Sudden Threat (50 page)

“Thanks, Mark. I’ll see you in a few days,” Meredith said, ready to hang up.

“Karen, can I use that computer I asked you about last night?”

“Sure thing. Do all my business on it. Have my own server too. Went back to UVA and got a certification in computer science. I’ll do the occasional house call for the folks around here to fix their stuff.” They walked into the study, which was lined with pine paneling and had two bookshelves at the back. A smallish desk was covered with mail and books and a black-and-walnut UVA college chair with an orange and blue seat cushion was pulled away from the desk. A bench was underneath the window that opened onto the north part of the farm and offered a generous view of the mountains.

“Huh,” Meredith said. “You any good with security stuff?”

“How ya mean?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’ve got a thumb drive, and I can see the folders, but can’t open them.”

“Password-protected. You didn’t try to open them did you? Get locked out.”

“No, I figured that much out after I clicked on one and got the password dialogue box. I never tried a password.”

“Good thing,” Karen said. “Matt and I have played around with some algorithms for code breaking.” She looked up at Meredith after she sat at the computer and said, “Given his line of work.”

Meredith dug through her purse and said, “Well?”

“Problem?” Karen asked.

“Can’t find my lipstick, but here’s that thumb drive.” It was the one conscious thought she had as she crawled from the wreckage.
Get the thumb drive
.

Karen took the device and plugged it into the USB port and quickly pulled open the dialogue box with the files. Then she opened another program from her windows display and played around with it a minute. A black screen came up and scrolled through hundreds of lines of code and stopped. Karen minimized that screen and said, “Interesting.”

“What?” Meredith asked, hopeful.

“Did he have a problem memorizing passwords or something?”

“All the time,” Meredith said, more hopeful.

“Well, he used Firefox, and all you have to do is click on the Firefox icon here in his thumb drive and you get all the passwords,” Karen explained. She performed the function and a series of boxes with asterisks in them popped up.

“They’re still protected,” Meredith said.

“Watch this.” Karen clicked on java script. Suddenly the asterisks disappeared, and the passwords appeared.

KeithRichards2002.

“He a Stones’ fan?”

“You might say that.” Meredith grimaced.

“Okay, I’m going to leave it with you. I never did this. And if I ever get a call about it, this computer will be in the fireplace before I hang up the phone.”

“No worries. I promise. You’re awesome, Karen. Thanks so much.”

Karen left, and Meredith sat down to begin plowing through the files. The password worked for each folder, and what she found was, to put it mildly, shocking.

In the first file, the Pred-China folder, she read document after document that recorded financial transactions of U.S. technology sales to China totaling some $100 million. Meredith figured that at $5 million each, the Chinese had received about twenty Predators. The money, it seemed, was then funneled in two directions.

First, there was a clear chain of transactions to a man named Takishi, she presumed this was the man she had seen leaving Stone’s office and with whom Stone had exchanged a Rolling Stones’ code.

What could Takishi be doing with $75 million?

Well, she thought, he could be building weapons plants on the island of Mindanao. Was this any different than selling TOW missiles to Iran, then funding the insurgency in Nicaragua? Instead of Iran-Contra, do we have China-Abu Sayyaf, she wondered? That would be a twist, fund the bad guys to start a war … for what?

Next, she opened a file labeled “AIG.” American International Group was the world’s largest insurance company. In this file she found stock-trading records for early September 2001, prior to September 11. They were a combination of short sales of AIG and United Airlines stock as well as option puts. In essence, whoever the account numbers belonged to had bet in early September that AIG and United stocks were going to go down big.

Bottom line: Someone knew about the coming attacks.

Was that where it ended? she wondered. Did they know about the attacks or did they help plan the attacks? Meredith had read all of the reports of the high-ranking CIA officials who were under investigation for placing short trades on airline and insurance stocks a few days prior to 9-11. For whatever reason, the story never got much play in the press.

But the evidence was staring her in the face. The Rolling Stones, or at least Keith Richards, aka Bart Rathburn, either knew of the short trades or had placed the short trades … or both. Rathburn, after all, was a finance major and had worked at a hedge fund before finding his way to academia and the Pentagon. Had the other $25 million gone to short trades? Or had it gone to helping the hijackers?

