Intercept

by Patrick Robinson

  The entire crew was under orders not to converse with their passenger—to merely bring him coffee, whatever food there was, and anything else he needed. But there would be no communication. They were transporting the closest thing to a ghost any of them were ever likely to encounter.

  At the north end of the blacktop the Hercules made its turn, never braked, and, with its Boeing engines howling, screamed down the runway, shaking and rumbling as it gathered speed. It thundered into the night sky, through the coastal rain clouds and up into the clear air. It rose up through the pale rays of the almost-full moon, which glinted along its portside, as it made its way across the Atlantic Ocean.

  AS THE U.S. HERCULES TOOK OFF, the Pakistan International Airlines flight from Lahore to Amsterdam, a Boeing 777-300ER, was heading northwest somewhere over the eastern Mediterranean, preparing for its long swerve up over the Balkans, right across the old Soviet territories of Eastern Europe, and on to Amsterdam. Ibrahim, Yousaf, Ben, and Abu Hassan were seated in first class, each wearing a tailored Western suit and traveling on impeccably forged student visas.

  They were confident, fit, and cheerfully reading Western magazines and newspapers, looking forward to their meeting with the rabid Bradford-based al-Qaeda leader, Sheikh Abdullah Bazir.

  The big Pakistani passenger jet came in low over Holland’s flat country and sprawling network of canals, around the time of the morning rush hour. At Schipol Airport, nine miles south of the city, they were first out of the aircraft. They moved quickly through the line for transfers, the Dutch officials showing scant interest in passengers who were not remaining in their country.

  One hour later they boarded a busy Air Iran charter flight bound for Leeds-Bradford, the final one-hour lap of their 4,500-mile journey. They landed mid-morning and now faced the most dangerous part of the day, the moment of truth where a beady-eyed customs official could spot a flaw in their student visas and start demanding explanations. At least that would have been true in the United States, or Australia, or even France or Germany, certainly Japan. But not in England. The officials stamped the entry documents, giving the green light to the “University of British Literature and Law.”

  One by one, Ibrahim, Yousaf, Ben, and Abu, walked right through, out of the airport, and boarded separate taxis. Each gave the driver the same instruction: “Please take me up to the Cow and Calf Rocks on Ilkley Moor.”

  The cabs completed the seven-mile drive at five-minute intervals, and for ten minutes the four terrorists from the Middle East stood in a huddle beneath the largest of the two stones. Shortly before midday, a black Range Rover with darkened windows pulled up alongside them.

  A young Indian-looking man wearing Western clothes jumped out of the driver’s seat and opened the rear door. A character who might have stepped off the back-lot at Universal Studios in Burbank emerged, the robed figure of the most dangerous man in England, the al-Qaeda mastermind and recruiter, Sheikh Abdullah Bazir.

  The white-bearded mullah, unsmiling beneath a black turban, offered the traditional Muslim greeting, his right hand making a wide arc from his forehead to a point level with his waist. He said, quietly, “Welcome, my sons. Allah has delivered you safely, and I would like you all to join me in prayer.”

  Without another word, he walked to a point on the north side of the giant stone. He stared heavenward to ensure the sun had passed its peak. Then, firmly, he spoke the words of Imams across the world, calling the faithful to prayer from a thousand minaret towers. Sheikh Abdullah had no minaret, but his words still rang with fervor, echoing across the bright and otherwise deserted Moors:God is most great.

  I bear witness there is no god, but God.

  I bear witness Mohammed is the Prophet of God.

  Come to pray!

  Come to wellbeing!

  God is most great

  There is no god, but God.

  And then he turned to the east, toward the ancient West Yorkshire village of Burley-in-Wharfedale. But his gaze was elevated and it carried far beyond that, beyond the Moors and the North Sea, beyond Europe. It was focused to the east, toward the Ka’ba Shrine, in the Holy City of Mecca, with its massive symbolic presence in the minds of the most devout followers of Allah.

  Suddenly, Sheikh Abdullah cried out the sacred word, “Takbir !” And Ibrahim, Yousaf, Ben, and Abu responded in unison, “Allahu Akbar!” God is great.

