Inside, Colonel Khalof sat at a desk. He appeared to just have awoken. He turned and stared at Murdock.
“I heard the alarms and the shooting. This is my battle command post, but all of my communications went out. How did it go?”
“None of your troops fired a shot, Colonel.”
“What? They had specific orders.”
“They said they received no orders,” Murdock said. “My men beat back the attackers and captured one. We thought you might want to question him.”
The colonel smiled and rose. He adjusted his uniform, put on his garrison-type hat, and strode out of the bunker. They returned to the colonel’s office, where he called in two guards.
“Take this man and interrogate him,” the colonel said. “I want to know what unit he was with, who their leader is, and what their objective was last night in the attack.”
The guards nodded and took the captured man out the door. He screamed something at them in Arabic. Murdock looked at the colonel. He waved it aside.
“He said he would die before he told them a thing. This is not true. My men have many ways to make a prisoner talk.”
That morning, three companies of infantry set up a bivouac in the area where the fighting had taken place the night before. There were three more companies on the other open two sides of the palace.
Just after the noon meal, Murdock was called to the colonel’s office.
“We have obtained a great deal of information from the prisoner. Unfortunately, his wounds suffered in battle resulted in his death. We learned that the attackers were a renegade company of my army. My elite guard has tracked down the survivors of the attack and captured or killed them all. They will not be a problem anymore.
“I have reworked my communications system and given all units on guard the freedom to return fire anytime they are attacked.”
“Who was behind the fracas last night?”
“Our intelligence operation has linked that renegade company and its captain to a group of foreign agents who are trying to kill the sultan and overthrow his rule here. We have known about them for some time, but this is the first time they have made a direct attack on the sultan. We have rooted out the leaders of the group, and they will be executed tomorrow, the old way. We will chop off the heads of seven men in a public execution with ten thousand of our people watching and cheering.”
“One way to take care of the opposition.”
“We find it most effective. Almost as good as the way your men killed the captain who led the insurgents last night. He died in the half-track when it was hit by the RPG.”
Murdock nodded. “Then would you say our mission here is completed?”
“I would think so. I will contact your superiors and talk with them.”
“Thank you, Colonel Khalof.” Murdock came to attention, nodded curtly, did an about face, and marched out of the office.
Two hours later, the word came from Don Stroh on the SATCOM.
“Get your rear ends in gear, SEALs. A Greyhound has just left the Enterprise. It should touch down there in just a little under an hour, so get yourselves out to the airport. This whole damn Persian Gulf region is going to hell in a shit can. Trying to figure out which of three places to send you next. Now move.”
The SEALs moved.
9
Abou Zawr lay in the shrubbery within sight of the gates that led into the highly guarded Presidential Palace. He had been there for ten hours, since just before dawn when he had slipped in through a row of small trees and brush and hid in the dark of the waning moon.
Now he stretched and touched his companion, a shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenade that had the blasting power of a quarter pound of plastique explosive.
Zawr waited. He was an expert at waiting. He had been in that mode for the last four years, expecting some softening of the rule of the president, Meyadin al-Assad. Zawr knew that al-Assad was little more than a figurehead, taking his orders from the actual rulers of his land, the army generals who made the decisions and backed them up with a harsh justice that every Syrian knew and feared.
There was little freedom, little incentive. That all must change. He had been assured that when al-Assad was eliminated, there would be a surge of political power and military help from a neighbor that would sweep the generals and their front men out of the country. Then the people would take over the government and their country with the help from their good friends in Iraq.
Syria’s sixteen million people would rise up and overthrow the last of the old regime. Then there would be a new day, a new government, a democracy, and a freedom the Syrian people had not known for generations.
He blinked. Even though the day had been long, he had not slept. He was waiting for the precise moment. The big car the president rode in was a stretch limousine, but it was not armored. The president was not considered important enough by the generals to give him an armored limo of the kind they used every day.
The RPG would penetrate the shell of the car and explode inside it and instantly kill everyone in the vehicle. Yes. Now all he had to do was wait for the exact moment.
He blinked.
Yes. The gates were opening. As was his usual practice, the president always paused at the gate to speak with the guards there. He was a good man, but had been twisted and turned and convoluted by the generals and their payments to him. He was one of them now.
Zawr shook his head to be certain. Yes, the long, black, extended Lincoln came around a slight curve to the guard gate.
Zawr brought up the RPG, made certain it was ready to fire, and aimed it at the gate. The limo stopped. Zawr refined his sight and fired.
The round flew through the air, trailing wisps of smoke. No one at the target saw it coming. It struck the driver’s-side door of the limo, penetrated, and detonated. At once the gas tank exploded as well, and the resulting fireball enveloped the guardhouse, the two armed guards, and the gate, reducing everything to flaming rubble and incinerating bodies.
Sirens wailed on the palace grounds. Zawr left the firing section of the RPG on the ground, stood, stretched his aching muscles, and walked away, hidden from sight by the slight growth of trees and brush that flanked the highway. He had only to move a quarter of a kilometer, and he would be well beyond the sight of the army guards who even now must be converging on the south gate.
Should he run? No, that would attract attention. He paused and looked behind him. All he could see was the boiling, rising column of black smoke from the burning car. There was no wind, and the column built higher and higher into the sky.
Abou Zawr kept walking. He had done it. He had struck a solid stroke for liberty and freedom. No one would ever know, but he had brought his beloved country a huge step closer to becoming one of the great free republics of the world.
He felt his heart singing as he left the brush and stepped onto a dirt road that led away from the highway and angled into the low hills. He was only twenty meters up the roadway when he looked up and saw a trio of army guards facing him.
“What are you doing here?” one of the men barked. “This is a restricted area. No one is allowed here under penalty of death.”
“I… I didn’t know. I was out for a walk. I walk three kilometers every day to help strengthen my heart.”
Two of the soldiers had their weapons pointed at him. The third used a handheld radio. He spoke softly into the radio and then smiled and put the radio on his belt. He lifted his automatic rifle, covering Zawr.
“There has been trouble at the gate. We are to return you to the palace grounds so you can be questioned.”