Strike Force Alpha (2 page)

He took another sniff of the air. What was that other strange smell? And that dripping sound? He retrieved his Bic lighter, located a candle, and lit it. Then he turned around.

They heard his screams out on the street.

The entire squad of security men started for the door, but the chief bodyguard stopped them with a shout. He pulled a pistol from his belt. Only he would go in—at first.

He walked through the front door and found Abdul doubled over, vomit covering his shoes.

Hanging above him was a body. It was a young man; his throat had been cut. The corpse was upside down and strung from the ceiling in such a way that Abdul must have looked right into the eyes upon discovering it. The man’s pockets had been stuffed with wedding pastries. A pool of blood and crumbs had collected on the floor below.

The bodyguard stared into those dead eyes and then vomited himself. The body was that of Abdul’s youngest son, Hamiz.

But how could this be?
Hamiz was in Jedda, studying at a
madrassa
under an assumed name. Who could have done this? And who could have known about this place and hung his body here?

Something had also been stuffed into the dead boy’s mouth. The bodyguard retrieved it with shaking hands. It was a playing card. On one side was the ace of spades, except it was colored in red, white, and blue. On the other was a photograph of the World Trade Center in flames.

Scrawled below the Twin Towers were the words:
We will never forget.

Mogadishu, Somalia
Two days later

The place was called the Olympic Hotel.

It was an infamous building, six stories, whitewashed top to bottom. Nearly a dozen years before, a horrendous battle had been fought near here between U.S. Special Forces and gunmen loyal to local warlord Mohammed Farrah Aideed. Months earlier, Aideed had stolen just about all the food the United States had delivered to the desperate city of Mogadishu. In a place where starvation killed nearly a thousand people a day, food was power. And Aideed wanted power.

On that early October day, a top-level meeting between Aideed and his henchmen was in progress in the building next to the hotel. The U.S. troops, including members of the United States’ premier special ops unit, Delta Force, as well as many Army Rangers, had descended on the building in a swarm of Blackhawk helicopters. Their orders were to capture Aideed alive if possible, or, at the very least, bring in some of his high-level associates.

But Aideed’s gunmen had been tipped off that the Americans were coming. They were waiting when the Blackhawks arrived overhead. Aideed’s soldiers were no ragtag army. Many were in league with al-Itihaad al-Islamic, also known as the Muslim Brotherhood. They’d been trained extensively by veteran Al Qaeda fighters and were armed to the teeth.

Aideed’s men waited for the right moment, then opened up on the fleet of American choppers. Two of the Blackhawks went down almost immediately; many others were driven away. The majority of U.S. troops that had already rappelled to the ground found themselves trapped. It took them a day and a half to fight their way out of the hostile city. Eighteen Americans never made it. One was butchered by an armed mob and dragged through the streets.

These days, the Olympic Hotel was a shrine of sorts. Because of what happened here, the Muslim Somalis got what they wanted: the embarrassing withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country. A mission that had begun as one of mercy, to feed the millions of starving in Somalia, had ended in a humiliating failure. The hotel still served as the not-so-secret headquarters of al-Itihaad al-Islamic, the people responsible for the killing and desecration of American servicemen that day. At any given time, several dozen Al Qaeda–trained soldiers could be found inside, too. It was here that tax money collected from the city’s miserably poor was kept and counted. It was here that the terrorists sold
qat,
the narcotic leaf chewed by Somali men. It was here that top-level Al Qaeda operatives transiting through Africa could lay low and know they would be protected and safe.

Until this night.

It was 10:00
P.M.
and the electricity in downtown Mogadishu had gone out for the night. Candles and cooking fires were lit in most of the rooms at the Olympic, as well as the building next door. The noise from battery-operated radios blared through the open windows. Drunken laughter, too, along with muffled praying and the sounds of sour music.

This was all broken by the growl of helicopters, approaching in the dark. There was no advance warning this time. No tip from the Italian peacekeepers to Aideed’s men. This was unexpected. A complete surprise.

Fittingly, it was two Blackhawk helicopters that showed up first. No soldiers would be lowered by fast ropes this time. This was not an insertion operation or a high-level smash and grab.

This was simply payback.

The pair of Blackhawks dived for the hotel, miniguns firing, rockets flying off their underbellies.

