by Don Bendell
Bobby turned in the saddle, “Bo!”
She was riding along the shoreline at a trot. Bobby pointed at the two FBI agents.
Bo waved him on. “Got it. Go!”
Abdul had stopped at the trailhead right at the edge of the forest and faced Bobby, who was now coming on at full gallop. Something was wrong. He should be running if all he had was a pistol. Bobby saw Abdul’s hands come up and spotted the grenade. He waited for the arm to start forward with the throw and quickly reined the horse to the right and plowed into the thick scrub oak thicket, feeling branches whipping him on both sides. As he figured, the grenade exploded harmlessly to his rear.
Unfortunately, Bo was off her horse applying first aid to the leg of the wounded agent and was not watching. She heard the explosion and her heart leapt into her throat. All she saw was the giant cloud of smoke and dirt and Abdul Haq disappearing into the woods.
Bo ran to her horse and galloped off after Bobby. She did not see a dead horse, or even a live horse, so that gave her hope. She slid to a stop by the crater from the grenade and saw Bobby’s horse tracks jumping off to the right and going into the scrub oaks. This relieved her so much, but she was also a cop. She rode into the thicket on Bobby’s trail for about twenty feet and saw that he had gotten away clean. Bo turned her horse and went back out to the shoreline and headed at a gallop after the terrorist. She knew Bobby must have gone cross-country on a different route and did not want to ruin his plan. She turned down the trailhead and slowed to a fast walk, seeing the man’s tracks running down the trail.
Abdul ran down the trail for one-quarter mile, then when he came to a series of boulders along the trail, he looked for a place to jump off the trail. He found a long log lying parallel to the pathway, and he walked to the end of it and jumped up sideways on the log, and ran back on top of it, jumping off into some mossy undergrowth. He made his way up among the boulders and perched atop one directly over the trail. From here, he could shoot straight down at anyone following.
Bo was coming fast as she saw by his tracks that he was still running. Her horse was trotting down the trail and soon came to the boulders. Bo was indeed a cop and immediately knew this was a potential ambush site. Bobby had warned her before that a simple and common tactic of many soldiers and trained guerilla fighters is to leave a trail on the ground, and at some point, to get off that trail and double back and set up an ambush.
She slowed her horse to a very slow walk and then only one step at a time. Bo held her Glock in her right hand. Abdul lay flat atop the big boulder lest he show a small part of his body to her. He simply listened, as her horse slowly, carefully approached. He held his own pistol in his hand, but was going to wait until she was safely past and then he would shoot her in the back.
Minutes passed, while Bo remembered what Bobby taught her about tracking someone or a predator. She looked at the tracks, but also let her eyes sweep outward in ten-meter arcs moving from side to side. She also looked up into all the trees to her front and sides. Every thirty seconds or minute, she would turn and look at her back trail, as well. Bo was also wondering where Bobby was, but knew he would be around somewhere.
Bo stopped as she looked ahead on the trail and saw the clearly obvious tracks of Abdul running stop at the end of the log running parallel to the trail. She instantly realized he had jumped sideways up onto the log and ran backward and must be up in the boulders on her left. She spun but it was too late. Abdul had been standing on the rock and was bringing the gun up slowly in a two-handed hold. He figured she and Bobby wore Kevlar, so he was going to take a headshot.
Something dropped over his shoulders, and he at first thought a branch had fallen by him, but he looked down at the loop of a lasso, which tightened quickly around his lower legs and jerked them together, and he heard the hooves of a horse taking off up the hill behind him and Bo’s laugh. At the same time, he was jerked off his feet, his pistol flying, and he slammed facefirst on the boulder, breaking his nose and pulping his lips. Then he was dragged uphill by Bobby on his powerful quarter horse for twenty yards.
Bobby stopped, wheeled the buckskin, and ran back to the dirty, bloody, disheveled jihadist.
