[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel

by Richard Marcinko

  “You were playing a pretty dangerous game,” I told Magoo. “But that’s how you rose so quickly through the ranks to begin with. You were capable of real work, good work—penetrating one of the cells of Allah’s Rule was really a coup. But why did you get so greedy?”

  He pressed his lips together.

  “You set up the bank explosions for Veep, didn’t you? Did you tip him off? I should have caught the connection right away.”

  He didn’t say anything. Just to clarify—the hit on the bank was done by people51 Magoo had hired through another cutout after the board of directors started asking questions and it looked like I might actually figure out what was going on. The attack was made to look like the terror groups. This gave Veep cover to change the computer records, losing the ones that would have revealed what was going on. It also gave Magoo another “case” he could solve at his leisure: bust some isolated tango, plant a modicum of evidence, and ship the bastard to Guantanamo for the rest of his natural-born days.

  Not that I had a problem with the last part.

  “In another year, you might have made deputy director,” I told Magoo. “Or at least been close. Then, who knows? Get the admiral’s job, maybe? Though I don’t know why anyone would want to be head of the CIA.”

  “I earned my promotions.”

  The gate attendant called for the first-class passengers to board.

  “The irony is, killing Habib is what’s going to nail you, at least for now,” I told him. “Because the whole thing is on video tape. And it’s murder.”

  “Right.” Magoo rose, retrieving his ticket from the papers in the back of his book. “I looked at the garage security cameras myself. Not one of them was pointed in the right place.”

  “Lucky for you, huh?”

  Magoo started past. I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to stop him.

  “The camera over the runway approach was working, though,” I said. “And it happens to have caught the entire transaction. There’s no sound track, unfortunately. But Habib definitely seems relieved to see you, walks up freely to the car when you get out, then quickly backs away when you shoot him. You walk over, take the gun out, and drop it down.”

  “There’s no evidence of that.”

  “We have a witness,” said Danny, opening his briefcase and pulling out a photo. “And this.” The image was extremely grainy, but you could just make out Magoo reaching for the pistol in his jacket.

  “This could be anyone,” said Magoo. “I have a plane to catch.”

  “Clayton Magoo?” said a plainclothes D.C. officer behind me. “I have a warrant for your arrest.”

  Two TSA cops and a pair of New York City detectives had fanned out behind him. Magoo looked from one to the other, his expression growing more solemn.

  I was hoping he’d run. That would have justified my jumping on him and kicking the crap out of him. I would have relished giving him a physical demonstration of what I think of greedy, avaricious traitors. I would have loved to have paid him back for every American he put into harm’s way, directly and indirectly. I don’t guess we could blame the deaths of the people on the Bon Voyage solely on him, but I would not have minded giving him a bit of retribution on their behalf.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t run. So there was no way to justify my punching his lights out.

  I did it anyway, with one punch, a solid smash to the side of the face as he looked away.

  True, I’d cold-cocked him, but no worse than he’d done to the rest of us.

  (II)

  The charge of murder against Magoo wasn’t going to stick, because no jury, even in Washington, D.C., would convict a CIA officer of killing a terrorist, even if the evidence showed that that officer not only lured the man to his death but had masterminded the entire ill-fated bomb attempt to begin with. Magoo wasn’t in total control of Habib’s operation; he had recruited him through an American imam, and funded him without ever meeting him. But he had given him enough aid, including information on how to set the bombs, to make the attack on the Court possible.

  The information on bomb-making he passed along included two flaws that made the bombs harmless, but Habib hadn’t known that. His operation existed solely to make Magoo look good.

  “It was a brilliant setup in a lot of ways,” I told Danny over a pair of Sapphires that evening in New York. We were up at the Rock, a fancy-schmancy bar in the RCA Building with a view to die for, and waitresses who convinced you not to end it too soon.

  “Here’s the thing I don’t get,” said Danny. “If you’re Scarface, why abandon a profitable drug-running operation to blow yourself up?”

  “You’re thinking like a cop.”

  “No, I’m thinking like the thugs I used to lock up eons ago.” He took another sip of his drink. “They all wanted to be rich. God knows what they would have done to get into Scarface’s position. And to stay there.”

  “The drugs were not about making money for him. They were about funding jihad. Anything else would be a great sin—drug selling is one of those universal sins.”

  “So is suicide.”

  “It’s not suicide if it’s jihad. You don’t die—you end up in Paradise, where you live forever. He gave me a big lecture on it.”

  Danny shook his head. He’s been through a lot of ops, but he still has the head of a policeman. The motivations he thinks about are greed and lust, not religion.

