The Gryphon Heist

  “Mitch Rapp and Sydney Bristow have nothing on Talia Inger—CIA rookie spy. James Hannibal has crafted a story slam full of mystery, danger, twists, and turns. Breathless with anticipation, I couldn’t flip the pages fast enough—or bother to stop to breathe. You don’t want to miss this one!”

  Lynette Eason, bestselling, award-winning author of the Blue Justice series

  “A movie-worthy tale of espionage and intrigue. Hannibal has done it again.”

  Steven James, national bestselling author of Every Wicked Man

  “Cutting-edge technology and age-old cons collide in this high-stakes thriller from James R. Hannibal. The Gryphon Heist plunges readers into a world where no one can be trusted, nothing is as it seems, and choosing the wrong side could be catastrophic.”

  Lynn H. Blackburn, award-winning and bestselling author of the Dive Team Investigations series

  “Leap on board The Gryphon Heist and ride the whirlwind of suspense. Don’t let go!”

  DiAnn Mills, author of Burden of Proof, www.DiAnnMills.com

  © 2019 by James R. Hannibal

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1943-2

  Some Scripture used in this book, whether quoted or paraphrased by the characters, is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

  Some Scripture used in this book, whether quoted or paraphrased by the characters, is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Half Title Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

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  Sneak Peek of Chasing the White Lion

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Back Cover

  Chapter

  one

  PRESENT DAY

  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  TALIA INGER CLUTCHED HER SIDE, letting her shoulder fall against the alley wall. The pain had been growing for the last half hour, threatening to overtake her as it had in Windsor.

  Eddie Gupta, her team specialized skills officer, sat cross-legged on the asphalt beside her, hidden from the street by a dumpster defaced with Cyrillic graffiti. He looked up with concern, fingers hovering over a tablet computer. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Talia shoved the pain to the back of her mind. She wouldn’t fail—not again. “Bring up Whisper One. Show me the square.”

  An app expanded to show infrared video of a small city square. A few gray, lukewarm figures drifted across the cold black of the cobblestones. A white heat source flared near the center, blocking out a good bit of the image for a moment before the filters kicked in. The flash subsided to reveal a single individual seated on the edge of a fountain. The hot spot remained where his hand should be for several seconds, then dropped to the ground and was snuffed out, crushed under his heel.

  “There’s Borov.” A hint of British Indian colored Eddie’s accent. “He’s giving us the all-clear signal. Do you remember his code name?”

  Talia shot him a look, and he answered with a sly smile. She remembered everything. Always. Eddie knew that. Her eyes returned to the drone feed. “Escort, Siphon is ready. Move in.”

  “On it, Control,” a young woman replied through Talia’s earpiece. “Moving now.”

  The infrared camera on Eddie’s Whisper nano-drone picked up another gray figure entering the square from the west, moving toward the fountain at a brisk pace. Even from behind the alley dumpster, two streets away, Talia could hear the echoing clop of the linguist’s designer heels on the stones. “Take it easy, Kayla,” she said, using the girl’s name instead of her call sign to be sure she caught her attention. Kayla hated the handle Escort, anyway. “Slow is fast, remember?”

  The linguist slowed her pace to an exaggerated stroll. Talia closed her eyes and shook her head. She should have kept her mouth shut. The abrupt change looked out of place in the quiet square—enough to draw the attention of any local opposition. She held her breath. The pain in her side flared. But no enemy forces stormed in to grab Kayla.

  Alexi Borov’s deep grumble came to her through the comm link—a low, intense string of Belarusian. When he moved to stand, Kayla touched his arm and sat beside him, offering what Talia hoped were whispered assurances of his safety. After a few tense seconds, he nodded. More grumbles. Kayla switched to English. “Two, six, nine, seven.”

  A third player read back the sequence. “Two, six, nine, seven. Black Bag copies. Stand by.”

  In the silence that followed, Eddie glanced up at Talia. She gave him a smile, made thin by her pain. “We’ll make it. It’s been a year. We can last another twenty minutes.”

  One year.

  One year of academics, field craft, and mock missions, knowing everything—fake embassy balls, live-fire exercises, chance meetings with undercover agents in Chestertown—everything was a test. Talia’s only break had been the TGT—the Trainee Grand Tour—which had taken her across four continents in two months, sampling every menial, low-risk job the Agency could offer. And even that had ended in a twenty-page evaluation from six different supervisors. One year of weeding out the chaff.

  Only five candidates remained. Tonight was their fi
nal exam.

