Under Siege (18 page)

“Okay, you brain whuppers, come up with some ideas about what we can do. I don’t like this dead time. The First Lady could be in real trouble and we can’t help her.”

“If he’s worked with al Qaeda before, he will again,” Jaybird said. “We could raid any al Qaeda cells the local cops know about.”

“Possible. Stroh?”

“Let me call my new police friends downtown.” He left the group and headed for a telephone.

“What else?”

“We should cover the small airports better,” J.G. Gardner said. “He could cut and run again and we’d know nothing about it.”

“Take two men and start phoning,” Murdock said.

The SATCOM came to life.

“This is Mrs. Eleanor Hardesty, wife of the president of the United States. I’ve been kidnapped and am at a house in Cape Town, South Africa, on Wander Street. The house number is one four, three, six. That’s fourteen thirty-six. If anyone can hear me, please notify the president at once. I’ve got to go.” The transmission stopped.

At once the set spoke again, the voice high with emotion and excitement. “Stroh, did you hear that?” the CIA director said. “Get moving on that right now. She got hold of the SATCOM somehow. Move it, Stroh. Murdock, get cranking. You should be halfway out the door by now.”

Murdock waved and the SEALs ran for their equipment.

“Find Stroh,” Murdock yelled at Fernandez, the nearest SEAL. “Get him back here. Saddle up you guys, we’re moving.”

A moment later Stroh came charging up, panting, his face red.

“True? A transmission from her?”

“Yes, we’re on it.”

“I better contact the local police so we don’t get in trouble if there’s any shooting. I’ll do that and catch up with you.” He ran back to the phone at the edge of the big hangar.

Three minutes later, the sixteen SEALs loaded for combat piled into the two vans and raced away from the hangar. They stopped at the airport gate and picked up a guard to guide them to the right street. Stroh caught them there and climbed in the van.

“I got the watch commander on duty. He said he knew the street. He would dispatch a car there to help us.”

The guide gave them the quickest way to the street. It was on the far side of town and with stop lights and one wrong turn, it took them just over twenty-five minutes to get to the right address.

It was a four unit. Each had a separate number. Fourteen thirty-six was on the ground floor left. They covered the front, and the back. Then Murdock went to the door and knocked. No answer. He knocked again.

“Anyone around at the back door?” he asked on the Motorola.

“Negative,” Lam answered.

Murdock tried the door knob. It was unlocked. He twisted it inward and waited. The inside of the house was dark. Murdock waited ten seconds, then charged in, dove to the right, and came up with his weapon ready. Nothing moved. No one made a sound. Jaybird reached around the door and found a light switch and snapped it on.

They quickly cleared the five rooms.

“Nobody,” Jaybird said.

“Someone was here a short time ago,” Murdock said. He pointed to a cigarette still burning in an ashtray. There
were dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and pots and pans still on the stove.

“Somebody left damn fast.” They searched the place, but found nothing that would indicate that the kidnappers or al Qaeda had ever been in the house. Murdock motioned the men outside and turned off the lights and shut the door. He barged up to Stroh, who had stayed with the vans.

“Nobody knew we were coming except the Cape Town police. Somebody in their outfit called ahead and warned these people.”

“Looks that way,” Stroh said. “Next time we don’t trust anybody, anywhere, at anytime. The damn patrol car didn’t even get here.”

Less than a mile away, Badri, the First Lady, and Badri’s two Arab men sat in the al Qaeda cell man’s rusting 1978 Volkswagen van and stared into the darkness.

“How did they know to come to that address?” Badri brayed. “Who could have told them?” He turned and stared at the First Lady. “Shit! I left you alone with the SATCOM for maybe three or four minutes. You used it, didn’t you? You transmitted with it and told someone where you were.”

“Well, Mr. Badri, thank you for the compliment. But I’m not mechanical or science minded. I can’t even work a computer. How in the world could I get that funny radio to work? You give me more credit than I’m due.”

