Текст книги "Raven Strike"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Chapter 12

Southeast Washington, D.C.

Amara sat in the kitchen while Ken worked over the laptop, studying the program for hours, punching keys and mumbling to himself. He put his face right next to the screen as he worked, his nose nearly touching it. Amara wondered if he would be sucked inside if he hit the wrong key.

“I see,” said Ken finally.

He rose and picked up the laptop. Unplugging it but keeping it on and open, he walked back toward the stairs. Amara followed him down into the darkness.

Ken flipped a light switch at the bottom of the stairs. The basement flooded with light so strong Amara’s eyes stung. He shaded them as he trailed Ken over toward an ancient, round oil burner. There was a door just beyond it, secured with a padlock and a chain. Ken undid the locks, then pulled open the door and stepped into a primitive wine cellar. Shelves lined the left wall; two large wooden barrels sat on pedestals just beyond them. Dust and spiderwebs were everywhere.

A sheet of heavy, clear plastic hung from the ceiling just past the second barrel. Ken pulled at the sheet, revealing a seam. Amara followed him through, passing into a twenty-by-thirty-foot work space lined with gleaming new toolboxes, a large workbench, and commercial steel shelving. There were a number of high– and low-tech tools—a pair of computers, an oscilloscope, a metal drill press. In the middle of the floor sat a small UAV, engines fore and aft on the fuselage, wings detached from its body and standing upright against the bare cinder-block wall.

Ken knelt down and opened the laptop, staring at the screen before pushing it to one side. He rose and went to the workbench.

“I need solder,” he said, rummaging through a set of trays.

These were the first words Ken had spoken to him in hours, and they filled Amara with an almost giddy enthusiasm.

“So the program will help you,” said Amara.

“Can I trust you to buy solder? Do you know what it is?”

“Of course,” said Amara.

“It’s too late to get it now,” said Ken, his voice scolding, as if it were Amara’s idea in the first place. “Get us something to eat. Buy a pizza and bring it here. There’s a store on the corner.”

“Pizza?”

“You know what pizza is, don’t you?”

“I know what pizza is.”

“Go. Lock the front door behind you. Ring the bell twice, wait, then once and twice more. If you don’t follow that pattern, I won’t let you in.”

Despite his jet lag and the way he had been treated, Amara felt a burst of energy after he locked the front door and trotted down the steps. He walked with a brisk, almost jogging pace for about half the block, pushed along by a sense of mission—not the pizza, but of doing something useful.

Amara did not, in his heart, hate America or Americans. On the contrary, he liked much about the country where he had studied. And he had found that most Americans he came in contact with were helpful and even on occasion kind.

The fact that he’d been sent on a mission that would hurt Americans did not, somehow, connect with that feeling. It existed in an entirely different realm. He didn’t have to rationalize that Americans were fighting against what the Brotherhood stood for; he simply saw his mission separate from his experiences with and feelings for real Americans. He was like a professional sports player who could play ferociously against another team, and yet at the end of it think nothing of shaking and even hugging his opponents.

The heat in the pizza parlor was overwhelming. It was moist and pungent, an oregano-scented sauna.

“Hey,” said the man behind the counter. He was a white man with a child’s face and a belly two sizes too large for the rest of his body. “Help ya?”

“Pizza. To go.”

“Cheese?”

It had been quite a while since Amara had eaten pizza. But the safest answer was yes.

“Yes,” he told the man.

“Large or small?”

“Large,” said Amara, guessing.

“What da ya want wid that?” said the man, punching a cash register. “Soda?”

“Uh, yes.”

The man pointed to a trio of coolers at the side. There were a variety of sodas and other drinks; the last was filled with beers.

He took a water for Ken—he couldn’t imagine he would drink anything else—then, giving in to temptation, pulled open the beer cooler and took a Coors.

“Gotta drink the beer here,” said the man behind the counter.

Amara didn’t understand.

“I can only sell it to serve,” said the man. “OK? So if you want it . . .”

He shrugged, as if his meaning was obvious.

“OK,” said Amara. “I’ll drink here.”

Just as well—Ken might take the ban on alcohol far more seriously than he did.

“Thirteen fifty,” said the man, ringing up the bill. “Pizza’ll be done twelve minutes.”

Amara fished into his pocket and pulled out two twenties. He handed one to the man, took his change, then sat down with his beer.

It tasted like water with algae in it. But he drank it anyway. He didn’t realize he was gulping until he was more than halfway through.

Two teenage girls came in, texting on their cell phones as they walked to the counter. Amara remembered that he hadn’t called to say he had arrived.

