Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono. Mr. DeBono seamlessly blends history and fiction with the deft precision of a literary surgeon. His knowledge of special forces, intelligence agencies, political corruption and the tradecraft of espionage are unrivaled in the literary world. --Jim Clonts, Author Of MIG Drivers I was glued to my cozy chair during the entire story! I enjoyed the characters and found both the dialogue and the plot of this fantastic story a real edge of your seat kind of read from cover-to-cover! (A Highly Recommended Novel!) --Victoria Taylor Murray, Author Of Friendly Enemies/Le Fin

No Safe Harbor
by Douglas DeBono, 2006

CHAPTER 1

Running Man

The Paramount Hotel could have easily been mistaken for a ten-deck cruise liner. A stack of floors banded by blast-white stone and heavily tinted energy efficient windows gave the elongated structure a sense of going somewhere. Situated on Singapore’s east coast just south of the Changi International Airport and astride the expressway leading to the rest of the island nation, the Paramount was a great place to get lost for a while.

Malaysia sat a few miles north across the Johor Strait. Two man made land bridges connected Singapore to Malaysia’s Johor State: The Causeway and “The Second Link.” A boat ride off the island was subject to the perils of modern day pirates who rarely flew the Jolly Rodger, preferred tea to ale, and arrived armed with surplus AK47, SKS, and Chinese made PKM machine guns. The airport, with its armed guards, image matching software and cameras probing relentlessly. was out of the question.

A border crossing risked exposing his false passport, a detailed search of abdul Haq’s luggage, and he knew that a serious search would find the false side where two more passports, five unused credit cards and $5000 in hundred dollar bills sere secreted.

Abdul visited the hotel’s Internet Café once a day at varying the times. He rarely stayed online more than ten minutes—uncertain of whom might be watching. Hambali had warned him to remain alert and brief when using them.

While he did not comprehend the intricacies of the technological world, he did understand the images telecast on CNN International. Osama bin Laden had struck deep into the heart of the enemy. His plan worked better than anyone could have hoped.

They clustered around the television set, thumping one another on the back, cheering each time the American’s replayed the planes slamming into the World Trade Center, and the aftermath: the fireballs, the pancake collapse and the billowing gray-white dust cloud. Osama left rubble, wreckage, and death. While murder and mayhem tore deep into the American soul, economic peril attacked their bloated pocketbooks even faster.

There were the expected recriminations, threats, bluster, and silence. The vaunted nuclear umbrella did not launch blindly and incinerate cities. Indeed, nothing happened for several days, and they began to believe that Osama had unmasked a paper tiger. Of course, they knew the Americans were impotent before almighty Allah. Their hedonistic culture no longer had the mettle to hit back. George Bush apparently lacked the courage to strike.

That was before Operation ENDURING FREEDOM launched on October 7, 2001. Hambali told them that Osama had lured the Americans into another trap—no army had conquered Afghanistan since Alexander the Great. The British Empire had been stymied at the Khyber Pass, and the vaunted Red Army had been bled white during the eighties. The Americans were on their way to another Vietnam, because they did not have the will to fight.

For a while it looked like Hambali was right. The Americans pounded positions across the country using their heavy bombers and carrier-based strike aircraft. A full month went by before the Taliban lost Mazar-e Sharif. Taloqan fell two days later, and the next day brought news that Herat and Shindand were lost as well. The Taliban were driven out of Kabul next and Jalalabad the following day.

Osama and Mullah Omar were running for their lives, hiding in the caves along the Pakistani border. The Americans controlled the northern half of the country and were winding around the mountainous passes towards Qandahar and Konduz—this was not the way it was supposed to work.

Hambali locked himself away in his room. Some supposed he was secreted in prayer; others believed he searched the Koran for an answer to the disaster befalling their Mujahideen brothers. Most everyone in Hambali’s inner circle had served in the war against the Soviets; many had lost friends and cousins in the struggle. The Soviets came with tanks, fuel air bombs, and Hind gunships. They sowed land mines and burned crop land. They reduced large boulders into pebble piles, but never managed to subdue the country. The Afghan War was largely over by early December. It took the Americans two months to conquer Afghanistan.

