Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (3 page)

There was
nothing for him back home, and home itself was a strange concept to him, one
that never had any particular relevance to him. He had spent most of his life
in different places, often different countries, for up to a year at a time. He
felt like he had little to lose, and it made it easier to accept the risks he
now took.

The taxi stopped
outside of a squalid, four story apartment building.

Cramer handed
the driver a wad of cash. He tipped him well, but not so well as to be
remembered later, and quickly exited the car. As he approached the front
entrance of the building, the cab was already gone.

Cramer used the
spare key he’d been given to enter the building. There was no one else in
sight, and he took the stairs to the third floor.

SCINIPH wanted
to have this meeting in private and had told Cramer that this was a secure
location. Cramer surmised that it was a Russian safe house.

Following the
instructions given him, Cramer reached a heavy wooden door at the end of the
hallway. Using his key, he entered the corner apartment without knocking.

It was dark
inside, with the shades drawn over the windows.

SCINIPH waited, seated
in an armchair, smoking a cigarette.

But Cramer hadn’t
expected the other three men in the apartment.

One, he
recognized at once from his description and the numerous stories he’d heard. The
man’s strong Slavic features, shaved head, and the small shaded tattoo of a
spider crudely rendered on the left side of his neck were immediately distinctive
features.

The presence of
the other two men—Uzbeks—reinforced the uneasy knot in the pit of his stomach.
He recognized one of the Uzbeks from GKNB counterterrorism files.

Avery was halfway through the movement
of his fourth repetition when the cell phone on the table across the room rang.
He swore softly, at once furious at the break in his concentration. His arms
stopped in place for an instant, his first instinct to lower the weights, but
then he inhaled deep and resumed shoulder-pressing the pair of seventy-five pound
dumbbells over his head. Lowering the weights slowly and deliberately, he
released the air from his lungs. He did this one more time, after which he was
incapable of performing a seventh rep.

The ringing
continued. There was only one person who would call him on this phone. Calls
were infrequent, but he still always kept the phone fully charged with the volume
up and within reach at all times of the day, every day, wherever he went. He
dropped the dumbbells onto the rubber matted floor on either side of the
inclined bench. His heart pounded. His chest rose and fell with each breath. A
burning line ran down the inside of each of his deltoids, and his triceps
bulged.

He took four
steps across the spare bedroom he’d converted into a weight room, grabbed the
phone with his right hand and, without glancing down to see the caller, thumbed
“answer” on the touch screen, while taking the towel in his opposite hand to
wipe up the sweat dripping from his face.

“Hello,” he said
in between intakes of air.

“Avery, how are
you?” The familiar voice was laced with a barely discernable southern drawl. It
was the first voice Avery had heard in four days, felt longer though, since
he’d gone to Quantico earlier that week to put rounds down range with a buddy from
DEA. 

“I’m doing well,
thank you.”

“There’s a job
for you. I’ll see you at one; my office. Be ready to travel.”

The call ended.

Avery set the
phone back down and guzzled water from a plastic bottle. He took half a moment
to collect his thoughts, re-focus his mind, and returned to the weights. He
needed to do three more sets before completing this week’s shoulder work-out.
It looked like he no longer needed to consider tomorrow’s legs work-out, which
suited him just fine.

He’d been
training, preparing, and waiting for this call for the last fifteen weeks,
since returning from the last job. The last week in particular he’d started to
grow anxious and impatient, eager for something new on which to focus his mind
and take him away from here. He wondered where it was this time, but it didn’t
matter. He went where he was needed.

It might be a
week between jobs, might be a month, Avery never knew, but whenever Matt Culler
called him, he was grateful for it. He often thought where he’d be without
Matt’s jobs, and the answer presented a singularly bleak, empty alternative to
his existence.

___

Four hours later, Avery passed through
the metal detector and turnstiles, and checked in at the security desk in the foyer
of the Original Headquarters Building of the George Bush Center for
Intelligence. The security officer had Avery empty his pockets and relieved him
of his cell phone. Cell phones and electronic devices were strictly prohibited
here. Avery was then given a green badge, the one worn by private contractors
while at CIA headquarters. The electronic chip in the badge allowed security to
track his movement anywhere on the premises and restricted his access to
certain areas. Avery had no doubt security would keep tabs on him. Many still
considered him unwelcome here, and he was sure his name was flagged. Security
would search him again on his way out, to make sure he hadn’t managed to swipe
a USB drive or stuff classified documents down his pants, both of which people
have been caught doing in the past.

