Sandblast

Book 1: Task Force Epsilon Thriller

by Al Pessin

Genres: Military Thrillers; General Fiction; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

THE ULTIMATE PATRIOT MISSION

The plane carrying the Secretary of Defense is blown out of the sky. The Defense Intelligence Agency greenlights an unprecedented response—Operation: Sandblast.

Pentagon Covert Ops runner Bridget Davenport, must find someone to infiltrate the Taliban, get to the terrorist mastermind, and at all costs stop his plan for an attack more destructive than 9/11. Bridget finds young California-raised Afghan-American Lieutenant Faraz Abdallah. His heritage and military training make him the perfect undercover agent, but no one knows whether he can do the job.

Success depends on Faraz's ability to fool the Taliban's top leaders and become a terrorist, while remembering why he's really there. Bridget believes in him, but it will take everything she has to keep the president and the top brass from pulling the plug . . .

Release date: March 31, 2020

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 341

Sample

When the young Arab man in a business suit got out of a black cab and breezed into the lobby bar in late afternoon, no one took any notice. This was the Marriott Grosvenor House in London, a haven for visiting delegations and business barons from around the world, in a city with a sizable Muslim population. No fewer than five of the hotel’s cable channels were Arabic satellite networks.

Mahmoud ordered apple juice and took out his Times. If he had been arrested at that moment, and there was no reason to do so, there would have been nothing incriminating on him at all.

He perused the newspaper and sipped his juice. Mahmoud had left a message for a bellboy he’d befriended at a mosque in South London. The message said he would be in the hotel and needed a small favor. It asked the young man to please meet him near the service elevator off the lower lobby at four o’clock. He checked his watch, 3:55.

Mahmoud put a five-pound note on the bar and took the stairs down one level. The bellboy was already there.

“I was surprised to hear from you, Mahmoud,” he said. He did not appear to be concerned. The two were about the same age and had met several times. They were both five feet, seven inches tall, clean-shaven, and had olive complexions and similar builds. Men at the mosque had commented that they looked like brothers.

“My friend!” Mahmoud greeted the bellboy with a handshake and a smile. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need your help.”

“Of course. I will help you if I can.”

“Thank you, thank you. But, well, this is a confidential matter.” He looked around to be sure no one else was in the service hallway and then, as if he didn’t know exactly where he was going, Mahmoud pretended to notice a large utility closet, its door ajar.

“In here,” he said, “Just for a second.”

Now the bellboy gave him a suspicious look, but it was too late. Mahmoud pushed him into the closet and closed the door.

“No, wait!” said the bellboy

“Shhh,” said Mahmoud, “I have something to show you.”

“No, I will not . . .” The bellboy continued to protest, but Mahmoud reached under a shelf and removed a small packet, ripped it open, and pressed a cloth to the young man’s face. The bellboy passed out before he could make another sound.

Mahmoud paused. He had impressed himself; it had all gone as it did in practice. No problems. No hesitation. That gave him confidence for the work yet to be done.

Under another shelf, he found the second packet—this one with a pair of plastic gloves and a carefully forged hotel nametag. It said “Mahmoud.” Why not?

Mahmoud put on the gloves, removed the young man’s uniform and put it on himself—dark blue trousers with a black stripe down the sides, a white shirt, and a pullover tunic matching the pants. It fit well, as expected. He replaced the bellboy’s nametag with his, and made sure the passkey was in the pants pocket. Mahmoud took the money and two handkerchiefs out of his own trousers, now crumpled on the floor.

He opened a large plastic garbage bin and tossed in his clothes and the young man’s nametag. Then he hefted the bellboy into it. The head faced Mahmoud with closed eyes, then lolled to the right.

Now, Mahmoud found the final packet under a third shelf. He took out the gun, screwed in the silencer, put it against the center of the bellboy’s forehead, and fired. The young man’s head jerked back and his body convulsed. Mahmoud was briefly startled. But he composed himself, put the gun and the gloves into the bin, and made sure to properly seal the lid, protecting his hands with the handkerchiefs.

Mahmoud cracked open the closet door and peeked into the hallway. Still clear. He left the closet, locked the door, and took the service elevator to the ninth floor.

