Bucks and does; it was a coed force.
Boston was in Florida at the moment, putting their recruits through their paces. They had twenty-four newbie “shooters” or Whiplash troopers, drawn mostly from active military commands, each with different specialties and strengths. Eventually Danny planned to have some forty-eight troopers to form the core of a covert strike force. They could be deployed as a group, or work in very small teams, depending on the assignment. Whiplash technology would increase their effectiveness exponentially.
Danny took a sip of the coffee — it was perfect, naturally — then walked down the hall to the conference room.
“Colonel, good morning,” said Jonathon Reid. Reid was the CIA director’s liaison to the project, Breanna’s equivalent in authority. As the lines of responsibility went, Reid was in charge of operations for the specific missions, while Breanna’s ultimate say was over strategic and funding issues. But as a practical matter, their responsibilities were shared. Reid had the immediate access to intelligence as well as the people who commissioned the ops. Breanna, as a member of the Pentagon, held sway over most of the personnel, and thus the means for completing the mission. Though in many respects they were opposites, they worked together remarkably well.
Danny took a seat at the conference table across from Nuri Abaajmed Lupo, nodding at him as he sat down. Nuri was a CIA officer who’d preceded him into the program — the first and for a short time only member of Whiplash. He was young but extremely capable, as he’d shown in Africa and Iran. Nuri did, however, have some difficulty dealing with the fact that Danny was the one in charge. He was also used to working alone.
“Now that we’re all here, we can begin,” said Reid. “Screen.”
A screen appeared above the center of the table. It was another projection.
“The man on the ground in a pool of blood is the deputy defense minister of Poland,” said Reid. His voice was dry and raspy. “You may remember seeing something about it in the daily intel briefings. That’s the ministry behind him. Yes, this murder was carried out in broad daylight, inside a secure facility.”
Danny studied the images as the screen changed, showing first the surroundings, then the autopsy photos. Finally he had to look away — something about seeing death treated that clinically turned his stomach.
“You’ll note that the deputy minister was shot in the forehead,” continued Reid. “That wasn’t a sniper shot. It was at close range, with a very distinctive bullet. Something like this.”
Reid reached down to his briefcase and removed a manila envelope. Holding it upside down, he shook out what looked to Danny like a model of a bullet, with a rounded top and in an unusual shade of brown.
“This is a bullet?” said Nuri, picking it up.
“Carbon composite,” said Danny. “Right?”
“Yes, Colonel,” said Reid. “There’s no metal. We imagine that it was fired from a weapon that also had no metal, as whoever fired it had to get past a metal detector.”
Nuri passed the bullet over to Danny.
“This killed him?”
“That’s not the actual bullet, no,” said Reid. “That’s something one of our labs was working on. The actual bullet is in Poland. This is another murder, more recent,” Reid went on, changing the slide. “Yesterday as a matter of fact.”
A new image appeared on the screen. A man lay on a sidewalk, blood around his face and mouth. This time Danny couldn’t see the bullet wound. The picture had been taken at night, and the flash glinted off an unseen window just to the right of the image area. Two other bodies lay on the ground nearby.
“The dead man is named Helmut Dalitz,” continued Reid. “MY-PID, please display Herr Dalitz’s professional dossier.”
The computer complied. MY-PID stood for Massively Parallel Integrated Decision Complex, and referred to the network of interconnected computers and data interfaces that were at the heart of the Whiplash project. Not only did the network of computers provide an integrated database and security system for Room 4, but it also could be used by field ops, who connected via a tiny interface device that looked like an MP3 player.
“This one is a businessman,” said Nuri. “And he’s German. What’s the connection?”
“The only hard connection is the bullet,” said Reid.
“So they were murdered by the same man,” said Danny. “I mean, person.”
“Maybe not the same person,” said Reid, as Breanna slipped into the room and sat down. “But it’s a good bet that the organization is the same. This image was captured by a surveillance camera near the Polish base. We think it’s the killer, or one of the people working with him.”
Danny looked at the photo. It wasn’t exactly much — a figure, estimated by the computer to be six feet one inch tall, approximately 220 pounds — stood sideways in the grainy distance. His face was covered by shadow.
“I don’t even see how you can tell if that’s a man rather than a woman,” said Nuri.
“Wait,” said Reid.
The computer began peeling away the layers, modeling what it thought the man looked like based on the shadow it had seen. It was a generic image, something like the computer-generated models used on online clothing sites when you wanted to buy semitailored clothes.
“So who is this guy?” asked Danny. “Or guys?”
“They’re called the Wolves,” said Breanna. “They’re murderers for hire, and they operate in Europe. The murder in Berlin was an anomaly. It was ordered by a mafia chieftain in Italy. His compatriots wouldn’t authorize the killing, and so rather than cause trouble with them, he reached out to friends in Russia. They have a business arrangement selling stolen vehicles there — he exports them, they sell them.”
Reid picked up the thread again, explaining that the Italian state police had the mafia member under surveillance; their phone taps recorded a conversation with one of his Russian mafiya partners asking for the hit. The price was unusually expensive, but success was guaranteed — three million euros to take down the businessman, and another two million to kill some of his associates.
“Not so coincidentally, the sum coincided with money the Russian owed the mafioso,” added Reid. “He didn’t even try to haggle. He was very angry — in his mind, the businessman had caused his father’s death, and the reluctance of his associates to authorize revenge added insult to injury.”
The Russian had then contacted someone outside of Russia with details. Unfortunately, information had been sent in at least three different messages, all via e-mail. Only one had been recovered — and that was by accident, part of an NSA program aimed at Russian intelligence. But it was enough to connect the murder definitively to the Wolves, even if the bullet hadn’t been recovered.
The Russian contact was subsequently placed under electronic surveillance.
“Unfortunately, he is no longer with us,” continued Reid. “The Italian was not the only person to whom he owed money.”
“So we’re going after criminals now?” asked Nuri.
“The assignment is a little more complicated than that,” said Breanna. “The Russians seem to be hoping to disrupt the NATO meeting in Kiev set for ten days from now. The ministers are supposed to vote on Ukraine’s membership, and the thinking is that this group has been hired to kill some of the ministers supporting the addition.”
“Or members of the Ukrainian government who support membership,” added Reid. “It’s not clear. They have been used for some political assassinations before. Most notably, Deng Pu’s death.”
Deng was a Chinese foreign minister who had opposed a new trade agreement with Russia. After his death — an assignation at his country house outside of Berlin — the treaty was signed.
“We’re still working through the intelligence,” admitted Reid after turning the projection image off. “Simply disrupting the meeting may be the Russians’ primarily goal. And it’s possible they’re not after the entire NATO board. They may just want the possible Ukrainian representatives to it.”
“What do the Ukrainians say?” asked Nuri.
Reid shook his head. “I haven’t a clue whether they’ve been told. I suspect not.”
“Apprehending the Wolves would be beneficial for a lot of reasons independent of NATO,” said Breanna. “They’re pretty dangerous assassins. Think about whom they’ve killed — a Chinese minister, a Polish defense official, a banker. And those are the murders we know about.”
“So where do we start?” asked Danny.
“Berlin,” said Reid. “Find out what information they have on the shooter and see if it can be added to our
