Tim's glance around the SCIF reveals three facts:
- The sound-deadening within the compartment is excellent. Probably enough to swallow a suppressed gunshot if the door is closed and the engines are running.
- Speaking of: there's a corner lockbox that's definitely sized for a pistol. Considering that things on airplanes are usually there for a good reason, there must have been at least one scenario with an aggressor on board. Not the kind of thought that puts you at ease.
- When Operations absentmindedly brushes her hair behind her ears, it becomes obvious that her left earlobe is almost entirely missing - and that she's wearing some sort of hearing aid in that ear. Not a tactical earbud, not earpro - a no-shit hearing aid. Tim's been around enough musicians to tell that.
And on that notion, it's off to smokes, instant coffee and whole grain ham-and-pickle sandwiches.
---
Somewhere over the deep blue seas where the Gulf of Oman turns into the Arabian Sea - or vice versa - the team is asked back into the SCIF, where Operations has wrapped up her collation of the known intel. As soon as the door is closed, she launches right into her shpiel and brings up a presentation on the wall-mounted screen. Death by Powerpoint - so far, so US government.
"Alright, here's where we are," she begins, clicking a button on a small black remote in her right palm.
The first thing that pops onto the otherwise white screen is a big red question mark labelled 'RoI'.
"At the top, we have a group that Brahmvir Singh calls 'Renewal of Islam'. As I'm sure you can imagine, you can't exactly Google a name like that. I've got my best analyst back home going through our spiderweb of Al Queda affiliates and their shells, but even she hadn't heard of those guys. I take that to mean they haven't blipped on our radar before. So they're either really smart, really new or Singh's lying his ass off - a possibility I'm not willing to eliminate, given the circumstances of this revelation. The plan here is to turn him over to our HVT unit. They'll meet us when we land at Thumrait, take custody of him and then get him out of the line of fire to your standard-issue undisclosed location. I expect we'll have the results of their interrogation in a couple of days."
A red line appears under the question mark, tracing its way to Brahmvir Singh.
"Proceeding under the assumption that this Renewal of Islam actually exists...Brahmvir Singh claims to have had contact with them, and they subcontracted AQIS to carry out the bombings."
A box appears around Brahmvir Singh, labelled "
Al Queda in the Indian Subcontinent", with matching Arabic script beneath.
"AQIS is a relative newcomer to the scene, a conglomerate of previously separate Jihadist cells united by Brahmvir Singh in 2014. They've carried out smaller-scale attacks and bombings before, but as such things go, we considered them merely a subfaction of the TTP, the
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan."
A box labelled TTP appears to the side of the connection between RoI and AQIS, then lines are drawn between TTP and the other two, both topped with question marks.
"Whether AQIS's work for RoI indicates that RoI controls TTP or competes with them or is some unknown intermediary between TTP and AQIS, we don't know yet. Al Queda and the Taliban have never had the clearest sense of who's actually in charge where, and this isn't helped by copycats and spinoffs all doing their own thing and jockeying for power and influence. TTP's merely the biggest fish in that particular small pond, maybe even the most powerful organization left when it comes to
AfPak as a whole. This is something we'll have to untangle as we go. Which means we're following Standard Operating Procedure - roll it up from the bottom."
Another line shoots out of AQIS to the left, connecting it to a picture of Varayev.
"Edil Varayev," Operations says. "Now there's a world-class scumbag with excellent credentials in gunrunning and supporting sectarian violence. Now, if you're not up to speed on your post-Soviet Caucasus politics - and I don't blame you if you aren't - then you ought to know that Chechnya is a hotspot for the
Caucasus Emirate. They're radical even for a country where the President has come out in favor of
honor killings. Just the fact that Varayev supports them should tell you everything you need to know about Varayev and the CE. Anyway, turns out that AQIS has been reaching out to a bunch of Chechnyan radicals recently, and whether on their own or with the help of RoI, they got in touch with Varayev. Who, we're assuming, is ultimately behind the theft of untagged SEMTEX from Ukrainian arsenals earlier this month, the subject of Chief Blake's investigation for the
KIWC. Now,
Explosia has publicly maintained that they've tagged everything they made since 1991, so either they're lying about the tagging, lying about the shelf life of SEMTEX...or somebody else cooked imitation plastique that ended up in a Ukrainian arsenal, and they just called it SEMTEX to hide what it really was. Not liking either of those three."
A line rises from Varayev to another box, this one labelled "Russian partners?".
"Now, notably, we're talking about an arsenal on the Crimean peninsula," Operations says. "Russian-occupied territory. And the Russians were in no hurry to confirm any information about the stolen explosives to ONI. These guys held up the strike mission for three weeks, and from what our contacts in ONI and State tell us, they're still playing dumb even after the bombings. I don't know if there are elements of the Russians who are working with RoI, or if they were just caught flatfooted by Varayev stealing stuff from under their noses, but either way they're stonewalling us and trying to cover things up."
