In Washington, the lights were bright in the hallways of power and the mood somber in the Oval Office. “Where does this leave us?” asked the president of the United States.
“As I see it, we can mount covert operations and threaten sanctions, but with the safety of our people guaranteed, we no longer have just cause to attack.” The secretary of state ran a finger down the transcript of the broadcast. “All lies, but good ones.”
“General?” The president raised an eyebrow at the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
“The Vinson Strike Group and the Marine Expeditionary Unit are en route and waiting for our decision. You guys have to make that call.”
The national security adviser said, “It’s a damned chess game, and we’re playing against someone who is pretty good at this, thinking two steps ahead. Giving permission for civilians to use e-mails and Facebook is nothing but free publicity. We cannot attack the Iranians now without looking like the bad guys.”
With everyone in the room agreed, the president issued his decision. He knew that Kyle Swanson was already on the ground and hard at work, so things were not totally at a standstill. Perhaps some special ops unit could go in to back him up. There would be another briefing in two hours, but for now, he made the only logical call.
The chairman summoned his aide, who was waiting outside the door. “Get on the horn back to my office. Stand down the MEU (SOC) and all strike packages, and await further orders.”
Captain Aaron Clay had peeled out of his flight suit, put on his khakis, and found a bench in the mess deck of the Peleliu LHA-5. He was decompressing with a hot cup of coffee while digging into a meal of steak and eggs. No more butterflies in the gut; just a sense of deep disappointment.
19
SWANSON SLID AWAKE AT noon, his eyes opening as easily as elevator doors parting to show a new world. He felt renewed, ready to take the next step, whatever it might be. His subconscious had mulled the situation thoroughly while he slept, and he recalled the first President Bush’s words when Iraq invaded Kuwait, “This will not stand.” Obviously, this illegal invasion of Egypt by Iran, no matter how it was spruced up as a diplomatic and humanitarian mission, was a slap to the face of the West; it also would not be allowed to stand.
Things had to be in motion in the world capitals, and although he did not know what actions were being considered, he did know that he had not a moment to waste. Don’t let them get comfortable. Kyle rolled from the bed and padded to the kitchen, the tiled floor chilly on his feet. He made a quick snack of juice, sliced cheese and melon, and an apple and walked to the big window overlooking the airport. It looked quiet. No planes arriving or departing.
He put his eye to the big telescope and scanned slowly left to right, coming to focus on large piles of boxes and crates stacked in and around a maintenance hangar about four hundred yards from the terminal building. Forklifts were carrying more crates to the pile, and guards were walking lazy patrol around the perimeter. Kyle pulled the telescope back away from the window to avoid being spotted by anyone doing countersurveillance by studying the windows of every building that overlooked the critical airstrip. The safe house wasn’t going to be all that safe if the Iranians and their pals in the Muslim Brotherhood got their act together and cleared the area. Omar would have to find something else within the next few days.
Back in the bedroom, he raided the closet and found a fresh pair of white cotton pants; they were a little loose in the waist, but a cloth belt took care of that. He chose a knee-length, loose dark blue dishdasha with an open Nehru collar. A checkered blue and white scarf covered his shoulders, and a cream-colored knitted cotton kufi went on his head. With that and the face stubble, he could go out in the daylight for a while, as long as he didn’t have to speak.
At the small desk in a corner, Swanson laid out a one-time code sheet and spent thirty minutes composing a report, then checked in again by sat phone with Trident headquarters. The Lizard answered instantly, and they greeted each other with inane-sounding passwords.
“How’s the weather down there?” asked Commander Freedman.
“Pretty cool. How about there?”
“Always the same. Shackle.”
“Right and ready.” Liz was ready to take the secret and guarded transmission. It was known as the Simple Shackle, and they each had preset identical pads that were a series of connected squares that gave them the look of a chessboard. Each square corresponded to a letter in the alphabet, but each number was really the number that followed it; a four actually was a five, which might correspond to a vowel the first time used and a consonant the next. The code was no match for a computer but was perfect for ease of communication. Afterward, the code sheet would be destroyed. Swanson had four that he could use on this mission.