He got up, leaving the drink, and went outside.

His finger paused over the quick-dial combination.

Two rings, then he went directly to voice mail.

“I am here. It is very hopeful,” he said in Arabic.

After he hung up, he turned quickly to make sure he hadn’t been overheard. Using Arabic had been a mistake—he should have made the call in English.

It was nothing to worry about now. Amara went back inside to wait for his pizza and finish his beer.

Chapter 13

Ethiopia

Nuri watched the sky, waiting as the shadow descended. By the time he could make out the parachute, the SEAL harnessed into it was only a few feet from the ground. The sailor walked into his landing, then began gathering his chute. He had it squared away by the time Nuri arrived.

“Hey, Navy,” said Nuri.

“You’re Jupiter?” answered the SEAL.

“Yeah.” Nuri thought the code word was funny, and gave a little self-deprecating laugh.

The man retrieved a small ballistics case from his kit. “Here you go.”

“Thanks. The command post is that large building up there on the left,” said Nuri. “Someone’ll find you food and arrange for a pickup.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Nuri started away.

“Tell me, if you don’t mind—what exactly is it that I just brought you? They rushed me special here from Italy and flew me on my jetliner. I never seen such a fuss.”

“Bottle of vodka,” said Nuri.

The Russian was just finishing his dinner when Nuri entered the tent. A small card table had been placed in the middle. The guards had removed his hand restraints, but were watching him carefully from the side.

“You can wait outside,” Nuri told them. He put down the case and pulled out the empty chair.

“How was dinner?” he asked Kimko in English.

“All right.”

“You prefer English or Russian?”

“Your Russian is horrible.”

“Ready to talk?”

“I have said everything necessary to say.”

“I think you have a lot to say.”

Kimko smiled and shook his head. “Nuri, you are young yet. You do not know how this game is played.”

“No?”

Kimko laughed. “You waste your time. You are Mr. Nice Guy. Before, when you threaten me with the gun—that was more effective. Then you feed me. Mistake. You should make me wait. Hunger pains do much.”

Nuri reached down and opened the case. He removed the two glasses from the cushioned interior and set them down. Then he took the bottle of vodka and opened it.

Kimko said nothing.

“I know all about you, Milos. You have no secrets.”

Nuri put a finger’s worth of the liquid into the one closest to him. MY-PID was recording the session through a video bug planted in the far corner of the walls near the ceiling; it analyzed the Russian’s facial features and what physiological data it could deduce about how he was reacting to Nuri’s interrogation tactics. It gave Nuri a running update on the data as it watched.

But he didn’t need MY-PID to tell him that Kimko really wanted the vodka.

Nuri picked up the glass and swirled it: it was all very dramatic and over the top, but he had a captive audience, and hamming it up only helped.

“I know you work for SVG,” he told Kimko. “I know who your supervisors are. I know every stop in your career. I know how you got shafted. Because your boss wanted to sleep with your wife. It was an injustice. They screwed you. You should be a supervisor by now. Or a rich man. A very rich man.”

Nuri took a small sip from the glass. He hated vodka.

“I can help you,” he continued. “With my help, you can get out of Africa. I can help get you promoted. I can make you rich. And most of all, I can help you get revenge.”

Kimko’s pupils dilated ever so slightly; Nuri didn’t need MY-PID’s nudge to tell him he had just scored big. He paused, hoping Kimko would talk, but he didn’t.

“You can talk to me, and I can help you a lot,” said Nuri. “You don’t like being assigned to Africa. That’s clear. I can give you information that will get you out. And no one will know where it came from. Except you and me.”

“You are more clever than I thought.”

“No. I just have all the cards. But I can share.” Nuri gestured at the bottle. “Why not use them to get yourself out of this shit hole.”

“It is a shit hole,” agreed Kimko.

“Talk to me about the UAV. Who else knows about it? Who wants it?”

“You claim to know everything and you don’t know that?”

As an intelligence agent, Kimko presumably knew the basic interrogation technique called for starting with questions one knew the answer to, so the subject’s truthfulness could be tested. He was parrying, trying on his side of the table to determine what Nuri really knew.

Nuri changed direction.

“Tell me about Li Han. Why would SVG want to deal with him? The man is a criminal. Despicable. A sociopath.”

“We all have our faults,” said Kimko dryly.

“What’s yours?” Nuri took another sip from the glass.

“I have many, many faults,” said Kimko, casting his eyes downward.

“I can help you get out of here,” said Nuri. “You don’t want to be here. It’s a rat hole.”

“You’re here.”

