by Tom Clancy
They would serve as al-Matari’s bodyguards, and they had decades of military and insurgency experience that would make them assets to the other cells in the United States. They were both expert bomb makers as well, and their forged driver’s licenses and other papers were good enough to pass scrutiny with American law enforcement, as long as they weren’t challenged too hard.
And if they were challenged too hard, Algiers and Tripoli were cutthroat killers.
Behind the three Middle Easterners, a semi-trailer sat in the rain, its doors still shut. Inside, all the equipment they’d be taking into the U.S. had been split into locked plastic cases weighing fifty pounds each. A dozen boxes for each cell, roughly six hundred pounds of weaponry per group.
The cab had been uncoupled from the trailer minutes earlier, hitched to an empty trailer waiting here, and then it left the abandoned airport, heading back to the west.
The white, nearly featureless An-32 rolled to a stop in front of the three men and their cargo, the stairs came down and splashed in a deep puddle. The copilot descended the stairs, then chocked his own wheels while the pilot shut the aircraft’s engines off.
The pilot and copilot walked up to the three men standing in the rain and they all shook hands. The pilot spoke in accented English; al-Matari assumed he was Bolivian. “It’s raining very hard, señores.”
This was Guyana during the rainy season, so al-Matari knew the rain should come as no surprise to anyone, certainly not a South American cargo pilot.
The runway was one thousand meters, which, as far as al-Matari was concerned, was more than long enough, because he’d been told the fully laden aircraft would need nine hundred meters for the takeoff roll.
But the white-haired pilot fixed his eyes on the semi-trailer. It was clear there was a problem. “What is the final weight of the cargo?”
“One thousand eight hundred fifty kilos.”
The man shook his head. “No way we can take off in this rain.”
Al-Matari all but lunged at the pilot now. “What are you talking about? Planes fly in the rain all the time.”
The man shook his head, pointed to the airstrip behind him. “That, my friend, is a gravel runway. Gravel! If there is a rejected takeoff, with the amount of weight we will be carrying, my brakes will be worthless. I won’t be able to stop before the end of the runway. There is simply not enough room.”
Al-Matari wasn’t having it. “Then I suggest you don’t reject the takeoff.”
The pilot rolled his eyes, but al-Matari stayed firm. “We are not waiting on the weather. We take off now, or you do not get paid.”
“Yes, well, I want more money.” He jerked a thumb to his copilot. “We both do. Five thousand more U.S. Each.”
Al-Matari had anticipated something like this. He thought about just killing the men when they landed in the USA, but that would compromise their mission.
He swallowed his anger and said, “I pay five thousand more. Total. You two can split it or fight over it. I don’t care. But we load up now, and we fly now. Do you understand?”
The captain looked at al-Matari angrily for a moment, then motioned for the men to begin loading the plane.
Al-Matari’s two men, the pilots, and al-Matari himself all worked together to place the sixty hard plastic containers inside the aircraft. The boxes were numbered on the top, one through five, so al-Matari wouldn’t have to open them to determine which container went to which cell.
The copilot secured the load while the three rain-soaked Middle Easterners grabbed their own luggage, then climbed aboard with rolling duffels and large backpacks.
The An-32 took off to the north in the rain—there was no rejected takeoff to worry about, and by the time they’d climbed over the clouds they were leaving Guyana airspace and heading out over the Caribbean Sea.
—
Musa al-Matari had nothing to do for the next several hours but sit and wait for the next phase of the operation to begin, so as soon as the plane reached a cruising altitude, he strode back to his containers and looked them over, running a hand over the rough plastic crates inside the netting holding them in place in the cargo bay.
Most, if not all, attacks done in the name of ISIS by so-called remote radicalized attackers in the United States had employed weapons purchased in America. The United States was rife with small arms, after all. It was a nation where one could walk into a store and walk out with a firearm twenty minutes later. A thousand dollars would buy you a quality carbine rifle, although special features like holographic optics, enhanced grips to better control the recoil, flashlights that attach to the front of the weapon, and extra magazines, could easily double this price. And with $500 to $800 you could purchase the exact same handgun used by most American law enforcement agencies, as well as many of America’s best special operations units.
But these purchases, despite what many who know nothing about guns think, require paperwork, a show of identification, and a near instantaneous but nevertheless effective check of a national database of those legally prohibited from purchasing a firearm.
There were ways around this: one could buy a gun from a private seller in his or her home state without jumping through the same hoops one would have to jump through when dealing with a federal firearms licensee, meaning someone in the business of selling guns. But these private purchases were still subject to laws and required making contact with unknown parties who might or might not be with the government or might or might not find themselves curious enough about the purchaser to contact the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Even though none of al-Matari’s cell members had criminal records with felonies or domestic battery charges, had been adjudicated mentally ill or, as far as he knew, were under investigation by law enforcement or intelligence agencies, he decided it was still too dangerous for his Language School operatives able to buy weapons in America legally to do so. Every time one of his cell members stepped into a gun shop and asked to look at an AR-15, an AK-47, a pump-action shotgun, or even a handgun, it would invite scrutiny on the cell member, and scrutiny was one thing al-Matari was trying to avoid.
