by Gary Haynes
Nathan wound up by saying that there’d be a quarter-moon, which mean that there’d be enough ambient light to use their night vision effectively, but also meant that they could stay relatively hidden. Tom knew he was referring to their goggles, because they all had thermal or infrared scopes, which worked perfectly in total darkness. While he worked primarily in the open during the day, the SEALs adopted feline tactics. They attacked at night, utilizing surprise and stealth. The Delta assaulters back in Pakistan had had no option but to go in the way they had, due to the occupation of the land around the fort by the Shia refugees. But the majority of Special Forces’ ops were the opposite.
As he stepped out into the overcast daylight once the briefing had ended, he saw an Air Force officer walking towards him. She was in her late thirties and wore tortoiseshell-framed eyeglasses. Her blonde hair was up in a neat bun at the nape, although her uniform was struggling to contain her Munroesque curves. After confirming his identity, she informed him that a local hospital administrator had rung to say that Lester’s condition was described as comfortable and that he had a good chance of pulling through.
Despite the secretary’s circumstances, Tom could barely conceal his relief.
100.
To Tom, the payload compartment of the C-130 Hercules, or the Herky Bird, as the military had nicknamed it, looked even more basic than the Chinook he’d flown in to the Upper Kurram Valley. With its exposed-aluminium conduits, metal plate boxes and lengths of clad wiring, the cabin resembled a basement generator room. But it’d been relatively stable, even at eight thousand metres, and had decent AC. While he’d been unable to close his eyes for the duration, the operators had taken sleeping pills and had spread out on the deck close to where their gear was strapped down, and had fallen unconscious from barely after the plane’s chassis had retracted.
He wondered if he’d been wrong to try to do things by himself. Perhaps the US intelligence community would have had her safe by now if he hadn’t intervened. But if they’d had a better source of intel, he figured he’d be facing a federal indictment, or even occupying a cell at a black site, instead of flying towards the African continent with a bunch of the Navy’s finest.
Resting against the back of the red canvas seat now, he watched a brawny crew chief in a massive aviation helmet hold up two fingers to the SEAL sitting closest to him. Due to the loud whine from the engines, the arrival time was passed down the line of operators in the same fashion. Then they grasped the alloy bar either side of their thighs, so that they wouldn’t injure themselves before the mission if the plane hit the runway like a lineman taking out a wide receiver. Tom did likewise, bracing himself for the landing.
The Hercules landed heavily, as it always did, the screech and roar of the four turboprop engines in reverse thrust making it sound as if the fuselage were imploding. After the plane had taxied on the runway, they all moved to the aft cabin.
The operator next to Tom was a short guy, perhaps five-six, with wavy hair that fell over his ears, and a pale-pink scar on his jaw-line. He held a weapon that Tom didn’t recognize. It was less than a metre in length and looked like a mini-cannon, with a laser rangefinder on top. Unlike the other small-arms weapons the men had, which were camouflaged in a tan-desert pattern, the stocky weapon was jet-black.
“That heavy?” Tom asked.
“Nope.”
Tom sighed. “So what does it weigh?”
The operator looked over at Nathan, who nodded to him.
“6.35 kilos. It’s called the XM25 CDTE System. That’s Counter Defilade Target Engagement. An air burst grenade launcher. Fires 25mm shells with microchips programmed to detonate mid-air at a specific range. Over five-hundred metres if fired straight from the shoulder. Designed to take out targets hiding behind impenetrable obstacles like reinforced walls. Heckler and Koch smart tech.”
“Effective?” Tom asked.
“We call it the Punisher. Real motherfucker.”
As the cargo door swung up and the heavy rear ramp lowered to the tarmac, Tom shivered. The daytime temperature had plummeted to something like November in New York.
