I'm running a bit behind on SCORPION II, so here's the first chapter....
Although Avery was expecting his visitor,
the sound of gravel crunching beneath tires still caught him off guard for a second,
so rarely did the sounds of civilization intrude upon his quiet redoubt in the
backwoods of northern Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. His nearest neighbor was
a retired dentist and Vietnam veteran, whose wife recently passed away, and
Avery sometimes went fishing with the septuagenarian or took him into Roanoke
for lunch. Rarer still, an army buddy might come by. Most frustratingly, a
motorist might become lost and turn into his driveway, looking for directions.
Otherwise Avery
received little human contact here, which was how he liked it.
Not to say that he
was unwelcoming of today’s visitor. To the contrary, after sustaining a life
threatening wound ten months earlier and just recently re-qualifying for
service with CIA’s Global Response Staff (GRS), Avery had been looking forward
to Matt Culler’s call. Still, his instincts told him something was wrong, that
he probably wasn’t going to like what Culler had to tell him.
After all, it was
beyond unusual for the head of GRS to come all the way out here to see Avery in
person, instead of calling him in to Langley.
The Global Response
Staff is a section of CIA’s National Clandestine Service (NCS) tasked with
employing independent contractors, mostly former special operations soldiers
and SWAT shooters, for security operations: guarding CIA bases overseas,
babysitting case officers, transporting personnel or materials in combat zones.
The best, most lethal of these operators are known informally as scorpions.
Invariably their activities overlap into operations, especially in areas where
the Agency finds it necessary to leave zero footprint by utilizing deniable
agents on low-vis ops. GRS contractors often worked alongside Special
Activities Division paramilitary operators.
Wearing shorts, a
tank top, and running shoes, and well-tanned from time spent outside during the
recent summer months, Avery turned off the fire on the stove and stepped out from
the combined kitchen-dining room into the living room, crossing the spotless
hardwood floor to the front door.
The outside air
was cool and musty and smelled of pine needles. The land around the ranch house
was well shaded by the towering trees that vaulted up on either side of the
driveway and around the yard.
By the time Avery
descended the three steps on the wooden porch, the stopped Lincoln Town Car’s
driver side door swung open. Culler climbed out with ease while his driver, a
security protection officer, remained behind the wheel. Culler was in far better shape than most
fifty-plus year old men, and he definitely stood out amongst CIA’s middle-aged,
suited, executive class. But unlike most of Langley’s Seventh Floor suits,
Culler was a former ops officer, a veteran of Afghanistan and elsewhere. He’d
also formerly headed CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. He was one of the few
people at Langley Avery actually respected.
Handshakes were
exchanged.
“You’re looking
well,” Culler said, appraising Avery. The comment was a genuine observation,
not an intro to contrived perambulatory pleasantries, which Culler never
bothered to go through with Avery, because he knew Avery had little regard for
such social customs.
The last time
they’d talked in person, Avery had been restricted to a hospital bed at Walter
Reed, with tubes sticking out of him, connecting him to a half a dozen blinking
and beeping machines. After being stabbed in the side with nearly the full
seven inches of the Viper’s combat knife, Avery underwent multiple surgeries to
fully repair his torn oblique muscles, severed blood vessels, and perforated
large intestine.
The wound took
over four months to fully heal. The first month was by far the worst, because
he’d also suffered from infection, which nearly became life threatening. It was
the closest Avery had ever come to dying. He’d come close to bleeding out by
the time the FBI and Homeland Security agents reached him on the California-Mexican
border, where he’d lain in his own blood and vomit, barely conscious.
Recalling that
afternoon, Avery could still feel the distinctive sensation of the titanium
blade inside his body, the sudden wave of nausea and numbness that overtook
him, and the deep burning pain. The thought of it still made him feel sick and
cold and sent a chill through his nerves. He’d been shot before, but that was
nothing compared to the damage this knife had caused.
The ordeal didn’t
end with the painful recovery process.
After, Avery found
the sudden loss of muscle mass, strength, and stamina to be the singularly most
wretched, depressing feeling he’d ever known. Worse, he wasted three weeks
drinking nearly every day, all day, breaking almost a decade of sobriety, until
he finally decided to stop feeling sorry for himself and get his shit together.
That was followed by another miserable week of riding out the withdrawal
symptoms.
