by Oliver North
A concrete, one-story blockhouse in the middle of the grounds, topped by a large satellite antenna and three smaller dishes, had to be a communications facility. Peering through the binoculars, Newman figured that the large utility building at least four meters high, without windows, was likely some kind of vehicle shed. Next to it, completing the quadrangle, was the large building that faced toward the highway. He had seen the loading docks on the opposite side of the structure and assumed it was the warehouse.
Across a courtyard from that building and also facing the highway, a large complex sprawled out in an L-shaped configuration. Probably their offices.
On the southwest corner of the property, adjacent to the runway, was a smaller, separate building. It was obviously constructed with more refinements than the other buildings. He made a mental note that this was either the headquarters for the facility or the residence for the onsite commander, or both.
Now, where is Rachel? If she's being held here, in which building? He used the night-vision device and binoculars, checking each of the buildings and areas once more, very carefully.
His heart pounded. He wished he could go in there and take the two women away with him into the night and let the commandos finish the job the following night. But he knew he had to stay with the plan that he had given General Grisham, Skillings, and Rotem. They needed him on the ground to make the raid successful. So he tried to put thoughts of Rachel out of his mind for the time being.
As he lay on the ground peering into the optics of the night-vision device and binoculars, he committed every detail of what he had seen to memory. He would recite what he had seen, detail by detail, to Skillings when he checked in with him at 2400 hours.
As he was looking through the lens of the night-vision scope, an enormous flare of light momentarily blinded his right eye. He reacted quickly and looked away, but he had to close that eye in order to see with his unaffected left eye. Then he heard the noise of the jet whose landing lights must have flared into the lens. The sleek Learjet touched down at the east end of the runway and immediately began braking, its engines roaring. It coasted to a stop and parked not far from the hangar. After a moment, the door was opened. One of the pilots jumped down and lowered the exit stairs that were built into the lower half of the clamshell door.
Fortunately, the door was on the left side of the aircraft, directly in Newman's line of vision. The effects of the sudden flare in the binoculars were wearing off. The person deboarding was Komulakov; once again, Newman's heart raced in anticipation of confronting the man.
When he disembarked, General Komulakov ordered the two Swiss pilots to refuel the Lear and to pull it into the hangar. He then strode into the compound and directly to the guest house where Dotensk was waiting. Without speaking, he strode into a small office off of the living room and poured himself a glass of vodka.
The Ukrainian arms merchant waited until Komulakov took a second deep draught.
“Qusay is sending a shipment of two trucks filled with gold bars. They will arrive by noon tomorrow or so,” the Ukrainian reported. “Can you imagine, General? Two huge trucks filled with gold bars!”
Komulakov just sipped his vodka. Why doesn't he at least offer me a drink? Dotensk thought. Dotensk was handing him a hundred million dollars in gold. It is time for this partnership to end. “Did you have a good trip to Damascus?”
“No!” Komulakov said. “It was a terrible trip.”
“Uh...I am sorry to hear that.” Dotensk walked to the credenza and poured himself a drink.
“I went to Damascus to receive an urgent message from the spy Morales,” Komulakov said. “Apparently, he found something so important he was willing to risk being found out. Morales must work at the U.S. State Department; none of the other intelligence agencies would have such direct access to the material he sent. So there was some good news, at least—I can find him on my own, now that I know where he
is.”
“What did he want to tell you?”
“He said that Newman is not back in the United States, as I had ordered. He is still over here. In fact, he is in Iraq—looking for Saddam's nukes! I can't believe it. Why would he take such risks? Doesn't he know that I promised to kill his wife and her friend if he didn't do exactly as I instructed?”
“But how did this Morales fellow find out?” Dotensk asked. “Perhaps he is misinformed. I cannot believe Newman would put his wife in obvious jeopardy like that.”
“Neither can I. I can only assume it has something to do with that general who was supposedly helping him get back into the States to find Morales.”
“Weren't you using Newman to track down this spy because you felt Morales might compromise you if he was caught?”
