The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6

by B. Hesse Pflingger

  “That will be very soon, I’m sure. Mr. Fawaz was tied up today but he looks forward to seeing you tomorrow. He will send a driver to collect you at five o’clock in the morning, if that is all right with you. And by the way, he suggests that you will be more comfortable if you wear clothing suitable for being out in the country.”

  I thanked him again for the tour and he drove away, leaving me standing there wondering: five a.m. for a drive in the country?

  Friday, July 27, to Wednesday, August 1, 1990

  I waited in the hotel lobby at 0500 hours togged out for a jaunt in the countryside, such as it was. From what I’d seen of it yesterday Kuwait didn’t boast much jaunt-worthy countryside. The hot buffet hadn’t yet been laid, but I managed to round up enough coffee, dates and rolls to fuel me for a while. Mr. Fawaz showed up within a few minutes. He wore a military uniform today, mid-level officer.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jake,” he said brightly. I hope you slept well last night.”

  I said I had, though I hadn’t really.

  “Good,” he said. “Did your tour with Mr. Haroun go well?”

  “Yes it did,” I said. “He was very thorough and informative. He covered your city from one end to the other. Very impressive, I must say.”

  “Yes, we have tried our utmost to do right for our people with our oil revenues. Today I will show you some other aspects of our nation that cannot be conveniently seen by automobile. I apologize for the early hour, but as you will see, some variety of wildlife are best observed before the world has fully awakened.”

  He guided me outside to the curb, to a military vehicle with cop lights and sirens above the windshield. The sun was just rising in a crystal clear sky, a few stars still twinkling at the opposite horizon. The early morning gloom had only begun to disperse, but the temperature already challenged 90F. We took the back seat and he instructed the driver to get under way.

  Traffic was light so we were able to speed down Highway 51. A short way beyond the International Airport we went through a major cloverleaf interchange and abruptly our six-lane highway became a country road with fewer lanes but still well paved. We proceeded south about 20 miles through flat, mostly desolate terrain populated by oil derricks along one stretch. We came to a large compound with military length runways, Ahmed Ali Jaber Air Force Base. The driver pulled out on the tarmac and rolled to a stop beside an attack helicopter, a French Gazelle, rotors lazily turning. The pilot and another military man stood by.

  Fawaz and I got out and approached the chopper. “Mr. Jake, meet Colonel Aarzam of the Kuwait Army, and our pilot, Major Nmir. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Jake Fonko, who has come from America to assist us.” We shook hands all around. “Let’s not tarry,” said Fawaz. “We’ve no time to spare. Element of surprise, you know,” he quipped to me.

  We climbed aboard and donned flight helmets. I couldn’t fathom what this had to do with my assignment to investigate financial irregularities in Spain; all would be made clear, no doubt. We lifted up, tilted northward and took off over the city, flying fast. Rather than follow the highway toward Basrah, the pilot took us easterly out across a stretch of bay. After a time we flew low past a big field of oil wells, then followed a course between farmlands along Mutla Ridge to our left, and what looked like marshland to our right. At a point where a large inlet flowed into the marsh, Fawaz remarked, “Now we have reached the Iraqi border.” To the pilot he said, “Go three more miles north. Then take us up to 1500 meters and turn west, paralleling the border.”

  We sped along, coming out of the rising sun, and I spotted something on the horizon at two o’clock. As we drew nearer, I could see a large troop encampment spread out across the desert. Did I say large? It soon was revealed to be huge. Fawaz handed me some binoculars.

  The camps were still waking up and stirring about, but it was clear these were battle-ready units. They had tanks. Hundreds of tanks, and some mobile artillery. And a shitload of APCs—armored personnel carriers. We passed over a small town and found more troops and tanks positioned on the other side. I estimated at least four divisions, about 80,000 men, in a line several miles long, poised not far above the border crossing of Highway 80. Oddly there were a number of large, articulated cargo trucks—in the U.S. we’d call them “big rigs”—scattered around the rear areas. Hauling what kinds of cargo?

