Lethal Trajectories - Michael Conley [147]
Al Mishari’s complicity secure, he abruptly dismissed the man with a promise to supply an itinerary.
Al Mishari left his commander’s office in a funk. As a patriotic military officer who deeply admired King Mustafa’s leadership—though he found the so-called cleansing operations troubling—he was concerned. Ali Jabar had just committed a major security breach by sharing confidential information far in excess of anything Al Mishari needed to know for his clandestine mission. Worse, Ali Jabar’s deceptive plan could be a detriment to the well-being of Saudi Arabia’s dirty-bomb defenses, odious as they were.
Ali Jabar is a megalomaniac and a threat to the regime, Al Mishari concluded in the secrecy of his own thoughts. But what can I do about it? As four F-15s passed over the base, Al Mishari, an accomplished pilot, knew what he had to do. He would take his F-15 up to the stratosphere where he often did his best thinking.
53
Situation Room
23 October 2017
By two in the afternoon, Clayton had attended to most of the non-Safe Harbors work that he had let slide over the last few days. He was eager now to get back to the grand plan and hurriedly assembled the information he needed for the two thirty Situation Room meeting. With files in hand, he headed down to meet with his team.
“Thank you, my friends, please be seated,” Clayton said, still uncomfortable with the deference shown him as their commander in chief. “A great deal has happened since my speech a week ago, and I’d like an update on where we are today. Tony, let’s start with the CIA.”
“It’s been a busy week, Mr. President. With regard to the Saudi crisis, there have now been two attempts on Prince Khalid’s life. The first attempt nearly succeeded and did, in fact, superficially wound Khalid; thankfully the second, which happened just yesterday, was an ill-conceived failure. Our sense is that Mustafa’s regime is getting desperate to take him out.”
“Excuse me, Tony,” said Jack McCarty. “I’ve got an update on that. I received a call from Prince Khalid less than an hour ago seeking asylum in the United States. Apparently the last attempt made a believer out of him. I said we’d be happy to have him, and he’ll be calling back soon to make arrangements.”
The room was abuzz with this news, and the discussion digressed briefly into the logistics of asylum before reverting back to Tony.
“Israel has become an armed camp,” Mullen continued. “The insurrections in Gaza and the West Bank seem to be subsiding, and the Israelis have launched heavy airstrikes against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Our intelligence indicates Israel has dusted off its nuclear arsenal; it wouldn’t take much to set it off.
“My counterpart in the Mossad, Meir Kahib, told me they had uncovered a terrorist plot to implant a dirty bomb in Haifa. It was a masterful undercover job by the Mossad. They not only nabbed the ringleaders, they also recovered the dirty bomb. Their lab boys are analyzing the bomb and hope to get some sense of its radioactive half-life. Mustafa has claimed his dirty bombs would render a contaminated site uninhabitable for decades, which seems unlikely, but we’ll know the answer once we determine the type of radioactive substances contained in the bomb. The bad news is they have reason to believe another dirty bomb has been smuggled into Israel, and they are taking draconian steps to uncover it.
“On the Saudi front,” Mullen continued, “a number of high-level meetings have taken place between Mustafa and leaders of Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. Our guess is Mustafa’s putting heat on them to continue their partial embargo of oil, now estimated at more than half of their normal exports. We’ve also learned he might try to coerce them into a protectorate arrangement whereby these Gulf countries ‘request’ that the Saudis send in forces to bolster their security.” Mullen finished his report with estimates of oil inventories, consumption levels, and petroleum reserves for several major nations.
“Peter,” asked the president, turning to Peter Canton, “what’s