Dead Fall, page 3
On the last day of training, as the sun was slipping low toward the horizon, the Iranians and their Russian protectors clambered into their vehicles for the final drive from the testing range in Mykulichi to the hotel back in Gomel.
The Iranians were looking forward to a final night out before returning to Tehran. The Russians were looking forward to getting rid of the Iranians and completing their assignment. Neither group was going to get what they wanted.
On a narrow piece of road snaking through the thick woods, they came around a tight bend.
Once all of the vehicles were aligned, one of Harvath’s teammates—an ex–Delta Force operative named Staelin—stepped out into the road. Balancing an RPG on his shoulder, he took aim and let it rip.
The weapon fired a high-explosive antitank “HEAT” munition, which was designed to penetrate the lead vehicle’s armor, release a superheated jet that flaked off pieces of the metal called “spall,” and send them racing through the interior in a tornado of shrapnel. It was the equivalent of having a big, very nasty fragmentation grenade dropped through an open sunroof. Those who weren’t instantly killed would be badly wounded.
The driver of the lead vehicle had barely applied pressure to his brakes when the round tore into his Dongfeng.
At the back of the column, another one of Harvath’s men, a former Force Recon Marine named Haney, stepped out with the same weapon and engaged the rear armored vehicle.
As soon as the Dongfengs were taken out and Staelin and Haney had retreated a safe distance in each direction, Harvath gave the command to two more teammates—Preisler, an ex-MARSOC Marine, and Johnson, an ex–Green Beret—to commence the next wave. This part of the attack was what had given Operation Boathouse its name.
Both sides of the road had been lined with M18A1 antipersonnel weapons known as claymores.
They were mines that, via a layer of C4 explosive, fired a shit ton of steel balls in a fan-shape pattern at almost four thousand feet per second. The force of the detonation deforms the balls into something similar to a .22 projectile.
The mines had been daisy-chained together, allowing Johnson to light up one side of the road and Preisler the other. The occupants of the unarmored, soft-skinned Suburbans never stood a chance.
Weapons up and at the ready, Harvath and his team went vehicle to vehicle, making sure there were no survivors.
When Harvath got to Al-Masri, he put several extra rounds in him. He wanted there to be no doubt who, specifically, they had come for.
Once that task was complete, the team took photos and collected evidence that would allow the CIA to confirm the identities of all the dead.
The final box that needed ticking was to add a little something special on behalf of the Ukrainians. Just as they had with the Operation Boathouse codename, they had decided to once again go Hollywood.
Since the beginning of the invasion, someone had taken a cue from the classic Cold War–era movie Red Dawn and had been spray-painting the word Wolverines on destroyed Russian vehicles across Ukraine.
Pulling out their own cans of spray paint, Harvath and his teammates did the same before packing up their gear and disappearing into the woods.
CHAPTER 2
WASHINGTON, D.C.
FRIDAY
FBI supervisory special agent Joseph Carolan fumbled on the bedside table for his phone. The worst calls always came in the middle of the night.
He was a big man who stood six foot four and weighed in at two hundred and fifty pounds; a lifer who’d been at the Bureau longer than anyone could remember.
Carolan was known for his investigative skills, as well as for his zero-tolerance policy when it came to bullshit. People who wasted his time pissed him off. His coworkers referred to him as “Bear,” both because of his size and because of his demeanor, which could swing anywhere from Gentle Ben to a rip-your-face-off grizzly, depending on how his day was going.
“Go for Carolan,” he growled as he activated the call and pressed the phone to his ear.
The person on the other end had been well trained on how to deliver breaking news, especially to a superior whom you had just awakened. Make it quick, stick to the facts, don’t speculate.
After listening for several moments, Carolan broke in, “Any press on scene yet?”
Once the question had been answered, he sat up in bed and began giving orders. “Have Metro PD fully tent the area around the body—no windows. Then have them push the perimeter out as far as they can. And if they haven’t already begun canvassing the building, get it started. In the meantime, I want someone assigned to start pulling all the CCTV footage we can get our hands on. Got it? Good. Text me the address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Disconnecting the call, Carolan placed the phone back on the nightstand and rubbed his stubbled face. Yet another morning he was going to have to skip his workout. At this rate, he was never going to shed the twenty-five pounds his doctor had been hounding him to lose.
“Coffee to go?” his wife, Margaret, offered. She had been a Bureau wife long enough to know not to ask questions. What’s more, as a highly accomplished trial attorney who had known her husband since they’d both been in law school, she could read him better than anyone.
While he wouldn’t publicly admit it, Joe was under tremendous stress. He had been promoted to his current position because the previous agent in his chair had suffered a massive heart attack. If there hadn’t been an AED in the office, the woman would have crossed over right there.
She had gone on to flatline once more in the ambulance and then again upon arrival at the hospital. All of this in a fit, health-conscious forty-two-year-old with no underlying conditions, nor family history of heart disease, who ran four half-marathons a year.
Had it been brought on by the demands of the job? Or had something more nefarious been to blame? That’s what headquarters was looking into.
