by Rick Jones
They wrestled in an obscene tryst, both trying to find a combative gain over the other. Fists were thrown and deflected. And then Jeremiah found a brief opportunity, a quick and gifted moment to react as he brought his hands up and clapped them over the large man’s ears, destroying his eardrums.
The large man immediately reared back with his hands pressed tight to the sides of his head as if to stem the bleeding, his eyes amazingly wide. Jeremiah didn’t stop there, however, he didn’t hesitate. With the large man continuing to pin him to the desert floor, Jeremiah threw a series of knuckle punches to the man’s throat—one, two, three times in quick succession, the blows striking the Adam’s apple causing the Arab to gag and choke, his eyes now rolling upwards to show nothing but whites. In a subsequent move, Jeremiah shifted underneath to toss the large man off him and succeeded, the terrorist now lying supine on the desert floor writhing, gagging and twisting, the man unable to take in oxygen, his throat now a collapsed tube, broken and unfixable. Then with a final rattle, the man succumbed as his arms fell limply by his side in mock crucifixion.
Jeremiah, breathing hard as if he had just finished a marathon, engaged his lip mic. “Command Post from Bravo Four.”
“Go, Bravo Four.”
“Tango neutralized.”
“Copy that. All units proceed to the ‘Gateway.’”
Finding his knife and his weapon, Jeremiah headed for the cave’s entrance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When Kimball moved to crest the sand berm he and Shari hid behind, Shari mirrored his actions. Side by side they jogged towards the cave’s entrance, which seemed an eternity away with the open ground between them a lackluster silver from the cast of the sickle-shaped moon.
Kimball was surprised at Shari’s speed and agility to keep up, especially when she had a piece of her lung removed after an assassin’s bullet tore into it with mincing damage. Even though her lung endurance and capacity had been minimalized, she remained strong.
They had crossed a click of dead landscape together, nothing but sand and stone. Then as they neared the hillside range, they could see the team converging to the cave’s gateway entrance. In the shadows, they appeared like black scarabs descending the hills, nothing but spotted shapes in the dark.
“I see them,” she said with a vibrating vibe to her tone.
Kimball couldn’t tell if the tremble in her voice was due to her losing wind, or if her tension was beginning to surface. Either way, he asked, “You OK?”
“Feeling just fine,” she told him. This time she sounded like a woman brimming with confidence, which made Kimball wonder if she was vacillating between emotions.
“Once we get inside, you follow my unit to the second branch. From there it’s up to you to finish your assignment. The branches will be little used because they’re thin with most leading to dead ends. Others will lead you directly to your target point.”
“I know my job.”
“I know you do,” he returned. “My point is this: you’re on your own after we reach the second branch.”
Together, as they trekked across a dead landscape, Shari Cohen and Kimball Hayden were once again reunited on the battlefield under similar circumstances where emotions weighed heavy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It was early morning, a time for sleep, but sleep would not come to Ahmed Ali on this night. Inside his chamber, which was a naturally hollowed out section that was more like a wide spot in the middle of a tunnel, he sat on his throne of uneven rock thinking about the past and the future. Close by were crates filled with guns and ammo, the tools of the trade which were to be handed out to the recruits once training was over. This, of course, was only if they were mentally prepared to fall in league with Allah with unquestioning conviction. To question one’s mindset after their military education simply shows a crack in their armor, which is most likely being held together by a single bolt. To show such frailty was cause for immediate dismissal from the ranks, since the weak link is the Achilles heel of any military force. So far, few had been labeled as unimpressive recruits, and those who would best serve as suicide bombers. And there were others, three, who had yet to prove their absolute devotion to Allah or to the cause. Should such mindsets remain by teaching’s end, these three would be culled from the rest of the pack by means of execution.
Closing his eyes knowing he should be fatigued, he wasn’t. His system remained active and alive, the thought of a mounting revolution that would once again revitalize a cause that he had romanticized for so long was now coming to fruition. Today they would build an army of fifty, then five hundred, and then five million—all the way until the worldwide communities finally succumbed to the law of one rule under one god.
I am a vessel of Allah.
Then Ali looked at the satellite phone and wondered if Junaid Hassad was asleep, or if he shared the same enthusiasm or eagerness to spearhead and guide the Islamic State to greater heights.
He wanted to believe that he did, with perhaps Hassad pacing the hallways of his abode the same way that Ali paced the tunnels, with unbridled excitement.
Returning to his throne, Ali shifted his weight to find a manageable position to tolerate, but the stone was uneven and bumpy. Nevertheless, he delighted in hardship because hardship turned a boy into a man, and a man into a warrior.
Ahmed Ali was a warrior.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
By the time Kimball and Shari reached the ‘Gateway,’ they were met by the Vatican Knights and the gruesome posting of severed heads, which began to stink like rot. Since flies are not common to desert landscapes, these heads would simply dry out to have a waxy texture to them and then turn to leather, which was a natural process of mummification.
