Larry would head next to Tripoli, the largest population center in Libya, with the largest number of fresh water facilities to be clustered on the coast nearby. France would be undertaking the solar power plants and building construction for these facilities. In Tripoli, he would repeat the same commissioning and training regime as in Ajdabiya, getting one facility largely commissioned and technical staff for several others also trained up. Then he would head back to Ajdabiya to overlay the SCADA system for the seawater intake pumping, piping and storage system and the fresh water pumping, manifold and cistern system onto the more technical desalination process controls. By that time the overall facility should be complete, and Larry would see his dream come to fruition when copious fresh water gushed into homes and fields in one of the most parched and arid places in the world.
Larry would not linger long in Ajdabiya. He wouldn’t be there long enough to actually see the crops that his fresh water was now irrigating begin to be harvested. He would need to return to Tripoli to see how the commissioning of those facilities was doing and provide assistance and advice as required. However, the Tripoli cluster would not be fully operational for another couple of months, so Larry had been shadowed on the SCADA setup for the Ajdabiya facility by several engineers and technicians who could now perform that task in his absence.
His next destination would be the west coast of Mexico, though his role there would be a little different. Rather than supervising the installation and commissioning of cells produced in the United States, he would be providing assistance and support to the startup of a new Mexican plant constructed as a fabrication center for production of capacitive deionization cells. After that he’d be back in the Middle East to work on the Saudi desalination plants. Larry was looking at a very busy schedule with a lot of travel for at least the next year. He didn’t object a bit. As he completed the short walk from the Italian mess hall to the small portable dorm unit that housed the few Americans on site, he reveled in the experience of seeing a personal dream starting to come true. Nearby, however, there were others whose immediate objective was to shatter Larry’s dream.
***
The six-man Russian Special Operations Forces Command team, better known as the KSSO, crawled out from beneath their camouflage tarp as the last traces of sunlight faded in the west. They prepared for their four-mile approach to the new compound. They had come in from Sudan by truck, a long and boring drive especially since they rarely left the truck at any of the oases that occasionally provided brief relief along the way from the dust and sand of the desert. Only the team leader, who shared the cab with their local driver, had any view of the outside terrain, and there was little to see, even for him.
The team had left the truck and driver the previous evening twelve miles away on the Ajdabiya–Kufra road. From there it had been an easy four-hour march in the cool of the night to their lay-up point. A helicopter insertion would have been a lot easier, quicker and not nearly as boring. However, this close to the coast, there would have been a high risk of detection by an American electronic surveillance aircraft operating from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. In any case, the team was trained at patience and endurance so they felt no real hardship. They were also very highly motivated from two angles.
First, there had been eight Russian covert operators among those killed by Americans at the Maziq compound a couple of months ago. The dead Russians had worked for the Russian clandestine operations group and were not of the same caliber as the KSSO, in terms of physical ability, aggressiveness or tactical offensive and defensive training. Of course, that would be true of nearly any military force in the world compared with the Russian KSSO, whose training and physical requirements matched those of the American Delta Force or SEAL teams or the British Special Air Service.
If the KSSO were not a full match for the Americans in the special operations field, it was only a matter of a small advantage the Americans held on electronic technology, an advantage that the KSSO team leader nevertheless knew could be the death of him, literally, were he facing an aware and prepared position rather than the unsuspecting relatively soft target they had been briefed on.
The KSSO operators didn’t consider their countrymen who had been killed not very many miles away as brothers-in-arms, exactly; still, they were cousins and deserved to be avenged. If that hadn’t been enough motivation on its own, the KSSO team had been told very clearly that the success of their mission was paramount, and failure was unacceptable. The eyes of their senior officers and of the leaders of their country were on them. The long-serving Russian dictator was not one to accept the thwarting of his ambitions in Libya without retaliation, even if largely symbolic, nor was he one to accept failure by his subordinates either. The team leader understood that his orders were tantamount to “return successful, or die trying.” It wasn’t the first time he had been tasked in this way and, as with the prior occasions, he didn’t believe he would fall short of his superiors’ expectations.
The team had spent the rest of the prior night and all of the day in a detailed surveillance of their target, with night-vision scopes at night and high-powered telescopes during the day. The telescopes had specially coated lenses to prevent any reflection back to the target. The imagery from all the optical devices was fed into the team’s tactical personal computers so that several of the operators could observe at the same time. They could rerun anything they wanted to examine more closely, expanding and creating freeze-frames as needed.
After nearly eighteen hours of surveillance the team leader was satisfied that the target was just as had been laid out in the team’s briefing. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, with the only gate manned at all times by a detachment of Italian military police. The defenses were certainly sufficient to prevent the local thieves from purloining construction supplies. They could likely even hold out against a lightly armed militia, of which there were numerous in Libya, until reinforced from elsewhere. However, military police, though armed with automatic rifles, would pose little resistance to a night attack by the KSSO special operators. The team’s orders were to dispatch all military resistance, and in particular any American personnel, even non-combatants, then destroy all equipment and buildings.
