Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  “Besides my obvious enthusiasm, there are things you need to know for the flight. First of all, the craft exerts 10-11 G with its rate of climb of 350 meters per second. It will be uncomfortable on take-off. More than one occupant has fainted; don’t be embarrassed if you do. We will be traveling with a fairly light load. I have been ordered to fly at maximum speed which is in excess of 2100 kilometers per hour as is afforded by the completely updated engine, an AL-41F Turbo-Fan R. The R is for “Re-fitted”—at a final cost just to produce this one plane’s engine of 150 million U.S. dollars and an overall engine project that cost 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. Such performance requires an immense amount of fuel; so, we will have to slow down twice to link up to in-air refueling. The deceleration and subsequent reacceleration will be temporarily quite uncomfortable. The auditory system is very advanced and most clear and useful. We will be able to converse with ease.

  “Any questions?”

  “No, sir. Just a couple of comments. First, I am tremendously impressed with the plane, and second, I can’t tell you how grateful I am and my country is for what the VVS and you personally are doing. Thank you.”

  “We are comrades. I am at your service. Before we get aboard, you have to go through a brief escape and ejection training. Frankly, at the speeds we will be traveling, ejection would be like being blasted with a cannon and is unsurvivable. Nevertheless, comrade, it is protocol; and the VVS is nothing if not wedded to protocol.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Sukoi PAK FA swept across the Gulf of Aden, over the port city of Aden, and streaked north nearly invisibly across the desert to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. Both occupants surveyed the rapidly passing city and both saw two significant fires burning in the heart of it, one in the southwest and the other in the northeast. Colonel Koronski brought up his on-board GPS which showed a clear map of the city.

  “If I am not mistaken, my friend, the more easterly fire is coming from your embassy. I’m sorry.”

  “That might complicate matters,” Sheep Dog said sourly.

  The swift bird passed over the well-lit busy Sana’a International Airport with its full complement of aircraft from the Airlines of Ta, Egypt Air, Air Emirates, Ethiopian Airlines, Air Etihad, Gulf Air, Luftansa, Middle East Ai, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordania, Turkish Airways, and Yemenia. Colonel Koronski slowed as much as possible, consulted his GPS manually, and assured himself of the computer setting. Moments later they made one pass over a very small local airport at Bar al Hazm which had only three small private craft on the runway. The main flight path was obviously too short for the high speed PAK FA, and Sheep Dog began to get nervous. The Russian aviator, however, was calm as the proverbial summer’s morn. The PAK FA streaked out to the east, made a wide arced turn and rocketed down towards the ground on a parallel to—but a short distance north of—the well-lighted main public runway. The invisible parallel runway became lighted only a minute before touch-down. Sheep Dog felt his bowels begin to loosen as he watched the altimeter fall to zero at the moment the lights illuminated the strip. The plane was going 300 miles an hour when the wheels hit the tarmac. The Sheep Dog clenched his eyes shut.

  The landing was perfectly smooth, and even in that desert at night, the landing corridor was sufficient.

  “Airstrip is compliments of your CIA, comrade. Welcome to Yemen,” Colonel Koronski said holding back his amusement at the Sheep Dog’s discomfiture.

  “Nice flight,” the passenger said when he could gain control of his voice.

  “Routine.”

  Both men laughed—at the Colonel’s mastery of understatement and with relief.

  Sheep Dog said, “There is a phrase in Arabic that is appropriate for our arrival—‘Al hamdulillah’.” “Ah, yes, ‘thanks be to God’.”

  “And thanks be to you, comrade pilot. I understand that your orders are not to leave the plane, but to return immediately.”

  “To Poдина-мать [Rodina-mat’], my friend. To the real world.”

  “To the Mother Homeland,” Sheep Dog acknowledged. “Good-bye then.”

  Sheep Dog and a short, heavy-set man who had appeared out of the darkness unloaded Sheep Dog’s gear from the aircraft and onto a small pick-up truck without a word being spoken. The colonel stood in the cockpit exit and shook Sheep Dog’s hand, turned back into the plane, taxied around the tarmac, and accelerated off as Sheep Dog and the man from the ground drove away towards the southwest from the obscure airstrip. The roar of the great AL-41F Turbo-Fan R engine was deafening and final.

