Scorpion Deception Read online

  It had taken him weeks to study the target and come up with a plan that the Gardener would approve. The problem was, the place was a fortress. He knew going in that he would lose some, perhaps all, of the team. “The real question, baradar,” brother, the Gardener had asked, “is not whether it can be done, but whether you can do it?” The Gardener looked at him then with those brown almost coal black eyes that for many were the last thing they ever saw, and even Scale felt a chill.

  It was the Gardener himself who had given him his code name. Named for the saw-scaled viper, the most venomous snake in the Middle East. He liked it. He was a small man, thin, with little physical presence except for his oversize hands that looked like they belonged to a much larger man. Hands he had worked his entire life to strengthen, endlessly squeezing lastik balls till they could crush like a vise. A child that other children avoided or made fun of. He couldn’t remember a single friend, not one true dust, from his childhood. But now his name made others fear him, even members of his own team, he thought, returning to the problem.

  The American embassy in Bern was located at Sulgeneckstrasse 19, a tree-lined street in the Monbijou district. It was a white six-story structure on extensive grounds behind a high wrought-iron fence, with concrete driveway barriers to prevent a car-bomb attack. Outside the embassy, a Swiss security policeman with a SIG assault rifle stood guard twenty-four hours a day. The only way in was on foot past him. At the front gate, you had to pass a U.S. guard shack where visitors were asked to empty their pockets and were X-ray screened before being allowed to stand in line outside the building. No baggage, backpacks, purses, or packages of any kind were allowed.

  Once past the guard shack, you went down a covered walkway to the building, where you had to go through two additional security checkpoints under the eye of a high-tech security post behind bulletproof glass. Surveillance cameras covered every possible approach as well as all interior areas and hallways. Security was provided 24/7 by armed United States Marines, six of them on duty at any given time.

  Even assuming you could get past all that, eliminate the Marines and get in, you’d still have only seven minutes before the Kantonspolizei arrived in force, leaving no way out.

  The girl’s name was Liyan. She had to be attractive, Scale insisted. She had to hold their attention for at least two or three seconds. And they couldn’t suspect her, so she had to wear Western clothes and look sexy. A twenty-two-year-old college student, she was trim, dark-eyed, and modern enough not to wear a hejab. Her family were Syrian Kurds from Aleppo, and Scale had false-flagged her by convincing her he was from the GSD, the Syrian internal security service. They had arrested her brother during the Arab Spring revolt, and he threatened that unless she cooperated, her brother would be shot.

  Reasonable enough, since the Gardener’s contacts within the GSD had confirmed that the brother was already dead.

  Another lie was that she had been told her only job was to get the explosives—C-4 pressed flat and shaped to the curves of her body inside her undergarments—into the building. No ball bearings, no shrapnel, nothing added that would set off the metal detectors. She had been told to take it off in a restroom for them to use inside the embassy. In fact, she would not survive the attack, and if by some chance they were able to identify her body later, Scale thought, the blame would fall on the Syrians or the Kurds.

  Now, coming from the blue parking zone on Rainmattstrasse, he took one final look at the embassy and gate that had been his obsession for weeks. He scanned the roof and sides of the building, spotting at least a dozen video cameras, knowing there were probably more that he couldn’t see. His every move was being recorded that very second on videos that would later be scrutinized pixel by pixel for every last detail. His people were waiting in the SUV around the corner. The other two vehicles, a van truck and an old bus, were in position. Both were packed with C-4 and ammonium nitrate fertilizer and gasoline. They would act as roadblocks, one near Kapellenstrasse, the other at the Schwarztorstrasse intersection to slow the Kantonspolizei and isolate the embassy from either approach. The rest depended on timing and the girl, Liyan.

  Seven minutes from now, inshallah, God willing, either he would have done it or he would be dead, he thought as he crossed the street, touching his false moustache, latex nose prosthesis and sunglasses, and pressing the button on his chronometer watch to start the countdown.

