“I saw you out on the water this morning. I was in early for lunch prep, and I spied you riding the big swells.”
“And you’re still here. That’s a long day.”
“One of the other girls called in sick, so I took a double.”
“The conditions are supposed to be good again tomorrow morning. If they are, you should join me. I could use some pointers.”
“I’ll do that. Do you mind if I bring a friend?”
“Not at all,” Pat said as he touched the bruise on his scabbed jaw. “You saw my skills. The more lifeguards the better.”
Pat finished his dinner, which was far better than expected, and walked back to the house. Surfing was a welcome distraction from the morbid thoughts he was having about Jenny Lyn and the two Joes. He preferred to focus on the tide, wind, and other details that made for the perfect conditions. He was going to wake up early and wax his board, once he had a look at the surf conditions and was able to decide which one to bring. Hopefully, Diane would show with her friend. She was a legitimate expert, and anyone she would bring would likely be of the same caliber. That, in Pat’s opinion, was the best way to learn. Pat was a pretty decent athlete, but since he had never had the time to surf a lot, his technique was basic. It would be nice to gain some pointers from a professional surfer like Diane.
The next morning, Pat was out on the water alone at seven o’clock. An hour and a half later, Diane and a guy joined him beyond the break. Diane introduced her friend as Finley. Like Diane, he looked to be in his midtwenties, and just from watching him glide through the surf to the break, he was obviously in a different league than Pat was. Both had watched his last run from the beach, and when they finally reached him, they gestured approvingly. It made Pat laugh at himself, because he genuinely cared about the opinion of these two twenty-somethings.
After reaching a point of exhaustion in the late morning, Pat invited the hard-bodied übertalented surfers to lunch at the house. To his surprise, they joined him. Maria prepared an enormous meal of barbecued pork ribs, chicken, and steaks, and they drank beer and told stories until Pat had to wrap things up because he had a flight to catch. Finley was quite a character; he was a web designer from California who’d relocated to Governor’s Harbour two years earlier. Finley had an excellent sense of humor, and his impressions of the island tourists had Pat in stitches.
Pat took a private charter from Governor’s Harbour Airport to Miami and then flew Emirates first class direct to Dubai. After the exertions earlier in the day, he slept like a rock on the flat bed during most of the flight. If he’d learned nothing else during his time in the Army, he’d learned to take advantage of the downtime while traveling.
He woke up and ordered breakfast. He had to wait until the cabin crew member was done being chewed out by an obese young Arab guy for the limited yogurt selection. Beyond learning to sleep on anything that moved, the Army had also taught Pat to appreciate how good he had it. He wondered how that flight attendant’s abuser would handle some of the flight experiences Pat had had when he was in the Army, especially when he was a Ranger.
Those flights had been miserable. They would have eighty guys crammed into a cargo jet for a twelve-hour flight, sitting on webbed nylon seats, each with an eighty- to one-hundred-pound rucksack at their feet. No bathrooms on board, just pallets with clear plastic tubes sticking out to waist level. They called them piss tubes. One hour before reaching the drop zone, the parachutes stacked in the middle on pallets would be distributed, and everyone would conduct in-flight rigging. Buddy teams helped one another don the parachutes and attach the rucksacks below the parachute harnesses. The rifles inside the weapons bags were attached to the side of the parachute harness, and the helmet straps were secured tightly.
Once everyone had been inspected by a jumpmaster, the white lights were shut off, and a few red lights illuminated the interior of the aircraft. Thirty minutes out, the jet descended to one hundred feet above the earth to avoid radar. Flying NOE meant the airplane followed the nap of the earth, so the plane went up and down constantly following the contours of the terrain. Out of eighty-plus personnel, there were always a few who had problems with motion sickness, and this was the point where they would lose the battle with nausea. The motion, body odor, smell of the puke, and the overfilled piss tubes generated an odorous effluvium that would make the barfing contagious. At the ten-minute mark, the aircraft popped up to a jump altitude of five hundred feet above ground level. The jumpers were lined up facing the doors, holding on to static lines. When the doors opened, it would usher in fresh air, and Pat could once again breathe without distress. Finally, the green light was illuminated, and the jumpmaster yelled go and slaps the lead jumper on the ass. Everyone else raced to the exit, desperate to get out before the jumpmaster stopped them because they’d run out of drop zone, forcing the aircraft to racetrack around for another pass.
As Pat sat in his first-class seat, reflecting on the discomfort of military airborne operations and his one mass tactical combat jump with the Rangers, he recognized that he was subconsciously preparing himself for a fight. He was going to approach this problem with the same grim determination he had in combat. Like the fat Arab guy throwing a tantrum on the poor flight attendant, Pat’s enemy was a soft bully who could dish out adversity but had no capacity to receive it. That was Pat’s advantage. He had been getting knocked around his whole life, and he had very high pain tolerance.
Chapter 19
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Pat woke up aboard the Sam Houston and put on his workout clothes. He made himself a cup of coffee in the galley and sat outside on the couch in the stern. The weather was dry and warm, which was the best part about October in the UAE. After the morning workout, his first stop was the Falcon office. Pat was no longer the COO, but he was still the biggest customer. He made his rounds when he reached the office, saying hello to the administrative staff and the few sales guys who were hanging around. He went over some routine shipping and finance details with the accounting and admin teams. At ten o’clock, the CEO, Ahmed Al Junaibi, arrived, and Pat went into his office to visit.
