Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (12 page)

“We have a live
one,” Poacher announced.

Avery stormed
across the house to the back.

Otabek Babayev
lay on the floor, with his wrists and ankles flex-cuffed, and a piece of duct
tape over his mouth, muffling his cries. He was shirtless, and there were
blood-soaked bandages and gauze over his right shoulder.

  The SAD
operators were right behind Avery. He instructed Flounder to get in the van and
be ready to leave in a hurry. He told Poacher to search the bodies and rooms
for anything of potential intelligence value. They acknowledged and left Avery
alone with the prisoner.

He ripped the
tape off Babayev’s mouth in one fast, hard motion. “Where’s the American?”

The Uzbek stared
contemptuously up at Avery. It was the same look of pride, hate, and defiance Avery
saw on the face of Gurgakov’s prisoner.

There wasn’t
time for this shit. Avery raised his rifle, barrel pointed up, and smashed the
stock down against Babayev’s head, splitting skin, scraping bone, and drawing
blood. Babayev bit into his lower lip and struggled to mute any scream or
verbal reaction. He did not want to give the American the satisfaction of
seeing him suffer and wither in pain.

Avery repeated
the inquiry, which was again met with silence.

Avery took two
steps back, shouldered the M4 and drilled Babayev straight through his left
kneecap.
That
got a reaction out of him. Babayev twisted and turned on
the floor, screamed and howled like a deranged animal. Blood poured rapidly out
from the hole through the destroyed bone and cartilage. Then, just to show he
was completely serious, Avery blasted apart Babayev’s other knee.

“Where is he,
you son of a bitch?” Avery shouted. He battered Babayev once more with the
rifle’s stock.

“He’s dead,”
Babayev finally shouted in English. “He had a heart attack, during
interrogation, but it is no big thing. He was to die soon anyway.”

Avery examined
Babayev’s face closely and said, “I don’t believe you.” He shot the Uzbek through
the foot and waited for him to stop screaming. “I know he was here. When did he
leave?”

Silence.

Avery angled his
rifle toward Babayev’s crotch and was about to tap the trigger again.

“No, don’t! Yesterday
morning, they took him out of here.”

“Then what are
you assholes still doing here?”

Babayev smiled.
Blood streamed down his face from the gashes and scrapes in his forehead and
his split lip. “We were waiting for you to come.”

“Where did they
take him?”

No response.

Avery leaned in
and shoved the tip of his suppressor against the hole in Babayev’s right knee.
He forced the tip into the destroyed cartilage and twisted it around, sending
waves of agonizing pain throughout Babayev’s body. The Uzbek squirmed and
screamed.

Finally, after a
couple excruciatingly long seconds, Avery stopped. He didn’t want Babayev to
pass out. “Talk to me, fucker.”

“Ayni,” Babayev
finally blurted out. He gasped for breath and writhed and squirmed on the floor.
“They took him to Ayni, the airfield. A plane will be there for him. He leaves
early Thursday morning.”

It was almost
4:00AM, Tuesday.

“Who’s taking
him? Where?”

“I don’t know.”
Speaking at barely a whisper, the Uzbek became harder to understand.

“Cramer, is he
alive or dead?” Avery asked. “Who told you we were coming?”

Babayev stared
up at his tormentor. He appeared calmer now, relaxed. His eyelids flickered as
blood dripped into his eyes. Avery knew he wouldn’t get any more answers.
Looking into Babayev’s eyes, unfocused and in a haze, Avery saw he was far gone
now.

Poacher
reappeared. “I couldn’t find anything of value, no computers, no USB drives,
nothing, just a cell phone on one of the bodies. I took pictures and
fingerprints of each of the crows. But there’s something you might want to
see.”

Avery followed
Poacher into the living room.

Poacher crouched
over the body of the man Avery had smoked outside and shined a flashlight over
the dead man’s face. This one stood out from the other tangos they’d just
waxed. He was clearly not of Central Asian or Uzbek descent. He was Caucasian
and sported Slavic features, at least from what could be ascertained from what
remained of his face, and had a shaved head. Poacher pulled down the collar of
the man’s shirt and shined the light on the left side of his neck, revealing a
small tattoo of a spider with a bulbous body and short spindly legs.

“Look what he
was packing.”

Poacher shined
his light over a Russian-made SR-3 Veresk.