  Success hinged on two interconnected objectives: extract a Belarusian scientist from an urban environment and use his access code to steal a device from a corporate lab. They had Siphon in hand. Once Black Bag recovered the device and Talia got them all to the extraction point, the rest was pomp and paperwork. She would pass through the black curtain into the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, better known as the Clandestine Service.

  Scott, the candidate who had read back the numeric sequence, broke the silence on the comms. “Green light, Control. Code one was solid. Black Bag is inside the compound.”

  “Copy.” Talia widened her eyes at Eddie in a here we go look. “Escort, Siphon’s info is genuine. Get him to the bridge.”

  Eddie tapped the screen again. The first window shrank to half its size and a second window labeled WHISPER TWO opened beside it, giving them a bird’s-eye view of a walled compound. Four L-shaped office buildings surrounded a flat bunker. Two gray figures, her teammates Hannah and Scott acting together as Black Bag, slipped through a gate in the south wall and crouch-ran to the shadows of the nearest structure. Another pair casually strolled in their direction, leaving the central bunker. None of the candidates knew what waited inside that bunker, the infamous Sanctum. No graduate had ever revealed the answer. They were spies, after all, and what good were spies who couldn’t keep secrets?

  “Black Bag, two guards are headed your way. Use the eastern approach.”

  “Copy. Black Bag is moving east. We’ll be at the door in minutes, Control. We need the second code.”

  Talia gave Kayla a chance to reply, but the linguist was busy. She and Borov had stopped at the exit from the square, arguing in whispered Belarusian.

  “Escort?”

  “Siphon says the western street will be watched.” Kayla turned north, letting the mock scientist take the lead. “He knows a better route, to the south.”

  Eddie opened his mouth to protest, but Talia held up a hand to quiet him. She called up a map of the city in her head and looked for a route to the bridge. It would work. “That’s fine, Escort. Tell him we need the second code, though.”

  “He says we’ll get it when we’re out of danger.”

  “Great.” Scott’s usual pessimism came in loud and clear. “So we play hide-and-seek with armed guards until Siphon gets a warm, fuzzy feeling inside? Escort, shove your gun in his ear and see if that changes his mind.”

  “Negative, Black Bag,” Talia said. “That’s not how we do business.”

  “Right. I forgot who was running this op. Miss Everything by the Book.”

  Strange motion on the video feed cut the argument short. Talia watched as the roof of the Sanctum expanded to fill the frame. “Eddie, check Whisper Two. You’ve got a runaway zoom.”

  The SSO tapped the screen, frowned, and tapped harder as granules of cinder on the roof rushed toward the lens. The feed went black.

  Scott’s voice grew tense on the audio link. “We heard a crunch from the Sanctum. The guards are moving that way.”

  Eddie locked eyes with Talia. “That was not a zoom issue.”

  “I know. Redirect Whisper One. We need to get eyes on our team.”

  Kayla and Borov moved out of frame as the drone left them behind. Through the SATCOM, Talia distinctly heard the scientist say “Prabačcie.” With his sorrowful tone and inflection, it sounded so similar to a phrase she knew in Russian. “Prostitye.”

  Forgive me.

  She heard a metallic sptt. Kayla let out a muffled cry. At the same time Whisper One dropped out of the sky and crashed into the Sanctum roof beside the first.

  “Escort, check in!”

  Nothing but static.

  “Kayla? Kayla, respond!” Talia clenched her fist, pounding the brick wall behind her, and then doubled over to stop the needles shooting through her midsection.

  The pain had been with her for years, most of her life. But it had not become crippling until the previous spring, at Windsor, in the middle of the national rowing championships. It had cost Talia the gold medal. The team doctors at Georgetown had found nothing. The specialists had checked her kidneys, her liver, her blood-work. Nothing. Now with her career—her future—on the line, it was back.

  “You are not fine.” Eddie stood, taking her elbow to support her.

  She pushed him back. “Doesn’t matter. Black Bag, Siphon sold us out. You’re walking into an ambush.”

  Scott didn’t answer. They had no visuals and no comms. They would have to breach the Sanctum both deaf and blind.

  Chapter

  two

  CIA TRAINING GROUNDS

  LOCATION STILL UNDISCLOSED

  EDDIE SLAPPED THE TABLET down into his lap. “I have heard rumors about this. Whole classes wash out on Sanctum night. This is the Kobayashi Maru.”

  Talia gave him a blank stare.

  He spread his hands. “The Kobayashi Maru. Star Trek? How is it possible you don’t know this?”

  She jerked him out of the alley.

  With their SIG Sauer P226s drawn, Talia and Eddie hurried across the square. She kept her weapon down, reminding herself to aim chest level if she encountered a threat. The Farm’s Simunition paint rounds looked and fired like real bullets, carrying enough velocity to make a head shot deadly.