  In the dim light of the dashboard, Sheep Dog noted that the driver had red hair. He spoke first.

  “You’re the Sheep Dog, I presume.”

  “Yes. And I presume you’re Dustin?”

  “Call me Dusty. That was my dad’s idea of a joke when he saw that he had just hatched a red-headed son. We’ll meet him at a safe house in Sana’a. Maybe you saw the fires in the center of the city as you flew over.”

  “We did. The pilot brought up his GPS and said it was our embassy.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. The other fire is in the Old Sana’a Suq in Bab al-Yaman. We’ve been hearing for the past several days about some big plans by al Qaeda. I guess we now know what those plans were.”

  The road out of the small airport to the main highway south was execrable, and it took an hour and a half to navigate their way through the main suburban city of Al Jiraf to a small group of low beige mud-brick buildings west, just outside the population center of the main city called Rohm as Sufla.

  “Home crap home,” Dusty said. “Or more accurately, ‘crap home away from home’. We used to have a place two doors from the embassy. It’s gone now.”

  Sheep Dog and Dusty got out of the truck and carried his gear into the middle of three nondescript and unlit buildings that stood a little apart from the few other virtually identical buildings that constituted the town. After a few moments, a brilliant flashlight snapped on temporarily blinding the two men.

  “Hands where I can see them,” came a man’s harsh voice.

  As the effects of the dazzling light subsided, Sheep Dog made out a figure in full Arab dress holding a combat shot gun. He waited for the man to continue since the desert apparition certainly had the commanding position. Sheep Dog began calculating his chances of overpowering the Arab and Dusty. Sheep Dog looked at his situation and recalled Damon Runyon’s quote, ‘I came to the conclusion long ago that all life is six to five against’. Sheep Dog thought his odds worse than that, tensed, waited, and held still.

  “What do you think, Dusty?” the Arab asked.

  “He’s okay, dad. He just got off the most fantastic plane you ever saw. I don’t think either of us is worth somebody sending a Russian super jet with a colonel as a pilot just to snuff us out.”

  “Turn on the lights,” the Arab ordered.

  The room illuminated fully, and Sheep Dog noted that the windows had opaque black curtains; the man had a very menacing weapon; and he was not an Arab.

  “My arms are getting tired. Can I let them hang by my sides?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Now the man’s voice was now more affable. He removed his Arabic costume and dropped it to the floor and walked up to Sheep Dog and shook his hand.

  “Sorry about the gun. Can’t be too careful.”

  “I understand,” Sheep Dog said quietly.

  He scrutinized the man, obviously the father of Dusty. He was of medium height and powerfully built with arms like large hickory branches. Although he was rotund, there did not appear to be anything wasted on fat. He had military cut, short-cropped graying hair and looked to be about the same age as the Sheep Dog. For all of his serious demeanor, he had a pleasant, even handsome, and fetching face. Sheep Dog was drawn to him. He needed someone to trust, and he guessed that Dastrup would have to be the one. He waited for the man to speak.

  “I’m Neal, Neal Dastrup,” the former Arab said, “I’m the resident Company agent here in lovely tropi
cal Yemen. You’ve met Dusty. He’s my son and a good man. Right now, we don’t have an office. It used to be in the front part of the embassy, which is now a pile of rubble. However, we have a back-up communications system here, and can operate fairly decently. To come to the point, we think we know where the perps are right now, or at least where they’ll be this afternoon. In the meantime we can take care of one of the two missions you have been assigned this morning. That would be the elimination of Faizah Batool al-Faisal, the pesky Saudi lady physician who the Yemeni National Security Agency is holding and is at their wits’ end to know what to do with. They don’t want to anger big Saudi Arabia; so, they don’t dare question her. They can’t ship her away; nobody will have her; and, finally, the U.S. can’t be seen to have treated her unpleasantly. After all, she is some sort of Saudi princess and all. I am under the strictest orders from The Company to be certain that there is never any connection between the agency and the girl. So…enter you.”

