Interdiction - W.Addison Gast (great novels TXT) 📗

/> An amazing discovery starts the ball rolling

There was not a lot of terrorist activity to deal with within the city of Mazar I Sharif but sergeant Bill Prestin brought his new recruits into action in force whenever possible in order to give them real time training. Training classes in air conditioned classrooms were good but nothing beats good in-the-field hands-on training.
That is what his group was doing today.
“Scorpion-you still have the nest in sight?” It was Prestin talking to the captain of his recruit group.
“Cowboy, we have five images on our IR scan that are inside the house. It would appear that there are two floors to this little shack because two of the images are lower than the rest. Wait minute Serge, we are getting some RF emissions on our other scan. It looks like we might have something very interesting here. They evidently have a radio or a satellite computer.”
“Cowboy to Scorpion—hold that surveillance and see if you can record any of those RF emissions coming from there. Look especially for designator codes-you know what I mean. I’m moving to your position in five-out.”
The top instructor of the police recruits was excited but calm. Prestin had missed the heavy action he had been engaged in doing evasion analysis of tangos in Iraq. The police recruit training job came by way of a CENTCOM
recommendation. His work in Baghdad and the surrounding area finding how tangos moved out of the area of engagement and into the local population earned him a reputation and a name.-- Cowboy.--He liked to use this as an operative name whenever possible. On his first tour in Iraq the cop from San Antonio Texas knew he had found his calling. He studied the language and dialects intensely so that he could communicate more directly with his students than using one of the interpreters that were available to force personnel. His students soon realized that Prestin was a very focused individual and demanded the best from his action group. Prestin was” innovative and resourceful” . This was the description in his package that was sent to CENTCOM when the request went out to commands for recommendations for this top spot in Afghanistan On his first month in Iraq he was assigned to the IED tracking unit SWUMED. When the company commander asked for input during a morning briefing, Prestin stood up and asked permission to put forth an idea on how to decrease the number of IED using cell phones as detonators. The Commander gave Prestin the floor.
“Tangos are using about six different makes of cell phones in their detonators. These are French, Italian and U.S. makes and basically the same circuitry. Very few are satellite and most are using the local network powered by a switchwork that is pretty basic and common. There are only three network providers in all of Baghdad that all the cells here use. My suggestion is, we set up a plan to ring every cell in the circuit all at one time on a given hour. This may only detonate the cells that are attached to IEDS presently or those in place but it will sure give Gomer thoughts on the reliability of using phones on detonators. He will never know when the phone will ring on this test. It may just happen to ring while he is making his little piece of handy work in his living room.” The idea worked and earned Prestin a commendation for his efforts. The second commendation came to Prestin for his work with the Iraqi local police. The problem was getting the locals to report sightings of individuals placing the IEDs and booby traps in their respective neighborhoods. Force leaders knew that the locals had to be witness to the Taliban digging holes in the roadside and disguising bombs in old cars parked alongside the road. It was obvious that someone had to see this. It just went unreported until someone was killed. The operation took only one week to increase the amount of calls to CENTCOM local police headquarters by thirty percent when locals saw Gomer placing explosives in their neighborhood. It was a pretty simple and basic plan. After one of the IED had exploded in an outlying neighborhood wounding several Iraqi police in a van, the area was evacuated around the detonation site for five hundred yards. The local police and U.S. forces made much ado of the evacuation procedures and made sure there was sufficient population watching when they leveled everything within the five hundred yard sight line to the area. All of the buildings and structures within the five hundred yards were leveled. The local population was told that this would be done whenever an IED was detonated in an ambush. The way to keep your neighborhood intact was to call the authorities when you saw strangers doing unusual excavation work in your block.
“Head shed to Cowboy; are you putting a hold on the ops?” It was the boss calling to see why the tactical unit had been told to hold their position. The tactical unit was comprised of two Bell HU2 special equipped light helicopters with troopers standing on the rails ready to rappel onto a rooftop and take down any resistance on the roof that may cause the assault force on the street any problems. They were especially small for a military craft but very lethal in operation.
“Affirm head shed. Advise sparrows to stand-down until we get additional info on this location. It is not your usual suburban household if you get the meaning. Over”
“Roger Cowboy-your call. When you have firm intel call us back –pronto. Head shed out.”
