Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  A husband—obviously in shock, bloody and battered—aimlessly carried his wife in a meandering circuit of the edges of the smoking pit until a mortuary technician stopped him. Sheep Dog watched the horror grow on the man’s face as he came to the full realization that his wife was dead. The technician gently persuaded the stricken man to relinquish his hold on the only thing he had of value in his meager life and laid her carefully on the ground. He closed the woman’s staring eyes and folded her arms across her chest before signaling to a co-worker to fetch a shroud. A battle hardened soldier put an arm around the man’s shoulders and lead him away.

  Sheep Dog moved into the square and began helping with the wounded and dead as best he could. He placed a shroud on a child, carried a woman to a waiting ambulance only to find out from the doctor that she was already dead, and became a stretcher bearer for a another dozen corpses. Aside from three critically wounded men, he did not see another survivor. He had paid no heed to himself until the police officer in charge indicated that the work was done and that he should go back to his friend, who continually beckoned to him. His hands were soaked with a thick crust of blood, and he reeked from the coppery smell of fresh blood. He had trouble recognizing his hands as his own. He fought to prevent visual hallucinations of his own family from intruding into his psyche as he backed away. He was only partially successful.

  A cordon of soldiers and police began to move the on-lookers away from the square, including Sheep Dog and Bahman. Yellow crime scene tape was wrapped around the makeshift morgue as the few survivors were carried out of further harm’s way in ambulances and carts. There were pitifully few of them. The dead—wrapped in their final white linen—were placed gently but like so much cord wood into flat bed trailers in serried rows. Most of them were destined for a mass grave since there was no practical way to achieve identification before the mandatory Islamic practice of 24 hours of mourning and then burial within that same day.

  Bahman pulled on Sheep Dog’s arm.

  “Effendi, we must go. It is not good for men to see such things. We must not stay. The Jinns are here, and we will be next. I can hear them whispering even now.”

  Sheep Dog could hear them, too.

  Sheep Dog had an ice cold shower as soon as he got back to his hotel suite. He scrubbed himself until his skin was raw but could not shake the sense that he was still dirty, that he still carried the blood of those people on his hands. In the marrow of his bones, he had the conviction that he must do something to even the scales.

  When he was sure that he was in complete control of himself, Sheep Dog telephoned Neal Dastrup at the number the CIA agent in charge in Sana’a had given him.

  “This the man from the Russian plane,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Meet me at my room ASAP.”

  There was a pause while Dastrup said a few unkindnesses to his son, the least of which was “who does he think he is?”

  Sheep Dog read his mind.

  “Bring the orders you got regarding what you are to do for my purposes here. Bring 50K in mixed currencies and all the info you have for the country up north.”

  “You know—my active friend—it would be better for you to come here. I’ll send the red son. Don’t leave anything behind.”

  “10-4,” Sheep Dog said and put the receiver back on its hook.

  He packed swiftly then trotted down four flights of stairs to the main reception area. There he bought a copy of the Yemen Times. His cursory glance revealed three stories that interested him. The front page headline article covered the bombing in the Old Sana’a square and suggested broadly that Saudi mercenaries at least were involved or were the direct instigators. The article more tentatively hinted at the possibility that Saudi General Intelligence Directorate—the Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah—may have been behind the attack that killed 213 innocent Yemenis.

  Below the fold in two columns which carried over to the second page was an article about the assassination of Faizah Batool al-Faisal while in Yemeni Army custody. Her relationship to a prominent Saudi princely family and her known association with al Qaeda Yemen was documented at length. The paper put forward the opinion that she had been assassinated by AQY because she knew too much. Again, the article hinted at a Saudi connection.