Slowly, Kyle read the appropriate numbers that briefly reported that he was still good, the resort city of Sharm was quiet, and the airport was standing idle for the time being as far as plane movements. Then it was his turn to receive, and he jotted down the numerical series. When he decoded it, he found a surprise: The Saudis had already reacted and were shifting forces into position along the northwestern border to face Egypt. That would cover from the Jordanian border to the Red Sea, close the side door to the east, and dash any hope the Iranians might have of leaving that way. This will not stand.
He read on with a surge of pleasure that made him chew his lower lip. The next part of the message added another item to his list for this afternoon’s chores, one that he was happy to do. Then the piece of paper was ripped to pieces and flushed down the toilet.
He took a moment to disassemble the rifle, wiped the parts with gun oil, and wrapped it all in a pillowcase to cushion it and break up the straight lines, then dumped it into a trash bag made of heavy-duty black plastic. The pistol went into the back of his belt and was covered by the loose dishdasha. After adding a wire hanger from the closet to his bag of goodies, he left the apartment, locking the door behind him.
* * *
HE WALKED CASUALLY, WITH the bag over his shoulder, taking on the appearance of an average businessman just trying to get by during this surprising and dangerous time. The sun was bright and the sky clear, giving everything a confusing veneer of normality, although Sharm el-Sheikh was anything but normal. Still, awnings hung along storefronts to provide shade, and goods were stacked outside for sale, everything from bicycles to fruits and vegetables. Women, who could dress with some style in Egypt, had ducked back into the anonymity of their traditional ankle-length robes and covered their faces. Kyle found he did not have to worry about speaking, for not only were the crowds of civilians unusually silent, no one was meeting the eyes of anyone else. The best way to survive was to not be noticed. He kept moving, back toward the lower-income outskirts where he had left his stolen car, for he needed to steal another one for the day.
It took some shopping because many of the automobiles were either too small for his purpose or too new, with the cutoff SUV look or a hatchback. Within a half hour, he narrowed in on a dirty white Renault parked at the edge of a field. It probably dated back to the mid-1980s, and it had slick black tires, four doors, and the scars of having been in more than one fender-bender during its long life. It was a small box on wheels, but with a spacious trunk. It took only a couple of minutes to bend his wire coat hanger into a hook, slide it down the door beside the window, pop the latch, and get inside. His knife tore the ignition away from the steering column; he twisted the wires and sparked the engine to life. The Renault gave a couple of coughs, then chugged away, and he drove downtown, happy that his new escape-and-evade platform would never draw a suspicious glance.
A few bunkered-up guard posts manned by Iranian soldiers had been erected at key points throughout Sharm, although civilian police still directed traffic and apparently were also handling ordinary law enforcement duties. It was obviously an uneasy alliance, and the cops, none of whom were allowed to carry guns, were also staying low to the ground, fearful of the hard
looks cast at them by the soldiers with automatic weapons. The soldiers were at ease, smoking cigarettes, laughing, and watching the women more than they watched the men or the passing vehicles. Perfect, thought Kyle. With nobody opposing them, the occupiers were getting sloppy, and their vigilance was dropping every minute that nothing happened.
He drove by what appeared to be the central government administration building, which stood out from its surroundings just as a county courthouse dominated so many small towns back in the United States. Over here they were almost always simply called “Government House.” Four soldiers wearing the deep olive green uniforms of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were clustered outside the front entrance. Two were simply standing there with weapons over their shoulders, watching civilians approach a young officer seated at a table stacked with papers beside the front door. He was apparently there to give army permission for some errand to be run, or something just as mundane. There was only a short line of five or six men waiting their turns, and they hesitantly approached him one at a time. At an adjacent table was a communications setup that connected the officer to a higher command level if there was a question. There were no questions; whatever its purpose was, the line moved along rapidly. The radioman was bored, leaning back in the chair with his ankles crossed, and flipped his cigarette into the street.
