The Outside Man

by Don Bentley

  But that was what I was here to do.

  “I need to find two people,” I said, “a man and a woman. A girl, really.”

  Switching driving hands from his right to his left, Zain reached into the leather messenger bag at his feet, withdrawing a cigar. After removing the cellophane casing, he slid the unlit stogie between his teeth and began to chew.

  “Finding two people in a city this large is no small task,” Zain said, working the cigar between his lips. “Tell me what you know. I will do what I can. But first, the items you requested are behind me.”

  Turning in my seat, I found a black nylon bag and pulled it into my lap. The heft alone was comforting. Unzipping the main pocket lifted my spirits even further. An assortment of ordnance and communications gear was nestled in custom-made mesh pockets. I selected a Glock, loaded the pistol, holstered it, and slid the rig into my waistband.

  The feeling of relief was immediate. For the first time in fifteen hours, I was back in my element. Without logistical assistance from the DIA, traveling to Iraq had been difficult. Finding a way for Virginia and me to arrive in-country together had been impossible. For the initial leg of the trip, Frodo had secured us seats on a private Air Force jet heading to Turkey. But once we arrived, things got tricky.

  Tradecraft dictates that clandestine operatives never infil on the same flight if at all possible. With the prevalence of artificial intelligence, foreign services have become adept at employing custom-designed algorithms to discover patterns in the vast amount of readily available open-source data. Patterns that revealed clandestine activity. With this in mind, we’d decided to come into country separately.

  Since Virginia had never entered Iraq before, she was arriving via a commercial flight to Baghdad International in a couple of hours. I’d come in dark, taking a chartered flight into the still-nonoperational Mosul International Airport. At least nonoperational for the Iraqi public. Due to its proximity to Turkey and Syria and its newly refurbished runway, quite a few unmarked planes were making regular stops at the airport, which was technically closed.

  Once I’d secured passage into country, it had been a simple matter to make contact with Zain and arrange for him to pick me up. Though if the two Hilux trucks escorting us were any indication, nothing in Iraq was ever quite as simple as it seemed.

  Zain ran one of the largest smuggling operations in this part of the world. Hell, probably in any part of the world. Prior to the Syrian civil war, he’d operated a successful and completely legal trucking company. But in the last decade, his organization had morphed into something a bit more nebulous. While he still moved legitimate goods through Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, the bulk of his business now involved smuggling arms and ammunition to the wide assortment of militias fighting against Assad.

  Moving restricted material across three heavily guarded borders required a network of informants and people on the take that rivaled New York’s Five Families. Zain had been one of the most successful recruitments I’d ever made. The intelligence his network provided was unrivaled, and I intended to put it to use getting Ferah out of Iraq while drawing a bull’s-eye on Mr. Suave. Using her NSA tools, Katherine had been able to localize the Facebook IP addresses to Mosul. Now I needed Zain’s help finding the man who didn’t want to be found.

  But first Zain needed to understand the risks.

  “The man I’m looking for runs a large criminal enterprise,” I said, paving the way for the next part of our conversation. “I need your help locating him. But before you say yes, I want you to know that this time things are different. When I asked for your assistance in Syria, I was trying to save one of my countrymen. Now, my actions might lead to the death of one of yours. This man is dangerous, Zain. Do you understand?”

  Zain looked across the truck at me for an instant before returning his attention to the road. His expression had been strange, unreadable even.

  “Let us talk plainly, my friend,” Zain said. “These never-ending wars have caused unimaginable suffering. And this is saying something. When it comes to suffering, we Arabs have both vivid imaginations and long memories. In any case, the war has also made me rich, powerful even. Powerful men have a responsibility to use their authority wisely. Inshallah one day I will go back to being a simple truck driver. But I fear that day will be long in coming. Until then I will use what Allah has granted me wisely. Tell me what you need. If it is within my power, I will provide it.”

  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Zain’s recruitment had required more than just a simple pitch offering money in exchange for intelligence. By the time we’d met, Zain had already transitioned into the gray market and was reaping the financial benefits. More money wasn’t going to grab his attention. Instead, I offered him the one thing he needed but couldn’t buy—information.

  In exchange for intelligence on ISIS and Assad’s troop movements, I targeted Zain’s logistical routes with an entire portfolio of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—or ISR—assets. He knew when bandits set up checkpoints intended to extort or outright murder his drivers and steal his cargo because I told him.

  Without my help, Zain would have risen to the top of the smuggler heap eventually. With me in his corner, his ascendance had been meteoric. In return, he’d dedicated part of his vast logistical train to moving arms and equipment to the Syrian rebels while turning every one of his employees into a HUMINT collector. This arrangement had been hugely beneficial while I was in Syria, but it should have ended once I’d left.

  It hadn’t.

  As September 11th had so aptly demonstrated, the intelligence community defaulted toward being reactive rather than proactive. I didn’t intend to repeat this mistake with Zain. So even though the US had effectively washed its hands of Syria, I kept Zain’s network active. I still pushed him information even though he was no longer an on-the-books asset.

  My personal relationship with the smuggler aside, I’d believed that someday I’d need to use him operationally again. When that time came, I wanted him in my debt and ready to help. So far, that approach seemed to be bearing dividends, but the real test was coming.

