Night of the Cobra

by Jack Coughlin

  “Swanson is with the CIA now, correct? Why not just let the agency handle it with its normal operations? If they can find this guy, I will happily call in the SEALs or shoot a Hellfire missile up his ass. Pardon my language.”

  “The possibility of leaks, sir. Security clearances no longer guarantee secrecy. Swanson and Special Agent Sharif would be a formidable team on this specific mission. No extra training would be involved. They know the target.”

  “And you believe we can do this on the quiet?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The president barked a short, ironic laugh. “We shipped Swanson off to obscurity, and he still ends up in the middle of things. A onetime thing?”

  “Then Kyle and Lucky fade back into their regular jobs.”

  The man behind the big desk thought a long moment. He still wasn’t sold.

  “Mr. President. Kyle Swanson is going after the Cobra no matter what you or I say. If we don’t use him, he will just quit the government and do it anyway. Let’s help him succeed.”

  The president leaned forward and planted his elbows on the big desk. The clock was ticking, and he had to move to other things. “If he fails, you may have to fall on your sword, General, and I don’t want to lose you from my national security team.”

  Middleton brushed his stiff mustache with a finger. “It won’t come to that, sir. These are two avenging angels willing to take down a monster, and I will make sure they have whatever they need through the Joint Special Operations Command.”

  The president lightly knocked the wood on his desk. “Anything else other than give you a green light?”

  “Nothing else, sir. Buy us some time while you examine all possibilities. You may even find something better, although I doubt it. In the meantime, Swanson will go after the bastard.”

  * * *

  OMAR JAMA WENT TO Mexico aboard trolley car number 1053, a comfortable fire-engine-red electric people mover that whisked him out of the quiet Santa Fe railroad depot in San Diego for the sixteen-mile trip south. It ran all day. The ticket, which he bought at a vending machine that did not ask questions, cost a dollar and twenty-five cents because he was leaning on a cheap cane and was considered disabled.

  At the San Ysidro crossing, he debarked with dozens of tourists. Automobiles driving into Mexico were crowding up along the interstate highway gates, where alert Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were watching everyone passing their posts. A picture of the Cobra was posted in all of their cubicles. The trolley crowds were unmolested. Smiling and joking with the party people, shopaholics, and other travelers, Omar Jama, the most wanted man in America, left the country by walking casually through a full-length revolving turnstile and stepping across the yellow and black stripe that marked the border. Some twenty-five thousand other people would do the same thing before the day was done.

  A stylish straw hat was raked low across his forehead, and he wore dark aviator sunglasses with a pullover shirt and khakis. For the next minute, he stayed with the crowd as it moved through a lightly guarded quarantine corridor staffed by a few Mexican Army soldiers who carried weapons. A young American with a bald head and a helmet of tattoo ink was the center of their attention as they pawed through his bulky backpack, looking for drugs, fruits, guns, or grain. He looked suspicious. The Cobra did not.

  No one asked the Cobra for his passport or any identification, and those would only be examined if he came back into the United States, which he did not intend to do. He kept pace with the steadily moving, lighthearted throng, and the quarantine zone ended as quickly and easily as it had begun. He pushed through a second revolving gate and a multitude of taxi drivers called out in English to offer their services. He chose one and got into the little clean vehicle that had a plastic Madonna on the dashboard.

  “Avenida Revolución?” asked the driver, a somber man of middle age whose thick black hair was combed straight back.

  “No. Take me down to the Rosarito Beach Hotel, please,” the Cobra said politely.

  “Ah. Okay. Some warm lobster tacos and cold cerveza for lunch, eh, my friend?” The car started to move through the heavy traffic.

  “Something like that,” Omar Jama answered.

  * * *

  LUCKY SHARIF OF THE FBI had never been inside the Central Intelligence Agency. He felt like a child who had wandered into a candy factory. No wonder he had almost had to sign an oath in blood to get through the front door. Swanson just slid a plastic card from his wallet, swiped it through a machine, and stepped through. Lucky received a visitor’s tag that he clipped to the pocket of his suit jacket.

