'A' for Argonaut (33 page)

No! Treasury!

He turned, ran to the woman’s sprawled body, checked her pocketbook. He found her Virginia driver’s license made out to Utile Nsangou, a name with which he was vaguely familiar.

He felt like he
was living a nightmare, that he had nowhere to turn. Everywhere he went, he ran into another enemy, a new attack. Where he once felt like a part of the system, a bonded brotherhood of dedicated patriots, he now felt as if his soul had been taken and ripped to shreds by those he admired the most, the keepers of the faith, the leaders of the country’s defense and government establishment.

Where will it go? How far up the line?

When he studied military history and its lessons, dignifying honor, discipline, and integrity, he thought he had finally found a family. That’s what enticed him. It seemed to him so rock-solidly bound in fairness, back then.

Now it all seemed a sham.

He had to rally his strength and fight back with all the reserves he had.

Amber!

He rushed through the restaurant’s kitchen, bowling over the sous-chef and a female assistant. Outside Chez Biarritz, he flagged another taxi. He got out a block from the Hotel Borghese and walked down the street to a side street that led to the back of the hotel. He shot up the back stairs reserved for the room service wait staff. Ten minutes later, he had grabbed their bags and led Amber down the emergency fire escape over an alley in the back that led into the underground garage. They hit the ground running, out to the street, turned the corner to the front of the hotel, and jumped into the rental car.

He heard the plea in her voice. Tough as she appeared, she cried out for help.

“Tony! They are going to kill us!” It wasn’t just to rescue her son. Maran knew. He identified. They were together now, needed one another, chained in a common cause.

Forty-Two

Washington, DC

A
lex Pajak walked out into the heat on Wisconsin Avenue, turning to see if he had a tail. Satisfied, he trade-crafted down the busy street and across the bridge over the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal‌—‌the C&O‌—‌keeping a sharp eye to his rear. Confident he was clear, he entered an alley to the back door of the 12th Note Lounge. A jazz trio was on stage. They played a soft rendition of Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew.” Through the window in the entry alcove, he recognized the two men. They sat at a small table over a bottle of wine. He moved through the crowd at the bar, which led into the dining room. The muscular men at the table both wore polo shirts with two buttons opened with heavy gold chains around their thick necks. One sported a Van Dyke beard, knife-like sideburns and big hair, pitch black, pomped in front and slicked back in a ponytail. The other was distinguished by cropped, coppery hair that looked like it had been soaked in a child’s watercolors.

“Looks like 1999 Beaulieu ‘Georges de Latour Private Reserve,’” Pajak said, approaching them, pointing to the wine bottle.

“Lush and velvety,” the blonde grinned.

“Naw, more like a trooper,” Van Dyke said. He shook his craggy head. His chin jutted out like a granite precipice. “Intense, ramrod straight.”

“Always said you should have been a wine critic,” Pajak laughed.

“Yeah, but I like doin’ what we do.” The joke was these two men were what the intel community refers to as “knuckle-draggers,” men trained in little more than setting up and executing assassinations until they got injured and transferred to DRAMS. Now they ran the security operations for the oil fields off Cabinda. They liked things just the way they had been.

“OK,” Pajak said. “Maran’s too close. We have to cover Boyko’s flank, get rid of Maran. These fuckin’ guys, Pentagon dweebs, their cronies. All caught up in their underwear. Have you heard the latest?”

“I’m on the edge of my seat,” V.D. wisecracked.

“He took out our shooters in Antwerp, including Utile Nsangou.” Neither man showed recognition. “Maran’s got to go. Right now. Goddamn! He’s a threat to the American fuckin’ way,” he continued.

“What happened to Maran in Cabinda?” the blonde asked. “I couldn’t believe what I heard. He was too good to let his team get ambushed like that.”

“He was, but Maran’s op was a threat: a rescue of some leftist Save-the-Worlders, American U.N. observers, taken hostage. Maran had already infiltrated into Boyko territory. If he succeeded, it would have blown our operation,” Pajak explained.