  He smiled and nodded pleasantly at the Swiss policeman who barely glanced at him. As soon as he was behind the man, he pulled out his Beretta 92FS with the sound suppressor and killed him with a single shot to the back of the head. A half-dozen steps took him to the guard shack, where the Marine security guard had just turned from his computer screen. Scale slipped his hand with the gun under the bulletproof glass panel and shot him in the face. As he headed on the walkway toward the building, he could hear someone from the non–U.S. citizen queue scream and the sounds of his team coming up fast behind him. Then his cell phone vibrated.

  Scale dived to the ground. The detonator was on a two-second delay, and as he hit the pavement, the front of the building exploded outward with unbelievable force, bits of debris and glass and human flesh flying past like shrapnel. His ears ringing, the air thick with dust and the smell of explosive, burning meat, and charred metal, he got to his feet. Turning around, he saw his team getting off the ground, their ski masks on, HK G36K assault rifles ready to go.

  He pulled on his ski mask and checked his watch. Six minutes and twenty-eight seconds remaining.

  “Come on!” he shouted in English—the only language they were to use till it was over—and ran at the gaping opening ripped in the side of the building where the door and checkpoint had been.

  They went through the opening. The lobby was a shambles. It was filled with debris and blood and body parts, the security post utterly destroyed. There were two bodies by the far door, including a Marine guard struggling to move. A bloody foot in a high-heeled shoe lying on its side on the floor was all that was left of the girl, Liyan. Scale went over and shot the Marine in the head, then motioned to the others. They had six floors to cover and needed to move quickly. Before he left, Scale pulled a small IED from his jacket pocket and planted it next to the opening, where anyone coming would have to enter.

  They headed for the stairs. Two for each floor. Scale motioned to Hadi, recognizing him by his blue ski mask. The two of them went down and out back to the second metal detector post. The door burst open and a Marine with an M4 carbine came out running. His eyes widened, but before he could react, Hadi fired a burst that cut him down. Scale went over and put a bullet in his head to make sure. Grabbing the M4 from the dead Marine, he racked the charging handle and switched to full automatic, safety off. Four Marines down, he counted; one at the guard shack, two at the security post, and now this one. That left two.

  Coming into the main reception area, they spotted four civilians—three men and an older woman—who had been running for the door. He and Hadi fired simultaneously; two long automatic bursts that took down all of them. They could hear sounds of firing from the higher floors as the team went from office to office, killing everyone they found.

  He motioned to Hadi to work his way down the hallway, glancing up at a security camera, secure behind the ski mask. “Kir tu kunet,” he cursed the camera under his breath, kicking the bodies. The woman was still breathing. He shot her again and started up the stairs, checking his watch.

  Five minutes left.

  There was a firefight on the third floor. The remaining Marines, he thought. He ignored the shooting and continued to the fourth floor, going door to door. There was no one in the first two offices, but in the third he found five people: three men standing, their hands raised, a young woman crouched behind a couch, and another woman hiding behind a desk. First he killed the men, then the woman behind the couch. The woman behind the desk made a run for it and he shot her in the back, and as she lay writhing on the floor, put another burst into her.


  In the next office, he found an attractive blond woman feeding pages into a shredder. She froze the second he came in.

  “Please, don’t,” she said, her lips trembling. “I’ll do anything you want.”

  “I know,” he said, motioning her closer. “Where are the CIA offices?”

  “Sixth floor,” she said, coming around the desk. She came closer. He could smell her perfume. Lilacs. She wore a white blouse and a neat gray skirt. She really was very pretty. They could hear screams and the sounds of shooting on the other floors. Then the sound of a grenade exploding on the floor below made the floor vibrate beneath them. F1 grenade, he thought. Hopefully, it took out the last two Marines.

  The firing stopped. They got them, he decided.

  “Which offices?”

  “All of them. They have the whole floor,” she said.

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head, a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said soothingly, and shot her with the M4.

  He killed four more on that floor, then on the stairs ran into Hadi and Maziar, who wore the ski mask with the red stripe.

  “Did we lose any?” Scale asked as they headed up.

  “Three. Jalal, Mohsen, and Ashkan,” Hadi said.

