Secret of the Oil: Prequel to the Donavan Chronicles (24 page)

MATT HIGGINS

12:05 P.M. – SAUDI ARABIAN DESERT

Before they left to go after the two remaining terrorists, Matt stared down at the body of al-Hanbali. Right now, the adrenaline was flowing through him at the speed and force of a fast moving freight train. It was a good feeling to get this terrorist. He had overcome his doubts and his regrets for being late on the previous occasions. That belonged to the past, now he could see that his tenacious efforts had accomplished the mission. The authorities in Washington had helped, but it felt like they had hindered just as much. That he had not prevented one explosion would always gnaw at him.

“Bridget, we’ve got to go after the ones you were tailing. We’ll have them all if we can capture those two,” Matt said. “I feel like shit over the loss of our man, not to mention those guys in the chopper. Damn, what a waste, but we can’t stop now. We’ve to get the rest of those bastards. They did kill American troops. They must pay.”

The satellite phone rang and Matt answered it. Mary Jean asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, ma’am. All the terrorists are dead except two. Bridget and I are going to try to get the last two so we can wrap this operation up. There is nothing we can do for the team you sent. They all perished in the crash, we checked.”

“Don’t spend any more time there. A team will be on site shortly to take care of the clean up. I want you out of there. Now.”

“Is the aircraft waiting for us at the airport?” Matt asked; was there going to be another screw up by Washington? He indicated to Bridget to get moving toward the SUV.

“It will arrive there in thirty minutes. You be there. That’s an order. It’ll take you to Cyprus, then to an RAF base in the United Kingdom, then direct to Andrews Air Force base. I’ll be there to meet you,” Mary Jean said and rang off.

“Yea, and to take a chunk out of my ass for not preventing the explosion,” Matt said aloud.

Looking at Bridget with an arctic cold blue stare he said, “We go and we get the other two. I don’t want even one of them getting away. Then we go back home. It won’t be a hero’s welcome. I could tell the general is pissed. You know we did everything we could to get to these guys earlier and the system just didn’t let us get there on time. Have you ever thought that we could do this better without all the ‘Help’ we got?” Matt asked. They reached the vehicle and jumped in.

“Maybe we should talk about this after we take care of the last ones. So let’s go get them,” Bridget said. She peeled a dust cloud of sand as she floored the accelerator.

They raced for the main road. Upon reaching it, Bridget drove toward where she had last seen the two terrorists sitting at a gas station. Approaching the small fueling station, Bridget saw the car still parked off to the side, the same location as when she left to respond to Matt’s call. She pulled in, parked on the opposite side of the station from the vehicle, and waited a full minute. Then Matt got out and came round to Bridget’s side of the SUV. He rested his arm on the open window.

Bridget said, “I’m looking in the mirrors and I don’t see either one of them. But maybe they are inside the building. Let’s wait a few minutes and see. What a loss, that team of McDonald’s. It’s just hitting me. Is there anything we could have done?”

“I should’ve killed him when I approached. Maybe he wouldn’t have fallen on the plunger.”

“Shoulda, coulda, bullshit. We did the best we could at the time. Don’t Monday morning quarterback. There is really nothing we could have done to change the course of events. We’ll just have to live with that,” Bridget said and gently touched Matt’s hand.

“Okay, I hear you, but if those shits don’t come out in two minutes, I’ll mosey over and see if I can find out anything. You’ll have to cover me,” Matt said.

“On the plane trip back to Washington,” Bridget said, “I’d like to hear more of your thoughts on what we could have done better on this mission, or maybe how we can do better in the future. I’ve been thinking seriously about getting out of the army. It’s been good to me. It made me tough and I know how to kill as well as how to defend myself now. My fear of a man doing something again to me against my will has gone. By the way, you don’t fit in that category,” she smiled at him and grabbed his hand. “You and I have worked together quite well on this mission, just as we did in the training. I think we could in the future, but let’s see how things work out.” She removed her hand when the door at the gasoline station opened and a man walked over to the Nissan they were watching.

“He’s not one of the men who came in here in that vehicle,” Bridget said. She moved over on the front seat and started backing the car up, to block the SUV from departing. Matt hurried over to the Nissan and then rushed the driver’s side, pulling his weapon as he went. He put the weapon right in the man’s face. The man looked up in pure horror.

“Where are the two men who came in this vehicle?” Matt demanded in Arabic.

“They left maybe ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago,” came the response.

“Why are you in this car?” Matt asked.

“They traded me their car for mine,” he said, not mentioning the cash he must have received.

Matt asked the man to give him a description of the truck and the license numbers. Realistically, he knew there was probably no chance of finding a vehicle with a fifteen-minute lead heading back into the city. It would disappear into a populated area and the terrorists would change cars and be gone. There was no way they could get local police to be of any assistance in such a short time.

As he was about to turn away from the vehicle, Matt saw a small computer lying on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He opened the back door and grabbed the computer. The man started to shout, but Matt ignored him and returned to the car where Bridget waited.

He told Bridget, “That guy says he traded cars with two men and they are in a blue pickup truck. I grabbed this computer from the back floor of the vehicle. I assume it belonged to one of them.”