Using the dead bellboy’s key, he went into a small storage room filled with cleaning supplies, linens, and other housekeeping items. In the back of the room was a stack of yellow plastic buckets labeled “floor wax.” He removed the upper rows until he could access the bucket at the bottom left. He opened it. It did not contain floor wax.

Seeing the black backpack in the bucket made Mahmoud pause again. Until now, he had been remarkably calm. He went through the motions of capturing and killing the bellboy as he had in dozens of practice sessions. He put the bullet into the young man’s head as easily as he had fired an empty gun at the head of his trainer at the safe house, again and again. He understood now why the man had made him do it so many times. But looking at the backpack, he realized how close he was to his goal, how close he was to performing the will of Allah. He caught his breath, felt his heart race.

Mahmoud removed the backpack and put the lid back onto the bucket. He restacked the other containers on top of it and left the storage room. Carrying the backpack by its top handle, as a bellboy would, he returned to the service elevator.

On the sixth floor, he headed for Room 626. The door was open and a handwritten sign read “Delegation Baggage.” No one was inside. Across the hall, several men worked behind a partly open door labeled “Control,” but none of them paid any attention to Mahmoud.

Room 626 was almost empty. All the furniture, including the bed, had been removed. There were a few suitcases and other bags on the floor along the far wall, under the windows looking out on Hyde Park. The bags had delegation tags on them, each with a name, a list of destinations and room numbers, and a small American flag. The tags were tied to the luggage with white strings. Mahmoud untied a tag labeled “Mr. Goff: Brussels, Kabul, Baghdad, London” and tied it to his backpack.

He opened the top zipper. His heart pounding now, he removed several books to reveal a metal box and reached down its side to feel for the switch. He flipped it. A red light flashed once. He put the books back in, closed the backpack, put it behind the other bags, and turned to leave. He had been in the room less than a minute.

As he left, one of the men across the hall saw him. “Hey,” said the man, “Where’s that other guy?”

“Went home sick,” replied Mahmoud, “Can I help you, sir?”

“No, it’s okay.” And the man went back to his work.

Mahmoud went to the public men’s room on the main floor, where he stashed the bellboy’s tunic in the trash bin. He went out on the far side of the hotel, toward the park, and hailed a taxi. Within seconds he was lost in the traffic, on the first leg of a trip that would crisscross London via taxi, bus, and train before it took him back to the safe house.

Mission accomplished.

As the afternoon wore on, civilian officials, military officers, and the journalists who were traveling with them dropped their luggage in Room 626 to be sent ahead to the plane while they finished their work. Nearly everyone had an extra laptop in one of their bags. Many had other equipment—codecs, recorders, mixers, modems. By evening, when the security team came to take the bags to the plane, they were overflowing into the corridor.

Mahmoud’s bag, with its metal box and tangle of wires, would have drawn attention at any normal airport security checkpoint. But it would not stand out among these bags packed with electronics that belonged to known, vetted, and trusted holders of delegation credentials.

At midnight, a police escort led the way as the delegation’s motorcade rolled through a misty drizzle into Northolt Royal Air Force Base, forty-five minutes west of London. Its plane was already loaded and ready for the overnight flight to Washington. The aircraft was an impressive-looking, but aging, Boeing 747 configured for government use, white with a wide blue stripe along its fuselage, an American flag painted on its tail, and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned on its sides.

A small, shivering team of British officials lined up on the tarmac to offer farewell handshakes and small gifts of English tea. The tired delegation members and their press corps managed weak smiles and quick thank-yous before dragging themselves up the stairs onto the plane for the last time this trip.

After takeoff, some tried to go to sleep in their seats or grabbed some floor space to lie down. Others worked on their laptops and shared the few Internet access cables. In keeping with tradition on the final leg, the boss’s favorite beer was served, with pretzels.

Three hours later, when the explosion ripped the plane apart, most of the passengers were sleeping, including the secretary of defense.

Bridget woke up with a start, as she always did, a legacy of her combat tours. The clock read 0428, two minutes before the alarm setting. She reached for Will but he wasn’t there. Then she heard the water running in the bathroom.

