The two leading SUVs set off down a dusty track into Jawf Province, but they kept apart so the watchers in Nevada did not know which to strike. Then they stopped for breakfast and parked side by side. There were eight figures grouped around the vehicles. Two drivers and four bodyguards, and the other two were American citizens: Awlaki himself and Samir Khan, editor of the English-language online Jihadi magazine Inspire.
The NCO at Creech told senior authority what he had in the target frame. From Washington, a voice murmured: “Take the shot.” It was a J-SOC major, a soccer mom, about to take her kids to evening practice.
The trigger was pressed in Nevada. Over North Yemen, 60,000 feet high in a beautiful sunrise, two Hellfire missiles detached themselves from the Predator, sniffed the nose-cone signal like hunting dogs and tilted down to the desert. Twelve seconds later, both Land Cruisers and eight men vaporized.
Within six months, J-SOC had ample evidence that Asiri, still only thirty, had continued making bombs, and they were getting more and more sophisticated. He began to experiment with the implantation of explosives inside the human body, where no scanner could spot them.
He sent his kid brother to assassinate the Saudi head of counterterrorism, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef. The youth claimed he had renounced terrorism, wished to come home, possessed much information and sought an interview. The prince agreed to see him.
As he entered the room, the young Asiri simply blew up. The prince was lucky; he was blown backward through the door he had come in by, taking only some cuts and bruises.
The young Asiri had a small but powerful bomb up his anus. The detonator was a mobile-telephone-based device across the border. It was his own brother who designed and triggered it.
And the dead Awlaki had a successor. A man known only as the Preacher began to launch sermons into cyberspace. Just as powerful, just as hate filled, just as dangerous. Yemen’s ineffectual president fell to the Arab Spring. A new man took over, younger, more vigorous, prepared to cooperate with the U.S. in exchange for substantial developmental aid.
The drone coverage of Yemen increased. U.S.-paid agents proliferated. The army was launched against AQAP leaders. Quso was wiped out. But still it was presumed the Preacher, whoever he was, remained in Yemen. Now, thanks to a boy in a loft in Centerville, the Tracker knew better.
• • •
As Tracker closed the file on the life of Awlaki, a report came through from those Gray Fox had simply called the drone boys. For this operation, J-SOC was not using the CIA drone facility out of Nevada but its own dedicated unit out of Pope Air Force Base near Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The report was succinct and to the point. Trucks had been seen visiting the target warehouse/shed in Kismayo. Some came, went undercover and left. They arrived loaded but left empty. Two were open-topped over the cargo area. What they seemed to be carrying was a cargo of fruit and vegetables. Endit.
Tracker turned and stared at the portrait of the Preacher on his wall. What the hell do you want with fruit and vegetables? he mused.
He stretched, rose and walked out into the summer warmth. Ignoring the smiles of those in the parking lot, he hauled his Fireblade off its stand, pulled on his helmet with the visor down and cruised out through the gate. When he hit the highway, he turned south for D.C., then off the main road for Centerville.
“I want you to check something for me,” he told Ariel, as he crouched in the semidarkness of the attic. “Someone is buying fruit and vegetables in Kismayo. Can you find out where it is coming from and where it is going to?”
There were others at computer consoles he could have approached, but in a vast arms-industrial-espionage complex teeming with rivals and loose mouths Ariel had two unpurchasable advantages: He reported to only one man and he never talked to anybody. Ariel’s fingers flickered away. The map of lower Somalia swam into view.
“It’s not all desert,” he said. “There is a richly forested and planted area along both banks of the Lower Juba Valley. Look, you can see the farms.”
Tracker studied the patchwork quilt of orchards and plantations, a splash of green against the dull ocher desert. The country’s only fertile zone, the food bowl of the south. If those cargoes were harvested in the plantations he was staring at and trucked to Kismayo, where thence? Local markets or export?
“Go to Kismayo port zone.”
Like everything else, the port was pretty shattered. Once it had thrived, but the quay was broken in a dozen places, the old derricks tilted and damaged beyond use. It could be that a freighter came in occasionally. Not to discharge. What could al-Shabaab’s bankrupt ministate import and pay for? But to pick something up? Fruit and vegetables? Maybe. But destination where? And for what?
“Search the commercial world, Ariel. See if any company trades with Kismayo. Anyone buying fruit and vegetables raised in the Lower Juba Valley. If so, who are they? Maybe they own the warehouse.”
He left him to it and returned to TOSA.
• • •
In the extreme northern suburbs of Tel Aviv, off the road to Herzliya, in a quiet street just down from a food market, is a large, nondescript office block that its inhabitants simply call the Office. It is the headquarters of Mossad. Two days after Tracker’s meeting with Simon Jordan at the Mandarin Oriental, three men in short-sleeved, open-necked shirts met in the director’s office. That room had seen quite a few momentous conferences.
It was where, in the autumn of 1972 after the summer slaughter of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Zvi Zamir had ordered his kidonim (bayonets) to go out, find and kill the Black September fanatics responsible. Such was the decision by Prime Minister Golda Meir to launch Operation Wrath of God. Over forty years later, it was still shabby.
The men were of different ranks and ages but only used first names. The oldest had been there twenty years and needed only the fingers of one hand to recall the times he had heard surnames. The grizzled director was Uri, the chief of operations was David and the youngest, running the Horn of Africa desk, Benny.
“The Americans are asking for our help,” said Uri.
“Surprise me,” muttered David.
“It seems they have tracked down the Preacher.”
He had no need to explain. Jihadi terrorism has several targets for its violence, and Israel is far up the list, along with the U.S. Everyone present knew of the top fifty in the world, even though Hamas to their south, Hezbollah to their north and Iran’s al-Quds thugs to their east jostled for first in the queue. The Preacher’s sermons might target America and Britain, but they knew who he was.