Chunk raised his eyebrows at the news and motioned Dempsey to follow him back in the direction the other three SEALs had gone. They entered the room just as a SEAL was tightening zip ties around the wrists of a kneeling fighter. A second man sat at the head of the table, flanked by two SEALs pointing their rifles at the back of his head. Three other ISIS fighters lay motionless in expanding pools of blood. A family portrait hung crooked on the facing wall.
Once upon a time, this was someone’s dining room—before the ISIS usurpers turned it into their private war room.
A burst of gunfire reverberated directly overhead, followed immediately by a calm report over the comms channel. “One, Two—Upstairs is secure. Eight KIA and two crows.”
“Copy, Two,” Chunk replied into his mike.
Dempsey studied the man still sitting at the expansive dining table. Presumably, this was Rafiq al-Mahajer. The warlord’s thick, black beard was wet with Chai, and there was a large brown stain on the front of his gray “man dress,” as Romeo used to call them. The sudden memory of Romeo was painful, but he swallowed it down.
No distractions, he chastised himself. You’ve been waiting for this moment for years.
“You made me bring twenty-two operators for this piece of shit,” Chunk said, sneering at the terrorist. “I hope he’s worth it.”
Dempsey mentally compared the jihadist’s features to the photographs he had studied of Rafiq al-Mahajer, but he already knew: Nose, too narrow. Eyes, too closely set. Beard, not gray enough, and something else . . . This man is not an Arab . . . Damn it.
“It’s not him,” Dempsey said, through clenched teeth.
“What?” Chunk said, incredulous. He pulled a PDA from his kit, tapped it to open a picture of al-Mahajer, and held the screen out beside the man’s face. The terrorist stared back at them with dark, angry eyes.
Dempsey saw abject hatred in those eyes, but none of the fear he remembered in the Mujahideen he’d captured before. This man would gladly die for Allah.
“Fuck, you’re right. It’s not him,” Chunk said, and snapped a picture of the warlord with his PDA. He handed the device to the operator beside him—the same SEAL who had set up the laptop with satellite comms outside. “Here, Gyro, find out who this asshole is,” he said. Then, turning to Dempsey, “You know this guy? Is he on any of your lists?”
Dempsey shook his head.
While the other SEAL ran a facial recognition search on the terrorist, he let his mind race furiously. Had they hit too early? Could Rafiq have been en route from Qa’im, but running late? Did he know about the attack in advance? Or had Rafiq escaped yet again?
Dempsey pulled on Chunk’s sleeve and leaned in close.
“Task the Predator to sweep a two-mile perimeter for squirters, then check the roads between here and Qa’im. Look for a convoy on its way here—or worse, hauling ass back west.”
“Check,” Chunk said, and looked with disgust at the bearded man at the end of the table. He pulled his comms operator aside to pass the instructions in a whisper.
Dempsey walked over to the terrorist, who was sitting with his back so straight and upright it looked like it hurt. The man stared at him with smoldering hatred. Dempsey clucked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “It’s a shame, LT,” he said, circling around behind the prisoner. “A shame we didn’t have more survivors we could bring back for questioning.”
Chunk gave him a quizzical look. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“Got any Skoal?” Dempsey asked, looking past the prisoner and smiling.
“Sure,” Chunk said, and tossed him the can, his face even more confused.
Dempsey packed a generous pinch of snuff behind his lower lip, then wiped his tobacco-coated fingers on the jihadist’s sleeve. The prisoner visibly tensed at the touch. He tossed the can back to Chunk, slid out the chair beside the man, and took a seat. Then he spit a thick gob of brown tobacco juice onto the terrorist’s sandaled foot. The man jerked his foot away, disgusted.
“Mar Haba,” Dempsey said and leaned forward. “Shis-mek?” he asked, inquiring as to the man’s name.
The terrorist made a show of turning away and staring at the far wall.
“Taraf tah-chee in-glee-zee?” he continued. Do you speak English?
The ISIS fighter glanced at him and then immediately looked away. Dempsey leaned back in the chair. “Yeah, you speak English, you fuck,” he said and laughed. “Wein Rafiq al-Mahajer?”
The man said nothing.
Dempsey could feel Chunk’s eyes on him now.
