Placing one hand beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her buttocks, Tariq rolled Trixie onto her stomach, then straddled her at the waist. He placed his left hand beneath her chin, drew her head up toward him, then placed the flat of his right palm on the side of her head and levered his hands in opposite directions. The neck snapped. He reversed his hands and twisted the head back in the other direction, getting one more muffled pop. The body’s residual nerve impulses caused her legs to jerk once. He gently lowered the head back to the ground and stood up.
Now all that remained was to decide how far into the desert to drive her.
18
THE RECEPTION they received upon touching down in Tripoli should have told Clark and Chavez all they needed to know about the mood of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his generals, as well as what level of support they could expect. The People’s Militia lieutenant they found waiting at the bottom of the plane’s stairs was polite enough but green as the Libyan sun was hot, and the twitch under his left eye told Clark the man knew enough about his charges to be nervous. Good for you, boy. Clearly Qaddafi was less than pleased to have Western soldiers on his soil, let alone Western Special Forces soldiers. Whether his displeasure was born of pride or some deeper political motive Clark neither knew nor cared. As long as they stayed out of Rainbow’s way and didn’t get anyone inside the embassy killed, Muammar could be as pissy as he liked.
The lieutenant snapped off a sharp salute to Clark, said “Masudi,” which Clark assumed was his name, then stepped aside and gestured toward a circa-1950 canvas canopied Army truck that sat idling fifty feet away. Clark gave the nod to Stanley, who ordered the team to gather the gear and head toward the truck.
The sun was so hot it almost stung Clark’s skin, and sucking the superheated air into his lungs caused them to burn a bit. There was a slight breeze fluttering the flags on the hangar roof but not nearly enough to provide any cooling.
“Hell, at least they sent somebody, huh?” Chavez muttered to Clark as they walked.
“Always look on the bright side, eh, Ding?”
“You got it, mano.”
Within an hour of being pulled off the plane at Heathrow and getting the dump from Alistair Stanley, Clark, Chavez, and the remainder of the on-call R6 shooters were aboard a British Airways jet bound for Italy.
As did all military teams, Rainbow had its fair share of personnel turnover as men returned to their home country’s unit, most of them for well-earned promotions after their work on Rainbow. Of the eight Stanley had picked for the op, four were originals: Master Chief Miguel Chin, Navy SEAL; Homer Johnston; Louis Loiselle; and Dieter Weber. Two Americans, a French-man, a German. Johnston and Loiselle were their snipers, and each was scary-good, their rounds rarely finding anything but X-ring.
In fact, all of them were good shooters. He wasn’t in the least worried about them; you didn’t get to Rainbow without, one, having a lot of time in service, and two, being the best of the best. And you certainly didn’t stay in Rainbow without passing muster with Alistair Stanley, who was, though polite to the core, a real ass-kicker. Better to sweat in training than to bleed on an op, Clark reminded himself. It was an old SEAL adage, one that any Special Forces service worth a damn adhered to as if it were the word of God.
After a brief stop in Rome they were shuttled to a waiting Piaggio P180 Avanti twin-engine turboprop kindly supplied by the 28th Army Aviation “Tucano” Squadron for the final hop to Taranto, where they sat and drank Chinotto, Italy’s herbal answer to American Sprite, while getting a history lesson from the base’s public-affairs officer on the history of Taranto, the Marina Militare, and its predecessor, the Regia Marina. After four hours of this, Stanley’s satellite phone went off. The politics had been settled. How they’d talked Qaddafi out of sending in his shock troops Clark didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Rainbow was green-lit.
An hour later they reboarded the Avanti for the five-hundred-mile hop across the Med to Tripoli.
Clark followed Chavez to the truck and climbed aboard. Sitting across the wooden bench seat from him was a man in civilian clothes.
“Tad Richards,” the man said, shaking Clark’s hand, “U.S. embassy.”