Avery spent the
next five months working out and training hard to rebuild what he’d lost,
determined not to retire early from doing the only thing at which he’d ever
been particularly good, the only thing that gave his life some vague sense of
purpose. He still hadn’t quite gotten back up to his former maxes on squats and
deadlifts, and he doubted he ever would, but his run times were the best they’d
ever been since when he was a twenty-two year old army Ranger. And he could
still give a navy SEAL or Delta operator a run for their money on the gun
range, which he sometimes did.
After getting back
in shape, there came another month of going through the exhausting bureaucratic
hoops and procedures to get reinstated with GRS, and even that was a close
call. The psychological evaluators knew Avery was holding something back, but
Avery wasn’t about to tell anyone about the kid he saw murdered in Colombia and
the lingering affect that had on his psyche. That job had been totally off the
books anyway. He also didn’t tell the psychologists about the drinking relapse,
either. He only told them what they expected to hear, about how he was coping
after coming so close to death. They wanted to make sure he didn’t exhibit any
PTSD symptoms and that he handled the psychological stress in a healthy way,
which he generally did.
“Good as new,” Avery
replied, “except for the new scar on my side. Hopefully, that detail doesn’t
get out to anyone, but at least it’s not visible.” His body carried no other
visually distinguishing features that could potentially be used to identify
him. “Though there’s only one group I know of who would have a personal
interest in me anyway.”
Culler knew what
Avery meant. “Far as we know, the Russian mafiya have no reason to know of your
involvement with what happened on the Mexican border, so they won’t be able to
make any connections.” He paused. “And that’s a good thing, because I’m sending
you into FSU again.”
Avery recalled unpleasant
memories of his mission into Tajikistan and Belarus the previous year. Chasing
down loose nuclear material headed for the Taliban. Putting down a former
friend turned traitor. When Culler called yesterday, Avery was expecting to be
sent to Iraq or Syria to make life difficult for ISIS.
But FSU?
He sighed.
Well, it wasn’t
like he could turn Culler down now. Avery was extremely lucky to have gotten a
second chance with Langley as it was. Beggars could not be choosers.
“I know it’s not
what you expected, but after you hear what I have to say, you’ll want this,”
Culler said. Looking Avery in the eye, he added. “Trust me.”
That grabbed
Avery’s attention and re-focused his thoughts, though he knew Culler wasn’t
above a little manipulation. He’d subtly poked Avery’s ego before to get him to
take on a shit job no one else wanted.
“What is it?”
Avery asked.
“Did you hear
about the car bombing in Tbilisi three days ago?”
“Yeah, I saw it
mentioned briefly on CNN. What, ten or so people were killed? A couple
Americans from a natural gas company are among the dead. Some local militant group
that no one ever heard of claimed responsibility.”
“It wasn’t a
terrorist attack.”
“You know
something CNN doesn’t?” The question was sarcastic, but not entirely without
merit. Almost every office TV at Langley was tuned to CNN throughout the day.
“It was quite
clearly a targeted assassination, but the White House and Langley aren’t going
to acknowledge that,” Culler said. “They hit one of our NOC officers, and his bodyguard.
The bomb was rigged to their vehicle, though that particular detail won’t be
made public for obvious reasons of OpSec.”
If the identities
of the slain CIA personnel were revealed, then the identities of other officers
and agents connected to them and the front company would potentially be put at
risk. Even in death, the slain officers would have stick to their cover story.
“Who did we lose?”
Avery asked, unprepared for Culler’s response.
“Poacher was running
security for the NOC.”
A dozen memories
flashed across Avery’s mind. Afghanistan. Poacher’s bearded face and big grin.
Being welcomed into Poacher’s home and meeting Katie. He remembered the last
time he saw Poacher, seven months ago, at a Task Force Dagger reunion BBQ.
Avery took a deep
breath. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to lash out and punch something,
anything. Instead he said, “Who’s responsible?” His voice cracked a little. He
felt his stomach churning.
“So far we’re
going with the Black Fist, an unknown militant group based in the Caucasus that
initially claimed responsibility.”
“I never heard of
them.” And Avery’s knowledge of the worlds’ insurgent and terrorist organizations
was near encyclopedic.
“Neither has the
Eurasia Desk or the Counterterrorism Center at Langley,” Culler admitted. “And the
Georgian security services don’t seem to know a hell of a lot other than the
Black Fist is a small, close knit, radical offshoot of Adamon Nikhas, an older Ossetian
nationalist group. They’re also connected to assorted Armenian and Chechen
groups in the region. The Georgians claim this is all bullshit and that the
group’s financed off-the-books by the Kremlin as a proxy terrorist force, but
we have nothing substantial to support those allegations. We have to take
anything from Tbilisi with a grain of salt.”
