The Yemeni Package: Sean's File, #4

Prologues - Long Ago Far Away

Yemen Arab Republic

The border between North and South

A day in 1962 no one remembers

It was a castle of sand, with reeds for minarets and rocks at the corners. There would be a city nearby, with people watched over by their Sultan. Little Samir, five years old, had not built the city yet. There had to be a castle first, so the people would know it was safe to live here. Of this, he was sure.

Samir dug the mouth of the wadi to bring water to the oasis in the rainy season. The wash would remain underground so the women of the city could fetch water from its wells. It would be a good place, he had decided. People would live here a long time and would all be happy.

Glancing up at a growling sound, Samir saw another boy, Nasir, walking toward him. In Nasir's hand was a battered, metal toy truck—a tin soldier riding in the back—driving through the air down a road only he, older by a year, could see.

Once he reached Samir, Nasir looked up and stopped. He laughed. What are you up to? the Yemeni child asked.

I am building a castle here, Samir pronounced. It is for the city that will be there. He pointed toward the level area where he would work next.

It is small for a castle, Nasir said with a frown. See? The walls should be higher. The enemy could take your castle very easily.

No. They would be too afraid of the Sultan, Samir informed him.

Again Nasir laughed. Ha! We have no sultans! The Army runs things now. Father has told me.

This is how it will be here, though, Samir protested.

No! See? The Army will not have it. Nasir grabbed a stick, thrusting it into the ground under the strongest part of Samir’s castle wall near one of the rocks. The older boy stomped the stick, and sand flew everywhere. Just as he said, the fortification was breached, and he knelt to drive his triumphant soldier inside.

"Stop it! You are ruining everything!" Samir objected, shoving the larger child.

Nasir pushed back. It is how it is. I have won!

No!

Yes!

Angry now, Samir grabbed the older boy’s shirt and pulled. Nasir’s fist flew, and Samir fell on his backside, holding an eye. "Ow! You hurt me!"

You should not have fought me.

From the distance came a sudden rumbling, one even little Samir recognized in his pain. They were cannons, the grown-ups said, and the children had learned already to associate their thunderous volleys with fear. The sounds were louder and closer than ever, and so was the wave of explosions as the artillery shells found their targets. Standing up, the boys knew life in Yemen had not always been this way. Soon their parents would call, and it would be time to stop playing and go home. Everyone there would be afraid, even the grown-ups. It was how things were now.

Hoboken, New Jersey

Spring 1982

Danny Sean and his cousin Ralphie, stretching their legs, emerged from the front of the brownstone. The larger of the two took a cautious look up and down the block since it was not his neighborhood. Tapping out a Marlboro, he unrolled his sleeve enough to get at his Zippo. He offered the half empty pack to his cousin. You wanna burn one?

Ralphie waved him off. Nah, man. Ma would kill me. Don’t your ma care?

She’s after me when she sees. But Ma smokes. Kinda makes it hard to argue.

Danny Sean was damn near fifteen and bigger than other kids his age, with more musculature on his tall frame. The combination often had people thinking he was older than he was. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that, either. The visitor from Little Germany swiveled his head again, keeping watch up and down the block.

His cousin noticed. Whatcha, nervous?

Gettin’ dark. Ain’t your boys comin’ out?

Yeah, man, but everybody here knows me, Ralphie assured him.

"Yeah, well, they don’t know me," the visitor to Hoboken reminded him. Strangers on the street in Little Germany as a rule did not do very well. Unless they’re bad enough to get by.

Keep close. We need to get you home, her mother warned, shifting her load of groceries. She did not carry as much as her daughter. And cover your hair!

Oh, Mom, I hate this scarf.

"You will be modest when you are with me, or I will tell your father again." The older woman looked toward the sun, already behind the buildings. There remained enough time, however, to get where they were going.

Her mother wore the same hijab she remembered as a child in Greece before prevailing sentiments there had forced her family to leave. It seemed so long ago. America was better. "I like my hair. Why should I have to—"

Grabbing her daughter’s arm, the woman drew her close. It was all the more alarming when the younger of the two perceived the precaution did not mean her mom was angry.