The most appalling moment, however, was when Shari acknowledged the fourth head on the stick. With skin so ashen and eyes that had the milky glaze to them, Shari barely recognized the face of Henry Faizan.
For a moment she felt weakness in her legs, that sort of gelatinous feeling where she was sure that her knees would buckle.
Kimball reached out and grabbed her by the triceps. “You OK?”
She shrugged out of his hold as a showing of her toughness. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
Kimball looked at the heads sitting upon the sharpened sticks, all sickly in appearance, with three of them not far removed from youth. Faizan was someone he recognized by reading up on the mission goals, for which Faizan was a member to be extracted from the site. Now he understood Shari’s startled reaction. No matter who you were, no matter how strong, losing a friend in the field of battle always weakened the knees.
Removing the phone from a cargo pocket of her pants, she took a picture of Faizan’s head as proof that he had died in the course of his duties, then sent it to the principals at the Green Zone and Langley. Henry Faizan would be posthumously decorated by the intel brass and an empty coffin buried in Arlington in homage. And it was here that Shari wondered how many empty coffins had been buried inside the cemetery as a tribute. Dozens? Hundreds? More?
After putting the phone away, she turned to Kimball and said, “My mission is no longer twofold . . . All you have to do is get me to the second branch. From there I’ll do the rest.”
Nodding, Kimball, along with his team of Vatican Knights, raised their weapons to eye level so they could view the cave through their night-vision scopes, then proceeded to move ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Command Center
The Green Zone
Baghdad, Iraq
Jacoby was sitting in his office inside Iraqi’s Green Zone when Shari finally enabled her NVG body cam, which was to be done after reaching the ‘Gateway.’ On the wall behind him were TV monitors of principals who were skyping from Langley; two women and three men, all heads of their departments who shared a similar interest. From the placement of the screens, they could clearly see the mission as it played out in live time. What everybody had been witnessing was the display of hum
an heads that were situated upon the pointed sticks, a rather gruesome and ancient tactic that had lasted through the ages due to its effectiveness of stopping those from entering a keyless entryway. But Shari pressed on after forwarding a photo confirming Faizan’s death.
“Not exactly a stellar beginning,” commented one of the male principals who was skyping.
Jacoby remained quiet, even though his mind didn’t. Did you expect them to walk right in, shake hands with the enemy, and then walk away with the prizes in hand? Jacoby had learned long ago not to refute the powers that be. Let them have their say, and then walk away. It was a poetic mantra he considered to be quite clever, but apparently the only one who thought so.
The main monitor lit up in a lime-green hue, the color associated with night vision. Everyone was watching as the slow and careful progression of Shari Cohen and the Vatican Knights made their way through the labyrinth.
“There are many branches that break off from the main tunnel to create many more,” said the male principal. “How confident are you that Ms. Cohen will succeed?”
Let them have their say, and then walk away. Sometimes, however, you simply had to provide an answer when called upon.
“The odds of this mission, like most, cannot be calculated because there are too many variables that cannot be evaluated. There are fifty-two radical extremists inside that system that we know of, against six Vatican Knights and one CIA operative. What do you think?”
“I think the mission was over before it had a chance to begin, that’s what I think. And yes, I feel for the hostages and Faizan knew the consequences should he be exposed and compromised. It’s the nature of the game of selecting a few to become moral sacrifices for the good of the many. We should have taken that hillside down with Hellfire missiles.”
“Inside that tunnel,” Jacoby began to counter, “with all due respect, could be pertinent information that outlines what Hassad and Ali plan to do next. If Ms. Cohen finds that intel, then the advantages of preventing future terrorist episodes outweigh your need to go in and destroy everything that has a pulse.”
Behind him, the principal remained quiet.
On the screen in front of Jacoby, even with the audio feed live, he could hear Shari’s breathing which was slow and steady, the woman in control of herself. Though Jacoby and the principals could hear every word, Shari could not.
The feeds, audio and visual, worked only one way: they came in, but they didn’t go out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Kimball, Jeremiah and Isaiah stayed to the left of the tunnel, Joshua, Noah and Jonah to the right. Shari took rear behind Kimball’s squad.
Wearing an NVG monocular that she had retrieved from her backpack, Shari could see the incredible view that technology had to offer. She could see every outcropping of stone; every line, crack or seam in the wall; the unlevel ceiling. What was amazing to her was that if she lifted the monocular from her head, the world would have been so black that if she raised a hand inches from her face, she would not see it.
As they took the twists and turns while ignoring the smaller openings they knew went nowhere, they came upon a large tunnel on the left, one that Kimball remembered after studying the map that had been charted by the drone. This was a pedestrian tunnel, a channel that was used to move crated goods or recruits to more secured locations. Up ahead, however, was a winding corridor that would lead to the second branch. This was the optimum outlet that Shari needed to reach in order to acquire the intel Jacoby believed was necessary to counter future ISIS plans of operations.
