Bart shrugged. "There"s no other possibility. My men were extremely well trained, but he must have somehow spotted them and taken them out.""From my experience, you SAS guys are pretty tough.
53.53.You think a mere courier could take out two SAS men that easily?" Coop asked.
"The only explanation is that Atwa is not a mere courier, as you say, but a trained terrorist operative," Bart said.
"Do you have any information on where he went in the Emirates or who he made contact with there?" Ben asked.
"No. By the time we found out where he"d gone, our operatives in the Emirates could find no trace of him."
Mike Post opened his briefcase and withdrew a sheaf of papers. "It"s interesting that your man with the pluto-nium has Middle Eastern connections," he said. "The message I got from the U.N. may be connected to this plutonium transport."
"Oh?" Bart asked.
"Yeah. The U.N. has some intel that factions of the old Al Qa"eda, Hezbollah, and Al Nahda terrorist networks are reforming and joining forces for some as yet unknown mission."
"I thought all of those cells were destroyed years ago in the war in Afghanistan," Jersey said.
Bart shook his head. "Not all of them, just the leaders at the time. A lot of the terrorists merely joined in with the refugees and went back underground."
"As you know," Ben said, a thoughtful look on his face, "we had a problem last year in the U.S.A. with a man named Abdullah El Farrar. He tried to invade the U.S.A. and take over the government there. The U.S.A. asked us for help, and the invasion was thwarted and most of his soldiers killed or captured, but El Farrar managed to escape and return to the Middle East. Do you think this could have anything to do with him?"
Bart gave a harsh laugh. "h.e.l.l, Ben, in that region anything is possible. The radical Muslims have hated any- 54.one non-Muslim for so long, there is no telling what they"d do if they got the chance."
"But," Mike Post said, "for the Middle Eastern terrorist organizations to try and procure plutonium makes even less sense than if another government did it. To our knowledge, they have had almost no technical ability with nuclear weapons since the U.S. took out Saddam Hussein after the war in Afghanistan back in the early years of the century."
"You"re right, Mike," Bart said. "But if the terrorists went to all this trouble to get some plutonium, you can bet they have a plan for its use,and that plan will probably entail the deaths of a lot of non-Muslims somehow."
"Are you sure they got the plutonium from the U.S.A.?" Ben asked.
Bart nodded. "We have that on a very good source."
"If it was stolen, you"d think Claire Osterman would be yelling at the top of her lungs for something to be done about it," Ben mused, almost to himself.
"Unless she was ashamed that something so deadly could be stolen from her so easily," Mike Post said.
"Something doesn"t smell right here," Ben said.
"Surely you don"t think President Osterman could be cooperating with the same group that tried to take over her country and kill her, do you?"
Bart asked.
Ben snorted. "h.e.l.l, if Claire thought it would do her some good, she"d make a deal with the devil himself." He got up from his desk and poured himself another cup of coffee, a thoughtful expression on his face.
When he sat back down, he glanced at Mike. "Mike, I want you to get your Intel men to work with our scientists to try and figure out what possible use plutonium could be to a group of men who are still living in the Dark Ages technically. See if they can come up with any 55.scenario where the plutonium could be used to cause us harm."
Bart got to his feet. "I"ll do the same back home," he said, preparing to leave.
"Bart," Ben said, "leave Mike here a contact person in your Intel group and we"ll keep in touch. As soon as we know anything, we"ll let you in on it."
"I appreciate that, Ben. We"ll do the same."
After Bart left, Ben looked at Buddy. "Looks like you and your team had better start some desert and mountain training, son. I"ve got a feeling we may be sending some troops over to the Middle East sooner rather than later."
Buddy stood up. "You got it, Ben. I"ll issue us some desert fatigues, and we"ll head on over to the training field in west Texas at first light in the morning."
"Texas?" Coop asked.
"Yeah. Good old Texas has both desert and mountains where we can try out our new equipment to see how it stands up to those conditions," Buddy said.
"Are the mosquitoes as bad in Texas as they are here in Louisiana?"
Jersey asked.
Ben laughed. "h.e.l.l, the mosquitoes in Texas don"t bite you; they put youunder their arms and take you home to eat later."
"It"s not the mosquitoes that worry me," Coop said, a look of distaste on his face. "It"s those d.a.m.ned rattlesnakes."
Jersey grinned. Coop"s aversion to snakes was well known. "You know the difference between a rattlesnake and a p.i.s.sed-off woman, Coop?" she asked as they headed out the door.
56."No, what?" Coop asked.
"The rattlesnake warns you before he takes a bite outta your a.s.s."
57.Bwi Al Hazmi put the Exxon Marquis crewmen under guard in the forward hold, finally agreeing to leave the top open to keep the men from dying from the acc.u.mulated vapors from the crude oil that had been stored there. He kept Captain Briggs on the bridge under close guard in case a radio message needed to be answered.