  Magoo and Veep’s motivations, at least, were more in Danny’s line. There were still some loose ends that night—in fact, there are still a couple as I write this. Neither Veep nor Magoo has come to trial. The prosecution sounds confident of convictions of both; I’m not so sure.

  But only two loose ends really bothered me as I drained my glass and asked for a refill: the pain in my knees, which the doctors insisted had to be corrected surgically, and Junior.

  I reluctantly went under the knife to get my knees refurbished a few weeks later. As for Junior … his story will have to wait for another day. I will say, though, that he is definitely a chip off the old block. And like all clichés, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

  ALSO BY RICHARD MARCINKO

  FICTION

  Violence of Action

  With John Weisman

  Red Cell

  Green Team

  Task Force Blue

  Designation Gold

  Seal Force Alpha

  Option Delta

  Echo Platoon

  Detachment Bravo

  With Jim DeFelice

  Rogue Warrior®: Vengeance

  Rogue Warrior®: Holy Terror

  Rogue Warrior®: Dictator’s Ransom

  Rogue Warrior®: Seize the Day

  Rogue Warrior®: Domino Theory

  Rogue Warrior®: Blood Lies

  NONFICTION

  The Real Team

  Rogue Warrior (with John Weisman)

  Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior: A Commando’s Guide to Success

  The Rogue Warrior’s Strategy for Success

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Richard Marcinko is a living, breathing hero. He was honored with the silver star and four bronze stars for valor, along with two Navy Commendation medals and an assortment of other honors. After serving in Vietnam, he went on to start and command SEAL Team 6, the Navy’s antiterrorist group, and Red Cell, a high-level antiterrorist unit whose exploits, fictionalized for security and legal reasons, have formed the basis of his novels. Besides an active speaking and consulting calendar, Marcinko keeps his hand in the field as the president of a private international security company and now lives in Warrington, Virginia.

  Jim DeFelice is the author of many military-based thriller novels and is a frequent collaborator with Stephen Coonts, Larry Bond, and Richard Marcinko, among other New York Times bestselling authors. His solo novels include Leopards Kill, Threat Level Black, Coyote Bird, War Breaker, and Brother’s Keeper. He lives in New York.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organiz
ations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  ROGUE WARRIOR®: CURSE OF THE INFIDEL

  Copyright © 2013 by Richard Marcinko and Jim DeFelice

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photographs by Getty Images

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Marcinko, Richard.

  Rogue warrior: curse of the infidel / Richard Marcinko and Jim DeFelice.—First Edition.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

  ISBN 978-0-7653-3294-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4299-6547-7 (e-book)

  1. Rogue Warrior (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Special forces (Military science)—Fiction. 3. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. I. DeFelice, Jim, 1956– II. Title. III. Title: Curse of the infidel.

  PS3563.A6362R63 2014

  813'.54—dc23

  2013025794

  e-ISBN 9781429965477

  First Edition: January 2014

  1 The glass is specially treated and cut to block light waves that are larger than a certain wavelength. By placing it over the entire detector, it ensures that there are no hot spots on the sides that can be seen. The latter is why using a huge pane of glass to walk across a room won’t work, as a quality sensor will note the temperature emanating from your body at the edges.

  2 “Zeus” is a famous, or infamous, piece of malicious programming that steals information from online transactions. Trojan horses are programs that may look benign or be presented within another program, but are actually designed to do something bad. They don’t generally spread to other machines like viruses do.

  3 Perl and HLASM are programming languages. Or soft drinks; I’m not sure which.

  4 Taking drugs is forbidden under Islam. Because of that, there are varying opinions on whether devout Muslims are allowed to traffic in them, even to fund jihad. Osama bin Laden wrote a very long letter to one of his minions saying they were not. Obviously, not everyone agreed with the old goat.

  5 In case you’re interested, no direct link to al Qaeda has ever been proven. Most experts believe that bin Laden’s network inspired the Madrid bombers, but didn’t guide them.

  6 Yet another member of the Saudi family who owed me a favor.

  7 My editor suggests some of you may never have heard of Mr. Magoo, the nearsighted cartoon character who first appeared in 1949, and has been a perennial kids’ favorite ever since. I think he overestimates my audience.

  8 This was changing during my time there, with the government slowly taking over territory.

  9 Also known as the State Department.

  10 The copy editor is asking for a definition of a “snake dive.” It’s what you do when bullets are flying and you try to make your body as narrow and lithe as possible so you somehow slink between them. You’ll find the full definition in Webster’s between “Get the Hell out of There!” and “Kiss Your Ass Good-bye.”

  11 “No-load people”—The heavily redacted version of the RW Dictionary defines them as people loaded with “no’s.” The unredacted and not-safe-for-work version uses more colorful language.