So far, all of her toxicology screens had come back clean. That didn’t mean, however, that there hadn’t been an attempt on her life. What it meant was that nothing at this point was being ruled out. Carolan could be walking into the same set of crosshairs and had been told, in no uncertain terms, to watch his back.
The operation he had been put in charge of was codenamed “Quick Silver.” It was housed in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, specifically the Russia Operations section known in Bureau shorthand as CROS.
Operation Quick Silver had been created to root out Russian influence operations inside the United States that were designed to advance Russia’s goals in Ukraine.
It was a broad purview that had the potential to reach into almost every facet of American life—the military, the media, the government… The possibilities were endless.
As such, the top brass at the FBI had been adamant that everything be done by the book and follow the exact letter of the law. All effort was to be taken to avoid embarrassing the Bureau. The last thing the FBI wanted was to hand its enemies a propaganda victory. Agents, especially those directly involved in Operation Quick Silver, were to maintain the highest levels of integrity at all times.
Carolan understood the solemnity of the situation. He didn’t care what Moscow’s endgame was: he didn’t like the Russians trying to manipulate America, its people, or its institutions.
The problem, however, was that the internet, coupled with a fractured media landscape, made it all too possible for people to silo themselves. Too many citizens got their “news” and information only from sources that supported their biases.
There was nothing the Russians loved more than injecting poisonous propaganda into the American cultural bloodstream. The return on their investment—as Americans turned on each other and their own institutions—was off the charts. And, despite all of Russia’s economic problems, it was the one area that the Kremlin was more than willing to keep pumping ever-increasing piles of cash into. As long as Americans had a bottomless, and easy-to-influence, addiction to anger, Moscow would continue serving it to them.
All of this made Carolan’s job exceedingly difficult. He not only had to battle the Russians, but he also had to contend with some of his own countrymen and -women—American taxpayers—of whom he was a servant.
The fact that so many were acting as repeater stations for anti-American propaganda was a difficult pill to swallow. These otherwise good and patriotic people simply couldn’t be bothered to do even a modicum of fact-checking.
While disheartening, there would always be a percentage of disengaged citizens who didn’t live up to their societal responsibilities. The people who knew better, however, were the ones that really got his blood boiling.
Next to corrupt politicians, the media grifters and digital con artists were the worst in his book. These people made their living not by telling people the truth, but by telling them anything and everything they wanted to hear. No lie was too outrageous. No conspiracy too corrosive. Collectively, there was no bottom with them, no line they wouldn’t cross.
What was worse, the outrage they supplied was akin to hits of heroin. Like any addictive substance, it constantly needed to be delivered in stronger and stronger doses. The moment any grifter or con artist failed to provide an ever-more-potent product, the audience would migrate to someone else who did.
It was slow-motion cultural suicide; an arms race of weapons-grade stupid, which tens of millions of people were lapping up daily. Carolan worried for his grandchildren and what the country would look like by the time they reached adulthood.
He had always seen his duty as a citizen to be a steward of the Republic. No generation “owned” America. Instead, it was each generation’s responsibility to do everything they could to make sure the next generation coming up was handed a freer, more prosperous, more secure United States than had been handed to them.
This was why Carolan had joined the FBI and had spent his life in service to his country. He believed in America and wanted to be of service to the nation that had given him, and his family, so much opportunity.
No other country on earth empowered the individual the way America did. Nowhere were the rights and liberties of citizens so well protected. There were times he shuddered to think about what his life might have been like had he been born in another country, especially one not nearly so free.
That thought was playing out in his mind as he pulled up behind a row of squad cars double-parked in front of a luxury condo building in the popular Washington, D.C., neighborhood known as the West End.
Getting out of his vehicle, he made sure his credentials were visible and headed toward the “LZ.”
The term was short for “Landing Zone,” a macabre law enforcement reference used to designate the spot where a body had come to rest after falling off a roof, from a balcony, or out of a window. Since Carolan could see the tent he had requested, as well as a bunch of Metro cops standing around, he didn’t need anyone to point him in the right direction.
After signing the perimeter log, he stepped inside the tent and made eye contact with the young FBI agent who had called and woken him up.
Jennifer Fields was one of the youngest and most accomplished agents at CROS. When Carolan had inherited Quick Silver, she was the first person he wanted transferred to his team.
Fields had been born and raised in Harlem. Her dad had been a cop and her mother a nurse. They had worked their asses off to give their daughter an exceptional education. She attended Penn and graduated with a double major in criminology and finance. She was a remarkable student who sat atop the dean’s list every semester, and the FBI had made her an offer before she’d even been fitted for her cap and gown.
She impressed all of her instructors at Quantico. On top of being smart as hell, she was a natural athlete who blew away many of her male classmates during physical training.
Known for crushing a second, unrequired workout at the end of the day, she caught the attention of some of the hard-core members of the Hostage Rescue Team, who invited her to participate in extra training with them. Suffice it to say she left the FBI Academy with a rather special set of skills.
