our station chief in Bucharest is working with their national police force, but honestly, I’m not optimistic.”
“Do you have any theories?”
“Smart money says they grabbed her as a consolation prize when the attack on you and Raife failed, but there’s something else, something darker.”
“What?” Reece asked.
“After the accusations and evidence of Russian intelligence meddling in our elections, infiltrating social media platforms to influence our political process, the director is not in the mood to play games with them. The power vacuum left by the assassination of their president has their intelligence agencies running wild without adult supervision. Financial crimes, the election meddling, it’s like we’re back in the Cold War but without the rules. We’ve done a deep dive on their leadership, particularly Aleksandr Zharkov. Our cyber capabilities are impressive, thanks to some help from Silicon Valley. We all know that there is human trafficking that’s being facilitated through the Dark Web, and we’ve found evidence tying Zharkov to brokering humans as prey for trophy hunting. For a half a million dollars, you get to hunt what they call ‘criminals destined for the gallows.’ ”
“ ‘The Most Dangerous Game.’ ”
“Exactly. Our records show that Zharkov is a big hunter type, shot animals all over the world while posted overseas for the SVR. At some point, his tastes crossed over from four-legged to two-legged game. You know what Hemingway said, ‘Once you’ve hunted man…’ ”
“That all squares with what I found out on my end.”
“Oh, really?” Vic asked with renewed interest.
“Do you think that Aleksandr blows his father’s op so that he can have a crack at me and Raife?”
“That’s my own pet theory, yes.”
“And he’s using Hanna for the bait.”
Vic nodded.
“That confirms what I learned in a conversation with a recently deceased Russian mobster.”
“I am going to pretend I believe it was just a conversation,” Vic said.
“Now your intel is confirmed via my HUMINT. What are our next steps?”
“The director is preparing a presidential finding that would authorize a hostage rescue mission. She thinks the connection to you and Freddy, and the attempted assassination, will help sway the president. He’s not running for reelection and if we can convince him that this won’t start World War III, I think we have a chance. You did save his life after all.”
“Even so, he’s not going to green-light a hostage rescue on Russian soil.”
“Don’t be so sure. The operators will all use AKs to make it look like it’s a Russian criminal syndicate hit on the son of bratva leadership, just enough plausible deniability and confusion to make this a nonattributable action. Believe me, if you knew half the classified history of this place, you’d know this is one of the most sane paramilitary operations the CIA has ever proposed. If denied, we’ll have no choice but to pass it to Alpha Group via diplomatic channels.”
“Alpha Group? Vic, we do that and she’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Who’s got it from our side? [Redacted]?”
“The [XXX] commander has two COAs,” Vic continued, using the acronym for courses of action. “The first is SEALs from [Redacted] jumping into the Pacific just south of the Bering Sea to link up with an amphib. From there they head south to rendezvous with a submarine carrying a platoon from SDV1 on a [Redacted X X X X X]. They’ll come from the sea, hit the lodge, and extract back out to sea just like we’ve done with [XXX] [Redacted] [Redacted] in the past. It’s a proven COA.”
“Even with the AK ploy, if someone goes down and gets left behind, facial recognition technology will confirm it was us.”
“That will be fully explained to the president.”
“What’s COA 2?”
“The [XXX] commander is an Army general so he wants [XXX] in on the action as well,” Vic said, using one of the nicknames for the Army’s [Redacted X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X], better known to the public as [Redacted]. “Second COA is to launch [XXX] in MH-X Black Hawks from an amphib. In and out.”
“Riskier COA,” Reece observed, remembering the Army helicopter that went down on his last Afghanistan deployment.
“True. We are pushing for COA 1 but it will take a couple days longer to get that one in motion. We are lucky that SDV was deployed for a [Redacted]. Part of their work-up is the [Redacted X X X X X X X X X X X X