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  “So, if there’s something she believed to be valuable, she would have reported it to UN headquarters, correct?” Tankian said.

  “Yes, most likely.”

  “We have contacts there, right?”

  “We do,” Padarski said. Then, as if the thought were a hammer to the head, he slapped his forehead and said, “I will discreetly inquire.”

  “Discreetly,” Tankian said. “But also, go see what she saw. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Tankian thought he knew what she might have seen, and it would not be good for his German investor, Max Wolff, who was providing Tankian Logistics Group with its largest payday yet.

  “I may have already taken a look.”

  “Even better,” Tankian said.

  “There’s a basement with maps. Something to do with ports. Maybe blocking them,” Padarski said.

  This was a problem. Someone had gotten sloppy with preparations and rehearsals. The question for Tankian was whether to kill the Russian now or later. He decided he had enough on his plate at the moment and would wait.

  “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” Tankian said.

  “What do I get for giving you this information?”

  “I will include steak and lobster in your next rations delivery.”

  “We’re due for that anyway.”

  “Then I will make sure it doesn’t go away.”

  Padarski glared at him as Tankian stood silhouetted against the mountains and the moon, and then turned and walked toward his truck. Once the truck departed, Tankian left Khoury in the parking area and walked about a quarter mile up a small ridge, where he stared at the crater that was once his childhood summer home. He felt nothing. No hatred. No remorse.

  When he looked in that crater, he saw opportunity, not loss.

  His phone buzzed with an encrypted text from Khoury: Aircraft down vic Lake Qaraoun.

  Lake Qaraoun was twenty miles south of his location. The Sobirat had served its purpose again.

  He called Khoury. “What do we know?”

  “Just the imagery. I’m looking at it now on the ROVER. Small aircraft. Looks like a cargo plane.”

  “Okay, I want a four-man team to Lake Qaraoun. Tell them that an airplane has crashed and to bring back everything and everyone they can. Immediately.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  He lifted his night-vision goggles to his eyes and watched his men jog to the warehouse where they kept the Suburban SUVs. Two of them pulled out and raced to the south.

  He looked back in the crater, now overgrown with grass and weeds and nothing more than a useless piece of land. Turning back to the east, he saw the Russian truck lights navigating the switchbacks and chided himself for being harsh with the captain. The Russian resupply contract was his mainstay at the moment—at least until the operation planned in al-Ghouta came to fruition.

  The resettlement of refugees to the city of al-Ghouta had been a windfall, but the UN contract—if they ever paid—was minor compared with the opportunities that had spun off from that contract. Like the men who had provided the picks, axes, dungarees, and pans to gold miners, Tankian understood that being a supplier and facilitator generally carried less risk than the bounty hunters pursuing the prize or bounty, whatever it may be. One month, it could be the utopian notion of peaceful resettlement of all civilians in the Damascus suburbs. The next month, it could be the Syrian drive to reclaim the Golan Heights or Galilee. And the next, Turkey could pursue eradicating ISIS from its borders. Ideas and movements came and went, as did the true believers subscribing to the latest scriptures. The one thing they had in common, Tankian had figured out early, was that they needed safe houses, training ranges, supplies, and transportation.

  The beauty of having the lines of supply inside the Beqaa Valley was that Tankian’s business enterprises could cater to all these activities in a legitimate way.

  Now a plane crash? What bounty could that bring?

  Tankian punched the code to enter the back gate to his compound. Ascending the steps to his pool, he turned and looked into the valley. Lights twinkled along the north-south artery road that provided for the life functions of war: training, personnel replacement, and resupply.

  His phone buzzed again: Eyes on plane crash. On foot. More to follow.

  His curiosity was piqued. He hoped his men were first at the location. If it was a Syrian jet, he could secure the crash site and claim that he had tried to rescue the pilots. If it was an Israeli jet, he could call the Syrians or Hezbollah and sell access to the location. His mind clicked into overdrive, considering the possibilities.

