RW16 - Domino Theory Read online

  “You don’t know what the target was?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t there long enough to gain their confidence,” said Fatty.

  I got the impression that “long enough” would have been a million years. To be fair, most of these operations would be so compartmentalized that the actual shooters wouldn’t get specific information about their targets until the very last minute. There had been roughly three dozen men at the training camp; it was highly unlikely all would have been used on the operation. My guess was that the larger group would have been pared down, with the best and brightest pulled off for the mission. Only they would have gotten the real details. From the looks of him, Fatty would never have been in that group.

  “I am very tired,” he told us. “I need to relax.”

  “You look plenty relaxed to me,” I told him, continuing with the questioning.

  The overall program at the madrassa was similar to that followed in literally a hundred of these camps in the northern border area of Pakistan. The schools provide not only terrorists but many of the Taliban soldiers we’ve been facing in Afghanistan, committed Soldiers of God, ready to do whatever their supposed religious superiors tell them, whether it’s murdering a police chief’s infant son or strapping a bomb to their chest and boarding a bus in Kabul.

  The only difference that I noticed was the lack of religious or political indoctrination classes; many of these camps devote an enormous amount of time to pounding religion into the skulls of their followers. Instead, there were classes in English and Hindi, undoubtedly aimed at making it easier for the team to infiltrate the country and then fit in.

  The majority of the recruits had come from India, which has one of the largest populations of Muslims in the world. But there were a number of people in the camp from outside the region. According to Fatty, three came from Yemen, as to be expected; the place is a veritable terrorist paradise. But there was also a man from Egypt, one from Malaysia, and another from South Africa.

  “They could blend with anyone,” said Captain Birla.

  It was a good point. With the exception of the Yemenis, all of the “students” were from Commonwealth countries. Give them fake passports, and they’d look like tourists. Dress them in sweats, they’d look like athletes. Work clothes … you get the idea.

  “Now they will blend in with no one,” chuckled Fatty, dumping the ash from his cigar into the pot of a nearby midget eucalyptus tree. “Dead, dead, dead, instructors and students both.”

  “How many other schools does India for Islam run?” Captain Birla asked.

  “Other schools?” Fatty shook his head. “I don’t know other schools. If there are others, they do not tell Khalid.”

  I glanced at Captain Birla. He was frowning, and I knew what he was thinking: if we’d been able to hold off the operation for another week or so, we might have gotten much more information.

  There’s always that tradeoff. Strike early, and you may not get the best information. Strike too late, and your targets may be gone.

  “You think there are more people involved in this?” asked Captain Birla as we went down in the elevator after we finally concluded we’d gotten everything we could for the night.

  “Hard to say,” I told him. “There would definitely be support groups, but if you look at successful terror operations, they’re usually carried out by eight, ten, maybe twelve people.”

  “Here there were three times that number,” said Captain Birla. “But not all of these would have been the action people — shooters, as you say.”

  “Right.”

  “But the Games are very big, with many targets. Perhaps they are more ambitious and need more people.”

  Captain Birla’s point was well taken. The Commonwealth Games were an immense target. India for Islam might be planning multiple hits, with different training camps for each.

  From the terrorists’ perspective, the Games were their own Olympics — a huge target with instant PR value if they were hit. We knew of several other plots against the Games being pursued by other agencies. (A few of them you’ve read about by now. Unfortunately.) Those were large operations as well. There was just no way to be sure we’d gotten this entire cancer.

  “The best course is to expect more problems,” I told the captain.

  He nodded.

  “More trouble and more trouble,” he said. “That is the nature of the beast.”

  ( VI )

  Did I mention earlier that Trace Dahlgren and Doc Tremblay were also in India?

  Everyone knows Trace looks good in a skirt. But Doc?

  All right, so he was wearing a kilt. His knobby knees were still a sight to behold.

  Doc and Trace had joined the Scottish field hockey team — Trace as a player, and Doc as a trainer. Hollywood couldn’t have cast them better — Trace was practically born with a stick in her hand, and Doc just loved to get his hands on the ladies.

  But why were they there at all?

  To understand, you need to flash back to the 1972 Olympics at Munich. I’m sure readers of a certain age will know what I’m talking about, but to fill some of you youngsters in:

  Early on the morning of September 5, with the Olympics in full swing, a group of scumbags from the Black September faction of Fattah — aka PLO — climbed a six-foot chain-link fence at Olympic Village and raided the dormitory where the Israeli athletes were staying.

  By nightfall, all eleven hostages were dead. Several of the hostage takers were also killed in a heavily botched operation by the German police. (The mistakes were partly redeemed by the formation of GSG 9, a premier German counterterrorist unit formed out of their National Border Police, led by my old friend and mentor Ricky Wegner. They’ve saved a number of lives since their inception. The Israelis later served their own brand of justice on the people who had organized the attack in a series of aptly named operations — Operation Bayonet, Operation Wrath of God, et al. Of course, to this day, some Palestinians deny that the whole event took place, but I’m not writing a book on mass hallucinations.)

