by Harold
“Not until we’re ready to board the Hercs. Far as the troops will know, we’re just conducting a mobilization drill. Colonel Malloum might go along but he understands it’d just be for show.”
The former Marine went to work on the chaw, nodding his approval. “Yessir. Uh, what about the choppers?”
Lee suppressed a yawn; he had been up much of the night, finalizing arrangements for the operation. “Keegan and Marsh are checking out two Alouettes today. The attaché will help them test fly two birds and get them headed for the border tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
“What about maintenance?”
“Already handled, Gunny. Our pilots brought a guy who knows Alouettes inside out, and one or two Chadian mechs are going along with some spare parts.”
Foyte was working on his wad now, savoring the juice. “Well, all right, Major. But I’d be damn nervous riding in a machine that wants to tear itself apart on a good day, let alone one maintained by some of the boys in this neck of the woods.”
Lee sat upright, looking Foyte full in the face. “Gunnery Sergeant, this has come up before, and I need you to tune your command set to ‘receive.’ Are you reading me?”
Foyte knew what was coming. “Yessir. I read you five by five. No more talk about ‘boys.’“
“You got it.”
* * * *
N’DJAMENA
Marcel Hurtubise walked rapidly, covering ground in a purposeful stride that led nowhere. Hands in his pockets, uncharacteristically looking at the ground rather than 360 degrees around him, he realized with a start that he had circled a city block for the second time. He looked at the sky. Late afternoon. Gabrielle has been dead at least six hours.
He resumed walking.
In his lonely, violent forty-four years, Marcel Jules Marie Hurtubise had learned to rely upon himself. Oh, there had been the comradely nature of the Legion—Legio pro patria and all that—but it was not strong enough to hold him. He had wanted something else, something more.
Gabrielle.
He saw her again in his memory for the first time: the defiant, skinny teenager who could use a good meal and a hot bath. He had seen many like her: frightened, angry runaways seeking temporary shelter, both physical and emotional. Somehow, it had worked with her. Most of the time, anyway. It had not been easy, getting her off drugs and off the street. But in months rather than years, his attention and his patience had won her. He remembered the first time she had given herself to him. And with something approaching remorse, he recalled the only time he had forced her—the result of a simple job that had gone terribly bad and there was no one else to take his wrath. She swore that if he ever did that again, she would kill him, herself, or both of them.
He believed her.
After that, the years had been more good than bad. She grew to mental maturity, if not emotional, and occasionally shared in his work. She was a natural in some ways—coy, manipulative, astute about people. Especially men. But eventually he had seen the edge return, something hard and bitter behind the big blue eyes. When she had wanted to execute the Israeli, he knew she had turned a corner that offered little chance of return.
Raoul’s question forced its way to Marcel’s consciousness again. Why not let us do it?
He had answered, “I have my reasons.”
True, Clary and any of the others could have handled the intrusive American female, but Marcel wanted Gabrielle to do the killing. She had arrogantly asserted that she could handle the con job, and when she failed, it became her responsibility to put things right. If she did it, maybe there was a chance she could recover. If not. . . well. . .
Mauvaise chance.
Hurtubise bit his lip until it hurt. He thought he tasted the salty tang of blood. We came so close, Gabby. After this job, we could go anywhere, settle down, enjoy life. He even had a spot picked out, a semi-secluded property in Switzerland. Wonderful scenery, skiing in the winter, not too many neighbors.
Now that was gone. It was partly her fault, partly his, and partly theirs.
By God, the Americans were going to pay
He turned around and strode back to the apartment.
* * * *
42
SSI COMPOUND
Steve Lee was a professional pessimist. He spent much of his life contemplating what might go wrong, and shared that philosophy with the SSI team’s final briefing for the raid.
“As I see it, the biggest problem we might have is the people north of the border.” He indicated the boundary with Libya, barely forty kilometers from the uranium mine. “Now, there’s no reason to think that they’ll get involved, but in my experience that’s reason to think they might.” He gave an ironic grin that prompted polite chuckles from his audience.
“If we take them by surprise, there shouldn’t be much trouble. But if they ‘make’ us inbound, if they have much warning at all, they could have some yellow cake on a couple of trucks hightailing it for Colonel Qadhafi. From there, the load could go anywhere. Like Iran.”
Bernard Langevin, monitoring the briefing from the back row, raised a hand. “Steve, I agree that’s a concern. But I just don’t think the Libyans are going to pick a fight with the U.S., not even in Chad.”
Lee laid down his pointer and turned to the scientist. “Look at it from their boots, Bernie. They won’t know we’re Americans. Hell, officially we’re not even involved in this op. That’s the whole idea behind SSI: deniability.”
Before Langevin could respond, Brezyinski posed a question. “Sir, doesn’t Iran have uranium? I mean, why go to all the trouble to smuggle the stuff from Chad or someplace?”
Langevin nodded. “Reasonable question. But you’ve just had a hint of the answer from Major Lee: deniability.”
