Strike Force Alpha

by Mack Maloney

  The five soldiers did not waver as the Tiger gunship bore down on them. Certainly they didn’t really intend to shoot down the Dubai helicopter. This was little chance of that, as rifle bullets would most likely just bounce off the heavily armored gunship. No, this was an act of defiance. The five soldiers standing firm, the Stars and Stripes flapping in the wind behind them. Suddenly the Tiger pilots knew what this was all about….

  These were the Crazy Americans—or five of them anyway. And in effect they were saying: Do you really want to fuck around with us?

  The Tiger pilots didn’t.

  No one in the Persian Gulf did.

  The pilots knew they could blow these five guys off the roof in a heartbeat. But if they did, some night soon they would surely awake to find more of the Crazies standing over their beds, and the beds of their wives and children, axes in hand. Only the most horrible end imaginable would come from that. That’s the way the Crazies worked.

  The Tiger pilots wanted no part of it. So they killed the weapons computer and veered off, just seconds before it would have fired automatically.

  Then they made a call back to their commander and reported that the expensive new French helicopter had malfunctioned.

  Reluctantly, the commander told them to return to base.

  By the time Zangrelli ran back down to the penthouse, the Delta troopers had many of the hotel maids laid out on the floor, facedown.

  The first thought through Zangrelli’s head was: God, they’ve seen our faces…but do we really have to shoot them all?

  The maids weren’t being prepared for execution, though, as so many people on the bottom floor of the hotel thought. They were actually getting their fondest wish of the past two weeks. They were finally cleaning the penthouse.

  Hunn had put the maids to work picking up all the paper scattered around the huge suite. There was so much of it, it would have taken the Delta team hours to go through it all, and at this point time was a luxury they could not afford. Once the maids had gathered up a sizable quantity of the refuse, they would lay it out as neatly as possible on the floor of the big room and, along with the young Delta troopers on their hands and knees, would begin scanning the individual sheets, looking for what the American team wasn’t sure even existed. In all the thousands of old, overbooked airline tickets, were there really some that had yet to be used? And would it make any difference if there was?

  By a quirk of the printing, it turned out to be a fairly easy thing to check. The first line on each of the multiline statements indicated what date the ticket being purchased could be used. Anything earlier than the present date was quickly discarded—in trash bags, at the maids’ insistence. Still there were hundreds of sheets to go through, each one listing hundreds of tickets.

  So Zangrelli didn’t even have a chance to tell Hunn about the close encounter with the Tiger gunship. He wasn’t four steps into the big room when the Delta squad leader dragged him down to the floor and started him looking through the paper debris as well. Meanwhile the noise and sirens were increasing down below. And even though the troopers had cut power to every floor except the one they were on, they knew it was just a matter of time before the police or the military or even the firefighters got enough gumption to climb nine floors in the dark to see just what the hell was going on. And that would only lead to another bloody shoot-out.

  Zangrelli and Hunn were down on the floor no more than a minute when they heard a scream from the next room. They immediately had their weapons up and ready. What now? Zangrelli thought. One of the maids came running into the room, waving a sheet of paper over her head. She gave the sheet to Hunn and pointed to a group of receipts in the middle of many. Sure enough, it was a list of airline tickets purchased for flights that were leaving later that very morning, just a few hours away. Twenty in all. Just about what they were looking for.

  The roller coaster was on its way up the hill again….

  The other troopers cheered. Hunn remained stoic, though. He pocketed the sheet and then began barking orders to his men. In seconds, the Delta guys started tying up the maids in earnest, binding hands together with duct tape and putting pillowcases over their heads, making them look more like prisoners than allies.

  Why?

  As Hunn explained to Zangrelli: “They might have just given us more help in catching these monkeys than the entire U.S. intelligence community put together. What do you think the mooks would do to them if they ever found that out?”

  Aboard Ocean Voyager

  1:00 A.M.

  “You would have made a lousy burglar,” Phelan was saying to Ryder. “Your hands are just too honest.”

  Ryder could not disagree. True, he had talent in his hands, at least for flying souped-up jet fighters. But he was not so good at picking locks and such. And yet that’s exactly what he was trying to do now. He had a screwdriver, a pen, and a butter knife, and with all three he was trying to snap the lock off the drawer at the bottom of Bobby Murphy’s desk.

  The ship was still rolling; the rain outside was coming down in sheets. The heat had shut down throughout the vessel, and many of the lights were flickering, too. They were running out of fuel; there was just enough to keep the ship’s engines turning and not much more. It was now just as cold and clammy in the upper decks as it usually was way down below.

  The team leaders had not budged from Murphy’s old stateroom, though. They were still here, going through his papers, even as the condensation was building up on the cabin windows and the big clock on the wall was ticking even louder.

  Their quest in the stateroom had been a frustrating one up to this point. Murphy tended to write a lot of things down, but most of what they’d uncovered had to do with the operation of the ship: its logistics situation, the number of miles on the screws, the weight distribution of the containers. Items that were maddeningly routine. They did find one scrap of paper stuffed in a notebook, that read: Profile on Ali M. due today? But they had no idea what it meant.

