“You’re correct,” Sandra said. “But before they had a chance to, the Libyan government claimed that a fire set by the United States had destroyed the plant. However, satellite imagery indicated only minor damage.”
“So the fire was a hoax.”
“That was the conclusion of your CIA, yes. Again the Reagan administration threatened to destroy it. In late 1990, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi announced that he was shutting the plant down, but not before it had produced an estimated hundred tons of mustard blister agent and sarin nerve gas.”
“Sneaky bastard.”
“The site was reopened in 1995 as a pharmaceutical plant, jointly run with Egypt’s El Nasr Pharmaceutical Chemicals Company, designed to produce medicines, detergents, and cleansers,” Sandra continued. “But we concluded that it was still capable of making chemical weapons.”
Ritchie: “Why am I not surprised?”
“In 2004, Libya signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. But leaked classified cables from Gaddafi’s government proved that they were not in compliance and still possessed 9.5 metric tons of mustard gas, an unknown quantity of phosgene gas, and sarin nerve agent, most of which was stored at Pharma 150.”
Ritchie: “We should have leveled it back in the eighties.”
Crocker asked, “What’s the status of the facility now?”
“An Italian company called SIPSA Engineering has been pressuring the interim government to sign a contract for destruction of all chemical agents at Pharma 150. So far the contract hasn’t been signed,” Lundquist answered.
“So what’s our mission?” Crocker asked.
Remington leaned forward and answered, “One, make sure the chemical weapons stored there are secure. Two, inspect the nearby metal fabrication plant. We know that it hasn’t been open for years, but as far as I know, no one has eyeballed that particular plant in years, either.”
Lundquist said, “I’ve been there as recently as two months ago. There’s nothing to see at the metal fabrication plant. Ruins, a shed that some locals use to store grain, not much.”
Remington: “Dr. Jabril won’t be going with you, but he drew up a map of the fabrication plant. He says he helped run it back in the nineties.”
“Where’s Lasher?” Crocker asked.
“He and the doctor are out interviewing some former Gaddafi scientists.”
“And the city is safe?” Crocker asked.
“Toummo? It’s hardly a city. Barely qualifies as a village. It’s a desert border town. NATO has a base there to guard the uranium mines nearby. There’ve been some recent skirmishes with local tribesmen, raids across the border, but the Polish commander, Major Ostrowski, is firmly in charge. He’ll be your host.”
As Akil, Mancini, Davis, and Ritchie loaded their gear into the Suburban for the trip to the airport, Remington pulled Crocker into the kitchen.
“Keep close to Ms. Lundquist,” Remington said.
“That won’t be a problem. But…why?”
“She was attacked in the old quarter a couple of nights ago. A group of young men tried to force her into a car. She fought them off but is still a bit shaken.”
The Royal Canadian Air Force CC-130 took off with a roar that afternoon with Crocker and Mancini in the first row of seats; Davis, Akil, and Ritchie occupying the middle row; and Sandra Lundquist stretched out in the back row by herself. The space behind her was filled with jugs of water, propane tanks, and other supplies for the NATO camp. When she wasn’t talking on her cell phone she was typing on her laptop, frustrating Akil and Ritchie’s attempts to engage her in conversation. So they started ribbing Davis about getting his wife pregnant twice in less than a year.
Ritchie asked, “You ever hear about pulling out?”
Akiclass="underline" “He can’t. He’s too quick.”
Ritchie: “You’ve got to learn to prolong it, enjoy it. Right, Manny?”
Mancini: “What do you two know about heterosexual love?”
Then they tried to get her attention by telling off-color jokes.
“Hey, you hear the one about the woman at home who hears a knock on her front door? She answers and sees a man standing there who asks: ‘Do you have a vagina?’ She slams the door in disgust. The next morning she hears another knock on the door. It’s the same man who asks, ‘Do you have a vagina?’ She slams the door again. That night when her husband gets home, she tells him what happened the last two days. Her husband tells his wife in a loving and concerned voice, ‘Honey, I’m staying home from work tomorrow, in case this idiot shows up again.’ The next morning, sure enough, there’s a knock on the door. The husband whispers to the wife, ‘I’ll hide behind the door. If he asks you the same question, answer yes.’ She opens the door and sure enough, the same man is standing there. He asks again, ‘Do you have a vagina?’ She answers yes. The man replies, ‘Good. Then would you mind telling your husband to leave my wife’s alone and start using yours?’ ”
The men all laughed, Mancini so hard he started to choke.
Akil asked, “You like that one, Sandra?”
“Not bad.”
“You’re hard to please.”
Mancini: “How about this? There was this older guy who wanted to make his younger wife pregnant. So he went to the doctor to have a sperm count done. The doc tells him to take a specimen cup home, fill it up, and bring it back the next day. The next day the old guy comes back. The specimen cup’s empty and the lid’s still on it. The doctor asks, ‘What was the problem?’ The old guy says, ‘Well, I tried with my right hand…nothing. So I tried with my left. That didn’t work, either. Then my wife took over. She tried with her right, then her left, then her mouth. Each time…nothing. Then my wife’s friend tried. Right hand, left hand, mouth. Still nothing.’ Hearing this, the doctor said, ‘Wait a minute. Your wife’s friend tried, too?’ ‘That’s right,’ the old man answered. ‘None of us could get the lid off the specimen cup.’ ”
Sandra laughed this time and said, “I like that one better.”
Akil leaned over the seat and asked, “What about you, Sandra? You know any good jokes?”
Crocker was about to change the subject, but the German seemed game.
She shut her laptop and said, “Three guys go to a ski lodge, and there aren’t enough rooms, so they have to share a bed. In the middle of the night the guy sleeping on the right wakes up and says, ‘I just had this wild, very vivid dream about getting a hand job.’ The guy on the left says, ‘That’s funny. I had the same dream.’ The guy in the middle says, ‘Not me. I dreamt I was skiing.’ ”
They laughed, then Ritchie said, “The guy in the middle was Davis!”
Davis: “Grow up, Ritchie.”
“Never. Fuck you.”
Crocker: “Okay, guys. Settle down. We’re almost there.”
After a little more than four hours in the air, the CC-130 started to descend. All Crocker could see out the side windows was a thin ribbon of highway surrounded by desert. When the plane passed a few hundred feet over a collection of what looked like shacks on either side of the highway, Sandra said, “That’s it. That’s Toummo.”
Akiclass="underline" “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Looks like the end of the earth, yes?”
As soon as the plane touched down on a landing strip alongside the NATO base, Polish soldiers arrived in trucks and started unloading the supplies. Crocker and the others exited out the side door and were greeted by a big man with enormous arms and a broad chest wearing an olive-green tank top and camouflage shorts.
He said in English, “I’m Major Ostrowski. Welcome to our base. Officially, it’s known as Base Toummo, but we call it Base Piasek Burza. Or you might prefer the English translation, Base Sandstorm.”
The camp housed two dozen soldiers and was roughly two hundred feet square, surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall of sand, gravel, rock, Conex containers, and sheets of metal. Inside were tents, mud buildings, lookout towers, picnic tables, electric generators, an oven, showers, a latrine, a pen filled with goats, and a barbecue pit.