Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 44

The time difference between the east coast of the United States and Libya was six hours. By the time Harvath and Meg had organized all of their gear and gotten to sleep, it was after midnight for them back home and almost sunrise on the Ubari Sand Sea.

Harvath had offered to post one of the four-hour guard shifts, but Morrell declined, saying he had more than enough men to cover the rotations. Harvath drifted into one of his deep trancelike states while Meg slept in interrupted, fitful bouts. At one point, she awoke with a start at the sound of bells, but Harvath was quick to cover her mouth. A herd of goats from one of the oasis farmers had wandered close to the mouth of the cave. Meg looked around and saw that every member of the team had his weapon drawn and was ready to kill the goatherd, should he be unlucky enough to stumble across them, but nothing happened. The goats moved on, and the team eventually stood down.

After a while, Meg gave up trying to fall back asleep. Thoughts of what lay ahead filled her mind, and there was no way she could completely relax.

Morrell had brought along two two-man sniper teams as part of the operation. The men who had gone out to recon the area had confirmed the distances to where they assumed the target would be, and the sniper teams were now quietly quizzing each other on ballistic charts. “At five hundred meters in ten-to-twelve-knot winds, how far will a three hundred Win Mag drop?” said one of the men.

The spotter from the other team responded, “Considering the drag coefficient on a three hundred Win Mag, it’ll be seven inches off, right to left,” and so the conversation continued. It was completely over Meg’s head. All she knew was that there were at least seven more hours till sunset and God only knew how many more before Morrell would give the order to move out of the cave so they could take up their positions and await Hashim Nidal.

Meg turned to Harvath to help pass the time. Normally, he would have been concerned with keeping an operative’s head in the game, but he realized Meg needed distraction. She didn’t want to think about what lay ahead. She needed to talk about something else… anything else.

Harvath asked questions about her family and growing up in Chicago. He asked about college and starting her own business. He even spent some time trying to explain the philosophy of true country music, which could be summed up as, “three chords and the truth” — my wife left me, my dog ran away, I lost my job… He had no idea if Meg appreciated his position, but she laughed nonetheless.

Darkness had just fallen when Morrell finally made his way to the back of the cave where Harvath and Meg were still talking. “Saddle up,” was all he whispered before gathering his gear and heading outside.

Sounds from the distant oasis could be heard floating on the mild breeze that stirred the loose sand all around them. Harvath and Meg took their places in the middle of the column, and after a final weapons and equipment check, the team set off for their positions overlooking the Hijrah Oasis.

They picked their way over the boulder-strewn hillside with extreme caution, careful not to make even the slightest sound. Though the entire team was wearing throat mikes, no one dared break radio silence. As they crested the hill, the oasis came into full view. A perfectly still, oblong pool of water seemed to magically spring up from the desert sand like a forgotten mirror and reflect everything around it. An amazing array of flowers and vegetation, including young date and palm trees, surrounded the tiny desert lake and spread outward for hundreds of meters, adding brilliant touches of color to the otherwise barren landscape.

Many of the buildings shown in the satellite photos, once only a hodgepodge of unimpressive gray boxes, were now completely visible. Vegetation hung from windows and over the edges of makeshift balconies. To people who had no idea of the real purpose of this oasis town, it could easily have been mistaken for a modern-day Garden of Eden.

On a small promontory jutting out into the dark water, obviously a place of great honor and ceremony, stood a large bedouin-style tent. Torches lit a path to the open panels of striped fabric that billowed in the desert wind. Robed figures trudged back and forth from covered trucks, preparing for the meeting between Hashim Nidal and the Saudi, while other robed figures stood quietly by, clutching Kalashnikov assault rifles.

All of a sudden, loud music erupted from a boom box in the back of one of the trucks, and the men setting up the tent cheered. The Operation Phantom team hit the deck and searched for cover. Morrell clutched his throat mike and snapped, “What the fuck is that?”

The operatives were all silent. After listening for a few moments Harvath whispered, “Flashlight.”

“ ‘Flashlight’? I didn’t see any flashlight. I’m talking about that goddamn music.”

“It’s the name of the song. ‘Flashlight,’ by Parliament. They may hate us, but they love our music.”

“Fuckin’ no-taste ragheads,” spat one of the operatives.

“Actually,” whispered Harvath, “ ‘Flashlight’ is considered far and away a seventies funk classic.”

“Both of you shut up,” commanded Morrell. “Obviously, our real players haven’t arrived on the scene yet. Let’s get into place.”

Morrell gave the signal for the team to split up, and the members fanned out in separate directions. Two men went off to recon the suspected training camp as the sniper teams took up strategic positions overlooking the striped tent. Harvath and Meg were directed to stay behind a large outcropping of rocks while Morrell took several more men and his operative who had somehow managed to repair the mini-drone further down the hill.

Harvath scanned the scene below with one of the next-generation AN/PVS starlight scope systems he and Meg had been given to identify Hashim Nidal with. The music seemed to have had the desired effect. The men were now unloading the trucks at a much improved pace. Harvath noticed that not all of them were dressed in robes. Some wore civilian clothes, and one even had a Chicago Bulls T-shirt on. He loved the hypocrisy of it all — The U.S. is the Great Satan, but Michael Jordan? He’s number one!

