Strike Force Alpha (12 page)

“You don’t really let them do anything up there, do you?” he asked the tanker pilot.

Noonan laughed again.

“Ever hear of the twelve-thousand-dollar coffeepot?” he asked.

Ryder and Phelan nodded. Years before, government whistleblowers had caught the Pentagon buying $12,000 coffeepots for some of its aircraft, an extravagance of days gone by.

“Well, we got one onboard,” Noonan said. “And we let those guys use it to make our coffee…and believe me, nothing else.”

Ryder and Phelan didn’t get the call to return to
Ocean Voyager
until six that morning.

In that time Ryder had drained four beers but also drunk four cups of the strongest, thickest
Arabic kaffee
imaginable. It gave him a buzz that made his pep pills seem like Chocks. Phelan had matched him on the beers but managed to down a half a dozen cups of the hot black glue.

They passed the time jawing with Noonan. They were all too smart to ask for specifics about one another’s missions, so the conversation touched on everything but what they were doing out here, in the middle of the Persian Gulf, on this night of dark, thick clouds.

Noonan filled them in on some recent events up in Iraq and other places. Nothing earth-shattering, but suffice to say, the region was always hopping with U.S. military activity. Another round and they started hauling out old “war stories.” Mishaps in training, fuckups by officers. Close calls. The universal language of military fliers.

Then they started talking about their hometowns. It was strange. Ryder learned more about Phelan during this part of the three-way conversation than in any talk he’d ever had with him one-on-one. Phelan had grown up in San Diego, and not only had he been very close to his father, the old man had been grooming him to be a major-league baseball player. Phelan was attending San Diego College, doing NROTC and playing shortstop for a championship team, when his father,
his hero,
was killed in the attack on the
Cole.
He immediately dropped out of school, went into the Navy, earned the rest of his wings in less than a year, and volunteered for the nastiest duty the fish could find for him.

Such dramatic requests usually went unfulfilled. The Navy wasn’t in the business of making its officers—its pilots—into instant heroes. But when what he called in Noonan’s presence “our little club” was started, Phelan’s name popped up somehow. A fast course in flying Marine Harriers, a jump to the Naval Reserve (to avoid typical assignments), and the rest was history. The shortstop in the cockpit. Soft hands. Pinpoint landings. Good wingman potential.

But this was just the tip of the iceberg with the young lieutenant. He also revealed, in the most conversational way, that he was an accomplished musician, in guitar and viola. Berklee had wanted him, but he chose to fly jets instead. He also had a slew of girlfriends back in San Diego, owned a rebuilt 1981 Corvette, was a championship motocross racer at age 15, and at 4 was the youngest person to ever ride a hang glider solo.

Then, there was one more thing: before she got married, his mother had been a Playboy playmate.

Miss August 1978….

It was six-thirty the next morning when the two Harriers returned to the
Ocean Voyager
.

The ship had wound up turning 180 degrees—twice. Ironically, Ryder and Phelan found it in nearly the same position as when they left, just off the coast of Qatar.

They landed almost simultaneously, each plane using its own separate pancake. The Marine techs were practically pulling them out of the sky, obviously anxious for them to land. The elevators were going down even before Phelan’s wheels touched. Ryder felt sure the rush-rush had to do with the security window closing.

Actually, another aircraft was coming in.

He and Phelan rode one of the pancakes back up to the top. They arrived in time to see Martinez and Bingo descending from the bridge house. Ryder and Phelan joined them on the railing.

They spotted the incoming helicopter. It was an elderly Huey, painted white and blue, a bad imitation of something that might belong to a private oil company or a cargo-handling firm. There was a long stream of black smoke trailing behind it, and the copter’s engines were backfiring mightily as it circled the ship.

“Oh God,” Martinez said. “They’re trying to kill him….”

Somehow the Huey made it down, landing with a great thud, not on a pancake, but on the ship’s aft-end, little-used static copter platform. The side door opened and a passenger stepped out, carrying two suitcases and a briefcase.