Ahmed was happy to see him. He had the tea boy—the name sounded terrible, but it was an actual job title in the Middle East—bring the qahwah, and they had a small cup of the strong Arabic coffee. Pat gave him four sets of contracts to study. Each set contained a purchase contract between a supplier and Falcon and a purchase contract between Falcon and Trident. He asked Ahmed to review and sign the contracts. Each was already countersigned by either the supplier or by Trident. It was an easy profit that Ahmed made because of Trident, and he was appreciative enough that he signed on the spot without review. Pat left one set of originals with Ahmed and kept the others.
Before he left, he asked Ahmed if Saeed, the company chairman, was in town. Pat could tell he was curious why he was asking, as he didn’t usually communicate with the chairman. He told him it was a personal matter; he intended to ask a favor of him.
Pat called the retired general and asked him for an appointment. Saeed asked Pat to meet him at his farm. During the hour-and-a-half trip on the Al Ain Highway, Pat had a chance to rethink his plan. He had been confident before that the Emirates would offer up the traitor, who was an accomplice to the murder of his first mate and his pilots, but that had been a plan made in the USA. Now that he was back in the UAE, he was more inclined to think the Arab mentality would kick in. They’d never offer up one of their own just because he’d betrayed an Ameriki. There was an old Arab Bedouin saying: I against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world. Pat reconsidered how the UAE leadership would respond to his request. Instead of expecting the UAE to offer him the traitor, he decided the best option would be to cause the UAE government to flush the traitor out and then to snatch him away when they least expected it.
The chairman of Falcon Group owned an extensive farm near Al Ain, a city along the Oman border of UAE. During
the pre-oil days, many from Abu Dhabi would retreat from the coast to the cooler climes of Al Ain. The hundred-mile trip to the date-palm oasis of Al Ain used to take three days by camel. Even after the first roads were built in the 1960s, the trip could take two days by Land Rover. The dunes between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain were tall and majestic, and constant efforts were required to prevent the desert from reclaiming the pavement with drifting sands. The road from the entrance to General Saeed’s farm to the main house was two miles long. When Pat exited his truck, he looked around for the camel herd that Saeed had once mentioned, but he saw no sign of it. The farm was that big.
Saeed’s house was a rambling single-story stone structure. As Pat approached the front door, a male servant opened it and gestured for him to enter. He was escorted to a large room about the size of a tennis court that had chairs and accompanying coffee tables lining three of the walls. The floor was white marble tile. The room was lit by five huge crystal chandeliers and had no exterior windows. It was a traditional majlis, very common to the area. General Saeed was seated alone at the far end of the room.
General Saeed was a short muscular man who, since retiring from the military several years back, had begun to sport a belly. He had a large hawkish nose and longish black hair without a hint of gray, and he maintained a fine well-groomed beard. He had a volatile personality and was prone to emotion swings, and he had a keen intellect. A member of one of the most prominent families of Al Ain, he was closely aligned with the ruling family from back in the days when the tribes had defended the Al Ain oasis from interlopers with swords. Saeed was a man very comfortable with his authority. What Pat liked about him was his no-bullshit style.
After all the courtesies were dispensed with, Pat spent a long time laying out the situation as clearly as he could. He described the attack on his boat and the attack on his plane. Saeed was an excellent listener and a military man, and when Pat was done, he got right to the point.
“Who wants you dead?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that neither the attack on the water nor the attack in the air could’ve been accomplished without detailed knowledge of my travel plans. I was the only person who was aware of the plans for both trips, and I didn’t attack myself.”
“Maybe you have more than one leaker, one for the boat, one for the plane?”
“Only three people had knowledge of the boat trip schedule—myself and my two crewmates—one of whom was killed. With all the traffic in the strait, the Iranians had to have had knowledge of my departure time and route.”
“What about the air cargo mission?”
“That had more people in the know, but they were all cleared, and most were on the aircraft when it was attacked.”
“Like I said, it could be two sources.”
“The timing on the C-130 attack had to be even more precise. Beyond the people in the aircraft, the only other people who knew were US military and the Agency. I don’t see any motive for them to destroy the supplies they needed, and I’m just a cargo hauler doing something both the UAE and USA want done.”
“Who do you suspect?” asked Saeed.
“An intel service who is surveilling me. Because I’m an expat, and because of the business I’m in, I’m under constant surveillance by the UAE government. I think someone who had access to the information collected on me through the UAE government surveillance program provided the info to the bad guys who attacked me.”
“The UAE is not going to tip either the Iranians or Daesh. We are on the worst of terms with both. UAE is not the only government that surveils you, is it?”
“You have me on that point. But the UAE does it the most consistently and the most thoroughly. I really have no idea why someone wants me eliminated. But I’m almost positive the only element that had the information to plan both attacks was UAE SSI.”
The general poured himself some Moroccan tea from a gold tea set in front of him. “When you called me, you said you were visiting to ask a favor of me. What is it you ask?”
