Black Flagged Redux (2 page)

He sighted in on the rooftop sentry through the ATN MARS6x-3 night vision scope attached to a silenced Heckler and Koch MSG-90 rifle, placing the sight's center red dot on the man's upper chest. At this distance, with the ambient glow of the surrounding sodium vapor lights, the bright green image was crisp. He could have used a conventional scope for these shots, but as soon as the sentries went down, electricity to the yard would be cut to maximize confusion in the building.

Based on intelligence provided by Ernesto Galenden's contact in the Buenos Aires Police Department, a high level meeting of Chechen street bosses was scheduled for tonight, which always preceded the arrival of a large, "tri-border" area, Andean cocaine shipment destined for Europe. He might need the night vision scope to deal with any men left outside to guard the VIP vehicles, which still hadn't arrived. They anticipated a possible total of twenty targets at the building. Their mission was simple. They were to kill everyone on-site.
Señor
Galenden wanted to both send the Chechen mafia an unforgettable message and put an end to their increasingly violent encroachment on his legitimate dock interests.

Four minutes later, his patience was rewarded by the staggered arrival of three expensive, oversized SUVs. The drivers maneuvered the SUVs to face away from the building and parked them side by side, away from the four assorted cars and trucks already parked at the base of the building. All of the truck doors opened at once, and several men exited and walked toward the metal staircase. He didn't count them. One of the breach teams would take care of that. Instead, he noted that two heavily armed men stayed with the vehicles. They positioned themselves on the exposed side of the nearest vehicle, a silver Mercedes SUV, and lit cigarettes.

"All teams, this is control. Proceed."

"Over watch, out," Petrovich whispered.

Through his earpiece, he heard the rest of the teams confirm the order. At this point, everything hinged on Petrovich's shooting. The three breach teams would move once the roof sentry dropped to the ground, which might require a little more patience. He wanted to hit the man while he stood on the edge of the far roof, so he would tumble to the ground. He couldn't be sure of the roof's thickness, and an unusual overhead thud during a tense meeting would not be a good start to their operation.

Petrovich steadied the crosshairs, which had already been adjusted for the distance and a steady six knot breeze. The roof sentry touched his right hand to his ear for a few seconds, which was a tell that he had just received orders through an earpiece. It was a hard habit to break, even for a seasoned professional. The guard moved toward the far edge, and Petrovich was willing to bet he had just been ordered to keep a close eye on the areas behind the building. They already had three men watching the front.

He kept the red dot centered on the man's upper back and started his breathing drill. Slow, predictable breaths, allowing him to gauge the rifle scope's natural drift. He gently added pressure to the sensitive trigger, and the rifle bucked into his shoulder, the large suppressor barking a sharp hiss that was unlikely to attract any attention. The sentry lurched forward from the impact of the 175 grain hollow point projectile and disappeared over the edge.

He zeroed in on the second sentry and fired a hasty shot, knowing that the first round had passed over the remaining sentries, travelling at over 2100 feet per second, and the sound would be unmistakable. The second projectile struck the man center mass, and the wall behind the guard turned dark green in his scope. By the time he had quickly centered the crosshairs on one of the two guards near the SUVs, all three of the breach teams had reached the building undetected. Two of the teams ascended the stairs, and one climbed an affixed ladder on the far side and headed for the roof.

He fired two shots, quickly alternating between the guards on the ground, dropping each of them unceremoniously to the hard gravel. One of the SUV windows shattered, reminding Petrovich that the high velocity rounds seated in his rifle's magazine tended to exit humans at these ranges, unlike the smaller caliber hollow point projectiles fired from pistols. He checked the bodies for signs of movement. If one of them managed to operate their handheld radio, the breach team would have a big problem. He saw an arm move for one of the compact assault rifles lying in the gravel. Petrovich's rifle bucked, and the movement stopped. He quickly changed rifle magazines and aimed at one of the second-story windows, waiting for the lights to go out.

