by Tom Haase
“No. Not at all. You are wrong. I only e-mail my friends in Saudi,” protested Mohammed.
“You lie. I checked the computer right after you went out, but you only cleared the “message sent” file; you forgot to clear the “trash” file. There was one in there to an American. I have you now and Tewfik will kill you himself.”
Abdul reached for Mohammed, but he rocketed up from his chair, deliberately dropping the teacup to the floor. As Mohammed started to race for the door, Abdul pulled a knife, lunged for him and stabbed him in the stomach. Reaching down to the small table, Mohammed managed to grab a glass water bottle and swung it with all his strength. It caught Abdul behind his ear, collapsing him like a rag doll. He didn’t move.
Mohammed snatched a cloth from the table and tried to stop the gush of blood from his stomach. Now that Abdul had found him out, there was nothing to do but run. If he stayed here, they would kill him as a traitor. He staggered out of the door, checked his watch, and limped, pain shooting through him, toward his rendezvous with the American agent.
A few moments after Mohammed departed, Abdul slowly opened his eyes. He was blind with pain. He held his head until his vision cleared. “Must tell Tewfik al-Hanbali,” he thought and as he groped his way to the phone. When al-Hanbali answered, Abdul talked fast.
“We have a traitor in our midst. Mohammed has been in contact with the Americans and gave them information.”
“What, what are you saying?” Tewfik asked.
“Listen, look on your computer’s trash file and you will see his message to the American. He has run off and I’m going to follow him. I have to go. I’ll call later.” Abdul was breathing heavily and had started to shout.
“Mohammed, is he…” were the final words he heard as he hung up the phone. Then he flung the front door open to follow the traitor.
Outside the cell’s safe house, in the dim streetlight, he picked up the trail of blood and followed it to the nearby corner. At this location, they usually turned to go to the mosque. He thought he saw Mohammed in the distance, at least two corners away, moving slowly and using the walls to support himself. He hadn’t gone to the mosque. Abdul followed and was still well back from the man when he saw him disappear into a house. He stopped and looked around.
Abdul was cautiously moving closer to where Mohammed had entered when he saw what he thought was a woman, dressed in Western clothes, rush across the street and use the same entrance. Abdul’s eyes opened wide, his pulse quickened and he smiled. He crept up to the door of the house and listened. He could hear an exchange between the woman and Mohammed going on beneath muffled noises from inside the house. Then a long silence followed and he heard movement inside but no more voices. He waited, hoping to hear the next bit of conversation. He decided to get out his Beretta just in case. At that exact moment, the woman opened the door. Taken by surprise, he fired as soon as he saw her.
Now he was standing in the house where Mohammed and the woman both lay dead. Abdul surveyed the room with the flashlight one more time, and then turned it off. It was time to think exactly what he was going to tell al-Hanbali. He continued thinking. Walking in a small circle in the dark.
****
Four seconds,
Three seconds,
Two seconds,
One second—the laser-guided 500-pound bomb struck three feet from where Abdul stood.
CHAPTER 6
GLENWOOD MCDONALD
EARLY FRIDAY MORNING
THE PENTAGON – WASHINGTON, D.C.
Lieutenant Commander Glenwood McDonald had a pile of papers at least five inches high in the middle of his desk. Just to the right lay an old hexagonal coffee mat displaying the emblem of the U.S. Navy in blue and gold. His Sony computer, occupying the center of the desk, showed a stark blank face. Not even the little orange flashing light was awake. The clock hanging on the wall just above the computer indicated 0530 hours.
The never-off lights illuminated the Pentagon’s Intelligence Command Center as he entered the small cubicle area allotted to him. His day was about to start. The Pentagon was coming alive, the other early-morning shift workers arriving to replace the overnight crew at 0600 hours.
