Andrew Kaplan: Scorpion Deception

Seven minutes from now, inshallah , God willing, either he would have done it or he would be dead, he thought as he crossed the street, touching his false moustache, latex nose prosthesis and sunglasses, and pressing the button on his chronometer watch to start the countdown.

He smiled and nodded pleasantly at the Swiss policeman who barely glanced at him. As soon as he was behind the man, he pulled out his Beretta 92FS with the sound suppressor and killed him with a single shot to the back of the head. A half-dozen steps took him to the guard shack, where the Marine security guard had just turned from his computer screen. Scale slipped his hand with the gun under the bulletproof glass panel and shot him in the face. As he headed on the walkway toward the building, he could hear someone from the non-U.S. citizen queue scream and the sounds of his team coming up fast behind him. Then his cell phone vibrated.

Scale dived to the ground. The detonator was on a two-second delay, and as he hit the pavement, the front of the building exploded outward with unbelievable force, bits of debris and glass and human flesh flying past like shrapnel. His ears ringing, the air thick with dust and the smell of explosive, burning meat, and charred metal, he got to his feet. Turning around, he saw his team getting off the ground, their ski masks on, HK G36K assault rifles ready to go.

He pulled on his ski mask and checked his watch. Six minutes and twenty-eight seconds remaining.

“Come on!” he shouted in English-the only language they were to use till it was over-and ran at the gaping opening ripped in the side of the building where the door and checkpoint had been.

They went through the opening. The lobby was a shambles. It was filled with debris and blood and body parts, the security post utterly destroyed. There were two bodies by the far door, including a Marine guard struggling to move. A bloody foot in a high-heeled shoe lying on its side on the floor was all that was left of the girl, Liyan. Scale went over and shot the Marine in the head, then motioned to the others. They had six floors to cover and needed to move quickly. Before he left, Scale pulled a small IED from his jacket pocket and planted it next to the opening, where anyone coming would have to enter.

They headed for the stairs. Two for each floor. Scale motioned to Hadi, recognizing him by his blue ski mask. The two of them went down and out back to the second metal detector post. The door burst open and a Marine with an M4 carbine came out running. His eyes widened, but before he could react, Hadi fired a burst that cut him down. Scale went over and put a bullet in his head to make sure. Grabbing the M4 from the dead Marine, he racked the charging handle and switched to full automatic, safety off. Four Marines down, he counted; one at the guard shack, two at the security post, and now this one. That left two.

Coming into the main reception area, they spotted four civilians-three men and an older woman-who had been running for the door. He and Hadi fired simultaneously; two long automatic bursts that took down all of them. They could hear sounds of firing from the higher floors as the team went from office to office, killing everyone they found.

He motioned to Hadi to work his way down the hallway, glancing up at a security camera, secure behind the ski mask. “Kir tu kunet,” he cursed the camera under his breath, kicking the bodies. The woman was still breathing. He shot her again and started up the stairs, checking his watch.

Five minutes left.

There was a firefight on the third floor. The remaining Marines, he thought. He ignored the shooting and continued to the fourth floor, going door to door. There was no one in the first two offices, but in the third he found five people: three men standing, their hands raised, a young woman crouched behind a couch, and another woman hiding behind a desk. First he killed the men, then the woman behind the couch. The woman behind the desk made a run for it and he shot her in the back, and as she lay writhing on the floor, put another burst into her.

In the next office, he found an attractive blond woman feeding pages into a shredder. She froze the second he came in.

“Please, don’t,” she said, her lips trembling. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“I know,” he said, motioning her closer. “Where are the CIA offices?”

“Sixth floor,” she said, coming around the desk. She came closer. He could smell her perfume. Lilacs. She wore a white blouse and a neat gray skirt. She really was very pretty. They could hear screams and the sounds of shooting on the other floors. Then the sound of a grenade exploding on the floor below made the floor vibrate beneath them. F1 grenade, he thought. Hopefully, it took out the last two Marines.

The firing stopped. They got them, he decided.

“Which offices?”

“All of them. They have the whole floor,” she said.

“Anything else?”

She shook her head, a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said soothingly, and shot her with the M4.

He killed four more on that floor, then on the stairs ran into Hadi and Maziar, who wore the ski mask with the red stripe.

“Did we lose any?” Scale asked as they headed up.

“Three. Jalal, Mohsen, and Ashkan,” Hadi said.

“Marines. Madar sagan ,” Maziar cursed them. Sons of bitches. “We killed them both.”

“Speak only English,” Scale hissed. He checked his watch. Less than a minute and a half left. “Take the next floor,” he told them, and sprinted to the top floor.

As he reached the landing, he heard the sound of heavy gunfire on the floor below. Hadi and Maziar, he thought. Stepping into the hallway, he was nearly killed by a pistol shot. He pulled back and dropped to the floor.

Suddenly, an incredibly loud explosion shook the building, rattling and shattering windows. It came from the direction of Kapellenstrasse. The roadblock. He was running out of time. The question was, how long would the roadblock hold them?

The shot had come from the left side of the hallway. Someone taking cover in an office, firing from the doorway, he thought, pulling the pin on a Russian F1 grenade. About four meters, he estimated, tossing the grenade and counting. It was a 3.5 second fuse, and as soon as it exploded he ran at it firing the M4.

There were two dead men in white shirts turned red with blood lying in the doorway, one with an S amp;W.357 pistol-the one who had been shooting. Scale went through the offices methodically, rushing through the door first, then ducking in to check. There was only return fire from one office, near the end of the hallway, and another F1 grenade took care of the men inside. He killed fourteen on that floor, the last in a corner office with a name plate on the door that read: MICHAEL BRAND, CHIEF POLITICAL LIAISON OFFICER. Dead giveaway for CIA, he thought. Brand was a big man. He lay on the carpeted floor, clutching his chest where he’d been shot, staring venomously at Scale.

“Who are you?” Brand asked.

By way of an answer, Scale knelt, put the Beretta to his forehead and pulled the trigger. Brand’s head flopped back, blood and bits of his skull seeping into the carpet.

Scale checked his watch. Eight minutes and forty-two seconds had elapsed. They had taken too long. The Swiss polizei would be past the roadblock any second now, unless they had gone around to approach the embassy from the other side. Even as he was thinking that, the building was rocked again by another powerful explosion coming from the direction of the Schwarztorstrasse intersection, glass flying from the few remaining windows. Got you, you stupid seyyedan , he thought. There was still a tiny bit of time.