Abdul looked up and one of his eyes was already swelling shut, but he saw the barrel of Bobby’s Glock pointed at him. Bobby was smiling behind that weapon. Abdul slowly started to move his hand for his tunic.
He said, “Go ahead, reach inside your clothes for that backup, and I will make you a martyr. Wanna go to paradise today, boy? Do you?”
Abdul, who understood English, stuck both arms straight out to his sides. Bo was right there and patted him down, finding a backup gun and a long knife as well as one other high-explosive grenade.
Bo looked up at Bobby and said, “I was going to say he is clean, but that’s not true. He is unarmed.”
Bobby got down and pulled a small coil of baling wire and a fencing tool from his saddlebags. Making multiple twisted wraps with the wire, he fashioned a crude but sturdy pair of handcuffs around the killer’s wrists behind his back.
He and Bo then lifted Abdul to his feet and moved him to a desk-sized rock and bent him over, and now both searched him much more carefully. They removed all items from his clothing and moved him back down to the trail.
Bo said, “He could have shot me. Why didn’t you shoot him?”
“We needed him alive for intel, honey. I was not going to let him get you in his sights,” Bobby replied.
With Bo’s help, Bobby lifted the defused terrorist up into the saddle of Bo’s horse, facing backward. Bobby placed the man’s crudely cuffed hands around the saddle horn.
He said, “Don’t let go and whatever you do, Usama, or whatever your name is, don’t fall off the horse.”
Abdul finally spoke, asking, “Why?”
Bobby stuck the noose of the lasso over his head, tightened it around his neck, and walked over and climbed up into his own saddle, still holding the end of the rope.
He wrapped the lariat around his saddle horn, saying, “Because you’ll choke.”
He held his hand down to his wife, saying, “Come on up, ma’am.”
Bo grabbed his hand and put one foot in his stirrup, as he pulled her up behind him, and they walked the horses back up the trail toward the FBI agents.
When they reached the lake, the agents were waiting for them.
One of the agents looked at Abdul and said, “Gitmo, huh?”
Bobby climbed down, saying, “I don’t know.”
He pulled Abdul out of the saddle, setting him on the ground, and said, “So can you say ‘Sodium Pentathol’?”
Abdul kind of snarled because he did not get the joke, but all four cops were laughing.
Bobby said, “You know in all this, we have never even introduced ourselves. I apologize.”
The one who now had a good bandage on his lower leg stuck out his hand, saying, “I am sorry. Chuck Baker.”
“Bobby Samuels, and my wife, Bo.”
They shook and the other offered his hand, saying, “Lee Spaulding.”
He winced from the broken rib. Bo offered to bind it, but he refused.
Special Agent Baker said, “We got our cell phones working, and called it in. The cavalry is on its way.”
Bobby said, “By the way, we were never out of your sight, when your bosses ask. When the shooting started Bo and I took off to try a flanking movement from the ridge.”
Both agents gave each other relieved looks and stuck their hands out again. Bobby and Bo shook with them once more.
It was only minutes later that they heard the wop-wop of two Black Hawk helicopters approaching. While Bo moved the horses to the other side of the lake and held them, Bobby helped the FBI agents load Abdul on the helicopter; by now, Bobby had placed a blindfold over his eyes.
The choppers lifted off within minutes, and Bo rode over with Bobby’s horse in tow. She then rounded up the agents’ horses, which had been grazing in a nearby meadow, and each led a horse.
Bo smiled, saying, “Won’t be the first time, honey, or the last.”
Bobby said, “I just hope they get some good intel out of that jerk.”
“How would you like to be the FBI agents that are assigned to go back up on the mountain and dig up the bodies of his two buddies?” Bo said.
Bobby laughed. “Yeah, I’m going to remember them every time I say I am buried in work from now on.”
Bo chuckled, and then got serious. “Bobby, I want us to go to Laos.”
“I know, honey,” he replied. “You know they are going to try to kill us again?”