  On page three an investigative reporter told of an attack by opposing forces—unnamed—on a farm house in the small city of Ad Dummam which had resulted in an unknown number of people being killed. The reporter was of the opinion that a substantial force of attackers had likely been involved in the attack based on the extent of the damage seen by investigators. The reporter went on to say that the terrorist attack occurred in broad daylight but with no known witnesses. Several names of prominent local and foreign terrorist agents were mentioned as having possibly perished, but none were confirmed. The report indicated that further investigations by the Times and governmental agencies were underway.

  Sheep Dog obtained a large manila envelope and placed the article in it without any explanatory cover information. He addressed it to Karin Petersdatter in Reykjavik, a postal drop specified in his original orders, which was operated under an agreement between the U.S. National Intelligence Service and the Greiningardeild Ríjuslögreglustjóra [GRLS—Iceland National Security Agency] and the Greiningardeild Varnarmálastofnunar İslands [BVMSI—Military Intelligence]. He overpaid the concierge to send it out by first mail in the morning. He paid his bill in cash and bribed the desk clerk to delete any reference to his having been a guest at the Sheraton.

  He was waiting in the lobby when Dusty walked in twenty minutes later. They carried his two bags to the old truck they were using then drove rapidly to Rohm as Sulfa in the dark.

  Neal Dastrup greeted Sheep Dog coolly, “What’s this all about? You are about to leave my zone of responsibility tomorrow night. What kind of bug do you have in your bonnet?”

  “I have had a busy day,” Sheep Dog said.

  “Now that’s a real understatement. You apparently have been a one-man war machine since we left you.”

  “That might well be my job. Your job is to cancel the plane reservations you previously made for me to leave Yemen and to provide me with everything I need operationally—for a new operation. Here’s what I need. First, $50,000 in cash in U.S. dollars and Saudi riyals. Second, I need to get to Riyadh as fast as is possible.”

  Neal raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Third, I need you to keep quiet about me. Quiet as the grave, if you get my drift. No reports, no loose lips, no little memos to anyone I might encounter on my way to that city, and no ‘wink, wink, nod, nod’ to anyone ever that I might have been here. Read your orders. Do you need any clarification about how serious a fella I might be?”

  Sheep Dog had decided during their earlier telephone conversation that he did not need friends; he needed compliance; and Neal and Dusty were tools toward that end. He could not afford emotional tiesl; and he could not afford loose ends, even if the loose ends were these two good men who had served him well thus far.

  “Hey, no. We’re on the same side. You don’t need to get testy.”

  “I appreciate what you’ve done already, but I can’t have anyone…any-one… suggesting my presence anywhere. You never saw me; you never heard of me; you have no idea what anyone is talking about if they suggest that the U.S.A. or I was ever involved. I have mentioned it before, but I am not a forgiving person.”

  There was a decided chill in the relationship of the three Company agents now. Dastrup decided to keep matters strictly professional. He was frankly scared of the man.

  “What else?”

  “You drive me to the Arabian border, and you arrange for a clandestine plane ride into Hatred’s Kingdom tomorrow morning. You get hold of your nice fellow agents—the secret kind—in Riyadh to smooth the way for me. They need to ready a cover story that gets me into and around in the country swiftly. I don’t have time to tarry. The reason for that will be evident in my next order. I need pr
ecise information on the exact whereabouts of Dr. al-Faisal’s puppeteers and the controllers of any and all of the agents that work the Yemen terrorist pipeline. Pay whatever must be paid; extort, torture, or call in markers; but get me that working information, tout de suite. I guarantee that your hand, my hand, their hands, and the Company’s hands will never be identifiable. That’s what I’ll do for you. Oh, and another thing I’ll do for you is to disappear. I will not pass this way again…at least this go-around.”

  “We’re glad for some good news at least,” Dastrup said, his eyes set in a hard staring contest with Sheep Dog, “but those are tall orders.”