He didn't envy the teams tasked with entering the building. Everyone inside was heavily armed and anything could go wrong. He felt lucky to be lying on top of a quadruple stacked shipping container, nearly three stories up, well removed from the danger below. Things had worked out decently enough for Jess and him in Argentina, and he had no intention of taking a bullet to help Sanderson pay off a debt to one of his crony supporters.

**

Five minutes later, over six hundred miles away near the Chilean border, General Sanderson's satellite phone rang. He answered the call and listened for a few seconds.

"That's great news, Rich. See you back at the ranch." He leaned back in one of the leather chairs situated around the lodge's stone fireplace and relished in the team's success, the program's success…
his
success. He had sent twelve operatives into Buenos Aires to execute a high risk raid on behalf of Ernesto Galenden, their "unofficial" sponsor in Argentina, and it had gone off without a hitch. This was fantastic news, given that Sanderson had decided against fully stacking the team with their most experienced operators. With a number of them just over a year into their formal training, the newer recruits needed opportunities like these to hone their skills and instincts.

The final body count at the container yard had been eighteen. He suspected that the message would be received clearly by the remaining Chechen mafia heads, and if not, Sanderson would gladly send them another. He wanted to keep Galenden happy. The headquarters compound and surrounding training areas turned out to be ideal, and he needed at least another eighteen months in Argentina before he could start pushing the newest batch of operatives into their assigned areas of operation (AO). Presently, he could deploy most of the operatives into their AO's for short assignments, but they lacked the fine tuning necessary to ensure their longer term survival. Fine tuning that came with consistent practice and patience.

So far, the program's progress had exceeded most expectations, despite the challenges involved in getting the Middle East program off the ground. Viable recruits for this group had proven difficult to find and screen, especially candidates with prior military or law enforcement experience and most importantly, fluency in either Farsi or Arabic. Sanderson had overstated the program's Middle East capabilities when he struck a sudden truce with Karl Berg and the CIA two years ago. He knew that Berg had seen a healthy portion of the original Black Flag files and would believe that Sanderson had re-engineered a new program to face America's biggest perceived threat: radical Islam.

The fact that Berg had gone "off the books" to hire a covert assassination team had led Sanderson to believe that Berg was a player. He was an expert at reading people, and Berg struck him as the kind of career CIA officer who normally worked within the system, but who had enough salt to cross the line if the potential payoff was big enough. Sanderson had been correct in all of his assumptions, and once Berg accepted the deal over the phone, there was no turning back.

In less than two years, Sanderson planned to have the entire program fully capable of conducting sustained operations throughout the world, right on the doorstep of every pressing threat to U.S. national security. At that point, it would only be a matter of time before they stumbled onto something big enough to give him the leverage needed to pull his program back into the fold as a legitimate and necessary extension of the United States.

For now, he had the generosity of several wealthy and extremely influential powerbrokers who professed the same commitment to worldwide stability as Sanderson, but their support came with a price. The occasional "favor" had turned into a monthly distraction, which provided his operatives with real world experience, but also underscored the fact that he was no longer ultimately calling the shots. Sanderson's practical side had long ago come to terms with this arrangement, but for a man who had "run the show" for decades, it gnawed at him. The sooner he could break free from these shackles the better.

General Sanderson stood up and pushed the remaining glowing ashes around in the fireplace. The fire had long ago died, but the embers had kept him warm enough while he waited for word from the team. He turned off the light, relying on instinct to get him to the front door of the headquarters lodge, and opened the wooden door to step outside into the frigid winter night. A thin layer of snow covered the ground, illuminated by the first quarter moon that beamed through the valley at a low angle above the Andean foothills. The valley was deathly silent, except for the sound of water trickling past larger rocks in the exposed riverbed ahead of the lodge.

He stepped onto a worn path to his right and cleared the lodge, crunching the freshly fallen snow under his boots. He glanced around, confirming that all of the compound’s lights were out, except for the one he had expected to see shining through the thick trees of the forest. His last duty of the night would be to let Jessica Petrovich know that Daniel was fine.

