by James Ward
Morgan simmered down then he filled Steck in on Greg Liss’ story. “I need you back here. Your knowledge of Arabia and the Persian Gulf will help us to get in and communicate with Doctor Wigglesworth. Get out of there as quickly as you can.”
“Saudi Arabia is one thing, Ryall. Yemen is quite another. I believe the only guys that can help with Yemen would be Task Force Orange. I suggest you get hold of the Pentagon and ask their help. They’re the only chance for you to get an American in and out of Yemen with his head.” There was a pause while both men thought about that.
“Greg Liss wants to go himself,” offered Morgan.
“You got any turf issues with that?” Steck immediately regretted the remark. At any rate, he sure didn’t want to have to baby sit a green kid like Liss in a quagmire like Yemen. He hoped Morgan would have more sense than to set him up like that.
“Just get whatever you can and get back here pronto, Bob.” Morgan clicked off.
__________
Steck rented a car in Sheridan, and drove out early in the morning. He presented himself at the guard shack near the main gate to Free Nation around nine-thirty a.m.
“We’ve been expecting you Mister Steck,” the guard wore fatigues, a gray beret and spit polished boots. On his shiny black belt was a .45 Caliber sidearm. He gave Steck directions to the headquarters building. “You have exactly three minutes to get there before we come after you. You will be met by a captain in a purple beret.” Steck gave him a puzzled look. “In case you get lost. We wouldn’t want you to wander into a live fire area, sir.”
Steck knew better. He figured they had been given orders to keep him under wraps. “Have a good-day sir!” The guard snapped a smart salute and waved Steck in. Steck marveled at the high level of training and organization everywhere he looked. This was no tinhorn outfit. Discipline was tight and everyone seemed well equipped. Exactly three minutes later he was greeted by a young Captain and whisked into the guest quarters. It was a small cottage with white siding and black shutters. Inside it was clean and neat, sporting two bedrooms, a modern kitchen, a dining room, living room with a stone fireplace, and a bath. The place had a woman’s touch, all tastefully decorated in rustic western style.
“Make yourself at home, Mister Steck,” said the Captain. “Colonel Randy will send for you at ten hundred.” There’s food in the kitchen and linen for your use. He handed Steck an index card with a number on it. “Call this number if you need anything.” He gestured towards an antique telephone. The officer started to leave then he paused by the door. “I suggest you stay inside. There’s a lot of traffic today on post.” He snapped a salute, turned and went out, closing the door tightly behind him.
Steck waited a few seconds then tried the door to see if he was locked in. He was not. He quickly searched the place for evidence of electronic surveillance. “Phew!” he exclaimed to himself, impressed by the array of electronic bugs he found, wondering about the ones he did not find. At the refrigerator, he opened a coke and took a long draught. Returning to the living room, he pulled a straight chair to the largest window and sat, watching the activity outside.
The post was alive with vehicles ranging from converted Jeep Wranglers to heavy trucks. Paved roads and even sidewalks gave the impression of a small western town. Work crews were busy maintaining the streets. At his extreme right, Steck could see an electric utility truck and crew hanging a string of lights by the entrance to a PX that looked like a small version of Wal-Mart. To his left, off the big main square was a long low building he surmised was an elementary school by the sounds and spectacle of children at supervised play on the grounds. In the distance, he heard the shouts of a drill sergeant. He figured there must be a parade ground nearby.
The headquarters building, just across the big square was another surprise. It was a large two storey brick building with lots of windows. A steady stream of both men and women flowed in and out of the building. Many of them were in civilian clothes, but many sported the odd looking military full dress that had first impressed Steck at the guard shack by the main gate. It seemed a cross between US and European, with a grey and red beret that had a stripe of green galun around the brim. As he saw more of it Steck thought of tin-horn African third rate military dress. He thought it best not to advertise that observation while he was here.
Steck sat quietly by his window and concentrated on burning a mental image of all he could see and hear.
