Interdiction, W.Addison Gast [room on the broom read aloud .txt] 📗

the unit was a scruffy individual that looked a lot like the cartoon character “BLUTO” in Popeye because of his untrimmed, scraggy beard This gave him and his team the nick of “Bluto and his boys.” The unit would slip onto a base and capture the base commander and usually his executive officer and then turn them lose after reporting to NAVSYSCOM that they had breached another military base. Well, Dean Wilkins was at that time just putting together what eventually became our first counterterrorism unit. Your dad was a young Major then and between Wilkins and your Dad, the department had access to any communication system in the administration. In an intercepted fast-advise from this red cell unit to one of the air mobility commands, your Dad and Wilkins discovered what base the unit was going to breach on their next operation. It was NAS Cubi Point in the Philippines. Wilkins sent your dad and a team of twenty agents to Cubi and informed the base commander what red cell had in store for them. Base security went OPCOM2 without the usual obvious reinforcement of security. Everyone just got heads-up on anything that looked out of norm. Well, one of the landscape contractors on the base found a weapons cache stored in a culvert next to the beach recreation area. Reviewing security cameras for the location of the culvert, they saw a team of evidently UDT bring the bundle ashore in a nimrod, stash it in the culvert and leave. Your dad’s team took the bundle apart to find several weapons –all loaded with rubber bullets and blanks. They took the weapons apart, reworked the firing pins so they would not work and replaced the cache in the culvert and waited. Then, that same day, they got a call from a sailor that was in charge of the transient air operations passenger terminal. He was concerned that he recently had several individuals that were being inbound processed, fail to pass the security process. In checking out the problem, the base security team found that there had been several “Space-available” passengers that failed the process---all in the past three days. They also found another “gotcha” in the review. All passengers that had not passed the security process were grade E-9 and retired. Three of the ID cards had the same birth dates on them. Additional check on the names indicated that there were six of these individuals on base presently staying in the military lodge for travelers. Within the following 72 hours the team had spotted four more of the travelers who incidentally did not look old enough to be retired military. They were all tagged and observed 24/7. On the following Monday evening, all these ten individuals gathered at the base enlisted club and then abruptly left after a few beer. The team had them cold in the act. When they went to get the weapons from the culvert and make their attack, the team was waiting. It happened the following morning at 0700 when the base commander went to his office. The team knew that one of the infiltrators had broken into the Captain’s office and was waiting on him. The team had the radio frequencies of the infiltrators and knew where each was at that moment. As the door to the Captain’s office opened, it was not the Captain arriving for his day’s work but your Dad and five of his team. They arrested the embarrassed infiltrator SEAL and told him to call each of his team members and surrender to the security force. They assembled them in one of the hangers and had them strip to their skivvies and then they were all photographed and fingerprinted. Wilkins then called the scruffy Greek Captain of the group and told him to personally come get his men and if they ever planned another assault on a WESPAC base, he would pass the photographs and prints of his entire team to every base commander in the Pacific. I guess when the Captain arrived to get his men, one of the master chief boatswain’s mates on the base security team tossed the Captain one of the weapons and told him to fire it. The weapon didn’t fire at the dismay of the captain and when the master chief told him that his team had not even checked their weapons and that they had beer on their breath when captured, the shit really hit the fan. So there, DJ is a great story to ask your dad for details about. I thought it was great reading. Incidentally, the SEAL captain was later charged with a felony for another instance of bad discipline and did a few years in Leavenworth”
“Quite a story Penny.” DJ smiled at Charlene and gave her a thumbs up.
“I have some instructions from the General for you DJ. You are to return here after you take care of the necessary reports and thanks for the assistance in this operation to the local command . Big Bird will be at Lackland AFB tomorrow at 0800.”
“We still have one tango on the lose in Texas Penny. I think we’ll have to stay and finish the job. Tell the General I respectfully request a delay in that request to return.”
“Negative DJ. The General anticipated your response and said to tell you these orders are firm.Copy?”
“Roger. We’ll be airborne tomorrow by noon. We’re finished on this end. I’ll call you tomorrow just prior to leaving and if you have anything for me, I’ll be at the Lackland AFB BOQ.”
