by Oliver North
“Yes, radios and satellite telephones."
“Are they encrypted?"
“No. They are broadcasting in the clear, using some kind of code from their Quran."
“Are you sure that they are from Yunesi?" asked Komulakov.
“Yes," answered Dubzhuko. “The senior one here was with Yunesi when we met with him in Tehran. He insisted that I talk directly with Yunesi on their equipment to receive instructions about getting one of their people out of the American detention center in Cuba. I told him it was out of the question—that it was too dangerous for me to use their communications equipment to talk to anyone, but they are coming back over here in an hour."
Komulakov thought for a moment. He couldn't care less what ultimately happened to his deputy, but he needed him to stay alive until at least the eleventh of November. He said, “I cannot talk to Yunesi directly on this circuit about the operation because he does not have our encryption. It was all right before because we were connected entirely by fiber optic. I will make a very brief call to him from here and tell him to communicate through the people he has in Riyadh and that they should pass any information to me through you. But to avoid compromising your location, you should not talk to Yunesi from there. Are you still at the Filaya Petroleum site or did you move to the ‘Persian Gulf Exports’ facility over on Al Kadif Road?"
“We are still at Filaya. After we lost communications, I decided to stay here until we could reestablish a connection."
“It is good that you stayed there, Nikolai, but if you have Iranians broadcasting via radio from across the street, we must assume that the Americans or the British will very quickly discover them. I think we must expect that they will attack that site. You should try to spend your nights over at Al Kadif Road. That is when the Americans and British are most likely to attack."
“I will do so, but what do I tell the Iranians?" asked Dubzhuko.
“Just tell them that I have ordered you to set up an alternate communications site and leave some people behind each night so that they believe you will be back."
“But if the Americans attack this site, our people left here could get killed," protested Dubzhuko.
“Yes, that is true," replied Komulakov. “And that would be a shame. Make sure you take our best men with you."
Simon Bolivar International Airport
________________________________________
Caracas, Venezuela
Friday, 02 November 2007
0945 Hours Local
“Whoa, what's this?" said Robert Nievos, as the tiny earpiece began to screech in his right ear. He quickly reached for the instrument positioned beside him on the floor of the white van and turned down the volume.
Sgt. Maj. Amos Skillings, in the front passenger seat, turned around and said to the Delta Force Sergeant First Class, “Man, I heard that squeal all the way up here. Is that thing working or is it on the fritz?"
“I think it's working," Nievos replied, fiddling with the dials on the neutron particle/gamma radiation detector. “I did everything the techs back at the warehouse told me to do. I don't understand why we would be getting a false reading out of it," he added. Nievos then began reading the instructions that had been e-mailed into his D-DACT.
Emilio Roca, driving the white airport shuttle van with the big numeral 7 on its sides, turned to Skillings and said, “Do you want me to turn around and go back to the warehouse so that you can get another instrument to test? It is only ten minutes from here."
“Let's do that," said Nievos, shutting off the device and turning it back on again, in accord with the “troubleshooting” instructions.
“That works for me," said Skillings. “No one is going to think it strange that an airport shuttle is coming and going on the airport perimeter road."
Emilio made a wide 180-degree turn at the next intersection. As they returned the way they had come, Skillings, watching his comrade from the front seat, asked, “What's it doing now?"
“It seems to be fine," answered Nievos. Then suddenly, as they passed a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire and Ninguna violatión signs every fifty feet, the machine screeched again. “Ah-h," groaned the Delta Force operator from the rear of the van, “there it goes again."
Then, just as abruptly, the noise faded and stopped.
“Maybe it isn't broken," Skillings said, looking back at the large hangar inside the chain-link fence they had just passed. “Isn't this the same spot where it screeched the last time?"
Nievos looked up through the tinted window and said, “I don't know, I was so busy reading the instructions on our device I didn't notice."
“Shall I turn around again?" asked Emilio, slowing the van.
