Authors: Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice
Western Ethiopia
D
anny Freah stared out into the black night as the MV-22 Osprey whipped over the hills.
“Hasn’t changed,” said his companion bitterly. Nuri Abaajmed Lupo was sitting in the sling seat nearby, slumped back, arm draped over the canvas back.
“Maybe it has. Too dark to see,” said Danny.
“Never changes,” said Nuri. “It’s a shit hole.”
Danny was silent for a moment. He’d been here a few months back, on his very first mission with Whiplash—the
new
Whiplash. They’d pulled Nuri out of a tense situation, and nearly died in the process.
A good christening.
Since that time, the lawless situation in southeastern Sudan had gotten worse. Worried about violence spilling over the border, the Ethiopian government had declared its “neutrality” in the civil war, but was ineffective in keeping either side out.
At the same time it was engaged in an unrelated feud with the United States, Ethiopia had dismissed the U.S. ambassador a few weeks before. This made the existence of a secret American base in the northwest corner of the country even more problematic.
“Wish you were still in Alexandria?” Danny asked Nuri.
Nuri shrugged.
“We’ll wrap this up and get back,” said Danny. “She’ll remember you.”
Nuri frowned. “She” was a colonel in the state police administration, assigned as one of their liaisons. The sudden assignment had interrupted Nuri’s plans to take her out.
The Osprey dipped into a valley, skimming close to the treetops. As the aircraft slowed, the engine nacelles on the wings swung up. Danny cinched his seat belt, the aircraft fluttering down onto the landing strip.
Outside, the air was cool and crisp, a welcome change from Egypt, where it had been oppressively hot. Danny zipped his jacket to his neck. He was dressed in civilian clothes, unsure exactly what to expect.
“They didn’t even send anyone to meet us,” said Nuri, surveying the field.
“We probably got here faster than they expected,” said Danny. He pulled the strap to his rucksack over his shoulder and started walking toward the low-slung buildings beyond the small strip where they’d been deposited. Ras Dashen, the highest peak in the Semien Mountains, rose in the distance, its brown hulk clearly outlined by the glow of the full moon. The mountain was a popular destination for adventure tourists, but this sparsely populated valley was more than fifty miles from the nearest route taken by tourists. Accessible only by a scrub road or aircraft, the CIA had been using the field for Raven for nearly two months.
The Osprey rose behind them, spitting sand and grit in every direction. The aircraft would fly back to southern Egypt, refuel, then go north to Cairo to wait for the rest of the Whiplash team.
Assuming they were needed. Danny wasn’t exactly sure what the situation was; Reid hadn’t given him many details, saying only to get there and find out what had to be done.
“Lonely place,” said Danny as they walked.
Nuri grumbled an answer.
“This place operational when you were here?” Danny asked. “Before Whiplash?”
“Not that I knew.”
A thick clump of clouds floated in front of the moon, casting the base in darkness. As they passed, a pickup truck emerged from the shadows near the building, riding toward them without its lights.
“Here comes our ride,” said Nuri.
“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”
“I wouldn’t trust anything the Agency is doing out here.” Nuri stopped. “Black projects have a way of becoming rodeos.”
The pickup arrived before Danny could ask what he meant. The driver rolled down the window. He was white, and spoke with a British accent.
“You’re Colonel Freah?”
“That’s right.”
“You can put your bags in the back.” The man didn’t introduce himself. He waited silently for Danny and Nuri to get in, then put the truck into reverse, made a slow-motion U-turn, and drove toward the buildings. There were five; two about the size of a small ranch house back home, and three slightly smaller.
“Which building?” Danny asked.
“You can wait in the one on the far right.” The building was one of the larger structures.
“Wait?” snapped Nuri.
“What do you mean wait?” asked Danny. “We’re here to meet Melissa Ilse.”
“I don’t know where she is.” The driver seemed almost offended that they would imply he did know.
“How long you been on contract?” asked Nuri.
