The FSB operatives in Maracaibo’s orders were to secure a fast yacht and immediately sail across the choppy waters of the Caribbean Sea at best possible sea to the northwest. Their destination was the same as the commandos coming via air from the north; an archipelago in northern Panama called Bocas del Toro.
Neither the GRU commandos nor the FSB operations officers knew that the FSB rezident in Caracas had initiated the entire chain of events the day before. He had been told by friendly officials in Venezuela’s General Counterintelligence Office that the federal police would begin rounding up men and women across the city. It was explained that an American traitor had given the Venezuelan embassy in Washington a list of thirty-three names of CIA agents in Venezuela, in exchange for quick and safe passage out of the United States. Further, the GCIO executive relayed with excitement that the traitor soon intended to pass a second list of names, those of spies working against Venezuela in its embassies abroad.
When the FSB man in Caracas contacted the Russian embassy in Moscow seeking confirmation of this wild story, he was told the FSB had just learned through a highly placed intelligence source in the U.S. government that the American FBI was looking for a National Security Council staff member named Ethan Ross who had just fled the country, possibly after murdering his girlfriend and a pair of FBI agents who had been pursuing him. Also, rumors were circulating that he was on the run with a large digital cache of top-secret documents.
At first the FSB man in Caracas was skeptical; this sounded like some sort of American disinformation campaign. How could one man walk out of Washington with such a treasure trove of intelligence? But the GCIO officer showed Ethan Ross’s list of Venezuelan spies to the FSB rezident, and the Russian knew he was dealing with a real intelligence leak. Although the actual names of the agents weren’t listed—they were given code names—the files described positions held, job titles, relationships with known personalities, and other recognizable aspects, so the agent’s true identities were easy to discern. The Russian immediately recognized some of the positions as legitimate spies for America that the FSB had already identified but left in place.
The rezident was on the phone with Moscow within moments of getting this confirmation, and he was ordered by FSB leadership to pressure the Venezuelans to hand over the entire intelligence scrape as soon as the American was in Caracas. The rezident himself suggested to the GCIO they inject the American with SP-117, a Russian developed “truth serum” drug that would, in theory, anyway, ensure he gave up the password for his data, but the Venezuelans rebuked the Russians, claiming the American would be kept at a safe house in Panama until the arrests were complete and the time was right to bring him into the country.
The FSB knew any American traitor with intelligence on his person of the nature this man allegedly had was a rapidly depreciating asset. The Americans would come after him hard and fast, they would find him in days if not hours, and they would do what they needed to do to close the compromise. The FSB rezident in Caracas conferred urgently over secure comms with Lubyanka, the FSB’s headquarters in Moscow, and the decision was made to obtain the files via active measures. Executing the operation in Panama would be diplomatically preferable to doing it in Venezuela, and fooling the Venezuelans into thinking the Russian commandos sent on the mission were, in fact, Americans, would be better still.
The FSB rezident thought it to be something of a miracle that this decision had been rendered in only twenty-four hours, but by the time the green light came for the Spetsnaz commandos in Managua, one thing was clear: The Russians were coming for Ethan Ross, they wanted the man and his files, and they planned on leaving no trace back to Moscow of their act.
IT HAD BEEN a long and dismal day for Dominic Caruso. He’d avoided a cruel sunburn by staying under the edge of the rainforest canopy tucked inside a large fern, but he felt like he’d come damn close to heat exhaustion during the afternoon. He’d been bitten by ants and mosquitoes and crawled on by spiders and stared at by a sloth and a howler monkey.
And shortly before dusk this evening he’d had an experience that he knew would someday bring laughs from the rest of his team of operatives at The Campus.
A toucan had actually shit on his back from its perch in the oak above him. At the time, a two-man guard patrol had been nearby on the lawn, so Dominic just lay there and took the splatter. When he finally did get a chance to try and wipe it off he saw he was covered in red, as if the bird had been eating a steady diet of wild berries.
Dom would have laughed himself, had he been in the mood. But he wasn’t because through all today’s effort and misery he had yet to see any hint of Ethan Ross.
Just before dusk he did see one man who did not look like he belonged here at the mansion. A small, dark-complexioned individual who wore blue jeans in the ninety-degree heat stood on the veranda for several minutes talking on a mobile phone. Through the binoculars Dom made out short hair and a very young-looking face, and hiding in the brush fifty yards he away put the man at no older than twenty-five.
Dom pulled out a camera and took a few long-range shots, but the distance and the fading light made them all but worthless. After a lengthy phone call small man returned to the cool of the house and shut the door behind him.
Dominic decided to change his position after six hours without any sighting of anyone other than the obvious guard force. He left the majority of his gear in his hide—after pinpointing it with a GPS waypoint, and began moving laterally to the west toward the back of the property.
He found a new temporary hide with a view of the swimming pool and the wraparound balcony at the rear of the house. When he was sure he was well hidden in deep tropical shrubs under the canopy of the rainforest, he pulled out his binoculars and scanned the windows. Unlike in the back, several of the curtains here were open, and he could see one man moving around, back and forth, on the second floor.