  “I can hack the instructor cameras,” Eddie said, puffing hard and pushing his glasses into place as the two threw their backs against the compound wall.

  She made no answer, leaning forward just enough to look up and down the perimeter.

  “Hacking the system is exactly what they want us to do—thinking outside the box and all that.” Eddie nudged her with an elbow. “We are spies now. Sometimes spies break the rules. Besides, it worked for James T. Kirk.”

  Spies played dirty. Talia understood. At the Farm, there had been plenty of morality discussions. The book was for the übernerds at the FBI. But how quickly would good guys cease to be good when they crossed every line? “We’re not hacking the instructor cams. That’s cheating. And since you went there, Kirk slept with every green alien girl who crossed his path. Maybe you should find a new role model.”

  Eddie stomped his foot. “You do know Star Trek.”

  Siphon’s code still worked on the southern door to the compound. Talia and Eddie ran to the shelter of a colonnade of trees bordering the same building where they had last seen their teammates. “Black Bag, say your status.”

  Nothing.

  “Hannah? Scott?”

  White static filled the comms. In the darkness beyond the trees, there were muted flashes, accompanied by four rapid spits. The two crept to the edge and found Hannah and Scott lying motionless on the cobblestones. Red blotches marked their tactical vests. There was no sign of the shooter.

  Eddie poked Scott with the toe of his boot. “So much for Black Bag.”

  This earned him a glower from below. Scott bared his teeth, but he remained silent. The rules were clear.

  Meanwhile, Talia grabbed the collar of Hannah’s vest and dragged her back into the enclave of trees. She thrust a chin at Scott. “Grab him, Eddie. We have to get them out of sight.”

  “Why bother? We’re blown.”

  “We’re not blown. We’re betrayed. Where are the guards? The sirens?” Talia reached the bushes and lowered Hannah to the grass. “Borov must have doubled back. He got the Agency’s money. Now he wants his corporate payday, but he’ll have to silence us first. That has to be the scenario we’re facing.”

  When Eddie failed to move Scott, Talia did the job herself, grunting against the phantom pain in her side. “I saw a jeep . . . outside . . . the compound. We retrieve the device, drag the bodies out . . . and drive to the bridge.” She didn’t have enough strength left to lower Scott gently to the grass. She dropped him.

  Scott let out an involuntary “Oomph!”

  “Shhh!” Talia gave him a stern frown, then pointed at Eddie. “I am not losing this. Got it? Get the charges. Hannah has them.”

  Eddie fol
ded his arms. “We don’t have the second code. How are we supposed to enter the Sanctum?”

  “Hannah. Has. The charges.”

  “Oh, right.” As Eddie squatted next to his teammate, Hannah opened one eye and stared at him hard. He pulled his hands back. “Um. Where exactly did she put them?”

  “Now, Eddie.”

  “Okay. Not a problem.” The SSO winced as he patted the pockets on Hannah’s thighs and midsection. “Sorry. So sorry.”

  “Eddie,” Talia hissed at him, “what are the two keys to infiltration?”

  “Uh . . . Shut up and hurry up.”

  She gave him a you’re not doing either glare.

  “Found them.” He held up two black discs, the size of hockey pucks, and followed her up the lane leading to the Sanctum.

  The bunker looked unguarded, but that was too much to hope for. Talia and Eddie were halfway to the Sanctum’s steel door when two silhouettes wandered into the orange circle of light spilling from the lamp above.

  Talia pressed Eddie back against the wall, her side throbbing.

  The guards looked their way and started down the lane.

  An alcove a few feet away offered the only shelter. She pulled Eddie into it. He sniffled, and she dug her fingernails into his arm in the universal signal for Don’t you dare sneeze.

  The guards walked past.

  When Talia and Eddie reached the circle of light, she held an explosive disc close to the door and let its magnetic backing do the rest. The disc jumped from her hand and clamped itself to the metal with a soft clink. She glanced at Eddie. “Backpack.”

  “What about it?”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Uh . . . This is my personal gear, Talia. This bag is a Givenchy.”

  “You bought a designer bag? This is why you haven’t had a date since our junior year.” Talia glanced up and down the intersecting street. They couldn’t stay in the light, exposed, for much longer. “I’ll need your tactical vest too. And your sweatshirt. Hurry up.”

  A knife through the strap, wedged into the doorframe, held the pack in place over the charge, and Talia stuffed it near to bursting with the vest and sweatshirt. She dialed the charge to its lowest setting and started the timer, and the two retreated to a safe distance.

  There was a light pop and a muted flash. White smoke rose from behind the Givenchy bag.