At one minute before ten, the Captain strode up to the front door of Steck’s cottage and knocked loudly. Steck swung the door, facing the man. “The Colonel will see you now sir,” the Captain snapped a salute.
________
Paul Roche had checked in to a resort hotel in Salt Lake City after a five hundred mile straight run in an old Ford Taurus he bought out of a farmer’s front yard in Great Falls, Montana. The car ran okay, but it smelled of cow manure. He was glad to get to a city he knew well, where he could change identity again and maybe complete his “fade” from the police trail. Since he had a passport that worked okay through Canada immigration, he decided to remain “Terry Jansen” for today. After a shower and a couple hours sleep, he ate a hearty breakfast and went shopping. Paying cash for a business suit and casual accessories, he stopped at the hotel barber shop and got his three day beard shaved off, along with a brush cut, something he had not had in years. The new Mister Jansen looked every bit the modern business traveler.
Roche had his best set of contacts in the US around Salt Lake City. A couple of calls from the prepaid cell phone he had bought on the road got him a new set of Chevy wheels and rid of the smelly Taurus.
By afternoon, Roche was relaxed enough to rent clubs and play a round of golf on the hotel’s reasonably good course. His plan was working fine. He had tapped a bank account that he had long held in SLC, deciding not to risk a transfer from the Caymans yet. In the evening, he would keep an appointment with a guy who could supply him with his final change of identity, including a British passport with all the trimmings. This trip was costing him a lot, but safety and security came first. It was just part of the cost of doing business Roche style.
________
Ryall Morgan had just left the office of Colonel Radcliffe at the Pentagon. It was the first official meeting for these two men since having served together teaching a top secret class of special agents just after the September 11th tragedy. The class brought top members of the clandestine services, military and FBI together to map strategies in what was to become the “war on terror.” Out of that had come several new operating entities including Mort Lindsley’s FBI JUMP Team domestically and Task Force Orange in the military. One of those new “entities” was also Ryall Morgan’s group, headed by Bob Steck. Contrary to Washington banalities, Ryall’s group purposely didn’t have a name. The ones with names have a way of finding their way into the press, a great way to lose cover.
Steck’s observation had been right. After a briefing by Bill Radcliffe, Morgan knew for sure that he would need help from a group like Task Force Orange to get someone in and hopefully out of Yemen in a hurry. He marveled at the apparent ease with which old professor Wigglesworth and his archeological team moved in and out of that horrid place.
The problem was that Radcliffe’s team was fully deployed. The eight men he had in Yemen at the moment were chasing a hot lead obtained from the interrogation of Sheik Khalid Muhammed. Radcliffe made it clear that he wasn’t about to drop the trail of top Al Qaeda operatives to find some college professor out digging in the desert. He also opined that any American who thought he could get away with digging all over a rat hole like Yemen must be a perfect idiot.
Realizing that he was not going to get the resources he wanted from Radcliffe, Morgan stopped short of telling the Colonel about TheHand of Mohammed. The fewer involved in this the better, for the moment.
On the way back to his office at Langley, Ryall Morgan spoke with Mort Lindsley on the phone. “Mort, I can’t get Pentagon resources that would get
your man Liss in and out of Yemen safely.”
“Well, Mister Morgan, I tell you what,” began Mort. “I can get him in or out of any place in the world with a few pokes from the State department.” Not waiting for Ryall’s response, he drawled on. “I guess my boys will have to figure it out themselves.” As he said this Mort sat back and smiled, waiting for Ryall to react.
“Negative!” snapped Morgan. The last thing he needed was meddling from the State Department. “Come up to my office at four-thirty. I’ll see what else I can arrange.”
________
Brandt sat on his bunk at the head of about forty bunks and lockers in the bachelor officers quarters (BOQ,) a long, low barracks style wood-shingled building amidst several others near the parade ground. It had the typical spotless floors and walls, toilets at one end and a vacant day officer’s desk at the other. The events at Coeur d’Alene Idaho were buzzing through his mind. He stared into space, his face taught, trying to organize bits of information. Some were vivid, some were obscure.
