by Dalton Fury
“Joe, fill us in.”
The senior intel officer explained that U.S. satellites were tracking two barges heading north on the Nile, both within a day’s travel of Ras El Bar, at the mouth of the river. The alert squadron from ST6 had arrived offshore in the Med, ready to get the go-ahead to take one or perhaps both vessels down so they could get the SAMs back.
Kolt was relieved to hear this. He would’ve liked to have been there, with a remote detonator in his hand, crouched at a safe distance, while pressing a big red button that would make the SA-24s go up in a mushroom cloud.
In a perfect world, Kolt thought.
Oh, well, some lucky ST6 commander was going to get that pleasure, and Raynor knew better than to begrudge him for that. It would be a dangerous mission, and Kolt had a unique understanding of all the worries and stresses that would be on that commander’s mind.
Even hits that went off without a hitch were no picnic. He wished them all the luck they could make.
Kolt thought about something else he’d learned from Curtis. “There was an earlier shipment of missiles that went through Cairo. Do we know the location of that?”
Webber stepped in and shook his head. “The ship made port a week ago. We lost the cargo.”
“Why the hell didn’t we blow it out of the water?”
“Politics. It was a Finnish-flagged boat, so POTUS wanted to be certain of its final destination before allowing it to be taken down. It docked in Aden before the Pentagon got the info to the White House and the White House sent back the go-ahead.”
“Damn!” Raynor shook his head in disbelief. “Curtis said there were fifty SAMs on board.”
The colonel said, “That was his estimation. We do not know for sure, but we do think a number of SAMs are in play. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would be the obvious recipient of these weapons, due to the location they were sent to. The intel community agrees that they may have them to target government-forces helicopters that approach their operational bases and hideouts in the country. Nobody is assuming that these SA-24s will be used against U.S. or Western commercial aviation.”
Kolt had packed his right jaw with chew and turned his Styrofoam coffee cup into a makeshift spittoon by now. He took a long spit and blew out a long sigh. “So … CIA says there’s nothing for us to worry about.”
Webber put his hands up in surrender. “Just passing on the message. Of course there is a hell of a lot to worry about. Langley is just basing their assessment on AQAP’s focus during the past couple of years. They have been fighting a civil war, not an international war.”
“But … boss. They didn’t have fifty damn SAMs until a week ago. Who’s to say their mission might not have changed?”
“Agree totally, Major.”
Kolt did not need to say that AQAP was the organization David Doyle belonged to. “Does TJ know about this?”
“He knows.”
“Is JSOC planning to get these SAMs back?”
Webber said, “The President knows how important this is and he is a little pissed. He told the Secretary of Defense to move quicker on any new intelligence.”
“So, the gloves are off?”
“Kolt, if the gloves didn’t come off after 9/11, they aren’t off now. Not in this political climate. But the JSOC commanding general says we have been given a good deal of latitude in course-of-action development to get the missiles out of the hands of the terrorists.”
Raynor’s frustration bubbled over. “Not exactly a catchy battle cry, Colonel.”
Webber shrugged. “It is what it is. The SEALs got the call last time, but keep your kit bags packed because the CG says we have the next one. If the intel folks can find those SAMs in the next forty-eight hours,” he said, “then it’s likely you will get yourself another hit.”
“It’s not necessarily about our squadron getting the hit, sir. It’s about knocking those SAMs out.”
Webber nodded. “It’s about both, Kolt. I know you want to be there when it happens. Nothing wrong with that. It’s why we do what we do and don’t leave it to someone else.”
Raynor thought it over. Yeah, it was about getting the SAMs dealt with, but Kolt wanted to be front and center while it happened. This was a big deal. He knew a lot could change in the world before his squadron was on alert again three months from now.
* * *
After the meeting, Kolt found Stitch in the Grimes Library. Stitch’s hand wound was still bandaged, and the big operator was in the same chair as the last time Kolt saw him, again reading some hefty tome on warriorhood.