Although they could have covered the four miles to the compound in an hour or less, they planned to take several hours, moving slowly and cautiously. After two miles they spread out to approach the gate individually from different angles. Their tactical plan was for the team’s two snipers to take out the four-man squad on duty at the gate from about two hundred yards out. The leader also had two operators creep slowly up to the fence line about twenty-five yards on either side of the gate to take down any of the duty squad that the snipers couldn’t get a clear shot at. All of their weapons were silenced.
If the initial assault went as planned, they would then take the duty officer in a small command post about ten yards inside the gate, followed by the two military police officers patrolling the fence line. They would move next to the portable trailers serving as the barracks for the military police detachment. The KSSO team planned to throw high explosive charges through the barracks doorway, which would likely kill the fifteen sleeping occupants. At that point, with all the military opposition dispatched, the team would split in half with one group assigned to demolishing and the other to identifying and executing any Americans among the remaining construction and technical personnel within the compound.
The KSSO team leader knew that his government would officially deny any involvement in the attack, pointing out the many armed factions active in Libya. However, the world would still know who had counted coup on this project, and the Americans and their president would know for sure. With a grim smile the team leader gave the order over his tactical network for the attack to begin.
About two hundred and fifty yards away, Larry Johnstone slept peacefully, unaware of the nearby team with its lethal intentions. He hadn’t even bothered to turn
the latch on the door of his small compartment, not that it would save him if he had. He awoke to the sound of a powerful explosion.
The governments of the United States and its allies were fully aware of the risk of an attack on the desalination facility. The president’s military and intelligence advisors understood the psychological profile of the Russian leader well enough to anticipate that there would be some form of conspicuous retaliation for the destruction of the Russian arms shipment and its security team, and that it would come soon. The initial desalination plant, in a fairly remote location, was the obvious and most probable target.
The twenty-two supposed Italian military police providing security at the Ajdabiya facility were neither Italian nor were they military police, though several were of Italian heritage and a few could even speak it. Moreover, fifteen of the twenty-two supposed Italian military police were not sleeping peacefully as the attackers anticipated. The twenty two soldiers were, in fact, a full Delta Force platoon under the command of Captain Mark Simpson, plus an attached team of electronics specialists, and they were all awake, in assigned positions, and fully alert. The latter were set up in a compartment within the barracks module with a rooftop antenna that looked similar to the satellite TV antennas on all of the habitat modules but which provided both satellite and line-of-sight communication with an overhead unmanned aerial vehicle and an offshore surveillance aircraft.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, a state-of-the-art ScanEagle 4, was an unarmed long-endurance miniature aircraft equipped with synthetic aperture radar, a high-resolution camera operating in both the visible light and infrared spectra and an integrated optical detection system. The system could spot a rabbit running through the desert either by day or by night at a range of up to ten miles when on station at its optimum altitude of sixteen thousand feet. From four thousand feet it could spot a moving mouse at a range of about two miles. The ScanEagle could remain stationed for a full twenty-four hours. Two ScanEagles were tasked to the Delta platoon to provide continuous coverage.
The electronics team had been alerted to the incursion of the group of six men soon after they left their truck. Such a group moving at a steady pace through sparsely inhabited desert terrain matched a primary threat profile within the electronic database of the system. The KSSO operators had been continuously monitored ever since.
Captain Simpson had his command fully briefed as the attackers approached. His defense plan was carefully prepared, and he had rehearsed it with the soldiers in a walk/talk-through within the confines of the barracks module. He had used the time the enemy was in motion, and not likely to detect movement within the compound, to deploy all his men to their assigned positions. Two men would provide security for the electronics team and another four would protect the civilian habitat module. That left sixteen of them to intercept the attackers.
The four Americans stationed in the gatehouse would be at greatest risk. The half walls of the structure were heavily reinforced with plate steel but were open from the waist up except for the corner posts. At least two of these men would need to be visible within the gatehouse to present a credible picture to the attackers. While their flak jackets would provide some protection, a head shot would be fatal. Captain Simpson had no intention of allowing his opponents to take the first shot.
Six members of the Delta platoon were fully qualified snipers with sophisticated electronic sniper rifles tied into the battlefield management system from which Captain Simpson would direct the fight. Each of these had moved into position on the roofs of the buildings in the compound nearest the gate. Each was zeroed in on a primary target whose precise location was established by a combination of the rifle’s independent infrared scope and the position data from the ScanEagle. Each marksman also had a secondary target they would shift to immediately following elimination of their initial target to provide redundancy in the event one of them missed a primary target. However, with a clear sight picture from eight feet above ground, a miss was unlikely at a range of only two hundred yards.