Camp Lemonnier was situated on the southernmost end of Djibouti airport, an outcrop of volcanic rock at the base of the Red Sea. The five-hundred-acre site was home to three thousand US military personnel and Department of Defense contractors, who occupied lines of adapted shipping containers known as Containerized Living Units, or “cans”. As they disembarked Tom saw them illuminated beneath the floodlights a hundred metres or so ahead. To the left, a military truck was parked on a nearby gravel road in front of “Thunder Dome” – the massive hangar-shaped structure used as a basketball pit – a group of five US Marines dressed in desert camouflage stood around it. The hum of generators filled the cold air, and Tom felt suddenly incongruous.
Nathan came up to his shoulder. “The rest of our gear,” he said, nodding towards the vehicle.
“What’s the up-to-date intel?”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“How long?” Tom asked.
“A helo will be flying us out in thirty minutes. We’ll be at the Y at zero two ten,” Nathan answered, referring to the point from where they’d proceed on foot to the hamlet. “There’ll be an interpreter in Yemen. Stick with him.”
“You think I’m a liability?” Tom asked, a little rattled.
“I respect what you do. But this is a military op,” Nathan said. “Nothing personal, dude.”
He walked off towards the truck, took his hands out of his cargo pockets and gestured to the Marines to unload the gear.
He’s right, Tom thought. It’d struck him that although he was the head of her protective detail, he’d been as much use as an interpreter in preventing her kidnapping in the first place. Now he’d be a bystander again, same as at the Shia fort in the Pakistan Tribal Areas. But, in truth, he was fortunate to be even that.
101.
The Saudi ambassador sat deep in thought as the Land Cruiser moved in a small convoy across a flat, arid plain in western Yemen, bordered by high sand dunes. The xenon headlights lit up the clear night air seemingly for miles. This was the Tihamah, the hot lands on Yemen’s Red Sea coastline. He’d stopped at a small village en route, constructed entirely of stamped clay and sun-dried mud bricks. Sitting on palm-leaf matting, he ate a light meal of goat meat and lentils, and drank the strong sweet tea. He thought the village smelt like a dung heap and was glad to return to the hermetically sealed car, and feel the AC on his face. But at least he hadn’t been at risk from the northern Shia. If they’d gotten hold of him, he would’ve likely lost his manhood.
With his keffiyeh-wrapped head tilted backwards against a rear headrest, he ruminated upon the recent events that had led to him being in this unlikely and primitive place. Despite all of the meticulous planning and loss of life, the secretary had almost been rescued. He found it difficult to believe, especially given that the head of her protective detail was supposed to have been killed by Swiss’s men in the US. As a result, he had blood on his hands, including that of Brigadier Hasni and the jihadist, Mullah Kakar. Part of him felt disloyal. But he couldn’t risk anything coming back on him, let alone the Brothers of Faith. That would not only lead to his probable death, but also, and more importantly, the complete negation of all he wished for his son.
After landing back in Riyadh, he’d had a meeting with the Brothers. They had ordered him to oversee the secretary’s killing personally. A poorly veiled repost, he’d thought at the time. Besides that, he hated Yemen. He called it the sick dog of the Gulf. Dirt poor, unstable, dangerous and corrupt. All the things his country would have been without oil and gas. He’d thought he’d be going back to Riyadh to watch the beheading on the Internet like half of the computer-savvy world. Instead, he’d been flown to Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, ostensibly on a personal visit to the Saudi embassy there.
It had taken fourteen hours for the secretary to be flown from France to Yemen and then driven overland to the
remote hamlet. His journey would add another six hours to that. The difference between the time that she should’ve been beheaded online, and the actual time it would take to get it done and transport the video to an area with Internet connection, would be close to a day and a half. The only possible advantage would be that the US would consider the threat to be a bluff, one that would be all the more dramatic when it was in fact carried out. Still, he took off his Ray Ban sunglasses, which he wore to help him relax, despite the darkness, and barked at the driver, ordering him to put his foot down. He wanted the grisly errand over as soon as possible.
