The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) (27 page)

January 14, 1991 started with a cold morning sun rising over an endless desert. All preparations had been made. Elite teams of the British Special Air Service were deployed into southern Iraq three days earlier. Their reconnaissance and reports back from the field detailed position and placement of Iraq forces. The allied air campaign was set to begin in two days. The Iraqi military had become very adept at hiding their forces, especially tanks and Scud missile launchers, from satellite and aerial surveillance. Eyes on the ground were invaluable.

The British reports were of great interest to Seibel and Fuchs as they put the teams of Delta Force commandos through the plan one last time. Seibel had made the decision to keep Lance under full cover as a translator and avoided any public contact. Lance was embedded in one of three Delta Force teams being inserted into Iraq. The teams were tasked with traveling under cover of night through the eastern deserts of Iraq to the outskirts of Baghdad. They were to arrive at a location highly suspected to be the transaction zone for nuclear materials smuggled into the country by Korovin and Kusnetsov.

The intelligence utilized to determine this time and location had been incredibly difficult to obtain. It resulted from combined espionage resources working both sides of the quickly deteriorating “Iron Curtain.” Seibel and Smelinski had spoken twice more, which was more than they’d conversed in the previous two decades.

K&K had been ultra-secretive in their efforts to contact, negotiate and deliver nuclear arms to a now fully rogue Iraqi government. But their secrets were discovered along the way.

Marta and her network had remained illusive. Tracking their activity and progress had been significantly more difficult. Gregor the Terrible shared a theory with Seibel that Marta was working at an entirely different level than Korovin and Kusnetsov and even monitoring their progress from inside.

He believed that Marta’s nascent operation was playing all sides against each other and didn’t intend to deliver anything to anyone. Instead, any funds garnered from her operation would be funneled back into a ghost government of oligarchs springing up in Russia. Seibel considered it an interesting theory.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in the cold Saudi Arabian desert outside Hafar al Batin, Seibel and his team had set up operations a quarter of a mile from the 24
^th
Infantry headquarters. His team, headed by Fuchs and joined by the Jordanians, worked closely with military intelligence.

The Delta Force teams had been going through drills for several weeks now, including a week at Harvey Point, where Seibel could issue orders directly. Colonel Franklin, the commander on scene for Delta, had questioned Seibel and his methods within minutes of meeting him at the Point. The two men stepped aside for a brief conversation.

Not surprisingly, Franklin did not question Seibel again. Papa had a way of convincing individuals that his plans and approach were the most likely to succeed. Colonel Franklin stood across a table from Seibel as they poured over a map lying before them and the three captains who were to lead the Delta teams the next day.

“Newest data coming in from the field, thanks to our British friends, is just as we expected. Most Iraqi resources are either in place or being moved to Kuwait or the northern Iraq theatre. Baghdad is being emptied of its military elements,” Seibel swirled his finger around the ancient city at the center of the map as he spoke. “Every day they move more troops out. They continue to reinforce this area directly north of our position. Troop and transport movements are being captured by aerial and satellite reconnaissance.”

“As we have discussed at length, we will circumvent these forces by entering Iraq from further to the west,” Colonel Franklin spoke and moved his finger from Hafar to the west and up through the deserts of Saudi Arabia into southern Iraq. “Your entry point will be here, west of Nisab.” The small desert outpost along the Saudi/Iraq border was little more than a gathering of small huts surrounded by hundreds of miles of barren desert.

Franklin added, “Black Hawks will transport your teams to the drop zone outside Mahmudiyah. The choppers will remain there until you signal them for extraction.”

Captain Alan Doster, commander for the second Delta Team leaned in. “So no modifications for entry. The route from Mahmudiyah is still this surface road? No changes there?” He traced his finger along a line south and east of central Baghdad.

Colonel Franklin responded. “Correct. That corridor is unprotected, no checkpoints detected. And those that spring up will be low-level. Still provides ideal access to the transaction location without having to utilize major thoroughfares or highways except for the one bridge across the river.”

The group of a dozen men stood around a table and continued the planning for another 45 minutes. To the side stood a silent but observant shaggy faced Corporal Priest, a translator. He had been briefed, debriefed and over-briefed in secret by Seibel and Fuchs late into the evenings. Lance had memorized every detail of every report Seibel and team could obtain on K&K, the Marta Squad, as he had come to call them, and the players on the Iraqi side. He’d also read up on deactivating nuclear warheads.
Boring stuff
.

During the previous month and a half, he had continued to assimilate to the desert environment and culture with daily tanning, dying his hair and beard jet black again. His voice projected the dryness, the utter dust-filled dryness that pervades the kingdom. He drank little water, never took a shower and dropped even more of the weight he had carried into the desert from western civilization. He looked to anyone who gave him a moment’s attention to be a local – a creature of the desert.