Glenwood’s stomach always felt tight as he prepared to go onto the floor to receive a turnover briefing by the person he relieved, which usually took only five to ten minutes. This handover procedure would give him the highlights of the preceding eight hours and allow him to be “read in” on any message traffic containing significant information. On an average eight-hour shift, more than eighty thousand messages arrived at the center. The protocol employed by the computers allowed the writer to rank his message by its importance. This made briefing the oncoming officer rather easy as the most important messages were at the top of the queue.
The highest-ranking messages carried the word “flash” and received the fastest routing by the various communications centers around the world. The system ensured receipt of any flash message at the national command level in less than ten minutes, from any point on the globe. The computers in the center would jump the message with this classification to the top of the message queue; the desk officers received flash messages as soon as they were in the Pentagon computer system.
The three other classifications—routine, priority, and immediate—were usually the day-to-day reports the various geographical sections would read during normal duty hours. The system was not foolproof. Writers of intelligence reports sometimes assumed their messages were of higher interest than the facts warranted. One such report with a flash precedence had come in the previous week concerned some minor political party leader who had lost an election on the island of Malta. It did not warrant this highest category of interest even though the writer presumed it did. That particular type of information did not have to be in the hands of a decision maker in a matter of minutes. When a message was given the wrong precedence, getting “read in” could prevent a lesser classified, yet more important piece of information from going forward to higher authorities.
The Command Center also monitored overhead satellite imagery and reconnaissance photography, especially in Russia and in the Middle East. A real-time satellite telephone downlink and other highly sophisticated electronic gadgets provided additional assets. In another part of this vast complex, a real-time satellite picture of a new Russian submarine leaving port in Vladivostok was just arriving on the plasma displays.
As Glenwood was taking over his area desk, other officers in the Command Center observed events at the Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri on the island of Cyprus, where an American U-2 spy plane was taking off to monitor the Sinai desert areas. Concurrently, a Navy P3 was on a collection mission for the NSA off the coast of Korea; North Korea had accused the U.S. of conducting over two hundred spy missions over their country in the last few months—in reality there were only one hundred ten.
These events were part of the Command Center’s worldwide intelligence gathering activities, the primary reason for its existence. It provided the top decision makers with analysis of any immediate hostile activity impinging on the national interest of the United States. Terrorist activity stood at the top of the list of interest these days. “The Center,” which sometimes was confused with the Command Center, was actually located in another part of the Military District of Washington, where it handled all counterterrorist operations for the DIA. That center immediately received any information on terrorists or their activities from the command center.
During the first hour at his desk, Glenwood would have to give the morning briefing on his area of the world. The Secretary of Defense, the White House situation room, the National Security Advisor, and any other agency with a need to know would get a thumbnail sketch of any topic of special interest. Real-time hookups on secure television channels provided teleconferencing.
Glenwood McDonald had the Middle East area desk in the Command Center. He knew as a fact that every day somewhere there was a flap or a major announcement by this
or that dictator in Latin America or some terrorist leader in Iraq, while the big boys in D.C. slept. A State Department official or military bigwig would always want to know immediately the significance of a specific announcement on U.S. interests. Glenwood thought on such occasions of reaching into his desk drawer and pulling out a crystal ball to give a brilliant answer. He knew there would be hell to pay for a stunt like that.
He placed the coffee mug on his scruffy-looking blue and gold mat. One more day to shine. Or one more day to screw up. Certainly one more day to survive in the throes of this highly intense political-military environment. One had to be ever sharp in the command center for national military intelligence in the heart of the Pentagon. Glenwood sat there with his small chin and a bobbing Adam’s apple, displaying a bird like face, with blue jay eyes and a nap of the head haircut.
Just for a moment, between reading messages, Glenwood thought of Tara. Her deployment to Baghdad had caused a major hiatus in their budding romance. After a brief and intense three-month courtship, they had moved in together, and she planned to give up her career in the Air Force to attend graduate school; he hoped she would become a Navy wife in the not-too-distant future.
