by Greg Dinallo
Arafat stiffened as Moncrieff expected he would. The Intifada was the PLO manifesto, a top-secret document that after decades of impulsive warfare and rhetoric had precisely defined the movement’s goals and tactics, and given the Palestinian uprising its name. Only PLO leaders were privy to its contents.
“I proofed the first drafts, sir,” Moncrieff explained. “I met the author when I was at MIT; actually, I knew her quite well.”
“Then you also know Abu Nidal controls the currency you’re after, not I.”
“That’s why I came to you first.”
“Abu Nidal is no longer a member of the PLO. I’ve no power over him,” Arafat declared, splaying his hands resignedly. “To be blunt, you don’t stand a chance.”
“They said that about the Zionists in forty-eight,” Moncrieff replied, risking the insult to win his respect. He knew that the Palestinians’ hatred of their archenemy was tempered by grudging admiration. The Zionists had pulled it off—they had a homeland.
Arafat studied Moncrieffs eyes, gauging his intent. It was a guileless challenge, a forthright peering into one’s soul in the Arab manner. Then the PLO chairman’s expression softened, and he pulled himself from the chair. “We’ll take a walk,” he said genially. “And I will tell you what you’re up against with Abu Nidal.”
Arafat slipped through the arched doors into the courtyard and strolled off into the night with Moncrieff at his side. Two bodyguards appeared from the shadows and followed them across the pale gray marble. “It’s a horrid story,” Arafat began. “A story that would make a smart man abandon the idea. Of course, there’s always the fool who would find it encouraging.”
IN WASHINGTON, D.C., the meeting with the president broke up just before noon. Colonel Larkin avoided the postmortem sessions in the White House corridors and drove to the Pentagon, just south of Arlington Cemetery, to initiate redeployment of the spy satellite.
Not gifted, not born to lead, Larkin grew up in a family where compassion went unrewarded and ruthlessness triumphed. He developed a tenacious, can-do mentality in an effort to satisfy the harsh standards. It was Larkin, deemed too small to play football, who starred on his college team, who won the hand-to-hand combat competition in survival training camp, who after being shot down and captured while strafing a North Vietnamese supply convoy in his F-4 Phantom, escaped from a POW camp and survived months in enemy-infested jungles, fighting his way back to American lines.
“What’s going on?” he asked his secretary as he entered his office in the Pentagon’s basement, where Special Forces personnel were inconspicuously housed.
“What isn’t?” she replied, brandishing a stack of phone messages.
“I need satellite tracking first.”
She was reaching for the phone when it rang. “Colonel Larkin’s office? Hold on please.” She covered the mouthpiece and said, “Mister Moncrieff.”
Larkin’s eyes widened with curiosity, then he reached across the desk and scooped up the phone.
“Moncrieff,” he said, brightening. “It’s been a while. What’s going on?”
“I’m having breakfast,” the Saudi replied, though it was evening at Arafat’s villa. “I had an insatiable craving for scrambled eggs and bacon.”
Larkin’s eyes flickered knowingly at the remark. “Coming right up,” he said, hitting the hold button. “Put this on the scrambler, will you?” he said to his secretary. Then he headed down the long corridor toward his office, reflecting on the blustery autumn morning in Boston when he recruited Moncrieff.
That was five years ago.
The Saudi was writing his doctoral dissertation at MIT at the time. He was walking across the campus alone when the precise man with the short, neatly combed hair and dark suit, whom he thought bore a striking resemblance to former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, approached.
“I represent some people who are very interested in your work,” Larkin began after introducing himself. “You have a minute to chat?”
“Yes, sir, I do; but I’m afraid there wouldn’t be much point in it,” Moncrieff replied, having assumed Larkin was a corporate recruiter. “I’ve decided to go into business for myself and haven’t been interviewing.”
“Yes, I know,” Larkin said, privy to a CIA background check that informed him Moncrieff planned to return to Saudi Arabia and open his own consulting firm. “Have you ever considered working for the U.S. government?” he asked, showing him his identification.