  A quick elevator ride dumped them on the third floor, and Kyle led the way to an unmarked door, which he unlocked with his little card and pushed open to enter a semidarkened room that seemed to glow. “Hello, Marty, everybody,” Swanson said conversationally, as if they saw each other daily. “This is Lucky Sharif from the FBI.”

  There were glances and grunts, but everyone remained in their chairs, watching the six large computer screens on the far wall. An operator was at his console, an organlike contraption with multiple decks of keyboards and towers. The man had a shaved head and big glasses that amplified his vision. Sharif thought that whatever the CIA analyst was doing was eating entire clouds of disk space.

  “You find the Cobra yet, Marty?” Kyle asked, taking a rolling chair. Lucky found another and pulled it forward. He noticed they were all in casual civilian clothes, while he was in full FBI dark-suit-and-tie regalia.

  “We’re not looking for him.” Marty Atkins, the deputy director of Clandestine Service, brought them up to date. “The last sighting was at your house in Venice. Odds are, he is already beyond Mexico by now. He’ll turn up soon enough. The Behavioral Science people at the FBI agree, don’t they, Lucky?” With a single question, Atkins smoothly bestowed CIA legitimacy on the outsider.

  Sharif was still going over the busy boards. “Yes. They say that he will want the entire world to know that he is the one who carried out the attacks. He is a megalomaniac, and needs the credit to prove his power and greatness.”

  “I think he is heading back to his rat hole in Somalia,” added the deep voice of a balding, middle-aged man on the far side of the room. “The man who would be king. Show us the big map, Bob.”

  The operator pulled up a map of northeastern Horn of Africa, then tightened it to just Somalia. The screen sliced, and he added a photograph of a man in military uniform.

  The man spoke again. “I’m Paul Graham, by the way, the lead on this project. The Somalis are busy forming a parliamentary system of government, complete with a prime minister and a cabinet and all that malarkey. This is the man with the real power, the commander of the armed forces, General Mohammed Ahmed. Strip away the political trappings, and he is the top-dog warlord in the country right now. The good news, for us, is that General Ahmed is not going to roll over and give up power just because the Cobra would like to take his job.”

  Lucky shifted his position before he spoke. “I know about him from my work in the Somali community, and it boils down to the same old tribal story. This general is of the Abgal Hawiye clan. Cobra is Habar Gidir, so there is an automatic hatred and distrust. The general has the local guns, but Cobra will now have the mystique: local boy makes good. He has to gather fighters on his own, which will take time.”

  “Right. That works for us,” said Graham. The hum of the secure computers was like background music. “If we move right away, you guys might be in place when the Cobra comes up for air. He has half a world to travel and knows that we might be waiting around every corner.”

  Marty Atkins spoke. “Let’s get out of this dungeon and into the sunlight of my spacious and gilded private chambers and drink some coffee and make a plan. Bob, you stay in here and do whatever the hell it is you do. You will not get sidetracked by playing Mario Kart Five or Call of Duty Twelve.”

  The operator sneered back. “Right now I’m looking for the money. Always follow the money.”r />
  30

  THE MESSAGE

  THE TAXI DRIVER IN Tijuana had been correct. The lobster tacos from the kitchens of the Rosarito Beach Hotel were delicious and spicy, and a chilled pitcher of sugary fruit juice topped it off. The Cobra ate and drank his fill in a comfortable room on the seventeenth floor. True, he had room service instead of dining in the bright Azteca Restaurant, but at least no one could see him, and he had a view of the beach and the water. Moving around the room behind him, talking on the phone, was Hassan Abdi, who had fled the United States several days earlier and had rented adjoining suites for them under false names. Now the Cobra had travel documents, and all of the requisite bribes had been paid.

  “You look tired, brother,” Hassan said. “Crossing the border when you are a wanted man required great courage.”

  Omar Jama finished the glass of sangria. Ice cubes clinked in it. “I am fine. When do we leave?”

