Tom Clancy Support and Defend

50

Caruso never saw the wreckage of the helicopter, he passed it in the trees fifty yards on his right, but as he climbed through the woods he came across the tracks of several men, along with streaks of blood in the snow, and he followed the tracks into a draw between two hilltops. Here not only could he could look out into small valley, but he could also see that Ross and his entourage had done the same, as the tracks and blood stains indicated they had paused here.

Dom used the scope of his rifle to scan a row of roofs he saw in the distance. They looked like chalets arranged in the woods along a road, but he could see nothing more than that. He thought it likely the Iranians holding Ross would head for the buildings in hopes of finding transportation out of the area, and the prospect of them getting away forced Caruso to pick up the pace. He all but ran down the hill, into the trees toward the road and while he did so he attempted to call Adara. He was not terribly surprised to find he had no service here, so he pocketed his phone and told himself he was the only one between the Iranians and complete and unfettered access to the intelligence scrape.

It took Caruso just a few minutes to arrive at the road, and he crossed it carefully, then entered the trees to approach the first chalet unseen.

The trees ended just twenty-yards from the side of the house, but Dom stayed back another twenty-five yards to stay deep within the tree line. He saw a man sitting on the steps in the front of the wooden building with a Kalashnikov resting on his knees. He was olive-complexioned, wearing a gray ski jacket and blue jeans, and he looked young and fit, but from the way he handled his weapon, not terribly well trained. Dom had seen the men around Ross, and this guy was definitely not part of that crew.

Part of the reinforcements from the helo, Dom guessed. He got eyes on the second sentry just seconds later. The man held an HK MP5 submachine gun, and he stood out of the wind, squatting next to a woodpile facing the woods behind the house.

Dom moved to a position where he could see into a large window on the side of the house near the driveway. He used his rifle’s scope to peer inside the chalet. The lights were on and through the three-and-a-half magnification afforded him by the ACOG battle sight on the rail of the M4, he could see one of the men sitting at a computer screen at a desk. To his left was movement, Dom shifted his focus to it, and there in front of him was Ethan Ross.

The American was being held up by two men, they had his arms up high behind him in a stress position. His pants were down to his ankles.

Dom withdrew his eye from the scope in surprise.

Focusing again, he saw another subject, this man stood in front of Ross and spoke to him — from his animated demeanor, Dom thought the man might have been shouting.

This man Dominic recognized. He’d seen him on the veranda of the Venezuelan safe house in Panama.

And then he saw what was happening. The Iranian held a broken bottle in his right hand. Low at Ross’s crotch.

“Oh, God,” Caruso muttered.

Caruso quickly shifted his rifle to position it next to the thin trunk of a pine, then he used his forearm to make a solid shooting platform, nesting the rifle in the crook of his forearm and holding the pine with his left hand. He placed the red chevron reticule in his scope on the small man’s forehead.

Dom realized that as soon as he fired a single round the two men outside right in front of him, really, would know he was here, and they would be able to engage him from two directions.

Shit, Dom thought. He found himself at a ridiculous tactical disadvantage. All his training told him to back into the trees and disengage, but he knew he didn’t have that option.

He had to end this, even though he had a strong suspicion that the moment he fired his rifle, shit would start to go wrong.

Mohammed stepped forward with the broken wine bottle.

Ethan screamed; spit shot from his mouth and snot dripped from his nose.

“No! Please, no!” Sobbing, he said, “I will tell you!”

“What is the password?”

“I will tell you when we get to Iran.”

Mohammed shook his head. “Our journey together must end now, Ethan. That is my decision. You only get to decide if you will live, or if you will keep your manhood.”

“I have other information. Get me to Iran and I will tell you—”

Mobasheri shook his head. “You have no power to negotiate, because I know you will tell me what I need.” He slipped the broken wine bottle between Ethan’s legs.

Caruso held his finger on the trigger, but he did not fire. He took his eye out of the scope again, and counted off targets. He saw five in total. Two outside, and four inside. If he shot the man with the broken bottle he could quickly engage the two men outside, maybe he’d get both of them, maybe he’d get only one. Even if he got both, however, that would still leave two men inside with Ross, and there was no way in hell they wouldn’t be ready if Dom came in after them.

They still had access to Ethan, so they still had access to his information.

From fifty yards away he heard a bloodcurdling scream. He quickly looked back into the scope and saw the Iranian torturing Ross with the bottle.

Quickly he lined the reticule up on his target’s head. He took a full breath and blew it out halfway.

And then he pressed the trigger.

Mohammed leaned into Ethan’s face while he cut, screaming at him to talk.

Ethan did talk. Through frantic cries he shouted, “I’ll tell you!”

Mohammed pulled the bottle away, and just as he did Ross lunged forward at him, yanked out of the restraining arms behind him, tumbled onto Mohammed, and knocked him to the floor.

Mobasheri thought Ethan was attacking him, but as he landed on his back on the wood floor he felt the hot blood splashing on his face. It dripped into his eyes. He had no idea what was going on, he knew Ross’s hands hadn’t come up when he lunged forward, so he thought maybe the American had somehow managed to bite him.

The three other men in the room began shouting in Farsi and Arabic, the shouts garbled and panicked.

Mohammed brought the broken bottle up to strike Ross with it, but instead he scrambled out from under the American on the floor, pushed him to the side, and saw the incredible amount of blood covering both men.

Ross’s eyes were wide open.

Only then did the words shouted by his men make sense.

“Sniper!”

Ross was dead. Shot through the back of the head. How the bullet had not penetrated all the way through and killed Mobasheri as well he had no idea.

