Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (17 page)

His biggest
concern was that the intruder at Ayni could have seen his face. Sure, the media
just reported he was dead and CIA publicly confirmed this, but it’s not like
CIA would rescind its statement and alert the media that a high ranking officer
was dealing in guns and drugs with the Taliban.

He swore aloud
as he considered the possible repercussions. “This could be really bad.”

“Who do you
believe it was?” asked Litvin.

“It has to be
CIA. The only question is why they were there? Did they somehow track me to
Ayni? Were they after Arzad? Was it to monitor the arms delivery? We’ll need to
prepare for the worst.”

“And what is the
worst?”

“His name’s
Avery. He’s the one who took down the IMU safe house. If he was at Ayni, he’ll
pursue this thing to the end. Count on it. He’s a stubborn, obsessive fuck who
doesn’t know when to quit.

“Avery,” Litvin
repeated the name, slowly drawing out the syllables. “This man is a danger to
us?”

The nature of
the inquiry gave Cramer reason to pause and consider his response. If the world
made any sense, Avery would be on his side. Like Cramer, he’d dedicated nearly
his entire life to defending and serving the United States in one capacity or
another. In Afghanistan, Cramer couldn’t have a better man watching his back.

Still, he would
kill Avery, if that’s what it came to.

Like Avery,
Cramer had no qualms over doing what was necessary, but he wouldn’t live easily
with it. This troubled him, because he knew that if Avery caught up with him,
the man would have no hesitation at all about ending his life, and he’d never
think back on it with an ounce of remorse.

They served
three years together in Afghanistan. Avery’s first Special Activities Division
assignment was at FOB Camp Gecko, near Kandahar and the Pakistani border, where
Cramer ran black penetration ops into Pakistan.

In 2009, Avery’s
SAD unit was responsible for pursuing Taliban targets across the border. On one
such mission, faulty intelligence led his team into an ambush. Only two members
of the six-man team survived the initial assault. Avery and his wounded
teammate fled into the mountainous foothills, finding a high ground to defend.

Cramer knew that
Kabul station would deny his request to send FOB Gecko’s special operations
contingent into Pakistan to retrieve the CIA officers. Cross-border raids
without Pakistani consent were not yet commonplace at this time. Besides,
Avery’s SAD team was deniable.

Cramer
dispatched an UNODIR message to Kabul station, stating that unless otherwise
directed, he was going to sheep-dip the Delta operators and 160
^th
SOAR flight crews at FOB Gecko, go into Pakistan, and bring his men out.  He
did so immediately, without awaiting a response from Kabul station. When the
response did come, the Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s Black Hawks and
Little Birds were already in the air and en route, and the order from Kabul
station, as expected, adamantly and frantically instructed Cramer not to
proceed.

When the
helicopters returned to Camp Gecko, two hours later, they unloaded the
surviving and wounded SAD operators and the bodies of the others. They also
left behind over two dozen dead Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.

Cramer was
reprimanded by Langley, but they didn’t do anything to him. The war in Afghanistan
was picking up, with Taliban and al-Qaeda escalating their attacks and tactics,
and they needed someone like Cramer on the battlefield if they were going to
win. 

“I’m not
exaggerating when I say that he’s the most competent and capable operator I’ve
ever worked with. So, yes, that makes him dangerous. But he’s an independent
contractor, and he’s not on good terms with the CIA leadership. He won’t have
the full resources of the Agency behind him. I doubt he’ll be able to reach us
outside of Tajikistan.”

“What are you going
to do about this?” Litvin asked.

“I have someone
in Tajikistan who has penetrated Avery’s operations there. I’ll have this taken
care of by the end of the day.”

“That is reassuring
to hear,” Litvin said, “but I am afraid I will not be able to commit any
further to this operation until I am satisfactorily assured that this matter
has been resolved and the fallout mitigated. Until then, consider all other business
placed on hold.”