  “I read the particulars during my flight.”

  “We can’t take you to where she’s being held, but we can get you to a Yemeni transport service that can. You’ll have to lie a little, I’m afraid.”

  The Sheep Dog just smiled.

  “Your cover is that you’re an oil company geologist for some company from Iceland. Let’s see…”

  He fumbled through a manila folder for a moment.

  “Yeah, here we are. You are one Svein Magnus Thorsteinsson; you’re oldern dirt, and you work for Royal Dutch Shell of Iceland. I have your passport and professional papers—they got here before the bombing. I don’t think anybody but the transport guy will ever ask to see them. We have a customs entry stamp on the passport; so, you shouldn’t have any problem exiting so long as you match the picture of the old geezer on the passport.”

  “That’s part of the gear I brought. Incidentally, the stuff is all marked as belonging to Royal Dutch Shell. The gun case is labeled, Fragile, Geological Instruments. I can’t imagine that fooling anyone, but who knows. I can be persuasive if the need arises.”

  “I can just bet,” Neal thought after giving the Sheep Dog a visual once over.

  The three men took advantage of the enveloping darkness and drove the truck and Sheep Dog’s gear to a small hotel in the market district of a small town in southwestern Sana’a Governate about thirty kilometers southwest of the center of Sana’a, called Da’ir. The area was a sparsely populated flat desert region well outside the main population centers.

  The Dastrups helped Sheep Dog get his gear into the Ruhm al ‘Ulya Hotel lobby.

  “The hotel is one of four little accommodations in a small chain owned by a friend of ours,” Neal said.

  The two CIA agents shook his hand and gave him a note containing the address of a local transport company. The front door was unlocked, and no one was about; so, he sat there in the dark for morning’s light. The muezzin’s call to first prayer, the Fair, came just as it had since the days of The Prophet. Sheep Dog pictured in his mind’s eye that the light was barely enough to see a single hair. He was able to get a better look around the small hotel’s seedy waiting room. On the wall behind the reservations desk hung a cork-board for announcements, all in English since the majority of Yemenis and essentially all tourists used the world’s dominant language. He noted the currency conversions:

  1 US dollar to 212.26 Yemeni rials (YRL)

  1 Euro to 286 YRLs

  1 Pound Sterling to 326 YRLs

  1 US dollar to 3.75 Saudi Arabian Riyals (SAR)

  1 Euro to 5 SARs

  1 Pound Sterling to 6 SARs

  The Company had provided the Sheep Dog with sufficient quantities of all of those currencies; so, he was confident that he could find transportation for his mission even if the prices were exorbitant. He stepped out onto the dusty street and dragged his large bags and sat on them to wait for a taxi or even a private vehicle to take him to the transport company that the Dastrups had recommended. Shortly, he was able to hail a taxi which was no more than a battered pick-up truck with an Arabic logo——emblazoned on the driver’s side door that Sheep Dog could not read. The driver turned out to be the proprietor and sole employee of Jabal an-Nabi Shu’ayb Mountain Transport Service who had not had a paying fare for days. As it turns out, that was the only service available in the town. The driver was obsequious and eager to take the well-healed, well-dressed, old man into the mountains; so, he could drill core samples for his petroleum company; so he said. He did not evince the slightest evidence of suspicion regarding the Sheep Dog’s peculiarly shaped equipment.

  “Sabáh al Kháyr, Ismi Mohammed Abdullah Selah. Sh’nnu ismak?”

  “Sabah al Khayr, Ismi Svein Magnus Thorsteinsson,” Sheep Dog replied in the best response he could muster from his brief study of common Arabic phrases he had worked to memorize on the incoming flight. “Mutaasif, Mr. Selah, ma kan tkellemichi Arbia. Tkellem Inglisia?”

  “Oh, forgive me, kind sir, by the grace of Allah, the Merciful, I have learned English. We can easily talk in that dialect,” Selah said, eyes down lest the European stranger think him immodest.

