The Assassins

by Oliver North

Moments later, Lt. Col. Dan Hart, USMC, commanding officer of 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company—now designated as Special Operations Command Detachment Two—entered the ship's dimly lit Combat-Intel Center. The ten sailors on watch barely looked up from their scopes and computers as Captain Toomey greeted Hart warmly, took him to the rear of the compartments, and said, “It's good to see you, classmate. You got here fast. I'm truly sorry about your boys in Riyadh, Dan.”

  Hart and Toomey had graduated from Annapolis in 1990, and both had been starters on the Naval Academy varsity lacrosse and soccer teams. The Marine lieutenant colonel responded, “Thanks, Pat. I was already on my way here when I got the word about the ‘dirty bomb’ at the embassy. What's the latest?”

  “Here's the most recent from 5th Fleet,” said Toomey, handing Hart a clipboard with several sheets of paper affixed to it. “Most of it's based on what we sent them.” Hart read the top message:

  PRIORITY

  SECRET/NOFORN

  200521ZOCT07

  FM: COM 5TH FLEET

  TO: AIG 51.4

  SUBJ: NUCLEAR INCIDENT REPORT (NUKE-REP) 10-20-03

  1. (S) DECONTAMINATION TEAM ABOARD USS MAKIN ISLAND, LHD-8, CONFIRMS THAT DURING NON-COMBATANT EVACUATION OPERATION AT AMEMB RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA, AN EXPLOSIVE DEVICE CONTAINING RADIOLOGICAL MATERIAL WAS DETONATED VIC AMEMB AT APPROX 2311 HOURS LOCAL, FRIDAY 19 OCTOBER 2007.

  2. (S) THE EXPLOSION KILLED FOUR AND WOUNDED ELEVEN. THE REMAINS OF ONE MSG MARINE AND THREE MARINES FM SOCOM DET TWO WERE NOT RECOVERED. FORTY-SEVEN OF THE RESCUED AMCITS INDICATE EXPOSURE TO ALPHA, BETA, AND GAMMA RADIATION AND TOPICAL/RESPIRATORY CONTAMINATION BY IONIZED RADIOLOGICAL PARTICULATE MATERIAL. ALL EXPOSED AND CONTAMINATED PERSONNEL/ REMAINS HAVE BEEN EVACUATED TO USS MAKIN ISLAND FOR TRIAGE AND DECONTAMINATION IAW NAVORDDIR 522.4.

  3. (S) RADIOLOGICAL DETECTION DEVICES WORN BY SIX AIRCREWMEN AND TWO HOSPITAL CORPSMEN ABOARD TWO MV-22 OSPREY A/C ALSO INDICATED EXPOSURE TO LOW LEVELS OF RADIOACTIVE PARTICULATE MATTER. THESE PERSONNEL AND THEIR AIRCRAFT HAVE ALSO BEEN DECONTAMINATED IAW NAVAIRDIR 109.7.

  4. (C) ALL PERSONNEL INDICATING EXPOSURE ARE UNDER OBSERVATION BY MEDICAL OFFICERS ABD USS MAKIN ISLAND. NO EVIDENCE OF RESIDUAL PATHOLOGY APPARENT AT THIS TIME.

  5. (C) CASREP: IN ADDITION TO CASUALTIES REPORTED IN NUKE REP 10-20-02, MEDICAL PERSONNEL ABOARD MAKIN ISLAND HAVE CONFIRMED THE REMAINS OF AMBASSADOR KENNETH P. SNELLING AND ANDREW J. CHRISTOPHER, CAPT. USMC 196-44-8956. BOTH KIA BY ENEMY.

  6. (C) REQUEST CENTCOM DISPATCH MORTUARY AFFAIRS DET TO RECOVER REMAINS ABOARD USS MAKIN ISLAND ON RET. DOHA.

  7. (C) REQUEST SECSTATE NOTIFY NOK AMB SNELLING.

  8. (C) REQUEST CMC NOTIFY NOK CAPT. CHRISTOPHER.

  BT

  Hart finished reading the message, handed the clipboard back to Toomey, and said, “I want to see the wounded guys first, then meet in Troop Ops with Lieutenant Weiner and the rest of the Det.”

  “That's no problem,” Toomey answered. “The wounded and all those who were exposed to any radiation are in the infirmary. If you want, you can meet with your Marines in Flag Plot. It's just below this space and unoccupied since we don't have an admiral or general aboard. It'll give you more privacy than Troop Ops since the MEU staff is using that space.”

