Strike Force Alpha (19 page)

Murphy and Aviv climbed out of the helicopter, unloaded their sensitive cargo, and bounded away, carrying the big can between them. They had to be very careful. The materials inside were extremely toxic. One drop in 100 gallons of water was enough to kill several hundred people. If the substance got into the bloodstream, it would be lights-out in three minutes, a buildup that included a minute of extreme paranoia, and then what was called instantaneous dementia. This was followed by heavy nausea and then, boom, you’re dead. Should the substance get on your skin, it was the same result, about 24 hours later.

That’s why both men were also wearing extra-heavy-duty gloves.

They scrambled over to the air-conditioning unit, a huge metal flaring in the center of the warehouse roof. Aviv pronounced it usable. Murphy flicked a Bic lighter and held it under the bottom of the can. The two jets roared by again; still dropping their flares up and down the harbor, they were now taking return fire from the destroyers.

Murphy swore softly, for the long five minutes, trying to rush the heating process. Finally the red button popped out.

The can was now “gasified.” Ready to use.

They broke out their screwdrivers and began working on the circulation vent.

Gallant and Curry ticked off the minutes the two men were gone.

How crazy was this? They were sitting on a roof, inside Libya, and with two people who didn’t really look like undercover agents running around with a big aerosol can, searching for the warehouse’s air conditioner vents, God knows why. The copter pilots were too smart to ask Murphy if the big can was actually a small nuclear bomb, as had been speculated. They’d been warned in advance that the less they knew about this mission, the better.

To their surprise, Murphy and Aviv jumped back onto the copter at precisely 11 minutes, 10 seconds. Exactly the time Murphy figured the installation would take. Their silenced rotors had never stopped turning, so Gallant took off immediately.

“Did you do what you had to do back there?” Curry yelled to Murphy.

“Sure as hell did!” was his excited reply. He was nervous, but it was obvious that on some level he was also enjoying himself.

“
Now
can you tell us what’s going on?” Curry asked him. “Bombing this place would have been ten times easier than all this.”

“Like I said before,” Murphy yelled back, “there are some things you just don’t want to know.”

Then he paused a moment and added: “But a word to the wise: Don’t put any bananas on your cornflakes for a while.”

They made it back to the Al-Hibiz Zim mountains before sunup.

They had squirreled away the fourth BT in a depression next to an ancient dry riverbed. Both the Harriers and the Blackhawk were able to set down on the stone where water once flowed. The fuel was found in good shape, its canister camouflaged from above by mounds of dirt, sand, and debris.

They attached the BT to Ryder’s Harrier. He had the most fuel onboard internally; Phelan and the Blackhawk would be able to refuel off him on the way back. It would not be like the journey out, where the three aircraft had to perform a complicated ballet of low-altitude hookups and precalculated fuel transfers. It was always about weight. The plane carrying the most fuel was also
burning
the most fuel, so it had to be refueled more frequently than the others, in order to preserve the fuel it was carrying for them all to use later on…things of that nature.

The flight back promised to be a breeze compared to all that.

They prepared to set out again. As usual the Harriers would take off first and regulate their speed to match that of the ascending copter. Then it would be a dash straight to the south, where
Ocean Voyager,
steaming madly to the west, would meet them at a point closer than where they’d had left, another factor added into the fuel transfer madness.

But just as Ryder was preparing to lift off, he saw Gallant waving at him madly from the cockpit of the Blackhawk. He was drawing his finger across his throat, telling Ryder to kill his engine. Ryder did so; he had to believe Gallant had a good reason for telling him to. All Gallant had to do was point westward, over Ryder’s left shoulder, to the other side of the Al-Hibiz Zim mountain range. There it was, a huge fist of dirt and sand, rising as high as a thundercloud and swirling like so many dark brown tornadoes.

It was a
haboob,
the gigantic sandstorm guaranteed to ruin anyone’s day. This was the birthplace for many of these things, so tumultuous that flashes of lightning could be seen crackling within the tempest. The team was not going anywhere, not with this monster bearing down on them. They hastily repositioned the Harriers so that they were hard up against the mountain wall. They used strapping and electrical cord to tie off the Blackhawk’s rotor blades. Then they all climbed inside the helicopter and hunkered down to wait out the storm.

Luckily Phelan had packed some playing cards and candy bars, because they remained here, like this, for the next two and a half days.

The team returned to
Ocean Voyager
on the morning of the fourth day.

The ship had been loitering in the Red Sea for nearly 48 hours, talking to the stranded team sporadically via Phelan’s sat phone, which was dying because they’d used the scramble function too often. They had ridden out the storm but then faced another entire day digging out the aircraft and “desanding” them, especially the Blackhawk.

When the three aircraft finally thumped back down onto the ship, the away team was beyond exhaustion. Martinez had left strict orders with the Marine techs and anyone else who might come in contact with the returnees not to show them any of the Internet newspapers they were still able to get onboard. Nor should they talk to them about the BBC news broadcasts they’d been monitoring since the raiders left.

