The First Casualty (23 page)

53

Sankore Mosque

Timbuktu, Mali

At the Same Time

The low light of a single low-wattage bulb made Abu Bakr ibn Ahmad Bian squint through thick spectacles at a Jeppesen high altitude chart of the North Atlantic, the same chart Colonel Hasty had been studying earlier in the day. Next to it, a conventional map of much the same area. A red line stretched northwest from Timbuktu to a point about 300 miles off the Moroccan coast. In the background, the mosque's generator chugged softly.

Almost engulfed in a sea of shadows, Mahomet Moustaph watched as Abu Bakr used a compass to measure the distance for the third time. “They will die over water?”

The younger man nodded.

“
In shā' Allāh.
It is better that the infidel devils never find their president to bury just as they did with the martyred Bin Laden, peace be upon his soul.”

Moustaph stepped closer to inspect the machine that occupied most of the small room as if he had never seen it before. “I am curious­. How are you certain you will strike the infidel's aircraft from such a distance?”

“That was a problem when we obtained the first device. If we missed the target, the particles continued until they either ran out of energy and fell to the ground or the curvature of the earth brought them smashing into some part of the earth's surface, such as happened to a forest in Siberia when the machine's inventor overshot the North Pole.”

“And now?”

Abu Bakr pointed to a laptop computer on the floor, wires disappearing into the larger machine. “GPS. I simply set the coordinates; and, Allah willing, the particles strike the target.”

Moustaph was still not convinced. “That requires some precision, to make particles and target meet.”

The other man nodded his agreement, holding up the high altitude chart. “It is made easier by the American devils themselves. The aircraft will be out of radio contact for several hours. Its first communication will be when it reaches this point.” He placed a finger on the map.

Moustaph glowered at the Roman letters. “What does the English say?”

“ ‘Hamid.' It is what is called an intersection like the meeting of two streets, except here two vectors meet.”

“Vectors?”

“Predetermined routes like a highway. With GPS, the concept of set vectors is all but obsolete, but intersections are useful in ascertaining an aircraft's position to a ground controller. For instance, the president's plane will become visible to civil ground radar just before Hamid, and it will so identify itself and give its altitude to Gibraltar Center on frequency 122.45, a broadcast we will monitor. One of our brothers has hacked the center's radar so we, too, have all the information we need as to speed, altitude, and heading. We will put that data into the computer, which will feed them to the machine, which will fire a burst of particles every fifteen seconds for a minute. May it please Allah, one or more of the bursts will rain down on the infidel aircraft just as it did the Air France plane with the same result.”

Moustaph toyed uneasily with his beard, a man who was naturally suspicious of anyone with such scientific knowledge. “If these particles of yours may be directed with such accuracy over such distances, why not rain them down on Washington or New York?”

Abu Bakr shrugged. “It is not my decision, but I would speculate once the particles reach the altitudes necessary for such targets, they and their source would be apparent on military radar. In fact, once the American president's plane is struck, it may be possible to trace the direction of the particles back to here.”

The thought of the death and destruction that could be wreaked on America gave almost sexual pleasure to Moustaph. The threat of retaliation against an obscure city such as Timbuktu was hardly a deterrent. He would not be here when the American drones came on silent wings to unleash their deadly missiles without warning. His experience and importance to the movement necessitated postponing blessed martyrdom. Only the young, inexperienced, and otherwise useless would voluntarily taste an early paradise.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden awareness Abu Bakr had asked a question.

“The infidel Peters and his band of devils are here in Timbuktu. You have taken precautions to make certain . . . ?”

Moustaph smiled though there was no humor in it. “May Allah will it, he will foolishly attack tonight or tomorrow morning. We are prepared for him.”

54

Outside the Sankore Mosque

Timbuktu, Mali

At the Same Time

Men and women exited different doors shortly after
Isha
ended, the small crowd disbursing into streets illuminated only by such light as leaked around edges of closed doors and shuttered windows. In the dark, the four men in loose-fitting
thiyaab
could have easily been mistaken for Bedouins. The departure of worshipers lasted long enough for each to slip one by one into the mosque's main courtyard.

Wordlessly, Jason motioned toward two figures, also in Bedouin attire, standing beside the entrance to the minaret. Even in the near total absence of light, it was clear each held something that gave an occasional reflection. Jason had no doubt they were armed.

Stepping back into the deepest shadows given by the wall, Jason removed a pair of night-vision goggles from the billowing sleeve of his
thobe
. A detailed scan revealed only a pair of gray-bearded old men in the arm waving, head wagging, body language punctuating conversation common in this part of the world. Other than them, his crew and the two guards at the door, the courtyard was deserted.

He gave a low whistle he hoped would blend with the ceaseless breeze's whisper. No such luck. The two at the door turned, searching as they raised what were now unmistakably rifles, most likely the ubiquitous AK-47. At the same time, Emphani and Viktor glided silently across the sand toward them. The guards turned back just in time to detect movement. One had his weapon raised just as a blur of silver streaked the night like a comet. There was the sound of steel meeting flesh, a grunt and one of the two was on the ground. The second almost got off a shot before there was a single coughing sound, and he joined his companion.