The scuffle that led to the unfortunate “accidental” death of Ralph Baker was something he thought he could explain or excuse to Colonel Randy with just a slight spin on the truth. His involvement with the girl, her startling reaction to Baker’s demise and Brandt’s killing of her in self defense was a gigantic problem.
The trip back to the post had been handled just like any military assignment, cool and professional. Now in the quiet of his quarters, Brandt trembled like a kid who had been caught stealing chickens and would have to face his parents.
Colonel Randy trusted Brandt to carry out any mission, anywhere in the world, with absolute adherence to discipline and training. It was a trust not given easily, but rather earned over a long period of flawless performance of duty. Now Brandt would have to report to his mentor his total breakdown of discipline and disregard for the importance of the mission entrusted to him. It was as if he was about to take his knife and pierce the heart of the only person who’s love and trust he ever craved.
The violence was just his military training in automatic mode, he reasoned with himself. Every man has to have a woman companion once in a while, he postured. After all, he had covered his tracks well and would probably never be connected to this incident. Did he really have to tell Colonel Randy the whole story? Maybe he could just omit the part about the girl. The agonizing answer was that he could not. That would be dishonest to Colonel Randy, something Brandt knew he could not live with.
Finally, he put on a clean set of fatigues, donned his beret, and slowly jogged up to the headquarters building to face the music.
_______
Susan Deet had wrapped up and filed a report on the pursuit of Paul Roche. She thought of checking out of her hotel and going up to Sheridan, Wyoming to find the airplane and re-join Steck. Instead, she decided to kick back and get some tanning time.
Susan donned a fairly modest two piece bathing suit, sunglasses and a sun hat. Taking her laptop and a book to read, she went to the ground level and took a chaise by the hotel pool. She connected via secure WiFi and was now exchanging email with Greg Liss, who was back at Jump Team headquarters near Washington.
Greg was trying to enlist her aid to convince Mort Lindsley to let him go to Yemen and conduct a de-briefing of Doctor Wigglesworth about the “Hand of Mohammed.” Lindsley had just told Liss that the mission to Yemen would be honchoed by the CIA because it was outside the United States and the FBI had not been invited by the “host” country. Whether Greg would be part of the mission was still to be determined.
Deet was tempted to get unprofessional about the obvious breach of the same type of turf protocol by Bob Steck, but thought better of putting it in an email. She was still wrestling with the emotional sting but savvy enough not to let it screw up her next performance review.
As if persuaded by that argument, she wrote to Greg “better to honor the chain of command, accept your orders and keep the boss happy.”
________
Paul Roche returned to his hotel room in Salt Lake City just after ten o’clock pm. He now had all the things he needed to get to his final destination for the next few months. Soon he would be living quietly and quite well in a villa high in the hills just outside of Mexico City, under the name and identity of Hugh Coles, a British author of romance novels.
Hugh Coles’ persona had been practiced for years by Roche but never used except to create some superficial social contacts that could some day serve to verify his identity. Among his many assumed personae, Roche had held this one in reserve for a difficult occasion like the present one. The ‘Hugh’ character that Paul had practiced for so long in front of his hall mirror in Norfolk, Virginia was a wealthy refugee from the British upper Class. He never really had to work for a living, but kept busy writing un-published novels. Hugh bore a classical British education (which was close to the truth, for Roche had studied the classics via internet links to prestigious British schools) and he even belonged to a couple of British men’s clubs, although no one at those clubs would remember meeting him. Roche had cleverly donated several sizeable amounts to their charities, just so he could accumulate correspondence on the clubs’ letter head, in appreciation of his generous support.
Now ‘Hugh Coles’ stood before the bathroom mirror in his hotel room, adjusting his hair and eyebrow color to add more gray, then fitting a paste-on moustache of short bristly gray lip-hair. “Rather handsome, aren’t you Mister Coles,” he exclaimed to the mirror in a very British accent.