She remembered reading somewhere that 9-11 cost Al Qaeda somewhere around a half million dollars. That was peanuts to these guys.

Or had their cooperation, if there was coop-eration, been more subtle, such as pushing aside a report on the flight training of insurgents, for example?

She shuddered. The bottom line, she assessed, was that the Rolling Stones knew about the 9-11 attacks before they occurred.

So, let’s see who they are.
She opened Mick Jagger’s file and saw a complete dossier on Secretary of Defense Robert Stone. She scanned through the document and closed it.

Next she opened Charlie Watts’ file and saw a Harvard Business School picture of Takishi, smiling and handsome. As she read the file, Takishi was an HBS classmate of Bart Rathburn.

She had assumed that Rathburn was Keith Richards since there was no file on Richards and because Stone had once mistakenly called him Keith. So when she opened the Ronnie Wood file, she was not so much surprised when she didn’t see Rathburn’s face.

Instead, she was shocked at the image staring back at her.

Dick Diamond?

CHAPTER 89

Island of Mindanao, Philippines

Chuck Ramsey could hear the helicopters circling in the distance near Cateel Bay. He saw one of the U.S. Air Force Pave Lows zipping low along the beach, then banking high into the air above the thatch huts, blowing the roof off one of them. The valiant effort of Zachary’s Black Hawk had ended when the UH-60 had to make a precautionary landing on the northern tip of Mindanao because of lack of fuel. These U.S. Pave Lows were sent via the Joint Special Operations Task Force.

There was little he could do to effect linkup with this soaring, hovering angel above them, though, with no radio.

The helicopters were a welcome sign, as he had lost six more men besides Eddie in the last series of ambushes. The Abu Sayyaf was still out there chasing him. For the past week, they had walked, then fought, walked, then fought, like two boxers in the twelfth round, slinging wild punches, then moving away, circling, holding a lone fist outward to keep one another at bay, circling some more, then fighting. It was ceaseless.

Ramsey licked his dry lips and steadied his dizzy gaze as he peered through the gray-morning skies, searching for the Pave Low. A rainstorm looked to be moving to his north. He was weak from lack of water and food. The bodies of his Special Forces team littered the trail, a trail of tears, which they had cut through this unspoiled rain forest on the Mindanao eastern shore. First, there had been Peterson, then Jones, then Eddie, then one here, two there, and suddenly it was just Ramsey, Lonnie White, Randy Tuttle, Ken Benson, and Abe.

Abe had survived it all and carried a rucksack and M4 rifle from one of the fallen soldiers. He had painted his face with camouflage stick. During the last small engagement, similar to the others where they had doubled back on their own trail like some Louis L’Amour scouts often do, Abe had surged forward, bayonet fixed on his rifle, rising out of the tall grass and charging the stunned and equally tired rebels. They had fled down the mountainside as Abe had impaled a fourteen-year-old boy toting a rifle on the end of his bayonet.

The Pave Low circled back, and Ramsey briefly saw it through the top layer of the thick triple-canopy jungle. There was a small window of sky above him. He angled the metal tube in his hand toward the opening and slapped it hard on the bottom, bruising his weak palm.

The star cluster rocketed skyward, making it through to the small hole, then bursting green and sparkling back into the jungle nearly two hundred meters away.

The Pave Low reacted and tightened its search arc to about a hundred-meter area.

He pulled another star cluster from his ruck, his last, and repeated the procedure. Benson, White, Tuttle, and Abe all watched with hopeful eyes.

Ramsey turned on his strobe, holding it high in the sky, hoping that somehow it might help. The Pave Low passed the opening once, then circled back, tilting and trying to draw a bead on them.

The pilot hovered the aircraft over the opening as a steel cage called a jungle penetrator began to push its way toward them from seventy-five meters above the ground. Lowered by a hydraulic cable, the penetrator turned and twisted as it floated toward them.

Ramsey looked skyward, thankful, but still not convinced they were free. The adrenaline began to rush, though, giving him the strength to reach up and grab the metal basket. He felt a mild shock from the kinetic energy created by the massive torque of the whipping blades and transmitted along the steel cable.

