Operator Down Read online

  While the trip was a little bit of a boondoggle, we did have a specific mission. We’d just come from a booth manned by a company called ZEV Technologies—a maker of high-end aftermarket components and custom frame/slide work for Glock pistols—and had sealed a deal to test some pistols for our specific applications.

  Although we already had our own armorer support that we used to hone our combat weapons, Kurt Hale—the commander of the Taskforce—was wondering if we weren’t just reinventing the wheel and wanted to see if it would be better to simply farm out the work. After talking to ZEV, I was beginning to believe he was right, only our wheels were something from a Conestoga wagon while ZEV was racing around on run-flats.

  We pushed through the crowd and entered the cavernous Venetian casino, working our way to Las Vegas Boulevard. We exited into the sunshine, leaving the commandos and gamblers, only to be hit by Guatemalan refugees trying to hand me cards with hookers offering their services. One of the strangest things about Vegas.

  Knuckles said, “What did you think?”

  “Seriously? I think we should have flown here with the entire team’s Glocks. No question they can do better than our internal armorers. Nothing against them, but did you work the one they had on display? Better trigger than ours by far.”

  Knuckles took a left toward Caesars Palace, passing the gigantic Venetian hotel, saying, “So forget about any other vendors?”

  He had a point. While we didn’t fall under any official DoD rules about contracts, it would be stupid to latch on to the first one we found. We had a list of potential companies that could meet our goals, and it wouldn’t be right not to at least check them out. But I was pretty sure where I would end up on my recommendation to Kurt.

  I said, “Naw, we should hit ’em up as well, but we only get two days out here, and I want some Vegas time. I’ll send Retro and Jennifer to go hunt them down.”

  “Retro isn’t going to like that, and Jennifer’s not exactly an expert.”

  Retro had been a teammate of mine since Jesus was wearing diapers, but all things come to a close sooner or later. He was set to retire from the military at the end of the month and had truly come out here for vacation. Kurt knew he wasn’t needed but had let him come along as a little retirement gift. Unbeknownst to me, in all our time together, he absolutely loved playing craps, and his wife frowned on gambling. I learned he had planned on spending his entire time in the casinos betting away his per diem like a drunken sailor.

  As we were planning to leave for the trip, he’d begged to come along, getting a seat through Kurt, then had turned around and told his wife he was desperately needed for national security, which she bought. As they say, “What happens in Vegas . . .”

  I said, “It’s not going to kill him to take a break for a few hours, and as far as Jennifer goes, she could learn something.”

  Jennifer was my partner in Grolier Recovery Services—our company—and, outside of some serious weapons training I’d given her, had no military experience. She wasn’t qualified to judge whether a vendor was worthy and wasn’t needed on this trip either, but I’d paid for her to come along out of my own pocket because, well, she was a partner in more ways than one. She’d planned on spending her time at the pool—or, if the weather was too cold, in the spa.

  I felt my phone vibrate and saw it was her. I said, “Speak of the devil.”

  I answered, “Hey, we’re on Vegas Boulevard headed home. What’s up?”

  “Kurt wants to talk on the VPN. Secure.”

  “About what?”

  “Apparently, about a mission. In Vegas.”

  3

  Aaron Bergmann left the parking lot of the Sakhumzi restaurant, keeping a few cars between him and his target, blending in with the traffic on Vilakazi Street. In short order, they had left what was sarcastically called by the locals the Beverly Hills of Soweto, crossing out of the Orlando West neighborhood and into Orlando East.

  Making sure he was still screened from the car in front of him, he turned to Alex and said, “What’s the video telling us?”

  Alex, in the passenger seat, said, “It’s got nothing about diamonds or the diamond exchange. They’re talking about weapons. The black man is being called a general, and he’s asking the blond guy how many soldiers he has. Our target’s only contribution is saying that money is no object.”

  She looked at him and said, “What’s going on? This isn’t about blood diamonds. It’s not about embarrassment to Israel or the diamond exchange.”

  They entered a single-track road leading to two giant power-plant towers looking like they belonged in a nuclear facility, only they were now painted with multicolored graffiti and artwork. Why would they be coming here?

  He said, “Get off the video. Google this place. What’s here?”

  She did, just as they passed a sign describing the towers as a fun park, with bungee jumping, paintball, and other adventure sports. Aaron let the target car roll past the parking lot, seeing it continue on to a cluster of abandoned buildings. He pulled over to the side of the road, caught by a stream of patrons exiting the park, the sun beginning to set.

  He said, “Give me something. What is this place? I’m about to lose the target.”

  Looking up from her tablet, Alex said, “It’s an old coal-fired power plant. It closed in 1998. In 2008, it reopened as a bungee-jumping place called Orlando Towers. Since then, it’s expanded into a bunch of different adventure events. Something called ‘SCAD Freefall’ and other things.”

  “That’s no fucking help. Who owns it? Why are they here?”

  Alex snapped back at his tone, looked fearful, realizing she was failing in her duties. She said, “I have no idea. I don’t know how to ascertain that.”

  Aaron glanced forward and saw the car drawing away at a slow pace, passing through the remains of the power station. It pulled into an alley between two brick buildings that looked like a setting from a Saw movie, the doors hanging askew and the windows broken. He had to make a decision.