A line is drawn between "Russian partners?" and "RoI" with another question mark superimposed. Then, a circle appears connected to Varayev, labelled "Laptop".
"What we know thanks to the tracker on Varayev's laptop is that he made it to
Indira Gandhi International and got on the next KLM flight to Amsterdam," Operations says. "Our analysts have reason to believe that this is his final destination for now. He has a secure apartment downtown where he will likely lay low. I expect that China - the
MSS, to be precise - is coming to the same conclusions. We have one major advantage over them - we have the key device that is needed to decrypt the laptop's data. Luc here says the tracker is just that, a tracker, not a logger or a phreaker, so the MSS has nothing on what’s inside the laptop. That said, the MSS is nothing to sneeze at, boys, and they have one major advantage over us, too: Varayev probably knows that we have the key. The laptop without the key is practically worthless to him, but it would give MSS leverage against us. Meaning that he might make a deal for it with the MSS, cutting himself out of their investigation and maybe even earning some money on the side, and then we're really stuck. We might work out something with the MSS eventually for shared custody of the intel, but that'll make getting cooperation from the Russians look easy. Or Varayev might destroy the laptop, figuring better safe than sorry, but I expect he'll want to contact someone at AQIS first, and we've bagged their leader. This won't keep them isolated forever, though. Either way, as long as we don't have the laptop, Varayev and AQIS have time to cover their tracks. Boys, this is time I don't want them to have. I want that laptop in our hands, pronto."
Another box appears. This one is another big question mark, labelled simply "
Woman on motorcycle". No connecting lines to anything.
"And now we're into the
really loose ends part of the presentation," Operations says. "This...person came after Agent Barstow right after he broke contact from Mason's interruption of Varayev's deal with Singh. No name, no biometrics, no affiliations - we've got nothing on her. And I don't like knowing nothing about people who are trying to kill us. We need to figure out her deal."
Another box for Amrita, again without any lines.
"Amrita Bhaduri," Operations says. "That had to get messy. She was at one point on the payroll of pretty much everyone who wanted to get something done in the region, often two or three clients at a time. The CIA used her as a fixer a couple of times, which is where I'm guessing you learned about her, Mason. In any event, she was obviously double-booked both on your little op and for somebody who didn't want our friend Brahmvir Singh to survive his captivity. Whether she was RoI's backup plan, or working for someone else entirely...there's the rub, as the Bard would say. She's too dead to ask, but her being in the right place at the right time to kill Singh after you captured him doesn't sit well with me at all. I'm not a big believer in coincidences. Let's figure out her other client, too."
A line from Amrita to a box labelled "Kill Squads?"
"These guys seemed to be working with Bhaduri when they came after Mason and his buddies," Operations says. "Their gear screams
National Security Guard, but how they got mixed up in all this, I don't know. If AQIS or RoI has suborned the Indian government, we're in even deeper shit than I thought. On the other hand, this might be a false flag op, but whenever someone puts on a show, you have to ask yourself, who's the audience? What were they trying to do by sending NSG operators - or people who look like them - after you?"
One more box without lines. This one features the blond guy Blake killed in the bike repair shop, labelled "
Geraint Reese".
"I'm not sure there's a Wikipedia page for Notable Welsh Terrorists, but Reese would have been on it," Operations says. "Demolitions expert for hire. Probably our man for the Delhi U bomb. Again, too dead to ask him now. He almost certainly build the smaller device that Blake disarmed, which I expect is now in the custody of the Delhi police. He might have prepared the Islamabad devices, too. What interests me here are three things: one, did Reese build all those bombs, and if so, did he do it alone? Two, do those devices account for all of the stolen SEMTEX, and if not, how much is still in the wind? Three, was he working directly for AQIS or did he have ties to RoI - and if so, can we trace whoever paid him to RoI?"
Operations takes a breath.
"We've got a lot on our plate, boys," she says. "So, the ground rules, one more time. For the duration of this investigation, you'll all be answering directly to me and
only me. No side deals, no going behind my back - you won’t enjoy it if you do. I'm delegating final action authority to you, so wherever this takes you, you go with my blessing - for whatever that's worth out there. I can't hand out any Get Out Of Jail Free cards, but if you get in trouble, I'll do my best to get you out again. Whatever you do, don't compromise the mission, don't compromise Wildcard, don't compromise your team - in that order. Anything you need, I can probably get - but we are on a clock here, so I expect you boys to make do as best as you can. You lie, cheat, steal and kill, I don't care. But you find the people behind this, and you take them down for good. Questions?"
Gatac