“Sir, I want to request His Highness initiate an investigation of the UAE intelligence personnel who have access to my files. I would like for him to identify the person who accessed my file on these dates.” Pat handed the general an index card with two time windows on it.
“Why these dates?”
“Sir, each of those time frames represent the time windows from when my attendance on those two trips was planned and when those trips began. As you can see, neither window is more than two days long; the search should be quick and simple. We’re talking about electronic files. I’m sure every time someone accesses a file at an intel agency, it leaves a record of who opened it and a timestamp of when it was opened. If they search the files and find a person who opened my file inside those two time windows, that should be the mole.”
Pat drove away from General Saeed’s farm convinced the man would raise the matter to the group chairman, Sheik Abdulla. The group chairman was the brother of the crown prince. Within the hierarchy, he was number three, behind the crown prince and the president. In addition to serving as chairman of the largest company in the UAE, Sheik Abdullah was also the minister of national security, which meant that all the intelligence directorates reported to him, including NESA, the agency responsible for electronic surveillance. Pat was sure that General Saeed would drive immediately to the chairman and make him aware of the request.
Because of his former position at Falcon, Pat had a working relationship with the national security personnel. For the most part, they were selected for the organization based on family loyalty and education. Falcon supplied them with equipment and the new equipment training that came with that equipment. Pat had seen enough training sessions to have a decent idea of their capabilities. As a rule, the agents were good citizens, loyal, hardworking, and well educated. These were young men who’d grown up in palaces and never experienced serious deprivation of any kind. They were at the top of a very rigid caste system, and they’d been bossing the lesser classes around since they were old enough to form words and tell their nannies what to do. Although Pat respected the skills within UAE intel, he didn’t expect any of them to hold up well under the kind of pressure he had in mind.
It was midday when Pat stopped at Al Dhafra Air Force Base and checked in on the team. When he got to the company hangar, he found the plane parked and the entire team hanging around waiting. He shook hands with the guys, and Migos did all the talking, as usual. Eventually, Pat broke away and went into the C-130 parked inside the hangar. He disappeared up the ramp and returned with a go-bag on his shoulder. This was something that had never happened before. There was never any good reason to move the go-bags. Pat could feel all eyes on him.
As he passed, he said one word loudly—“Budweiser”—and kept walking back to his truck. The OPSKED “Budweiser” was their code word for “Move to the alternate air base.” The alternate base was a leased hangar at a civilian airport in Paphos, Cyprus. For future shipments, all paperwork would continue to go through Falcon in Abu Dhabi, but until further notice, all further transshipping would be done through Cyprus.
Pat kept walking, not wanting to answer any questions. He heard the team immediately go to work. They had a lot to do: filing flight plans, conducting the preflight, requesting approval from security command to depart, and generally taking all actions necessary to get out of UAE airspace as soon as possible.
Pat threw his bag in the back of the truck and covered it with a blanket. He figured it will take at most one hour before the Trident Team was safely away from the reaches of the UAE government. Pat’s second aircraft and its two new pilots were not due to arrive for another week, and he’d get the word to them when it was safe to talk to Jessica.
As he drove through the gate of Al Dhafra Air Force Base, his next destination was a to-go lunch from McDonald’s at the Al Raha Mall, and then on to the National Electronic Security Agency (NESA) headquarters. NESA shared the building with several other government and pr
ivate companies, which made it a lot easier to stake out the building. Although the building had numerous entrances, it only had one access road leading to all of those entrances.
Pat parked the Explorer in a busy parking lot with a good view of the access road and waited. Almost five hours later, he watched three white Nissan Platinum Patrol SUVs with black-tinted windows exit the highway and drive onto the access road. As soon as the vehicles passed, Pat got on the highway and headed toward downtown Abu Dhabi.
The national security and intelligence complex was in one of the busiest sections of downtown Abu Dhabi. The complex took up an entire city block and was surrounded by an intimidating twelve-foot brick wall with triple-strand concertina on the top and cameras spaced every five meters. The front gate had triple-layer security with an armed guard and a hydraulic metal barrier that descended to allow traffic to pass. Pat had been through the main gate in the past, but he had never been inside the main building. All commercial business with civilians was transacted in a sterile building adjacent to the main office.
It was already dark when Pat found a parking spot on Al Falah Road, a little over a quarter mile west of the compound. While at Falcon that morning, he’d borrowed a REBS collapsible ladder from the samples inventory. It was a handy piece of boarding equipment that was stowed as a three-foot-long tube, but then telescoped out to a length of ten feet with ladder steps that branched out as it extended. The top of the ladder had a big hook to secure it to a ledge.
The flaw in the security was an excess of cameras. The height of the wall and number of cameras were intimidating, but no human could effectively monitor the hundreds of cameras surrounding the perimeter wall. Computers could do it, but Pat was betting they had only a couple of guys staring at banks of constantly flipping video screens. He had a SkeetIR thermal monocular in the cargo pocket of his Beyond tactical pants, along with six flex-cuffs. He also had a SIG P226 and an extra mag in the other cargo pocket.
Arabian Deception Page 15