Strike Force Alpha

by Mack Maloney

  Chaos now ensued. The noise was deafening. Explosions, the sound of gunfire, the surviving militiamen trying to shout to one another over the racket. Another dozen gunmen arrived, their large open truck screeching to a halt at the end of the alley. They were armed with rocket-propelled grenades. One fired his weapon at the helicopter retrieving the bombers. The RPG shell missed high, exploding in the street one block over from the alley. Another RPG went off. This one went right through the rear cabin of the helicopter and out the other side, without exploding, an extraordinary piece of luck for those on board.

  A third RPG was fired, this one at the helicopter that had unleashed the rocket barrage. Aimed way too low, the grenade smashed into an empty apartment building a half-block away. The structure went up like a box of matches.

  The two bombers had been reeled into the helicopter by this time and the aircraft began moving away. Still, the remaining militiamen persisted. They were astonished that these were Americans doing this, astonished that it was happening so fast. But no matter. Shooting down one of the U.S. helicopters was now their priority.

  So every man with a gun opened fire on the second helicopter. It took some serious hits along the fuselage and up near the tail. It began to stagger; a trail of smoke appeared. A cheer went up from those below. Suddenly half the neighborhood was shooting at it.

  That’s when the Harrier jump jet arrived.

  It came out of nowhere as jump jets were known to do. It immediately opened up with its cannon, raking the alleyway from one end to the other. The militiamen went scrambling for their lives. Firing at helicopters with rifles was one thing; battling a jet fighter was quite another. The Harrier climbed, turned, and came back down again, cannon blazing once more. Another stream of explosions ran down the alley, tearing up the pavement and covering just about all the fleeing militiamen in concrete and burning rubble. This gave the second chopper enough time to safely move away.

  Only then did the Harrier leave the scene.

  Five hours later

  The Mercedes had been speeding through the streets of East Beirut all afternoon, going in circles, a caravan of SUVs and Toyota trucks trying hard to keep up with it.

  Slumped over in the backseat of the SE500 sedan was Abdul Abu Qatad, brother of the recently departed Muhammad Ayman Qatad. Abdul’s chief bodyguard was lying on top of him, shielding him. After five hours of this, both men were very sweaty.

  Abdul was lucky he was still able to sweat. Arriving late at his niece’s wedding, he’d just climbed out of his SUV when the function hall blew up. Abdul had escaped with just cuts on his hands and face, but his young boyfriend had simply disappeared, caught by the storm of nails. His gore was still splattered on Abdul’s robes. Abdul had served as his brother’s right-hand man for the past 10 years. They had overseen dozens of jihad operations together, using their Algerian moneymen as their workforce. But never had Abdul imagined the horror he’d seen this day. And never had he come so close to being killed himself.

  He’d been calling and calling on his cellphone all during this mad trip through the crowded streets, trying to contact anyone still alive in his brother’s security organization. His fingers were numb from punching in the same numbers, over and over again. But no one answered. No one was left.

  He finally ordered his driver to stop in front of a nondescript apartment building on the edge of East Beirut. The escort of SUVs and Toyotas, brimming with private security troops, roared up behind him. The armed men jumped from these trucks and surrounded the Mercedes. It was dark by now. The lights on the narrow street were very dim.

  The chief bodyguard lifted himself off Abdul and opened the door. A mumbled request was translated into a quick order: the security men were not to look at their employer as he was being taken from the car. He was in such a sorry state, Abdul didn’t want his hired guns to see him like this.

  All eyes averted, the chief bodyguard gently eased his boss out and helped him through the apartment building’s dilapidated front door. This was a safe house, a place Abdul had secured years before for just such an emergency as this. His bodyguard produced a key and turned it in the lock. The door sprang open.

  Only then did Abdul straighten up. He wanted to enter the house with dignity; not to do so would be considered bad luck. He shook off the bodyguard and ordered him back to the car. “Watch the entrance until further notice” was the man’s new order. The bodyguard hugged Abdul and departed.

