The Assassins

by Oliver North

  Lieutenant Colonel Hart spent another half hour talking with individual Marines and their Navy Corpsmen. After he departed, most of them lay down on the concrete floor and dozed, their heads resting on rolled-up poncho liners, rucksacks, and flak jackets. While the troops rested, Captain Christopher gathered his squad and team leaders off in a corner of the hangar, and they reviewed the Operations Order, load plan, and communications annex. Finally, two USAF C-17s landed, taxied up to the front of the hangar, and dropped their ramps, exposing their cavernous interiors. By the time the screech of their engines had died away and the big hangar door was slowly opening, the Marines were on their feet and gathering their gear.

  Without being told to do so, they formed up in two columns beside the Humvees while Captain Christopher and Lieutenant Weiner checked their names off on the manifests. On a signal from the Air Force crew chiefs, the two columns of Marines, looking like two long, sand-colored centipedes, shuffled up the ramps, then all the way forward in their respective aircraft. In addition to his own weapon, each man wore or carried more than a hundred pounds of gear.

  As soon as the troops were belted into the four rows of red, webbed seats, the four Humvees and trailers rolled aboard—two sets on each C-17. As soon as the vehicles were positioned inside the fuselage, Air Force crewmen strapped them down. Finally, after everything else was loaded, two large diesel-powered forklifts, each carrying an enormous pallet of ammunition and ordnance, approached the aircraft. That's when it happened.

  While the troops and vehicles were being loaded, Sergeant Major Skillings had been talking to the two NEST scientists beside the ramp of the C-17 parked to the right of the hangar door. The men from Los Alamos, dressed in Air Force flight suits, had shown him their ID badges and introduced themselves as doctors Reynolds and Chaisson. They were clearly excited about the prospects of putting their highly specialized education, training, and unique equipment to work.

  Skillings was listening carefully. While genuinely interested in how they did their job, the sergeant major was also sizing the men up, trying to estimate how they would handle themselves on the mission deep into Saudi Arabia's empty—and now radioactive—southeastern desert.

  Dr. Reynolds, having just described one of their radiation detection devices, suddenly said, “Wait, I'll show you one…” and he turned to board the ramp—directly into the path of the oncoming forklift.

  The equipment operator, his view blocked by the large metal pallet and the heavy load of ammunition lashed atop it, couldn't see the green-clad scientist who was about to be crushed from behind by three tons of ordnance. But Skillings, facing the hangar, saw it all and reacted instantly.

  Yelling “Duck!” at the top of his lungs, Skillings lunged through the air, hitting Reynolds in the right rib cage just as the scientist was raising his right foot to step up onto the ramp. The impact of Skillings's 212 pounds hurtling into Reynolds threw him across the entire width of the ramp, well away from the oncoming pallet and left the two men sprawled on the tarmac.

  The scientist's body was completely clear of the calamity—but Skillings' left foot was not. The forklift operator, wearing ear protection against the roar of the diesel engine, hadn't heard the sergeant major's shouted warning and couldn't see the two figures flying from right to left beneath the pallet. By the time the loadmaster standing inside the C-17 reacted and raised his hands to signal the driver to stop, Skillings's left foot was beneath the forklift's left front tire.

  The driver immediately backed up, but the damage was done. Though his foot had only been pinned for a few seconds, Skillings had felt the crunch of bone being crushed against the tarmac. “Doc” Doan, one of the detachment's Navy corpsmen, was there in an instant. He didn't even have to remove the desert-tan boot to see that blood was already soaking through the nylon canvas upper.

  The corpsman gently probed with his fingers, and though Skillings never uttered a sound through his clenched teeth, neither one of them needed an X-ray to tell that something was broken. Doan shook his head and said, “Don't move it. We need to stabilize this, Sergeant Major. I'm going to get an inflatable splint.”

  The corpsman ran up the ramp and returned in seconds with his canvas Unit One First Aid Kit. He withdrew what looked like a rolled up, double-sided plastic bag. Doan deftly slid the bag up over Skillings's leg, hit a small compressed air cartridge, and the bag inflated around the sergeant major's injured extremity.

  By now the apologetic forklift operator and several of the Air Force crewmen were standing around the injured sergeant major and the corpsman kneeling beside him. Skillings looked around and growled, “What's wrong with you people? Haven't you ever seen a black Pillsbury ‘doughboy’ before? Get back to work!”