  The Munich massacre is a key terrorist event studied by everyone in the counterterror community — and most likely, by terrorists themselves. Protecting athletes at events like the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games presents very unique and difficult problems. Ticking them off in detail here would be like providing a how-to list for newbie tangos, but I can say in general that athletes are used to a certain amount of freedom of movement and openness in order to train. At the same time, they’re very high priority targets, in many ways a more desirable “get” than politicians.

  Each of the teams coming to the Commonwealth Games were well aware of Munich, and had their own security people in place. But I knew we’d need a little more than that, which is why I’d arranged for Doc and Trace to join the team. If I could have, I would have placed someone on every team, but Red Cell International doesn’t have the man (or woman) power to do that. So we focused on the teams that had come to the country early, that would be high-value targets, and that at least from the outside would look like easy pickings.

  The Scots had come to New Delhi a week before to use the training facilities at a private girls school that happened to be a few blocks from Dhyan Chand National Stadium, the complex where many of the Commonwealth Games were due to be held. With the stadium still undergoing last-minute preparation work and therefore off-limits for athletes, the school was the best place available for the hockey teams.

  In fact, except for Dhyan Chand itself, the practice facilities were said to be among the nicest in this part of the country. There were three full-sized fields or “pitches,” along with half a dozen other large practice areas. The grass was as well maintained as any American golf course, quite an achievement in this part of India, where the weather can go from extremely dry to oceanic in a matter of hours.

  The locker-room facilities were a little cramped, according to Trace, but there was a three-story dorm with private rooms for the athletes and a large cafeteri
a in the basement. The dorm was at the front of the campus, shouldered into an area of low-rise apartment buildings. The property swung back in an elongated L from there, backing toward an industrial area of warehouses and factories. These were separated from the fields by a wide, rarely traveled road. The large factory on the northeast corner of the property was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The property was owned by the Indian Helicopter Company and at least superficially patrolled.

  The buildings to the northwest were a motley collection of clothes manufacturers and dried food storehouses. Their yards were cluttered with trucks and old bins — a good place for a group of tangos to gather pre-raid. We’d tried getting the area secured, but had had no luck.

  Two other national teams, one from Malaysia and one from Pakistan, were staying in housing nearby and using the facilities as well. Trace would have fit on any of the teams — she’s part Navaho and part everything else. With the right makeup, she has passed as Chinese and Spanish; dye her hair red and she looks a bonny if sunburned lass. Doc, on the other hand, wasn’t about to come off as Malaysian or Pakistani. In fact, he couldn’t even do a passable Scots accent — we gave him a backstory as an American who’d been hired by the team for his skill with ankles and knees.

  Fitting, since he’s always been something of a leg man.

  (Here’s another hint: there’s a rooster tattooed to his leg. The inked bird hangs by its neck. If you’re ever out drinking with Doc, don’t be surprised if he brags that his cock hangs below his knee. And don’t bet him on it, either. Good for laughs, and more than one free drink.)

  Planting them on the Scottish team made the most sense from a tactical point of view as well — it was far more likely that a team of mostly white Westerners would be targeted than Asians and fellow Muslims. The Scottish team’s manager and the captain knew they were plants, but the rest of the players, coaches, and assorted hangers-on thought they were real.

  If you’ve ever seen Trace handle herself, that’s not hard to believe. In fact, when Shotgun and I stopped by late that afternoon during a scrimmage, she was single-handedly taking the Pakistani team to school.

  Doc was standing on the sideline with the manager and some of the coaches when Shotgun and I ambled into the stands. Shotgun had spent the morning sleeping, and the early afternoon stocking up on snacks. He was munching some sort of Indian peanut and sugar concoction as we settled into the bleachers.

  “What are you eating, elephant food?” I asked.

  “That’s a good one, Dick.”

  While Shotgun munched away, Doc came over and asked how things had gone the night before. Of course he did this with the sprinkling of the usual four-letter terms of endearment.

  “Recover from your bumps and bruises?” he asked. “Or should we confirm that reservation for the Old Shooters Home.”

  “I’m over them,” I told him. “I may have trouble with smoke inhalation. The informer we brought back likes to smoke Cubans.”

  “Maybe I should share some from my stash.” Doc had managed to smuggle a few puros back from our sojourn on Cuba.

  “I don’t think he’s cigar worthy.”

  “Problem?”

  “I don’t know. Something about him doesn’t seem right. Like the fact that he weighed three hundred pounds and was supposedly doing PT and running every morning.”

  “Shotgun weighs three hundred pounds,” said Doc.

  “This guy isn’t Shotgun.”

  Doc shrugged. He looked like he was about to say something when Shotgun spit some of his peanut concoction out of his mouth.

  “Look at those guys over there,” he said, pointing. “Man, they are out of place.”

  Two men in long coats were standing on the opposite end of the field. They were way overdressed for the weather.

  And if that wasn’t suspicious enough, as soon as they saw Shotgun pointing, they turned and started to run.

  Shotgun jumped up from his seat and started to chase them.

  “Shit,” I said, looking at Doc. But there was nothing to do but follow.