“Maran’s an asshole. No alternative,” the towhead surmised.

“An idiot,” V.D. joined.

“OK. So he’s crippled‌—‌disgraced, thrown out. That didn’t work. Now what? He’s back in our faces,” the blonde frowned.

“Not for long. He’s with Chu. Boyko’s on him. He’s a corpse.” Pajak vowed.

Back out on Wisconsin
Avenue Pajak shaded his eyes from the intense sunlight, pulled out his sat phone and dialed up a number in Timbuktu.

“Did you get that shipment?”

“Like clockwork. Mustafa and the
al-Shabaab
bless you with all their love. The Niger flows gently through Bamako in Mali. The ricin is being readied to distribute through our channels all over America,” answered Abu Mahmoud al-Ebrahyim. His words referred to weapons designed to introduce poisonous ricin vapor through the elementary school HVAC systems in the country’s twelve wealthiest communities, seats of American power like Short Hills, New Jersey, outside of New York City; Bethesda, Maryland, outside of the Washington Beltway; and Hillsborough, California, outside of San Francisco. Al Qaeda’s planners figured that a ricin attack preceding their economic terrorism assault would be the one-two punch to bring America to its knees.

Holding influence over the Somali group al-Shabaab Youth Mujahideen Movement, al-Ebrahyim’s own cell was headquartered in Mali; he was at the forefront of a global assault on the United States and reported directly to Abu Mustafa al-Masri, al Qaeda’s man in Iran. His work with Vangaler was part of the Youth Movement’s plan to finance the establishment of armed sleeper cells throughout the world, particularly in the United States. Their expressed goal was “to establish an Islamic caliphate after eradicating the State of Israel, throwing the west out of the Middle East, invading the United States, and killing the infidels.” They were leaving no stone unturned.

The late August sun
pierced the picture windows in the back of the lounge at Clyde’s of Tyson’s Corner, a popular restaurant on Leesburg Pike in Vienna, Virginia. Brigadier General Bull Luster met with Cole Martin, Lieutenant General Alexander Stassinopoulos and Major General Randy Baltimore. They sat in a private booth. Above their heads, hanging from the ceiling, a toy train circled the restaurant.

Luster sliced into his grilled Porterhouse pork chop. Baltimore ate chopped shrimp salad. The din of the other patrons dampened their conversation; they leaned close to one another.

“Let’s get right down to it,” Luster said. “Maran’s mission was to get those hostages out. The first responsibility, however, is always to bring the team back, intact if possible. Maran failed.”

“Why was that, General? Why do you think one of our most decorated ops failed?” Baltimore asked.

“You tell me. You’re the one who ordered him to retreat,” Luster said.

“He believed that the terrorists were unaware of Task Force 9909. Our satellite intelligence disputed that conclusion. We ordered him to pull out. Maran took it into his own hands.”

“Given our political history there, I understand his thinking. Not that I agree, but we’ve been smack in the middle of a pile of shit in the region since we let Bombe take over,” Martin said.

“So we freeze their assets in the banks and they move into diamonds,” Baltimore continued.

“Diamonds, near cash, are easier to move around than truckloads of currencies. Concentrated wealth, retain their value. We know these assholes’re in Timbuktu, Mali. African base. Pretty far from Cabinda. Not as far’s Kabul to New York! Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas. All those guys have moved into diamonds. It’s one big glitter orgy,” Luster charged.

“Nothing has changed. Why do you think so many of these diamond dealers on Avenue Inga in Mbuji-Mayi or the Petit Marché in Bakua Bowa, are Lebanese, Pakistani, or Iraqi‌—‌Muslims? Diamonds always belonged to Congo, never to the Congolese. Bombe. I guess we figure if it doesn’t matter, why not make sure the dictator of the day is our dictator?” Luster’s point made sense.

“Like Mubarak?” Stassinopoulos sneered. “We’ve used fear of Islam to prop the worst dictators in the Arab world since Nasser’s revolution in 1952 and it is those same dictators that have fanned the flames against Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its allies.”

