Mission Liberty
Authors: David DeBatto
Copyright © 2006 by David DeBatto and Pete Nelson
Excerpt from
CI: Homeland Threat
copyright 2006 by David DeBatto and Pete Nelson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
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Contents
A war-torn country.
A deadly new front in the fight against terrorism.
A battle for freedom America must win…
CI: MISSION LIBERTY
Hoolie Vasquez tapped DeLuca on the shoulder and handed him his GPS-linked handheld. On the screen, DeLuca saw a map of the
area, with Camp Seven at the bottom of the screen. Above the camp, to the north, was a field of red dots representing troops
marching south, perhaps five kilometers away. Estimated strength: two thousand men.
DeLuca looked at the sun, setting in the west. In another hour or so, it would be dark. “We’ll have to work with what we have,”
he said.
“Spoken like Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Remember the Alamo?”
“Who could forget?” DeLuca said. “With one difference.”
“Which is?”
“They had a fort.”
Paul Asabo looked at the two Americans with a puzzled expression on his face.
“Famous American battle,” DeLuca told him. “Nothing to worry about.”
ALSO BY DAVID DEBATTO AND PETE NELSON
CI: Team Red
CI: Dark Target
To Cathy and Ray—for keeping the home fires burning while I was off saving the world. My humble and sincere thanks. Thank
you to SGM Jeffrey Galland (Ret), Department of the Army (G-2) and MSG Michael Marciello (Ret), senior counterintelligence
special agent.
—
David DeBatto
Thanks to Greg Ford for his technical expertise. Thanks to Mari Omland for bringing me to Africa years ago. Many thanks to
Laurent Chaline for helping me with my French translations and to my nephew Benjamin Mackenzie, whose recent semester in Ghana
supplied me with many details. Thanks to Dr. Ben Osborne for his medical advice, and to Peter Haas for explaining global oil
economics to me, and finally to my wife Jen for helping me along the way.
—
Pete Nelson
A1 International
US forces poised off coast of Liger
By Roddy Hamilton
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAKU DA’AL, Liger—Over five thousand United States Marines from the 3rd Marine Division, out of Ft. Bragg, North Carolina,
are waiting 10 miles off the coast of Liger aboard the landing ships USS
Cowper
and
Glover
for final word from the White House to begin Operation Liberty. In addition, 10,000 reservists from the 27th Mountain Infantry
Division at Ft. Drum, New York, are on standby.
The White House has said General Thomas Mfutho, leader of the Ligerian People’s Liberation Front, has until midnight Saturday
to pull his troops out of the capital city of Port Ivory to positions held as of the first of the month, and to honor the
cease-fire agreement currently in place, or the president will give the order for U.S. troops to come to the assistance of
beleaguered President Daniel Bo’s government.
“We want General Mfutho and the others to understand that the president’s resolve in these matters is as strong as it was
in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” said White House spokesman Daryl Firth. “We will not sit by and watch while another Rwanda transpires.”
Civil war in the West African country of Liger began six months ago in the famine-plagued northern region of Kum when rebel
faction leader John Dari accused Bo of using food as a weapon.
The Pentagon fears that an alliance between rebel forces and the group IPAB or Islamic Pan-African Brotherhood may lead to
wider-spread violence in neighboring countries. IPAB may be associated with Al Qaeda, says Marine commander four-star General
John Kissick.
“We’re here both to provide air and logistic support and to put boots on the ground, wherever they need to go. We’ve shown,
in Afghanistan and again in Iraq, that quick decisive U.S. military action is the best way to avoid unnecessary loss of lives.”
The war escalated a month ago when President Bo sought to nationalize the Ligerian oil industry. Liger is the United States’
fourth-largest supplier of oil, pumping at a prewar rate of over 1,200,000 barrels a day. Production has dropped to under
half a million barrels per day since the fighting began.
Liger was a British colony from 1674 until 1962, when a bloodless revolution left King Mufesi Asabo in power. Asabo was dethroned
and placed under house arrest in 1972 by General Sesi Mutombo, who was displaced in 1980 in a bloody coup by President Daniel
Bo, Sr., father of the current president. Strife in Liger has generally been between the president’s mainly Christian Fasori
tribe, in the south, and the traditionally Muslim Kum people in the north, with the Animist-Christian-Muslim Da people of
central Liger caught in the middle. Fears of religious genocides are ever present (see story p. B1).
“In order for democracy to flourish and take root in West Africa or elsewhere on the African continent,” said U.S. Ligerian
Ambassador Arthur Ellis, “the people on both sides of the issue need to realize that without dialogue, there can be no freedom.”
“Despite its oil wealth, Liger is one of the poorest, most corrupt countries on earth,” says People Against Yet Another War
president Carol Kennedy. “There’s never going to be democracy in Liger until Ligerian resources are more equitably divided
among its people.”
Aggravating Liger’s political difficulties are five consecutive years of drought and a plague of locusts that have left the
northern regions of the country devastated by famine and disease. Nearly two million people have been forced from their homes
and into refugee camps, where they’re preyed upon by bandits or recruited by IPAB. Accusations of atrocities in the region
perpetrated by both sides, including mass executions, rape camps, and mutilations, are unconfirmed, according to a State Department
spokesman. ♦
A1 International
U.S. Ambassador Ellis, staff evacuate embassy
By Kurt Hess
REUTERS
PORT IVORY, Liger—In advance of the arrival of rebel troops from the Ligerian People’s Liberation Front, under the command
of General Thomas Mfutho, the decision was made late last night to move American Ambassador Arthur Ellis, his staff, and his
contingent of Marine guards from the U.S. embassy to the Castle of St. James, a former slave-trading stronghold.
