Mission Compromised

by Oliver North

  This is more like it, he thought. They brought him into a large, well-appointed waiting room. Somewhere within the building he could hear voices and music. Then, down the long carpeted hallway, came Kamil. At first Dotensk did not recognize his co-conspirator. Kamil was not in uniform but was instead garbed in a white thobe covered by a brown mishlah trimmed with gold. He had sandals on his feet and was wearing the traditional Arab gutra with a black igal wrapped around it. “Good evening, my friend,” said the Iraqi, holding out his hand. “Thankfully, the Americans waited to bomb until after the Sabbath. Had they come earlier, so many of our brave soldiers would have been at prayer that we would not have been able to shoot down many of them.”

  Dotensk wondered for whose benefit this propaganda was recited, but decided to say nothing. The Ukrainian had learned that with Kamil there was always a hidden, complex agenda. The man was, on the one hand, planning to defect while, at the same time, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire stolen nuclear weapons to arm his nation. He was playing host to Osama bin Laden and the other terrorists and concurrently planning to become a hero by “saving” his father-in-law from a UN-directed assassination. Dotensk wondered how the Iraqi kept all four initiatives separate in his mind. But about one thing, the arms dealer had no doubt. He had already witnessed the merciless killing of three people by Kamil and so he had no illusions about Kamil's ethics.

  “Kamil, can we talk?”

  “Ah yes, but first, you must shed the desert sand from your clothing and have some food. They will show you to your room, and after you have had a chance to cleanse the dust out of your eyes, you will join me for some refreshment.” At this, Kamil clapped his hands twice and the two young men who had met Dotensk at the entrance appeared from an anteroom and guided him down the hallway to a luxurious suite.

  Dotensk removed his soiled suit, showered, and changed into a pair of cashmere slacks and tailored cotton shirt. A half hour later, a knock on his door introduced another young boy—he can't be twelve years old—thought Dotensk. “His Excellency, Minister Hussein Kamil, has instructed that I am to be at your service this evening,” said the child in perfect Russian.

  “Yes, well thank you,” said Dotensk. “But all I desire is a chance to talk to the Minister, if he's available.”

  “Of course,” said the child. “I shall take you to him. Please follow me.”

  The Ukrainian followed the boy down the hallway to a large room made to look like an enormous Bedouin tent: muslin was draped from the ceiling; sidewalls of silk reached the floor; there, seated on cushions, and surrounded by voluptuous women, was Hussein Kamil. Music from several stringed instruments was playing softly, and the pungent odor of burning hashish mixed cloyingly with the scent of incense.

  “Welcome, my dear friend,” said Kamil. “Come sit here beside me and we shall eat. Then we shall talk.”

  Dotensk was astounded. An hour ago, enemy aircraft, undoubtedly American, had bombed an air base not five kilometers away. He knew from information provided by General Komulakov that the UN assassination team was planning to parachute into Iraq tonight, and the arms dealer strongly suspected that the air strike he'd witnessed was a diversion for the insertion. And here was his co-conspirator in the entire plan, splayed out like a desert sheik.

  As Dotensk took a seat on one of the cushions, he hissed, “We must talk!”

  For nearly a minute, Kamil seemed not to hear. He sat with his eyes closed as the music continued. Then his head snapped up abruptly, and he clapped his hands three times and motioned for all those attending him to depart. They disappeared immediately, though the music continued to play. Dotensk hoped that it was a recording and that it was loud enough to mask the conversation they needed to have.

  “Can we talk here?”

  “Certainly, these are my private quarters. We are protected by Amn Al-Khass officers totally loyal to me.”

  “Good. You know that the air strike was very likely conducted to mask the insertion of the assassins?”

  “Yes, I thought the same thing myself.”

  “Is everything in place for Monday?”

  “I have made all the preparations we agreed upon,” said the Iraqi security chief. “I had my people paint the interior of the large abandoned brick Ba'ath Party building beside the old aqueduct northeast of the city It took almost two hundred gallons of paint just to make it look like a hospital. And, as you suggested, I had 247 prisoners trucked there from the Special Security Service prison at Al Ranighwania. Unfortunately most of the prisoners were uncooperative so they—died.”