Time to escalate things a bit.
He leaned forward, trying for eye contact, but the prisoner kept his gaze forward and distant. Then without a word, Dempsey grabbed the man’s beard and yanked, smashing his face against the wooden tabletop, and then pushed him back upright in the chair. A small laceration opened on the bridge of the man’s nose and blood began to run—down the left cheek until it disappeared in his heavy, dark beard. The jihadist glanced at Dempsey for only an instant, but long enough for Dempsey to see something new in the man’s eyes: fear . . . and fear told Dempsey volumes.
This crow knew Rafiq al-Mahajer.
“Lieutenant, give me your knife,” Dempsey said softly. He saw the man’s eyes flick to the bowie strapped to the front of Chunk’s kit.
“For what?” Chunk asked, his tone insinuating he was not cool with where Dempsey’s impromptu interrogation was heading.
“I’m gonna cut off this guy’s thumbs. Maybe that will help jog his memory about where his boss is.” As he said it, he watched the man tuck his thumbs inside balled-up fists. Dempsey resisted the urge to smile. He had no intention of cutting anyone’s thumbs off, but this shithead didn’t know that. Knife any grunt might understand, but thumbs? This guy was definitely fluent in English, and that would save time since Dempsey’s Arabic was rusty at best.
“Why don’t you guys take the other crow downstairs while we chat with our friend here?” Chunk said to the three other SEALs in the room. He gestured at the kneeling ISIS fighter, whose hands were bound behind his back, and then nodded at the doorway.
“Roger that,” said the closest SEAL.
Chunk clearly didn’t want his team to have any part of what he feared was about to happen—Dempsey respected the Lieutenant for that, but tonight he was OGA. Tonight, he was playing a game with a different rule book. He needed the prisoner to believe torture was in bounds, and he saw no way to achieve that without roping Chunk into the ruse.
“We’ll be right down,” Chunk called after the junior SEALs shuffling the other terrorist out the door. He pulled Dempsey aside. “This cannot happen here,” he said quietly but firmly. “This is my mission and there’s no way I’ll have my team connected with CIA torture bullshit.”
Dempsey met the Lieutenant’s gaze. “Then you should go downstairs and join your guys.” Without offering a chance for rebuttal, he turned his back on the SEAL and strode toward the seated jihadist. In a single fluid motion, he drew his own knife, arced the blade high over his head, and drove the point down toward the prisoner’s hand. “Where is Rafiq al-Mahajer?” he screamed as the knife slammed in the table with a resounding thud.
“Nein! Please, no!” the bearded man screamed. After a beat, the jihadist opened his eyes and looked down to survey the damage.
Dempsey watched him slump with relief. The knife was embedded an inch deep in the table and a scant millimeter from the tips of his knuckles.
Dempsey pulled the knife out of the table, but he did not return it to its scabbard. “So, you do speak English,” he said, spinning the knife hilt in his palm. “And German.”
Chunk shot him a quizzical look.
“This guy’s German,” Dempsey said, answering the unspoken question. “You gotta check the other database to find him.”
The jihadist looked pale. “You are CIA?” he said in a trembling voice.
“You wish,” Dempsey said with a laugh. “They got protocols for situations like this. Oversi
ght and ethical guidelines, shit like that designed to protect assholes like you. No, I’m just a contractor. They hire me to take out the trash.” He slapped the side of the man’s bearded face.
The door opened and the comms operator stuck his head in. For an instant, Dempsey could have sworn he looked disappointed to see the jihadist still sitting upright and lucid.
“Hey, LT?” he said.
Chunk walked over to him and the SEAL whispered something in his ear. Chunk slapped him on the shoulder and he left, conspicuously closing the door behind him. Chunk walked over to Dempsey. “There’s nothing going on between here and Qa’im,” he whispered. “They’re tracking a couple of pickup trucks, but they look like patrols.”
“Squirters on foot?”
Chunk shook his head.
Dempsey frowned.
Burned again.