“Whoa, wait a
minute,” Cramer said. “Let’s not overreact. First off, the Agency’s after me,
not you, Aleksander. Read the news. The goddamn president is going to make a
statement about my death. This guy, Avery, yeah he’s dangerous, but as far as
CIA is concerned, he’s unreliable and a loose cannon. Nobody who matters at
Langley gives a shit what he has to say. He can tell them he saw me at Ayni,
sure, and he may as well tell them he saw the pope smoking crack with Elvis for
all the good it’ll do.”

“I am pleased
you’re so confident, Robert,” Litvin said. “It should then be a simple matter
of determining what this man knows and then removing him from the field. Then
we can go through with the sale and delivery, and conclude our business with
Arzad. Do you have any objections to this?”

Cramer thought
it over and decided not to argue. To do so would indicate he was unconfident in
his ability to deal with Avery. “Sounds reasonable enough to me,” he said.

“Splendid.”
Litvin flashed the winning smile he put on anytime he closed a business deal. “Moving
forward, this setback will necessitate a face-to-face meeting with Mullah Arzad,
to offer him reassurances and re-negotiate our next transaction. I’m willing to
offer him some small compensation, but there is no way we can replace all of
the hardware that was lost. I purchased all of that equipment from my suppliers
in cash, and I’m not going to reimburse Arzad and take the loss myself. If he
doesn’t care to continue doing business with us, well, that’s all right, too.
There are plenty of other maniacs interested in what we are offering.”

This meant that
another foray into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province or Gorno-Badakhshan
was likely in Cramer's future. He would need to calm Mullah Arzad and make sure
that that the heroin would continue to flow to Ayni. Cramer’s only concern was
that by this point, every CIA asset in the region would know his face, and the
Department of Justice was offering $5 million for information leading to
identification and arrest of his “killers.”

“Arzad won’t be
a problem. I know him, I can deal with him,” Cramer said.  “I’ll get in touch
with my agent in Tajikistan and set it up as soon as this lingering problem
over there has been resolved.”

Now that he was
out of Tajikistan, he’d planned ahead as to how he would maintain contact with
Mullah Arzad. Oleg Ramzin now acted as the network’s eyes and ears in
Tajikistan, Dagar Nabiyev his personal courier. He could contact Oleg easily
enough, by encrypted satellite communications, but Mullah Arzad didn’t trust
technology. He forbade his inner circle from using computers and cell phones.
Although time consuming and not one hundred percent secure (bin Laden’s
location was compromised when his messenger was identified and followed),
Mullah Arzad used human couriers to deliver messages.

“In the
meantime, I have an appointment later this evening with a senior KGB officer,”
Litvin said. “Either through the media or from Moscow or their own sources, the
Belarusians will inevitably hear of what happened to the weapons in
Afghanistan. This will make my position much more difficult in negotiations for
the final sale. As you say, we will need to lay low in the coming days and see
how events unfold from here. No worries, whatever happens, I know how to handle
the Belarusians and placate them. And if your former colleague in Tajikistan is
not dealt with, then I will find a different buyer.”

Following a
protracted silence, the Krasnaya Mafiya enforcer called Karakurt finally asked
Cramer the question that had been on his mind the past several minutes.
“Robert, you are certain this man Avery was in Yazgulam?”

“Positive,”
Cramer said. He noticed the pained glint in the Chechen’s eyes and understood
why he asked the question. “I’m sorry, Ruslan.”

Ruslan Kheda,
called Karakurt in reference to the spider tattooed on his neck, nodded and said
nothing further, but the tormented expression behind his eyes spoke volumes. His
near-identical twin brother was among the dead at the Yazgulam safe house.

The Kheda
brothers had fought together during the wars in Chechnya and Dagestan, and
later killed together for the Krasnaya Mafiya. They weren’t hardcore Islamists.
Instead they’d been motivated by the cause of Chechen nationalism. When that
cause became hijacked by the fanatic jihadist outsiders from Afghanistan and an
insane Saudi warlord called Ibn al-Khattab, they left Chechnya and turned to
organized crime.