  Fawaz said something to the pilot in Arabic, and he turned us abruptly south toward Kuwait and upped our speed. “We’d best clear out of here before they scramble something after us,” Fawaz remarked to me. In a minute we’d re-crossed the border, and after passing over another large oil field Major Nmir set us down on the edge of a forward Army outpost. Compared to what I’d just witnessed, it seemed more like a Boy Scout Jamboree campout, with perhaps a couple platoons on site. The camp looked neat, maybe a little too neat. It had been set up recently and could be quickly disassembled and evacuated. The three of us took our helmets off and climbed down to the ground. “Well, Mr. Jake,” said Fawaz, “what do you think?”

  “Think about what? If you mean the army we just saw, I’d say Kuwait is facing big trouble ahead. That’s at least four divisions lined up a couple miles across the border, and they look ready to fight.”

  “Actually, our intelligence people say it’s five divisions—about 100,000 men—including Republican Guards…the Iraqi equivalent of your Airborne Divisions.”

  “How long have they been there?”

  “They’ve been establishing the camp for several weeks, but once the facilities were in place, the numbers ran up rapidly and then stabilized at present strength in the last few days.”

  “Has Iraq been threatening war lately?”

  “Iraq has perennial complaints against Kuwait, but they have issued no threats or declarations pertaining to these troops here, no. In fact their diplomats assure us that their country means Kuwait no harm.”

  “Perhaps it’s just a big war game, but I’m not aware of any instances in which that kind of troop concentration didn’t soon attack.”

  “My government fears so too, despite all the reassurances. So what would you advise us to do?”

  “Do you mean you want my off-hand opinion?”

  “Oh no,” said Mr. Fawaz. “We need your considered opinion, after careful analysis. That is why we brought you here.”

  “I agreed to come here to investigate some financial irregularities between Kuwaiti investors and Spanish investments.”

  “So you were told. When I talked to you in Los Angeles I was not authorized to mention the military situation, for security reasons. The world at large still does not know anything about it. And we feared that you’d never agree to come if we told you at the outset we were in danger of being invaded by Iraq. But surely you must have suspected something when you saw the deposit in your account? Why on earth would we pay you that much for a job that could be done as well by a team of ordinary accountants and lawyers?”

  “But if you’d approached me straightforwardly, I’d have told you that I’m not qualified to give you that sort of military advice.”

  “Come now, Mr. Jake. Your modesty is commendable, but when we saw that this Iraqi troop build-up was in earnest our intelligence specialists asked their colleagues in allied nations for recommendations. Your name came up in more places than any other. Such a reputation cannot be undeserved.”

  If you only knew, I thought. “Look,” I said. “For several years I was an officer in army intelligence. I served a hitch in Nam with the Rangers in the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols. I had a brief assignment on loan to the Central Intelligence Agency. But I’ve had no experience in strategic planning. Small unit tactics in jungle warfare is where my expertise lies.”

  “Yes, of course,” Fawaz said. “And that will come in handy too. Now, what kinds of preparations would you advise? Considering the force buildup across the border, it appears we have very little time to get a defense
in place.”

  “Look…oh, what the hell. Okay, first of all what kinds of armed forces does Kuwait have?”

  “All Kuwaiti men—citizens, I mean—have military training, and between ages 18 and 30 they are in the reserves. So theoretically that’s perhaps as many as 100,000 men we could call on. Especially if some of the foreigners volunteer.”

  “If they’re well-equipped that’s not a bad start, if there was adequate time. The foreigners would have to be trained. How quickly can your regulars and reserves be mustered?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not even that simple,” Fawaz said. “Many Kuwaiti men in the reserves are out of shape. Another problem is their training, which I fear can be desultory. Our professional soldiers are very good, but our young men do not always take their service seriously. They are sons of the wealthy, after all. Many of them live in luxury and do not even work. Few if any of our soldiers have ever been in a real battle, or even a real fight, in their lives. And then many of those theoretically eligible are currently out of the country—on vacation, studying abroad, and what have you. Nor do we have adequate equipment on hand at short notice to engage in a full-scale shooting war.”

