They’d returned to the Dayrabot safe house shortly after 11:30AM. Flounder immediately collapsed on his cot, shut his eyes, and drifted off, while Poacher filled in Reaper and Mockingbird. Both operators expressed disappointment to have sat out on the action, but Poacher said that it may have been for the best. With a larger assault team, they would have likely overpowered the IMU faster and someone may have tripped one of the traps in the haste.
“The same things you are.” Avery grabbed one of the empty chairs and joined the others at the table. His voice sounded strained, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. On the drive back, his mind had been too preoccupied to get any sleep. He always felt that way, coming down off the high of combat. “First off, it was a damn set-up. Babayev’s cell knew we were coming. That’s why we didn’t find any intelligence inside. They completely sanitized that place, and then they re-located Cramer. Then they sat quiet in the dark all night, just waiting for us to knock down the door. That’s what the phone call we overheard was all about. Remember, Babayev said he’d wait one more night and see if ‘they’ showed. The fuckers were expecting us.”
“That’s why that tango with the suicide vest didn’t waste us,” Poacher agreed. “He could have easily, but he hesitated. He wasn’t mentally prepared to become a martyr, didn’t have it in him. He was as afraid of that vest as we were and didn’t expect us to ever make it past his friends or those grenade traps they set for us. So when we walked in on him, he panicked and froze. We’re lucky it turned out the way it did.”
Poacher spoke from experience. While he was with Asymmetric Warfare Group’s Dog Squadron, he’d gone through an intensive three-day instructional course run by Israel’s Shin Bet on identifying suicide bombers in a crowded public place and preemptively terminating them. Later, he put those skills to use in the cities and marketplaces of Iraq’s Sunni Triangle. He’d sat in on the interrogations of failed suicide bombers in Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories. He knew the vacant look when he saw it, the faraway eyes and stone cold face of the walking dead. It had chilled him to the bones, standing in the holding cell of a sixteen year old girl who had been psychologically prepared to violently end her life and the lives of those around her on a busy Haifa street.
Avery agreed with Poacher’s assessment, but he still felt no qualms about wasting the Uzbek, nor the manner in which he did it. As long as the man had his hand around the detonator, he’d posed a threat to the entire team and the mission.
“That shit sounds like Iraq,” Mockingbird observed. During his time with Task Force 145, he’d taken part in the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The al-Qaeda in Iraq leader regularly left false trails of evidence leading to safe houses wired with explosives.
“So how’d they know you were coming?” Reaper said. “We know Dushanbe station is seriously fucked, but nobody there knew about the op we ran in Gorno-Badakhshan. The leak didn’t come from the embassy this time.”
“You’re the only person we’ve been in contact with,” Poacher told Avery. “So it’s somebody on your end.”
“I’m looking into it.” Avery left at it that. He knew Poacher was right. It would be easy to narrow down the suspects. It was a very short list.
“How severe is the damage?” Mockingbird asked. “Do we need to relocate? I mean, we’re not going to have the fucking IMU visiting us tonight are we?”
Poacher glanced at Avery, interested to hear his response. “No, we’ll stay here. I can assure you that no one I’ve been in contact with knows this location.”
That put the others at ease.
“We did uncover one valuable bit of intel from the house,” Poacher said. “That crow with the spider tattoo you waxed sure as hell wasn’t IMU. The others could pass for Uzbeks or native Tajiks, but not him. I’d peg him as Slavic or maybe from the Caucasus. They were packing a lot of the latest Russian kit, too, and he was carrying an SR-2. Only professional operators carry SRs.”
“Russian operators,” Avery added.
Russia’s Central Scientific Research Institute for Precise Mechanical Engineering specially designed and produced the SR-2 (Spetsialnaya Razarbotka; Special Development) Veresk submachine gun for FSB spetsnaz units like Vympel or Alpha Group. The gun’s nickname, Veresk, is the Russian word for heather, a type of shrub. Invariably, the weapon had also found its way into the arsenals of connected Russian mafia gangs.
“Those IMU guys knew what they were doing and put up a good fight. They weren’t the typical spray-and-pray Jihadist amateurs. They had CQC training and understood the tactics an entry team would use.”
“I’ve checked out that phone we recovered from the dead tango,” Mockingbird said, with his laptop open in front of him. “They placed three calls to the same number since the time Cramer first went missing. The dialing format of the number indicates a Russian cell phone.”
“Any names or messages on the phone?” asked Poacher.
“There’s three numbers in the saved contacts, including the Russian number, but no names. The other two numbers are local.”
“Half-ass tradecraft,” Poacher observed. Knowing that a cell phone could be a huge source of intelligence, a pro would have cleared their call history and not have any numbers saved in the contacts. “But it’s another Russian connection.”
“We’ll give the phone to Gerald at the embassy for NSA to examine,” Avery said. “Gerald also needs to get in contact with whoever the FBI has at the embassy and get a crime scene unit to Yazgulam ASAP to comb that place for prints, DNA, whatever they can find. At the very least, maybe they can confirm if Cramer was ever at the house. Maybe the Tajik or Uzbek services can identify those bodies we left behind.”
Poacher almost laughed. “How the hell is the Bureau going to pull that off? They can’t go into Yazgulam without going through the Tajik authorities and getting all sorts of Interior Ministry and ambassadorial permissions.”
“Their problem, not mine,” Avery said. “They can tell the GKNB they received an anonymous tip. It’s almost true.”
“Cramer had to have been at the house,” Reaper said, thinking out loud.
“That intel came from Gurgakov’s IMU prisoner,” Avery said. “It doesn’t make sense that the prisoner would have been aware of the ambush. That would mean he was intentionally captured to plant disinformation and lure us into a trap. By the time we arrived in Yazgulam, they’d gotten word from an as-of-yet unidentified third party that we were coming and either executed Cramer or moved him.”
And only one person knew that he was going to Yazgulam, Avery thought.
“Speaking of Gurgakov,” Poacher said, “what’s the deal with his IMU prisoner?”
“Gurgakov’s offering his prisoner for twenty grand,” Avery said. He thought it over. “How much did SAD put in your expense account?”
Poacher groaned and squirmed uncomfortably.
“I’d do it myself, but buying an Uzbek’s a bit out of my budget.”
“Shit,” Poacher finally said. “Langley’s going to be pissed. Culler wasn’t prepared for us to leave Tajikistan with a goddamned Uzbek national in our custody. I mean, what the fuck are we going to do with this guy when we get back to the States? I’ll have to go through Culler on this first.”
“Negative,” Avery said. “I’ll deal with Culler. After I get what I need from the Uzbek, we can leave him for the FBI or GKNB, or Culler can tell Langley he was captured in Afghanistan and throw him in Guantanamo.”
“All right,” Poacher replied, unconvinced. “I’ll take care of the money.”
“Next: Ayni airfield, our third Russian connection,” Avery said. “I want everything Dushanbe station has on the place, especially satellite imagery, and information on troop placement there, numbers, and what kind of firepower they’re packing. We’re going in for a sneak and peak, but be prepared with a full combat load. If Cramer is there, it can only mean they’re going to fly him out of the country, if they haven’t already.”