Richard viewed the lands below him with growing anxiety as the Night Hawk traveled ever further from its Mediterranean carrier base. It was no longer pure desert, but bleakness and oppressive heat still radiated from the rocky grassland below him. When they found the airport, it was really nothing more than a dirt strip adjacent to a rundown terminal no larger than a couple of Atco trailers put side by side, and a small fuel depot. One ancient Jeep was parked beside the terminal. Waves of heat were rippling from the small structures.
“OK, Clinton,” said Payton over the Com-Link. “Let’s set them down near the fuel depot.” There was an edge to his voice. Sudan north of Khartoum was lawless, in a continual state of anarchy, and subject to brutal, pitiless civil war. It wasn’t the kind of place he wanted to hang out.
“You betcha, Major,” responded Clinton. Both Night Hawks landed simultaneously, coming down in swishing vortices of sand. “Heads up, people. Safeties off and weapons ready. We have no idea what’s here,” he ordered his crew. “We don’t want another Somalia.”
“There’s only one Jeep,” observed one of the other men. “I don’t think it’ll be too bad. Can’t be more than one or two people here.”
“It only takes one to kill you,” said McMurray. “Least that’s what they teach you in the Army.”
“I’m going inside the terminal to see if a DC-3 came through here in the last few hours,” said Richard, opening the door of the helicopter and climbing out.
“Don’t think you’re leaving me here,” McMurray snapped. Stressful situations tended to make him even sharper than usual. “Someone has to make sure this damn thing goes right.” He jumped out of the chopper and followed Richard toward the terminal.
“Clinton, gather a couple of the guys, we’re going with them,” ordered Payton. “See what we can do about getting fuel. We’re on empty here. Thompson, get on the radio and let home base know we’re here and that we’re looking for fuel. Tell them it’s quiet, so far.”
Unbeknownst to Payton, a swarthy man inside the terminal had just made a short call of his own on his Sat-phone. “Two helicopters,” he said. “Maybe ten soldiers. Americans. Send the trucks.”
What that man didn’t know, in turn, was that the NSA had received a directive from the DDCI, just hours before, ordering them to monitor everything monitorable in southern Libya and northwestern Darfur. The NSA most definitely had that capability. Headquartered in Fort Mead, Maryland, the several thousand employees of the NSA worked within the second-largest building in the world (the Pentagon being the largest). If the NSA was ordered to monitor a specific region, it was all but done.
The problem with using a Thuraya Satellite telephone in the middle of a wasteland is that there are only a few such telephones within a thousand square-mile area. For this reason, the NSA’s mission was a very different proposition than monitoring the Islands of Indonesia, where there were almost 200,000 such devices, and millions of cell phones. With the warning that the agency had received, they had no problem picking up the call from the airstrip to the little village of Yarim-Dhar, about ten miles distant. One of the translators yelled at his supervisor the moment it happened. “It’s a set-up! They’re going to be attacked!”
The supervisor immediately relayed that to the executive director of his section, who relayed it to the DDCI’s office. The message went across to the Pentagon, and to the Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group in the Mediterranean. From there it was linked to the AWAC-2 aircraft circling high above the Mediterranean, and to Thompson, who was still on the Com-Link in the second Night Hawk.
The end result was that four FA-18/E Super Hornets were immediately scrambled from the deck of the Theodore Roosevelt, while, miles away, two dozen Darfur warriors were racing toward seven trucks in the village of Yarim-Dhar, with heavy machine guns in tow. The trucks were about ten miles from the airport and were moving at 50 miles per hour, the maximum speed permitted by the rough terrain. The Hornets maxed out at Mach 1.7, but had some 700 miles to go. Clearance across Libya was approved almost immediately, once General Minyar was briefed on the situation. No one really cared about clearance in northwest Darfur.
At that moment, Thompson was yelling to the Major and his small group, who were halfway to the main terminal. Richard and McMurray had already entered the building. “Major, take cover! It’s an ambush!”
Two heads appeared on the roof of the terminal building. The so-called warriors had taken an inside ladder to the roof of the terminal after the choppers landed. Each had an RPG launcher. They fired simultaneously, each aiming for a helicopter.
Yousseff completed his long, lonely journey to Jalalabad, slept for a few hours, and had his pilots fly him over the mountains into Pakistan, to an almost identical hangar, with identical offices and suites, at Islamabad International. It was there that he reconnected with Marak, just after dark. He did not ask Marak what had become of the unfortunate Zak, nor did he care to know. It was, thankfully, an operational detail that he, as CEO, did not need to trouble himself with. Yousseff had never had the stomach for death or torture, and was glad to leave that aspect of the business to Marak. His role was master and planner. Now he made a number of telephone calls, all on a pre-paid cell phone that Marak had brought with him. Various aspects of the mission were discussed and revised.
As he hung up, he turned to Marak. “Can you have Vijay and Mahari here tomorrow morning?” he asked.
“That will not be a problem,” Marak replied. “First light.”
“Then I should call Omar in Karachi, and Kumar in Los Angeles,” said Yousseff. “We can’t give them all of the information, but they need to know some aspects of the plan. Especially Kumar.”
It was late in the evening, Pacific Standard Time, when Kumar’s personal cell phone rang. He flipped it open. “Hanaman here,” he answered. Kumar had been born in Pakistan, where he’d first met Yousseff. With some passport trickery, he had moved to Long Beach, California, where he’d been living for more than a decade now. There he had built a thriving company that manufactured and sold small commercial submarines to the military and private enterprises.
“It’s Yousseff. How are you Kumar?”
A broad smile crept over Kumar’s face. “It is good to hear your voice, Yousseff. It’s been too long. All is fine here. What do you need?”
Yousseff never wasted much time on pleasantries. Over the years he had found that it was best to deal with the details first, and take time for pleasure second. “I need you to build something for me, Kumar. Something very unique, very unusual. It will take all of your immense talent.”
Kumar’s eyebrows rose, nearing his curly black hairline in surprise. “Oh?”
“But,” continued Yousseff, “I know that you, in that plant of yours, can build anything. It will be difficult, but not impossible. We will email the plans to you shortly. Encrypted, of course, but you know the code. I will call you again in a day or two.”
“Sure, Youss,” came Kumar’s voice, with an edge of uncertainty. “Email what you have. I’ll look at it. Then I can let you know if it’s possible or not.”