“I have a serious situation, and I need your help. Somebody is trying to kill me.”
“How do you know that?” asked Mike.
“About two hours ago, about five miles off the coast of Limah, Oman, my boat was attacked by three fast-attack craft. No warning or anything. They chased me down and engaged with fifty-caliber machine-gun fire.”
“Iranians?” asked Mike.
“I think so. That’s the flag they were flying, and I don’t know anyone else who has those boats. All three craft were destroyed, and I don’t know if there were any survivors. I’m now anchored off the port of Fujairah. Jenny Lyn was killed in the attack. Her body is on board, and I’m in the process of sending Mia back to Philippines. I’m guessing I must be the target, but I have no idea why, or even who. I need your help to clean this up.”
After listening quietly, Mike replied, “Find someplace safe and sit tight. I’ll check back in with you in four hours, and we’ll discuss next steps.”
Pat received a text from the limo service that the car had arrived. He went downstairs to help Mia with her bags and walked into her cabin just as she was closing her last suitcase. The color had returned to her face, and she looked steady.
Mia turned to him. “What should I do?”
“You’ll be safe in the Philippines. Just go back to your village and keep a low profile. Don’t return to UAE, ever.”
Pat used the hydraulic control to lower the tender into the water. Before starting the engine, he asked Mia to give him her phone. She did, and Pat dropped it into the water.
As soon as he returned from dropping off Mia, he stowed the tender. He made sure the automatic identification system was in its standard position, which was off, meaning they weren’t sending their location out to the world via satellite. Pat cut the master power and began a sweep of the boat using a multispectral signal detector. It was nagging at him that someone had been able to find him and ambush him so easily. Bug finders worked very badly inside cars and boats; they triggered every time they detected an electronic component, which was constantly.
Pat couldn’t find anything. He refueled the boat at the Fujairah Marina and set the heading at eight knots south toward Muscat.
Once the autopilot kicked in, Pat grabbed a Sam Adams from the fridge and reclined on the bench chair on the flydeck. He had been in a lot of firefights, and he had seen some bad things, but the sight of innocent Jenny Lyn was never going to leave him. The realization that he was responsible for getting her killed was just starting to set in. Getting caught by surprise and endangering civilians was unforgivable. The problem was, Pat hadn’t thought he was involved in anything that would draw this kind of reaction from anyone, especially the Iranians. Jenny Lyn was a true innocent; sitting on the deck with her dead body only feet away was difficult to cope with. He had been completely blindsided by the attack. Allowing his personal and professional life to gradually intertwine had been a serious mistake.
Pat spent the next hours drinking beer and trying to sort out why they had been attacked. If someone wanted him dead, why wouldn’t they just shoot him on the way to the office? Why be so elaborate about it? He hoped the CIA would be able to tell him who he had crossed and what he had done to earn such an attack.
As the sun set, he turned on the running lights and anchored the boat. Two miles out from the Omani shoreline, the water was too deep to anchor, but the boat’s positioning system automatically used thrusters to maintain position without any drift. Too far out to receive cell coverage, Pat heard his iridium satphone chime and picked it up.
“Hey, Mike.”
“Cleanup crew has you in sight. They’re in a fifteen-meter fishing trawler. Keep an eye out.”
An hour later, the men from the fishing trawler departed with Jenny Lyn’s body. Pat was more morose than ever when he returned to his perch on the flydeck. No sooner had he sat down and opened a fresh beer than the iridium phone chimed again. It was Mike.
“Sorry it took so long to get back to you. We have a lot of people working to figure this out, and I just came from a meeting with the top floor on the subject.”
“Do you know who wants me dead?”
“We can confirm it was the Iranians. We have satellite imagery showing the Iranian fast craft leaving their base in Iran, pursuing you, and being destroyed by direct fire from your vessel. From the imagery, it looked like a fifty-caliber sniper rifle and some sort of guided rocket. Kudos on that. None of our people can understand why the Iranians would put a hit on you. The guys at Mead have been tasked but will need a couple of days to do a meta search. If they don’t find anything, we’re at a dead end.”