“Oh, I get to leave.” Nuri laughed. “They just sent me back for you. Who are you selling to? Sudan First? They’re psychotic.”

Kimko shook his head.

Nuri tried a different tack. “Who do you think was your competition to buy the UAV?” he asked. “Was it the Iranian?”

The suggestion of the third party—who of course didn’t exist—took Kimko by surprise, and it took him a moment to recover his stony face.

“You were my competition, I would suppose,” he told Nuri, leaning back. The shift in posture told MY-PID—and Nuri—that he was unsure of himself.

“You didn’t know about the Iranian?” Nuri asked. “So you don’t know why he was here?”

Kimko waved his hand.

“You’re not telling me an Iranian smoked you, are you?” asked Nuri. “You didn’t know he was with Girma? Are you kidding? Was your boss right—are you washed up?”

Kimko’s eyes flashed with anger. For a moment Nuri thought he would grab and fling the vodka bottle. He’d already decided that he would let him do that, let the bottle break—the smell would only make Kimko more desperate once he calmed down.

But Kimko didn’t. He hunched his shoulders together, physically pulling himself back under control.

“You’re a salesman,” said Nuri. “Why would you want to buy the UAV?”

“Who says that I am buying this thing?”

“Come on. You were prepared to deal. But how did you know what you were buying?”

“I was not going to deal. No buying.”

“Li Han isn’t a buyer. He’s a seller. And a worker bee for whatever slimeball will stick a few million dollars into his account. Right? I’m surprised you would deal with him,” added Nuri. “Considering that he helped the Chechens.”

Kimko raised his head.

“You didn’t know? You guys don’t know that?” said Nuri. This part was easy—he wasn’t lying.

“You’re a liar. You don’t know nothing. You’re a child.”

“In 2012—the bomb in the Moscow Star Theater. Used an explosive initiated from a cell phone. That’s common. There was wire in the bomb with lettering. You traced it to Hong Kong. Our friend was there a few weeks before the bomb was built. There’s other evidence,” added Nuri, who had gotten all the background from MY-PID and its search of the files and data on Li Han. “Maybe I’ll give it to you, if it will help. Of course, if your boss knew that you were dealing with someone who helped the Chechens—that probably wouldn’t be a good thing. I guess it would depend on how the information came out. Who shaped it. We call that a slant in America.”

“I had no deal,” said Kimko harshly. “I despise the man.”

“Feelings and business are two different things,” said Nuri. He rose, leaving the bottle and glasses on the table. “I’ll be right back.”

Kimko stared at the vodka.

He was beyond starved for a drink.

But if he reached for that bottle—where would it take him?

He knew nothing of value. His contacts among the Africans were probably well known by this Nuri. As for the UAV, he had already told him everything he knew.

Yet the American wanted more. Logically, that must mean they had not recovered it.

He couldn’t help them on that score either.

So really, as far as his duty was concerned, there was nothing preventing him from taking the bottle. There was nothing he could say that Moscow could object to.

But that was the rub—Moscow wouldn’t believe he’d said nothing now. And clearly this Nuri had some sort of evidence to ruin him. True or concocted, it wouldn’t matter.

He lowered his head to his hands.

One drink. One drink.

The smell of the vodka Nuri had poured in the glass permeated the tent. There was no way to resist.

He pulled the glass over. Before he knew that he had lifted it, he’d drained it. His lips burned, his throat.

He put the glass back on the table, defeated.

“You can have more,” Nuri told Kimko, standing behind the chair. He felt bad for the Russian; he looked as if he had collapsed.

“I can’t help you,” said Kimko, his voice subdued. “I had few arrangements. The Brothers have established supply lines with the Middle East, al Qaeda. We can’t compete. They’re friendly, of course, but they don’t buy. They get everything they need from bin Laden’s successors. I knew nothing about the Iranians. I assume it’s their Revolutionary Guard, but I know nothing.”

“Tell me who you saw in Duka.”

“First—I was supposed to call someone yesterday. I lost my phone. I need to call him. If I don’t, Moscow will know I’m missing.”

“Who?”

“He’s insignificant.”

Nuri reached down and picked up the bottle. He filled the glass.

“Come on,” said Nuri. “We have to help each other here.”

“He’s an expert in UAVs. He needed to inspect the aircraft. They were sending him to find me. I need to talk to him. Or they’ll think I defected.”

“We don’t want that,” said Nuri.

The entire conversation lasted no more than sixty seconds.

“There was fighting in the city,” Kimko said as soon as the other line was opened. “I’ve had to take shelter in Malan. The UAV must have been destroyed. I’m sorry that I didn’t meet you.”

