The outlaws
( Presidential agent - 6 )
W E B Griffin
W E B Griffin
The outlaws
ONE
El Obeid Airport North Kurdufan, Sudan 2130 31 January 2007 The small convoy-two battered Toyota pickups, a Ford F-150 pickup, and a Land Rover-had attracted little attention as it passed through Al-Ubayyid (estimated population around 310,000).
Al-Ubayyid was the nearest (seven kilometers) town to the El Obeid Airport, which was sometimes known as the Al-Ubayyid Airport. The town of Al-Ubayyid was sometimes known as El Obeid. In this remote corner of the world, what a village or an airport-or just about anything else-was called depended on who was talking.
The men were all armed with Kalashnikov rifles, and all bearded, and all were dressed in the long pastel-colored robes known as jalabiya, and wearing both tagia skullcaps and a length of cloth, called an imma, covering their heads.
The beds of the trucks each held one or two armed men. It was impossible to tell-even guess-what the cargo might be, as it was covered with a tarpaulin.
The convoy looked, in other words, very much like any other convoy passing through-or originating in-Al-Ubayyid on any given day. By whatever name, the town had been a transportation hub for nearly two centuries. First, there had been camel caravans. Then a rail line. Then roads-it's a nine-hour, five-hundred-kilometer trip from Khartoum-and finally, six kilometers south of town, the airport with a runway nearly a thousand meters long.
As it approached the airport, the convoy slowed and the headlights were turned off. It moved near to the end of the chainlink fence surrounding the airport and stopped, remaining on the road.
A dozen men-everyone but the drivers-quickly got out of the vehicles.
The man who had been in the front seat of the Land Rover went to the floodlight-not much of a floodlight, just a single fluorescent tube-on a pole at the end of the fencing and quickly shot it out with a burst from a.22 caliber submachine gun. The weapon was "suppressed," which meant that perhaps eighty percent of the noise a.22-long rifle cartridge would normally make was silenced.
He then quickly joined the others, who were in the process of quickly removing the immas and skullcaps from their heads and finally their long jalabiya robes. The discarded garments were then tossed into the Land Rover.
Under the jalabiya robes they had been wearing black form-fitting garments, something like underwear except these had attached hoods which, when they had been pulled in place, covered the head and most of the face.
Night-vision goggles and radio headsets were quickly put in place.
Next, they took from the Land Rover and the pickups black nylon versions of what was known in the U.S. and many other armies as "web equipment" and strapped it in place on their bodies.
The man with the.22 caliber submachine gun-the team leader-was joined by two other men equipped with special weapons. One was armed with a high-powered, suppressed sniper's rifle that was equipped with both night vision and laser sights. The other had a suppressed Uzi 9mm submachine gun.
The laws of physics are such that no high-powered weapon can ever be really suppressed, much less silenced. The best that could be said for the suppressed sniper's rifle was that when fired, it didn't make very much noise. The best that could be said for the Uzi was that when fired, it sounded like a suppressed Uzi submachine gun, which meant that it wasn't quite as noisy as an unsuppressed Uzi.
The sights on the sniper's rifle, which was a highly modified version of the Russian Dragunov SVD-S caliber 7.62 x 54R sniper's rifle, were state-of-the-art. When looking through the night-vision scope-which had replaced the standard glass optical scope-the marksman was able to see on the darkest of nights just about anything he needed to.
And by sliding a switch near the trigger, a small computer was turned on. A laser beam was activated. The computer determined how distant was the object on which sat the little red spot, and sent that message to the crosshairs on the sight. The result was that the shooter could be about ninety percent sure that-presuming he did everything else required of a marksman since the rifle was invented, such as having a good sight picture, firing from a stable position, taking a breath and letting half of it out before ever so carefully squeezing the trigger-the 147-grain bullet would strike his target within an inch or so of where the little red dot pinpointed.
The team leader made a somewhat imperious gesture, which caused another man-who had been standing by awaiting the order-to apply an enormous set of bolt cutters to the chainlink fence.
Within a minute, he had cut a gate in the fencing through which everyone could-and quickly did-easily pass.
The runway was about fifty meters wide. An inspection, which the team leader considered the most dangerous activity of this part of the operation, was required. A good leader, he had assumed this responsibility himself; he walked quickly in a crouch down the dotted line marking the center of the runway toward the small terminal building.
The man with the suppressed Uzi walked down the runway halfway between the dotted line and the left side, and the man with the sniper's rifle did the same thing on the right.
All the others made their way toward the terminal off the runway, about half on one side and half on the other. Most of them were now armed with the Mini Uzi, which is smaller than the Uzi and much larger than the Micro Uzi. The Kalashnikovs, as much a part of their try-to-pass-as-the-locals disguises as anything else, had joined the jalabiya robes and skullcaps in the Land Rover.
They had gone about halfway down the runway when a dog-a large dog, from the sound of him-began to bark. Or maybe it was the sound of two large dogs.
