Operations Compromised

by Warren Conrad

  He sensed motion behind him—the tell-tale flutter of a shadow—and turned sharply, his gun barrel rising. A small girl stood peering up at him curiously, eyebrows drawn together, her dark eyes assessing but not afraid.

  “I don’t have any candy,” Stryker said, though she was the only child without her hands out. She responded in Pashto, and although he knew a few words, he didn’t catch what she said. “I’m sorry,” he said, and shrugged.

  The girl smiled, and he felt like a cloud was moving away from the sun. She laughed as she shrugged her small shoulders in imitation. He couldn’t help but think of his niece, watching her, although the skin color, hair, and eyes were different; there was something about her that disarmed him, as there had been about Emma. How old would she be now, if she had not been flying to New York that September day? Eleven? About this girl’s age—she would still be smiling, laughing, and making fun of him with her wide eyes and easy smile.

  He fished in his pocket and found a stick of gum. “You remind me of someone,” he said, though he knew the girl would not understand. “Someone very special.” The girl accepted the gum and flashed another smile, her eyes bright and warm, before they shifted past him to focus on something else.

  He looked over his shoulder, following her line of sight, to see an Afghan man striding directly toward the group of soldiers and children. Something about him was off. Stryker’s instincts screamed warnings, and with one hand he shoved the girl to the ground as the other raised his rifle. He opened his mouth to shout a warning. The man’s hand moved inside his robe, and the bomb detonated.

  Stryker was blown off his feet, the world exploding into light and then darkness. For several long seconds, he fought to remain conscious as his vision blurred in and out of focus. Black smoke drifted over him, obscuring the clear blue sky. He could hear nothing—only the ringing in his ears. He seemed to be in a vacuum, all the air and sound sucked out, his lungs laboring even to draw breath. The shockwave had hurled him back several yards. His rifle was out of sight. He rolled over with great effort, crawled forward, and staggered to his feet as sound came rushing back. Screams, cries of pain, gasps of breath. The air smelled of burning flesh.

  Body parts of soldiers and children were strewn in every direction, pooling black in the dirt. Soldiers who had been at some distance came running, and several took up positions to secure the area—shouting at the dazed locals to show their hands—while others rushed to help the wounded on the ground. Stryker saw the young soldier who had been passing out candy. He lay on his side, and his armored vest had protected his chest, but his left arm was gone from the elbow down. All of the children were dead. He looked away, forcing himself to breathe. Off to the side, in a crumpled heap, he saw the little girl who had been watching him. He knelt beside her, steeling himself, knowing what he would find.

  He turned her over and saw where the shrapnel had torn holes in her side, chest, and throat. The bright warmth was gone from her eyes. He closed his hand into a tight fist to steady it and then gently brushed her eyelids closed. “I’m sorry,” he said to her again. He was saying it to all the children. He was saying it to Emma. What was he doing here, he wondered, if he still could not protect innocents such as these?

  A hand fell on his shoulder, and he started violently. It was a member of the local Army unit they had met up with, a tall sergeant. “You OK?” the man asked. Stryker just stared at him. The man pulled out a radio and sent a distress call for emergency medical teams. He glanced back over the carnage and shook his head. “How are we supposed to fight this kind of war?”

  Stryker stood. “Not like this.”

  Chapter 3

  Tehran, Iran

  1992

  The room was dimly lit by candles and smelled sharply of incense. At the far end, the man Ali had come to visit sat behind a dark, polished desk that held a scattered sheaf of papers and an ornate, gold-hilted dagger resting on a display base. Ali stood on a plush rug before the desk and waited. He had not bothered to remove his shoes.

  “Ali Shirazi,” the man said without looking up. He flipped through the papers with one hand, scanning them, while the other held a tall glass of melting ice. He was in his early sixties, his face weathered by years in the sun. He addressed the younger man in Persian. “My advisors tell me you do good work.”

  “Then they lie,” Ali answered. He did not smile.