“Yes. But now Morales himself has opened the door for me to find him. I don't need Colonel Newman to kill Morales now. And Newman knows too much. He'll put two and two together and figure out our role in providing those nuclear weapons to Saddam. He must be silenced before he can lead the Americans to us.”
“How will you do that?”
“Go get his wife. Bring her over here. We'll have her call him on his satellite phone. I have the number. We'll have him go to a location that we can control—and then we'll kill him.”
“Where, Dimitri? You cannot tell him to come here. His phone is surely monitored—by the Jews, the Americans, or both. If they know where we are sending him, they will meet us there with one of their commando units—like they did when they tried to kill you at the safe house.”
“Yes, yes…you're right, Leonid. We need a place where they can't get to us but he can. How about if we tell him to go to the VIP lounge at the airport in Damascus, just as we did when we arranged for him to come in? It's too dangerous for the Duvdevan or Mossad to stage a confrontation, and the Americans can't get there either. We can have a couple of our PFLP men meet him at the VIP lounge as before, and they can drive him to our hangar over at the other side of the airport. Tell them to kill him there. Oh, and have him strangled—I don't want any blood in the hangar. Put his corpse in one of those body bags and we'll have it flown out and dumped in the desert the next time they are flying one of the MI-8s.”
“Yes... that sounds like it will work. And what about the women?”
“Take them out into the desert and kill them both as soon as Mrs. Newman calls her husband. Have her tell him he'll be met at the VIP lounge by someone who will take him to where the women are. Tell him that in exchange for any information he has about Morales, I will release the women and he can take them with him from Damascus.”
“Do you think he will believe her?”
“Of course he will. He wants to believe it. He'll be there.”
Dotensk took the last swallow from his glass and stood up. “I will convince Mrs. Newman that they will be released, and that she must convince her husband to meet her in Damascus.”
“Yes...good. But add this incentive: tell her that if he does not come to Damascus to give me information on Morales, they will never see each other again and that their child will grow up without her. That should make her a very convincing interlocutor.”
NSA Collection and Analysis Center
Fort Meade, Maryland
Monday, 23 March 1998
1725 Hours, Local
“What's going on?” asked Roy Schumaker as he rushed into the watch center at the heart of the supersecret intelligence agency. He stared at one of the computer screens arrayed in the console in front of his subordinate, thirty-one-year-old Intercept Analyst Dale Morse. “Is this why the computer paged me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Morse. “It's not the text of the intercept—but it's a ‘Red Rocket' from GCHQ, and the SOP says we're supposed to disseminate this info immediately by Flash precedence even if we don't yet have the full intercept in from the field.”
“Well, did you disseminate it?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Morse, checking the electronic transmission log on another of the computer screens. He r
an his finger down the list on the screen. “It's gone to the White House, the VEEP, the DCI, State, Defense, NORAD, all the military CINCs, and NRO. I called the old man, and a courier has been dispatched with a copy for him.”
“Don't you generally clear that kind of thing with your superior first?” asked Schumaker, his voice revealing his irritation.
“Yes, sir. When I found out you weren't here yet, I tried calling your cell phone, but it wasn't turned on. I left you a message that we had an urgent matter. This seemed too important to wait.”
“Uh-huh.”
Schumaker picked up the printed advisory.
RED ROCKET / RED ROCKET / RED ROCKET NUCLEAR ATTACK WARNING
UK MOST SECRET / URGENT / EYES ONLY BIGOT LIST ALPHA U.S. TOP SECRET / FLASH / EYES ONLY NSC PRINCIPALS ONLY 23 2315:43 MAR 98 MAL LLT QX
1. GCHQ STATION JULIET HAS PARTIALLY DECRYPTED AN INTERCEPTED ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES GENERAL STAFF WARNING ORDER ALERTING ROCKET FORCES TO PREPARE TO EXECUTE QUOTE JERICHO SANCTION UNQUOTE AGAINST IRAQ.
