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THE FARM
Charles
C. Anderson
1
Lieutenant Commander Andrew
Carlson, U.S. Navy SEAL, stared from the crest of a 900 foot sand dune at the
smoldering hulk that had been an HH-60H Seahawk helicopter only fifteen minutes
ago. If he had not been the first one
down the rope, he would have been included in the twisted metal and
fireball. Just as he had been trained
to ignore physical pain, he would postpone his grief for the other member of
his recon team, Petty Officer Josiah Chambers, not to mention the nameless
pilot and copilot. The bottle would be
there waiting for him when the mission was over.
The pilots were new to the Navy
base at Bahrain. They would be easier
to forget. But Josiah had been his
closest friend for the last five years.
They were more like brothers than
partners. They had endured
thirty months of SEAL training together. This was their sixth covert insertion
into Saudi Arabia.
Covert was really not an accurate
term, since a member of the Saudi royal family not only knew when Andy was
coming, he had picked out Andy’s targets and arranged for camels and water to
be near the insertion site. A typical sniper mission took out a financial
supporter of Al Qaeda or Hamas or some other terrorist faction. Other targets were simply identified to Andy
as team leader, and no explanation given for their elimination.
This mission was a rush job from
the get-go. A curt phone call from his
CIA contact, Harrison, gave Andy and Joe thirty minutes to gear up and report
to the helicopter tarmac. There were no
written orders. Andy was informed by Harrison that the royal family had
approved the mission. He wrote the GPS
coordinates for the insertion site and recon target on his paper map.
Satellite intel had noted that a
Russian freighter had delivered a shipping container to the port of Al Jubayl,
in the Persian Gulf, west of the island of Bahrain. This container was transported by truck to the remote desert
palace of a Saudi prince named Khalid.
Their mission was to investigate the contents of the container, avoid
capture or identification at all costs, and leave no witnesses to their
presence. Andy completed his GPS and
map work en route to the insertion site.
Andy and Joe had encountered blinding sandstorms
before. It would not have mattered if
the pilot were a rookie to desert flying or a veteran. No pilot could control a chopper that was
sucking hundreds of pounds of sand per second into its engines. Andy dropped
most of his gear the forty feet to the desert before sliding down the rope. He
planned to stabilize the rope in the wind for Joe while the chopper
hovered.
As he descended the rope, he heard
the engines coughing. Their steady whine
dramatically decreased, accompanied by his free fall the last six feet to the
sand. Instinctively he rolled out from
under the helicopter, which keeled over, dug its rotors into the sand, and blew
up. Andy’s pack was blown off of his back, but it absorbed much of the blast as
he was catapulted away from the inferno.
He had crawled, clawed, and run up the sand dune to escape the heat of
the burning JP-5 fuel.
Andy took stock of his physical
condition and gear from atop the sand dune.
He stood up and checked his boots.
He felt sore all over, but could find no injuries. He still had his dust goggles. His binoculars hung around his neck, held
against his chest by an elastic apparatus.
A bota bag of water was slung by leather straps across each shoulder to
his hips.
The handheld GPS receiver and the
short-burst radio that he had attached to his combat jacket had been blown
away, along with his desert hat. He had
programmed his entire mission, including his maps, onto the missing GPS
unit. From his backpack he had lost his
camera, his secure long distance radio, a tool kit, a tent, a blanket, and all
of his food.
Andy checked his paper map and
compass in the inside pocket of his combat jacket. He was dressed in desert camo.
Bedouin robes were supposed to be with the camels. He checked his knife,
always attached to his left thigh. His SIG Sauer nine mm pistol had grown to
his right thigh during his SEAL career.
His M110 sniper rifle was rarely off of his shoulder unless he was
shooting or spotting. Inside one
cargo pocket he carried desert camouflage netting. Extra twenty round clips of 7.62 mm ammo were in his combat
jacket.
Andy reminded himself of his
current position. The southern fifth of
Saudi Arabia is called the Empty Quarter.
This is the world’s largest sandy desert. It is almost waterless,
250,000 square miles, and uninhabitable except for nomadic Bedouin tribes and
their camels and sheep. His insertion
site was 128 miles into the windswept, rippling sand dunes, which stretched as
far as he could see in any direction.