Avery picked up
the submachine gun. He ejected the round from the breech and held it between
his thumb and index finger. Clearly this wasn’t the guy who’d hit him earlier.
The SR-3’s 9mm SP armor piercing round would have bore right through the armor
plate in his vest and then through his intestine. It gave him a sick feeling,
and he didn’t dwell on it further.

He looked over
the rest of the dead terrorist’s kit, which included a Kirasa Model-6 armored
vest with ceramic plates over the chest and back, the type of vest used by
Russian tactical units.

“Let’s clear
out,” said Avery.

“What about
him?” Poach asked pointing in the direction of Babayev. They heard him moaning
and mumbling incoherently to himself in his native tongue. He sounded delirious.

Without a word, Avery
strode back across the hallway. He stood over Babayev, looking down at him and
hating him for what he was and what he’d done. Fuck it. Avery shouldered the rifle
and shot Babayev once through the face, permanently silencing and stilling him.
Then he looked back to Poacher and said, “Let’s move.”

“So what are you thinking?” Poacher
asked Avery as the latter walked out of the kitchen opening a bottle of orange
Gatorade he’d taken from the fridge. Avery had so far excluded himself from the
conversation and had barely said a word on the drive back from Yazgulam.

They’d returned
to the Dayrabot safe house shortly after 11:30AM. Flounder immediately collapsed
on his cot, shut his eyes, and drifted off, while Poacher filled in Reaper and
Mockingbird. Both operators expressed disappointment to have sat out on the
action, but Poacher said that it may have been for the best. With a larger
assault team, they would have likely overpowered the IMU faster and someone may
have tripped one of the traps in the haste.

“The same things
you are.” Avery grabbed one of the empty chairs and joined the others at the
table. His voice sounded strained, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was
exhausted, mentally and physically. On the drive back, his mind had been too
preoccupied to get any sleep. He always felt that way, coming down off the high
of combat. “First off, it was a damn set-up. Babayev’s cell knew we were
coming. That’s why we didn’t find any intelligence inside. They completely sanitized
that place, and then they re-located Cramer. Then they sat quiet in the dark
all night, just waiting for us to knock down the door. That’s what the phone
call we overheard was all about. Remember, Babayev said he’d wait one more
night and see if ‘they’ showed. The fuckers were expecting us.”

“That’s why that
tango with the suicide vest didn’t waste us,” Poacher agreed. “He could have
easily, but he hesitated. He wasn’t mentally prepared to become a martyr,
didn’t have it in him. He was as afraid of that vest as we were and didn’t
expect us to ever make it past his friends or those grenade traps they set for
us. So when we walked in on him, he panicked and froze. We’re lucky it turned
out the way it did.”

Poacher spoke
from experience. While he was with Asymmetric Warfare Group’s Dog Squadron,
he’d gone through an intensive three-day instructional course run by Israel’s
Shin Bet on identifying suicide bombers in a crowded public place and preemptively
terminating them. Later, he put those skills to use in the cities and
marketplaces of Iraq’s Sunni Triangle. He’d sat in on the interrogations of
failed suicide bombers in Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories. He
knew the vacant look when he saw it, the faraway eyes and stone cold face of
the walking dead. It had chilled him to the bones, standing in the holding cell
of a sixteen year old girl who had been psychologically prepared to violently
end her life and the lives of those around her on a busy Haifa street.

Avery agreed
with Poacher’s assessment, but he still felt no qualms about wasting the Uzbek,
nor the manner in which he did it. As long as the man had his hand around the
detonator, he’d posed a threat to the entire team and the mission.

“That shit
sounds like Iraq,” Mockingbird observed. During his time with Task Force 145,
he’d taken part in the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The al-Qaeda in Iraq
leader regularly left false trails of evidence leading to safe houses wired
with explosives.

“So how’d they
know you were coming?” Reaper said. “We know Dushanbe station is seriously
fucked, but nobody there knew about the op we ran in Gorno-Badakhshan. The leak
didn’t come from the embassy this time.”

“You’re the only
person we’ve been in contact with,” Poacher told Avery. “So it’s somebody on
your end.”

“I’m looking
into it.” Avery left at it that. He knew Poacher was right. It would be easy to
narrow down the suspects. It was a very short list.

“How severe is
the damage?” Mockingbird asked. “Do we need to relocate? I mean, we’re not
going to have the fucking IMU visiting us tonight are we?”