  “But if you shot them—”

  “Ah, you always underestimate me, my dear little arms dealer. I ordered some to be beaten to death, a number to be stoned, others to be burned alive, and some dropped from the roof of the building. When the international press corps goes to see the ruins of the ‘hospital’ destroyed by this UAV thing, all they will find are dead patients, killed by the explosion and the collapse of the building.”

  Dotensk was feeling ill and contemplated taking a hit from the hash-filled water pipe that had been offered earlier. But realizing he needed a clear head, he decided to press on. “Does anyone else know about the UN attack on Monday?”

  “Of course not. If Qusay or my father-in-law had any inkling of what was about to happen, they would call off the meeting with bin Laden or move it to another location and all this planning would be for nothing.”

  “My contact told me just before I left Baghdad that the commandos are to move overland for the next three nights so they can be in position by Monday morning. How do you plan to interdict them?”

  “I have a brigade of Amn Al-Khass troops and Republican Guards deployed to the west of here in the direction from where you said they will come. They have seven hunter teams of twenty men each. Each man in the hunter team that finds the British and American killers will get a new Mercedes. I have set up a command post in hangar 3, the least damaged structure at Tikrit South Air Base. Inside the hangar, invisible to the American satellites, I have placed two MI-27 HIND attack helicopters—yes, the pilots are loyal to me. You told me that you would be able to give me the exact location of the assassins once they establish their observation post. If that's true, we will quietly go there and kill them, take their targeting device, and point it at the fake hospital.”

  Dotensk was impressed. “How about their quick-reaction force? It's now deployed just across the border in Turkey. According to the British-American plan, they are to cross the border between Silopi and Zakhu to rescue the assassination team—if they run into trouble. Since that part of the border is controlled by the Kurds and the Iraqi National Congress, how do you plan to stop them?”

  “What is this QRF—fourteen or fifteen mercenaries? That is nothing. I have an Amn Al-Khass office in Mosul. The colonel who commands that detachment is one of my fiercest officers. He assures me that when you provide the location of where this QRF will cross the Tigris, he'll eliminate them in a matter of minutes.”

  Kamil had been busy. In less than a week, he had taken delivery of three Soviet-made nuclear artillery warheads, transported several biological and chemical weapons samples from his laboratories to the presidential palace for examination by Osama bin Laden on Monday, and still found time to position forces to disrupt the planned UN assassination of his father-in-law. “Now,” he said, pushing his finger into Dotensk's chest, “it is all up to you to tell me where these killers are so that they cannot escape. If you fail me, I will kill you.” And then he smiled and handed the Ukrainian a plate of figs and dates.

  Command Center

  ________________________________________

  UN Headquarters

  New York, N.Y.

  Sunday, 5 March 1995

  0825 Hours, Local

  General Komulakov strolled slowly around the command center operations area and observed the activities there—busy for a Sunday morning. He stopped occasionally to watch as operators keyed in the latest da
ta downloaded from satellite communications. He watched—but his mind was elsewhere.

  Ever since Captain Joshua Weiskopf and the seven men of ISET Echo had parachuted into Iraq, the Russian had been passing to Dotensk regular updates on their movements. Now the team had reported to Newman—and Newman had dutifully informed Komulakov—that the ISET was nearly in position, having hiked nearly eighteen miles in two nights from their drop zone west of Tikrit. The Russian knew he was taking a great risk in passing along information to Dotensk. If anyone suspected he was involved in sabotaging the first International Sanctions Enforcement Group mission, particularly given its targets—Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden—all his plans for a luxurious retirement would be traded in for an eight-by-eight-foot cell.

  Komulakov also felt conflicted because compromising the ISEG mission would mean that, instead of a UN commendation and perhaps even international recognition for helping to rid the world of Saddam and one of the world's most ambitious terrorists, he would spend the next few months answering inquiries as to what went wrong and why—all the while having to cover his own tracks.