  “That would be great,” Hart said. “I also want to see Captain Christopher. Where's his body, Pat?”

  “Uh …it's in the freezer—along with the remains of the others who were killed in Riyadh. Are you sure you want to do that, Dan?”

  “Yeah,” said the Marine. “I sent him on this mission. The day I left Lejeune, his wife delivered a baby girl. I stopped by the hospital to congratulate her, and she asked me to bring this picture,” Hart said, producing a photograph of a smiling young woman, proudly holding a newborn. “She asked me to bring back his choice of names. Instead, I'm going to bring back the body of her husband.”

  Both men stood there as tears welled up in Hart's eyes. For a long while neither of them spoke. Finally Toomey reached over and put his arms around his classmate and said, “He's in a far better place, Dan—you and I know that for certain. He knew the risks, but he was willing to sacrifice his life in an effort to save others. Remember, ‘Greater love hath no man than he who lays down his life for another…’”

  The words, spoken by any other person right now, might have sounded glib. But to Hart, struggling to control his emotions, they spoke to his heart. He said, “I do know that he's in a better place. But it's still hard to lose one of your own. And it's especially tough when it's one of the really good ones. Andy was one of the best, Pat. I should have kept him back…”

  The two men stood close together for a moment. Then Hart stood erect, reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, blew his nose, and said, “Ahh…I don't have much time. I've got to be on a flight back to the States out of Bahrain tonight.”

  “What's the rush?” asked Toomey. “You just got here.”

  “It's not my call,” said Hart, his voice tinged with a mixture of sadness and anger. “If I had my way, I'd stay here until we recovered the bodies of those four Marines buried in the rubble of what was once our embassy. But, as they say, orders are orders.”

  “Who's calling the shots—SOCOM?” asked Toomey.

  “No, not this time. These orders are coming from the JCS. Just as Andy Christopher's mission was getting underway, I was given a list of fifty of my best Marines—including Captain Christopher, my Sergeant Major, Lieutenant Weiner, plus sixteen of the boys in this unit—and I was told to send them to Washington, D.C., ASAP.”

  “What for?” asked Toomey. “I thought you guys were supposed to be a ‘national asset’ so that other commands couldn't mess around with you.”

  “That's what I thought, too, Pat. But now Washington wants fifty of my guys for some ultra-classified mission. I think I might know what it is—and I don't like it.”

  “Can you tell me?” asked Toomey.

  “Not supposed to,” said Hart. “I don't really know that much myself—yet—but I can speculate. Have you heard anything out here about this super-secret ‘assassination unit’ that Congress wants organized?”

  “Only what I've heard on the news over the satellite. There hasn't been anything through channels. Sounds nuts to me.”

  “It is nuts. But I've got a bad feeling that brass at the five-sided wastebasket in Arlington are planning to put my boys into this ‘assassination’ thing. If that's what they have in mind, I've got news for 'em.”

  “Which is what, Dan?”

  “If they want my boys,” said Hart emphatically, “they're going to have to take me with 'em.”

  Lourdes Signals Intelligence Facility

  ________________________________________

  Bejucal, Cuba

  Saturday, 20 October 2007

  0420 Hours Local

  Dimitri Komulakov received the news of the successful bombing of the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia within minutes after it happened, courtesy of American TV newscasts that were merely repeating an Al Jazeera report that “a nuclear weapon had been detonated by the Americans in Riyadh.” He immediately placed a call using the Cuba-Murmansk secure circuit to his “client” in Tehran to report success.

  Speaking in Farsi, Komulakov said, “You will be pleased to know that your package was opened at eleven minutes past eleven, as you directed. The gift performed exactly as expected. I hope you are pleased. I will call you again about the next packages.”

  In response Ali Yunesi exclaimed, “Allah be praised for that good news”—words that stung Komulakov.

  If you had wanted Allah to handle this, thought Komulakov, you should have called him instead of me, you filthy pig. I did it—Allah didn't have anything to do with that explosion!

  Knowing better than to say what he was thinking, the Russian simply grunted. But he was even more surprised by the ayatollah's next statement: “It is important that you start getting the other ten weapons aboard the Saudi aircraft and yachts that you have captured. You do have a
total of eleven boats and planes—is that correct?”

  “Yes,” replied Komulakov. “But are we going to change the schedule we agreed upon?”

