They met two hours before dawn on Saturday, September 10, in Slivenec, a suburb to the south and west of Prague. Anders Ljent, the lead CIA operative for the Prague region, flashed the light twice and the van pulled into the small, well-concealed courtyard behind the two-story brick house. Six men emptied from the van and moved quickly to the stairs leading to the basement. Anders joined them in the underground room after closing and locking the outer gate.
“Anders Ljent,” he said, shaking hands with the man who appeared to be in charge. “CIA station chief for Prague.”
“Lieutenant Chris Phelps,” the man responded. He made a slight motion with his head to the five serious-looking men immediately behind him. “My guys. Navy SEALs, Team Six.”
Ljent gave them a perfunctory nod and then spread a map of Prague and surrounding area on the table. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to the bottom left corner, “and our target is here.” He moved his finger to the center of the map, just east of the Vltava River. “The lab is on the second floor of a three-story brick house, facing south on Ostrovni Purkynova. It’s the third house from the corner, so you have neighbors on both sides to contend with.”
“What sort of opposition should we expect?” Phelps asked. He was young, as were all the SEALs, mid-to late twenties. All had short-cropped hair, intense eyes, and grim looks etched on their faces. They were dressed in street clothes, but all wore Kevlar vests beneath their shirts.
“We’ve been watching this lab for about four months now. We’re positive it’s al-Qaeda, as we’ve identified at least three men of Arab descent on the wanted list, entering and exiting. At this time of the morning, you can expect four to six armed defenders and at least one lab worker. The shift change seems to be about nine o’clock, about two hours after sunrise. We should be gone before that happens, or this will spill out into the street.”
“We’ll be long gone,” Phelps assured him.“How do we get in?”
“Front door is best,” Ljent said. “There is a rear entrance, but when they open the door we can see the locks, and if they’ve got them all in place, that door is almost impenetrable. They’ve left the front door pretty much the same as all the rest on the street, probably to keep appearances normal. You’ve got a couple of locks, including a good deadbolt, but nothing that should keep you out for too long.”
“What about the lab?”
“As I said, on the second floor. They’ve got a series of filters of some sort, and the exhaust vents to the rear. We saw them bring in a filter system recently, and it looked like a HEPA filtration unit. So whatever they’re cooking in that lab, it’s not nice. I’d try to avoid gunfire inside the lab itself, Lieutenant. For your own safety.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Phelps said. “Anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you driving us?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, here’s how it goes down. You stop on the street immediately in front of the building and give us fifteen to thirty seconds to assess entry. When we exit the vehicle, pull around the corner and wait in a position so you can be back to pick us up within fifteen seconds of receiving our signal.” He handed Ljent a two-way radio. “The message is simple: Come and get us.”
Ljent adjusted the squelch and tested the equipment. It worked fine. “I’ll be ready.”
They left the CIA safe house at 5:35 A.M. and made good time into the city on the Strakonicka Expressway. As he turned onto Legii Bridge, Ljent opened the window to the rear of the van and said, “At the end of the bridge, I’ll make a right, then a left. Your target will be the third house from the corner on the left side of the vehicle.” He reached the end of the bridge and made the first turn. This was the oldest part of Prague and the streets were narrow and bumpy, bordered on both sides by three-and four-story stone and brick buildings. Cars lined both sides of the street; passage was easy for one vehicle, tight for two. Ljent made the second turn and slowed. He stopped in front of the third house. “Red door,” he said quietly.
Five seconds passed, then ten, then the locks on the front door literally disappeared in a shower of splinters. Two seconds later, Ljent saw the men streak from the rear of the van into the building, their silenced rifles held in front of them and still smoking. In less than fifteen seconds from the first bullet hitting the wood abutting the locks, the team was inside and the outer door closed. Other than the damage to the door, the street appeared normal for six in the morning. Ljent pulled ahead, circled the block, and got into position to pick them up.
Lieutenant Phelps motioned in three different directions as they entered the house, and his team quickly split into three groups of two. He moved directly ahead to the staircase, taking the risers three at a time. A second team followed him, destined for the third floor, and two SEALs remained on the first floor, moving room to room, looking for anything living. Phelps hugged the wall on the second floor as his third team brushed by and continued up the stairs. Then he pointed to his companion to take the front of the house; he would take the rear. They split and moved into the rooms off the main hallway.
