by Rick Jones
As the truck took the rises and falls of the desert terrain, Doctors Gregor and Mayne sat at the rear of the canopied vehicle closer to the driver’s cab, with Father Savino between them. The six nurses, all male, were spread along the benches with two ISIS soldiers sitting by the tailgate keeping watch.
Doctor Mayne, with his eyes cast to the truck’s floor, spoke in hushed whispers to Doctor Gregor. “I’m sorry, Chancellor.”
“For what? The decision to stay was just as much mine as it was yours.”
“I believe that we chose poorly.”
“Perhaps in hindsight.”
“Hindsight? No imagination is necessary with what they did to Marge, Kim, Denise and Flo. In fact, I can still hear them screaming. I wonder if we should have used better judgment knowing the risks.” Marge, Kim, Denise and Flo were the female nurses whose screams went on well into the night before they were finally silenced, with their cries now indelibly linked to Mayne’s memory. His guilt began to develop by the urging of his ‘hindsight.’ They could have forcibly made the decision for them to evacuate when the American units bugged out to the east towards Iran. But the women had given their solemn oath to provide aid when and where necessary, despite the dangers.
“I could have chosen for them,” Doctor Mayne added, his voice having the undertones of regret.
“The women chose their destinies with free will,” Father Savino intervened. “The fault belongs to no one. Not even to them. Not all decisions work to the favor of the one who makes it. Yes, what happened to them was unfortunate, no doubt. But be assured that they are in a better place right now.”
“Yeah,” returned Doctor Gregor. “But the price of admission to get there was a horrible one to pay. It just makes me wonder what we’ll have to pay when it’s my time, our time. Not a very pleasant one, I assume.”
“Dwelling on what might have been rather than what is, Doctor, is not doing anyone any good. Dwell on the fact that God has a purpose, which is why we’re here. Those who were taken from us are now in His embrace. All we can do is hope and pray that God will provide in His wisdom.”
“I’m glad you have faith, Father,” said Doctor Mayne. “But it’s something I ashamedly admit I don’t share. We are going to be used to some capacity and then made an example of during a live stream. That’s what these people do. They elicit terror.” Then the doctor leaned closer to the priest and through the side of his mouth, he whispered, “In all due respect, where was your God when the women were sequestered, tortured and raped. Why would God allow such an act to be committed against good people?”
“It happens, Doctor, because there will always be a divide between the Darkness and the Light, and the war between them will always be waged. There are always victims in acts of war. And those taken too soon will sit beside God after they have suffered a moment of pain for an eternity of indescribable peace.”
When Doctor Mayne was about to rebut the priest’s statement, one of the soldiers by the tailgate directed his AK-47 on him and began to shout in Arabic. Even though Doctor Mayne’s Arabic was spotty at best, the message was clear by the leveling of the terrorist’s weapon in his direction. The soldier was asking for silence.
Not too long after the debate between Father Savino and Doctor Mayne had ended, gunfire could be heard in the distance, the sounds unmistakable.
Everyone inside the truck was finally nearing the end of their journey.
* * *
Jamon Qadir and Mubarek Alfarsi were conducting live ammo exercises as the recruits ran over obstacles or beneath them. In one of the exercises, the trainees were belly crawling underneath a latticework of ropes using their elbows and knees to move them along. As motivation, Qadir and Alfarsi fired off live rounds with the bullets causing the sand to erupt around them upon impact, with some so close the recruits could feel the sting of sand pepper on their faces.
Crying out orders as they fired their weapons provided the recruits with performances above and beyond what they would normally achieve. It wasn’t the screaming of Qadir or Alfarsi that goaded them along, it was the constant prattle of machine-gun fire: they were all motivated by fear, which was the most effective tool of the Islamic State.
As men climbed knotted ropes and scrambled underneath rope nets, a convoy of trucks was closing in on the site, which prompted Qadir to halt training and have his recruits stand in the orderly fashion of attention.
