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

Unit 999
by Douglas DeBono, 2005

Prologue

The trucks crossed the Syrian border at Al Tanf and Abu Kamal. They were a mishmash of covered army vehicles, tractor trailer rigs and minivans. Each had a special emblem embossed on the license plates. They rumbled over the desert like blind elephants unconcerned about the war rumors.

Beyond the horizon, an American armada was beginning to mass. The second Gulf War was a few months away and the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime an almost certainty. The confused Americans gave the United Nations and diplomacy another chance. The Administration believed it owed the European allies one last shot at peace. Saddam believed he could con the West into granting him another Security Council resolution and stymie the Americans.

The United Nation’s Oil for Food program was nothing more than a massive slush fund that Saddam used to bribe the French, the Germans, the Russians and the U.N.—Saddam had a long list of hanger-ons. Everyone seemed to be on the take except for the man who mattered most: President George W. Bush.

To thwart the American president, a clumsy disinformation campaign was leaked to the press outlets eager to keep their Baghdad offices and elect someone else in 2004. The lie ranged from “Iraq is a peaceful nation” to “Dubya is only interested in a grudge match.”

Cooler heads understood that the first President Bush left the matter unfinished when Desert Storm vanquished the fourth largest tank army, and drove the Iraqi invaders out of Kuwait. In those days, people still believed Russia to be a world power worthy of consideration and France had not yet slid into a permanent anti-American posture. Saddam was a problem, bellicosely threatening his neighbors in the morning and hinting at his potent arsenal of Weapons of Mass destruction by the evening.

Unlike the first Gulf War, the Americans were not coming to simply liberate another country. This time they were surly bunch out for vengeance. Three thousand dead and a pair of the tallest skyscrapers reduced to a million tons of rubble caused them to look around for the bad guys. The ties between Saddam’s government and Islamic terrorism were there for anyone to see.

Saddam paid a bounty to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. Twenty-five thousand dollars for the life of a child and as many Jews as they could take with them.

He kept a retirement home for aging terrorists like Abu Nidal. His agents ran interference for bin Laden when things got uncomfortable in the Sudan, and they tacitly supplied support to the September 11th hijackers.

Critics still demanded that the evidence stand up in a court of law. What they failed to understand—the law did not apply to people like Saddam. The only thing Saddam understood was the smoking barrel of a gun.

He would soon get his wish.

The border guards were replaced by members of special intelligence group called Unit 999. The unit maintained its headquarters at Salman Pak—a brutal place where terrorist groups honed their deadly skills inside the hull of an abandoned Boeing 707 and Dr. Rihab Taha plied her trade as Saddam’s chief bio-weapons designer. Most of the West’s Iraq watchers referred to her using her nom de guerre: Doctor Death.

Unit 999 is an ultra secret unit buried inside the At-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya (Special Branch of Iraqi Military Intelligence). Over the years, elements of Unit 999 have sabotaged Iranian oil platforms, attempted the kidnapping of General Norman Schwarzkopf and organized Palestinian suicide bombers along the West bank and Gaza Strip.

During the last two weeks in January and first week in February 2003, Unit 999 took over the border checkpoints between Syria and Iraq. Saddam decided to hedge his bets. He suspected, and the Russians confirmed, that American reconnaissance satellites had focused on the known WMD development sites and his numerous presidential palaces.

Saddam’s peccancy, when it came to the United Nation’s Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors, was laughable. Hans Blix and his keystone inspectors would be hard pressed to find water in the ocean or sand in the desert. They prepared reports detailing the destruction of the Botulinum and Anthrax production facilities at Al Hakum, but failed to account for the 30,000 liters of Anthrax produced. UNSCOM proudly pointed to the dismantling of the Muthanna State Establishment where precursor chemical agents necessary for mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun and VX had been discovered, but they never accounted for the missing stocks of those weapons.

The same could be said for the nuclear programs discovered at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center and Al Furat. The reports that Iraq had successfully tested a nuclear device prior to the first Gulf War were either scoffed at or outright ignored. No one wished to consider a nuclear armed madman. Yet, the 21st century appeared to have a growing troop of such people in Libya, North Korea and Iran.

The trucks rolling across the frontier at Al Tanf continued west through Sab Abar and An Nabk on their way to the Lebanese border. Each truck had a heavily armed escort of Unit 999 troopers and a curious lack of any Syria military presence. Saddam skillfully bought of Bashar Assad’s government by running black market oil through the pipeline that stretches from Kirkuk in northern Iraq to Syria’s oil terminals at Banais on the Mediterranean Sea. The quid pro quo permitted banned weapons and dual use technologies to flow back into Iraq.

