Secret Justice Read online

  JAMES W. HUSTON

  SECRET

  JUSTICE

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Pierre Lahoud stood and smiled. “At last, you have arrived,” he. . .

  Chapter 2

  Mr. President, we got Duar!” Sarah St. James, the National. . .

  Chapter 3

  The Marine guard nodded at Rat, who opened the steel door. . .

  Chapter 4

  Rat walked straight to the Counterterrorism Center, the CTC. . .

  Chapter 5

  John Johnson of the NSA, freed for a while from. . .

  Chapter 6

  Rat walked into Jacobs’s office. He had been paged and had no. . .

  Chapter 7

  Elizabeth Watson stood silently in the wardroom, watching. . .

  Chapter 8

  Groomer had never been in Don Jacobs’s office. He had been in. . .

  Chapter 9

  Thanks for coming,” Rat said to the members of the team. . .

  Chapter 10

  Rat had been surprised by the late night summons. Jacobs never. . .

  Chapter 11

  Right this way, ma’am,” the petty officer said to Andrea as he. . .

  Chapter 12

  David Stern waited to be connected to the captain at the. . .

  Chapter 13

  David Stern found Josephine’s desk with some difficulty. She. . .

  Chapter 14

  Nino Jorbenadze turned to Hotary with an expectant look on his. . .

  Chapter 15

  Rat’s airplane flared late and landed hard on the cracked runway. . .

  Chapter 16

  The three lawyers stood in front of the judge aboard the Belleau. . .

  Chapter 17

  The doors to the courtroom on top of the Department of Justice. . .

  Chapter 18

  The admiral’s wardroom was packed and hummed with. . .

  Chapter 19

  The attendees at the meeting were gathering up their papers. . .

  Chapter 20

  The South Atlantic was as gray as the sky. The whitecaps broke. . .

  Chapter 21

  Aboard the Belleau Wood Judge Graham spoke loudly over the. . .

  Chapter 22

  The CH-53 settled into a hover just above the flight deck of the. . .

  Chapter 23

  Commander Glenn Pugh read the message he had been handed. . .

  Chapter 24

  The tribunal members filed back into the wardroom. They had. . .

  Chapter 25

  After the recess Wolff began his closing argument. As he got. . .

  Chapter 26

  One of Duar’s men, who had cut his hair so short that he looked. . .

  Chapter 27

  Captain Pugh looked through his periscope. It was very difficult. . .

  Chapter 28

  The courtroom was jammed with reporters and spectators. They. . .

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by James W. Huston

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter

  1

  Pierre Lahoud stood and smiled. “At last, you have arrived,” he said to Wahamed Duar, perhaps the most hated man in the world. They embraced in a cold, distrusting, automatic manner. They crossed warily to the single table sitting in the middle of the candlelit room. Duar took the far side of the table, the side facing the single door. He sat slowly, scrutinizing everyone. His men were dispersed throughout the room, their weapons at their sides.

  Acacia controlled his expression of shocked disbelief. Where had Duar been? All the buildings had been searched carefully. They had been waiting for him in this abandoned building in the remote desert of Sudan for two hours—how could ten men show up out of nowhere?

  He stood and moved slowly toward the exit. He had to transmit the signal to the American Special Forces circling overhead, waiting for this meeting, waiting to catch Duar.

  Duar saw him. “No one leaves this room,” he said in Arabic with unshakable authority. His light eyes were fixed on Acacia.

  “I have to relieve myself,” Acacia protested with a faint smile as sweat formed under his arms.

  “I don’t care if you piss on your feet. No one leaves this room.”

  Acacia nodded and shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but he had to activate his pen. It would put everything else in motion. He took it out of his pocket and opened a small notebook as if preparing to take notes.

  “No notes,” Duar said, still looking at him, staring into his eyes.

  Acacia looked at Lahoud, his boss, who nodded.