  Sheep Dog said nothing more. The assassin’s remarkable hazel eyes with flecks of luminescent green looked back with that penetrating gleam that chilled men’s insides. Dastrup blinked first.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The three men left Sana’a and drove west on the major and well paved highway to the west coast at Al-Hudaydah where they stopped to get diesel for the embassy Mercedes and to stretch their legs. They quaffed several cups of thick, black, and bitter coffee to keep them alert then drove hard along the coast through northern Yemen without encountering any road blocks, traffic, or problems with the road conditions until they came to Wadi Mawi.

  “We’ve got about a hundred kilometers to Harad where we’ll have to watch for the hard left turn towards Maydi which will put us within spitting distance of the border. We have to keep our eyes open from here on out. This is Indian country. There were reports of bandido activity as recently as last night. Lock and load, gentlemen,” Neal said.

  Sheep Dog and Dusty checked the weapons Neal had provided; each man had an air-cooled, light-weight, magazine-fed M16A2 5.56 mm rifle; and every weapon was taken off safety and its selector lever was locked in the automatic position. There was palpable tension in the car. No one spoke.

  A little further on, Neal slowed quickly to a crawl.

  “Something up ahead,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Maybe a wreck. They’ve got a road block,” Dusty said straining to get a better look.

  “No. Military,” Sheep Dog said. “Turn off the lights and stop by those three trees on the right.”

  Neal coasted to a stop. The activity at the road block did not change. They waited for five minutes.

  “Whadda you think?” Neal turned to the back seat and asked Sheep Dog. “Doesn’t look copasetic to me.”

  “Me neither,” Sheep Dog said calmly. “Let’s get out and have a quiet little look. Bring three extra magazines of ammo each. This can turn out to be a real contest; and if a single shot gets fired, not a one of them can get out of there alive.”

  Neal muttered to himself that this was exactly that he had been trying to avoid during his entire career; and now, thanks to this Sheep Dog character, he was about to get himself and his boy into a real mess that was likely to earn them an unwanted black star on the wall of the CIA Building in Langley. He was of half a mind to shoot Sheep Dog in the back, get in the car, turn around, and head back to Sana’a. He could just deny he had ever seen the man.

  “Let’s go.” Sheep Dog’s voice was insistent.

  Neal and Dusty turned to look over their shoulders and saw Sheep Dog standing at the ready behind them. He seemed to be holding the end of his M-16 a bit too directly at them. Neal pushed the idea of causing harm to the assassin out of his mind—way out of his mind. He was more scared of him than he was of the bunch of unknowns up in front of them. They walked along almost silently on the paved highway. It was cool and clear. The crescent moon and myriads of stars shown brightly with a view unpolluted by city lights or clouds.

  Fifty yards from the road block, Neal turned and brought Dusty with him to face Sheep Dog.

  “This is no Yemeni police, military, or security force road block. These are bandits.”

  Sheep Dog scrutinized the men milling around the two truck road blockade. He counted seven or eight, maybe more. They had not seen the three Americans and were casual and careless. Several were smoking; one was relieving himself with his back to Sheep Dog, Neal, and Dusty; and two of the men were apparently having an argument.

  “What do you want to do?” Dusty asked.

  “Follow me,” Sheep Dog ordered.

  Dusty looked over at Neal who nodded reluctant assent.

  Sheep Dog took a throwing knife out of his chest band scabbard and hurled it into the now relieved bandit’s back. It struck home in the upper third of the left side. The man whirled about. A black fountain of blood erupted from his open mouth as he stood with a brief quaver facing his attackers. Then, he fell face forward onto the asphalt. Sheep Dog moved swiftly and silently forward to where the bandit had been standing and administered a coup de grace. He paused for a fraction of a minute, then stepped into the light formed by the trucks making up the road block. He began firing at once raking a half arc of chest high bullets from left to right and back again. Neal and Dusty took places on either side of Sheep Dog and added their automatic fire to his. Acrid gun smoke and the smell of fresh blood assaulted their nostrils. Thirteen men in front of them were beyond caring.

