The Ericksen Connection

by Barry Becker

  Two minutes later, he entered a deluxe room with a view of the Red Sea and noticed a bottle of chilled French white wine in a bucket and a gift basket. He found a note by the gift basket and read it, “Wel- come to Sharm El-Sheikh. Mona and I look forward to meeting you tomorrow morning at 7:00 am in the Aladdin Café. Get ready for a great day for diving. Ahmed.”

  The Gulfstream G550 jet roared as it approached the Hurghada Airport runway. The aircraft taxied to the government gate and eight men and two women walked down the airstairs to the gate area. The Director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center was the last member of the group to arrive at the military terminal gate. They were greeted by the Egyptian Secret Service. A senior secret service officer met Bill Sullivan. “Director Sullivan, Welcome to Egypt,” the officer said. Sullivan nodded approvingly. At that moment three American men arrived from the gate area, armed and with earpieces.

  Sullivan shook the CIA men’s hands.

  “Saudi intelligence uncovered a potential threat. We moved the conference to Cleopatra’s Resort Hotel,” the Egyptian security official said.

  He seemed a bit surprised, and suspiciously snapped, “Has the Saudi delegation arrived?”

  “Yes, director.”

  He glanced at the Egyptian security officer. “Thank you.” Sullivan didn’t like surprises, and his instincts went on high-alert.

  25

  harm El-Sheikh

  The weather off Sharm El-Sheikh on Saturday, May 9,2009, turned out hot and sunny, not a cloud present. The

  scuba divers put on their dive gear. The captain of the dive boat moored the boat off a reef. The buddy system swung into operation. A man and woman, both in their thirties, two women in their late twenties, Mona and Ahmed Kamel, Ericksen, Kevin Howden, and the dive master and his wife were all enjoying the pristine, tranquil turquoise waters of the Red Sea.

  They were in thirty meters of water. The serenity of the Red Sea and its spectacular reef life made the dive rewarding. Ericksen and Howden turned and watched two large sharks swimming close by them. Ericksen took his eleven-inch SOG knife from its sheath, which was fastened to his right leg. The sharks swam toward them, and at the last moment turned off in another direction. Ericksen nodded to him, and the dive master motioned an okay sign with his hand.

  After a few hours, the scuba divers were back on the boat. The deckhand started serving lunch while the dive master’s wife served drinks. Ericksen, Howden, and Kamel drank beers. Two young

  women joined Ericksen’s table. Ericksen extended his right hand and shook both women’s hands as he introduced himself. “I’m Mark, and these are my friends, Mona, Ahmed, and Kevin.” The taller, more attractive woman with the sparkling blue eyes and auburn hair replied, “I’m Rachel, and this is my friend Ava – we’re Canadians.”

  “We won’t hold that against you, neighbor,” Ericksen said and smiled.

  At seven o’clock in the evening, Mark, Kevin, Mona, and Ahmed sat down at a dinner table in the hotel’s Magic Carpet Restaurant. Off to the side near the bar, a pianist played soft, romantic music.

  “How many people do you expect to attend the two-day confer- ence?” Ahmed asked. “About thirty from Europe and the Middle East,” Ericksen said, as his eyes shifted to two women as they entered the restaurant.

  Suddenly, Rachel and her friend appeared. She wore a beautiful blue and white dress, highlighting her curvaceous figure.

  “Hi, Mark, good to see you again.” “Would you like to join us?”

  “Thanks,” she replied as she and Ava pulled up chairs. The waiter came over.

  “Would you like a menu?” “No thank you.”

  The waiter asked, “Would you like something to drink?” Rachel smiled, “I would like a martini.” She turned to Ericksen, “Where are we going tomorrow?”

  “A secret location. Lots of beautiful sea life, reef sharks, sea turtles, barracuda, dolphins, a famous sunken old Spanish ship, and a few tiger sharks to check out.”

  “Everything sounds exciting except the tiger sharks,” as she gave him a warm smile.

  He thought Rachel was a lot like Karen – warm, kind and with a sense of adventure. It had been more than three years since he had been in a relationship. She hailed from Vancouver, British Columbia, a ninety-minute flight from Portland. Perhaps this could be my lucky break.