Poacher glanced
at Avery, interested to hear his response. “No, we’ll stay here. I can assure
you that no one I’ve been in contact with knows this location.”

That put the
others at ease.

“We did uncover
one valuable bit of intel from the house,” Poacher said. “That crow with the spider
tattoo you waxed sure as hell wasn’t IMU. The others could pass for Uzbeks or
native Tajiks, but not him. I’d peg him as Slavic or maybe from the Caucasus.
They were packing a lot of the latest Russian kit, too, and he was carrying an
SR-2. Only professional operators carry SRs.”

“Russian
operators,” Avery added.

Russia’s Central
Scientific Research Institute for Precise Mechanical Engineering specially
designed and produced the SR-2 (
Spetsialnaya Razarbotka
; Special
Development) Veresk submachine gun for FSB spetsnaz units like Vympel or Alpha Group.
The gun’s nickname, Veresk, is the Russian word for heather, a type of shrub. Invariably,
the weapon had also found its way into the arsenals of connected Russian mafia
gangs.

“Those IMU guys
knew what they were doing and put up a good fight. They weren’t the typical
spray-and-pray Jihadist amateurs. They had CQC training and understood the
tactics an entry team would use.”

“I’ve checked
out that phone we recovered from the dead tango,” Mockingbird said, with his
laptop open in front of him. “They placed three calls to the same number since
the time Cramer first went missing. The dialing format of the number indicates
a Russian cell phone.”

 “Any names or
messages on the phone?” asked Poacher.

“There’s three
numbers in the saved contacts, including the Russian number, but no names. The
other two numbers are local.”

“Half-ass tradecraft,”
Poacher observed. Knowing that a cell phone could be a huge source of
intelligence, a pro would have cleared their call history and not have any numbers
saved in the contacts. “But it’s another Russian connection.”

“We’ll give the
phone to Gerald at the embassy for NSA to examine,” Avery said. “Gerald also needs
to get in contact with whoever the FBI has at the embassy and get a crime scene
unit to Yazgulam ASAP to comb that place for prints, DNA, whatever they can
find. At the very least, maybe they can confirm if Cramer was ever at the
house. Maybe the Tajik or Uzbek services can identify those bodies we left
behind.”

Poacher almost
laughed. “How the hell is the Bureau going to pull that off? They can’t go into
Yazgulam without going through the Tajik authorities and getting all sorts of
Interior Ministry and ambassadorial permissions.”

“Their problem,
not mine,” Avery said. “They can tell the GKNB they received an anonymous tip.
It’s almost true.”

 “Cramer had to
have been at the house,” Reaper said, thinking out loud.

“That intel came
from Gurgakov’s IMU prisoner,” Avery said. “It doesn’t make sense that the
prisoner would have been aware of the ambush. That would mean he was
intentionally captured to plant disinformation and lure us into a trap. By the
time we arrived in Yazgulam, they’d gotten word from an as-of-yet unidentified
third party that we were coming and either executed Cramer or moved him.”  

And only one
person knew that he was going to Yazgulam, Avery thought.

“Speaking of
Gurgakov,” Poacher said, “what’s the deal with his IMU prisoner?”

 “Gurgakov’s
offering his prisoner for twenty grand,” Avery said. He thought it over. “How
much did SAD put in your expense account?”

Poacher groaned
and squirmed uncomfortably.  

“I’d do it
myself, but buying an Uzbek’s a bit out of my budget.”

“Shit,” Poacher
finally said. “Langley’s going to be pissed. Culler wasn’t prepared for us to
leave Tajikistan with a goddamned Uzbek national in our custody. I mean, what
the fuck are we going to do with this guy when we get back to the States? I’ll have
to go through Culler on this first.”

“Negative,”
Avery said. “I’ll deal with Culler. After I get what I need from the Uzbek, we
can leave him for the FBI or GKNB, or Culler can tell Langley he was captured
in Afghanistan and throw him in Guantanamo.”

“All right,”
Poacher replied, unconvinced. “I’ll take care of the money.”

“Next: Ayni
airfield, our third Russian connection,” Avery said. “I want everything
Dushanbe station has on the place, especially satellite imagery, and
information on troop placement there, numbers, and what kind of firepower
they’re packing. We’re going in for a sneak and peak, but be prepared with a
full combat load. If Cramer is there, it can only mean they’re going to fly him
out of the country, if they haven’t already.”