News from the front dissolved to mist and rumor. Some said Osama had been caught in one of the caves at Tora Bora; others said he had escaped to Iran and made a stilted peace with the ruling Shi’ite theocracy. Still others claimed Osama had never been at Tora Bora when the Americans blasted the mountain sides. He was safe amidst the wild country between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Elvis sightings had more substance.

Hit and run terror squads continued to operate in isolated pockets throughout the country, but they were outmatched by American Rangers, Force Recon Marines, Delta Teams, and Airborne Troops. The Americans systematically located, engaged, and destroyed the Taliban remnants. Gradually, the war’s tempo and level of violence subsided as Afghanistan attempted to reconstitute a government under the watchful eyes of the United Nations and her American overlords.

Hambali explained Afghanistan as a setback. They would be better prepared the next time they struck the Western infidels. Early in 2002 he established a war council to implement his plan. The Christian West and their Jewish bankers needed to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood remained a viable force.

Mubarok agreed to use his bank account and act as the team’s paymaster.

Imam Samudra easily filled the role of field commander. Immediately, he set about planning the operation and procuring the necessary elements to construct both bombs.

The Nurhasyhim brothers—Amrozi and Mukhlas—had a source for explosives and access to the vans ultimately used.

Hambali helped them forget about Afghanistan. He gave them reason to believe they could regain their September 11th swagger. He inspired hope and fortitude. He focused their energies on the future and muted their tendency to brood upon the past. He explained that the West cared nothing for embassy bombings or suicide attacks inside Israel. A bold, master-stroke would set the proper tone.

The twin bomb attacks demolished Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Nightclub along Bali’s Kuta Beach. Most of the 202 casualties were Australian tourists out for a good time. Until the incinerating blasts killed their countrymen, Australia never saw itself as a front line state in George Bush’s War on Terror.

They recaptured their ballyhooed euphoria as television images replayed the dreadful carnage and deadly flames shot into the night. A grim faced John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister, accompanied the dead home, and led his country through a period of national mourning.

In a private conversation between George Bush and John Howard, the American President listened attentively and offered insightful suggestions based on his recent experience. George Bush pledged the full resources of his intelligence services to identify, hunt down, and exterminate the vermin responsible for the Bali bombings.

While the popular press was quick to pounce on the CIA’s short comings, they were less apt to ridicule the Star Wars like technology deployed against America’s elusive and murky enemies. The National Security Agency and Great Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters located near Cheltenham can potentially process a trillion bytes of information daily. Specialized sniffer programs tirelessly sift and strain the data for keywords in over a hundred languages, and a grid based inference engine is used to manage the entire effort.

America unleashed her cyber bloodhounds.

While Abdul and his lot chortled like Super Bowl winners, the law of unintended consequences kicked in.

John Howard accepted the American offer and transformed from a so-so partner against Saddam Hussein into a fierce competitor out for blood. The Aussies wanted a piece of the action and a scalp to hang on the wall.

Within weeks, security services throughout Southeast Asia had a list of names, faces, and aliases. The American’s extended their reach, bluntly explaining to wayward allies that they were either “with us or against us.” Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan quickly fell into line. The rest of Asia had no desire to make an enemy of the Americans as they could all readily witness the consequences of American aggression.

Abdul knew something was amiss when Indonesia began rounding up people connected to the bombing plot. He looked to Hambali for guidance, and what he saw chilled his heart. Hambali handed him a set of five blank passports, a list of forgers, access cards to bank accounts, and time-worn black book.

Hambali was the brains and the spiritual impetus behind Jemaah Islamiah, and he recognized trouble just as readily as the next man. It was no accident that he had stayed one step ahead of the West for over a decade. Some of those steps involved false identities, forged passports, and phony credit cards. He gave Abdul the same instructions.

“Not everyone is called to martyrdom,” he explained. “There are those who need to remain free, to plan for another day. Should the worst happen, and I am caught or killed, you need to take up the banner and drive the sword of Allah into the belly of the beast.”

