Secret of the Oil: Prequel to the Donavan Chronicles (6 page)

GLENWOOD MCDONALD

1:57 P.M. – FRIDAY, THE PENTAGON

EIGHT MINUTES AFTER MAJOR LAWSON SENT HER MESSAGE

As Lieutenant Commander Glenwood McDonald read the flash message, he held his breath and his pulse quickened. He rose from his desk and walked over to the senior duty officer. He showed him the message.

“Okay, Glenwood, you had better take that directly to the boss.” He waved his hand indicating Glenwood was to go right then.

Glenwood proceeded to turn the desk over to his replacement and headed for the division director’s office. After passing by the general’s secretary with a smile and a wave of the paper in his hand, he received the nod to go on in. He knocked on the open door and entered. The director was Major General John Forsman, an old combat soldier from the 25th Infantry Division, who had served in Croatia and the Gulf Wars and had worked in intelligence on and off for over twenty-five years. He was also the same Forsman who worked side by side with then Lieutenant Matt Higgins on the fateful day in 2001. Forsman was an accomplished foreign area officer who spoke Arabic like a native, the result of traveling with his father in the diplomatic service in Oman and Qatar.

On entering, Glenwood noted that the general's gray hair was thinning on top, but his shoulders were as broad and strong as ever. The general looked up with his chiseled face, taut with strain from the many hours he worked each day, and Glenwood noticed he was still able to give a smile to a subordinate. Although boasting many decorations on his uniform blouse, he possessed an ability to put subordinate officers at ease—with the additional capacity to deliver a first class ass-chewing if required. The general signaled him to come close.

“Come on in and have a seat. I’ll be with you in a second.” Shortly, he looked up again from the document he was reading. “Glenwood. What's up?”

“General, I have a flash message. I believe this one is probably going to need your level of action,” Glenwood said.

“Let's see it,” said General Forsman. After scanning the message, he looked up at Glenwood. “You’re right. We have to get on this ASAP. Get the analysts assembled. I want a full workup briefing at 0700 hours tomorrow in the conference room. It will give them some time to get the background data together. We’ve enough forewarning to get this right. Is Higgins back from that mission to Saudi?”

“Yes. I just saw him a few minutes ago. General, you’re aware that Tara must have found out something important for this type of information to come in by phone. She has never been out on an operation before.”

“I am aware of that,” the general said.

“Sir, I really want to lead a team for this mission. I have experience in the field and we have one in training that is ready to go.” He waited on the general’s decision. By asking up front for the command and being in the office, he hoped the general might appoint him to head the team.

“We’ll get that new team we've been training for a year to take this one on. I think it's time to see what they’re made of. I’m going to let Captain Higgins lead the team on this mission, Glenwood. You have been out of the field for a while and would take time to get back up to speed with a new team. This mission will require immediate action. Make sure that Captain Higgins is there for that briefing.”

The general looked down at his notes, ending the meeting. Glenwood got up, stared intensely at the general, clenched his hands into tight fists and left the office. Damn, but maybe he could change things in time. So much for going home early today, and so much for getting command of the team right now, he thought as he was walking the corridors back to his desk.

The halls in the Pentagon offered a collage of various flags and insignia plaques from foreign wars in distant lands. The pictures and banners arrayed on the walls portrayed the struggles of the American military from Bunker Hill, to the halls of Montezuma, to the battle of the Marne, to the airborne invasion of Europe, to the battlefields of Viet Nam and the desert war in Iraq. As he walked through these corridors, Glenwood now fully realized that America was in the middle of a new conflict, which promised to be bloody. The country was at war with the Islamic fundamentalists.

He recalled the message from Tara. The information she sent would certainly initiate a covert operation like none before. This could be a real preemptive strike. Secrecy had to be maintained; a careless word, or slipshod staff work, could spell disaster. He longed to lead the team into combat. He had to prove that he was an equal to the young captain who seemed to be favored by the general. Right now, however, his duty was to get everything coordinated and prepared for the morning meeting. He would bide his time.

By the following day, Glenwood had fulfilled the general’s instructions. All the requested individuals were present in the conference room, along with the pertinent files, accumulated over the last year in their searches for the network of terrorist cells and organizations in the Middle East. Using his own initiative, Glenwood had all the backup data available, even though the general had not specifically requested it. He wished to impress Forsman. Somehow he planned to get command of this team after he was transferred over to the Center. Things would be different there. There General Bergermeyer would be in charge now that she had assumed command.

At exactly 0700 hours, the general rapped on the table and, pointing to Glenwood, he said, “Glenwood, you start the briefing and lead it to a point that brings all present up to speed on the latest intelligence.”

Glenwood walked up to the podium. He switched on the viewgraph and projected a copy of the text on the screen. “Yesterday afternoon we received a message from one of our operators in the Middle East. Here is the content of that message displayed on the screen.”

FLASH MESSAGE

Three terror leaders are to meet in Beirut in two weeks at Intercontinental. Planning operation against America called dirty oil.

EOM.

End Of Message (EOM) only meant the sender had nothing more to send, thereby eliminating any doubt that additional text was coming or that the message was incomplete.

“The single most likely hostile leader who could conduct such an operation called ‘dirty oil’ is probably Tewfik al-Hanbali,” Glenwood said as he pointed a laser penlight on the words
dirty oil
. “Much of the contact that Major Lawson had on the Internet was with a terrorist member in al-Hanbali’s cell, and it makes sense that if someone knows about the dirty oil, Tewfik al-Hanbali must be central to the operation. I’ll be followed by the briefer from current intel division, Dr. Westcamp,” Glenwood concluded.

