by Oliver North
Harrod was barely listening. He had no idea what an AGM-88 was or did, and he couldn't care less. He only knew that his masterful plan to make his president look good in the eyes of the international community was going down in flames—just as Newman's plane apparently had done.
Now Harrod could hear the Air Force general talking to someone else. “…I understand Sergeant Major, thank you very much. Out here. Hello, Dr. Harrod?” the General said.
“Yes,” Harrod replied weakly.
“Sergeant Major Gabbard tells me that they will try to divert or destroy the UAV, but they do not believe it can be done in the time remaining. The Global Hawk is due on the target in less than thirty seconds.”
Harrod hung up the phone without saying another word. He stared at the wall. Then, remembering the Army lieutenant general standing on the other side of the table, he said, “The UN Sanctions mission has been terminated. You might as well go back to the Pentagon. I have to go brief the President.”
Later, just before he was called to testify before a closed session of the Senate Armed Services Committee about the U.S. military role in the UN operation, General Tatum was instructed by Senator James Waggoner to “forget about the meeting with Harrod on March 6 in the Situation Room.” The Senate committee would not ask about the meeting, so the general wouldn't need to testify about it. But he would never forget about it either.
Amn Al-Khass Operations Center
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Hangar 3, Tikrit Air Base
Tikrit, Iraq
Monday, 6 March 1995
1501 Hours, Local
Dotensk was standing next to Kamil at the west end of hangar 3. Kamil was congratulating the commander of the Amn Al-Khass unit that had finally overrun the UN assassination team when the whine of an Allison Rolls Royce AE3007H turbofan jet engine passing almost directly overhead made them all instinctively duck. Once they realized that they were not about to die, they raced around the north end of the hangar and looked off toward the Tigris, in the direction the craft had flown.
In the river valley, a kilometer east of the hangar, they could see a huge, black, V-tail aircraft with extremely long, skinny wings, an engine mounted high and aft, and a whale-like nose, descending directly toward Saddam's summer palace. And on the highway headed south toward the same palace was the Iraqi president's twelve-car motorcade, returning from the bunker at the abandoned Al Sahra Air Base.
The Ukrainian arms merchant and his client watched in horror as the strange-looking aircraft passed just above and directly in front of the lead Mercedes in the motorcade and slammed into the west wall of the largest building in the palace complex—Saddam's personal residence. There was an enormous explosion that sent a huge fireball high into the sky. By the time the sound and concussion reached Kamil and Dotensk, flaming fuel and debris were falling on the vehicles in the motorcade. The lead Mercedes was on its side, tossed over by the explosion and totally engulfed in fire. The next three vehicles in line were also aflame, and the occupants could be seen jumping from the cars and running for the ditches on both sides of the roadway. And then, as everyone at the hangar watched, eight of the dark-windowed, silver sedans pulled around the four wrecked and disabled vehicles and sped south on the highway toward Baghdad.
Dotensk watched as Kamil raced into the hangar to the communications center and screamed at the radio operator, one of the few not to rush out of the hangar when the Global Hawk swooshed overhead. “Get me the President's security detail, now!”
The operator consulted a chart on the table in front of him, reached up to change the frequency on one of the radios before him, and handed Kamil the handset. Over the speaker atop the radio, the Amn Al-Khass commander could hear members of the security detail talking hurriedly to one another. He keyed the handset.
“Break, break… this is Commander Hussein Kamil! I want to talk to the senior Amn Al-Khass officer with the presidential motorcade. All others stay off this net.”
After a moment of silence, a voice came over the speaker, “This is Major Khidan al Tikriti, over.”
“Major, is the President all right?”
“Yes, sir. He and his special guests are unharmed. We were the last two vehicles in the motorcade.”
“How about Qusay?” the Amn Al-Khass commander asked, more than half hoping his rival for Saddam's affections had been in the lead vehicle. Kamil knew that Qusay would try to blame him for the assassination attempt.
