*****
At Langley it was just after midnight, but Jones was hard at work, putting the final touches on his briefing for the DO in the morning. It was, he reflected as he finished looking at his electronic charts, a fairly complete picture.
On the main area of concern, they’d made considerable progress. State had provided a list of Saudis who held legitimate US passports, which was good. Not so good but not much of a surprise, there were several thousand. However, Jones and a sharp young kid down in the Directorate of Intelligence had worked for the last several hours on that list, and managed to reduce it to about a thousand men of what he considered “military age,” between sixteen and about forty-five. Still a large group, but that’s where Intel had really done it’s duty. There were about a hundred who were known to have spent time in Afghanistan during the Soviet jihad, mostly now getting up there in age, but still important. Another couple of hundred had certainly not entered the US anytime in the last five years, another group in ten, etcetera. Presuming that the people he was most interested in would not have been in the US recently, a ploy he would have used to throw off just such an analysis, he would focus on this group. So, they were looking at maybe two hundred, possibly three hundred-fifty if you wanted to look at some of the older guys. A big list, but manageable with the new systems that State and Immigration had brought online since the 911 wakeup call. The list was already out there, and any of these guys trying to enter the US would be flagged and detained for some special attention.
Cameron’s thoughts on a small-unit infantry attack were also helpful, not something anyone had thought much about. Again, the Intel guys, once they’d warmed up to the idea, had produced some good stuff. They’d put together a computer simulation to illustrate the impact of one or several such events in small-town America, and the results were surprising. Taken together, the total effect appeared to be much more worthy of the effort on the part of the terrorists than anyone had previously thought, and therefore much more worthy of some hard thinking and preparation on the part of American security people. FBI was now working on that along with the team over at the Joint Counter-Terrorism Center. A cryptic and probably not-too-helpful note had gone to all the police departments in the country. That would probably draw some fire from the press: another non-specific warning about a terrorist attack “somewhere” that nobody would be able to do anything about. But Jones knew a few things about small unit actions that the press did not, and he knew that across the country police and sheriff’s departments would read the warning and at least think just a little about “what if in my town?”. That by itself could make a difference if it came to it, but he hoped to do better with some more time to work.
He turned to his computer and switched to the next section of the briefing. The phone-intercept picture was pretty complete by now, and had been remarkably productive. The roll-up of the terrorists in Paris had been pretty big, the biggest ripple-effect anyone had produced since Fall of 2001. The take in London and across Britain had been even better, and now there were lots of people in custody, guests of MI-5 or Scotland Yard, and he knew they would provide even more good intelligence, eventually.
But one of the down-sides of success was that things began to get quiet very fast. Since London, his phone contacts had pretty much gone silent. Even the multitude of numbers on the twenty-five or so phones taken in England weren’t talking, to say nothing of anyone in Paris that started this whole thing. And the Saudi connection had recently gone dead, too.
He opened a file and found the latest transcript from that most interesting but most un-disciplined suspect, Khalid was his name. He read through the short conversation again, wondering. Well, Saudis were big about parties, especially for family no matter how extended. Could be that’s all this is, just a party for his nephew in Ha’il. Still, it might be worth checking, maybe he’d get lucky. He opened another application on the computer, and was soon staring at the National Reconnaissance Office’s classified “Overhead Asset” intelligence request site. It took a few mouse-clicks and five minutes to fill in the online form, but by the time he pushed the “Submit Request” button at the bottom, he’d done all the paperwork required to get high-resolution photographs of the town of al-Ha’il, Saudi Arabia, on the next available pass of a suitable satellite. He didn’t know when that might be, yet: he hoped for sometime Saturday. Whenever the space-cadets decided when and what “next available” was in his case, he’d get an email. It would have to do, but if it didn’t happen by Saturday, he made a note to ask the DO to see if he could bump up the priority. That done, he added a couple of bullets to the last chart to describe the “overhead” plan.