“No," answered Skillings. “If we turn around again in such a short distance, we may attract more attention than we want. Every tenth light pole along this section of road has a camera mounted on it. And there are armed soldiers standing guard around that hangar behind us. Let's assume that we are being watched and go back to the warehouse, pick up a new instrument, and take another ‘test drive.’”
Minutes later Emilio pulled the van up to a gate in the masonry wall beside a sign in both Spanish and English: “CJR Warehouse No. 7."
A tall, muscular man wearing a Guayabera that bulged over his right hip stepped out of the guardhouse beside the gate, looked into the van, said, “Un momento," and returned to the enclosure to open the gate. Emilio pulled through, drove around to the rear of the warehouse, and stopped the van in front of one of the four large roll-up doors. A few seconds later the door opened and the van pulled into the warehouse.
Inside, there was a beehive of activity. Beneath bright industrial lights suspended from the ceiling, dozens of well-built men were unloading equipment from two large sea-van containers. The beards on some, mustaches on others, and the long hair on most belied their real occupation. On one of the plywood partitions that had been erected to subdivide the cavernous space, rows of weapons, body armor, and helmets hung from hooks. Beneath them on the concrete floor were metal cans of ammunition and loaded magazines appropriate to each weapon. Along another wall, technicians were working on equipment that had been arrayed on folding tables converted into test benches. Lined up against three of the four roll-up doors were three Chevrolet Suburbans and, behind them, three Ford Excursions, all with tinted windows and all rented by Eduardo Roca. The side and rear doors of the vehicles were all open, and armorers were securing flexible ballistic blankets to the interiors using strips of Velcro.
While Emilio turned the van around, Nievos and Skillings—in his “ski-boot” walking cast—carried the apparently defective detector to one of the technicians. He listened to their complaint, agreed to check it over, guided them to a large Pelican case, and said, “Try this one. I just ran a diagnostic test on it, and it's working perfectly."
“Good," said Skillings, “you can ride along with us to make sure it really is working properly—and make sure that we're not committing any ‘operator error.’”
While helping carry the new neutron-gamma detector to the van, the tech said, “If that's what you want, Sergeant Major, but I want you to know, I'm a civilian tech-rep—not one of you guys. I won't be any help if you get into trouble out there."
“Don't worry, young fellow," said Skillings with a smile, as the door opened in front of them and Emilio nosed the van back out into the bright sunlight, “if anybody starts shooting, Sergeant First Class Nievos and I will take care of 'em."
The young technician, seated in the back beside Nievos and his equipment, wasn't reassured. As the van pulled out of the warehouse compound onto the highway and headed back toward the airport, he said, “But you have your leg in a cast."
“Right," said Skillings, “but I don't shoot with my left foot—only my right."
This silenced the young specialist for several minutes until the new machine began to screech. Nievos looked at the tech, who immediately pushed a button on the console of the device.
Peering at a small display screen on the top of the instrument, the specialist said, “There's nothing wrong with this sensor; it's getting a positive reading from a radioactive source."
Skillings and Nievos looked first at each other, then out the window at where they were. Skillings grabbed his D-DACT off his belt, hit the GPS function key, then the “Save” button, and suddenly said, “Emilio, don't slow down! Four men carrying weapons just came out of the hangar and jumped in that military vehicle!"
All but invisible behind the dark tinted glass of the van, the three Americans watched out the rear window as the green vehicle raced up to a gate. One of the blue-clad occupants jumped out, fiddled with a lock, swung the gate open, and then closed it as the Brazilian-built military vehicle pulled through. The green truck stopped only long enough to pick up the gate-man and then pulled out onto the highway—and began following them, about a half mile behind the white van. Nievos, seeing the truck gathering speed, said, “Uh oh, looks like we have company."
Skillings had already grabbed his D-DACT and was busily tapping out a brief message on his keypad:
SKILLINGS TO NEWMAN. DET NINE PURSUED BY 4 ARMED PERS
IN VENZ MIL VEH. HOSTILE INTENT UNK. PREP QRF FOR POSS ACTION.