  He said, “Switch seats with me. Give me the tablet.”

  They did so without opening any doors, playing a game of Twister, arms and legs flapping back and forth in an awkward dance, him keeping an eye on the car to their front. It began to disappear through the crumbling buildings, and he made a choice that would prove fateful.

  “Keep going. Slowly. Keep the car in sight, but don’t turn down that alley. Stop before they can see us in the rearview mirror.”

  She did so, turning on the headlights to counteract the dying sun. He immediately snapped, “Off, off, turn them off.”

  She reflexively twisted the stalk hard enough to break the plastic, shutting out the lights. She looked at him in a panic, and he patted her hand, saying, “Take a breath. We’re okay.”

  She exhaled and then inched forward, past the tourist park and into the abandoned buildings. She leaned toward the windshield in the gathering gloom and said, “I see the car in the alley. It’s pulled over next to a trash pile.”

  He said, “Park it here, in the shadow of the buildings. Whatever they’re doing, we’re not going to see. We’ve gone far enough.” He pulled out a night vision monocular and handed it to her, saying, “Keep an eye on the car. I’m going to cycle the video.”

  He powered up the recording from the restaurant, the conversation between the men spit out at the bottom of the screen by the software package, looking like closed captioning at a sports bar. He saw that Alex was correct. The men were discussing weapons, strategy, and money. The deputy prime minister of Lesotho, Makalo Lenatha, was mentioned, then the black man spoke, and Aaron finally had a name: Lieutenant General Jonathan Mosebo, head of the Lesotho Defence Force.

  The readout continued, and he learned that the general was being unceremoniously fired by the prime minister and was none too pleased about it. The other Caucasian, a man called Johan, calmed him d
own, and the talk continued along nebulous lines about force structures and loyalties.

  Nothing to do with diamonds. What the hell?

  The phone call came, the target answering, and he fast-forwarded through Alex’s short walk down the stairs. When she appeared by the target’s table, he slowed the video down again, and the scrolling sentences at the bottom turned into gibberish. Confused, he punched a couple of icons on the software package, then realized what the problem was: The man wasn’t speaking English.

  He’s speaking Hebrew.

  Aaron glanced up from the tablet and saw that a single streetlight had come on, providing enough feeble illumination to potentially compromise them. He began manipulating the software package, saying, “How’re we looking?”

  Alex said, “Good. I haven’t seen any movement from them at all.”

  Which should have been an indicator.

  He loaded the Hebrew suite into the software program, saying, “Get the car turned around and out of the ring of that streetlight. We’ll stay for a couple of more minutes, but this isn’t worth burning ourselves. There’s more going on here than just blood diamonds. I need to assess and report back for guidance.”

  She started the vehicle, and he rewound the video feed, getting to the start of the phone conversation. She did a U-turn, parking the car on the opposite side of the street, now facing toward the exit of the dilapidated power station.

  He hit play, and the screen cleared. The software suite could only lip-read the target’s end of the conversation, making the readout a little confusing, but eventually, one sentence stitched the others together, clearing the state of play like fog hit with the morning sun.

  I have a tail? From Mossad?

  The text across the bottom of the screen hung still as the man on the other end of the line talked. Aaron saw the words on the tablet, not wanting to believe them.

  His voice grating low, he said, “Get out of here. Now.”

  Alex said, “What?”

  The man on the other end of the phone quit talking, and the screen spit out the target’s response. You want me to take him out? Are you sure?

  In that millisecond, Aaron realized that he was no longer the hunter. He was the hunted. They had been led here for a reason.

  He bolted upright and saw men appearing like wraiths from the dilapidated buildings, an anthill kicked over, running toward the car.

  He shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!”

  The driver’s-side window was smashed. He saw Alex’s head yanked out of it, a man trying to pull her from the car by her hair. He exploded forward, grabbing the man’s wrist and slamming it backward, into the shards of glass that remained in the window. The man screamed, releasing Alex’s head. Aaron leaned over and jammed his foot on the accelerator, causing the car to burst forward. The men dove out of the way, with one flipping onto the hood. Alex shouted, and the car skipped into the curb, bounced back, and headed straight into the wall of a building.

  Aaron grabbed the wheel, but not soon enough. They slammed into the brick, the vehicle stopping in a grinding of metal. His door was ripped open, hands jerking all over his body, spilling him out. He hit the ground hard, felt a fist hammer his temple, and heard Alex scream again.

  A visceral fear flooded him, the adrenaline coursing through him in a spastic jolt. Like a father defending his family against overwhelming odds, knowing he would lose, he began doing what he knew best.

  He turned to fight.

  4

  Knuckles took a sip of his club soda and said, “This is bullshit. I should not be burning myself for this mission. We should be using Jennifer. It’s easier, and you know it.”

  I kept my eye on Retro at the craps table and said, “If GRS is to remain in play for the follow-on mission, I only have two guys here who I can burn. You and Retro.”

  “You don’t have to burn me. I can do the follow-on mission. Retro’s the one retiring.”