  “Marines. Madar sagan,” Maziar cursed them. Sons of bitches. “We killed them both.”

  “Speak only English,” Scale hissed. He checked his watch. Less than a minute and a half left. “Take the next floor,” he told them, and sprinted to the top floor.

  As he reached the landing, he heard the sound of heavy gunfire on the floor below. Hadi and Maziar, he thought. Stepping into the hallway, he was nearly killed by a pistol shot. He pulled back and dropped to the floor.

  Suddenly, an incredibly loud explosion shook the building, rattling and shattering windows. It came from the direction of Kapellenstrasse. The roadblock. He was running out of time. The question was, how long would the roadblock hold them?

  The shot had come from the left side of the hallway. Someone taking cover in an office, firing from the doorway, he thought, pulling the pin on a Russian F1 grenade. About four meters, he estimated, tossing the grenade and counting. It was a 3.5 second fuse, and as soon as it exploded he ran at it firing the M4.

  There were two dead men in white shirts turned red with blood lying in the doorway, one with an S&W .357 pistol—the one who had been shooting. Scale went through the offices methodically, rushing through the door first, then ducking in to check. There was only return fire from one office, near the end of the hallway, and another F1 grenade took care of the men inside. He killed fourteen on that floor, the last in a corner office with a name plate on the door that read: MICHAEL BRAND, CHIEF POLITICAL LIAISON OFFICER. Dead giveaway for CIA, he thought. Brand was a big man. He lay on the carpeted floor, clutching his chest where he’d been shot, staring venomously at Scale.

  “Who are you?” Brand asked.

  By way of an answer, Scale knelt, put the Beretta to his forehead and pulled the trigger. Brand’s head flopped back, blood and bits of his skull seeping into the carpet.

  Scale checked his watch. Eight minutes and forty-two seconds had elapsed. They had taken too long. The Swiss polizei would be past the roadblock any second now, unless they had gone around to approach the embassy from the other side. Even as he was thinking that, the building was rocked again by another powerful explosion coming from the direction of the Schwarztorstrasse intersection, glass flying from the few remaining windows. Got you, you stupid seyyedan, he thought. There was still a tiny bit of time.

  He heard something behind him and whirled, ready to fire. Hadi and Maziar. He motioned them close.

  “Quick. The flash drives. Start with the ambassador’s office on the fourth floor and work down. I’ll take this floor,” he whispered, moving to the laptop on Brand’s desk. Checking to make sure it was on, he plugged a flash drive into a USB port. It would automatically download every document and data file on the hard drive.

  He didn’t wait, but went to the next office. Stepping over the bodies of a man and a woman, he plugged in another flash drive and repeated the process, going from office to office. In the sixth office, he peeked out the window at the street and grounds below. Two polizei vans were pulling up. Men in body armor armed with SIG assault rifles began setting up a perimeter.

  Time to go.

  He pressed a contact number on his cell phone and sent a call. Hadi and Maziar would know what it meant, he thought as he raced down the hallway, popping into each office, pulling the flash drives and dropping them in his pocket.

  He ran down the stairs, Hadi and Maziar just ahead of him. They heard the sound of polizei from outside. It was going to be close. As they reached the landing of the second floor, they heard men come into the building. Scale pulled out the cell phone, selected the contact number and pressed Send. The three of them hit the floor as the IED he had left at the opening went off, deafening them and shaking the floor.

  They got up and ran down the remaining stairs, the area filled with smoke and the screams of the wounded polizei hit by the IED. The three men went out the back. The embassy grounds were green with trees and lawns and a vegetable garden. They ran through the garden toward the spiked wrought iron fence at the back of the property, knocking over the wooden stakes along the way.

  They just reached it when shots rang out behind them. Hadi boosted Scale, who perched atop the fence. Thirty meters away he could see the black BMW SUV waiting for them on Bruckenstrasse. Hadi was hit as he started to boost Maziar. He sagged down, clinging to the fence bars, as Maziar scrambled up, over the top, and down the other side like a monkey. Still at the top of the fence, Scale fired a long burst back at the polizei. Hadi looked desperately up at him, his eyes wide behind the ski mask.