At a run, Jason crossed the distance to the entrance where Emphani and Viktor were dragging two limp bodies out of sight. Even in his hurry, Jason noticed the neat round spot in the second guard's forehead. Viktor's skill with a pistol had not diminished since that frigid night in a Washington, DC, strip mall.

He was aware of Andrews next to him as the former Navy man applied a pair of man-size bolt cutters to the chain securing the iron gate on the stairs. Behind them, the other two men were furiously stripping the dead of items that might perfect their own disguises.

The chain made a dull thump as it hit the sandy floor. Andrews whispered, “This place was patrolled regularly today?”

“I watched from the hotel,” Jason responded. “Timed it as every five to six minutes a couple of guys in Bedouin dress walked by this minaret. Far too regular to be coincidence, and I doubt there are that many Bedouins in town anyway. I guess at night they figured no one would notice if they posted guards.”

“You watched all day?” Andrews wanted to know.

“From the time you guys left the hotel. I did take a piss break or two. Listened to Albinoni on my iPod and watched this mosque.”

“Albinoni who?” Viktor asked.

“The sixteenth-century Italian Baroque composer who wrote the Adagio in G Minor
.
”

“
Merci
for that
friandise
,
tidbit,” Emphani said. “My life will be complete now.”

Humor and friendly sarcasm had relieved many tense moments in Jason's career. Warriors were frequently their most witty when facing death. Jason knew it was a healthy relief to the tension that naturally built before the shooting starts.

“Five to six minutes, huh?” Andrews returned to the task at hand. “They might not continue roving patrols since they have men posted. Still, no time to waste.”

Andrews was already quickly and silently making his way up the stairs.

Jason's last view of the outside was of Emphani and Viktor taking up the position of the fallen men. Ahead, inside the minaret, was a tower of stygian darkness. Glock in one hand, Jason used the other to feel his way along the wall up a spiral. Relevant to nothing, he noted the turns were clockwise going up. Coincidence or was the minaret designed like midlevel fortresses so that a climbing attacker's right, the side carrying a weapon, would be hindered?

“Jesus Christ on a camel!” Andrews whispered angrily. “There's a fucking door here. No light coming under it, though.”

Jason produced a penlight from his sleeve, its laser-like beam painting a steel door and its deadbolt lock. “Obviously not part of the original structure,” he observed.

“Brilliant, Artiste! Don't suppose you brought along an acetylene torch?”

Jason shouldered his way next to Andrews. The stairs' builders had not planned on two adult men standing side by side. “Got something better, a lot quicker.”

Again Jason went to his thobe's sleeves, groping until he found a small metal cylinder, a Brockhage battery-powered electric lock pick, available to anyone with 150 bucks plus postage, no questions asked.

Andrews watched for the few minutes before the spinning needle tumbled enough pins and the lock clicked open. He pointed. “You wouldn't have a decent bottle of scotch in there, would you?

“Huh?”

“Your sleeves. You seem to have everything else we need there.”

Jason ignored the observation. “Cover me.”

Glock in hand, he pushed open the door, hit the floor in a body roll and slammed his leg into something hard enough to blur his vision with blotches of color.

“Shit!” he cursed through teeth clinched as pain shot the length of the still-healing scar. He soon forgot it.

He had lunged into a device that left very little space in a room he estimated as no more than ten by fifteen feet. The machine was encased in roughly elliptical metal housing from which a long protuberance ended in what looked like a giant fire hose nozzle. A sweep of the narrow beam of his penlight revealed a battery of dials above a row of switches and a pair of hand clasps similar to those on a heavy machine gun except there was no visible trigger mechanism. Taking hold, Jason was surprised at how easily the bulky machine could be maneuvered by the grips alone. There must be a swivel beneath the floor.

Andrews was rubbernecking. “I'd say we found what we were looking for.”

“Either that or the world's largest smoothie machine.”

“Let's get the job done and get out of—”

Jason's iPod vibrated.

He held up a hand for silence as he put it to his ear. “Go!”

He listened for an instant, then said, “Get your asses out of there now! No, don't wait for me and the Chief. Wait at the hotel for thirty minutes, then get the hell out of Dodge if we haven't shown by then.”

Jason shoved the device back into his sleeve. “At least eight bad guys headed this way.”

Andrews shook his head. “Considering there's only one way in or out of here, that sucks. My momma always told me to avoid fast women, slow horses, and places with only one way out.”

Jason was looking for an escape route. He saw none. “You might have mentioned that a little sooner.”

55

Andrews Air Force Base

Prince George's County, Maryland

At the Same Time

Colonel William Hasty always spent the night before a presidential flight at the bachelor officers' quarters on base. The Boss liked to get an early start, like, say, five a.m., which meant, leaving from home, Hasty would wake his wife, Eugenia, in the wee hours. He would also disturb Tiny Tim, the 200-pound Newfoundland who howled most piteously whenever Hasty left the house with a suitcase, which would, in turn, wake little Jeannie, his granddaughter, staying with them during the last three months of her daddy's deployment in Afghanistan so Mommy could finish her MBA course at the University of Maryland.

Besides, he could sleep a little longer on base without the drive.