  Unaided by a foreign intelligence service, Mr. Suave had put together a complex operation that had nearly killed me. His professions to the contrary aside, my nemesis was no simple businessman or warlord. Going toe-to-toe with him would be the equivalent of declaring war on a sovereign nation. I wanted Zain to understand this before he agreed to help.

  Once again, easier said than done.

  I took out my cell phone and scrolled through the pictures until I found the screenshot of Ferah. “This girl is fifteen. Her name is Ferah, and she’s about to be auctioned by sex traffickers. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  Zain exploded into a series of choice Arabic curses as he slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “I knew it. I knew it. Sooner or later I knew this would affect someone I cared about. It is to my great shame that I didn’t fight this scourge before now. Once again, you are my conscience, Matthew.”

  “What do you know about the sex traffickers?” I said.

  Zain tossed the cigar he’d been gnawing out the window before replying.

  “The ISIS dogs started the practice of selling captured women and girls. Unfortunately, this was but one of the atrocities perpetrated by the Caliphate, but this aberration has outlived the black-clad imbeciles. Selling kidnapped women has become a profitable business. One of the local flesh traffickers actually tried to hire me to move his girls into Turkey. He was willing to pay handsomely.”

  “What did you say?”

  Zain gave me another unreadable look. “I said nothing. Instead, I let my pistol do the talking. Inshallah the desert sands will never give up his worthless body.”

  I gave Zain’s shoulder a squeeze, but he shrugged off my hand. “Do not think so highly of me because I exterminated this cockroach, Ma
tthew. That should be the reaction of any reasonable man. But a good man would have done more. I have not bought, sold, or transported girls, but I have also not aided them. That makes me as much to blame as the chelb now rotting in the sand. What else do you know about this girl, this Ferah?”

  “I know that this man runs the organization that took her.” I switched to the augmented picture of Mr. Suave pieced together from the stolen airport security video. “Do you know him?”

  Zain glanced at the phone and then gave a long sigh. “With you, Matthew, nothing is ever easy. Of course I know him. Who does not know the Devil?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Devil?” I said.

  I tried to sound nonchalant, but in my mind’s eye, I saw Mr. Suave squatting in front of my broken body as he casually explained how the chemical weapon would devour my brain. He’d spoken in a matter-of-fact manner, as if giving me directions to the café down the street rather than discussing my death. I’d made an enemy or two over the course of my career. Hatred I could handle, but his total indifference terrified me.

  “It isn’t just a nickname,” Zain said. “That is what he is. I’ve seen men kill for their country, or tribe, or god. But he is different. The Devil is motivated by power. Power and the money that comes with it.”

  “Who is he?”

  Zain shook his head. “No one knows his true name. I’ve heard rumors that he was one of Saddam’s generals. If so, he must not have been high-ranking. The truly important ones either followed their leader to the gallows or threw in with the Caliphate. But not the Devil.”

  “Then how do you know him?” I said.

  “It’s difficult to put into words,” Zain said, reaching again for the messenger bag. “I’ve seen him only once, but I’ve known of him for many years. Much like you can’t see the wind, but you can feel its effect. Things happened in my world—things shaped by unseen fingers. Certain organizations grew stronger while others faltered. The jihadis gave some towns a wide berth but ransacked others. The Russians targeted one tribe and left their neighbors untouched.”

  “That sounds very vague.”

  Zain shrugged. “It is the nature of things here. When order begins to supplant chaos, someone is managing the transition. Just because you can’t see that person doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

  “Do you deal with the Devil?” I said.

  Another shrug. “I deal with many people. Not directly with the Devil, but certainly his organization. What they do to the people who stand in their way makes the jihadis seem like schoolchildren. Are you sure there is no other path for you, Matthew?”

  I paused before slowly shaking my head. “Sorry, my friend, but everything you’ve told me only confirms my suspicions. The Devil reached halfway across the world to get my attention. I don’t think he’s going to back down now.”

  “You’re right,” Zain said. “He won’t. And for that, I’m sorry.”

  Something in Zain’s voice started my spider senses tingling. My inner lizard had been trying to warn me, but I’d ignored it. Not because I’d doubted my instincts, but because I hadn’t wanted to believe them. Zain had been my asset for more than three years. He’d risked his life for me. He was a friend. But as he’d been trying to tell me ever since I’d climbed into the Hilux, now things were different.

  Even friendships fail in the face of the Devil.

  I went for my Glock, but I was too late. The hand Zain had reached into the messenger bag now held a pistol instead of a cigar. I looked from the gaping barrel to Zain. His brown eyes were liquid, his expression torn.

  But he pulled the trigger all the same.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I woke up in stages, my senses coming online one at a time. My sense of smell was first—musty staleness of enclosed spaces mixed with the sour odor of desperate men. Touch came next. The chill of a subterranean floor. The sandpaper-like texture of unfinished concrete. Sight arrived last and was the least revealing. The dimness of confinement coupled with drab walls and a prison cell’s familiar steel bars.

