MAC WALKER'S BENGHAZI: The Complete Collection (4 page)

“Ok gentleman, we have ourselves an assignment, and I think you’ll be pleased with the pay. Tilley got us fifteen hundred per day and a twenty one day guarantee with another forty thousand for expenses.”

Minnick quickly did the math in his head.

“So that’s $25,500 for each of us, plus whatever we can scrape off of the forty thousand from the expenses amount.”

Mac nodded to Minnick.

“That’s right – but it gets better. We are also getting an additional hundred thousand.”

Benny let out a long, slow whistle.

“Why the extra hundred grand Mac? That doesn’t sound like Mardian. Who we working for on this one?”

Mac left Minnick’s questioned unanswered for a moment as he glanced at Benny.

“We’re going through Tilley like usual. The funding is connected to someone connected to the U.N. though. I’m not sure of the specifics, but Tilley seems ok with it, so…I figured we would be too.”

Jack’s expression told Mac all he needed to know – the big man wasn’t happy. Not one bit.

“Shit Mac – the United Nations? Since when do we do work for them? You really think this is a good idea?”

Minnick quickly interjected.

“Jack, we’re talking fifteen hundred a day plus we get to split another hundred thousand between us. I could use the money, and know you could too. Who cares where it comes from, right? As long as we’re still the good guys, I could give a shit.”

Mac continued to look over at Benny, who remained silent. Mac knew the normally outgoing man was thinking the United Nations angle over very carefully. Finally, Benny asked a question.

“Where’s the location Mac?”

Mac again paused briefly before answering.

“Libya.”

Jack’s concerns intensified immediately, his Alabama drawl extending his expression.

“Ohhhh shit, Mac. Fucking Libya? That place is God’s asshole. What the hell we doin’ going into that firefight?”

Mac looked at Jack, his jaw setting as he sensed his eyes flaring slightly.

“Because that’s the assignment Jack. That’s where the money is taking us. You want to sit this one out? Fine – your call. It always is. Me…I’m going in. That’s what we do. That’s our operation. We do the things the government wants done…unofficially. You suddenly developed a problem with that?”

Jack Thompson was not easily intimidated, but his respect for Mac both as an operational leader, and a man who could prove most unforgiving when crossed, gave Jack pause.

“I’m not saying no on the assignment Mac. Just…just wondering how it came about. Libya is a mess right now. You’ve got to be hearing the same things I am. It’s like they went and pulled the plug without thinking first about how they were gonna get around in the dark. Just one big ass clusterfuck. And you know my feelings about this administration. I don’t trust nothin’ that’s had their hands on it.”

Mac shrugged.

“And that’s just the kinds of places that we get called into Jack. Our job is to bring our own little version of peace and happiness to that…what was it you called it? God’s asshole.”

Benny rapped his knuckles on top of the table.

“I’m in Mac. That kind of money…just too good to pass up. Twenty one days? Shit, we can do that in our sleep.”

Minnick nodded.

“Me too Mac. I’m in. Ready to go.”

That left Mac looking back at Jack, who in turn rolled his eyes.

“Fine. Guess I can’t let you little shits go off and get killed ‘cause I wasn’t there to keep an eye on you. Fuck.”

Mac stood up from the table.

“Ok, I’ll confirm with Tilley and we meet tomorrow morning at the hangar for a 0600 departure.”

Mac waited for the others to exit the room and then reached into a pocket and retrieved two clean, crisp, one hundred dollar bills which he left on the table. Carlos always refused payment for the use of the room, and Mac always left two hundreds each time before leaving. The man was raising a family after all, and in this world, that was about the hardest job there was.

V.

The hangar was a private airport some twenty miles from downtown D.C., used primarily by the political elite and movers and shakers who wanted to get into and out of the capitol with as little notice as possible. It was Minnick who, through a suggestion from his Congressman father, introduced Mac to the facility. Though a private facility, its runway was long enough to accommodate a 747 if needed, and many times during the year, it did just that. There were rumors members of the Saudi royal family used the airport to leave the
United States within hours of the September 11
th
, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mac glanced at his watch, noting the others should be arriving within the next ten minutes. He saw the Gulfstream III that Tilley had been using to transport them from the hangar location the last two years. It was a military grade jet that had a range of just over four thousand miles at a cruise speed of over five hundred miles an hour. It was one of countless items that were part of massive appropriation bills that allowed multiple off the books programs like theirs to exist.

The Gulfstream’s pilot was a guy Mac had come to simply call Captain Bob. Robert Hazelbrook was a retired Air Force pilot who, as Tilley had told it to Mac years ago, had been handling transport services for these types of operations for nearly twenty years. Mac was shocked when Tilley had recently informed him Captain Bob turned seventy.

Hazelbrook walked across the narrow runway toward Mac, stopping in front of him to shake his hand. His full head of closely cropped dark hair remained almost entirely free of gray. Physically, the still lean retired Air Force pilot could have easily passed for a man twenty years younger. Mac was hopeful that as the years passed, he would remain as well preserved as Captain Bob.

“Hello Mac. Already received the destination instructions this morning – going to be landing you boys in a place called San Vito. Haven’t flown into there since Kosovo back in…hell, 1999 or so.”

“Who runs the San Vito facility? Is it American military?”

Captain Bob shook his head.

“No – used to be. We gave it over to the Italians a decade ago, and then they handed it to the United Nations. Far as I know, what little use it sees now is as a hub for humanitarian projects. At least that’s the official word. Our going there would suggest it’s being used for a whole lot of other things too.”