  After mulling it all over again, the Russian shrugged and walked back toward his office. He concluded again that there was no other choice than to proceed as he and Dotensk had planned. The ISEG mission had to be compromised. Otherwise he would lose the only client he and Dotensk had found who could afford to pay for the nuclear weapons they had stolen.

  He knew that he could never find other buyers for his stolen weapons at the price Iraq was willing to pay for them. None of the other rogue nations with which he and Dotensk dealt had anywhere near the resources of Iraq. However, thankfully for Komulakov, there was no one else standing in the wings to offer Iraq such weapons. If another seller did exist, Kamil would have been able to “haggle” and get the price dropped. But Komulakov knew he was the only seller of such a prized commodity. The potential cash from this sale would enrich him beyond his imagination, and he could retire at the ripe old age of forty-six.

  Actually, his share of the 150 million Swiss francs that they already had in secret bank accounts would enrich him enough to provide wealth for several lifetimes, but this had now become a contest for more than money. It was a dangerous game of peril, of risking everything, and there was no other competition that was worthy of his participation.

  Komulakov thought that if he could maintain his good relations with so many Western leaders and the respect and associations with the United Nations, it was conceivable that he might amass sufficient wealth to one day return to Moscow and announce that he was a candidate for president of Russia. To become the chief of state for the world's second great power would be a wonderful addition to his list of glories.

  Major Ellwood interrupted the general's reverie. “General, the Baghdad channel is calling you. Do you want to take it in your office or here?”

  “Send it to my office.”

  Komulakov had been getting regular updates from Newman on the status and location of the team on the ground inside Iraq. To ensure he was getting real-time information, the Russian had also directed that the UN Communications Center be patched into all satellite communications traffic between Newman, aboard the MD-80; on the ground in Siirt, Turkey; ISET Echo in Iraq, and the UAV element back at Incirlik.

  There was no risk in this—such monitoring and reports were expected, and the USAF Satellite Relay Station at Incirlik had dutifully complied with the White House directive to keep the UN command center in the loop. The risk for Komulakov was in passing this information on to Dotensk.

  And now, with Weiskopf and ISET Echo nearly in position in Tikrit, the risks to Komulakov were about to increase considerably. He would have to be in near-constant communication with Dotensk. The ISEG operations plan called for the ISET in Tikrit to establish a satellite video uplink so that, in addition to the audio description of the mission, a visual record could be made, confirming the results of the UAV attack and to document every effort that had been made to avoid collateral damage. Once the ISET was at its final location, they would set up a miniature camera pointed at the target, position their flat-plane satellite antenna, and dial into the USAF Satellite Relay Station just as though they were making a telephone call. Komulakov planned to use this visual connection to confirm the ISET's GPS location by using the coordinates displayed by the team's EncryptionLok-3. He would then pass these coordinates to Dotensk, who would in turn give the information to Kamil for his Amn Al-Khass hunter teams. If everything worked as Komulakov planned, Weiskopf's ISET Echo, the QRF crossing into Iraq from Turkey, and Newman and the crew and team aboard the MD-80 would all be dead within hours.

  Al Fuhaymi Oasis

  ________________________________________

  Euphrates River

  Western Iraq

  Sunday, 5 March 1995

  1345 Hours, Local

  Eli Yusef Habib was sitting in the shade of a date grove, isolated from the hubbub of the oasis activity just a few hundred meters away. Al Fuhaymi was a tiny retreat in the vastness of the Iraqi desert, enriched by the waters of the Euphrates River that ran from northern Turkey, through Syria, and into Iraq, where it joins the Tigris River just north of Basra.

  Habib was sixty-eight, born in 1927—not far from where he sat—when the British ran the country through a monarch they imported after they took possession of Iraq under a mandate from the League of Nations.