Last, he summarized what they knew of the French connection. Their Gallic friends had Salah the Egyptian and were, presumably, having an entertaining time at his expense. Nothing had happened for two days on Kisani’s phone, which might mean he’d gone silent, too, but it might be he was just sleeping off his beating. Jones smiled unconsciously at this and shook his head, picturing the small Moroccan getting pummeled by a bunch of Paris thugs, with Cameron listening a couple hundred yards away and out of sight. Man, what’d he’d have given to have thought that one up. Brilliant. “It’s getting late,” he said aloud, jerking himself out of this reverie and returning to the briefing. He added a few bullets about the French operation in Paris, the likelihood that Cameron was compromised in France, his own deduction, something that would have to be “fixed” at a high level once this was all shut down. Cameron would certainly want to travel as a tourist in France again someday—his passport history clearly indicated that he and his wife had a thing for Paris—and it would never do for the French to arrest him on his next trip and put him on ice. Not at all. The DDO would have to fix it, or maybe State, perhaps even the President. No worries. Finally, he noted the report of the events in Amman, and his suspicion that the mystery agent in the cab had likely been French. “Nothing much to that, just a hunch,” he thought, “but it would fit. What Anderson said about his chat with the DGSE chief just made him feel like the man in Paris probably was fully in the game by now, and playing hard. He wondered what his Boss would think of that in the morning.
Jones scrolled back to the top of his presentation and went through it once more, making sure the story flowed as he wanted, and that he’d left nothing out, trying to guess what questions might be asked by the Boss, and by others he thought might attend. Finally, satisfied, he logged off and closed down the machine for the night. Tomorrow would bring something new in this game, he was sure.
XX. The Desert, Northern Saudi Arabia
Colonel Cameron took another long pull on the bottle of water, then poured some on the neckcloth he’d removed a few moments ago and swabbed his forehead. It was just before noon Friday, and he thought briefly of the call to prayer that would just be getting under way in the cities and towns. Here, two and a half hours east of Amman, there was nothing but open desert in every direction, bisected by the long, straight ribbon of asphalt that reached to the Eastern horizon.
He turned and cast a worried eye Northwest, but there was nothing to be seen. He’d not seen a car or anything else on the road behind them for more than an hour. That meant that their diversion had either been successful or unnecessary, and it didn’t really matter which. It had been fun, though, he had to admit.
He’d found Allen and the Chief of Station in their ops room, had been allowed into that most sensitive and secretive space in all US Embassies the world over, and there they’d talked for over an hour. The diversion was simple, yet ballet-like in its intricate interplay of moving parts. The Embassy owned three Suburbans, all black. They were each a year older than the two the Saudis were traveling, in, but that would have to do. Only a practiced admirer of GM vehicles would know the difference, especially if they were moving fast. The plan was to be moving fast.
Everything was loaded and ready to go by nine, Cameron had bee
n impressed by the industry and speed of the Saudis who’d come to collect them. They were smart and quick, and surprisingly hard-working. They’d made some adjustments to the plan that made good sense.
The morning was really “made” by the appearance of Ripley, which Cameron had not expected, but he was pleased. The DDO concluded sometime late last night that Allen needed another hand along to ride shotgun, and Ripley got the nod. An all night flight on a chartered jet delivered him to the Embassy about 6 this morning. For his part Patrick was beaming. Not his part of the world, he’d said, but he’d grown fond of the Colonel as he put it, and looked forward to a run across the desert and whatever might lie at the other end of the trek.
The Company did its duty in the equipment line. There were two Iridium satellite phones, the ones that used the commercial satellite constellation that Motorola designed, built, and launched as a commercial venture in the early 90s, but which had failed to find a market. The whole system was now owned by the US government and used mostly by the Defense Department, and it provided cellular-like coverage anywhere on the planet. There were also two handheld GPS units, much like the ones hikers and hunters used everywhere these days, but with an important difference: these contained “Blue Force Tracker” transponders that allowed the units not only to know where the bearer was to within about 3 feet anywhere in the world, they also transmitted this position back to the nearest satellite and from there to whatever US operations center might be interested in where they were. Langley would be interested, of course. Last came the Station Chief’s personal vehicle, a lightly armored Suburban in silver, with a 454 V-8 that made it go like a rocket. This was to be the Ripley/Allen ride, and it had special “hides” for weapons and other stuff that needed to be kept private. Into these went four Smith & Wesson 10mm automatic pistols and 10 boxes of ammunition, 500 rounds in all. On the other side in a larger compartment there were two Heckler & Koch MP-5/9 submachine guns, each with a silencer and night vision sights. Allen had beamed at these, mouthing “we own the night” as he tucked the last of the ammo into the compartment and closed the cover. A final smaller compartment contained four sets of tactical radios and spare batteries, Special Ops equipment with earbuds and boom mikes that allowed communication while keeping the hands free for weapons employment. Two sets of night vision goggles. Ripley was very pleased, Allen looked like a kid at Christmas. Cameron remembered thinking that they’d be running a modern remake of the John Wayne film “War Wagon” if anyone tried to make trouble.