The term Russian
mafia is a misnomer. It is not a single organization with a hierarchy like La
Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, or the Albanian mafia. Instead, there are numerous
gangs of varying size and power. Many of these groups are made up of Armenians,
Belarusians, Chechens, Estonians, Georgians, Ukrainians, and other “black,” or
non-ethnic, Russians from the former Soviet Union. FSB aggressively targeted
organized crime gangs, but only those of non-ethnic Russians or foreigners.

The “white”
Russian ethnic gangsters are given sanctuary inside the Russian Federation and
are protected by the
siloviki
, the former intelligence and military
officers turned politicians who now rule the Kremlin. In exchange for their
protection, the gangsters often perform services for the Russian special
services, such as the assassination by polonium poisoning of Kremlin-critic
Aleksander Litvinenko in London, or murdering a troublesome journalist like
Anna Politkovskaya. 

It was uncommon
for Chechens like the Kheda brothers to end up in the service of a Russian gang
like the Krasnaya Mafiya rather than the Chechen Obshina, which is staunchly
nationalistic and maintains close ties to jihadist networks. Both brothers
served as conscripts in the Red Army. Ismet Kheda served under an ethnic
Russian officer and black marketer who later inducted the brothers into the
Krasnaya Mafiya.

No one had quite
trusted Babayev’s Uzbeks to handle the American raiders in Yazgulam by
themselves, so Kheda’s brother had volunteered to lead the IMU cell there.
Ruslan had wanted to tend to it personally, but Ismet, eager to prove his worth
in the eyes of his brother whom he looked up to, insisted on going. Now he was
dead.

Cramer wished
that he could somehow give Avery to Kheda, but it was best to allow Dagar to
handle it. He supposed he’d also feel some amount of remorse if Kheda did get
his hands on Avery. In Chechnya, Kheda had learned and mastered some of the
most gruesome ways of killing a man—Chechens are especially adept with
blades—and would leave his brother’s killer castrated and mutilated, and Avery
didn’t really deserve that. Killing Kheda’s brother hadn’t been anything
personal, after all. Cramer thought he at least owed Avery a quick and
relatively painless end, if and when it came to that.

The spider on
Ruslan Kheda’s neck wasn’t his only tattoo. In the Russian underworld, tattoos
told the entire criminal history of their bearer and warranted respect. Kheda’s
body was covered. Prison and gang tattoos adorned much of his heavily muscled
back, chest, and abdomen, along with an assortment of scars. The tattoos were
crudely rendered, as proper equipment is often unavailable in a prison cell.

 A red rose on
his chest indicated Kheda’s membership in the Red Mafia. The stars covering
both knees signified that he kneeled before, submitted to, no one. The Celtic
cross between his shoulder blades marked his status as a killer, and the small badge
denoted that at least one of his victims was a police officer. The row of six
tombstones over his stomach represented the number of years he’d spent in Russia’s
Black Dolphin Prison. 

Always protective
of his brother, Ruslan had kept quiet and accepted blame when falsely
identified and arrested by the Chelyabinsk Militia for a murder committed by
Ismet, who was four minutes younger than Ruslan. Eventually, Oleg Ramzin
exercised his FSB influence to have Ruslan released.

When this
business was over, Ruslan Kheda would have his brother’s name inscribed
permanently into his flesh. He also hoped to add another skull. He had many of
those, one for each life he’d taken. He owed his brother a skull. He owed this
man Avery a killing.

The number of
men Robert Cramer personally would be afraid to cross could be counted on one
hand, with fingers remaining. One of these men was Ruslan Kheda. Another was
Avery.

2:42PM

Avery parked the
Lada off Saadi Sherozi Avenue and proceeded on foot to the Barakat Bazaar. This
is Dushanbe’s commercial center, located a mile east of the Varzob River, near
rail yards, the National Museum of Tajikistan, a prison, and hotels. Barakat
was the country’s largest outdoor marketplace and a popular stop for tourists
and an essential part of daily life for locals. Shortages of food and goods
were the norm in Tajikistan, making Barakat the place to go.