Four Delta Force operators were positioned out of sight behind the command post and would serve as a reaction force to support the team in the gatehouse. Captain Simpson sat in the command post. A single rifleman guarded him as he peered into the screen of his battle management laptop, watching the cautious hostile force move into position. He noticed four of the attackers come to a stop about two hundred yards out while two continued on toward the fence. He knew that the four who were now motionless would include snipers who could bring fire on his gatehouse men within seconds, but he reasoned that the leader would almost certainly undertake a few minutes of final surveillance before initiating the attack. Mark Simpson then made a tough judgment call and withheld his command to open fire while the last two attackers continued to move into position.
The battle played out something like a shoot-out from the American Wild West days, with gunslingers drawing and firing on each other in the same split second. Captain Simpson gave the command to open fire almost simultaneously with the command from the KSSO leader to commence the attack. The outcome could have been quite different in terms of American casualties if the two commands had been separated by a few seconds in either direction.
As it was, the gatehouse soldiers had been ordered to immediately drop behind the reinforced walls when the shoot command was given to the Delta snipers, and their reactions were quick enough that the KSSO sniper rounds passed harmlessly slightly above them. If the Captain’s command had come a second later, they likely would have been added to the casualty list. In fact, if Captain Simpson had delayed another second he likely would have been unable to issue the open fire command, and the battle would have slid into a melee of independent actions.
The KSSO leader had barely issued his order to commence the attack when a .308 caliber high-velocity steel-jacketed round struck his prone body just behind the shoulders, destroying his spine and lungs. A similar fate befell the remaining members of his team within the same second. However, the sixth member of the team had just enough time to fire his weapon before being struck, as had the two KSSO snipers. His weapon was not a rifle aimed at the gatehouse. It was an RPG-35 anti-bunker rocket launcher aimed at the stationary target of the command post just beyond the gatehouse. The armor-piercing high explosive shell ripped through the corrugated steel of the command post and the Captain never had the satisfaction of seeing his plan culminate in victory.
Larry and the other civilians, both American and Italian, were restrained by the security team from leaving the habitat module and were told that the explosion was caused by local criminals attempting to breach the fence and pilfer construction materials. Larry continued on with his plans completely unaware that his death had been carefully planned by a ruthless bully leading the world’s second most powerful nation and that the plan had been thwarted by a professional American military leader who had given his life in the process.
The battle of the Ajdabiya compound was never publicized or acknowledged to have taken place. The KSSO operatives were buried in unmarked graves without ceremony. The two deceased Americans were buried with full military honors but without fanfare. The President of the United States privately extended his personal condolences and appreciation to their families.
The Russian leader was furious at having been thwarted yet again. Although the setback to his plans to bring Libya into his sphere of control was known to only a few senior political and military leaders, he knew it had cost him loss of credibility with his subordinates. He now regarded the amateur American president not with dismissiveness and disrespect, but with deep enmity. It would not be the last time that the two would cross swords.
Chapter 22
Wednesday, February 16, 2028
Washington, DC
President Rushton sat pensively in his study beside the Oval Office. He’d just finished a long-distance call with Larry Johnstone and was pleased by the progress of the fresh water program and cheered by the young man’s enthusi
asm. The Boston cell fabrication plant would complete production for the Middle East program in another month or so and would then begin on the U.S. domestic program.
The president had signed agreements with California, Arizona and New Mexico covering the scope and funding for large scale fresh water projects for each. The federal contribution in each case was making the technology available at no cost and providing loan guarantees to permit each state to debt finance the capital costs at low rates. For the Arizona and New Mexico projects, salt water would be piped in from the Sea of Cortez, which had required an agreement with Mexico. The agreement was readily achieved thanks to President Rushton’s close relationship with the President of Mexico.
There were requests for fresh water programs from several other North African and Middle Eastern countries. However, while he was more than willing to supply the desalination plants, the president knew that in most cases new facilities would need to be financially self-sufficient rather than gifts from his Treasury and his allies. He also knew that Americans would need to see some direct domestic benefits themselves in addition to the international humanitarian and foreign policy benefits of disseminating the application of the new technology.
The president was also worried about his next meeting, which was with Dr. Wayman and several others. Eli had sent an e-mail the day before with a preview to the meeting. Jim was happy to read that Peregrinus would very surely not collide with the Earth and that they could now focus on plans to manage the secondary consequences of its flyby. It was the latter part of that message that worried the president.
A short while later his chief of staff stuck his head into the study to advise the president that the group was ready. The president followed Will Templeton into the adjoining dining room, which had once again been set up to display diagrams from a personal computer. James Rushton recognized several of the group, including his science advisor; General Montgomery, the chief of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office; and the young mathematician from the JPL, Dr. Tony Galletsia. He was also advised that Darya Ahmadi and Dr. Rigby from the LSST observatory were on the phone. Eli Wayman introduced two new participants whose names and backgrounds were familiar to the president because he had cleared them for the Peregrinus file a month earlier.
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