Person of interest two was Mohammed Al-Kariya. He was a money man for Al Qaeda with fingers in various sources of supply. He was technically “white” although he was on the State Department list of terrorism supporters. Nobody had ever pinned anything on him, though, and the Europeans let him come and go. His “white” identity was as an international banker and fundraiser for “Muslim Charities.”
Mohammed had required Muslims to support the poor and thus it was the duty of good Muslims to donate to charities. A large number of Muslim “charities” however were funding channels for international terrorism. The money traveled mostly through a closed banking system among Muslim groups that was surprisingly hard to crack. But plenty of it got to Al Qaeda and similar groups. And Al-Kariya was one of the main men handling it. If the Chechens wanted that much money, he was going to be around keeping an eye on it.
Al-Kariya was, to say the least, heavy-set. He wasn’t going to be running very fast.
Then there was Arensky. The data on him was surprisingly sparse. He’d gotten a Ph. D. from Moscow University back in the Soviet days and then disappeared into the Soviet and then Russian “Advanced Research Agency.” ARA was something like America’s DARPA, a clearing house for various high tech research projects. What bothered Mike was that as far as he knew, ARA didn’t play with nukes. That was under an entirely separate agency and the two rarely interacted. And although it said that Arensky had gotten a Ph.D. the document didn’t say in what.
Arensky had a daughter, Marina, who had apparently disappeared with him. Twenty-two, blonde, green eyes. Pretty thing. But not a security issue on the op.
Arensky was probably going to have security with him. The number one probable provider was Sergei Rudenko. Former Spetznaz colonel, fifty-three and started under the Soviets. Described as “tall and broad” with gray shot black hair. The photo was from his official dossier and Mike mentally added “seriously cold eyes.” Russian mobster but not a member of any particular group, known hitter. He had a group of former Spetznaz that he picked and chose from for missions. There would be at least fifteen to twenty of them. Mikhail had been one of his usual guys which was had made the first connection.
Another “person of interest” was one Kurt Schwenke. Often worked as Rudenko’s second-in-command. Former East German Stasi specializing in “wet work.” Got into the game late but made something of a name for himself in his brief period before the fall of East Germany. Forty-seven. There was a photo but it was old and had the notation that Schwenke was “an expert in disguise and deception.” The list of kills, culled from the Stasi archives found after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was impressive as was the variety of techniques from pistol to sniper to small explosives. Wanted by Germany for “crimes against humanity” and by just about every government in Europe for that matter; he was tied to most of the former Western European communist terrorist groups. He’d been around. Like Mike himself, he was an expert at infiltration and silent kill.
The Al Qaeda guys would have their own security and then there was the Chechen “battalion.” The Keldara had tangled with them once, but it was from prepared defenses. Unless he got brilliant, that wasn’t going to happen this time. The correlation of forces was adverse.
If he had full support, say a B-52 loaded with JDAMs or a Spectre gunship, this would be dead simple. But using just the Keldara it was going to be tough.
Not as tough, however, as simply getting into the Pansiki. The last Georgian control post stopped nearly sixty miles from the site of the rendezvous. And it wasn’t a straight sixty miles; the area was nearly vertical Alpine mountains. The Chechens had patrols and logistics groups moving all through the area so even flying in would be tough. The closest they could get was maybe thirty miles from the rendezvous. Then they’d have to hump in, hit the site and hump back out. It was hard enough to carry food for a thirty mile hump through that sort of terrain: carrying ammo, weapons and commo was going to be a stone bitch.
Where’d they put those mules from the last Chechen supply-train they’d hit?
If they brought mules they’d raise their profile significantly. However, they could probably mask as a Chechen train. That had an upside and a downside. There were Spetsnaz working the other side of the border, covertly. They were likely to get hit by “their” team. And the Chechens had control teams on the routes in the area.
Okay, he knew a group that had the helos to get them into the area. And they could handle the mules; the Keldara weren’t that far from their farmer roots. The last thing they didn’t have was good intel on the area around the rendezvous. But he knew how to get that, too. It would mean a preliminary covert insertion and some way to set up short range commo. But that could all be arranged. Come to think of it, Vanner was airborne qualled.
Mike started to grin evilly.
“Did you have a good day, Stasia?”
The dinner was the definition of “intimate.” The room was, like most of the White House, small, tucked away in a corner of the East Wing. The only diners were Mike, who had seen his “assistant” for about three minutes since he’d left, Anastasia, the President and the First Lady.
Mike was still having a hard time figuring out which fork to use.
“Both good and interesting,” Anastasia said, cutting a bit of her salad and taking a small bite. “Mostly because of Mrs. Weston.”
“Didn’t I tell you Amelia was a treasure,” the First Lady said.
“A force of nature,” the President added. “There don’t seem to be many like her, anymore, present company excluded.”
“I must exclude myself, Mr. President,” Anastasia replied. “I thought many times, today, that if I live to be a hundred I might come close to being Mrs. Weston.”
“I think I need to meet this lady,” Mike said, smiling.
“You’d probably get along well,” the President said. “She’s far more steely than she generally lets on.”
“You should hear her talk about the first attack on the Embassy in Mogadishu,” the First Lady said. “The Embassy Marines beat it off, with some help from the Embassy staff and… others. The General being then a military attache he was in the thick of it.”
“And according to General Schnorer, so was Amelia,” the President added. “On the roof with a sniper rifle taken from a wounded Marine. I understand your meetings went well, Mike.”
“Yes, sir,” Mike said. “Well enough.”
“All the issues resolved?” the president asked.
“More like in the process of being identified,” Mike admitted. “But it’s doable. Marginally.”
“If it was easy, we wouldn’t be talking,” President Cliff noted, smiling.
“The difficult we do immediately,” Mike responded. “The impossible takes a little longer.”
“Take all the time you need,” the President said. “As long as you make the train.”
Mike shook the hand of the pilot then stepped out of the Blackhawk. Petro, son of the houseman Uncle Latif, was already there, grabbing bags from the crew-chief. Of course, with what Anastasia had bought the kid couldn’t carry it in one load.