“It was only one incident, last month in Algiers. He was spotted near the American embassy by one of our observers. It could have been nothing, but a report was generated and it reached my desk. As you know, Klaus has for years managed the finances ofour operations in Europe. He’s proven himself discreet and effective, yet he also knows a great deal. For that reason, we watch him.”
The president paused, as if in contemplation. “Your instincts have merit. There is risk in using a foreigner like Klaus.”
“Unfortunately, we have little alternative. We can’t move money on the Continent without Western banks, and that requires an insider. Someone who knows the Bahnhofstrasse.”
“Klaus…or someone like him.”
“Would you like me to find someone new?”
“I think it might be wise.”
“Very well, I will begin a search. And Klaus?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
Gennady Vasin did not. “I will see to it.”
Moments later, Vasin was retreating down the gilded executive wing corridor in a panic. The president had just ordered him to eliminate Gunther Klaus.
But he had no idea where the man was.
21
Hawk 11
Central Anatolia, Turkey
1948 Local Time
Conza sat on the steel floor in the Black Hawk’s passenger compartment, the big side door open to the rushing night. It was a sideswipe vista he had experienced countless times during his years with the Teams. In the dim moonlight craggy hills and arid grassland whisked past in a blur. The steppe of the Anatolian plateau felt deeply familiar, an echo of places he’d operated back in the day. The hot zones of Africa and the Middle East. The familiar visual was reinforced by chill night air swirling through the open door. Altogether, it was raw and exhilarating. Just as it had always been.
Conza was glad he’d volunteered for this flight.
“We have received another possible target to check on,” the copilot announced through the intercom. Conza had been given a spare helmet with a boom mic. There were three crew members, the two pilots and a crew chief. The pilots spoke solid English, but the crew chief’s grasp was limited—a vocabulary drawnfrom Tom Cruise and Hugh Jackman movies. But even that was light years beyond Conza’s ten words of Turkish.
“Copy that,” Conza replied, pressing the push-to-talk button. Hot mikes were off the table given the noise level in the cabin. “Do you have a visual?”
“Not yet, but we are still three miles away.”
The mission, operating as Hawk 11, turned out to be more productive than Conza had expected. The pilots were in constant communication with their command authorities, who in turn were coordinating with law enforcement agencies to locate vehicles that could conceivably be tied to a suspected electronic attack two nights ago in Bodrum. Encouraging as all that was, the parameters of the search, as Conza understood them, seemed hopelessly vague. The Turks were using traffic cameras and witness interviews to locate a vehicle that might not even exist.
After one landing for fuel at an army base, they had been airborne for over an hour. In that time, they’d made two interventions. The pilots had chased down two vehicles whose descriptions had been forwarded—a container truck and a large work van. Once identified, the intervention tactics were rudimentary. The pilots switched on the Black Hawk’s searchlight and landed so as to block the road. Their bird wasn’t loaded with any ordnance—the day hadn’t started as a combat mission, and contrary to Hollywood depictions, military aircraft didn’t fly with live loads unless there was a specific mission requirement. Once the two vehicles had stopped, Conza and the crew chief had approached them with the only weapons on board, a pair of Turkish-made short-barrel MPT-55K rifles. They’d searched both vehicles, found nothing worrisome, and sent two rattled truck drivers on their way.
Feeling like a glorified traffic cop, Conza expected that was how the rest of the night would roll. But at least there was a method to the madness. The Turkish regime had long existed on a knife-edge—an attempted coup d’état in 2016 had nearly succeeded. Ever since, the military had put a high emphasis on countering internal threats. Scouring remote roads for potential terrorists? That would be standard tasking for a military helicopter crew.
“I have a lock,” the copilot said.
Conza edged forward and looked past the right-seater’s shoulder to see his tactical display. The pilots weren’t wearing night vision gear—on a clear moonlit night that wasn’t necessary. For this mission, however, they had something better. On the helo’s chin was an ASELFLIR-400 electro-optical reconnaissance, surveillance, and targeting system. The system sensed shortwave infrared that fed to a gray-scale tactical display.
Centered in the targeting reticle, Conza saw a midsize box truck heading east. There were two other vehicles half a mile ahead of it, both traveling in the same direction. The road was the E80, a desolate stretch of highway east of Ankara. There were no other headlights or taillights visible in either direction.
“What’s the intel on this one?” Conza asked the copilot.
“A witness saw a truck near the Bodrum airport the day before the crash. This one is the same model and color. It was picked up by a road surveillance camera an hour ago. Our orders are to investigate.”
“Sounds pretty iffy,” Conza replied.
“Iffy?” the crew chief parroted, clearly put off by the slang.
