Strike Force Alpha

by Mack Maloney

  Ryder introduced himself and they shook hands. Phelan was a lieutenant, Ryder was a colonel, but there was no need to salute here.

  It sounded like a line from a movie, but Ryder just had to ask him. “How did you learn how to fly like that?”

  Phelan smiled—it was a Pepsodent smile. “Well, the Navy paid for it, but the Marines were the ones who taught me, sir….”

  There was that word again.

  Ryder pointed to the earphones. “And you listen to music in the cockpit, Lieutenant?”

  Phelan was looking around, taking in his new surroundings. “Had to do the jump in radio silence, sir,” he said plainly. “So why not?”

  Ryder started to say something—but stopped. What was there to say, really? The kid came across not so much cocky as supremely self-confident, in that rookie sort of way. Typical of the Top Gun, Navy jock, Tailhook crowd.

  He reminded him of someone, though. His mannerisms, the attitude.

  But try as he might, Ryder just couldn’t remember who.

  Chapter 6

  That night

  There was one drawback to the Air-Land Assault Ship/Special concept.

  It had to do with the aviation gas. A Harrier could go through tons of it, literally, in just a few flights. A bulked-up stealthy one burned that much more. The helicopters were also gas guzzlers, but nothing compared to the jump jet. The problem was, the ship could only keep so much JP-8 av fuel onboard. Space on Ocean Voyager was at a premium despite its size, and there were safety concerns as well. There had been no good place to set up a fuel reservoir big enough to meet just the fixed-wing asset’s needs, so the copters and the jet had to draw from the same tank, an uneven feeding. (The ship could carry just about enough gas to keep the three of them flying off and on for 14 days.) The rest of the available tank space was taken up by fuel needed to run the ship’s turbine propulsion engines.

  Keeping the gas supply up then was an ongoing concern. It wasn’t like they could get a hose boost from a passing Navy fuel ship anytime they needed some extra fuel. Nothing would blow their cover quicker. So Murphy had devised an alternative system. On prearranged nights, Ryder would take the jump jet up to meet an in-flight refueling plane. These aerial gas pumps were almost always USAF KC-10 Extenders, usually flying out of bases in Europe or the Middle East. Their crews knew only that an American Harrier needed a drink, nothing more. If Ryder wasn’t going on a mission, he would fill his internal tanks and some spares on his wing. He’d float back down to the ship and the Marine Aviation guys would drain the extra fuel off into auxiliary buddy tanks for use later on. To have a four-day supply of gas dedicated just to the jump jet was considered optimum. Now that Phelan was onboard, though, that requirement would have to double.

  Ryder had run the nocturnal refueling drills several dozen times since the Ocean Voyager started operations. They weren’t growing on him. The flying part wasn’t bad. It was finding the tanker. The Extenders were usually on time and at the right altitude. But locating them on the vertical plane took both skill and luck, especially in bad weather.

  And it all had to be done without any lights and, of course, no radio.

  It was 2350 hours when Ryder and Phelan took off. They were going out on a mission, their first together, even though they hadn’t spoken more than a few words to each other since the junior pilot came aboard. Ryder had barely introduced himself to the young pilot when the typical workday aboard ship kicked into gear. They were both summoned to the CAC by Martinez to be briefed on what would prove to be a long night of multiple assignments. A lengthy airplane prep came next, then a few hours to nap, another to suit up, and the final premission brief. Then it was time to go.

  The long night had to begin with one of the aerial fill-ups, though, as both Harriers were low on gas. They’d been told the weather above the ship was clear up 5,000 feet, but after that it would be solid overcast for a while. They went through the first cloud layer with no problems. The cumulus was moving fast, as it always did above the Med at night. They were promised a full moon after 12,000 feet. The tankers always flew at 20,000.

  They were going nearly straight up, Ryder out front, Phelan off his right tail, exactly where he was supposed to be. They had reached 11-5 when suddenly an enormous silver shape came out of the night and went over their heads. It was moving so quickly, Ryder and Phelan had no chance to react. It was not the tanker. It was an Italian airliner, Alitalia Flight 7544, Rome to Tunis. Ryder and Phelan had come within 500 feet of it—but it never saw them because the Harriers were ghosts; their signatures would barely register on a military radar. Never would they show up on an airliner’s screen.