As soon as she moved, her cat Sarge started crying for his breakfast. She got out of bed and slipped into the oversized white T-shirt that lay in a heap on the floor.

Even in that, she looked pretty good. At thirty-eight, she was five feet, six inches tall and had an athlete’s body from running and exercise. Her skin was on the pasty white side, an occupational hazard. She didn’t get much sun. But that only accentuated her pale blue eyes. Even her just-got-out-of-bed light brown hair somehow worked, frizzed out a bit, the ends dancing on her shoulders.

At the bathroom door she saw Will from behind, with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was shaving. She ran her fingers through her hair just as he noticed her in the mirror.

“Morning, kiddo,” he said.

She smiled. “Hi.” Her tone was noncommittal, which seemed about right. She gave him a peck on his shoulder blade as she squeezed by. The manly shaving cream smell gave her ideas, but she knew there wasn’t time.

The toilet’s small alcove provided a modicum of privacy. “Taxi at zero-five?” she asked, largely to cover the sound of her peeing.

“Right.”

Bridget could see part of Will’s chest reflected in the mirror. His muscles were highly toned after years of rigorous physical training, and she caught glimpses of his impressive arms as he shaved. His freshly clean, milk-chocolate skin enhanced the effect like a permanent tan.

Lieutenant Commander Will Jackson was a Navy SEAL. It was part of his job to stay in shape, and he did his job extremely well. In thirty minutes, a taxi would take him to Joint Base Andrews, east of Washington, D.C., where he would meet up with his team and depart for downrange training and deployment, probably to Afghanistan. Bridget was not allowed to know his destination, officially. But she had a pretty good idea. She did know this would be his fifth tour, and he would be gone about six months.

Bridget squeezed by again, making sure her breasts slid across his back. She wanted him to miss that.

“You have time for a cup, right?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

Bridget moved toward the kitchen and struggled for something more to say. She couldn’t ask where he was going. Same for “When will you be back?” “What’s your plan?” and any other question she could think of.

It was a rare bit of awkwardness in their three-month relationship. They had kept it pretty casual. The occasional romantic interludes over dinners or walking along the C&O Canal in Georgetown had been natural, and no one made too big a deal about them.

They had both known this day would come.

Arriving in the kitchen, she went with the safe bet, raising her voice to be heard over the running water, “Supposed to be good weather for flying today.” Gawd! The weather? So lame!

“More excellent information from the Defense Intelligence Agency!” he shouted back. “Of course,” and she could hear that little smirk coming onto his face, “I’m not confirming that I’m flying, or to what destination, if any, or what the weather will be like there, if there is a ‘there.’”

“Fucking navy!” Bridget yelled.

Will laughed, and nearly nicked himself on the last pass of the razor.

By the time Bridget delivered the coffee, Will was sitting on the bed in his boxers and T-shirt. He pulled up his second sock and stood to take the mug.

They were standing irresistibly close, and they kissed. It was intimate, but not passionate, and they had a one-arm-each embrace as they tried not to spill their coffees.

“Grrrrr.”

“Yeah,” he said. He took a sip and met her gaze. “I’ll miss this.”

“Don’t get too mushy on me now, sailor.”

“No, I mean the coffee. They serve us shit downrange.”

“Asshole,” she said, and she smacked him on one of those muscular arms.

“Yeah, but you knew that.”

“Yes . . . I . . . did,” she said, pausing a little between each word and separating from him. She went to brush her teeth.

He admired her body as she walked away. “Nice ass. Can I see it?”

“Not anymore,” she said, but then it felt harsh.

When Bridget came out of the bathroom, Will was fully dressed in jeans, a gray cotton crew-neck sweater, and sand-colored combat boots. He was cinching the flap of his desert camouflage duffel bag.

“Aw, Will, this sucks,” she said, letting her guard down for a change.

“Yeah, but like the man once said, ‘I’ll be back.’ ” His Schwarzenegger was not very good.

“I thought your travel plans were classified,” she teased as she sidled up to him, still wearing just the T-shirt.

They kissed again, more deeply this time. Her hands explored his back, and his slid down to that ass he liked so much. She didn’t mind. It was safe. They had made the boundaries clear, yet again, and the taxi was due any second.

His phone buzzed. There it was.