2. ANALYSIS:
A. JERICHO SANCTION IS ISRAELI CODE PHRASE FOR NUCLEAR STRIKE USING CBM WEAPONS.
B. SPECIFIC TARGETS: UNK.
C. TIME OF ISRAELI MISSILE STRIKE: UNK.
D. MAY BE ISRAELI PREEMPTIVE ATTACK TO ELIMINATE NUCLEAR WEAPONS ACQUIRED BY IRAQ.
E. RELIABLE INTELLIGENCE INDICATES IRAQ IS ACQUIRING OR HAS ACQUIRED AT LEAST THREE NUCLEAR WEAPONS FROM UNK SOURCES.
“This is not good,” Schumaker muttered. “What's happened since this went out?”
“The President and Prime Minister have already talked about this. The Pentagon wanted to go to DEFCON One, but the White House nixed it because they think it will scare the public.”
“Uh-huh. Well, what now? Who's driving this runaway train?”
“I'm not sure. The Secretary of State, the DCI, and SECDEF are meeting with the President and the National Security Advisor,” Morse said.
“Do we have anyone from NSA at the White House?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why not? I should have been called in.”
“I guess everything was happening so fast, they didn't think of it. The President is on the phone with the UNSG to get ahold of Iraq right away, and the Secretary of State is calling the PM of Israel. They're trying to cool things off, threatening them with the worst possible sanctions if either of them tries to use their nukes.”
“Yeah, well...I doubt if the Israelis will back down now. They've been making it pretty clear for some time that if Israel is hit with a weapon of mass destruction, they will—how do they put it?—‘respond the only way they can.' I guess nobody ever expected Saddam to get a nuke. And unless somebody does something pretty quick, it looks like the Iraqis are all set to kick-start Armageddon.”
NATO HQ, licirlik Air Base
Adana, Turkey
Tuesday, 24 March 1998
0025 Hours, Local
Blackman and Thomas of MI6 were two very busy men as they prepared an operation to recover the nuclear weapons that Qusay Hussein was preparing to use. Blackman was on a sat phone to the commander of Four-Two Commando, Royal Marines Detachment in Saudi Arabia. Thomas, as the senior, was dealing with London while he waited for a call from this fellow Newman, who supposedly was to provide a reconnaissance report of what he found at the objective.
Blackman had already asked Gunnery Sergeant Skillings to find as many maps as possible of the area around At Tanf, Syria; Skillings also provided the imagery and details of the last two satellite passes over the objective.
Skillings came through the door into the little office adjacent to the NATO Operation Center that the two Brits were using as their temporary command post. “Excuse me, gentlemen; I have Lieutenant Colonel Newman calling on a sat phone. Would you care to accompany me into the Ops Center so you can talk to him yourselves?”
Thomas jumped up from the table and followed the Marine out the door while Blackman continued his coordination with the Royal Marines. In less than ten minutes, Newman was able to provide a detailed description of all he had observed of the IST facility. At Thomas's suggestion, they agreed that Newman would call again on his Iridium phone in an hour and attempt to conference in the Four-Two Commando leader and Major Rotem in Israel. As soon as Newman and Thomas terminated their call, Gunnery Sergeant Skillings set out to find the HQ signals officer to ensure their ability to connect and encrypt all the calls and record what was said.
“Well then,” said Thomas as he and Skillings re-entered the office where Blackman had just finished his conversation with the CO of Four-Two Commando in Saudi Arabia, “thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Newman, we now have a very good idea of what's going on at the objective. So why the long face, Blackman? ”
“Well sir, Colonel Banks says that even if they relocate our Royal Marines up to Turayf, the U.S. Marine CH-53 helos and the AH-1 Cobras that escort them can't carry enough fuel to make the round trip to At Tanf and back. One of the American Marine pilots said that he had signed for his helicopter and was loath to park it in Syria and walk home. He's asked if we know of any petrol stations on the way they could use to top off their tanks.”
“Midair refueling isn't an option?” asked Thomas.
“Asked that myself. Apparently the Marines don't have one of their KC-130 tankers out here, and all the American Air Force tanker assets are tied up refueling the aircraft doing the no-fly zone surveillance flights.”
“How about using the fuel at the airfield Lieutenant Colonel Newman just told us about?” asked Skillings.
