Professor Forrest met him in a traditional Victorian sitting room on the first floor. The system was still experimental, and Pat could sense a triumphant air from the quant jock over this latest success. He was an academic, and he felt the need to describe the entire process, everything. He explained that it wasn’t possible to keep up with every move made by the software powered by the Cray supercomputer. It was only possible to identify some of the breadcrumbs left by the system in the process of discovering the whereabouts of Prince Bandar. The professor explained how the initial profile, including the images, had been fed into the software. The computer software had then used the video images from the Zephyr HAPS and information publicly available on the Internet to formulate a search.
After tea, the professor pulled out a pipe and began a long ceremonial process of cleaning it, filling it with tobacco, and lighting it. Having spent the previous thirty minutes explaining what the system did, he next went into the how. The thirty-minute dissertation on pattern analysis, spectral sparsification, and algorithms was so completely beyond Pat’s comprehension that the only way he could even feign interest was to mentally plan his lunch. Finally, the good doctor displayed an iPad with an image of Prince Bandar sitting back on a chair in a garden, looking up toward the sky.
“This is amazing. Your system is miraculous,” Pat said when he saw the iPad image.
The beaming professor replied, “This was a particularly difficult search. The prince has not left this home, which is not his, by the way, for a long time.”
“How do you know that? I thought you just detected him.”
“We did, but once we found him, it was an easy task to walk the data backward. Except for having lunch most days outside in his garden, this man never leaves his house.”
“Can I get a summation of your analysis, especially his location and movements?”
“Of course. Would you care to see the real-time feed?”
One of the offices was set up as an operations center, with a line of tables with keyboards and small flat-screen displays. There were two large-screen displays on the wall. The fifty-inch flat-screen wall displays showed the real-time video streams from the Zephyr in both IR and regular camera view as well as the position of the aircraft. GSS could not control the flight of the aircraft, but they received all the same flight data as the GCS in Al Dhafra Air Force Base. Through the same Internet link, they could control the sensors, which included the camera pan and tilt and zoom. These were functions that were controlled by the GSS software, but it was possible to place the camera controls on manual and control them using a computer keypad.
Pat spent the next six hours in the operations center. Two hours into the study session, he watched on video as Prince Bandar walked outside his luxe forty-thousand-foot mansion and had lunch in his traditional English garden, replete with fountains, flowers and hedge borders. Using the Zephyr feeds, he could identify the external guard locations, the number of personnel on his personal security detail, the number and types of vehicles that drove through the mansion gate each day. He was also able to obtain the same information on the prince’s neighbors. At four thirty, Pat left with a dozen USB drives filled with videos, plus his own handwritten notes. He thanked the professor and wrote him a check for the balance owed on his account.
Pat returned to Abu Dhabi and began preparations for the second phase of the operation. Staging out of the UAE gave him a huge advantage. Saudi Arabia bordered Yemen, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan. Including a huge coastline, securing the borders was an impossible task for the Saudis. UAE was by far the safest neighbor, which meant it was also the least protected. Pat selected a border-breach point based on the UAE’s security forces, not the Saudis’. The border area between the UAE and Saudi Arabia was in an area of the Arabian Peninsula referred to as the Empty Quarter. The area was an extremely inhospitable place to travel, with soft sand, high dunes, and very little water, which naturally translated into very few people.
Pat departed the marina parking lot at five in the afternoon in a dark gray Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. It was a six-cylinder, 250-horsepower model with a hard top. The Rubicon is one of the best desert off-road vehicles ever made. In the back of the vehicle, Pat had four five-gallon jerry cans of fuel and a large Pelican box with his tactical gear. The only items he had in the front of the cabin were a pair of bolt cutters, night vision goggles, and a GPS.
He drove west on Highway 11, the main road from Abu Dhabi to Saudi Arabia. The road followed the coast. After two hours, it became dark, and Pat turned onto Highway 15, moving due south parallel to the Saudi border. After moving thirty miles on Highway 15, he turned right off the highway. He shut the headlights off, put on his night vision goggles and began the forty-mile open-desert night drive to the border fence.
