Inauguration Day

by Claude Salhani

  “Standby one,” said the voice from Langley. Two more black SUVs had now joined the chase.

  “Where is our closest carrier?” asked the duty officer in the Langley crisis room who had spoken to Hines. “How soon before we can get a Cobra over to him?”

  “The Abraham Lincoln is off the coast of the port of Haifa, Israel, to the south, about seventy miles away,” replied a junior officer. “The Cobras can reach the target in just about—” he punched some numbers into his computer and continued “—in just under thirty minutes.”

  “Scramble them NOW,” said the senior officer. The junior officer relayed the orders via secure satellite transmission to the carrier, then told Hines he was patching him through to the fleet command in the control room. Within seconds, the commanding officer standing behind the radio operator plugged his headset into the control board.

  “Buffalo Bill, this is the USS Abraham Lincoln. Hold your current course and we should be with you in less than thirty. Do you copy?”

  “Copy. But would be much appreciated if you stepped on the gas. We might not have thirty.”

  “Roger that. We’re sending you the best we’ve got.”

  With a maximum speed of 173 miles per hour and a range of 358 miles, the AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter carrying one M197 three-barrel 20 mm gun with a maximum capacity of 750 rounds of ammunition—basically, a Gatling gun—sixteen Hellfire anti-tank missiles, and 76 x 70 mm folding-fin aerial rockets, all designed to kill combat tanks, could very easily take out an armored SUV.

  The two US Marine Cobra helicopter pilots were already running out of the briefing room before the first burst of the alarm alerting them to scramble stopped. A US Navy officer ran along with them as they darted across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, heading for their Cobra attack gunships.

  “This is a top-priority clearance mission,” the Navy officer shouted to be heard over the din of the activity around them. You are cleared to engage and terminate with extreme prejudice. Do not waste time checking with Command and Control before engaging your target. Identify the target and eliminate it.”

  7

  BEIRUT, LEBANON

  Paul Hines was driving as fast as he could, given the heavy volume of traffic traveling on the busiest of Beirut’s highways. He was trying to outrun the three Range Rovers behind him, who had started to fire at them with AK-47s. He wasn’t worried about that. His car could withstand fire from an AK. But he knew that the men in the Range Rovers must have had other weapons. A grenade launcher or an RPG, most probably. He thought, with some cynicism, that they probably also had a couple of US-made LAWs (light anti-tank weapons). They were easier to carry than the Russian-made RPGs, and easier to conceal, as they were shorter. The disadvantage was that they could only be used once, and could not be reloaded as an RPG could.

  Paul Hines opened the sunroof of his SUV and told Mansour to prepare himself with the M203, now loaded with a grenade.

  “Now,” shouted Hines.

  Mansour stood up on the rear seat, stuck his head out of the opening, took aim, and fired. The grenade hit the first Range Rover dead center in the engine, sending the vehicle and its occupants flying in a great ball of fire. The other two cars plowed ahead, firing frantically. Najah Mansour ducked back inside the relative safety of the embassy vehicle, and the ping of bullets from the two Range Rovers could be heard hitting the car.

  The Cobras came in low over the waves, flying barely a few meters over the calm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The pilots were homing in on the GPS reading and were closing in fast. The lead pilot could now see the sudden burst of flames as one of the cars exploded. His first thought was that he was too late and that his package had been taken out of the fight. The pilot pushed his throttle forward, giving his engine an extra little push. He banked left and within seconds found himself within firing range. He fired his first rocket straight into the center of the Range Rover that was closest to his package. The car and its occupants practically disintegrated.

  Hines and his informant began to feel better. Two of the three SUVs following them were out of commission. Their chances of survival suddenly improved.

  The Cobras banked hard left, swung back, and made a second pass over the remaining SUV. A quick burst from the lead helicopter’s machine guns and the threat was neutralized.

  Their mission accomplished and already running low on fuel, the two Marine Cobras turned left and headed out to sea and their floating base aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, but not before banking their machines left to right and then left again, in a symbolic salute to the men they had just saved.

  Or so they assumed.

  Just one mile down the highway waiting on an overpass, were two men, friends of those just killed in the three black Range Rovers. They allowed the US embassy car to approach, and as it neared, one of the men rose and fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the car. The car, now on fire, and its two occupants badly wounded, kept moving forward, passed under the overpass, and came into view on the other side of the bridge, where the second man fired his RPG into the car, this time killing Paul Hines and his informant instantly.

  At about the same time that the Beirut CIA chief was killed on the coastal highway along with his chief informant, the sheik, in Cairo, was being briefed on the choice of the candidate who had been selected to be the president’s assassin. He was one of the rising stars of the movement.

  “You see,” said the man in the gray suit, briefing the sheik, “Omar had always known hate. Since his birth, whether he was born to Palestinian parents and grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zaatar, as some think was the case, or if he was born in Kabul, it makes no difference. In fact it makes it all the better, as he can be claimed by many countries.