When the trucks reached the campsite with the opening of the cave approximately fifty yards from the training camp’s position, Ahmed Ali exited from the lead pickup making his way to Qadir. At the rear of the convoy, the soldiers unloaded their cache of six recruits, mostly teenagers, and a medical team, which was Ali’s true bonanza.
“Six recruits,” Qadir commented, sounding disappointed.
“Six recruits, my friend, is six more than we had yesterday. And you should know by now that armies are never built over night, but over time. So relax, Jamon, and remember that you are an Arab. And Arabs are a patient people.”
“I meant no disrespect.”
“I know.”
Qadir saw the medical team who were lashed together by a single line of rope, all wearing soiled scrubs. “Doctors?”
“To care for our wounded,” Ali answered.
“American infidels?”
“Who will serve our needs until they no longer have value.”
Qadir nodded.
As Ahmed Ali looked over the troops, who were sweating profusely after the workouts beneath an incessantly hot sun, the team leader pleased with their conditioning. It reminded him of when he was a recruit not too long ago when he climbed the ropes or hustled his way across the hot sand. The live-round fire, the motivational calls to be the best he could be all led up to this moment where he could now be a spectator and not a participant. He had paid his dues.
“Carry on,” Ali finally told Qadir.
With orders loudly issued and with manic gesturing of Qadir’s hand, the troops broke rank and continued with their training.
As Ali headed for the mouth of the cave, three heads were mounted on poles that stood sentinel at its opening. Absconders. Their skin had a sickly and ashen cast to them, and their eyes were either at half-mast or remained wide with a final note of paralytic terror to them. And though the doctors and nurses had seen battle-born wounds and carnage, this display had sickened them because it was showcasing inhumanity at its worst. But the message was clear: any attempt to escape would be met with the same consequence, and your head added to the collection.
. . . This is your new home . . .
. . . This is your new your life . . .
. . . Allah will provide . . .
After being escorted into the cave, the doctors, nurses, and Father Savino were ordered to strip down to don orange jumpsuits. They were then taken deep inside the tunnel system. After being shackled together with chains and leather strappings, most had lost hope except for Father Savino, who prayed for deliverance.
The answer to his prayers was about to be delivered in earnest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The city of Baghdad was more than 3,200 miles east of the Vatican Knights’ position in Nigeria. But to make the transport safely, they had to travel by chopper west to Ghana, which had a relatively stable government, then double back to the east and to Baghdad, with the entire trip nearly 4,000 miles total.
The Vatican Knights were in a chartered jet which was leased between the Vatican and the Ghana government. The trip took nearly twelve hours from Nigeria to Baghdad after transitioning from helicopter to plane after reaching Ghana, and then a straight flight to Iraq.
When the plane touched down at Baghdad International Airport, the Vatican Knights were greeted by a pair of black SUVs, both CIA issue according to their plates. Kimball, Jeremiah and Isaiah were in the forward vehicle, whereas Jonah, Joshua and Noah rode in the rear.
It was morning, close to nine, and the sun was shining brightly.
If the V
atican Knights were tired, they didn’t show it.
The driver in the lead vehicle was Caucasian, a giveaway that he was an operative, or, by terms granted him by the United States government, a ‘consultant.’ He wore the traditional sunglasses with dark lenses that lent an air of mystery about him. And he wore the customary conservative haircut with the ruler-straight part.
“You have anything for me?” Kimball asked him.
The operative shook his head while chewing gum. Then: “Your briefing will take place with the principals inside the Green Zone,” he said. “Everything you’ll need to know will come from them.”
Kimball accepted the answer and looked out the tinted window of the passenger side. Baghdad had a long way to go, he considered, with a lot of the buildings remaining in disrepair as remnants of the war with Saddam Hussein. Progress was slow to rebuild because the value of the Iraqi dinar was less than a penny on the American dollar. No wonder the reconstruction was slow.