  At that point Capt. Andy Christopher arrived from the other aircraft and said, “Lying down on the job again, eh, Sergeant Major?” But his voice showed his concern and compassion as he asked, “What's it look like, Doc?”

  “Broken ankle, sir,” replied Doan in a matter-of-fact manner.

  “Can he go with us?”

  “No, sir,” answered the corpsman. “He needs to see a medical officer, get an X-ray. Depends on how bad his foot is; it might need surgery.”

  “Button it up, Doc, and help me up,” said Skillings through clenched teeth. “I'll be OK in a couple of days.”

  The corpsman stood, looked at the captain, and shook his head.

  Christopher thought for a moment, then said, “No, Sergeant Major, you need to sit this one out. I'm going to get the Air Station duty officer to send an ambulance and run you over to Hospital Point. If the docs say you're good to go, you can catch a hop to Doha. We'll probably still be sitting there waiting for something to happen.”

  Twenty minutes later Skillings was riding prone on a gurney in the back of an Air Station ambulance headed toward the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital when the roar of the two C-17s lifting off reverberated through the vehicle. The youthful hospital corpsman seated beside him checking his vital signs said, “Hey, Sergeant Major, your pulse and blood pressure just spiked. Don't get so worried. This isn't combat. That's just the noise of a couple of planes taking off.”

  Skillings looked at the young man, leaned back on the pillow, and said, “Yeah. Thanks, Doc. I wonder where they're going.”

  Operations Directorate, 7th Floor, CIA Headquarters

  ________________________________________

  Langley, VA

  Wednesday, 17 October 2007

  1300 Hours Local

  “I'm telling you, Bill, there is something going on at that Filaya Oil Facility in Riyadh.” Joseph Blackman, the British MI6 officer sitting across the desk from his friend William Goode, spoke earnestly to the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations. He continued, “Patterson here says that the GCHQ listening post at our embassy in Riyadh and our El Auja base in Jordan are both picking up Russian, Arabic, and Farsi—all coming out of the Filaya site.”

  Goode, in his shirt sleeves, with hands clasped and his arms resting on his elbows, leaned forward across his desk, looked from Blackman to Roy Patterson, the young GCHQ “Emissions Technician” who had accompanied Blackman “across the pond.” Their hastily arranged RAF flight from London had landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 1200, and a CIA car had whisked them directly to the Agency's Langley, Virginia, headquarters.

  Patterson, suddenly realizing he was expected to speak, stammered: “Yes, quite, Mr. Goode. Just as Mr. Blackman said, we've been picking up quite a montage of language coming from the Filaya site. It appears to us that it is some kind of command and control node for what's been happening in Saudi Arabia—and perhaps elsewhere around the world involving members of the Saudi royal family.”

  “Have you been able to translate any of what's being said?” asked Goode.

  “Some. I brought a number of transcripts,” Patterson replied, reaching into his briefcase and withdrawing a sheaf of paper. Handing Goode the top sheet, the GCHQ expert said, “This is the last one to come in befor
e we left London. It's a cell phone conversation ‘in the clear’ between two males speaking Russian. Both El Auja and our embassy site intercepted it early this morning. It's only a partial, but it appears that the person initiating the call is in the Filaya building and the person taking the call is a subordinate somewhere in King Khalid Military City, the big Saudi Army and Air Force base northwest of the capital.”

  Goode nodded and read the intercept:

  MOST SECRET

  SIGINT

  INTERCEPT POST: GCHQ/AD BRICKMAN

  DATE: 17 OCT

  TIME: 0545-0547 LOCAL

  LANG: RUSSIAN

  CIPHER: CLEAR

  MODE: VOICE CELL BAND GSM SA 825-894 MHZ

  TARGET/SOURCE:

  A. ID UNK, MALE, VIC FILAYA COMPLEX, RIYADH

  B. ID UNK, MALE, VIC KING KHALID MILITARY CITY

  A. YOU AND (UNINTELLIGIBLE) MUST COME HERE IMMEDIATELY.

  B. WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME ON THIS PHONE? WE ARE BUSY HERE WITH THE AIRCRAFT.

  A. THERE HAS BEEN ANOTHER CHANGE OF (SEVERAL WORDS UNINTELLIGIBLE). I NEED YOU HERE WITH THE BARRELS OF SPECIAL MATERIAL. IT (SEVERAL WORDS UNINTELLIGIBLE) READY FOR USE BY THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.