The sandstorm had passed, leaving
an orange sunset. Within minutes, the
sky turned blood red. The temperature
would soon plunge a staggering seventy degrees. But he had planned to travel
during the night, to avoid the 120 degree heat of midday.
His first priority was to find the
camels. Lowering his dust goggles, he checked his compass and focused his
binoculars north. The camels were a small mound out of place compared to the
sand dunes around them. If he had not
seen camels huddled for a sandstorm before, he would probably have missed
them.
There was never any consideration
in his mind that he would not complete his mission. The whole process of choosing the right candidates for SEAL
training is to identify persons who never give up. An excerpt from the philosophy of the U.S. Navy SEALs states, “I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder
and mentally stronger than my enemies.
If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of
strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.”
Like every other SEAL, Andy was trained
in the expert use of weapons, explosives, underwater and parachute insertions
into hostile territory, land combat in any terrain, and close quarters combat with and without weapons. He was the top sniper in his class. He was a communications and navigation
expert. He was fluent in Arabic. He
considered himself a patriot and a warrior, an American who would come out
fighting on behalf of the U.S. government and his commander-in-chief, the
President of the United States. Andy
was a fully-trained emergency physician and a binge drinker.
Being an emergency physician and
an officer had no meaning during his SEAL training. The Navy was glad to have a SEAL with extra skills, but they
would never compromise their training to accommodate anyone. Team leaders earned their position and
respect by out-performing their peers.
Each of the 160 potential SEALs who started in Andy’s class had to
complete stringent physical and mental screening tests just to qualify as
candidates. They were all
volunteers.
Most rang the bell on the beach
and gave up on their own. The rest were
dismissed because their performance in any area was merely good, not
outstanding. They simply could not swim well enough, run fast enough, or lift
enough. Some lacked confidence in one
terrain. Some were unwilling to punish
themselves. Some had no fire in their gut
or were not suited for difficult decisions under pressure.
Most who survived the training
were college graduates. Only four of
the twelve commissioned officers in Andy’s class earned their trident patch as
a SEAL, and only twenty-eight enlisted men graduated. Once the right thirty-two
men were identified, they trained for another thirty months.
A SEAL believes that there are few problems he cannot solve
with explosives or a well-aimed bullet. In his mind, he is invincible. SEALs gladly go in teams of two, or six, or
sixteen into any battlefield. They
expect to be outnumbered. They take for
granted that they may be wounded, soaking wet, trapped, deprived of food and
water, fighting for their lives in freezing cold or searing desert heat. Most of their work is done in darkness, in
two to six man teams. They do not complain.
This is what they signed up for.
They do not seek rewards or medals.
So how did a fully trained
emergency physician end up in SEAL training? Andy blamed it on the kids of
active duty personnel. He had gone to
medical school on a Navy scholarship.
After four more years of internship and residency training in emergency
medicine, he owed the Navy four years of payback. The choice was to be a general medical officer in the Navy or do
something that suited his personal skills.
Andy loved kids, but he had come
to believe that they did not like him.
Those little Navy brats who whined about their sore throats wouldn’t
even open their mouths unless he drew blood from their gums with his tongue
blade. If he got the blade inside their mouths, the little hellions would chomp
down and commence kicking, spitting, or blowing snot out their noses. Deployments to forward areas did not come
along often enough between the months of working in the Navy clinics scattered
around Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, and Newport News, Virginia. Thus, a SEAL was born.
The desert insertion site had been
chosen by Harrison. There are few
places in the Empty Quarter where camels could be bought like used cars and
delivered within an hour. After all, a
camel only walks two and a half miles per hour. A Bedouin oasis, two miles to the south, was such a place.
The Bedouins were the idealized
version of the American cowboy. They
were tough, self-reliant, and fiercely independent. These noble loners didn’t become involved in Sunni and Shiite
disputes. They wanted no part of
terrorist organizations. They didn’t
look to Riyadh for financial or political support. Camels, sheep, gold, and goats were their money. They knew every blade of grass and
teaspoonful of water in their ancestral territory.
Andy and Joe had been inserted
near this oasis twice before. They had
never had a reason to kill Bedouins.