"Muzzies! the accented voice called. Hey, Vinnie. We got Muzzies on the block!"

The comment came from above and behind them, and guffaws followed. Their pace hastened as much as the grocery sacks would allow, and the elder woman pulled her daughter’s scarf over more of her long, jet-black hair.

Footsteps sounded on the landing behind them. Hey, ladies, where ya goin’ so fast? C’mere.

Ralphie slapped Danny Sean's shoulder. Hey, the boys are out, he noted. Maybe we oughta, yanno, go back in.

The larger teenager shook his head. I ain’t done. ‘Sides, ya said they know ya, right?

"Yeah but they don’t all like me."

Laughter sounded inside the brownstone. The kid from Little Germany turned his head to hear raised voices inside his cousin’s place. The increasingly animated conversation meant someone, probably his uncle, had started drinking. Man, they’re playing cards now. I ain’t goin’ back in there.

The two had only one route home. But now it was being blocked by boys in jeans and dirty white T-shirts.

"Hey, lady, I’m talkin’ to ya!" A foot snapped up and kicked her mother’s grocery bag, sending items flying.

"Stop it!" the girl cried.

Danny Sean slapped back at his cousin, pointing to the evolving scene down the block. Hey, what’s this?

Eh. Muzzies, moving in from Arabia or wherever. Bunch of ‘em in the next neighborhood.

As they watched, one of the guys kicked the lady’s groceries, and Danny Sean heard her daughter yell at the dude. Aw, man, that’s bullshit. He straightened up and threw the cigarette out to smolder on the sidewalk.

Aw, shit, Sean, don’t do dis, Ralphie pleaded.

C’mon. Back me up. He started walking toward the trouble, and his cousin, Danny Sean knew, really had no choice but to follow him. They could better hear the exchange a quick twenty steps later.

We don’t need Muzzies on our block, yanno? Don’t need to hear ya screamin’ when it’s time to pray.

Leave us alone! Mother! They are going to hurt her!

Another boy came up to them then. Hey. Why don’t you assholes leave th’ lady alone?

Hey, tough. Why don’t you and your bud mind your own fuckin’ business?

Mother and daughter watched in alarm as the tall kid stopped talking and started punching. One, two, and then three blows landed, and the troublemaker was down. Another local boy went after the bigger one but didn’t do any better than the second, who was bent over and bleeding now. The fourth boy had not so much as balled a fist.

"Shit!" her mother’s attacker said, holding his nose.

Get th’ fuck outta here, the tall one encouraged them, glaring to make sure his advice was being taken seriously. Afterward, he bent down and helped the older woman roll her groceries back into the paper bag. You OK, ma’am?

Her mother gave only a terrified nod in response. He has the most beautiful gray eyes, the girl thought. Thank you, she added on her mother’s behalf, smiling.

The pair of neighborhood kids who had chased off the others nodded back as the woman and her daughter continued on. They moved as fast as the older woman was able to shuffle along in her traditional but restrictive Muslim attire.

Her mother jerked her arm again. "Do not talk to boys. You are not of age."

"Mom, I’m sixteen."

Enough, Thalia! We need to get home!

Thalia Kebauet glanced backward anyway, but the two American teenagers were looking over their shoulders as they returned to their own front step. Doubtless, they were now as anxious to get off the street as was her mother.

See, Mom? That’s why I hate this scarf. It’s the reason people stare and stay away.

Chapter 1 - The Harbor of Peace

August 7, 1998

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

She walked the debris field with an entirely different mission from those pushing the perimeter outward although one of the Embassy’s Colt submachine guns was slung across her back as a precaution. The woman’s eyes told her trained mind everything she needed to know regarding what had occurred this bloody morning.

It’s a deep crater. Her head swiveled to the degraded surfacing of the nearby wall, portions of which had collapsed. And plenty of evidence points to an intense shattering effect. All the signs indicated a high-brisance load. This must have been TNT.