  B. YOU KNOW NIKOLAI THAT THE MEN ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS. AFTER THE LAST ONE (UNINTELLIGIBLE) HAD A MUTINY.

  A. GREGOR DO NOT (UNINTELLIGIBLE) ME. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST IT IS AN ORDER.

  B. WHEN DO YOU WANT ME THERE?

  A. YOU KNOW BETTER THAN I HOW (UNINTELLIGIBLE) PUT THIS TOGETHER. WE HAVE TO HAVE IT IN PLACE BY FRIDAY MORNING.

  B. YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THIS WILL NOT DO ANY SERIOUS DAMAGE OTHER THAN (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

  A. THAT IS NOT THE ISSUE (SEVERAL WORDS UNINTELLIGIBLE) WE HAVE BEEN TOLD WHAT TO DO AND WHEN IT HAS TO BE DONE.

  B. I WILL (UNINTELLIGIBLE) TONIGHT.

  A. AS LONG AS YOU HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

  TRANSMISSION TERMINATED 0547:23

  When Goode finished reading the transcript he looked up and said, “Are the others much like this one?”

  “There are only a few cell phone calls like this,” Patterson answered. “Most of what we're getting is short-range radio with commercial encryption. There are multiple bands and frequency ranges in use, and it is in various Arab dialects, some Farsi and, of course, Russian, like this one.”

  “What do you make of it, Joseph? Could this be Russian diplomatic or commercial people communicating with the locals, perhaps trying to arrange safe passage out of the country?” Goode asked, turning to Blackman.

  “We don't know—but here's what I think,” Blackman said emphatically. “Person ‘A’ at the Filaya Complex is the man in charge of some activity in Riyadh—but he has a superior somewhere— because even though ‘A’ initiates the call, he's clearly relaying someone else's orders to ‘B’ at King Khalid Military City. ‘B’ is a subordinate, likely some kind of technical expert that ‘A’ needs back in Riyadh to repair or build something, using ‘barrels of special material.’ Person B is not happy about what he's being told to do, but he's going to comply.”

  “And we have no idea who these people are or what it is they are planning to do?” asked Goode.

  “Officially? No,” replied Blackman, “but Patterson and I think we know who ‘A’ and ‘B’ are—though we can't confirm it with our voice recognition software.”

  “Who are they?” asked Goode, looking now at the GCHQ expert.

  “We believe ‘A’ is Col. Nikolai Dubzhuko, the Russian who Mr. Blackman says arrived in Riyadh eight days before all hell broke loose in Saudi Arabia. And we think ‘B’ is Lt. Col. Gregor Pokrovsky, who was the SVR Deputy Rezident in Damascus in 2003.”

  Goode squinted at the two men and said, as though to himself, “Why do I know that name, Pokrovsky?”

  “He's a man your DIA believed to have taken part in removing Saddam's WMD stocks and equipment, shipping them into Syria just before we launched Operation Iraqi Freedom,” answered Blackman.

  Goode nodded his head, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the two men for a long moment, then said, “And, Joseph, if I understood your call last night, you think that Dubzhuko is working for Gen. Dimitri Komulakov, whom you believe to be in Cuba.”

  “Yes, William,” said Blackman. “And now that I've had some rest coming here on that delightful RAF transport, I now believe that Komulakov is somehow orchestrating this whole Saudi Arabian fiasco from Cuba—including the murders of royal family members elsewhere around the world—and I believe he's doing it all at the behest of Tehran.”

  “That's a stretch,” said Goode with a half smile. “Did you find any comms among Dubzhuko in Riyadh? Or from Komulakov in Cuba—and from anyone in Tehran?”

  “No,” said Blackman, “but you're a lot closer to Cuba than we are, old friend.”

  “True,” said Goode. “But I'm not sure I'm going to get a lot of help from NSA to start poking around Mr. Castro's little island. Things have changed a good bit over here since we ‘reorganized.’ I now have to put a request in for that kind of coverage through our DNI, and Mr. Straw seems to be fairly well preoccupied with Southwest Asia right now.”

