“Can I make you some coffee?” Pat asked.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Pat made a quick coffee for Mike in the Keurig machine and set it down for him on the table in the galley, along with the sugar and cream.
“Where is Sheik Rasheed?” he asked.
“He’s dead and gone, under a thousand feet of water.”
“What were you thinking? How do you expect the Emiratis to react?”
“I don’t expect them to do anything.”
“Seriously? You don’t expect them to do anything? You attacked the national security office, assaulted two intelligence officers, and kidnapped a third. You broke into a palace and assaulted a sheik’s wife, who also happens to be the niece of the UAE president. Oh, and let’s not forget you kidnapped and killed the sheika’s husband, the seventh most powerful sheik in the country, a member of the UAE National Security Council and half-brother to the president and the crown prince.”
“Sounds pretty bad when you put it like that,” Pat said as he made ginger tea at the galley stove. “But let me ask you this. Has anyone from the UAE leadership communicated anything about this situation to the United States through official or unofficial channels?”
“So far, no,” said Mike.
“One of the reasons I let Mansour go was so he could tell his story to the government. When the leadership learns that Sheik Rasheed was responsible for the attacks against me and the deaths of two Americans, they’re going to cover everything up. That’s what they do; they hide mistakes. Sheik Rasheed was working against UAE interests. He was running rogue, and he paid a price. The UAE will conduct an in-depth investigation, and they’ll eventually uncover most of the information that was contained in the confession I sent you.”
“How sure are you about that?”
“I’m positive. I’ve been working with these guys long enough to be sure. Mistakes are always hidden, as are the people who make them. I’ll bet Mansour spends the next decade in jail, and Sheik Rasheed dies of a heart attack and is buried with honors at a state funeral once they confirm he’s dead.”
“The analysts back in Langley are suggesting the same thing. I briefed the deputy director of clandestine operations, and he hit the roof. Then I had to brief the director. He watched the interrogation of Sheik Rasheed twice. The first time, I thought he was going to have a coronary. He wants your head on a spike. I finally convinced both the DDC and director that it would be in everyone’s best interest for me to come out here and bring you in.”
“Let me get this straight,” Pat said. “The director of the CIA watches a film where Sheik Rasheed confesses to funding and supporting ISIS, along with his two accomplices Sheik Meshal from Kuwait and Prince Bandar from KSA. In the video, he confesses that he practically cofounded the organization with Baghdadi, nurturing it from its early days to the height of its power. ISIS, an organization that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, tortured and enslaved tens of thousands of Christians and Yazidis, and done some of the worst things in the history of man. And the head of US intelligence’s first thought when he sees all this is to go after me. That’s tragic, what a political hack. The next step is not to bring me in. The next step is to kill Sheik Meshal and Prince Bandar.”
Mike finished his coffee. He looked tired. He had bags under his eyes, and it was obvious he was managing a good deal of stress. “If you’re so confident the Emiratis are going to do nothing, why did you move your operations to Cyprus?”
“I expect some personal harassment, but nothing officially against the US. They’re going to want revenge against me for killing one of their own even if they know he deserved it. While they would never do anything in the open that could be misconstrued as an endorsement of Sheik Rasheed’s actions, they’ll do something to show that they’re beyond touch. The last thing we need is for the personnel and aircraft we rely on for delivery operations to be locked down in UAE because of some paperwork error motivated by payback.”
Mike nodded. Pat knew there was a team in Langley dissecting his every move and thought for the last few days. Most of what he was saying to Mike had no doubt already been predicted by the geeks.
“Let’s say you’re right, and the crown prince and Sheik Abdullah choose to bury the unfortunate business with Sheik Rasheed. What’re you planning on doing next?”
“Let’s remember that Sheik Abdullah owns Falcon, and he makes a pretty good profit from our operations. What we’re doing not only supports the security needs of UAE, it also benefits these guys financially. Even so, they’ll do an investigation, and they’ll likely find a money trail to ISIS from Sheik Rasheed. They may also find a connection to Sheik Meshal and Prince Bandar.