She grinned at his back, saying, “Yeah, well we’ll just have to keep killing them one at a time, if need be. I know one thing about it though.”
“Well, Mrs. Samuels, what is that?” Bobby responded.
Teeth clenched, she said, “The bastards better bring reinforcements.”
8
JADE SECRETS
It was dark, but the moon was full and its streaking brilliance in the rippling waters of the Potomac made the river’s polished surface look like a giant flag waving in the breeze and made of alternating strips of blue cloth and aluminum foil.
Behind the multicolumned Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, right next to the White House and providing offices for many of the White House staff, at the end of the parking lot in the trees is the White House South Lawn security office. The White House was well lit and looked magnificent as it loomed to their left front as Bobby and Bo, wearing dress blues, followed General Perry, his aide, and others through the Secret Service security point. Bobby and Bo were pulled out of the line of the others by an agent, and they handed their guns to the agent, who promised they would not be scratched. They showed their badges and army IDs. They both were given badges to wear around their necks and were told to simply rub them across a scanner next to the sidewalk, which they did. They entered the grounds, escorted by the agent as well as General Perry, his aide, and two new FBI agents who were escorting Bobby and Bo right now.
They walked down the wide driveway between the West Wing of the White House and the Eisenhower Office Building, which Mark Twain once labeled “the ugliest building in America,” because of its numerous columns and almost overdone ornate architecture.
Bo felt a shiver as she walked by three black limousines, and the Secret Service agent pointed them out as the vice president’s vehicles and pointed up at second-story windows, saying that was the vice president’s office.
To their left was a big pair of double doors covering an archway going into the Executive Office (its actual name for many decades, until President Bill Clinton added the Eisenhower moniker to it in 1999).
To their immediate front-left, closer to Pennsylvania Avenue, were dozens of television cameras and video equipment covered with mainly green tarps and all asleep for the night. They turned to the right and went into a side door into the West Wing near the infamous press briefing room.
Another Secret Service agent behind a desk just inside the door politely greeted them and rescanned the badges hanging around their necks. In every hallway was another Secret Service agent and Bo noticed each one taking in Bobby’s Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star with Oak Leaf cluster meaning second award, let alone the Bronze Stars, Purple Hearts, Special Forces crest and metal tab, and so on. Bo was used to men staring at her breast area, as she could have easily modeled for a high-class magazine advertising bras. She did not realize the agents were also checking out her own Silver Star, Purple Heart, Soldiers Medal, and even jump wings.
Minutes later, they were in the Cabinet Room. Bo inquired about the brass-looking little plates on the back of each maroon-colored leather chair, with some having more than others, and the agent explained that each time someone serves in a presidential cabinet, they get the same chair and the little medallion is added to the back of the chair each time they serve. They were all seated in the room along with the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security, as well as the national intelligence director, the head of the CIA, and the FBI director and a surprisingly small number of staffers. Soon, the president was brought into the room, and Bobby noticed there was no press and no members of congress.
The president walked around shaking hands and acted like he had written Bobby and Bo’s biography.
He nodded at an assistant and a large box was brought into the room gift wrapped with the presidential seal on the wrapping paper and a beautiful red, white, and blue bow. She handed it to Bo and everybody clapped.
Bo’s face turned beet red when the president of the United States said, “It is for both of you, Major Samuels, please open it. We’re all waiting.”
Bo, being careful not to tear the priceless keepsake paper, opened it up and pulled out a beautiful silver bowl. She and Bobby wondered at it, and read together the engraving on the side. It had the presidential seal and was engraved personally to them, wishing them a long, prosperous, and happy marriage and was from the president and First Lady with their names on it.
Bo fought hard to hold back tears and Bobby had a lump in his throat as well. They both thanked the president and asked him to thank the First Lady.
He said, “Did you notice anything you thought was in error when I addressed you?”
Again, her face reddened, and she replied, “Honestly, sir?”
“Of course.”