The large space
it occupied and the heavy volume of people also made Barakat an ideal place in
which to quickly disappear if necessary. Flounder had already scoped out the
bazaar earlier. It had taken him nearly an hour to cover all the ground.

The market was
packed with shoppers and traders. The masses of people streamed around the
kiosks, tables, and stalls, forcing Avery to walk at a snail’s pace and to maneuver
impatiently around them. Minibuses constantly pulled up and deposited more
prospective buyers. The mixed aroma of grilled meat, tobacco, incense, and
sweaty, unwashed bodies carried in the warm air.

A variety of
languages registered in Avery’s ears. The place was almost a chaotic sensory
overload, and upon first entering the market, it had taken him several minutes
to get his bearings.   

There was a
moderate police presence, too. Recently, local hooligans had taken to setting
the bazaars on fire. Avery kept conscious of the cops as his eyes scanned the
sea of faces. It would be nearly impossible to try to keep track of someone in
here. While this worked both ways, Avery had more faith in Sideshow’s combined skills
than he did in that of Dagar’s thugs.

Barakat wasn’t
the exotic Middle Eastern-style marketplace most tourists probably envisioned. Western
food, clothing, computer games, and VHS tapes were readily available and highly
sought after by the locals. Avery wasn’t surprised to pass a vendor serving
pizza, French fries, and Pepsi. It looked and smelled as good as anything back
home.

Avery’s pace
came to a grinding halt when he came to a large group of people clustered
around an art exhibit and street performers, including jugglers. No one paid
attention to the big American as he squeezed his way through the crowd.

Reaper and Mockingbird
were on target, too, and had been for the past two hours. Avery had passed
Reaper coming into the bazaar, but the two men had not even glanced at each
other and to an outside observer they would have seemed to not even notice or
recognize one another.

 Flounder was 
also nearby, in the team’s Lada, parked a block outside the market from where
he had a good vantage point of the sidewalk cafés and restaurants outside the
bazaar, as well as anyone entering or leaving the square from this end.
Everyone was wired with concealed Motorola radios and mikes.

Avery finally emerged
from the opposite end of the bazaar from which he’d entered. The herds of
people grew thinner here. He sat down at a tiny, circular sidewalk table
outside of a Turkish restaurant. He’d selected the table deliberately and
positioned himself in such a way that offered a wide vantage point of the
street and sidewalks in either direction. A waiter quickly appeared with tea
and a menu.

As he leisurely
sipped his tea and pretended to peruse the menu, Avery scanned the passing
pedestrians and vehicles from behind reflective mirror sunglasses. He almost
wished that he did have time to eat, because the kabob sounded tempting and
inhaling the aromas coming from the grill stimulated his appetite.

Dagar soon appeared,
emerging from the bazaar, some seventy feet away. Despite the sea of faces, the
Tajik registered immediately on Avery’s radar, and Avery instantly forgot about
food.  

Avery tilted his
head and spoke into his throat mike, identifying Dagar to the Sideshow
operators by the tan jacket and pakol hat the little Tajik wore and giving them
his current position. Surveillance teams always recognized and tracked a target
by articles of clothing—usually shoes, since a professionally trained subject
would dress in layers that could be easily discarded and replaced, but shoes
weren’t so easily switched.

Problem was there
were so many people packed in here that it’d be pretty difficult to stay on
anyone.

Reaper responded
first, ten seconds later, saying that he had eyes on target.

Flounder chimed
in seven seconds later, indicating he’d spotted Dagar, too. Then so did
Mockingbird. Now that they’d identified Dagar, the Sideshow crew could sweep
the market and look out for where his potential backup would be positioned. This
is what Reaper and Flounder did, while Mockingbird kept his eyes on Dagar.