Good enough. Kyle kept going, scanning the opposite side of the street. Since he was near the center of the city, there were a number of multistory buildings that seemed in decent repair, and boxy air-conditioning units hung from some of the windows. That made sense, he thought, and also signaled that windows that were closed were to unoccupied rooms, for without any cooling air, the rooms would be unbelievably hot and stuffy, even in January.
The building was a definite possibility. He did some mental measurements and chose a pair of windows on the fourth floor of a building about two hundred yards down the street with unobstructed sight lines to the soldiers. The old fashioned double-hung windows gawked at him like open eyes. Decision time: inside or outside?
The whitewashed building was some kind of office complex, the natural habitat for a lot of lawyers and businessmen who would want to be near the main government building. It offered Kyle the definite advantages of all-around concealment and height for a sniper’s hide, and since most of the lawyers and other workers were probably staying home today, there would be only a small chance that anyone would interrupt him if he could occupy that supposedly empty room with the dirty windows. Get in, shove a desk in front of the door, throw together a hide in the back shadows of the room, then slowly open the window about a foot. That would work.
The downside was that he was alone and could not really watch his ass and the target at the same time. He could not be certain the offices were empty, and getting up and down the stairs, through open hallways, breaking locks, making the shot, then getting out across sidewalks and streets was definitely the more risk-laden move. Somebody could stumble upon him at any moment, for pure chance and the real world could always intervene, and it was wise to keep such dangers to a minimum. As much as he hated to admit it, some things were just beyond his control. Go to Plan B.
Swanson drove on until he found an abandoned shed outside of town, not far from the road, swung in behind it, and killed the motor. Pulling on a pair of gloves, he opened all four doors and wrestled the backseat out of the car, leaving it beside the shed as if were an outside sofa. After that, he burrowed through car junk into the trunk and tripped the lock from the inside; the lid rose smoothly for a few inches, then stopped. He got out and went around to the back to lift it all the way.
Unloading the clutter went quickly as he rolled away two spare tires and tossed the jack, a sealed quart of oil, and a wooden box of tools. In this area of the world, owners worked on their cars rather than drop the vehicles off for a day with an expensive mechanic. Within minutes, the trunk space was empty. He covered the flooring with the pillowcases with which he had wrapped the rifle, so as not to smear old oil and dirt on the clean dishdasha and attract unwanted attention.
Newer-model cars all have release triggers inside the trunk to prevent anyone from getting stuck, but his Renault was of a different day. He would have to improvise. A roll of duct tape from his bag performed the needed magic, as he taped over the locked mechanism to disable it, then used some thin 550 parachute cord to create a handle of twined loops on the inside of the lid. Back in the trunk again, he sprawled out to test if he could fire from the prone position. It would be tight, but he was satisfied. He pulled the lid closed with a rope made by twisting a sturdy length of duct tape and lashing it to the cord handle. The trunk was then taped shut on the inside, still unlocked but secure enough to avoid its flying open while he drove.
The final chore was to ready his M-16A3, and he snapped the two pieces of the semiautomatic rifle together, fitted in the pair of cotter pins, and attached the silencer. The scope was dialed in to two hundred yards, virtually point-blank range. A fresh magazine of ammo was clicked home after he polished each of the standard 5.56mm NATO rounds for a last time. He laid it down and spread the black bag over it, weighting the plastic sheet with his duffel.
A few minutes later, he was back cruising the target zone, a Joe Average Civilian looking insignificant but with a large pistol wedged beneath his thigh. The soldiers were still at the Government House, doing their paperwork thing as he passed without looking directly at them. The street might have been choked and busy on a normal day, but not under this cloak of a menacing military presence. With many people sticking close to home, a lot of parking spaces were created, and Kyle steered smoothly into one about two hundred yards from the officer at the table on the other side of the street. He parked before a two-story facility that apparently also housed a number of small businesses that dealt with the local government. Windows were closed or the air conditioners were on. No one was on the two small balconies overlooking the street, which was virtually empty.