  This crisis passed only to be followed by another. They popped through the cloud layer at 12,000 feet but found no moon. Wrong forecast? Wrong time? Wrong altitude?

  Nope. The moon was being obscured—by an oncoming sandstorm. A big one.

  The Africans called them haboobs. Clouds of desert sand and dust that looked like gigantic fists, rising with the wind and the heat of the day. Blowing unobstructed across the Med, they could make flying very unpleasant.

  Ryder had ridden out two of these monsters already and he wasn’t looking forward to a third. He guessed that the sandstorm would arrive in their part of the sky in about ten minutes. They still had to find the gas truck, hook up, get a drink, and split. Was it possible to do all that in such a short amount of time?

  They climbed to 20 Angels and found the tanker just a minute later, right where it was supposed to be. How Murphy was able to arrange these secret refuelings no one knew, but the tankers had not failed them yet. It took another minute for the Harriers to get the right speed and altitude, communicating only through the quick blinking of their navigation lights. The KC-10 could only serve one ship at a time, so Ryder hooked up first. He was full in three minutes. With one eye on the sandstorm, he unhooked and drifted off the nipple.

  Phelan went up and in and fucked the duck. But then the Extender started shaking, and Phelan started shaking with it. The windspeed at 20,000 feet had suddenly doubled. Phelan was smart enough to break off contact and then reinsert once the big tanker settled down. But the turbulence came again, not once, but twice. Ryder was riding right alongside Phelan, but there was little he could do except watch his wingman bounce all over the sky, a long nasty stream of fuel spurting from the Extender’s boom. Phelan kept his cool, though. He finally hooked a fourth time and hung on long enough to take a full gulp. Then he flashed his lights once and disengaged.

  The tanker immediately banked south, its ordeal over, and disappeared into the clouds, intent on escaping the worst of the haboob.

  Ryder and Phelan turned north.

  Chapter 7

  Lower Sicily

  Two hours later

  The huge explosion rocked the tiny village of Sardarno just after midnight.

  The village police chief was thrown from his bed by the force of the blast. He landed in the far corner of the bedroom, a dresser smashing against the wall next to him. His wife, all 327 pounds of her, was also hurled to the floor, their modest bed stand collapsing on top of her. Every window in their house blew out instantly; their kitchen ceiling came crashing down. Outside, half their flock of pet geese died on the spot—of heart attacks. All this in just a few seconds, and the ground was still shaking.

  The chief—his name was Roberto Tino—thought it was the end of the world. Anything less wouldn’t have sounded so loud.

  He slowly got to his feet, stepped over his wife, and retrieved his eyeglasses. He pulled the torn curtains from the bedroom’s broken window and looked out.

  The night sky was on fire. A red-and-orange spire of flame was rising out of the west. Tino wiped his glasses clean and then realized the flames were coming from the top of Monte Fidelo, the tallest peak in a line of remote hills outside Sardarno. Monte Fidelo was nearly 2,000 feet high—and four miles away from Tino’s farmhouse. Yet the glow was so intense, his roosters were crowing. It was that bright
outside.

  Tino finally had gone to help his wife when the telephone rang. Stepping over her again, he picked it up to hear the very anxious voice of the village mayor on the other end. The mayor was 91 years old but still a pistol. Tino couldn’t believe he’d been able to dial his phone number so fast.

  The mayor had also been thrown from his bed—and he lived inside the village, more than five miles from the peak. He asked if Tino’s house was still intact; the explosion had been so violent, he’d assumed everything between the village and Fidelo had been leveled.

  Tino replied that his house was still standing, but that it looked like the summit of the Fidelo was engulfed in flame. Was it an eruzione, the mayor asked him urgently. An eruption of a volcano? That’s what everyone in the village thought. People were fleeing toward the sea, many still in bedclothes, expecting to be overtaken by lava at any moment.

