“Jump in, fire up, wait for you to tell us where the hell to go.”
“My kind of tasking. What about comm?”
“We’ve got satellite connectivity, but our input interfaces leave a little to be desired. You carry one of those fancy sat phones like the DEVGRU guys have?”
Clark had no idea. He pulled out his handset and showed it to Wheeler.
“That’s the one. DS&T guys didn’t hold back on the bells and whistles.” He was referring to the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. Wheeler produced a cable and inserted one end into a portal on a comm control head. “Plug that in and check the signal.”
Clark did and saw five bars. An extensive message began downloading. “I’ll be damned.”
“Connects to the airplane’s antenna,” Wheeler said. “From what I’ve seen, it works pretty darn well.”
Clark was impressed by the technology, but even more so that somebody had gotten it seamlessly deployed into the field. Hishandheld usually didn’t get a usable signal inside an aircraft, the antenna being stymied by the surrounding metal hull. He recalled once having to drop a loading ramp, harness up, and lean into a two-hundred mile-an-hour slipstream with a phone to his ear. Some things in life you didn’t want to do twice.
The first thing he saw in the message was a set of lat/long coordinates. He showed them to the pilots. “That’s for starters. We’re chasing a moving ground target, so it’s going to change.”
“Understood.”
Captain Ross typed the coordinates into the navigation computer.
“Carry on,” Clark said.
He turned toward the back and confirmed that the load-up was going smoothly under Ding’s direction. Clark then began reading the rest of the new message. It was the follow-up he’d hoped to see; when Mary Pat Foley had ordered them to scramble to the airport twenty minutes earlier, she’d told him what was at stake. Now she was providing specifics.
Soon they were airborne, the little C-41 plugging eastward toward their objective. Clark mustered the team and they semicircled around him, sitting on webbed seats and leaning against sidewalls. Everyone was dialed in, alert, and he was glad they’d all gotten some sleep.
He put on his command voice to overcome the drone of the engines. “The DIA is actively tracking a GAZ transport that they believe is the culprit in this air crash. It’s a moving target, roughly five hundred miles east of our position. We suspect it’s making a dash for the Georgian border. Our mission is to interdict this truck, along with two accompanying sedans, before they reach the border.”
“Any idea who this is?” Ding asked.
“Not directly. The fact that it’s headed to Georgia might give us a hint. That’s one fence line away from Russia proper, but we can’t assume anything. This could be pure terrorism, mercs, or state-sponsored players. The only way to find out who we’re dealing with is to stop this bunch dead in their tracks. If possible, we are also directed to recover any hardware that might have been used in an electronic attack so our techs can analyze it.”
“Sounds like this crash really was a GPS spoofing event,” Hyori ventured.
“The DNI seems convinced. If we can intercept this convoy, we’ll get a hard answer. Our specific tactical plan will depend on the situation. The general idea is that we will leapfrog ahead of these vehicles and find a way to stop them.”
“Rules of engagement?” Ding asked.
“The DNI was very specific that we arenotto engage Turkish or Georgian forces. That goes for military, police, or border guards. Whoever is inside these three vehicles, however…they are fair game. We will give them the option of surrender, and if they have enough sense to do so, we hand them over to the Turkish authorities. If they choose the other route, then no-holds-barred. For what it’s worth, the area of expected intercept is sparsely populated.
“Our best estimate of the enemy force in these vehicles is between six and twelve individuals. We will assume they are armed and experienced. As a minimum, expect them to be carrying assault rifles. Heavier weapons are a distinct possibility.”
“Is there evidence of that?” Bauer inquired.
“There is. When this truck was identified as suspicious, a Turkish army Black Hawk helicopter went to check it out. As the helo was approaching to investigate, a SAM was launched from one of the sedans. It struck the Black Hawk and it went down hard.”
“Dios mío,” said Ding. “Casualties?”
“Unclear. The Black Hawk’s three Turkish crew members are unaccounted for—first responders are just now reaching the crash site. But for us, this situation includes one major complication. As it turns out, there was a fourth person on the Black Hawk. An observer was on board, a U.S. Navy officer who had been assigned to the investigation in Bodrum. On top of that, our intel agencies got some overhead footage of the crash site immediately after the shoot-down. One of these goons could be seen shoulder-carrying a possible survivor out of the wreckage and dumping them into the box truck.”
“Wait, hold on,” Charlie said. “I was going over SITREPs earlier and I saw the name of one of the officers involved in this inquiry. You’re not saying the President’s daughter—”
“No,” Clark said, cutting her off. “Katie Ryan is in theater, but she’s safe in Bodrum. We are, however, talking about someone we all know.” He looked straight at Charlie. “He actually helped us out in China, on the pier in Tianjin.”
“JC?” she exclaimed.
“The one and only. He and Katie still work together.”