“He is here with me. We are now the lead vehicle. The President has ordered that we return to Baghdad. Our special guests want to go to the airport and fly out immediately. I was making those arrangements when your radio call came in.”
Kamil paused, unable to think of a way to salvage his standing with Saddam. “Allah be praised. I shall proceed to Baghdad as soon as I have completed the investigation here.”
Dotensk had walked back into the hangar and was now standing beside the dejected Kamil as he handed the radio handset back to the radio operator. The two men now walked off to the corner of the hangar out of earshot of the others.
“Now, Mr. Dotensk,” said Kamil in a strangely calm voice, “the only thing that will keep me alive are those three nuclear artillery warheads you delivered. At this moment, I am the only person alive who knows where they are hidden. But that will only last for a short time. You must now find a way for me to escape to the West. Do you understand?”
What Dotensk also understood was that for Kamil to be the “only person alive” who knew where the three nuclear warheads were hidden had to mean that he had killed the subordinate officers who had helped hide them. He also understood that the elaborate plan he and Komulakov had concocted to make millions more selling weaponry was now in ruin. And finally, he understood that his own life was in greater jeopardy than ever if Kamil decided to offer up a “Ukrainian spy” as the reason for the assassination attempt on the Iraqi president, his son, and their prized guest, Osama bin Laden. But all Dotensk said was, “Of course, I shall start working on your escape immediately.”
“Good,” said Kamil. He started to walk away, then turned and asked, “By the way, you are sure that those warheads will work?”
In fact, Dotensk had no idea whether the warheads would still perform as advertised. He had gone to some lengths to get the PAL auto-arming keys for the three warheads, but he also knew that these old weapons were notoriously unreliable. One Soviet officer had told him that only one in ten would actually detonate properly with its full yield.
“Certainly,” he told Kamil.
Situation Room
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The White House
Washington, D.C.
Monday, 6 March 1995
0915 Hours, Local
The National Security Advisor came bustling, breathlessly, into the White House Situation Room and without so much as a nod to the watch officers, entered the conference room and closed the door. After leaving General Tatum an hour before, Harrod had gone to his own office and awakened the Commander-in-Chief with a phone call, convincing him of the urgency of the situation.
Now, having briefed the President on the catastrophe in Iraq, Harrod was back with a plan. Alone in the conference room, he sat down at the table, removed an EncryptionLok-3 from his pocket, attached it to the telephone cord on the same phone over which he had received the bad news from General Harris in Incirlik, and told the signal operator to get General Komulakov on the line.
When the Russian general took the call in his office on the thirty-eighth floor of the UN headquarters building, Harrod told him to engage his EncryptionLok-3. “Here's what we're going to do. There has been no press reporting on this incident yet. We think it will be several more hours before anyone in Baghdad or Turkey says anything. I want you to round up the Iraqi ambassador to the UN so that I can meet with him privately—preferably in your office. Tell him that an unmanned American reconnaissance vehicle doing surveillance for the
UN Special Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction went off course and crashed, and we deeply regret any damage or loss of life. Second, tell him that a USAF F-16 has crashed in the no-fly zone south of Mosul and that I'm coming to New York to negotiate for the return of the pilot. Don't tell him that we're already pretty sure he's dead. Third, tell him that a UN humanitarian flight transiting Iraq is missing and overdue. Tell him it was an Aer Lingus MD-80 chartered by the UN, and you want his help locating the aircraft if it's down. Finally, tell him that as a sign of good faith, the President is sending me up there to meet with him to do a rug dance.”
“Rug dance?”
“You know, make apologies, and tell them how sorry we are. Let him know that when I get there I'll provide information we have obtained about a group of mercenaries that may be trying to stir up trouble in Iraq. Now, if I understand things, you have a secure way to get information to some of the authorities in Iraq, is that correct?”