  Sheep Dog had gotten used to haggling during his military years in Southeast Asia and afterwards while doing business throughout the rest of Asia. It was tedious for him, but he realized that it was a necessary and expected cultural courtesy and a way to establish that the buyer was not a rube unaware of how to protect himself. He had been prepared for the inevitable need for cash by The Company providing an envelope with large amounts of Yemeni Rials, Saudi Riyals, and Euros.

  “How much will you charge me per day for two days transportation?”

  “My friend, I would prefer to have that unpleasant subject dealt with at the end of our journey; so, we can travel as friends.”

  “Ah, in a perfect world, how I would also like to deal only as friends; but, alas, my company insists that all business transactions be conducted with the strictest accounting; and I must pay you up front. It is policy.”

  “Certainly you cannot offend the great leaders of your company.”

  He thought for a long moment, seeming to suffer a bit over the very necessity of having to charge.

  “Shall we say 15,000 rials per day, my friend?”

  Sheep Dog did a quick calculation-$75.

  “That would be more than my company would allow, I am afraid. Perhaps 7,000 would be more appropriate.”

  Selah seemed to be genuinely hurt by such an insulting counter offer. After all, this was among friends, no?

  “I have a family, and we are not rich people. We have debts incurred from the operation of this humble business. I suppose I could reduce our regular rate a bit…for a friend. Let me see…perhaps 11,000 would be reasonable.”

  “Since I really must be getting on with my business, and much as I would like to continue with our very pleasant chat, I can perhaps go as high as 9,000.”

  Selah looked Sheep Dog over, and considered whether or not he had reached his limit. Selah knew he would make a profit if he settled for seventy-five hundred, but this wealthy European appeared likely to be able to go at least a little higher.

  “In order to secure the necessities for my family, I am afraid that I can lower my fee to 10,000, but that will have to be the limit of my generosity, I’m afraid.”

  Sheep Dog could feel the wasting minutes racing by. He did have to get going, and Uncle Sam had deep enough pockets to pay triple what the man asked originally. Still, there was the matter of face. He had to try once more.

  “I will offer you 8,500. That, my friend, is as much as I can possibly afford and is adequate for expenses, your time and work, and some profit. We cannot be guilty of trading in usury, can we now?”

  Selah hated to have his religion used as a weapon against him, but the man had him there. The look in the intense brown eyes of the older European convinced that it was futile to hold out for more.

  “Well, my friend, why not. I can work again. I do not have to make all of my living from o
ne man who is obviously astute and one who—in addition—understands the religion. Let us shake on a deal at 8,500 YRLs.”

  It was done. The two men spat on the palms of their hands and shook. Whatever else Mohammed Selah was; he was product of millennia of participation in the custom of the sanctity of keeping his word and honoring a bargain. Sheep Dog intended to give him a handsome bonus when they returned to Da’ir. Their handshake was a solemn sealing of a sacred bargain. The terms of the deal would not be mentioned between honorable men. It was not done.

  Mohammed Abdullah Selah’s truck proved to be a far more reliable vehicle for Sheep Dog’s purposes than it appeared. The talkative transporter was happy to have someone to practice his considerably flawed English upon and kept up a voluble stream of one-sided conversation going the entire trip. He did not seem to mind that Sheep Dog responded only laconically and infrequently.

  The roads were paved all the way to Jabal an-Nabi Shu’ayb Mountain but rutted and worn with time and heat. Sheep Dog’s bones were beginning to ache. The truck had no air-conditioning, and the two men were sweating in the 40° C heat. Selah’s body and clothes odors were wearing on Sheep Dog’s Western sensitivities, a fact he took considerable pains to avoid letting his loquacious little driver know. They drove through a little burg which Selah named Baril and passed a rectangular block monument of some sort made of cinder blocks painted with peeling white wash with a painting of a falcon with its wings spread wide in a predatory dive on one side. The otherwise featureless structure stood slanch-wise at a 40 degree angle.

  “That is al-Saqr, the falcon,” Selah said as if that was something that should be meaningful to his Western client.