GPS LOC ON BFT.
He quickly scanned through what he had written on the tiny screen and hit the red, “Emergency X-MIT” button.
Less than two seconds later, the message popped up on a laptop computer screen in the CJR Warehouse office, prompting the young Army “battle captain” to turn around and say, “General Newman, Sergeant Major Skillings may need some backup."
Newman arose immediately from his “desk”—another of the folding tables that Eduardo had obtained, and where he and Lt. Col. Dan Hart had been sitting with Chief Manuel Suazo, the Navy SEAL sniper, going over the final plan for the “hit” on Mubassa the following day. Hart had arrived earlier that morning on a flight from Toronto, using a Canadian passport.
Standing over the watch officer's shoulder, Newman quickly read Skillings's message, then said, “Switch to the Blue Force Tracker display and show me where they are."
Using the computer's mouse, the captain moved the cursor over an icon labeled “BFT” and clicked once. Instantly the screen shifted from text to a map, displaying the area around Caracas. Four tiny blue circles were blinking on the map, showing the GPS designators of Newman's units. Three of them were stationary: a “6," at the location of the CJR warehouse and a “2” and an “8” in downtown Caracas—the over-watch scouts Suazo had positioned for the hit on Mubassa. The fourth blue circle—with a “9” in its center—was moving along the airport perimeter road.
“There he is," said Newman, pointing to the flashing “9." Turning to Hart, he said, “Dan, take two of your five-man QRF teams and move out in two of the Suburbans. Get on the same road that Sergeant Major Skillings is on and follow a mile or so behind whoever is tailing Skillings and Nievos. If they need help, take care of it. If you have to engage, do not return here; go to the alternate location up the road toward Maracaibo. Stay in touch with him and me on your D-DACT. Make sure your GPS transponder is on so I can track you from here."
“Aye aye, sir," responded Hart, hastily putting on his Guayabera to conceal the H&K Mk 23 Mod 0 .45 cal. pistol hanging from his hip and the much smaller M11 9mm suspended in a shoulder holster beneath his left armpit. As he buttoned his loose-fitting shirt, Hart grabbed what looked to be a garage door opener suspended by Velcro near the doorway into the warehouse and pressed it once. A large bell mounted in the ceiling of the warehouse rang loudly for about three seconds, and a bright red light centered over the roll-up doors began to blink. In the warehouse, twenty men stopped what they were doing, moved to the wall where the weapons were hung, grabbed their gear, and hastily assembled by the rows of vehicles.
Meanwhile farther up the highway the occupants of the white van were preparing to be stopped by the green vehicle that was rapidly closing the distance behind them. Skillings typed another brief message into his D-DACT, sent it, and then ordered Emilio, “Head straight for the International Departures level at the main terminal. Don't speed up. Don't slow down unless they make us pull over. If they do, just tell them you are taking me to the airport for a flight."
Less than five minutes after Skillings transmitted the first message from his D-DACT, Hart had briefed the ten men who would be accompanying him, and two of the Suburbans had pulled out of the roll-up doors at the CJR warehouse and were heading up the highway. Seconds after they were in the open, a new blue designator—a circle with a “Q” in the center—popped up on the laptop screen in Newman's “office."
In the backseat of the white van, Nievos and the young tech-rep had shut off the neutron-gamma detector and stowed it in its Pelican case. When the green vehicle closed to a distance of less than thirty meters behind them and matched their speed at fifty kilometers per hour, Nievos reached up under Emilio's seat, pulled out a small black nylon fabric briefcase, placed it on the floor between his legs, and unzipped it. Without looking down he withdrew an H&K M5KA4 submachine gun and three extra 15-round magazines. As the young tech-rep watched with growing anxiety, the Delta Force commando calmly cocked the weapon and then jammed it and the magazines down into the pocket on the back of Emilio's seat.
The white van, still shadowed by the green military vehicle, pulled onto the Departures ramp and Emilio turned to Skillings and said, “Which airline?"