As Phelps moved into the first room on the right, two men in jeans and T-shirts opened fire with automatic weapons. Bullets chewed into the door frame, and the noise was deafening. Whatever stealth they had hoped to achieve was now gone, and the clock was ticking on a short fuse until the police arrived and cut off their escape route. Phelps leaped back from the door, dropped to the ground, thrust the barrel of his weapon around the doorjamb, and pulled the trigger, spraying the room with automatic fire. He heard grunts and the familiar sound of air escaping from punctured lungs. He rolled across the opening to the room, his eyes seeing one man down, the other still standing. He fired as he rolled and saw the second man take three direct hits in the chest. Blood gushed from the wounds. No Kevlar.
He jumped to his feet and entered the room. It was some sort of a coffee room with a card table and a microwave oven. A couple of couches faced a television, which was switched off. Other than the two bodies, there was no one in the room. Phelps ran the length of the hall to the rear of the house and kicked in the door.
Two slugs hit him in the center of his chest as he flew into the room. The impact knocked him back a few feet and winded him, but he didn’t lose his footing. The assailant was directly in front of him, a pistol leveled at his chest. He instinctively fired, the slugs from his M16A2 slamming into the man and knocking him back into a bench covered with lab equipment. He crashed over it, his finger tightening on the trigger as he died. One errant shot smashed into the wall just to the right of Phelps’s head, missing by less than an inch. Phelps sucked in the deepest breath he could and called his team.
“All clear, second rear,” he said into his microphone.
“All clear, main front.”
“All clear, rear third.”
“One bad guy, main rear.”
Phelps could hear the gunfire from the main floor. He had two men on that floor, and that was enough. He needed his science expert and he needed him fast.
“Joey,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Third, on my way down, LT,” came the response. A few seconds later, Joe Jameus burst into the room. “I’m on it, LT,” he said, swinging his rifle onto his back and assessing the mass of lab equipment in front of him. A small fridge sat off to one side, and he made a beeline for it. Inside against one side were a number of vials, all filled with a white powder. A glass canister containing what appeared to be large beans sat against the other side. Jameus snatched one of the vials, popped open the container with the beans, shook a few into a plastic bag, and resealed the container. He glanced at the system of beakers and test tubes, the centrifuge, and nodded.
“We’re done, LT.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” Phelps said, calling to his men on the microphone. Extraction time. He called Anders Ljent. “Fifteen seconds,” he said, moving full speed for the front door. Above and below him, his men were on the move. The gunfire on the main level had stopped, and as Phelps came down the main staircase he saw both his men waiting. They had been successful in taking out the last defender. Behind him, two more SEALs came flying down the stairs. They met at the front door just as Ljent pulled up. They piled into the rear of the van, the sounds of police sirens now very audible and very close. They pulled onto Narodni, the main access to the bridge, just as the first police car entered Ostrovni Purkynova from the far end. The sounds of the sirens diminished as they put distance between themselves and the target.
“Good job, gentlemen,” he said. “What was our opposition?”
“Two on the main floor, LT.”
“Three on the third.”
“And three on the second,” Phelps said. “Eight bad guys, nobody injured. Excellent job.”
One of his men pointed at Phelps’s chest. “Good thing you had your vest on, LT.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Forgot to shoot him before he shot me.”
There were a few chuckles, and Phelps turned to Joey Jameus. “What have we got, Joey?”
Jameus held up the beans he had taken from the fridge.“Castor beans.” Then he pulled the vial of powder from his front pocket.“And unless I’m totally out to lunch, we have ricin.”
“Ricin,” Phelps said. “That shit’s pretty deadly, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely. Ricin inhibits protein synthesis in the body. If you inhale this stuff, you can suffer pulmonary edema and asphyxiation. Inject it and you get kidney and liver necrosis. Either can result in death.”
“So we just shut down a seriously dangerous lab,” Phelps said.
“Sure did, LT,” Joey said, tucking the ricin back into his pocket.
“Excellent,” Phelps said. “Let’s just hope it was what they were looking for.”