“Let me guess. This brick of cash means you’re looking for either a Mark Six or a Mark Seven.
“The Seven.”
“You’re going deep.”
I didn’t say anything, and Roger had the good sense not to ask what or where “going deep” meant. He knew, more or less, and knowing less was always better in his business.
Our launch chugged out of IJmeer and into Markermeer, a huge lake contained by the Houtribdijk dike, a massive wall of earth and stone spanning the middle of the horizon and threatening to block out the sky. With the egrets and the pelicans behind us, Roger advanced the throttle, and we picked up speed.
“The Seven is a rig for extreme altitude,” he said, tucking the envelope inside his windbreaker. “Let’s talk logistics.”
My original plan had gone to hell. Roger seemed to be the only piece of the puzzle that was holding together, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. It didn’t matter now how things had gotten so mucked up; it didn’t matter whether the DDO was compromised or whether the MEK had sprung a leak. All bets were off. If I was going in via HALO, I needed a staging area. I needed one or two good people who I could trust for at least twenty-four hours. And if not trust, then use up quick and dispose of quicker.
I could find both the staging area and the help in one place: Turkey.
“I need to get to Istanbul, Rog, and not by the usual methods,” I said. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “Istanbul works. Good choice. Maybe your only choice, now that I think about it. And, yeah, I can get you there. You got the dough, I can get you just about anywhere.”
I winged a thumb in the direction of Amsterdam’s fading city lights. “Off the grid.” I meant no airports, no train stations, and no water taxis.
Roger looked at me as if the obvious was something he had no time for. He said, “Is there any other way?”
“What do have in mind?”
“Jake, you work your magic, and I’ll work mine.” He pulled a cell phone from his jacket and punched in a number.
“Think I’ll make a call myself,” I said to him. He gave me a nod.
I moved from the stern to the bow and planted myself against the railing. The closest boats, all pleasure craft, were a good hundred yards away and mere outlines in the deepening night.
First, I had to finalize my entry into Iran. I needed a location within reasonable driving distance to Tehran, but not so close that someone could spot my drop. I’d done a preliminary search back in D.C., but that had been with three or four people looking over my shoulder. I didn’t need three or four people times three or four other people knowing anything about my entry. I pulled out my iPhone and activated my mapping app. I plotted three possibilities, all north of the city and all deep in the mountains. Google Earth allowed me to study the sites from above, and the hills outside the village of Fasham looked ideal.
I noted one landing point in a broad valley crossed with an unpaved road moving east to west and a two-lane piece of asphalt that traveled north and south. I marked the coordinates in the phone’s memory. This would be my diversionary landing point. Then I zeroed in on a less-trafficked valley a kilometer to the northwest and hidden by a low-lying ridge. The high-desert terrain was passable, and it would need to be. I marked those coordinates as well.
Next, I opened the secure-communication app. While I waited for the protocols to signal the all clear, I glanced back at Roger. He was still busy chatting on his phone.
The first prompt from the app told me that General Rutledge was unavailable, so I activated a recording feature that would ensure he had a transcript of the call.
The second prompt patched me through to the phone I had given to the CIA’s deputy director of operations, Otto Wiseman. It was the middle of the day in D.C.; he picked up after a single ring. “You’re not much of a communicator, are you, soldier? What happened to our deal?”
“How’s the saying go? Deals are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver. Especially when the shit hits the fan the way it did in Amsterdam,” I remarked.
“Yeah, I heard about your troubles,” Wiseman said deliberately.
A shootout in downtown Amsterdam struck me as a bit more than “troubles,” but maybe the DDO was used to a bit more action than I was.
The less Wiseman knew about my plan the better, but he was the only one with the assets I needed for the next stage, assets that neither Rutledge nor Mr. Elliot could provide.
No use beating around the bush. “I need a C-17. One of the high-altitude jobs.”
The venerable C-17 had gone through any number of variations, but the Globemaster III was built for high-altitude clandestine missions of the max variety, and that’s what I needed.
“When and where?” Wiseman said without missing a beat. No Are you out of your mind? or even a What the hell for? I had to give him credit.
This was a $250 million airplane I was requesting, crewed by highly trained and combat-seasoned aviators. Wiseman’s casual tone made it sound like I was asking for a neighborhood delivery of groceries.
“Field Twenty-seven.” That’s all I needed to tell him. Field 27 was a remote airstrip in Turkey where, during the Cold War, the CIA used to launch U-2 spy planes for look-sees over the Soviet Union.
“You sure about that?” Wiseman asked. “Twenty-seven’s not exactly in prime condition. In fact, it’s desolate as hell.”
Even better. “I’ll be ready at 0100, local time. Day after tomorrow.”
“You’re not cutting yourself much slack.”
“Can you have it there, yes or no?” In other words, don’t waste my time with small talk.
“Consider it done. Day after tomorrow, 0100 local time.”
“Good. And the less noise the better.”
“I guess that goes without saying,” the DDO said. In his eyes, maybe. Not in mine. “What’s your ten-twenty? Amsterdam?”
Yeah, he was the deputy director of operations for the CIA, and one of the most powerful men in the world, but he really didn’t need to know where I was at the moment. When I didn’t answer, he threw out another question: “How will you get to Turkey?”
At the moment, I didn’t know, so I said, “Director, just make sure the C-17 is ready, okay?”
“I think we’ve already covered that ground,” he said. “What’s your MO once you get in the country?” Inquisitive guy.
I had to know if there was a leak in his office, and the bait was entrance into the country. I said, “Have your people at this location at dawn. And tell them to keep their eyes open. Once I touch down, we’ll want to move fast.”
I transferred the coordinates of the first landing point, at the crossroads just outside Fasham. I waited. Heard computer keys clicking on his end.
“Fasham?”
“Yeah, basically the middle of nowhere.”
“Where a shitload could go wrong. You know that, right?” Wiseman said.
“Yeah, well, plenty has already gone wrong.” It was a lure. I wanted to see how he’d respond.
“There’s still time to abort. We’ve got other options.”
I wondered for a split second whether the DDO had ever heard the term superpatriot. Not likely. I said, “Actually, we don’t. And I’ve got my orders. And it’s only a round-trip ticket if I succeed.”
Wiseman cleared his throat. He was basically a desk jockey. Desk jockeys didn’t like being reminded that, for some of us in the national-security business, a mission screw-up had consequences a helluva lot more damaging than a black mark on an efficiency report.