*****
At 6:30 pm DC time Jones was having a beer while steaks cooked on his neighbor’s outdoor grill. He’d had a relaxing Sunday. Up at a leisurely 7 am, a 3 mile run, about 150 pushups along the way. Breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, juice and some quality coffee. He’d watched the morning shows, read two DC papers and the Wall Street journal. Took a nap from 11 to 1, then watched the Nationals baseball game all afternoon. The steaks were thick, the neighbor was working the grill just right, ladies were in the kitchen doing whatever they were doing for the rest of the dinner, and things were looking pretty perfect in Jones’s world. The neighbor was just offering his opinion of the early season so far for the Nationals when the phone started to vibrate in Jones’s pocket.
He set the beer down and retrieved the device, looked at the number and gave an inward groan. He thumbed the “Talk” button and held the phone to his ear.
“Mr Jones?” a bodiless voice asked.
“Yes”.
“This is Ops. There is a situation. Are you secure there?”
“No. What kind of situation?”
“Nothing hot. But warm. We think you should take a look. You have people on an errand somewhere?”
“Yes, I do, in a warm place. Is it warm there now?”
“Yes, it’s warm. We’re wondering if it might get hot there soon.”
Jones did the math. “Middle of the night there. How soon?”
“We don’t know. Putting the pieces together, but it could be any time, maybe even the next few hours. We think you should take a look.”
Jones rolled his eyes and looked heavenward. The steaks smelled divine. The beer was cold. But somewhere it was warm and might get hot. Very bad if something happened to the DDO’s boy out there and he was here swilling beer and stuffing his face after taking a call. No way out.
“OK. I’m about 40 minutes away, be there as soon as I can. If something happens, or even begins to smell like it’s happening, call me on this number again. On my way now.”
He thumbed the “End” button and stuffed the phone in his pocket. Apologized to the neighbor and walked into the kitchen. Kissed his girlfriend and told her he had to go out. That was the good thing about this girlfriend: they had an understanding; sometimes he had to go “out” at awkward times and she knew not to make a fuss. She started doing the cover up thing with the neighbor’s wife that she did so well, no big deal, business thing in China or somewhere that it was Monday morning already. He made a mental note to keep her on…maybe he was getting old enough to get married.
He made it to Langley in 35 minutes and was in the Ops Center in 40. The Watch Officer flagged him down as he came through the door, and he walked across the floor past all the duty staff at their computer screens and into the glass-enclosed conference room at the back. There were already 3 young kids in there.
The Duty guy introduced himself as Wayne, “and this is Shirley, and Max, and Ted. Signals intel analyst, satellite guy, and our integration guy on the night/weekend shift. They think they’ve fused something together that you should take a look at.”
Jones looked across the table at the three analysts: none could have been more than 24 years old, maybe a year or two out of school at most. Max had glasses so thick they looked like the bottom of coke bottles. Shirley was Asian, and Ted was a nerd of biblical proportions. They looked excited.
“So, tell me about it,” Jones said. He was pretty sure he’d just passed on a great steak for no reason at all.
The three kids looked at each other briefly, seemed to elect a spokesman just as quickly, and Ted cleared his throat.
“A few days ago we picked up a cellular call originating on the northwestern Saudi border with Jordan. Lonely place in the middle of fucking nowhere. About 2 cars cross the border there in a week from what we can tell…we uh, did some checking to make sure this wasn’t pretty, you know, normal.”
“Go on,” Jones said.
“Well, the call flagged some keywords that got it logged by some computers over at Fort Meade. But not enough of them to get immediate attention. So it didn’t get a look from an analyst over there until late afternoon yesterday.”
“Do you have the text of the call?”
“We do, and a translation.”
“Well, what did the guy say?” Jones was losing patience…did he have to play 20 questions?
“It said: “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.”
“Holy Shit,” Jones came out of his chair. Those are my guys. Where was this? Show me on a map!”
Max reached for a remote on the table in front of him, pushed a series of buttons, the lights dimmed and a projector fired up and a map of Saudi Arabia appeared on the screen at the end of the room.
“Here, at al-Kaf, border crossing with Jordan.” He pushed a button. “This is a satellite shot of the crossing.” He was using a laser pointer. “This is the guard house, sleeping quarters, small kitchen, probably a couch and a TV. You can see the satellite dish…” he zoomed in and moved his laser dot around on the roof. He zoomed back out. “Over here is the outhouse…looks like they don’t have indoor plumbing. You can see their water tank here on the side of the main building. Looks like it gets trucked in every couple of days.”
“When was this?” Jones asked.
“Friday, about 1030 local time there in Jordan.”
Jones looked at Shirley, the Signals analyst. “Do we know who took the call?”
