Mission Compromised (76 page)

They exited the rear of the shop into an alley and headed in the direction of the gate Rachel had left a half hour before. At the end of the alley, they came to a busy thoroughfare full of pedestrians and joined the throng as they walked across to the gate. As Rachel and the sergeant showed their ID cards to the armed Royal Marine sentry, the U.S. Marine kept an eye on the passing traffic.

He walked her back to the boat, helped her aboard, and said, “Ma'am, I'm going to go report this incident to General Grisham and then I'm going to come back here with a car to take you and Lieutenant Colonel Newman to meet with the general up at the Officer's Mess. I know he's expecting you, but I think you need to get back up to the officer's billeting area. It's further away from the street and safer.”

“Do you think that man was sent to kill me?” Rachel's voice shook a little.

“I don't know, Mrs. Newman, but our guys will find out. I've got his wallet and ID. The general will know if we have to alert the local authorities. You're safe now … just relax. Tell Colonel Newman that I'll be right back with the car.”

As he started to leave, Rachel said, “Wait. I didn't even get your name, Sergeant.”

“Skillings, ma'am. Staff Sergeant Amos Skillings,” he replied. “I served with your husband in Force Recon. Now I work for General Grisham. The general said I should make sure that nothing happened to Colonel Newman's lady,” he said, smiling broadly.

Rachel was close to tears but managed to say, “Thank you, Staff Sergeant Amos Skillings, for what you did back there. I'm still shaking, but more grateful than you'll ever know. Thank you.”

“No problem, ma'am. Glad to do it.” He came to attention, saluted, and said, “I'll be right back, ma'am.”

 

 

When Rachel went below deck, Peter was just coming out of the shower. He had a towel wrapped around his middle and for the first time Rachel noticed the extent of his injuries.

“Nice dress,” he said. “By the way, who were you talking to up there on the pier?”

“Staff Sergeant Amos Skillings.” She told him quickly what had happened on her shopping expedition while he dressed in the clothing she had just purchased.

“He's going to get us a car. He doesn't even want us to walk up to the Officer's Mess up on the hill without an escort. Peter, suppose there are more of them. Is Staff Sergeant Skillings going to be all right?”

“What do you think?” Peter replied with a hearty laugh. But then he said, “Seriously, I'm not worried about Skillings. It's
us
I'm worried about. This long ordeal may not be over. Come and sit beside me. Let me show you something.”

Peter took out of a manila envelope the documents William P. Goode had given him earlier in the day.

 

 

“May I take your order, sir?” said the tuxedo-clad waiter to the two men seated at the best table in the officers mess.

Grisham and Goode looked up from their menus and were about to tell the waiter their choices when the entire building shook as a tremendous explosion rocked the piers outside. The general could see a reflection of the huge fireball across Goode's face.

Both men were startled—it sounded and felt as though a one-thousand-pound bomb had been dropped directly in front of the restaurant. Several of the diners leaped under tables, and others screamed.

Both Goode and the general ran to the window. Despite being reinforced with Mylar film, it had a web of cracks from the force of the explosion. Through the shattered panes they could see outside and below them that the dock was a raging inferno.

Goode and the general raced down the steps from the officers mess toward the piers. As they did so, a black sedan sped down the quay, made a screeching turn at the gate, and raced past the Royal Marine sentry, ignoring his order to halt. And though he fired twice at it, the vehicle careened off up the hill and disappeared.

Goode ran toward where his sixty-two-foot sloop had been. Flames had already completely engulfed the vessel and were now consuming
the teak deck and other wooden fixtures. There was a gaping hole in the starboard side into which seawater poured and pulled the beautiful blue hull into the harbor depths. The explosion had been purposefully set… obviously by someone who knew what he was doing. From the look of it Goode guessed that the bomb had been placed just below the waterline—and had probably detonated the propane cooking fuel.

General Grisham caught up with him and was equally shaken by the sight.

By the time the first firefighters responded, the deck of Goode's ship was almost completely under water and the flames were almost out. Only the mast protruded above the slip, canted at a crazy angle as though pointing toward the ocean it would never sail again.

Both men stood together for a long time without speaking, and before long there was a large crowd watching and waiting for the Royal Navy divers to show up and begin trying to salvage what they could. But aside from the mast sticking up out of the water, there was very little for the crowd gathered outside the chain-link fence or on the crowded quay to see. There was nothing left but a thin layer of floating ashes.

 

 

Corporate Offices

________________________________________

North American Enterprises, Inc.