Everyone dropped flat.
The man with the Dragunov assumed the firing position, turned on the night sights, and peered down the runway.
He took his hand off the fore end and raised it with two fingers extended.
The team leader nodded.
The two shots didn't make very much noise, and there was no more barking.
The team leader considered his options.
It was possible that the shots had been heard, and equally possible that someone had come out of the terminal to see why the dogs were barking on the runway, or that they had come out-or were about to-to see why the barking dogs had stopped barking.
That meant the sooner they got to the terminal, the better.
But the problem of having to inspect the runway remained-that was the priority.
The team leader activated his microphone.
He spoke in Hungarian: "Trucks, lights out-repeat, lights out-to one hundred meters of the terminal. Hold for orders."
There was no need to give orders to the others; they would follow his example.
He got to his feet and resumed his inspection, this time at a fast trot, still crouched over.
The sniper and the man with the suppressed Uzi followed his example. The men off the runway, after a moment, followed their example.
They came to the dogs, lying in pools of blood where the animals had fallen, about a hundred meters from the terminal building.
The team leader could now see the flicker of fluorescent lights in the terminal building itself, and in the building beside it, which he knew housed the men-four to six-and their families-probably twice that many people-who both worked and lived at the airport.
And he could hear the exhaust of a small generator.
That was powerful enough to power the lights he saw now, and the two dozen or so fluorescent "floodlights" around the perimeter fence, but it wasn't powerful enough to power the runway lights.
He looked up at the control tower. There was no sign of lights, flickering fluorescent or otherwise.
Runway lighting would logically be o
n the same power as the control tower.
That meant he was going to have to find the much larger generator, see if he could start it, and see if there was enough diesel fuel to run it.
If he couldn't get the runway lights on, the whole operation would fail.
He spoke Hungarian into his microphone again: "Change of plans. Cleanup will have to wait until we get some of these people to show us the runway lights generator and get it started for us. Commence operations in sixty seconds from…" He waited until the sweep second hand on his wristwatch touched the luminescent spot at the top "… time." The next stage of the operation went well. Not perfectly. No operation ever goes perfectly, and that is even more true, as the case was here, when the intelligence is dated or inadequate, and there has been no time for thorough rehearsals.
There had been several rehearsals, but there had been no time to build a replica of the airport and its buildings. And if there had been time, they had had only satellite photography, old satellite photography and thus not to be trusted, to provide the needed information.
They had improvised, using sticks and tape to represent the fence and the buildings, and guessing where the doors on the buildings would be.
But despite this, the team leader thought the operation had gone off-so far, at least-very well.
The man with the bolt cutters had opened the gates to the terminal area and to the tarmac. Then one two-man team had entered the terminal to make sure there were to be no surprises from there, and two teams of three men each had stormed and secured the building where the workers and their families lived.
The operator with the suppressed Uzi-who was the number two-had climbed up into the control tower.
The sniper-who was the number three-had gone first into the terminal building to make sure that team had missed nothing, and then into the living quarters, where he checked to see that everyone had been rounded up and securely manacled.
The operations scenario had used that term, but the "manacles" actually used to restrain the locals was a plastic version of the garrote.
The locals were frightened, of course, but none of them seemed on the edge of hysteria, which was often a problem with women and children.
Another potential problem, language, didn't arise. The team leader had been told to expect the locals might speak only the local languages, and the team had been issued hastily printed phrase books in Daza, Maba, Gulay, and Sara.
The trouble with phrase books was that while they permitted you to ask questions, they were not much help in translating the answers.
All four of the men the sniper had "manacled" in the living quarters spoke French. And so did most of the thirteen women and children, to judge by their faces and whispered conversations.
One of the men was a tower operator, and another was in charge of the generator. The former reported that the radios in the tower seemed to be operable, and that the runway lights could be turned on and off from the tower. The latter reported that if he had his hands free, he could have the generator started in three minutes.
The team leader signaled one of the operators to cut the plastic handcuffs from both. The sniper took the generator man to wherever the generator was, and the team leader took the tower operator to the tower.
He had just about reached the top of the ladder to the control tower when he heard the rumble of a diesel engine starting, and as he put his shoulders through the hole in the tower floor, the incandescent lightbulbs began to glow and then came on full.
There was a screeching sound from the roof as the rotating radar antenna began to turn.
All the avionic equipment in the tower was of American manufacture, and both the team leader and his number two were familiar with it. Nevertheless, the team leader ordered the control tower operator to get it running.
Dual radar monitors showed a target twenty miles distant at twelve thousand feet altitude. Just the target. No identification from a transponder.
"Light the runway," the team leader ordered.
The tower operator threw a number of switches on a panel under the desk which circled the room. As the sound of the diesel engine showed the addition of a load, the lights on the runway and two taxi strips leading from it glowed and then were fully illuminated.