Clark didn’t bother asking the man’s position. The answer would likely involve a combination of words like attaché, cultural, junior, and state department, but he was in fact a member of CIA station Libya, which worked out of the embassy in the Corinthia Bab Africa Hotel. Like the People’s Militia lieutenant who’d greeted them, Richards looked too fresh by half. Probably his first overseas posting, Clark decided. Didn’t matter, really. As long as the man had the intel dump for them.
With the crunching of gears and a plume of diesel exhaust, the truck lurched forward and started moving.
“Sorry for the delay,” Richards said.
Clark shrugged, noting that the man hadn’t asked for names. Maybe a little sharper than I thought. He said, “I gather the colonel is less than enthusiastic about hosting us.”
“You gather correctly. Not sure of the hows, but the phones have been nuts for the past eight hours. Army’s got extra security posted around the hotel.”
This made sense. Whether a real threat or not, the Libyan government’s enhanced “protection” of the U.S. embassy was certainly a signal: The people of Libya were so unhappy about having Western soldiers on their soil that attacks on American assets were possible. It was crap, of course, but Muammar had to walk the fine line between being America’s newest ally in North Africa and presiding over a population that was still largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and therefore unsympathetic to their oppressors, the United States and Israel.
“The joy of international politics,” Clark observed.
“Amen.”
“You got Arabic?”
“Yeah, passable. Getting better. Working on a level-three Rosetta Stone course.”
“Good. I’ll need you to stick around, translate for us.”
“You got it.”
“You have intel for us?”
Richards nodded, wiping his sweating forehead with a handkerchief. “They’ve got a command post set up on the top floor of an apartment building a block from the embassy. I’ll show you what we’ve got when we get there.”
“Fair enough,” Clark replied. “Any contact from inside the compound?”
“None.”
“How many hostages?”
“According to the Swedish foreign ministry, sixteen.”
“What’ve they done so far? The locals, I mean.”
“Nothing, as far as we can tell, beyond setting up a perimeter and keeping the civilians and reporters back.”
“The news broke?” Chavez asked.
Richards nodded. “Couple hours ago, while you were in the air. Sorry, forgot to tell you.”
Clark asked, “Utilities?”
“Water and electricity are still running to the compound.”
Cutting off these essentials was near the top of the to-do list for any hostage situation. This was important for two reasons: One, no matter how tough they were, a lack of amenities would begin to wear on the bad guys. And two, the resumption of water and electricity could be used during negotiations: Give us five hostages and we’ll turn your air-conditioning back on.
Here again, the Libyan government, having gotten the political “butt the fuck out,” was washing its hands of the situation. This could work in their favor, however. Unless the bad guys inside the embassy were complete idiots, they would have taken note of the utilities and perhaps made some guesses about what was happening outside, assuming that the security forces were either unprepared or waiting to cut the power in advance of an assault.
Maybe… if, Clark thought. Hard to get into anyone’s head, let alone some dirtball who thinks it’s okay to take hostage a bunch of innocent civilians. It was just as likely the bad guys weren’t strategic thinkers at all and hadn’t given a second thought to the power-and-water question. Still, they’d be
en good enough to dispatch those Särskilda Skyddsgruppens, which at the very least suggested Rainbow was dealing with people with some training. Didn’t matter, really. There was none better than Rainbow, of that Clark was certain. Whatever the situation inside, it’d get sorted out-and most likely to the detriment of the bad guys.
The trip took twenty minutes. Clark spent most of it running scenarios in his head and watching the dusty, ochre-colored roads of Tripoli skim past the end of the tailgate. Finally the truck grumbled to a stop in an alley whose front and rear entrances were shaded by a pair of date palms. Lieutenant Masudi appeared at the rear and dropped the tailgate. Richards climbed out and led Clark and Stanley down the alley, while Chavez and the others gathered the gear and followed. Richards took them up two flights of stone stairs mounted on the stone wall’s exterior, then through a door into a half-finished apartment. Stacks of drywall lay against the wall along with five-gallon tubs of Sheetrock mud. Of the four walls, only two were finished, these painted a shade of sea-foam green that belonged in an episode of Miami Vice. The room smelled of fresh paint. A large picture window framed by date palms overlooked at a distance of two hundred meters what Clark assumed was the Swedish embassy, a Spanish-style two-story villa surrounded by eight-foot-high white stucco walls topped with black wrought-iron spikes. The building’s ground floor sported plenty of windows, but all of them were barred and shuttered.