Once that was accomplished, he lowered the tender and sent it back to his freighter to load additional troops and weaponry for the eventual a.s.sault on the port at Kuwait. When all was in readiness and his men were in control of the ship, he turned command of the ship over to one of his lieutenants, Dinise Jabagh. Hazmi had known Jabagh since they were children playing together in the slums of Kandahar in Afghanistan and dreaming of the day when they"d bring all infidels to their knees.
"Dinise," Hazmi said as he bade his friend good-bye, "I am counting on you to take the port of Kuwait on my signal. Do not let me down, old friend."
Jabagh slammed his right fist against his chest over his heart. "I swear on my life, my leader, I will succeed."
With that, Hazmi smiled and said, "I know you will. Remember, this is something we"ve waited our entire lives for."
He climbed down the ladder on the side of the ship, 58.and got into a Magma Marine Patrol boat, a twenty-seven-foot-long boat capable of over sixty miles an hour, that he used for transportation from his freighter to other ships. He waved as the boat took off back toward the freighter. He had several more ships to invade before his day would be done.
When he again boarded his freighter, he set a course to intercept another tanker headed this time toward the port city of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. His third target was a tanker en route to Bushehr in Iran.
There, his men would have to travel a good distance by truck to get to the oil fields, so that tanker would be allowed to dock first to give his men time to get to their destination.Three other freighters, all supplied by the United States and Claire Osterman, were in the process of intercepting other tankers bound for different targets. Before the next day was over, the terrorists hoped to have control of all of the major oil fields in the Middle East.
As he sailed to rendezvous with the second tanker, Hazmi sent a coded message to El Farrar that step one had been accomplished as planned.
In his headquarters in Kandahar, El Farrar read the message to Muhammad Atwa, and the two men grinned like schoolchildren at recess. Farrar turned to a large map on the wall, his eyes glittering with antic.i.p.ation at the land that would soon be under his control, giving him a power no one man had held since the Caesars ruled the Roman Empire.
At the same time, a C-130 transport was landing at the Midland Airport in Texas. Inside were Buddy Raines and 59.59.his team, along with over a hundred scouts, under the command of Major Jackson Bean and his second in command, Willie Running Bear, a full-blooded Sioux Indian. Squad Leaders Samuel Clements and Sue Waters were also present. All had fought with Ben Raines and his team the previous year when they defeated Abdullah El Farrar in the U.S.A.
When the troops deplaned, the temperature was in triple digits and there was a thirty-knot wind blowing, and visibility was limited by the amount of sand being carried by the wind.
Coop wiped tearing eyes and observed to Jersey, standing next to him, "Jesus, what is this? A sandstorm in Texas? Christ, it feels like an oven out here."
"To paraphrase an old saying about the Mississippi River, the air here"s too thick to breathe and too thin to plow," Jersey observed as she took a kerchief from around her neck and folded it into a triangle. Then she put it over her nose and mouth and tied it behind her head.
Coop stared at her and began to laugh. "You look like a bandit in the Old West," he said.
"Laugh all you want, pilgrim, but I can breathe now. How about you?"
Coop started to reply, and then had a coughing fit from the sand in his mouth. He turned red-rimmed eyes to Jersey. "You happen to have another one of those handy?" he rasped through a raw throat.
Her mask hid Jersey"s grin. "Sure. Running Bear is giving them out back in the plane. He said he knew we"d need "em sooner or later, him being from Texas originally."
The troops a.s.sembled in front of the aircraft while some of their heavier equipment-Bradley Attack Vehi- 60.cles, light tanks, and HumVees specially equipped for traveling over sand-was unloaded and parked near the troops."All right, you guys, heads up," Major Bean called when the troops were a.s.sembled. "I"m gonna go over some of the heavy equipment we"re gonna be usin" if we get deployed to the Middle East."
He stepped over to a long vehicle with tracks on it like a tank. "This here is the HEMTT, p.r.o.nounced Hemit. It"s a heavy-equipment, mobility-tracked truck. We use it for cargo-carryin", recovery, and it can also carry large amounts of fuel or water-things we"re gonna need in the desert. Next to it is the Bradley Attack Vehicle, which carries a 120mm cannon and a fifty-caliber machine gun. We"ll use it to move our attack teams into place. It has a five-man crew: two to run it and three to attack once it"s in place."
He moved down the line. "Here is the Ml Abrams, a light tank which can move at forty to fifty miles per hour over sand and can target up to six targets simultaneously with its laser sighting. Next to it is the Sheridan tank, which, as you can see, is modified to have a low profile, just in case we come up against some LAWS or Stinger missiles. And these little babies are the Vulcans. They"re small, but they carry a h.e.l.luva punch with their 120mm cannon. We"ll use these to protect our flanks if we go in on foot against a superior force."
He spread his legs and put his hands on his hips. "Any questions?"
Coop raised his hand.
"Yeah, Cooper?"
"Yes, sir. When do we eat?" Coop asked, to a general laugh from the rest of the troops.
Bean smiled an evil smile. "Why, Mr. Cooper, you"ll 61.61.eat when I"m convinced you know how to drive and operate each and every one of these here vehicles."
The troops all groaned, until Bean held up his hand. "Listen to me!
We"re Scouts, not Regular Army. We go in when it"s not possible to send in large forces, so we all have to be jacks of all trades. Now, Squad Leaders Clements and Waters will take you through the basics with this stuff. I don"t expect you to be expert at it, but in case the driver or gunner is taken out, every one of you needs to be able to step in and take their place. Am I clear on that?"
"Yes, sir!" the troops all responded.
"Then get to it. The sooner you"re all checked out, the sooner you can get some chow."
As they gathered around the equipment, Coop touched Samuel Clements on the shoulder. "Hey, Sam. How"s the wound?"
Clements, who"d been wounded in the fight against the terrorists the previous year, grinned and spread his arms. "What wound?" he asked."That good, huh?" Coop asked, relieved that the friend he"d made last year was in good health.
"No problems, compadre. Now, why don"t you climb up in that HEMTT and see if you can get it started. It only has eighteen forward gears."
"I didn"t join the force to be a truck driver," Coop grumbled, but he climbed up in the driver"s seat anyway.
Clements stepped up on the running board. "Coop, I know this baby ain"t exactly pretty, and it sure as h.e.l.l ain"t as exciting as driving a tank, but when you"re out in the middle of nowhere and dying of thirst with no gas 62.for your HumVee, you"ll kiss the driver that shows up in one of these."
Coop scowled. "Not unless it"s Sue Waters," he said.
Clements laughed. "You try to kiss Sue, and she"ll probably do no worse than break your arm, pal."
Coop shook his head. "Now, Sam, you just don"t know how charming I can be when I try."
Clements nodded, a sarcastic look on his face. "Yeah, I"ve seen how good you are with the women, guy. Jersey especially seems taken with your manly charms."
"Hey, that"s not fair. Jersey doesn"t count. h.e.l.l, she"s more manly than I am."
From behind Clements, a voice spoke up. "I heard that, you baboon!"
"Oh, s.h.i.t," Coop mumbled, blushing scarlet. Jersey had heard him.
63.Helmut Schmidt, lead officer on the oil tanker Grosse Hund, was a different sort of man than Captain Jason Briggs. With a disposition like a German shepherd dog, he took no c.r.a.p from anyone and suspected everyone of being against him.
When his second officer told him of the freighter adrift in their shipping lane with smoke pouring out of its forward hold, he was immediately suspicious.
"Hans," he told his second in command, "issue weapons to the men and stand by the radio. This does not look kosher to me."
"But Captain," Hans argued, "they are obviously in need of a.s.sistance."
Schmidt glared at him, daring him to question his orders a second time.
"Perhaps a bit too obvious. If they are what they seem to be, we will certainly provide help," he growled. "But since they sent no radio message asking for help or declaring a Mayday, I intend to approach them with all due caution."
"Aye, Captain," Hans said, trying to hide his anger. He didn"t know what the old man was worried about. They"d off-loaded all of their oil inHouston two weeks previously. What did he think he had for anyone to steal?
"While I prepare a boarding party," the captain said 64.just before leaving the bridge, "radio the port authorities at Bushehr and tell them about the freighter. They will need to warn other ships in this lane to be careful."
Schmidt put six men, all armed with side arms, in the captain"s gig and told them to check out the freighter. "But be careful when you board her," he advised, touching his nose. "Something doesn"t smell right about a disabled ship that sent no radio message asking for help."
Half an hour later, while watching through binoculars from his bridge, Captain Schmidt saw his gig appear out of the haze of smoke, which hung around the freighter. Several men could be seen lying in the boat with b.l.o.o.d.y bandages around their heads, covering their faces.
"Hans, come here and look. Tell me what you see," he said.
Since he hadn"t sent any shortwave radios with his men, the captain had had no contact with his crew since they boarded the ship.
Hans took another pair of binoculars from a hook on the wall and peered through them. "It appears the men have found some casualties, sir, and are bringing them back to the ship for medical care."
"Look closely at the man at the helm, Hans. Look at his face."
Hans took another look. "I can"t see much, Captain. His hat is pulled too low."
"No, you idiot, look at his chin."
Hans gasped. "Why, he seems to have a beard, Captain."
Schmidt nodded. He allowed none of his crew to have facial hair. "That means he is not one of our men, Hans, and yet he is wearing the uniform of one of our officers."
65.65.Do Hans looked up at Schmidt, alarm in his eyes, you think they are pirates, sir?"
Schmidt snorted. "Whatever they are, they have no business on my ship.
Alert the hands to stand by with weapons ready but out of sight. We will give these gentlemen a surprise when they try to come aboard!"