The man looked at him. “That’s not your business.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Danny and Nuri got out and went into the building. It consisted of a single room. A set of tables formed two long rows in the center, with chairs running down one side. Dim red lights shone from overhead fixtures; there wasn’t enough light to read a watch by.
“Most of them bugged out already,” said Nuri, surveying the room. “Shit.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Too few people. If they were running UAVs from here, they would have needed dozens of people. Even if it was just a skeletal crew. Even if they were flying from somewhere else. And the security would have been tighter. I’ll bet they had tents, and just took everything away. I don’t like this.”
Dubious, Danny looked around the room. It looked more like an empty Knights of Columbus hall than a command post.
“So where’s this Melissa, you think?” he asked Nuri.
Nuri pulled out a chair and sat down. “Damned if I know. I never even heard of her.”
He shook his head. Danny was used to dealing with Nuri—he tended to be a bit of a crank—but this was cantankerous even for him.
“There aren’t that many people who can deal with East Africa,” Nuri added. “I know them all. And she’s not one of them.”
“Maybe it’s a pseudonym.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, this is a bullshit way to treat us,” said Danny. As he turned to go back to the door, it opened. A short, thin man with several days’ worth of stubble on his face entered.
“Colonel Freah?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Damian Jordan.” He reached out and shook Danny’s hand. He had a grip that could crush rocks.
“We’re supposed to meet Melissa Ilse,” said Danny.
“She’s not here,” said Jordan. He offered his hand to Nuri. Nuri just stared at him.
“Where is she?” asked Danny.
“She got a lead on the aircraft and she went to check it out.”
“By herself?” asked Nuri.
“Melissa is like that.”
“You’re in charge?” asked Danny.
“Melissa is.”
“Where’s the rest of your team?” asked Nuri.
“With the aircraft down, we were ordered to move to a more secure location. We’re pretty wide-open over here. So it’s just me, Ferny—who drove out to get you—and two Ethiopian nationals working as bodyguards.”
“You trust them?” asked Nuri.
“Only until the shit hits the fan,” said Jordan. “Then they’ll take off for the hills. Come on into the other building and we’ll get something to eat. I’ll brief you on the way.”
Southeastern Sudan
I
t took Li Han several hours to reach the crash site, most of it on foot. A boy in a village allied with the Brothers had seen the aircraft fall from the sky. He showed Li Han the way himself, plunging down hillsides and scrambling over the rocks like it was a game. The Brothers who were with Li Han couldn’t keep up, and in fact even Li Han, who prided himself on his excellent condition, had a hard time toward the end. The moon kept poking in and out of the clouds, and he stumbled several times, twisting his ankle and knee, though not so badly that he gave up.
And then they were there.
One of the wings had broken off in flight, but the rest of the aircraft was nearly whole. It looked like a black tent, sitting in the ravine where it had landed. Li Han approached it cautiously, afraid that the Americans had booby-trapped it. They were capable of anything.
Li Han knelt down next to the fuselage, examining the strange-looking aircraft. It had landed on its back. A missile was attached to the wing.
Li Han caught the boy as he started to scramble onto the wing near the missile.
“No,” said Li Han. He used English. The child may not have understood the language, but the tone was enough to warn him away. Li Han pointed, telling the boy to move back.
Li Han rose and walked to the nose of the small plane. Its skin was covered with a black, radar-absorbing paint, obviously intended to lower the radar profile. He took an LED flashlight from his pocket and ran its beam over the wreckage. The antennas might be hidden under the wreckage; they would be on the top of the aircraft most likely, where they could receive signals from satellites. But where was the sensor pod with its cameras?
Integrated into the hull. The material seemed almost porous.
The two Brothers who’d accompanied him came over the hill, huffing for breath. They slid down the ravine on the sides of their feet.
“Careful,” said Li Han, forgetting for a moment and speaking in his native Mandarin.
They looked at him sheepishly.
“We must get the wreckage out of here before the satellite comes,” he said, switching to English. “Before it is dawn. We have only three hours. Do you understand?”
The taller one, Amara of Yujst—they all had odd, African names—said something in Arabic.
“Pick it up and carry it out,” Li Han told him, still in English.
