First strike tyler griff.., p.1
First Strike (Tyler Griffin Book 1), page 1
Table of Contents
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Unnamed
FIRST STRIKE
© 2018 Dean Crawford
ASIN:
Publisher: Fictum Ltd
The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Dean Crawford Books
I
Mizdah, Libya
March 14th, 1986
‘They’re coming.’
Ibrahim ben–Hadj knew that he and his family had only moments to live or die. Despite the corrosive fear that had scalded his arteries for days now, he was no longer afraid for himself. His only concern was for his wife, Sarah, and their daughter Aya, who now cowered with him in a dusty drainage ditch, a hundred miles south of Tripoli and a universe away from safety.
The blistering heat had drained their bodies of the will to move, days spent scavenging in the bush for meagre meals of roots and tubers or the occasional rat taking its toll on their bodies until they could barely speak. Ibrahim had been forced to avoid the towns as they fled south, staying off the roads and travelling only when the sun was low in the sky and the ferocious heat abated. Since the moment they had been forced to flee their beautiful home in an upscale part of Tripoli, it seemed that the ill–omens of the Djinn had cursed their every move.
Sarah was holding Aya in her arms, the little girl’s eyes fluttering on the dreamlike border of consciousness. Ibrahim knew that she would not last much longer, their access to water and basic medicine limited. The Sahara Desert that surrounded them was as brutal as any he had encountered, and as a formerly loyal servant of Colonel Muhammar Gaddafi he had not often found himself anywhere but the comfortable surroundings of Tripoli. Now, beyond the town of Mizdah lay hundreds of miles of empty desert, the border with Chad and the safety of the Aouzou Strip a sanctuary it seemed impossible for them to reach.
If his fellow Libyans didn’t kill them, the desert would.
They had fled Tripoli five nights before, south across the barren deserts, flitting from town to town. The battered Lada truck that Ibrahim had managed to buy with what little cash he possessed had failed them fifteen miles short of Mizdah. Truly, he had believed that when he had reached the desert with his family that their pursuers would turn back, fearful of any engagement with the much–feared Government of National Unity, or “GUNT” fighters patrolling the deserts like packs of wild dogs. But they had not, and now he could hear them closing in on the ditches, shouting back and forth, the sound of an engine rattling nearby on the Gharyan Road.
‘Come, we must keep moving.’
Ibrahim pulled at his wife’s shoulder, but Sarah did not move. She was crying but there were no tears, her face creased with exhaustion and ingrained with the desert dust of her Bedouin ancestors. She held little Aya in her arms and shook her head.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, her voice as rough as sandpaper brushing against stone. ‘We can’t.’
Aya’s lips were cracked and bleeding, her eyes drooping with fatigue. Ibrahim scooped some of the run–off water in the depths of the ditch and brushed it gently across her lips. She tried to suck the water off but he held his fingers clear, knowing that the stagnant water would only dehydrate her further with sickness. He looked at Sarah, barely alive, and he felt such a regret that he thought his heart might burst within him; regret for being brave, for doing the right thing, for trying to help expose their Libyan dictator for the coward and the despot that he truly was. And what had it got them? They had lost their home, their jobs, their friends and now feared that they would lose their lives beneath the burning sun.
I cannot protect them.
Ibrahim took a deep breath. He knew that he could not change what had already passed but, inshallah, he could take control of the consequences.
‘Sarah,’ he whispered. ‘Rest here. Wait until the dusk when the sun is low, and move then. Nasham is to the east, a few miles from here. Keep the setting sun behind you and don’t stop, don’t stop for anything. If you can reach Khoms from there, you might be able to escape the country.’
Sarah looked at him, her gaze unfocused as the delirium of heat stroke set in. ‘Where will you be?’
Ibrahim smiled and kissed his wife on her forehead. ‘I will be with you, both of you, always.’
He bent down and kissed his daughter in the same way, tears stinging his eyes but not flowing as he stood and turned away from them. He thought he heard his wife emit a faint cry of grief but he did not look back, could not look back as he hurried in a low crouch along the drainage ditch. He followed it to the edge of a sandy field, where there grew a meagre crop of wilted barley, before he stopped and listened to the sounds of the men following them as he peered across the field.
They numbered perhaps twenty, followed by two trucks. All were heavily armed, some smoking as they walked, others jostling and pushing one another. They would be aware that they were tracking a family, a woman, and he knew that out here there were no laws and no rights. If Aya and Sarah were captured then Ibrahim knew what the soldiers would do to his wife, and probably to his daughter too. Ibrahim was a traitor to his country, a Libyan who had knelt before the Americans and done their bidding: his life, and that of his family, was already forfeit.
Ibrahim waited until the men were half way across the field, heading directly for his wife and child, and then he scrambled up out of the ditch and sprinted for the scant cover of the crops.
