Dead or Alive

Now all that remained was to decide how far into the desert to drive her.

18

THE RECEPTION they received upon touching down in Tripoli should have told Clark and Chavez all they needed to know about the mood of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his generals, as well as what level of support they could expect. The People’s Militia lieutenant they found waiting at the bottom of the plane’s stairs was polite enough but green as the Libyan sun was hot, and the twitch under his left eye told Clark the man knew enough about his charges to be nervous. Good for you, boy. Clearly Qaddafi was less than pleased to have Western soldiers on his soil, let alone Western Special Forces soldiers. Whether his displeasure was born of pride or some deeper political motive Clark neither knew nor cared. As long as they stayed out of Rainbow’s way and didn’t get anyone inside the embassy killed, Muammar could be as pissy as he liked.

The lieutenant snapped off a sharp salute to Clark, said “Masudi,” which Clark assumed was his name, then stepped aside and gestured toward a circa-1950 canvas canopied Army truck that sat idling fifty feet away. Clark gave the nod to Stanley, who ordered the team to gather the gear and head toward the truck.

The sun was so hot it almost stung Clark’s skin, and sucking the superheated air into his lungs caused them to burn a bit. There was a slight breeze fluttering the flags on the hangar roof but not nearly enough to provide any cooling.

“Hell, at least they sent somebody, huh?” Chavez muttered to Clark as they walked.

“Always look on the bright side, eh, Ding?”

“You got it, mano.”

Within an hour of being pulled off the plane at Heathrow and getting the dump from Alistair Stanley, Clark, Chavez, and the remainder of the on-call R6 shooters were aboard a British Airways jet bound for Italy.

As did all military teams, Rainbow had its fair share of personnel turnover as men returned to their home country’s unit, most of them for well-earned promotions after their work on Rainbow. Of the eight Stanley had picked for the op, four were originals: Master Chief Miguel Chin, Navy SEAL; Homer Johnston; Louis Loiselle; and Dieter Weber. Two Americans, a French-man, a German. Johnston and Loiselle were their snipers, and each was scary-good, their rounds rarely finding anything but X-ring.

In fact, all of them were good shooters. He wasn’t in the least worried about them; you didn’t get to Rainbow without, one, having a lot of time in service, and two, being the best of the best. And you certainly didn’t stay in Rainbow without passing muster with Alistair Stanley, who was, though polite to the core, a real ass-kicker. Better to sweat in training than to bleed on an op, Clark reminded himself. It was an old SEAL adage, one that any Special Forces service worth a damn adhered to as if it were the word of God.

After a brief stop in Rome they were shuttled to a waiting Piaggio P180 Avanti twin-engine turboprop kindly supplied by the 28th Army Aviation “Tucano” Squadron for the final hop to Taranto, where they sat and drank Chinotto, Italy’s herbal answer to American Sprite, while getting a history lesson from the base’s public-affairs officer on the history of Taranto, the Marina Militare, and its predecessor, the Regia Marina. After four hours of this, Stanley’s satellite phone went off. The politics had been settled. How they’d talked Qaddafi out of sending in his shock troops Clark didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Rainbow was green-lit.

An hour later they reboarded the Avanti for the five-hundred-mile hop across the Med to Tripoli.

Clark followed Chavez to the truck and climbed aboard. Sitting across the wooden bench seat from him was a man in civilian clothes.

“Tad Richards,” the man said, shaking Clark’s hand, “U.S. embassy.”

Clark didn’t bother asking the man’s position. The answer would likely involve a combination of words like attache, cultural, junior, and state department, but he was in fact a member of CIA station Libya, which worked out of the embassy in the Corinthia Bab Africa Hotel. Like the People’s Militia lieutenant who’d greeted them, Richards looked too fresh by half. Probably his first overseas posting, Clark decided. Didn’t matter, really. As long as the man had the intel dump for them.

With the crunching of gears and a plume of diesel exhaust, the truck lurched forward and started moving.

“Sorry for the delay,” Richards said.

Clark shrugged, noting that the man hadn’t asked for names. Maybe a little sharper than I thought. He said, “I gather the colonel is less than enthusiastic about hosting us.”

“You gather correctly. Not sure of the hows, but the phones have been nuts for the past eight hours. Army’s got extra security posted around the hotel.”

This made sense. Whether a real threat or not, the Libyan government’s enhanced “protection” of the U.S. embassy was certainly a signal: The people of Libya were so unhappy about having Western soldiers on their soil that attacks on American assets were possible. It was crap, of course, but Muammar had to walk the fine line between being America’s newest ally in North Africa and presiding over a population that was still largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and therefore unsympathetic to their oppressors, the United States and Israel.

“The joy of international politics,” Clark observed.

“Amen.”

“You got Arabic?”

“Yeah, passable. Getting better. Working on a level-three Rosetta Stone course.”

“Good. I’ll need you to stick around, translate for us.”

“You got it.”

“You have intel for us?”

Richards nodded, wiping his sweating forehead with a handkerchief. “They’ve got a command post set up on the top floor of an apartment building a block from the embassy. I’ll show you what we’ve got when we get there.”

“Fair enough,” Clark replied. “Any contact from inside the compound?”

“None.”

“How many hostages?”

“According to the Swedish foreign ministry, sixteen.”

“What’ve they done so far? The locals, I mean.”

“Nothing, as far as we can tell, beyond setting up a perimeter and keeping the civilians and reporters back.”

“The news broke?” Chavez asked.

Richards nodded. “Couple hours ago, while you were in the air. Sorry, forgot to tell you.”

Clark asked, “Utilities?”

“Water and electricity are still running to the compound.”

Cutting off these essentials was near the top of the to-do list for any hostage situation. This was important for two reasons: One, no matter how tough they were, a lack of amenities would begin to wear on the bad guys. And two, the resumption of water and electricity could be used during negotiations: Give us five hostages and we’ll turn your air-conditioning back on.

Here again, the Libyan government, having gotten the political “butt the fuck out,” was washing its hands of the situation. This could work in their favor, however. Unless the bad guys inside the embassy were complete idiots, they would have taken note of the utilities and perhaps made some guesses about what was happening outside, assuming that the security forces were either unprepared or waiting to cut the power in advance of an assault.

Maybe… if, Clark thought. Hard to get into anyone’s head, let alone some dirtball who thinks it’s okay to take hostage a bunch of innocent civilians. It was just as likely the bad guys weren’t strategic thinkers at all and hadn’t given a second thought to the power-and-water question. Still, they’d been good enough to dispatch those Sarskilda Skyddsgruppens, which at the very least suggested Rainbow was dealing with people with some training. Didn’t matter, really. There was none better than Rainbow, of that Clark was certain. Whatever the situation inside, it’d get sorted out-and most likely to the detriment of the bad guys.

The trip took twenty minutes. Clark spent most of it running scenarios in his head and watching the dusty,