CHAPTER 74

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

October

SMITTY WATCHED HIS TROOP chief huddled in conference with their squadron commander. The squadron commander was new to XXX but he seemed like a good-enough guy. Smitty could tell that his troop chief was mentoring the cake-eater into his new role. Officers just rented lockers at this command; enlisted assaulters ran the show.

As leader of one of the four assault teams split between two aircraft and four boats that would jump in to take control of the motor vessel Shore Thing to capture/kill Syrian general Qusim Yedid, Smitty took a breath and thought through the contingencies for the next phases of the operation. He had done more than a few ship-boarding operations in the Northern Arabian Gulf to enforce the UN embargo on Iraq just prior to the U. S. invasion in 2003, but this was the first time he would do it as part of his current command. What if a boat burned in? Aside from being a multimillion-dollar loss, it would not be the end of the mission. They could lose two boats and still accomplish their task. What if, God forbid, an operator burned in? Two boats would stay to recover the body with minimal assaulters while the other two moved to the target vessel. They would still get it done. They would owe that to their fallen brother. His troops carried an assortment of HK 416s and MP7s. The breachers had torches and saws but those heavier tools would stay on the assault craft; intel suggested that Benelli shotguns set up to breach should be able to get them through any doors on the expensive yacht.

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Underway Maritime Interdiction Operations were a prime mission set for this elite unit. If there was an opposed boarding that needed to be done to protect the national security of the United States, Naval Special Warfare Development Group got the call. The warriors in its esteemed ranks were the most highly trained in the U. S. arsenal, and though most of their missions since the towers fell had been against land-based targets, they kept their ship-boarding skills sharp.

• • •

It had been years since Dr. Rob Belanger had fired a weapon and he didn’t have so much as a handgun on him tonight. He didn’t know much about boats, nor had he ever jumped out of a plane, certainly not at night into the ocean. Tipping the scales at 140 pounds with a thick mane of graying unkempt hair and a smile that kept those around him wondering what he was thinking, he had established himself as one of the CIA’s best interrogators. The U. S. Air Force had paid for his medical school along with follow-on training in neuroscience. Rob had started working his way up the military medical corps chain when the world changed forever on a sunny Tuesday morning.

With the country’s appetite for retribution at a peak after the brazen attack on the homeland, administration lawyers issued a classified memo giving the CIA authority to research, test, and evaluate interrogation techniques that went beyond those labeled “enhanced. ” Those techniques would be the subject of scrutiny in Op-Eds, debated on panels, and argued on the political and legal fronts for years to come. At the recommendation of the head of neurosurgery for the Air Force, Rob found himself detailed to a covert CIA research facility buried four stories underground in the arid mountains outside Monterrey, Mexico. While pundits, politicians, activists, and talking heads were focused on sleep deprivation and stress positions of detainees held at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Rob and his team of doctors were experimenting, studying, refining, and documenting the most effective and efficient ways to extract information from the most senior and hardened al-Qaeda prisoners.

Whatever mixed emotions Dr. Belanger had felt about the coupling of politics and ethics beneath the Mexican soil were guided by his devotion to country. He didn’t want to cause these prisoners any undue pain, the key word being undue. To Dr. Belanger it was like the challenge of a complex puzzle: how could he extract the necessary information from a religious fanatic, causing him the least amount of pain possible while ensuring that the intelligence gleaned was accurate and reliable? He couldn’t pick up a weapon and charge into battle in defense of his country, but he could help the war effort in a different way, and the doctor intended to do just that.

With the change in administration and the nation feeling the fatigue of what some had termed “the Long War, ” Dr. Belanger was reassigned to the medical staff of the CIA in Northern Virginia. The interrogation files from the team’s experiments in Mexico existed only in hard copy in the depths of a vault deep in the bowels of an off-site medical clinic with no discernable clientele. It existed in name only as a shell corporation for a company that didn’t exist.

As one of only a few doctors in the United States with the knowledge and experience to extract information from a noncompliant subject, Dr. Belanger was a valuable commodity. On very rare occasions, he would pack a Pelican hard case with the tools of his vocation and be flown to a foreign country to ply his trade. This was the first time he would be jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. He knew he could not be in better hands than those of the SEAL senior chief seated next to him, but he was still nervous. Who wouldn’t be? He wasn’t even a very good swimmer.

The doctor’s black hard case would be jumped in by another SEAL. He would be reunited with it once the assaulters had secured what he heard them refer to as the VOI, or Vessel of Interest. Then it would be his turn to work.

Dr. Belanger watched as the SEALs went into what looked to him like the well-rehearsed movements of a Team that knew their business. Chutes were donned, weapons and gear secured, then double- and triple-checked by teammates to ensure multiple sets of eyes were inspecting every detail of the lifesaving equipment that would guide them safely into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

The doctor stood and turned around as his harness was clipped to the tandem rig of the large SEAL next to him. His life was now in the hands of the blond-bearded Viking he’d met only hours earlier. There was nothing he could do now but consign himself to fate.

The roar was deafening even through his foam ear protection, as the ramp of the C-17 opened to the unforgiving elements. With the adrenaline, Dr. Belanger felt something that he hadn’t experienced since the early days of the war when the first al-Qaeda prisoner was delivered by a team of CIA operatives: purpose.

A gray pilot chute shot from the palletized assault boat, violently pulling it from the cargo hold and out into the night. No sooner had the first boat been pulled from view than the second followed closely after. Dr. Belanger knew a second C-17 would be going through the same sequence right behind them just like he’d been told in a quick brief in the hangar before they launched. As his jumper moved with him closer to the open door, he barely noticed the steady stream of assaulters and boat drivers piling out the back of the aircraft in quick succession, following their sleek high-speed assault crafts falling from the sky.

The edge of the ramp was suddenly before him and they stepped off into the abyss.

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