hinges of black iron attached it to the stone house. There was at least a 50 percent chance that it was unlocked, since the guards on exterior security might need to get inside in a hurry. The people inside were considered secure because the mercenaries with guns were outside. Swanson let out a long breath and softly depressed the large lever handle. It went down smoothly, and the giant door gave way with an easy push. He was inside in a single step.