Andy didn't like the idea of using a repeat insertion site, but those were
his orders. The camel trader at the
Bedouin oasis was not Bedouin but traded with them. Andy didn’t know his name but had seen his eyes, the only part of
him left uncovered by his pale robes and headdress.
Harrison always arranged for the
camel trader to be paid. Andy had only
one contact within the Saudi royal family, Prince Salmon Abdullah Akbar, who
had the ear of the king. The prince knew Andy as “R.E. Lee,” his code name.
They had never met in person, but had talked over a secure radio many times. Andy trusted Prince Akbar, as much as he
trusted anyone in the Middle East.
Andy checked his compass and
walked toward the camels at his desert pace of four and a half miles per hour.
From a hundred yards away he could see that something was wrong. The two camels
were not watching his approach. They
sat perfectly still, their forelegs folded underneath them, staring across the
empty desert with indifference.
He pulled up on the nose rope of
the closest camel. Its head lifted and
stretched out, but it would not get up.
This was a new experience for Andy, but he had watched Bedouin shepherds
deal with stubborn animals. There was an old saying that the Bedouins loved
their camels as much as a man could love a camel, which meant they only hated
them a little bit.
No matter how stubborn they were,
camels were a necessity in the desert.
They were also a disguise for Andy and Joe, so they could move
unmolested in the desert. A man could
not survive for more than a few days in the desert without a camel because he
could not carry enough water to sustain himself.
He walked around to the camel’s
rump and kicked it. The camel didn’t
seem to notice. More kicks, gradually
increasing in severity, produced no response in either camel. He tried pricking
the camel’s rumps with the point of his knife, but neither camel cared. Andy had seen Bedouins build a fire under a
camel’s hindquarters to get it moving, or pour water into its nostrils.
There was no point torturing these camels. He noted that their pupils were
dilated. They had been poisoned. It didn’t make sense that they were
dehydrated. They could not have been at
this location more than an hour. Their mucous membranes and mouth were not
parched.
Two goatskin bags of water were
tied to each animal. Andy estimated each bag held five gallons. He would need
at least three quarts a day if he were riding, more if he were walking. Each gallon of water weighed over eight pounds.
But if the camels were poisoned,
the water might also be poisoned.
Hurriedly he removed the stopper of the nearest goatskin bag, pushed his
finger into the spout, closed his eyes, and brought his finger to his nose. The
smell was fetid. Camel dung had likely
been mixed with the water. He checked each
goatskin bag. They all stank. Vomiting,
diarrhea, and dehydration from drinking contaminated water were not options on
this mission.
The loss of the water and the
camels was a disappointment, but unexpected hardship was not a source of fear
to a SEAL. He processed the
information. Someone had made a
connection between his past insertions near the oasis and the subsequent death
of a prince or a terrorist supporter.
Such a person would likely be following his tracks in the sand.
But this new enemy would likely
travel like everyone else in the desert, on camels. Andy knew that he could easily walk faster than a camel. There would not be enough light tonight for
a man on a camel to see his boot tracks in the sand without a light or night
vision goggles. A moving light in the desert could be seen from miles away. He
would push on. Even with night goggles,
few men could match his pace up and down the sand dunes.
He felt the two leather bota bags
on either side of his waist. Unlike canteens, they made no noise from sloshing
water. As water was removed, the bags
collapsed. Each held two quarts.
He would have to change his
course to Prince Khalid’s palace. Under
normal conditions Andy could use his handheld GPS display to watch himself move
through the desert toward his target.
He could make random movements and still arrive at his target. Now he had only a compass and his map. And the red glow of daylight was almost
gone.
Andy opened his map on the back of
a somnolent camel and placed his compass on it. He would navigate by dead reckoning. If he could maintain a
course of seventy-eight degrees NE for thirty-nine and a half miles, he should
see the palace or intersect the concrete road that ran from northwest to
southeast toward the palace.
He must follow the compass
wherever it pointed, never giving in to the temptation to skirt a high sand
dune. Even a fractional error in course
could result in missing the palace entirely, and continuing on into the
desert. The ground would become more
firm as he moved northeast toward the coast. The moon was only one quarter, but
would offer some light. His compass
used LED lighting, only visible to the person holding it. The stars were
beginning to appear. The temperature was
falling off a cliff. He wanted to
identify the north star before he left, and confirm his course relative to it.
