The Team (15 page)

Chapter 43

Abdul Aziz called ahead to a safe house in Saudi Arabia outside of Riyadh where other members of the New Wahhabi Jihad were staying. He notified his contact that he would be there before sunup and asked if there was any news about the American airbase or the soccer game in Qatar. His contact, a man named Rafika, told him that the American airbase had been attacked, and two American Marines had been killed, but that was all he had heard. The would-be bombers had all been killed. When Abdul heard that, his face turned purple with rage.

“Two?
Two
Americans? They’re lying! They’re covering up the truth! There must be hundreds—
thousands
dead!” He was screaming into the phone.

“I don’t know,” said Rafika, fear in his voice.

* * *

High overhead, the ECM officer in the rear of the Prowler spoke to the pilot. “Captain, I have confirmation on that GPS coordinate. There’s a phone call in progress. Looks like the target is still on Highway 5 headed for the border. Time to target two minutes.”

“Roger that, I’ll notify Hunter One. Light up the target.”

The ECM officer pressed a few buttons and pinpointed the target vehicle with laser guidance. “Target is painted.”

“Hunter One, this is Moon Dog Five. We have painted your target. Highway 5, heading southwest. Over.”

“Roger, Moon Dog Five. We have the target. Acquiring visual, over.”

* * *

Abdul continued his rant in the car as he drove. It wasn’t Rafika’s fault the news hadn’t been made public yet, but he flinched with every curse and insult that Abdul shouted.

* * *

“Moon Dog Five, we have visual confirmation at this time. Vehicle is driving south east on Highway 5. Looks like one occupant. Over.”

“Roger, Hunter One. We’re jamming and his cell phone won’t function. Take down the target.”

“Roger, Moon Dog Five. Time to target, twenty seconds.”

* * *

Rafika tried his best to calm Abdul. “The Americans are just embarrassed, Abdul. The truth will come out soon. Hello? Abdul?” The phone had gone dead, compliments of the Moon Dog overhead.

Abdul was still screaming at Rafika when his phone stopped working.

* * *

The crew chief was listening to his pilot, and yelled over to Moose, Ripper, and Hodges. “Okay, boys—we’re here. Target is the silver Mercedes below. There’s not another car for miles. How do you want to do this?”

Moose yelled back, “Ask the pilot to move us out to the side a bit and pull even with the car. Our sniper is going to stop the engine, and when I tell you, I need your pilot to put us down right over the car. We’re going to rope out, grab this hajji, and get right back on the bird. Then we haul ass back to base.”

The crew chief explained back to the pilot, who banked right and increased speed to pull into a blind spot over the car below. The helicopter pilot kept their position steady, and Ripper slid the side door open. Hodges leaned against the door frame with his sniper rifle.

“That’s it. Keep holding steady,” the crew chief told the pilot.

They hovered.

A single loud gunshot echoed through the aircraft, and the .338 Lapua round blasted through the engine block. Hodges chambered another round and hit it again. Smoke billowed from the engine, and the car rapidly slowed down.

Inside the car, it took Abdul a moment to realize what had happened. First, his cell phone had stopped working, and then a loud
BANG
and his car was shuddering. Now, a second loud explosion and his engine was steaming and smoking as his dashboard lights all came on. He lost his steering and fought hard against the car, pulling it to the side of the road.

By the time Abdul’s car came to a full stop, a giant black helicopter blocked out his view of everything through his windshield. Abdul was horrified. What was happening? As his brain tried to catch up with impossible events, two giant human beings dropped to the ground from ropes that appeared on both sides of his smoldering car. He stared in disbelief at the man next to his window as the window on the passenger side exploded.

Ripper use the butt of his assault rifle to smash the window and reach in to open the door. Moose held his assault rifle pointed right at Abdul’s terrified face. Ripper hit the unlock button on his now-open door, and as soon as Moose heard it click, he pulled the driver-side door open and slammed his hand into Abdul’s throat. Abdul’s eyes went very wide as he choked and lost his breath. Before he knew what was happening, Moose had pulled him out of the car, face-down on the blistering hot asphalt. Ripper hopped over the smoking hood and dropped down next to them, pulling plastic zip-ties, which he used to secure Abdul’s wrists behind his back. They pulled the gasping man to his feet and dragged him quickly to the Black Hawk, which had spun around and landed on the road for their exit. They pushed Abdul inside, where Hodges slammed him against the metal floor. Ripper hopped up and sat on him as Moose jumped in and pulled the door closed behind. The crew chief told the pilot they were ready, and the bird tilted forward and lifted off the ground, banking hard towards the base.

Moose photographed the stunned Abdul Aziz while Ripper scanned his fingerprints. Before they had travelled five miles, Abdul Aziz’s information had been sent to Dex Murphy in Langley.

Moose radioed Cascaes, “Package is safe and secure. Heading back to base, out.”

A lone silver Mercedes sat smoking on the empty highway.

Chapter 44

Stadium

The Black Hawk touched down outside the stadium in the parking lot and the team jumped out, the dogs trotting alongside their handlers. Two Qatari Army soldiers watched in shock as the team jogged towards them. They looked to each other for guidance, but had no idea what to do.

