by Tom Haase
“The Americans found my house and attacked it, killing our brothers. I don’t think they have followed us here, or they would have attacked this house. So they are unaware of our location. They will try to find it and kill us so we must work faster to complete the bomb. Yuri, can you get the work finished by the day after tomorrow? I feel it will take them time to find us. It’s just a guess but I think we have some time,” al-Hanbali concluded.
“Yes, I can if we work all day and most of the night. Two days. Yes, I can do it,” Yuri responded.
“We will set a patrol schedule to guard the outside of this area at all times, starting in one hour. Basam, get the outside sensors on line. We were lax in the other place; we can’t afford any mistakes here. Now I must call Faisal and tell him of our movement plan. He will have to send his Hezbollah people to take the bomb into the city.” Al-Hanbali left the room and called Faisal on his tri-band cell phone.
“Faisal, we are at a location away from my main house. I think the same group that was in Beirut murdered three of my men there tonight.”
“What are you going to do?” Faisal asked.
“We will be ready to move in two days to the target. Your part is to get the men here. I will give them instructions.”
“I’ll have them to you. When do you want them and where?”
“We will move the weapon to Ras Tanura, near the coast, in the morning two days from now. Have your men meet us there at the marketplace after evening prayer.”
“They will be there. If they found you at your home, this phone may be the way the Americans are tracking you?”
“Damn, you might be right.” Tewfik closed the phone. It had not dawned on him before, but the phone had to be the way they were tracking and finding him. The phone was the one thing he had with him at all the locations. He would have the phone taken a hundred miles to the south by one of his men and order him to call a number in Riyadh two or three times a day. That should keep them off his trail.
* * * *
The NSA intercept of the conversation between the old woman and al-Hanbali arrived on Brigadier Bergermeyer’s desk fifteen minutes after the call ended; a new plan would be required to meet the information they now had. Just as before, it would take a day maybe two to locate, with a high degree of accuracy, the position of the new hideout. It might be too late to get there and intercept him before he transported the weapon to another location. The signals people promised to give them a general area from which the call originated in a few hours.
The one thing al-Hanbali had given away on the second call was where he would be in two days. That location, or somewhere near it, would have to be the intercept point. She picked up her phone to call Glenwood McDonald.
“Glenwood, come to my office and bring our command center liaison officer with you.”
“Yes, ma’am. Be there in five. Do I need the Inferno file?”
“Bring it,” said the Brigadier.
Five minutes later, she sat around an oblong wood conference table with Glenwood and Colonel Rick Dunn. One wall, opposite the windows looking out over the nation’s capital, had a large-scale map of the Middle East. Pictures of the President and the chain of command adorned the wall next to the entrance and the DIA emblem hung on the opposite wall.
“Colonel Dunn, I want you to read the file Lieutenant Commander McDonald has on our current intelligence operation. It is now at a critical stage and we will need support that we can only get from the national military command center. You are their liaison officer here. Understand that we can reveal the “what” of our operation but not how we know the intelligence the operation is based upon,” said Brigadier Bergermeyer.
“Thanks, General. Glenwood briefed me on the way up here, and with the intercept you now have, I think I can get you any support your team might need. This is some of the most critical information we have received since 9/11.” Colonel Rick Dunn, an Air Force fighter jock, sat in his blue uniform, radiating confidence in his own abilities, a universal characteristic of fighter pilots the world over. In Rick’s case, he merited it. He had twice received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions in the two Gulf wars, and he was a graduate of the National War College.
“Yes, it is. Now, we must make our operation plan. Glenwood, what are our best options? You’re the operations officer on this mission and have followed it every minute. Suggestions?”
“The Colonel and I came up with what we think is the best option at this time.” Glenwood went to the map. “We can’t just conduct a major operation on Saudi soil. They would want to know everything and take too long to act. So we must continue with our team in Saudi now. Its presence there is still known only to us. Let’s move our team to a position to intercept the movement of the weapon. The road network is primitive, and, based on al-Hanbali’s previous movement, he will likely take the least traveled way to reach his target. There are two bridges over rather deep gorges”—he pointed to the two locations—“they must traverse to get from the general region where he is currently located into the city.”
“We do have assets we could use to move the team to an ambush site at one of the gorges,” added Colonel Dunn. “With an AWACS—an Airborne Warning and Control System—over the country, we could monitor road traffic in the area to ensure the team has the latest information on all road vehicle movements.”
Glenwood returned to his seat and said, “I recommend we hit them as they start to cross the second gorge. It appears to provide the best concealment, fields of fire, and a good place to embed tire shredders to stop the vehicles. It is on the old road and hardly anyone uses it anymore. I have been there and traveled on it about three years ago for a reconnaissance training exercise. It is desolate, so the AWACS aircraft would have no problem monitoring any traffic using it.”