Two-thirds of his cell members looked Arab, whether they were born in the USA or not, and the Yemeni assumed all Americans were suspicious of all Arabs, and would send the FBI after anyone making a gun purchase.
Plus, one simply could not purchase fully automatic weapons in the U.S. without lengthy wait times, paperwork, and additional scrutiny, and the same went for short-barreled rifles, which were much easier to conceal than a full-sized AR-15 or AK-47 pattern rifle.
He and his two subordinates had instead decided to bring the guns in from out of the country and distribute them to the twenty-seven cell members.
The Saudi had acquired all the gear, and the Yemeni had to admit the man had done an admirable job. Originally, the Saudi had planned on purchasing weapons from Mexican drug cartels, but an easier and better option presented itself. He explained to al-Matari that he managed to arrange a shipment of military small arms from Venezuela to be driven over the border to an airport nearby in Guyana, where a few thousand U.S. dollars ensured the airport would be closed for the night and the security officer working there would accidentally leave the gate open.
Venezuela did not have much in the way of food or democracy, but what it did have in abundance were crime and weapons. They were ranked the eighteenth top purchaser of weapons in the world, and the Venezuelan military’s controls on these arms had grown lax in the past few years.
A colonel in the Bolivarian Armed Forces, desperate for money in the economic disaster that was Venezuela these days, agreed to sell whatever small arms and explosives the mysterious man who contacted him via e-mail wanted. Money was placed in an offshore numbered account and the number was given to the colonel, along with assurances more money would be transferred in as soon as the weapons were delivere
d.
The weapons arrived in the trailer, then al-Matari and his two men personally inspected and separated the equipment right there in a warehouse next to the airfield in Guyana.
Now as al-Matari walked through the cargo section of the An-32, he could look at each crate and know what was inside. There were twenty-five Uzi nine-millimeter submachine guns and twenty-five AK-103 rifles. The Avtomat Kalashnikova model 103 fired a much more powerful round than the Uzi, but the weapon was twice the length and therefore much harder to conceal. The Kaibiles from Guatemala had brought similar versions of both guns to the Language School, so all the students were capable operators of both.
There was a crate of hand grenades for each cell, along with C-4 explosives, military-grade detonators, and other bomb-making equipment.
The Saudi had also purchased four AT4s, American-made antitank rocket launchers, and eight RPG-7 rocket launchers with thirty-six rockets, along with four Russian-made Igla-S man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS. These were shoulder-fired antiair missiles, capable of downing a jumbo jet.
Unfortunately for al-Matari and his students, the Kaibiles had never used an Igla-S and there wasn’t even a mockup at the school to train on, but fortunately for the Islamic State operatives’ plans, there were YouTube videos instructing one how to properly prepare, aim, and fire the weapons.
It wasn’t as good as real training, but the YouTube vids would be a treasure trove for the terrorists employing MANPADS for the first time.
Instead of separating his four shoulder-fired missiles among four different teams, al-Matari had decided to keep them all with him, and distribute them when the time was right. Tripoli and Algiers would fire the weapons, or even al-Matari himself.
There was a Glock 17 pistol on board the aircraft for each and every language student. It was the principal sidearm of the Venezuelan military, and while large for a handgun, it was still very concealable and could fire eighteen rounds of nine-millimeter ammo before the operator needed to reload. This meant to al-Matari that a five-man cell could, if operating together and in unison, dump ninety bullets at a single target in ten seconds or so—at a guard shack, a table full of Navy pilots, a stage where an American intelligence official was making a speech.
Ninety bullets! His operators did not need to be snipers; they just had to be brave and committed.
He knew the Glocks and Uzis would be the principal weapons of close-in assassinations, while the rifles would be more for distance work and large clusters of targets, and the explosives, rockets, and missiles used more to take out vehicles or other large targets.
There were thirty Kevlar vests on the aircraft, too. These could stop handgun rounds, but would be useless against anyone shooting a rifle at one of his cell members.
There were another thirty vests in the cases. These had not come from Venezuela, but had been flown into Guyana directly. These were suicide vests. They could be detonated via remote signal, or via a pressure switch on the end of a cable that could be slid down the sleeve of a shirt and held in the hand.
He would send his men and women out with the Kevlar under their S-vests. He would do what he could to protect them, until that moment he would do what he needed to do to martyr them to achieve his objectives.
Al-Matari had arranged for each team’s full complement of equipment to fit into a single van or large SUV and still provide room for the driver and a passenger. Of course the cells would not travel with all their equipment at all times, but he wanted to minimize the chance they would be detected by hauling around large amounts of ordnance in multiple vehicles.
Finally, Abu Musa al-Matari returned to his seat and looked over at Algiers and Tripoli. Both men were brimming with excitement but aware that this journey of theirs would be a one-way trip. They would stay in America until they were martyred. They prayed their martyrdom happened at the moment they fired the last bullet, threw the last grenade, or launched the last missile now stowed in the cargo hold behind them.