Once he reached the fence, he logged the waypoint on his GPS and used the bolt cutters to cut a Jeep-size opening in the chain-link fence. Once through the fence, he had another twenty miles off-road moving due west before he would reach Saudi Highway 95, and then it would be another four hundred miles of highway driving to Riyadh. Prior to departing, Pat had mounted Saudi plates on the Jeep. He’d snagged them from a Lexus 470 he’d found in the Abu Dhabi Jumeirah Hotel parking lot. Once in the KSA, the plates should make him less conspicuous.
Pat drove all night, stopping for breakfast at a pancake house in Al Safarat, west of Riyadh. After breakfast, he drove to a nearby abandoned construction site. Low oil prices had idled most construction projects in the kingdom. He slept and woke up a few hours later, following the GPS through the insane Saudi afternoon traffic into one of the more upscale neighborhoods in Riyadh. Although nothing like his palace, Prince Bandar’s hiding place was a very striking mansion.
Pat stopped at the entrance gate at the home next door to where Prince Bandar was staying. He stepped out with his bolt cutters, cut the chain securing the front gate, and drove through. The house was an unoccupied mansion. Pat had studied seven days of Zephyr video of the home, and during that time, there had been no activity except the occasional labor crew. The owner most likely spent his time in Europe, as did many of the Saudis who could afford it. Pat drove his Jeep off the driveway and around to the back of the house and parked.
The time was twelve forty-five. Pat’s review of the tapes showed that Prince Bandar never took his lunch before one o’clock. He reached into the back of the Jeep, popped open the Pelican case and retrieved five objects. The first two objects were twelve-foot telestep ladders. The two-foot-long collapsed black ladders were strong when extended—rated to 320 pounds. He was confident the ladders could handle the four-hundred-pound load he was going to put on them. He also retrieved a set of flex-ties and a rifle. The rifle was a Daniel Defense ISR 300 blackout with a Trijicon ACOG site. The integrated suppression system, when used with subsonic ammunition, was very quiet, making a sound not much louder than a spitting sound. The final item was a Prox Dynamics PDR-100 Black Hornet Nano UAV. The controller and video display on the PDR-100 looked like a game controller and a mini iPad. The five fully charged Nano day helicopters were four inches long and one inch wide, and each had a twenty-five-minute battery life.
Pat lowered the driver’s-side window and extended his hand out the window with the UAV in his open palm. He launched the UAV using the controller in his right hand. Separating the two estates was a ten-foot wall with a line of cypress trees that were all above twenty feet tall and made for an effective privacy screen. He guided the Nano UAV to the top of the trees, where he could look down into the garden area and the house beyond. The PDR-100 was used by many of the world’s elite special forces units. The aircraft had a navigation system and a position location system, making it possible to navigate the Nano UAV when it was out of sight. Once in position, the camera in the nose of the helicopter could be directed, and the helicopter could be placed into a stationary hover.
When the first Nano UAV was down to ten percent battery life, Pat retrieved it and launched
a second. Five minutes into the second flight, he watched a maid set up the lunch table. Several minutes later, the prince came outside and sat down. He had a two-man security detail outside with him. The first remained close to the door leading into the home, and the second took up a forward position at the small garden gate leading out of the garden onto the rest of the estate grounds.
After the battery power forced Pat to retrieve the second UAV, he launched a third, watching through the video screen as the maid served the prince. Pat exited the Jeep, slung the rifle slung over his shoulder, grabbed both ladders, and walked to the wall nearest to where the prince was sitting on the other side. He silently opened the first ladder and positioned it against the wall, and then he opened the second and placed it next to the first. He returned to the Jeep and resumed viewing the Nano UAV video screen. Once the maid departed the garden, he retrieved the Nano UAV and tossed it inside the Jeep.