Refined yellow cake uranium ore came from Al Qaim. Gas centrifuges designed at Rashidiya and assembled at a reconstituted underground facility at Al Furat rumbled down the super highway connecting Iraq to its neighbors. Uranium dioxide, uranium tetrachloride and uranium hexaflouride were packed and sealed in double hulled steel barrels.

Camel Pox agents, Anthrax, Botulinum toxin, Clostridium, perfringens used for gas gangrene, mycotoxins, aflatoxins and Ricin were studiously sealed in leak proof canisters. They were weapons for another day—another war; one that the American armada was powerless to stop.

The trucks entered a military zone inside Lebanon that was patrolled by more than thirty thousand Syrian troops. They made for a bunker complex along the Orontes River between Al Labwah and Baalbeck in the Bekaa Valley. Iraq and its proxy Syria had invested millions of dollars to create an air defense envelope comprised of SA-2 Guideline and SA-6 Gainful surface-to-air missiles. The missiles were there to protect Hamas and Hezbollah training camps. They were also there to guard Saddam’s secrets.

Vehicles crossing into Syria at Abu Kamal went north towards the port city of Latakia. Three medium sized freighters took on similar materials, but nothing that could immediately be converted into a weapon. Saddam might be as crazy as the Austrian paper hanger that drove the world into war, but he was a sly as a fox when it came to hide-and-seek.

The freighters were part of a fifteen ship fleet controlled by al Qaeda. They flew under “flags of convenience” such as Liberia and Panama, and changed registration readily. Once again lawyers hamstrung western navies when it came to stopping the proliferation of weapon technology. There were rules of the sea and maritime privileges to be considered. Such niceties lost their charm if Boston or New York or Savannah suddenly had a fireball erupting in the harbor.

Colonel Khalid al-Husan had an impressive resume when it came to terrorism. In a sense, he was one of Saddam’s top spies. In one way or another, al-Husan had been party to the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, the first and second World Trade Tower attacks, and the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Originally assigned to the 14th Directorate Special Operations, he also worked for Syria’s Idarat al-Amn al-‘Amm (General Intelligence Directorate). At various times in his career he had reported to Saddam, Qusay and Uday. He flitted across the Syrian border, whenever necessary, to relocate terrorists. In 1996, he traveled clandestinely to the Sudan in order to warn Osama bin Laden of the al-Bashier Government’s offer to hand over bin Laden to the Americans in return for Sudan’s removal from the list of rogue states.

Saddam could not turn to his sons when it came time to hide the national treasures. The Israeli, British and American intelligence services were keen on keeping track of Iraq’s leadership, so Saddam turned to the one man he trusted to handle the affair. Al-Husan was transferred to Unit 999 and given broad powers in both Syria and Iraq to safe guard Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

Even as Saddam prepared for his interview with Dan Rather prior to the start of hostilities, al-Husan was ensuring that every major weapons program had been hidden inside Iraq or moved to the Bekaa Valley storage area. The freighters sailed weeks earlier, heading towards open water in the Atlantic and safe haven along Africa’s Atlantic coast.

On March 19, 2003 Operation IRAQI FREEDOM commenced as forty cruise missiles slammed into a leadership bunker believed to house Saddam Hussein. British and American warplanes dominated the skies and the final days of Saddam’s murderous regime came to an end. American troops raced across the country towards Baghdad, battling those foolhardy to take them on and sandstorms that threatened to engulf the liberators.

The American led coalition that included Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Poland, Italy, Spain and others won the freedom for twenty-six million people. France, Germany and Russia were curiously absent from the fight. They had forgotten that they had much more in common with George Bush than Saddam Hussein. Of course, they were embittered as well, having lost a reliable sugar daddy.

Al-Husan watched the war from his Damascus office and contemplated the outcome. American airpower sought out and devastated Republican Guard’s Hammurabi, Nebuchadnezzar and al-Medina Divisions. It became obvious that ground commanders came to fear the Americans more than Saddam and unilaterally decided not to fire their chemical munitions.

The commander of Unit 999 considered his options and bided his time. He held the keys to a counter strike; all that remained was for him to organize the pieces. Al-Husan knew how to do that. He had operated inside America before. The weapons stored in the Bekaa bunker complex were meant to be used.

Neither Great Britain nor America could rest easy as long as the means to their destruction remained in al-Husan’s hands. Major combat operations wound down to an uneasy peace and nettlesome insurgency. The fruitless hunt for WMDs began, and the predictable naysayers pulled their heads out of the sand. By the fall of 2003, people were coming to the conclusion that Saddam had no WMDs and the entire Iraq War was a pretext to grab oil.

Al-Husan let the cauldron boil, never taking his eye off the goal. He simply laid the groundwork for the next phase in the war between civilizations. The moment was nearing.

Finally, the moment is now.

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