Big Jack, aka Admiral Jackson, aka the DDCI, explained the problem to him. “Look, we’re going to conference in Richard Lawrence, who’s in Bazemah at the moment, and Kingston from the NGA.”
There was a pause, and the sound of a line connecting. “Mr. Lawrence, are you there?” Big Jack continued, officially starting the call. “This is Admiral Jackson. We’ve got IMINT and TTIC on the line. Can you explain your problem?”
“One moment, sir,” Johnson interrupted. “I’m going to put you on our speaker system here in the control room, so that everyone here can hear this. Everyone has clearance.” He flipped a switch. The whole room was now in on the conversation. The advanced microphones, speakers, and feedback suppression electronics brought the conversation into the control room with virtually no distortion, hissing, or feedback.
“Turbee,” Johnson said. “Flip the map to Libya and Sudan.”
“One second, please,” mumbled Turbee, as he kept the DDCI, Richard, and his entire agency waiting while he saved his latest Grand Theft Auto chase sequence. “There.” He jumped up from his work area and went to the Atlas Screen control station. Dan, who’d been missing all morning, finally entered the room. Something important was officially up. Everyone sat up and started paying attention.
Meanwhile, Turbee was fumbling haplessly with the controls to the map. He was not as familiar with the system as some of the other members of the team. He had only played with it once before. He was desperately trying to put Libya and Sudan on the Atlas Screen, and having little success. Bolivia was displayed in great detail. Then Antarctica, followed by Mongolia. Then he managed to turn off the massive computer subsystem that served mapping images to the Atlas Screen. It would take a full five minutes to reboot.
“Are you guys there?” Admiral Jackson’s voice boomed out over the speakers.
“Yes we are,” replied Dan as he shoved Turbee off the map control station. “Can you hold for a minute? We have some technical issues.”
The five-minute reboot was like dead air at a rock concert. Each second seemed to last an hour. “You know, at a hundred trillion calculations per second, I think you guys have already done more calculations than God did when he created the universe,” Jackson commented impatiently as minute three ticked by.
“No, no,” said Richard. “It took at least that many calculations to create a woman. The rest of the universe, just a little more.” Chuckles erupted up and down the conference call.
“OK, we’re live,” breathed Dan, as he watched the Atlas Screen come back online. “What do you need to know?”
“We’re at the explosion site, near Bazemah,” said Richard. “We’re trying to determine where the DC-3 went with the stolen Semtex. Kingston came up with a vector of the DC-3’s direction when it left Zighan, a little airport to the north of us. Kingston, are you still there?” asked Richard.
“Yeah, I’m still online here. You want to know the vector?”
“Yeah, let’s hear it,” said Richard. “What I need to know is if there are any landing strips along that path, assuming it maintained its direction. Landing strips in northern Sudan. TTIC, can you guys give me that?”
Dan looked perplexed. His knowledge of the mapping system was rudimentary, and he had no clue how to find what Richard was asking for. The day was rapidly sliding into a tar pit. Another minute ticked by as Dan slipped deeper into the quagmire.
“Sheesh,” said Kingston, after a few moments. “I could have figured it out with a protractor and a ruler by now.”
Fortunately, George Lexia had entered the room just after Dan did. George was a Silicon Valley engineer and programmer. He had written large chunks of the GPS-mapping programs that were becoming popular in vehicles and pleasure craft. George, like Turbee, had become very wealthy before joining TTIC. In his case it was from his roles and stock in several successful companies. He did not need the work but, like Turbee, loved playing with the largest computer, and the most complex mapping system, that had ever been devised. Like so many others in the Intelligence Community, he was married to his job and took it very seriously. George was also the leading architect of the program that controlled TTIC’s massive interactive map.
“A vector, you say,” said George as he gently nudged Dan out of his workstation. “Not a problem.” His fingers raced over the console, and a red line magically appeared on the interactive map, moving southerly along the direction that Kingston had given him.
He touched his keyboard a few more times, and northern Sudan appeared, highly magnified. Even the villages, streets, and alleys of the tiny desert towns were illustrated. “Ahh, here we are,” he said. “Yarim-Dhar. The vector goes directly over an airstrip about ten miles north of Yarim-Dhar, a tiny village that’s 400 miles south by southeast of Zighan. I’ll give you the vector and distance from where you are.”
After hearing this, Jackson barked some orders at his secretary, who immediately repeated them to the Commander of the Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group. From there, the orders were relayed to Major Lewis Payton, commander of the small Night Hawk force that had transported Richard, the Marines, McMurray, and the other men providing American support for the Semtex demolition job.
As a result of the lessons learned in two Gulf wars, and in the war in Afghanistan, American communications had become so efficient that Payton and Richard received their orders almost simultaneously. Richard turned off the Sat-phone and walked toward the helicopters. At the same instant, Major Payton hailed Richard. They looked at each other and said “Yarim-Dhar,” together.
Richard motioned to McMurray. “He’s Army,” he said to Payton, “but he knows about this Play-Doh stuff. He needs to come along.”
“OK, Richard. We normally don’t let Army on Night Hawks, but we’ll make an exception here. Let’s head out. How far away is Yarim-Dhar?”
“About 400 miles, give or take.”
Payton frowned. “There had better be a gas station there. We’ll be running on empty by the time we get there.”
“I’m certain there is. Might be self serve, though,” Richard quipped. Then he, Payton, and McMurray headed toward the Night Hawks, where George Clinton still sat, awaiting orders.
8
Yousseff’s mind was racing. There were a thousand facets to the enterprise that the Emir had entrusted to him. Delivery of the Semtex. The construction of the various devices they’d be needing. The creation of false trails, to divert the investigation that was sure to follow the attack. But the possibilities and the potential gain were breathtakingly large. This was another turning point, another Four Cedars. Yousseff had already set his people in motion, and the plans were already drawn up. But did he dare bet everything on one shot?
Dusk turned to nightfall as Yousseff’s horse gingerly picked its way through the difficult mountain terrain on its own. He barely considered the dangers of the path. He had been crisscrossing these mountain ranges since he was a child, and to him the trail was as familiar as the main street in any town. He was alone, lost in his thoughts, pondering both the task that lay ahead of him and the journey that had brought him to where he was.
Yousseff had been 13. His mother and younger sister were both ill, and his father did not want to leave either one. Twenty kilos of opium had been gathered. The family needed the $60 or $70 that this sale would bring in the markets of Peshawar.
“Go,” Yousseff’s father had said to him, over the objections of his mother. “Go. We need money for supplies. For food. Go, and may Allah be with you.”
Without further word, Yousseff had saddled one horse, placed the saddlebags across a second, and rode toward the mountains that rose impenetrably behind the home of his uncle. Izzy al Din, still his faithful sidekick, had wanted to come with him.