Cascaes screamed at the two men as they ran towards them. “You speak English?”

One of the men nodded. “Little,” he said in a heavy accent.

Cascaes cursed under his breath. “Bomb! You understand?”

The man looked at him blankly.

“Ka-Boom!” screamed Cascaes, pointing at the stadium, and then at the dogs. “Dogs look for Ka-Boom!”

The two men shouted back and forth in Arabic for a few seconds. They then began running towards the stadium, motioning the team to follow them. The group sprinted to the entrance, the Qatari men screaming at everyone they saw until one soldier finally ran to Cascaes. “I speak English. What’s going on?”

Cascaes looked at the man’s uniform. He appeared to be some kind of officer. “We have intelligence that there may be a bomb inside, armed with Sarin gas. We need to get to the chillers upstairs.” The officer yelled back in Arabic for the two men to bring the team upstairs. They raced off to the escalators, the officer watching them go. As soon as they were out of sight, he began walking quickly out of the stadium. Whatever he was being paid wasn’t enough to be blown up with a Sarin bomb.

The team ran up the escalator to the first level and then again to the second level. Cascaes looked around for the officer, but he was nowhere to be found. Cascaes did his best to explain that he was looking for the air-conditioning system, but was getting nowhere. EOD Franklin spoke up. “Hey! Tucker’s got something!” The large black shepherd was sniffing the air and the ground. He was obviously getting the scent of something.

“Work, Tucker! Work!” yelled Franklin.

The dog began pulling him inside the stadium and the other dog began whining. The other handler spoke to his partner as well. “Good boy, Cody. Get to work.”

Both handlers followed their dogs into the stadium where tens of thousands of fans were screaming as Manchester United kicked a goal into the top right corner of the net. The fans were on their feet as the team entered the top of the second tier of seats. The dogs pulled at their leashes and the handlers spoke to each other.

“I’m taking him off lead. Work, Tucker!” he commanded as he unsnapped the leash from the dog’s collar. The other handler did the same thing, and the two large dogs ran down the steps towards a food vendor. Fans on the aisle seats who saw the dogs running down the stairs spun around to see where they came from. They were even more surprised to see commandos with assault rifles coming down behind the dogs.

The dogs raced to the food vendor and stopped, barking at the man’s food container.

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” said Moose. “Dog wants a hotdog?”

The food vendor’s turned white when he saw the dogs. He dropped the box and began fighting his way through the seats to exit the other side of the section. Moose saw him and yelled behind him to the team members coming down the stairs. He pointed to the other aisle and screamed, “Go around the other side!”

Four of the men turned and ran back up the stairs to head him off on the other side. The dogs sat and stared at the box, ignoring the nuts and dried fruit that had spilled all over the stairs. They were totally focused on the aluminum box.

“Good find!” said Franklin, as he knelt down and patted his dog’s shoulder. He looked up at Cascaes, who was now standing over him. “What do you want me to do? I can look inside it here, but we need to get these people out of here.”

“No, let’s get it out of here,” said Cascaes. The EOD picked up the box carefully and began walking up the stairs with it, the dogs close behind. The fans were now watching closely, and began asking questions. They were told to remain calm, and stay where they were.

As soon as the team had gotten to the top of the stairs with the box, they quickly moved away from the crowd to an outside area farther away that overlooked the parking lot. The dogs both began sniffing the air again and pacing around nervously.

“Shit,” said Franklin.

“What?” asked Cascaes.

“They ain’t done.”

The other EOD opened the top of the box and looked inside. He gently removed whatever snacks were inside until it was empty. He stared at it for a second confused, and then realized what he was looking at. “False bottom,” he announced.

“Okay, everyone move away. We need to take the bottom off; it may be booby-trapped,” said Franklin.

“What about you?” asked Cascaes.

“It’s what we do. Move away.”

Cascaes motioned with his chin to head over the section where four of his guys were still trying to grab the food vendor. A few went down the same aisle again in case the guy had doubled back, and the rest headed to the other side of that section.

Franklin dropped his pack of tools and began slowly disassembling the bottom of the box. “Tommy, I’m opening the cover.”

The two of them held their breath as Mark slowly lifted the aluminum plate. Beneath it was a Sarin bomblet wrapped in cushioning, attached to a cell phone that was lit up and waiting for a call.

“Bingo,” he said calmly. Mark calmly pulled the wire lead from the phone, removed the phone from the box, and turned it off. He looked up at Jeff Krekeler. “Tucker and Cody think there’s more.”

“Yeah. Now what?”

Mark studied the bomb. “If they’re all like this, they’re all waiting for a call. As long as the Prowler’s flying, we should be cool. The only way to detonate this manually is to take it apart, unwrap the bomblet, and break it open.”

“Yeah, but how many more are inside?”

Mark shook his head. This was bad.

He stood up and looked over at Cascaes who was standing close enough to have been killed anyway. “Hey, Chief, I got good news and bad news.” He explained what was going on.