At precisely nine-forty-eight three black Suburbans roared out of the US embassy in Amman in close trail, and began a serpentine dance around town. They immediately grew a tail, which was quickly identified as French by alert watchers posted on the Embassy roof. Five minutes after this departure three other Suburbans, two black and one silver, left the Embassy grounds and turned in the opposite direction, also making a twisting, turning pathway along the surface streets of Amman, finally joining the main motorway heading East out of the city. And so, here, nearly 290 kilometers East, they sat waiting for the Saudis to pray along the side of the road, the Americans drinking chilled bottled water, taking turns looking West for any signs of pursuit.
Ripley pulled his wide-brimmed safari hat down over his brow, and turned to face Cameron. “Colonel,” he said, “have you been this way before?”
“Nope, can’t say that I have, Patrick. But I know the general route, not many choices out here after all. It’s about 600 miles by road from here to where we’re going, the town of al-Ha’il in northern Saudi Arabia. We cross into Saudi in about another thirty minutes, I think, at a place called Kaf. Not much out there. From there, we go a short way, then make a left turn to reach al-Turayf, where we pick up the Tapline road. That stands for Trans-Arabia pipeline, Patrick—the road parallels the pipeline that used to take Saudi oil across Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea somewhere on the Lebanese coast. Not since the 1973 war, though—Israelis shut it down. Anyway, the Tapline runs all the way along the Saudi border, parallel to the Iraqi border and then the Kuwait border but about 30 miles south, before it heads south toward Dhahran and al-Jubail on the coast of the Arabian Gulf. . .”
“Where the hell is that, Colonel? I’m not a big geography guy, and this isn’t my part of the world, but isn’t it the Persian Gulf?”
“Depends on whether you’re an Arab or a Persian, doesn’t it?” Cameron smiled. “Anyway, you’re interrupting. We don’t go that far. We go to a small town called Rafha, where we’ll stop for the night, probably have to camp, I’ve never been there but am sure there isn’t going to be a Holiday Inn Express. That’ll be about 450 miles out of our total of 600, done today. We get gas all around. Tomorrow we try to make the rest of the distance, but it’ll be slow going. Last map I remember shows only a desert track for a road between the Tapline and a little town called Baq’ah, about 120 miles at a speed I figure will never top 30 mph. The last 30 miles should be paved road into al-Ha’il, but it’ll have been a long, hard day by the time we get there tomorrow night.”
“You think we’ve got the right equipment for that?” Ripley asked, looking at the Suburbans with a critical eye?
“Yep, all set,” Allen said matter-of-factly as he rounded the corner of the silver vehicle. “The Arab guys have done a good job—their vehicles have tons of bottled water, they have some portable food, but that’s not going to be a problem, either. We camp tonight at someplace called Rafha, another 300 miles East of here along the Tapline, but more of the General’s people meet us there with camp equipment, food, the works.”
Astonished, Ripley looked from Allen to Cameron, and back, then shook his head. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Asked ‘em” Allen said, shrugging. “Even professional killers should speak Arabic, Ripley.”
“Yeah, but how come the Colonel here knew the route without asking?” Ripley looked accusingly at Cameron, and Allen followed suit.
“What?” Cameron asked. “So I got a thing for maps. You don’t get to be an old fighter pilot being stupid, my laddies, nor careless, either, and don’t you youngsters forget it. It’s not that hard, anyway, there’s really only one way to do this in this country. I didn’t know we’d have more company, though. I think we’re in for a treat.”
“How’s that?” the other two said at once.
“Well, it wouldn’t be fun if I spoiled the surprise, now would it?” the Colonel answered with a smile. “Let’s just say for now that camping in the Saudi desert means something completely different from your average Boy Scout or US Army experience, at least as I’ve seen it done. We’ll just have to see for tonight. Now, I’ve got to piss before we hit the road again, and this prayer will be over soon.” He looked around. “That’s my dune over there. Don’t leave without me.”