He didn’t get it. The intel was solid—Baldwin didn’t make mistakes, even with other people’s data. If Rafiq al-Mahajer decided not to show, then it meant he’d sent this guy as a proxy. Dempsey shifted his attention to two confiscated laptops and a Blackberry on the table beside the prisoner. If on a scale of one to ten Rafiq rated a seven, then his proxy was a five. Which meant that this mission was not a failure. Proxies had value, and more importantly, so did the electronics they carried. Dempsey probed a pocket for his sat phone. He needed to check with Smith, but he was 99 percent certain Jarvis would want one of their people to take a turn with this guy. That meant escorting the prisoner to Baghdad, where hopefully Smith and Jarvis could make arrangements with the CIA to transport the crow out of Iraq. Suddenly, the thought of flying in the Russian helo turned Dempsey’s stomach. Maybe if he was real nice to Chunk, he’d be able to hitch a ride in one of the Blackhawks that had delivered the reserve force.
“What now?” Chunk asked, interrupting Dempsey’s mental masturbation about which helo he would be riding in.
“I have a ride waiting to take my new friend somewhere very special,” Dempsey said, glancing at the prisoner. The bearded fighter’s cheeks were still pale, but his eyes were regaining the fire Dempsey had seen before. Dempsey smiled and spun the knife in his hand one last time before shoving the blade back into its scabbard. “I know what you’re thinking, tough guy, but you might as well put that idea to bed right now. Everyone talks eventually,” he said. “Everyone.”
CHAPTER 3
Mi-17 Helicopter
Eight Hundred Feet over the Desert Floor
Fifty Kilometers Southeast of Haditha, Fifteen Kilometers from Al Wadi Thar Thar, Iraq
0510 Local Time
The predawn sun kissed the horizon pink across the desert. Dempsey frowned and looked away from the porthole. With sunrise, he would lose his most loyal and reliable ally. For the vampires of Special Warfare, the night was more than a comfort; it was a tactical advantage.
Dempsey slipped off his helmet and snapped it to a carabiner on the side of his kit. The weight of the thing had finally become unbearable, and he didn’t need his NVGs anymore with the cabin lighting up. He rolled his neck and got a satisfying double crack. Absently, he ran a fingertip along the serpentine scar that wrapped his left forearm, until Smith’s voice played in his head: You have to do a better job policing your mannerisms. That behavior is something Jack Kemper did. You’re John Dempsey now. John Dempsey doesn’t do that . . .
He stopped and hooked his thumbs onto his kit.
Then, he noticed the prisoner staring at him from the other side of the aisle.
Dempsey scowled and swallowed the urge to reach out and smack the terrorist across the face. Instead, he studied the German Islamic convert. Brown eyes that had once brimmed with homicidal rage were now cool and distant. The corners of the captive’s mouth were turned down, hung heavy with dread. His flex-tied hands were between his knees, with another flex-tie securing his wrists uncomfortably to the aluminum rail of the helo’s bench seat.
Getting caught is a bitch, man, and American justice hits like an iron club. It’s only going to get worse for you . . .
Movement toward the back of the loud, rattling helicopter caught Dempsey’s attention. He turned to see Chunk rolling with laughter. After a good howl, he leaned back in to continue the discussion with the SEAL across the narrow aisle. Their foreheads nearly touching, they jawed about the things SEALs care about when they’re not being stone cold warriors—girls, beer, and sports. And sometimes, maybe which superhero would make the best SEAL . . . Dempsey smiled at the memory of Tito and Spaz, two of the teammates he’d lost in Operation Crusader, laughing and arguing about Spider-Man in the back of a Blackhawk.
He watched Chunk and the other SEAL for a while, envious of their private world—a world only a few feet away, yet out of reach to him. Eventually, Chunk felt Dempsey’s gaze and turned his head. Dempsey gave the officer a nod, and the SEAL flashed him a tobacco-stained, toothy grin.
The helo shuddered, sending a drip of warm oil splattering down onto the crown of Dempsey’s scalp. He knew better than to look up this time, lest he take a drop in the eye. He shifted his gaze out the porthole beside him. The helo pilot was flying low, following a dirt road that Dempsey was sure he recognized. Yeah, he remembered this particular desert trail. It served as an offshoot, connecting the paved highway to the glistening waters of lake Al Wadi Thar Thar. He craned his neck to get a better view, and two white pickup trucks trailing at their eight o’clock position came into his field of vision. In 2008, two junkers speeding across the desert would not have been cause for immediate alarm, but now the Wild West was hostile territory. Any trucks coming from the direction of Ar Ramadi were surely packed with ISIS fighters. He’d known that crossing this swath of Anbar controlled by the jihadists would be the most dangerous part of the journey.