The radio silence was interrupted when Rick Morrell whispered, “Marty away.” Harvath and Meg both tried to locate the mini-drone through their starlight scopes, but at half the size of a wine cork, it was next to impossible to see.

For a moment, they heard what sounded like the beginning strains of “Kung Fu Fighting”; then an irate and obviously very senior member of Hashim Nidal’s staff began yelling at the men near the tent and the music was immediately turned off.

The wind picked up, and rough sheets of sand blew across the narrow streets of the oasis town. The workers wrapped their kaffiyeh headdresses across their faces to keep the sand out of their mouths and noses. Over the plastic earpiece wedged deep within his ear, Harvath heard one of the operatives say, “We’ve got an inbound aircraft.”

As Harvath turned his eyes to the north, he could make out the lights of a small plane off in the distance. A moment later, the landing strip lit up like a Christmas tree. The man taken into custody in Helsinki had indicated that the Saudi would be arriving via private jet and he was right on time. That meant Hashim Nidal couldn’t be far behind.

One of the sniper teams quietly hailed Meg and asked her to call out various points and distances around the tent. Meg pressed her face against the rubber blinders of the starlight scope and synced with both spotters to make sure they were on the same page. She didn’t dare remove the device from her face. Her vision was now acclimated to the greenish glow, and the last thing she wanted to do was expose her eyes to any of the blowing sand. The mission could not afford her missing the target.

She was still scanning the area around the tent when another voice came over the team’s earpieces and said, “Two convoys approaching target area.”

Meg knew that one of the convoys approaching from the direction of the airstrip would belong to the Saudi, while the other would most likely belong to Nidal. She noticed her hands were shaking, and she tried to steady them by resting her elbows on the boulder in front of her.

“You okay?” asked Harvath, whose eyes were also glued to the scene unfolding through his starlight scope.

“A little nervous.”

“That’s good. It’s to be expected. Just ID Nidal to the snipers the way we practiced it. You’re going to do fine.”

“I hope so. I want this to be over with.”

“It will be soon enough. Don’t worry. It looks like the convoys are about to enter the perimeter.”

The voice came back over their earpieces. “Convoys entering perimeter. All teams stand by.”

Two sets of Land Rovers came to a stop twenty meters away from the tent. As the doors to the vehicles opened, another gust of wind erupted, sending sharp blasts of sand in all directions. The men momentarily retreated into their vehicles until the wind passed, then reemerged with their kaffiyehs drawn tightly across their faces, like the guards and workers.

“Wild Onion, have you identified the target?” came the voice of one of the spotters over Meg’s earpiece.

As Meg was from Chicago, Morrell had assigned her a code name based on what the Native Americans had originally called the Windy City.

“Target not yet identified,” said Meg as she strained to get a better view through her starlight scope.

Seconds passed and the men moved toward the tent, their bodies bent against the force of the wind and blowing sand.

“Wild Onion,” came the voice again. “Do you have the target?”

“Negative. Target not yet identified.”

The men had now covered half the distance to the tent and would be inside within the next ten seconds.

“Wild Onion. You must identify the target before they’re out of view.”

“I’m trying,” said Meg desperately, more to herself than anyone else. “They’re all dressed alike and I can’t see their faces.”

“It’s no good,” said Harvath over his throat mike as he watched the men finish filing into the tent.

“Target pool out of view,” came the voice of one of the sniper team spotters. “Awaiting instructions.”

“Damnit,” hissed Morrell over the team’s earpieces. “Stand by.”

Meg pulled the starlight scope from her face and slid down against the large boulder. “I blew it,” she said.

Harvath slid down next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t blow anything. Nobody could have called that shot. Their faces were completely covered.”

“So what do we do now?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do,” said Meg as she wiped the perspiration from her palms onto her fatigues.

“I think Morrell’s probably got no choice but to light that tent up like a roman candle.”

“If he does, how are we going to know for sure we got Nidal?”

“We might never know for sure, but we also might never get another chance like this.”

“In Chicago, you told me you wouldn’t just fire missiles into a bunch of people. You said you couldn’t. You said you had to know for sure you got him.”

“If Morrell decides to take out that tent, I would have to agree with him. It’s a good tactical decision.”

“But there’s innocent people in there.”

“Meg, calm down. The people in that tent are anything but innocent.”

“Are you absolutely sure about that? Do you know for a fact that the people helping set that tent up and who are probably serving a meal inside right now aren’t some hapless workers from the oasis town?”

“No, but this is a numbers game. We have to be willing to sacrifice a few for the benefit of the many. And better it be a few of theirs, than many of ours.”

“What about their families?”

Harvath was beginning to lose his patience. “What about your family? What if Hashim Nidal had been responsible for killing someone you cared about? How about your assistant, Judy? Do you want to let this guy slip through our fingers again only to hurt more innocent people than we might?”

“Of course not. But I want to know we did everything we could to nail him before another innocent person dies.”

“Well, you can sleep like an angel. Your conscience is clear. We did do everything we could.”

“No we didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” said Harvath.

“It doesn’t matter if Nidal’s face is wrapped up tight. After what he tried to do to me on that plane, I’d know him just by his eyes.”

“You can’t make out anybody’s eyes from up here.”

“You’re right. But, from down there I could,” said Meg as she pointed her index finger over the water of the oasis and toward the tent.