  112BARRY L. BECKER

  Hurghada, Egypt

  At eight in the evening, four Egyptian secret service men, wearing earpieces, their handguns holstered, checked for proper badges. Ad lib chatter, laughter, and drinking occupied members of the govern- ment delegations in the Pyramid banquet hall at Cleopatra’s Resort Hotel. Sullivan enjoyed a conversation with three men, Sir Derek Worthington, Graham Moore, and Ulrich Genscher. His Director of Counterterrorism stood by his side.

  Worthington asked, “Does President Porterfield allow you to express your views directly on intelligence or does Campbell have the honors?”

  Sullivan chuckled. “Derek, I can’t comment officially on bullshit.” “Bullshit or not, I’m sure you let your opinions on critical matters

  be heard regardless of diplomatic civility,” said Worthington.

  “There are risks in being assertive with the facts in Washington, and bureaucrats and politicians don’t like to hear the truth.”

  “Would you like another Scotch?” Moore asked.

  “No thanks, Graham. I need to get back to the room and go over my speech.”

  “That’s not neighborly, Bill,” Worthington said with a smile.

  As Sullivan left the banquet hall escorted by two bodyguards, he walked by an Arab man, Abdullah Al-Suhaimy, dressed in business casual western attire. They both stared at each other in passing. Sullivan thought there was something curiously strange about the man, have I seen him or his photo before? Little did he realize, at that moment, the man was one of the most dangerous Islamic Jihadist operators in the world.

  Sullivan’s two-bedroom suite had two CIA men, one outside and one inside, for protection. He sat down by the desk, powered up his laptop, removed a portable device from his briefcase, and placed it on the desk. The optical scanning area measured two inches by four inches with a USB cable connected to one of the ports.

  Then he took out a USB flash drive and inserted it into the other

  port. The USB flash drive stored his original registered palm subcuta- neous vein template. Then he placed his palm face down, and the motion of his hand on the optical scanner activated a scan of his palm. It took less than five seconds to match, in real-time, his live- palm biometrics patterns to his previously registered template in the database.

  His identification was authenticated, and a Green LED appeared: ID Confirmed. EyeD4 Comm Systems’ biometrics and email software used top- level encryption.

  This authentication process gave the intelligence agencies and the DoD employees a sense of security in protecting their laptops because passwords were vulnerable to hackers.

  Up came a document with the letterhead of the Central Intelli- gence Agency:

  TOP SECRET:

  Government Counterterrorism Summit Date: Sunday, May 10, 2009, 8:00 am

  Speaker: CIA Director William “Bill” Sullivan Topic: Actionable Intelligence and Counterterrorism

  T

  26

  Hurghada, Egypt

  he Muezzin’s call to prayer was emanating from the mosque’s minarets. Six Arab men were praying next to their vehicles on prayer rugs. It was 6:05 am. They wore black

  jeans, t-shirts, and headbands. In the lead pickup truck were two men, a driver and a man seated in the passenger seat armed with an AK-47. The panel truck and the SUV followed, loaded with C-4 explosives hidden behind the seats and covered under a black canvas cloth. Motorcycles driven by Abdullah and his right-hand man trailed behind.

  At 6:59 am, five armed Egyptian soldiers planted in front of the entrance to the driveway exchanged fire as the pick-up drove up to the hotel with the two armed terrorists. Bursts of shot
s killed three soldiers, as the pick-up ran off-course and crashed. The panel truck loaded with one-thousand-pounds of explosives slammed into the front entrance.

  The terrorists yelled, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.” At that moment Abdullah pressed the remote detonator from the hotel’s parking lot. The thunderous sound of the explosion sent smoke

  billowing over the hotel as the city shook. The SUV loaded with six hundred pounds of explosives slammed into the other side of the building as Abdullah pressed the detonator button, bringing down a portion of the hotel. Fire erupted. The sound of the heavy fragments of brick, marble, cement, glass, and steel was deafening. He and his assistant sped off on their motorcycles. A soldier took aim and fired several shots, killing Abdullah’s assistant.

  Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt

  At 7:00 am, Ericksen brought his scuba equipment to his hotel room’s door, opened the door, and stopped when he heard the phone ring. He bolted back to the bed stand and picked up the telephone. “Hello.”

  “Mark, it’s Roger, I have good news for you. Today we received the German government’s signed contracts with their purchase orders.”

  “Now all we need is venture capital to accelerate our growth plans,” Ericksen said. Outside the hotel, a panel truck loaded with eight hundred pounds of C-4 explosives rammed the front entrance to the hotel lobby. The terrorists yelled, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.”

  Wolfgang Beltermann, a former Stasi intelligence officer and terrorist in the employ of the Red Sea Brotherhood, pressed the remote detonator button from the parking lot, one hundred meters from the entrance.

  Within the span of one second, the line went dead. The force of an explosion suddenly hurled Ericksen against the wall, knocking him unconscious. The blast knocked out all the glass windows in his room. An SUV loaded with eight hundred pounds of explosives slammed into the side of the hotel. Fires erupted as part of the struc- ture of the Regal Crown Resort Hotel started tumbling down.

  Beltermann and Omar jumped onto their motorcycles and rode down El-Salam Road to Maya Bay. They got off and bolted to the

  116BARRY L. BECKER

  twenty-foot speedboat by the jetty. Once they boarded the speedboat, the driver took off. The time was 7:10.

  Abdullah reached the Safaga Marina at 7:20 and ditched his motorcycle. An Arab speedboat driver pulled up near the dive shop and kept the twin engines idling as he jumped into the boat. They took off for the open seas as Abdullah put on a baseball hat and changed his shirt and shorts.

  Back at the Regal Crown Resort Hotel, police and firemen arrived on the scene. They entered the hotel wearing oxygen masks and searched room by room for any sign of life. They broke down the door to Ericksen’s room as smoke began filling up. He lay on the floor with soot and blood all over his clothes and body. One of the fire- fighters yelled in Arabic, “Hurry, this one is still alive! Bring the stretcher.” A few minutes later, they carried Ericksen to an awaiting ambulance.

  At Cleopatra’s Resort Hotel, people screamed, cried, and bled as they fled the hotel. The sounds of police and fire engine sirens howled as part of the hotel structure crumpled to the ground. Fire- fighters entered the hotel wearing oxygen masks and searched room by room.

  Two hours later, the authorities cordoned off what remained of Cleopatra’s Resort Hotel as people assembled and watched the destruction. The Hurghada police chief ’s smartphone started ringing. He picked it up.

  “This is the US Ambassador. Any word yet on the status of the American delegation?”

  “Mr. Ambassador, unfortunately, the only Americans we found alive were CIA Director Sullivan and four members of his delegation.”

  “I’ve dispatched a medical team, and once they’re on the ground, I’ll have them contact you. Please get them flown immediately to Landstuhl Regional Medical Hospital.”

  “Of course, Mr. Ambassador.”

  Abdullah, Beltermann, and Omar arrived on The Dolphin Prince within thirty minutes of each other. They let their speedboats drift from the mega-yacht. When they were two hundred feet away, they

  fired their AK-47s and watched the small boats disappear from the surface.

  Viewing the event from his periscope 40-meters under the Red Sea and one mile from the mega-yacht was an Israeli Navy captain aboard a submarine. The sub had monitored The Dolphin Prince for the past twenty-four hours. The captain held the radio phone and spoke in Hebrew, “Sir, we’re about 100 kilometers due east of El Quseir…coordinates are 26 degrees 18’21.28” North, 34 degrees 50’31.83” East. We’ll follow the ship.”

  27

  n May 11, outside of room 311 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, stood two armed US Army MPs. Inside, a nurse and a doctor attended to

  Sullivan. “How does it look, Colonel?”

  “Director, you have some nasty lacerations and bruises, but you’re real lucky.”

  “You’re damn right, Colonel,” Sullivan said. Over 300 people were killed, Ulrich Genscher, Derek Worthington, the Director of Counterterror- ism, and several of my staff. “We’re going to find those bastards and give them a one-way ride to hell!