  “I will tell you if we are to change the schedule,” was Yunesi's curt response. “The problem is not the schedule—the problem is that your ‘scientists’ have failed to deliver on the additional special weapons you promised they would build. Because of that I have had to explain to the Supreme Islamic Council that we do not yet have as many weapons as expected. This has caused me many difficulties with the Council, but I assured them—and Ali Hussein-Khamenehi, our ‘Supreme Guide’—that you will deliver them by the deadline as we planned.”

  Komulakov was suddenly alarmed that the Iranian intelligence chief might be setting the stage for nonpayment of their next installment for his services—a sum of $100 million that was to be deposited in two days. It was also the first time in the history of their relationship that the ayatollah had acknowledged that he was not the final decision maker on Operation Dawa.

  Though tempted to remind Yunesi that he had merely promised to help the Iranians build their own warheads for their Shabaz ballistic missiles, the Russian said instead, “I will contact the scientists and inquire about their completion dates.”

  “Yes, that would be wise,” was all Yunesi said before ending the call with “Hopefully, In Sha' Allah, you will be able to contact me again soon with some good news.”

  By the time he replaced the receiver on the phone, Komulakov was both furious and fearful. He had no way of contacting his Russian and French scientists in Iran without compromising his communications security. Though they had been working for two years to build a nuclear payload to put on the Iranian Shabaz missile, they had been unable to construct a warhead that was light enough to fit the missile so that the weapon could reach its maximum range. The Iranians had never told him so, but he suspected that for internal reasons they wanted their own nuclear weapon—not someone else's—to be able to reach a very specific target: Tel Aviv.

  The obstacle, he knew, was no longer sufficient quantities of fissile material. Selling the Iranians enriched uranium and plutonium from poorly secured Russian stockpiles had solved that problem. But the continuing challenge—as his scientists briefed him before he left Tehran for Cuba—was constructing a workable triggering device for the conventional explosion to properly compress the radioactive material in the warhead so that it would cause a critical chain reaction—and a nuclear detonation.

  Komulakov didn't fully grasp all of the intricate physics required to produce a nuclear explosion—but he understood that his scientists had been unable to build timers that would create the absolutely necessary simultaneous, uniform explosion in the sphere of conventional explosive material packed around the radioactive core. Without these timers to perfectly control the conventional detonation within a matter of picoseconds—about 560-billionths of a second—the nuclear weapon would either fizzle or blow up prematurely.

  Despite a string of failures, Komulakov had kept promising the Iranians that he would “try” to solve the problem for them, and they had planned accordingly. And he had tried—for months—to acquire the timers on the black market before Operation Dawa commenced but had been unable to do so. Two of his “purchasing agents” had spent weeks in Islamabad trying to get them from the A. Q. Khan network, and he'd even sent one of his “colleagues” to Pyongyang—all to no avail.

  Now, with the operation underway, he'd have to find some other way of putting a warhead on the “Islamic Missile.” The Russian was painfully aware that it wasn't just a matter of not getting paid. If he failed to deliver by the deadline, he knew that he was a dead man. The ayatollahs had no trouble doing deals with the devil. But even the devil had to deliver. Otherwise he was a liability. And Komulakov knew that the deadline for the devil's delivery was just twenty days away—November 10th.

  Office of Senator James Waggoner

  ________________________________________

  Dirksen Senate Office Building, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC

  Saturday, 20 October 2007

  1000 Hours Local

  “Didn't mean for you to have to come in on a Saturday,” said Senator James Waggoner to his chief of staff. Ralph Monroe was standing in the threshold of the senator's office door wearing the uniform for bureaucrats on working weekends in Washington—a blue blazer, a light-blue, button-down cotton shirt, khaki trousers, and topsiders.

  “Yes, sir, no problem,” said Monroe—not really meaning it at all. Despite the exorbitant price of gasoline, he had intended to drive his latest girlfriend out I-66 to the Skyline Drive. She had wanted to view the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, now in transition from green to riotous hues of red, orange, and yellow. He hoped to seduce her into a night at the Mayhurst Inn, a romantic, century-old bed and breakfast in Orange, Virginia.

  Waggoner had called while Monroe and Kathleen were packing a picnic basket. He had left her to finish the task and rushed over to Waggoner's office.

  “Come in, Ralph, come in,” said the senior senator looking up from the stack of papers he had removed from a file box labeled “Confidential” beside his desk. Waggoner was sporting a carefully pressed pink shirt, meticulously creased lightweight tan wool trousers, British-made “field shoes,” and a paisley-print cravat.