  There, on the dry heathers of Ilkley Moor, the five men prostrated themselves before their God, and the Imam murmured the mantras of the Prophet Mohammed—ending once more with the cry, “Allahu Akbar,” the phrase written so sternly on the national flags of the Islamic republics of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. They would also be the last words uttered by the four terrorists whenever their next bomb detonated, bringing, as it always did, blood, sorrow, and destruction to so many innocent lives.

  And now Imam Abdullah Bazir took each one of the four men by the hand and spoke to him, as his leader. “My sons,” he said, “the agents of the Infidels are conducting surveillance upon my mosque throughout every day. They watch for my visitors and especially for my warriors. I dare not allow you entrance and therefore we must meet only here on the high moors. But don’t be afraid, for we are closer to Allah.”

  Ibrahim thanked him. And the Sheikh continued. “Either I or my representative cleric will be here each evening at 7 p.m. It’s a lonely place, and we shall not be disturbed. It is not necessary for you to attend when your minds are clear, but when you need the guidance of the Prophet, we will be here for you.”

  “And, Imam, will you pray with us?” asked Yousaf.

  “Either I or my cleric will conduct prayers here each evening when you arrive. But each day wherever you are, you must make the recitations—that Allah is the one who deserves to be worshipped, that praise and thanks be to Him, the owner of the world.

  “Remember, He is the Owner of the Day of Judgment. From He alone we dedicate worship and seek help, which is the ultimate subjugation. You must repeat again, ‘O, Allah, we pray You keep us on the straight path, and not the path of those who went astray.’”

  The Imam then turned and walked back toward the Range Rover, signaling for the others to climb aboard. “I will not come with you,” he said, “but you will be taken to a safe place, and you will never be far from me. I alone will know your new address.

  “Shakir Khan has entrusted you to my care. But when it is time, you will be told. And you will continue your long journey to the United States of America, where you will conduct God’s work. You will be here as guests of the al-Qaeda High Command for several weeks while arrangements are made for your new mission.”

  Each man thanked Sheikh Abdullah, who now stood apart from the black vehicle, alone in the shadow of the giant rock. And the young Muslim driver set off without him, across the Moors, heading south toward the Islamic area of Bradford.

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT OWEN THOMAS, lying flat in the heather about eighty yards east and slightly elevated from the rocks, watched the Range Rover leave, and finally put down his camera.

  He and his younger colleague, Constable Tom Wainright, had been watching the downtown mosque all week from a small, unmarked, dark blue patrol car.

  When Sheikh Abdullah moved, they moved. And they had driven up onto Ilkley Moor about three hundred yards behind him. As soon as the holy man disembarked, they pulled off the road and half-walked, half-crouched into their current hiding spot.

  Sergeant Thomas had an excellent set of finely focused shots, taken through a powerful old-fashioned “long-Tom” lens. He had no idea who the four visitors were, but he had perfect identification of everyone who had prayed at the rocks.

  Within five minutes, another vehicle arrived to collect Sheikh Abdullah, and they watched it head back toward Bradford. Tom Wainright immediately called in, and reported that he and his boss would return to HQ immediately to develop the film. The next two-man shift would take over the endless night watch on the mosque.

  That afternoon in the Wes
t Yorkshire Police bureau in Bradford, events moved rapidly. The 8x10 glossies delivered by Sergeant Thomas at 9 p.m. to the desk of Detective Superintendent Len Martin were almost immediately sent for transmission to Scotland Yard’s Antiterrorist chief, Ronald Catton, in London.

  He had them wired electronically across the Atlantic to the CIA in Langley for possible identification. It was 4:15 p.m. in Washington, and Bob Birmingham’s boys took only moments to identify Ibrahim Sharif, Yousaf Mohammed, Ben al-Turabi, and Abu Hassan Akbar. The four most wanted men on the planet had plainly moved into Bradford.

  Len Martin asked Sergeant Thomas a relatively simple question: “Did we track the four guys to their address?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s not our job, sir. We’re detailed to track Sheikh Abdullah at all times. Nothing else.”