Breezy wrinkled a brow. “How’s that, Doc?”
“Almost every uranium ore has its own identification, like a fingerprint. If there’s anyplace on earth that hasn’t been fingerprinted, so to speak, I don’t know where it is. So if the Iranians want to nuke someplace, they’re not going to use material from their own backyard. They have at least three mines but they’ll want to use refined ore from someplace else, the farther away the better. They’d use it from Colorado if they could get enough of it.”
Bosco, whose scientific interest generally was limited to pulp fiction and Star Wars movies, now took a closer interest. “Excuse me, sir. But how much uranium do you need for a bomb?”
Langevin grinned hugely. His smile said, Low, slow one over the middle of the plate. Finally he replied, “Well, I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.”
When the laughter abated, the scientist raised a hand. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But it’s a fair question. I can’t talk about current weapons, but for the Little Boy that flattened Hiroshima, about sixty-five kilos. Less than 150 pounds.” Warming to his subject, he continued. “But that’s not a very efficient use of a valuable product. Now, take Fat Man, the Nagasaki bomb. That only used six kilos of plutonium, but of course you need a lot of uranium to process plutonium. There’s an intermediate step called a composite, with a core using both uranium and plutonium. A little over three kilos of plutonium and six and a half of U-235.” He shrugged. “Actually, it doesn’t make a lot of difference. An exact duplicate of Little Boy is still about twelve to fifteen KT yield, and we know what that did to Hiroshima.”
“I have a question.” It was Josh Wallender, who rarely spoke in meetings. “Libya has been awfully quiet for several years, like maybe they learned a lesson. Why would they risk another setback on behalf of Iran?”
Langevin shifted in his seat to face the Green Beret. “Good question, Sergeant. For some years there was cooperation between Libya and Iran on weapons research, even though Qadhafi’s regime is pretty secular. But there was a Libyan group of Islamic extremists that attacked government facilities inside Libya so Qadhafi had them expelled. They went to Afghanistan, then settled in Iran with some other al Qaeda groups. Along the way, some of their rece
nt knowledge about Iran’s nuclear program got back to Libya, and that had something to do with Qadhafi renouncing WMDs in 2004. So it looks like there’s a connection: Tehran doesn’t want Libya spilling what it knows about the Iranian bomb program, and threatens to return the radicals to Libya if that happens.”
Wallender emitted a long, low whistle.
Langevin smiled in appreciation. “Yeah. Welcome to the Middle East.”
Regaining control of the session, Lee said, “That’s the long way ‘round the block to say that we should be prepared for a Libyan reaction. It’s entirely possible that some yellow cake can be moved to Libya with or without the government’s knowledge, and shipped elsewhere. That means we want to do this as slick and quick as possible.”
He scanned the room, unblinking behind his Army issue glasses. “Anything else for discussion?” He glanced at Foyte, who shook his head.
“Very well then.” Lee shot a look at his watch. “Let’s get our people moving. Equipment check before the briefing and nobody leaves the compound. We’re wheels in the well in four plus thirty.”
* * * *
43
AOZOU STRIP
The Cessna 421 braked to a halt on the hard-packed runway and shut down the left engine first. Before the three-bladed propeller had stopped spinning, the door opened and two men immediately debarked. Marcel Hurtubise and Paul Deladier carried overnight bags that contained few clothes. Anyone hefting the satchels would have commented upon the weight.
Cruising at 190 knots, the trip had taken over three hours. Deladier would have preferred to try to sleep during the trip but his superior had other priorities. In one way, however, Deladier welcomed the diversion. He did not want to dwell upon Gabrielle Tixier.
Etienne Stevin was waiting. Anticipating the question, he met Hurtubise and said, “We’re almost ready.”
The three mercenaries climbed into the Land Rover and talked en route to the mine. “Tell me,” Hurtubise commanded.
Stevin’s stubby fingers grasped the wheel, navigating the unpaved road from the landing strip. “After we got Paul’s message, we reinforced the guard and changed the schedule. We’re now at fifty percent alert during the night, thirty-three percent during the day. Moungar’s assistant is practically using a whip on the blacks; they’re pushing hard to get two full loads ready for loading.”
“How soon?”
“The first one—maybe day after tomorrow. No later than Tuesday. The second load maybe later that day.”
Hurtubise chewed his lip and rubbed his stubbled chin, measuring the time-distance equation. It was going to be tight. He could feel it. He looked at Stevin. “Who is the assistant?”
“Name’s Jean Djimesta. I thought you met him before.”
“I did. I just don’t remember the name. Medium-sized, really black, balding. Bit of an attitude for a nigger.”
“That’s him.”
Hurtubise glanced over his shoulder to Deladier in the rear seat. “Well, seeing that he’s getting the job done, we can tolerate some attitude. But not too much, eh?” He almost laughed.
Deladier leaned forward between the front seats. “What about Moungar? Will he be here?”