He kept up his fitness routine by running barefoot up and down desert hills each morning before sunrise. He was in seriously deadly shape.

His transition was nothing short of remarkable. He was an Arab. He had taken to changing into a thawb and keffiyeh and walking around amongst the locals in Hafar any chance he got. He had spent more time with several traveling Bedouin families of peddlers to improve his acting skills. Try as he might, he couldn’t take on their hardscrabble persona in a convincing manner. Their total independence from any other aspect of Arab life made them a challenge to any actor, let alone a 24-year-old Oklahoman. Still, he worked at it every day.

Fooling Americans and westerners was no problem. Lance had been subjected to rude and crude treatment at the hands of American soldiers and been berated for being in a secure area by a French lieutenant who went as far as pulling his sidearm to motivate an apologetic Lance to leave the area immediately.

Captain Reese had gotten used to Lance’s need to assimilate and enjoyed being in on the ruse. He had come to rely on Lance and his translation skills daily. The main character Lance had developed was Ismail, the son of a fisherman in Jeddah who wanted to help his country fight off the demon and unholy Saddam. He had become an expert in the types of fish, ideal locales and preeminent weeks of each season to bring in the best catch from the Red Sea. Reese would at times have to interrupt Lance and his tales of fishing along the coast to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. Lance would bow and praise Allah for his bountiful seas. Invariably, everyone sitting around them would also bow and thank Allah as well.

“The sea is a desert Allah has given us with the bounty below, just like the desert sands,” Ismail would add, also to general agreement from those around him. Reese would smile and try to keep from laughing.

If anyone ever took it upon themselves to question Ismail’s seemingly western features beneath his tanned skin, Lance would tell them the story of his grandfather, also named Ismail. He had traveled the world as a sailor and met the love of his life, a Spanish beauty in Barcelona, and brought her back to Jeddah. In telling this tale, he invariably brought in Muslim pride at conquering a good portion of the Spanish Iberian Peninsula 1,500 years ago. The Moors were Muslim Northern Africans who left their marks on European culture in the forms of architecture, government and, of course, dark skin and coal black hair.

It was as Ismail that Lance stood at the back of the room as the final elements of the plan were nailed down by Seibel, Colonel Franklin and Delta Captains Parkhurst, Doster and Hubbard. Lance had been assigned to Doster’s squad to ride shotgun alongside Tarwanah who would drive one of the three trucks from Mahmudiyah northeast into southern Baghdad. As the group broke, Doster turned to Lance and smiled.

“You got all that Corporal Ismail?”

“God willing, we will be successful,” he was in character more than not most days.

“I get the feeling you are my lucky charm on this one,” Doster looked back at the other captains. “Don’t know why I got you, but Seibel seems to think you’ll be able to handle yourself and the product when it is secured. You think so?”

Lance responded by singing a newly classic song and strumming his air guitar. By the time he was done with the song, Doster and everyone else in the room was singing alone. They continued singing and humming the song as they left.

“Always infecting others.” Seibel smiled a telling grin.

“Music is my life,” and then just as quickly back in character, “Allah gives us music to allow us to focus on his majesty, his word.”

“Ah yes.” Seibel nodded.

“Allah be praised,” Ismail answered.

Seibel kept the smile, but stepped in close to Lance and whispered into his ear. “This one is turning into a goddamn crapshoot and quick. Intel on the items in transit has been spotty the last two days since the truck passed over the border from Iran.”

“I thought you had 24/7 surveillance, satellite and fixed wing?” Lance asked.

“I thought so as well, but a couple of generals have seen fit to pull my recon for other intel, especially with go-ahead day after tomorrow.”

“So have we lost contact with the vehicle?” Lance asked.

“Only for short periods, a little more than an hour a few times. Confidence is high that nothing has changed and the package is still on board. Point and follow vehicles have not changed. Satellite imagery has confirmed Korovin in the follow vehicle. He got out to take a piss yesterday morning and the bird got a perfect shot.”

“Of his pecker?”

“No,” Seibel laughed. “His bald head.”

“Oh you mean this,” and Lance proceeded to grab his privates, relax his shoulders and raise his head, releasing a quiet groan of satisfaction felt during urination.

“Exactly, except he is left-handed.” Seibel corrected.

“I knew there was something else about that guy I didn’t like. He’s a brutal killer, an extortionist, but by God, he’s wrong-handed as well. I’m going to enjoy killing him.”

Seibel stepped back to ditto Lance’s comment, “Allah be praised.”