DJ looked over at Charlene who was driving. Her blonde hair was gently blowing in the breeze that was coming into the SUV through several of the bullet holes. He could not take his mind off of the way she had conducted herself during this entire operation. She was fearless. She was well trained and educated and had the guts to make it all work when the cards were down. Beyond the professionalism DJ saw in this lady he had just met less than a week prior, there was something else. He was not sure what it was but something in his mind said he was attracted to her.
DJ’s mind could not put aside the fact that one of the most trained and savvy terrorists was still lose. Haydar had to be captured and brought to justice. The hundreds of Pakistanis that died in the Lahore incident demanded it if not his actions in the past week here in America. He would be elusive and so far, from any intel DJ was able to gather from the two quasi students, Haydar was now a lone wolf. He had no contacts with any other cells operating in the US . But DJ knew that kind of thinking was what brought about problems. Never underestimate your enemy especially an Islamic trained terrorist. Their training was not to rush and short-cut a mission. They had been known to plan years for a single mission. From the Lackawanna five, US intelligence had found that they planned the 911 mission for six years in advance.
Charlene entered the Federal garage parking area and after showing her ID to the security guard turned to DJ and asked;
“The team is bringing the prisoners to this location for more interrogation in about an hour. Do you want to hold them here or are they going to be transferred to Gitmo or elsewhere?”
“Good question. I’ll have to call Justice Department. or see if they have someone here to take them off our hands.
“The reason I asked is, you see those two over to your right taking pictures of this war torn vehicle with the bullet holes in the windows we are driving? Those are the first of the press corps that will be all over us in the next hour. If you want to keep the prisoner aspect an unknown, we’d better secure this entrance area from the press.”
“Tell the entrance security detail to the garage to keep the press back a hundred yards and the team to place hoods on the captives.”
Charlene parked the SUV and as they were walking to the building entrance, she called security on her radio and gave them the instructions.
DJ reached over and took hold of Charlene’s arm and asked her to wait a minute.
“WE may not get a private moment for the next few hours Agent McBean so I need to ask you here if you’d like to come back to Arlington with me and enjoy a family back-yard Fourth of July party. We’ll be back here Tuesday to clean up the details.” Charlene was taken off guard for the first time since the two had met. In her mind she wondered if the young Captain even noticed she was female. This was the first time he had hit on her and his timing was not off but the topic was totally unexpected.
“I like the idea DJ but I wonder what department policy people would say.-- I mean riding across country and back in a department private jet for a weekend with your family?”
“All part of the program Agent McBean. I need your personal attention to my after action report I am to make to the department of Homeland security Monday morning.” What we do in the interim is only our business.”
“You have a deal Captain. I’ll look forward to the weekend.”
DJ realized that he had been holding on to her arm all the time he was presenting his plan. She smiled and glanced down at his hold on her arm as if to say; now that I have agreed, you can turn lose of my arm..
DJ turned lose of her arm and opened the door to the FBI central office for the State of Texas. He felt relaxed and a little excited at the same time.
The press conference was the usual how- close- to- a catastrophe-were-we questions and why wasn’t the press informed sooner? Where are the prisoners and who are they?
The deputy director handled the main line of questions and DJ and Charlene stayed in the background. DJ was informed after the gathering dissipated that the prisoners had been turned over to Justice without a hitch. The agent that continued the questioning of Goat and Ali Baba after DJ left to pursue Badra and Haydar left a message for DJ at the FBI office. The note simply said; “Contact Dan Nero at Arlington for additional details on the interrogation of the four captives.” DJ decided to call Dan now and see what the message contained.
“Danny—DJ what was the detail in the interrogation of the tangos I should know?”
“Several things. Lingo. The coroner’s report came back with a curious message that, when we followed it up turned out to be a goldmine in our opinion. The report said that the female –Badra was pregnant. No big shocker for us until we got curious about who might be the father. We thought if it perhaps was Haydar we could use it effectively but after questioning all the captives we found that she was never alone with any of them and the two that were knowledgeable of her time volunteered the award winning response.”
“That was?—“
It appears that the night they stayed in the mountains between Pakistan and India, They had a chat with none other than Osama Ben Lama or, as they called him, The supreme one.”
“Ok that’s cool so now we have a probably location for OSBL?” Is that the information?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then Dan? I don’t know where we are going here.”
“After the little chat with the supreme one, they all turned in for a nights rest. All except OSBL and the female. They didn’t see