Chapter 1
JOHN BRANDT WAS a former warrior of the Cold War era, an experienced spook with more missions under his belt than he cared to remember. After retiring from the CIA, he’d formed Crisis Response Consultancy - CRC. He might have been too old, according to the federal government, to be useful as a field agent. But he was not too old to train his own team in the old ways and make a lot of money doing what the ‘new’ CIA was expected to do but couldn’t because of the interference of politicians. Outsourcing to private contractors was the only alternative.
CRC – Crisis Response Consultancy, nominally commanded by the CIA, was a private military contractor under the command of John Brandt. The name, Crisis Response Consultancy, was one of those nondescript names that simultaneously said nothing and everything about the activities of the organization. You had to be one of them to know what crises they were consulted about and how they responded to it. CRC was a Black Ops organization.
Every few months Brandt would take an overseas trip to visit some of the countries where CRC agents on missions were operating and meet with them, in secret of course. Some of the trips were to touch base with his ‘boys and girls’ and some were to evaluate them while on a mission.
On these trips he always traveled under pseudonyms, and there were only a few people who knew about it—among them, his second in command at CRC, Chris McArdle, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations—informally known as Clandestine Services, and of course the agents whom he was visiting.
To attract as little attention as possible, he was usually accompanied by a small group of ‘friends’ in a tour group, ostensibly interested in sightseeing and the stuff tourists are usually interested in seeing and doing. They stayed in tourist class hotels, ate at tourist class restaurants, and did the things tourists did. In other words, they blended in and went to great pains to attract as little attention as possible. These ‘friends’ were an old network which he’d cultivated as informants in his days in Russia and France. He kept in contact with them and from time to time used them for surveillance work. They were also among the most talented field agents Brandt ever had the pleasure of working with.
After all this time and so much hands-on experience, they also had the added advantage of being among the invisible ranks of the late middle-aged to elderly. No one paid attention to an old woman knitting a sweater on a park bench, or a pair of old men engaged in a chess match at a picnic table, or a single old man feeding pigeons. An elderly woman waiting for a bus or staring mindlessly at the passing crowds wouldn’t excite a moment’s curiosity.
What made his ‘friends’ even more exceptional were that they were lifelong students, now masters, of the science of human behavior. Their particular talent was that they could follow a target for ten to twenty minutes and then predict the target’s next or even final destination and be there in advance.
Tailing a subject who had a highly-trained security detail was dicey. It was so amusing to know that the target was taking extreme precautions, long and circuitous routes, and other countermeasures to avoid being followed, only to arrive where they were expected and their ‘tails’ waiting there for them. These wily old spies could do it without the target’s knowledge and get it right with astounding accuracy
Brandt and his cronies called themselves the Old Timers. He, in his late sixties, and his friends, ranging from his age into their mid-seventies.
***
Athens, Greece
Day of abduction
THEY WERE IN Athens, at the Apollo Hotel, Karaiskaki Square, a two-minute walk from Meraxourgio Metro Station allowing for easy rail access from Larissa International Train Station five hundred meters away, and bus access, with convenient reach to Plaka (the Old Town of Athens) and the Acropolis. Being so centrally located enabled Brandt’s party to move easily around the city, enjoying the sites of the ancient city and keeping an eye on the agent Brandt was evaluating on his trip.
That night, they all bundled into a taxi and took a food tour of Athens, which took them on a three-hour excursion to ten different restaurants all over the city for a tasting of authentic Greek food. They got back to their hotel at about ten p.m. After the unusually-heavy dinner, the rest of the Old Timers were tired and went to their rooms, but Brandt said he was going to take a stroll before bedding down for the night.
He went to his room first, put on his jacket, and took his wallet. As usual, he looked out the window at the street below to see what was going on before leaving. There was nothing of note.
When he exited the elevator, out of habit, he scanned the lobby and noticed a man with his back to him in a chair reading a newspaper. Besides the chair in which the man sat, there was a couch and two empty chairs. He noted the man was in a strategic position, but that could have just been the most comfortable chair.
However, it’s the seat I would’ve chosen if I wanted to monitor who’s coming and going through the lobby.
When Brandt passed him, he noticed the man glancing at him briefly. Brandt nodded, the man nodded back and then turned his eyes back to the newspaper.
The small things. Enough of them and trouble is the next thing on your doorstep. Paranoia? Maybe. That’s what kept you alive so far.
He headed for the front door and stepped out. Before proceeding, he stopped and scanned the street outside, first left, then right. There were three cars parked on his side of the street, two to the right and one to the left. Across the street, there were four parked cars. He’d seen them from his room before he’d left. None of the cars had occupants.
Nothing to be concerned about.
He glanced back inside at the man in the chair. He was still reading, showing no interest in Brandt. He ticked the man off his list.
The sidewalks were empty, not unusual for ten-thirty p.m. in this part of the city, where there were only small hotels and apartment blocks. Brandt took a deep breath of the fresh night air, turned to his left, and started walking.
He was about five hundred meters away from his hotel when an African man blocked his way and tried to sell him a handcrafted, collapsible wooden basket. Brandt couldn’t understand a single word, but he’d seen peddlers selling those baskets all over Europe. The cleverly-designed baskets were spiral cut and mounted on a circle of wood, with a handle that rotated to lift the bowl part and keep it standing, causing it to drop the spirals into a bowl shape.