  Angra Mainyu laughed, short and mean. “No doubt.” His name meant “devil” in Persian, and Ali had never heard him called by any other. Mainyu ran a thick finger down a page. “I knew much of this, but some gaps were filled in. Good marks in school, fine enough student of Shia Islam. Then you served in the Basijis under Khomeini, where I hear you developed a taste for killing. Beat to death a number of civilians.”

  He looked up for a reaction, but Ali simply gazed back at him. The Basijis had come into power at the end of the seventies, after the Shah went into exile and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran. Strikes and demonstrations crippled the country. There were battles in the streets, but the Shah’s troops were defeated and Khomeini was named the Supreme Leader.

  Thousands of Revolutionary Committees staged arbitrary arrests and executions, and Hezbollah attacked newspapers and anyone critical of Khomeini. Over nine hundred executions took place, most without trials.

  In 1979, Khomeini had announced a jihad against the United States, and his version of Islam incited thousands of teenagers to volunteer for martyrdom missions as “holy soldiers.” They were blessed by the mullahs and sent to their deaths. The movement, known as the Basijis, joined with Hezbollah as the primary enforcers of Sharia law. Their ranks swelled to more than twelve million. Ali had no interest in martyrdom, but he found he had a natural talent for enforcing obedience and loyalty. The Basijis cracked down on civilians and were praised by the mullahs for their brutality, Ali more than most.

  Once a jihad was declared, all males over the age of fifteen had to fight. Ali had never been a particularly zealous or even faithful follower, either of Islam or the self-proclaimed Twelfth Imam, but the underlying current he understood—war, power, fear, control. He grasped it instinctively, and it gave him a feeling of security and purpose like nothing else. Blood followed him, but it was such a small price, and gladly paid.

  “I see you attended the University of Tehran and graduated top of your class,” Mainyu continued. “Political science. Then Iranian Intelligence recruited you. It didn’t take long for a killer like you to be brought into the Vevak, did it?”

  No, it hadn’t. The elite squad chose its members carefully, and they had a high admission requirement—the death of both parents. Ali killed his mother and father while they slept and reported for assignment the next morning, well-rested. After his first weeks in the squad, he had often sensed that there were some even in the Vevak who looked at him fearfully, and this was right and good.

  “Are you coming to a point?”

  “You will be patient,” Mainyu said, smiling again, “or I will feed you to my dogs.”

  Ali let it pass. His eyes slid to the dagger on its two-pronged display on Mainyu’s desk. The blade was huge and curved, and the edge looked razor sharp. It had sapphires set into the golden hilt. Ali wondered what Shah or Sultan or government official had given it to him in hope of favor.

  Mainyu was babbling on about the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which Ali had pulled off earlier that year. At twenty-three years old, he had already developed an impressive enough record that Mainyu, a man that Western intelligence had pursued for years, took note. Over several decades, Mainyu had left a trail of global death and destruction. He had arranged for Ali to plan and carry out the Buenos Aires bombing, and although the two of them never met in person before now, Ali pulled it off flawlessly.

  After months of preparation, Ali had traveled by boat under fraudulent Colombian documents and entered Argentina through the Triple Frontier, where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina joined. He met with members
of Hezbollah who supplied the suicide truck and driver. The embassy stood next to a Catholic church and a school building, and Ali checked for security or surveillance. He made several trips over two months until he was certain of his timing—the buildings would be full of people in early afternoon.

  On the afternoon of March 17, 1992, a truck loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer crashed into the front of the Israeli Embassy. The detonation destroyed the embassy, church, and school, killing 29 and wounding 242. Many of them were Argentine civilians and children. After the bombing, Ali killed his contacts in Hezbollah and buried them in graves dug days earlier in a remote part of the forest. He erased all evidence at the staging house and slipped across the border.

  Ali stayed a few weeks in a fishing village on the coast of Paraguay. He had spent months here on his way to Argentina, and he spoke the language. He then made his way to Rio de Janeiro and from there to Europe and finally spent months on a container ship bound for Latakia in Syria. After a long bus ride, he was back in Iran.