Number two dialed in a frequency on one of the radios.
"Activate transponder," he said in Russian.
Thirty seconds later, a triangle appeared next to the target on the radar screen.
"I have you at twelve thousand, twenty miles. The field is lit. The runway is clear. Land to the south."
The target blip on the radar screen began moving toward the center of the screen. The numbers in a little box next to the transponder blip began to move downward quickly from 12000.
The team leader pointed to something under the desk.
The tower operator looked confused.
Impatiently, the team leader pointed again.
The tower operator dropped to his knees to get a better look at what was under the table that he was supposed to see.
The team leader put the muzzle of the.22 caliber submachine gun against the tower operator's neck at the base of his skull and pulled the trigger.
The short burst of fire made a thump, thump sound, and the tower operator fell slowly forward on his face. Then his legs went limp and his body completely collapsed.
There was no blood. As often happened, the soft lead.22 bullets did not have enough remaining velocity after penetrating the skull to pass through the other side. They simply ricocheted around the skull cavity, moving through soft brain tissue until they had lost all velocity. There might be some blood leakage around the eyes, the ears, and the nose, but there seldom was much and often not any.
A team member entered through the tower floor hole. The leader ordered: "Stay until the plane's on the ground. Then set these to twenty minutes."
"These" were four thermite grenades. Each had a radio-activated fuse, and, for redundancy, in case the radio detonation failed, a simple clock firing mechanism.
The team leader set the thermite grenades in place, two on the communications equipment, one on the radar, and the last on the spine of the tower operator near the entrance wounds made by the.22 rounds.
He took a last look around, and then spoke to his microphone.
"Commence cleanup," he ordered. "Acknowledge." Before the team leader had carefully climbed completely down the ladder, there was about thirty seconds of intense Uzi fire as the site was cleaned of the remaining three men and their women and children.
The firing made more noise than the team leader would have preferred, but the options would have been to either garrote the locals or cut their throats, and that was time-consuming, often a little more risky, and this way there was less chance of messy arterial blood to worry about. As he watched one of his men carry a box of thermite grenades into the living quarters, the team leader heard a rushing noise, and a split second later, when he looked up, he could see two brilliant landing lights come on as the aircraft approached the field.
A moment later, he could see the aircraft itself.
It was an unusual-looking airplane, painted a nonreflective gray, ostensibly making it invisible to radar. That was a joke. As soon as they had turned on the radar just now, they had seen it twenty miles distant.
There were two jet engines mounted close together on top of the fuselage, where the wings joined the fuselage just behind and above the cockpit. This had made it necessary for the vertical fin and the horizontal stabilizers to be raised out of the way of the jet thrust. The tail of the aircraft was extraordinarily thin and tall, with the control surfaces mounted on the top.
The aircraft, a Tupolev Tu-934A, was not going to win any prizes for aesthetic beauty. But like the USAF A-10 Thunderbolt II-universally known as the Warthog-it did what it was designed to do and did so splendidly.
The Warthog's heavy armament busted up tanks and provided other close ground support. The Tupolev Tu-934A was designed t
o fly great distances at near the speed of sound carrying just about anything that could be loaded inside its rather ugly fuselage, and land and take off in amazingly short distances on very rough airfields-or no airfields at all.
It was also an amazingly quiet aircraft. The first the team leader had heard its powerful engines was the moment before touchdown when the pilot activated the thrust reversal system.
And even that died quickly as the aircraft reached braking speed on the landing roll and then stopped and turned around on the runway.
Number three, now holding illuminated wands, directed it as it taxied up the runway, and then signaled for it to turn.
Before it had completed that maneuver, a ramp began to lower from the rear of the fuselage.
"Bring up number one truck," the team leader ordered.
The Ford F-150 came across the tarmac and backed up to the opening ramp at the rear of the now-stopped aircraft.
A small, rubber-tracked front-loader rolled down the ramp. The driver and the four men riding on it were dressed in black coveralls.
The team leader saluted one of the newcomers, who returned it.
"Problems?" the operation commander asked in Russian.
"None so far, sir."
"Cleanup?"
"Completed, sir."
"Cargo inspected?"
"Yes, sir," the team leader lied. He had forgotten that detail.
"Well, then, let's get it aboard."
"Yes, sir."
Instead of a bucket, the front-loader had modified pallet arms. To the bottom of each arm had been welded two steel loops. From each loop hung a length of sturdy nylon strapping.
The other two men who had ridden off the aircraft on the rubber-tracked vehicle climbed into the bed of the F-150, removed the tarpaulin which had concealed its contents-two barrel-like objects of heavy plastic, dark blue in color, and looking not unlike beer kegs. They then removed the chocks and strapping which had been holding the rearmost barrel in place.
That done, they carefully directed the pallet arms over the bed of the truck until they were in position for the nylon strapping to be passed under the barrel and the fastener at the free end to be inserted into the loop on the bottom of the arm.
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