  Tino didn’t think this was a volcanic eruption. A plane crash, maybe. Nevertheless, the mayor ordered him to get as close as he could to the hill and investigate. Tino began to protest. They’d received an order from the Carabinieri, the Italian national police, earlier that very day telling them to stay away from Monte Fidelo and keep any civilians away from the peak as well. (This was not a hard thing to do, as the area was very isolated and only one dirt road ran in and out.) No official reason was given for this order, but the national police had been adamant.

  “Maybe this is why they didn’t want us to go near it,” Tino reasoned to the mayor. He knew a little more about Monte Fidelo than he was letting on.

  But the mayor couldn’t have cared less about the Carabinieri. He was convinced Monte Fidelo was erupting and he wanted Tino to go up there and prove him wrong.

  Tino just shrugged and hung up. Orders were orders and the mayor was his boss. So Tino slipped on his boots, grabbed his rifle, and headed out the door. As he passed over his wife, still on the floor, he heard her gently snoring.

  No reason to wake her up now, he thought.

  Tino jumped into his Toyota jeep and began driving west, toward the glowing hill.

  There was a villa at the top of Fidelo. It was very old, with 12 rooms and a spectacular view of the Mediterranean, a mile over some very rough terrain to the south. In telling Tino to stay away from the hilltop the Carabinieri had also asked him to report any unusual activity around the area, but again they never said why. Just after receiving their communiqué, Tino had called a friend at the state police base in Palermo asking if he knew what it was all about. He did. The villa had recently been leased by 16 men of Middle Eastern descent. They’d all claimed on their rental application to be “physicians and religious students.” Their previous address had been a rooming house in Genoa. The national police suspected these men were terrorists and that the villa was rented as a staging point for their operations. Plus, something strange had happened in the Aegean Sea the night before that might be connected with all this.

  The Carabinieri higher-ups in Rome were going to move on this information very soon, Tino’s friend revealed. He suggested it was best that the police chief obey their order.

  “Questa non e una cosa da coinvolgeri,” his friend had told him. “This is nothing to get mixed up in….”

  Tino arrived at the bottom of Monte Fidelo ten minutes later. The flames shooting out of the peak had intensified. But he didn’t see any lava or whatever else might come rolling down the side of a volcano.

  He checked his rifle. It was loaded, but only with birdshot. Not much of a punch, but it would have to do. He looked to the summit again and blessed himself. The glow was even brighter. The air around him was getting hot. He vowed to ask the mayor for a raise after this.

  He put his Jeep into low gear and started up the hill. It was more than 1,900 feet to the top. The villa was located just below the peak, on the south side. There was a huge abandoned vineyard directly in front of the main house. Thick woods and rock covered the other three sides of the hill.

  Tino quickly passed the 500-foot mark but had to slow down as he neared 1,000 feet. The Jeep’s engine was breathing hard and the road went nearly straight up from here. The flames were climbing even higher as he reached the 1,500-foot point. He pulled to the side of the road and stuck his head out the window. He could hear the roar of the fire, the crackle of wood and old vines burning. The smoke was getting thick.

  But he pressed on.

  His Jeep was just about to quit when he reached the 1,800-foot mark. Here he found a trail leading to the villa.

  He got out, locked his doors, and checked his rifle one more time. Then he started walking cautiously toward the flames. The wind was blowing clouds of glowing sparks all the way to the ocean, a mile away. That’s why the sky seemed to be on fire. Tino had never seen anything like it.

  He walked out of the woods and onto the pathway leading directly to the villa’s front door. The door was still standing. But the rest of the villa was gone.

  Tino was shocked. There was nothing left. The villa had encompassed five separate houses, one of which had been four stories tall. But everything was just…gone. There could be no doubt about this: an explosion had taken place up here, one so powerful, it had blown the compound into dust.

  The flames were coming from the cellar, the only portion of the main house still intact. Between the path and where the house used to be Tino spotted the remains of six adults. Their bodies were twisted into grotesque positions; all had been horribly burned. They’d been running from the house when the blast went off.