Of course, it wasn't technically night yet, and he hadn't had time to check into the BOQ, but there was still enough to keep him busy and still allow a few hours' sack time before takeoff for the approximately ten-and-a-half-hour flight.

He got up from the desk in his office, went out into the hall and into the adjacent office. A black man with the brass oak leaves of a major on the epaulets of his uniform was hunched over a desk running numbers on a calculator.

Jim Patterson.

Major was a relatively junior rank for the copilot of Air Force One, particularly the service's youngest major. Patterson had been promoted with unusual speed. But then, he was an unusually talented pilot.

Eighteen months ago, he had been a captain, transporting combat support material from Ramstein Air Base. It had been a cold March night, the rural Rheinland-Pfalz district in Germany shimmering white with snow and more forecast. The Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules had a load of ninety-four paratroopers prepared for a night training exercise.

Clumsy on the runway, the aircraft climbed into the ragged sky with grace, its four turbo prop engines at full throttle as it was swallowed by low clouds. The problems started when the pilot, Patterson, eased back the throttles to climb power.

As is often the case in aviation, things happened all at once: The stall warning horn beeped frantically, the plane yawed violently to the left, and a red light was blinking from somewhere in the cluster of engine instruments.

“Sir, we've lost the number-two engine,” the flight engineer's panicked voice would later be heard on the cockpit voice recorder.

Patterson lowered the nose of the climbing aircraft to regain airspeed, postponing, if not ending, the possibility of a stall. He quickly feathered the prop on the dead engine to present minimum resistance to the air. What happened next was best described by replaying the tape:

(Loud blast of stall warning)

Copilot: Captain, now the number one has quit!

Patterson (with the calmness of a man discussing his entrée with a waiter in a restaurant): I can see that from the panel. Wonder what the odds of that happening are?

Flight engineer: I don't know, but with the two left engines out, this plane isn't going to climb and we're below MOCA (minimum obstacle clearance altitude).

Patterson (to copilot): Lieutenant, put the emergency code on the transponder and tell Ramstein departure we'll be making a forced landing. Flight engineer, give me a GPS position.

Flight engineer (voice wavering): Sir, shouldn't we try to return to base?

Patterson: We have a line of hills to our right, if I recall, and I'm sure not going to put us in a graveyard spiral by turning into two dead engines.

Flight engineer: Captain, we're two and a half kilometers from the fence, flat farmland, but by the time you get down, we'll be less than a thousand from some woods. We'll hit the trees.

Patterson: This was built as a STOL aircraft. I'll get her stopped before then.

Flight engineer: Sir, the book says you'll need at least 3,000 feet to stop.

Patterson (annoyed): Lieutenant, I am flying this airplane, not some fucking book. Clear?

(Unintelligible voice, presumably copilot talking to Ramstein departure)

Copilot: Sir, departure orders you to attempt to return to base.

Patterson: Tell them to fly their fucking radar scopes. I'll fly this airplane. Now, give me ten degrees of flaps and tell those grunts in the cargo bay to tighten up their seat belts.

Captain Patterson made a gear-down landing, coming to a stop not fifty feet from a grove of very large oak trees. The only damage was large trenches in the wet ground of a potato field. The only injuries were the badly lacerated face and the broken ankle of two paratroopers who didn't buckle up quickly enough. The other ninety-two received only a bad scare. Patterson's skill and judgment had saved their lives, as well as those of his crew.

The ensuing inquiry found that one of the switches used to change fuel tanks after takeoff had jammed between tanks, starving both left engines. Although the problem could have been discovered in flight, the plane's low altitude and certain collision with ground obstacles did not leave time to do a thorough checklist of possible culprits.The ultimate result of the hearing was the red bar of the Legion of Merit Patterson wore among other decorative ribbons above his left breast pocket.

Patterson was definitely the man Hasty wanted in the right seat of any plane he flew.

Patterson looked up from his calculator, started to rise. Hasty waved him back into his seat.

“Colonel?”

“Weight and balance calculations?” Hasty asked.

Patterson nodded. “Almost everything except passengers and the president's personal baggage is aboard—food, fuel, oil, press's luggage, et cetera.”

The aircraft must be loaded not just according to weight, but where that weight is placed so that the plane is balanced. A pound at the rear of the plane is given more significance than, say, the same pound at the center of gravity, usually right over the main wing spar. An improperly loaded ship will not handle properly and could become dangerous in turbulence.

“Be sure the president's golf clubs come off first.”

Last year, the clubs had been misplaced. America's chief executive had played Scotland's St Andrews with borrowed equipment.

“I wasn't aware golf was on the agenda for this trip.”

“It isn't but if the opportunity arises . . .”

Becoming serious, Hasty held up some papers in his hand. “When you get it all inside the envelope, take a look at this. I got a discrepancy in the fuel burn depending on whose winds-aloft forecast I use.”

“Different winds, different air, and ground speed.”

Hasty dropped the papers on Patterson's desk. “I'd take it as a favor if you'd take a crack at it.”

Major Patterson suppressed a smile. He knew the colonel redid every calculation every crew member did. The man was a perfectionist. His job demanded it.