She said, “You addressed me as Major, Mr. President, and that is my husband, sir. An easy mistake to make.”
The president stood, saying, “No, it is not. Stand up, you two.”
They both jumped to attention. General Perry stood also and walked over to the president, carrying four shoulder boards for dress blues. One set had silver oak leaves and the other had gold oak leaves.
He handed them to the commander in chief, who handed one of each back to him, saying, “General Perry, these two have been your pet project from the get-go. You do the left shoulder on each, and I’ll do the right. Major Bobby Samuels, effective today, you are promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel of the United States Army. And Captain Bo Samuels, effective today, you are promoted to the rank of major in the United States Army. Congratulations.”
Everybody stood and applauded and then they applauded more as Jonathan Perry presented two Legion of Merit medals, and they pinned those on.
The president said, “General, speaking of the army keeping it simple.”
People chuckled.
Perry said, “Did you notice that your shoulder board background colors were green?”
Bobby said, “Yes, sir. I was wondering if I am going back to SF?”
General Perry said, “Yes, you are.”
He looked at a piece of paper and said, “You two have no idea how much brainstorming was done here. You have your own little office of the army. First of all, the Married Army Couples Program was started in 1983 to try to keep married army couples from being separated by duty assignment, so I would venture to say you two will be working together the rest of your careers. We have also created a new MOS code for you two. You are 31/18AlphaSierras. What that means is you are military police slash Special Forces officers and Special Operations Support. Your 201 file will be changed to reflect that. You are no longer under the Provost Marshal’s office, but are under the command of U.S. Special Operations Command out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, but are working TDY attached to the staff of the U.S. Army chief of staff, that being me. Now, Major Samuels, Bo, you are now, because of OJT classified as Special Forces qualified, however it does not mean that you are qualified to wear a Green Beret.”
Bo said, “Sir, I am perfectly fine with that. I do not believe women should earn Green Berets. Some are capable, but I do not believe we should. That should remain male, and I am happy with my husband being qualified, sir. I cannot thank you enough, and you,
Mr. President. I am in shock.”
Bobby added, “Me, too, Mr. President, General Perry. I am deeply humbled and deeply honored, gentlemen. Thank you.”
The president said, “Well, now that we have the pleasant part of this meeting out of the way, let’s get to the very unpleasant part.”
That got everybody’s attention while he sat down.
He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Colonel and Major Samuels most definitely proved themselves when Bobby Samuels was made head of our joint task force on those al Qaeda pukes smuggling nuclear devices into the United States across our southern border. Now Bobby is being put in charge of a new joint task force with his wife second in command. We have a traitor in our midst.”
Everybody in the room looked around, and the president chuckled. “Sorry, I did not mean here. I meant in our U.S. Senate. This is very sensitive and cannot be whispered outside this room with anybody. Do not, and I mean do not decide on your own that your assistant, deputy, secretary, wife, or mistress has a need to know about this. All of you in this room are the only ones with a need to know for now, period. Are we all clear on that?”
Everybody said, “Yes, sir,” or, “Yes, Mr. President.”
Bobby and Bo were in even more of a state of shock.
The president went on, “We have proof positive, lots of it, that Senator James Weatherford of a state that was one of our original colonies, no less, is in collusion and has been meeting in secrecy with a high official of the al Qaeda terrorist organization as well as a high official of the Communist Party and a deputy prime minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
There was a lot of murmuring and head shaking in the Cabinet Room.
The vice president smacked his hand down hard on the table, and everybody stared. His face was red.
“I apologize, Mr. President,” the VP said. “That son of a bitch came to my only daughter’s wedding, and even danced with my daughter.”
The president smiled softly. “It is much worse. He betrayed his fellow countrymen, not just you. We cannot prove it yet, but we are positive he was behind the killing of CIA Agent Boom Kittenger, which you all know about, and we are positive he is directly tied into the attempted assassination of Colonel and Major Samuels. Everybody take five and we will talk some more.”