  Acacia glanced up. His pen had to acquire GPS satellites to get a fix and transmit that fix in a burst transmission. Latitude and longitude. It was all they needed. The existence of the signal would tell them the meeting was under way, and the numbers in the signal would tell them where. But he had to get outside. The roof of the building had been destroyed in whatever action had caused this crossroads to be abandoned, but the thick stucco walls were high, perhaps three stories, with bare crossbeams. There was some chance he could acquire two satellites through the destroyed roof; he had no choice. He pressed the end of his ballpoint pen and moved it slowly to his pocket.

  Lahoud’s six other men sat on the floor in random places, much like Duar’s, with their weapons next to them. Their faces were equally full of distrust. Others stood guard outside the building.

  Acacia examined Duar, a man neither he nor Lahoud had ever met but knew by reputation. He was nearly six feet tall, thin, and good-looking. He was a native of Sudan and had worked with Usama bin Laden when he was based in Sudan. When bin Laden had been asked to leave by the government of Sudan, Duar had stayed behind to start his own organization to accomplish the same objectives independently. He had been shockingly successful in his grisly business. He was now the most sought-after terrorist in the world. The Americans wanted him badly, obsessively. The bombing of the American embassy in Cairo had been the final straw. It had caused the deaths of forty-six Americans including the ambassador. Fifty-five Egyptians had also been killed outside the embassy compound by the enormous blast. It had been seen for what it was—a simultaneous attack on America and Egypt’s secular government.

  Duar had finally agreed to the meeting with Lahoud, one of the world’s leading arms merchants, because Lahoud could deliver what Duar wanted most—weapons grade plutonium. Lahoud claimed to have enough to make a nuclear weapon. Duar was buying. Today Lahoud had only a microscopic amount, just enough to prove he could bring more.

  The instant Acacia triggered his pen it searched for the L band GPS transmissions from the twenty-four satellites. Two were high enough to be useful deep inside the dim room. The pen quickly calculated its position and fired its encrypted burst transmission. He hoped to God the transmission went out and was heard, but he knew if the Americans received his signal all hell would break loose.

  High over Sudan, Lieutenant Kent Rathman, Rat as he was known, waited with the rest of his SAS team, a Special Operations group of the CIA, as they orbited in one of the Air Force C-17s. He stomped his feet on the hard deck against the cold and looked at his watch again. He paced back and forth in the belly of the noisy jet. The other team members watched him. They were accustomed to his boundless energy and intensity.

  Rat leaned on one of the Toyota Land Cruisers painted as Sudanese Army vehicles. The Toyotas would be the first out the door if Rat’s team was the lucky one, the closest team to the agent on the ground known to them only by his code name Acacia, a name selected by the CIA’s random word generation software that had come to rest in the tree section.

  The four C-17s were strategically placed. E
ach carried an American Special Forces team in a quadrant of Sudan. Each was ready, eager, to jump out of the large cargo planes as soon as the meeting was located. The meeting was expected to last only thirty minutes. No more. They knew they wouldn’t have time to fly across the country to get to the meeting. They had to hope one of the teams was on top of the location when the signal was received.

  They had waited the night before but never received the signal. This night they had launched again. Their hope had waned as they orbited past eleven, then past midnight. Rat squinted in frustration at Groomer in the low light. He didn’t need to say anything. Groomer had worked with Rat for three years, first in Dev Group, the Navy’s secret counterterrorism team, then in the SAS. In the Navy, Groomer was a lieutenant, junior grade, and in Rat’s SAS team he was the executive officer, or number two. He knew exactly what Rat was thinking: if one of the other teams gets to go it will be wrong, unfair, and unjust. They’d prepared for this mission three times before. They had orbited all night twice before, all for nothing, because Duar was always suspicious and had spooked. But this time, they thought it would go. He was believed to have picked a location so remote that he would feel secure, confident that no one would sneak up on him unexpectedly, and certainly not in thirty minutes.

  Groomer walked over to Rat. Rat looked at him quickly to see if he had new information or data that Rat could throw into the hopper that was turning furiously in his brain. He didn’t, he just wanted to chat. “What do you think? We gonna go?”