Whoever poisoned the camels and
the water did leave a Bedouin robe and headdress tied to each camel’s
saddle. He covered himself from head to
foot in the traditional dress, except for the slit in the howli which
accommodated his sand goggles. Andy had
been encouraged to grow a full beard, like a Bedouin. This meant he had to dye
his sandy hair and beard once a month.
From his left hip pocket he
retrieved a small GPS receiver/transmitter with a safety pin attached to
it. He activated the lithium battery
and pinned the device to the left shoulder of his robe. The battery would only last three days in
the desert heat. The device would give
him no information, but he could be tracked by satellite.
He looked at the camels. He would
not leave them suffering in the desert. With a quick slash of his knife across
each neck, they lay their heads in the sand.
If those camels were rentals, he thought, Harrison had lost his deposit.
Andy thought of Harrison. He had
never even met the guy, who had a squeaky voice on a secure phone. He was apparently the CIA’s point man in the
Middle East. Harrison’s intel was never
as good as that of his Saudi royal family contact, Mr. Akbar. Akbar did not seem to hold Harrison in high
regard.
Harrison would know about the
helicopter crash by now, from an AWACS plane or a satellite. Now that the GPS homing device on Andy’s shoulder
was activated, Harrison would know that at least one person had survived the
crash. He would be following Andy’s
course across the desert.
At 2000 Andy strode briskly into
the desert night air. He calculated
that it would take nine hours for him to reach Prince Khalid’s palace. Marching
all night was as much a mental exercise as a physical one. Most important, he was not afraid of the
desert. At this point in his career he
had marched hundreds of miles at night in the desert with only a compass for
navigation. He usually carried a forty-five
pound pack.
Another man might be complaining
about the cold night air. Andy was
grateful to be marching at night because he knew what it was like to march in
the heat of mid-day. The M110 rifle on his right shoulder no longer felt like
extra weight. It had become part of his
body.
One sand dune led to another, and
to another. He thought of his father,
who was currently visiting Andy’s two brothers in Uganda, where they were
missionaries. He looked forward to the
report from his dad. They had always
been close, especially since his mother’s death. Andy had been sixteen years old when his mother had died of
breast cancer. She was only
thirty-nine. The miles in the sand
passed quickly as he thought of his mother.
His family was always praying for him, but he was not religious. He had never forgiven God. His comfort was
Southern Comfort.
Abruptly, there was a faint light
in the distance. It appeared as he reached
the top of another sand dune. He
stopped and lifted his binoculars. The
light was perhaps two miles away. It
didn’t flicker like a campfire or twinkle like a star. He was confident that it
was Prince Khalid’s palace.
He looked at his watch. It was 0415. He sat down and studied his
back trail with the binoculars.
Nothing. It was time to
rest. No man or beast could catch up to
him for the next three or four hours.
He would not need to worry about oversleeping. The heat would wake him up.
His last thoughts were of camping overnight with his mom and dad at age
ten. They had slept on the sandbar in
the middle of the Appomattox River, on his family farm in Virginia.
Andy awakened at 0710 and quickly
scanned his back trail with the binoculars.
He had chosen a good spot to stop.
The crest of the nearest dune behind him was over 800 yards away. He preferred to shoot at this range. The M110 sniper rifle had a sound suppressor
which muffled everything but the sonic boom of the bullet. At 800 yards, even the sonic boom was
undetectable.
His bullet could arrive at the top
of the other sand dune in less than one second. The M110 was just as accurate as the bolt action M24 he had initially
been trained with. Unlike the M24, the M110 was fed by the spring in the
magazine. He could make one carefully
aimed shot per second until his twenty round clip was empty. Within three seconds he could remove the
empty clip and insert another from his combat jacket.
Andy drank the remainder of the
water from the first bota bag and unstrapped the second, placing it in front of
him as he lay prone on the sand dune.
The barrel of the M110 rested across the bota bag. He removed the plastic lens covers of the
telescopic sight. The sun was on his
left. It would not create glare or give
away his position by reflection on the lens.
