Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

“Melissa. Scorpion. Two of them went over the cliff edge,” he said.

Not waiting for a response, he ran to the iron railing and peered over. Already a few hundred feet below, two men were rappelling down the face of the cliff. He looked around, spotted the climbing ropes and carabiners tied to the rail, and ran over. It took him longer than he wanted to find his Leatherman pocket tool, and by the time he used its knife to cut the ropes, he could no longer see them or tell if he had done any damage. From far away he heard the distant wail of police sirens. The Costa Brava was remote enough that although the gunfire and explosions had to have aroused dozens of emergency calls, it would take the policia time to reach the villa.

And speaking of reaching, how were any of the surviving attackers going to get away?

“Melissa. Scorpion. I’m heading for the road,” he said into the EV-DO phone, then ran toward the front gate, the gateposts blasted and what was left of the wrought-iron twisted and mangled on the ground. He ran out into the road and down the hill toward the curve where he’d left the Citroen. Without the goggles in the pitch-darkness, he would have seen nothing, but far ahead he saw two figures running on the road.

One of the figures turned and fired a burst from an AK-47 at him, but it was wild and went wide. Scorpion zigged and zagged a little and ran faster. Rounding the curve, he could see them approaching the Citroen some two hundred meters ahead. Scorpion hit the asphalt, pulled out his cell phone, found the contact number for the IED and pressed Send.

The explosion lit the night with a giant fireball that shattered everything around it for a hundred meters and set nearby trees ablaze, bits of metal and glass stripping leaves from the trees. The force and a wave of heat rolled over him. He stood up and took off his goggles. The shooting had stopped. Whoever had been near the Citroen no longer existed. He walked slowly back up the hill to where Webb and the other remaining men of the SOG team were standing on the grounds in the front of the villa.

They had lost two men, Rutledge and Mini Me. Rodriguez was wounded and limping from the blast from the electric company van. J.G. and Spartacus Balls Delucca were stripping and packing their weapons.

“How soon before the policia arrive?” Webb asked.

“Ten minutes. Not more,” Scorpion said.

“We’ll be gone,” Webb said, motioning to his men.

“We need to sweep the bodies for intel,” Scorpion said, heading toward the pool terrace. The two bodies of the attackers he’d shot were both lying facedown near the railing. He pulled an iPad out of his backpack and began checking their pockets, using the iPad to photograph and fingerprint the dead attackers, what was left of them. The first body was of a small man, obviously of Middle Eastern origin. Nothing in the pockets. When he rolled the second over, he had a brief moment of satisfaction when he saw it was Mustache, the man who had killed Karif. He took his photo and fingerprints, and in one of the pockets found a small plug-in drive. Perhaps Mustache had intended to use it on intel he found inside the villa. Langley could handle it, he thought, heading to what was left, a foot and part of an arm and skull of the attacker with the suicide vest who had taken out Mini Me. As Scorpion took the fingerprints of the surviving hand, his EV-DO sounded.

“Melissa. Time to go, ladies,” Webb said.

“Elizabeth. Romeo that,” Scorpion said, gathered his things and went back to the front of what was left of the villa, where the others were already carrying their gear. J.G. and Rodriguez carried Rutledge’s body on a stretcher. They could hear the sirens of policia cars coming closer up the hill. They headed into the pine woods where they had hidden their getaway ride, a square-angled Mercedes G SUV. Before they got in, J.G. checked the traps-thin black threads tied between the doors-and under the chassis-branches in specific positions and angles to camouflage the vehicle-to make sure they hadn’t been tampered with and that no one had booby-trapped the SUV.

Twenty minutes later they were riding on a side road they had reconnoitered the previous day toward the autopista, AP-7, to Figueres and the French border. They sat cramped next to each other, legs on their gear and weapons. They had laid Rutledge’s crumpled body in the back. For a time none of them spoke.

“How long till they shut the border?” Rodriguez asked.

“Our contact from CNI,” Scorpion said, not using Marchena’s name, “said the policia request would have to be routed through CNI. He said he would be watching for it and hold off closing the border till 0430 hours.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got fifty minutes.”

“Step on it, J.G.,” Webb told J.G., who was driving. “How many hajjis did we get?”

“One in the van,” J.G. said.

“One plus three in the woods,” Spartacus Balls growled.

“One with the suicide vest,” Scorpion said, not wanting to mention Mini Me. “Plus two in the garden and two with the IED in the Citroen.”

“Confirm two more in the garden with the XM25,” Webb said.

“Four for Rutledge: two inside, two outside,” Scorpion added. “Two got away.”

“Seventeen dead Mike Foxtrots,” Webb said.

“Fucking van,” Spartacus Balls snarled, hitting the back of the seat in front of him, and for a time there was only the sound of the engine and the tires on the road, headlights carving the way in the darkness.

“Well, you said not to underestimate them,” Webb muttered finally, not looking at Scorpion. “I’ll give you that.”

“Rutledge and Mini Me didn’t underestimate them,” J.G. said, and no one said anything after that. In a way, Scorpion couldn’t blame them. He was the outsider, and so far on this mission, he had brought everyone associated with it grief. God, he was glad Sandrine was out of it.

As they approached the border at Le Perthus Scorpion got the call on his SME PED phone from Shaefer.

“Mendelssohn,” Shaefer said.

“Flagstaff,” Scorpion answered, his hand covering his mouth to minimize being overheard by the others in the SUV, though from their thousand-meter stares, he didn’t think they gave a damn.

“We got a hit. A cell phone call from one of the coves in Begur. Aiguafreda,” Shaefer said.

“What have you got?” Scorpion asked.

“A phone number in Tehran.”

“Do we know who it belongs to?”

“Romeo that,” Shaefer said. “But we need confirmation. The good news is you’re legit again.” The mission was back to being authorized by the DCIA.

“We left a mess here. Killed some Bravo Golfs.” Bad guys.

“We’ll handle it. Casualties?” Shaefer asked.

“Two,” Scorpion said, looking at the dark silhouettes of Webb and the others.

“I’ll pass it on,” Shaefer said, meaning Harris and the upper echelons. “What about collateral damage?”

“Negative, but there’s some property and a road pooched.”

“Christ,” Shaefer muttered. “Everywhere you go, do you have to blow every goddamn thing up?”

“What’d you want a SOG to do, kiss ’em? How’re we doing?” Asking what was happening behind the scenes in Langley and Washington.

He could hear the tension in Shaefer’s voice. “We got their attention. The whole damn NSC, the Pentagon, everybody’s on stand-by.”

“I’ll tell them,” Scorpion said. Webb and the SOG team. They’d earned it, he thought. Shaefer’s message meant that the U.S. was ready to attack Iran and if necessary go to war as soon as he provided proof as to who in Iran had ordered the Bern attack. “I’m not sure they’ll give a shit, but I’ll tell them. How soon do I have to be there?” Thinking Tehran. The belly of the beast. The odds of ever seeing Sandrine again were getting longer by the second.