Pat climbed the ladder slowly hand over hand, as quietly as he could with his rifle slung over his back. Once on top, he carefully lifted and retrieved the second ladder and lowered it directly behind the trunk of a cypress tree. He straddled the two ladders with his legs and then climbed down on Prince Bandar’s side of the wall.
Sandwiched between the wall and the cypress tree, he readied his suppressed blackout 300 and stepped out into the sunlight. His first bullet was intended for the security guard at the house door. He hit the bearded sentry in the forehead and pivoted to the guard at the garden gate. The guard was already in motion, raising his pistol when Pat’s first round hit him in the chest. Before he could fall, Pat fired a second round, double-tapping him in the face.
The prince was ten feet from Pat and was getting up to bolt. Pat rushed the Ewok doppelganger before he could make a step, stunning the prince with an openhanded blow to the forehead and knocking him to the ground. He fell over the back of the chair onto his back. Pat flex-cuffed the prostrate prince’s legs and hands, placed a precut strip of duct tape on his mouth, and stood him up. Lifting the heavyset prince onto his left shoulder, Pat walked into the cypress trees from which he had come. He climbed the first ladder and stepped over the wall to the second. With the prince still on his shoulder, he retrieved the ladder on Bandar’s side of the wall and dropped it onto his own. He climbed down the ladder facing away from the wall, holding the ladder behind him.
Pat’s legs burned from the effort, and he could feel the ladder flex with each step. He felt the soft ground when his legs were ready to give out, and with the last of his strength, he weaved with the heavy prince still on his shoulder to the parked Jeep thirty feet away.
Pat dropped the prince onto the ground and threw all of his kit into the Pelican box. He lifted and dumped the bound prince next to the Pelican case in the far back of the Jeep. Grabbing his pistol with attached suppressor, he headed for the driver’s seat. The rear windows were tinted, and nobody would be able to see the prince inside the Jeep.
Pat set his GPS to the first waypoint and drove out of the neighborhood at a regular speed. Five hours later, he was turning off Highway 95, but instead of driving the twenty miles directly to the breach he’d made in the border fence the day before, he drove into the empty desert another five miles and stopped.
He parked the vehicle in a shallow depression and removed two collapsible nylon sports chairs. It was late in the afternoon, and the shadows were long, but the light was still good enough for filming. Pat went to the Jeep and removed Prince Bandar, dragging him over and onto one of the chairs. He went back to the Jeep and retrieved his camcorder and a tripod. He set the camera up to face Prince Bandar and then set the other chair up next to the camera, where Pat wouldn’t be visible in the shot. Removing the tape from the prince’s mouth, he turned on the camera.
The look of terror in the prince’s eyes was exactly what Pat had wanted and expected to see. He opened a liter bottle of Evian water and took a drink, then set it in the built-in cupholder on the armrest. The prince began to ask questions and make demands. Pat got up from his chair, walked over to the hood of the Jeep, and retrieved the suppressed 9mm pistol from where he had left it. Once the pistol caught his attention, the prince stopped talking. Pat sat down again, and with the pistol in his right hand and the prince five feet across from him, he began to question him.
“What’s your full name?”
“Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al Saud.”
“Explain your role in in the terrorist attacks on September 21, 2001.”
“I had no role. That’s a false accusation—a rumor. I never met with any of the hijackers.”
Pat shot the prince in the right knee. The subsonic 9mm round exploded loudly against the bone and splattered so much blood that a few drops made it all the way to Pat, dotting his pants. The prince briefly shrieked before blacking out. He regained consciousness a minute later and screamed again until he was hoarse. Pat gave the prince some water and returned to his seat.
“You can cooperate, or this can be long and painful. That choice is entirely yours. Now, answer the question.”
Sheik Rasheed had sentenced Bandar to death when he had revealed his involvement in the attacks against Pat off the coast of Muscat. Even though he was responsible for killing Jenny Lyn, Joe Fitzgerald and Joe Ferguson, torturing the prince was difficult for Pat to stomach. It was not something he was proud of. But the confession from Sheik Rasheed was insufficient. If Pat didn’t provide the US with proof to show the Saudis that Bandar was a bad guy who had only gotten what he’d deserved, then retribution would be coming Pat’s way from both the US and Saudi governments, and Pat would never get out from under this mess.