Despite his fatigue, Komulakov, the disciplined KGB officer, was thinking clearly and he didn't want to reveal that his connection was through Dotensk. It raised too many other questions. So he simply said, “I… have away of getting information to Hussein Kamil, the head of the Amn Al-Khass.”
“Good. There is one final thing we must do if we're going to keep all this from blowing up in our faces. Neither the President nor the Secretary General can afford to have another counterterrorism failure on their hands. If there are survivors to talk about all this, it'll be worse than that fiasco in Somalia. You botched both attempts against Mohammed Farrah Aidid back in '93, and neither you nor I will be at our jobs next week if word gets out that this was a failed attempt on Saddam and bin Laden.”
“May I remind you, dear Simon, that the twenty-three cruise missiles fired at Baghdad on June 26 of 1993 were all made in America. And when it comes to Somalia, on the twelfth of July '93, when the attack helicopters tried to kill Aidid, though the UN sanctioned the mission, the pilots were all Americans. And if memory serves me right, when the raiders were killed in Mogadishu, in October that year, they were all American Delta Force soldiers and Rangers. Your President's record at proving his manhood isn't very good, but I don't see what that has to do with me.”
“Look, we don't have time for this. The QRF has fifteen men in it who know everything. If they are captured in Iraq, we'll be getting a bill from the devil himself. Contact your Amn Al-Khass commander and tell him that you have reliable information that a group of mercenaries has crossed into Iraq from Turkey and plans to cross the Tigris River near Faysh Khabur. If any of them are captured and expose my government's or the UN's role in what they are doing, we're finished.”
Komulakov thought for a moment. Harrod was right. Though gratuitous killing had never been part of how the KGB operated, when it was a necessary means to an end, it was done with a minimum of soul-searching. “You are correct, Simon. I will see to it,” the Russian said quietly. “What about the one that's left at Incirlik? A sergeant major, I believe. And there's that officer you still have back there with you. Robertson, isn't it?”
Now it was time for Harrod to think. “I think I know how to take care of Robertson. Can you handle the sergeant major in Incirlik?”
“I suppose so, Simon. But it's getting very complicated. What if there are survivors from Newman's MD-80 inside Iraq? Do we have to hunt them down too?”
“We'll do what we have to do.”
After hanging up with Harrod, Komulakov had Major Ellwood contact Captain Bart Coombs, the QRF commander; the satellite radio had finally started working again. Komulakov told Coombs that ISET Echo was likely dead and he should try to rescue any survivors from the downed MD-80. He gave them the last known location of the aircraft from earlier in the day—east of Tikrit and almost due north of Lake Tharthar.
Coombs, the good soldier from Delta Force and close friend of Peter Newman's deceased brother, dutifully altered his original plan of trying to extricate the trapped ISET and set out to find Newman or any other survivors of the downed MD-80. As instructed by the Russian general in New York, Coombs kept in communication with his UN superior via sat comms encrypted with an EL-3. And, as Komulakov had planned, the GPS transponder in the little encryption device provided the exact location of the QRF every time Coombs communicated. After each radio call came in from the QRF, Komulakov contacted Dotensk, who in turn passed on the latest grid coordinates of the QRF to Hussein Kamil.
It was a little past 1300 hours in New York—2100 in Iraq—when Dotensk called Komulakov. The Ukrainian reported that a company of Kamil's Amn Al-Khass had ambushed the fifteen-man QRF as it crossed the Wadi ath Tharthar, thirty miles east of Sahl Sinjar. There were no survivors.
The Russian general consulted the map spread out on his desk and was impressed at how far into Iraq the American-British QRF unit had gotten. Those were good troops. A shame, somehow. But he knew, just as he had back in 1986 when he'd ordered the assassinations of those who had diverted the munitions train in Poland, that sometimes people just had to die.
TWA Terminal Food Court
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Dulles International Airport
Washington, D.C.