  Hassan looked in a pocket notebook that he used because he distrusted the security of electronic devices and believed too much information was already out in the e-world. “I have a private car to take us out to the General Abelardo L. Rodríguez International Airport in time for the four-thirty Volaris flight to Mexico City. Since it is an internal trip, there will be no customs or immigration checks.”

  “Do I have time to rest a little first and take a shower?”

  “Yes, sir.” Hassan turned a page. “We overnight at the Hilton Hotel at the airport down there, then leave early tomorrow morning at eight forty-five a.m. aboard Cubana. An immigration official and his partner will be around to clear the paperwork and escort us aboard.”

  The Cobra put down the sweet drink and examined the rich blue passport, which read in gold letters: “Pasaporte” and “República de Cuba.” It was a worn document that had passed through many hands and contained the stamps of someone who flew frequently to the countries in Central and South America. An accompanying manila envelope contained a sheaf of supporting documents, business letters, contracts, and receipts. “I am a citizen of Cuba, a weary investor returning home from another successful road trip.”

  “We will be in Havana shortly after noon. Our friends there will protect us.” Hassan closed his notebook and smiled at his brave friend. “We did it.”

  * * *

  KYLE SWANSON AND THE team met regularly over the next few days, deep in the CIA building, designing a snare to trap the Cobra. Folders, prisoner interrogations, maps, and electronic data were studied over and over without substantial discovery of his next move or his ultimate intent. Guessing what was in the mind of a mentally unbalanced killer was a roll of the cosmic dice, for Omar Jama himself might be playing it minute by minute.

  “This is all yesterday stuff,” Kyle said, frustrated with the lack of progress as he looked through the reports. “Everything in here is dry history. We have to lean forward, not get stuck in paperwork.”

  Paul Graham rolled his fingernails along the desktop in a staccato that had the rhythm of a horse crossing a bridge. “We’ve learned some things, Swanson. It’s not a waste.”

  Marty Atkins was relaxed, with his glasses pushed up on his forehead. “We identified one of his bank accounts, although it is under another name, and I could have the State Department get the Swiss to freeze those funds. I decided not to, because it might be a valuable information pipeline. The last deposit was for one hundred thousand dollars from a minor Saudi sheikh who lives in Greece. The House of Saud will slam him hard when we share that news, and he may not live through the experience.”

  “The Cobra is going to be rolling in terrorist money after these attacks,” Kyle complained. “Plus, Iran, Syria, Egypt—you name it; they will all be throwing cash at him.”

  Swanson leaned back. “We’ve learned all we can from his tracks, people. We can’t stick around here any longer.”

  “He could be anywhere,” warned Graham.

  “It will be Somalia,” Swanson said with great certainty. “Marty, we need for you to whistle up some air transport to get us over to Jeddah as soon as possible.”

  “What is in Jeddah?” asked Atkins. The city was a Saudi port on the Red Sea.

  Kyle explained. “The Vagabond, a private yacht that will take us to Somalia. It was already in the Med on business when the attacks happened in Minnesota, and it immediately changed course. She cleared the Suez Canal last night and will be waiting for us.”

  Paul Graham blinked. “The Vagabond? Is that one of ours, Marty?”

  “No.” Atkins pointed to Swanson. “It’s his.”

  “Oh.” The surprise was minimal. After thirty years in the CIA, very little surprised Graham, but he had never actually known anyone who owned a yacht. He looked at the sweep hand of the clock on the wall. “It will take a little time to nail down a flight. Be at Andrews in the VIP lounge about nineteen hundred.”

  Kyle looked at his friend. “Consider yourself operational as of now, Lucky. We do not tell Deqo or Janna, and Marty will alert your boss. This is strictly need-to-know.”

  * * *

  THE LONG-EXPECTED ANNOUNCEMENT FROM the Cobra was recorded on a laptop computer that was propped on a beachfront table at a small restaurant on the Bahía de Cochinos, a scuba-diving spot on Cuba’s Zapata Peninsula, a resort popular among sportsmen around the world for its warm and crystalline waters. It was also known as the Bay of Pigs.

  Viewers saw a husky black man wearing a lightweight shirt and a broad-brimmed straw hat with a thin veil attached to the front brim, both to keep away mosquitoes and disguise his image. The voice was deep and confident.