“We decided rather than take unnecessary chances on the safety of our people, we could relocate to a more defensible position,”
says State Department spokesman Dennis Abney. “No people, papers, or documents were left behind.”
The embassy came under threat when angry mobs began to surround it a month ago. Before that, it was the site of frequent protests
against United States involvement and international oil interests.
Government troops under the command of General Kwesi Emil-Ngwema are believed to be positioned just west of town, ten miles
from the castle. Also in Liger are 300 African Union troops, commanded by General Ismael Osman, and 500 United Nations peacekeepers
led by Belgian General Rene LeClerc.
“Our plan is for the safe and orderly withdrawal of embassy personnel in the next few days, depending on developments in the
city,” said a representative of Marine General John Kissick. “Captain Allen, of the embassy’s Marine contingent, assures me
that his people are fully in control of the situation on the ground.”
“It’s tempting to draw parallels between this event and the fall of the U.S. embassy in Teheran, or even the evacuation of
the U.S. embassy in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War,” says Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tai Rutledge,
“but the circumstances are entirely different. We still have a friendly government in power, not to mention 5,000 Marines
offshore. When order is restored, and we expect it will be soon, we’ll know more about what’s going on, but we don’t think
the ambassador or his staff are in any danger. We are in communication.” ♦
B1 National
President’s spiritual “guru” still missing
By Madeleine Stern
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
HUMBOLDT, Texas—“He’ll be back,” says Alice Dunn of First Baptist Church in this dusty east Texas town of 6,000. “If you’re
a person of faith, you have to believe that the Lord is watching over him.”
Dunn’s pastor at First Baptist on Plain Street, the Reverend Andrew Rowen, disappeared two weeks ago while touring the central
part of war-torn West African nation Liger. Having once served as a missionary in Liger for the Baptist church, Rowen, a friend
of the president and frequent White House guest, returned to the country in hopes of fostering peace. He was last seen leaving
a refugee camp in a white Land Rover, accompanied by soldiers from the African Union.
“We’re still awaiting word,” says State Department representative Sabina Lake. “Unfortunately, communications in Liger right
now are so poor that it’s possible Reverend Rowen doesn’t even know we’re looking for him.”
Rowen received the nickname of the President’s Guru after converting the former Texas governor to born-again Christianity
in 1995. Rowen gave the prayer at the president’s first and second inaugurals.
Critics have said they’re afraid that the president has made this both a holy war and a personal mission to rescue his close
friend and advisor.
“That is patently ridiculous,” says Lake. “First of all, the president needs the approval of Congress before he can declare
war on a sovereign nation. There are no personal wars.
“Second of all, we don’t even know that Rowen is missing.”
“It’s a matter of great concern,” said Minority Whip Senator Lester Solomon (D., IL), “that we should even give the appearance
of waging a holy crusade of any kind.”
Solomon is making reference to a statement by the president yesterday, when he said, “This is not a holy war, but our cause
is holy. Freedom is sacred. Liberty is holy.”
“I think if we have to send troops and our boys have to die to protect Christians, then we have to do it,” says First Baptist
parishioner Leon Spivy. “Look at it the other way—would we turn our backs on people, simply because of their religion? I don’t
think so.”
“I went to high school with Andy Rowen,” says Humboldt mayor Ray Lamont. “I know that if anybody could survive something like
this, he could. He’s a strong man.”
Rowen was born in neighboring Ghana, where both his parents were missionaries from 1951 to 1962. He attended Harvard from
1968 to 1971, where he and the president were roommates. ♦
THE CAR BOMB HEADING FOR THE U.S. EMBASSY, a fifteen-year-old Isuzu passenger van carrying two sixty-four-gallon drums marked
“ammonium nitrate,” enough to sink an aircraft carrier, was driven by a young man wearing a vest that appeared to be packed
with C4 explosives. He was joined on his mission by four men in ski masks carrying AK-47s and glancing nervously at the mobs
that were throwing stones and looting stores and burning everything that had the taint of “foreigners.” A fifth man rode on
the roof, grabbing the roof rack for support whenever the vehicle hit a pothole or crossed one of the open sewers.
Down an alley, they saw a group of men with machetes chasing three boys who slipped through a hole in a fence. At the next
corner, they were slowed in their progress when four women with babies strapped to their backs crossed in front of them, carrying
portable stereos still in their boxes. The palm-lined avenue called Presidential Way was strewn with debris, the smoking shells
of burned and overturned cars, the blackened armor from what used to be a military half-track with two burned bodies falling
from the back, one corpse with its head intact and one without. Groups of children dressed in cast-off clothing donated by
American charities, wearing T-shirts bearing logos for Georgetown University or faded images of Britney Spears, huddled in
doorways, aiming toy rifles and broomsticks at the passing vehicles and laughing. Mixed with smoke and cordite and the pungent
aroma of raw sewage flowing in the gutters was the faint smell of tear gas in the air, lingering in the areas where government
troops had beaten a retreat in the face of the onslaught. Uncontrollable mobs now surged through the streets of Port Ivory,
driven forward by rebel troops in green forest camo uniforms and red berets. Many of the regular rebel forces hadn’t been
paid in weeks and now took their compensation in the traditional way of conflict, seizing whatever they could load into their
Jeeps and trucks or carry in their arms, and in whatever pleasures could be gained along the way.
