by Don Mann
Their gear sat waiting on the same RCAF CC-130 Hercules they had flown to Toummo—weapons, Geiger counters, hazmat suits, shovels, saws, breaching material, acetylene torches, new locks.
Jabril strapped himself into the seat next to him and said, “My friends and I are worried about the future of our country.”
“I would be, too, if I were a Libyan.”
They were only a few minutes aloft and were already passing over endless tracts of desert.
Jabril, who was in a talkative mood, started sharing his impressions of Gaddafi. How he used to sit around a fire in the backyard of his compound and talk all night—about his dreams for Libya, his theories of human evolution, and the relations between men and women.
He spent most of his time outdoors, despite the fact that he’d built a palace decorated with a white baby grand piano, indoor pools, a golden mermaid sofa, and closets stocked with his eccentric wardrobe, ranging from uniforms covered in gold braid to African tribal gowns.
He considered swine flu a biological weapon, and had even designed and built his own car, called the Rocket, which he called the world’s safest automobile. Why had he built it? To better protect his people, many of whom were killed and injured on Libyan roads every year.
Crocker nodded and listened politely. If nothing else, Jabril was helping him keep his mind off his own problems.
“Have you ever heard the name Sheik Zubair?” the scientist asked.
“I don’t believe so.”
“Gaddafi believed that William Shakespeare was really a poet from Basra, Iraq. He claimed to have studied Shakespeare and discovered a strong resemblance in his work to the teaching of the Zenith sect of Islam.”
“That sounds pretty out there.”
“I agree. But aren’t all men shades of gray? Even Gaddafi did some positive things.”
“For example?”
“He gave everyone in Libya free electricity, free health care, and free education. All loans were interest free. Gasoline cost fourteen cents a gallon. The country was debt free.”
“Then why was he overthrown?”
“My friends claim it was more like a coup d’etat from abroad,” Jabril answered.
“A coup?”
The elfin-faced scientist nodded. “My friends are sophisticated men. Businessmen, professors. They opposed Gaddafi, but claim that anti-Gaddafi sentiment was never very strong.”
Crocker wasn’t particularly interested in Libyan politics and had no way of judging if what Jabril was saying was true. Still, he nodded and listened politely.
“A coup d’etat from abroad to get two things, oil and gold,” Jabril continued.
Oil sounded reasonable, but…“Gold?”
“Gold, yes.” Jabril grinned and leaned closer. “Gaddafi owned one hundred and fifty tons of gold that he kept in banks in Tripoli. He was also talking about introducing an African currency called the gold dinar, which would have rivaled the dollar and euro, and shifted the economic balance.”
“Shifted it which way?”
“Oil would no longer have been traded exclusively in dollars.”
“And your friends believe that’s why Gaddafi was overthrown?”
The Libyan raised a crooked index finger. “Consider this. In the year 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraqi oil would be traded in euros instead of dollars. Sanctions and war followed, and he was ousted. The same thing happened to Gaddafi.”
Crocker wasn’t a big believer in conspiracy theories. He’d heard them all—the Illuminati were secretly running the world, or the Rothschild banks, the oil cartels, the drug cartels, Opus Dei.
After two more hours of listening to the doctor reminisce about his childhood in Libya and his wife and children, they touched down in Sebha. As he exited the aircraft and felt the midday heat bearing down on him, Crocker noticed several MiG-25s parked beside the runway. “They used to be a mainstay of Gaddafi’s air force,” said Lasher. “Now they belong to the NTC. Trouble is, they don’t have anyone to fly them, because all the pilots left the country.”
They piled into a van for the short ride to the military base, past a domed mosque and a large hill of sand with a castle on top that Jabril said had been built by the Italians in the 1930s, when Libya was still a colony.
Sebha appeared to be a sleepy, windswept town. The streets were paved and modern, most of the buildings white one- or two-story dwellings.
Akil pointed out the green pro-Gaddafi flags flying from a number of houses and vehicles. “What’s that about?”