  “So what size operational army are we looking at?”

  “Optimistically, 17,000 in total, and like any army, most of them are not combat arms.”

  Facing 100,000 troops battle-hardened by the recent war with Iran, positioned less than an hour from where we stood. “What does your air force look like?”

  “We have 24 Gazelle attack helicopters, several of which are requisitioned to the police. For interceptors we have 34 Mirage fighter jets. For ground support we have several dozen Douglas Skyhawk attack jets.”

  “And they are operational?”

  “No, not all of them. Most, maybe. The pilots are well-trained but not battle-tested.”

  “What about armor?”

  “Of main battle tanks, we have fifteen World War II M-48AB Patton tanks. Also we have more than 200 BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles from the Soviet Union. We have on order 200 M-84s from Yugoslavia, but unfortunately, only four have yet been delivered.”

  “If I may ask, what battle plan did your military have in mind when they structured their forces?”

  “We are a small country,” said Mr. Fawaz. “Our thinking was that we should be able to hold off an attack long enough to give allied nations time to bring in sufficient men and arms. We never anticipated attacking any other nation, nor withstanding a powerful invader on our own.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me sit down with some of your military planners and see what kind of defensive strategy we can devise.”

  The heavily loaded traffic on the roads and the big cruisers off the coast, all heading south, now made sense. Word of the border build-up was leaking out, and in-the-know Kuwaitis were leaking out too. And so I followed the Kuwaiti military doctrine. Comparing what I saw massed across the border to Kuwaiti defense forces available, clearly the Kuwait army had the survival chances of a crippled anchovy in a shark feeding frenzy. Therefore my personal strategy was to buy some time while I came up with a way out of this mess.

  *

  The chopper whisked us back to Kuwait City, dropping us off on a helipad, and Fawaz returned me to my hotel by mid-morning, leaving me able to catch the breakfast I’d missed earlier. It was Friday, the Muslim Holy Day, so most everything in town, including government offices, was closed while the Faithful did their duties at mosque. Therefore I intended to spend the rest of the day gathering my thoughts, I told him when he dropped me off. My first thought was to pay a pronto visit to the U.S. Embassy to find out their take on the situation.

  After breakfast I strolled around the hotel lobby and out to the swimming pool overlooking the Bay. No one was using it, and I hadn’t had any exercise in the last several days, so I returned to my room and put on my swim trunks. The pool was warm and the blazing sun had brought the air temperature up toward 110F. My dip was anything but refreshing, but I swam hard laps to the point of exhaustion and then lay on a chaise in the shade until I dried off. That didn’t take long.

  Returning to my room, I found a petite Asian maid tidying up the bed. Her facial features looked familiar. “Excuse me,” I said.

  She left off tidying and turned around, “Yes sir?” she said.

  “Are you by any chance from the Philippines?”

  “Why, yes I am. How did you know?”

  “I spent some time there, and the Filipinas have a distinctive look. Very beautiful ladies. What part of the Philippines do you hail from?”

  “The city of Manila. Are you familiar with it?”

  “It was where I spent most of my time. Are you one of the Filipinas with a teaching degree who couldn’t find work there?”

  “How did you know about us? Yes, that is my situation.”

  “I knew a woman, her name was Luz, who worked for a time as a housemaid in Singapore.” I’d thought it best not go into Luz’s subsequent career, but not to worry.

  “Oh, was that the same Luz, the escort woman who married the minister? She is very famous.”

  “I believe it was. She told me that being a housemaid in Singapore was not easy work. How is your job here?”