“Anything useful
from the investigation so far?” asked Avery.
“The detonator
used in the blast has been linked to a theft from a Romanian munitions train
earlier this year. Sometime when the train stopped in a city called Brasov, on
its way to Bulgaria, four containers of eighty detonators went missing, along
with dozens of kilos of RDX plastic explosives. Along with the FBI, Langley
sent people to coordinate with Romanian investigators in Brasov.”
Avery tried to
listen, but he’d inadvertently started to tune out. The news of Poacher’s death
had broken through even his normal stoicism. He didn’t even notice when Culler
paused for several seconds.
“Look, Avery, this is way bigger than the guys
we lost in Tbilisi, and I’m not sending you on a routine counterterrorism op
here. In fact, given your personal connection to Poacher, I’d prefer not send
you. I need a clear head on this.”
“So why me then?”
“Regardless of the
possible Ossetian terrorist angle, what happened in Georgia is just the latest
in a long string of compromises we’ve experienced in the former Soviet Union
over the past year. Ever since Tajikistan and Belarus, really. Chief of station
Tallinn was exposed and expelled from Estonia. Case officers have been caught
in stings and deported from Russia, Belarus, and Turkmenistan. We’ve lost
highly placed agents in Ukraine and Azerbaijan. The Russians obviously have a
line into the National Clandestine Service’s operations in the FSU, and it
comes at a time when Putin’s become increasingly aggressive in places like the
Baltic, Ukraine, and Syria.”
“So that’s why
you’re here,” said Avery. “You don’t know who within NCS might be compromised right
now or, worse, a double agent.”
“Partially, but not exactly. D/NCS came
directly to me with this and asked for you by name,” Culler said, referring to
the director of the National Clandestine Service, the CIA’s top spymaster.
Avery frowned as
he thought it over and put the pieces together. Counterterrorism was his normal
province, not the former Soviet Union or conventional espionage work. He knew there
was only one thing that connected him in any way to anything involving Russia.
“Cramer?”
Culler’s tight-lipped
expression answered for him.
“He’s dead,” Avery
said.“I watched him burn.”
“All of the assets
we’ve lost so far, including the NOC in Tbilisi, were active before Cramer’s treason. Cross
referencing their 201 files, they’re all veteran officers with prior experience
in Eastern Europe or Central Asia, and they have all worked with Cramer on past
assignments, or at least have crossed paths with him operationally in one
fashion or another. D/NCS doesn’t believe that to be a coincidence.”
Robert Cramer was
an almost thirty-year CIA veteran who had been slated to end his career as the chief
of station in Dushanbe when he conspired with the Krasnaya Mafiya to fake his
kidnapping and murder. He then helped organize a network smuggling highly enriched
uranium from Belarus to the Taliban.
“Makes sense,”
Avery said. “We know Cramer was collaborating with the Russian services. Organized
crime or state agencies, there’s no distinction between the two in Russia. They
probably debriefed him very extensively, and we don’t know just how far back
their relationship goes or the extent of their network.”
“D/NCS always
thought that shit with Cramer would back to haunt us one day. He might be right.”
“So where do we
start?” Avery asked. “We wouldn’t be talking if you didn’t already have
something to go on.”
“If this does go
back to Cramer, then it might be worth starting with the only loose end you
left in Dushanbe.”
Avery took a
couple seconds to search the names and faces stored in his mind. “Ramzin.”
“You got it.”
Oleg Ramzin was a
Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) counterintelligence officer who had been
assigned to Dushanbe. Ostensibly he was Cramer’s agent, providing cover for
status for their relationship and frequent meetings. In reality, Ramzin was
Cramer’s link to the Krasnaya Mafiya, and he helped Cramer organize the nuclear
smuggling network.
“We know the
Lubyanka promoted him shortly after Tajikistan,” Culler said, referring to the
FSB’s headquarters. “He’s a colonel now. He stayed in Dushanbe for another four
months after everything that went down there, did some work in Moscow, where we
know he personally briefed Putin on a highly classified matter, and that’s when
we lost him. Moscow station confirmed Ramzin’s still doing fieldwork, but he’s
almost certainly adopted a pseudonym after you compromised him in Tajikistan.”
“Sounds more like
a dead end than a lead,” Avery observed.
“Not necessarily.
NCS’s Russia Desk might have an access point to Ramzin. His name’s Yefremov.