  However, unlikely, if this was somehow an American plane, then the possibilities were endless. His first obligation would be to Wolff, of course. If he deferred, then he would go to the Russians, Iranians, and Syrians, in that order.

  But Wolff would come first. Tankian had an interesting relationship with Wolff. They had met in Beirut as Tankian was picking up a delivery of new trucks. Wolff had combined business with pleasure, as he was known to do, by visiting the port, observing the off-loading, meeting some of his customers, and then heading off to an exclusive beachside retreat near the Israeli border.

  Tankian and Wolff had connected initially because they were about the same size. Both were large men at six and a half feet tall and over 250 pounds. Where Tankian was dark and had black hair, Wolff was fair, though ruddy, with thick gray hair. They towered over everyone else, and when they were watching the stevedores off-load the ships three years ago, Wolff had approached him, saying, “They could use a couple of guys our size to help break those blocks and chains, huh?”

  Tankian had replied, “I’m ready if you are.”

  Lighthearted chatter led to a more serious conversation, which led to a substantial overture from Wolff. If Tankian would be his eyes and ears on the ground in Syria and Lebanon, then Wolff would make it worth his while. Hesitant to accept Wolff’s sincerity on blind faith, Tankian had told him he’d consider the offer. But before leaving the port that day, Tankian’s convoy of purchased new trucks included an additional brand-new Zetros 6 × 6 truck valued at two hundred thousand euros.

  In exchange, Tankian had provided Wolff one kilogram of hashish and one kilogram of opium for his vacation. He would have provided more, but the stevedores had already loaded his shipment to Greece, and what he gave Wolff was what was left over after rewarding the guards, customs officials, and dockmaster. A month later, the next shipment of trucks included another Zetros 6 × 6 truck, this one with an extended cab.

  The trucks weren’t no strings attached, however. Wolff had called soon after delivery of the second Zetros and said, “Check the container,” and hung up.

  Tankian had checked. Inside was a false floor filled with sealable containers. The message was clear. Tankian was to ship Wolff premium heroin and hashish, for which he would be rewarded. The relationship had proved fruitful. The typical shipping route was from Tripoli, Lebanon, to Cyprus, where the containers were triaged and laundered to new destinations every time.

  Tankian lifted his head to the wind. He could feel the breeze only on the right side of his face. It was cool and calming. The left side of his face was hard and unfeeling—like his psyche. All business, no emotions. A theater mask.

  “Bring me some good news,” he whispered to the wind.

  Angling behind his home, he walked near the pool with the white paint and lights reflecting the water upward into the sky. His phone buzzed one final time for the evening. It was Khoury about the plane crash.

  Americans.

  CHAPTER 7

  Vick Harwood

  Harwood slapped his wrist a couple of times, hoping the TacSleeve was experiencing a connection issue, but everything else seemed to be in working order. His own latitude and longitude were correctly displayed.

  After securing his position by emplacing an early-warning trip wire, he had done the triangulation using an old-school compass by calculating reverse azimuths from the
peak of Mount Hermon, a well-marked radio tower toward Damascus, and the smoldering tanks on the valley floor, a location he already had memorized. Drawing the lines backward from those three points created an intersection and validation of his position.

  He was exactly where the TacSleeve said he was located.

  Just as he made a decision to pick up and move to the crash site to find Clutch, the flash-bang grenade exploded behind him. The report was thunderous, heat washing over his position like a tsunami. He spun, SIG Sauer at the ready in one hand and knife popped open in the other. The ghillie suit was restricting, but he had no time to remove it.

  Through his night-vision goggles, he saw two men at the base of the trail. They had tripped his early-warning device. Seeing the wounded or dead men reinforced in his mind the usefulness of this position, which was now burned. He would have to move again anyway. Before he could think about any of that, though, he needed to clear the surrounding area and then conduct sensitive site exploitation of the men who had breached his position.

