Chapter 3 / Page 3

Of course, if anyone believed Arthur volunteered out of the goodness of his patriotic heart, then someone should examine his Bahamian bank account. Arthur would eventually become another of those faceless, nameless bureaucrats that were never hired and never fired, but had complete access to the inner workings of government. Even the cynical Stillwell was somewhat shocked at the NSA’s blunt political calculation.

“Who’s going to lead this team?” Lisa’s eyes were aimed at the NSA, but her question was answered by the spook.

“Our recommendation is to insert a covert team into southern Iraq and penetrate Iraq’s central Data Center. We have no reason to believe we will be able to apply the correct resources in tracking these weapons down now that the Iraqis have had sufficient time to move them in country.

“However, the central Data Center is a major Iraqi installation. It is connected to every major weapon, command, and control center in Iraq. We believe that the Data Center holds the information to tell us exactly who, what, where, and how the Iraqis are preparing banned weapons systems.”

“How do you know that?” snapped Lisa Borden.

“The tooth fairy,” offered Brian.

He received a collective set of dirty looks from everyone except the spook and the Two Star.

The spook looked over the table to Lisa and replied, “We know this because we’ve been inside once before. Back in ’92.”

“Why aren’t we still there?” she demanded.

Brian thought of another one liner, but managed to restrain himself.

“We had a presence on their network for almost twelve months. We learned a great deal about how Saddam moves money, how he shuffles his doubles, and the post-war condition of his major command bunkers,” answered the spook.

“You need to understand the West Germans; they’re suppose to be our allies. They built several nuclear bomb-proof shelters a hundred meters below the ground on top of big springs,” explained Brian. “If we didn’t think Saddam was a bleeding maniac, we might think he’s a flipping gopher. He has tunnels with electric cars to take him from bunker to bunker. Do you know what we developed during the Gulf War? A bomb that could drill down over a one hundred meters and then blow up. It was really quite ingenious—kind of wish I’d thought of it. Unfortunately, the media folks and State Department schmucks fell in love with the one-hundred-hour war and we never got a chance to blow Saddam all over the inside of one of his pretty German bunkers.”