Six thousand square feet at least, Clark thought sourly. A lot of territory. Plus maybe a basement.
He had half expected to find a colonel or general or two from the People’s Militia waiting for them, but there was no one. Evidently, Masudi was to be their only contact with the Libyan government, which suited Clark fine, as long as the man had the requisite horsepower to provide what they requested.
The street below looked like a damned military parade. Of the two visible streets adjacent to the embassy, Clark counted no fewer than six Army vehicles, two jeeps and four trucks, each surrounded by a group of soldiers, smoking and milling about, bolt-action rifles casually dangling from their shoulders. If he hadn’t already known it, the soldiers’ weapons would have told Clark everything he needed to know about Qaddafi’s attitude toward the crisis. Having been pushed out of the loop in his own country, the colonel had taken his elite troops off the perimeter and replaced them with the shabbiest grunts he could field.
Like a spoiled little boy taking his marbles and going home.
While Chavez and the others started unpacking the gear and sorting it in the unfinished breakfast nook, Clark and Stanley surveyed the embassy compound through binoculars. Richards and Lieutenant Masudi stood off to one side. After two minutes of silence, Stanley said without lowering his binoculars, “Tough one.”
“Yep,” Clark answered. “You see any movement?”
“No. Those are plantation shutters. Good and solid.”
“Fixed surveillance camera on each corner, just below the eaves, and two along the front façade.”
“Best assume the same for the rear façade,” Stanley replied. “The question is, did the security folks have time to mash the button?”
Most embassies had an emergency checklist that any security detail worth a damn would know by heart. At the top of the list, titled “In Case of Armed Intrusion and Embassy Takeover” or something similar, would be an instruction to fatally disable the facility’s external surveillance system. Blind bad guys are easier to take down. Whether or not the Swedes had done this there was no way of telling, so Rainbow would assume the cameras were not only functional but also being monitored. The good news was the cameras were fixed, which made it much easier to pick out blind spots and coverage gaps.
Clark said, “Richards, when’s sunset?”
“Three hours, give or take. Weather report is for clear skies.”
Shit, Clark thought. Operating in a desert climate could be a pain in the ass. Tripoli had a bit of pollution, but nothing like a Western metropolis, so the ambient light from the moon and stars would make movement tricky. A lot would depend on how many bad guys were inside and where they were positioned. If they had enough bodies, they’d almost certainly have surveillance posted, but that wasn’t anything Johnston and Loiselle couldn’t handle. Still, any approach on the compound would have to be planned carefully.
“Johnston…” Clark called.
“Yeah, boss.”
“Go for a stroll. Pick your perches, then come back and sketch it out for coverage and fields of fire. Richards, tell our escort to pass the word: Let our men work and don’t get in their way.”
“Okay.” Richards took Masudi by the elbow, moved him a few feet away, then started talking. After half a minute, Masudi nodded and left.
“We have blueprints?” Stanley asked Richards.
The embassy man checked his watch. “Should be here within the hour.”
“From Stockholm?”
Richards gave a negative shake of his head. “Here. Interior ministry.”
“Christ.”
There was no use having them transmitted in piecemeal JPEGs, either. No guarantee they’d be any better than what they already had-unless the Libyans were willing to take the shots to a professional printer and have the pieces stitched together. Clark wasn’t going to hold his breath for that.
“Hey, Ding?”
“Here, boss.”
Clark handed him the binoculars. “Take a look.” Along with Dieter Weber, Chavez would be leading one of the two assault teams.
Chavez scanned the building for sixty seconds, then handed back the binoculars. “Basement?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Bad guys usually like to hunker down, so I’d say they’re concentrated on the first floor, or in the basement if there is one, though that’s iffy-unless they’re really dumb.”
No exits belowground, Clark thought.
