The Phoenix Affair - Dave Moyer (smart ebook reader TXT) 📗

are clearly worrisome. First, they’re damned well organized, and they have pretty fast communications to have managed to have someone onto us in London so quickly. Second, they want to find you pretty bad, which to me means they think you’re onto something very big that they very much want to keep secret. They sent four men to kill all of you in Paris, Fahd.”

“I know, I know, but don’t tell the rest of them that.” Cameron could see heat behind the eyes. “Paul, you think they’re going to use these boys with American passports to do something in the US, don’t you?”

“Yes, Fahd, I do, and I suspect you do, too, and I’m pretty sure you’ve thought so all along, haven’t you?”

“Truly? Yes, although I did not want to believe it. It’s all so stupid. They can’t accomplish anything beyond killing some people and getting themselves killed. Oh, I suppose with the right plan and the right support they could do something spectacular like the World Trade Center. But in the end, what did that accomplish? Two Muslim governments toppled, many people dead, their headquarters in Afghanistan denied to them forever, I suspect their leaders are either dead, living in caves, or getting along very unpleasantly at some unknown location hosted by some very angry Americans. And on top of all of that, they’ve made Arabs and Muslims the subject of hatred, suspicion, and prejudice all over the world. To be honest, Paul, I’m ashamed of what they have made of us all, and I’m angry.”

“Amen, my friend. But I have a feeling their plan this time is less spectacular, but still very dangerous. How big a town is al-Ha’il, Fahd?”

“Not big, maybe fifteen or twenty thousand, not more. Why?”

“What about businesses, shopping, police, security, that kind of thing?”

“Well, there’s a gold market, of course, and a small shopping center, the usual kinds of stuff you find in small towns everywhere I guess. There would not be many police, perhaps twenty or so, crime isn’t much of a problem in the Kingdom, Paul, you know that. And, everybody knows everybody, most people are al-Auda or related to someone, so what could you do without everyone knowing? And we have a pretty effective way of dealing with violent crime in the Kingdom.” He made a chopping gesture that landed with a thud on the table top.

“Hmmm, not much different in the US, the police department might be a little bigger, and there might be more small businesses. People wouldn’t be as related, and they probably wouldn’t know each other well. Still, close enough. Now, Fahd, what do you think would happen if say fifteen terrorists armed with automatic rifles, maybe grenades and RPGs, showed up in your hometown, and if they were trained pretty well in small-unit infantry actions? What could they do?”

Fahd thought a moment, then said, “I don’t know, Paul. It would depend what they tried to do. Certainly if they wanted they could shut down the city center, the police couldn’t handle it in a small town; kill a lot of people in the beginning before the streets cleared, put business to a stop for the day, God forbid they should attack a . . .school, Paul?”

“God forbid. I hadn’t thought of that, wouldn’t have thought of it, but they did in Russia a few years back. I was thinking of the business, to be frank, but the school scares the shit out of me, beg your pardon, now that you mention it. Now suppose you have six or seven teams of fifteen men, Fahd. What if they did this in as many small towns across the Kingdom, either all at once, or better yet I think, one at a time over a period of three weeks or so? I can tell you what I think would happen in the US. Nobody would send their kids to school, nobody would open their businesses, people wouldn’t go shopping unless they had to, things would just shut down. It would take a long, long time and a lot of convincing for the public to regain confidence that it wouldn’t happen in their town. In the US you’d probably see actual troops, armed, in the streets or at least publicly known to be in every little town, just to give the impression that the government was doing something. We’d look like a garrison, a police state. People would be afraid. The people would start carrying their own guns openly, just to feel like they could protect themselves. It’d change everything, at least for a while, maybe for a very long time. And the backlash against Arabs and Muslims in America would be horrible.”

“One thing they could not do in al-Ha’il, they could not take over any of the major family homes. They all have a wall, Paul, and like yours, our people are usually armed, especially in the small towns way out in the desert. It’s a tradition. Once the shooting started, people would defend their homes. The bigger compounds like my family’s would hold out easily if very many people were at home.”

“A little different in the US, I’d think. Individual homes would be easy, one at a time. Eventually someone might put together an organized defense of people with hunting rifles and the like, but it would take time, and leadership, and courage. Sheesh, something like this could get out of hand very, very quickly in the US.”

“You think this is what they plan to do, Paul?” Fahd asked soberly, still thinking hard and not liking what he saw.

“It’s what I’m afraid they may plan to do, Fahd.” Cameron was still thinking of all the implications and he liked it less and less. “Well, we’d better get on with it. I think I’ll call my friends in Paris again when I leave you, but we have things to do. Fahd, I need to go buy some clothes for Saudi, didn’t bring the right kind of thing with me. Can I leave the booking of tickets to you? I think we can assume you’re safe in London as long as you stay away from your embassy. The more I think about it, I think our enemies simply made a lucky guess.”

