Kurt pulled up to the West Wing security gate of the White House and said, "Competent may not be enough for what we're asking him to do."
Kurt fidgeted at the head of the table, waiting on President Payton Warren before starting his briefing. He went over in his mind what he was going to say at this meeting, the first Oversight Council conference where he would ask permission to launch a team.
Already seated when he arrived, the secretary of defense and the secretary of state had tried to get an inside look, but Kurt had begged off. The director of central intelligence had simply said hello to George, then remained silent.
Five minutes past the appointed time, President Warren entered the White House situation room, followed by his national security advisor, Alexander Palmer.
The president nodded at Kurt, then sat at the head of the large conference table. "Looks like we've got everyone here. Let's go. I'm on a bit of a timeline."
Kurt started with a status review, delineating progress on the various cover businesses being established for operations, the construction timeline for the Blaisdell front office in Clarendon, and an update on the two concurrent exercises being conducted, one in Charleston, South Carolina, and one in Kansas City, Missouri. He left out any mention of Pike's close call with the police, simply stating that the exercise was progressing.
Alexander Palmer asked, "So we're on track to go operational in two months?"
"Yesterday I would have said yes, but something came up this morning. I think we can go operational right now."
Before anyone could ask a question, he flipped to the next slide, showing an acerbic Arab male; he was young, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-eight, with a full mustache.
"This is Muhammad bin Qasim, otherwise known as Abu Khalid. He's a digital graphics designer and uses those skills as a passport forger for al-Qaeda. He's currently located in Aden, Yemen, and I think we should go after him."
"Okay, how does that change anything on our side?" the DCI asked. "We've got a ton of names on the list. None of them makes us prematurely operational."
"A couple of things," Kurt said. "One, we don't want to take him out. Just get the data off his computer. Thus, we don't need to worry about the whole exfiltration problem of leaving a sovereign country with a terrorist in tow, which we currently don't have the capability to do.
"Two, he works for a water desalinization plant. This plant has just asked for bids on surveillance system upgrades due to the unrest over there. The closest business cover we have to completion is Advanced Surveillance Solutions. We can use that to bid and win the contract. We can get over there and flesh out future operational actions with little risk."
President Warren said, "So you're asking for our first Alpha? Are you sure we're ready? We blow this, and we blow more than just the mission."
Kurt knew what he was really saying. If the mission was compromised, ripping the lid off an intelligence operation that existed off the books and outside the legal scrutiny of congress the president's brand-new administration would be destroyed, with the men in this room more than likely going to jail. But he also knew that the president had understood those risks when agreeing to Project Prometheus in the first place.
"Sir, that's exactly what I'm asking. Everyone here saw the Surefoot series of capability demonstrations. They've got the skills to do it, and it's a simple Alpha introduction of forces. No Omega operational authority. Let's get a team in the game. All they'll be doing is building a pattern of life on Khalid. If it looks like we can access his database, we'll come back for Omega."
The secretary of defense asked, "Which team do you want to send?"
"Pike's team. He's got a solid mixture of guys who can walk and talk the surveillance business, from infrared cameras to digital recording. One guy, Retro, is a little bit of a computer geek. He keeps up on all that stuff on his own. And Pike's also got Jesse, a trained Arabic linguist."
Palmer said, "So you have the infrastructure and requisite cover skills. Are you sure they're ready for this mission? Can they execute?"
"They're proving that right now in Charleston."
"They haven't proven anything yet. Let's see what happens in the next twenty-four hours before I give you my vote."
Chapter 5
I'd been sitting in my vehicle for about three hours, starting to get a little antsy because of the location, when I finally got the call from Retro that the beacon was on the move.
The real estate office had provided a link to the target's beddown site, which happened to be in North Charleston in an area that was most decidedly not the nice part of town. While I was sure that I wouldn't blow the target by my location, I wasn't so sure that the neighbors around here wouldn't do it for me. No doubt they thought I was a cop and had been spreading the word around about my presence.
Something to remember. The threat isn't only the target.
At least this part of the exercise was proving beneficial. Trying to penetrate this area was like trying to penetrate Fallujah. Getting the beacon on the target's vehicle had been fairly challenging, given that we didn't blend in at all and the vehicle itself had been located on the street in front of a dilapidated town house.
I'd sidelined Kranz because of his shenanigans the night before, ignoring his pleas that the beacon was CIA kit and therefore somehow his mission. I'd sent in Retro and my squid insteadRetro because he was a little bit of a techno-geek, and Reaper because I was feeling him out. Testing his left and right limits.
So far Reaper had proven pretty damn solid. But we still had the night to get through yet.
I looked at my watch, seeing it was close to midnight. With an exfil boat at two in the morning, we were pushing things. We had the intel indicator saying he was "potentially meeting with an unknown" and a location, but we didn't have a time.
Retro finished his initial report, telling me that the beacon appeared to be heading toward Interstate 26, to downtown.
I kicked over the engine, wondering how many people flipped open their cell phones at the same time, and headed in the direction of the beacon track.
I had three vehicles operating as singletons, which made mounted surveillance pretty tough, but I wanted the spread in case we lost the beacon, so I only had one vehicle with two men.
I'd given the job of surveillance chief to Kranz one, because I wanted to give him a chance to prove himself, and two, because he had a hell of a lot more experience at this than I did. I was just another pair of eyes on this mission.
I entered the freeway headed south, trying to catch up to the target, currently being tracked by Retro and Bull from the two-up vehicle.
I had little idea where the other vehicles were located, but that knowledge was unnecessary. If they were in the hunt, they knew what to do-which was to stay the hell out of the way until Retro called for a change-out of the eye. That wasn't going to happen anytime soon, because he was hanging back, using our technology to keep tabs.
At least that's what I thought until his next call.
"Kranz, lost the eye. Beacon track is wigging out."
Kranz said, "Last location still I-26?"
"Yeah. But we're passing exits left and right."
I should have kept my mouth shut, let Kranz run the surveillance, but I couldn't help myself. "Retro, this is Pike. What's up with the beacon?"
"Pike, that thing is a piece of shit. I swear, for being so top secret, it amazes me how old-school our capabilities are. FedEx has better tracking on a day-to-day basis. The beacon we're using has some sort of proprietary software package that only gives a trace and a grid. It doesn't even place it on a map."