After completing his transformation task, Roche decided to use the last minutes on his prepaid cell phone to call Buel. He was interested in how hot or cold his trail might have become in the past day or two.
Buel had just finished his chores at the ranch and sat to watch TV. A bit after nine pm the phone rang. “This is Buel,” he answered in his customary way. The unmistakable voice of Paul Roche chilled him.
“Has any one been around looking for me, Buel?”
Buel foolishly lowered his voice as if that would help foil any bug on the line. “Damn right, they have!” he forced a shouting whisper. “You got me in a heap of trouble. Bob Steck and some woman came-a-calling and put pressure on me. I didn’t tell them anything, I swear!” Buel was sweating. He reminded himself not to tell Roche that he knew Blake was involved. That would surely get him killed.
Roche was not happy and he let Buel know it. Then he decided to throw some flak. “Are they buggin this line, Buel?”
“No. That is, I don’t know!” stammered Buel.
“Just don’t tell them anything about my ranch here in Calgary, you hear?”
“Of course I won’t, Paul. You know me, I wouldn’t…” his voice trailed off.
“Be sure now.” Roche clicked off. He went to the sink, drew about six inches of water and doused the phone to wipe out the call memory. When he was sure the phone would no longer work, he flushed it down the toilet and began packing.
CHAPTER 10
Steck spent three hours of intense conversation with his old friend-turned-criminal, Randy Pullin. At times during those few hours, he felt as if his life was in danger. At other times he felt sympathy and admiration for Pullin and his organization.
Colonel Randy started out by showing Bob the strength of his operation. Long dismissed as a few nuts living in the wilderness by the FBI and CIA types who were supposed to be keeping an eye on him, Randy had built a military organization that many third world governments would be proud to call their army.
Randy’s organization boasted over Three thousand five hundred men trained in some ways as well as any U.S. Marine. More than two thousand of them lived at the post. He had quarters for their families and a school system inspired by the famous Calvert curriculum. The schools had turned out kids who were on full boat scholarship at major universities, including magna cum laude graduates of Harvard. He had accumulated military hardware from all over the world. This included Leopard and T-82 tanks; self propelled howitzers, rocket la
unchers, MANPADS (Stinger) missiles, and even his own brand of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that boasted GPS and multi-spectral sensors. This small airplane carried advanced imaging cameras as well as a tiny rocket designed and built at the post. Randy boasted that the UAV’s rockets could take out a coffee can from five miles away with a ninety-nine percent kill rate.
Steck was flabbergasted to think that a Para-military group could “sneak” tanks and howitzers into the U.S and then get them into the mountains of Wyoming without detection. He was confounded to imagine how in the world Free Nation could possibly use this kind of hardware except to play soldier on this patch of ground. Randy admitted that the heavy stuff was only useful for training. But he hinted that the value of a soldier for hire was enhanced by familiarity with the materiel of their clients.
The most amazing impression on Steck was the gung-ho atmosphere and absolute dedication and loyalty to Colonel Randy that he sensed in every person on the post. The officers and men all seemed to be US or European military types, a few Asians too, who had combat training as their background and constant personal improvement as their goal.
When he asked the obvious question – “How do you finance all of this?” Steck had been disarmed by the reply. Colonel Randy had looked him straight in the face and declared, “Our resources are for hire anywhere in the world for nearly any mission at the right price. We have our code of ethics, which obviously doesn’t match yours, Bob, but is rigorously adhered to by all hands. I don’t tolerate killing unless it is part of a military mission or in self-defense, and I won’t engineer a coup on sovereign governments. Every thing else is fair game.”
“Is it really that simple?” Steck queried, incredulous.
“Yes, Bob. It is really that simple,” was the straight-up reply.
Rattled by Pullin’s cold candor, Bob decided to go right back at him with the question he needed answered. He had no idea whether the next few minutes would seal his fate. “Randy,” he started, “There was a recent event in Charleston, during Hurricane Joseph. Do you know the one I mean?”