“You ever think about going home and watching a game on TV?”
Stitch smiled. “Yeah, but I figure I’ve got the rest of my life to do just that, so I’ll just hang out here a little longer. How was Cairo? Heard you got hitched.”
“Hitched by the Army. Then divorced by the Army.”
“Trust me, Racer. Someday you will wish it was that easy.”
Kolt laughed. He knew Stitch spoke from experience. “How’s the hand?”
“Hurting less and less. I’m ready to get back in action. Hoping Doc Markham will release me this week.”
“Great. Just in time for training cycle.”
Stitch waved the book in his hand. “Beats reading about it. Any chance you guys will deploy again before Gangster and his boys take over?”
“Heading down to the SCIF now to check my sources. You up for a walk?”
Stitch slammed the book shut with a bang and shot to his feet.
* * *
Kolt pressed the red button and lifted the phone receiver outside the thick metal SCIF door. “Raynor, 2836.”
An audible balanced magnetic switch disengaged and then Kolt opened the door. The SCIF was pretty empty at the moment. An imagery analyst was leaning over a laminating map machine by the door; he looked up and gave a bored nod to the two operators at they entered.
The faint sound of Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” could be heard from the back cubicle.
Stitch and Racer made a beeline past the rows of sliding filing cabinets packed with intel folders toward a cubicle near the back wall.
In his two months back in the Unit, Kolt had been down here nearly every day he was in the building, to sniff around for rumors and insight from the experts. Racer always made a point of crediting the intel folks with the lion’s share of the work. Without their expertise and unsung dedication, guys like Racer wouldn’t have anything to do. Kolt also knew that these men who connected the dots were the same men who could keep Kolt and his men alive.
Kolt had the feeling that a few people in the facility thought him to be a bit of a pest. Some of his old SCIF buddies had moved on while Kolt was away for three years, so he had worked hard and fast to make friends with the new crop — perhaps a little too hard and fast. He knew that came with the territory, but he did his best to not dawdle too long or take too much time from the people working here.
But one man in the SCIF stood out to Raynor for his smarts and his instincts, so Raynor always sought him out and made him feel welcome and important around the building. Kenny Farmer was a young ex — Air Force Intelligence officer who was now a civilian contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, a strategic intelligence-consulting firm with Defense Department contracts. JSOC had a few Booz Allen guys working with them. They had to endure the same security clearance vetting as anyone else when trying to get a position working for the Unit with access to classified data. Civilian intel augmentees were generally worked like dogs overseas, putting in long hours while the operators lounged around playing Xbox or trading copies of Playboy and Penthouse. Guys like Farmer would stare at the ISR feed on a flat-screen all night looking for triggers and indicators. Once those were found, the glory boys would roll out quickly, do the deed, and then come back to hot chow. Farmer and the other guys would wait till the assaulters had cleared the chow line, then settle for the cold leftovers, before getting back to the computer to analyze the information brought back from
the hit. It was an ugly, continuous cycle for the intel folks, and Kolt very much appreciated all they did.
Farmer was young; Kolt put him no older than thirty. He was red-haired and portly, but his analytical skills were, as far as Major Raynor was concerned, second to none. Anytime Kolt had a question about an image from a UAV or a satellite, or even a question about some of the technology that had come along during the three years Kolt was out of the Unit, Kenny was his go-to man.
Kolt considered his charm offensive with the young geek a success, but in truth Kenny Farmer dreaded his impromptu meetings with the bearded major. Kenny was a bookworm and a computer nerd, as well as a bit antisocial. All the interest from Racer was disconcerting. No Delta officer had ever given him that much attention in the box. Even when he was smiling and cheerful Racer had intense searching eyes; he was a little high-strung for Kenny’s taste, and he seemed to show up at Kenny’s desk nearly every damn day. Each time Racer left the SCIF, Kenny Farmer breathed a long sigh of relief and wiped sweat off his cheeks with a paper towel from a roll in a drawer, put there for the expressed purpose of wiping off after chats with Major Raynor.