The last time anyone saw the two Marines at the gate, they were leaning into their weapons and firing as the truck approached. Now, their comrades—some bloody from wounds and all of them angry—fanned out in front of the Embassy, extending the exclusion zone. She knew the protocol:  prevent any potential follow-up suicide attack from targeting the response teams.

At the moment the rolling bomb exploded outside the entrance to this isolated compound on Bagamoyo Road, she had been present on station less than twenty-four hours. In retrospect, it was far too little time to interdict the attack. This operation was well beyond the planning stages her supporting documentation had theorized.

Regardless of the circumstances, Thalia Kebauet did not like to lose. Consequently, her countenance burned with intensity matching the heavily armed and camouflage-clad Marines also out in the debris. Her five-foot-ten frame was wide shouldered and athletic. Dark hair—tied back as usual to keep it out of her eyes—accented her olive skin, heavy-winged eyeliner and blue eye shadow. The overall effect, as intended, evoked the ancient pharaohs depicted on the temple walls in her ethnic Egypt. Where once-proud walls have fallen to rubble. Just like here.

A combat boot, recovered close to the obvious point of detonation, was the extent of any remains they so far had found. Of the men who stopped the incursion of the vehicle and driver, little else could be expected. The pair had prevented many more casualties beyond the current count of eleven. She glanced back at the solitary piece of footgear lying near the crumbled wall. That could have been me.

Catching the attention of the burly noncom directing the efforts to secure the site, she pointed. Her voice was level and her tone of authority unmistakable. Sergeant, have your man bag and label these remains and secure them in the Embassy infirmary, please.

Yes, ma’am, he responded.

Thank you, Marine.

Briefed in Langley five days ago, Thalia had flown KLM midweek through Amsterdam and Kilimanjaro International. In twenty-one hours, she had arrived to evaluate security and the situation on the ground. A case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations, she was following up on extant leads in nearby Dar es Salaam when the attack was launched in the middle of the morning.

Dar es Salaam. The name means The Harbor of Peace. Was it intentional irony on the part of those who did this? As a result of her upbringing by Egyptian parents, Kebauet was fluent in Arabic. She spoke the native tongue of Greece as well, having been born and raised there. That was before her mother and father left Europe behind and brought the family to the United States. Upon her parents’ naturalization to citizenship, she was automatically granted the same. It had happened in 1983 on her seventeenth birthday. College. CIA recruitment. State Department Embassy Security liaison. All so I could get to Tanzania too late, and kick rocks in the aftermath. I will find you jihadi bastards.

As for claims of responsibility, there were none yet, but such would come soon. The motivation was clearly Islamic and fundamentalist, like the great majority of terrorism in the world. Not all Muslims are terrorists, true, but virtually all terrorism today is Islamic. Kebauet understood the historical context, ideology and mind-set … if not the twisted logic or detachment from any guiding sense of humanity she considered characteristic of her enemy.

Footsteps trotted in a rapid cadence, crunching behind her. The CIA Station Chief, his fist supporting the strap of another nine-millimeter Armalite-pattern weapon hanging on one shoulder, caught up to her. Chief Ronald Sol clutched a sheaf of communications in his other hand. Miz Kebauet—I have fresh traffic from State. Nairobi got hit, too. We have a coordinated effort.

Same game plan?

Roger that. First reports are it’s bad. High-population area targeted in the same operational modus—truck bomb. The Embassy there is right in the middle of the city.

She sighed though he did not hear it. New phase, Chief.

Yeah. He scanned the scene with her. The world changed a bit today.

Yes it did, sir. Yes, it did. Her anger was kept, and internalized, and deliberately cultivated as righteous indignation. She knew she would return to Washington and write her reports. She would make her presentations to the appropriate desks in Operations and Intelligence, further building her reputation. Such had drawn her to Tanzania, where she tried to make a difference. Though her effort had failed this time, her seething resentment settled in as embers of motivation. Emotions like these would keep her strong and keep her moving. Thalia Kebauet knew when her opportunity to level out her quarry’s karma finally presented itself, these memories—the sight of destruction, the sounds of recovery, and the smells of blood and expended explosive—would make her at least as dangerous as any of them. Then we’ll see how they feel about being taken down by a woman. It’s going to be too long of a wait.