“It will be heavy,” said Amara.
“Then get more help,” said Li Han.
Western Ethiopia
“W
e’ve been targeting him,” said Damian Jordan, pointing at the hazy black-and-white image of an Asian man on the screen. “Mao Man.”
“Sounds archaeological,” said Danny, looking at the face.
“Li Han,” said Nuri coldly.
“You know who he is?” asked Jordan. He cracked his knuckles, right hand first, then left. The sound echoed in the room. Except for a pair of cots and a mobile workstation, the room was empty.
“I never heard him called Mao Man,” said Nuri. “But I know who he is. He’s a technical expert, and a weapons dealer. A real humanitarian. You’ve heard of A.Q. Khan, right?”
Khan was the Pakistani scientist who had helped Iran—and possibly others—develop their own nuclear weapons program.
“This guy is similar, except he’s Chinese,” said Nuri. “He had some sort of falling out with the government and military. Probably over money. Anyway, he’s been in a number of places in the last few years, selling his services. He’s pretty smart. And absolutely no morals.” Nuri turned to Jordan. “He has a team here?”
“Not a team. He’s working with the Sudan Brotherhood.”
“Lovely.” Nuri turned back to Danny. “Muslim fanatic group. Gets some money and help from al Qaeda.”
“I don’t know about the link—” started Jordan.
“I do,” said Nuri flatly.
“Well you know more than me,” said Jordan. “All I know is we’re targeting this guy. It’s a noncontact situation.”
Nuri frowned. “How long?”
“We’ve been here almost five weeks,” said Jordan. “Most of that time was getting the aircraft ready, though. We only just started tracking him.”
Jordan began briefing them on Raven, an armed UAV they had used to track Mao Man. Its function was similar to Reaper—the armed Predator drones—but it was newer, more capable.
“How?” asked Danny.
Jordan shrugged. “Faster. A little smaller. More robust.”
Nuri snorted.
“This was its first mission,” said Jordan. “Really more of a shakedown cruise. They picked a quiet area for a maiden flight. Afghanistan was too hot.”
“Yeah,” sneered Nuri.
“Have to try it somewhere,” said Jordan. “It wasn’t my choice. There was some sort of mechanical problem about a third of the way through the mission. There were temperature spikes in the right engine. My guess is that there was impurity in the fuel and something blew in the chamber. The power profiles were off, and we got a lot of ambient sound, kind of like you’d get in a car if there was a hole in the muffler. It may have been loud—that’s what may have tipped off Mao Man and the guerrillas he’s working with. Or maybe they heard the Predator, or saw something somehow. Anyway, they came out of the mine and fired a couple of MPADs—shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles. It was a Stinger Block 2.”
“An American missile?” asked Danny.
“Oh yeah.”
“How’d they get that?”
“Don’t know. They get a lot of stuff out here.”
“Sold by a friendly government,” said Nuri. “Allegedly friendly.”
Danny shook his head. “So they shot it down.”
“No, that’s the damn shame of it. Raven was flying with a Predator on overwatch. The two aircraft collided.”
“You know where it went down?” asked Danny.
“Roughly. That’s where Melissa went. We have transponders, but the accident knocked one of them out, and separated the other two. So it’s in one of two spots. At first there was no signal because of a sandstorm.”
“A sandstorm?” asked Danny.
“Happens all the time here,” said Nuri.
“The particles screw up the low-power transmissions,” explained Jordan. “It’s a trade-off—if you have a transmission that’s too strong, anyone can find you. At any rate, we can see them now. It’s over the border about fifty miles.”
Nuri whistled. “That’s not the best place for a woman.”
“It’s not
that
bad,” said Jordan. “She’s been out there before.”
“How is one person going to bring back an aircraft?” asked Danny.
“She said she just wants to locate it.” Jordan shrugged. “When they told us you were coming, she said she’d get there and you could follow.”
“Is she nuts?” asked Danny.
“Well yeah, actually, she is,” said Jordan.