No one was to say anything to them about what had happened in the past 72 hours, about how the world had turned over a little bit while they’d been away.

Not until the team got a good night’s sleep.

Ryder was so tired when he climbed down off his jet, he accepted the six-pack of Bud tall boys from a curiously quiet Martinez, went back to his cabin, drank all six beers himself, and then fell on his bunk. He hoped he could get at least 12 to 15 hours of uninterrupted Zs.

No such luck.

He awoke to the sound of a great commotion directly over his head.

His bleary eyes read 11:00
A.M.
on his watch. He’d slept for no more than 30 minutes. Cleaning his grandmother’s roof with a sponge, Maureen had waved good-bye as Ryder fell out of this abbreviated slumber. He thought he was still back in the desert, the sandstorm blowing through his ears. The noise that roused him was almost that loud.

The great racket was coming from up top. The ship was vibrating mightily. Ryder took a moment trying to figure out what was happening. Then it came to him. A helicopter was landing on the ship; in fact it was setting down on the deck right above his head, where the ship’s little-used external helicopter pad was located.

Resigned to never sleeping again, he got up, splashed water on his face, and climbed up top.

He reached the outer deck to find a silver chopper sitting on the ship’s helicopter platform. Its rotor was still turning. It certainly was not one of the unit’s aircraft. This was a Huey, painted silver with a thick yellow line stretching from the nose to the tail. It looked like something from a spy movie. There were four armed guards surrounding it; they were in plainclothes.

“Can you tell what’s going on?” he heard a voice from behind him ask.

He turned to see Phelan sitting on the ladder one level above him, his Mexican breakfast—a glass of water and a smoke—in hand.

Before Ryder could answer, the hatch on the landing deck swung open and Murphy stepped out. He was holding his hands tightly behind him, which looked odd. Murphy took two more steps before Ryder and Phelan realized he was actually in handcuffs—the old-fashioned steel kind. Two armed guys in jeans and T-shirts were in back of him. They were leading him to the waiting chopper.

Martinez came rushing up the steps at this point. Everyone else had wisely stayed below.

“What the fuck is happening here?” Ryder asked him.

“They’ve arrested Murphy,” Martinez replied, his voice hollow.

“Arrested?
For what?
”

Martinez pulled out a newspaper headline they’d taken off the Net from the English-language
Arab World News
that morning. This was what Martinez didn’t want them to know, not until they had to. The headlines read: “More than 1,700 Dead in Fruit Poisoning…. Authorities Fear More Biowar Deaths…. Distributor Shut Down.”

Ryder stared at the headlines. Poison. Biowar. No wonder Murphy had been so tight-lipped about what he wanted to do in Qartoom.
Why didn’t we just bomb the goddamn place?
Ryder cursed to himself.
Why did we talk him into doing this?

“Murph got his wish,” Martinez was saying to him now. “He shut that bastard down. But shit…this is nasty.”

The next thing Ryder knew, Phelan had leaped completely over him, landing onto the helicopter platform with a clang. He went to throw a punch at the guy holding Murphy’s left shoulder—but Martinez had dropped down to the platform right after him and expertly blocked the punch. It was a good thing, too. These guys were State Department Security troops, a little-known civilian force who would just as soon shoot you as look at you. They probably would have shot Phelan had he truly interfered.

A small scuffle did erupt though between Phelan, Martinez, and two of the guards who’d stayed by the Huey. It was Murphy himself who quelled the shoving match.

“Cool it!”
he yelled at Phelan and Martinez. “There’s no sense in fighting this. The jig is up.”

Now Ryder found himself leaping to the copter platform as well. He blocked the guards from putting Murphy into the copter.

“Tell them, Murph!” Ryder yelled at him over the screaming rotor blades. “Tell these guys what’s what, that everything here is OK!”

But Murphy just hung his head.

Ryder was confused. “Just tell them,” he urged Murphy again. “The operation. This ship. How you got the President to OK it all. To fund it. How he gave you a free rein….”

Murphy just shook his head. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said with a wan smile. “But, really, take a good look around. What President in his right mind would have authorized all this?”

With that, the guards threw him onto the helicopter. The door closed and the Huey lifted off.

And just like that, Bobby Murphy was gone.

Riyadh

It was Thursday night and the plaster tent in Prince Ali’s backyard was filled to capacity.

Nearly 3,000 Saudi citizens had been permitted inside for the weekly ritual of asking the Prince for favors—and there was some surprise among the Prince’s staff when Ali actually showed up for the affair. He’d been acting very odd lately. Harsher than usual on the help, spending more time wandering his palace than at Pan Arabic, working his worry beads to the nub. He’d also become obsessed with how thoroughly his clothes were being laundered.

He strolled into the tent 30 minutes late, but here nevertheless. He sat on his gold-and-sapphire-encrusted chair and brusquely motioned his people to let the parade of petitioners begin. On the rare occasion that Ali was in a good mood for one of these things, mostly in his younger days, he would stand at his throne for several hours, having a word or two with just about everyone who passed by in line.