  I sat up, pushing myself out of the damp puddle in which I’d been lying. In the first good news of the day, it wasn’t urine. But I wasn’t lounging in a Jacuzzi either. Droplets of water dribbled down the wall in green streams, smelling of mold and corruption.

  The room’s mustiness seemed to be fogging my brain. I didn’t know who I was, let alone how I’d gotten here. After several disconcerting seconds, my memory returned in patches like a paused movie beginning to play.

  Zain.

  Zain pointing a gun.

  Zain pointing a gun and squeezing the trigger.

  The image made me lurch, just like I had in the passenger seat. I reached for my chest, searching for blood-soaked fabric, but found nothing. Then I remembered the rest. Instead of the sharp crack of detonating gunpowder, I’d heard a spitting sound. Not the cough of a suppressor. More like the pop of an air pistol.

  Or a tranquilizer gun.

  Reaching beneath my sweat-slicked shirt, I found a welt where the dart had embedded its pointy head into my sternum. The skin was sore and warm to the touch, but my fingers came away blood free. In my surprise, I hadn’t felt the dart’s impact. I’d been too busy trying to process Zain’s betrayal.

  But whether I felt it or not, the tranquilizer dart had worked as advertised. One moment I’d been looking at the black fletching sprouting from my chest. The next the world had gone hazy. I remembered Zain saying something as the medication went to work, but his voice seemed to be coming from a long, long way away. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but it sounded as though he was repeating the same thing over and over.

  I’m sorry.

  Or maybe that was just what I’d wanted to hear. Bottom line, I’d made a handler’s most devastating mistake. I’d let myself believe that my relationship with Zain, the relationship between handler and asset, had become more than just transactional. I’d begun to believe we were friends.

  And now that slip of sentimentality might have just cost me my life.

  Closing my eyes, I wiped the grime from my face. The cell was just as dark when I opened them, but the dark outlines started to become recognizable in the damp gloom. A metal drain cover in the center of the sloped floor. Thick chains hanging from metal brackets drilled into a concrete ceiling. A coiled rubber hose fastened to a rusted spigot on the far wall.

  I recognized what I saw and shuddered. These weren’t instruments of confinement. They were implements of torture.

  As if on cue, a series of overhead bulbs began to buzz, flooding my cell with light that was both harsh and somehow dirty. The bulbs hummed like a swarm of angry bees, and I squinted against the glare, eyeing my cell.

  Bars covered a square window at the top of a metal door. The rest of the cell was as its shadow self had hinted—bare concrete walls meeting a rough concrete floor that sloped to a drain speckled with brown-tinged rust. The room was about two paces wide by three long. Big enough to curl into a fetal position, but much too small to completely stretch out.

  I’d spent more time in places like this than I cared to admit, and my memories weren’t exactly fond. I tried not to dwell on the blood-crusted manacles or the bits of gore clogging the drain cover. This was a place where bad things were done by bad people.

  I didn’t know what was in store, and trying to guess was its own form of torture. Instead, I took inventory of my injuries, which, aside from the tender and bruised portion of my chest, were for once nonexistent.

  Then I took deep, calming breaths.

  I could not control what the men who held me would attempt, but I could control how I prepared for it. In some ways, this was analogous to waiting for the light above an aircraft’s open doorway to change from red to green, signaling it was time to jump. Though I hated parachuting, most of my combat jumps had been relatively uneventful. For the few that hadn’
t been, no amount of prejump worrying would have changed the outcome. With this in mind, I closed my eyes, stretched my aching muscles, and waited for the invisible light to change from red to green.

  I didn’t have to wait long. With the shriek of rusted metal on metal, an unseen door opened. Then the sound of heavy footfalls echoed as someone descended a creaking staircase one step at a time. For better or worse, the light was now green.

  Time to jump.

  * * *

  —

  A prisoner and his captor are somewhat codependent. Unless your captors keep you bound hand and foot, at some point you start to cooperate with them. For instance, if you want to get fed, you do what they tell you. If the captors know their business, they establish this dependency early on, often with pain as a motivator. After getting beaten enough times, or going without food or water long enough, even the most resistant prisoner breaks. Hollywood bullshit aside, everyone does.

  It’s what happens next that determines who survives and perhaps escapes and who becomes a mindless slug.

  The invisible dog fence is a great example of this put into practice. After getting the shit shocked out of them a handful of times, most dogs accept the limits of their captivity. Oftentimes owners can even turn the electricity off because, after riding the lightning once or twice, the average dog never again tests the limits of his confinement.

  He’s been physiologically conditioned not to.

  But every now and again, a dog takes the pain and still comes back for more. Equal parts stubborn and tough, that mongrel will eventually get free. Not because he’s immune to the hurt, but because he’s tenacious. Even after getting zapped ninety-nine times, the mutt still goes back to test the fence one more time. And that might be the one time the owner decided to save money on the electricity bill by shutting the fence off.

  Is escaping a sure thing? Nope. Does it hurt like hell when the cattle prods underneath his collar light the dog’s throat on fire? Yep. The truth is that the owner may never turn off the fence. But one thing’s for sure: A dog that gives up has zero chance of ever visiting the pretty golden retriever next door.