“Great. It might give us some more info on those two and good intel on the cell they belong to.” She started driving back towards Ras Tanura and the airport. Both of them were thinking about the men who had gotten away. The terrorists were gone, and there was no real way of finding them in the time that they had left before their scheduled departure at the airport. They had accomplished the mission of killing Tewfik al-Hanbali, killed most of his men, and captured the atomic weapon. Mary Jean wanted that weapon back in the states as soon as possible for examination and evaluation. All in all, Matt felt the team had basically completed its mission. It was time to head for the airport. As they drove, they both had unanswered questions.

“Why do you think those two ran?” Bridget asked.

“Probably after they heard the underground explosion and didn’t see the one in town go off they realized something had gone wrong. They might have even snuck back and seen us at the oil derrick, who knows?” Matt thought aloud.

“They’ll have to run. They know we’ll have to tell the Saudis everything now that it has detonated on their soil,” Bridget said.

“Yeah. I bet they’ll probably try to get out of the country. I just hope the Saudis catch them.”

“At least, they don’t have any more atomic bombs,” Bridget concluded.

MATT HIGGINS

12:47 P.M. - AT THE AIRPORT - RAS TANURA

Matt saw the aircraft approaching just as they arrived at the gate to the executive ramp. When he looked towards the rear of the parking lot, he saw Sergeant Peter O’Toole walking to the rear of a SUV. He drove over to park beside the vehicle that Peter and Lucien occupied.

Peter said, “Captain, we had better leave these cars here. No one will find them for a few days. There are a lot of cars that look like these parked here. As soon as that aircraft comes to a stop, Lucien and I’ll carry Gary out and get him strapped down.”

“Okay. Let’s get all of our stuff out of the cars, clean them up, and show no evidence that we were in them. We’ll probably have a few minutes before that aircraft is ready for us to get on board,” Matt said.

While sanitizing the car, they were surprised to see a vehicle approaching them. From outward appearances it looked like a military green-colored sedan. They thought this must be one of their own people coming to assist them. The car stopped a few feet from where Matt was standing.

The olive skinned man with dark sunglasses and a Western-style military uniform emerged from the vehicle. As the man got out of the car, Matt was able to see that he wore the uniform of a Saudi Arabian general officer. He immediately recognized him.

“Captain Higgins, a pleasure to see you again. A certain American admiral told me that you would be here getting ready to depart for the United States. I must again congratulate you on what you have accomplished, and please accept my sympathy for the loss of your man. I will handle the crash site where you lost other brave men. You may never know what it took to pull this off, unless the admiral decides to talk, a liberty that I do not have, but I want to assure you that we are both on the same side. I’ll make sure that, as far as anyone will ever know, you have not been in Saudi Arabia at this time. You have my best wishes. Good luck and good fortune to you and your men, all of your men,” he said with a large smile emerging on his face as he saw Bridget. The general got back into the car.

Captain Higgins, and the rest of his team, snapped to attention and saluted the general as he drove off. The car had not gone fifty feet, when Lucien punched Peter in the side and said, “What the friggin’ hell was that all about?”

“One of those “if I tell you, you know that I’m going to have to kill you” things. Now let’s get moving and get Gary on the aircraft so we can get out of here,” Peter said.

Matt turned to Bridget, who looked perplexed. He could see that she didn’t understand how a Saudi general seemed to know everything that they had done and had congratulated them on accomplishing their mission.

“How the hell did he know you? Moreover, you seemed to know him.” She waited for an answer.

“You remember the mission I went on to Saudi just before this one? Well, I met him then,” Matt said.

“He sure seemed pleased to see you and to come out here to meet us. How did he know where we would be? No, skip that. I can figure that out,” Bridget said.

“I think that when we get back,” Matt said, “we’d better have a very, very long discussion about everything that happened on this mission. You never know when it might come in handy in the future. We do have to get better at doing this. I’m not sure that what we did was the best way of getting it accomplished.” They headed towards their aircraft that had opened its doors after taxing to a stop.

Once they were inside and seated, the aircraft taxied for take off. They were airborne in less than two minutes. The Gulfstream V jet headed for their first stop for refueling at the RAF base on Cyprus. Fourteen hours before they were back in the States.

Matt and Bridget sat beside each other in the front of the aircraft, while Peter and Lucien occupied the two rearmost seats. Matt thought it was time to carry the promised conversation in private, but Bridget beat him to it.

“Matt, I think this is might be my last mission for the DIA. We didn’t receive the kind of support we needed, and we weren’t able to move as fast as we should have. To be able to get these guys we have to have the ability to act faster using real time intelligence, reacting quicker to changing conditions, and make decisive judgments in the field without waiting on somebody from Washington to tell us what to do.” Bridget folded her arms and looked straight ahead. “I plan on not re-upping at the conclusion of my term of service. I want to go to college and get my master’s and PhD.”

“That’s great and I agree with what you said,” Matt said. “I think it may be time for me to get out of the army. I’ve done everything I possibly can in the short time I’ve been in and I feel like I have accomplished a good bit. I’m not patting myself on the back. But I think I might be able to do something like this on the outside with all the training we have.”

