Direct Action - 03 Read online

  The terrain flattened out into desolation in all directions, an empty desert that probably didn't look much different that it did during the time of the Pharaohs. Halfway to the coast, Deckard pulled over to gas up their car while Ramon went and bought some coffee at a bus stop. Deckard could tell that his reaction time was slowed and he wasn't working at one hundred percent. Ramon came back with bottles of water and the coffee both of which they promptly drank, and then got back on the road.

  Ramon got a text from Bill. The other Liquid Sky element had arrived in Suez and was looking for their exfil platform. After another hour on the road, they reached Suez just as the sun was setting. Making a phone call, Bill directed them south for a link-up. Driving by some residential neighborhoods, the low-laying mountains in the distance made for a change in terrain near the entrance to the Suez Canal. They spotted the mini-van in a parking lot next to the fishermen's docks.

  Zach was leaning against the side of the van smoking a cigarette.

  Deckard parked the car alongside the van and killed the engine.

  “You have it?” Zach asked before Deckard had even stepped out of the car.

  “Yeah.”

  Bill opened the van's passenger door and got out.

  “Let's have it.”

  Deckard tossed him the backpack.

  “Something else,” Deckard mentioned.

  “What is it?” Bill asked as he unzipped the backpack.

  “Banggen was in the engineering building. He was on his way up to inspect the device as I was on my way down.”

  Bill looked at him blankly for a moment.

  “You do him?”

  “Fuck yeah,” Deckard answered.

  Bill nodded.

  “Then it's done.”

  “What the fuck was he doing there?” Zach asked. “For him to be in cahoots with our previous target and then involved with this one as well, that isn't a coincidence.”

  “No, it isn't,” Ramon said. “We talked about this a little on the drive here. It is possible that we are working the same mission profile as Chinese intelligence but from different approaches. They are working to influence world events in a manner that favors their economic policies. We're working to prevent world events from negatively influencing American foreign policy.”

  “Cool story bro,” Zach snorted. “That or our OPSEC is fucking blown and the dinks are shadowing our moves.”

  “Not very well,” Deckard added. “Homeboy ate a 5.56 round between his eyes from about three feet away.”

  “Everyone fucks up at least once in their life,” Zach said, challenging Deckard and Ramon on their hypothesis.

  The sliding door on the van swung open. Rick and Paul jumped down to the pavement.

  “Who the fuck cares,” Rick said, having overheard parts of the conversation. “We're alive and he's dead. That's all that matters.”

  Bill was still fishing around inside Deckard's backpack, pushing the broken-down AR-15 out of the way and palming the device.

  “This is it, huh?” The Liquid Sky team leader was unimpressed to say the least.

  He took it back to the van and crawled inside to show it to the three college students. They confirmed that it was the device they had used in Tahrir Square. Nadeesha got out of the driver's seat to join them. She was still wearing a head scarf over her hair.

  “Okay,” Bill told the Liquid Sky team. “I don't care about some fucking chink right now. We did our job, like Rick said. I got us a fisherman who is going to take us out to sea where we will board a commercial shipping vessel that the client secured passage on for us. Grab whatever kit you have and we can walk to the docks from here.”

  The seven Liquid Sky members and the three recently liberated hostages walked to the fishing docks and met up with the captain of a small boat that Bill and Nadeesha had gone to make arrangements with twenty minutes prior to Deckard's arrival. The client had secured them transport into international waters, but they had to get to that transport first.

  As the fishing boat churned the waters and lumbered off to the commercial ship in the distance, Deckard started to get the idea. Who ran a maritime commercial shipping business that doubled as a logistics infrastructure for covert operations? There were not a whole lot of players in that arena. If it wasn't Langley, then this mission was Langley cleaning up someone else's mess.

  The deck hands lowered a rope ladder and also a cargo net to haul up Ramon's suitcase. One by one they ascended to the top, the college students going up in the middle of the group. Bill paid the fishing boat captain and was the last up the ladder.

  Once on board, the crew took them belowdeck and showed them to their berthing area. The captain was an American with a largely Indian crew, and showed up briefly to inform them that they could make their way to the galley and the cook would be ready to make them something. About half of the group stumbled off to grab some food, the rest fell asleep almost immediately in their bunks. Bill lay down with Deckard's backpack next to him as he slept.

  Deckard went to the galley and grabbed a couple rolls before heading back to the bunks. He realized that he was alone as everyone else was already snoring in their bunks or still at the chow hall cramming down some grub. He should have remembered to take a picture of the device when he first snatched it, but he would have to act now. A third opportunity probably wouldn't present itself.

  Tapping on his cell phone, Deckard slowly unzipped the backpack next to Bill's cot and took out the device. With the Egyptians having already tore it open, all the guts inside were exposed. Deckard could see the motherboard, the power source, and several other electrical components that he did not recognize. Whatever it was, the device was clearly professionally made in a modern laboratory somewhere, not just something the three college students jury rigged in their dorm.