He’s also FSB, Ramzin’s former superior officer and mentor. They served in
Chechnya together. According to the analysts who profile Russian intelligence
officers, Ramzin and Yefremov are still real close together.”
“And you know
where to find Yefremov, I take it?”
“We do, as a
matter of fact.”
Avery read
Culler’s expression, felt an unpleasant sensation in his gut, and said, “You’re
going to tell me something I won’t like, aren’t you?”
“Hey, if this was
going to be easy I would have gone to someone else.”
“Where is he?
Syria? Fucking Moscow?”
“If only,” Culler
said without humor. “Yefremov currently runs counterintelligence for the
pro-Russian separatists in Donbass.”
Avery blinked and
hesitated before responding as he digested this. Suddenly his last ops in
Colombia and Mexico didn’t sound so bad. “Yeah, well that’s pretty fucked.”
“We can get you
into Donbass easily enough through a local Ukrainian agent network.”
Avery opened his
mouth to protest, but Culler cut him off.
“Don’t worry. We
know they’re clean, and they have a contact in Donbass that can provide support
and point you in Yefremov’s direction.”
“So what do you
expect me to do?” Avery said. “Sure, I’ll have a chat with Yefremov, but he
can’t possibly walk away from this, you understand?”
He suddenly
realized exactly why Culler came out here instead of summoning him to Langley
for this discussion, and the sick feeling in his stomach grew deeper and more
pervasive. Culler didn’t want any official record of Avery’s role in this.
Avery generally targeted sub-state actors, but now Culler, likely with D/NCS’s
blessing, intended to put him directly up against another power’s agents.
“After I’m through
with him,” Avery went on, “it’s not like we can let Yefremov go back to Moscow reporting
that Americans grabbed him and questioned him about Oleg Ramzin’s whereabouts.
Somehow, I also doubt you’ll be able to just stick Yefremov in one of your
secret prisons in Poland or Romania, assuming I’d even be able to bring him out
of Ukraine undetected.”
“What happens to
Yefremov after you’ve spoken with him is not our concern,” Culler said bluntly.
“D/NCS intends for this to be totally deniable. Deep black. Zero footprint.”
This meant if
Avery was detained by the Russians, he was fucked. But what else was new? “How
am I even supposed to talk to Yefremov? My Russian is shit.” He’d been trying
to learn the language after the operation in Tajikistan and Belarus, but his
progress was slow.
“According to the
profilers, Yefremov speaks decent English, like most senior Russian
intelligence officers do.”
“Because it’s not
like the analysts ever get something wrong.” Avery couldn’t help but roll his
eyes. He had little use for the Directorate of Intelligence, which was
comprised predominantly of academics and subject matter experts with little, if
any, firsthand experience in their areas.
“This intelligence
is reliably confirmed,” Culler said. “There are several reported occasions
where Grigory Yefremov spoke English, and that comes not just from us, but from
the British and German services, too.”
“There’s no way I can pull this off as a
singleton. Where’s Flounder and Reaper?”
“They’re at the
Point, but they’re active duty Ground Branch. D/NCS can’t just order them to-”
“He won’t have to.
If they know this is connected to Poacher, they’ll be onboard. Trust me.
There’s no security risk. Remember, they were with me in Tajikistan, and they
know all about Cramer.”
“Look, Avery,
there’s-”
“Either I get Flounder
and Reaper, or I don’t go. It’s that simple. I’m not going into
Russian-controlled territory in a war zone with only some local assets for
back-up.”
“Alright,” Culler finally
relented, knowing that once Avery decided on something there was no room for
negotiation. He wouldn’t have felt good about sending Avery into Donbass alone
anyway. “I’ll get D/NCS to clear it with SAD, but you better bring everyone
back.”
“Don’t worry, Matt,
I know the drill. The Seventh Floor would rather have us dead than taken alive to
the Lubyanka. I share the sentiment. Fuck spending the rest of our lives in a
Russian prison with our faces all over the news.”
In 2014, the bodies
of several Americans with M16 rifles, Meals Ready to Eat (MRE), and other American-manufactured
armor and kit, turned up in eastern Ukraine after a firefight between Ukrainian
soldiers and separatist forces. The State Department denied any knowledge of or
responsibility for the Americans, even after a couple of them were identified
by Russian intelligence services as contractors with Greystone, a private
military corporation and former Blackwater affiliate that was registered in
Bermuda and often did work for the Agency and allied foreign governments..
Avery had long
accepted that he’d meet a similar fate one day. He knew it was just a question
of when and where.