“Curious,” Lasher answered. “I noticed them, too.”
The base looked abandoned, except for two elderly men in olive-green uniforms who guarded the gate. It was surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and consisted of several barracks, a shed with two disabled tanks inside, a shooting range, and a water tower that looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
Several skinny, mangy dogs slept in the shade created by a broken-down transport truck. “Soviet make,” Mancini reported. “A KrAZ, I believe they called it. Remember, boss, Afghanistan in 2000?”
“Didn’t we drive one of these through the Panjshir Valley?”
“Correct.”
It had been a CIA-led mission to assassinate Bin Laden that was aborted by President Clinton. They were stationed in the Panjshir, working with the Afghan Northern Alliance, particularly its leader, the charismatic Ahmad Shah Massoud. He and his small force of Tajik tribesmen had held off the Soviets for ten years. Back in late 2000 they were resisting the Taliban and al-Qaeda and seeking American help, but Washington was more interested in the come stains on Monica Lewinsky’s dress.
Massoud was assassinated by al-Qaeda on September 9, 2001—two days before the World Trade Center attack. The memory still produced a pain at the pit of Crocker’s stomach. Sometimes political leaders and policymakers in Washington didn’t understand, because they were too far removed from the realities on the ground.
The van bounced up and down as Jabril directed the driver down a road mostly obscured with sand. It wound around a several-hundred-foot-high mountain of dirt and loose rock to a second fence and a gate posted with warning signs in Arabic.
After Ritchie cut through the lock with a battery-operated saw, they entered and drove past a fifty-foot mound of dirt and boulders to an opening between two even higher mounds of barren sand and rock.
This was another unlikely place to find anything, especially the modern refinery-type plant that occupied the three-hundred-by-hundred-yard space. White metal, glass, and aluminum all sparkled in the sun like a mirage.
“Where’d this come from?” Ritchie mumbled as they stepped out of the parked vehicle. “Mars?”
They walked under the cloudless pale blue sky as Jabril pointed out the plant’s features—the long production shed that had once housed his office, the storage and distillation tanks, drying facilities, and cylinder filling station. Unlike the plant at Toummo, this one hadn’t been inspected in recent years.
“This is where we manufactured mustard gas and sarin in the nineties,” the Libyan scientist said.
“How much?” Crocker asked.
“Roughly two hundred tons until I defected in 2003.”
“Two hundred tons? That’s a hell of a lot.”
Jabril explained that the plant had been built in the nineties with the help of a German company and Japanese engineers.
“Where are the chemical weapons now?” Crocker asked.
Jabril said, “You’re about to find out.” He stopped to adjust his sunglasses and mop the sweat off his brow. Then he continued toward the opposite two-hundred-foot mountain of dirt and rock. The sun was impossibly hot.
Following twenty feet behind with Lasher and Akil, Crocker didn’t notice the indentation in the mountain until Jabril disappeared.
“Where’d you go?” he called.
“I’m over here,” the doctor shouted, his voice echoing through the mounds of sand.
&
nbsp; When they joined him, he pointed to a pile of boulders positioned against the side of the mountain. “There’s an entrance somewhere behind there,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Unless the whole chamber was destroyed.”
It took almost an hour for Crocker, Davis, Akil, Ritchie, and Mancini to clear away the rocks. Behind them stood a metal door tall and wide enough to accommodate a truck and painted to blend in with the terrain.
“Clever, yes?” Jabril asked.
“Very clever,” Crocker answered. The hard work had made him sweat through his clothes.
“This must have cost a shitload to build,” Akil said.
“Hundreds of millions,” Lasher offered.
“What for?”
“To produce chemical weapons.”
“I know that already,” Akil answered. “My question is, What did Gaddafi want them for?”
“Back in the nineties, he had a vision of creating a united Africa. He called it the African Union and saw himself as its godfather. Planned to lead a united continent that would rival the United States or the Soviet Union in military and economic strength.”