  He started by low crawling to the lip of the outcropping and scanning for good overwatch positions. Any sensible mission included an assault force and a support force. On his third pass of the ridge to the northeast, his infrared goggles detected a faint shimmer, which to Harwood looked like a rifle scope.

  The bullet washing over him confirmed this belief.

  Scrambling back to his hide position, Harwood retrieved his SR-25 and repositioned. He figured the play was to try to flush him out and have the sniper pick him off.

  Behind Harwood was a quarter-mile drop to the jagged rocks lining the base of the ridge. To move north or south would expose him to the enemy sniper on the higher ground to the northwest. His only avenue was the small gorge through which he had entered and where two dead attackers currently lay.

  The question Harwood entertained as he gathered his gear and slowly tightened everything into one tight ball was, how big was the assault force? Two people? Four? The typical team included four to eight personnel. Two or four on assault, two or four to support. Some personnel on the assault and support teams would be securing the operation from outside infiltrators. Just as he was a doing mental calculation about how many people he was confronting, so were they. In fact, his pursuers most likely found it difficult to understand that he was a singleton out here all alone. Their belief was most likely that he was part of a larger team. Perhaps they saw the Sabrewing resupply drone enter and exit the area. That, too, would confuse them. Did it drop off more personnel, supplies, or what?

  Exploiting that confusion was his best play. How to reinforce his enemy’s belief that there had to be more soldiers would be difficult, but psychologically, they would be protecting in all directions, which would give him a small window of opportunity.

  Harwood low crawled through well-protected terrain to the two dead bodies. They wore olive uniforms with insignia that were difficult to discern in the dark. Their weapons had been thrown during the blast. He collected two AK-47s and set them aside. He had a covered area in which to prepare, as long as the remainder of the assault force didn’t come barreling through the opening about ten meters to his front.

  The sniper would by now be zeroing in on the one spot that allowed for egress. Assuming the sniper had a spotter, Harwood opened the three-point sling of one of the AK-47s. He then lifted the body of the first dead man, who actually wasn’t dead.

  “Whaaa,” the man muttered. Harwood doubted that anyone heard him, but he couldn’t be sure. He quickly looped the sling around the man’s neck, seated the magazine, and ensured there was a round the chamber of the AK-47. With the man’s arm around him as if they were two drunk buddies walking home from a bar, Harwood nudged the man forward toward the gap. He slid his hand down and placed the man’s finger in the trigger housing. As they arrived at the edge of the opening to the trail, Harwood let go of the man, who stumbled forward.

  Harwood heard the wet smack of the bullet into the man’s chest. Reflexively, the man’s finger squeezed the trigger and popped off about three rounds spraying the hillside. Harwood quickly lifted the second man, who was dead, and pushed him through the gap as best he could. This time, the sniper fired a double tap.

  Two down, they had to be thinking. The typical makeup of a sniper team was two men.

  Harwood retrieved his rucksack and prepared to engage the remainder of the assault force. Two different voices were most likely uttering commands over radios. He braced against the rocks nearest the trail with his rifle hanging from a snap link hooked into his outer tactical vest. He took deep, silent breaths, thought about the moves he had performed a thousand times that would duplicate what he was about to face. A well-trained team would enter with one man clearing to the right and the next clearing to the left. He would have to be fast.

  Boots scuffed against the shale directly on the opposite side of the rocks from Harwood. One man whispered something. They were probably checking the dead men. He couldn’t give them time to call in that they had just shot their own men who were already dead or close to it.

  One man barked a word in Arabic. Boots shuffled. Weapons charged and pinged off the rocks as they clumsily entered the defile. The first man went obliquely left. Bad form, poorly trained.

  Harwood shot him in the back of the head with his pistol.

  The second man was close behind the first and was better. He turned toward Harwood, raising his rifle, but Harwood was too close, as he had planned. Harwood blocked the upward lift of the man’s rifle with his left hand and shot the man in the face with the pistol in his right hand.