Mac assumed Dasha had access to the airport then, and had helped to coordinate its use for the current assignment. Whether that was a good or bad thing, he wasn’t yet sure. While he enjoyed the time he had spent with Dasha, he remained unconvinced of being able to fully trust her. Neither of them shared much personal information with each other last night or this morning.

Captain Bob looked up as Tilley’s black SUV parked adjacent to the runway. Tilley and the remainder of Mac’s team exited the vehicle. Mac could already tell that Jack remained more tense than normal regarding the mission, the big man’s brow furrowed as he made his way to where Mac and Captain Bob stood.

Tilley nodded to Mac and the captain and then gave the team a quick briefing as he always did right before departure.

“Ok gentleman, half of the additional hundred thousand has already been deposited electronically into your blind accounts, as Ms. Al Marri promised to Mac yesterday. Your forty thousand expense funds will be waiting for you upon arrival at the San Vito facility. You’ll be met there by a man named Angelo Moretti. He’s my direct contact there, and he’ll be the one securing your passage into Libya. He has all the credentials ready to go. He’s also coordinating with our Libyan contact for your weapons and the safe house. The actual assignment parameters and communications instructions will be at the safe house. Mac, please confirm your arrival there ASAP, and then do twenty four hour updates after that per standard procedure. That’s it then, unless there are any questions?”

Mac looked to the other three in his crew before shaking his head back at Tilley.

“We’re good Tilly – ready to fly out of here.”

Captain Bob nodded, and began making his way back to the Gulfstream.

“Lift off in ten boys. See you aboard.”

Mac shook Tilley’s hand and then took several steps toward the jet before pausing when he heard Tilley call him back.

“Hey – be careful on this one. There’s a lot going on there. Libya has the attention of some real nasty fucks. You need to be on your game. I want you all coming back safe, ok?”

Mac gave Tilley a quick thumbs up before jogging over to the Gulfstream and then bounding up the boarding platform steps. Jack, Minnick and Benny were already onboard.

Twenty minutes later they were shooting across the clear morning summer skies of Maryland, and soon after, out over the blue waters of the Atlantic. Captain Bob’s voice calmly called out over the interior cabin’s intercom system, indicating they would be arriving at the San Vito airport in just over eight hours.

Their Libyan mission had begun.

VI.

A few hours into the flight and Mac found himself peering over at Jack, watching as the big man looked out the small window next to his seat.

“You ok Jack? Feeling alright enough about the assignment?”

Jack’s blue eyes glanced back at Mac as he took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts before responding to Mac’s question.

“No Mac…not gonna lie to you and say everything’s good. It’s not. Hasn’t been for a while now. I’m telling you, telling all of you, things are getting weird. This whole Libya bullshit, how it all went down, I don’t like it. Don’t like flying into it. Not one bit.”

While Jack Thompson had become increasingly paranoid about the American government in recent years, Mac considered him intelligent enough to still differentiate between a real threat and nonsense. If he was sincerely worried about going into Libya, Mac wanted to know why. He moved seats to allow him to look directly back across at Jack.

“Ok then – tell me what you think is going on Jack. I want to hear it.”

Jack folded his well muscled arms across his chest, looking at Mac in silence for nearly a minute before proceeding.

“How much do you know about how Gaddafi was taken out Mac? Did you bother looking into it before accepting this assignment?”

Mac’s pride was hurt a bit by Jack’s accusation. Of course he informed himself of some of the particulars – he wasn’t an idiot.

“Yeah, Tilley broke it down for me. For the most part.”

Jack shook his head as his eyes returned to looking out the window.

“Shouldn’t depend so much on Tilley’s version of things Mac. Do your own homework – connect the dots.”

“You saying Tilley can’t be trusted Jack?”

Jack shook his head again.

“No, I’m not saying that. He gets his information through his Congressional contacts. The Senate…whatever. I don’t trust those fuckers anymore than I trust Mardian, and I know you don’t trust him.”

“Ok Jack…then you give me your version of Libya. Why are you so worried about this assignment? It’s not the first shithole we’ve gone into. What makes this one any different than the others?”

Jack’s arms remained crossed over his chest as he tilted his head back against the top of his seat.

“Do you know how the take down was started? Gaddafi’s fall? What was the event that got that rolling?”

Mac shook his head.

“He was a dictator and people had enough. I know we had operatives there pushing for the protests, helping get things rolling. That’s nothing new. We’ve been doing that kind of thing for decades.”

Jack appeared to ignore Mac’s response.

“It was the alleged arrest of a man named Fergi Tahbell. A human rights activist in Libya with strong ties to organizations in the United Nations, throughout Europe, and the United States. Within hours of his arrest, there were people marching in Benghazi. That is where this thing originated – that is where our operatives were focused. The protests were bullshit. Staged. Their purpose was to incite protest throughout Libya, but what was going on in Benghazi, was highly controlled Mac. Every minute of it was orchestrated. Within a week of the Benghazi protests, the United Nations is locking down Gaddafi, moving for a war crime tribunal, the whole nine yards. It goes down fast, Mac. You get that? How fast it all happened? How smoothly? What does that tell you?”

Mac pondered Jack’s question for a brief moment. Certainly the United Nations wasn’t thought of as a smooth, quick responding organization. Not normally, anyways.

“That would tell me it was operational, like you said. Not some random protest event that few in size, but something that had been planned.”

Jack nodded back at Mac.

“Of course, we know it when we see it, right? We’ve been part of those things, right? Egypt, Iraq, it’s what we do. Libya was different though Mac. We weren’t the lead in that. We were taking orders from somewhere else. The United States was deferring to the United Nations. The administration took a back seat. Since when does that happen? And why?”