  Death is the only justice they deserve.” The colonel nodded in agreement. The US Ambassador to Germany and the CIA station chief entered the room. They updated him on the Regal Crown Resort Hotel terrorist bombing in Sharm El-Sheikh.

  “Most of the hotel guests killed were tourists and businessmen. Two American tourists, a former British head of SAS, and Mark Ericksen, an Oregon businessman, were flown to Herzliya Medical Center in Israel,” the CIA station chief said.

  Sullivan’s eyes widened with the mention of Mark Ericksen.

  “Keep me updated on any breaking news. And keep me informed on Ericksen’s status.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Director Sullivan focused on the two major terrorist attacks and suspected they had to be the work of Al-Qaeda or a new Islamic Jihadist group, perhaps the group General Al-Jabr mentioned. Sullivan had an uncanny ability to evaluate both empirical raw data and human intelligence collection. Once he and his staff confirmed the facts, he activated a course of action. In the final analysis, if he had a target in mind, he never gave up until they were captured or killed, like a baseball pitcher in the zone programmed for strikeouts.

  Herzliya Medical Center, Herzliya, Israel

  Doctors hooked Ericksen up to an IV while they examined the imaging results from the MRI. He opened his eyes and felt groggy. The nurse entered the room and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  He moved slowly and whispered, “Where am I?”

  “You arrived last night. You’re at Herzliya Medical Center in Israel.”

  “What!”

  “Please, Mr. Ericksen, take it easy, you have a traumatic brain injury.”

  He started to get lucid. He gripped the side of the bed and pushed hard to sit up.

  “What happened?”

  “Terrorists bombed your hotel yesterday.”

  She picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune news- paper and gave it to him. The headline read: “Islamic terrorists blew up two Egyptian hotels, The Regal Crown Resort Hotel in Sharm El-Sheikh and Cleopatra’s Resort Hotel in Hurghada. Over four hundred people were murdered, and six hundred were wounded.”

  He put the newspaper down. “Please check and see if Rachel Bos, and Mona and Ahmed Kamel are okay.”

  “I’ll find out. Now get some rest.”

  The Israeli nurse, a young woman with dark, long black hair, hazel eyes, and olive skin, left the room.

  He looked toward the window. He could see the Mediterranean Sea from his hospital bed. He remembered the last time he had spent time in Israel, doing a six week joint-training exercise in 2000 with Israel’s version of the Navy SEALs – Shayetet 13, their elite naval commando force. The training had served him well on future missions.

  His thoughts raced back to April 2002:

  Bashir removed a photo from his vest pocket. “Please, I have a wife and two daught
ers. Please, I’m telling you the truth. I beg you,” cried out Bashir, as the sound of two shots pierced his body.

  The nurse entered the room and noticed his gown soaked with sweat and his face wet. He shook his head. “It’s Afghanistan.” The nurse wiped the sweat off his face with a towel.

  “What branch were you in?”

  “We were part of a joint special operations task force in 2002. I was a platoon leader.”

  “Mr. Ericksen, I can only imagine how painful those memories must be for you.” The nurse placed her hand on his hand. “I’m sorry, but I have bad news. Rachel Bos, Mona and Ahmed Kamel were all killed.”

  Ericksen placed his hands on his face and rubbed his head several times. He began feeling alive again, and then this tragedy struck. He was captivated by Rachel’s stunning beauty, grace, and charm. He thought she might have been the one. Why me…why did my friends die and I survive? These monsters deserve to burn in hell.

  28

  t the National Intelligence Directorate Headquarters in McLean, Virginia, leaders of the intelligence community and their staff were seated in a high-tech, bug-proof, and

  SCIF conference room, and surrounded by large hi-def, flat screen television monitors. Several people sat down around the conference table. Their name and title badges on their clothing read: Regis Helms, Secretary of Defense; Pete Geiger, FBI Director; Steve Camp- bell, Director, National Intelligence; Hank Lucas, Secretary of Home- land Security; Susan Norstad, Deputy Director of the CIA; the National Security Advisor; plus several senior heads of DIA and NSA.