Strike Force Alpha by Mack Maloney Read Free Book Online Page A

himself. He indicated that he’d spent time in all of these agencies, the DIA being his most recent. But, he also claimed, he’d been shuffled around so many times between them, due to his status as “a spy, par excellence,” apparently sometimes he didn’t know exactly who he was working for.
    He knew a lot of people in Washington but quickly added that, in his case, this was not the same as having a lot of friends there. He claimed to have been called into secret trials to give testimony relating to the Middle East and Muslim terrorists, and indeed, Murphy was supposedly a walking encyclopedia on terrorist groups, and especially on the ways of Al Qaeda. Murphy had also bragged about having many friends in other countries’ intelligence agencies, especially the European ones.
    Though he’d claimed he was married, he admitted he wasn’t sure where his wife was these days. She was not as in love with the spy game as he. He claimed to have a cadre of beautiful, highly paid prostitutes in place around the world, women he used to get what he could not get by other means. Supposedly a dozen of these beauties were working for him in the United States alone.
    But how did the whole Ocean Voyager concept come about? It was another murky story, one with holes big enough to sail a battleship through. The most accepted version went like this: After the September 11th attacks, Murphy spent days browbeating his bosses at the DIA to do something— anything —to strike back at Al Qaeda. The DIA turned him down: they gathered intelligence; they didn’t run operations, which he knew was a lie. He then went to the CIA and pleaded with them to let him plan a mission similar to Jimmy Doolittle’s raid over Tokyo in the dark early days of World War II, something that would lift the morale of all Americans in the wake of 9/11. The CIA sat squarely on their thumbs for weeks, then months; no one wanted to take responsibility for OK’ing such a plan, no matter what form it might take. Murphy then went to Naval Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, even the National Security Agency. All of them turned him down for the same reasons: too much risk and the fear of insulting both Arabs and allies around the world.
    Time passed, but Murphy could not be deterred. He finally prevailed, so the story went, when by sheer pluck he managed to get a sit-down with the President himself. What he told the Chief Executive during the course of their 30-minute meeting was apparently known only to the President and Murphy himself. One account said Murphy promised to hunt down and eliminate every Al Qaeda operative connected to the attacks on 9/11, whether they be foot soldiers or financiers—and grease any other bad guys he found in between. Whatever the case, by the time he walked out of the Oval Office, Murphy had been given a blank check to essentially do his thing.
    The assurances to keep it ultra secret were all there, too: The President promised absolutely no oversight, no justifications, no receipts. No micromanaging from Washington, no reports to be filed, no debriefings needed. Murphy had been given access to whatever military resources he wanted. He had a lengthy shopping list. The 18 helicopter troops came from Delta Force, America’s best-trained, most secret special operations group. The Blackhawk pilots were from Air Force Special Ops, the best at driving copters in and out of tight spaces. The ship itself was run by a company of handpicked U.S. Navy sailors, each one given the highest security clearance possible. A Marine Air maintenance squad took care of the aircraft hidden below. Murphy claimed that he’d personally selected every person for the secret unit himself sight unseen and as proof rattled off for Bingo’s CO the names of just about every soul who would eventually come onboard.
    Murphy got everything he asked for and more—and as a result this was no ordinary secret ops team. There were no uniforms. No IDs. All orders were given