Andrew Watts
The Oshkosh Connection
If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing.
Chapter 1
Hugo the assassin arrived at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on the 4:35 p.m. flight from London. He grabbed his Samsonite carry-on bag from the overhead compartment and walked confidently through the airport.
The stop at immigration was quick. He had nothing to declare. On a personal visit. Staying about a week. Thank you. You have a nice day as well.
Hugo left out the part about being paid to kill people while he was here.
The muggy July air hit him like a wall as he stepped outside to fetch a cab. The drive to Dupont Circle took just over thirty minutes. Hugo had rented a flat online the night before. Just a five-minute walk from James Hoban’s Irish Restaurant, where he ate a BBQ burger with bacon and grilled onions at an outdoor table, sweating while watching the streets and waiting for his assignment. He licked BBQ sauce off his fingers. He had to admit, Americans knew how to cook good burgers.
The courier arrived by bicycle. A know-nothing. Just a shaggy-looking man wearing spandex, eyeliner, and a nose ring who delivered envelopes for a living. Sometimes there were special instructions. This was one of those times. The courier placed a manila envelope on the table with the bright red scarf, then departed without saying a word. A block down the street, a man watching from behind a half-closed set of blinds texted confirmation that Hugo had received the envelope. Within seconds, that confirmation message was relayed to the second-highest-ranking intelligence officer stationed in the Pakistani embassy.
Inside the envelope was a hand-written note. A coded meeting location. Hugo took the strip of paper with the writing on it, ripped it up, and dunked it into his ice water. It dissolved instantly. The assassin left the rest of his meal uneaten and hailed a second cab.
“The Smithsonian.”
“Which one?” asked the cab driver.
“The Castle.”
The driver nodded, and the car began moving. Hugo caught the driver’s curious glance at him through the rearview mirror.
“Where are you from?”
Hugo didn’t answer, and the cab driver didn’t ask a second time, not wanting to affect his tip. The car dropped him off a few minutes later and Hugo paid in cash. He then made his way along a brick walkway that wound between several Smithsonian museums. The Smithsonian Institution Building—“castle” was probably too generous — stood to his right. The red sandstone, faux-Norman architecture, and four-story towers seemed out of place in this city. But it made a good meeting spot.
A wide-open courtyard before him. Pedestrian tourists strolled and sat along a peaceful garden filled with lavender and goldfish ponds. The smell of honeysuckle hung in the air.
The assassin’s eyes darted from person to person, scanning each face, each set of belongings, each person’s wardrobe. Checking for inconsistencies — red flags that might give away someone in the American government. It was a crowded summer night, and most of the people he saw were tourists, walking to and from some festival being held on the National Mall one hundred meters away.
A Pakistani man sat on a bench fifty feet ahead of the assassin.
The assassin’s client.
Abdul Syed wiped sweaty palms on the front of his khaki pants. He had taken all the proper precautions. His team of ISI countersurveillance experts had been watching the assassin since he had departed the airport. Still, now was when things got tricky.
If Hugo had a tail, the Pakistani operatives performing countersurveillance would let Syed know, and the meet would be aborted, along with tonight’s mission. But this close to the rendezvous, even an aborted mission presented the risk of his man being detained and questioned.
Syed had participated in many operations like this before, but never on US soil. The Pakistani intelligence officer’s blood pressure was abnormally high, triggered by the persistent worry that one of the FBI’s counterintelligence teams might be watching.
While Syed’s official posting at the Pakistani embassy was that of an agricultural counselor, the Americans knew better, and they regularly followed him. Syed had spent every night for the last few weeks in the same fashion. Riding the Metro around D.C., visiting different museums and restaurants, meeting acquaintances in locations far from one another. Innocuous locations using hard-to-follow routes. It took considerable time and effort, but Syed was sure that he had lost his surveillance each and every night for the past week.
Every one of those surveillance detection routes had been in preparation for this meeting. The assassin could have no connection to Pakistani intelligence. The Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, had been accused by Western governments of holding double standards in the fight against terrorism. Syed must not give them any more reasons to support that belief. Even more important, he must not allow them to discover his current operational plans.
Despite what both nations proclaimed, the United States was not a friend of Pakistan. And it was up to the ISI and its officers, brave men like Syed, to ensure that American imperialism would falter. American minds were brainwashed with propaganda. In Pakistan, everyone knew that Al Qaeda was not responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001. Several ISI and Pakistani military officers had known of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, less than a mile from the prestigious Kakul Military Academy in Abbottabad. Syed himself had known. He had been infuriated on that day when US Special Forces soldiers had illegally flown their stealth helicopters into his country, killing innocents and taking bin Laden. The CIA had not shared that operation with the ISI ahead of time, because they had known what Syed had known.
The US and Pakistan were enemies, playing at a dangerous game. The ISI and American intelligence agencies put on the charade of friendship, as the politicians demanded. But each agency did its best to sabotage the operations of the other. The Americans would love nothing more than to catch him tonight, planning the assassination of American citizens on American soil.
A man sat down next to him on the park bench.
Syed did not make eye contact with the man. Instead he continued to scan the courtyard for American agents who might be posing as casual observers as he removed an envelope from his pocket and placed it between them on the bench. An encrypted thumb drive was inside. One that, unless the correct procedure was used, would delete its contents upon insertion into a device.
The man took the envelope, stuffed it into his pocket, and walked away without saying a word.
Syed couldn’t help but cast a sideways glance in his direction as he departed. He snorted air out his nose, shaking his head. The assassin was quite unremarkable. It was hard to believe that he was responsible for so many deaths… and would soon be responsible for so many more.
Chapter 2
“We’re going to crash.”
The plane’s nose was angled down, the green Appalachian Mountains now filling most of the cockpit windscreen.
Max Fend said, “You’re overstating the problem, Renee. You really need to learn to relax. It’s so peaceful up here. Away from the world, away from all of your troubles. Nothing but blue sky… well, as long as you look up. Maybe not straight ahead. Those are mountains.”
Renee’s voice was an octave higher than normal. “I’m not kidding, Max. Please, just… ” She gripped the yoke of Max’s Cirrus SR-22 tight enough that her knuckles went white, and she was unable to finish her thought.