Dr. John Westcamp walked to the podium. All officers with an academic PhD were addressed as doctor. Westcamp was a tall thin man, about sixty-five, with a sandy brown receding hairline above thick lenses in standard Army-issue black frames. After thirty years in DIA he had seen some real intelligence debacles as well as some shining successes. The fact that they had the date and place of a major terrorist meeting motivated him to spend the entire night in his research preparing for this briefing. He appeared exhausted, but his voice was strong as he started his presentation.

“I concur with Lieutenant Commander McDonald that the leader of this terrorist cell is most likely Tewfik al-Hanbali, a Saudi, known to us through previous intelligence sources and suspected of conducting the devastating attack on American soldiers at the Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia in 1999. We believe he is currently operating in Baghdad, and he recently organized an attack on a Saudi military convoy by some of his associates. His education is in economics from Moscow State, and he has had extensive training in the radical version of Islam. We also have strong reason to believe that one of the hijackers, Ahmed al-Haznawi, was a member of his cell and was on the plane that hit the Pentagon.” No one around the table noticed the reaction in Matt Higgins’s face on this news. Dr. Westcamp changed the slide on the screen to show two different pictures.

“The next picture on the left side of the screen is Faisal Mallah, a Palestinian. He is most likely Hezbollah. The Israelis have been watching him for many years, and he is probably one of the other terrorist leaders planning to meet in Beirut. He was an active commander in the last confrontation with Israel and claims to have personally killed twelve Israeli soldiers.

“The third possible member who might take part in the operation referred to in the message, and the picture you see on the screen, is Kemal Hassan, an Iranian, a former commander in the Revolutionary Guards on the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini following the overthrow of the Shah. He was in charge of hunting down and eliminating any opposition to the imposition of the Islamic state there and was ring leader in the takeover of the American embassy and the 444 days of embarrassment we endured.” Dr. Westcamp turned off the projector and waited until the lights came back up in the room.

“The various friendly intelligence organizations routinely reported on these people in the past. Some information comes from the NSA intercepts, some from the CIA reports, and the majority from the DIA’s own assets. No one has been able to nail down exactly what these terrorists are currently doing, or why they are engaged in this upcoming meeting. As yet the concept of ‘dirty oil’ does not necessarily mean anything in quantifiable terms.” He stopped and surveyed the room for questions and for input from anyone there. No one stirred. “Just what ‘dirty oil’ means ranks as the number one question. What is the secret of the dirty oil? As of right now, we don’t have a good answer to that question.” Dr. Westcamp returned to his seat.

While the briefing was proceeding, Glenwood looked at the men and women around the table who had come to the briefing with their own experiences and expertise in terrorist and counterterrorist operations. Using the reporting of many various and diverse sources, the civilian and military analysts at the DIA were well educated in specific areas of the world on which they produced finished intelligence.

He remembered watching war movies with high level military meetings to decide great things and now he was part of that system He glanced around with pride in his heart. He was one of them.

Glenwood realized the knowledge of the participants in this room came primarily from careful research, training in-country, and contacts in a variety of academic fields. They provided the high-level decision makers with their completed analysis on political-military topics that could be used to form a basis for determining the administration’s policies. In his own mind he possessed the same credentials.

The military members of the DIA came from different backgrounds. The DIA was the second largest intelligence agency after the National Security Agency. Both of these agencies were part of the Department of Defense. The CIA was a relatively small agency in comparison to the Department of Defense (DOD) intelligence agencies. The DOD received eighty percent of all monies appropriated by the Congress for intelligence operations.

These military and civilian professionals, the DIA’s anti-terrorist working group at the conference table, had dedicated their lives to the concept that they must eradicate the terrorists who were conducting operations against the people of the United States. They were not mercenaries, nor were they crusaders. All knew their jobs and knew what their country expected of them. To accomplish that objective and to eliminate terrorists required them to complete their mission in the most secretive and clandestine manner possible, not only for the operatives’ safety but also for the protection of any sources who provided information. They knew the public did not have a right to know. This was not a grandstand organization nor did they look for publicity.

He would make a difference. He knew it. Somehow, someway he planned to directly engage the terrorists who threatened his country.

* * * *

Matt watched as General Forsman walked up to the podium. Looking around, the general's gaze fell upon him. The general knew Matt spoke excellent Arabic and currently sported a deep tan that made his clear, winter-blue eyes stand out even more. When their eyes met, Forsman could only see cold steel blue eyes.

“We do not know what ‘dirty oil’ means or its secret,” the general said, “I’m appointing Captain Higgins to take his team and ensure that whatever the purpose of this Beirut meeting is, it will not be accomplished. These terrorist leaders are the enemies of our country and therefore can be directly engaged by us. Our response will be a direct military operation against armed enemies. You will capture or eliminate these leaders. I want you to attempt to capture one of them, but don’t jeopardize your team in the attempt. If you cannot, then I want you to eliminate them." He walked around to the front of the podium and faced the assembly.

"We don’t know the exact purpose of the meeting or the exact timing of the meeting—only a hotel. Your mission is to find out where and when and to take appropriate action. You have the full use of all the assets of this agency at your disposal. You will report directly to the new Director of Covert Organizations and Operations, Brigadier General Bergermeyer, who will be in charge of this mission. All analysts in DIA will concentrate on this mission and request NSA assistance in acquiring signals intelligence. Captain, do you have any questions?”

“Thank you for the opportunity to do this. Will the Director of National Intelligence want to insert CIA or other operatives into the mission?” Matt asked the general when he looked up.