He dozed off again.
By 0900 the temperature was
already ninety. He sat up and rested
the binoculars on his knees, looking toward the palace. He could see two buildings, one with a dome,
inside a solid wall compound. The
Bedouin robes provided some protection from the heat, which had begun to
radiate off of the sand, producing a rippling effect in his vision.
He turned 180 degrees to scan his
back trail. A speck was moving toward
him. It was 0930. The speck disappeared behind another sand dune. Within an hour he could make out a lone
traveler on a camel. There was no point
in shooting too soon. He would allow
this man to bring his camel, water, and provisions closer.
At 1012 the lone rider stopped his
camel at the top of the sand dune in front of Andy and lifted his
binoculars. The 7.62 mm bullet passed
through the center of his chest. The
camel heard nothing and was unconcerned as his rider dismounted into the
sand.
Andy walked the 850 yards back to
the camel, which had folded his forelegs underneath himself and lowered his
rump to the sand. This camel watched
Andy’s approach.
He pulled back the headdress and
stared at the man’s face. He knew those
eyes. It was the Arab camel trader from
the Bedouin oasis. The man had a curved
Bedouin knife in a sheath underneath his robes, along with an antique
pistol. The Chinese-made AK-47 tied to
the saddle was not antique, nor was his M24 sniper rifle. If the M24 had come
from a SEAL, Andy was glad to recover it. The rightful owner could be
identified from its serial number.
A pocket inside the man’s robe
held two grainy pictures. Andy
recognized himself and Joe. The
pictures had been taken at an earlier visit to the oasis. He looked at Joe’s
picture and reminded himself that it was not time to mourn.
What kind of a man would poison
his own camels and contaminate another man’s water supply? The answer was in two hefty bags of coins,
tied together and slung over the saddle.
The coins were gold, but Andy didn’t recognize the language or picture
on the coins. He took one coin and put
it in his hip pocket. Harrison would
have to figure it out.
The camel was loaded with almost
everything Andy needed. There was
plenty of uncontaminated water in twin goatskin bags. He helped himself to all he could drink and poured a quart over
his own headdress before refilling his bota bags. The camel was stocked with a tent, a cooking bowl, a tin cup, a
teapot, tea, and some desiccated goat’s meat. A bag of mixed grain and hay was
apparently for the camel. A smaller bag
contained German night vision goggles and extra ammo for the rifles.
Andy grabbed the nose rope and
pulled the camel to its feet. This
camel walked obediently behind him for four hundred yards. They stopped between the two towering sand
dunes. It would make a nice base
camp. He needed the tent for
shelter. The camel was tired from its
night journey. He would watch the
palace during the day and recon it tonight.
Harrison should be able to figure out what he was doing from the GPS
receiver/transmitter on his shoulder.
He left the camel at base camp,
content with a second bowl of water and a small pile of grain and grass mix
poured from the bag onto a leather roll.
It was not much, but enough to make a new friend. Friends were important
in the desert.
Andy untied the tent roll and
stuffed it underneath his left arm. The
leather bag with the night vision goggles and the goat meat fit nicely across
the left shoulder and rested on his bota bag.
He slung the AK-47 on his left shoulder and his own M110 on his right
shoulder. With this gear he climbed the
sand dune toward Prince Khalid’s palace.
When the palace came within sight, he pushed the barrel of the AK-47
into the sand and fashioned the tent overtop. The camo netting from his cargo
pocket disguised the tent. He backed into his day bed and lay prone, facing the
palace. The sand would soon be hot
enough to burn uncovered skin.
The day was bearable due to his
lack of activity and the tent to block the sun’s rays. He drank frequently from one bota bag,
knowing that he had plenty of water at his base camp. He rested his chin on the
other bota bag and watched the compound below with his binoculars.
The palace was typical for a wealthy
prince, of which there were between 4000 and 5000 in Saudi Arabia. Each had one or more vacation palaces which
sported concrete roads into the desert, underground water pipes, and utility
poles made of steel. This palace had a pale
blue concrete dome and a water fountain.
The walls surrounding the compound were solid, but only six feet
high. He made a note of the electric
transformer on a steel pole inside the compound and the satellite dish on the
roof, facing almost straight up.