Probably another guard, Dom determined, but he liked this position nonetheless and decided to wait until dark when there would be a better view inside the lighted rooms and hallways of the property.
Shortly before ten-thirty in the evening, a breeze picked up and Dom smelled the approach of rain in the air. He decided he’d go back to his original hide site, it had better coverage, and he had a light poncho stored in his backpack he could use in the case of a serious downpour, but just as he put down his binoculars he saw movement on the veranda. Quickly he brought the glass back to his eyes, and he saw a blond-haired man with a wineglass in his hand, standing against the railing and looking out over the swimming pool. He clutched what looked like a closed laptop computer under his arm.
Dom scanned the man up and down. He couldn’t really make out his face because he was standing out of the light. “Is that you, Ross?” he whispered to himself. It was impossible to be certain at eighty yards’ distance, even with the binoculars.
He grabbed his camera and got a few inconclusive shots, then he took more pictures when a female with long and curly black hair came through the French doors behind the blond man. She carried a glass in one hand and a wine bottle in the other. Even at a distance, Dom could detect a wide smile on her face. She hugged the blond-haired man, awkwardly, because her hands were full, and the man just continued looking out over the back of the property like she wasn’t there.
Dom willed the blond-haired man to step back into the light and face in his direction. Eventually a large man in a cream-colored suit and a brown mustache stepped out onto the veranda, and with his gesticulations Dom could tell the man was beckoning the others back indoors. He focused the binoculars on the blond, who finally did turn back to the French doors and step through them while talking to the big man in the cream-colored suit. As he did this, he walked into the light and faced the rainforest on the eastern side of the property. There, eighty yards away and invisible in the darkness beyond the lawn, Dominic Caruso lay under a fern with binoculars to his eyes.
It was Ross.
Softly, Dom said,
“Nice to see you again, asshole. You think you’re safe here? You might be safe from Albright, you might even be safe from me. But you aren’t safe from Shayetet Thirteen.”
Ethan Ross disappeared behind the doors and the light on the veranda snapped off.
35
DOMINIC MADE IT BACK to his primary hide site just before midnight. He planned on calling David to let him know that he had positively identified Ross, but the rain clouds had completely obscured the moon and taken every bit of the natural light Ethan planned on using to traverse the jungle. Instead, he found that the only way he could move was by keeping dangerously close to the lawn of the safe house. Even though the main house’s lights didn’t reach all the way to the rainforest on the edge, some ambient light made it this far, so Dom used the faint glow to find his way back toward the water and his hide.
Now back in place and secure, he pulled out his sat phone, ready to call in Israeli special forces. But before he could make the call, the phone vibrated in his hand and the low-light screen came alive with one word: ALBRIGHT.
This was interesting. Albright calling him? Dom answered in a voice just above a whisper. “Actually, Darren, this is kind of a bad time.”
The line hissed and crackled. Dom assumed the rain clouds were interfering with his signal. Albright’s tone was sharp despite the distortion. “That is interesting. A couple of days ago you were bugging the shit out of me, and now you’ve suddenly found something better to do. Well, I won’t keep you, I just thought I would let you know before you see it on the news.”
“Let me know what?”
“Ethan Ross has stolen something in the neighborhood of six hundred eighty thousand files out of Intelink-TS. Sensitive compartmented intelligence documents relating to CIA assets all over the world.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He perpetrated a one-hundred-twenty-gig intel scrape the day before yesterday. He used Eve Pang’s credentials and logged on to a virtual private network, used some sort of a crawler that knew just where to go and what to look for. Forensics is still trying to reconstruct the breach so we can figure out exactly what he has, but it has been characterized to me as, and I’m quoting the techs here, ‘pretty much everything.’”
“Oh, God.”
“The two missing SSG guys turned up floating in the Potomac riddled with bullet holes. And a body that was shot up and torched in a Richmond hotel room the other day has been ID’d as another government IT guy. An ex–NSA employee named Phillip McKell. This murder looks like it is somehow related.”
Dom just laid his head on the wet ground. “This keeps getting bigger, doesn’t it?”
“You’re damn right it does. And that’s not the worst of it,” Albright continued. “Now it looks like Ross has run off to Venezuela.”
Dom lifted his head and cleared his throat softly. “Why do you say that?”
“Our CIA liaison has come to us at FBI to let us know that Agency proxy assets in Caracas are getting snatched off the street. We’re talking about somewhere around two dozen, just in the past forty-eight hours.”
That’s it, Dom thought to himself. Payback to the Venezuelans to get him out of the country. Before he could say anything, Albright continued.
“We checked some static cams we have set up to monitor the Venezuelan embassy on Thomas Jefferson here in D.C., and we see Ross walking into the front door the day before yesterday, right about the time the surveillance officers went missing. We figure he gave Venezuela intel from the scrape so they would help get him out of town. In the process, either Ross or the Venezuelans killed Phillip McKell, Eve Pang, and two FBI surveillance officers. We’ve got to assume he’s down in Caracas right now.”