“No,” Hurtubise replied. “I’d like to have him here because he represents the government. But he’s making arrangements with our friends across the border.”
Downshifting to cross a narrow defile, Stevin said, “Boss, I’d like to hear more. What do we really know about the Americans? And how good is the information?”
Hurtubise dropped the impending grin. “The information is about as good as we can expect, but it’s the usual situation. You never have everything you want. I got suspicious when Gabrielle came back from her second meeting with the American woman.” He shook his head in self reproach. “That was my fault, really. I thought she could handle it. The little shrew was pretty good at getting people to talk but. . .”
Deladier felt a small, electric prickling between the shoulders at Tixier’s name. He sat back, grasping a door handle to steady himself as the Land Rover jounced over the graded road.
“Anyway, she spilled more than she learned,” Hurtubise continued. “When I realized what had happened, I sent her to deal with the American broad but she didn’t come back.”
Stevin did not know what to say. Deladier had already described the basics so the burly Belgian merely nodded.
“The rest I filled in with contacts at the embassy, and intuition. The American firm is training a counterinsurgency unit in N’Djamena but we have to assume they can get up here pretty fast if they want. That’s why I want to get at least two loads out as soon as possible. After that, we’ve met our contract. Anything else is a bonus.”
Stevin turned toward his boss and unzipped a tobacco-stained grin. “I like bonuses.”
Hurtubise scowled in reply. “You just blow it on gambling and booze and whores. In a couple of weeks or months you’re broke again.”
The Belgian nodded gravely, looking at the road again. Then he perked up. “But there’s always another job. Thanks to you.”
The Frenchman regarded his colleague with a sideways glance. “Not after this one, Etienne. Not after this one.”
* * * *
BORKOU-ENNEDI-TIBESTI PREFECTURE
Terry Keegan had a good opinion of his dead-reckoning ability, but he was glad of the GPS set in the borrowed Alouette III. Flying with Charles the mechanic in the seat beside him, the former naval aviator led his two helicopters in a descent to Bardai airfield in the rugged terrain of northern Chad.
From studying aeronautical charts and Web sites, Keegan knew that only seven of the nation’s fifty-one airports had paved runways. Bardai, at thirty-five hundred feet elevation, was unpaved but its fifty-nine-hundred-foot runway would accommodate the C-130s inbound behind him.
Major Lowe, flying with Eddie Marsh, handled air-ground communications, such as they were. Though Bardai was a military field, it impressed the Americans as an extraordinarily low-key operation. They air-taxied to the area indicated by the controller, alit side by side, and shut down. The Turbomeca engines wheezed to a stop and the four men debarked. They were mildly surprised when no one met them.
“Not a bad thing,” Lowe observed. “As long as we can get refueled and arrange security, I’d just as soon be ignored until we’re finished here.”
While the Air Force officer arranged for fuel, Keegan, Marsh, and Haegelin conducted post-flight inspections on both choppers. “I’m using a little more oil than the manual lists, but I guess it’s okay,” Marsh said.
“What do you mean, you guess it’s okay?” Keegan never took anything for granted: it was part of the reason he had survived four western Pacific deployments as a sub hunter, operating in big waves off some small decks.
“Charles says it’s in limits,” Marsh replied. “And he sure knows more about these machines than I do.” The former Army flier quipped, “Hey, I’m an H-47 kinda guy.”
Keegan tried to suppress a smile, and failed. “Chinooks—they’re like women. You can’t live with ‘em and you can’t live without ‘em.”
“No lie, GI. The ‘47 was in the inventory twelve years before I was born!”
A low, insistent pulsing thrummed through the atmosphere, coming from the southwest. The helo pilots turned in that direction, shading their eyes against the slanting westerly rays of the sun. Several moments later Marsh exclaimed, “There! Just above the horizon.”
The tall-tailed silhouettes of two C-130Hs hove into view at 290 knots, slanting toward the field. They flew a straight-in approach, taking landing interval but not bothering with the traffic pattern. “They probably don’t want to draw any more attention than they need to,” Keegan surmised.
Charles Haegelin ventured a rare sentiment, as he had not been asked a question. “With that kind of noise, they cannot keep hidden so well.”
He had a point. Each Hercules’s four Allison turboprops conspired to produce a pulsing resonance that could not be i
gnored. The lead transport touched down in the first quarter of the hard-packed runway and the pilot reversed the propellers, visibly slowing the big Lockheed, which turned off before the end of the strip. The second plane loitered momentarily in its approach, allowing the dust to disperse. In a few minutes both planes were parked, their engines whining a descending dirge as propellers windmilled into stillness.
“Hey look,” Keegan exclaimed. “New paint job.”
Marsh squinted at the 130s. Finally he saw the Navy man’s meaning. Chad’s tricolor cockade was painted over the tactical black-on-gray American insignia on fuselage and wings. There was also a fin flash on the vertical stabilizer. “That’s not going to fool anybody,” Marsh ventured. “Besides, it’s probably not legal.”