“I can’t say I have, sir, no,” the young Saudi replied somewhat curiously. His English was impeccable, with a mild British inflection imparted by years of schooling in the United Kingdom. “I’m not an American citizen.”
“Not a requirement. Talent and intelligence are the criteria. I’d say you’re more than qualified.”
“So is everyone else at MIT.”
“They won’t have your positioning. Your work will be a natural entrée to situations we’d like to observe.”
“Observe—”
“Right. No assignments. You do business and tell us what you’ve seen or overheard along the way.”
“May I think it over?”
“Of course; discuss it with your family. I’ve no doubt they’ll approve.”
Nor did Moncrieff. Born into the Saudi royal family, he knew this was a chance to make his mark within the competitive and staunchly anti-communist family structure. Those who practiced Zakat, a pillar of Islam that obliged Muslims of wealth and social rank to almsgiving and involvement in affairs of state in the spirit of Western noblesse oblige, were well rewarded.
Since acquiring his Ph.D., Moncrieff had been “observing” those drought-stricken nations in Africa and the Middle East where his work had taken him. The political and economic climate, the mind-set of leaders, their state of health and personal happiness were all reported to Larkin; and bright fellow that Moncrieff was, he began seeing opportunities and proposing ways to exploit them.
Now, on this cool, April morning, Larkin entered his office, closed the door and lifted the phone. “Moncrieff—we’re clear. What’s on your mind?”
“You mean other than the fact that civilization is unraveling at the seams?”
“Tell me about it. This damned bombing’s got the president stuck in neutral.”
“Yes, rather nasty business, isn’t it?”
“Very. The DCI’s taking it pretty hard.”
“Perhaps I can help the old fellow out.”
Larkin brightened and loosened his tie. “You saying you have something on Libya for me?”
“I’m involved in a project with the colonel that might have a connection,” Moncrieff replied, encouraged by the anxious tone he detected. “In brief, you invest little and receive a substantial and immediate return.”
Larkin’s brows went up. “My kind of game. What’s the ante?”
“Bombers,” Moncrieff replied evenly. “Bombers with Pave Tack.”
“Christ,” Larkin said, stunned. “What’s his ante?”
“The hostages.”
4
“WHY WOULD WE give bombers to a madman?” Bill Kiley asked incredulously before Larkin could explain.
Now, stunned by the reply, the DCI stared at the Polaroid of Tom Fitzgerald that he kept amid the top-secret folders on his desk, then went to the window.
The director’s office was in the southeast corner atop the seven-story, 1-million-square-foot headquarters building that looked out over a forested campus.
Bill Kiley loved Mother K, as insiders affectionately called Langley. Every morning he strode through the lobby, pausing at the south wall to ponder the memorial stars engraved in the richly toned Georgia marble. Each honored a CIA operative who had died in the line of duty. Kiley had known them all, in spirit if not in person, starting in Europe during World War II with the OSS; and it was the hallowed presence of these dedicated men and women that sustained him at these times.
“The hostages,” Kiley whispered hoarsely.
“Ye
s, sir.”
Kiley removed his glasses and cleaned them methodically with a handkerchief, taking the time to compose himself. Hostages had brought down one president and now haunted another, a nagging reminder that CIA’s vast intelligence resources had been beaten by diverse groups of rag-tag zealots: Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Force 17, the Revolutionary Justice Organization, Cells-Omar Mouktar Forces, Lebanese Revolutionary Faction. Each had claimed to have kidnapped at least one hostage. “Bull,” Kiley finally growled. “Qaddafi doesn’t have them.”
“He will.”
“All of them?”
Larkin nodded.
“Fitzgerald too?”
“That’s the deal.”
Kiley’s jaw dropped.
“Moncrieffs already cleared it with Libya and the PLO. The bottom line is the Palestinians get a sanctuary in Libya in exchange for the hostages. Qaddafi turns the hostages over to us in exchange for the bombers.”
“Christ,” Kiley exclaimed, his eyes flashing. “You mean we’ve been chasing all these factions, and Arafat has had the hostages all along?”
“Nidal, sir,” Larkin corrected gently.
“Nidal? How does Moncrieff know that?”