One aircraft stayed in the lead; it was the gunship of the two. The second copter was packed with soldiers. Held in with safety belts, many had their weapons thrust out of openings on the right side of the aircraft. This second Blackhawk slowed almost to a hover, allowing the soldiers to fire their weapons directly into the windows of the hotel’s upper stories. The first Blackhawk meanwhile launched two rockets and a TOW missile into the bottom floor. There was a trio of explosions and suddenly half the building was on fire. Many within instantly perished. Others died leaping from the rooftop and windows. Cluttered and rancid, the building next door caught fire, too.

The attack went on for 10 minutes. Crowds gathered in the streets surrounding the hotel; some were armed fighters who’d rushed to the scene but were not sure what to do. A few RPGs, the weapons that had proved so fatal to the attack back in October of 1993, were fired at the helicopters. But they all missed the Blackhawks because this time they were fired from the streets and not from the rooftops, as in the previous action.

The Blackhawks finally did depart, only to be followed by a jet fighter suddenly streaking low over the neighborhood. Its noisy arrival jolted many thousands from their sleep. The fighter—a Harrier jump jet—did not drop any bombs. Instead, it swooped down on the mob of gunmen and dusted them with a light green powder. This was barium sulfate and pepper acid—superitching powder. Once on the skin, it was near impossible to get off. It would plague the victim with incessant itching and bloody rashes for up to a year. The jet made two passes; then it, too, disappeared over the horizon.

Only then did the ancient air-raid sirens begin to wail across the city, but they were too late on this good night. Rumors that the raiders would soon be back were shouted from the rooftops. Panic washed through the streets. Angry mobs began hunting down Muslim fighters and hacking them to death—they’d been the cause of this! No medical personnel ventured out into the madness. Nor did the police or the Army.

And no one bothered to put out the fire at the Olympic Hotel, either.

It burned to the ground.

Port of Aden, Yemen

Hamini Musheed hadn’t yet heard about the attack in Mogadishu the night before. And he’d read only a brief story in
Al-Quds Al-Arabi
on the incident in Beirut that past Saturday. Which was good for him. In his position, some things were best left unknown.

He was a lawyer. A very wealthy one. His office, extremely luxurious by Yemeni standards, was located in a rebuilt villa, overlooking the harbor. He handled all kinds of legal matters within the city, everything from wills to criminal defense. He was well connected with the local authorities, all of them, like him, highly corrupt. It was a rare occasion that he even went to court. For the right price, he could get his clients out of just about anything.

Musheed also belonged to a group called the Islamic Relief Fund. It was a charity fronting for the main Yemeni cell of Al Qaeda. He was the treasurer, responsible for moving up to $10,000 a week to an Al Qaeda–controlled bank up in the United Arab Emirates. Musheed had also been responsible for hiding the terrorists who had transported the explosives used in the attack on the
USS Cole,
in this very same harbor, several years before.

Though, on the face of it, there seemed to have been cooperation between the Yemeni government and U.S. authorities in searching for the perpetrators of the
Cole
attack—which killed 17 sailors—Musheed had escaped the dragnet. Even when the United States eventually managed to track down many of the players in the
Cole
bombing, eliminating them, Musheed had remained unscathed.

He was just too connected to get into trouble.

He’d just sat down to his morning yogurt and tea when there came a knock on his office door.

His two secretaries were missing this morning—both had sent messages that they’d be late. Musheed was a large man, weighing more than 350 pounds. It took a lot for him to get up and answer the door himself. So he called out that it was open.

Two men came in. Non-Arabs, very white. Musheed knew immediately they must be Americans. They were wearing civilian clothes: jeans, T-shirts, and ball caps. They were also wearing black combat boots. Highly polished.

The two men were carrying bags that Musheed would never have recognized: they were baseball-bat sleeves. The two stepped into his office and calmly shut the door. Musheed asked them what they wanted. They didn’t respond.

Musheed was pinned behind his desk; he couldn’t move. The men reached into the bags and came out with two M-16s equipped with silencers. They both fired twice. Two tap shots each. Four bullets right through Musheed’s head.

He hit the desk with a crash, landing facedown in his bowl of yogurt.

The two men packed up their weapons and departed. They were out of the city by the time Musheed’s office help arrived 10 minutes later.