“The man had ambition.”
“So did Hitler,” Mancini added.
The door had an internal lock that Mancini managed to pick—which was convenient, because the next option would have been to use explosives, and they didn’t know what was housed inside.
It took three men to push the door open. The awful screeching sound reverberated up Crocker’s spine. Hundreds of little black birds took flight and circled overhead.
Crocker, Lasher, Jabril, and Mancini were selected to wear the hazmat suits.
Unlike the Class C suits they had worn at Busetta that used gas masks to filter the outside air, these suits were Class A, which meant that they were vaporproof right down to their special seam-sealing zippers, two-ply chemical-resistant nitrile gloves, and supplied-air respirator with escape cylinder. Each man breathed from an oxygen tank strapped inside his suit.
The hiss of Crocker’s breath through the respirator and the crinkly roar produced by every movement of the thick plastic material drowned out all other sound. The suit was so bulky that Crocker couldn’t see his feet. And it was hot.
Holding a high-powered flashlight, Jabril led them inside one of two high tunnels that had been carved into the mountain. At one end was a twenty-by-twenty-foot chamber stacked to the ceiling with narrow five-foot-long aluminum cylinders.
“Mustard gas,” he said through the two-way radio built into his suit.
“Which ones?” Crocker asked.
The scientist pointed a purple glove to his right.
“And that’s sarin over here,” he said pointing to the cylinders to his left.
“That’s a whole lot of destructive power.”
“Serious stuff.”
“The sarin degrades quickly. But the mustard gas might still be lethal.”
“Even ten years later?”
“It’s possible.”
“I feel like I’m about to faint,” Lasher shouted through the radio. Mancini helped him out of the tunnel. The others followed.
Outside, Lasher removed his hood to reveal a head and face covered with sweat. After chugging a bottle of water, he said, “We’ve got to secure this place immediately. If the wrong people get their hands on this, the NTC could be fucked.”
“They’re fucked already,” Ritchie mumbled.
Davis: “The sat-phone’s in the vehicle.”
Lasher held up a hand. “Wait…”
Once he caught his breath, he explained that the United States had known about the chemical weapons stored here for years, but the Department of Defense had refused to allocate the $100 million it would cost to clean up the site and dispose of them.
“Why?” Ritchie asked.
“Politics. DOD wanted Congress to pass a special provision. The House held hearings back in 2007, but never allocated the funding.”
Akil: “I hope someone’s willing to spend the money now.”
Ritchie: “Either that or we bury the whole fucking thing under the mountain. I can rig up a bomb with the extra can of gasoline attached to the back of the van.”
Crocker: “Not yet.”
When they’d rehydrated and cooled down as best they could, Crocker and Mancini accompanied Jabril for one last look around the tunnel. Sand gophers and lizards scurried about in the dark. When Mancini switched on the handheld digital Geiger counter, it went berserk, whining and flashing.
“Hey, boss!”
“Is it working correctly?”
Jabril said through the radio, “Let me see that machine.”
The device squealed even louder when he approached the chamber at the far end. In the cone of light Crocker saw a dozen green canisters—each one the width and half the length of a coffin—propped against the rear wall.
Jabril handed the flashlight and Geiger counter to Mancini and started to unfasten the metal clasps along the side of one of them.
“Is that safe?” Crocker asked.
“Probably not.”
The scientist pulled back the lid and pointed to where he wanted Mancini to shine the light. Embedded inside the canister were four dozen glass ampoules filled with white and silver crystals.
“What’s that?” Crocker asked.
“I believe it’s uranium hexafluoride,” Jabril said.
“UF6?”
“Yes.”
Crocker knew that UF6 was a compound needed to enrich uranium. It was hard to make and carefully monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
He tried to locate Mancini’s eyes through the plastic mask but it was completely fogged up.
“You okay in there?” Crocker asked.