“Well,” she broke the kiss and leaned back in his arms, “better not be late for your first day of school.”

He chuckled.

“You think I’m cute, don’t you?” she said.

“Nah.” And there was that smirk. “The army always makes me laugh.”

She pushed him away in mock anger. He shouldered his duffel and picked up a small backpack. He took a final look around to be sure he had all his things.

Will gave Bridget a resigned smile. She moved aside so he could pass, and followed him to the apartment door. He opened it and turned back to face her. “See ya, kiddo,” he said.

She gave him one more kiss, and a hug that said, “Yeah, see me again, will ya?” As he backed through the doorway, she said, “Stay safe out there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and he flashed her a salute. One more smile and he turned for the stairway and was gone.

Bridget listened to his footsteps as he went down the stairs. She heard the outside door slam. And she waited until she heard the taxi pull away. Only then did she go back inside.

Leaning against the door, she let out a long sigh. She allowed herself just that moment.

Then she went back into the bedroom, dressed quickly in her workout clothes, grabbed her oversized work purse and prepacked garment bag, and headed for the gym.

Her martial arts instructor was going to have a rough morning.

Bridget put her bags in a locker in the women’s dressing room and walked through into the Pentagon Officers’ Athletic Club at 0530. It was not a quiet time there. More than half the aerobics machines were already being used by soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Defense Department civilians, many of them wearing T-shirts with service colors and slogans like “America’s Air Force, No One Comes Close” and “Pain is the Weakness Leaving Your Body.”

The free-weight area was also getting crowded, with already-muscular men working on their upper bodies and legs. There were a few intrepid women as well.

The gym was functional, not fancy, but the locker room décor hearkened back to an era of wood grain and white-shirted stewards. TV sets hung from the ceiling, tuned to news and sports channels.

Bridget found Jack flirting with the receptionist. “Ready?” she said, without the usual “good mornings” and “howya doings.”

“Sure,” he said, looking surprised by her abruptness.

She took off for her warm-up run on the track around the perimeter of the gym, leaving Jack sprinting to catch up.

“What’s with you this morning?”

“Nothing, just want to get started,” she lied and picked up the pace.

“Right,” Jack said, falling behind and clearly not believing her.

After a few laps, they went into a side room where mats covered most of the floor. This room also had a TV, but the sound was off.

“Okay,” Jack said, “Let’s start easy.”

He assumed a defensive stance and Bridget attacked him. They fought for a few seconds and separated, then went again.

After three rounds, Jack said, “Take a break.”

“I don’t want a break.”

“Take one anyway,” he ordered, rubbing his left shoulder and breathing hard.

Bridget could tell Jack was dying to find out what was up. But he wouldn’t. The wall around her made that impossible for all but a very few. That’s the way it had to be for an attractive woman in a building where twenty-five thousand men worked.

Thirty seconds later, she said, “Come on,” and they were at it again.

She threw Jack to the floor hard, and he raised a hand for her to stop. “Working out some anger, are we?”

“Sorry, Jack,” she said, avoiding the question. She offered him a hand and he stood.

“So, what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Right,” he said in a tone that made clear she was not fooling him.

Standing near the middle of the room, Bridget could see the TV over Jack’s shoulder. A “Breaking News” banner came onto the screen, and then a shot of the White House press room, with the presidential seal hanging on the lectern. The seal only appeared when the president himself was going to speak.

“What the . . . ,” Bridget said.

“Huh?” Jack said turning to see what she was looking at.

She jogged the few steps to the TV and turned up the volume, just as President Andrew Martelli walked into the frame.

He was tall and thin, and seemed to be moving in slow motion. His suit was impeccable, his tie was perfect, and his gray hair was all in place. But his face foretold what he was about to say.

“My fellow Americans,” he began. Then he stopped, as if he hoped he wouldn’t have to go on. But he did.

“I have very tragic news to share with you this morning. It is my sad duty to tell you that the plane carrying my good friend and our secretary of defense, Roderick Bates, is missing. Its last contact was over the North Atlantic, and I must tell you that all our technology and all our experts lead us to believe that it exploded in midair.”

Bridget felt as if all the blood had been drained from her body. She involuntarily grabbed Jack’s arm.