Pat had never been sure about the persistent swirling allegations that Saudi Arabia had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. Like everyone, he was aware that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers had been Saudi, and the heavily redacted recently published 9/11 Commission Report had alluded to Saudi Arabian involvement. Pat was just leading the interrogation with the subject because he was curious, and as a tactic. He expected that once Bandar had resisted the more serious charge, admitting to involvement in funding ISIS and the two attempts on Pat’s life wouldn’t be a big deal.
Once he got Bandar talking, he couldn’t shut him up. He was a treasure trove of information. Pat would’ve liked more time to pursue the reference he made at the end to American protection and involvement, but the prince was no longer coherent. The Saudi authorities were no doubt looking for Pat after the carnage he’d left at Bandar’s house. It was time to go. Pat loaded up the camcorder. Before he stepped into the Jeep, he drew his suppressed SIG P226 and shot the prince three times in the heart.
It grew dark as Pat approached the border fence aided by his GPS. He had to use night vision goggles to locate the unrepaired breach in the fence. The illumination from the moon was excellent. Pat moved quickly over the forty miles of open desert before he reached Highway 15 and switched on the headlights. Before getting on the highway, he removed the Saudi license plates and replaced them with the legal UAE pair.
Pat arrived at the Sam Houston at four in the morning. The first thing he did was to connect the camcorder to his laptop and download Prince Bandar’s confession. The video was 124 minutes long. Pat labeled the file “Bandar” and saved it to a different file-share account than the last one he’d used. Mike had given him a file-sharing site that was better protected. Pat sent an e-mail to Mike, notifying him that the file had been shared with him.
He was tempted to send a copy to a reputable news network. The only thing that stopped him is that he didn’t know anyone in the news business. Prince Bandar’s confession was blockbuster stuff. He had confessed with verifiable evidence that he’d passed information and funds to Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian leader of the 9/11 attackers. He’d also admitted to communicating with and providing minor financial support to several other 9/11 terror cell members. He had denied knowledge of the scope and timing of the attack until it had occurred, and Pat believed him. The information on the fu
nding and support of ISIS was perhaps even more damning. Where the confession information became truly thermonuclear was when Bandar had described the knowledge and involvement of other inner-circle members of the Saudi government. Pat had been right all along. Meshal and Rasheed had been operating against their respective governments; Bandar on the other hand, was doing his government’s bidding.
Pat made a cup of coffee and sat behind his laptop in the galley dining area. Looking out the window, he could see the early-morning sun shimmering on the water and reflecting off the bright white presidential palace. The Sea Palace was a spectacular sight, even more so with the orange glow of an emerging sun.
Pat backed up his laptop to a portable hard drive and then went downstairs and hid the hard drive in his hideaway in the engine room, a waterproof box the size of a small jewelry case that he kept at the bottom of a full five-gallon oil can. Inside he had a spare passport, a hundred one-ounce Canadian Maple Leaf gold coins, and now an iPhone-sized hard drive. Pat was exhausted but decided to stay awake in case Mike got back to him right away.
He was on the flybridge drinking a second coffee when a black Suburban with diplomatic plates drove into the marina parking lot and parked in the space nearest to the Sam Houston. Two men exited the vehicle. One of the men looked to be around fifty, the other in his early thirties. Pat went downstairs and met them as they reached the stern gate to the boat. Without asking permission, the older American walked up the gangplank and stepped on board. Presenting his credentials, he introduced himself as Harold Wasserman from the US embassy.
“We’re here to pick up the video you just sent.”
“Can I see your ID again,” Pat asked. His credentials said US State Department. Which would make sense if he was with the CIA. Pat returned them and ushered him into the salon. He continued to the galley and retrieved the camcorder, returning to the still-standing Harold Wasserman and showing him the memory card inside the camcorder.
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