“If we can halfway nail down where the hostages are and whether they’re lumped together or split up… But if I had to make a snap call, I’d say enter on the second floor, south and east walls, clear that level, and then head down. Standard small-unit tactics, really. Take the high points on the map and the bad guys are at an automatic disadvantage.”
“Go on,” Clark said.
“The first-floor windows are out. We could handle the bars, but not quickly, and it would make a lot of noise. But those balconies… the railing looks pretty solid. Should be easy to get up there. A lot’s going to depend on the layout. If it’s more open, not too broken up, I say start high. Otherwise, we rattle their cages with some flashbangs, breach the walls in a couple places with Gatecrashers, then swarm ’em.”
Clark looked to Stanley, who nodded his approval. “The boy is learning,” he said with a grin.
“Fuck you very much,” Chavez replied with his own smile.
Clark checked his watch again. Time.
The bad guys hadn’t made contact, and that worried him. There were only a couple reasons to explain the silence: Either they were waiting to make sure they had the world’s attention before announcing their demands, or they were waiting to make sure they had the world’s attention before they started tossing bodies out the front door.
19
SURPRISING NO ONE, the blueprints did not arrive within the hour but closer to two, and so it was not quite ninety minutes before sunset when Clark, Stanley, and Chavez unrolled the plans of the compound and got their first look at what lay ahead of them.
“Bloody hell,” Stanley growled.
The blueprints weren’t the original architect’s set but rather a taped-together photocopy of a photocopy. Many of the notations were blurred beyond recognition.
“Ah, Jesus…” Richards said, looking over their shoulders.
“I’m sorry, they said-”
“Not your fault,” Clark replied evenly. “More games. We’ll make it work.” This was another thing Rainbow did very well: adapt and improvise. Bad blueprints were just another form of insufficient intel, and Rainbow had deal
t with its fair share of that. Worse still, the good colonel’s intelligence service had refused to give the Swedes blueprints to their own damned building, so they were out of luck there, too.
The good news was the embassy building did not have a basement, and the floor plan looked relatively open. No chopped-up hallways and cookie-cutter spaces, which made room clearing tedious and time-consuming. And there was a wraparound balcony on the second floor overlooking a large open space that abutted a wall of smaller rooms along the west wall.
“Forty by fifty feet,” Chavez observed. “Whaddya think? Main work area?”
Clark nodded. “And those along the west wall have gotta be executive offices.”
Opposite them, down a short hall that turned right at the base of the stairs, was what looked like a kitchen/dining area, a bathroom, and four more rooms, unlabeled on the plans. Maybe storage, Clark thought, judging by their size. One’s probably the security office. At the end of the hall was a door leading to the outside.
“There’s no electrical or water on these plans,” Chavez said.
“If you’re thinking sewer to get in,” Richards replied, “forget it. This is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Tripoli. The sewer system is for shit-”
“Very funny.”
“The pipes are no bigger around than a volleyball, and they collapse if you look sideways at them. Just this week I’ve had to detour twice on the way to work to avoid sinkholes.”
“Okay,” Clark said, bringing things back on track. “Richards, you talk to Masudi and make sure we can get the power cut when we give the go.” They’d decided to leave the utilities on, lest they agitate the bad guys this close to Chavez and his teams going in.
“Right.”
“Ding, weapons check?”
“Done and done.”
As always, the assault teams would be armed with Heckler & Koch MP5SD3s. Noise-suppressed and chambered in 9 millimeters with a 700-round-per-minute rate of fire.
Along with the standard load-out of fragmentation grenades and flashbangs each man would also be armed with an MK23.45-caliber ACP with a modified KAC noise suppressor and a tritium laser aiming module-LAM-with four selector modes: visible laser only, visible laser/flashlight, infrared laser only, and infrared laser/illuminator. Favored by Navy Special Warfare teams and the British Special Boat Service, the MK23 was a marvel of durability, having been torture-tested by both the SEALs and the SBS for extreme temperature, saltwater submersion, dry-firing, impact, and a weapon’s worst enemy, dirt. Like a good Timex watch, the MK23 had taken a licking and kept on ticking-or in this case, kept on firing.
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