Everything around them was silent as a catacomb that was filled with the bones of the dead.
Then into his lip mic, Kimball whispered, “Shari, your point of access is ahead, about three hundred yards in. You got it?”
“I’m good,” she said.
“We’re going to scout the forward tunnel for hostages.”
Then Kimball and Shari looked upon each other in study. It was a worry for the other’s welfare, that deep sense of caring that Shari fully understood, but something Kimball remained confused by.
Then from Kimball in a hushed tone, he said, “Keep mics open. We have thirty minutes to liberate the hostages, gather intel, and then make our way to the extraction point. Is everyone clear on that?”
Everybody copied that last statement.
Gesturing to everyone with a fisted hand, Kimball pointed down the corridor that Shari was to take, while the Vatican Knights headed away from her position to go a separate way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Since we have always been in a warring state, we have also become stuck on the middle rung of the evolutionary ladder and would never reach the moral high ground. And if we continue to believe that war is about good versus evil when the truth is that it’s about us against them, we will languish in disparity and forever remain in the Dark Ages of moral development. At least this is what Shari Cohen believed since the opponents of both sides of a war believed their cause to be the just one. There would never be a compromise at the roundtable for those on opposite ends of the spectrum to come to a mutual agreement to end hostilities, this she knew. In 5,000 years of recorded history, violence had become a lifelong tradition when man first gripped a cudgel and struck down his brother when the creation of fire was a novelty, to the moment of utilizing the atom. So here she was inside a thin corridor, a person on the hunt, and someone who was about to reinforce this hypothesis of remaining on the ladder’s middle rung by killing Ahmed Ali, whose ideologies were far different from hers. His philosophy was wrong, she told herself, and his death would be justifiable. But wasn’t it always said that the easiest thing man could do was to justify his actions in the end, no matter how heinous?
Shari gripped the handle of her suppressed sidearm tightly, a Glock, as she moved through the channel that was barely high enough to clear her head.
When I see Ahmed Ali, she considered, will I have what it takes? Can I level the point of my weapon at the man and summarily execute him—to become his judge, jury and executioner with a single pull of a trigger?
Doubts were beginning to cross her mind.
Then as the serpentine tunnel meandered, she finally came upon a bend that showed an aura of light.
Shari stopped to listen.
Nothing but silence.
But in this case, she knew that absolute silence could be thunderous.
Was someone aware of my approach? Were they waiting for me?
Approaching with caution, Shari leveled her weapon with the Glock gripped in both hands. Her world was lime green through her NVG monocular. But as soon as she neared the light, she lifted the unit because the brightness was becoming too stark to look at through the lens.
Inside the room, the glow of a single lantern.
The dim light.
Ahmed Ali’s chamber.
The area, which was nothing more than a circular storeroom, had crates that took up most of the space with some stacked to the ceiling. Against the uneven wall of the room was a table that held a burning lantern, one that operated by lithium batteries. And on the table were documents written in Arabic with most pages encrypted, but not all. Some of the documents Shari deciphered were communications that outlined some of the Junaid Hassad’s plans, with countries like the United States, Israel, London and The Hague caught within the ISIS crosshairs. Sitting on these documents like a paperweight was a satellite phone, the only piece of electronic hardware that could be mined for data. Shrugging out of her backpack, Shari placed the satellite phone inside the pack and laid the pack on the floor. Then she started to spread the documents across the tabletop so that the pages were side by side. Using her camera phone, she took photos of each individual page and forwarded the files to the Green Zone and Langley. She had to repeat this maneuver three times after placing the photographed documents into her backpack and spreading new documents over the table. More pictures, more data, all sent to the department principals and analysts. After the third spr
eading and photo taking, she placed the documents in the backpack and checked her watched. She still had twenty-one minutes before meeting up with the Vatican Knights for extraction.
Turning her attention to the crates, she removed her knife, slid the blade between the seam that divided the lid from the crate, then pumped the weapon until the lid popped free, but not without the nails squealing in protest from the separation.
When Shari looked inside the crate, she wasn’t surprised at what she discovered: nothing but AK-47s, all new toys for the recruits as graduation gifts. The other crates held the same pieces of hardware: rifles. But the fourth crate held something that brought horrible memories to the surface. Inside were Semtex bricks, the same plastique that nearly cost Kimball his life. She could tell by its distinct scent and the look of its texture. Then she opened additional crates to find enough Semtex bricks enough to level city blocks, or at least to be apportioned to cause major destruction in cities across the globe. This was more than just a training center, she thought. This was a weapons’ depot.
Replacing the final lid, she realized that something major was in the works based on the documents on the table. Hassad and Ali were planning major events against interests that involved major cities across the globe and she was sure that the encrypted documents outlined in detail what those operations would be.