Scorpion Deception

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Begur,

Costa Brava, Spain

The villa was on a cliff overlooking a spectacular view of the lower town and a rocky cove opening to the sea. It was made of stone and glass, large, modern, and expensive, with at least a half acre of landscaped grounds and a stone pool terrace with a rectangular swimming pool. The terrace was on a level with the colonnaded back of the villa and stood a half meter above a garden of rosebushes and trees that led down to a wrought-iron railing at the edge of a thousand-foot cliff, overgrown with wildflowers. The villa was surrounded by a high ivy-covered stone wall with a drive-in wrought-iron front gate. On the land side it was backed by a pine forest that isolated it from the other holiday villas, and could only be approached by a winding single-lane road that made it ideal for defense and would hopefully limit any civilian casualties, Scorpion thought as he stood on the pool terrace and used Webb’s binoculars to survey the terrain.

Below was a part of the town of Begur with its medieval stone buildings and palm trees, and below that the cove, with stone steps carved into the side of the cliff leading down to a small sandy beach. The water was so clear that when the wind died, you could see rocks on the bottom a hundred feet deep. The beach was deserted, umbrellas stacked and furled this early in the season, especially with a Tramuntana, the wind that in the early spring blows from the Pyrenees. The wind whipped the sea to whitecaps, rocking a lone sailboat at anchor in the cove like a metronome.

From the terrace, Scorpion could see a good stretch of the Costa Brava, trees bending in the wind and beyond, the wild jagged coast and the sun shining on the choppy blue of the Mediterranean. It was the most beautiful place he had ever seen.

In a way, his part was done, he thought. Webb had hinted as much. He was the bait. He’d driven into Begur, with its narrow cobbled streets and ivy-covered stone walls, dominated by the ruins of twelfth century castle perched atop a hill like the Acropolis in Athens. He stopped in at cafes and little tiendas in town, talking loudly and generally doing his best to draw attention to himself so people would remember him, though in his blond surfer boy wig, he thought it would be hard if they didn’t, making sure everyone knew which villa he was renting and that he would be there for a week. Several of the townspeople had thrown him looks that let him know they thought he was full of himself. Good. They would remember him.

Now all he had to do was leave the cell phone turned on at the villa, whose number he hoped Kta’eb Hezbollah was GPS-tracking, and let the SOG team do the rest. All they could do was wait for Kta’eb Hezbollah to commit. Because otherwise the trail ended with the dead Karif and the mission was over.

He met the SOG team in the villa’s upper master bedroom, whose windows had the widest views. All of them were like Webb: lean, muscled, intense. They were a team; he was the outsider. He tried to break the ice with stories about SAD training at the CIA Harvey Point facility, aka “the Point” in North Carolina; in particular, about a certain well-endowed female bartender named Melissa in Elizabeth City, about whom everyone had a tale to tell. On the surface they accepted he was a warrior, but their looks let him know they didn’t think they needed him.

Scorpion knew otherwise. If their ruse worked, the Saw-scaled Viper and his team would be coming. They had been ahead of him every step of the way. They had killed Harandi and the Gnomes, and whatever happened, Scorpion knew he had to be here.

“When do you think they’ll hit?” Webb said.

“Tonight, probably 0200, 0300 hours,” Scorpion said. “It’s when either of us would.”

Webb nodded. They went over the layout and deployment of men-who would be where, weapons and sensors-on the iPad with the team. The comm, a mid-sized welterweight with a crooked nose called J.G., passed around the satellite-based TactiCell EV-DO phones they would use to communicate. In honor of the Point, the password would be “Melissa” and the countersign “Elizabeth” for Elizabeth City. A lanky Kentuckian, Rutledge, passed around the night vision goggles. Rodriguez, a Latino from East L.A., was on the M25 sniper rifle. A six-foot-six African-American linebacker type with a shaved head that everyone facetiously called “Mini Me” set up the C-4 IEDs. Webb and a tough New Jerseyite, Delucca aka “Spartacus Balls,” would have the XM25s, plus they would all have H amp;K MP7A1 compact submachine guns, plus grenades and pistols, including Scorpion.

“Where will you be?” Webb asked him.

“In the house, nice and lit up where they can see me till it gets late and they’ll figure I’m asleep. Then I’ll make my way down to the car in the woods off the road. Once they attack, I’ll move it to block the road set with C-4 so they can’t get out.”