The cry went up as soon as he began to run, a cacophony of shouts and then the staccato clatter of machine gun fire. The air around him cracked like glass as rounds zipped past him like supersonic metal wasps. Ibrahim kept running, stumbling his way along the edge of the field and heading west, away from his family.
The truck engines roared as they turned to give chase on the unpaved tracks that circled each abandoned field, those of a farm long–since swallowed by the conflicts and droughts that had tortured this soil for so long. Ibrahim heard more rounds clatter through the trees as he plunged between branches and risked a glance over his shoulder.
The troops had taken the bait and were now pursuing him directly, running behind two Toyota trucks that were bouncing over the uneven ground and trailing clouds of dust behind them.
Ibrahim ducked and dashed this way and that, seeking the densest bush knowing that the trucks would not be able to pursue him. The troops would be forced to pursue him on foot, and the further that Ibrahim could take them from his wife and child, the better. He knew that the trucks would encircle him before he could reach the town of Mizdah ahead, but escape was not his priority now.
Ibrahim fought his way through banks of twisted thorn scrub, the thorns slicing into his flesh like knives. He heard the trucks pull up short of the thicket somewhere behind him and he knew that the troops were leaping out and hurrying into the bush in pursuit. Just a little further. If he could reach a point where he could go to ground and double back on the Libyan soldiers within the streets of Mizdah, he could sneak out of here and rejoin his wife and daughter under the cover of darkness and…
A stream of bullets smashed through the thicket and Ibrahim felt something slam into his right shoulder. For a moment he thought that one of the soldiers had caught up with him and tried to grab him, but the force of the blow was so strong that it hurled him onto his face in the dust.
Then the pain hit him.
Every movement of his right arm became searing agony and he fought the urge to cry out in pain. Ibrahim tried to stand but he could barely get to his knees as he cradled his right arm with his left. He looked down and saw an exit wound wide and bloody in his shirt, stained pink from the blood pulsing out of the wound.
‘Please, not yet.’
Ibrahim tried to stem the flow with his fingers but it streamed hot and slick and he felt his balance waver.
‘No, please no.’
Ibrahim sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to stand. Moments later he felt himself falling and his world turned black.
*
‘He is alive.’
Ibrahim opened his eyes.
He was lying on his back in the dust, the sun bright in his eyes. His right arm throbbed as a soldier worked on it, and he saw medical dressings being applied to his wound. There were more soldiers standing over him, watching him with poisoned glares.
‘The traitor lives, but for how long?’
One of the men, who wore the insignia of a L
iwa Haris al-Jamahiriya Captain, moved into view against the flawless blue sky. His face was scarred, probably from time within the prisons or perhaps on the streets of Tripoli, and he drank deeply from a water bottle as he looked down at Ibrahim with one jaundiced eye. He finished the water, slowly replacing the cap with one hand and never taking his gaze from their prisoner.
‘They tell me that a traitor’s death should always be the worst imaginable,’ he murmured in a conversational tone. ‘But they also tell me that the death should be at the hands of a court. What say you, Ibrahim?’
Ibrahim said nothing. The Jamahiriya Revolutionary Guard were notorious for their brutality and he feared provoking them. The medic attending to his wounds stood up.
‘Will he live?’ the captain asked the medic.
‘The wound is superficial, shrapnel from one of the rounds that went straight through. I’ve stitched it for now and the dressing should hold. He needs a hospital to make a full recovery, to avoid infection.’
The captain nodded and looked down at Ibrahim.
‘You hear that Ibrahim? You need a hospital. Do you see one around here?’
The men around him began to laugh, some of them stroking the barrels of their AK–47 rifles. The captain moved to stand over Ibrahim, one boot either side of his waist.
‘I will take you to the hospital myself, as soon as you have told me where your wife and daughter are.’
Ibrahim opened his mouth to speak. His throat was dry, and the act caused him pain so that his words were weak and twisted with suffering.
‘They are gone,’ he whispered. ‘I led you from them.’
The captain nodded slowly, as though understanding. Then, he lifted his right boot and brought it crashing down into Ibrahim’s groin. White pain seared Ibrahim’s body and tears sprung from his eyes as he cried out in agony and curled into a foetal ball. The boot of another soldier slammed into his unprotected flank and he shuddered, the breath ripped from his lungs as he felt blow after blow land upon his weary body.
The captain pushed his men aside after a few seconds of frenzied blows, and then crouched down alongside Ibrahim.
‘There are no fresh tracks south of this field, Ibrahim. If you do not tell us where they are, then when we find them I shall have you strapped to a tree with your eyes pinned open so you can watch as my men violate them both.’
Ibrahim, his voice so weak that the captain could barely hear it, turned and whispered something. The Revolutionary Guard could not hear him and leaned closer.