Over the years he’d bought them from immigrants trying to make a living in Italy, France, Germany, and elsewhere. He had about a dozen of them in various shapes and sizes at CRC headquarters, serving as vessels for anything from fruit to paperclips.
He sighed, smiled at the man, and said, “I’ve never bought one of these in Greece before,” as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket to retrieve his wallet.
In the next moment, Brandt knew something had gone terribly wrong. Three men in police uniforms came rushing toward him from the foyer of the apartment building where he and the hawker were doing business. They were screaming at him in English to drop to his knees and put his hands behind his head.
A sting? But…
He heard tires screaming and engines roaring as vehicles came rushing toward him from both sides of the street.
In seconds, he was surrounded by at least eight men and two cars. He was on his knees, hands behind his head, and staring down the barrels of two SIG Sauer P226 guns in the hands of the two men directly in front of him. A third tapped a baton into his opposite hand, and to his left was a man with a Taser X26 gun.
It took him less than three seconds to figure out these men were imposters. The Hellenic police’s standard issue handgun was not the SIG Sauer P226 but rather the Heckler & Koch USP 9 mm, or Beretta M9, or Smith & Wesson Model 910, or Ruger GP100. They didn’t use tasers, and they didn’t wear hiking boots with their uniforms.
Brandt was hopelessly outnumbered, that much he knew very quickly. In days of yore, if it were two or three attackers facing him, he’d put up a fight and would’ve given himself a better than even chance to beat the crap out of them. But he was sixty-eight years old, and there were eight attackers he could see. There could have been others as well, but there was no point in looking for them. All he could do was to go along with whatever it was these men wanted, for now. He didn’t get much more time to think through his situation when the hooks from the taser gun embedded in his chest and his body was jolted by 50,000 volts. He never felt the prick of the needle that was plunged into his neck before his world went dark and quiet.
Chapter 2
Arizona, USA
Fourteen months previously
HE’D NEVER HAD a mission go so badly, though he’d lost men before. At least they’d always had a body to bury, or a reliable witness who saw what happened, some closure—they’d never left a man behind, dead or alive. He’d never cried over a loss before, but now he gave in to the grief and let the tears come.
He loved Rex Dalton as if he were his own son.
Those who were not in the know about CRC’s business would probably refer to Rex as a consultant. Those who had an inkling of what was going on would have thought of him as a field agent or an operative. His enemies, and some others, would have used the word assassin.
Rex was CRC’s most coveted asset; a stone-cold killer with a grudge against bad guys, especially terrorists, who had killed his family when they blew up a train in Barcelona in 2004.
After ten minutes of stunned inaction upon hearing the news from the director of the CIA, Bruce Carson, that Rex and his support team were missing, probably dead, Brandt pulled himself together.
The others had to be informed. He called in Rick Longland, his company’s resident psychologist, to help him plan what to tell the others and how to commemorate the best agent CRC had ever had. Rex Dalton inspired great loyalty among his teammates, and a paternal feeling in Brandt. He deserved a memorial, at the very least.
Longland was there within minutes and saw the devastation in Brandt’s face. “Dalton?” he asked.
Brandt nodded. “It appears he and the team he took with him may have been ambushed.”
“What makes them think it’s our men and not the drug lords Dalton was supposed to dispose of?” Longland asked. “Isn’t there any hope?”
“Right number of bodies, according to the operational plan Rex submitted before he and the others headed out. Rex must be dead. He’d never leave me hanging like this if he weren’t dead or worse.”
“What’s worse?” Longland asked.
“Do you need to ask? Worse would be if he were in the hands of the terrorists. Remember, the Taliban were supposedly at that meeting. I pray if the team was ambushed that they were killed rather than captured.”
“John, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“What are we going to tell the others, Rick?”
Longland had no answer to the rhetorical question.
Brandt prepared a few remarks, and then he abandoned them when the time came. For the sake of the entire team, he had to be as strong as he ever was in these situations. He decided to inform them at dinner, after he’d had a chance to compose himself. There would be a formal memorial later, when there was a body to bury or at least incontrovertible proof that Rex was really gone. As soon as it appeared that most of the men were finished with their meal and about to leave, Brandt stood up. Everyone went quiet and every eye turned toward him.
“Men, I have some unhappy news. Rex Dalton, whom most of you know, is believed killed in action in Afghanistan. He was a brave man, a great agent, and an excellent soldier. We will all miss him. He wouldn’t want you to grieve. Dalton was a man of few words, but those words spoke of his devotion to this country and the missions we take on. The incident was such that there is no body to recover.
“You all know that shit happens, and in our line of work some of us get killed. Nonetheless, Dalton, like you, signed up for this. He knew the risks and never hesitated to take them. None of us is invincible. We bleed and die like any other human. Rex has paid the ultimate price, and I can tell you I know without a doubt he paid it willingly for the safety and betterment of our country.”
He turned and left abruptly and with the certain knowledge that Rex had not willingly given his life. Not in that sense. He’d willingly gone into danger, he’d willingly gone to the battlefield to fight, but he’d never willingly gone to be betrayed. If he’d failed, it wasn’t because he hadn’t given it his best shot, he’d failed because of treachery.
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