“I understand. I’ll return through the strait tomorrow. I swept the boat and couldn’t find any tracking or RFID devices. I doubt we’ll have another incident. After what happened today, they won’t be sending any more fast boats after me. It’ll most likely be a long-range missile shot, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“Why not just leave your boat in Fujairah? It’s not smart to pass through the strait a second time.”
“I have an appointment on Monday with Dr. Schneeberger. She’s going to evaluate my risky behavior, and I want to have something to talk about.”
Chapter 15
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Abdul-Rahman waited outside Sheik Meshal’s office at the Kuwait National Guard headquarters. His olive-green dress uniform was perfectly tailored, his broad chest was resplendent with badges and ribbons, and the crease in his trousers was razor-sharp. The waiting area was filled with photographs of the aging sheik, sporting his black Peter Sellers mustache, with various foreign leaders. In addition to Abdul-Rahman’s counterterrorism battalion, there were eight other battalions in the KNG, including two mechanized battalions and two riot-control battalions. The walls of the waiting room were decorated with action photos of the many units taken during training exercises.
Kuwait was threatened at its borders by the Iranian-backed Shia, and it was threatened internally by a large Shia population as well as an active local Sunni protest movement. The KNG counterterrorist battalion and two riot-control battalions were very active organizations.
Ever since the Americans had recaptured Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards in 1991, the external defense of the country had largely been outsourced to the US military. The United States kept a heavy brigade in Kuwait on a rotational basis, along with an Air Force fighter squadron, and of course the Navy’s Fifth Fleet was parked nearby in Bahrain. Kuwait’s internal security issues were primarily the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior and the Kuwait National Guard. Kuwait did have a regular military, but they were more of a show pony than a warhorse. During the Iraqi invasion, the only casualties incurred from anyone actually fighting back had been from the KNG; the regular military had run.
When Abdul-Rahman was finally summoned into the KNG deputy chairman’s office, he was not asked to sit. He remained standing at a position of attention across from the desk of His Highness Sheik Meshal Al-Sabah.
Skipping the ritual greeting, Sheik Meshal said, “I’ve entrusted you with a very important task. One that must be completed successful and quickly. What can you tell me about your progress?”
Remaining at attention, Abdul-Rahman replied, “Your Highness, you made it very clear that any action to kill the American arms dealer cannot be traced back to us for political reasons. I used a contact in Lebanon who, through a Hezbollah agent, provided a message to Iranian intelligence about a person supplying weapons to the Iranian Kurds. I also provided information on when he would be passing through the Strait of Hormuz in a motor yacht.”
Sheik Meshal cut in. “How did you know when and where the American was going to sail?”
Abdul-Rahman replied, “We received the information from our counterparts in the UAE; they keep a very close eye on the American and his associates.”
“What have our friends in the UAE been able to tell us? Did the Iranians act?
”
Abdul-Rahman paused and looked at his feet before responding. This was the part he had not been looking forward to. “Cee Dee, the Iranians were given notice of when the American sailed from Abu Dhabi. The Iranians ambushed the American’s motor yacht with three fast-attack craft armed with rockets and heavy machine guns. The American pleasure yacht destroyed all three Iranian boats. Nine Iranian sailors were killed, none survived, and the American escaped unharmed.”
Sheik Meshal’s eyes bulged, and his cheeks were red. “That is unacceptable. We have to kill the American. What will you do next?”
Abdul-Rahman replied, “The Iranians are no longer an option. Nobody will know that we were behind the attack, but we can’t use them again. The only other organization we can use that will not point back to us is Daesh. Our friends in the UAE are still able to keep track of the American. He often travels to Iraq and sometimes Syria with air shipments of weapons and equipment. We’ll attack him the next time he accompanies a shipment.”
Sheik Meshal stood up and walked around his desk. Abdul-Rahman was visibly nervous. He’d never seen the sheik so intense, and he stood even more rigidly at the position of attention.