The boxy Renault had become a sniper’s mobile hide, and Swanson took it out of gear, pulled on the emergency brake, but left the motor idling as he made one last visual sweep of the street. A few people were around the open Government House, but no one was looking his way. He slithered into the back of the vehicle and took out the weapon, squelching the normal urge to hurry and keeping his breathing normal. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Now on his stomach, he peeled the tape away from the lid and held the handle to keep the trunk lid closed while he also stripped off the tape from the lock catch bar. Gun in one hand and the makeshift rope handle in the other, he allowed the trunk lid to rise another few inches. He saw an open lane to the target and let the lid rise even higher. Swanson listened to the sounds of the street. He disdained using the earplugs preferred by some snipers, because they dulled the senses and the shooter could not hear the enemy or what’s around him. Kyle would rather be deaf than dead.
Elevation was no problem since they were all almost at street level, and there was no detectable wind, which in any case would have made no left-or-right difference at this range. He eased the lid open the rest of the way, brought the M-61A1 to his shoulder, and acquired his first target, the busy officer. The view in the scope was so close and clear that Swanson could see that the man’s cheeks were pitted with acne scars, and the sniper exhaled and turned the job over to his muscle memory; he had practiced this very shot thousands of times. The finger caressed the trigger with a gentle, steady pull and unleashed a round that struck the officer right at the bridge of his nose, the fabled medulla oblongata shot, which impacted the lower brainstem and tore through the area that controlled almost everything in the body. The back half of the officer’s head exploded away and the body cartwheeled back over his chair, fanning up a wave of blood.
Before that body hit the ground, Kyle had moved the rifle slightly and shot the radioman through the head, which was totally pulped. The victim had been so totally relaxed that his arms just fell to his sides and the body
stayed in the chair.
The semiautomatic rifle and its shooter were acting as a single unit, cycling through the job, and Kyle swung the other direction by a few degrees and popped the two guards with shots to their hearts. Boom, boom, pause, boom, boom, and it was all over in five-point-seven seconds.
He pulled the rifle back with his right hand while lowering the trunk lid with his left until it locked with a firm snap. The few people in the plaza were on the ground in fear, shocked by the unexpected gunfire and staring at the dead soldiers, as Kyle climbed back behind the steering wheel and released the emergency brake. The battered Renault puttered away at an average speed, turned at the first corner, and disappeared.
20
CAIRO
IRANIAN COLONEL YAHYA ALI Naqdi of the Army of the Guardians took a great deal of pride in viewing things not as he wished they were but as a situation actually was. Artists lay down one careful brushstroke at a time, and time and talent determine whether the painting will be great or just colors scrawled on canvas. His invasion had proceeded nicely up to this point. The first phase was a success. He had gotten Iranian troops on Egyptian soil without opposition.
With the massacre of the soccer team, the attack on the Iranian ship, and the atrocities inflicted on tourists in Sharm el-Sheikh, most Egyptians felt their military forces, their police, and the coalition government had failed in their primary duty of protecting the people. In the public eye, the Iranian troops were regarded as rescuing heroes. In reality, Naqdi had established military control over the vital oil routes and effectively controlled the Suez Canal. Oil and gasoline prices were already spiking around the world, a problem that would continue.
The colonel understood, however, that the few thousand soldiers he had down in Sharm might look powerful, but they could not hold out there indefinitely. It was time for Phase Two: for the Muslim Brotherhood to capitalize on the opportunity. All Naqdi’s men had to do was keep up the peaceful facade in the south while the Brotherhood stirred the mobs into a frenzy. The Brotherhood had made substantial political gains, even winning the presidency, but it was not in real control. That lay, as always, in the hands of the generals. Now was the time to reorganize the unruly mobs into an alternate army supported by the people, drive south and link up with his Iranian commandos. Supplies and ammunition were sufficient to last until that main force could reach them.
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