  In the many years since, Habib had seen governments come and go—some kind, some cruel, like the present regime. Yet he had survived them all and even prospered. And despite his age, he was still strong and nimble. He was taller than many of his neighbors. Habib's wife of forty-four years let it be known she thought her husband was also quite handsome. His beard was still black, like the thick black hair on his head—although within the past two years, some white hairs were beginning to grow on both.

  As a young boy, Habib had spied for the British in World War II. It was dangerous, and he was nearly shot on at least four occasions by the Gestapo in the North African desert. It was during his three years of wartime activity with the British that he learned to speak English. When the war ended, Habib found that this skill was extremely valuable. The world was becoming smaller by the '50s and '60s, and international industries were looking for ways to sell their merchandise and products in the Middle East, where oil revenues were helping many Arabs become rich. Radios, TVs, Levis, and other consumer products found new markets—in places off the beaten path in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the area he considered his sales territory. Habib had established contacts in many of the small towns along the Euphrates River. And like most successful salesmen, he had spent much of his life on the road. There was hardly a paved highway or dirt track in four countries that he did not know—and his smiling face was well known. Habib was respected everywhere as an honest man who could deliver a portable radio here, a hard-to-find part for a diesel engine there—or, nowadays, a microwave oven almost anywhere. His integrity, perseverance, and willingness to trust a customer's word that he would pay on delivery had made Habib a wealthy man.

  Habib was also something of an anachronism. He had roots going back in the region more than seven hundred years. His ancestors were among those who traveled the ancient trade routes between Persia and Eurasia. And today, seven centuries later, he was a man who had the same occupation as his forefathers. He even dressed as he might have seven hundred years ago.

  For nearly fifty years, Habib had plied the craft he had learned from his father and his grandfather before him. And since 1970 Habib had been teaching his sons—and more recently, his grandsons—how to carry on the family business. He had four sons and three daughters. They had given him and his wife twenty-one grandchildren. All of the sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, to some extent, helped with the business. Some, along with their own families, had established homes and businesses along the route. They acted as warehouses for their wandering father. Habib would find those w
ho needed merchandise, and they would locate it, procure it, and deliver it to the buyers.

  But Habib was different from other Arabs. He stayed mostly to himself and his family. Like other Arabs, Habib was deeply religious and prayed many times each day, stopping his work one day a week in observance of the Sabbath. What made Habib different from his Muslim neighbors was that he was a Christian. The followers of Christ were a tiny minority in Arab countries. Many times they were tolerated without problems, but often they were verbally and physically persecuted. Arab Christians like Habib had learned to be cautious in practicing their faith. Even in these modern times there were some places, Habib knew, where a practitioner of Islam could legally kill a Christian if the Muslim felt threatened by the Christian's belief. Christian believers were considered to be outside the true faith, and as such, they were infidels.

  Another thing that set Habib apart was that he was a lay preacher. He was a self-taught pastor-theologian and as he traveled for his business, he had a preaching itinerary that enabled him to mentor other believers as his business took him back and forth through the countries of Syria, Iran, Iraq, with sometimes stops in Turkey and even trips to Cyprus and Greece when a particular product could only be found there.

  Habib was a happy, contented, and gentle man who had mastered the harshness of the desert and the eccentricities of its towns and cities. He had also come to terms with people.

  And now he was sitting by himself, praying. His prayers grew longer with each passing year. He had many petitions that he brought to God on behalf of his growing family. He also prayed for wisdom for himself—wisdom to know how and when he might share his faith so others could find the peace and solace that he had through belief in God through Christ. Habib was not really a mystic, but his devotion to God, along with his sincere and continual prayers, seemed to put him into a trance whenever he rested like this. He liked to tell his family that prayer was conversation with God, and that conversations were two-way avenues of communication. That's why, sometimes when he prayed, he had his Bible open in his lap. He prayed for God to answer his prayers, then he read, to hear what God was saying to him. Occasionally he had received what he believed to be specific instructions directly from God. Sometimes he just sat still and prayed with his eyes closed, but without conscious thoughts. Instead, he tried to be receptive to other thoughts that he believed God might put into his mind.