“It may take them weeks or months, but I think we should assume they’ll learn these things. And when they do, they won’t use the info to seek justice. They’ll use the info for political advantage, which will allow Meshal and Bandar to skate. We have a small window of time to act. My plan is to travel to Kuwait this evening and take out Sheik Meshal before the disappearance of Sheik Rasheed raises alarm. I doubt anyone but the Emiratis know Sheik Rasheed was taken. By the time I go after Prince Bandar, he’s going to know I’m coming for him, so he’s going to be the hardest target. But first things first.”
“A bunch of guys back at Langley are scratching their heads at what you’ve been up to—the audacity. It’s incredibly bold stuff—impressive and slightly psychotic, but also lucky as hell. The complacency and lax security that made your moves possible in UAE don’t exist in Kuwait, believe me.”
“I do believe you, but I don’t need to conduct a high-risk snatch and grab. Rasheed told me all I need to know. I don’t need to get close enough to talk. I just need a clear shot.”
“This is crazy as hell, but I’m going to try to get a green light on this. Joe Ferguson and Joe Kilpatrick were our guys too.”
The abundance of caution from the CIA was extremely frustrating to Pat. Mike went outside and got on the telephone with his higher-ups. For the next three hours, he shadowboxed with the political appointees and bureaucrats. Finally, he returned to the salon.
“What’s the verdict?” Pat asked him.
“You’re okay to travel to Kuwait.”
“It took a lot of talking.”
“The video you sent is very damning. These people created ISIS. Everybody wants you to take them. The problem is we have laws against this sort of thing.”
“How did you get approval?”
“Officially, I have no idea where you’re going or what you plan to do. You’re a private citizen with a contract that supports the Department of Defense.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re on your own. I won’t stop you, but I can’t help you either. If you get caught, we’ll deny everything.”
“That’s fine by me.”
“It’s not fine by me, but it’s the best I could do, and orders are orders.”
Pat landed at Kuwait International at six thirty. The airport, like most of the infrastructure in Kuwait, was badly in need of modernization. He waited in line at the visa desk for forty-five minutes and then another forty-five minutes in customs clearance and passport control. He was dressed in smart casual, as they called it in the Middle East, wearing a blue sports jacket, white oxford shirt, and tan slacks. He took a taxi to the Regency, which was on the water in a residential area in the Salmiya neighborhood where Sheik Meshal’s palace was located.
By the time Pat checked into his room, it was already nine in the evening. He walked up the street and ordered a hamburger at a Johnny Rockets restaurant. He had changed into jeans, a black polo shirt, and a pair of running shoes. He was unarmed. It wasn’t possible to fly with a weapon, and the Agency wasn’t going to provide him one in country. Sheik Meshal’s palace was only a ten-minute walk from the hotel, and Pat thought he would do a preliminary reconnaissance before calling it a night.
The walk around the sheik’s place took thirty minutes. The building was
a city block and it bordered a public sidewalk. The palace was across the street from a park with children’s swing sets, trails, and palm trees. The other three sides of the building were across the street from residences. The streets and sidewalks surrounding the palace had open access. It was possible to walk right up to the front door, which had a small guard station with two uniformed Kuwait National Guard soldiers inside.
The palace was a fortress. The amount of refraction in the windows was a sure sign of bulletproof glass. The weather was pleasant, but none of the windows were open, which was another indication they were bulletproof. The building had no balconies. The palace was shaped like a rectangle. The two shorter sides of the rectangle each had a pedestrian doorway. There was a large retractable garage door on one of the longer sides, the one along Nasser Al Mubarak Street, which was the busy street.
All three of the access points had a small glass-enclosed guard shack with uniformed KNG soldiers. The guards were all seated in climate-controlled shacks with communication and CCTV feeds.
Pat walked back to his hotel, but once in the room, he couldn’t sleep as his mind struggled to identify a viable plan of attack. Unlike the sheik’s palace in UAE, where Pat had received a quality description of the palace from Mansour, he had no clue where to find the sheik and no description of the security layout within the massive building. More troubling was his lack of access to any weapons or tactical gear. Making a forced entry was going to be nearly impossible.