Not tonight. The parade of citizens became a kind of human assembly line. One security man was literally pushing people toward Ali’s assistants collecting the petitions, who would then shove them along to the senior bodyguards, who would frisk each one before pushing him or her up to meet the Prince himself. Ali wasn’t even shaking hands tonight. The citizen had about one second in his presence before he was pulled along by another security man, given an orange or a lemon, and then told to leave the grounds immediately, as the Prince wasn’t that fond of crowds.

This roughhouse system got the line of people moving quickly. Still it took Ali more than a hour to greet them all. Most just gave him a slight kiss on the right shoulder, a sign of respect for the Royal Family. No one detected the smell of alcohol on him simply because no one got close enough, long enough, to give him a good sniff.

Finally the last person in the line was in sight. When this individual reached Ali’s security coterie though, the bodyguards took one good look at the petitioner and then backed away. Ali was horrified. What was going on? Then the man stepped before him and pulled the
kufi
from his face. Ali saw his features for the first time. His stomach did a flip.

It was Kazeel, planning master for Al Qaeda.

Ali was furious.

“Brother, what are you doing here?” he hissed at the man.

“Peace to you, brother,” Kazeel replied in that threatening tone of his. “You should be braver, my friend.”

“I don’t need to be brave,” Ali shot back at him. “I can pay people to be brave for me.”

Kazeel just waved his comment away. “You are protecting that CD-ROM with your life, I hope?”

Ali replied: “I don’t have any other choice.”

Kazeel displayed his gap-tooth grin for a moment but then turned very serious. “We have a problem, my brother,” he told Ali. “With the big plan.”

Ali was not surprised to hear this. He’d been watching CNN nonstop for days. The bank in Abu Dhabi. The biopoisoning at Heavenly Fruits. The overdue acknowledgment that a rogue team of U.S. operatives had been carrying out vicious attacks on Arabs for the past month. Ali didn’t need any further explanation for Kazeel’s sudden appearance. He was here for money. Again.

But there was a real air of desperation about him this time. Ali studied him closely.

“Things are really not so well with you, are they, brother?” he asked him.

“The operation date is very close,” Kazeel replied. “But we are experiencing a sudden cash flow problem, due to the recent events, of which I’m sure you are aware. These things have left us less liquid than we hoped.”

“You have never been one to massage words, brother,” Ali told him, a little defiantly. “We are friends. Tell me how bad things are.”

“We are bleeding dollars,” was how Kazeel chose to put it. “These crazy American gunmen have pushed us to the brink, and frankly, many sources of our revenue have dried up. My brother, you are now one of the few people on earth who know this sad information, and it is a secret I suggest you protect as vigorously as you are protecting that CD.

“But Allah is nothing if not truth—and the truth is this: the big operation is in jeopardy. As we have all been praying for this for so long, our brave
maji
are fanatically reluctant to postpone it or cancel it outright. To do so might adversely affect our standing with our many brothers around the world.”

“I understand, my friend,” Ali said. It was no surprise that the Al Qaeda planner had come to him. People in Ali’s position were just expected to give, on a regular basis, as proof that their Muslim hearts were still “pure.” Ali went a bit further than most by allowing the
jihad
organizations to use his offices at Pan Arabic to launder their money. All these things kept the terrorist group flush in their bank accounts, kept the black ink from spilling into the red, and kept them from going after targets within the Saudi Family itself.

“I will have an envelope waiting for you at my desk tomorrow morning,” Ali told him—he just wanted to get rid of Kazeel at this point. “I will gladly double my donation to four hundred thousand dollars and, as always, my offices stand by to help you in funneling any other donations collected during this pressing time.”

But Kazeel just stared back at him. “Brother, a million apologies,” he said. “But you really
don’t
understand what I am saying.”

Ali felt something poking him just below his rib cage. He looked down to see the tip of a knife pointed at his stomach.

Kazeel gritted his teeth and whispered: “We need
two million
in cash immediately. To refuse means you have turned unfaithful—and that this blade will soon be inside you. And may I remind you that a belly wound is the most painful way to die.”

Ali nearly lost control of his bladder. “But…you would die, too, my brother,” he gasped. As always, Ali had a small army of bodyguards around him.

But Kazeel only pushed his knife in deeper. “I will die, too?” he asked snidely. “So what? It is my job to die.”

Ali was suddenly terrified, and appalled. That it had come to this defied all that he’d believed in Allah, what little that was. And it was not the money. It was the fact that every dollar he gave to Kazeel further illuminated the path the Crazy Americans would eventually follow to get to him. Just like they got to Farouk’s nephew and so many others.

Yet if he refused outright, Kazeel would gut him right here, on the spot. There was no doubt about that.

So Ali hastily wrote out a note with which Kazeel could withdraw funds from a blind bank account Ali had in Riyadh. He included the bank president’s private phone number, ensuring that Kazeel would get the funds right away.

Kazeel took the note and read it. Ali’s signature was as good as gold in Riyadh. Kazeel withdrew the knife and simply walked away.

No farewell. No thank-you.

“Sleep in peace, brother!” Ali called after him. “God knows, I won’t….”