“He mentioned a connection in Beirut, sir.”
The DCI seethed. “Fitzgerald’s people scoured every sewer and rat hole ...” He paused, then chortled, starting to savor the idea. “The Israelis will hate our guts for doing it without them. One problem—how do we know Qaddafi won’t screw us? How do we know he won’t take the bombers and welch on delivering the hostages?”
“Pave Tack is useless without ANITA,” Larkin replied. The acronym stood for alpha-numeric input for target acquisition, a transposition key used to program Pave Tack computers to find and identify targets. “You can’t enter target data into the computer without it. No hostages, no ANITA.”
“Sounds good,” Kiley mused, impressed. “But we’re not talking guns and bullets for the Ayatollah here. A couple of seventy million dollar bombers can’t get lost in OMB’s computer. This won’t mean a hill of beans until we figure out how to deliver and account for them.”
“An air strike is the only way I know, sir.”
The DCI nodded pensively. “Two planes downed over Libya —over the Mediterranean,” he said, quickly seeing the possibilities. “Sixth Fleet could handle the whole thing,” he went on, alluding to carrier-based bombers but a few hundred miles off Libya’s shores.
“At the risk of appearing self-serving, we already have air force personnel in place.”
“Good point. Who do you have in mind?”
“Paul Applegate,” Larkin replied, referring to a longtime air force and Special Forces colleague.
“Applegate,” the DCI echoed, recognizing the name. “Lebanon, three years ago.” Moncrieff had picked up some intelligence on the terrorist group that had bombed the marine barracks in Bei- rut. Larkin and Applegate had flown an unconventional air strike on their training camps. “You stuck it to those Shiite bastards.”
Larkin nodded, eyes ablaze with the memory.
“What’s Major Applegate up to these days?”
“Military intelligence with Third Air.”
“U.K.?”
Larkin nodded. “I touched base with him before coming over and took the liberty of bringing him up to speed. The major sends his regards and asked me to tell you he’d be more than tickled to take on Qaddafi.”
“Tripoli’s a long haul from Piccadilly.”
“That’s what the air force does, sir,” Larkin said with a little smile. “I realize it’ll be a bitch cutting the navy out of this.”
“We’ll give them their own target,” the DCI said, undaunted. “Air force gets Tripoli; navy gets Benghazi. The place is overrun with terrorist training camps. It’ll take the focus off Tripoli and reinforce the idea that this is nothing more than an antiterrorist strike.”
“A night strike,” Larkin quickly added. “We can’t deliver bombers to Qaddafi in broad daylight.”
“No problem. Defense has put billions into night-mission avionics and has never used them. They’ll jump at the chance to show off their hardware.” The DCI paused, his face taut with concern. “You know the president’s attitude toward an air strike.”
Larkin nodded solemnly. “Well, sir, I’m sure he’d approve the raid if he knew the hostages would be—”
“You bet he would,” Kiley interrupted. “But he can’t sign a finding on this one. Arms for hostages doesn’t bend the law, it breaks it in half.”
“How do we explain their release?”
“We claim,” Kiley began, assembling the pieces as he went, “that they had been shrewdly hidden in Tripoli—CIA found and rescued them. The air strike was a diversion to get them out.”
“That’d work,” Larkin said, smiling at his mentor’s facile mind. “Maybe we can take that to the president?”
“And State, Defense, the Joint Chiefs, everybody’ll have an opinion,” Kiley grumbled. “Before you know it, Congress and the media will be into it. We get these hostages out, Colonel, nobody will give a damn how we did it. Let’s keep it simple. CIA needs an air strike, CIA provides the president with the incentive to approve it.”
“I understand, sir,” Larkin said dutifully, reading between the lines.
“Considering the attitude of the Chiefs, we better come up with something that’ll get their attention too.”
“I’ll take care of it personally.”
Larkin was on his way to the door when Kiley called out, “Dick?” The colonel turned to see the DCI walking toward him.
“The Company needs this one—badly,” he said.
Larkin nodded grimly.