The concrete road and the splendor
of the palace were out of place in the desert.
What he had thought was a second building inside the compound was
actually the shipping container still atop its tractor-trailer. This was
encouraging. If he could get a good
look at the contents of that container without having to kill anybody else, he
would be even more encouraged.
This thought seemed strange to
Andy. He had never been concerned
before about avoiding casualties.
Enemies were enemies.
No traffic came or went during the
day. No one ventured outside, at least as
far as he could see above the compound walls.
As the sun dipped to the horizon on his left, he inspected his M110
rifle. After removing the lens covers he used the telescopic sight to take a
closer look at the palace’s vulnerable points. He checked his watch. It would be dark in thirty minutes. He needed enough light to hit the
transformer and the communications lines and to see who would exit the
compound.
Andy’s first shot disintegrated
the telephone line at its attachment to the pole in the compound. One second later the satellite dish that had
been pointed up was pointed down. The
third shot caused a minor explosion at the transformer. Three people ran out of the door and down
the steps out of sight. Within a minute a large dark sedan burst out of the
compound and accelerated down the concrete road. A second vehicle soon made its exit, a white sports car. These people were unwilling to give their
lives for whatever was in the container.
Andy checked the gear he would
need to recon the palace. He replaced
the lens cover on his M110 telescopic sight and used its quick-disconnect
feature to remove it from the rifle. He left the sight in the tent and picked
up the leather bag with the goat meat and the night vision goggles. He methodically
touched his binoculars, his knife, and his SIG Sauer pistol. The people in the two vehicles had made the
right decision, he thought, as he slung the M110 over his right shoulder.
He walked toward the palace until
it was dark enough to put on the night vision goggles. They were fourth
generation, state of the art. If there
was anyone left at the compound they would probably not expect trouble from the
south, from the Empty Quarter. Nevertheless, he kept his gaze on the widows and
walls of the compound. When he reached
the wall, he sat down and leaned against it.
He listened for thirty minutes.
There was no sound.
He got up and pulled the SIG Sauer
from its holster. The gate, which faced
west, was wide open. Andy circled the
palace inside the wall and peered into every opening. He noted no movement or
light. The palace was silent, except
for the water in the fountain.
Returning to the front of the palace, he walked through the open door
into an empty room underneath the blue dome.
The rooms of the palace were
spacious but easy to distinguish with the night vision goggles. The sand from his boots grated on the marble
floor. He stopped to listen. He heard
the sound of bare feet running on the floor in a bedroom to his left. A child?
The unmistakable click of a lock.
Andy entered the room with his
pistol out in front, quickly scanning from left to right in a crouched
position. There was only one closed door in the room, which featured a large
Jacuzzi built into the floor and a massive round bed.
He walked to the locked door and
stepped to the right side. Whoever was
behind the door was breathing rapidly.
He spoke softly in Arabic. “You don’t want to see my face and I don’t
want to see your face. Tell me what I
need to know and I won’t harm you.”
After a brief pause, a young
woman’s voice answered in Arabic, “I’m just a girl. They don’t care what happens to me.”
”Is there anyone else here? You must be truthful.”
“I’m the only one left, and I’m at
your service.”
“I don’t need anything from you,
young woman, except for you to stay where you are for an hour. I ask you again: Is there anyone left at this palace that will die because you
have not told me about them?”
“No.”
“Then stay where you are.”
“I understand.
What you’re looking for is in the shipping container. I heard the prince talking about weapons
that were very valuable.”
“Thank you.”
Andy checked every other room to
confirm the girl’s story. Satisfied, he
holstered his pistol and pulled his gloves from the cargo pocket on his thigh
as he walked back outside toward the shipping container.
The international shipping lock on
the container doors had already been broken.
Andy pulled a pen from the inside of his combat jacket and wrote the
unique shipping container number and GTIN number on his sleeve. Adjusting the focal length of the night goggles,
he crawled underneath the container looking for trip wires and explosives. He found none.
From underneath the rear of the trailer he lifted the handle
of the right rear door with the barrel of his M110 rifle. He pushed the door open with the rifle
before crawling out from under the trailer. Standing behind the trailer, he
noted two tarps covering two wooden crates with built-in fork lift openings in
their bases.