  “We deserve this.”

  “ ‘Cause it was your idea?”

  “No.” Rat smiled. “Because it’s us. We always deserve to go.”

  Groomer smiled back and fingered the camouflage paint on the Land Cruiser. “Hell, Rat, if it were me, I’d just drop a bomb on these assholes and vaporize them. Why do we have to go in?”

  “You heard Jacobs. They want Duar alive. Any cost. Otherwise you’re right. One airplane off a carrier, one JDAM, these guys are gone. They think Duar will open the entire worldwide operation for them. They just need the right can opener. We’re it.”

  Groomer shook his head. “I’d just vaporize them.”

  It was the Global Hawk that received the weak transmission, the pilotless drone flying sixty-five thousand feet above Sudan. The signal from Acacia’s pen was fainter than expected but the reserved frequency was unmistakable. The drone instantly amplified the signal and relayed it to a hundred waiting receivers. The RIVET JOINT RC-135 received it as soon as the Global Hawk sent it off. The officer monitoring the frequency quickly relayed it to all the Special Operations teams, then examined the chart superimposed on the screen in front of him. The location was automatically marked in southwest Sudan, one of the remotest parts of the country. He sat back and waited.

  “Bingo,” Rat said as he stared at the small color screen on his Rugged Personal Digital Assistant, his RPDA-88. It was highly modified and included a GPS receiver and encrypted e-mail capability. “Here we go,” he yelled. Groomer stood by the Land Cruiser to look over Rat’s shoulder at the screen. Rat furiously manipulated the buttons on the side of the screen to call up the map of Sudan with Acacia’s location automatically marked as a waypoint. “We’re it,” Rat exclaimed, seeing the fix in his sector.

  The pilots knew it at the same instant. He felt the large C-17 bank toward the destination.

  “Everybody up!” Rat yelled, motioning with his hands.

  Rat pictured the jump in his mind. The moon would be behind them, but it was a waxing crescent and would be of only marginal help without their night-vision devices.

  Rat looked at the Air Force sergeant, the jumpmaster, who was listening carefully on his intercom. He held up two hands. Ten minutes.

  Rat nodded. Everyone on his team had seen the signal. He didn’t have to repeat it. Many, like Rat and Groomer, were actually Navy SEALs operating on temporary assignment with the CIA.

  His men checked their parachutes and weapons again and tightened their helmets. Rat had been one of the few in the CIA who had been allowed to see the information provided by Acacia. It was stunning. The man’s infiltration of Pierre Lahoud’s illegal arms sales orga-nization had been bold and spectacularly successful. What Lahoud didn’t know was that Acacia, his new finance man, was with the Jordanian GID, the General Intelligence Department, and was working with the CIA. Rat had worked with him before. The reason Acacia had gone to such trouble to work with Lahoud was to be there when Lahoud met with Duar. His only job was to send his single electronic signal when the two were in the same room. The American Special Forces knew he was there, and what he looked like. He was one of the two people the Special Forces were to bring out alive.

  Rat opened the file box he had brought aboard the plane. He fingered the files until he found the one that corresponded to Acacia’s location. It had been identified as one of the twenty or so possible meeting locations in his area. Rat tore through the intelligence information again. He had read through it before several times, but now he tried to memorize everything in it, the satellite photos, the infrared images, and the messages. He returned the file and called up the photographs of Duar, Lahoud, and Acacia on his RPDA. He studied Duar’s face. There was only one known photo of Duar. It was a grainy blowup of a distant photo. He had dark long hair, a wispy beard, and light eyes. Rat tried to imagine him without a beard, with a buzz haircut, anything that would make him more difficult to identify. Lahoud was easy; a big square face on a short square body.

  The crew chief leaned down toward Rat. “Five minutes!” he yelled, holding up five fingers.

  Rat nodded. “Radio check,” he said on his microphone, attached to his helmet.

  The eleven others gave him a thumbs-up.