The crackle of automatic weapons fire erupted outside at both the front and the back of the chalet. Mohammed dropped back to his hands and knees, rushed over to the computer on the desk, and retrieved the microdrive and the adapter. He stuffed it into his jacket and ran low and fast for the front door.

Dom had called it — shit went wrong almost immediately. After he shot Ethan Ross in the head, determining it to be the least worst option, he’d pivoted to get an angle on one of the men outside the house. Just as he lined the man up in his sights, gunfire from the other sentry tore through the trees just feet above Dom’s head. Dom shot the man with the AK dead at the front door, but the man in back with the MP5 had impressive aim, and branches all around Dom began snapping off trees. He dropped to the ground, nine-millimeter bullets came so close he felt the overpressure of them as they parted the cold air near his face.

He all but buried himself in the snow until the man stopped to change his magazine. Dom rose to his knees and fired several rounds at the man with the MP5, striking him in the stomach and knocking him into the snow. By now someone else was firing, and Dom thought it might be coming from the kitchen window. He turned and crawled through the trees for fifty feet or so, rose and aimed his rifle at the house behind him. He squeezed off three rounds without having a target in his sights in an attempt to make some noise and slow down anyone coming after him.

His gunfire was met with multiple weapons chattering back in his direction, and he hit the deck again and then crawled for cover.

Mohammed Mobasheri stood in the doorway to the chalet. One Hezbollah man from the Lyon cell lay dead in front of him, shot multiple times in the chest. Isfahan had already leapt off the port and started to run off after the retreating sniper, but Mohammed stopped him with a shout. He didn’t want his small team to split up, there would be a lot more police crawling around here soon enough, and he knew they needed to be gone by then.

His entire operation had been derailed by the bullet to the back of Ethan Ross’s head. He had been making quick changes to his plan since the moment he stepped off the plane in Washington last week, and he’d rolled with the punches, but he’d never anticipated losing any chance to obtain the password from Ross.

All he could do at this point was to get himself back to Iran with the microdrive full of CIA intelligence, and leave it to machines to crack the encryption. He’d been told it might take months or even years to do this with brute-force computer decryption techniques, but now that the only other option was to lie dead on the floor in the house behind him, he saw no choice but to escape from Europe with the drive and begin the arduous process.

Ajiz rolled up the short driveway behind the wheel of a red Mercedes 4Matic SUV. Mohammed ordered everyone into the vehicle, and Ajiz remained at the wheel. As they pulled out of the drive of the chalet, leaving Ross’s body behind, Mohammed began programming the GPS in the car to get them out of these fucking hills and down to Genoa as fast as possible.

It took Dom a minute or two to realize it, which was understandable, considering his focus had been on not getting shot, but soon he came to the conclusion there was no one chasing him through the trees.

He stumbled back out onto a road, ran across to the other side, and then dove into a small gully. He swung the black M4 around and scanned the way from which he had just come. Through his scope, through the trees on the other side of the road, he saw a red SUV — it looked like one of those boxy Mercedes — pulling up the driveway of the chalet. He couldn’t see people at this distance, even through the scope, so he knew he wouldn’t be shooting at the vehicle. His chest heaved and vapor shot out of his mouth in cadence with his panting. He forced himself to hold his breath so he could listen for the telltale sounds of pursuit, but he heard nothing more than the hiss of snowfall and the whine of a drifting wind through the pines. In the distance the singsong sirens of emergency vehicles came and went. They sounded like they were a half-mile away or more, nowhere in this valley, and Dom thought it likely they hadn’t even made it to the site of the helicopter crash.

He took a moment to dial Adara again, keeping his eyes peeled while he did so. There was no service, he fought an urge to throw his fucking phone into the snow, but instead he just jammed it back into his jacket and he continued to scan and heave while he lay there on his chest.

He’d killed Ethan Ross, that was just now sinking in. He didn’t think he had much of a choice, and considering what Ross had in store for him at the hands of the Iranian with the broken bottle, Dom felt he’d done the bastard a favor. He’d say a bullet to the brain was more than the American NSC man deserved, but he’d realized at some point in this entire affair that Ethan Ross, though responsible for the deaths of the Yacobys, was little more than a useful idiot in the entire event.

A fool in over his head.

He didn’t feel bad about killing the American traitor, but he didn’t feel as great about it as he thought he would when he had been seeking vengeance.

Dom wondered what the Iranians would do now. He didn’t think Ross had given them the decryption key before he died. If he had it seemed unlikely they would have taken the time during their escape to break into a house just to cut up their prisoner’s genitalia. No, they were torturing him for the password. But just because they didn’t have it, brute-force decryption — plugging the encrypted drive to a computer than then throwing tens of millions of possible passwords at, was also an option. It would be time consuming, but Dom knew, with enough time and effort, Iranian intelligence could still penetrate the breach and reveal its secrets.

Caruso also knew enough about intelligence and counterintelligence to know that the CIA would have to operate under the assumption that all the data on the drive had been compromised. This would result in operations stopping cold, profitable ties with agents being severed, facilities closed and moved, and case officers recalled. It would be a disaster even if the breach were never actually fully exploited by the opposition.

The red SUV backed out of the chalet, and sped off in the opposite direction.

Dom stood and climbed out of his one-piece motorcycle suit. It was restricting his movement, and he knew he was going to have to run. The bike was somewhere back in the valley, a quarter of a mile in the opposite direction. Wearing only a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, he hefted his gun and sprinted back across the street. He was outnumbered by at least five to one, but he saw no alternative, he had to go after the drive.

As he ran, he heard the voice of Arik Yacoby in his head.

“C’mon, D. Soldier on.”