  “Jesus Christ, Owen,” exclaimed Martin, “according to this signal from both Catton and the CIA, the four men on the Moor, the ones you just photographed, are convicted terrorists, ex-Guantanamo Bay.”

  “Sir, if we tracked everyone the Imam spoke to, we’d need another three hundred cars and six hundred officers.”

  “Apparently half the antiterrorist squads in the free world are trying to locate these four characters.”

  “Do the Americans have names for them?”

  “Just arrived, in a signal from Catton. The usual, Mohammed, Abu, Ibrahim, etcetera. And we’re forbidden from entering any of their names anywhere in our records.”

  “Any point checking with immigration?”

  “None. Guys like that can’t even remember when they last used their real names. Still, they can’t be far away. Tom and I saw them leave in Abdullah’s car, and one of the boys just called in to say it was back at the mosque, and so is the Sheikh.”

  “So it must be in Manningham, maybe a few streets away from the mosque.”

  Moments later another surveillance signal came in: “Range Rover spotted parked north end of Darsfield Street, passengers disembarking. No further surveillance.”

  “We got four suspect houses in Darsfield,” said Len Martin. “Guess it’s one of them.”

  “We still can’t pick anyone up,” said the grim, tough-looking Sergeant Thomas. “So far as I know it’s not really against the law to speak to a Muslim cleric in the middle of a bloody field.”

  “No. But it should be, when it’s that particular Muslim Cleric,” snapped Len Martin. “He’s a bloody menace. Should’ve been sent home to the Punjab years ago.”

  THE FOUR-ENGINED J-model Hercules freighter carrying just Mack Bedford, instead of its usual load of 156 troops and twenty tons of hardware, was well over the United Kingdom by dawn, heading to its home base of RAF Lyneham.

  It came lumbering in over the chalk hills and touched down hard on the west runway. They had the big steel staircase at the aircraft door open within sixty seconds, and Mack Bedford ran lightly down the steps, directly to a waiting Jaguar. He slung his bag onto the front passenger seat and settled behind the wheel. No one acknowledged him.

  He switched on the SATNAV system and headed for the exit gates, aiming across the Cotswold Hills to Cirencester, Gloucester, and then Ross-on-Wye, a distance of seventy miles. The last leg of his journey took him up an old familiar road, the one which led to Hereford, the former home to 22 SAS, the Brits’ top Special Forces regiment, with whom he had trained many times.

  The SAS had moved recently, and now occupied the most secretive HQ—the instantly fabled Stirling Lines, set in deep, wooded countryside outside the tiny village of Credenhill, four miles north of the 930-year-old Hereford Cathedral.

  Here, in total seclusion, the SAS, often in company with U.S. Navy SEALs, worked and trained their way through the most searching brutal routines ever dreamed up, including those of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Alexander, Geronimo, and Conan the Barbarian.

  Stirling Lines housed Mack’s only point of contact, his old friend Lt. Colonel Russ Makin, who, having done such a good job in command of the regiment, he hadn’t been promoted further to a job in the Defense Ministry in Whitehall.

  Russ was a combat soldier at heart. He had served with distinction in Great Britain’s Falklands War in 1982, and again in the first Gulf War. In 2003, at the age of forty-one, he had attacked the oil rig in the Gulf with Mack Bedford. In a joint SEAL/SAS operation, the two had taken the high platform after a fire-fight with twelve Iraqi commandos, none of whom survived.

  Russ half expected to see his old colleague today, but the signal from U.S. military Intelligence had been deliberately vague. He had no idea what Mack was involved in, but it was sure as hell secret. He sipped his afternoon tea in silence, watching the twenty-four-hour news channel on a large flatscreen television. He learned two more guys he knew were dead, blown to bits by a roadside bomb in Kabul, another British army jeep with insufficient armored protection.

  Russ could never quite work out whether he should feel sorrow or fury, regret or anger, whether to play all hell in Whitehall, or resign forthwith, and get out of the entire dirty rotten business. He was worn down watching kids get killed for nothing, because of dumb-ass politicians, who put budgets and their own pathetic careers before the lives of his troops.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered, not caring a damn whether anyone heard him or not.