The Petroviches remained somewhat of an enigma to Sanderson. He had never met two people more tightly connected than Daniel and Jessica. He had limited information regarding their relationship in Serbia, but he was convinced that something had happened in Belgrade to seal these two together forever, aside from their audacious plan to steal over a hundred million dollars from Srecko Hadzic. He wasn't overly concerned about their secret, but it kept him from fully trusting them.

He could already sense that Jessica was losing her interest in the program. Much to his surprise and pleasure, she had embraced her duties as an instructor with a raw eagerness that painfully contrasted Daniel's less than enthusiastic arrival at the compound. Gradually, they had reversed roles, and now he found Daniel deeply immersed in the program while Jessica was drifting, which wasn't the only thing that worried Sanderson. Lately, she struck him as less emotionally stable than when she first arrived. If he couldn't control—or at least predict—her behavior, she could quickly become a major liability. It was something for him to consider, and watch with a keen eye.

He softened his footsteps as he turned down the path that would lead him up to her door. Terrence Sanderson didn't have many fears. An active thirty year career in Army Special Forces had cured him of that useless emotion. Still, as he slowly approached the Petrovichs’ timber A-Frame, he kept imagining Jessica inviting him inside and cutting his throat. Most men might have a different fantasy about Jessica Petrovich, but for Sanderson, his thoughts about her always involved a quick, razor-sharp knife. She was starting to get under his skin, and he didn't like it.

BLACK TIDE

Early April 2007

Chapter 1

8:05 PM

Foothills of Kurchatov

Republic of Kazakhstan

Anatoly Reznikov stared at the fading ribbon of cerulean blue sky over the darkened steppe. He sat in the back of a cheap Russian four-door sedan, likely rented at the airport in Semipalatinsk (Semey), where he would soon board a privately chartered aircraft. From there he would fly unescorted to an airport in western Russia. Generous prepayments ensured that he could walk straight from the plane to a four-wheel drive vehicle, with no questions or hassle. Of course, this had all supposedly been arranged for him by his new partners, while he worked on their product at the laboratory. Reznikov didn't expect them to honor the final terms of the contract, so he had made his own arrangements.

The driver was still headed vaguely in the right direction, but Anatoly knew the man had taken a subtle turn down a dead end spur, which might have gone unnoticed in the dark, especially if he hadn't been paying close attention to every single action, facial expression…even word, uttered by his partners, as the project neared completion. It also helped that he could understand what they were saying, a fact he had kept secret from everyone, especially his new "partners."

Over the past few weeks, he had overheard some interesting conversations about "covering their tracks" and "getting rid of any links." The phrases had churned his stomach and made it nearly impossible for him to focus on the transfer of his product to the delivery devices. He had expected to be killed at any moment, either in the lab or his room, and the suspense had nearly crippled him as he played scenario after scenario in his head, trying to determine if they had realized that either of his assistants could complete the final steps of the project without his help.

He had become a nervous wreck during those weeks, plagued by stomach problems, unexplained sweating episodes, and numerous other symptoms of severe paranoia. All of that suddenly vanished when they announced that he would be transported to the airport as agreed. His "friend" Ahmad spoke right in front of him to a rough-looking man Reznikov had never seen at the lab complex: "Get rid of him."

As soon as the words were spoken, Anatoly felt calm, almost relieved. He found himself looking forward to the ride. Finally, he could get on with the plan he had set in motion nearly three years earlier, when he first tried to contact these traitorous jackals.

He wished there had been some way to keep the final product out of their hands, but this crew didn't mess around and there had been no opportunity to sabotage the project while keeping what he needed. He wouldn't get the second part of his payment, but it didn't matter. He had exactly what he had set out to obtain sitting in two innocuous, specially designed, thermos-sized coolers, snuggled into the backpack sitting next to him.