17
As one aircraft approached the United States from the south, another flew across the country, then landed at Van Nuys airport near L.A. for a quick refueling stop. A half-hour later it was back in the air, this time for the longest leg of the journey. The men of The Campus had worked on the trip across the U.S., and they’d work some more on the last leg, but from California to Seoul, Korea, the men tried to get some sleep. The three men and one woman on board did deplane in Seoul during their fifty-minute refueling stop there, but they weren’t going through customs here in Korea so they didn’t walk more than fifty feet from the aircraft. They did stretches, ran in place, but mostly they just wandered around bleary-eyed and bored, just like they’d been on the aircraft.
After taking back to the skies the three operators used the last segment of their flight to come up with a specific plan on arrival. They had more intelligence from CIA and FBI about what they’d encounter at the scene, which was a damn good thing, considering they’d arrive close to five a.m. and have to race off the aircraft into a waiting rental car, then proceed directly to a hotel for a final comms and gear check before the nine a.m. meeting between the North Korean agents and the unknown U.S. Department of State employee.
—
They landed in Jakarta on schedule and went through customs, where they had their luggage checked thoroughly. Helen and Country taxied into a hangar, taking their time to do so, because the three operatives were busy revealing hidden access compartments in the galley, pulling out their Smith & Wesson M&P Shield nine-millimeter pistols, inside-the-waistband appendix holsters, extra magazines, state-of-the-art covert earpieces, emergency medical equipment, and other items they would need on their operation.
Domingo, Dominic, and Jack took their hand luggage and hurried down to the waiting rental car, while Country and Helen headed to the fixed-base operator’s office to fill out some paperwork. They would immediately refuel and restock the aircraft for the flight out of here, and then they would both find a comfortable cabin chair or sofa in the back of the aircraft and try to get some sleep, while remaining at the ready for a quick getaway.
They didn’t expect to be leaving for at least five hours, but they knew when the call came that the team was en route to the airport, they would very likely have to preflight and clear customs quickly, so a little sleep in the meantime would be helpful.
—
At six a.m. the three American men drove their rental to a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and loaded a handbasket up with items. Water, snacks, and other odds and ends, mostly, and Ding bought a box of fifty paper surgical masks, worn regularly here because of the potential for disease transmission and the high pollution in the air.
Back in the car, Ding passed out a fistful of masks to the other two.
Dom quipped, “We’re gonna be here for a week?”
“You start sweating, running, breathing hard, these things will get soggy fast and melt off your face.”
“Right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll wear two at a time.”
“Not if you want to breathe freely.”
Jack said, “The location of the meet is a pedestrian zone that allows bicycles and motorized scooters but not cars. Do we want to get a scooter just to have at the ready?”
Chavez pulled back onto the road, heading in the direction of downtown, where they had secured a hotel just a few blocks from the location of the North Koreans’ meeting with the unknown American State Department worker. “I think we want to get two scooters. That, and this car. It will give us more options. Like we talked about on the plane, we’re going to be winging it on this one. The more flexibility we have, the better.”
They checked into their hotel at seven a.m., and through the clerk they arranged for a pair of rental scooters to be parked next to their rental car. Then they went upstairs, where they double-checked their equipment and changed clothes. All the men wore outfits that could make t
hem look like either joggers or very casual tourists, as most tourists usually were.
The meeting was to take place in Merdeka Square, in central Jakarta, at the foot of the National Monument, a white 433-foot tower built to commemorate Indonesia’s independence. Their hotel was just a few blocks west of the square, so they had a few minutes to drink some bottled water, eat some protein bars, and stow their binoculars around their necks and tuck them inside their shirts.
As they prepped they talked over the plan one more time, reexamined a map of the area, and tried to shake off the onset of jet lag so they could concentrate on the action to come.
—
The men arrived at three different corners of the square at eight a.m. Chavez parked the car to the northwest, Dom parked his scooter at the southeast, and Jack kept his helmet on and drove his scooter straight toward the location.
It was a massive space, with flat open grass fields, fountains and statues, wide cobblestone thoroughfares with scooter traffic racing by, and a significant number of pedestrians passing through the area on their way to work. The tower itself was in the dead center of the huge square, on top of a large grassy hill, and sightseers milled about, even at eight in the morning. Stone steps, some fifty yards wide, ran up ten yards or so to the base of the tower.
It made sense for the North Koreans to do the pass here, because the U.S. embassy was on the southeast corner of the square. But there were many reasons this didn’t seem like a good spot at all for a clandestine transaction, as both the Indonesian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the headquarters of the Army were both right here on the edge of the square as well.
“Damn, this is a big space,” Jack mumbled.
Chavez said, “Dom, I guess you and me are joggers. We’ll cover more territory.”
Dom groaned. “We’re gonna run for an hour before going up against DPRK agents?”
Chavez replied, “If we ID the agents in time, maybe we can avoid them. Run a few minutes, take breaks to look around, then run a little more. We’re each going off on our own here, but stay in comms.”