Abdul did not need much prompting as the cable networks began reporting the apprehension of the Bali bombers. Indonesia is not known for its adherence to civil rights and due process. Nor did the American task masters peeking over Indonesian shoulders ruminate about civil liberties. They wanted a rack of scalps to hang on their wall too.

The War on Terror has many secrets and the battlefields do not necessarily make the nightly news. The Gray Men, who office out of Langley and Vauxhall crossing, required results and they are not terribly picky about how they gathered their information.

Hambali wished him luck and fled, leaving Abdul holding five blank passports. Paranoia crept up and strangled the euphoric bombing success. Hambali did not intend to be cornered in a lone cave fifteen thousand feet above sea level where the B-52s could drop their Joint Direct Attack Munitions and obliterate the inside of a cave from miles away.

Abdul clung to his faith and reassured himself that Allah would watch over him. After all, he was a soldier embarked on a holy mission. He had risked much to send infidels to hell. His reward lay in paradise, but Abdul tended to enjoy the carnality of the here and now. He checked his list of forgers, and decided on a set of false identities and different faces.

His mission kept him away from airports and train stations. He walked, hitched rides, or found fishermen to ferry him along the coast. He assumed his chameleon-skinned existence, and tried not to jump at every sound. Abdul soon realized he was not cut out for life on the run.

Perhaps, the Americans did not know his name or his face, but their Indonesian puppets ferreted out details. Abdul knew what the inside of an Indonesian interrogation room looked like. The floors reek of urine and feces, blood splatters adorn the walls, and a single bulb hangs above a wooden chair that has leather manacles on the arms. In the dank rooms where confessions poured out of bleeding, broken people, the list of collaborators slowly emerged.

There were few secrets the combined intelligence services of America, Great Britain, and the Russian Federation did not know. The American’s produced a list of Jemaah Islamiah’s leadership and ordered the Indonesians to go fetch. Similar lists were parceled out to Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Korea.

Abdul cautiously made his way down the Malaysian coast from Malacca to Singapore. He shied away from border crossing points, and studiously used cash for virtually every purchase. He read about the trials in Denpasar, Bali’s provincial capital, and the death sentences handed down to Mubarok and the Nurhasyhim brothers. They were the lucky ones, Indonesia is not known for a prisoner-coddling penal system.

Hambali ran into trouble in Thailand. The details remained murky, but Abdul understood that Hambali was no longer in Thailand or Indonesia. He had been swallowed whole by the American security apparatus. George Bush called Hambali, “One of the world’s most lethal terrorists…and that he was no longer a problem.”

A ranking security official who spoke on the basis of anonymity told the Taipei Times, “I don’t think one more public trial would necessarily affect public opinion that much, at least in the short term.”

Hambali, Jemaah Islamiah’s spiritual leader, simply vanished into the ether. According to the few sources still available to Abdul, he never arrived at the American’s much publicized prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Abdul skipped across the Johor Strait to Singapore, and took up residence on the Paramount Hotel’s fifth floor. He had no illusions and assumed his room was bugged. Abdul affected the airs of a tourist on holiday. He forced himself to visit China Town, Little Indian, and the Colonial District. He scrambled aboard a harbor boat and checked out the Southern Islands. The whole time he considered his plight and plotted his next move.

Indonesia bent to Washington’s demands, but rounding up everyone ever associated with Jemaah Islamiah was impossible in a country of 230 million people spread across 13,667 islands, of which, less than half are inhabited. It also sports the largest Muslim population in the world—a force the government dare not ignore.

Abdul had a mission to accomplish. Hambali had given him the means to form a sword. He returned to the black book Hambali had given him before they both fled across the world. He worked his way through the coded pages, finding what he was looking for. He prepared his message before he left for one of the Internet Cafes.

The World Wide Web made it possible for him to place a personal ad in Johannesburg’s Mail & Guardian. He paid for the ad using a credit card he would destroy before returning to the Paramount. The act took only seconds, but it commenced a chain of events that would shock a nation.

Douglas De Bono / DouglasDeBono.Com Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota E-Mail readermail@DouglasDeBono.Com