The Marine answered, “LACSA—Costa Rican Airlines."
As Emilio halted amidst cars, taxicabs, and hotel vans full of departing travelers, the green military truck pulled around to block the van from pulling out. Three men wearing blue Venezuelan Air Force uniforms and brandishing brand new AK-47s jumped from the truck and surrounded the van. On the curb, passengers scurried away to avoid what clearly looked like a dangerous situation.
Immediately after the crowd had scattered, a tall, well-built, fair-skinned man wearing sunglasses, a Guayabera, and dark trousers emerged from the front passenger seat of the truck. Skillings noticed that he was wearing military-style boots—and that there was a bulge beneath the man's left armpit.
The fair-haired man walked coolly up to Emilio's window and said in heavily accented Spanish, “Why were you driving on the road past the military side of the airport?"
“I was taking a shortcut because we needed to catch a flight," said Emilio.
“What flight are you trying to catch?"
“LACSA Flight 921 to San Jose, Costa Rica," answered Skillings in English.
The man standing outside Emilio's window took off his sunglasses, revealing blue eyes and said, “Who are you?" in heavily accented English.
“I am Amos Skillings, and I am going to miss my flight. Who are you to delay me?"
“Who I am is of no consequence to you, Amos Skillings. Get out of the van."
While Skillings did as ordered, the tall man with the blue eyes and Slavic features came around the front of the van and said in Spanish to one of the uniformed men carrying an AK-47, “Go inside to the LACSA counter and see if an Amos Skillings has a reservation on flight number 921." He then turned to the Marine sergeant major who was now standing outside the van and demanded, “Let me see your passport."
Skillings reached in the pocket of his shirt, pulled out the passport, and handed it to him. The younger man flipped it open, looked at the photograph inside the front page, then up at the Marine and said, “So what business brings you to Venezuela from Grenada, Mr. Skillings?"
“I am with the OAS Human Rights Commission—and as you can see from my passport—I have a diplomatic carte blanche," replied Skillings, in what he hoped sounded like a Caribbean-British accent. He then continued, looking the taller man right in the eye, “And I can assure you, sir, unless you release me immediately to proceed to my flight, I shall report to the Commission that the government of Venezuela is using Russians to illegally detain injured diplomatic personnel. Now I must insist on seeing your
identification."
For the first time since the inquisition began, the imperious fair-haired man seemed to be uncertain. He reached in his hip pocket and withdrew a Venezuelan National Police Identity wallet and flipped it open briefly. Skillings ignored the gold badge that would have attracted most people's eye and read the name and title beneath the photograph: Mayor Gregor Argozvek, Consejero Especial De la Seguridad before the leather case slapped closed.
At this moment, the armed man who had been sent into the airport returned and whispered something into the major's ear. Neither of them, nor the other two armed, uniformed men standing guard outside the white van, paid any attention to the two Chevrolet Suburbans with the tinted windows that pulled up about thirty feet behind them. The Russian turned back to the Marine and said, “Well, Mr. Skillings, it appears that you do indeed have a reservation on LACSA Flight 921. Where is your luggage?"
The large side door of the van slid open and Nievos handed Skillings the black fabric briefcase—that had moments ago held a submachine gun—and the hard plastic Pelican case previously containing the radiation detector. The major moved toward the open door and asked Nievos in English, “Who are you?"
“Roberto Nievos," the Delta Force operator responded in Spanish with perfect Venezuelan inflection. “We came to help him because he injured his leg."
The Russian peered at the two men in the back of the van, then at Emilio in the driver's seat and grunted. He then waved to the three uniformed, armed men and motioned them toward the military vehicle. As they slung their weapons over their shoulders and started to return to their truck, the major handed Skillings his passport and said, “You may go."
The Marine nodded, picked up the briefcase, and started hobbling toward the terminal. Nievos jumped out of the back of the van, grabbed the Pelican case and started after Skillings, shouting to Emilio, “I'll help him get checked in and then meet you on the Arrivals level where you usually pick up your passengers."