Webb looked around.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Scorpion said to all of them. “These are probably the guys who lit up Bern. I know we all want to kill these Mike Foxtrots,” Army slang for motherfuckers, “but if we can keep one of them alive, we can get intel the White House would kill to have right now.”

“We’re not going to give these dicks the chance to shoot back,” Spartacus Balls growled in his Jersey accent. They all looked at Scorpion, and he looked at each of them in turn.

“No, we’re not going to do that,” he agreed.

They nodded. Professionals. Everyone began to move to their assigned locations. Webb walked Scorpion down the stairs and out to the pool terrace, the water in the pool spilling over the edge because of the wind.

“How do you figure they’ll come?” Scorpion asked.

Webb inclined his head toward the pine forest on the hill behind the villa.

“That’s how I would.”

“What about the cliff?” Scorpion asked.

“Too steep. Especially with equipment.” Webb shrugged. “But just in case, I’ve got Mini Me there. He’s big enough to take them all by himself. So,” he hesitated, “what do you think?”

“It’s going to be a long night,” Scorpion said.

He watched the three-quarter moon rise over the sea from the dining room of the villa, painting a rippling silver path on the surface of the water. The night was clear, cool, the Tramuntana blowing about twenty miles per hour, stirring the trees. Although he seemed alone, he was conscious of Rutledge in the hall closet, the door cracked just a little to let the sound suppressor on the MP7A1’s muzzle peek out. The living room was well lit. From the outside anyone could easily spot him as a target. That was the idea.

He checked his watch one last time. A little past 2330 hours. Time to go. He hit his EV-DO phone.

“Melissa. This is Scorpion. I’m heading out to the road,” he said, and clicked off. The others would be tracking him with their night vision till where the road curved and they lost sight of him. Not for the last time, he wished he had a drone for eyes above. His mission sense told him they would absolutely hit the villa tonight; he could feel it.

He grabbed his gear, went out by the pool terrace and around to the front of the villa. The back of his neck prickled. He could feel them watching him as he got into the Citroen and drove down the road, shrouded by overhanging trees. The headlights carved a tunnel of light in the darkness bordered by shadows that seemed to move as the trees rustled in the wind. As he came around the curve and saw the road empty ahead, he switched off his headlights and put on the night vision goggles, turning the road into an eerie green lane between the trees.

The gap in the stand of pines he had spotted earlier that day was on his left. He stopped, turned the car around, and backed in far enough so it was well hidden from the road but facing it so he could drive it out in seconds. It took a few more minutes to set the detonators for the C-4 rigged to a cell phone set to Vibrate. If he called it, the vibration would create sufficient amperage to set off the detonators. He gave his weapons a final check, then got out of the Citroen and hid on the ground at the edge of the trees beside the road, lining up so he could watch the road through tree branches he pulled into place to camouflage his position.

He settled in, the MP7A1 with its sound suppressor steadied on a downed tree limb. From where he lay he could not see the moon, only its light on the road, a slash of pale green in the goggles, and the moving shadows of the trees stirring with the wind. They wouldn’t hit from this side, he thought. Of all of them, he would probably have the least part in this fight.

As the minutes stretched he thought about Sandrine and whether he’d ever see her again. Probably not. If they were successful tonight, the mission would get much more dangerous and he would be going it alone. And if they were unsuccessful, he’d be dead. Don’t think about that, he told himself, thinking like that never brings luck. He shivered inside his jacket. It was getting cold. It was going to be a long night.

Come on, he thought, calling to Kta’eb Hezbollah in his mind. He’d planted the cheese in the trap. He’d set the table for them. All they had to do was take it, not wanting to think about how much could go wrong. Everything depended on a dubious CNI agent and a dirty Spanish cop.

It was just after three in the morning when he was alerted by his EV-DO phone vibrating. By the voice, it sounded like the sniper, Rodriguez. He and Webb were stationed in prone positions on different sides of the villa’s roof.

“Melissa. Movement in the trees,” Rodriguez said, and clicked off. Almost at the same moment, Scorpion heard the sound of an engine coming up the road. A white van loomed in the night vision goggles; IBERDROLA, the electric company, was painted on its side as it raced past. He called on his EV-DO.

“Melissa. Van approaching fast. Could be explosives. Don’t let it get close.”