  He began snapping pictures with the camera on his phone. If he could get them to Aghassi, finding the origins of the device might help them build the big picture, and ascertain who the puppet master behind Liquid Sky was.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” a voice said from the cabin door.

  Deckard's head jerked up as he held the device in one hand and his camera phone in the other. It was Rick, who had just returned from chow.

  “Taking some SSE photos in case we need them later,” Deckard said trying to play it off. SSE stood for sensitive site exploitation, an evidence-gathering methodology that Special Operations units used to uncover intelligence information.

  “SSE my fucking ass,” Rick bellowed as he stepped through the door.

  “What the hell,” Bill grumbled as he woke from what had been a deep sleep. As team leader, he was probably the most exhausted.

  “Deckard is here taking pictures of the fucking device,” Rick complained. “OPSEC violating motherfucker. What the fuck do you think you're doing?”

  “This is the kind of tech we might want to request for our own use on a future mission.”

  “Bullshit,” Rick cursed. “What are you up to?”

  “Deckard,” Bill cut in. “Don't let me catch you going through my shit again. I don't give a fuck about this horseshit Rick. You two both need to shut the fuck up so I can get back to sleep. If this Army puke was going to steal the device for his own purposes, then I'm pretty sure he would have done it by now.”

  “Maybe that's just what he was up to,” Rick said as he got red in the face.

  “Deck is part of the team now, Rick. Learn how to steer a fucking parachute, you fucking chump, then you can complain to me about how I run my fucking team,” Bill said as he leaned up on one elbow from his cot. “Now get the fuck out of here and go catch a sea jack in the showers or something. I'm trying to rack out here.”

  Rick turned and stormed out. Deckard zipped the device back up in the backpack as Bill tore it out of his hands and flopped the bag down next to him on the cot.

  “If you pull some shit like that again Deckard, I'll fucking kill you.”

  Deckard took the hint and hit th
e rack himself, with the cell phone tucked in his pants pocket.

  Deckard was vaguely aware of the others filing into the berthing area in ones and twos as they hit the rack themselves. With adrenaline bleeding off, they all went into a post-mission coma while the captain of the ship went full power and headed for international waters.

  It was a deep, dreamless sleep as their minds and bodies reset themselves. Ten hours later, the passengers began to wake. The ship had cleared the Gulf of Suez and was now in the Red Sea.

  Bill was the first one up. He had confirmed with the client that they had accomplished their mission, but now he headed up to the bridge to re-establish commo and find out what was going on. Having seen things on the way out, Egypt had probably imploded on itself just as they were sailing off.

  Liquid Sky and their three liberated college students cycled through the showers and had another meal before they peeled off in separate directions. Zach and Rick went up on the deck to work on their tans. Nadeesha and Paul sat around the day room watching television. Bill was working on his push ups in between the cots. Ramon fell back asleep.

  Deckard was up on the deck, watching the sea pass by. It was now early in the morning. As he walked to the stern of the ship, he heard voices and muffled giggles. It was Luke, Aaron, and Adam, enjoying a pack of cigarettes they had bummed from the crew.

  “Can I get a smoke?”

  They turned to look at him, having thought they were alone.

  “Bro, you can have whatever the fuck you want,” Aaron said. “You guys saved our sweet virgin assholes from that prison.”

  “That we did.”

  Luke handed him a cigarette and held up a lighter for Deckard to get it started.

  “That prison would have been Gitmo, Abu Gaireb, and Auschwitz all rolled into one for us,” Luke said. “They were talking about transferring us to some dungeon somewhere at any moment. Then they would have let the guards have a go at us.”

  “Nah,” Deckard informed them. “In Egyptian prisons they have a special technique for people like you.”

  The college students looked at Deckard with wide eyes.

  “They would strip you naked and lock you in a small cage with a dog and its, uh, fully engorged member.”

  “A dog?” Adam asked in disbelief.

  “Then when you gave up all the intel they wanted you would have a sudden and catastrophic drop in blood pressure.”

  “We owe you guys big time,” Luke said. The other two nodded in agreement.

  “Takes a special kind of man,” Deckard said as he played it up. This was the real interrogation. The one where he got the information he wanted. He was just lining them up before he knocked them down.

  “Are you like SEAL Team Six or CIA or something?” Adam asked.

  “Or something. Freelance.”

  “A mercenary?”

  “You know it.”

  “That's so gangster,” Adam blurted.

  Deckard took a drag on his cigarette.

  “So they tell me that you three were in Tahrir Square.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said. “Had the best seat in the house from a nearby rooftop. Revolution in real time.”

  “I was the guy that had to go in and recover your toy for you.”

  “The Nexus Interceptor,” Luke said.

  “That is what that black box is called?”

  “It's just a nickname we gave it. That bad boy is state of the art.”

  “What exactly does it do?”

  “It is a hacking bypass tool. You know if you want to break into secure computer systems you can hack in through cyberspace, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well this allows you to sneak in through the back door. It creates a temporary power shortage in the targeted system, which creates an opening for you to then insinuate yourself into various networks.”