As the vehicles made their way through the Iraqi streets by taking the route that was quickest between two points, Kimball recalled the moments when he was an upstart as an assassin with a black-arm unit of the CIA, a budding and rising star. His last mission to serve his country ended here after he gunned down two shepherd boys who may have compromised his position, after he was sent to kill Hussein to avert a war. This much he did remember, despite his Swiss-cheese memory. Not only was the killing of the two boys the catalyst that ended an old life, it had also served as the motivation to begin a new one. Without thought, Kimball unknowingly raised his fingertips and grazed them against the band of his Roman Catholic collar.
As the vehicles took the necessary bends and turns, they summarily passed through all the checkpoints of the Green Zone. After the SUVs parked close to the building that housed CIA operations, Kimball and his team of Vatican Knights grabbed their duffle bags and followed the consultant inside the structure.
The building was cool, the A-C units working just fine.
They got into the elevator and descended to a subterranean level.
When the cab reached Level B-6, the consultant exited with the Vatican Knights directly behind him.
The room had a cavern feel to it. It was dark with banks of TV monitors against the far wall that could be divided into several grids that could watch the hotspots across the globe or be united to view a single area from the eye of a satellite. Right now, they were watching the screen in single view, which appeared to be a desert encampment.
The consultant had the Vatican Knights follow him down along the descending tiers and into a side office that was well lit. After a knock, the consultant opened the door and leaned his head inside. “The joint team is here,” was all he said, and then he backed out and left the door open. “She’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Thank you,” said Kimball.
Dumping the duffels along the floor, a woman exited the office. She was stunningly beautiful and attractive with raven hair that came to a widow’s peak along her forehead, and startling bright eyes that were the color of newly minted pennies that were almost orange. The moment she saw Kimball there was a hitch in her stride, her knees nearly buckling beneath the shock that eclipsed her like a blow to the abdomen, a shot that literally knocked the wind from her lungs as she brought a fisted hand to her bosom.
Kimball Hayden stood before her looking as wide and as tall as he ever did, and with those cerulean blue eyes that had captivated her along a smile that never quit.
Finally, able to form a smile of her own after the initial shock was beginning to wear off, she crossed the short distance between them with open arms and fell into his embrace. With her ear against his chest, she could hear his heartbeat—strong and in rhythm, the beat of a man she thought would never return to her.
“I thought you were gone,” she told him. “They said you wouldn’t come back—at least not whole.”
Kimball held her away to appraise her, his hold on her gentle as he smiled at her.
“You have no idea how good it is to see you like this,” she told him. “I know they said that we’d be working a joint operation with the Vatican Knights, but they never mentioned that you’d be the one fronting the team.”
With a smile that seemed to brighten the room as he continued to hold Shari at arm’s length, he asked her softly, “Do I know you?”
First, she thought he was joking. But when she saw the absolute conviction in his eyes that he was telling the truth, only then did she realize that he had no memory of her. Outside of losing her family to a domestic terrorist, Shari Cohen had never felt so deflated when she finally realized that she was a stranger in Kimball Hayden’s eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Somewhere within the Syrian Theater of Operation
The morning had been brutal, the training tough, and the hot sun had beat down on them consistently without mercy. Their reward at the end of the exercise, however, was an eight-ounce bottle of water.
. . . The sun is hot, Qadir told them. The sun is always hot . . .
. . . There is no water in the desert, so you must learn to adapt in order to survive . . .
. . . You will train and fight under the worst conditions . . .
. . . And by adapting to these conditions, your chances of survival will improve. . .
. . . If you cannot adapt, Allah will not favor you . . .
Faizan remembered those words at the end of training as he was being handed his bottle, his reward for making it through the day, and then sucking down its contents in less than five seconds. Those around him did the same, all drinking their bottles to the point of tapping the sides to drive the last few drops into their mouths. Adapting was a way of life for Faizan, the man having been trained similarly in order to blend in and be a chameleon. What he did today he did as if he was on common ground with his training, something he had been through before.
