Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

Williams was especially grateful for the fact that the president had never complained about the expense, or meddled as Williams got Op-Center up and running. Most of their interaction was through their POTUS/OC Eyes Only memos. Much of what Williams communicated to the president were reminders about the new, professional threat facing the nation. Without burying the president in details, Williams had carefully explained how Op-Center was organizing to defeat this new threat.

Half a world away, in his palace in Riyadh, Prince Ali al-Wandi was setting the wheels in motion to keep his dream of reaping the riches his position as “pipeline czar” for Saudi Arabia’s multibillion-dollar oil pipeline was going to bring him from slipping away. Forces completely beyond his control had put the project in jeopardy, but he had found a solution. He had one more task to perform, and then he would go and see what his handpicked crew had created many miles to the northeast in the Saudi desert.

“Enter,” he said as he pushed his 245-pound body from the expensive chair behind his smoke tree burl desk in his personal office. He moved around his desk to greet his visitor, pausing to catch his breath from this momentary exertion.

“Your Excellency!” the man said. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“You have done good work, and I thought it was time we met face-to-face. Sit, please,” Al-Wandi said, motioning to one of the two chairs in front of his desk.

“It was an honor to be of service to a member of the royal family.”

Al-Wandi knew that was a lie. The man had done it for the money, plain and simple. He had paid him a substantial sum up front, and promised him even more upon delivery. Now this man was here to collect.

“Remind me again how you were able to obtain this technology,” the prince said, his voice conveying natural curiosity. He had acted through intermediaries to have the man do this for him, and he wanted to assure himself there were no loose ends — no trail that would lead back to him.

His visitor hesitated a moment. He didn’t know whether he should share this secret, but Ali al-Wandi had paid him well. Now the job was done. All he wanted to do was collect his money. Perhaps there would be another job and another payday in the future if he told the prince what he wanted to know.

“Your Excellency, until recently, I was an officer in our Royal Saudi Air Force and worked at a base where the Americans operated their Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. The Americans were in the process of selling us our own UAVs, and I was one of the officers picked to learn how to operate them.”

“But, if you were just a UAV operator, how did you get hold of the technology?” the prince asked.

“It was easier than you think, Your Excellency. The United States was anxious to reduce its presence at our air bases and the contractors who taught us how to operate these UAVs were eager to sell these birds to the kingdom. In their zeal to ensure we kept our enthusiasm for these birds, they were … well … a bit careless in protecting their technology.”

Prince Ali inquired, “So you were able to just walk off with the technology that controls these UAVs?”

“Not precisely. As is always the case in such matters, money changed hands, but I assure you what I paid, and what you are paying, is a small price compared to the capability that you now have.”

“Indeed, indeed,” the prince replied. “You have earned your money. My assistant tells me you delivered what we needed to him yesterday morning.”

“Yes, Excellency, I did.” The man had, in fact, taken risks, many risks, and this Saudi prince had an immense personal fortune. What he was getting for his efforts was really a pittance, he rationalized. He smiled as he watched al-Wandi open his desk drawer and fish around for his reward, undoubtedly an envelope stuffed full of even more riyals than he received when he first took this assignment.

Al-Wandi rose and his visitor rose, too. But the man’s smile turned to a look of terror as he stared at the prince’s hand. The hand didn’t hold an envelope with riyals. He was looking at the ominously long barrel of a pistol!

“You have earned your reward, my friend,” Ali al-Wandi said as he leveled his pistol at the man’s head.

The silencer did its job and suppressed some, but not all, of the sound. The bullet hit him square in the right eye and he went down like a dropped sack, blood, bone, and tissue erupting from the back of his head.

Ali al-Wandi’s bodyguard appeared moments later.

“It’s done,” the prince said. “Get rid of his body and clean up this mess.”

Ali al-Wandi took no delight in killing. Actually, the act repulsed him, but obtaining this technology was the last step in an intricate chain of events the prince had conceived, and he could not leave anything to chance. With this man dead, nothing could be traced to him. Yet there was another issue. He operated in the shadows, but not in a vacuum. Those who did know of his business, like his bodyguard detail, had to fear him as well as obey him. The fact that he was not afraid to take a life, as well as to order it to be taken, would now not be wasted on those close to him.

His bodyguard bowed with a new measure of respect as al-Wandi strode out of the room.

“Three minutes till landing. Cinch down your seat harnesses, and tight!”

Laurie Phillips and her fellow passengers aboard the U.S. Navy Carrier-Onboard-Delivery aircraft needed no further urging from the COD’s crewman. The 240-mile flight from Norfolk, Virginia, to USS Harry S. Truman had been a bumpy one, and Phillips had already filled up her “barf bag” with what was once her lunch. What seemed like a good idea months ago, furthering her career at the Center for Naval Analyses by taking an assignment as a CNA analyst aboard the Aegis -class cruiser USS Normandy, now seemed like a really bad idea.

“Can you see the ship?” Laurie shouted to the man sitting next to her as they both hunched down in their backward-facing seats. They were already bracing for what they knew would be a bone-jarring landing, actually more of a controlled crash, on Truman ’s four-and-a-half-acre flight deck.

Her seatmate stared out the tiny window, one of only two windows in the entire cargo compartment, or tube, of the C-2A. He was unable to make himself heard above the deafening roar of the aircraft’s two Allison T56-A-425 turboprop engines. So he turned toward Phillips, smiled weakly, and shook his head from side to side. Truman might be down there, but the dark gray clouds just below them completely obscured the surface of the Atlantic, to say nothing of the ship they were trying to land on.

Laurie saw the fear in the man’s eyes and hoped she wasn’t registering the same fear herself, but she knew she was. Why had she gotten herself into this mess?

“Arrughh,” choked Laurie reflexively as the COD pilot chopped the throttles and the aircraft dropped from the sky like a rock. They hurtled down through the dirty, swirling clouds toward the Truman ’s wet, pitching flight deck.

Deep inside Truman, the Tactical Flag Command Center, TFCC for short, was the hub where the flag officer responsible for the ships, aircraft, and eight thousand men and women of the Truman carrier strike group directed the group’s efforts. Admiral Ben Flynn had more important things to worry about than Laurie Phillips and her fellow passengers.

“Chief of Staff,” he said to his second in command, “we did a damn fine job on our final joint training exercise. Hell, we hit it out of the ballpark. We should be pumped up, but the staff seems down. I know we’re not getting our normal thirty days in port for predeployment rest and resupply time, but we’ve got a damned important mission to do.”