Dulles, VA

Monday, 15 April 1997

1045 Hours, Local

 

T
he package arrived in the morning mail, and Dave Smolinski, director of Corporate Security for North American Enterprises, was concerned. He was standing in the front office doorway. “Colonel North, I told Mr. Smolinski that he couldn't interrupt you. I'm sorry.” Marsha, my long-suffering secretary and guardian of the gate, apologized for the intrusion. She was standing behind Smolinski, glaring at the back of the security chief's head for having had the temerity to barge past her into the boss's office. But Smolinski was one of the few who could get away with it. Before leaving government
service, he had been one of the federal agents detailed to protect my family after the Libyan assassination attempt in 1987.

“I've got to show you this package, Boss,” Smolinski said. Marsha rolled her eyes in despair for the day's schedule and went back to her desk. “It's addressed to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, USMC (Ret.) at this address, but doesn't mention the company name, it doesn't have a return address, and it's fairly heavy. I had the dog sniff it and ran it through the X-ray. Both negative. In the X-ray it looks to me like it contains some kind of audio- or videotape, a pile of paper, and a 3.5-inch computer disc. There are no visible wires or detonators and no sign of any shielding to mask something from the X-ray. Oh yeah, it's postmarked APO, N.Y., on 11 March. I checked, and the zip code is for EUCOM, meaning that it was mailed in the military postal system from somewhere in the European Command.”

“Well, go ahead and open it,” I said.

“Uh … Colonel North, why don't I take it out back and open it in the cage?”

“Look, Dave,” I reminded him, “Marsha is mad enough at both of us right now because she's having to re-jigger my whole day. Open it here. If it blows up, it'll be a minor explosion compared to the one Marsha's going to detonate if I don't get back on schedule.”

Smolinski shrugged, smiled, and said, “Always nice to know who's in charge around here.” He started to carefully cut around the packing tape with his penknife and peel back the several layers of brown paper.

As the security chief lifted back the brown paper wrapping, we could both see the corner of a thick file folder—with a distinctive red and white border and the words
TOP SECRET
emblazoned upon it. “It looks like someone's mailed you some classified documents, Colonel.”

“Yeah, open it up.”

Using his penknife, Smolinski carefully cut away the rest of the wrapper and slid the contents out onto the conference table. There was a fat file folder full of paper, a digital audiotape, and a computer disc. On the computer disc was hand-printed, “Read this first.” And below that, an
icthus
was drawn with the same indelible marker.

“Let's load this disk in the old stand-alone computer down in the file room, just in case there's a virus on it,” said Smolinski.

As we walked past her desk, Marsha inquired, “Colonel North, will you be keeping any of your morning appointments—or shall I just reschedule?”

“Don't know yet. I'll let you know in a few minutes,” I told her and ducked out of her line of fire into the file room where Smolinski was loading the disc in the computer. He clicked the mouse to open the files. The index contained three entries:

“Read This First,” a 19 KB file;

“National Security Directive 941109,” a 36 KB file; and,

“ISEG Concept of Operations,” a 22 KB file

All were dated 10 March 1996, one year to the day since Peter and Rachel Newman had disappeared in the fiery blast aboard the sailing vessel
Pescador.

Smolinski clicked “open” on the “Read This First” file and we then bent over to read:

“Lt. Col. North
,

“I pray this finds you well. I regret that it has taken me so long to get this material to you, but now that I have it assembled, I believe you to be the best judge of what should be done with it.

“Please note that this computer disc contains two other documents: a copy of NSD 941109, describing the U.S. role in a Top Secret United Nations assassination plan
—
called ‘Sanctions Enforcement Operations' and a copy of The International Sanctions Enforcement Group (ISEG) Concept of Operations. The ISEG was a highly classified group of U.S. and British shooters commanded by Marine Lieutenant Colonel Peter J. Newman. Both of these documents were retrieved from a government-issued laptop computer issued to Sgt. Maj. Daniel J. Gabbard, USMC. I am told by friends still working for my former employer that the ‘Gabbard computer' has since disappeared, that NSD 941109 does not exist, and that there never was any such thing as an ISEG.

“The audiotape included in this package was recorded on 10 March 1995 aboard the sailing vessel
Pescador,
enroute from Iskenderun, Turkey, to Larnaca, Cyprus. You will hear me asking the questions and Lt. Col. Newman answering. I believe that the answers he gave are truthful and accurately describe what happened to him and those who accompanied him on a highly sensitive, UN-directed assassination mission into Iraq twelve months ago. Newman did not know that all of the other members of his unit, except for Sgt. Major Gabbard, had been killed at the time of the debriefing. As you may already know, Sergeant Major Gabbard retired from the Marines last October and has dropped out of sight.

“When you listen to the tape, you will find that your name comes up several times
—
to include references to the third item enclosed in this package
—
a photocopy of a classified file taken from your office in the Old Executive Office Building. In the debrief tape, you will hear Newman tell me where this copy of your
file could be found and that you alone know where the original is hidden. He also speculates correctly that you and I were both identified as William P. Goode during the 1985—86 hostage rescue and Nicaraguan Resistance Support Operations.