“W
e’re getting about a tenth of the story here,” Nuri told Danny when they went outside. “No-contact mission. You know what that means?”
“No,” said Danny.
“That means they don’t have to ask permission to kill this guy,” said Nuri.
“Okay.”
“They’re out here testing a new UAV on a high-value target? CIA officer goes out by herself to locate it? Granted it’s not as bad as it was a year ago, but it’s still not Disney World. There’s a lot more to the story, Danny. A hell of a lot more.”
Nuri folded his arms. He didn’t know exactly what else was going on here, but it smelled bad. Predators had never been used against the rebels here, not even the Sudan Brotherhood, because they’d never taken action against the U.S. In fact, except for their religious beliefs, one could have argued that they were much friendlier toward America philosophically than their government was.
As for Li Han, targeting him made a hell of a lot of sense. But bugging out didn’t. The bureaucratic bs needed to authorize a strike was so immense that an operation like this would continue for years.
Unless they hadn’t gone through with the bureaucratic bs.
Which meant the operation wasn’t just black; it was unauthorized; aka illegal.
Nuri felt his lower lip starting to shudder. The cool air was getting to him.
“How long before we can hook into the Voice?” asked Nuri, using one of his pet names for the MY-PID system.
“Tigershark won’t be on station for a few hours,” said Danny, checking his watch. “I’ll find out—I have to tell Bree we’re here. Hang around, all right?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Danny took out his encrypted satellite phone—it used standard military satellites, not the data-heavy Whiplash network—and called in as they walked toward the airstrip, as much to keep warm as to avoid being overheard. Nuri put his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth as he listened to Danny’s side of the conversation.
“Hey Bree, this is Danny. We’re here. What’s the ETA on Tigershark? . . . Uh-huh.”
Nuri felt a twinge of jealousy at how close the colonel and Breanna Stockard were. There was a level of trust there that he’d never had with any of his supervisors, and certainly not with Jonathon Reid. It wasn’t that he thought Reid or any of the men he’d worked for were less than dedicated, or would leave him purposely in the lurch. It was more a question of how far beyond their duty they would go. He’d already seen Stockard risk her career and her life for Danny.
For
them
. For the entire team. But it was personal for Danny in a way it would never be for Nuri.
“Nuri thinks there’s a lot more going on here than we’re being told, Bree,” said Danny. “Uh-huh.”
Nuri watched Danny listen to something she said, but in the darkness he couldn’t see his face well enough to interpret his reaction.
“She wants to talk to you,” said Danny, handing him the sat phone.
“Ms. Stockard, hello.”
“Nuri, what do you think is going on?” asked Breanna.
“I can’t say exactly.”
He explained that the Agency didn’t seem to be following its usual protocols when targeting a high-value terrorist like Li Han. On the other hand, he had to admit that because he had no direct information about either Raven or the particular mission, he simply didn’t know how suspicious to be.
The more questions Breanna asked, the less confident Nuri felt. And yet, things still seemed a little off, a little unusual in ways that made him believe the CIA wasn’t telling them everything.
Well, duh, he thought, handing the phone back to Danny. When did the Agency
ever
tell anyone everything?
“S
he’s going to talk to Reid,” Danny told Nuri after he signed off. “I don’t think Reid would lie to her.”
“Probably not,” said Nuri.
“You think Reid would lie?”
Nuri shrugged.
There were all sorts of reasons Danny didn’t particularly like the fact that Whiplash was a joint project between the military and the CIA, but they all came down to Nuri’s two words:
probably not.
You never knew exactly what the CIA was up to. The Air Force and the rest of the military might have its problems and its politics, but these paled compared to Central Intelligence.
“Tigershark will be here in another three hours,” said Danny. Once the aircraft was overhead, they would have real-time surveillance as well as a connection with their computer system, MY-PID. The rest of the team was scheduled to arrive roughly two hours later. Assuming that Melissa Ilse had located the wreckage by then, they would fly in, retrieve it, and come home.
Danny noticed Nuri staring into the distance.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Just how lovely it is to be back in this stink hole,” said the CIA officer.