Avery declined
an escort—he knew the way. He took the elevator to the fourth floor and passed
through the glass-ceilinged entry corridor into the New Headquarters Building, a
six story glass building built into the hills behind the Original Headquarters
Building in the 1980s. Along the way, he was passed twice by uniformed security
officers, which he didn’t for a second think was coincidence.

It had been a
two and a half hour drive from his cabin in the backwoods of West Virginia’s
Blue Ridge Mountains. He did seventy most of the way on the interstate in his Jeep
Cherokee, slowing only when his radar detector chirped, alerting him to the
presence of a nearby State trooper or a speed trap. His Jeep sat now in the
parking lot, with his gear and a weeks’ worth of clothing stashed in the back.

Although he
welcomed the prospect of a job, he always hated coming to headquarters. He felt
uncomfortable and out of place here. When he was on the regular payroll, he’d
always spent most of his time in the gym or the library. The atmosphere and
layout felt too much like a university campus. An apt comparison, he felt,
given the fact that most of the staff here were young, right out of school, and
spent most of their day writing and reading reports, far removed from the
realities of the outside world.

Wearing rumpled jeans
and a black t-shirt that looked like it had been through the wash too many
times, Avery stood out amongst the professionally dressed staff. Passing them
in the corridors, they looked straight ahead with an air of busy superiority
and didn’t even acknowledge him with eye contact, or they gave him sideways
glances as he passed them.

Avery checked in
with the secretary manning a desk in the fifth floor office suite where Culler
worked. She buzzed Culler, and a second later, Avery heard the release of the
lock from inside the office. Like all offices, entry to Culler’s was granted
through a tiny vestibule that lay between two sets of doors. This was to
prevent anyone walking by outside from catching a glimpse inside an office
where classified materials were kept or seeing who was visiting a particular
office when the door was open as someone entered or left.

Culler stood up
and came around his desk to greet Avery.

He was tall,
almost Avery’s height, and, despite his forty-four years, he still maintained a
lean physique and stood erect. He lacked the hunched stoop, paunch, and double
chin of so many of his colleagues. He hadn’t allowed physical stagnation to take
over, despite spending the last seven years behind a desk. That’s when he’d
gone from chief of station, Kabul, where he’d first met Avery, to director of
the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, to the Global Response Staff.

Occasionally, Avery
ran with Culler, and he never needed to lighten his pace to allow the older man
to keep up. Avery believed someone’s outward appearance and maintenance was a
physical manifestation of what was inside, and he respected Culler as a
committed, disciplined individual.

Culler ran
deniable ops for the director of the National Clandestine Service, under the guise
of the Global Response Staff, which provided independent contractors, recruited
from the military and police SWAT units, to work undercover as bodyguards for
case officers, do security at CIA bases and stations, and even operate as agent
handlers and intelligence gatherers in high risk environments. The two former
navy SEALs killed during the attack on the American consulate and CIA base in
Benghazi came from the Global Response Staff.

The most lethal and
proficient of these operatives are informally known as scorpions.

Avery shook the proffered
hand.

“I see you’re
keeping well,” Culler said, returning to his seat. Avery sat down in one of the
chairs across from him. Culler’s office was what one would expect of a
professional intelligence officer: sterile, sparse, and rigidly organized.

“Always good to
see you, Matt,” Avery replied. He didn’t do small talk, awkward and obstinate.
He skipped the pleasantries and knew Culler understood and would take no
offense if he didn’t inquire into the well being of Culler’s wife and children,
pictures of whom adorned his desk, the only personal affects in the office. Avery
noted that a thickly padded, orange tabbed file folder lay on Culler’s desk.

Avery declined
the offer of coffee, opting instead for a bottle of unsweetened tea from the
mini-fridge. “So what is it this time?” he asked.

“There’s a developing
problem in Tajikistan. We’ve lost two officers within the last twenty-four
hours, including the station chief. One is confirmed KIA. The COS’s status
remains unknown at this time. Planning for the worst, we must assume he has
been taken by hostile agents and is currently undergoing torture and
interrogation.”