  “Why not just hack in the old fashion way from back in the United States?”

  “The thing with social media networks is that when you post messages they have a geographical locator with them so the network you are posting from knows where you are physically located. This means that you have to have an actual presence in the vicinity of the network you are trying to spoof.”

  “And once you spoofed it what did you do?”

  “Well, for instance you can then walk right into user accounts for e-mail and social media. That is what we were doing. So then we just start making posts as if we are those users.”

  “Egypt has been run by one dictator after the next,” Aaron informed Deckard. “The people have been suffering under oppression at least since Sadat was assassinated. We came here to help them out.”

  “What do you mean? Help them how?”

  “Human rights is a mainstay in American foreign policy,” Luke said. “But America propped up Hosni Mubarak for decades. He was a dictator and the people were suffering. All of us agreed that he had to go and we could help change conditions.”

  “All of us being the three of you?”

  “We were just facilitators. People were already flooding into the streets in droves.”

  “Pent up anger from years under the thumb of Mubarak,” Adam said.

  “Wait a second, what did you actually do with that device?”

  “We used it as a bypass to gain control of thousands of Facebook and Twitter Accounts,” Aaron said.

  “Then used them to broadcast the message of revolution,” Luke said.

  “A mass blast that got the ball rolling,” Adam finished.

  “You three lit the fuse on Egypt's Arab Spring?”

  “The fuse had been lit decades ago. Like Luke said, we were just facilitators.”

  “Holy shit,” Deckard said as he leaned back against the railing on the side of the ship. “Don't you realize that someone back in America flipped Mubarak's switch from green to red?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hold on a second.” Deckard was getting pissed and was starting to break role at this point. “Who put you up to this?”

  “What do you mean?” Luke asked.

  “Who gave you that bypass device?”

  “This NGO down in Virginia.”

  Deckard rubbed his forehead with both hands.

  “Yeah,” Aaron broke in. “They are called Global Freedom and Prosperity. They visit our college sometimes, really cool people. They really care about helping to get college students out into the world to help promote freedom. They offer workshops, training, and stuff like that.”

  “You know, like political advocacy type stuff,” Adam said.

  “Political advocacy type stuff,” Deckard repeated ominously.

  “What did you mean someone flipped Mubarak from green to red?”

  Deckard took another drag on his cigarette and flicked it over the side of the ship.

  “Nevermind.”

  “No man, what were you going to say?”

  “You guys don't get it?”

  “What?”

  “Mubarak didn't simply fall. The United States government would not let their strongman fall if they didn't want him to. A policy decision was made in the halls of power in D.C. They decided it was time for him to go. Not you, not some grassroots revolution. An NGO in Virginia? Are you guys kidding me?”

  “It isn't like you think,” Adam said flippantly. “That is not how GFP works; they are out to promote democracy. America was in bed with Mubarak so why would they want him out of office?”

  “Good question,” Deckard answered. “Maybe it plays into Syria.”

  “And why would they care about Syria?”

  “Because that plays into Iran.”

  Deckard turned and walked away, leaving the young men in stunned silence.

  Meanwhile, the world continued coming apart at the seams.

  21

  “It's a no-go.”

  “What do you mean, it's a no-go?”

  Deckard could feel blood throbbing in his temples.

  “I can't do
it.”

  He reached out and grabbed Aghassi by the arm.

  “The hell you can't. We were in Egypt for a day and then it took four days to get back. I've seen you do the impossible with shorter timelines.”

  “This is different,” Aghassi said. “They are different.”

  “You're literally killing me here.”

  Aghassi saw the look in his friend's eyes and knew he meant it. Despite trying to play it off the last time they met at the Chinese restaurant, Deckard was getting frayed around the edges. On top of the normal combat stress, he was working as a singleton. Piled on top was that, he was constantly undercover, even among his teammates. He was always on the job and could never let his guard down, not even for a second.

  “I worked out the guard cycle at Bill's place, bypassed the three security systems he had, picked the lock, made entry into the house and poked around. His office is upstairs. I slipped a fiber optic camera under the door and spotted something.”

  “Spotted what?”

  “A killswitch. If I trip the killswitch it will probably wipe all the drives and set off an alarm. Not only would we lose the data and compromise this entire mission, but it could put you under suspicion as well. The killswitch is rigged up to a motion and heat sensor. I couldn't even get into the same room as Bill's computer set up.”

  “What is the counter-measure? The next op they take me on is it. You go in there, get the data, and we call in the boys when we arrive back here in Mauritius.”

  “Listen Deck, I have to tell you. Someone with a security system this sophisticated is going to have PGP encryption on his drive at a minimum. I can mirror the drive and take it out with me but even if we had ten Cray super-computers decrypting it, they wouldn't be successful until our grand kids are applying for Medicare.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “I'll keep trying, but this might be a dead end.”

  “Then what?”