Steve Abbott - Devil's Gambit

“Yes.” Sean pointed his thumb at Sturmovic. “The good Commander was in the process of stomping the man’s shit into oblivion when we arrived.”

“How the Commander chose to handle the situation is his concern, not ours.”

Sean was aghast. “You’re saying torture is okay with you?”

“We need information. Thousands of lives depend upon retrieval of these units. I don’t like the methods, but I need results. I need to know the score.”

Sean took a step forward. His face was white with anger. “I don’t give a shit what you want, Captain. I will not condone or allow torture of anyone in any form on my watch. The damage done is amateur and pointless. By the time we got on the scene, Sturmovic here was really on a roll. The source would have been dead in another twenty minutes.”

Gayle bristled. How fast these people started to push. “Sergeant Addison, may I remind you that I command this team and expect you, in light of the circumstances surrounding this incident, would want to give full cooperation in the investigation.”

Sean gave the back of Sturmovic’s chair a small shove and spoke to the Commander in Russian. “He didn’t tell you anything, did he?” Sturmovic shook his head. Sean looked back at Gayle. “Do you understand? He didn’t tell them anything. Give her the tapes, Bill.”

Harris produced three cassette tapes from his chest pocket. “These are Smirnoff’s confession. He gave us as much information as he could. The man behind all of this compartmentalized everything very well. Sean and I have run across his handiwork before. He’s a South African, an arms dealer called Verkatt. This was a contract job, far too organized for terrorists, even well-funded ones. We have map notations and possible pick-up zones as well. Sean’s right, beating him wasn’t the answer. It was all something he could deal with. We gave this Smirnoff character a way out and he went for it.” Harris smiled, “There really is no honor among thieves, you know.”

Sean broke in. “So there it is. Bill and I have been out of communication with our superiors for nearly two days. Has your CIA or State Department come up with any other additional leads?”

“One of our analysts at NPIC thinks he found the boat the warheads were transported on. From his time code, they have a huge leap on us. He thinks the units were transferred to a truck and then airlifted out. He was following up on it.”

Sean looked at Harris. “Bill, why don’t you fill Captain Ecevit in on the autopsy results.”

“Okay.” Harris walked over to the chalkboard on the wall beside Gayle. “The autopsy and our own inspection of the bodies show that they were shot with 5.56mm NATO rounds fired from an East German modified version of the AK-74. Divers recovered one from the waters beside the wharf where the bodies were found. Judging from the pattern of hits, the men were standing in a group when killed by a burst of fully automatic fire from a single rifle. The remaining dead man, killed by a three-round burst to the chest, has been photographed and the film sent to the Moscow headquarters of the GRU. The East German dental work of this individual suggests that he is a national. They would have the best chance of telling us who he could be from their own files. As Sergeant Addison has also stated, Andrew Verkatt is a known South African weapons dealer. From time to time he has dealings with the drug trade. Otherwise Verkatt deals in strategic materials, specifically through the Congo, but Zimbabwe and Angola have been used as well. This would be the first time he was suspected in selling stolen nuclear warheads. Sergei Smirnoff was approached by an employee of Verkatt’s, an American named Benjamin Johnson, to use drugs to coerce three individuals from this base to steal three warheads and their navigational packages. As a known trafficker in the Soviet drug trade, Smirnoff had almost unlimited access to personnel of this base. Many of the men here are vets of Chechnya. A lot of them came back with more than just war stories.”

“Did Smirnoff give you the location of the landing site?” The GRU Captain Yevgeny Alexandrov had his hand on Sturmovic’s phone.

Harris nodded. “He gave us the one he used most often when this Johnson fellow was flying in trade.”

Alexandrov picked up the phone and started to dial. “I will scramble a pair of helicopters to check it out. The coordinates please.”

Sean shook his head. “It won’t do you any good. The airfield is in Turkey.”

Gayle checked her notes. “Is it by Carasamba?”

“Yes.”

She produced the photo facsimiles from NPIC. “The NPIC analyst was able to plot the egress track of this vessel to the port of Carasamba. He figured from there the warheads were transported by truck to an airstrip and then flown out.”

The quality of the pictures was amazing. Sean and Harris were both impressed. Sean pulled out a terrain map of the area and clipped it up on the wall. “Here’s your next piece of the puzzle, Captain. If Bill and I can have access to the com gear on your jet, we can get all the gen MI6 has on Verkatt. These things are probably heading for South Africa right now. If we don’t get them there, who knows where they’re going to turn up.”

Alan Barnes sat at the night officer’s desk, cursing his section leader, Edward Travis. This was the eighth time in two weeks that he had drawn night officer duty. Travis hated Barnes’s intellect and his ability with computers to extract valuable pieces of intelligence. It was clear the man had it in for him. With the Soviets not as active any more, the night desk was not as demanding as it used to be.

This was a godsend, in a way. It gave Barnes a large block of time to work on breaking the North Korean daily code algorithm. The night desk had a Data Entry Retrieval Terminal. He could interface with his files and programs in the mainframe.

At least he was not the only one stuck with night duty. As per regulations, there were two other members of A4 branch on call, just in case of emergency. These were few and far between these days. In fact, Barnes had heard rumblings about the possible closure of the Pretorian operation. He hoped they were only rumors. As the saying went in all sectors of covert service, “No good deed would go unpunished.”

South Africa was a player on the world markets and it had to be watched. Barnes’s thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the secure phone.

“Night desk. Barnes,” he answered.

“Don Evans, 4024. I need the section head A4, now.”

Barnes checked the name and verification number on a list kept beside the night desk’s phone. “One moment.”

Evans leaned back in his office chair. The dark of the watcher’s office broken only by the grainy images on the video monitor in front of him. There had been no change in activity. They could not have seen him or Weston.

The phone was cradled against his left ear. He faced the front door, gun cocked and aimed. It took a full minute to reroute his call through Foreign Offices’ secure system. After four rings, the phone at the other end was picked up.

“Anthony.” The watchers A4 section head put on his glasses and squinted at the digital readout of his clock radio. It was just after three am.

Don kept his voice low and urgent. “Sir, it’s Don Evans, Cape Town docks operation. Andrew Verkatt pulled up to the freighter docked beside the North Korean operation a short while ago in a heavy truck. Three crates were unloaded from the back of it onto the ship. Weston is trying to tail Verkatt as he leaves.”

“How big are the crates?”

“Roughly three feet wide by five feet long by about eighteen inches high, but we had a bad view of the things. We tried to get a better view from the dock itself, but the place is lit up like a carnival, and crawling with North Koreans. Verkatt left the building just as we got there. Weston decided it was better I notify you and he try to find out where Verkatt was heading.”