Peter Kirsanow - Target Omega

That characteristic made him virtually automatic, a quality that inspired terror in US adversaries around the globe. The bad guys had no inkling of his actual identity. Only that when he arrived in a particular theater, enemies began dropping. He had spent enough time in the wild west tri-border region of Paraguay-Brazil-Argentina that South American drug lords referred to him as El Diablo Negro — a descriptive coincidence since they had no inkling if he was black, white, or some shade in between. Once, when the Colombian Ministry of National Defense spread a rumor that El Diablo Negro was operating in the southwestern region of that country, two leaders of the Cali cartel surrendered to the authorities rather than risk certain assassination. Knox hadn’t even been in the Western Hemisphere at the time.

It had been slightly more than an hour since Knox had received the order to take out Michael Garin at the Mayflower. Although Knox didn’t know the details, apparently someone had been surveilling a woman with a connection to Garin. The woman had checked into the Mayflower and, sure enough, a short time later Garin was observed entering the hotel also.

Knox was staying at a Days Inn on Connecticut only five minutes away. A quick recon of the area surrounding the Mayflower had yielded a few promising sites for a hide. He had gained access to the roof of the Washington Square with the use of a proximity card descrambler and a pair of bolt cutters.

After the Crowne Plaza fiasco, Knox was pleased that someone had at least verified that Garin was actually inside the Mayflower. When first told that Garin had checked into the Crowne Plaza, Knox had dutifully reported to work, found a hide opposite the hotel entrance, and prepared to waste a few hours of his life. Knox knew full well that a fugitive with the skills and experience of Michael Garin wouldn’t check into a hotel — whether under his own name or any of his traceable aliases — unless he wanted to elicit precisely the reaction that had occurred the previous morning. In fact, Knox was fairly confident that while he was lying atop the PNC building, waiting for Garin to emerge, the target was somewhere nearby watching the pandemonium he had produced.

Knox didn’t know Garin personally, but he certainly knew of him. What he knew he respected. The tier-one special operator community was tiny, and the man had a reputation as an exceptional warrior. He must’ve committed a spectacular sin to be targeted for elimination by Delta, especially on US soil. He knew federal law expressly forbade the use of armed forces personnel within the United States except in extremely limited circumstances, such as restoring order after a terrorist attack, an insurrection, or a national disaster. The secretary of defense could, however, pursuant to the discovery of a nuclear threat on US soil, direct the use of military personnel to eliminate the threat. Knox could only conclude that Garin was involved in some pretty nasty stuff.

Knox was unaware of anything that permitted the assassination of an American citizen on US soil, but he assumed that the legal i’s had been dotted and t’s crossed. Knox’s job was not to analyze the legalities. Knox’s job was to kill Michael Garin.

And that’s what he would do. He had a clear view of the entrance to the Mayflower. He had a comfortable, undetectable hide. Sometime soon a head would appear in his scope. Then just a puff of scarlet mist where Michael Garin’s head had been.

Olivia watched as Garin paced the length of Room 546. The gait was familiar to her. She’d seen it often as a little girl when her father’s former Alabama football teammates visited, some of whom had been in the NFL. It was the stride of the well-conditioned athlete — smooth, balanced, controlled.

Olivia suspected that the intensity never left Garin’s eyes, but his face, incongruously, was calm and his body relaxed. Olivia couldn’t help imagining how she would be carrying herself if she were being hunted like Garin. An ordinary person, any sane person, would be tempted to curl into the fetal position in a corner of the room.

Just a few days ago, Brandt had teased Olivia about having a crush on Garin. Although she found him attractive in the dated photo and was fascinated with the history Dwyer had provided, Brandt had been wrong. Even as a schoolgirl, Olivia had never had anything remotely resembling a crush. Not that there hadn’t been any handsome, accomplished men in her life. Her looks and accomplishments ensured that successful, handsome, and wealthy men, even the occasional minor celebrity, pursued her. None had ever held her interest. Too often the successful were boring, the handsome vain, and the wealthy shallow. The minor celebrities were usually all three.

Garin, on the other hand, had been in her presence for barely thirty minutes, and she found herself wanting the meeting to continue indefinitely. But any attraction she might have felt was overshadowed by the insistent knowledge that this man was a killer.

Garin turned and faced Olivia, who was still seated in the armchair. The look on his face was a curious mixture of calculation and indecision. He needed her cooperation and for her to understand his theories, but he was unsure how much to tell her.

He examined her face for several long seconds. Dwyer trusted her. And although he liked to cultivate a frat-boy image, Dwyer was a shrewd analyst of character. Garin’s own preliminary sense of the woman was more wary. But then, his default mode was wariness. He especially distrusted civilians. Their innocence about malevolence was hazardous. All that was almost beside the point, however, since Garin had no better options than the woman sitting before him.

“My team was involved in an operation a week ago,” Garin began before pausing. “Look, you’re going to have to fill in certain blanks regarding what I’m about to tell you.”

“Michael.” Olivia caught herself. “I’m sorry. May I call you Michael?”

Garin nodded as another recess of his brain noted the length and shape of her legs. She was much taller than he had imagined.

“Please call me Olivia. If it makes any difference, everything you’re telling me is at the direct request of James Brandt.”

“Olivia, we both know that’s not really how Washington works. If things blow up, the fact that I spoke to you about a classified operation will be just one of the paragraphs in the multicount indictment that will be brought against me. And it won’t matter what a great guy James Brandt says I am.”

“I don’t dispute that. But if you can help James Brandt and the president avoid a catastrophe, no one will care that you told me about a classified operation. And believe me, Jim Brandt would go to bat for you. Now, what was it about the mission that makes you think the Middle East crisis is about more than Israel?”

“Something that at the time didn’t quite compute. Let me give you a little background. The conventional wisdom is that Shiite Iran and Sunni al-Qaeda won’t, and don’t, work together.”

Olivia shook her head. “That may be the media’s conventional wisdom, but not James Brandt’s.”

“Brandt’s right. They work together against their common enemy — the US. Are you familiar with the CIA’s program to track al-Qaeda operations in Iran?”

“Yes,” Olivia replied. “RIGOR, I think it was called. Established after the invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda operatives were fleeing from Afghanistan into Pakistan and Iran. Iran claimed that it was ‘detaining’ the al-Qaeda operatives. We had our suspicions about what that meant, so we began satellite, drone, and ground surveillance.”

“Right. The agency found that ‘detention’ actually meant ‘support.’ Turns out Shiite Iran had no problem providing assistance to Sunni al-Qaeda. In fact, intel from RIGOR showed that the Ansar Corps of Iran’s Quds Force was actually running al-Qaeda operations. They — Iran and al-Qaeda — were working joint operations.”