Dominic’s brain executed a multitude of calculations in the next few seconds. He tabulated all the pros and cons, and decided to tell Albright almost everything he knew. “I’ve got some intel you can use.”
“I kinda hoped you might.”
Dom said, “Ross is in Panama. Bocas del Toro Province. An island called Bastimentos.”
If Albright expected that Caruso might have something for him, he certainly didn’t expect this. “I beg your pardon?”
“He is under the protection of Venezuelan intelligence officers. He’s being held at a safe house about a half-hour boat ride from the airport.”
After several seconds with nothing but the pops and cracks of the sat-phone connection, Albright replied, “If you don’t tell me how you know this, I am going to make the very small and very reasonable leap that you are, in fact, working with Ethan Ross.”
“You know that is asinine.”
“Probably so. But I’m going to fuck with you anyhow. You are impeding my investigation.”
“You have been holding on to information about my suspect. You are impeding my investigation.”
“Damn it, Albright, I just told you where your suspect is hiding. That is exactly the opposite of impeding your investigation.” Dom took a calming breath. Did his best to look at it through Albright’s eyes. “I know because the Israelis told me.”
“What Israelis?”
“The guys who want Ross for his role in Arik Yacoby’s death.”
“Any chance I could sit down with these Israelis and have a little friendly chat?”
“I doubt it. Anyway, they have me at the tip of the spear right now. I know more than they do.”
“How is that?”
“I’ve got eyes on the safe house as we speak.”
Albright’s tone turned even darker and more accusatory. “You are in Panama?”
“Yep.”
“You are in pretty fucking deep, aren’t you, Caruso?”
“Hey, man, no law against a private citizen taking a trip down to sunny Central America.” As he said it, the rain began to fall again.
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re down there with your spook friends with a plan to kill Ross.”
“I keep telling you. No spook friends. I am down here with a hot blonde who could kick both our asses, but she’s no spook.” Dom cracked a half-smile, wiping water from his eyes as he did so. “She’s just a stewardess.”
Albright obviously didn’t know what to make of this comment, but he did not, for a moment, think it was true. He was fixated on the fact Caruso might be on a kill mission. “Listen to me very, very carefully. Whatever you and your friends have planned for Ross . . . this is a game changer.
“Ethan Ross very likely has the scrape with him right this minute. You kill him, and we might lose access to it. It’s out there in the wind somewhere, and we have to get it back.”
Dom said, “He’s got a laptop with him. I saw it.”
“That might be it, then. If not that, it could be put on a portable hard drive.”
“How do you know he hasn’t already handed it off to someone?”
“We don’t know. But this last-minute scrape wasn’t designed to go unnoticed. It has all the markings of someone trying to give himself a bargaining position. To steal data because he knew we were onto him so he’d have something to barter with. We think he’ll keep it with him at all times. He knows computers and has the expertise to encrypt the files to where they are worthless to anyone else without his password.”
Dom wanted to kill the son of a bitch in that house lit up across the dark lawn, or at least help the Israelis do it, but he knew now that killing Ross without getting the scrape back would endanger the lives of American assets all over the world.
Fuck. Things just got complicated.
He understood the ramifications of that type of intelligence product loose in the wind. He’d play by Albright’s rules.
“Okay. I’ll hang tight where I am and help you guys get it back. I’ll text you the coordinates as soon as we’re off the phone. How long till you are down here?”
“I’ll get a fly team from HRT together and get the paperwork in motion. It’s four-plus hours in the air direct with fixedwing to Panama City. We’ll need to meet up w
ith helos that can take us to his actual location. It might be after dawn before we get there.”
“I’ll keep an eye out till then,” Dom said.
“Not alone you won’t. We’ll get you some support. We’re friendly with the Panamanian Public Forces, I can make a call and—”
“Look, it’s your show, but I wouldn’t do that.”
“And why not?”
“I’ve seen Panamanian police patrol boats cruising up and down the waterway by this safe house all day long. I think it’s possible the local cops are getting paid by Venezuelans to keep an eye out.”
Albright understood the quandary. “Shit. And even if we talk to the federal cops, there’s no way to be sure they won’t let the wrong thing slip to the local cops, and Ross might well disappear again.”
“Bingo,” said Dom. “Maybe you guys should just haul ass down here and raid this place. I haven’t seen more than a halfdozen guards outside. I assume there are at least that number inside, but if you come in with enough shock and awe first thing tomorrow when everyone is tired you can wrap up Ethan Ross and his scrape.”
Albright said, “It would make me feel better if you went ahead and admitted you did have some other spook friends with you.”
“There are no other guys, Albright.”
The FBI man sighed. “I’ll send special agents from the FBI office in Panama City your way. It’s just a couple of guys who investigate bank fraud, but I want Bureau control of your operation.”
Dom said, “I have no idea what kind of time we have. The Venezuelans might move him at any time.”
“It’s important that you and your guys keep eyes on him and do not try to take him yourselves.”
Dom sighed. He was tired of repeating himself that he wasn’t down here with the CIA. He said, “Okay, I’ll pass the word down to the rest of my brigade to stand fast.”
“Smart ass,” Albright mumbled before hanging up.