“Elizabeth,” Webb started to say. “Romeo tha-” He was cut off.

There were two or three shots, then a fusillade of gunfire-the rattle of sound-suppressed MP7A1s and the unmistakable staccato of AK-47s-from somewhere close to the villa. The shooting sounded like it came from the woods behind it. Then a loud explosion echoed through the trees and a bright white flare of light filled the night goggles.

Scorpion ran to the Citroen. The gunfire didn’t sound like it was coming from the front of the villa where the van would pull in, but from the pool terrace.

Mini Me! The sons of bitches came up the cliff! Scorpion thought as he jumped into the Citroen and started it. He moved the car so it was parked horizontally across the road, preventing anyone from getting past. Locking the Citroen, he ran back to the woods, moving on all fours, Delta style, through the trees and toward the villa.

The Saw-scaled Viper-it had to be him-must’ve launched a three-pronged attack: from the pine woods behind the villa, up the face of the cliff, and with the electric company van. There was a sound of metal crashing-maybe the van smashing through the villa’s wrought-iron gate and then the bang of a single shot that could only have come from Rodriguez with the M25 sniper rifle. Taking out the driver of the van, Scorpion hoped.

Ahead, through the foliage in his night vision goggles, he could see the high stone wall that went around the grounds of the villa. On the other side came the sound of intense gunfire. It was coming from all over. No way to tell who was shooting at whom or from where, but he could hear the sound of bullets hitting the stone wall, some ricocheting, some of them-probably the MP7A1’s DM11 4.6x30mm bullets that could go through damn near anything-ripping holes in the wall, he thought, hitting the ground to try to avoid being tagged by one of them.

As he wriggled on the ground along the wall, he heard the crump of two grenades going off, one right after the other, then the crash of the M25 and more automatic fire. It was like a war on the other side, he thought, angling through the leaves on the ground toward where the wall ended at the edge of the cliff. Just as he reached the cliff edge, the sight of the cove and the sea and the moon eerily bright through the night vision goggles, a giant explosion hurled shards of metal, glass, and bodies like shrapnel against the other side of the wall, ripping trees, tearing down limbs and leaves, even taking down a part of the stone wall about twenty meters behind him.

He took out the EV-DO.

“Melissa. Scorpion. Do you copy?” he whispered into the device.

No one answered. He tried again. Nothing. My God, he thought. Have I lost all six of them? He had to find out!

Ears ringing from the explosion, he slid feet first over the edge of the cliff, feeling with his toes for a foothold. Nothing. He stretched his toes out as far as he could while keeping the weight of his upper body on level ground so he wouldn’t go over the rocky edge of the cliff, especially with all his gear. He had to get around to the other side of the wall and see what was happening.

He felt something. A crevice in the rock face for his toe. It would have to do, he thought, putting his weight on the toes of his left foot pressed into the crevice and swinging his body over and around the edge of the wall. With his right foot, he desperately felt on the rock face for something he could gain a purchase on. He clung to the wall with both hands, feeling blindly with his right toe. Then he felt something, a root or something else sticking out perhaps half an inch from the surface. Here we go, he thought, rested his weight on it and swung over with his upper body while clawing at the iron terrace railing. Pulling himself up, he rolled over the railing into the bloody mess that was all that was left of Mini Me and whoever had been wearing the suicide vest that killed them both.

That had been the first explosion he heard, he thought, scanning for movement and cover. All around there were flashes of light from gunfire. A bullet zinged off the iron railing. He dived into a rosebush and crawled on the ground below the side of the stone pool terrace. Cautiously raising his head, he peered over the terrace edge.

The electric company van was obliterated down to the chassis. That had been the big explosion. The back of the villa was completely demolished, upper floors buckled and exposed as if someone had cut away the entire wall. There were flashes of gunfire between someone next to the side of the villa and at least two persons, maybe more, firing from behind a stone flower urn on the terrace. Suddenly, from the battered roof of the villa, came a laser aimed above the urn. In the night goggles, Scorpion saw as a straight line of white light. It was followed by the crump of a weapon and an explosion as a grenade exploded above and behind the urn. Webb with the XM25 grenade launcher, he thought. The game changer. It calculated the distance and trajectory to the target from the laser and exploded the grenade so it took out those hiding behind an obstacle. The guns firing from behind the urn fell silent.

“Melissa. More from the woods,” someone said in the EV-DO.