  “Thankfully, my job here is better than that, though several of the managers have trouble keeping their hands to themselves. There are many Filipinas employed here as housemaids and nannies in Kuwaiti homes, and it is much worse here than in Singapore. Here they are often treated as nothing more than slaves. Employers confiscate their passports, work them all day long with no time off and withhold their pay. The men of the households use them as concubines, and the women beat and abuse them in retaliation. And there is nothing they can do about it, as foreigners have no rights here. Here in the Hilton Hotel I have long working hours but otherwise am free to go about town in my time off, and there is a workers’ union to look out for us, a little at least.”

  “I gather there are a lot of foreigners here in Kuwait?”

  “I believe the foreigners somewhat outnumber the Kuwaitis. In addition to maids and nurses from the Philippines, many Palestinians and Bangladeshis come here to work as laborers and cleaners. Also nurses and menials and shop clerks from India. Kuwaitis will not do those kinds of jobs. Because of the oil money they do not have to, and often families spoil the little boys and little girls rotten. So it suits them to bring in poor foreigners to do the necessary work. Oh, it is not that bad a place. It is well-managed and clean. Compared to other places the pay is adequate, so we can send money home to our families. I’ll not complain, as this is better than my prospects in the Philippines. There is nothing like Philippine poverty in Kuwait, and also very little crime. I count my blessings.”

  “As well we all should,” I replied. I went into the other room and read a copy of The Financial Times I’d picked up in the lobby while she finished her work. I found nothing at all in it about the army across the border.

  After Christabel (I gathered from her name tag) had tidied the room to perfection I put on some street clothes and went down to see what’s what at the Embassy, located across the road. I’d presumed our Embassy would keep to a normal American working schedule, but I walked over to find it shut tight. Friday was the Muslim Holy Day, and our Embassy adhered to the local workweek, Sunday through Thursday. At least they followed standard American working hours, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Great—another two days, at least, to get a clue.

  Now that I’d been Shanghaied into being a military strategic advisor, I thought another tour was in order, analyzing Kuwait City through different eyes. It being Holy Day, no Muslims worked, so a young Indian man, Raghu by name, drove the Merc today. I told him what I had in mind and we were on our way. Traffic was lighter than usual, which was good because he drove as recklessly as third-world people tend to do. As a first destination I told Raghu to drive me over to the Grand Souk—might as we
ll take a look. “I can take you there, sir,” he said, “but everything is closed right now. A few shops and food stalls will open later in the day.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you what, just drive me around slowly through the city center. I’ll tell if I want to stop anyplace.”

  “Very good, sir,” he said, and around city center we cruised. It had an entirely different aspect from the tour yesterday. Then it was a gleaming, ultra-modern city on the edge of the desert. Now it was a potential invasion target. What could that horde massed across the border do here? Hundreds of tanks roaming through broad avenues in a modern city supported by infantry could do plenty. The glass-sheathed high-rise office buildings looked pathetically fragile.

  We drove back and forth for a while, and then I directed Raghu to follow Highway 6 out of the city. When we reached Highway 80, we went north a few miles. I had him stop, and I got out of the car and walked out onto the bare ground.

  Forget any images of desert you may have picked up from Lawrence of Arabia or The English Patient. This was no expanse of sensuous, drifting sand dunes. This ground was flat as a pool table, pebble-strewn, firm and bereft of vegetation. Tanks and personnel carriers could stream into Kuwait City down that six lane highway at cruising speed. Nor did any terrain features suitable for defensive positions present themselves. The only cover I saw on our chopper trip was oil fields and farm plots. Say the Kuwaitis positioned their tank force in ambush below Mutla Ridge, concealed among date palm orchards. Fifteen obsolete Patton tanks in the hands of amateurs spring out to challenge 300 Russian T-72s run by veterans? They might as well just lay spike strips across the road, for all the difference it would make.

  Shit. Mission Im-bleeping-possible.

  I wanted no part of this impending tragedy. There was simply no useful advice I could give them, from any angle. I couldn’t even fake anything. Come tomorrow I would get my passport from Fawaz, resign my commission and join the mob leaving town. Back in L.A. I’d return their money, less a bit for a few days’ time and uncovered expenses. So long, it’s been good to know you.