Executive Actions (48 page)

There wasn’t a man on the bridge who didn’t read President Morgan loud and clear.

However, the weather was not under Taylor’s command and the USS
Carl Vinson
rocked in the waves for four more nauseating days. When the seas finally calmed where the
Vinson
sailed, a new squall, with heavy winds and rain stalled over Tripoli.

Ibrahim Haddad used his influence to learn that Michael O’Connell hadn’t been at his desk in ten days. He had missed invitations to
This Week
and
Meet the Press
. Nobody passed up that kind of exposure, especially twice. One of his editors was heard to say in the men’s room that O’Connell was on the network’s shit list. “And he’s gonna be covering the New York State Assembly instead of the White House if he doesn’t check in.” However, a friendly call to a
Times
editor indicated that he was working with an “inside source” on an important story.

Haddad ran the possibilities.
O’Connell was onto something. He covered the campaign. They wouldn’t take him off it now. He wasn’t with Lodge. That left only one other person.

He left a message that was picked up by his source at the FBI. Soon he learned that a DC cab driver remembered dropping off a man at the White House who fit the description of O’Connell.
And now Taylor was AWOL. Why?
Haddad wondered if Taylor took him to the Pakistani-Indian border to get him away from Lodge.

At the end of his mental exercise, Haddad concluded that he needed more information. He decided to do two things in the morning: Press his contact at the FBI for something concrete and send another encoded message in an e-bay picture to a business associate waiting in Washington. It was time to implement a contingency plan.

As his bedroom digital clock clicked over from 11:59
P.M.
to midnight, Haddad turned off his night light and willed away his anxiety.
Two days and it would be over. Two more days and the country will have a new president. It took the conservative Republican Nixon to open up relations with the Chinese communists. It will be the liberal Democratic Lodge who will undo the United States’ allegiance to Israel and eventually install a new generation of Kharrazi leadership in Libya. Yes, just two more days,
he thought.

One hour later, Haddad slipped into a fitful sleep. His dream returned. This time more vividly. The speeches. The bands. The jets overhead. The swearing in ceremony. The face. The face laughing now. Laughing loudly. The sound reverberating in his head, echoing as his body bolted upright again. Cold sweat drenched him. Haddad groped for his inhaler and stared across the darkness of his room. The room was pitch black, but for the first time he could see the face.

Morgan Taylor!

T
he ceiling was low, almost on the deck. But it wasn’t pouring and the winds had died down. The only illumination for miles emanated from the glow of the
Vinson
in the temporarily calm seas. The pulsing tracer lights on the flight deck dotted the active runway. The massive vessel headed into the cold 15 knot winds, now just 150 nautical miles off the coast of Libya.

High overhead, a USAF AWACS, with its saucer disc mounted on the fuselage, scanned the skies and the ground below. It flew parallel to and 60 miles north of the Libyan coast at 36,150 feet.

Boulder Devoucoux gave the order. “We commit in 38 minutes. This is it. Stations.”

First to takeoff from the USS
Carl Vinson
were a pair of UH-60 Special Forces Black Hawks, each carrying three members of the Special Forces team. They flew inside an envelope created by four fully armed Apache AH-64D copters 500 hundred feet away.

At 0040, four single seat F/A-18E’s, known for their night attack precision, shot into the skies over the Med, excelerating from from 0 to 160 mph in three just seconds.

Operation Quarterback Sneak was officially and finally underway.

Many tea rooms and cafés were still open, though most of the customers had left or were just completing their nightly rounds of backgammon.

In the corner of one small establishment near the Hotel El Kabir, sat a tired traveler in ragged African garb. He was listening to an old, cracked portable radio through worn earphones. He tuned to a specific station, adjusted the volume to minimize static from the florescent lights, and heard what sounded like the play-by-play of an English language football game. It was unusual to listen to football, but not illegal. If anyone heard it they wouldn’t understand the coded plays that were being called to an audience of one—Vinnie D’Angelo.

D’Angelo could change the station just by tilting the radio 45 degrees. He’d immediately do that if someone of authority approached.

The announcer punched through the recorded crowd noise to describe the 1
st
quarter—the flight to Tripoli. The second quarter would be a “fake.” There would be no halftime in this game. The big action would come in the 3
rd
quarter. The 4
th
quarter—the return flight to the
Vinson
. And if the game went well, there’d be one spectacular celebration in the locker room, which he’d miss.

Five blocks away, a man took a seat under a park bench lamp. He wore casual slacks and a turtleneck covered by a heavily worn windbreaker to keep him warm. Once comfortable, he lit up a cigarette then removed a paperback book and a flashlight from his jacket pocket.