“It had to be you, fancy-talking woman.” He took a deep breath. Never had he felt so frustrated, so unsure of what to do next. He was doing his job. Keeping the First Lady away from the United States agents for as long as humanly possible. But had his string run out? No. He would fly out again. Only to where? He could take off in a small plane at night. He had trained to and had done that many times, but where would there be a lighted runway for him to land? There wouldn’t be, not until the next big town, and he had no idea where that would be.

He found a spot where they could spend the night. It was in an industrial area with a few street lights and only a few other cars. He parked and tied the First Lady’s ankles together, then her wrists. He had sat her on the wide rear seat.

“Don’t roll around and you won’t fall off. You’ll be fine until morning. Then we figure out what to do. No way am I going to let the damn Americans find you.”

“So you tie me up like a slave, like an animal. Don’t you think you three big strong Arab men can keep me in this van? You must be remarkably unsure of yourself. Is this what they taught you in Afghanistan at al Qaeda training school?”

“I never went to Afghanistan. And yes, we could keep you safe in here, but then one of us would have to stay awake all night. Tying you up is easier, simpler, and we all sleep. Now be quiet and go to sleep.”

“You really believe that Arab propaganda about the United States wanting to hurt the Arab countries? Or are you just spouting it so you can pocket a few million dollars by kidnapping me? You’ll never get away with it.”

“It’s not propaganda. It’s the truth. The United States is hated by every nation in the Arab League. We know what you are and how you undermine us and cut us short and keep us at the Third World level.”

“So why did we spend a hundred billion dollars in three wars to save your countries and to free the Iraqi people?”

“Protecting your oil interests in our countries. It’s all about oil. It always will be all about oil until your country discovers more oil of its own, or makes practical dual-power cars—gasoline and electricity. Or maybe the fuel cell if you’re really lucky, because we all have all the hydrogen that we need in the atmosphere. Now, shut up, Mrs. President, and let me get some sleep, too. We will have a hard day tomorrow.”

“You don’t know how to treat women who stand up to you, do you, Badri? I wonder what your wife is like. Probably
younger than you, and you let her get fat. and don’t let her take care of herself, so she’s not as attractive as she was at sixteen and her beauty won’t be a threat to you. Tell me, did you marry her when she was fourteen or fifteen?”

“Shut up, or I’ll put a gag in your mouth.”

“Yes, a typical Arab man’s reaction to a logical argument from, of all people, a woman. Good night badass Badri.” She grinned. She had been wanting to say that for three days now. It was worth it just to see the fury on Badri’s face.

Badri held his tongue. He knew he was no match for her in these verbal fights, but he had to do his best. He bit his lip and stewed about it for a minute. Then thought about the problem at hand. His first job was to find a small airport. For that he needed some help from a local. A good map of the country would help as well. Tomorrow.

Two men slept sitting on the front seats and the third used the floor. They didn’t complain.

The First Lady smiled into the darkness. So her message on the radio had been heard. Someone must have called Badri at the house, and at once they rushed out of the place, into the van, and sped away. She had no idea if that’s how Badri knew that the Americans were coming, but that would be the only reason for them to leave so quickly. She smiled again. One small victory for her side. Now, what was she going to do next to complicate this kidnapper’s existence?

Just after daylight, she felt the van moving. One of the men untied her hands and feet and she sat up.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Badri ignored her question. Twenty minutes later they stopped at a small store and Badri went inside. He came back with a sack of fruit and pastry and a map of South Africa in a strange accordion-type fold.

One of the Arabs asked him a question and he nodded.
“Yes, I found a small airport out this way. Maybe fifteen miles. We drive there and see if they have any planes to rent. Money will buy anything in this country.”

They gave her a banana, a reddish fruit that looked like a pear, and two rolls that could be first cousins to a Danish. The trip took a half-hour and it was not quite nine
A.M.
by her watch when Mrs. Hardesty saw the small airstrip with a blacktopped runway. They drove in and stopped in front of a building that proudly proclaimed with a small sign that it was the office.

Badri went inside. He had been studying the map and asked for a plane that they could fly to Durban, seven hundred and fifty miles away. He showed them his international pilots license in a false name.

“You coming back?”

“Day after tomorrow. Business trip.”

“You one of them Arabs?”

“Yes.”