Having spent her high school and college summers working in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, she had learned a lot about its Russian immigrant community. And while she had to fight her way up through the ranks at the Bureau to get there, CROS was a perfect fit for her.
What’s more, Carolan was the perfect boss—or at least he was proving to be. As soon as he had been installed as the new director of Quick Silver, he had made her his number two. And it wasn’t some bullshit, politically correct promotion because he needed a woman or a person of color. Joe made it clear that he not only believed in her, but also, in entrusting her with such responsibility, he expected a hell of a lot from her. Fields had assured him that she was up to the task.
As he walked up to her under the tent, she handed him a Styrofoam to-go cup. “Iced Caramel Macchiato. Seven pumps of syrup. Just the way you like it,” she said, loud enough for the cops standing nearby to hear.
“Even has my name on it,” he replied, accepting the cup. Across the front, written in black Sharpie and massive caps, was the word BOSS with a heart drawn around it.
While Carolan could be a detail-oriented hard-ass, he appreciated a good sense of humor. The darker, the better, as it was a sign of high intelligence.
The ability to make light of tough situations was a necessary trait in law enforcement. If you couldn’t make jokes to let off some of the pressure, you were going to lose your mind.
Fields had nothing to worry about in that area. She had a great sense of humor and could go dark with the best of them. It was just one of a long list of reasons Carolan had selected her for the team.
Taking a sip of the hot black coffee she had handed him, he nodded at the tarp covering the body and said, “Okay, take me through it.”
Fields removed the notepad from her back pocket and began reading: “Dimitri Burman. Forty-eight. Estonian-born U.S. citizen. Software guy. Made a fortune in Moscow and St. Petersburg before moving back to the U.S. about seven years ago.”
“Married? Divorced?”
“Single,” she answered. “No kids. Lived in the penthouse on the eleventh floor.”
“Let’s look at the body.”
Fields followed him over, then bent down and pulled back the tarp.
Carolan set down his coffee, accepted a pair of latex gloves, and took his time studying the corpse.
“What personal items did he have on him?” he asked, looking at the man’s shoes before continuing his examination.
“Let’s see,” Fields replied, looking through several evidence bags that had been placed in a clear plastic tub on a nearby folding table. “One Rolex watch, one cracked cell phone, one key chain with various keys, and approximately eleven hundred dollars cash.”
“No wallet?”
Fields double-checked the bin, as well as the evidence log. “Nope, no wallet.”
A missing wallet, if in fact it had completely vanished, was an important detail. But there was another reason the wallet’s absence was salient, something that was gnawing at the back of Carolan’s mind. He just couldn’t remember what it was.
He decided to shift to another topic. “Have you been up to his condo yet?”
“Not yet. Metro was still processing it when I got here.”
Carolan stood, covered the body back up with the tarp, and peeled off his gloves. Motioning to a spot away from the cops, he began walking and signaled for her to follow.
Once they were out of earshot, he said, “Over the phone, you stated that Burman was a critic of the Russian government.”
“And then some,” Fields responded. “He was particularly outspoken about President Peshkov and the war in Ukraine.”
“Enough to get him noticed by Moscow?”
Fields nodded. “Lots of posts on social media and several interviews that have gone viral. That’s why I wanted you here to assess the scene.”
“So, we may be looking at a case of Sudden Russian Death Syndrome.”
Once again, Fields nodded. “Gravity does seem to be the number one killer of Peshkov’s critics.”
“And even more so since he invaded Ukraine.”
The Russians weren’t shy about political assassinations. It had been a favorite tool in their bag of tricks dating all the way back to the Bolshevik Revolution.
Russians killing Russians was one thing. Russians killing an American citizen, however, was something entirely different.
Not to mention the fact that Burman, if he had been murdered and this wasn’t a suicide, had been killed in the capital of the United States, only a mile from the White House.
A hit like that would have taken gigantic balls, even by Russian standards. Moscow would have known that there’d be hell to pay for such a move.
What form that hell would take was above Carolan’s pay grade. His job right now was to gather the facts, find any loose threads, and start pulling on them.
“So, what’s next?” Fields asked. “Want to head up to the condo?”
“Have you seen the building’s CCTV footage yet?”
“I did. Our guy can be seen entering via the front door, walking through the lobby, and getting on the elevator, all of it alone, about an hour ago.”
“What about exterior cameras?” Carolan replied.
“The camera in front is working. The one in back has been out for about two days. They’re waiting on a replacement from the security company. Supply chain issues.”
“Was our guy dropped off or on foot?”
“On foot.”
“Anyone else in the vicinity? Same side of the street? Opposite side? Following him via a slow-moving vehicle?”
“Not that I could see,” stated Fields. “I’ve got to tell you, if Russian Intelligence is behind this, they did a good job staying out of sight. That said, I’ve had a copy sent to our office and we’ve got agents out combing the neighborhood for all additional footage.”
“I don’t like that the rear camera was down. If he had unannounced visitors upstairs waiting for him, that’s the most likely point of entry.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Do we know if our guy kept a vehicle here in the building?”