He opened the second door and
climbed inside the trailer. Removing the tarp from the first crate, he stared
at a device he had only seen in pictures.
It looked somewhat like a generator with hand rails. He squatted and peered through the openings
in the wooden crate. He recognized a
new keyboard and battery, which was disconnected. The center of the device was a basketball sized mass of molded
metal with dozens of wires protruding, each connected to a box under the
keyboard. Russian lettering was on
several metal parts. In the side of the
basketball he found the female threads for the tritium reservoir.
The reservoir itself was shielded
in a smaller lead box attached to the inside corner of the crate using
brackets. The second crate proved to be exactly like the first. He covered the crates again, closed the
doors of the shipping container, and pulled down on the handle on the right
side door.
Some faction in Saudi Arabia now had Soviet-made Cold War era
tactical nuclear weapons in the ten to fifteen kiloton size.
Andy re-entered the house and
walked into the bedroom. The door was still locked. Technically, he was not authorized to leave anyone alive who knew
that he had been at the palace. He was
not authorized to take any prisoners.
He again took a position to the
side of the door. “Are you still there?”
“I’m still here. You can speak
English. My father sent me to a good school.”
“I must go,” Andy said.
“Will you take me with you?” she
asked.
“Why would you want to go with
me?”
“Prince Khalid’s men took me from
my school two months ago. They’ve done things to me. Now my family won’t take me back. If the prince returns and I’m here, he’ll torture me until I tell
him about you.”
Andy took off his night vision
goggles and pulled a mini Mag-lite from the inside pocket of his combat jacket.
He turned the light on and said, “Come on out.”
She unlocked the door and walked
into the bedroom. She was wearing her
abaya. He studied her eyes. They were young eyes. She was five foot four, he thought, and
slim, maybe sixteen years old.
“What do you know about the shipping container on the truck
outside?” he asked.
“The container has powerful
weapons that Prince Khalid expected to sell,” she said.
“Who would buy these weapons?”
Andy asked.
“A man named Harrison.”
“This man named Harrison--what do
you know about him?”
“He was here at this palace for
three days, two weeks ago.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
“He is a small man for an
American. He has a high pitched voice
and wears his dark hair and beard like a small animal in the zoo at Riyadh,”
she said. “His friends call him Weasel.”
“Tell me what you heard from this
Weasel.”
“No one here knew that I could
speak or understand English,” she said.
“The Weasel’s voice is so unusual that I could hear him whispering. He secretly buys weapons for the CIA. He and Prince Khalid have done business
before, but they don’t trust each other.
The Weasel hurt me in bed. More than once.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you be willing to leave with me
tonight, on a camel ride?”
“I have no future in Saudi Arabia.
Where would we go?”
“First we would go to a helicopter
crash, and then a Navy base, and then to America, I hope.”
“I have prayed for this day,” she
said.
Andy asked, “Did Harrison ever see your face?”
“That was the only part of me he
was never interested in. I doubt it.”
“Does he know your name?”
“Not unless the prince told him.”
“We need to give you a new name
before we get to Bahrain.”
“My name was all I had left.”
“Do you carry any weapons?” he asked.
“Only my brain. It’s a very good weapon because no one
expects me to have one.”
This girl had spunk. He liked that.
She followed him into the domed
room.
Andy asked, “Did Prince Khalid
have a radio or a satellite phone?”
She walked to a table and Andy followed
her with the flashlight. She handed him
a satellite phone, which was sitting in a charger on the table. “They left in a
hurry when the lights went out.”
“What should I call you?” he
asked.
“Sahar. It means dawn in English.”
“I don’t understand what’s going
on here,” he said. “You and I have
apparently stumbled into an extraordinary circumstance. I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
“You can trust me,” she said.
“I believe you,” he said. “My name is Andy. While you find some shoes for the desert, I’m going to try to
make a phone call.”
Andy considered the reasons that
Harrison might have for buying nuclear warheads. He could think of no justification for CIA trafficking in such
weapons on the soil of an ally of the United States. The whole thing didn’t pass the smell test. There was no honor in it. He would not be defending the United States
or its allies if he assisted Harrison.