  “Give me your flash drives,” Scale said, reaching down, bullets ripping through the leaves of a nearby tree. Hadi managed to hand them up, then sank down again, collapsing on the grass. Scale could see a blood spot the size of his palm on Hadi’s back. He kicked over and dropped to the other side. The polizei were charging, firing as they came. A bullet pinged on one of the iron bars next to him.

  He looked back and fired a quick burst from the M4 at Hadi to make sure he was dead, then ran for the SUV. Danush was driving, and took off as soon as they were inside. They pulled off their ski masks, out of breath, their faces flushed. Scale took off his false nose and mustache. He would get rid of them later.

  “Where are the others?” Danush asked.

  Maziar shook his head. Scale checked the time. Nine minutes and forty-six seconds had elapsed. Danush drove across the bridge to the Kirchenfeld side of the river, his face grim.

  “Give me your flash drives,” Scale ordered. Maziar handed them to him. “Stay with the plan,” he told them. “If you’re stopped, you know what to do.” The SUV had been rigged with C4. If stopped by the polizei, they would detonate. There would be no live witnesses for the FIS or the CIA to interrogate, and as little as possible left as evidence.

  They drove around, slowing to let the white Kantonspolizei patrol cars, their sirens blasting, race by. As soon as Scale got out in the Old City, Danush sped off. They would take the A1 autoroute, and if they made it, all of them would reconnect in Zurich.

  He walked the cobblestoned Spitalgasse, stone-gray buildings around him and tram wires overhead. He took the tram near the Zytglogge—the city’s landmark medieval clock tower, with its high pointed spire—to Gurtenbahn, where he caught the red funicular up the steep side of the Gurten, Bern’s local mountain. He watched the scenery as they ascended, thick with trees, some still covered with snow.

  It was cold at the top. Scale pulled up the zipper of his jacket and walked to the lookout. There were about twenty people, tourists and a few local families, enjoying the view. From there he could see across the city to the snow-covered Alps in the distance, though he couldn’t see the American embassy. He took out the cell pho
ne, the last time he would use this one, and called a number in Zurich. He was not surprised that no one answered, and waited for the beep for voice mail. It was a cutout. He had no idea who would pick up the message or how they would pass it along.

  “Gol ghermez,” he said in Farsi, and clicked off. Red rose; the signal for success.

  He removed the SIM card from the phone, put on gloves, wiped both the phone and the SIM with a sterile wipe to remove any trace of fingerprints or DNA, then tossed the phone into a trash can. When he got down into the city, he would get rid of the SIM.

  Scale took a deep breath then, enjoying the view. A little blond boy, perhaps two or three years old, looked up at him. After a moment the boy smiled. He smiled back, and the boy shyly pressed his face against his mother’s leg. He’d done it, he thought. The flash drives would be sent via DHL to a post office box in Madrid. There would be two days of watching TV in the apartment on Gutenbergstrasse till things eased up, then a train and the next mission.

  The Gardener would be pleased.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nairobi,

  Kenya

  “Why here? Place stinks of curry,” Soames said. He was a big man with a linebacker’s shoulders and short fair hair that didn’t disguise a bald spot. Harris’s pit bull, Rabinowich called him. Scorpion didn’t think much of Blake Soames, All-American Boy, and he trusted his boss, Bob Harris, deputy director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, even less. “And flies,” brushing one away. “I hate Indian food. We could’ve met at the Norfolk.”

  They were sitting in the back of a small shop in the Diamond Plaza mall in the Parklands district. Before connecting, Scorpion had watched from across the street to make sure Soames hadn’t been followed. The shop sold pirated DVDs and video games, and Scorpion had bribed the owner to disappear for a half hour. A waiter from one of the chicken tikka restaurants—“Please welcome good sir, better than chowpatty,” grabbing at Scorpion when he first entered the open-air food court—had brought them cold bottles of Tusker beer. He kept trying to get them to order till Scorpion shoved a hundred shilling tipu in his hand and he left.