Colonel Dunn concluded, “We are confident that we can monitor the road, but we ruled out using air power to take out the targets. Using drones is out of the question on Saudi territory. The danger of spreading enriched uranium all over the place is great. If the team captures the weapon, we can get it out of the country with the air assets we have. We then can destroy it on our own terms. None of our flights must spike Saudi interest. Therefore, they will all be a single plane or helicopter on a training flight.”
“I suggest we notify Captain Higgins of the plan and have air assets on standby in the area to transport his team to the ambush location,” Glenwood said. “We can have a debriefing team go to the house al-Hanbali used to build the bomb and do a through intelligence analysis of the scene. They will go by road to limit our air signature in the area.”
“Okay, make it happen,” the Brigadier said. She stood up and placed her hand on her forehead, brushing back a strand of her red hair. She scrunched her eyebrows up and carried a worried look on her face. After a short pause she said, “Here is where it gets sticky. We are engaging an enemy force armed with a nuclear weapon in a foreign country. The weapon is a direct threat against the U.S. I have to go to the Director on this one and he will want me to brief the Chiefs and probably the White House. Let’s see if I can get him to hold off until right before the operation begins to reduce the possibility of a leak. Go with the plan; get Matt read in and up to speed on it,” Mary Jean said. She concluded the meeting.
“Thank you, gentlemen, I am going to see the Director to let this cat out of the bag.”
CHAPTER 22
AFTER THE ATTACK ON AL-HANBALI’S COMPOUND
12:52 A.M. – 28 OCTOBER
“Gary and Lucien, take the bodies out to the shed. Peter, start a search of the outbuilding for anything they might have left. Bridget, you check the main house,” Matt ordered.
“Hey, Captain, here’s a CD I found,” Peter said.
“Give it to our geeks and let them look at it after they clear this place,” Matt said.
The men gathered the weapons captured from the terrorists and piled them into a small room in the house. They carried the bodies by feet and shoulders
out of the house to the shed. Then Gary and Lucien returned to the main house to set up communications with the Center.
Lucien had his computer up and running and a remote dish set up outside within ten minutes. He decided to put the CD in while waiting on the center to come on line. The music started up and it had a great beat. Lucien started to move with the beat of the music.
Matt walked into the room, asked Lucien to get a secure hook up with Lieutenant Commander McDonald at the center and started to listen to the music. He could tell it was some form of modern jazz.
“Gary, have you checked out that CD for anything besides the music?” Matt asked.
“No, sir. But let me take a look at it while you are on the line with the center. They are up now and you have Commander McDonald on the line.”
After exchanging greetings, Matt described the actions he took at the main house and their current situation.
“If that airplane had been on time, we would have them now. Damn it, we were so close this time,” Matt concluded in a raised voice.
“It was bad timing,” Glenwood said, trying to sound sympathetic. “We have a plan on what you need to do next. I need to discuss it with you for support. It’s not foolproof, but we believe it is the best course of action. I want you to get the team rested there for twenty-four hours. A USAF helicopter will move you to a location along the road from where we have a general position on al-Hanbali’s group and where he is headed in two days.” Glenwood paused here to wait for any reaction by Matt. Matt gave no reaction.
“You’ll have contact with the AWACS aircraft as it monitors the roads and alerts you to the arrival of the vehicles transporting the bomb. I’ll forward the photos of the area we selected to insert your team. Get back to us with your plan after reviewing the ground situation.”
Lucien interrupted Matt with a waving arm. He held up the CD.
“Captain, there’s something on this disc and it ain’t music. It’s an encrypted file. Someone took a lot of effort to do this, because it uses a sophisticated matrix encryption. I can send it to the center if they can get the boys over at Ft. Meade to look at it.” Lucien waited for Matt to reply.
“We have just uncovered a disc that was left behind in the building they were using for the bomb. My man says there is something encrypted on a music CD.”
“Okay, Matt, see if you can get him to make an image of the file and transmit it here. I’ll get the boys at NSA to see if they can help. Anything else?”
“That’ll do it for now. Will check back in a few hours,” Matt concluded. Then he turned to Lucien and instructed him to send the completed disc information to the center.
* * * *
The image arrived at the DIA and was passed to the NSA at eleven in the morning. The crypto analyst on duty put it into the largest deciphering system in the world. After only ten minutes, the software decrypted the code. It was in the Cyrillic alphabet. A technician reentered the decrypted code into the computer. The mega-computer went to work to crack the deciphered letters in order to read whatever was contained in the file. This was an easy procedure but time consuming. Twenty-three minutes later they had cracked it and the file was exposed.
The NSA had language experts from all major language groups spoken today. These people monitored the audible transmissions from all over the world. They reported on any situation that met certain criteria. Most of the criteria had certain phrases or words that keyed the analyst to concentrate on the intercepted transmission. The words nuclear, atomic, and bombs were just some of the trip words used.
The computer tried to read the file contained on the disc, but was not able to translate the language. The analyst, who was a Russian linguist, was confused. The code that protected the file was in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Russian software program translated the code information. With that task completed, however, the material inside the file was not in the Russian language. He called in his supervisor for assistance.
“Try Old Church Slavonic,” said the supervisor.