He was short, thin, with large ears and gray thinning hair. He looked in his early sixties. He was wearing golf slacks, a red cotton shirt, a light jacket, and holding a baseball cap with an American flag stitched above the bill. He had a befuddled look about him and seemed confused by his new surroundings. It was almost as if the copter had scooped up an American tourist wandering through Disneyland and deposited him here. The guy seemed very out of place on the dirty, oily undercover ship.

“Who the hell is that?” Phelan finally asked.

Bingo laughed. “Who the hell is that?” he said. “Son,
that’s
Bobby Murphy.”

Riyadh

The man in the bad Yemeni suit had been waiting patiently for two hours.

His name was Abdul Kazeel. He was 37, short and seedy, with dark eyes, one much larger than the other, a thin mustache, and a chronically unshaven face. He’d come to Saudi Arabia by way of motorboat from Iran earlier in the week. This morning, a taxi carried him from the coast to here, the soaring, futuristic Pan Arabic Oil Exchange building in downtown Riyadh. He smelled of four days of travel.

Kazeel was now sitting in a holding room on the seventh floor, just outside the office of Prince Ali Muhammad.

The Prince was not expecting him.

Kazeel killed his first man at the age of nine. A dispute over a cup of goat’s milk in the village square left an old man with his throat slit. Young Kazeel was never charged with the crime. He hadn’t stopped killing since.

He was born of a Palestinian mother and a Kuwaiti father. His village was near the border of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. His uncle, a Syrian, was the mayor and strongman of his village and a man connected throughout the Saudi Kingdom.
This
is why Kazeel had never been arrested in his life. He grew up protected from the inconvenience of the law.

His second victim had been a paid hit—at the age of 13. The target was a rival of his uncle. When the man answered the door, Kazeel shot him twice in the groin; then as he lay dying on the floor, Kazeel shot him again in the head. All this happened in front of the man’s wife and seven children.

For this job, and others performed by Kazeel at the bequest of his uncle over the next seven years, he was able to get a passport and gain admittance to al-Azhar Religious College in Cairo. Here Kazeel studied radical Islamic law and, naturally, turned to terrorism. Dalliances with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority followed. Both organizations were impressed with his brilliance and ruthlessness. He was also an expert in planning large suicide operations.

Kazeel’s talents quickly became known in the terrorist underworld. In 1999, he reached his peak. That’s when the boy who’d once killed a grandfather over some squirt from the village goat became one of the top mission planners for Al Qaeda.

Fifty feet from the waiting room, behind two locked doors, Prince Ali Muhammad was sitting at his desk, a stack of documents in front of him.

He had important business to conduct this morning. Pan Arabic dealt in oil lease futures; they could be traded like stocks or bonds, with tankers full of crude being moved about the globe like chess pieces. Most of the oil Pan Arabic handled was heading for the United States. As president of the company, Ali had to sign these weekly leases and have them time-stamped to lock in the price of the crude.

The lease purchase agents were waiting for him in the next room. At exactly 10:00
A.M.
, he began taking them one at a time. He signed his name to 23 total leases, more than $200 million in business transacted in 15 minutes. Sums like that sometimes called for a celebration, a lunch or at least some tea with the customers. This time, though, Ali dismissed them all with the wave of his pen.

He was in no mood to celebrate anything these days.

At eleven o’clock, his male secretary announced a dozen visitors were still waiting to see Ali. The second half of his business day was about to begin. Just like the
jeebs
who showed up in his backyard every Thursday night, a small group of oil ministers and police officials appeared at Pan Arabic every Wednesday morning. They were looking for handouts, too, and for the most part, Ali was obliged to pay them. Keeping these people happy made Ali’s life run easier. They helped his business; they protected his home life; they cleaned up his indiscretions, like the one over in Bahrain a few nights before.

He still had a hazy memory of the incident, one that was not going away quite as fast as he had hoped it would. With similar occurrences in the past, all thoughts of his actions would have faded by now. Such things certainly weren’t rare among his kind these days. And those girls really should be more careful! Besides, what was the life of one person—or two or three—worth compared to that of someone who had billions? Ali, too, was a killer. He’d just started later in life.