But the recruits who were being whipped into shape and forced to adapt to one of the world’s harshest elements, Faizan knew that this was Qadir’s way of culling the weak from the strong. The strong would move on to become the soldiers of a new generation, whereas the weak would be relegated to become suicide bombers.
How many more will fall under the hot afternoon sun, he wondered, when temperatures climb, and the maneuvers become far more strenuous in this heat?
Tapping the side of his bottle to free up its last few drops into his mouth, Faizan saw three men approach from the corner of his eye.
“Jinan Samara,” the one in the middle said in a manner that was more of a statement than a question. It was also someone Faizan recognized as one of Ali’s experienced soldiers and someone he didn’t know well enough to regard as an associate.
“Yes.”
“Ahmed Ali would like a word with you.”
Faizan pointed to himself. “Me?”
“Right now.”
There was something in the man’s tone that Faizan didn’t feel comfortable with, an abrasiveness.
“Is something wrong?”
“Ahmed Ali would like a word with you,” the soldier repeated in the same manner that was caustic and harsh, the measure itself telling Faizan that not everything was as copasetic as they should be.
“Of course,” Faizan said, standing.
“And bring your pack,” the soldier said, while pointing to Faizan’s backpack.
Faizan looked into the eyes of the soldiers around him which remained neutral with no one betraying their emotions. It was as if they were automatons going through the basic programming of breathing and blinking, performing nothing more than involuntary acts.
Sensing red flags, Faizan grabbed his bag and began to make his way towards Ali’s chamber surrounded by the extremists, with one on each side and the third behind him. Eyes from onlookers followed them with curious looks, which made Faizan realize that having an armed escort was never a good sign.
As he took the turns through the cave system, he finally came upon Ahmed Ali�
�s chamber, which was feebly lit by a single lantern. The illumination within this space was so poor that in the play of feeble lighting the darkened shapes appeared as one dimensional, like silhouettes, rather than something with contours. Within the circle of dreary light, however, Ali was tinkering with something in his hands, something small. As Faizan stood his ground surrounded by Ali’s terrorists, Ali refused to acknowledge Faizan’s presence, the man too engrossed with his tinkering.
Finally, and without looking at Faizan but at the item in his hands, he said, “I’ve heard of these,” he said evenly. Then he held the item up in display, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. From the distance and poor lighting, Faizan could not make out what Ali was holding.
After narrowing his eyes as if this would help Faizan see what Ali was holding, though it didn’t help at all, Ali said, “Step closer, Samara, for a better look, why don’t you?”
That was when Faizan felt the point of an AK-47 nudge him from behind, prompting him to take a choppy step forward, and then another, until he could see exactly what Ali was holding between his thumb and forefinger.
It was the dragonfly mini drone.
When Ali stepped aside, Faizan saw the remote lying on the stone that Ali used as his makeshift throne.
With the mini drone still pinched between his fingers, Ali stepped forward until he was a few feet from Faizan, then he raised and lowered his hand continuously in mock gesture of the drone’s flying pattern. Then he stopped, looked at the drone, then snapped the unit in half to show Faizan its fragility as it fell to the dirt floor of the cave. Returning to his throne, Ali picked up the small remote and showed it to Faizan.
Standing with his backpack tightly clenched with his grasp, Faizan had never felt so naked or so compromised, his position made.
“You may think that I know nothing beyond the pages of the Koran or the ideology of the movement to create an Islamic state with Allah the one true God,” he told him. “But be assured, Samara, which I don’t believe is your true name, I am an educated man. I may not have graduated from an esteemed university—in fact, my schooling being quite minimal, in general—I have studied my enemy well.” Ali shook the remote to further emphasize his point. “Dragonfly drones were manufactured in the 1970s by the CIA to secretly record conversations, but the unit was restricted in flight due to wind patterns. Over time, however, and with the advancement of technology, the CIA was able to modify, and perhaps perfect, the drone.” Ali dropped the remote to the floor and crushed it with his heel. After grinding the unit into several pieces, he turned to Faizan and openly asked, “You are CIA, yes?”