Tuttle was first to go. He had been wounded in the leg and needed better medical attention than White could give him with his limited supplies.

The basket came down again, and White was next to take the ride.

Chuck’s hopes began to grow, like a blooming flower in the spring, betting against the inevitable final frost of a winter not complete. Two of his men were safe aboard an Air Force helicopter. Its blades beat loudly above the jungle, which was why they did not hear the first salvo of AK-47 weapons fired their way.

A bright red spot suddenly appeared in Benson’s forehead, then grew rapidly as the blood gushed outward like a fountain. Benson kicked back, eyes open, and fell against the dangling basket, knocking it crazily to the side.

Abe crouched low and immediately returned fire.

“Get in cage,” he told Ramsey, who looked briefly at Abe and took him up on his offer. He pulled Benson’s limp body onto his lap as he climbed into the basket, charging his M4, and began to fire as he ascended into the heights of the jungle.

Beneath him he could see Abe shooting and moving. Rolling from tree to tree, firing. He watched as Abe pulled out his bayonet and snapped it onto the front end of the rifle. Two Abu Sayyaf charged Abe with bayonets fixed as well. He felt the cage break through a tree branch, hanging momentarily on the stub, then kicking free.

Abe parried the first slash by holding his rifle above his head, then kicking at the attacker with his foot, pushing him away. The second man ran into the powerful thrust of Abe’s lunging bayonet, skewering himself beyond the flash suppressor. Abe pulled the trigger, exploding the man backward into a tree, freeing his weapon to fight the dead man’s partner.

Is this what it has come down to, two against four?
Ramsey thought as he felt the cage strike metal. A large hand opened the top, and a voice said, “You’re safe now, sir.” Hands grabbed Benson’s body, then him, pulling them into the aircraft.

“Send it back down,” Ramsey said, weakly.

The crew chief lowered the basket as Ramsey peered over the ledge, much like Ron Peterson had done when he had saved his life.
So much has happened.

He watched the basket twist and turn its way through the jungle.

Abe cocked his right arm and straightened it, stroking the butt of his rifle into the man’s face, only to have him lower his head. His arm flew wildly against the vacant air, pulling his shoulder out of socket. Like a hot knife against his skin, he felt his right arm dangling loosely at his side.

He reached for the basket with his left arm, pulling it toward him, sliding his body into the seat.

The bayonet poked at him, glancing off the metal basket, making a spark, then finding purchase in his rib cage. He felt a rib crack, the pain sharp and pointed, like a razor in the eye. Perversely, it balanced the throbbing sensation of the separated shoulder on his other side. He kicked at the raging rebel, violently flailing his bayonet at the man lifting into the sky.

The rebel stopped, smiled, and looked down at his weapon, realizing Abe had no more ammunition. Then he watched the man slowly ascend toward the helicopter.

The young rebel lifted his rifle bringing it to port arms, and like an executioner, measured his next move, leveling the sight on the swinging basket.

Ramsey lowered his weapon and sighted the rebel. Then Abe. Then the rebel. The penetrator was oscillating, preventing Ramsey from getting a good shot.

“Pull this thing up! Pull up!” Ramsey yelled to the crew chief.

“We’ll lose him, sir. We’ve got to get him higher!” the crew chief screamed back.

Abe looked down with fear as the basket pulled him away. On the ground, an instinct had taken charge, making him a warrior, but now as he lifted through the fog of war, sensing he was moving closer to perhaps his safety, the fear crept back into his mind. Suddenly, he had something to lose. Before, he felt as if he had already lost it. He pulled the picture of his wife and family from the breast pocket of his borrowed uniform. They were smiling at him from a photographer’s studio in Tokyo.

The rebel looked away, then sighted again. The wooden stock of his Chinese rifle was covered with mud and dirt, but he was sure it would work again.

He pulled the trigger as the basket reached the bottom of the helicopter, firing one shot, then another, then stopping, flipping the selector switch to automatic, then emptying his magazine into the cage like a magician sticking swords into a basket. He was sure that one of the bullets would find its target.