  Catching Monroe staring at his neckwear, Waggoner said, “Don't get any ideas, Ralph, I'm going to the Gold Cup Races at Great Meadow this afternoon. Have to look the part, y'know.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Monroe—hopeful that this meant he was not going to have to spend the day poring through campaign finance documents. “What can I do to help you get underway?” the aide asked helpfully, and then added, “You don't want to be late.”

  “Seems like we have a bit of a problem with our ‘We Want Waggoner’ Presidential Exploratory Committee,” the senator said as he pawed through the pile of papers on his desk.

  “How's that, sir?” asked Monroe.

  “I got a call last night from an old friend who told me that the Federal Election Commission may want to take a look at the source of some of the contributions to my ‘3W Committee.’ Seems there is some question about whether all the funds are legit,” Waggoner said.

  “Why now?” asked Monroe. “You haven't even announced that you're going to run.”

  “Apparently an anonymous source called one of the FEC lawyers yesterday and suggested that some major donations to the exploratory committee may not be fully on the up-and-up,” said the senator.

  “Who?” asked Monroe, now genuinely sharing Waggoner's concern.

  “My guess is that this is Carl Rose playing hardball,” Waggoner replied. “But the ‘who’ and ‘why’ doesn't matter right now. What we have to do is make sure that this paperwork is in order before the FEC snoops start poking around. As long as we don't have any problems with the exploratory committee, we'll have clear sailing until the campaign gets underway in earnest after the New Year.”

  Monroe shook his head trying to recall how many “problems” there were with the donor list. He walked over to the records box, took out a file marked “Contributors,” opened it on the desk, and removed a computer printout. He flipped through several pages, found what he was looking for, and said, “Here are the only two contributions that I know of that they'll have questions about,” as he pointed to the spreadsheet.

  The senator looked at the two entries, each for five million, dated December 2006. Both were annotated: “Personal Contribution, J. W. Waggoner.”

  “Why are those problems?” the senator asked. “That's how you told me to do it in order to get the exploratory committee rolling. We've already filed reports on these.”

  “That's true,” replied Monroe, remembering the transactions. “The problem isn't with you making two significant contributions to your own Presidential Exploratory Committee—or even your own campaign. The problem is, where you got the ten million dollars. If the FEC subpoenas your personal banking recor
ds, you're going to have to explain the source of the funds.”

  “Well, if they ask, it came from the sale of ‘Yakona,’ my horse farm in Virginia.”

  Monroe looked at his boss for a long moment. Then, choosing his words very carefully, the aide said, “OK, as long as you can back that up, then we don't have anything to worry about. But…if it turns out that they can prove you washed someone else's money through your personal account, that's a problem—a big problem.”

  Waggoner sat heavily in his chair and said nothing for what seemed like minutes. Until now he had been confident that the true source of the ten million he had “contributed” to his presidential aspirations had been effectively hidden. Suddenly he wasn't so sure.

  The money had come from Samuel Mubassa, a Nigerian serving at the UN, whose family owned a fleet of oil tankers. Early in 2006, through NSA intercepts made available to the SSCI, Waggoner had discovered that Mubassa's family had made hundreds of millions from the corrupt UN “Oil for Food” program. During a quiet dinner in New York, Waggoner offered to keep Mubassa's name out of Congressional hearings. For “services rendered,” the UN diplomat promptly “invested” twelve million in the senator's horse farm. The first six million came by wire transfer from a numbered account in the Cayman Islands—the second six million arrived a week later from a Mubassa affiliate in Caracas. Both deposits were made in the “Yakona Farm Account.” When Waggoner sold the farm for sixteen million in October 2006, he made two five-million-dollar contributions to the “We Want Waggoner” Presidential Exploratory Committee. The balance went into his personal bank account.

  After a long silence, Waggoner looked up at Monroe and asked, “If the FEC does issue subpoenas, how far would it go?”

  “Well,” Monroe replied, “they'd surely want to interview anyone with whom you had financial dealings—probably back five or more years. They have the power to call witnesses to testify under oath.”

  “I see,” said Waggoner. Then he abruptly rose from his chair and exclaimed, “Well, thanks for coming in today, Ralph. I've got to be getting out to Great Meadow for the races. You run along now and enjoy your day. We'll talk more about this on Monday.”