There was nothing immediately suspicious about the man or his actions. But in fact he was on what he hoped would be his final Libyan assignment.

Like D’Angelo, the man had a special piece of equipment. For him, his flashlight. When the bottom battery compartment of the flashlight was given a quarter turn to the right, the on and off button was pressed in a 3-2-4 sequence, and the back returned to its locked position, the flashlight could “paint” a four story office corner building hundreds of feet away with a powerful, narrow laser beam.

“Painting” had a specific purpose. The building was a target. The computers in the cockpit of the lead F/A-18E Super Hornet would lock onto the reflected laser. The laser’s reflection would then be “ridden” by a pair of the plane’s missiles all the way to the target.

This was Sami Ben Ali’s job. The 2
nd
quarter
fake
. He had to help the fliers create a diversion, clearing the way for the actual assault. Ben Ali had exactly five minutes before aiming his light down the street. He prayed that the Mavericks would be accurate. He was only 1500 feet from the building. Close enough to die if a missile was off its mark.

The two men, D’Angelo and Ben Ali, took special care tonight. Surprise was on their side now. But that would change. Hopefully, after
the game
they’d still have a window of opportunity to slip through the Libyan infrastructure to freedom.

Sami lit his fifth cigarette and turned another page he hadn’t read. Three minutes to go.

The young agent knew that the sound would follow the flash. He wouldn’t hear the incoming Mavericks’ rocket engines. But their presence would be unmistakable.

He truly hoped no one was in the building. It was of no real military value. Targeting it was strategic only because of its position. The missiles would come in from the northwest. They’d hit the corner, a few feet above the ground, forcing the building to crumble on the narrow intersection below. Within seconds the rubble would slow or block the route of any armed personnel carriers, tanks or light artillery called in to combat the Special Ops forces due down the street.

Two minutes.

Three delivery trucks approached the intersection, followed by what looked like an old man slowly peddling a rusty bicycle.

He forced himself to turn away from the faces of the people who might die. They were working late, despising their jobs, wanting a better life that General Kharrazi or his sons could ever provide. Who would live and who would die? It all depended on whether they’d clear the intersection in 90 seconds.

Sami hadn’t been briefed on the full playbook. However, he did assume that Special Ops men would come from the air, hit the roof of Fadi’s building and somehow get inside.

Helicopters?
Did he hear the sound of helicopter blades approaching
? They’d be moving slower than the
Super Hornets
or the missiles. That would be about right.

He checked his watch. Barely one minute.

Sami put his book on his lap at precisely minus-sixty from the 2
nd
quarter. He turned the flashlight off and deftly twisted the bottom of the tube and entered the code. He aimed it at the building and gave the battery compartment the quarter turn back to the left. At minus :45 seconds to his play he aimed the thin laser beam across the sky to a support pillar at the first floor of the building.

Definitely helicopters.
It sounded like two.

His hand shook and the light bounced off the building into the darkness. He steadied his whole arm on the park bench, found the precise targeting point. The missiles had to be on their way, adjusting to his arm movements; receiving computer instructions on their destination. He held his breath and focused every sense on staying perfectly still. It took all of his will.

Helicopters passed to his right but he resisted the urge to look at them. He lost track of the time.
Any second
.

The flash transformed night into day. A hot, blinding force blew debris up the street toward Sami at an ungodly rate.

He dove for the tree to his left and pressed his back up against. He remembered to open his mouth. It helped prevent a concussion. Then the sound. The awful sound. And the faces of the last truck drivers and the bicyclist came to mind.
Did they even know?

When the noise abated he peered out from behind the tree. The corner building was obliterated. The Mavericks had done their job. So had he.

D’Angelo heard the explosion.
A perfect fake
, he hoped. Less than twenty seconds after the two missiles hit, he saw the Black Hawks hover 10 feet over the eight story high sports complex, home to Fadi’s growing empire. Four Apaches covered them from another 500 feet above. Each had their fuselage mounted 30mm automatic Boeing M230 chain guns tilted downward ready to let loose with 625 rounds per minute of ground supressing fire.

D’Angelo was on the move, listening to the play-by-play and waiting for the next quarter to begin. If all went well, they’d be out on their own. If it didn’t, he was on hand with an alternate escape route for the Special Ops.

As he approached the building, he couldn’t see what was happening eight floors above him. However, the President aboard the USS
Carl Vinson
could, though approximately two seconds behind real time. The signals were being individually uplinked by satellites to the IBCC command at McGill, then relayed to the
Vinson
. The lag time was normal, but it still made everyone nervous.

“Going for first and ten,” squawked Slange over the comm line. “Hitting the field now.”