On the evening she received orders to go to Baghdad, she had returned to his condo in Seminary Towers, a high-rise tower complex on King Street, and fixed a steak dinner for them, accompanied by a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz. This left them both relaxed and feeling amorous. Later in the evening, as they lay exhausted from two rounds of sexual frolicking, she brought up her departure. In bed, she rolled over to face him.
"Glenwood, I’ve been putting this off, but I’ve got to tell you something.” She spoke just above a whisper. “Please try to understand. You know that informant I’ve acquired over the Internet. He’s proven useful so far. They want me to go over and set up an operation to get this guy in high gear."
"Goddammit, Tara,” Glenwood shouted. “You’re an analyst. Not a trained operative. What are you thinking? We’re talking about a future together. Where did this come from?”
"I’ll only be gone for about two weeks and then when I come back I’ll resign my commission, and we can get on with our plans," Tara said.
"I should be the one going on this type of mission,” he grumbled. “You’ve never done any agent handling before."
"I know, but unfortunately, he will only talk with me. Besides, we have people over there to guide me on how to do this," replied Tara.
Glenwood realized now that by waiting until that moment, she’d hoped to make the announcement less confrontational. Glenwood's face had contorted in a grimace. He rolled over, and frigid air invaded their bed.
At last he said,” Okay, go on and go. You gotta understand, I think this is crazy, going on a mission like this. It’s absolutely asinine.” They had not spoken again that night.
The next morning they had parted on marginally friendly terms. “I just need to do this. Wait till I get back. We can work it out. Of course, I want what we have talked about. I promise,” she said.
Glenwood hoped to renew their relationship on her return. Right now, he was still miffed because Tara had been given the mission that he thought should have been his because of his training. He realized that he would have to cool off and accept this little interruption in their plans. Glenwood could just not comprehend why she felt this compulsion to go out into the field. God, how he missed her.
Before he knew it, the shift was almost over, with only twenty minutes to go before two o’clock. He swiveled in his chair and realized that he had been sitting at this desk for seven hours and forty minutes. He prepared a few notes to brief the takeover officer and got ready to leave. At that moment, Captain Matt Higgins entered the Command Center and walked up to his desk.
"Hello, Commander. I see they’ve got you here watching the world from a nice soft chair," Matt said without a grin on his face. It had been over six months since they were on an assignment together. Soon after returning from that assignment, Glenwood had received his promotion to Lieutenant Commander. Glenwood thought they had worked well together during the mission, but there seemed to be a subtle antagonism that separated them.
"Matt, how are you? How did the mission in Saudi go? And what the hell happened to your face?" Glenwood asked, looking at Matt. In front of him stood a six-foot, lanky but obviously athletic, chestnut-tanned man sporting unusually long black hair for a military officer, and moving his crescent-shaped blue eyes around the Command Center with a cat’s intensity and interest.
“Got back today. Just stopped by to see if Sergeant Donavan was here. I understood she had some documents to deliver to you, but it looks like she has already left.”
Glenwood gave an affirmative nod.
“The mission went off smoothly,” Matt continued, “and I got the cut by being clumsy and walking into a door,” said Matt as he released Glenwood’s hand.
Matt smiled. Glenwood placed his muscular arms on the desktop and leaned forward to say, "This is near the end of my six-month stint here. I talked to Mary Jean Bergermeyer yesterday about a transfer over to the Center. I guess I should say Brigadier General now that she’s been promoted. At least, that way I would know what you guys are doing and how Tara is getting along, without having to sit here wondering while I read messages.” He turned his head toward the computer screen to check messages and then looked back at Matt.
"Well, I guess I'll be in D.C. for a while. My team has trained for almost a year and I think we’re ready. Now that I’m back from that little special detail over to Saudi, I’d like to finish up the last bit of counter-surveillance training. See you later." Matt turned, raised his hand in farewell, and strolled out of the center.
Swiveling in his chair, Glenwood continued to observe Matt as he sauntered away. He remembered that operation they shared in Turkey when Matt related the events of that tragic day over more beers than either could count. But he also envied Matt for getting command of the team in training. He coveted that position.