  Mainyu had a reputation for being as careful as he was cruel, and Ali had taken more precautions than usual, knowing that Mainyu might share his tendency to sever loose ends. Instead, Ali had been congratulated and summoned directly upon his return to Tehran. Mainyu was apparently pleased with his work. He was smiling again and gesturing with his hands.

  “Yes,” Mainyu said. “Destined for greatness, I think.” He paused, a dark look clouding his expression. “Now I am told I must choose a successor. I am told I am growing to be an old man.”

  Ali stood straighter, his attention claimed. “I hope you have much life still ahead of you,” he lied.

  “You are qualified, there is no doubt. I was testing you, in a way, with the embassy.”

  Ali suppressed a smile. This would advance his plans. There would be much he could do with the old man’s power and influence.

  “Yet, you are too young, I think. What makes you so different from the others, some more experienced than you? No, you are too young still.”

  Ali’s mouth went dry. He licked his lips, struggling to find words. “I have done everything asked of me. I have given up—”

  Mainyu interrupted with another sharp laugh. “What have you given up? Child’s things. What do you know of sacrifice?” The older man held up his left hand, showing that he was missing the last two fingers, only stumps past the first knuckles. Not unusual for bomb-makers.

  Ali fought to hold in his fury. He slammed his left hand down onto the desk, fingers spread, with such force that Mainyu jerked back into his chair. Ali gestured at the dagger. “Do it, then.”

  “What?” Mainyu sputtered. He stared at Ali as if he were a rabid dog.

  “You want to know what makes me different? I’ll show you.” He snatched up the dagger and dropped it on the desk before Mainyu. It clattered and spun. Ali spread his fingers wider on the dark wood.

  “I don’t—this isn’t—”

  At the older man’s hesitation, Ali picked up the dagger and without pause brought the blade down swift and fierce onto his own hand, severing the third and fourth fingers. Blood sprayed across Mainyu’s face, and he recoiled. Ali held up his hand, his face a tight mask of anger, and waved the bleeding stumps before Mainyu.

  “This is what makes me different, you stupid old man.” Ali’s voice was calm, even. “Purpose. This is what it looks like.”

  Mainyu stared at him for a few seconds before he laughed again, though it had a different quality now. It was the way the others had laughed around Ali in the Vevak, the same ones who would not sleep while he was awake. “I see. Yes. You will make a good replacement.” He withdrew a square of embroidered cloth and wiped his face with it before passing it to Ali, who wrapped it tightly around his fingers and applied pressure.

  “In about five years, I should say,” Mainyu went on. “I will groom you over that time. You will learn your place.”

  Nearly a minute of silence fell between them. The cloth darkened on Ali’s hand. Mainyu finally opened his mouth, his eyes flitting to the doorway as if about to call in his guards, when Ali pulled the dagger loose from the desktop and thrust the blade cleanly through Mainyu’s throat until the golden hilt sunk in just below his chin. Pinned to the chair back behind him, the man’s hands fluttered toward his neck as blood poured down his front. Ali casually stepped around the desk behind Mainyu, stuffed the cloth in his mouth, and withdrew the dagger.

  “I’m afraid I will be teaching you about sacrifice,” Ali said. He grabbed Mainyu’s forearm and held it firmly on the desk despite his own fresh injury. Starting with the man’s fingers, he made swift, severe chops, like dicing an onion, moving up to the wrist. He then switched to the other arm. He heard the man’s last, dying gurgle of pain, but it didn’t matter and he kept going. This was mostly for the guards anyway.

  A minute later, Ali found a bell in a drawer and rang it, and the guards hurried in with their AK-47s at the ready. Mainyu was slumped over the desk, which now looked like a butcher block. The guards’ mouths fell open, their fingers tightening on the triggers. The next moment would be crucial.

  “Heart failure,” Ali said evenly. They looked at him. “You serve me now.”

  Their eyes flicked to the red pulp covering the desk and then back to Ali. “Yes,” one said.

  They both stood to attention.