“You going to blow up anything?”

“No. I’m a businessman.”

“Credit card?”

“American MasterCard.”

“Best. That and eight hundred dollars will get you up there. You’ll have to make a gas stop in Port Elizabeth. There’s a fueling area there you can use.”

“I can do that.”

Five minutes later they left the van and walked toward the plane. Badri had no idea what kind it was, but it had range enough to get to the next big town across the bottom of South Africa. It would put them that much farther away from the Americans. As they walked toward the plane, the First Lady saw a chance and she bolted away from the trio of men and ran toward the small office. One of Arab soldiers caught her after six steps and turned her around. Once they got in the plane the man slapped her hard across the face.

Badri yelled in Arabic at the man.

“You’re defending me?” Eleanor asked.

“No. I told him when someone messes up your pretty face, it will be me.”

Ten minutes later they were in the air.

Ten Miles Inside Iraq

Lieutenant Yasser Rabbo paused over the silent form of Sergeant Saadi and shook his head as the last dying gush of air came from his lungs. Saadi was his second sergeant who had been killed so far on this devil’s mission. How many more men would he lose? He keyed the battalion radio hanging over his shoulder on a strap. Only static came back, then even that stopped a moment later and he looked at the set in the faint moonlight. A piece of shrapnel from the exploding land mine had torn a deep gash in the back of the case. The set was useless. On the positive side, the radio had probably saved his life.

He urged his men forward. So far he had lost nearly half of his platoon. He looked around for the rest of the battalion; none were in sight. He sent runners ahead and behind to try to contact them, but the men returned empty handed. Push on north, Rabbo decided. Those had been his original orders. He moved to the head of the column, reduced now from thirty-five fighting men to eighteen.

They skirted another anthrax death zone without hitting any more Iraqi mines and hurried back to the highway. The tanks began passing them, grinding along the highway, not even pausing as the men scattered into the ditches as the fighting machines rolled by. Rabbo counted them as they clattered past. Fourteen. Out of two tank battalions. He wasn’t sure how many tanks to a battalion, but he thought it
was forty-eight. Ninety-six tanks went into Iraq, and only fourteen of these two battalions were coming out.

Before a week had passed there would be executions, and a whole new general staff of the army and air force would take over command of what was left of Iran’s fighting forces. Heads would roll. Lowly lieutenants would not be affected. He shook his head and kept walking. The men were tired, they needed pushing, but tonight he didn’t feel like pushing them. He knew he was lucky to be alive.

Without warning, a machine gun opened fire from a collapsed house a hundred yards off the highway. Bullets slammed into his platoon and men crumpled onto the road. Others dove to the ground and rolled toward the shallow ditch on the far side of the highway.

At the head of the column, Rabbo was not immediately targeted, so he sprinted for the ditch and dove in. Even in the darkness he could make out forms lying on the hard-surfaced road.

“Return fire,” he bellowed. Half a dozen AK-47s fired at the structure where the machine gun kept chattering out death. The weapon had angled its rounds on down the road now and Rabbo and his men poured full magazines of rounds into the smashed-up house. Lt. Rabbo tried to evaluate the enemy. Perhaps one or two men who had been bypassed in the rush forward. Probably not more than three of them, and the gun was firing only fifty yards down the road. He motioned to the two men nearest him.

“Follow me. Get full magazines and bring four grenades each.” He saw their medic moving out to the wounded on the highway. Rabbo lifted to his feet and sprinted across the highway, then into the field on the far side. The two soldiers followed him. There was little cover between them and the house. They ran forward toward what Rabbo thought looked like a ditch less than fifty yards from the house. They made it, panting hard, and rolled into its protection.

For a moment they rested. “Get out your grenades,”
Rabbo told his men. “We’ll go singly from here. We split up and go at the house from three points. One of us should get through close enough to throw grenades. Throw all you have, then we’ll charge back to the platoon.” The two men nodded. Both were seasoned veterans, one of them a corporal.

When they left, they crawled through weeds and some short shrubs moving toward the house twenty yards apart. The machine gun chattered now and then, took rifle fire from troops down the road, and evidently the gunners were not hit.