Hurlburt Field

Eglin Air Force Base, Florida

Three hours later

Rising at 0500 gained First Lieutenant Daniel Sean Ritter two hours to pound the roads around Hurlburt before his cadre's training shift. It was enough time to cover a few extra miles in his steady, powerful jogging pace. Afterward, with his mind cleared and blood pumping better than any coffee could achieve, he would get cleaned up and squared away in his officer's uniform in time to report early. The relentless motivation of the AFSOC Special Forces operator and instructing unit commander demanded it. This comprised his usual routine.

It was the responsibility of Lieutenant Ritter—Sean, to those few who were familiar enough—to hone the finishing edge of his trainees. His material consisted of personnel who emerged from the same prerequisite training as did he, and the methods he employed had begun forging him ten years ago. By continuously weeding out performance issues, Air Force Special Operations Command, and particularly his Pararescue specialty, maintained its readiness.

The people he trained, here at Hurlburt, deployed worldwide with Special Forces of the other branches of the United States military. SEALs, Green Berets, Marine Recon, and others depended on AFSOC air support and the airborne Pararescue Jumpers and Tactical Air Controllers who, on demand, answered their calls for medical extraction and operational assistance. When circumstances demanded nothing less than excellence, his PJs could be counted upon to equal any of their fellow operators. Of this, Ritter was certain.

The incessant pace of the morning's run was so ingrained into muscle memory that it required no attention of his mind. Ritter's thoughts were free to travel here, in the only space of his day otherwise unoccupied, while his legs pumped and his arms swung in their accompanying motion. What people saw on the outside was what he intended them to see. What he felt was the price he paid for making it this far.

Ten years down the road. There’s age, and then there’s mileage. The idea hung on, regardless of his achievements since enlisting. Physically, Ritter knew he was at his peak and demanded of himself that he stay here. His motivation to meet the challenges of his profession endured. It was a mental game, and so far he had always won.

Running is easy. Living is hard. The burdens he accumulated on the way grew a bit heavier to carry down the road with each successive year. We’re all passing from here to there. Every one of us.

Death was part and parcel of the career he chose to pursue, just as it was part of life. He had encountered it before AFSOC. His father left when he was nine, his mother—and he held her until she was gone—at nineteen. He had watched The End arrive, delivering it himself in Desert Storm and since then. He served his country to his best ability and sometimes in the capacity of a human weapon, so, as the Pararescue motto ran: That Others May Live.

But they don’t always. One of the best men he had known, and the only patient he ever lost, died despite anything Ritter could do. Shot through and bleeding internally on the floor of his Iraq farmhouse while his young wife and son kneeled at his side, the man was equally helpless as Sean at the time. All his attention had been unable to stave off Muhammad’s final moment. It’s over. It’s been over for a long time. Now it’s more than four years ago, Ritter. Stop it.

His mind, however, in acting out scenes no one else could see, remained relentless in its onslaught. It was especially so when his situation presented nothing better for it to do … than remember holding the small, broken body of a Bosnian girl whose strength had projected beyond any proportion to her age or size in her final moments. But they don’t always live, do they, Luci? I would have married you.

He blew his next breath just a little harder. Ritter! Stop it! She’s gone, too. Shaking off another bad memory, he tried to focus on the road ahead, telling himself the run was making him stronger. I need to be stronger. Stronger than I am.

No matter the extent or lack of preparation … death, he knew from experience, came for the strong just as it did for the weak. People in his life had proven it repeatedly until it seemed life was only a time of waiting for the endgame. There has to be more to it. We were born to live. I was born to live. It’s why the sun keeps rising. Run, Ritter! Do your job. Embassies blew up today.