“Now we’ve been up for a long time, and I need some sleep,” Bridget said. “Let’s explore this in greater detail when we get back and have some time to refresh ourselves and to think this through in all its ramifications.” Bridget let her eyes close.

Fourteen hours later, they arrived at Andrews Air Force Base. Mary Jean was standing on the tarmac waiting for them.

STRIKE TEAM ONE

ADA, OKLAHOMA

Friday Morning

It was a small church in East Oklahoma, just outside Ada. Six uniformed pallbearers surrounded the casket, draped in an American flag. The graveyard of the church was just to the right of the small white wood building and there were a few scraggly oaks in the area. The pallbearers slowly lowered the casket into the ground as the military bugler played the doleful notes of the final farewell to Sergeant Gary Macnamara. The sharp commands of the honor guard sergeant brought all the attendees back to reality after the last note of taps died in the slight breeze. The crack of the three volleys of gunfire preceded the honor guard commander going forward to present the folded flag to the father and mother of this brave soldier. That concluded the brief but fitting ceremony for a fallen warrior.

Matt, Bridget, Peter, and Lucien walked out of the small countryside graveyard toward the waiting cars. A week had passed since their return to the U.S.

“Everyone take three days off and meet up back at the center on Monday,” Matt said.

Matt strode toward the waiting military sedan and Bridget followed.

As they reached the car, the driver came around to greet them and handed Matt a note. “I was instructed to give this to you after the ceremony.”

Bridget moved to Matt’s side as he opened the envelope. The DIA embossed symbol was on the letterhead and it came from General Bergermeyer’s office.

Captain Matt Higgins:

On your return to Washington, you and Sergeant Donavan will report to my office on Monday at 0800 hours. Class A uniform.

BG Mary Jean Bergermeyer

“They are not waiting long to have our heads for not stopping that bomb going off. Even if I’d shot the bastard the second I walked toward him, he could still have fallen on the plunger. We both agree on that. I haven’t figured out yet why he tried to make a phone call. I think it might have been to set off the other weapon that we recovered,” Matt said.

“Probably so. We have to be in D.C. on Monday, so let’s take the time to make our plans, if we’re going to make any plans.” Bridget walked to the other side of the car to get in.

After sitting in the car, Matt said, “Lets get to D.C. today; that gives us two days to work this out. We need to have a serious discussion.”

When they arrived back at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, they agreed to meet at Matt’s place that evening. They went their separate ways, with a heightened sense of the future and anticipation for what it might hold for them.

* * * *

When Bridget arrived at Matt’s townhouse, she smelled the pizza even before he opened the door. All the team members loved pizza and they had often enjoyed a Papa John’s after a day of rugged training. She had thought of nothing but Matt for the last few hours. Could they really do something together? Did they—no really, did
she
—want to keep it on a platonic relationship? To work together as partners, that would be the best, but she might have a difficult time with that arrangement. She believed she was falling for Matt. She couldn’t make her mind up on what to do.

Matt greeted her, led her into the living room, and put the boxes of pizzas on the coffee table. The Coors was ice cold and they started on the pepperoni first.

“Well, what is it you think she really wants us for on Monday?” Bridget asked, addressing the first topic of conversation.

“I think it is to ream us out,” Matt said. “We did stop the atomic weapon from detonation in the city, but we failed in the desert. We’ll probably be sent off for a long retraining session and maybe even told we’re not fit for this type of operation, even though I think they would be full of shit.”

“I think you are being too hard,” Bridget said. “We’ve accomplished a lot on this mission and we did all we could with the resources we had available. We have one reason to hang our heads—Gary’s death. I also regret the loss of the guys in the helo.”

They ate a while in silence. Then Bridget asked, “Will you resign your commission?”

“Yes, at the end of the month. You?” Matt asked.

“I have a few months left on my enlistment.”

The tri-band cell phone rang. Matt answered it, put it on speaker, and heard the voice of Admiral Kidd say, “Captain Higgins, I need to see you and that sergeant. If you will be at your operations center on Monday morning at nine, I’ll have my aide-de-camp pick you up. Is that convenient?”

Matt looked at Bridget with his eyes wide and showing the bewilderment he felt. “Yes, admiral, we can be there. May I ask what this is about?”

“No. See you on Monday,” the admiral said tersely as he closed the connection.

“What the hell!” Matt said with a grimace. “We may be in more cow dung than we thought. Why would he want both of us at the center on Monday morning and give no reason?” Matt took a sip of his beer and relaxed back into the chair.

“If you are right about how they view our mission to Saudi, I don’t suppose it’s to give us a promotion,” Bridget said.

They talked about more details of their future career plans. Just past midnight, they decided that they were on the right course and that on Monday they would tell the general about their plans.

Bridget took the last sip from her beer and put it on the table. They both stood up and Matt escorted her to the door. She rapidly turned and gave him a kiss, then another one. She felt his reticence, pulled back, turned away and left.

“Wait!” Matt shouted. “Please come back here. Please,” he said in a softer voice.

She slowly walked back into his open arms.