“Who’s the new
star to the memorial wall?” Avery didn’t mean for the inquiry to sound as flippant
as it did and at once regretted his choice of words. He personally knew several
of the names to the anonymous stars on the Wall of Honor in the main lobby of
CIA headquarters. More names had been added in the last twelve years than the
last five decades combined, most of them paramilitary officers and contractors.

“Tom Wilkes, a counterproliferation
officer on special assignment to Tajikistan. He was investigating links between
the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and nuclear smuggling.”

 “And the station
chief?” asked Avery.

“Someone you may
know. Veteran ops officer named Robert Cramer. He’s a pro, one of the best in
NCS.”

Avery blinked.
It was difficult to catch him off-guard, but he allowed his surprise to show for
a split second. “Yeah, I’ve worked with him in Afghanistan and Pakistan when I
first joined the Agency. He was my base chief. He’s a smart, skilled operator
and knows his job, but he wasn’t without his faults. Too bitter, and he was always
too confrontational with superiors, like he was being disagreeable just for the
sake of it.”

Culler arched
his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty harsh critique coming from you.”

Avery seemed not
to hear the remark. “To be honest, I’m rather surprised he’s still on the
payroll. Last time I saw him, three, four years ago, he was being recalled from
Afghanistan over some mishap and on the verge of being retired. He was pursuing
the enemy a little too aggressively for some people’s liking back here, I
reckon.”

 “He’s close to
forced retirement, mostly because he’s pissed off too many of the wrong people
at Langley,” Culler confirmed. “It’ll be a shame to see him leave. The service
could use more officers like him. It’ll be a bigger shame to see him go out
like this, like Bill Buckley.”

He referred to
the Beirut chief of station who had been abducted and then tortured for several
months by Hezbollah terrorists and Iranian agents. After every last secret had
been forcefully pulled out of his mouth, blowing American intelligence networks
in Lebanon, he was finally, mercifully, executed.

“Secretly, the
Seventh Floor’s hoping he’s already dead,” Culler said, being surprisingly
frank, Avery thought. “If he’s talking to Iranian or al-Qaeda interrogators,
our intelligence capabilities in the region will be impaired for the next
decade, longer. If they torture him, he’ll hold out long as he can, but he’ll
break eventually. A man can only take so much. The only upside is that Cramer
is a mean, stubborn old bastard, and I can trust him try to drag it out and give
us time to protect our people. His last medical report shows that he’s in
excellent health, especially for his age.”

Avery nodded.
He’d gone through National Clandestine Service training at the Farm and knew
the basics of spook tradecraft, including mock interrogations and simulated
torture, like sleep and sensory deprivation, solitary confinement, and water
boarding. It was as close to the real thing as they could make it, similar to
the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training he’d undergone in
the army.

An intelligence
agency generally acted on the assumption that a captured agent undergoing
torture would breakdown and begin talking within thirty-six hours, as proven by
past episodes of agents being taken. That’s the timeframe Langley allowed
before sources and ops needed to be considered compromised. It was up to D/NCS
and the Central Eurasia Division chief to work out whether or not any of
Dushanbe station’s agents were blown and worth risking additional assets to
extract.

 “Why come to me?
I’m sure there are already half a dozen agencies working this. This isn’t a
normal job for scorpions.”

“Right,” Culler
said. “Office of Security is investigating this matter, but we both know
they’re mostly interested in placing blame and covering the Seventh Floor’s
ass. Then bring in the Diplomatic Security Service, FBI, and the Tajik KGB. You
know how that will go. It’s going to become a long, drawn-out investigation, with
everyone pointing fingers and fighting for turf. We do not have that kind of
time. Bob doesn’t have that kind of time. We need someone who doesn’t have an
agenda and whose hands won’t be tied, someone who can gather the evidence and
follow it to its conclusion and take immediate and direct action, if the
situation calls for it.

Avery was by no
means a stranger to this sort of job. After serving in the Agency’s
paramilitary Special Activities Division (SAD), he’d worked as a “cleaner,”
salvaging and sanitizing blown or compromised operations overseas. He’d quietly
go in, remove the Agency’s fingerprints from an embarrassing situation or mitigate
the potential for blowback, and slip back out.