Prestin was climbing up the back stair to the building where Scorpion had set up his OP. He called his unit squad leaders and told them to stay out of sight as much as possible and stay away from the building under observation.
“What made you push the hold button Amur?” Asked Prestin of the young Iraqi laying on his stomach and looking thru field glasses at his discovery.
“Take a look at the five IR images and then check the RF activity. This is a very active little bungalow boss.”
Prestin gave the building a close inspection. The guy on the roof was just sitting there by the wife’s laundry drying and flapping in the breeze---so it appeared at first glance. On closer inspection you could see that under his djellabas was an automatic weapon and that there was an insulator on the clothesline attachment to the building. The wire clothesline was actually a hi freq antenna. That was the only visible tango outside the building. The other four images were all in one spot apparently in a sub floor location. Checking the RF emissions on the RF3708 Rand monitor, there was a lot of activity on three channels. They evidently had a switch control as the emissions would shift from one frequency to other every ten seconds. This would keep most tracking devices in the dark but the Rand unit had been developed for just this type of emission detection
“What is this?” Asked Prestin pointing at a sine wave on the monitor.
The technician working with Scorpion replied; “Internet—these guys have a wireless broadband or a satellite unit working. I can’t get a good fix on the exact channel but it looks like a chat room.”
“A CHAT ROOM?” Prestin was astounded.
“Yes sarge, it looks like one of the teen age yakety yak 24/7 web sites. I can’t get what they are typing or saying but it looks like a chat room for sure.”
“Can we monitor what they are saying with different equipment?” Asked Prestin.
“A laptop sarge. We could match the freq here with the I.P and back it out but its probably in Pashi or Urdu. We’d need an interceptor that spoke the language.”
“Ok. Stay hooked up to everything they are transmitting and feed it back to head shed. I’m going to set up a special task force at headquarters to direct this operation. Right now, I’m going to get you two some cami cover here and a watch rotation. Make sure that tango on the roof does not see you or the game is over. Roger?”
“Gotcha Sarge. If you send some chow and some water over with our relief, we can stay here on this rooftop and keep the activity down to a minimum.”
Scorpion was thinking like a leader. His parents were Iraqi and Brit and he had a very good command of the English language as well as Arabic. Prestin was impressed with his dedication to his job
“Good thinking Abduar. I’ll advise as soon as I get some face to face time with head shed. Hang tight.” With that, Cowboy exited the building and climbed into the humvee three blocks away. As he returned to the vehicle, he surveyed the area to see how many locals had seen him climb the building stairs to the rooftop. It was afternoon prayer and all the men were either inside of in a shaded area doing their prayers. He felt confident it would look to the locals like it was just another American patrol checking out the local neighborhood and leaving. Then the idea came to him. He went back to the communications unit that was in the group of three vehicles . He took two of the battery powered mini cam videos and walked across the street to a shop that had been abandoned after a recent firefight. Inside the building he looked out onto the street and at the building across the street where his two men were located on the roof. It was perfect. The camera would feed a constant image to head shed of any street activity and cover Scorpions six. He placed the others at the base of the stairs. Prestin then had his men make a cover for the observers on the roof to hide under from a canvas cover that was in the Humvee .They were even fortunate to find a fan that could be placed under the cover for some air movement for the observation crew.
“Good decision Sergeant. We will use this little tango scorpion pit as a convenient collection platform and see what we can catch.” It was Col. Branding, Preston’s boss talking. The colonel turned to an aide and continued issuing orders. “Get this feed to Langley and also have the guys flying the Rapto patrol do a surveillance report on each pass they make over the scorpion pit. Depending on what priority Langley puts on this discovery, they may decide to task a satellite to get in on the act .” The Colonel then issued a heads-up to the other units in the area not to get close to the scorpion pit with their patrols. He wanted these guys to think that they were on their own little planet doing their thing without anyone watching or knowing they existed.
When Langley received the encrypted message that this small police group had uncovered what they considered a major intelligence find, the event caught the attention of the deputy director. His morning briefing outlined what resources they had assembled and a preliminary report on what some of the first transmissions from the scorpion pit were. The DD immediately decided that this was an excellent opportunity to turn the task over to the new agency just created within homeland security to coordinate intelligence gathered in different countries. The agency was given the designation DOCIS-Department of cooperative Intelligence Sources. It was headed by a Brigadier General that had a lot of time in the Middle East working with the various forces and was now assigned to the Pentagon. Brigadier General Tomas Jacobs

Chapter 7

West Point Virginia. East campus

The cell rang