“They’re torturing him,” the DCI went on, referring to Fitzgerald. An emotional timbre, unusual for Kiley, was reflected in his voice. “God knows what they’re doing to him. I don’t care what it takes.”
“I’ve been proceeding on that basis, sir.”
Larkin left the office, went to an adjacent anteroom, and made three phone calls: the first two—to Major Applegate at 3rd Air Force Headquarters on Mildenhall RAFB in England, and to Moncrieff at Arafat’s villa in Tunis—confirmed that the project had the DCI’s blessing and was operational; the third, to the CIA station chief at the U.S. Consulate in Berlin, laid the groundwork for a plan Larkin had devised to obtain presidential approval for the air strike.
The colonel then drove into the District to a high-rise on Virginia across from George Washington University. He had leased an apartment here years ago after his marriage broke up, and had since lived alone. It was a small, low-maintenance unit that suited his spartan life-style and the transient nature of his work. Among the furnishings were his collection of handguns, a word processor, secure communications equipment, and an exercycle with 9,361 miles on the odometer.
After showering and changing into civilian clothes, he restocked his two-suiter, which was always packed, then drove to Andrews Air Force Base in neighboring Maryland, where he boarded a flight to Germany.
5
THE F-111 was descending over the Suffolk countryside 10 miles north of London shrouded in darkness when Shepherd thumbed the microphone button.
“Four-eight TAC, this is Viper-Two. This is Viper-Two with in-flight emergency. Request immediate CTL.”
“Roger, Viper-Two. Cleared to land on six left,” the supervisor of flying in Lakenheath tower replied. The SOF was always a pilot, the duty rotating daily through the wing roster. “Repeat, six left; straight in; winds are two-four-zero at fifteen knots.”
“That’s a copy, Lakenheath.”
“Update your condition, Viper-Two.”
“Left engine is shut down; utility pump is down; I’ve still got my primary; hydraulic system indicators read seven-six-five and falling.”
“Roger that,” the SOF replied, thinking they might as well have read zero. “Emergency personnel are standing by. I’ll take you through the boldface for BAK-12 when you’re on short final
,” he went on, referring to procedures for landing without braking capability.
BAK-12 arresting systems were part of every military runway. They were installed at the approach and departure end overruns; both had to be operating for a runway to be declared open. Like aircraft carriers, the BAK-12 used a cable stretched just above the tarmac to engage an arrester hook and bring the aircraft to a stop.
The F-111 was three miles northeast of Lakenheath when it dropped below the clouds. Shepherd smiled at the sight of the runway lights winking in the mist.
“Coming onto short final, Al,” he said to Brancato, who was slumped in his couch, his head against the canopy. “Al? Al, how many E’s in Beethoven?”
Brancato grunted unintelligibly.
“Come on, Alfredo, don’t die on me now.”
“Viper-Two, we have you on short,” the SOF said over the radio. “Let’s cover the boldface.”
“Roger,” Shepherd replied, coolly.
“Blow in doors closed.”
“Affirm.”
“Wing sweep at sixteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Emergency extension on gear.”
Shepherd pulled the release. Compressed air from an emergency reservoir charged the system at 3,000 psi, blowing down the nose and main landing gear. His eyes darted to the position indicator lamps, which had just come on, informing him both were down and locked.
“Two greens,” he reported with relief.
“Verify green,” the SOF echoed. “Slats down.”
“Affirm.”
“Flaps down at twenty-five.”
“Flaps down; two-five.”
“Tail hook down.”
Shepherd reached to the yellow and black striped handle in the corner of the instrument panel and pulled hard. The arrester hook blew down at an angle from a fairing beneath the tail, the trailing end hanging several feet lower than the landing gear. Like many military fighters, not only those deployed on carriers, all F-111s had an arrester hook for emergency landings.
His eyes were riveted to the instrumentation now, monitoring angle of attack, sink rate, and air speed, which he kept at 160 knots—30 ks faster than landing with both engines—as the bomber came in at an angle against the blustery crosswinds. The tail hook touched down first; it dragged along the concrete, sending a rooster tail of blue-purple titanium sparks shooting into the darkness from below the F-111’s empennage.