Why isn’t the pilot opening up? Dempsey asked himself. Give the dude a second . . .
His stomach was going sour.
Fuck it. I gotta warn him.
Dempsey popped to his feet to make for the cockpit, but in his peripheral vision, he saw the flash of light. “Rocket!” he screamed.
The pilot glanced back for a microsecond, then jinked the helicopter violently to the right. Dempsey’s head hit the corner of the passageway leading into the cockpit. He felt his feet slip out from underneath him and his body slam into the deck. Dazed, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and shook off the stars. When he looked up, his nose was inches from the smirking face of the prisoner. The German mumbled something and laughed, but Dempsey couldn’t tell if it was in German or Arabic. Maybe he was laughing because he knew this old model Mi-17 didn’t carry defensive countermeasures and the next rocket fired would certainly finish them off for good.
Dempsey looked aft over his shoulder and saw Chunk and the other SEAL clutching the cargo netting lining the walls of the cabin. Chunk yelled something at him, but Dempsey couldn’t make out the words. For a moment the helo was stable, and he thought that the pilot’s evasion had worked. But hope evaporated as an explosive shockwave whipsawed the helo in midair. The old Russian bird groaned as steel twisted on itself and it tipped violently left, hurtling Dempsey against the port-side seat rail. His ribcage smacked against something, and he was on his back. The ceiling above him looked stationary, but the sensation of spinning told another story. This bird was going down.
The next thought that ran through his mind was almost comical: After everything I’ve survived as a SEAL, I’m going to die as a spook in a piece-of-shit Russian helicopter in fucking Iraq.
He closed his eyes.
And as the world spun out of control around him, a thought more dreadful than his impending doom occurred to him.
Kate thinks I’m already dead, but I never said good-bye.
I never said good-bye . . .
CHAPTER 4
607 Horseshoe Drive
Queenslake Subdivision, Williamsburg, Virginia
October 12, 2320 Local Time
Kelso Jarvis looked at the phone vibrating facedown on his de
sk and tried to remember if there had ever been a phone call after 2200 hours bearing good news. He flipped the phone over and saw Smith’s name on the screen. He took the call on the third ring.
“Jarvis,” he said simply.
“Hey, boss, it’s me—on a secure line.”
“What’s up with our boy in the desert?” He knew the call was about Dempsey, no point in wasting time.
“Dempsey went dark. His helo flight never arrived in Baghdad, and the pilot missed the last programmed check-in forty minutes ago.”
“What about the rest of the assault team?”
“Returned to the compound in Irbil on schedule.”
Jarvis pursed his lips and drilled a fingertip into his left temple. If Dempsey was discovered—or worse, captured—in ISIS-controlled Iraq, the ensuing firestorm would be one of biblical proportions. From the beginning, the Director of National Intelligence had been reluctant to approve any mission embedding Ember assets with the SEALs in Iraq: The President has publicly said we will not put “boots on the ground” in Iraq, Director Philips had growled at Jarvis, and so as far as the President is concerned, there are no SEALs conducting combat operations in Iraq. The SEALs in Irbil are for the security of the diplomatic mission there. Any media reports to the contrary would discredit the Administration. But the truth was Jarvis didn’t give a shit about President Warner or the media. All that mattered was stomping out terrorism. Everything else was just noise.
Unlike most of the spineless bureaucrats Philips dealt with on a daily basis, Jarvis refused to be cowed. Eventually, he had been able to convince the DNI to green-light the mission by offering unconditional assurance the operation would be completed in absolute secrecy. The promise was wind, of course. Jarvis could not guarantee absolute secrecy any more than a meteorologist could guarantee a forecast. However, he was not naïve in this business: the only surefire way to keep his fledgling counterterrorism unit operational was to ensure Ember’s activities did not sink his bosses. Smith’s report could not have been graver. John Dempsey existed only under non-official cover. If captured by ISIS, his ransom—or public execution, Fate forbid—would be the end of Ember.
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