  I took a sip of my own club soda and gave him the side-eye. I said, “You’re slated to train Carly. You want to ditch that for a simple Alpha follow-on mission?”

  Carly was a Taskforce CIA case officer who had been granted the honor of attempting to achieve Operator status in the Taskforce. Only the second female to be allowed to try, after Jennifer. It was an open secret that she was dating Knuckles, and he’d fought like hell to get her a shot, with Kurt agreeing only after I’d given my concurrence. She needed some serious training to even begin to think about succeeding, and Knuckles had been detailed to conduct it. His willingness to ditch that for a simple surveillance mission with no chance of high adventure was a little strange, to say the least. Especially after how hard he’d fought to give her the chance.

  He toyed with his napkin, then said, “Real-world missions take precedence. That’s all.”

  “So I should burn Jennifer so you can go on a potential trip, when she has no commitments and you do? What would Carly say about that?”

  He remained quiet, and I knew something was different. We were so close, I could read a tick of his eyebrow and learn volumes. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to push.

  He balled up his napkin and said, “You heard Kurt. This has a whole lot more behind it than a simple Alpha mission.”

  Earlier, after leaving the convention center, we’d returned to our hotel room at Caesars Palace to hear what Kurt was thinking. Waiting on the elevator to arrive, Knuckles had broached a topic that was also on my mind: “What the hell do you think this is about? We can’t operate on US soil.”

  The Taskforce was an extrajudicial force—which was a Washington, DC, way of saying it was illegal—but it still had some rules. One of those was that we only operated overseas, hunting bad guys in bad-guy lands. Home soil was the purview of the FBI and others.

  I said, “No idea. But it does make me wonder why Kurt was fine with me coming out here with a full team when two guys would do.”

  The bell dinged, and Knuckles said, “Well, this could be fun, but I’m smelling a shit sandwich. Like always.”

  I chuckled and said, “So working with me is always eating shit?”

  We hit the fourth floor, and he said, “Pretty much.”

  We’d entered my room to find Jennifer and Retro expectantly waiting, the laptop on the desk connected to the Taskforce through an unbreakable VPN. Jennifer’s eyes were alight, relishing a mission beyond sitting by the pool. Retro looked like he wanted to kick me.

  I shut the door and said, “Okay, before I get on, what’s the deal?”

  Retro said, “The deal is Kurt wants to do some sort of surveillance mission here in Vegas. Against our charter, I might add.”

  I looked at Jennifer, and she said, “Apparently, there’s an arms dealer he wants us to track. Some guy who’s got a booth here at SHOT.” She glanced at Retro and raised an eyebrow, saying, “I think it sounds fun. Retro’s a little angry.”

  He said, “I’m not angry. I just think it’s a little sleazy cutting this trip short for a mission that we’re not even allowed to do.”

  Which meant he was pissed. His answer brought a grin to both Knuckles and me because in the twenty-two years that he’d been running missions, he’d never cared about the rules.

  I held up a hand and said, “Okay, okay. Don’t worry about your craps weekend just yet. Dial Kurt up. Let’s see what this is about.”

  We connected, waited a bit, and then Kurt Hale settled in front of the camera. He turned around to look behind him and said, “Close the door, George.”

  When he returned to the screen, I saw his lips curl into a ghost of a smile. “How’s Vegas?”

  I said, “A little boring, to tell you the truth. I understand you want to spice things up.”

  He laughed and said, “You find a vendor for the work on our pistols?”

  “Yeah, I got the one that I think we’re going to end up with, but we ha
ven’t checked out the others yet.”

  “Good. Don’t worry about the others. Just send the information you have.”

  “What’s up, sir?”

  The camera feed disappeared, and in its place a target card appeared. A single PowerPoint slide that had the specifics on someone we were hunting.

  Name: Tyler Malloy

  Citizenship: United States of America

  Professed Occupation: Arms dealer

  Activity: Intercepts indicate possible facilitation of weapons transfers to groups designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the Department of State. Currently attempting to gain trigger components suitable for nuclear weapons. Currently licensed in good standing with Department of State ITAR protocols.

  Threat: Low

  Authority: Alpha only, secondary protocol

  Next to the information on the slide was a picture of a thick-necked guy of about twenty-eight, with the ubiquitous “operator” beard and a pronounced Jay Leno–looking jaw. He was giving his best I’m a badass scowl.

  I said, “What’s this guy’s story?”

  The slide vanished, and Kurt reappeared on-screen. “He was an enlisted Marine for four years, one tour in Helmand. After that, he became an independent contractor for a company called Blue Spoon. He ended up in Bulgaria training a bunch of Syrian ‘moderate’ rebels under the failed CIA program. While he was there, he seemed to figure out where the money was really made, which was supplying the arms for the fight instead of getting paid by the hour to train up a bunch of farmers. Blue Spoon was buying a ton of AKs and other old Soviet arms from Belarus and Bulgaria, and he spent his time there learning the trade and building personal contacts. Eventually, he went out on his own, using those contacts and undercutting Blue Spoon pricing until his little company became the sole supplier. That was three years ago. Now he’s a real player, selling everything from tanks to missile launchers. He’s moved far beyond the small train-and-equip program for Syria.”