Linda could barely breathe, the dry air being heavy with dust. It was dark with no artificial light. She’d heard insects scuttling around her since she’d been dragged here. It had been stifling at first, and she’d felt as if she were being slow cooked. But now she was freezing, her teeth chattering as she lay on the hard concrete floor. Wearing the burqa, although her head was bare, she was chained to a brick-built pillar in a square room. She hadn’t had any food or water since the group of masked men had brought her here. Despite not seeing the sky since leaving France, she knew she was in the desert, close to the coast. She could smell the sea and sand had leaked into the room.
The Muslim men who’d carried her from the jet at another unknown location had been different from those who had held her previously. Although they too had refrained from speaking in her presence, they’d manhandled her roughly for most of the time and had even kicked her on a couple of occasions. She’d been blindfolded and gagged before being thrown onto the bed of what she’d guessed was a pickup truck and covered with a mouldy tarp. She’d wept then, partly due to the pain in her shoulder and knee as she’d landed heavily, and partly due to a rising sense of fear. But weakness wasn’t going to save her life now, so she closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind.
She felt around with her feet, an act designed simply to distract her. But after a minute or so, she felt something sharp and cold like metal. She examined it as best she could, guessing it was a nail. She eased it up with her toes, so that as she extended the chain to its limit she was able to manoeuvre it into her hand.
It was a nail. She hid it beneath the folds in the burqa. Fleetingly, she thought she might get a chance to pick the lock with it. Then she thought that was a ridiculous notion. She didn’t have a clue how to do that. Still, she would keep it.
Less than a minute later, she realized that keeping up her spirits was an impossible task. It was little more than a pretence. Her mind was on the cusp of closing down and making up a new reality to save it from further trauma. After Tom Dupree had appeared in the room where the Englishman had abused her, she’d actually thought her nightmare would end. But she guessed he was dead now, and all hope had disappeared as a result.
She heard the wooden door being unlocked and opened. She trembled involuntarily. Someone shone a strong beam of light from a flashlight onto her face but said nothing.
“Water,” she said, although it sounded as if someone outside her body had spoken.
The figure stepped forward and blindfolded her with a length of rag that smelt faintly of male sweat before gagging her with another piece. The door was closed and locked. She guessed her death was near. She couldn’t help herself.
She began to weep. In truth, she didn’t know if she was weeping for herself, or for the pain her daughters would feel at knowing they would grow up motherless; for John, her husband, perhaps, or the thousands that would die once her death became known.
Where is God in all this? she thought. Where is He?
102.
The night sky was brocaded with tight clusters of luminous stars. On this part of the north-east coastline of Djibouti, the white-sand beach was speckled with stunted trees and scrub, and was edged by squat, stone cliffs. Abandoned fishing boats were upturned beneath them, their barnacle-ridden hulls resembling a pod of beached whales.
Tom and the operators were dressed in civilian Yemeni clothes: hand-woven turbans, short, sheepskin coats and cotton breeches. Underneath their baggy shirts, they all wore modified ballistic vests. The equipment – radio sets, portable SATCOMS, an array of small-arms weapons and IR and thermal lasers – was lying on light-brown poncho liners, ready to be passed out among the men.
Tom watched as a Mark V.1 Special Operations Craft, a twenty-five metre transport boat armed with M60 7.62mm machineguns, was lowered from the triple-hook system of a special ops Chinook, just beyond the surf thirty metres away. A Chinook was the heavy lifter of helicopters, versatile and dependable. The rotor blades whipped up the water into a surface whirlpool and flecks of sand stung Tom’s face. He turned his head, seeing the operators apply stripes of black face camo before checking the chambers of their assault rifles and sub-machine guns.
Nathan had informed them at the briefing in England that the Yemeni navy was insignificant, consisting of just thirty-five vessels, most of which were patrol boats. Given their extensive coastline, the chance of being spotted by one of them was remote. Added to which, the Mark V’s angular design and anti-radar cladding should ensure that they’d avoid the Yemenis’ Selex Coastal Defence System, he’d said, with a wry smile.
But as Tom waded through the warm shallows towards the craft, he knew he was heading for a kill zone.