Mockingbird circled
around on foot and made a pass, coming within four feet of Dagar, and spotted
the bulge beneath the Tajik’s jacket on his left side. He reported to Avery
that the target was armed.

Avery took note
of this. He hadn’t expected Dagar to show. He anticipated that at this point
Dagar would have some suspicions that his cover was blown, especially if he was
in contact with either Cramer or the Russians. The fact that Dagar did show
could only mean a trap. After all, the Tajik hadn’t been armed at Port Said or
when they travelled to Gorno-Badakhshan, but now he was packing a gun to see
Avery.

That’s why Avery
had Poacher’s crew on target. Dagar could have a kill team hidden nearby or
amongst the shoppers, watching and waiting, doing the same thing Sideshow was
doing.

 This wasn’t the
place for a confrontation. There were too many civilians present. The plan was
to lure Dagar away from the bazaar, to somewhere quiet and isolated. If Dagar
did have backup, then he’d almost certainly have the same idea and try to lure
Avery onto his intended killing ground, but Avery wasn’t going to let Dagar
take control.

Dagar was within
several yards of the Turkish restaurant. He didn’t even see Avery until the
American abruptly stood up from his chair. Then he caught sight of him and started
walking in Avery’s direction.

 Avery never
looked at Dagar or made eye contact. He reached for his wallet in his hip
pocket, where it was easy to feel and remain consciously aware of. Pickpockets
and thieves weren’t uncommon here. Plus, a professional spook could grab a
subject’s wallet, check his ID, and replace it without the target even knowing.

Avery left a
couple American dollars on the table, placing the bills partially underneath
his cup to hold them down against the breeze. By the time he replaced the
wallet in his pocket, Dagar had reached his table, and Avery instantly turned
and started walking, falling into stride with Dagar, by his side.

Dagar opened his
mouth to speak, but was cut off.

“Come with me,”
Avery instructed the Tajik, pushing him along. He led Dagar back through the
bazaar from which he’d just come.

Along the way, unknown
to Avery, they passed the IMU point men. Avery’s eyes passed over one of them,
but his mind didn’t register him or make any note of him. Even Dagar missed
him, and he had spoken with the IMU lieutenant only an hour earlier.

There were three
of them, and they’d been sent in advance of Avery’s arrival. Mostly through
luck and good timing—right place, right time—one even had been on hand to make
note of the Lada Avery arrived in. The IMU cell had Avery within their stakeout
box the entire time. And Avery was by no means a soft target, which spoke
volumes of their tradecraft and skills. The only good news was that they hadn’t
been able to identify any of the Sideshow team.

These IMU
operatives were specially trained in surveillance and field craft by a former
KGB pavement artist, as those who specialized in conducting outdoor
surveillance on foot were known in the trade. This IMU cell was utilized to
scout out targets and locations in advance of terrorist attacks and
assassinations.

Flounder and
Reaper missed them because they were only two sets of eyes covering a huge
crowd and had little time to prepare in advance. The market was an unfamiliar
setting for them.  Plus, most important, the IMU team knew how to blend in and
appear inconspicuous and hadn’t gone anywhere near Dagar or come into contact
with or acknowledged him in any way. As far as Reaper and Mockingbird were
concerned, the IMU surveillance operatives were simply more local shoppers or
tourists.
 

It helped that they
didn’t look like the typical Islamic insurgents. They’d shaved their beards,
gotten haircuts, and wore jeans and short sleeve shirts, or local
chapan
robes with
tupi
skullcaps, and blended in easily among the mid-afternoon
crowd of the marketplace, going from shops and tables and pretending to examine
trinkets and widgets and haggle with the shopkeepers and merchants. One of them
leisurely snacked on an apple he’d bought from a fruit vendor, and another
carried a stuffed shopping bag. They were each of medium height and build, with
relaxed expressions and unassuming eyes.

 “Did you bring
the Uzbek back from Yazgulam?” Avery asked and turned his head to appraise
Dagar for the first time.