Twenty minutes after that, they were out of Yemen altogether.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
The next day

The palace looked like a California beach house on steroids.

Whitewashed walls, miles of blue roofs, large windows everywhere. It had 116 rooms, on six floors, each floor bearing three levels. Six living rooms, six dining rooms, and six kitchens were on every level, all with separate areas for men and women. There were three dozen bedrooms and just as many bathrooms. The palace also had a fantastic indoor garden, a zoo, a gigantic atrium, an aviary, and two pools, both Olympic size, both with intricate Arabesque detailing throughout, both indoors. Everything inside was huge—except the place set aside for prayer. It was located on a tiny patch of sand near the edge of the indoor garden.

The palace was one of seven Prince Ali Muhammad al-Saud owned within the Kingdom. He had yet to set foot in three of them.

Out back, where the compound met the desert, there was an entirely different structure. It looked like an Arabian tent but was as immense as a circus big top. It was made of canvas and concrete, with a lot of steel ribbing everywhere. It, too, was all white and had gold flags and those of the Royal Family flying from its peak. It was large enough to hold several thousand people.

This was Thursday night, the Evening of Favors, and the tent was crowded. Every week at this time, ordinary Saudis could come to the palace and make requests of the Prince. These came mostly in the form of written petitions, though some were put to music and sung. Frequently the Prince himself would be on hand, collecting the requests and allowing each petitioner to kiss him on the right shoulder. The most common favor asked of the Prince was to intercede with the government on behalf of someone seeking a passport. Other petitions sought money for a doctor, tuition for a child, or funds to bury a loved one.

More than 3,000 people were waiting for him this cool night, but Prince Ali was already two hours late. Only the captain of his household staff knew where he was, the same place he’d been all day: in his master bedroom, on the top floor of the palace, sitting on pillows with two close colleagues, watching CNN.

These were troubling days for Prince Ali, if anyone worth $20 billion could be troubled.

He was a fabulously wealthy man; a direct bloodline to the House of Saud was all it took. By King’s decree, Ali got a percentage of every large construction contract signed within the Kingdom. He also owned the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange, which handled about 10 percent of the unrefined crude leaving the Persian Gulf. Through this, combined with his accountants’ daily manipulation of bond prices and metals futures and plain old currency fraud, Ali saw about $4 million flow into his coffers every day.

He was 40 years old and while not a handsome man, he didn’t have to be. He had 22 wives, all of them gorgeous. Two had been Miss America finalists, one had been Miss World. He also owned a fleet of U.S. and British sports cars, two Gulfstream jets, and a yacht the size of a destroyer.

But like the recently vaporized Muhammad Qatad and the Yemeni lawyer named Musheed, the Prince was also a moneyman for Al Qaeda. Many of those Islamic charities that Qatad and Musheed had been funneling money to ran right through the offices at the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange in downtown Riyadh. There the donations were mingled with Ali’s own money, then secretly distributed to the
jihad
cells worldwide. Two thousand people worked at Pan Arabic; almost a third were somehow involved in financing Muslim terrorists.

The Prince’s wealth and power were rooted in the Saudi business establishment, something the extremists claimed they wanted to tear down. Why then would he be involved in the backdoor financing of the terrorists? What did he share with the
mujahideen
hiding in the caves of the Pershawar or the sleeper agents living in the squalor of Manila, East London, or Jersey City?

Actually, very little. There was the obligation of every Muslim to help promote Islam, of course. There was also the respect he received from those holy fighters in the mountains and in the U.S. slums; they had been led to believe that Ali was spending millions of his own money on them. Then there was the dream of the Caliphate, the uniting of the entire Muslim world under a single entity. And the fact that if men in his position within the Royal Family didn’t help the terrorists, the martyrs would soon be blowing up their planes, their ships, their houses.

But the real reason was simpler: Prince Ali detested Americans. He detested their lifestyles, their attitudes, the colors of their skin. He detested their freedoms, their diversity, and the way their women walked. He detested McDonald’s, Chevrolet, Kodak, and Coke and the way Americans always seemed to have something on their minds and were never shy about spitting it out. He hated their ruggedness, their TV shows, their blond hair, and their big blue eyes.
He hated them
.