Sheik Meshal put his hands on the shoulders of Abdul-Rahman and said, “I have given my word to the Council that we will get this done. I want you to personally lead this next attack. Do not fail. Make sure you have everything you need and take every precaution to insure the attack cannot be traced back to us.”
Chapter 16
Al Dhafra Air Force Base, UAE
Pat watched the forklift raise the pallet and drive toward the ramp of the waiting C-130. This was the last pallet, and he could see Bill Sachse, the loadmaster, and Dmitri Migos, rushing to secure it with A7A straps so they could stay on schedule. Today’s load was small-arms ammunition, grenades, and mortars. The six pallets were double-stacked and covered the entire cargo bay in the fuselage, leaving a space just narrow enough to walk through on either side. The two pilots, Joe Ferguson and Joe Kilpatrick, had already completed the walk-around and were going through the preflight checklist in the cockpit.
The joking banter between Migos and Sachse was nonstop. Migos had left the Army from the Fifth Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell. Muey Muey Migos—a name he claims to have been given by a Venezuelan Sports Illustrated swimsuit model because he was so much more than the average man—was an extremely funny character. He’d left the Army after serving twelve years, most of them as a member of a Special Forces ODA team. Migos had studied Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and had an 18B military occupation specialty, which was a Special Forces weapons specialist. Migos was five eight and 220 pounds of muscle. He had huge biceps, Popeye forearms, curly black hair, and a bushy unibrow that accented a constantly grinning face. Migos almost never stopped talking.
His loadmaster and workmate, Bill Sachse, was the complete opposite. Sachse was tall and thin. He had close-cropped gray hair and wore wire-rimmed eyeglasses. Sachse was as quiet as Migos was loud. He was a procedural fanatic; the term anal retentive would not begin to describe the methodical and laconic Sachse. Every part of the aircraft behind the cockpit was Sachse’s domain, and he kept it immaculate.
Pat stepped onto the back ramp of the C-130 and sat on a web-mesh jump seat in the very back of the aircraft. A headset was already plugged in next to the seat, and he put it on before connecting the seat belt and shoulder-restraining harness. Migos kept up a steady banter with the two pilots, Joe and Joe, as they began to taxi toward the runway. It had been three weeks since the attack in the Strait of Hormuz, and Pat still had no idea why the Iranians had targeted him.
With the loss of Jenny Lyn and Mia, keeping the boat up had become a sad and lonely chore. Earlier in the week, Pat had notified Ahmed, the Falcon CEO, that he was leaving the organization. Ahmed had committed to continuing the relationship between Falcon and Trident with him still managing the deals and Falcon continuing to run the end user certificates and paper transactions, collecting the easy profits. Pat’s plan was still to extricate himself from the CIA arms dealer business. The coalition gains had been steady and he was still optimistic that he could be out in six months.
Today’s delivery was to the Peshmerga brigade leading the fight to retake Mosul. The fifty-five-hundred-man element located outside of Mosul was being supported from Erbil, the next major city twenty miles to the east. ISIS had lost almost a third of their previous gains in recent months, but they still inhabited an area close to the size of West Virginia. The Erbil International Airport was in excellent condition. It had an undamaged runway and robust ground support. Earlier in the week, they had used the airport to make a huge delivery of 122mm rockets and 152mm artillery rounds from Ukraine, supplied by Andre. The artillery ammunition had gone to the Peshmerga artillery forces, who were pounding Mosul in preparation for the final ground assault. The area of Erbil was very safe at this point, so today’s flight was very much a milk run.
The nylon seats on a C-130 were very uncomfortable. Four hours into the flight, Pat was lying flat on top of a pallet, resting his head on his jacket, when Migos tapped him on the boot.
“Boss, we’re twenty minutes out.”
Pat moved off the pallet, put his headset back on, took a seat, and strapped in next to Migos and Bill Sachse in the far back of the aircraft nearest to the tail ramp. In Iraq and most war zones, aircraft didn’t make the long, gradual approaches commercial travelers were accustomed to. The safest procedure was to maintain altitude as long as possible to avoid ground fire and then rapidly corkscrew down to the runway.