A second crump came from someone hiding up in a tree next to the villa, followed by an explosion and screams from the woods. Delucca and the second XM25, he thought. There were moving shadows and flashes of rapid fire, the shattering staccato of AK-47s and the crackling of an MP7A1, followed by another grenade explosion inside the house that for an instant lit the entire scene in harsh light. Two more dead attackers and one of the SOGs-no doubt Rutledge, who’d been hiding in the closet-whirling in a kneeling firing position as two figures streaked toward the villa wall. Rutledge cut them down with a long burst from his MP7A1. But an RPG fired from the vicinity of a tree in the front courtyard came streaking into the shattered villa and exploded in a blaze of light, and when Scorpion, blinking, could see again, Rutledge was gone.

Scorpion looked back toward the tree and thought he saw one of the attackers moving. He took a breath and started to aim. Before he could fire, there was another explosion by the shattered front gate to the villa property. An IED, one of those laid by Mini Me, he thought, and saw four shadows running toward him. They leaped from the pool terrace down to the garden and ran toward the cliff. He pressed against the stone side of the terrace and after they passed him sat up and fired his MP7A1, cutting down two of them. As the other two leaped over the iron railing, something came flying through the air back at him. A grenade. He barely had an instant, hearing it bounce on the stone surface of the pool terrace as he pressed himself against its side.

The hard shove of the blast ripped the air above him, shrapnel shredding a nearby hedge. Incredibly, he was okay. It had come within a hair of taking him out. Being below the blast and against the side of the terrace had saved him. He grabbed the EV-DO phone and clicked on.

“Melissa. Scorpion. Two of them went over the cliff edge,” he said.

Not waiting for a response, he ran to the iron railing and peered over. Already a few hundred feet below, two men were rappelling down the face of the cliff. He looked around, spotted the climbing ropes and carabiners tied to the rail, and ran over. It took him longer than he wanted to find his Leatherman pocket tool, and by the time he used its knife to cut the ropes, he could no longer see them or tell if he had done any damage. From far away he heard the distant wail of police sirens. The Costa Brava was remote enough that although the gunfire and explosions had to have aroused dozens of emergency calls, it would take the policia time to reach the villa.

And speaking of reaching, how were any of the surviving attackers going to get away?

“Melissa. Scorpion. I’m heading for the road,” he said into the EV-DO phone, then ran toward the front gate, the gateposts blasted and what was left of the wrought-iron twisted and mangled on the ground. He ran out into the road and down the hill toward the curve where he’d left the Citroen. Without the goggles in the pitch-darkness, he would have seen nothing, but far ahead he saw two figures running on the road.

One of the figures turned and fired a burst from an AK-47 at him, but it was wild and went wide. Scorpion zigged and zagged a little and ran faster. Rounding the curve, he could see them approaching the Citroen some two hundred meters ahead. Scorpion hit the asphalt, pulled out his cell phone, found the contact number for the IED and pressed Send.

The explosion lit the night with a giant fireball that shattered everything around it for a hundred meters and set nearby trees ablaze, bits of metal and glass stripping leaves from the trees. The force and a wave of heat rolled over him. He stood up and took off his goggles. The shooting had stopped. Whoever had been near the Citroen no longer existed. He walked slowly back up the hill to where Webb and the other remaining men of the SOG team were standing on the grounds in the front of the villa.

They had lost two men, Rutledge and Mini Me. Rodriguez was wounded and limping from the blast from the electric company van. J.G. and Spartacus Balls Delucca were stripping and packing their weapons.

“How soon before the policia arrive?” Webb asked.

“Ten minutes. Not more,” Scorpion said.

“We’ll be gone,” Webb said, motioning to his men.

“We need to sweep the bodies for intel,” Scorpion said, heading toward the pool terrace. The two bodies of the attackers he’d shot were both lying facedown near the railing. He pulled an iPad out of his backpack and began checking their pockets, using the iPad to photograph and fingerprint the dead attackers, what was left of them. The first body was of a small man, obviously of Middle Eastern origin. Nothing in the pockets. When he rolled the second over, he had a brief moment of satisfaction when he saw it was Mustache, the man who had killed Karif. He took his photo and fingerprints, and in one of the pockets found a small plug-in drive. Perhaps Mustache had intended to use it on intel he found inside the villa. Langley could handle it, he thought, heading to what was left, a foot and part of an arm and skull of the attacker with the suicide vest who had taken out Mini Me. As Scorpion took the fingerprints of the surviving hand, his EV-DO sounded.