Pat woke the next morning feeling less than refreshed. He dressed in the same jeans, black T-shirt, and running shoes and went downstairs to the breakfast buffet. After a small breakfast, he rented a Nissan Extera SUV at the kiosk inside the hotel. His first stop was the Rumaithya Co-op, located less than three hundred meters from the sheik’s palace. The malls in Kuwait opened late in the morning, but every neighborhood had a co-op with a grocery store, bakery, coffee shop, hardware store, and pharmacy.
Pat went to the pharmacy and the hardware store and eventually found a Motorola battery-powered video baby monitor that was suitable for his needs. He returned to his SUV and put it in operation, then left his car in the parking lot and walked down Nassar Al-Mubarrak. When he reached the palace, he placed the video camera at the base of a tree across the street from the guard shack and garage door. Nassar Al-Mubarrak was a two-lane road, but it was divided by a small island with grass and trees.
Pat walked back to the co-op and went into the Starbucks. The baby monitor had a four-inch screen. The Starbucks was four hundred yards from the camera, which was barely within range of the walkie-talkie-like radio link. The signal was just good enough that Pat could receive the video stream and use the controls to pan the camera.
After two hours and three cappuccinos, he felt he had a good enough understanding of the morning traffic into the garage from deliveries and staff. There were two guards operating out of the shack. Both were armed with rifles and pistols in drop-leg holsters. Some vehicles they let right in, but they stopped and checked the identification of others before raising the automatic garage doors. The garage had to be enormous. Pat saw a catering service’s sixteen-foot, three-ton refrigerated truck drive through with room to spare.
Using the garage to gain entry to the palace and hunt down the sheik was a possibility, but without knowing the locations of the security personnel or the target, there was no way to succeed without making it a bloodbath. Pat’s lack of a weapon wasn’t that big a problem; he could always take one from the Kuwait National Guard soldiers in the shack. They were just walking holsters as far as he was concerned. He decided to look at options to target the sheik when he was outside his palace.
Pat returned to his truck in the parking lot for another two hours. He went to the Burger King at the co-op for a late lunch and was back at his truck by four in the afternoon. At six forty-five, after it was dark, he walked down Nassar Al-Mubarrak and retrieved the baby monitor. Later that night, he walked the perimeter every hour until three o’clock in the morning. He came up with the idea of trying to identify the sheik’s apartment using light patterns. The palace was huge, and large parts of it were never lighted. The facility was proving to be a very difficult target—only four entry points, all with external security and most likely internal as well. Based on some of the traffic in and out by family members (the sheik had four wives, after all), there was a very large personal security detail. Primarily Arab, but at least twenty-five percent were European. Probably British SAS, from the looks of them.
Pat continued his near-continuous surveillance for three days. He augmented his ground surveillance with a small unmanned aerial vehicle he’d bought at the hobby store in the Shark Mall along the Corniche. The helicopter UAV allowed Pat to surveil the rooftop, which was almost three hundred yards long and one hundred yards wide. The rooftop was unguarded. He used the downtime to stay in steady contact with Trident. He was reassured to learn the business was carrying on unhampered from the alternate base of operations.
The contrast between UAE and Kuwait City was stark. Even in a posh Kuwaiti neighborhood, the streets were dirty and cluttered, and the landscaping was haphazard. In Abu Dhabi, the streets were always clean, and the landscaping was immaculate. The clutter and lack of streetlights made Pat’s task easier, but it was difficult not to recognize that Kuwait was an oil-rich nation whose investments were being made abroad and not within. Pat had once been told that the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein had affected the psyches of the Kuwait leaders. He’d once heard someone quip that Kuwait was the only city in the world where the closer to the airport you got, the higher the home prices. Every resident expected another invasion, and the closer the route to escape, the better.