  Rat stood up, reattached his RPDA to his lanyard and stuck it into a pocket. He walked back to the ramp that was now almost completely down. The C-17 had descended to twenty-five thousand feet but the air was still bracingly cold. The jumpmaster pressed a button and the three pallets bearing the Land Cruisers inched toward the ramp.

  They reached the drop point, got a green light, and the three Toyotas flew out the back of the C-17 into the blackness. Rat went to the back of the ramp, lowered his goggles, turned on his oxygen, and dived into the night.

  Rat dropped toward the African desert and watched the illuminated altimeter on his wrist. He controlled the instinct to gasp for air from the shock of the coldness. He slowed his descent rate with his arms and pulled the ripcord at exactly ten thousand feet. The rectangular-shaped para-glider canopy opened over his head with a vicious jerk. He stabilized his descent and pulled the handles to turn toward his destination. He pulled his RPDA out of his chest pocket to check his position with the GPS imbedded in the RPDA. He verified his heading and distance to their destination and made a course correction. He looked ahead; he could see the roads and the intersection where they were to land ten miles away. Those behind him were also above him. All their para-gliders were dark green and invisible in the night. Rat’s alone had a white arrow on the top of it pointing forward, invisible from below, but easy to see in the faint moonlight from above.

  They glided silently, dropping steadily. The sand was a pale gray below them in the half moon. He looked down as the first Toyota slammed into the sand. He couldn’t tell if it had landed upright. Rat checked his GPS again, then pulled out a ten-powered night rifle scope to see if he could find the buildings. He found them instantly, but saw more than he had expected. He could see at least four, maybe five, men walking between the buildings. His team had twelve. The sole support he could hope to get was from a Spooky gunship that was on its way. It would orbit ten miles away to be called in only in an emergency. To call the Spooky would be an admission of failure.

  He checked the nightscope again and saw men standing guard around the biggest building. Rat turned down toward the south to approach the landing area into the wind that was from the northeast, slightly behind him into his right. The others followed. He placed the sc
ope back in his pocket as well as his RPDA. He made sure everything was secure. He tugged on the strap of his H&K MP5N submachine gun to make sure it was attached tightly to his chest and prepared to hit the ground. He turned sharply into the wind, guiding his para-glider carefully.

  He dropped far enough below the rise that even the top of his para-glider would be invisible to the small intersection where Duar sat just over the ridge. He touched down in the sand and ran quickly to arrest his ground speed. His feet slogged through the soft sand and he tumbled over. As the para-glider began to drag him across the sand, he quickly released one of the Koch fittings dumping the air out of the glider. He jumped up, released the other Koch fitting on his shoulder harness, and began rolling up the para-glider. He wrapped it into a tight ball and began digging in the sand. He placed the para-glider in the hole and poured sand on top of it. The others landed behind him, silent except for an occasional grunt or curse.

  They buried their para-gliders and quickly made their way to Rat, who was kneeling in the sand. Groomer and three others hurried to the Land Cruisers and checked for damage. They were perfectly intact. They unstrapped the vehicles from their pallets, jumped in, and started the engines. The Toyotas responded instantly. Groomer and the others drove them off the pallets, across the loose sand, and onto the road. Groomer’s Toyota was in front with the engine idling and the lights off. The markings of the Sudanese Army were clearly visible in the moonlight.

  Rat spoke quietly to his men. “Everybody okay?” as they all climbed out of their harnesses and adjusted their Sudanese Army desert camouflage uniforms.

  They all nodded as they removed their helmets and pulled desert brown headscarves over their heads. They put goggles over their eyes, giving them a Rat Patrol look that disguised light skin, red hair, or blue eyes. Rat got right to the point. “Three guard posts, one on each of the roads, and a third closer in, next to the buildings. Banger, you’re going to have to get up on top when we’re stopped and hit the guard by the building. I can’t tell how far apart they are, but it’s probably close to five hundred yards. You’ll have to be quick about it. There are two of them. You up for that?”