“Melissa. Time to go, ladies,” Webb said.

“Elizabeth. Romeo that,” Scorpion said, gathered his things and went back to the front of what was left of the villa, where the others were already carrying their gear. J.G. and Rodriguez carried Rutledge’s body on a stretcher. They could hear the sirens of policia cars coming closer up the hill. They headed into the pine woods where they had hidden their getaway ride, a square-angled Mercedes G SUV. Before they got in, J.G. checked the traps-thin black threads tied between the doors-and under the chassis-branches in specific positions and angles to camouflage the vehicle-to make sure they hadn’t been tampered with and that no one had booby-trapped the SUV.

Twenty minutes later they were riding on a side road they had reconnoitered the previous day toward the autopista, AP-7, to Figueres and the French border. They sat cramped next to each other, legs on their gear and weapons. They had laid Rutledge’s crumpled body in the back. For a time none of them spoke.

“How long till they shut the border?” Rodriguez asked.

“Our contact from CNI,” Scorpion said, not using Marchena’s name, “said the policia request would have to be routed through CNI. He said he would be watching for it and hold off closing the border till 0430 hours.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got fifty minutes.”

“Step on it, J.G.,” Webb told J.G., who was driving. “How many hajjis did we get?”

“One in the van,” J.G. said.

“One plus three in the woods,” Spartacus Balls growled.

“One with the suicide vest,” Scorpion said, not wanting to mention Mini Me. “Plus two in the garden and two with the IED in the Citroen.”

“Confirm two more in the garden with the XM25,” Webb said.

“Four for Rutledge: two inside, two outside,” Scorpion added. “Two got away.”

“Seventeen dead Mike Foxtrots,” Webb said.

“Fucking van,” Spartacus Balls snarled, hitting the back of the seat in front of him, and for a time there was only the sound of the engine and the tires on the road, headlights carving the way in the darkness.

“Well, you said not to underestimate them,” Webb muttered finally, not looking at Scorpion. “I’ll give you that.”

“Rutledge and Mini Me didn’t underestimate them,” J.G. said, and no one said anything after that. In a way, Scorpion couldn’t blame them. He was the outsider, and so far on this mission, he had brought everyone associated with it grief. God, he was glad Sandrine was out of it.

As they approached the border at Le Perthus Scorpion got the call on his SME PED phone from Shaefer.

“Mendelssohn,” Shaefer said.

“Flagstaff,” Scorpion answered, his hand covering his mouth to minimize being overheard by the others in the SUV, though from their thousand-meter stares, he didn’t think they gave a damn.

“We got a hit. A cell phone call from one of the coves in Begur. Aiguafreda,” Shaefer said.

“What have you got?” Scorpion asked.

“A phone number in Tehran.”

“Do we know who it belongs to?”

“Romeo that,” Shaefer said. “But we need confirmation. The good news is you’re legit again.” The mission was back to being authorized by the DCIA.

“We left a mess here. Killed some Bravo Golfs.” Bad guys.

“We’ll handle it. Casualties?” Shaefer asked.

“Two,” Scorpion said, looking at the dark silhouettes of Webb and the others.

“I’ll pass it on,” Shaefer said, meaning Harris and the upper echelons. “What about collateral damage?”

“Negative, but there’s some property and a road pooched.”

“Christ,” Shaefer muttered. “Everywhere you go, do you have to blow every goddamn thing up?”

“What’d you want a SOG to do, kiss ’em? How’re we doing?” Asking what was happening behind the scenes in Langley and Washington.

He could hear the tension in Shaefer’s voice. “We got their attention. The whole damn NSC, the Pentagon, everybody’s on stand-by.”

“I’ll tell them,” Scorpion said. Webb and the SOG team. They’d earned it, he thought. Shaefer’s message meant that the U.S. was ready to attack Iran and if necessary go to war as soon as he provided proof as to who in Iran had ordered the Bern attack. “I’m not sure they’ll give a shit, but I’ll tell them. How soon do I have to be there?” Thinking Tehran. The belly of the beast. The odds of ever seeing Sandrine again were getting longer by the second.

“Yesterday,” Shaefer said.