  “My name is Omar Jama, and I planned and carried out the attacks on America in the state of Minnesota. The infidel government of the United States did worse—much worse—to my homeland of Somalia some twenty years ago during a crisis of famine. When we needed food and clean water and medicine and refugee assistance, and while international aid sources responded with kindness and compassion, the United States invaded with tens of thousands of their soldiers called marines to pillage and punish our poor country solely because of our religious beliefs. We are Muslims. So Washington now dares to call me a terrorist. I call them mass murderers.”

  With excruciating slowness, he removed the hat and veil and rested it on the table. He removed a dental bridge, used both hands to slide away the large dark sunglasses, then remained motionless, staring into the camera lens. The sharp white scars across his face, the bent nose, the missing teeth, and the white orb of his blind eye.

  “The Americans say they do not torture. That is a monstrous lie. My entire family and my friends were slaughtered, and I was given this horrible face by a U.S. marine. Then I was cast into the darkest, most vile prison you can imagine, without charges or a trial. While I rotted in CIA dungeons, my country of Somalia was mercilessly raped and ravaged by the blood-hungry marines.” He paused and took time to put his teeth back in, and then the glasses and hat back on. The veil was lowered, and the baritone voice continued.

  “For twenty years, I have thought about nothing else but how I must take revenge for what America did to me, to my family, and to my countrymen. The armed forces of the United States slithered away like cowards after my brothers finally were able to rise up on the Day of the Rangers and make the American military atone for their sins. The U.S. took its wars against Muslims elsewhere, but never stopped.

  “My dear friend Osama bin Laden struck back with the only weapon we really possess, which is to attack the United States itself without warning. He is dead. Murdered, of course, by Americans.” Viewers saw the mouth curve into a smile.

  “But I, Omar Jama, am alive, through the mercy of Allah and his Prophet Mohammed, whose name be praised. My message to my countrymen today is to keep your hearts strong and prepare to rise up and overthrow the tyrants who rule Somalia today. They are nothing but political puppets of the United States. We have suffered for twenty years. That is long enough. I will return home soon and lead the battle for true freedom.

&n
bsp; “So here is my message to Americans. I am recording at this place, known to them as the Bay of Pigs, where an attempted CIA invasion of Cuba was hurled back into the sea in defeat. Later, the Americans would also run from Vietnam, and are scorned around the world today as being clumsy paper tigers. Even as I make this video, they remain bogged down in Afghanistan in their longest war, unable to even defeat a handful of mountain tribesmen. Soon they will leave there, too. History has shown that, far from being safe, the international adventures have left Americans in greater danger than ever. I proved that last week.

  “The citizens of the U.S. share the blood that is on the hands of their soldiers. Your time has come. You may live in a small town or in a big city, be at home with your family or at a shopping mall, or perhaps you are touring abroad. My warning is a prophecy; look over your shoulder. Your armies and police cannot protect you. I am the Cobra. I am coming for you.”

  Since Cuba did not have the necessary wireless network for a broadcast from the beachside bench, the video was smuggled into Florida, only ninety miles away. From the communications hub in Miami, it was posted to a half-dozen social media sites. It drew millions of hits and was downloaded, shared, and passed around on the Internet as a mega-popular happening. It went everywhere. The laptop from which it was sent was destroyed and the pieces thrown into a canal beside the Tamiami Trail. By then, the Cobra was no longer in Cuba.

  * * *

  THE VAGABOND SWAM SMOOTHLY through the Arabian Sea after having charged through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden like a speedboat on steroids, with its pair of 3,240-horsepower engines wide open. Although it showed as a blip on some pirate radars, none could respond fast enough to pose any threat, and the 180-foot-long brilliant white yacht reached the safe channels patrolled by the warships of many nations without incident. Even if one of the little boats of terrorists had somehow managed to stage an attack, it would have discovered this particular pleasure vessel had very sharp teeth, including a pod of ship-killer missiles and a well-supplied armory for a crew made up of a dozen former British special forces operatives.