Morgan Taylor sucked in a deep breath as he watched Slange’s men rapel the ten feet to the roof. The wind from the rotor blades kicked up only a little bit of dust. Most had been washed away in the torrential rain, so the video was very clear.

One after another they leaped to the roof. Slange, Gardner, Recht from Black Hawk One. Jones, Aplen and finally Roarke from Two. A technician at the
Vinson
control panel switched from a Black Hawk down-looking camera to Recht’s helmet cam. He carried another on his shoulder covering his back. Aplen was similarly wired, but with wider angle lenses. They kept ten feet between each other, giving ample four camera coverage of the playing field.

“Setting for ‘Hail Mary’,” Slange commanded over the radio. The team moved in a swift coordinated effort, anchoring their aluminum alloy, 4 1/2” locking D carabiners to the roof with fast drill bolts. Next, they fastened the end of their 11mm rappelling ropes to the anchor, pulled against the carabiners which would stand a 5500 pound test, and laid out fourteen feet of slack in parallel lines to avoid getting tangled with one another. Four members of team—Slange, Recht, Aplen and Roarke—stepped to the end of the ledge and awaited the colonel’s call.

“On five.”

The president could see the nods. They looked like cyborg troopers ready to take on an alien force; each with their night vision optics in place over their helmets. Only the American flag patches on their arms told the viewers what this was all about.

“Hut one. Hut two. Ready. Three. Four…. Five.”

In one motion the Special Forces team leaped off the roof. Four men in simultaneous descent pushed out to about ten feet from the building. Their slack tightened and they arced back toward the windows to Fadi’s offices. With feet first, they each hit a double pane. Four windows in all.

Gardner and Jones remained on the roof for cover. Once Jones had confirmation of the team’s entry, he signaled for Black Hawks One and Two to move up and out until exfiltration. Hopefully in a matter of minutes.

Roarke felt the glass shattering around him. Fortunately none of the shards penetrated his clothes or helmet. Still, the moment played out very differently than any scene from a martial arts movie. Even his old Master, Jun Chong, crashed through treated Hollywood glass in his films. The real thing could kill. And this was the real thing. One long piece on the floor could puncture a vital organ.

Like the other members of the team, Roarke had been taught to push beyond the impact point and land solidly on two feet.

Two feet,
he told himself in a moment of suspended animation. Training paid off. Roarke nailed his landing. Everyone quickly disconnected their cords from their belts by depressing a hook lock.

An alarm blared. The team didn’t have intelligence on the actual security system. But they weren’t surprised. After all, they were breaking into the inner sanctum of General Kharrazi’s son.

Recht panned the room with his camera. Aplen did the same. Both were fitted with infra-red optics and the room, though dark, was clearly visible in their view finders.

The men stepped forward in pairs, each with their back to a partner. This way every unit was able to survey the room with a 360-degree sweep.

“Second and ten,” shouted Colonel Langeman. Only fifteen seconds had elapsed since they jumped from the roof. “Proceeding to goal.” The filing cabinet was in sight.

Aplen and Slange then broke to the outer offices and into the darkened hallways, scanning for the enemy through their infra-red. Their immediate targets were the elevator shafts and the stairwells.

One of the two elevators was already on the move. Aplen took a nod from Slange, pried open the metal doors with an adjustable utility tool from his belt and lobbed a grenade into the shaft. The blast immediately sent the cage plunging down to the basement. No one would survive. While he did the same to the second shaft, Slange concentrated on the stairway. Two guards rounded a corner, firing as they came into his sights. Slange popped off eight rounds from his Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun with its HK 100 laser aimer; four into the chest of the first poor Libyan security guard, four into the other. Then he added a grenade for good measure. All of this bought them needed escape time and cost only forty seconds.

The wail of ambulances and fire trucks pierced through the night air. They were on the way to the collapsed building a short distance away. The cacophony easily masked the fanning of the helicopter rotors above Fadi’s building. This was a residual benefit. The emergency vehicles were tying up traffic. No armored personnel vehicles could possibly get through the mess the Mavericks had created a few blocks away. They were forced to seek an alternate route. That would take three or four more critical minutes.

Slange returned to the office and went for
the goal—
Fadi’s filing cabinet. Once there, he called into his microphone. “Next play, handoff to fullback.” That was Roarke. Recht positioned himself to get complete game coverage for the fans in the bleachers.

The cabinet stood some four feet high. There were no locks to blow or booby traps to disable. Fadi obviously never considered theft likely.

Aplen aimed a light at the old metal cabinet and Roarke stepped forward. Thanks to the intelligence report he knew exactly where to look. Thirty seconds later he had it in his hands.