The Saudis remained at prayer for another fifteen minutes, a little longer than expected, but then the Al Auda were a devout clan and well known for it all the way back to the time when Auda bin Abu-Tayyii had made war alongside T.E. Lawrence in the First World War. It took another ten minutes to put the carpets back into the vehicles, to distribute snacks and water to everyone, and to get the people loaded back and the caravan moving again.
But once moving, they really moved. The three Suburbans ran right up to one hundred –sixty kilometers per hour and cruised there, about one hundred miles per hour. At that speed it took just a little under twenty minutes to reach the border station to cross into Saudi Arabia.
Cameron was now sitting beside General Fahd in the back seat of the lead vehicle, one of the Saudis had taken his place in the last truck with Ripley and Allen. Looking ahead General Fahd said, “Paul, here we go. This should not be hard, as most of these people are probably relatives, but one never knows these days. We should not have any trouble with the crossing—your papers are all in order—but let me handle it.” He winked, with a smile to punctuate it all.
“No problem, amid,?
?? he replied as they coasted to a stop just in front of the barricade across the road. There were no other vehicles waiting to cross.
On either side of the highway there were small buildings built of concrete blocks, rather shabby and unkempt looking with window air conditioner units droning in the still air. Beyond the building on the right side of the road Cameron saw there was a dusty parking lot containing two 4x4 vehicles, Land Cruisers they looked like, but old and hard-used, painted the same dun color as the surrounding desert, the palm and crossed-swords insignia of the Royal House of Saud stenciled in black on the front doors. Beyond the parking lot was a tall steel tower with antennae on the top. Other than these things, there was not any sign of life or civilization as far as the eye could see, only the faint shimmer of the heat above the vast emptiness of the desert, rocky, sand-strewn, with little vegetation or feature to break it up at all.
They sat there with the motors idling for what seemed like several minutes before the door on the building to their right opened and two men came swaggering out. They were chatting nonchalantly in Arabic too fast for Cameron to understand, but they were also trying to tidy up their wrinkled khaki uniforms as un-obtrusively as they could manage. Cameron thought the eyes of both men looked sleepy under the bushy black brows and the black berets that crowned their heads, the latter also appearing hastily applied.
The two walked together between the lead and number two vehicles in the little caravan, and then both appeared at the driver’s window which Faisal, who was driving, let down with an electric whir to admit a stifling blast of hot air into the cool comfort of the truck’s interior. A rapid flow of Arabic passed back and forth, of which Cameron caught only a few words, before Fahd said “Papers” and Cameron produced the passport in the name of Michael Callan, handing it forward.
The policeman scrunched up his brows and stared at the US passport, then peered into the dark of the truck to look at Cameron. The photo matched, of course. Cameron realized with some mirth that the man probably couldn’t read anything in the little book besides the Saudi visa, which was partly in Arabic. He affected a tiny smile and waited. After what he must’ve thought was a decent and intelligent-looking interval, the man handed all the passports back into the car, said “daghiga, daghiga, min fadlak,” which is “one minute, please,” and passed toward the rear to check the third vehicle while his partner stopped at the second. It took another five minutes of polite Arabic and polite waiting while the papers were given their required hard looks, and then the bigger man returned. “Marhabteen, ya amid” he said, “many welcomes, brigadier”. He then saluted as best he could and turned for the guard house to raise the barrier and let them pass.
The bar went up, the three big vehicles rumbled to life and crossed into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, leaving a thin swirl of fine, dusty sand in their wakes. The two guards watched for a moment in silence, both knowing these were the only vehicles they were likely to see at this lonely crossing today: not much of a break in the long, slow routine. They turned in unison to head back to the air-conditioned office to listen to music or watch Bollywood movies on the Star Network. On the way back, the thinner one veered right, mumbled “hammam”, and headed for the latrine building. The other waived him off with a grin.
The latrine was not air conditioned, but hot, dry, and rancid. Khalil was used to this, however, and without so much as a wrinkle of his nose he produced his cell phone and dialed a number in Dhahran, a land line with the prefix “03.” He waited while the phone rang, three, four, five times, and after the sixth there was a simple beep. He took the phone away from his ear and looked at it, then put it back and spoke quickly. “An Air Force Brigadier just crossed into the Kingdom at al-Kaf. He travels with his family: two women, a teenager, and a small boy, four Saudi men, and three Americans. They’re moving in three GMC Suburban vehicles. The time is ten-thirty.” He hung up the phone and left, and was seated in front of the TV a minute later.