Daniel Sean Ritter remembered them all, and picked up his pace, and ran for them as well as his own sake. Some of their names rolled through his thoughts in time with his footfalls. Ma. Muhammad. Farrah. Gabir. Luci. I won’t give in. I won’t let some bastard in a black hood win. I won’t let you down.

The somber voice in his mind took one last parting shot. Not if I can help it.

The White House

Washington, D.C.

Ten days later

Was it worth it, Bill?

The President, her husband, the man to whom she had sworn her love more than two decades ago and now could not meet her gaze, did not have an answer. His lack of a response made her cognizant of involuntary trembling in her arms and legs, generated by pure rage.

Officially, the truth was out and adopted in grand jury testimony and, later in the evening, would be broadcast in a statement to the American people. His admission, late in arriving, was of inappropriate behavior with his former intern. The young woman’s broadly smiling image was so unavoidable in the news media that the First Lady, regardless of the demands of her function or schedule, could barely tolerate tuning in even to sympathetic venues.

He lied. The impulsive, imprudent, reckless piece of shit had lied first to her. Then he did so again off the record with the pool reporters whose job it was to smooth the delivery of the constructed spin. Afterward, he had likewise pissed the same golden shower onto the American people and, finally under oath, all over the Special Prosecutor’s team. He committed perjury. He could be impeached for this. All these years, and it could be over. For what? Answer me, you sorry prick. Her voice was cold and sharp, sounding like the caricatured harpy her right-wing enemies popularized.

Well … what can I say, honey? They got me.

The moment seemed to hang in the air while she absorbed his redirection of responsibility. "They … got you? She had to take a step further away from her spouse for the sake of maintaining her self-control. They got you? she repeated, the trembling spreading to her voice. They did this?"

Honey ….

Don’t ‘honey’ me, you bastard. She drew a breath, almost challenging him to impinge on the flow of what he had to know, by now, was on its way. "Did they shove you in that hallway with a girl your daughter’s age? Were they the ones playing with her tits while I was upstairs waiting for you to come to bed? Were they the ones arranging a little head job before we marched out in front of the cameras for Easter services? It was them?"

I didn’t—

"Yes, Bill, you did! She continued in her raised voice. You did all those things. You took advantage of the little skank. You set yourself up for the consequences and endangered the rest of your term and everything … God … everything we’re trying to accomplish! You were the one who blasted the evidence against you on her blue dress … and God knows where else. That … was … you!"

He fell silent at her rant. In the same moment, his face reddened in contrition.

Surprise at his reaction caught her unawares … until the thought occurred to her it was hardly contrition at all, but regret … at having been caught. Again. She took another step backward, wanting to turn but needing to see his face when he finally got around to his response. Answer me.

Answer what?

He was at once one of the most intelligent and most dense men she knew. Leaning in, she restated the question like a lawyer. Was … it … worth … it?

Her husband could not, she realized, force himself to deny it. He was a compulsive … a risk taker. Her advisors tried to tell her even as she was buying into his initial denials. This only confirmed what she had known about him for years. He had a sickness, and it left him vulnerable at the very worst times and in situations able to ruin … everything!

The ashtray was heavy, marble, and pristine as she did not allow his cigars even here in the residence. It was in her hand before he knew it and in the air almost before he could move his head out of the way. Crashing into the wall paneling, it fell heavily to the floor. Undoubtedly the impact, she realized in horror, had been audible, if not actually felt, on the level below.

Jesus, Hill! he blurted, his eyes darting about for anything else possibly lethal and within her reach.

No time, now. I fucked up.

Footsteps pounded up the short flight of stairs from the Secret Service station below. The First Lady knew they had no requirement to knock, and indeed they did not. Four of the Treasury men were between her and the President in a matter of a few moments.

Is everything all right, ma’am? One of the tall, fit officers tasked with guarding her husband—and me, too—sought his dutiful confirmation.

Fine, fellas, just fine, the President attempted. We just had a little accident.

She