  Right about the time the lights began blinking, the team leaders turned their attention to the very ornate mahogany desk in the corner. It was the only thing in the large room they had not poked into, including the liquor cabinet. They’d discovered that every drawer in the desk was unlocked and empty—except for the bottom one. Why was it different? What might it hold? They’d set Ryder, their senior man, to work on it. But after 10 minutes the drawer’s lock had defied all methods of pushing, pulling, and twisting.

  Ten minutes, wasted….

  Finally Phelan nudged Ryder aside, drew out his service pistol, and fired at the lock, five times, at point-blank range. It disintegrated as expected, but the young pilot also succeeded in demolishing half the desk as well as filling the cabin with smoke.

  It was a small price to pay, though, as they found something very tantalizing inside the drawer. It was a personal diary Murphy had been keeping, a small green journal, with a cheap clasp and a key dangling from its back cover. It had BOBBY MURPHY printed neatly in blue ink across the first page and it was time-stamped the day he’d first come aboard. At some point within, the little guy had jotted down, in his very conversational writing style, a few deep dark passages about what shape he thought the Next Big Thing might take.

  They gathered around the bullet-ridden desk and read as Ryder turned the pages. The most intriguing scenario Murphy had come up with, and first on the list, had the terrorists taking local flights out of the Middle East, hijacking a number of U.S. airliners at their connecting points in Europe, and then crashing those airliners into prestigious or symbolic targets in the United States, a kind of “Super 9/11.” In the margin, Murphy had scrawled the names of all of the bridges leading into Manhattan, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Washington Monument as possible objectives, based on statements Al Qaeda had made in the past. He’d also written the words: Coordinated or staggered? beside this first entry. Also: How will they dodge our fighters?
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  The second group listed 10 nuclear power plants on the East Coast of the United States as potential targets, all of them close to population centers. The third group had 10 nuclear sites in the Midwest under the same bull’s-eye. Next to this pair of entries Murphy had written two more notes: 747s and larger would be needed for nukes and even with enough warning, still no chance to evacuate?

  The fourth entry played out a scenario in which up to 10 U.S. airliners would be hijacked and then simultaneously blown up over the mid-Atlantic, certainly a death blow for what was left of the U.S. airline industry. The fifth entry detailed another massive attack against New York City, but this time with crashes specifically targeted around the Wall Street area. Next to this Murphy had written: A real kick in the country’s financial scrotum!

  It was the sixth entry that proved most perplexing. It consisted of just two words, both underlined several times and complete with multiple exclamation marks. The two words: Or maybe!!!

  Reading this last entry, the team leaders could almost see their absent boss reaching what he might have considered the likeliest of scenario of all but, for whatever reason, not getting more than those two puzzling words on paper before being interrupted, perhaps by those who had come to take him away.

  Not a minute after they finished reading Murphy’s last entry, the sat phone came to life.

  Once again Martinez answered the phone before the second beep. It was Hunn.

  The Delta commander listened for a moment, then pumped his fist in the air.

  “OK, Ryder was right—they found something,” he said. He started repeating verbatim what Hunn was telling him: “‘Twenty tickets. All flights out of the same airport in Bahrain. Starting around 0800 hours this morning. Two tickets each flight. Local Arab air carriers. Ten connecting points. Ten different destinations, all in Europe….’”

  “Ten different destinations?” Phelan asked. “They’re not all going to the same place?”

  Martinez just shrugged. “I guess not.”

  “Actually, that’s what most of them did on September Eleventh,” Curry told them. “Just like it says on Murph’s list, they flew somewhere else before hijacking the airplanes they used in the attacks.”

  “But why go through all that trouble?” Ryder asked him. “Why not go direct?”

  Curry explained: “They wanted to get into the system early. They knew it was easier to move around that way. Back then there was less security flying out of a smaller place. Less suspicion. Plus, if one or two got caught or were delayed, the others could continue the plan. On Nine-Eleven, those that had to made their connecting flights; then the smaller groups all met up. Then they flew off to murder three thousand people.”

  “So if Murph was right then,” Gallant said, “the mooks are still one step away from the big moment.”

  “Yeah, a baby step,” Curry replied.

  Martinez gave Hunn the go-ahead to finally leave the Royal Dubai hotel. He told the Delta team to get airborne, get out over open water, avoid the bad weather, and await further orders. Then he hung up.

  Ryder was still puzzled, though. “But why would they buy up all those other tickets?” he asked. “They succeeded in knocking almost every U.S. airliner out of the sky. What did the radio broadcasts say? Only about ten percent of the planes are still flying between America and Europe? That’s a whole lot of planes that ain’t flying. So, when these guys reach their connecting points, what are they going to do? Hijack those few planes that are left?”

  Blank faces all around the table. It did seem strange—because there were fewer airliners flying at the moment, the hijackers would have fewer planes to pick from. And certainly the security at those connecting terminals would not have decreased. Why then the flood of ticket buying over-booking and bomb threats?

  No one knew.

  “But what the fuck difference does that make?” Phelan said finally. “Wherever they’re going, they’ll never make it that far, because now we know what they are up to and all we’ve got to do is get our guys to that airport and blast them.”