The two Brits blinked at each other, then nodded. “Brilliant, Gunnery Sergeant, just brilliant,” Thomas said with a wide grin. “Colonel Banks will be glad to know we've found him a petrol station.”
“The Marines will want to know how much fuel there is,” said Blackman. “Did Colonel Newman give quantity estimates, Gunnery Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir.” Skillings checked his notes from the satellite phone call. “He says that the place has a mile-long runway, a tanker truck with jet fuel aboard, and he counted at least two above-ground storage tanks that he estimated to be of 20,000-gallon capacity each—though he doesn't know how much fuel is left in them. But assuming all that's accurate—and knowing Colonel Newman as I do—I'd say that there should be enough fuel for all our aircraft and the Israelis as well.”
“Blackman,” said Thomas, “be a good chap and ring up Colonel Banks at Four-Two Commando on his sat phone. Encourage him to tell his lads not to damage the fuel truck or the tank farm when they get to the objective. He should be able to see both on the satellite imagery we're sending him. Tell him that's our petrol for getting them back home.”
“Right, sir,” Blackman replied.
“And then, Gunnery Sergeant Skillings, would you be so kind as to get on the phone with Colonel Banks and bring him up to speed on the rest of your conversation with Colonel Newman? Let's see if we can work out a way for him to communicate with your Israeli friends so that we won't all be going bump in the night and running over each other.”
Aye, aye, sir.
It took less than a minute for Blackman to connect with Colonel Banks's encrypted sat phone and only a minute more for him to complete his business with the Royal Marine. The MI6 officer then handed the telephone to Gunnery Sergeant Skillings.
“Good morning, sir,” Skillings said. “Lieutenant Colonel Newman asked me to confirm that you have received the overhead imagery of the objective from NRO.”
“It's being downloaded now,” said Banks.
“Sir, Colonel Newman suggests that the runway serve as the boundary between your unit and the Israelis—with Four-Two Commando taking the terrain and buildings on the north side of the runway.”
“Quite clear on that, Gunnery Sergeant. And the Israelis are going in on the south side of the runway—is that right?”
“Yes, sir, that's right.”
“I see...and just how many Israeli commandos are coming to this little party and
what toys are they bringing?”
“Actually sir, no toys—just themselves—no aircraft even. They'll make a HALO drop just to the north of the target and then glide in to an LZ south of the runway. Colonel Newman will advise when they move up to within a hundred meters or so from the south entrance to the place. They will have a force of nine men, led by Major Ze'ev Rotem of the Sayeret Duvdevan. His wife is one of the hostages, and his team will lead the rescue while your Royal Marines come in from the other end and concentrate on the other targets.”
“I think that will work. By the way, since we've been on this call, your NRO has sent us the latest overhead imagery of the place. This gives us a good picture of the whole area. Next time you talk with Colonel Newman, tell him we're going to designate north as twelve o'clock and number the buildings on the objective based on where they are around the clock. That way, we will take the buildings from nine to three, and the Israelis will take the buildings from three to nine.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Skillings. “I'll pass that to Colonel Newman and Major Rotem so that we're all in the same playbook. And as Colonel Newman sends reports in here, I will see to it that it's all relayed directly to you and Major Rotem.”
“Well done, Gunnery Sergeant. Now, a few questions—and pass these along to those nice chaps from MI6 you have sitting there beside you, because I'm about to put my lads in harm's way and I want some answers: What time does this raid go down? Who is in command on the ground? Who is in overall control? Who makes the final go/no-go decision? My Marines can talk to your Marines in the helicopters, because we've been doing it all week out here in training. But what's the overall communications plan? How are my Marines to coordinate with the Israelis, and what arrangements are being made so that we can all talk to Lieutenant Colonel Newman on the ground? No offense, Gunnery Sergeant, but I sort of expected an officer to be running the show on your end.”
“Sir, the chain of command is clear. Lieutenant General George Grisham, Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command, is the overall commander. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Newman, USMC, is the overall ground commander. General Grisham is more involved in this mission than you know, sir. He is monitoring every aspect. And Colonel Newman is running the show, sir...from the front door of the target. I'm just the ears and voice for them. And I