Usually the psychic hangover lasted 48 hours at the most. But earlier this day Ali had discovered something that would make this memory linger even further. He had foolishly worn his best white robe ensemble to the casino club that night; they were the same clothes he was wearing today. On his shirt, at a spot right over his heart, was a tiny drop of blood. Blood that was not his.

The outfit had been laundered by his staff, yet the spot had remained. He didn’t realize this until he’d already arrived at his office. He’d caught himself looking at the crimson spot many times since,
obsessing
on it. He’d tried to wash it out with warm water and clear tea, several times. But nothing worked. The spot defied all means of removal. This was not good for someone who fretted as much as he.

He despised the distraction of worry.

Ali finally signaled his secretary to begin the second ritual of the day.

The usual suspects were led in, one at a time, asking about the Prince’s health, the health of his children, even talking about the weather—this while Ali was less-than-graciously handing them envelopes stuffed with money. Each one went out the way he came in, bowing and scraping. In 20 minutes, Ali had paid out more than $500,000. A drop in the ocean.

The last man through the door was not from the oil world or the government, though. Nor was he from the national police. It was Kazeel, the planning minister for Al Qaeda.

Prince Ali knew him well. But he was very surprised, and a little nervous, to see him.

Kazeel did not bow and scrape like the others. He kissed Ali twice on his cheeks and then flopped into the chair across from his desk. Ali was nearly staggered by his body odor. Kazeel said: “I am happy for the happiness of my brothers.” It was a rote Arabic saying that Kazeel delivered without an ounce of emotion.

Ali tried to recover. He sat behind his desk and leaned forward, hands open.

“Why are you here, my brother?” he asked Kazeel gently. “We had no meeting prearranged, did we?”

“This could not wait, praise Allah,” Kazeel replied. He looked around the luxurious office. “Can we talk safely here?”

Ali nodded. The office was soundproof and bug-proof. The entire Pan Arabic building was.

Kazeel got right to the point.

“We have come up with a foolproof plan,” Kazeel said. “For a very big hit. Very,
very
big.”

“Allah be praised,” the Prince whispered. He wasn’t quite expecting this.

Kazeel went on. “The objective will be most prestigious. Most visible. Most symbolic to the Americans. Our friends around the world will view this act as great and holy retribution—and a gigantic production.”

“Can you tell it to me?” Ali asked.

Kazeel reached into his pocket, where he would normally carry a pistol, and came out instead with a CD-ROM. He handed it to Ali. “It’s all in there, praise Allah. The names of our operatives. Their rendezvous points. Our distraction ploys. The many planes we intend to take. Protect that with your life.”

He then reached into another pocket and pulled out a small copy of the Koran. This, too, he gave to Ali. The Prince started to refuse, but Kazeel forced it on him. “I know you have many already,” Kazeel said. “But you will need this one especially.”

Ali’s hands shook slightly when taking the Koran from Kazeel. “Is there anything else I need to know about this, brother?”

Kazeel winked his bad eye. “Just to remember the favorite words of our father, the Sheikh himself, and be frugal always….”

Ali nodded, then locked both the CD and the Koran in his top drawer. He began pulling his chin whiskers to approximate deep thought. Kazeel, of course, was not here to bring him into the loop. He was here for money. There had been talk of this next big hit for some time now. It was to top all previous attacks and again put pressure on the United States to remove its troops from the holy lands. Ali had already funneled nearly a quarter-million dollars into the initial planning for it.

“This will kill thousands of Americans, guaranteed,” Kazeel went on, lowering his voice. “Many more than September Eleventh. And, I should say, we might even find a way that we can split their own atoms, right under their noses. And who knows what side effect that will have?”

Ali found his eyes going back down to the bloodstain on his shirt.

“But, my brother,” he said, “it sounds like you are about to embark on an enormous undertaking. Getting just four airplanes under our control on September Eleventh took so much time and effort. Am I to understand that for this to work, you will require so many more?”

Kazeel nodded. “Yes, up to twelve, as a matter of fact.”

Ali was stunned. “
Twelve?
Where will you ever get them?”

Kazeel smiled again.

“Leave that to us,” he said.