  Abdul stepped inside. Downstairs was only one room, small and dark, no running water, no electricity. It also smelled of sewage. But Abdul didn’t care. The apartment was in such an obscure part of the city, no one would ever suspect he would flee here. Even his closest associates knew nothing about it. Nor did his wife or children. At last he would be safe.

  He took another sniff of the air. What was that other strange smell? And that dripping sound? He retrieved his Bic lighter, located a candle, and lit it. Then he turned around.

  They heard his screams out on the street.

  The entire squad of security men started for the door, but the chief bodyguard stopped them with a shout. He pulled a pistol from his belt. Only he would go in—at first.

  He walked through the front door and found Abdul doubled over, vomit covering his shoes.

  Hanging above him was a body. It was a young man; his throat had been cut. The corpse was upside down and strung from the ceiling in such a way that Abdul must have looked right into the eyes upon discovering it. The man’s pockets had been stuffed with wedding pastries. A pool of blood and crumbs had collected on the floor below.

  The bodyguard stared into those dead eyes and then vomited himself. The body was that of Abdul’s youngest son, Hamiz.

  But how could this be? Hamiz was in Jedda, studying at a madrassa under an assumed name. Who could have done this? And who could have known about this place and hung his body here?

  Something had also been stuffed into the dead boy’s mouth. The bodyguard retrieved it with shaking hands. It was a playing card. On one side was the ace of spades, except it was colored in red, white, and blue. On the other was a photograph of the World Trade Center in flames.

  Scrawled below the Twin Towers were the words: We will never forget.

  Mogadishu, Somalia

  Two days later

  The place was called the Olympic Hotel.

  It was an infamous building, six stories, whitewashed top to bottom. Nearly a dozen years before, a horrendous battle had been fought near here between U.S. Special Forces and gunmen loyal to local warlord Mohammed Farrah Aideed. Months earlier, Aideed had stolen just about all the food the United States had delivered to the desperate city of Mogadishu. In a place where starvation killed nearly a thousand people a day, food was power. And Aideed wanted power.

  On that early October day, a top-level meeting between Aideed and his henchmen was in progress in the building next to the hotel. The U.S. troops, including members of the United States’ premier special ops unit, Delta Force, as well as many Army Rangers, had descended on the building in a swarm of Blackhawk helicopters. Their orders were to capture Aideed alive if possible, or, at the very least, bring in some of his high-level associates.

  But Aideed’s gunmen had been tipped off that the Americans were coming. They were waiting when the Blackhawks arrived overhead. Aideed’s soldiers were no ragtag army. Many were in league with al-Itihaad al-Islamic, also known as the Muslim Brotherhood. They’d been trained extensively by veteran Al Qaeda fighters and were armed to the teeth.

  Aideed’s men waited for the right moment, then opened up on the fleet of American choppers. Two of the Blackhawks went down almost immediately; many others were driven away. The majority of U.S. troops that had already rappelled to the ground found themselves trapped. It took them a day and a half to fight their way out of the hostile city. Eighteen Americans never made it. One was butchered by an armed mob and dragged through the streets.

  These days, the Olympic Hotel was a shrine of so
rts. Because of what happened here, the Muslim Somalis got what they wanted: the embarrassing withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country. A mission that had begun as one of mercy, to feed the millions of starving in Somalia, had ended in a humiliating failure. The hotel still served as the not-so-secret headquarters of al-Itihaad al-Islamic, the people responsible for the killing and desecration of American servicemen that day. At any given time, several dozen Al Qaeda–trained soldiers could be found inside, too. It was here that tax money collected from the city’s miserably poor was kept and counted. It was here that the terrorists sold qat, the narcotic leaf chewed by Somali men. It was here that top-level Al Qaeda operatives transiting through Africa could lay low and know they would be protected and safe.

  Until this night.

  It was 10:00 P.M. and the electricity in downtown Mogadishu had gone out for the night. Candles and cooking fires were lit in most of the rooms at the Olympic, as well as the building next door. The noise from battery-operated radios blared through the open windows. Drunken laughter, too, along with muffled praying and the sounds of sour music.