Dagar hesitated
before responding, still trying to make sense of Avery’s abrupt behavior. It
was clear to him that Avery knew something. “Regrettably, he died in Gurgakov’s
custody, from infection to his wounds. Shortly after you left, he grew very
sick and did not recover.”

“That’s too bad.”
Avery knew Dagar lied. It was how he’d said it and the look in his eye that
betrayed him. Before answering, his eyes had shifted quickly down and to the
left, while his chest rose with the intake of a deep breath, a tic common when
someone tells a lie. Trained intelligence officers, cops, and interrogators
knew to look out for signs like that and other micro fluctuations in the face,
demeanor, voice inflection, and body language.

As they walked, Avery
considered the possibilities. Either Dagar had simply kept the cash for himself
and left the prisoner with Gurgakov or he’d taken the Uzbek and executed him
somewhere between Gorno-Badakhshan and Dushanbe, or delivered him to the IMU or
the Russians. He thought that Dagar intended to have him meet with a similar
fate this afternoon.

“May I ask where
we are going?” the Tajik asked.

Avery took wide,
purposeful strides, but stayed at Dagar’s side, his left shoulder and arm behind
him, nudging him along, and the much shorter Tajik struggled to keep up, while
avoiding bumping into people.

“Someplace
safe,” Avery said. “My cover may be blown.”

Dagar didn’t say
anything to that. He allowed Avery to lead the way out of the bazaar and onto
the quiet, residential side streets. He resisted the urge to turn around and look
back for his IMU backup. He hoped that they were nearby and prepared to
intervene.

After two
blocks, Avery heard Reaper’s voice in his ear, warning him that they were
likely being followed. The Sideshow operators could spot the IMU watchers now
that they were clear of the bazaar. Avery said nothing and didn’t react to the
news. He thought that by this time Reaper would have likewise signaled Poacher,
who was standing by in his own vehicle, a Datsun, waiting to tail Avery and
Dagar.

Four blocks later,
Avery and Dagar reached the Lada and got in. Avery locked the doors, keyed the
ignition, put the car into gear, and accelerated down the street. He took a
couple unnecessary turns along the way, to give the IMU an opportunity to
reveal themselves to the Sideshow team.

They drove in
silence for several minutes before Dagar asked, “Why not go to your embassy?”

“The embassy’s
not safe either.”

“Will you leave
the country?”

“No, my job here
isn’t finished yet.”

 “I see.” Dagar
tried to sound thoughtful. “So you did not find anything in Yazgulam?”

Avery merged
onto the A384 highway going south. In his rearview mirror, he spotted a van
slipping into traffic behind him, with another car in between them. He hadn’t
caught sight of Poacher’s Datsun yet, but knew he was back there somewhere.
“Not exactly. Cramer’s dead, but I’m still going to find those responsible.”

“Oh,” was all
Dagar said. He’d heard what he needed to know and decided to give up on the
friendly interrogation.

As he drove,
Avery heard the rustling and zipper of Dagar’s jacket and became aware of
movement through his right peripheral, Dagar’s hand coming up with something
black. When Avery turned his head, he was staring down the barrel of a CZ-999,
the Serbian version of the SIG Sauer P226. Behind the pistol, Dagar’s face was sweating
rivulets.

Avery looked
ahead and returned his focus to his driving. He kept both hands firmly on the
wheel and remained relaxed, but internally there was the onset of panic. Although
he’d anticipated something like this and knew he was still in control of the
situation, having a gun pointed at your face was always a disconcerting
experience. Avery’s Glock was holstered at his side, beneath his windbreaker,
but there was no chance of reaching it.

He’d considered
disarming Dagar earlier, but he hadn’t wanted to play his hand too soon. He
also hadn’t expected the Tajik to do something as amateurish as this. He was
edgy and being impulsive, not thinking his actions through. In many respects,
this was even more worrying than a calm, collected professional.