  Several nearby residents now arrived on the scene. They’d been about a minute behind Tino in climbing the hill. Tino did not order them away. This was a vision of hell up here, and at the moment he welcomed the company. He did, however, stop them from entering the field where the bodies were located. He asked them what they had seen or heard prior to the explosion. Two reported seeing low-flying helicopters in the area just minutes before the blast but claimed they could not hear them. Tino discounted these reports right away: helicopters always made a racket; he knew of none that could fly silently. Another villager, an Army veteran, told him the wreckage spray indicated an enormous blast must have originated above the main house and not inside it. He pointed out that all of the villa’s walls had been blown downward before they were vaporized. His guess was a large cache of explosives had been detonated just a few feet from the villa’s roof, literally blowing the structure into the ground. Tino’s conclusion: someone had bombed the suspected terrorists occupying the house. But who?

  There was only one clue. It came with a strange discovery made by another villager who had driven up to the scene but had parked lower on the hill. Walking through the abandoned vineyard, he came upon something very puzzling. Those up near the burning house heard him shouting and made their way to his location. They found him studying the wreckage not of a car or truck or even an aircraft, but of an outboard motor, the type typically used on a large speedboat. It was embedded in a bramble of old vines and was still too hot to touch. Obviously, it had been thrown here as a result of the blast.

  But this didn’t make sense. The Fidelo was nearly a half-mile high; the villa was at its summit. The only means of land access was by four-wheel drive, and the road was so steep it was impossible to tow anything up. Plus the nearest deep water was a mile away—and a long way down.

  How then did a speedboat motor get way up here?

  The place was called Ben Annaba.

  It was a small oasis village about fifteen miles in from the Algerian coastal city of El Kala.

  Ben Annaba was the headquarters of a terrorist group known as the Holy Islamic Army of God. They were part of Al Qaeda, though one of its smallest components. The government in Algiers wasn’t Muslim enough for the Holy Army, so they had vowed to change it. To do this, they had taken to attacking isolated desert towns and butchering the occupants. Men, women, children—everyone got chopped up in the name of Allah.

  Traveling on motorbikes and in high-speed desert SUV
s, the Holy Army was always long gone before the Algerian military could arrive on the scene. They moved so fast, in fact, sometimes the military didn’t bother to come at all.

  Bobby Murphy had somehow come upon a videotape shot inside the stronghold at Ben Annaba. Using the secure porn site in New Jersey, he’d fed this footage to Ocean Voyager’s White Rooms in bits and pieces, disguised as mpgs. The tape showed the Holy Army’s command facilities in the center of the town, with the terrorists’ living quarters and training areas on its periphery. Murphy had also drawn a map of the camp, which he sent as a jpg file. The drawing was so detailed, it looked like a photograph.

  The videotape keyed in on one barracks marked: BAYT ASHUHADA, loosely Arabic for “House of Martyrs.” This was where Al Qaeda members stayed when visiting their mujahideen brethren at Ben Annaba. Murphy’s information said up to 20 “martyrs” were in residence at the camp, along with their families.

  Then there was another building, located next to the main command hut. It was covered with crude drawings warning against bringing any open flames near. Murphy was certain this structure was the Holy Army’s ammunition dump.

  Ryder’s primary mission tonight was simple: put a thousand-pound bomb into the House of Martyrs and another into the No Smoking building. If he had any time to spare, he should strafe the encampment as well.

  The trip up to Sicily went off without a hitch. The Blackhawks had ingressed at their assigned point, one of them carrying the raft full of explosives picked up during the rescue of the Sea Princess the night before. The planning for the terrorists’ attempt to sink the cruise liner had indeed taken place inside the villa atop Monte Fidelo. The explosives that were eventually packed aboard the suicide raft had been kept inside the villa as well. This had been confirmed by cell-phone intercepts pulled down by the Spooks in Ocean Voyager’s White Rooms. Once the information was in hand, no one was in the mood to wait for the Italian national police to act. Besides, returning the explosives, raft, engine and all to their point of origin was a message to other terrorist cells: We know who did this and this is how they paid for it. And when we find you, you’ll pay, too….