  This was all broken by the growl of helicopters, approaching in the dark. There was no advance warning this time. No tip from the Italian peacekeepers to Aideed’s men. This was unexpected. A complete surprise.

  Fittingly, it was two Blackhawk helicopters that showed up first. No soldiers would be lowered by fast ropes this time. This was not an insertion operation or a high-level smash and grab.

  This was simply payback.

  The pair of Blackhawks dived for the hotel, miniguns firing, rockets flying off their underbellies.

  One aircraft stayed in the lead; it was the gunship of the two. The second copter was packed with soldiers. Held in with safety belts, many had their weapons thrust out of openings on the right side of the aircraft. This second Blackhawk slowed almost to a hover, allowing the soldiers to fire their weapons directly into the windows of the hotel’s upper stories. The first Blackhawk meanwhile launched two rockets and a TOW missile into the bottom floor. There was a trio of explosions and suddenly half the building was on fire. Many within instantly perished. Others died leaping from the rooftop and windows. Cluttered and rancid, the building next door caught fire, too.

  The attack went on for 10 minutes. Crowds gathered in the streets surrounding the hotel; some were armed fighters who’d rushed to the scene but were not sure what to do. A few RPGs, the weapons that had proved so fatal to the attack back in October of 1993, were fired at the helicopters. But they all missed the Blackhawks because this time they were fired from the streets and not from the rooftops, as in the previous action.

  The Blackhawks finally did depart, only to be followed by a jet fighter suddenly streaking low over the neighborhood. Its noisy arrival jolted many thousands from their sleep. The fighter—a Harrier jump jet—did not drop any bombs. Instead, it swooped down on the mob of gunmen and dusted them with a light green powder. This was barium sulfate and pepper acid—superitching powder. Once on the skin, it was near impossible to get off. It would plague the victim with incessant itching and bloody rashes for up to a year. The jet made two passes; then it, too, disappeared over the horizon.

  Only then did the ancient air-raid sirens begin to wail across the city, but they were too late on this good night. Rumors that the raiders would soon be back were shouted from the rooftops. Panic washed through the streets. Angry mobs began hunting down Muslim fighters and hacking them to death—they’d been the cause of this! No medical personnel ventured out into the madness. Nor did the police or the Army.

  And no one bothered to put out the fire at the Olympic Hotel, either.

  It burned to the ground.

  Port of Aden, Yemen

  Hamini Musheed hadn’t yet heard about the attack in Mogadishu the night before. And he’d read only a brief story in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on the incident in Beirut that past Saturday. Which was good for him. In his position, some things were best left unknown.

  He was a lawyer. A very wealthy one. His office, extremely luxurious by Yemeni standards, was located in a rebuilt villa, overlooking the harbor. He handled all kinds of legal matters within the city, everything from wills to criminal defense. He was well connected with the local authorities, all of them, like him, highly corrupt. It was a rare occasion that he even went to court. For the right price, he could get his clients out of just about anything.

  Musheed also belonged to a group called the Islamic Relief Fund. It was a charity fronting for the main Yemeni cell of Al Qaeda. He was the treasurer, responsible for moving up to $10,000 a week to an Al Qaeda–controlled bank up in the United Arab Emirates. Musheed had also been responsible for hiding the terrorists who had transported the explosives used in the attack on the USS Cole, in this very same harbor, several years before.

  Though, on the face of it, there seemed to have been cooperation between the Yemeni government and U.S. authorities in searching for the perpetrators of the Cole attack—which killed 17 sailors—Musheed had escaped the dragnet. Even when the United States eventually managed to track down many of the players in the Cole bombing, eliminating them, Musheed had remained unscathed.

  He was just too connected to get into trouble.

  He’d just sat down to his morning yogurt and tea when there came a knock on his office door.