“Don’t think so, I’ve seen that in my studies of the language at school. Your idea of church might be a clue. I know it is not in the old Greek, but it might be in …no …no, it’s not an old form of Hebrew. One of our guys is a Christian Turk. He comes on duty in an hour. Should I check with him?”
“Do it and get to me as quick as you can, as this is an operational matter and I understand we have people out there who might need whatever this contains.”
Ninety minutes later, the three men met in the supervisor’s office. The anxiety in the Turk’s voice was evident as soon as he spoke.
“The file is in Aramaic. It describes a bomb. I do know enough to translate the entire file in a short time, and the priest at our Armenian church can help me if there are words I might not be able to translate. You see, Aramaic is the language of our church.”
In three hours, the translation completed by the Armenian Turk revealed an astonishing plan to set off atomic bombs. The author described in minute detail the construction of two bombs and the plan for their use. The supervisor sent the entire file by flash message to the Center with the caveat “Eyes Only, Brigadier Bergermeyer.” A copy also went to his Director at NSA.
The Director’s office at NSA was located on the top floor of the central building in the massive complex located on Fort George Meade, Maryland. The Army had established Fort George Meade as a basic training center in World War I and it was still an active Army base.
Admiral John S. Kidd, current Director of NSA, was surprised when his aide-de-camp, Captain Thomas Mattowski, U.S. Navy, entered the conference room where he was in session with the heads of the various divisions of the agency. Without even a shake of his head, the aide immediately turned and left the room. The admiral excused himself from the meeting.
“Tom, what’s going on?” The admiral bellowed as he exited the room. Everyone knew he was a stickler for not having anyone interrupt him in a meeting. His bushy eyebrows rose, and his eyes looked at Tom over the top of his reading glasses.
“Admiral, sorry to interrupt, but the meeting was scheduled to go on for another hour and I believe you will concur in my action after you read this,” replied the aide. He handed the admiral the file from the analyst.
“Dammit. It had to happen eventually. DIA must have someone on the ground there to get this information. Get me General Bergermeyer on the phone. I want to talk to her before I call the National Security Advisor.”
The admiral marched to his office and waited to talk to Mary Jean Bergermeyer. This was a hot item and had to go up the flagpole to the top. An operation was obviously underway and he needed the information on its status before taking any precipitous action. On the other hand, he had a duty to keep his superiors informed of any major intelligence having a bearing on the security of the U.S.
An atomic bomb in the hands of terrorists fulfilled that criterion.
CHAPTER 23
STRIKE TEAM ONE
28 OCTOBER – 11:34 A.M.
Matt completed his plan to intercept the bomb on the designated road that headquarters had picked, as the most likely route the terrorist would use to get to the target—Ras Tanura. There were two small hills on the west side of the second bridge shown in the photo. Those locations would provide excellent places for covering fire and commanded a view of the approach to the bridge. The first bridge was visible about a half mile away: it had only flat terrain on both sides of the exit end and there was open terrain stretching between the two bridges. He called Glenwood on his secure phone and started to tell him of his concept for executing the ambush.
“Wait just a minute and let me get the Brigadier in on this.” Glenwood connected the general on a three-way call.
“Matt, this is General Bergermeyer. You performed well on the raid of the house. The CD you forwarded has some critical intelligence we need to discuss,” said the Brigadier as she got up and then went over to the window in her office.
“They have an atomic
bomb. In fact, they have at least two weapons and they are going to set them off at the same time to destroy the largest Saudi oil exporting facility and the oil underground reserves. One weapon is to take out the city of Ras Tanura and the other will be sent down an oil shaft to detonate below ground and contaminate the entire Saudi oil reserves. You must stop that from happening. We want you to capture the weapons if possible.”
“What about the terrorists? Do you want any captured for interrogation?” Matt asked.
“We have no use for them, as the CD contained all the details we need,” The general responded. “If you do capture one, that would be okay, but not necessary.”
“To be at their reported rendezvous at six o’clock they have to pass the location we picked between four and four thirty local. We’ll move you into position by chopper at two in order to get your ambush set. We can’t just blow them up with an air strike, because of the contamination that might occur from scattered atomic material in another sovereign country. They would blame us and we would have to fess up to the whole operation,” Glenwood added.
“Understood. By the timeline you set, we will be ready to move at noon tomorrow.” Matt had a feeling they were behind again, especially if the terrorists moved early. He could do nothing at this time. He did not know where they were located, and worse, he did not know if they had received reinforcements to replace their losses.
“Okay, gentlemen, keep me informed,” concluded Mary Jean just as the red phone on her desk rang. The admiral came on the line. He was his usual gruff self.
“All right, Mary Jean, what the hell is going on? I can figure you have an operation going on since no one else is on this atomic weapon thing. I need to know it all. I’ll have to inform the National Command Authority. I want to know everything before I call the president’s National Security Advisor. He’ll blow a gasket at this whole thing and have a hemorrhage over the fact that you are conducting a covert operation on Saudi soil.”