“I heard of your troubles and made other arrangements,” said the voice on the other end, before hanging up.

A few seconds later MY-PID supplied the location of the other phone. It was in southeastern Sudan—the site of the Brothers of Sudan main camp, to be exact.

Chapter 14

Washington, D.C.

Christine Mary Todd took a last spoonful of soup and got up from the table.

“Working tonight?” said her husband. “I thought you had the evening off?”

She made a face at him.

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

Todd sighed.

“I was thinking we could sneak over to the stadium tomorrow night,” said her husband. “We haven’t used the box all year.”

“Daniel, we were at a game two weeks ago.”

“Oh. But that doesn’t count—you brought the House Speaker with you. And you know what I think of him.”

“Your opinion is undoubtedly higher than mine,” said the President.

Her husband smiled. It was true.

“I don’t know,” she told him. “This thing with Ernst.”

“Oh, don’t let it bother you.” He reached out and touched her hand. “Take a little time off. We’ll have fun.”

“The Nats always lose when I’m there.”

“Because you don’t cheer enough.”

“Well, I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“No, you’ll try.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No, it’s not.”

“All right.” She patted his shoulder. “I will try.”

“Video in bed?” he told her. “Saving Private Ryan?”

“I don’t know if you should wait up.”

“If I don’t fall asleep.”

“We’ve watched that video three times in the last two months.”

“Good movie.”

“Yes, but—”

“Oh, all right,” he said, overstating his concession. “We’ll watch The Golden Heiress.”

She had been wanting to see that one for weeks. Obviously, he’d gotten the video already; he was just teasing her. She gave him a kiss.

“Thank you, Daniel. You know I love you.”

“And I love you,” he said, reaching up to kiss her back.

Her husband’s gentle teasing put her in a good mood, but it didn’t last as far as the West Wing, where she was holding an emergency meeting on the Raven situation. The CIA director’s refusal to hop immediately over to the Hill and sing for his supper had predictable results—there were all sorts of rumors now about what he might be hiding.

All of them wrong, fortunately.

The one thing everyone got right was the supposition that Edmund’s stonewalling was coming at the President’s behest. Which naturally directed all of the vitriol in her direction.

Todd spotted her chief of staff David Greenwich rocking back and forth on his feet as she approached the cabinet room. On good days he hummed a little song to himself while he waited. On bad days he hummed louder.

The walls were practically vibrating with his off-key rendition of “Dancing in the Streets.” She assumed the selection was purposely ironic.

“All present and accounted for,” said Greenwich, spotting her. Besides everyone who had been at the meeting the day before, Todd had added Secretary of State Alistair Newhaven. He had brought along the Undersecretary of State for Counter-Terrorism, Kevin McCloud, and a staff member who was an expert on the Sudan.

“Edmund looks like he’s wearing a bulletproof vest,” added Greenwich.

“I hope you’re joking.”

“I am. But he does look quite a bit worse for wear. The others, so-so.”

Todd let him open the door for her. She glanced at her Secret Service shadow, so unobtrusive she almost forgot he was there, then went in.

“Very good, I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “No gentlemen, don’t stand. Thank you for the thought.”

She pulled out her own seat and sat.

“All right. Where are we?”

Breanna Stockard gave a summary of the search so far. There was nothing new on the Raven, but there was one ominous development.

“A Russian operative arrived at the Sudan Brotherhood camp in southeastern Sudan a few hours ago,” said Breanna. “We believe he may be there to obtain the flight control portion of the aircraft. In fact, we have pretty good evidence that that is the case. Circumstantial.”

“Are you sure?” said Edmund. He apparently hadn’t been briefed.

“I literally heard about this in the car as I pulled up,” said Breanna. “We’re still checking everything out. The operative was headed for Duka, made some sort of contact the NSA picked up, and then drove to the Brotherhood instead. He’s an expert in UAVs. But we don’t know for certain that the aircraft is actually at the camp.”

“We have to act on this,” said Edmund.

“Assuming it’s real,” said Harker. His tone was odd—somewhere between genuine concern and sarcasm. Todd couldn’t tell which he intended.

“What do you propose?” she asked.

“That we go into the camp,” said Breanna. “We send Whiplash in. We get the computer. If it’s there.”

“Do we have a plan?”

“It’s being developed. They’ll be ready to move at nightfall.”

“You’re proposing an attack on the Sudan Brotherhood?” asked Secretary of State Newhaven.

“Yes,” said Breanna.

“It’s a completely domestic organization,” said Newhaven. “They don’t even have connections with al Qaeda.”