After he strapped himself into one of the eight seats on the port side, the Mark V was soon travelling at over sixty-five knots, the sea spray all but soaking the occupants. The craft was used extensively as a SEAL launch facility and the seats were designed for maximum impact resistance, but the shock waves from the aluminium hull slamming through the waves sent jolts through Tom’s spine.
Nathan, who was sitting in front of him, turned around. “Clench your teeth,” he said as he grabbed the gunwale, “or you’ll bite your tongue off.”
The platoon chief put on a pair of headphones, the wire affixed to a VHF radio backpack propped up against the spare seat next to him, enabling him to use a secure frequency.
About ten miles out from Djibouti, Nathan confirmed that their fellow SEAL Team 7 operators had arrived at the rendezvous point. The landward edge of a secluded lagoon eighty-nine miles south of Al-Hudaydah, a seaport and Yemen’s fourth largest city. The Mark V’s engine was killed and the two CRRCs, combat rubber raiding craft, were manoeuvred onto the ramp on the stern. The craft, powered by outboard motors, would take them the remainder of the distance, where they’d be slashed open and buried. The motors would be cut a mile out and paddles would be used to reach the shoreline. If all went to plan, they would be flown from the hamlet in Black Hawks and be back on the African coast way before dawn.
About an hour later, the oil-black waters of the near-stagnant lagoon could be seen separated from the expanse of sea by a coral reef little more than fifteen centimetres below the CRRCs. Beyond, the muted moonlight had turned the dunes into huge piles of dark-red spice. During the day, the lagoons were teeming with mosquitoes, but the species that lived in sandy environments didn’t feed at night, and Tom and the SEALs hadn’t needed to apply repellent.
As a couple of operators paddled towards the beach, Tom, who was surrounded by bagged covert ops gear and ordnance, saw a small group of men emerge from the dunes and crouch down into a diamond shape on the dry sand. The deployed SEAL team, he thought. Nathan, who was sitting in the stern, resumed radio contact with them, speaking in short sentences peppered with code words and military acronyms. Apart from him, no one else spoke.
After landing on the sandy beach, the operators dug two large holes with short-handled shovels to hide the deflated boats. A couple of them had heaved out a large black box beforehand, which had been handed over by the CIA at Camp Lemonnier. When Tom had asked what it was, he’d been told by a bearded SEAL with densely tattooed forearms that it created enough interference to block cell and satphone signals. But it wouldn’t mess with their voice-activated radios, so, even if the rescue site could be used to communicate from, the Arabs were screwed.
; One of the men on the beach was the Yemeni interpreter that Nathan had mentioned, a man of about twenty with eyes like polished chestnuts, a prematurely lined forehead and wispy facial hair. His name was Khaleed Thabit. The operators called him Kali. He’d told Tom that he loved the US president and that he was going to marry an American girl and bring up a family in Santa Monica. Tom figured the guy was hoping for a Green Card. If the Yemeni survived the next few hours, he guessed he’d get his wish.
Nathan liaised with the team leader on the ground, a broad-shouldered man in his early thirties with a thick beard. He was wrapped in a traditional Yemeni shawl and carried a big-barrelled M79 grenade launcher with a customized pistol grip. An HK 45c handgun was holstered on his thigh. He looked as if he’d just stepped off the set of a spaghetti western. Nathan told Tom afterwards that the guy was a seasoned master chief, who was famous among assaulters for never carrying anything into battle apart from his handgun and beloved launcher.
The SEALs who had travelled with Tom handed out extra gear and ordnance to their brothers in the troop, including fragmentation grenades, suppressors and ballistic vests. The hard ceramic armour was uncomfortable and would slow them down some, but it would help to save their lives. Their backpacks had ballistic shields woven into them, which would be used to protect their heads as they fired around them. But like Kali, Tom remained unarmed. Nathan had said from the off in Djibouti that his orders were that Tom couldn’t use a firearm in combat in Yemen, and, although he didn’t care for military rules, this one was non-negotiable. Kali refused to wear a ballistic vest, too, saying that he was a Muslim and would put his faith in Allah. No one tried to persuade him to do otherwise. But everyone, including Tom, was given a med kit.