“This is a great loss for our country. Rod was a wise adviser and a great leader of our Defense Department. I knew him for more than thirty years. Rod’s wife Cathy was also on board, a wonderful woman and a great champion of our military families. And we lost dozens of our military personnel, civilian officials, and members of the press.

“We do not yet know the cause of the explosion. But if this was an act of terrorism, our enemies can be assured that our response will be swift and strong. We will provide more information as soon as we can. For now, I ask you all to pray for Rod, Cathy, and the others, and their families. This is a time for America to come together, as the great nation that we are.”

Bridget did not hear that last part. She was already sprinting for the locker room.

By the time Bridget came through the double set of steel doors into the shared DIA workspace at 0615, Tommy was already there, abusing his keyboard. It seemed like he had been born there, but in fact he had been working at the Defense Intelligence Agency only twelve years, after retiring from the army at age forty-five as a master sergeant. He was twenty pounds overweight and balding with a bad comb-over. And that morning, he looked particularly terrible. He was sweating, his broad face was flushed, his shirttail was untucked, and he was using his stubby index fingers like hammers.

Bridget had known Tommy O’Regan for fifteen years, since he had been the top sergeant in the first platoon she commanded. He was the one who had really taught her how to be a soldier and a leader, and years later he had convinced her to come to the agency after grad school. Bridget was his junior by nearly twenty years, but also once again his boss. He was the hard-bitten old softie uncle she had never had. But at that moment, she was a little bit afraid to approach him.

“Hi,” she tried, from a safe distance.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he said, hitting a key with every word. That was unusual. Tommy was much more likely to say “heck” or “darn” than anything stronger.

“Tough morning, I know,” she said, trying to lower the temperature. Bridget needed him to calm down. There was a lot of work to do, and she thought he might give himself a heart attack.

“‘Tough’ doesn’t nearly cover it! I knew most of the people on that plane. So did you! Those bastards!” Tommy stopped, then continued in a lower voice, “Those fucking bastards.” He looked as if he might cry, but it passed. “We gotta hit ’em back, and hard.”

“Absolutely. Let’s dust off some old options and when the rest of the team gets here we’ll brainstorm some new ones.”

“Sure, okay. Fucking bastards!” And he returned to the abuse of his keyboard.

Bridget went into her office and booted up her computer. She rated a decent-sized office for the Pentagon, which meant something more than a cubicle. She even had a small round table with four chairs. But she didn’t have a window. No one did in the second basement.

This was the DIA’s Operations Directorate, and Bridget was chief of the Central Asia Division. She supervised a staff of intelligence analysts, what the press called “dot connectors.” They collected, categorized, collated, and prioritized the mountain of factoids and alleged factoids that came in from troops and agents in the field, from wiretaps and Internet monitoring, and from other intelligence agencies, U.S. and foreign. It was Bridget’s job to determine whether their analysis was right, and to conceive, plan, and run clandestine operations to act on the information and generate more dots.

She and her team were among the people who should have prevented the attack on the secretary’s plane, should have noticed some change in the patterns of terrorist communications, some movement of the key players they tracked worldwide. But they hadn’t. Worse yet, that wasn’t unusual. The terror groups had gotten too good at covering their tracks—using throwaway cell phones, satellite phones, and other evasive techniques, leaving fewer patterns to notice.

Bridget had arrived at DIA three years earlier via West Point and nine years of active duty as an intelligence officer, including two tours in Afghanistan. It was there that she became disillusioned. From her vantage point, she could see they were chest-deep in shit and the tide was against them. It hadn’t been an easy decision to leave the army, but she told herself she would find another way to serve.

So, having more than fulfilled her commitment, Captain Bridget Davenport, holder of two combat badges, numerous commendations, and an impressive array of ribbons on her uniform, resigned her commission and enrolled in Georgetown’s national security program.

Four years later, she was Bridget Davenport, Ph.D., author of Impediments to Counterinsurgency: Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Religion and Democracy in Afghanistan and Their Impact on U.S. National Security Strategy.