  “In any case, between the moving about from one Arab country to the next, there was not much room for love in those camps. He grew up around too much hate. He thrived on hate and it made him function. Hate was his leitmotif, it kept him ticking; it was in many ways his internal clock. It was hate and anger trapped deep inside of him that made him who he is. He wanted—and still wants—to avenge the death of his mother and father.”

  “Interesting. Continue,” said the sheik.

  “I have heard several versions of who he is and what he is, all are true and all are perhaps exaggerated. In reality, sometimes I think even he doesn’t know where he is really from. And for our purpose, this is to our advantage. It adds confusion and makes it harder to track him. In fact, he is a chameleon; the perfect man for the job. His story of his exodus from Palestine, in fact, could be that of any of the tens of thousands of refugees. One version—the one I heard—has it that after their exodus from the Promised Land, Omar’s parents arrived at a United Nations relief camp in south Lebanon, where they spent their first years. These were the hardest years, as they faced cold and wet winters, uncertainty, and unemployment. The rain soaked right through their puny shacks, constructed haphazardly with whatever they could lay their hands on: bits of cardboard, tin, and slabs of plywood. Pushed by lack of work and Israel’s proximity, they headed farther north to the relative safety of Beirut, where Omar’s father made a living repairing cars in a small garage on the outskirts of Beirut.

  “Like the majority of Palestinians who dwell in exile, Omar’s parents blamed Israel, the West, and conservative Arab regimes for their ills, but more than all, they blamed America. Omar’s parents raised him hating the Jews who stole their land, hating the Jews who stole their house, hating the Jews who forced them to live as political outcasts. His mother had lost her ability to love. Although she still cared for him and his father, her whole life became overshadowed by the Great Tragedy.

  “The Naqba, or the Catastrophe—that’s when they lost Palestine. Omar’s mother spent most of her time lamenting the loss of her nation and her house. One of Omar’s first recollections as a child was of his mother sitting outside their shack on an empty can of cooking oil and reminiscing with neighbors who shared the
same predicament. Omar once said it was the equivalent of being in perpetual mourning, except the dearly departed was not really dead. Palestine was alive, at least in their hearts. It was present. It was there! They could see it! They could smell it. Only now it was called Israel and was ruled by strangers who spoke an alien tongue and came from Russia, Poland, Germany, and other faraway places. Zionists, they were called. And America footed the bill.

  “Omar’s world was a desperate one. It was a world where tenderness and affection did not belong and where love had been unable to survive. Born into a violent society, in turbulent times, Omar belonged to a generation where understanding ceased. Dialogue had long been replaced by violence.

  “For sixty years, the Levant was the theater of four major wars, numerous revolutions, and a cluster of coups and counter-coups. The Middle East witnessed a major war every decade. Over the last sixty years, every generation had been raised amid war, death, and hatred. Now, this so-called peace with the Zionist enemy forced on by the Americans made him yearn for action even more. For Omar, it is worse than all the wars put together.

  “From birth, Omar never knew peace. His world was embedded in chaos and disorder. For Omar and those like him bound by the same predicaments, one thing mattered now. Only one thing: revenge! The little patience there was had long run out. For them, the younger generation, it was time for action. No more idle talks. Talk had gotten them nowhere. The examples to follow were those set by the youth in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Take to the streets. Take action. That’s what Omar and many like him believe. Many of today’s youth feel that the olive branch had fallen like a withered autumn leaf and the time had now come to raise the gun.

  “A few years after the death of his parents, Omar became convinced that talks alone were not going to liberate his occupied homeland or to push the Americans out of Iraq and Afghanistan and bring about true freedom for his people.

  “Growing up with stories of Israeli atrocities on his people, and then amidst the mayhem of postwar Iraq, had made Omar a violent man. He knew that violence merely attracted more violence, but he grew to accept that fact. He lived with it every day. Every raid against the Americans was met by far greater retaliation. He knew that the Americans would reciprocate with air strikes for IEDs planted by Iraqis along the roads they used. US forces would launch massive raids in certain parts of Baghdad to find those responsible for the IEDs. They would bomb from the air, killing hundreds of civilians. With every raid of coalition troops, he knew more innocent people would die. Children playing in filthy alleys would be caught in a deluge of fire and steel. That is the way things are in the Middle East. They had always been that way, and unless his generation took matters into their own hands, he believed, this one and the next generation were doomed.

  “Growing up amid the mayhem of the war in Iraq, the killing and the mass arrests, the torture stories of places such as Abu Ghraib, Omar believed his part of the world stood no chance to see peace anytime soon. This region, this part of the globe called the Middle East, seemed cursed for some reason to have all the wrong leaders. And this was nothing new; it was the same throughout the ages. Even before the Americans came, the Zionists came, and before them came the British, and before them were the Ottomans, and before them the Crusaders, and the Romans, and the Greeks, and the Babylonians. It was hard to keep track of the number of armies that had fought over this piece of land. Omar, like many of his people, believed armed struggle was the only feasible solution to achieve their goal. Their ultimate goal: the total liberation of their Sacred Land, Palestine! Ejecting the infidels from the land of the two rivers and from Afghanistan. Not by selling out to the Zionists, not by accepting deals for a small portion of the sacred territory. What was Jericho alone? It would be equivalent to the Vietcong accepting the liberation of a single hamlet in the Mekong Delta.”