Monday, 6 March 1995
1520 Hours, Local
Rachel had left word for Mitch Vecchio to meet her for five minutes before she left on the overnight flight to London. She glanced at her watch. He was already twenty minutes late, and she had to check in at 4:00 P.M.
Then she saw him walk into the restaurant, between the “A” and “C” gates overlooking the runways and the new midfield terminal, look around for her, then cross the room to her table.
“Hey, babe, what's up? You sounded kinda serious.”
“Mitch… I have to go in just a couple of minutes before checking in, but I had to tell you this face to face.”
“Whoa… I'd better sit down. This does sound serious.”
“Mitch… we can't see each other anymore. We have to break off our relationship,”
“Oh? Why?”
“Well, for one thing, it's wrong. We're both being unfaithful to our spouses, and I'm not going to do it anymore.”
“Why the sudden change?”
“Mitch, I… I've been thinking a lot about my life lately. And this past weekend everything all came together. My life was a mess, and I knew what we were doing was wrong. I think God is giving me another chance to get my life straightened out. To make a long story short… I committed my life to Jesus Christ, Mitch… and I can't do some of the things I used to do.”
Mitch threw his head back with a look of surprise on his face. “Well, glory, hallelujah! Don't you think it's a little late in life to become a nun?”
“Please don't joke about it, Mitch. It was a serious step for me, and I know it's the right thing to do. I have such peace about my decision. It's really like they say—like being ‘born again,’ and I have been given a whole new chance at life.”
Mitch grinned at her. “Rache, who are you trying to kid? Look, it's me, Mitch, your lover, your friend. Surely you can come up with a better exit line than that?”
“It's true, Mitch. It all happened over the past couple of days, and I made my decision to place my life in God's hands. That means I no longer decide what's right and wrong. And no matter what we think, adultery is wrong, Mitch. You must know that too. We both need to be faithful to our spouses.”
“You're serious about this, aren't you? Well, listen Rachel, it's been a great ride. You can buy into religion if you want. Me, I'm not interested. I'm the only guy I have to be accountable to, and what I do is my own business.”
They looked at each other for a long time without speaking. Then his face softened. “Look, honey, I know things have been stressful for you lately, with your husband gone off on some mission. But don't go off the deep end. Give it a little time… and then think about us. I'll be here if you change your mind. Just give it some time.”
Rachel suddenly had doubts a
bout what she had decided the day before. Her feelings were arguing with her intellect and winning.… No! I know this is the right thing to do!
She stood up. “Please don't call me again.”
“Listen, Rachel,” Mitch said, leaning toward her, “we both have to check in now. Let's leave it for now. I won't call you or bother you any more if that's what you want. Just remember, I'm here for when you need me. Just give it some time.” Then he stood and took her hand with both of his. “Take care,” he said, then he walked away.
There was something sad about their parting, but Rachel felt a sense of relief as well. She knew it was something she had to do. She had already started a daily journal listing all the other changes that she anticipated making in her life. This had been a suggestion from Pastor Brooks.
After the unexpected meeting with the pastor's wife on Friday, Rachel had decided to take up her offer to meet with them for brunch after the Sunday service. The pastor hadn't pointed the finger of condemnation at her, even when she told him about the affair she'd been having. Instead, he gently encouraged Rachel to break it off, to focus not on the past but on the future, and to start her spiritual journey by doing as much as she could to alter her old routine.
Part of her new schedule was to spend a few minutes every day reading Scripture. He had called it “the armor of God.”
Reverend Brooks had also encouraged her to join a small Bible study in her neighborhood. That Sunday night she went back to the church—the first time in her life that she had ever gone to church twice in the same day—and signed up for a Bible study that met on Wednesday evenings in the home of a woman who lived less than two miles from their home on Creswell Drive.
The pastor suggested that Rachel find time to write her thoughts in a journal and list all the prayers that she wanted answered. That morning she had made a list of things that she wanted to do for Peter—including telling him about her conversion to Christ.