“Yes. Landline in Dhahran, a guy named Mohammed, which doesn’t help us at all of course.”
“Anything else on that landline, since then I mean?”
“Yes, there was one outgoing call and one incoming. Outgoing was to a cell phone that didn’t answer; we think that one has gone out of service. Incoming was from another cell phone, a number we have nothing on prior to this, and he got the answering machine. Listened to the same message and hung up. Clearly knew the code for the machine.”
“You got an address in Dhahran for that landline yet? That’s key.” Jones said.
“Not yet, we’re working on it, but addresses are pretty wacky in Saudi Arabia. Mostly we get driving directions we don’t understand, we’ll probably have to send someone to look for the place and then put it under surveillance if anyone authorizes the assets to do that.” She held up her hand to preempt Jones’s next question. “The original cell number called outgoing from the landline WAS something we had before, got that number on the daisy chain of phones that was rolled up in Paris last week. Somebody named Saleh in Paris called someone named Ibrahim, also in Paris, and this Ibrahim called this guy named Khalid in Saudi Arabia on that mobile number. We checked backward, and Khalid’s been getting around. He was in Bahrain last Tuesday and Wednesday, then in Dhahran Wednesday afternoon, Riyadh on Thursday morning, Taif later that afternoon, and Jeddah on Friday afternoon. His phone hasn’t been on the network since Friday, we figure he guessed everyone had his number after Paris and ditched it. The new number on the incoming call to the Dhahran landline is a prepaid phone out of Jeddah. That suggests it’s this Khalid guy, right? A call to his old cell, then the new cell calls and gets the message off the machine on the same landline?
“Do you have any call history for this Khalid last week before he ditched his phone?”
“Yes, we have all of the history since we got the number, nothing before that since it wasn’t flagged before. And not the text of the calls, not set up for that until after this one on Friday afternoon when our computers got hold of the numbers. Before that he made several calls to the same mobile number in the Dhahran area while he was there, then he called that mobile number again from Riyadh a day later. Called it again the last day the number was on the network, Thursday from Jeddah. On Thu
rsday he also made about 25 other calls from Jeddah in a short time to numbers in Western Saudi Arabia.” Shirley stopped there.
Jones looked at Ted. “OK, you’re the integration guy. Do you have a theory?”
Ted looked right at him. “We do. We think the guy at the border was an inside job, and he called the landline just to report something he thought might be unusual. But no reason for the landline guy, this Mohammed, to call Khalid on his mobile unless the Brigadier and the three Americans were of interest to him, right? So we think he called and got instructions. Where are your people now, Mr Jones?”
“At a family compound with the Saudi General on the north side of the city of Ha’il”.
“Right. Well, it turns out that a guy named Ripley out of Paris had been tracking the same mobile number, this Khalid, since things started happening there last Tuesday or Wednesday. We think Khalid has sent Mohammed and at least 25 guys to Ha’il to take out your friends there.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because he told us.” Ted shuffled his papers and came up with the one he wanted. “Thursday afternoon he talks to some guy in Dhahran, we think it’s Mohammed. They’re talking about a ‘birthday party’ they tried to attend the night before, but nobody was home. Khalid’s ‘brother’ it says. Mohammed says there was nobody home, but Khalid says now he thinks the nephew or whatever is in Ha’il, and he wants Mohammed to go there and pay his respects.”
“So?” Jones didn’t like this, but wasn’t sure where it was going.
“So, Khalid tells Mohammed and I quote: “yes, I have thought of that Mohammed, that is exactly what I have in mind. I have thought to have some people meet you at al-Buraydah with the gifts. I think perhaps something like twenty-five would do. What do you think?” and then Mohammed says “Khalid, I should think that would do, if God wills it. Are their gifts to be, err, so heavy? And Khalid says yeah, they are very heavy.” So we think Mohammed and a few guys, say 5 or 6 altogether for the aborted party in Dhahran, are driving cross country…” Ted nodded to Max who thumbed his remote. The map changed on the screen.
“They drive to Riyadh, then Buraydah, then a short drive about an hour and a half, to Ha’il. Khalid says his nephew and this birthday party is in Ha’il, Mr Jones. We think about 30 heavily armed Saudis are headed for your people and this Air Force brigadier’s compound. We think they were likely all in Ha’il on Saturday afternoon, about 33 hours ago.”
Jones was pale. “Do we know when? Did he say when?”
Ted looked straight at him and said: “he said Sunday night, Mr Jones. It’s about 0230 there now, Monday morning. What would you be doing?”
“Holy shit” and Jones was out of his chair. “I need a secure phone, have to call an Iridium number and warn my guys.” Jones was out into the Ops Center floor. “Comms, who’s the fucking comms officer??”