  Patterson simply shrugged and said, “Quite.”

  Goode picked up the transcript again and asked, “Any thoughts on what your Col. Nikolai Dubzhuko wants Lt. Col. Gregor Pokrovsky to do with these ‘barrels of special material’ by Friday?”

  Blackman took a moment to answer and then responded: “Since you asked, William, I believe that the ‘barrels’ contain either chemical, biological, or radiological material that has been brought into Saudi Arabia from Syria by Pokrovsky. I think that our Russian ‘friends’ intend to use it to create more havoc on behalf of the ayatollahs in Tehran.”

  “Can we prove any of this, Joseph?”

  Blackman slumped back into his chair, looked Goode in the eye, and said, “No. I'm afraid not. But if the worst happens—as I think it's about to—everyone is going to wish we had some proof.”

  Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

  ________________________________________

  The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

  Wednesday, 17 October 2007

  1500 Hours Local

  “Quite a view you have from here, Mr. Chairman,” said Brig. Gen. Peter Newman with a smile. He was standing by the triple-pane, Mylar-coated window, looking northwest at the lengthening shadows from the top floor of the Pentagon. To his left he could see Arlington Cemetery—rows of white markers surrounded by green, overlaid by a blaze of orange, yellow, and red leaves—on his right, the muddy Potomac, and in the distance, Memorial Bridge and the Lincoln Memorial.

  “I appreciate you coming over here on such short notice, Pete,” Gen. George Grisham said, taking off his medal-laden blouse and hanging it on a hanger in the wardrobe on the wall opposite his desk. The general walked over to the window and stood beside his protégé. After a moment he said quietly, “You're right—it is quite a view. You know, this is the third office for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs since 9/11. And some time next year it'll probably get moved again. Apparently your experts at Homeland Security think the SecDef and the Chairman are too vulnerable.”

  Newman looked at his mentor and noted there was a little more gray in his temples than he remembered. Grisham's wide, deep-set blue eyes were still bright but tired. “You didn't fly all the way back from Qatar to call me over here to look at the scenery, General,” the younger officer said.

  “No, I didn't, Pete. I asked you over here for a reason—but before we get to that, how is Prince Arshad taking all this?”

  “He's doing all right, sir,” Newman replied. “He's more concerned about his parents than anything else. We still don't have any word on whether they are alive or dead. Matt Roderick is with him now—Matt switched off with me this morning so I could come in and get some work done. At some point in the near future we're going to have to make a decision as to what we're going to do with the prince. We can't hide him and his Naval Academy roommat
e at Mount Weather forever.”

  Grisham nodded and motioned toward the brown leather couch to the right front of his desk. “I'll talk to Secretary Powers about it this afternoon—but I think it may be premature to send him back to Annapolis until the mess in Saudi Arabia shakes out a little more.”

  As Grisham sat in a nearby leather armchair, Newman took a seat on the end of the couch. The Chairman continued, “I trust you were able to follow this business about the so-called ‘Threat Mitigation Bill’ while you were out there in the Blue Ridge Mountains?”

  “Yes, sir,” Newman answered. “We saw it on the news—and of course it was in all the papers. This town leaks like a sieve. When I got back to my office this morning, Secretary Dornin let me read the bill—I mean the law. I couldn't help but wonder—why would the President sign such a thing?”

  Grisham shook his head and said, “Apparently the Congress was going to override his veto. Secretary Powers sent me a lengthy backchannel cable while I was in Doha about all the palace intrigue behind it. And unfortunately, it's now the law of the land, and we're bound to uphold it.”

  “Secretary Dornin told me that the Commission—the one the media calls the ‘Assassination Committee’—is meeting with the President this afternoon at Camp David to discuss its implementation. Is that correct?”

  “That's right,” Grisham replied, nodding.

  “Who would want such a job?” Newman asked rhetorically, as though to himself. “That's about the only thing that wasn't in the papers.”

  The Chairman rose, went to his desk, and returned with a red folder. Opening it, he handed Newman a sheet of paper. Newman read:

  TOP SECRET

  PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON THREAT MITIGATION

  CHAIRMAN: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Anthony Scironi

  FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: James Cook

  FORMER DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE: Russell Bates

  FORMER CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: Gen. Conrad Vassar