  His two secretaries were missing this morning—both had sent messages that they’d be late. Musheed was a large man, weighing more than 350 pounds. It took a lot for him to get up and answer the door himself. So he called out that it was open.

  Two men came in. Non-Arabs, very white. Musheed knew immediately they must be Americans. They were wearing civilian clothes: jeans, T-shirts, and ball caps. They were also wearing black combat boots. Highly polished.

  The two men were carrying bags that Musheed would never have recognized: they were baseball-bat sleeves. The two stepped into his office and calmly shut the door. Musheed asked them what they wanted. They didn’t respond.

  Musheed was pinned behind his desk; he couldn’t move. The men reached into the bags and came out with two M-16s equipped with silencers. They both fired twice. Two tap shots each. Four bullets right through Musheed’s head.

  He hit the desk with a crash, landing facedown in his bowl of yogurt.

  The two men packed up their weapons and departed. They were out of the city by the time Musheed’s office help arrived 10 minutes later.

  Twenty minutes after that, they were out of Yemen altogether.

  Chapter 3

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  The next day

  The palace looked like a California beach house on steroids.

  Whitewashed walls, miles of blue roofs, large windows everywhere. It had 116 rooms, on six floors, each floor bearing three levels. Six living rooms, six dining rooms, and six kitchens were on every level, all with separate areas for men and women. There were three dozen bedrooms and just as many bathrooms. The palace also had a fantastic indoor garden, a zoo, a gigantic atrium, an aviary, and two pools, both Olympic size, both with intricate Arabesque detailing throughout, both indoors. Everything inside was huge—except the place set aside for prayer. It was located on a tiny patch of sand near the edge of the indoor garden.

  The palace was one of seven Prince Ali Muhammad al-Saud owned within the Kingdom. He had yet to set foot in three of them.

  Out back, where the compound met the desert, there was an entirely different structure. It looked like an Arabian tent but was as immense as a circus big top. It was made of canvas and concrete, with a lot of steel ribbing everywhere. It, too, was all white and had gold flags and those of the Royal Family flying from its peak. It was large enough to hold several thousand people.

  This was Thursday night, the Evening of Favors, and the tent was crowded. Every week at this time, ordinary Saudis could come to the palace and make requests of the Prince. These came mostly in the form of written petitions, though some were put to music and sung. Frequently the Prince himse
lf would be on hand, collecting the requests and allowing each petitioner to kiss him on the right shoulder. The most common favor asked of the Prince was to intercede with the government on behalf of someone seeking a passport. Other petitions sought money for a doctor, tuition for a child, or funds to bury a loved one.

  More than 3,000 people were waiting for him this cool night, but Prince Ali was already two hours late. Only the captain of his household staff knew where he was, the same place he’d been all day: in his master bedroom, on the top floor of the palace, sitting on pillows with two close colleagues, watching CNN.

  These were troubling days for Prince Ali, if anyone worth $20 billion could be troubled.

  He was a fabulously wealthy man; a direct bloodline to the House of Saud was all it took. By King’s decree, Ali got a percentage of every large construction contract signed within the Kingdom. He also owned the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange, which handled about 10 percent of the unrefined crude leaving the Persian Gulf. Through this, combined with his accountants’ daily manipulation of bond prices and metals futures and plain old currency fraud, Ali saw about $4 million flow into his coffers every day.

  He was 40 years old and while not a handsome man, he didn’t have to be. He had 22 wives, all of them gorgeous. Two had been Miss America finalists, one had been Miss World. He also owned a fleet of U.S. and British sports cars, two Gulfstream jets, and a yacht the size of a destroyer.

  But like the recently vaporized Muhammad Qatad and the Yemeni lawyer named Musheed, the Prince was also a moneyman for Al Qaeda. Many of those Islamic charities that Qatad and Musheed had been funneling money to ran right through the offices at the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange in downtown Riyadh. There the donations were mingled with Ali’s own money, then secretly distributed to the jihad cells worldwide. Two thousand people worked at Pan Arabic; almost a third were somehow involved in financing Muslim terrorists.