  Right now, Mack was in the city of Hereford. He’d taken a detour from the main road to drive the Jaguar down memory lane, past his old haunt, the four-hundred-year-old Green Dragon Inn, where he and Russ, along with three other SEALs and the SAS guys, had attended an Iraqi reunion in 2006.

  He drove over the fifteenth-century six-arched stone bridge, and into the old town before heading out on the A48, which runs through rich pastures and past herds of some of the finest beef-cattle in the world, the red-coated, white-faced Herefords.

  Mack reached the gates of SAS Headquarters at 6:30 p.m. The guards spotted the Jaguar’s registration plate number and waved him through. They knew who had arrived. Again, no one spoke.

  He parked the car, and walked up to the unit’s majestic and somber Clock Tower, which had been re-housed in the barracks memorial garden in front of the Regimental church. Engraved on the memorial were the names of SAS men who had lost their lives; the heroes who had willingly “gone beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow”—the sacred and avowed aim of SAS personnel, should the battle, the safety of their team, or the plain call of duty, have demanded it.

  Mack walked to the Clock Tower and stared at the memorial as the memory of three lost friends washed over him. He bowed his head briefly and then turned and walked away toward Russ Makin’s office.

  The CO of Stirling Lines saw him coming through the window and walked out to greet him. They shook hands warmly, and the British officer grinned and said, “I heard about your antics along the Euphrates, now what are you up to?”

  Mack Bedford laughed, and replied, “Couple of minor tasks, kind of thing you give a guy who’s unfit for command.”

  Russ slapped him on the shoulder and led the way back to his office. As they walked in he called to a young SAS trooper, “Tell someone to bring some hot tea, will you, Harry? And a few biscuits.”

  They walked inside and Lt. Colonel Makin picked up a message on his desk that read, “There’s an e-mail for you, sir. Military Intelligence. It’s on your machine.”

  He tapped a few keys on his keyboard and asked Mack to excuse him briefly as he picked up the message. Then he looked up and said, “Christ! Are you Visiting Black Bear?”

  “Shouldn’t be surprised, buddy,” said Mack.

  “Well, you’d better pay attention. It says here, ‘Tell Visiting Black Bear—for future ref. VBB—the chosen ones reached Stone Cattle as predicted. Suggest proceed there this day. Police DS Len Martin briefed. Tracing.’ Who the hell’s the chosen ones?” asked Russ.

  “Bunch of jerks who might try to blow us all up.”

  “You trying to find them?”

  “U
h-huh.”

  “Then what?”

  “Maybe a little negotiation.”

  “You mean you’re going to take them out?” edged Russ.

  “Who me?” said Mack. “Steady on, old buddy. I’m just planning to have a chat.”

  “Of course,” said the CO. “Just a little chat.”

  The tea arrived, hot, along with officers’ mess Royal Crown Derby cups and saucers, curved milk jug, sugar bowl, and a plate of biscuits. Mack sipped gratefully. He loved tea when it was made by the British. And he liked Russ Makin as much as he had ever liked any serving officer anywhere in the world.

  “Okay, Mack,” said Russ. “Since you’re plainly on your way to the bloody Stone Cattle, in the kind of car they routinely give to any old messenger boy, I’d better tell you my brief.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I am your contact and your link. You will not be moving signals through any other source. This office is effectively your command post. I have written down my private cell phone and my e-mail. This is my personal land line number, and, if all fails, you know the main number of the base. Any time you need to, grab a phone and reverse the charges to my office. Also I am forbidden to admit to one living soul that I have ever been in contact with you since we left Iraq.”

  “How about the Green Dragon?”

  “Screw the Green Dragon. And, before you ask, no, there isn’t a chance in hell this office has been, is, or will ever be, bugged.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because this is the toughest, most brutally efficient military base in the world.”

  “Second.”

  “Who once saved your life, Lieutenant Commander Bedford?”

  “Same guy who was darn near captured by the Iraqis, and I had to shoot all three of them and then throw their boss off the top of the oil rig.”

  “Well, we can all have a bit of luck,” replied Russ Makin, laughing. “I wonder if we could be serious for a moment.”

  “Okay. Let’s give it a shot.”