“Who? The
Russians?” asked Reaper.

“Maybe,” Avery said.
He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and stretched his arms out behind his back. “The
Russian connections are starting to add up. I’d even go out on a limb and posit
that the IMU action is a Russian false flag job. Regardless, we need eyes on
Ayni ASAP. M-Bird, can you head out there today? Make note of every aircraft
coming in or taking off, get registration numbers if you can.”

“No problem.”

“Reaper, you go
with him,” Poacher instructed.

“Sure thing,”
the former SEAL said, glad to finally have something to do.

“When do you
want to get started on prepping the Ayni job?” Poacher asked Avery.

“I’d like to do
it immediately, but I don’t think we’re in condition to do that at the moment.
Best we rest now and wait for night. According to Babayev, Cramer is being moved
out early tomorrow morning, possibly before first light. Babayev also said
Cramer was dead. Maybe that’s bullshit, maybe it’s not. There’s easier ways of
disposing of a body in a country like this than flying it out. It could be more
false leads, but we have to check it out.”

Avery paused and
glanced across the room. Flounder lay passed out on his cot, temporarily shut
off from the rest of the world. “Let’s let Reaper and M-Bird get the wheels
rolling on this one. Flounder has the right idea. We need a few hours to
re-charge. Let’s talk again in five.”

They broke it
up.

Avery reached
into his pants pocket for his cell phone. He texted Dagar Nabiyev and told him
to return to Dushanbe late tomorrow afternoon. In the interests of saving time,
he planned on having Dagar deliver the money and bring in the Uzbek prisoner. The
thought also prompted him to send Jack, who had put him in contact with the
Tajik, a quick text: “How do you know Dagar?”

Then he got up from
the table and walked across the floor. Still wearing his cargo pants and boots,
still smelling of sweat, cordite, and death, Avery collapsed onto a cot, shut
his eyes, and fell asleep within seconds.

___

When Avery awoke six hours later, he took
a cold shower. At its coldest, the water here was still a bit warmer than what
he could get back home, but it did the job of shocking his body out of its
fatigue. Then he chugged bottled water and ate a couple energy bars. The sleep
did him good. Although still drowsy, he felt functional, and his mind was at
least capable of thinking again. As there had been no updates from Reaper or
Mockingbird, Poacher had decided not to wake Avery, and instead allow him the
extra time to sleep.

During that
time, Poacher ventured into Dushanbe to meet up with Gerald Rashid, who was
accompanied by Darren, the station’s ops officer, at a pre-arranged location.
As requested, Gerald provided a briefing docket on the Ayni air force base, and
Poacher gave Gerald the IMU cell phone and told him that there was a house and
five dead bodies in Yazgulam that the Tajiks might be interested in checking
out. He also arranged to have Gerald and Darren deliver the $20,000 cash to
Dagar in Gorno-Badakhshan. Dagar was then to await further word from Avery
before returning to Dushanbe with the Uzbek prisoner.

Avery and
Poacher sat now in the Dayrabot safe house with the satellite imagery and maps
spread out over the surface of the table.

Located several
miles west of Dushanbe, Ayni Airbase was currently under Russian lease, but the
Russian military stationed only a small force at the base. Ayni had zero strategic
value for Russia
.
The
Kremlin simply wanted to prevent Dushanbe from leasing it to anyone else,
especially the US or India. India was keen to expand its reach in Central Asia,
Tajikistan in particular.

Ayni Airbase
looked more like a desolate air strip than a modern military base. It supported
two 10,000-plus foot long runways angled diagonally northwest to southeast
capable of supporting flight operations for cargo planes or MiG and Sukhoi fighters.
Off the west side of the runways were large aircraft hangars. Vast open wheat
fields surrounded the base on the east side, with a lightly forested area of
planetrees directly west and behind the hangar. The trees would provide a
perfect spot from which to observe and possibly infiltrate the base, but they
would still need someone across the way, more vulnerably positioned in the
fields, to get line of sight into the hangars.

 The nearest
town, Ayni, where Reaper and Mockingbird were currently positioned and watching
the skies, was over four miles away. The base was accessible from the M34
Highway, with Russian army checkpoints and barriers positioned at the entry and
exit ramps leading onto the airfield itself.