“Yeah. You need UF6 to make a nuclear weapon,” Mancini shouted into his radio.
“I know. I know. Lower the fucking volume.”
“Sorry. What do we do now?”
Crocker said, “Let’s seal it back up and carry it out of here.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. I’ll explain outside.”
The two SEALs lugged the canister under their arms, set it down near the entrance, then went back to help Jabril, who seemed to be struggling. Once outside they helped him take off his hood and saw that the scientist’s face was deep red.
“It’s my heart.”
“Sit down, breathe deeply,” Crocker said, unbuttoning the top of the Libyan’s shirt and checking his pulse. “I’ll get you some water.”
Meanwhile, Mancini joined the other men, who were sitting in the shade, and explained what they had found. At the mention of uranium hexafluoride Lasher jumped to his feet. “Jesus Christ! You found UF6? You’re kidding. Where?”
“The ampoules are in the canister we carried out. Right there.”
Lasher ran over to it and examined the labels and writing on the outside.
Mancini warned, “It’s leaking radioactivity, so don’t get too close.”
Lasher said, “It was shipped to Tajoura in 2010. In 2010!”
Davis: “What’s Tajoura?”
“It’s a nuclear research facility about ten miles east of Tripoli. Houses a research lab and a ten-megawatt reactor built by the Soviets. But it was shut down in 2004, after Gaddafi told the world he was abandoning his plan to build a nuclear weapon. Back in March of that year the IAEA oversaw the removal of weapons-grade enriched uranium from Tajoura, which was then shipped to the Russian Federation.”
“Incredible,” Mancini muttered, shaking his head.
“Why is it here?” Crocker asked.
Lasher: “Good question.”
“What’s it mean?” Davis asked.
“It’s a smoking gun,” Lasher offered. “The proof that Scorpion is real—a lethal weapon buried in the desert sand.”
“A smoking gun in what sense?”
“The presence of UF6 proves that Gaddafi was still trying to build a nuclear weapon after th
e invasion of Iraq and the whole furor over WMDs. Back in 2004 he was afraid he was going to be invaded next. Made a speech before the UN, telling the whole world that he was going to play nice from now on.”
“What do we do with it now?” Crocker asked.
Lasher: “Was that the only green canister?”
Mancini: “There were about a dozen more like it.”
“You check those, too?”
“No.”
Lasher: “Doesn’t matter. We’ll take this one back as evidence. NATO will have to figure out how to deal with the rest.”
Jabril was feeling better. He said, “It’s too dangerous to handle.”
Lasher: “I brought a lead sheet in the truck. We’ll wrap it in the lead sheet and take it with us.”
Crocker: “Sounds like a plan.”
They’d parked the van at the second gate—the one that connected the military base to the chemical plant. Lasher and Ritchie volunteered to walk back and get it.
While the others waited, Crocker and Davis went to explore the far side of the hill. There they found a vent hidden behind a boulder, but nothing else.
Davis said, “Sometimes I wonder what kind of world we brought our kids into.”
“It was a hell of a lot easier to defend yourself when men fought with rocks and slingshots,” Crocker answered.
“You read about all this apocalyptic end-of-time stuff and it makes you wonder.”
“Sure does.”
They sat in the shade talking about how advances in technology, designed to make the world safer, seemed to be having the opposite effect. Crocker heard a car horn honk three times.
“There’s the van,” he said getting to his feet.
He had taken half a dozen steps around the hill when he heard angry voices speaking Arabic, and stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Davis asked.
“Listen,” Crocker whispered back, pointing to the other side of the hill, then holding a finger to his lips.
Davis looked perplexed.
Very carefully, Crocker craned his head around the edge of the hill to look. In the distance he saw the van driving away, accompanied by two white pickups armed with .50-caliber machine guns. In the foreground, approximately two hundred feet from where he was standing, a dozen men wearing black and brown kaffiyehs pointed automatic weapons at Mancini and Jabril, who were seated on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs.