Liberation Day

Liberation Day.

by Andy McNab.

1.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2001, 23:16 HRS.

T he submarine had broken surface ten minutes earlier, and its deck was still slippery beneath my feet. Dull red flashlight glow glistened on the black steel a few yards ahead of me as five of the boat"s crew feverishly prepared the Zodiac inflatable. As soon as they"d finished, it would be carrying me and my two team members across five miles of Mediterranean and onto the North African coast. he submarine had broken surface ten minutes earlier, and its deck was still slippery beneath my feet. Dull red flashlight glow glistened on the black steel a few yards ahead of me as five of the boat"s crew feverishly prepared the Zodiac inflatable. As soon as they"d finished, it would be carrying me and my two team members across five miles of Mediterranean and onto the North African coast.

One of the crew broke away and said something to Lotfi, who"d been standing next to me by the hatch. I didn"t understand that much Arabic, but Lotfi translated. "They are finished, Nick-we are ready to float off."

The three of us moved forward, swapped places with the submariners, and stepped over the sides of the Zodiac onto the antislip decking. Lotfi was steering and took position to the right of the Yamaha 75 outboard. We bunched up near him, on each side of the engine. We wore black ski hats and gloves, and a "dry bag"-a Gore-Tex suit-over our clothes with elastic wrists and neck to protect us from the cold water. Our gear had been stowed in large zip-lock waterproof bags and lashed to the deck along with the fuel bladders.

I looked behind me. The crew had already disappeared and the hatch was closed. We"d been warned by the captain that he wasn"t going to hang around, not when we were inside the territorial waters of one of the most ruthless regimes on earth. And he was willing to take even fewer risks on the pickup, especially if things had gone to rat s.h.i.t while we were ash.o.r.e. No way did he want the Algerians capturing his boat and crew. The Egyptian navy couldn"t afford to lose so much as a rowboat from their desperately dilapidated fleet, and he didn"t want his crew to lose their eyes or b.a.l.l.s, or any of the other pieces the Algerians liked to remove from people who had p.i.s.sed them off.

"Brace for float-off." Lotfi had done this before.

I could already feel the submarine moving beneath us. We were soon surrounded by bubbles as it blew its tanks. Lotfi slotted the Yamaha into place and fired it up to get us under way. But the sea was heaving tonight with a big swell, and no sooner had our hull made contact with the water than a wave lifted the bow and exposed it to the wind. The Zodiac started to rear up. The two of us threw our weight forward and the bow slapped down again, but with such momentum that I lost my balance and fell onto my a.s.s on the side of the boat, which bounced me backward. Before I knew what was happening, I"d been thrown over the side.

The only part of me uncovered was my face, but the cold took my breath away as I downed a good throatful of salt water. This might be the Mediterranean, but it felt like the North Atlantic.

As I came to the surface and bobbed in the swell, I discovered that my dry bag had a leak in the neck seal. Seawater seeped into my cheap sweatshirt and cotton pants.

"You okay, Nick?" The shout came from Lotfi.

"Couldn"t be better," I grunted, breathing hard as the other two hauled me back aboard. "Got a leak in the bag."

There was a mumble of Arabic between the two of them, and an adolescent sn.i.g.g.e.r or two. Fair: I would have found it funny too.

I shivered as I wrung out my hat and gloves, but even wet wool keeps its heat-retaining qualities and I knew I was going to need all the help I could get on this part of the trip.

Lotfi fought to keep the boat upright as his pal and I leaned on the front-or bow, as Lotfi was constantly reminding me-to keep it down. He finally got the craft under control and we were soon plowing through the crests, my eyes stinging as the salt spray hit my face with the force of gravel. As waves lifted us and the outboard screamed in protest as the propeller left the water, I could see lights on the coast and could just make out the glow of Oran, Algeria"s second largest city. But we were steering clear of its busy port, where the Spanish ferries to"d and fro"d; we were heading about ten miles east, to make landfall at a point between the city and a place called Cap Ferrat. One look at the map during the briefing in Alexandria had made it clear the French had left their mark here big-time. The coastline was peppered with Cap this, Plage that, Port the other.

Cap Ferrat itself was easy to recognize. Its lighthouse flashed every few seconds in the darkness to the left of the glow from Oran. We were heading for a small spit of land that housed some of the intermittent cl.u.s.ters of light we were starting to make out quite well now as we got closer to the coastline.

As the bow crashed through the water I moved to the rear of the boat to minimize the effects of the spray and wind, p.i.s.sed off that I was wet and cold before I"d even started this job. Lotfi was on the other side of the outboard. I looked across as he checked his GPS (Global Positioning System) and adjusted the throttle to keep us on the right bearing.

The brine burned my eyes, but this was a whole lot better than the sub we"d just left. It had been built in the 1960s and the air conditioning was fading. After being cooped up in diesel fumes for three days, waiting for the right moment to make this. .h.i.t, I"d been gagging to be out in the fresh air, even air this fresh. I comforted myself with the thought that the next time I inhaled diesel I"d be chugging along ninety yards below the Mediterranean, back to Alexandria, drinking steaming cups of sweet black tea and celebrating the end of my very last job.

The lights got closer and the coastline took on a bit more shape. Lotfi didn"t need the GPS anymore and it went into the rubber bow bag. We were maybe four hundred yards offsh.o.r.e and I could start to make out the target area. The higher, rocky ground was flooded with light, and in the blackness below it, I could just about make out the cliff, and the beach Lotfi had a.s.sured us was good enough to land on.

We moved forward more slowly now, the engine just ticking over to keep the noise down. When we were about a hundred yards from the beach, Lotfi cut the fuel and tilted the outboard until it locked horizontal once more. The boat lost momentum and began to wallow in the swell. He"d already started to connect one of the full fuel bladders in preparation for our exfiltration. We couldn"t afford to fiddle around if the s.h.i.t hit the fan and we had to make a run for it.

His teeth flashed white as he gave us a huge grin. "Now we paddle."

It was obvious from the way they constantly ragged on each other that Lotfi and the one whose name I still couldn"t p.r.o.nounce-Hubba-Hubba, something like that-had worked together before.

Hubba-Hubba was still at the bow and dug his wooden paddle into the swell. We closed in on the beach. The sky was perfectly clear and star-filled, and suddenly there wasn"t a breath of wind. All I could hear was the gentle slap of the paddles pushing through the water, joined now and then by the sc.r.a.pe of boots on the wooden flooring as one or other of us shifted position. At least the paddling had gotten me warm.

Lotfi never stopped checking ahead, to make sure we were going to hit the beach exactly where he wanted, and the Arabic for "right" I did know: "Il al yameen, yameen." "Il al yameen, yameen."

The two of them were Egyptian, and that was about as much as I wanted to know-not that it had turned out that way. Like me, they were deniable operators; in fact, everyone and everything about this job was deniable. If we were compromised, the U.S. would deny the Egyptians were false-flagging this job for them, and I guessed that was just the price Egypt had to pay for being the second biggest recipient of U.S. aid apart from Israel, to the tune of about two billion dollars a year. There"s no such thing as a free falafel.

Egypt, in its turn, would deny these two, and as for me, the Egyptians probably didn"t even know I was there. I didn"t care; I had no cover doc.u.ments, so if I was captured I was going to get screwed regardless. The only bits of paper I"d been issued were four thousand U.S. dollar bills, in tens and fifties, with which to try to buy my way out of the country if I got into s.h.i.t, and keep if they weren"t needed. It was much better than working for the Brits.

We kept paddling toward the cl.u.s.ters of light. The wetness down my back and under my arms was now warm, but still uncomfortable. I looked up at the other two and we nodded mutual encouragement. They were both good guys and both had the same haircut-shiny, jet-black buzz cuts with a left-hand parting-and very neat mustaches. I was hoping they were winners who just looked like losers. No one would give them a second look in the street. They were both in their mid-thirties, not tall, not small, both clear-skinned and married, with enough kids between them to start up a soccer team.

"Four-four-two," Lotfi had said, smiling. "I will supply the back four and goalkeeper, Hubba-Hubba the midfield and two strikers." I"d discovered he was a Manchester United fan, and knew more than I did about the English Premier League, which wasn"t difficult. The only thing I knew about soccer was that, like Lotfi, more than seventy-five percent of Manchester United"s fans didn"t even live in the U.K.

They weren"t supposed to talk about anything except the job during the planning and preparation phase, in a deserted mining camp just a few hours outside Alexandria, but they couldn"t help themselves. We"d sit around the fire after carrying out yet another rehearsal of the attack, and they"d jabber on about their time in Europe or when they"d gone on vacation to the States.

Lotfi had shown himself to be a highly skilled and professional operator as well as a devout Muslim, so I was pleased that this job had gotten the okay before Ramadan-and also that it was happening in advance of one of the worst storms ever predicted in this part of the world, which the meteorologists had forecast was going to hit Algeria within the next twelve hours. Lotfi had always been confident we"d be able to get in-country ahead of the weather and before he stopped work for Ramadan, for the simple reason that G.o.d was with us. He prayed enough, giving G.o.d detailed updates several times a day.

We weren"t going to leave it all to him, though. Hubba-Hubba wore a necklace that he said was warding off the evil eye, whatever that was. It was a small, blue-beaded hand with a blue eye in the center of the palm, which hung around his neck on a length of cord. I guessed it used to be a badge, because it still had a small safety pin stuck on the back. As far as the boys were concerned, I had a four-man team with me tonight. I just wished the other two were more help with the paddling.

The job itself was quite simple. We were here to kill a forty-eight-year-old Algerian citizen, Adel Kader Zeralda, father of eight and owner of a chain of 7-Eleven-type supermarkets and a domestic fuel company, all based in and around Oran. We were heading for his vacation home, where, so the int (intelligence) said, he did all his business entertaining. It seemed he stayed here quite a lot while his wife looked after the family in Oran; he obviously took his corporate hospitality very seriously indeed.

The satellite photographs we"d been looking at showed a rather unattractive place, mainly because the house was right beside his fuel depot and the parking lot for his delivery trucks. The building was irregularly shaped, like the house that Jack built, with bits and pieces sticking out all over the place and surrounded by a high wall to keep prying eyes from seeing the number of East European wh.o.r.es he got shipped in for a bit of Arabian delight.

Why he needed to die, and anyone else in the house had to be kept alive, I really didn"t have a clue. George hadn"t told me before I left Boston, and I doubted I would ever find out. Besides, I"d f.u.c.ked up enough in my time to know when just to get the game-plan in place, do the job, and not ask too many questions. It was a reasonable bet that with over three hundred and fifty Algerian al-Qaeda extremists operating around the globe, Zeralda was up to his neck in it, but I wasn"t going to lie awake worrying about that. Algeria had been caught up in a virtual civil war with Islamic fundamentalist groups for more than a decade now, and over a hundred thousand lives had been lost-which seemed strange to me, considering Algeria was an Islamic country.

Maybe Zeralda posed some other threat to the West"s interests. Who cared? All I cared about was keeping totally focused on the job, so with luck I"d get out alive and back to the States to pick up my citizenship. George had rigged it for me; all I had to do in exchange was this one job. Kill Zeralda, and I was finished with this line of work for good. I"d be back on the submarine by first light, a freshly minted U.S. citizen, heading home to Boston and a glittering future.

It felt quite strange going into a friendly country undercover, but at this very moment, the president of Algeria was in Washington, D.C., and Mr. Bush didn"t want to spoil his trip. Given the seven-hour time difference, Bouteflika and his wife were probably getting ready for a night of Tex Mex with Mr. and Mrs. B. He was in the States because he wanted the Americans to see Algeria as their North African ally in this new war against terrorism. But I was sure that political support wasn"t the only item on the agenda. Algeria also wanted to be seen as an important source of hydrocarbons to the West. Not just oil, but gas: they had vast reserves of it.

Only fifty or so yards to go now, and the depot was plainly visible above us, bathed in yellow light from the fence line, where arc lights on poles blazed into the compound. We knew from Lotfi"s recce (reconnaissance) that the two huge tanks to the left of the compound were full of kerosene 28, a domestic heating fuel.

On the other side of the compound, still within the fence line and about thirty yards from the tanks, was a line of maybe a dozen tankers, all likely to be fully laden, ready for delivery in the morning. Along the spit, to the right of the compound as I looked at it, were the outer walls of Zeralda"s vacation house, silhouetted by the light of the depot.

2.

T he view of the target area slowly disappeared as we neared the beach and moved into shadow. Sand rasped against rubber as we hit bottom. The three of us jumped out, each grabbing a rope handle and dragging the Zodiac up the beach. Water sloshed about inside my dry bag and sneakers. he view of the target area slowly disappeared as we neared the beach and moved into shadow. Sand rasped against rubber as we hit bottom. The three of us jumped out, each grabbing a rope handle and dragging the Zodiac up the beach. Water sloshed about inside my dry bag and sneakers.

When Lotfi signaled that we were far enough from the waterline, we pulled and pushed the boat so that it faced in the right direction for a quick getaway, then started to unlash our gear using the ambient light from the high ground.

A car zoomed along the road above us, about two hundred yards away on the far side of the peninsula. I checked traser on my left wrist; instead of luminous paint, it used a gas that was constantly giving off enough light to see the watch face. It was twenty-four minutes past midnight; the driver could afford to put his foot down on a deserted stretch of coast.

I unzipped my bergen from the protective rubber bag in which it had been coc.o.o.ned and pulled it out onto the sand. The backpacks were cheap and nasty counterfeit Berghaus jobs, made in Indonesia and sold to Lotfi in a Cairo bazaar, but they gave us vital extra protection: if their contents got wet we"d be out of business.

The other two did the same to theirs, and we knelt in the shadows, each checking our own gear. In my case this meant making sure that the fuse wire and homemade OBIs (oil-burning incendiaries) hadn"t been damaged, or worse still, gotten waterlogged. The OBIs were basically four one-foot square Tupperware boxes with a soft steel liner, into the bottom of which I"d drilled a number of holes. Each device contained a mix of sodium chlorate, iron powder, and asbestos, which would have been hard to find in Europe these days, but was available in Egypt by the truckload. The ingredients were mixed together in two-pound batches and pressed into the Tupperware.

All four OBIs were going to be linked together in a long daisy chain by three-foot lengths of fuse wire. Light enough to float on top of oil, they would burn fiercely until, c.u.mulatively, they generated enough heat to ignite the fuel. How long that would take depended on the fuel. With gasoline it would be almost instantaneous-the fuse wire would do the trick. But the combustion point of heavier fuels can be very high. Even diesel"s boiling point is higher than that of water, so it takes a lot of heat to get it ignited.

But first we had to get to the fuel. All fuel tanks are designed with outer perimeter "bungs," walls or d.y.k.es whose height and thickness depend on the amount of fuel that will have to be contained in the event of a rupture. The ones that we were going to breach were surrounded by a double-thick wall of concrete building blocks, just over three feet in height and about four yards away from the tanks.

Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba had been rehearsing their tasks so often they would have been able to do them blindfolded-which, in fact, we had done some of the time during rehearsals. Training blindfolded gives you confidence if you have to carry out a job in the dark, such as dealing with a weapon stoppage, but it also makes you quicker and more effective even when you can see.

The attack theory was simple. Lotfi was going to start by cutting out a section of the wall, three blocks wide and two down, facing toward the target house. Hubba-Hubba had turned out to be quite an expert with explosives. He would place his two frame charges, one on each tank, on the side facing the sea and opposite where I was going to lay out and prepare my four OBIs.

As the frame charges cut a two-foot-square hole in each tank, the fuel would spew out and be contained in the bung. The ignited OBIs would float on top of the spillage, burning in sequence along the daisy chain, so that we had constant heat and constant flame, which would eventually ignite the lake of fuel beneath them. We knew that the kerosene 28 fuel oil rising in the bung would ignite when the second of the four OBIs ignited, which should happen as the fuel level reached just less than halfway up the bung wall. But we wanted to do more than just ignite the fuel within the bung: we wanted fire everywhere.

The burning fuel would disgorge through the cut-out section in the wall and out onto the ground like lava from a volcano. The ground sloped, toward the target house. As soon as Lotfi had shown me the sketch maps from his recce, I"d seen that we could cut the house off from the road with a barrier of flame. I hoped I was right; two hundred policemen lived in barracks just three miles along the road to Oran, and if they were called to the scene we didn"t want to become their new best friends.

Just as important, we could make what happened tonight look like a local job-an attack from one of the many fundamentalist groups that had waged war on each other here for years. That was why we"d had to make sure the equipment was homemade, why all our weapons were of Russian manufacture, and our clothing of local origin. The traser might not be regular Islamic fundamentalist issue, but if anyone got close enough to me to notice my watch, then I really was in the s.h.i.t, so what did it matter? In less than two hours from now, Zeralda would be dead, and the finger of blame would be pointing at Algeria"s very own Islamic extremists, who were still making this the world"s most dangerous vacation spot.

They didn"t like anyone unless he was one of their own. We hoped that our attack would be blamed on the GIA, the Armed Islamic Group. They were probably the cruelest and most screwed-up bunch I"d ever come across. These guys had been trained and battle-hardened in places like Afghanistan, where they"d fought with the mujahadeen against the Russians. After that, they"d fought in Chechnya, and then in Bosnia and anywhere else they felt Muslims were getting f.u.c.ked over. Now they were back in Algeria-and this time it was personal. They wanted an Islamic state with the Qur"an as its const.i.tution, and they wanted it today. In the eyes of these people, even OBL (Osama Bin Laden) was a wimp. In 1994, in a grim precursor of attacks to come, GIA hijacked an Air France plane in Algiers, intending to crash it in the middle of Paris. It would have worked if it hadn"t been for French ant.i.terrorist forces attacking the plane as it refueled, killing them all.

Unlike me, all the equipment in my bergen was dry. I peeled off my dry bag, and immediately felt colder as the air started to attack my wet clothes. Too bad, there was nothing I could do about it. I checked chamber on my Russian Makharov pistol, pulling back the topslide just a fraction and making sure, for maybe the fourth and last time on this job, that the round was just exposed as it sat in the chamber ready to be fired. I glanced to the side to see the other two doing the same. I let the topslide return until it was home tight before applying safe with my thumb, then thrust the pistol into the internal holster that I"d tucked into the front of my pants.

Lotfi was in a good mood. "Your gun wet too?"

I nodded slowly at his joke and whispered back, as I shouldered my bergen, "Pistol, it"s a pistol or weapon. Never, ever a gun."

He smiled back and didn"t reply. He didn"t have to: he"d known it would get me riled.

I made my final check: my two mags were still correctly placed in the double mag holder on my left hip. They were facing up in the thick bands of black elastic that held them onto my belt, with the rounds facing forward. That way I would pull down on a mag to release it and they would be facing the right way to slam into the pistol.

Everyone was now poised to go, but Lotfi still checked-"Ready?"-like a tour guide at the airport with a group trip, making everyone show their pa.s.sports for the tenth time. We all nodded, and he led the way up to the high ground. I fell in just behind him.

Lotfi was the one taking us on target because he was the only one who had been ash.o.r.e and carried out a CTR (close target recce). Besides, he was the one in charge: I was here as the guest European, soon to be American, terrorist.

There was a gentle rise of about forty yards from the tip of the peninsula where we"d landed to the target area. We zigzagged over sand and rock. It was good to get moving so I could warm up a little.

We stopped just before the flat ground and sat and waited for a vehicle to make its way along the road. Lotfi checked it out. No one said it, but we were all worried about the police being stationed so close, and whether, because of the terrorist situation here, they constantly patrolled their immediate area for security. I was still happy to stop and catch my breath. My nose was starting to run a little.

Lotfi dropped down below the ledge and whispered in Arabic to Hubba-Hubba before coming to me: "Just a car, no police yet."

The wet T-shirt under my sweatshirt was a bit warmer now, but it was just as uncomfortable. So what? It wouldn"t be long before it was black tea and diesel fumes again, and, for about the first time in my life, I"d be proactively planning a future.

I pulled back my sweatshirt sleeve and glanced down at my traser. 00:58. I thought of Mr. and Mrs. B. Just like the Bouteflikas, they too were probably having a wash and comb while they discussed what on earth they were going to talk about over the Tex Mex. Probably something like, "Oh, I hear you have lots of gasoline in your country? We wouldn"t mind some of that, instead of you giving it to the Italians to fill up their Fiats. And, oh, by the way, there"ll be one Algerian fewer for you to govern when you get back. But don"t worry, he was a bad guy."

As the sound of the vehicle faded in the direction of Oran, we all raised our heads slowly above the lip to scan the rock and sandy ground. The constant noise of crickets, or whatever they called them here, rattled into the night.

The fuel compound was an oasis of yellow light and bright enough to make me squint until my eyes adjusted. It was just under two hundred yards to my half-left. From my perspective the tanks were sitting side by side, surrounded by the bung. To the right of them was the not-so-neat row of fuel trucks.

The perimeter of the compound was guarded by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence, sagging in places where the trucks had backed into it over the years.

In the far corner of the compound, by the gate that faced the road, was the security hut. It was no more than a large garden shed. The security was for fire watch just as much as for stopping the trucks and fuel disappearing during the night; the depot had no automatic fire system in the event of a leak or explosion. Lotfi told us there was a solitary guy sitting inside, and if the whole thing ignited it would presumably be his job to get on the phone.

That was good for us, because it meant we didn"t have to spend time neutralizing any fire-fighting apparatus or alarms. What was bad was the police barracks. A complete f.u.c.k-up on our side was only a phone call and three miles away. If we got caught it would be serious s.h.i.t. Algeria wasn"t exactly known for upholding human rights, no one would be coming to help us, no matter what we said, and terrorists were routinely whipped to death in this neck of the woods.

3.

T he target house was to the right of us, and closer than the compound. The wall that surrounded it was a large, square, high-sided construction of plastered brick, painted a color that had once been cream. It was built very much in the Muslim tradition of architecture, for privacy. The main door faced the fuel tanks, and we knew from the satellite that it was rarely used. I couldn"t even see it from where I was, because the lights in the compound weren"t strong enough. From the shots Lotfi had taken during the CTR, I knew it consisted of a set of large, dark, wooden double doors rising to an apex, studded and decorated with wrought iron. The pictures had also shown a modern shutter-type garage door at the side, facing away from us toward the road. A dirt track connected it with the main drag. he target house was to the right of us, and closer than the compound. The wall that surrounded it was a large, square, high-sided construction of plastered brick, painted a color that had once been cream. It was built very much in the Muslim tradition of architecture, for privacy. The main door faced the fuel tanks, and we knew from the satellite that it was rarely used. I couldn"t even see it from where I was, because the lights in the compound weren"t strong enough. From the shots Lotfi had taken during the CTR, I knew it consisted of a set of large, dark, wooden double doors rising to an apex, studded and decorated with wrought iron. The pictures had also shown a modern shutter-type garage door at the side, facing away from us toward the road. A dirt track connected it with the main drag.

Inside the high protection was a long, low building. It wasn"t exactly palatial, but showed that the fuel and teabag business paid Zeralda well enough for him to have his own little playground.

Double doors from quite a lot of the rooms opened onto a series of tiled courtyards decorated with plants and fountains, but what the satellite photographs hadn"t been able to show us was which room was which. That didn"t really matter, though. The house wasn"t that big and it was all on one floor, so it shouldn"t take us long to find where Zeralda was doing his entertaining.

The paved road flanked the far side of these two areas and formed the base of the triangular peninsula.

Lotfi moved back down into the dead ground and started to scramble along in the darkness to his left, just below the lip. As we followed, two cars raced along the road, blowing their horns at each other in rhythmic blasts before eventually disappearing into the darkness. I"d read that eighty percent of men under the age of thirty were jobless in this country and inflation was in high double figures. How anybody could afford fast cars was beyond me. I could only just about afford my motorbike.

We got level with the tanks and moved up to the lip of the high ground. Hubba-Hubba took off his bergen and fished out the wire cutters and a two-foot square of red velvet curtain material, while we put on and adjusted the black-and-white-check shemags shemags that would hide our faces when we hit the hut. I wouldn"t be taking part directly because of my skin color and blue eyes. I would only come into the equation when the other two had located Zeralda. It wouldn"t matter that he saw me. that would hide our faces when we hit the hut. I wouldn"t be taking part directly because of my skin color and blue eyes. I would only come into the equation when the other two had located Zeralda. It wouldn"t matter that he saw me.

When Hubba-Hubba got his bergen back on and his shemag shemag around his head, we checked each other again as Lotfi drew his pistol and did his tour guide routine, with a nod to each of us as we copied. around his head, we checked each other again as Lotfi drew his pistol and did his tour guide routine, with a nod to each of us as we copied.

Breaking the operation down into stages, so that people knew exactly what to do and when to do it, made things easier for me. These were good men, but I couldn"t trust my life with people I didn"t know very well and whose skills, beyond the specifics of this operation, I wasn"t sure about.

Following Lotfi, with me now at the rear, we moved toward the fence line. It was pointless running or trying to avoid being in the open for the thirty or so yards: it was just flat ground and the light in the compound hadn"t hit us directly yet as the arc lights were facing into the compound, not out. We would get into that light spill before long, and soon after that we"d be attacking the hut, so h.e.l.l, it didn"t really matter. There was no other way of crossing the open ground anyway.

There came a point where, bent over, as we tried instinctively to make ourselves smaller, we caught the full glare of the four arc lights set on high steel posts at each corner of the compound. A ma.s.s of small flying things had been drawn to the pools of light and buzzed around them.

I could hear the rustle of my pants as my wet legs rubbed together. I kept my mouth open to cut down on the sound of my breathing. It wasn"t going to compromise us, but doing everything possible to keep noise to a minimum and make this job work made me feel better. The only other sounds were of their sneakers moving over the rocky ground, and the rhythmic sc.r.a.pe of the nylon bergens over the chirp of the invisible crickets. My face soon became wet and cold as I breathed against the shemag shemag.

We got to the fence line behind the shed. There were no windows facing us, just sunbaked wooden cladding no more than three feet away.

I could hear someone inside, shouting grumpily in French. "Oui, oui, d"accord." "Oui, oui, d"accord." At the same time there was a blast of monotone Arabic from a TV set. At the same time there was a blast of monotone Arabic from a TV set.

Lotfi held the red velvet over the bottom of the fence and Hubba-Hubba got to work with his cutters. He cut the wire through the velvet, moving upward in a vertical line. Lotfi repositioned the velvet each time, the two men working like clockwork toys, not looking remotely concerned about the world around them. That was my job, to watch and listen to the sounds coming from the shed in case its occupant was alerted by the smothered ping ping each time a strand of chain-link gave way. each time a strand of chain-link gave way.

The telephone line snaked into the compound from one of the concrete posts that followed the road, which looked like a strip of liqorice running left and right. There was a sign, in both Arabic and English, to be careful of the bend. I knew that if I went to the right I would hit Oran about ten miles away, and if I went left I would pa.s.s Cap Ferrat and eventually hit Algiers, the capital, about four hundred miles to the east.

Hubba-Hubba and Lotfi finished cutting the vertical line as the one-sided conversation continued inside the shed, then carefully pulled the two sides apart to create a triangle. I eased my way slowly through, so my bergen wouldn"t snag. I got my fingers through Lotfi"s side of the fence to keep it in position and he followed suit, taking hold of Hubba-Hubba"s side while he packed the cutting gear. When he was through as well, we eased the fence back into place.

We put our bergens on the ground behind the shed, to the accompaniment of the monotonous Arabic TV voice, and the old guy still babbling in French.

It flashed through my mind that I had no idea what had been happening in Afghanistan this past week. Was the U.S. still bombing? Had troops gone in and dug the Taliban out of their caves? Having been so totally focused on the job in the mining camp and then stuck in the submarine, I didn"t have a clue if OBL was dead or alive.