“That’s not entirely correct,” said Edmund. “They have gotten support from them. Arms and money. Even with bin Laden dead, the group is strong in Africa.”

Newhaven turned to his expert, who, while admitting that the two groups were sympathetic to each other, said there was no hard evidence of anything more than that. The CIA and State Department experts then proceeded to bat around definitions and nuances.

Todd glanced over at Jonathon Reid. Her old friend was silent, his eyes nearly closed. She knew the whole Raven affair disturbed him greatly; it was certainly costing him friends inside the Agency.

“Jonathon, what are you thinking?” she asked finally.

“I think whether there’s a connection there or not, there’s simply no choice,” Reid said. “This weapon is too dangerous to chance it falling into other hands. We need it back.”

“I agree.” She turned back to the others. “I think the evidence is clear. They have contact and support from al Qaeda. If they’ve gotten support from al Qaeda, then they’re allies of al Qaeda. If they are allies with our enemies, they are our enemies. The fact that our action will inadvertently assist the Sudanese government is unfortunate, but in the end, coincidental. And acceptable. We will strike them and retrieve whatever we find at the camp.”

Nuri’s call from Ethiopia with the new information had caught Breanna off-guard; she hadn’t had enough time to properly process it, barely discussing it even with Reid before the meeting. Striking the camp seemed like a no-brainer, an obvious decision. But as she sat across from the President and listened to the objections from the State Department experts, she realized the implications were enormous. The U.S. would in effect be taking sides with the Sudanese government against its rebels—but the U.S. did not support the Sudanese government in the least. On the contrary, there was more than ample proof that the government itself had ties with al Qaeda. If anyone should be attacked, it was them.

Even assuming Raven was there and the attack went well, there were sure to be unforeseen diplomatic consequences, especially since the Russian agent would presumably have to be killed.

“Why kill him?” asked Harker.

Edmund frowned but said nothing. It was Reid who explained.

“Risking a witness, even one who never actually got Raven in his hands, would be foolish.”

Was the weapon worth risking war over, asked the Undersecretary of State. Especially with Russia?

It was a philosophical question, since no one felt it would get that far. But Breanna had her own answer: it might very well be. Based on the information the CIA had reluctantly turned over, Ray Rubeo thought the program was every bit as dangerous as Reid had feared.

Though Rubeo being Rubeo, he had added a host of caveats to his assessment, starting with the obvious fact that he hadn’t inspected the actual software, just some of the technical descriptions.

The real villain was Harker, who’d decided to test the weapon without getting approval from anyone, except Edmund—or she assumed it was Edmund’s doing. You couldn’t actually tell in Washington. Edmund was generally defending his underling, or at least deflecting most of the flack. But that didn’t make him guilty—the President was going to be taking the flack for the tiff with the Intelligence Committee, and she certainly hadn’t approved the program.

Or had she?

Washington could be a maze of mirrors, each corridor a twisted path leading to a dead end.

Were Edmund and Harker so wrong to test the weapon there? Whiplash, and Dreamland before it, had tested a legion of cutting-edge weaponry in dangerous situations. They’d lost their share of them as well.

Breanna heard her father’s voice in her head:

We didn’t spend all this money making these damn things to keep them on the shelf. We have to use them. We lose them, that’s the breaks. That’s the price of playing the game.

“Swift action is what we need,” said Bozzone, the President’s personal counsel. “With the weapon secured, Director Edmund could go before the committee and tell them what happened.”

“More or less,” said Blitz. “More less than more.”

Under other circumstances, the line would have generated a laugh or two, or at least a nervous chuckle. Today it didn’t.

“We say Raven was a secret UAV project being tested in the Sudan,” said Bozzone. “It crashed. We have it back.”

“This is where we were yesterday,” said Blitz, referring to a private debate. “Once we start talking about it, they’ll ask why it’s special, they’ll ask about the assassination program, they’ll ask a dozen questions that he can’t answer truthfully, or at least not fully.”

“And as I said yesterday, the best approach is simply to tell the whole story,” said Bozzone. “As long as the unit is back, there’s no problem. Even Ernst will keep that a secret. And if he doesn’t—well so what? As long as we have the UAV, then we’re the only ones who can deploy it.”

“Acknowledging the existence of a weapon can have bad consequences,” said Reid.

“Gentlemen, thank you,” said Todd, cutting them off. “We’ll make the decision on what will be disclosed when it needs to be made.” She looked around the table, then fixed her eyes on Breanna. “In the meantime, Ms. Stockard, Mr. Reid—have Whiplash recover the missing components. At all costs.”