One could easily pick Kenny out of a room of military personnel due to his thick midsection, not uncommon among civilian employees. Racer had invited him to work out or go for runs with him, but Kenny had always managed to find a way out of what he considered to be a horrifying ordeal. Besides, Kenny knew, operators were paid to build their muscles, analysts were paid to build target folders.
Kolt and Stitch came up behind Kenny while he filed something into an upper filing cabinet drawer, and Raynor tapped him on the shoulder. Kenny turned to see the two bearded men looming over him, and Raynor watched the analyst’s eyes grow to the size of fried eggs.
“Hey, brother. How’s it going?”
The young man forced a smile. “Great, Racer. Welcome back.” He then looked to Stitch, and gave him a tentative nod while trying not to stare at his bandaged hand that, everyone in the compound knew, was missing a finger.
“Thanks. Got a minute?”
Kenny always had a minute for Racer, principally due to the fact that he’d yet to think up a reasonable excuse to say no.
“Sure.”
“Word is you are one of the team analyzing photos in Yemen looking for missing SA-24s.”
“That’s right…”
“Any luck yet?”
“No.” Farmer relaxed slightly, partly because he was comfortable talking about his work, but mostly because he realized he was not about to be asked to run the O-course or negotiate the rat maze with these two jocks. He said, “We know the SAMs went to the port of Aden. And we know the date they landed, but pulled satellite imagery shows no indication of where they went after that. Other assets and resources in theater haven’t helped with squat to give us a starting point.”
“So … where are you looking?”
The thick redhead shrugged his shoulders. “Everywhere. Well … pretty much everywhere AQ has known territory in Aden.”
“That’s a big area.”
Farmer nodded. “It is. AQ runs around all over southern Yemen. We’re focusing on highways and population centers, of course. CIA and the Air Force have aerial collection working it twenty-four/seven.”
“You think you’ll find the shipment?” Kolt asked.
Kenny hesitated, then said, “I’m going to keep looking, we all are, examining every image the community feeds us of a vehicle or a suspected AQ location that’s big enough to hide a MANPAD. But … truthfully? No, I don’t think we’ll find them. Lot’s of folks think the SA-24s are staying in Yemen to help AQAP fend off government attacks to their strongholds. But my guess is the SA-24s went to port in Aden in one shipping container, then they got broken out into individual crates and sent right back out on other conveyances. Trains, planes, automobiles, or boats. Those fifty SAMs, plus or minus, could be anywhere on planet earth by now.”
Kolt smiled and squeezed Kenny’s shoulder. He thought he was being gentle and friendly, but Kenny thought he’d have to grab an ice pack as soon as these two guys left the room. As he squeezed, Raynor said, “Farmer?”
“Sir?”
“You may be right. The SAMs could be long gone. But you are the best analyst in JSOC. It’s on your shoulders. Keep looking. Find us something. There are high-level AQAP assets cooking up something big, and there are a shitload of SAMs in their possession.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kolt said, “Eat while you work, don’t sleep, piss your pants, time is everything. You understand me?”
“Ye … yes, sir.”
Kolt nodded, squeezed Kenny’s shoulder one more time in a friendly manner that made Farmer wince, then he headed out of the SCIF.
Stitch held back just a minute. “Farmer … the major had a point to get across, and I assume that you got his meaning, right?”
“Yeah. Totally.”
“Outstanding. Just so you understand, he was speaking metaphorically. Work hard, but there is no need to piss your pants.”
“Okay.”
As Stitch left the room he wondered if Farmer already had pissed his pants.