  12 Technically, wailing aloud is not considered proper at an Islamic funeral, but either the local custom permitted it or no one was worrying too much about proper form. As Taban’s was the only funeral in Mogadishu I’ve ever attended, I’m not sure which of those is correct.

  13 Trace read the manuscript and asked, “Why is it always ‘son’? Women deserve equal billing.” I told her “bitch of a bitch” would just be piling on.

  14 It has to do with goats.

  15 See Domino Theory, available at fine bookstores, online, and from the neighborhood pawnbroker at a substantial discount.

  16 Damned if I can pronounce her actual name, let alone spell it. A Rose is a Rose by any other name, anyway.

  17 DIA = Defense Intelligence Agency, also known as Daft, Insolent, and Angry

  18 A corollary of the little-known Newton Law, the Desperately in Motion.

  19 Check out Domino Theory.

  20 Can’t Cunt. You’ve been reading Rogue Warrior books for how long and you didn’t know what that meant?

  21 The situation is somewhat more complicated than I’m detailing here, but that only means it’s worse, not better. If you want to delve into it a bit, Google “Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr” and “Abu Omarcheck” and read about the CIA agents and the operation in Italy that resulted in murder charges. Admittedly, this involved the Italian justice system, an oxymoron to be sure, but still …

  22 We should also credit the afore-not-mentioned intelligence service, whose “borrowed” dossier included the information that helped Shunt make the proper connections.

  23 The boys’ lovingly applied nickname for Hoshang.

  24 I have no idea. I’m not an expert on art.

  25 French colonial officer and hero of World War I. By the way, the name was spelled wrong on Google Earth the last time I checked.

  26 I always thought bin Laden deserved to be decapitated, castrated, and covered in pig blood, then wrapped in pigskin in keeping with the tenets of his preaching.

  27 Commander Seigel’s résumé is too long to reprint here, but one of the big bullet points is SEAL Team Six, where he distinguished himself as a man among men. Check out The Real Team for a list of achievements—and know that even those thirty pages barely scratch the surface.

  28 Since this all happened in real time, there was a bit of a lag with the first transmission and the interception, and we always lost a bit of the conversation the first time a different frequency was used. And because it used commercial sat frequencies, our system was relatively easy to detect, unlike the much more expensive bugs the Christians in Action and folks at No Such Agency routinely employ. Our method was cheaper, though.

  29 A U.S. court ruled that the attack could not have been carried out without the help of Sudan, and awarded a judgment against the government there. Personally, I would have added the Yemen government to the docket, and the award I would have awarded would have been paid in blood.

  Yemen eventually arrested some possible plotters, but all were soon released. Rumor has it that a few have since met other fates.

  30 In case you’re wondering, the battle we refer to as Black Hawk Down takes place the following year, and was part of a different operation, or “mission shift” in militarese.

  31 No, of course that’s not his name. He came to us via an associate who works in Virginia, who also can’t be named. He knows who he is.

  32 Given that he has somehow swindled the navy into thinking that he is ultra important and remains on active duty, I’m not going to use his real name. You can call him Chief Asshole if you want. Just duck when you say it. Better yet, run.

  33 I’m not supposed to mention the name of the submarine, or even the fact that it was a member of the Ohio class—oops—which was modified partly to facilitate SEAL missions. The submarine now carries Tomahawk missiles rather than Tridents, so it retains one hell of a punch.

  34 A late addendum: apparently the two have made up. I’m not sure what sort of ritual was involved, but Trace assures me they are now “friends.” Look for young Mr. Garrett to make an appearance in future episodes.

  35 Sean Mako, one of our best team leaders. The mission in Iran proceeded; maybe I’ll write about it someday. Then again, maybe not.

  36 More on Cuba can be seen in Seize the Day; Domino Theory details (some of) the India action he’s referring to. He had a point, but only to a degree.

  37 Legal counsel advises that the CIA absolutely does NOT do this, nor does any branch of the U.S. government engage in illegal fraud. (Legal fra
ud, of course, is a different matter.) You should treat these scurrilous allegations as COMPLETE and TOTAL fiction.

  38 DEA = Dickheads, Eunuchs, and Assholes. Otherwise known as the Drug Enforcement Administration.

  39 No offense intended, of course. At least not more than necessary.

  40 The British had already destroyed the most advanced French warships, but the remaining force was still potent.

  41 There were actually thirty-five apartments in the building. Add in the lobby, which had its own system, and you see that Junior screwed up two thermostats not in that building. We apologize for the inconvenience.

  42 I’m calling it a ladder only because it was on a ship. Even in the crew areas, the Bon Voyage’s interior looked more like a hotel than a garbage scow, and the ladder would have served well as the main staircase in a four-star establishment.