Homeland: Saul’s Game. Andrew Kaplan
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Название: Homeland: Saul’s Game

Автор: Andrew Kaplan

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Шпионские детективы

Серия:

isbn: 9780007546046

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ or the mosque. There’s no telephone landline, no Internet, and they never make cell-­phone calls. Just whatever contacts they might have at the mosque or the market,” she said.

      “Still doesn’t make sense. Why would Assad, an Alawite allied with Hezbollah and Iran, give sanctuary to Abu Nazir? Head of IPLA. It’s Shiites versus Sunnis? They’re deadly enemies. They hate each other,” Walden said.

      “Abu Nazir’s doing it because it’s next to Iraq yet it’s the one place he knew we wouldn’t look for him—­and he had to get out of Anbar because we were getting too close. We suspect Assad’s doing it, because in exchange, Abu Nazir’s willing to keep the Sunnis in Syria from what they’re dying to do, which is assassinate him,” Carrie said.

      “How do you know this? Cadillac?”

      She nodded.

      “So forget the raid. Instead we go in with a drone. Low risk. Flatten the place. Complete deniability. End of Abu Nazir. Period,” Walden said.

      Saul leaned in on Walden’s desk.

      “We’ve had this conversation before, Bill. We can’t get intel from a corpse,” he said. “We need an SOG.” He meant a Special Operations Group. Only ever used for the highest-­risk missions.

      “If you blast him to smithereens with a drone, they’ll say he’s still alive. He could become more dangerous dead than alive. Last week he had a suicide bomber in Haditha lure children on their way to school with candy and then blow them up into a million pieces,” Carrie said. “Little children! We need an SOG to make sure it’s him and to get the intel to finish this filthy war. So do it, dammit. Before the son of a bitch moves and we lose him again.”

      “Twenty-­seven minutes to touchdown,” Chris Glenn, the SOG team commander said over the helicopter’s roar.

      They were going in light and tight, he thought. Possibly outnumbered by hostiles in the compound. Two UH-­60M helicopters with ten SOG team members each. Total twenty men plus the CIA woman, Carrie. The only advantage, the element of surprise, and after thirty seconds, that would be gone and all hell could break loose, unless they were able to eliminate the guards silently and take out the rest before they woke up. The key was planning. And Carrie being right about Abu Nazir and where he’d be in the compound.

      And one odd thing he wanted to check out himself. Something opaque that had shown itself in the spy satellite infrared images. An underground cave or vault. They were hiding something.

      Or someone. Or several someones, he thought.

      “Keep it tight, guys. Nothing gets out. No light, no sound. Not even a fart,” Glenn said, moving over to Carrie. “You good to go, Mingus?” Per her request, they’d code-­named her after jazz bassist Charles Mingus. Carrie and jazz. Everybody knew it was her passion. Back at FOB Delta, it became a team joke.

      “Hey, Mingus, what’s wrong with Chris Brown?”

      “Lil Wayne, yo.”

      “Katy Perry, dog!”

      “I’m fine. You watch your own ass, Jaybird,” she said to Glenn. His code name.

      She clenched her hands on her knees so no one could see them trembling. Just being off her meds for two days was doing it. The only reason she wasn’t flying either on a high or a low with her bipolar disorder was that her system was probably so hopped up on adrenaline from the mission, she decided, shaking her head to clear it.

      Glenn and the machine gunner opened the cabin door to a roar of wind. Through the open door, with the night-­vision goggles, she could make out scrub on the desert floor speeding beneath them; it looked almost close enough to touch with her feet.

      They were supposed to be in Syria one hour flying time in, maximum forty-­five minutes on the ground, one hour back to the Iraqi border. Total: two hours and forty-­five minutes. Hopefully finished before daybreak and before the Syrian Army knew they were in-­country and could react. Once they were back in Iraq, the administration in Washington could deny they had anything to do with it—­and nothing left behind but some dead bodies to prove otherwise.

      And they’d either have Abu Nazir in custody once and for all or he would be dead. If Cadillac’s intel was solid. And till now, he’d been a hundred percent.

      “Ten minutes. Everybody on night vision,” Glenn announced.

      One by one, the team members put on their night-­vision goggles and adjusted their helmets and communication gear. There was little talking among them.

      For weeks, they had trained on a mock-­up of the Otaibah compound in the desert near FOB Delta. Each team member had his specific assignment and every man had trained to back up the others in case they were hit. The keys to success were speed and silence in the middle of the night. Every one of them was a combat veteran, the elite of the elite, in incredible physical condition; hair-­trigger-­trained volunteers who had pushed themselves beyond what they ever thought they could do in order to do exactly this kind of mission.

      “Five minutes to target,” the pilot called back over the sound of the rotor.

      “Selectors to burst,” Glenn said as everyone moved their carbine safety selectors into firing position. Men started stretching their legs, getting ready to get up and move.

      Carrie leaned over to look out the open door. Through the greenish field of night vision, she could see scattered structures on the outskirts of Otaibah. Small farms and shacks. These were poor ­people. Tribesmen who minded their own business. ­People who didn’t make it in the wider Syrian society, who didn’t want visits from the GSD, the brutal Syrian secret internal Security Forces. If this was where Abu Nazir really was, he had chosen well. She checked her watch one last time: 1:56 A.M. local time.

      “Three minutes. Everybody ready for landing.”

      The men in the helicopter got ready to get up. They were seated in the order they would exit from each side of the chopper. Carrie peered intently into the darkness.

      And then she saw it. A pair of yellowish lights from a house on a street about a mile or two ahead. Was that the compound? What the hell were lights doing on at two in the morning? Then more lights. It looked like the compound was lit up. Oh God, she had led them into a trap! They were going in hot.

      And streetlights too. Oh no! The satellites had shown no streetlights at night in this part of Otaibah. As if the government had deliberately neglected this part of the city.

      The intel was bad. Cadillac must’ve lied. Or someone. It was all her fault. They would die because of her. She looked around wildly, trying to think of how to get the pilot to pull them out, to find some way out. But they were too low.

      They were coming in fast now. Too late to think about it as they passed over a fence topped with barbed wire and over the compound’s courtyard, bumping down in a cloud of dust.

      “Go! Go!” Glenn hissed, slapping her on the back as she stumbled out of the helicopter.

      Jumping out, she felt the team moving around her. Every nerve in her body was screaming, anticipating an IED going off or men wearing kaffiyehs letting loose with automatic rifles any second. Everything was a swirling green haze in the night goggles, the lights over the courtyard like something in a van Gogh painting.

      She СКАЧАТЬ