The Prince could really work himself up over this, too. There was a lot of anger inside him: strange, because he derived more than half his fortune from products purchased directly by Americans. The oil he sold today would be refined and pumped into American gas tanks in three weeks. He was rich
because
of America.

The irony did not bother him. But if Prince Ali ever decided to lie down on an analyst’s couch, something he would never do, a not-so-surprising deeper truth would come out: that like many of his countrymen, rich or not, he hated Americans simply because he was not one of them.

He’d heard about the bloodbath in the Rats’ Nest an hour after it happened. It was a very disturbing event. Not only was an important layer of Al Qaeda’s organization wiped out, but also the attack had come with absolutely no warning, out of the blue. The same was true in the leveling of the Olympic Hotel, an even bigger surprise, because the target seemed so unlikely. Nearly half of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership had been killed as a result of that attack. Dozens of operations inside Africa were now in disarray. As far as the cold-blooded killing of Musheed, their legal connection in Yemen, went, the cut was even deeper. Musheed had been Prince Ali’s third cousin.

“Praise Allah, I still think these were Israeli operations,” one of the Prince’s companions said now. He was Adeen Farouk, 50, fat, bald—and another third cousin. “Israelis—with their aircraft painted like the Americans.”

“I cannot accept the boldness, either,” the second friend said. He was Abu Khalis, the brother of one of the Prince’s 22 wives. He shifted on his pillow in the middle of the vast bedroom. “This willingness to so openly show their flag? To make so much noise? No—these were tricks. It is not them. The Americans just aren’t like that. They always come with a hammer, not a scalpel.”

“It
had
to be them,” Ali replied harshly. “The Jews don’t have equipment like that. Plus we have the calling card stuffed into the mouth of the young nephew. Who else would have a dispute with Brother Qatad or our friends in Somalia? Or our dear fatso, Mr. Musheed? Yes, these were the Americans—and they were making a point. A
big
point. And that disturbs me.”

“Praise Allah,” the other two men said together. All three were furiously fingering their worry beads.

“But if it was the Americans, where did they attack from?” Farouk asked. “There is no American base or aircraft carrier within a thousand miles that our Chinese friends don’t have some kind of surveillance on. We have eyes near their special operations bases; we have ears on their phones. Yet we heard nothing about any of these things.”

The Prince replied: “What I am most concerned about is why we did not read about these attacks coming two weeks ago—in the
New York Times
. We know how the Americans are. It is impossible for them to keep a secret. As you said, they are almost pathological when it comes to telegraphing their next move. The sound of the giant’s feet
never
reaches us before the sound of his tongue does.”

“And they always pretend to be so careful about anyone seeing them,” Khalis said. “But this thing in Lebanon, it was not just some Predator drone shot. It was done in the bright light of day, by real soldiers, helicopters, and jet fighters—”

“Yet still nothing on CNN,” Farouk added, glancing at the wide-screen TV hanging on the far wall. “Nor on Fox. The BBC. Anywhere….”

This was true. The Rats’ Nest incident had been reported briefly as a gas line explosion. The attack in Mogadishu had been called civil unrest. Musheed’s killing barely made the local papers. No one in the media seemed to be making the link that the three incidents were related, that the perpetrators might be the same. But then again, only people within Al Qaeda would know enough to connect all the dots.

The three men sipped their tea. This was all
very
mysterious.

“Let’s say these
are
the Americans then,” Farouk said worriedly. “Could this be their way of finally taking it directly to us? I mean, they seem more like a hit squad than a military unit and they seem to know who to hit and when. Could they have picked up
our
scent?”

Not so long ago, such a comment might have invoked laughter from the three men. They were so high up in the royal Saudi hierarchy, they once believed themselves invincible. But not so now.

A knock came at the door, startling them. It was the captain of the Prince’s household staff. He asked Ali if he should tell the three thousand people waiting in the Tent to go home.

“Tell them to be patient,” the Prince said, waving him away. “I will be there.”

He stood up to go. “Brothers, we might be getting concerned over nothing. After all, the giant is still a giant. And praise Allah, this giant never acts both quickly
and
fruitfully on anything, as our brothers in Baghdad will attest. I feel this will be especially true after doing something like this. The perpetrators are already back home, I’m sure, in their beds, where it is safe, awaiting their medals and apple pie.

“In any case, we can’t allow these things to interfere with any of our future plans. We would be fools if we did.”