  Ali turned his back on them and returned to the desk where he found another cloth to apply pressure to his hand. He sorted through the bits of flesh on the desk until he found his two fingers and dropped them into Mainyu’s glass of ice, which he took with him.

  “Clean this up,” he said to the guards. “And get me a new desk.”

  *****

  Within two years, Ali would carry out another attack in Argentina. This time he would target the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association building, better known as the Jewish Community Center. He would continue to develop networks of contacts and sources of funding, and he would begin expanding to a global scale of operation. He would meet and coordinate the attack with members of the Islamic Jihad, never using his real identity and only acting as a go-between with no one knowing his true role. On the morning of July 18, 1994, a van would detonate in front of the community center, killing eighty-five people and injuring more than three hundred others, the majority of them Jewish. Islamic Jihad would take responsibility for the attack, but Mossad investigators would find evidence of Iranian involvement. They would never be able to track down the mysterious Iranian behind the attack. At the age of twenty-six, Ali would become a ghost.

  Chapter 4

  Berryville, Arkansas

  December 2008

  After the village bombing, Stryker made a decision. He rotated out of the military and returned to the United States. He felt an aching void when he left the base, as if he were leaving a part of his identity behind—more like all of it, if he was honest with himself—but he could not shake the feeling that this new kind of war required him to become something different. Or maybe finally to finish becoming what the Army had started.

  He returned to the abandoned family farm in Berryville, Arkansas, and as the holidays settled into the Ozarks and wintry weather fell upon the town, Stryker threw himself into repairs to the old house and the barn that sheltered a Super Cub he had not flown in years. The plane was dusty but would fly again with a bit of restoration. He was grateful to his parents for leaving him a considerable inheritance from insurance and his mother’s separate estate.

  On New Year’s Eve, he walked out of the house at midnight to hear celebratory gunshots and the distant crackle of fireworks. He raised a glass of Scotch and toasted those lost along the way. “Cheers, Emma. Cheers, Mom and Dad. I know your view is better than mine.”

  He had brought along secure communication equipment, and in the evenings he reached out to old allies, called in favors, and pored over the data they sent him. Sometimes he awoke to sunlight through the slatted window in the old loft, stiff from falling asleep in front o
f his computer. He slept in the loft even though his parents’ room had gone unused since their deaths. The loft had been his sanctuary as a child, his place to plot and scheme. So it was still.

  Without a doubt, there were intelligence leaks that had led to the deaths of his men on the helicopter and all of the children in the village. The Taliban couldn’t have known they were there without someone’s warning. He pressed his network of contacts, and they supplied reports, rumors, and suggestions. Research turned up additional connections. One name surfaced repeatedly, connected to a diverse group of people and events—an attorney named Herman Kaesar who worked for a large international law firm in New York. He had represented many of the defendants in the “Victims of 9/11” lawsuits filed in Federal Court. Several intelligence agents had encouraged Stryker to follow the money, and this fit the bill—large amounts had exchanged hands, with Kaesar’s firm profiting handsomely.

  There was nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but Kaesar’s name kept appearing on the periphery of stories of international drug trafficking, gun smuggling, and violent unrest in, of all places, Afghanistan. Nothing had been pinned on him, but after several weeks of research, there was no doubt in Stryker’s mind: the man was dirty, one way or another. He was as good a place as any to start and see where the information might lead.

  From various records, Stryker learned that Kaesar owned property in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and traveled there every year at the end of August. Stryker accumulated a substantial file on Kaesar’s habits, travel schedules, favorite golf courses, cars, friends, and associates. Stryker wanted to know everything about the man, even what he threw away in his garbage. For three months, he obtained intelligence, and as the spring thaw came, he decided to look closer.

  Stryker drove to Jackson Hole and camped in the shadow of Grand Teton. He hiked trails with other campers, took pictures of scenery, and blended in as he became familiar with the area. He photographed Kaesar’s house and all of its entry and exit points. He noted the security alarm. Kaesar would be in New York until the end of summer, but once a week, a woman arrived. She never stayed long and always entered through the front door. The woman appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties and drove an old, faded blue pickup truck.