Pat put together a list of equipment and sent it to Jessica for immediate purchase and delivery to the alternate air base in Paphos, Cyprus. On day four after he had gathered all the intelligence he thought he could, he left Kuwait for Paphos. He arrived at the alternate Trident base of operations at two in the afternoon and went immediately to work preparing his gear. A leased Ilyushin Il-76 landed at five o’clock. Pat did a preflight briefing with the aircrew once the aircraft taxied up to the hangar. A Trident C-130 was parked outside the hangar, but only a couple of personnel were at work. Migos was one of the first to greet him, and although he was obviously very curious at the equipment that had recently arrived—not to mention the Russian military cargo twin-jet aircraft—he was careful not to ask.
The Il-76 is a big cargo aircraft with a max load of forty tons, a max speed of 580 knots and a range of over twenty-seven hundred nautical miles. After the prebrief, the crew of five Ukrainians left the aircraft to get some dinner. On Pat’s request, they left the rear cargo ramp down.
The first piece of equipment Pat inspected was the SkyRunner. It’s a four-wheel dune buggy that can fly. It uses ram-air parafoil wing technology, or powered-parachute flight, and a three-blade propeller to take to the sky. It has a max speed of fifty-three knots and a max range of 120 nautical miles. The biggest limitation is the cargo weight, which maxes out at 317 pounds. The maximum takeoff distance is 450 feet, and the landing distance is 400 feet.
The second set of equipment Pat inspected was a full pallet of parachute-rigging gear. He inspected the ATV parachute-rigging kit. The beautiful part of the SkyRunner was that it was made to hang from a parachute, so the attachment points are already built in and perfectly balanced. The key to success was going to be constructing the compressible landing platform from corrugated cardboard that would absorb the shock from landing and keep the drift from flipping the vehicle on impact. A G12 parachute assembly can support a load of twenty-two hundred pounds, which is more than seven hundred pounds greater than the fully loaded SkyRunner. Included in the parachute set was an MC-6 steerable personnel parachute and accompanying reserve. The final item was a portable GPS retrans kit that would enable GPS inside an aircraft.
The third set of equipment was a breach kit. The kit came in a large Pelican box. Pat
had requested a Wilcox Patriot Exothermic Breaching System. The system uses fuel rods promoted by pure oxygen and comes on an assault backpack that has two fifteen-minute oxygen tanks and a cutting wand. The exothermic cutting rod makes it possible to cut through one inch of hardened steel like a knife through butter.
The last kit came in a small Tyr Tactical daypack. It consisted of a SIG P226 with a suppressor and green laser light combo inside a drop-leg holster. The bag also contained a small rappelling kit, complete with climbing harness, carabiners, figure eight, and jumar ascenders. Pat also found a Miko diving suction cup with latch and a handheld radar system from Tia Lynx for seeing through walls, called an Eagle-5. Pat planned on supplementing this kit with some items, like ballistic protection and night vision from a go-bag. The final item was a military free fall NAVAID GPS system.
Pat spent two hours training on the SkyRunner before refueling the system, packing it up, and turning it over to the Sachse the loadmaster to rig for a parachute drop. By eight o’clock, all the equipment was stowed inside the Il-76 with the rigged SkyRunner stored closest to the ramp. Pat shackled down with A7A straps on the conveyer wheels, which would allow it to easily slide out the ramp when the time came.
It was late and Migos should have gone home hours earlier, but he’d insisted on helping Sachse with rigging everything. Migos was practically jumping up and down, trying to figure out what Pat was up to. Finally, he could restrain himself no more.
“This must be Delta shit. I spent years at Bragg and never saw anything like this. What’re you up to?”
“This is a special delivery that I’m taking into Iraq tonight. If you check the manifest for the leased aircraft, you’ll see they’ll be landing in Basra.” Migos was disappointed that Pat wouldn’t confide in him.
The Il-76 was wheels up at eight forty-five that night. They left on a five-hour route that would take the aircraft directly over Kuwait City with the final descent beginning at the Iraq-Kuwait border and a landing at one forty-five a.m. in Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq.
Arabian Deception Page 17