She counted it as four years, three apartments, two boyfriends, and one cat. By graduation, only the cat remained. Grad school had not changed her relationship pattern, nor her desire to serve, but it had given her some distance from the frustration. She rejected breathless entreaties from corporations and consulting firms, taking Tommy’s advice instead, and went right back to work for the Pentagon.

Bridget logged on to the classified network and accessed the aircraft manifest. Of course she had known people on the plane. Christ, she could have been on it! She hadn’t volunteered only because the trip ran through Will’s final days in town. Bob Jenkins had taken the DIA seat. Oh my God! Bob! He had two little kids! Or was it three now? Jesus!

Bridget felt a chill, and beads of sweat formed on her forehead. She didn’t like it when her emotions got out of control. She closed the manifest and got up to hang her suit jacket on a wall hook.

Even on this terrible day, she had The Look.

The Look was essential for any woman hoping to make it in the defense establishment. Today, it was a white silk blouse open not quite enough to show cleavage, and a knee-length, gray, pinstriped skirt that rode up almost to mini length when she sat down. Her high-but-not-too-high heels completed The Look.

She might as well have worn a sign: “Formidable Executive. Notice Me, But Don’t Mess with Me Just Because I’m a Woman in a Man’s World.”

Bridget caught her reflection in the glass of the desktop frame that held a picture of her parents. “Not bad,” she said to herself. Then she realized that’s what Will would have said, but in a dismissive way to make her smile. Now it did the opposite. She’d be going home to Sarge and no one else, and coming back to her job in the bureaucracy tomorrow. Will was living the life she had left behind—exciting, exotic, stimulating, but also dangerous and sometimes almost impossibly difficult.

As Bridget sat back down, her classified email lit up. U.S. government intelligence services had picked up a claim of responsibility for the plane bombing. The translation was preliminary. The authenticity had not been confirmed. But chances were, it would prove out.

It was signed by Ibn Jihad, “Son of the Holy War,” the shadowy terrorist leader who had united the commands of the Taliban and al-Qaida. U.S. intelligence said he was somewhere in eastern Afghanistan, moving almost nightly to evade efforts to find him.

She thought about Will. He might be heading to that same area. He could already be in the air. Helluva day to deploy.

Around 0700, Tommy knocked on Bridget’s door. He had tucked in his shirt and looked as if he had washed his face. Overall, he was much more like himself.

“Come in.”

“Hi. Sorry about earlier.”

“No problem. We’re all upset.”

“Thanks. Listen, I got something for you to look at.” He held out a file marked “Classified: Top Secret.”

“What’s this?”

“It’s Sandblast. Got rejected a long time ago, before you came on board. I’m thinking maybe now . . . .”

“Okay, thanks,” she said, taking the file. “Tommy, do you think this was the MTO?” MTO—Pentagon-speak for major terrorist operation. The intel community had been getting indications one might be in the works for months.

“Hard to say for sure. It’ll take a while to figure that out.”

“I know. Just looking for your best guess.”

“My guess is no. I think they’re looking to target civilians, probably multiple locations. That’s what the Israelis’ source said.”

“But now he’s gone.”

“Disappeared. Lends credibility to his story.”

“But not confirmation.”

“Correct. But Mossad’s info is usually solid. And we know jihadi chatter is up. Hitting the plane would have been a close-hold operation. But multiple targets would require some coordination, and a jump in intercepts, like we’re getting.”

Tommy pointed to a scattergram on Bridget’s desk. The classified page had clusters of dots divided into quadrants indicating time and geographic area. Each dot represented the intercept of a phone call or email among suspected terrorists.

“Wish we knew what it all meant,” Bridget said.

“Me, too. Thousands of calls, a dozen languages, and the key conversations coded.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks, Tommy. I’ll have a look at this file. And leave the door open, will ya?”

He did. But the usual noise of the office didn’t filter in. Most of the staff had arrived, and people were busy. But there was none of the buzz, none of the banter about military services or sports teams. No one was even lingering by the coffee machine. The Pentagon was a house of mourning.

Once Bridget started reading the Sandblast file, she couldn’t stop. In fact, it had been rejected twice as too dangerous and too much of an escalation. But Tommy was right. Now, it might fly. It might be exactly the counterstrike everyone was looking for.

Who came up with this? Did they have someone who could d. . .