As they began the descent, Pat could hear the pilots talking to an Erbil air traffic controller, who spoke excellent English. Minutes into the landing approach, an alarm sounded over the intercom, and Pat heard one of the Joes announce in a calm voice, “Missile lock. Evading.”
The plane banked and shuddered from the rapid discharge of the IR and chaff countermeasures firing from launchers in the fuselage and wings. The engine noise roared as the aircraft went to full power and started to climb. A second discharge of flares went off, followed by an explosion that shook the aircraft. On the intercom, one of the Joes reported to the air traffic controller that they had been hit and were making an emergency landing. Without any windows within his view, Pat was unable to see anything that was going on outside.
Suddenly, the aircraft dove and began to spin. Seconds later, it stopped spinning and began to level, and Joe Fitzpatrick, in his best Chuck Yeager voice, announced, “Brace for impact.”
Pat instinctively tried to bring his chest to his knees and grab his legs, but when he tried, he realized he was in a shoulder harness. The plane hit the ground hard, then it bounced up, and then it hit the ground again before sliding nose-first for several seconds. Finally, it came to a sudden violent stop that lifted the tail of the aircraft up into the air before crashing down one final time.
Migos, Sachse and Pat were all in seats in the very rear of the airplane, facing toward the center of the fuselage. The final impact was back-wrenching, but their harnesses helped a lot. Pat was shaken, but not hurt. Over his headset, he heard Sachse request a crew check. Migos and Pat both said they were “up,” but there was no response from the cockpit. All three of them released their seat belts and shoulder harnesses. Sachse opened the side exit door, and the cargo hold was instantly filled with heat and smoke from the inflamed wings. Pat ran to the ceiling storage above the ramp area and released the go-bags. Migos and Pat each grabbed two before jumping out the side exit door. The fuselage was flat on the desert sand. The landing gear had been destroyed. Once on the ground, all three of them ran away from the fire that was engulfing the wings.
One hundred fifty yards from the rear of the aircraft, legs burning from the sprint, they found a depression on the desert floor and jumped in. Seconds later a huge explosion, followed by a blazing hot concussion wave, swept over them. For a few seconds, the air was excruciatingly hot and there was no ox
ygen, but gradually, the desert returned to what felt like a cool ninety-five degrees, and they could breathe again.
Without speaking, they all strapped the go-bags onto their shoulders, connected the waist straps, and walked out of the sandy depression to survey the damage to the aircraft. Pat was shocked to see the devastation created by the combined detonation of the aircraft’s fuel and the cargo’s explosives. Pat sent Migos to search around the aircraft counterclockwise while he went clockwise with Sachse to survey the smoldering remains and hopefully find their pilots. When they all met up in the vicinity of the cockpit, which was crushed against a sand dune, it was obvious that neither pilot had survived.
“Gear up, it looks like we’re going to be hoofing it to Erbil,” Pat told Migos and Sachse.
He donned his body armor and helmet, attached the drop-leg holster, and loaded his pistol and carbine. He used the GPS and got a fix on their location. They were only three miles west of Erbil International.
“I’m gonna call the American advisory team working with the Peshmerga brigade and request evac,” Migos said as he pulled out a cell phone. “They saw the explosion. They’re sending a vehicle convoy to get us,” he said a few minutes later.
While they were waiting, Pat sent Migos back to retrieve the fourth go-bag.
“What just happened?” he asked Sachse after Migos left. Sachse was a retired Air Force master sergeant with twenty-plus years of experience in the MC-130, often in hostile environs. Pat figured Sachse would have the best idea of what had just transpired.
Sachse replied in his slow Kentucky drawl, “Sir, I figure at about six thousand feet, we got locked on and engaged by a man-portable air-defense system. The countermeasures worked against the first MANPAD, but we were engaged by at least two more and that was just too much.
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