Sahar opened a cabinet in the domed
room, lit a lantern, and brought it to Andy.
He examined the phone carefully. The battery was fully charged. He considered
the risks of using the phone, knowing that the United States listened to many
calls. He concluded that the risks were
worth the possible benefits and dialed a number.
“Mr. Akbar, this is R. E. Lee. I
am calling from the palace of Prince Khalid, south of Harad.”
“But I have heard nothing from
Harrison. You are not authorized to
enter my country without my consent. I
am the Saudi Ambassador to the United States.”
“I know that, Mr. Akbar, and I
apologize. Harrison told me that my
mission had been authorized by you.”
“I’m not surprised, but why are you
calling my secure line?”
“I’ve found something here that
requires your immediate attention. You
must come at once by helicopter and bring a tractor-trailer driver. I won’t be
here when you arrive. I must cross the
desert to my extraction point. This
will give you enough time to come and remove the tractor-trailer. Harrison will send a team to remove the trailer
as soon as I tell him what’s in it.”
“What was your mission?”
“Apparently Harrison didn’t trust
Khalid. I was sent to confirm the contents of the trailer. I’ll not mention our conversation to
Harrison. When you see what’s in the
trailer, you’ll understand why I’m giving you this information first. I hope that I’m not being a traitor to my
own country.”
“You are a reliable man, Mr.
Lee. The king will call you an honest
man. We have been suspicious of
Harrison for some time. He’s helped us
maintain stability. Both of you have
solved problems for us, but we didn’t know that Harrison was in the arms
business.”
“It doesn’t make sense for Harrison to buy what I’m looking
at,” Andy said. “We have plenty of our
own. The Russians are already allowing
us to dismantle their weapons of this type.
Terrorists would not sell such weapons to the United States. They would
want these for themselves. If Harrison
wanted these weapons destroyed or removed from the reach of terrorists, he
could destroy them at any time. My
sources tell me he is trying to buy these weapons for the CIA.”
“And on Saudi soil,” Akbar said. “Most
disturbing.”
“This will likely be my last trip
into your country,” Andy said.
“Whatever Harrison is up to, I want no part of it.”
“May Allah go with you.”
“And with you, Mr. Akbar.” He turned off the phone and stuck it inside
his combat jacket.
“We have something in common, Mr.
Lee,” she said. “Both of us dislike Harrison.
Both of us feel betrayed by our own country.”
She was wearing a yellow scarf
with her abaya, and sandals.
“You’re a very good listener.”
He took her hand at the gate of
Khalid’s palace. He could tell that she
had never held hands. He showed her how
to lock fingers. They walked silently
as he looked down at his compass.
Within an hour they were back at his
recon site. He picked up the tent and the AK-47. He reattached the telescopic sight to the M110 rifle. The camel appeared to be glad to see them
approach, standing up as soon as he spotted them. Andy repacked the equipment on the camel and allowed Sahar to use
his hands to step into the saddle. He took the nose rope and set their course
into the darkness, toward the burned-out helicopter.
After a few hours of silence, Andy
said, “We must invent a story about how I found you in the desert. You must
forget that you know English. You have
never heard of Prince Khalid or weapons. You must request asylum in the United
States because you were raped, and your family left you in the desert.”
“That will be an easy story to
tell,” she said. “How many wives do you have?”
As the helicopter lifted off out
of the sand, tears trickled down Andy’s cheeks. Grief can only be shoved into the back of your brain for so long. His partner, his confidant, his best friend,
was gone forever. He didn’t regret his SEAL career. But there were so few
opportunities to save lives as a SEAL, and so many opportunities to take
lives. The day had finally come. He didn’t want to take any more lives. Once such a thought enters your head, you have
no business being a SEAL.
Andy had long since repaid his debt to the Navy. It was time to save lives for a living.
Harrison would find someone else to kill people for him. The steady drone of
the engines and rhythmic vibration of the rotors had rocked Sahar to
sleep. He looked down at the girl who
leaned against him. He had forgotten how good it felt to save one life, to free
one person from a miserable existence. He
would have to stay sober until she was safe.
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