TWENTY-NINE
Kolt went back upstairs and poked his head in at RDI, Research and Development Integration. This was TJ’s department. There were several men at low cubicles in the room, some of whom Kolt had worked with in his first stint in Delta, and others he’d only known by rep. Kolt said hello quickly to an ex-assaulter named Bobo, who waved back with one hand while he held his desk phone in the other. Bobo had been Racer’s teammate in their initial training but had gone to a sister squadron when they crossed the hall. Tragically, within a few months Bobo took a three-story fall during an explosive breach of a window while tethered to a nylon rope. The fall cost him a lower leg and his spot on an assault team.
Raynor then headed to TJ’s desk but found it empty.
Tackle, the master sergeant from the other squadron, was sitting on a table shooting the shit with some of the old-timers.
As Kolt turned to leave, Tackle called across the room, “Colonel Timble took a week of leave. Kind of strange since he’s only been back a month, but Webber let him go. He’s due back the day after tomorrow.”
“Did he leave town?” Kolt asked.
Tackle just said, “I wouldn’t really know. He’s your buddy.”
There was an inference to that, Raynor knew. He and TJ weren’t as close as they had been in the old days.
Before Pakistan.
Kolt looked at Tackle for a moment, but he wasn’t in the mood to start anything. He just turned and left the room.
* * *
David Wade Doyle passed through customs control without issue at Mexico City’s Benito Juarez International Airport. He had not expected problems, even though the passport he gave the officer identified him as a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and Doyle’s Arabic was not completely fluid.
But the document was authentic, it had been acquired through al Qaeda agents in Dubai, and Doyle’s baggage and person contained no contraband, religious writings, nor any hint whatsoever that he may be carrying radical thought in his head, so he received his entry stamp in short order and headed outside the airport terminal.
He looked through the crowd outside international arrivals and found a man standing there with a sign that read simply HASSAN. Doyle nodded to the man, as his documents identified him as Hassan, and he followed the man out front to a waiting minibus. Doyle climbed into the back while his driver managed his luggage, and soon they were leaving the airport grounds.
His driver was a member of Los Zetas, the most violent criminal cartel operating in Mexico.
Benito Juarez receives regular direct flights from over one hundred destinations around the world, and it serves over twenty-five million passengers a year. It is a huge cargo hub, as well, and dozens of shipping and receiving warehouses rim the airport and extend out into the sprawling hills.
The hills around Mexico City
also contained dozens of neighborhoods and suburbs, over twenty million inhabitants, and thousands of opportunities for David and his men to disappear and operate. It was a near-perfect destination for a criminal operation such as a terrorist cell, but this was not the only reason Doyle chose the capital as the first waypoint of his route in the Western Hemisphere.
No, his organization’s connections in the Zetas drug cartel had assets here that would help Doyle and his men get his weapons and then move them north through drug cartel country without interference from either a competing criminal enterprise or government military or police forces.
The Zetas did not control Mexico City, no one cartel did, but they brought men, weapons, money, and chemicals through Benito Juarez International Airport on a daily basis, so they were experts on moving from Mexico City to the north in a clandestine fashion. And even though a formal alliance between al Qaeda and the cartels of Mexico had been exaggerated over the years, this particular cooperation had been arranged as a single transaction, and all parties were well motivated to see that it went off without a hitch.
The Zetas would receive a large quantity of heroin delivered from Pakistan for their work on this operation, and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would get a dozen men and sixty shoulder-fired missiles into the United States of America.
Yes, both entities were well motivated to make this happen.
They drove for forty minutes but remained within the borders of the massive city, ending up in a walled private house in the San Pablo Chimalpa subdivision to the west of town. Doyle was led inside by the driver, who quickly placed the bags by the door and drove off.
Over the next six hours this driver returned four more times from the airport to the home, each time delivering men from Doyle’s cell. Miguel, Roger, and Steven came with the second load, Jerry and Tim and Peter and Andrew came with the third. In the fourth van from the airport Benjamin and Charles and Nick arrived, and George and Arthur were delivered by the fifth trip from the airport.