  “Get them out of the road and move the trucks off enough to let us drive through,” Sheep Dog ordered. “I’ll get the shell casings.”

  The three men hurriedly went to their tasks. Sheep Dog picked up every piece of brass casing he could find. He made multiple crisscross passes before he was satisfied. He filled his pockets with the brass and turned to help with the removal of the bodies. The road was covered an inch deep in blood, and it proved impossible not to get their shoes in it. In less than five minutes since Sheep Dog opened fire, the bodies and the trucks were out of the way; and every bit of evidence that Americans had been there was removed, at least the best they could do in the circumstances.

  They raced back to the Mercedes, removed their shoes, and drove quickly to the bloody area of road where Neal slowed down to avoid splashing blood on the sides of the car. Once past the bandit’s road block and death site, they roared away to Harad.

  “There’s the sign to Maydi,” Dusty called out barely in time for his father to make a wide, nearly two-wheel turn.

  They crossed a small stream, and Neal stopped long enough for them to wash their shoes. A quick inspection of the car indicated that there was no blood on the body that would be likely to attract attention. The city of Maydi was asleep, and the drive to the border was uneventful. Sheep Dog’s nerves were on full alert. A kilometer from the border, they stopped and hid the guns behind a rock wall near an ancient well where the Dastrups could retrieve them on the way back to Sana’a the next day.

  At the border with Saudi Arabia, a very sleepy young sergeant gave a cursory look at the passports of the three men, asked their destination in the kingdom and their purpose for coming there. Neal had taken the precaution of placing a thousand riyals in his passport to encourage enthusiastic approval by the custom’s official. The young man was satisfied that they were just going into the nearby coastal border town of Jizan for business, smiled, and passed them through. He was a thousand riyals richer and fell back to sleep in ten minutes. The border station did not see three people pass through at night in a month, and he did not give them another thought.

  The city of 100,000 was quiet as dawn started to manifest itself. Jizan is the new name of the ancient capital of the Jizan Province in the far south-west of Saudi Arabia. The city is situated on the Red Sea coast and serves a large agricultural hinterland. It is famous for its high-quality production of tropical fruits including mango, figs, and papaya. The three Americans stopped at a road side fruit stand and helped themselves to a bagful of the fruits from the laden tables as the owners—Arabs and Africans who were at once Sunnis and Shi’ites, Somalis and Eritreans—snored peacefully on their blankets on the sandy ground.

  “Nice and ecumenical, isn’t it?” Neal mentioned as they drove away towards the small airport where he had arranged for a clandestine flight to take Sheep Dog into the
heart of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia right after first prayers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The light was now such that a man could see a single hair. The airport muezzin called the faithful to the first Salah of the day, the Fair. While the workmen scattered around the hangers knelt on their prayer rugs and said their orisens, a small jet landed on the runway opposite to where Neal had parked the Mercedes. Two private propeller planes landed closer by, but Neal held up a hand to keep his companions in their seats.

  “Here it comes,” Neal said, checking the luminescent dial on his digital chronometer.

  A small twin engine cargo jet approached the runway. Neal blinked the car’s lights on and off twice. The plane circled the airport once and settled onto the runway seventy-five yards from the car. Neal gunned the powerful Mercedes engine into action and sped across the tarmac and stopped beneath the pilot side hatch door. The door opened and a set of steps unfolded out onto the tarmac.

  “Out,” Neal ordered.

  The three men moved out of the car with alacrity. Sheep Dog took his Beretta 9 mm out of his waist band holster and chambered a round. He mounted the steps two at a time and burst inside moving his weapon swiftly from side to side. He could see the pilot in the cockpit illuminated by the instrument lights. His eyes were already adjusted to the dim early morning light, and he could see enough to convince himself that the pilot was alone on the plane.

  “Clear,” he said, looking back at the Dastrups. “Get the stuff on board.”

  “Yessir!” Dusty muttered crisply, but not loud enough for the killer to hear.