  He wasted no time and darted through the gap, running north toward the sniper position. The sooner he could get into the dead space beneath the hide site, the better. He sucked in quick breaths, feeling the burn in his lungs. A bullet pinged off the rock wall to his right and spat chips in his face. He powered through with the single purpose of surviving, and survival was about fifty meters away. The rucksack was heavy on his back. His SR-25 slapped against his legs as he did his best to pull it away while still holding his pistol and knife in either hand. His night-vision goggles tilted away, giving him a half view of the dangerous trail ahead. He stumbled and fell forward, his rifle clattering against the rocks.

  Speed overrode the need for silence. His legs churned forward like a football player pushing a training sled. He powered up and rounded a bend, rocks falling away to his right. He had come upon a sheer drop-off, barely missing speeding over the ledge and plummeting to certain death. All of it was noisy. His rifle chattered against the snap hook secured to the sling, and his rucksack swished against the rocky walls.

  The geography of his immediate vicinity now resembled something like Yosemite’s El Capitan. He was on a narrow trail that fell away sharply to his right and was the base of a massive concave wall above. The enemy sniper was located at the top of the concave wall, affording Harwood protection from direct fire from just about any location.

  Except helicopters.

  He took a minute to adjust his equipment and drink some water from his hydration system. The water found its way through his system and reappeared on his skin as perspiration. The sleeves of his polypro shirt made his arms tingle when wicking away the moisture. Deep breaths in and out. Heart beating against his chest like a bass drum in a rock band. Maybe five feet between his position on the ledge and a mortal fall over the cliff.

  As he gathered himself, he thought about Clutch. His TacSleeve was still not showing any ping from Clutch’s locator chip. There was no communication from Stoddard, despite repeated attempts. He tried again, to no avail.

  His new mission, whether Stoddard liked it or not, was to move to the last known location of Clutch’s tracker. Whether Clutch and the chip were in the same location was a different story, but Harwood believed in the Ranger creed to never leave a fallen comrade behind. The Rangers had taught him as a young soldier the discipline required to prioritize his missions. Whatever his purpose here in the Israel-
Syria-Lebanon nexus that was Mount Hermon, he automatically had a new mission: find Clutch. He had maybe six hours of darkness remaining that would cover his movement.

  He shaded his TacSleeve with one hand to block the light from shining upward, swiped his thumb across the screen, and studied the map display. He pinched and spread his fingers until he had the location of Clutch’s last pin on the display. When he pressed a route function tab, a dotted yellow line chose the most expeditious route to the location that was nearly fourteen miles over the Mount Hermon ridgeline and across the Beqaa Valley to the west.

  Not too bad.

  He popped the magazine on his pistol and clicked in a new one. He used the kerchief around his neck to wipe his forehead and clean his knife. He tightened his night-vision harness, memorized the route, and darkened the TacSleeve screen. Moving north on the trail, he knew there would be only one spot where the sniper could range him, and that was when he hit the valley floor west of Mount Hermon.

  The going was slow at first, Harwood picking his way along the rocky trails. He traversed an area that appeared to be a ski slope, replete with lifts and broad, grassy swaths of land falling away steeply to his right. These runs were danger areas. He moved quickly through the slopes and angled toward the Beqaa Valley and his ultimate destination.

  His TacSleeve vibrated, indicating he had a message. He dashed another fifty meters, found a large Syrian juniper with a faded, pale trunk and branches that reached outward in a low semicircular arc. Harwood tucked inside the protective cover and knelt. He lifted the burlap Velcro cover from the TacSleeve and studied the message:

  Tracking your movement. Continue mission. Report when on location.

  He thought, Finally!

  Harwood closed his eyes. He assumed that Stoddard was communicating with headquarters. Everything was cryptic and compartmented. He understood classified missions, having conducted several during his short but storied career. He believed in minimizing the people who knew what he was doing and where he was located, and in this age of cyber communications and operations, he was okay with having the tenuous link of encrypted text messages. He was glad that Stoddard remained his lifeline, connecting him to possible medical evacuation or resupply.