Cascaes thought for a minute before speaking. “I’ve got an idea, but we’re going to need a lot of help and someone who speaks better Arabic than me.”

A young blonde woman appeared out of the stadium and saw Cascaes and the K9 units. She asked the two Qatari soldiers in Arabic what was going on. As soon as Cascaes heard her speak, he jogged over to her.

“Hey! You!”

The woman stopped in mid sentence and stared at him. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

“You’re American?”

“I asked you what’s going on. Should this place be evacuated?”

“Look, lady, I need your help. You speak fluent Arabic?”

She put her hands on her hips and stared as Cascaes. “Did I stutter? I asked you a question!”

“There may be bombs inside this stadium. We can
not
allow the crowd to panic, you understand? If the bombers know we’re on to them, they can detonate poison gas. I need your help—your language skills!”

The woman, named Patty, worked for an American oil and gas company in Qatar, and lived and worked in Doha. She spoke fluent Arabic. She took a deep breath and tried to be calm. “What is it that you need me to do?”

Cascaes looked at his watch. It was quarter to eight. “Look, I need for you to explain to these guys that they have to radio every cop and soldier in this stadium and instruct them to locate all the food vendors. We have no idea how many other bombs there are, but there may be a lot. I think they’re using the food vendors to scatter the stuff around the crowd. They need to move casually to wherever these vendors are and get fairly close. At exactly eight o’clock, they’re to grab these guys and make them put down the boxes. Exactly eight o’clock, okay? We have to try and get these guys all at once. If they realize they’re being grabbed, they may be able to detonate these things in the crowd. You understand?”

The woman’s face had gone from a healthy tan to corpse-white. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Focus! Listen, I need you to help me. Explain everything I said nice and simple to this soldier.”

She nodded, worrying about her husband inside the stadium with their friends. There were almost fifty thousand people inside. Her mind was racing and she felt sick.

Chris grabbed her arm and gently moved her closer to the Qatari soldiers. Patty began explaining, in a slow calm voice, even though she was sweating. The soldiers nodded and listened, and the n spoke rapidly to each other and then back to her. Patty looked at Chris and said, “They said it’s impossible; there’s hundreds of food vendors all over the stadium.”

“It’s not impossible. There are thousands of troops and cops all over this stadium. We just need to locate the vendors walking around with these boxes. Tell him he has to do it.”

They argued back and forth a little bit and, finally, one of the soldiers began speaking into his radio. It was dead.

“Son of a bitch. The Moon Dogs are jamming all the frequencies,” said Chris. “This won’t work.”

As Chris stood feeling helpless, Ernie P. ran over. “Hey, Skipper, we got the hajji that tried to run.”

Cascaes looked at the woman. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Patty.”

“I need you to help again with your Arabic. Come on.”

They ran over to the other side of the section, where Jon and Raul were holding the bomber. “Ask him how many bombs there are in the stadium.”

Patty spoke to him in Arabic. He spit at her, but missed. Chris responded with a knee directly into the man’s groin. If not for Jon and Raul holding him by his arms, he would have hit the deck. Cascaes smacked his face a couple of times and then held his gun against the man’s forehead.

“Ask him again,” he said to Patty.

She asked, but the man was praying and preparing to be shot. “He’s not going to tell us anything,” said Patty.

Cascaes grabbed the man by the throat and walked him to the Qatari soldiers. “Here,” he grunted, and shoved the man towards them. The Qatari soldier held him at gunpoint. The members of the team began assembling near Cascaes, and he called them in closer.

“Fellas, it’s just us. The Qatari radios won’t work with jammers working, and we can’t tell them to turn them off because of the bombs, so that’s it. It’s just us. We need to go through the stadium, one section at a time, and inconspicuously take the vendor boxes.”

The American woman was listening from nearby. She walked over to the group. “I can spread the word to the other Qatari police.”

Chris thought about it. He nodded. “Okay. That helps. Just explain to them they have to be subtle. No shooting. Just quietly get the vendor or the box out of the crowd.”

“Can I get my husband and two friends to help? We all speak fluent Arabic.”

“Go. And thanks, Patty.”

She ran off towards her seats in the deafening stadium.

“Okay, this is it. One section at a time. Let’s try to live to the end of the day boys. Fifty thousand people are counting on us not to fuck this up. No pressure. Half of you with me clockwise, other half work around the other direction. See you on the other side of the stadium.”

“What do we do with the boxes when we get them?” asked Jon.

“Bring them up the stairs and just put them in stacks against the walls. Grab Qatari cops or soldiers and just have them watch over them. If the bombers can’t detonate by phone, they have to take them apart by hand and break the Sarin bomblets. If they try that, we’ll probably see them.”

“And we catch them trying, we cleared to fire?” Asked Pete.

“Yes, but only if you have to. And for Christ sake don’t hit any civilians. Now go!”

The team broke in half, and Cascaes took off with Lance, Jake, Raul, Ernie P., and Smitty. Cory, Ryan, Jon, Pete, and Ray headed off in the other direction. Each team took a K9 unit with them.