  “The kid is right,” Curry said. “It’s the only thing to do.”

  But Martinez abruptly held up his hand. “Wait a minute,” he said cautiously. “We can’t be too hasty here.”

  Outside, the rain was splattering against the huge cabin windows. Thunder rumbled off in the distance. Martinez lit his cigar and let out a long troubled cloud of smoke.

  “Like you said, these guys are still one step away,” he began. “But we’re still at least one step behind them. I mean, Ryder’s question is a good one. Why would they go to such great lengths to ground nearly every U.S. airliner if they intend to use them in whatever they’ve got planned? And why are there only twenty tickets in the block Hunn found and twenty-two mooks on the CD?”

  Another long stream of smoke.

  “I think we have to be smart here,” he concluded. “And not jump in the deep end too quick.”

  But Curry went ballistic. “I hope you’re not suggesting that we hold off on these twenty guys,” he challenged Martinez. “When we’re so close? That’s crazy….”

  “I’m not saying ‘hold off,’” Martinez replied, not quite as calm as a moment before. “I’m saying that we use our heads. Sure, if we go in shooting, there’s a chance we’ll nail these particular monkeys. But we also might miss something going on somewhere else. We’re not even sure if these guys are the real hijackers or just messenger boys. And let’s face it. We’ve been trigger-happy since this whole thing began. We nailed those guys in Saudi, we nailed Zoobu in the electronics store, and we just nailed six more in that hotel and that Jamaal character before that. If any of them still had a pulse, he might have been a fountain of information.”

  He paused, as if to reach for a can of beer that wasn’t there.

  “Now, I know we’re out here to mess these guys up, whenever and wherever we can,” he went on. “But so far, going in with guns blazing has just made things more complicated. And besides, we’re so strung out now, we’re only going to have one last shot at them. We’ve got to make it a good one….”

  Curry was still furious. “But you might be letting them slip through our fingers!” he said. “This could be the only chance we have to redeem ourselves!”

  Martinez finally exploded—something that was long overdue. He fired his newly lit cigar over their heads and against the far wall. It went by Ryder and Phelan like a rocket.

  “It isn’t about us anymore!” he roared back at Curry. “Man, when are you going to get that through your head? The time to think about saving our own sorry asses passed long ago. This is different. This is about saving the lives of the people those greasy assholes want to kill. Innocent lives. American lives. And God knows how many this time. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve come full circle here, Red. You had to convince me earlier, but now I’m finally onboard. They sent us out here to stop these guys—and that’s what we’re going to do, even if it means they’ll be giving us our medals in jail. But, damn it, we’ve only got one bullet left in the chamber and we’ve got to be absolutely certain of when to pull the trigger. If not, then this whole thing really will have been a Chinese fire drill.”

  He took a moment, calmed down, and caught his breath.

  “Now we still don’t know what they are up to exactly,” he began again. “But we know it’s starting soon. If we can just get a hook into whoever is going to use those tickets, without their knowing it, we just might be surprised at what we find at the other end. It will also buy us time until the Spooks can break into the next level of the CD….”

  An uncomfortable silence descended on the room. Curry just stared at the floor. Gallant put his head in his hands. Ryder and Phelan slumped farther into their seats. It was impossible to tell if any of them were thinking straight. They were too tired, too drained, too punch-drunk.

  “So, what you’re suggesting,” Ryder finally said, “is that we play it cool for once?”

  Martinez just
shook his head wearily, then began dialing Hunn again.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” he said.

  Manama, Bahrain

  6:00 A.M.

  The capital city police received the trouble call shortly after dawn.

  There was something wrong at a domestics shop downtown, in an alley called al-Zakim Place. Customers arriving just before sunrise found the store locked and shuttered, unusual, as the owner was known to open at 5:00 A.M. every day.

  A small crowd of women was waiting outside when the police van arrived, anxious to get material for the day’s sewing. The cops were both fat and lazy, though, and insisted on having a smoke before they took any action. One did look underneath the shuttered window and saw the store’s main products hanging from hooks on the other side of the glass. Bolts of black, white, and gray material, gold chains, cell phones, and sandals. The shop was dark within.

  The cops finished their cigarettes, not any more quickly despite the murmured protests from the gaggle of women. Then one policeman retrieved a tire iron from the van’s trunk and, after much grunting and groaning, snapped the shop’s padlock in two. The front door slowly swung open.

  A rush of incense and body odor flooded out. The cops waited for it to pass, then turned on their flashlights and tentatively stepped inside. Hearing muffled cries coming from the back room, they pulled their pistols and slowly walked to the cluttered storage area. Here they found the owner—an 80-year-old man named Barook Qadeen—and his three daughters. They’d been tied to chairs facing one another in a tight circle around a slowly boiling teapot, the steam from which had kept them warm for the past two hours.

  The policemen untied the old man first. He began sputtering something about being robbed but got caught up in a hacking cough and could not be understood. The police then untied his oldest daughter. She was able to spit out only a few words before collapsing in tears. The next daughter was in no better shape. Soon the crowded storeroom was filled with coughing, moaning, and wailing.