Ibrahim lunged and sank his teeth into the captain’s ear and with every last ounce of his strength he bit deep into the ragged flesh. The captain’s mouth opened wide and he emitted a hellish howl of pain. Blows rained down on Ibrahim from the other soldiers but he tore at the lumpy flesh and it ripped away from the officer’s skull with a sound like cutting crisp lettuce. The captain screamed as he cupped what was left of his ear and hopped about, blood spilling between his fingers.
Ibrahim spat the ear out into the dust and watched as it seeped blood, and then the captain pointed at Ibrahim.
‘Get him into the truck! Find his family and bring them here, all of them!’
Ibrahim was hauled to his feet and dragged physically out of the bush to one of the battered Toyota trucks. The troops hurled him into it as others scattered in search of Aya and Sarah.
Ibrahim crashed down onto hot, dusty metal and closed his eyes in grief. Their only chance had been that the American would come through for them. The American had promised that he would keep them safe. He had promised that if it all went south, as he liked to say, then America would come for them. They would protect his family. America would not let them down.
But when they had called for help, the American had not answered.
The American had left them to die.
***
II
Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
General Vincent Griffin stalked the halls of the CIA like a ghoul seeking its next victim. Tall, gaunt and uncompromising, other staff gave him a wide berth whether they knew him personally or not. “Grim Griffin’s” reputation preceded him by several corridors within the building.
A former Army Intelligence operative who had served for some twenty years in many of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones, Griffin was now Director of the Directorate of Operations at Langley. The unit, one of the smallest within the agency and sometimes referred to as Clandestine Operations, was responsible for the gathering of intelligence using HUMINT, or Human Intelligence, via operatives and allies on the ground, and for covert action on foreign soil. Formed in 1951 as a counter to inter–agency squabbling, its role included coordinating HUMINT activities within the wider intelligence community of the USA. Vincent Griffin knew more than most about how best to handle agents in the field, and that was why he was now so enraged.
He had received a phonecall in the very early hours of the morning. The call had been one that most senior officers within the CIA feared receiving; the caller simply said the words Fallen Angel, and Griffin knew what had happened. They had lost an asset in the field. In this case, the operative was an asset within the government of Libya, a clerk within the Foreign Ministry who had been forced to flee their home after being exposed selling information to the United States via a CIA handler in Tripoli.
Nobody was under any illusion about the seriousness of the situation. Foreign assets by their nature were a volatile and unpredictable weapon in the war against dictators and despots; they were valuable as long as they remained covert, but once exposed they would generally sing like a canary for fear of extensive torture at the hands of their captors. Libya’s narcissistic leader, Colonel Muhammar Gaddafi, would have no problem in parading the captured man’s deceased remains around Tripoli both as an icon to his own cunning and a message to anyone thinking about defecting or betraying the people of Libya. There was no mercy for traitors.
Griffin walked into a conference room dominated by a long table where there sat enough brass to wage war on half the planet. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were seated before him, senior officers from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force along with further officers from within the CIA. The Director of the CIA, Norman Shearer, sat at the head of the table, a shrewd and equally uncompromising man who gestured for Griffin to take a seat nearby. The door was closed to the outside world, the conference room set within an anechoic chamber to prevent any possibility of listening devices picking up transmissions or conversation from within the room.
‘Gentlemen,’ DCIA greeted them without anything approaching a smile, his craggy and balding features turning to Griffin. ‘What do we got?’
‘Fallen Angel in Tripoli, current whereabouts unknown,’ Griffin replied without hesitation. This was not a meeting about directing blame: shit happened, especially in the spy game, hence the focus would be on damage limitation. ‘The asset is a mid–level government clerk in the service of Colonel Muhammar Gaddafi’s cabinet. They by now will have some level of knowledge of the depth of CIA operations within North Africa.’
‘How long have we had this guy in our pocket?’ asked an admiral by the name of Sandy Cunningham, younger than Shearer and currently the Chief of Naval Operations.
‘Two years,’ Griffin replied, fully briefed. ‘He was recruited after the Rome and Vienna attacks by Libyan–supported terrorist cells, when the Libyan Foreign Minister called the slaughters “heroic acts”. Our handler picked up several informers after the atrocities, but this one has proved the most reliable and discreet. He operates via the code–name Minotaur and has been solid until now, so something must have gone wrong. We have no knowledge of their whereabouts.’
No names were used during the meeting or outside of the CIA Headquarters. The asset and Minotaur were generic and specific monikers respectively, used to ensure that nobody knew everything about overseas operations. Having someone at the top of the chain with all the knowledge created a tempting target for Soviet operatives living within the USA or Europe, and although the CIA and FBI knew the identities of most of the Russian sleeper cells operating on US soil, one could never be too careful.
‘Jeez,’ murmured a JCOS Marine Colonel, William Shankley, a bolt–upright soldier replete with square jaw and white buzz–cut hair, ‘did we get any warning of a breach? Do we have any idea who broke the asset’s cover?’