  “Interesting fellow,” commented the sheik.

  “Yes, very.”

  “Continue.”

  “Well, unlike the infamous Carlos, Omar is not a master activist, or as the Westerners refer to us, ‘terrorist.’ He is just an ordinary refugee who worked his way slowly up the ranks, much as a business executive would climb the corporate ladder. Up until now, our Omar is unknown to the Mossad, the CIA, the French, British, and even unknown to the Jordanians, who have quite possibly the best intelligence service in the Middle East, as you well know. But he has great potential. Both his instructors and the few people who have worked with him attest to that effect.”

  The sheik allowed himself what could have passed for a smile. Yes, he knew quite well the Jordanians and their intelligence services, having been a “guest” of the king for seven years. “Yes, I know them well,” he said.

  “So he is a newcomer in the intelligence community. There was, and is, no active file on him. When the Americans arrested him in Baghdad, he gave them another name. And for the purpose of this mission, he will be using a whole set of new documents.”

  “What kind of education does he have?” asked the sheik.

  “Omar’s only education came from attending a few years at the local elementary school, along with rudimentary geography and history. But he is extremely street-smart. He taught himself English in just the four months he spent in an American jail in Iraq. He speaks it almost without an accent, and with a southern drawl when he wants to, which he picked up from a prison guard who was from Alabama.

  “He loves to read. He has read just about every author you can name, and many that you and I could never name. He has read them. When he runs out of books to read he will grab anything he can get his hands on: newspapers, magazines, periodicals, et cetera. He will even read the labels on soda cans and boxes of pasta. He has an insatiable appetite for reading. And he retains it all. His mind is like a computer. During the course of his training, I was told, he read every book they had in the camp,” said the man in the gray suit.

  “And he knows what to expect in Europe and America?”

  “Yes, we have been showing him films, so he should not be too disoriented.”

  “You have done an excellent job. Thank you.”

  8

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  The mood around the conference room at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, was somber. The Agency had just lost two valuable assets in the Middle East, just as they were about to uncover more information on a plot to kill the president of the United States. They didn’t know who, they didn’t know how, but at least they knew when. That was something concrete to go on—not much, but it gave them something. But who were they looking for? Where to start?

  “What’s that goddamn group called again? Who did Paul Hines say was planning this operation?” asked Phil T. Monaghan, Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA. Those who knew him well were allowed to call him P. T. “The Final Combat?”

  “The Final Struggle Front, sir,” replied Patrick Brent, his deputy, a former Middle East hand and a former US Marine with whom Monaghan had served in Beirut and in the Gulf War.

  “So we can safely assume that it’s them, this FSF, who plan to carry out the attack. That’s what our man in Beirut said, isn’t it? Play that tape back one more time.”

  Brent motioned to an assistant who ran the recording, the last message from Paul Hines. It was not clear, as his voice was covered by the sound of gunfire and explosions. But it certainly sounded as though Hines said “FSF.”

  “Play the recording back once more,” said the director. They could hear much shooting. The specialists had identified the sounds as incoming AK-47s and outgoing M16s and M203s. They could hear the screaming and they could make out the high level of stress in Hines’s voice.

  “Listen up, people,” shouted the deputy director. “We need you to be quiet for just a minute.”

  Paul Hines’s voice came through the speakers again. He was shouting to be heard over the gunfire. “. . . I say again, the FSF, Foxtrot, Sie . . . Fuck it . . .” Then came the loud explosion.

  “Run this by
the techies, have it cleaned up and let’s listen to it again,” said Monaghan. “Right. Who is their front man? Their top dog in Beirut must know. Can we plan an extraction? We have SEALs in the area? Let’s do it.”

  It was Brent who spoke now. “The FSF’s top dog, sir, is Dr. Hawali, but he is extremely well guarded and it’s doubtful that he would get involved in operations. The man we need to talk to is a guy called Kifah Kassar. All trainees go through him. All ops go through him. Anything that this group does goes through Kassar.”

  “Okay. Let’s get this guy,” said Monaghan. “Let’s get this son of a bitch now. Let’s nab the son of a bitch.” Turning to Brent, he asked, “How long would the SEALs need to pull this off? It’s August; the inauguration is in five months. We need to move fast.”

  “I figure a couple of weeks of training, recon, et cetera. Three to four weeks at the earliest, and that’s pushing it. We’ll need to reroute some satellites and get some overhead intel,” said Brent.

  “Well, needless to say, this gets top priority,” said the Director. “We need to liaise with the Secret Service and the FBI. Set up a meeting with their directors, ASAP. I’m not about to allow the president of the United States to be killed on my watch.”

  “One more thing,” said Deputy Director Monaghan. “We need to replace Hines in Beirut, like yesterday. Do you have anyone in mind? It needs to be someone working outside the embassy. We need to start playing dirty again. We can’t post someone in Beirut and have them work out of the embassy; it’s a dead giveaway. We need someone who can go in deep and set up a new network using whatever trusted sources we still have. Anyone fit the bill?”