“Yes, I’ll take care of the tickets, Paul. I think it should be tomorrow if there are seats—do you agree?”

“I agree, the sooner the better, but not today. If you go out, Fahd, may I suggest that you take Mohammed with you? Two might be better than one on the street, just in case, and the boy is probably curious, it would make him feel, well, engaged?”

“Good idea. The women and Aziz will be fine at the hotel. Anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of,” Cameron said. He looked at his watch. “OK it’s nearly eleven. I’ll go see if I can find what I need, make my calls. I’ll call you around, say two o’clock and see if there’s anything else we need to do or coordinate. Let’s plan on dinner again tonight all together if you think the ladies would like that, your pick of time and place?”

“I think I can guarantee Fadia will love that. She’s become very fond of you, abu-Sean.” He got up, “your treat this time, Colonel,” smiling.

“My pleasure, General,” Cameron smiled back. Fahd left through the door, while Cameron paid. A few minutes later he was outside for the short walk to the Green Park tube station, from there to Harrods’s where he knew they would have what he needed.

On the train he checked his phone for a signal and found a seat away from the sparse mid-day crowd. When Ripley answered he gave a short description of events and the plan for the rest of the day. He finished with “I’m not certain, but I expect we’ll find tickets to Amman for tomorrow afternoon, my guess will be arrival late that evening. Christ, what day is it Patrick?”

“Wednesday. I’ll get our guys working on tickets, let me know as soon as you know for sure. You have transportation squared away on the other end?”

“Yep, the General’s handling it. Your guys have any trouble with the equipment I asked for?”

“Nope, they’ll have it ready in Amman. Can we assume departure by road from there the next day, or would you leave tomorrow night if that works out? I’d prefer daylight . . .”

“No, I think the next morning. We have the two women with us and the little boy. Ripley, who the hell was “Smith”, the guy I was emailing when I arrived in Paris on Sunday morning?”

“Well, you’re going to think this is crazy, but it was the guy “Jones” that was on the park bench at Versailles yesterday morning. You met him as you left.”

Cameron just laughed. “You guys and names, so creative. OK, so if Smith-Jones is in Paris, who’s running this op at Langley, or maybe I’m not spook enough to know how these things usually work?”

Ripley was quiet for a moment, then said, “Good question, you’re right, there’s usually someone back at Langley to coordinate support and the like. You need something else? I can sling the DDO’s name around some more if you want, seems to work pretty well and I like watching people jump.”

“Not exactly, just wanted to run something by somebody. Might as well be you. Tell me what you think of this . . .”

Cameron first looked to make sure there was nobody within easy earshot on his train, then gave a detailed explanation of his theory about the Saudi-Americans and what their plan might be. When he finished he asked, “Crazy, or what do you think?”

“Hmmm. Not really my area, Colonel, strictly speaking. From a small-unit infantry point of view, though, I think you make a good argument. We don’t know who or what we’re really talking about here, but if they’re even remotely competently trained, they’d chew up a small town police force pretty bad. The strategic utility of a target like that is way out of my league, they usually go for something more obvious and with bigger casualties that will make the news. But my gut tells me your theory has pretty strong logic on the real impact of this kind of thing. I know if I was married with kids in a small town after several of those I’d be awfully nervous. Hell, if it was me, and if the police would tolerate it, I might be organizing a neighborhood watch that was armed, maybe a rifle on the roof 24/7, stuff like that. Kinda gives me the creeps.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Cameron agreed. “So, how would we pass this kind of idea back to the guys at Langley, or would they care?”

“Oh, I think they’d care, Boss. Can you imagine the ass that the DDO would have if this went down and he found out you’d thought of it ahead of time? And I’m sure you’d tell him, wouldn’t you?”

“Damned right I would, if I could figure out how. So what do we do?” Cameron finished.

“Leave it with me. I’ll talk to Jones, he’ll put something together to email to the DDO personally, I’ll make sure he does it. What? Just a minute, Colonel.” After a brief pause Ripley came back on the phone. “Whatsup with the broken arm? Knife attack? What’d you do to this guy? You didn’t say anything about that a few minutes ago!”

“I gather you’ve heard from “Johnson?” Well, that was quick. Hey, the guy came at me with a knife, a little yokomen uchi gokkyo was all that came to mind,” he said, giving the Japanese name for the aikido technique he’d used. “The arm was extra, he almost cut my throat and ruined a perfectly good coat in the process. I’ve had a hard week and I’m a little pissed off. It should be a nice clean break, it’ll heal.”

“I guess. Well, like you said, he shoulda known when he signed