Glenwood looked up. The red digits on the clock in the Intelligence Command Center displayed 1:56 p.m. and 9:56 p.m. in Baghdad. Just four minutes to go until two o’clock, he thought, as he sat back with his hands over his head, feeling good. His day was almost over, and he was looking forward to going home. He had survived another day in the bowels of the intelligence behemoth.
Soon Tara would be back and his world would spring to life again.
At that moment, his computer screen began to flash. The message indicator blinked FLASH. He guessed something had gone wrong in Baghdad and a SNAFU was in progress. He checked the message coding that told him the originator.
Tara.
CHAPTER 7
AFTER MIDNIGHT SATURDAY
TEWFIK AL-HANBALI’S HEADQUARTERS
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Tewfik al-Hanbali paced back and forth, looking at his watch several times a minute. Hours had passed since Abdul called to tell him that he was following Mohammed. Abdul shouted that Mohammed was a traitor. Al-Hanbali found this unbelievable; in the past, Mohammed always had provided excellent information and insightful analysis of what the Americans were doing. Al-Hanbali knew his terrorist cell, known as Al-Qulam (The Pen) from sura 68 in the Koran, had used the information to counter many of the coalition forces’ initiatives and to coordinate some of their moves, even though most were not successful.
Al-Hanbali was planning to be in Beirut in two weeks. There he would meet with the other two leaders who had been given their initial tasks. This face-to-face meeting would allow for the final coordination of the effort to bring the Western world to its knees. He had engineered the conceptual plan in every detail; now the execution must be just as precise.
His special contribution to the meeting would be announcing his recruitment of Yuri Marchanovich, the Russian he had known from years ago at university. He planned to go to Moscow to visit with Yuri, who after graduation had become a physicist working for the Russian military in their nuclear development
program. He had the exact skills they needed. In two days time, al-Hanbali’s task was to convince the man to build an atomic device.
Right now, he had to determine what had happened to Abdul and why he had not reported. He called his second-in-command, Madjid, and ordered him to find Abdul. If Mohammed had revealed their plans to anyone outside the organization, it would put the entire operation in grave jeopardy. Twenty minutes later, Madjid returned.
“Abdul was last seen leaving here at about 9:40. Mohammed must have left earlier,” said the man as he came into the room. “He was also sighted entering a house near the mosque, the one off the road the Americans call Santa Fe. It was the house that was just hit by an American bomb.”
“Is there any more information on what happened to Mohammed?” al-Hanbali asked.
“We were not able to find out anything else. I’ll go back there now to see what I can learn,” Madjid said.
It was early the next morning before al-Hanbali received additional details of what had transpired at that house. Madjid reported, “There appeared to be at least two bodies found inside the house: one of them was definitely Abdul, the other we are not sure, and there might be a third. The best guess is that Mohammed was in there with them. It must have been an American guided bomb that went off course and struck that house. Why, I don’t know. There was no planned meeting there. No one lived there. There were no terrorists, family members or any other reason why the Americans would've attacked that house.”
“Did you see any activity around the house?” al-Hanbali asked.
“Yes, the Americans had sealed off the area and were removing something. It must have been parts of the bomb or parts of a body. Maybe they wanted to find out why the bomb had gone off course.”
Al-Hanbali dismissed him and sat down, feeling the tense muscles straining in his neck. He stretched out his arms, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. If both Abdul and Mohammed were dead, their plan and his mission to Moscow remained safe. Mohammed, the only person in his organization in whom he had confided any information about the future operation, was now dead. He had revealed to him only the name and that the plan was an attack against the Americans. He told Mohammed he was going to a meeting at the Intercontinental Hotel in Beirut to coordinate the attack. He never mentioned that the plan was to construct an atomic weapon to use against the lifeline that supported the economies of the West. Consequently, he felt he was safe.