“Like Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza?” Martin interjected.

“You bet,” Stassinopoulos said. “For more than 60 years, the Brotherhood has been illegal, but it has tremendous support from the most democratic factions of Egyptian society, the trade unions, professional associations, local and regional government, even many in parliament, not to mention a quiet band of military leaders. We have always preferred dictatorships that guarantee our access to their oil and let Israel encroach on Arab soil in Palestine.”

“Funny to hear you talk like that, Stash,” Luster smirked. “Strange viewpoint. Don’t forget their history,” he continued.

“Going back to the 1930s,” he said, “long before World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood’s charter was laid out like a blueprint for Arab Naziism. Hassan al-Banna, its founder, backed Hitler and railed against the U.S. and its allies, calling for the return of the Caliphate,” Luster added.

“They are masters in working the shadows, removed from military conflict but covertly managing it. Past history says they will keep their powder dry for now until they think their time is ripe. It’s a testimony to the self-interested, blind eye approach of the Europeans that more of them won’t acknowledge it.”

“We’ve made some mistakes, not for lack of trying, General,” Baltimore snapped. “Why do you think we’ve got several thousand mercs, former Special Forces, guarding those oil fields in Cabinda?”

“Mercenaries. Long Bow. Stash, you got yourself a good deal there,” Luster said.

“Valentine has it right; we are protecting U.S. interests with the President’s express approval,” Stassinopoulos said.

“You bet. Maybe U.S. interests aren’t as moral as freedom for sixty million Egyptians, particularly since this could spread throughout the Muslim world,” Baltimore said.

“Shit, solder,” Luster almost spit. “You sound like Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn, the radical eggheads from Cambridge.”

“Zinn died,” Martin pointed out sounding less than distraught.

“Pity,” Luster eulogized.

“Look, you sound like idiots,” Luster shot. “You people and your elite allies on the left forget a few things.” From past experience, they knew what he was getting at: things like the entire Arab world’s armies attacking Israel as soon as the Jews declared independence for it in 1947, things like Hamas’ Iranian-supplied Grad missiles fired from Gaza on innocent Jewish civilians in Sderot, Ashkelon and Be’er Sheva, suicide bombings everywhere, the Muslims’ expressed vow to kill Jews and bury America, multiple bombings of Americans and American facilities.

“You’re talking strictly about the Islamists,” Baltimore responded.

“Hair-splitting,” Luster spat furiously. “How many Muslims worldwide celebrate the mass murder of 3,000 innocent souls in the 9/11 New York Twin Towers massacre? And get support from their imams? What kind of religious values tolerate murderers videotaping themselves cutting a Jew’s head off while they scream adulations to their God? Stand by silent while their religion sets world historical records for death and violence: 17,000 Islamic terror attacks since 2001. More than 31 attacks which killed 117 people and maimed 255 more just last week?”

Martin joined Luster’s diatribe. He was livid. “Look, we support the rights of anyone on Earth to live the life and religion they choose as long as they respect the same for everyone else. We condemn religious intolerance of all kinds. But we have to draw the line on those who openly practice and promote madness, terrorism‌—‌mass murder and serial killing. Whether that’s confined to what we are euphemistically calling ‘Islamists’ or to Muslims in general I can’t figure out. And their imams aren’t helping me.

“What religion has an army of PR firms to promote charities tied by the Justice Department to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood?” he added.

“What right does America have to force its religious morals and customs on other peoples of the world?” Stassinopoulos countered.

“Christ, Stash! You, your liberal pals here have to stop genuflecting at the idol of political correctness and face up to the fact that not all philosophies are either beneficent or created equal, whether we’re talking about Islam in the Middle East or U.S. and U.N. appeasement in Angola,” Martin said. “We have to rid ourselves of our fear of critical thinking even when it appears on the surface to be so un-American. Sometimes the truth is harsh, even cruel.”

“You have to ask: It might be creed, but is this brand of Islam a religion‌—‌or is it a political ideology?” Martin posited.