  * * *

  Shotgun is relatively fast for a big man, and with his head start he quickly pulled away. In fact, he was so far ahead that I lost sight of him and the men by the time I reached the fence at the end of the field. I climbed to the top — it was six feet tall — paused and took a look. They all seemed to have vanished into thin air.

  I went over the fence and started walking westward along the road. Every few feet I stopped, turning around, expecting to see Shotgun and the others suddenly burst into the open space in the complex of warehouses and yards to the right.

  A yellow brick building stood at the edge of the road to my right about fifty feet away. It was a collection of rectangles that had grown in a crazy quilt pattern over the years. Now mostly abandoned, it had been both a factory and a warehouse over the years, growing to cover nearly two acres. I figured that the men had either kept going down the road or run inside the building.

  I had just about reached it when I saw them run around its far corner, back out onto the road ahead of me. My feet tightened instantly as I started to run. But bogged down by their overcoats, they weren’t running too fast themselves. Neither looked to be taller than five-ten.

  The vague plan I formed in my head went like this:

  Assuming they didn’t stop, I’d jump on the nearest one and wait for Shotgun to catch up. Then we’d pummel the asshole and find out what he was up to.

  Looking at the situation from the comfort of your reading chair, you’re probably thinking: Dick, you jackass. Don’t chase them. They’re wearing long coats. It could be that they’re wired to explode. Hang back, don’t get too close. They may just decide to take you to Paradise with them.

  That, gentle reader, is good and sound advice.

  The truth is, though, that idea never occurred to me.

  Call me stupid, call me dumb. But then I’m not the one that thought I was going to Paradise.

  I was about five yards from grabbing the nearest miscreants when the other one spun around. My view of him was almost entirely blocked, and at that point I was sweating so much that my eyes were stinging with sweat, so everything in front of me was pretty much a blur.

  But I could hear pretty damn well.

  And what I heard was this:

  “Watch out, Dick! He’s got a gun!”

  I did the only thing possible — I launched myself into the air in his direction, hoping for the best.

  2

  ( I )

  I said earlier that I wasn’t thinking that either of the men I was chasing could be wearing explosive undergarments. I hadn’t thought they were carrying weapons, either. In my mind, they were probably scouting the area for some later action. The Commonwealth Games were still a couple of weeks away.

  Which, I have to say, was a big mistake on my part. Blame it on complacency, blame it on lack of imagination. Those two things have played a starring role in every successful terrorist attack since the dawn of the twenty-first century. So I’m not immune.

  My brain finally came online while I was airborne. All sorts of possibilities occurred to me at that moment. None of them were very good.

  It was too late to do anything about them, unfortunately. I spared my arms, puckered my butt, and proceeded to land full force on the man who’d pulled a video camera from beneath his coat.

  Yes, video camera, not a gun.

  It turned out that he and his companion were definitely scouting the practice, but not for a terror attack. They were engaged in skulduggery of a more commercial kind — they’d been hired by the Canadian team to get secret tapes of the competition.

  And you thought the Canadians were all goody-two-shoes.

  * * *

  Our little race across the field attracted quite a crowd. Unfortunately, they didn’t think it was a warm-up for the Games. School security came. Security and staff for all three of the teams practicing at the field ran over. Three Games security people on d
uty showed up. The city police came. I think a few meter maids also put in an appearance.

  They were followed by several members of the news media, making for an A-1 circus. The trench coats were arrested for unsportsmanlike conduct and hauled off to the hoosegow. Yours truly and Shotgun faded into the background, but not before several cameras snapped my portrait. (Google “unidentified bearded man in crowd during field hockey caper arrest, Delhi, India, 2010.” I’m the handsome devil in the upper right corner of the image, scowling for the camera.)

  The news that someone had hired spies to check out the field hockey teams earned sixty-point type in all the local newspapers, and created a scandal back in Ottawa. Unfortunately, the images also raised my profile around the Games a little higher than I wanted. While I was never named in any of the stories, I realized that my face, even in the background, would be enough to tip off a certain subset of scumbags to my presence. That would make it a little more difficult for me to blend in with the scenery. It also could potentially endanger some of the people I was supposed to protect.

  Yes, there are a number of people in the world who do not like the Rogue Warrior. And they’re not all former commanding officers.

  I’m resigned to going through life with a big fat target painted on my butt. But to give us a little more flexibility, I called home for reinforcements.

  You know Sean Mako by now. He’s an ex-Ranger. It breaks the heart of this old navy man to praise the army for anything, but I have to admit that the Rangers are a serious group of warriors, your basic army of one raised to the nth power. Sean’s been separated from the service for a few years now, but he still retains the elite skills he learned as one of the world’s premier infantrymen. Rangers like to say they lead the way, and when you work with people like Sean, you realize that’s not an empty brag. He’s nowhere near as big as Shotgun, nor, to be honest, as strong; he’s more the narrow, sinewy type. Taciturn — as in not prone to shoot his mouth off — he’s one of our jack of all trades, a weapons guy who can handle communications or first aid, and even in a pinch act as our technology officer.