by Thomas Waite
Lana sprints forward and looks over a half-wall divide into the kitchen. The man’s hand grasps his abdomen. She sees a wire and shoots him twice in the head, yelling to Ludmila, “Suicide vests.”
Black smoke billows into the sky more than 150 yards away from the crash of one of the choppers; the other must have fallen into the lake. She retrieves the phone and backs up till she can keep an eye on the front of the house. Then she keys in a code for a Department of Defense command center. It’s so secret she’s never known where it’s located or even if it’s ground-based.
“Identify yourself,” a man says.
Lana reels off a digital code, then a series of letters in Alpha-Bravo- Charley style before reporting the Delta Force choppers down at Hayden Lake. “Heat-seekers hit them.”
“We have it on satellite.”
“We need help. We’ve got two adults and a seventeen-year-old. We don’t know how many we’re facing.”
“Our count is eighteen. You have some dead inside, correct?”
“Yes. But eighteen more? Can’t you get us help? We’re way outgunned. One of them had a vest.” Shots ring out in front of the house and behind it. “You hear that?” Lana yells as Ludmila takes cover behind a blue enamel wood stove and forces the border collie into the down position.
“We’ve alerted the county sheriff and local police. The chief is on his way.”
“Please tell me you’re deploying forces from Fairchild Air Force Base.” Lana recalls her planned testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the mistake of relying too heavily on local law enforcement during national emergencies. Then a national emergency—a terrorist attack on the Capitol—claimed scores of lives and shut down the hearing.
“Negative. We sent you everything we have … ”
Which isn’t much these days.
“ … and now we need you to deploy at the first opportunity to see if there are any survivors on those MH-6s.”
“Seriously? You want us to go out there? They were coming to rescue us.”
“And they were downed by enemy fire. Ms. Elkins, you’ve had more combat experience in the past two years than anyone I could possibly send your way. I repeat, can you deploy for any survivors? We have no one else available.”
“We’ll see.” Lana ends the call. Ludmila’s staring at her.
“They’re sending the local police chief and Deputy Dawg.” The cartoon reference means nothing to the Russian. “And they want us to see if there are any survivors.”
The back door flies open. Ludmila is targeted by at least two more men bursting into the house. Maybe three. It’s hard for Lana to keep count as she upends a coffee table, using it to shield her advance.
Ludmila hits one man, who pitches forward as Lana wings a second. He drops his AK-47. She abandons the table and runs to the short wall once more. Peering over the top, she sees him grabbing his shot-up arm and nails him twice with the Glock.
“Just two?” she shouts to Ludmila, who shrugs and shakes her head.
We gotta know. But Ludmila’s view has been hampered by the stove she’s keeping between her and the men trying to take back the house.
An explosive blows open the front door about fifteen feet behind Lana. She pivots and sees a rifle poke through the smoke and dust. Before Lana can shoot, the Russian delivers a burst from her M16 that knocks the attacker back out the opening. The border collie cowers behind her.
Six down, fifteen more to go. But Lana knows a single heat-seeker could blow up the whole place.
She hears a siren growing louder and races to the gap where the door stood until seconds ago. She spots a Hayden Lake Police SUV and two pickup trucks with heavily armed men in the beds covering their flanks. The three vehicles brake about a hundred feet away, no doubt to give the chief a chance to assess the situation before drawing his men any closer. But blasts of gunfire behind the vehicles force all of them to speed toward the house.
The SUV’s rear window explodes and a bullet exits the center of the windshield, narrowly missing Lana’s arm.
She throws herself behind the doorframe as the vehicles skid to a stop feet away. The armed men jump over the body of the jihadi Ludmila just killed and dash inside. Using the doorframe for cover, the chief pumps a shotgun and fires at the first hostile who’s foolish enough to pursue them at close range. The man falls to the gravel drive with a gaping stomach wound.
With his eyes now scanning the front area, the short, barrel-chested chief asks, “Why didn’t you answer my call? We almost got killed out there.”
“I didn’t get any call. Been a little busy here.”
“They out back, too?” he asks, looking at her for the first time.
“All over,” she replies. “They took down two choppers. Fourteen of them left, we think. Is the county sheriff coming?”
“He’s thirty minutes out. We’ve got my posse here.” He eyes the men.
So does Lana. Some have got to be in their sixties. “Do you guys have any experience? This is war.”
The chief points to the older gents. “They’re Vietnam combat vets. Those guys,” he indicates the other five, “are from Operation Iraqi Freedom. They’ve got more medals for bravery than you’ve got bullets, so maybe some gratitude’s in order.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize that.”
“Who’s she?” the chief asks, glancing at Ludmila.
“Russian army vet. She’s real good.” Ludmila nods at him. “Command wants us to go out and look for Delta Force survivors.”
“I know. They briefed me. And ISIS and Al Qaeda want this house back for a webcast so they can slaughter you guys online, right?”
“Exactly.”
“These guys are gonna be some mighty disappointed monsters. Can you handle that search and rescue?”
“I’ve got my daughter hiding downstairs. I’m not leaving her.”
“We can hold this place,” the chief says. “Guaranteed. If you and the Russian are willing to go after the downed soldiers, Will here can go with you.” He glances at a tall, light-haired man. “He knows these woods like the back of his hand.”
Lana studies the men before her. They look loaded for bear. Not weekend warriors. Real protection for Emma, thank God.
“You up for this?” Lana asks Will.
“I’m ready,” the younger man replies.
“I’ll leave one of my guys with your kid,” the chief says. “And the rest of us will set up a perimeter here. They’re not taking this place or your daughter. This is America. This ain’t Mosul.”
Lana hates to leave Emma, but the chief’s posse is already fanning out like a steel curtain around the house. And if any of the soldiers or pilots on those choppers survived … well, she knows what it’s like to be taken captive—and two years ago she also knew what it meant to be saved by heroes in helicopters.
It’s payback time, she tells herself.
In so many ways.
• • •
Minutes ago, during the most recent spate of shooting, Emma heard heavy footsteps overhead. She hears more now and someone pounding into the house. Then, almost as quickly, there are other footfalls and a grotesque moan that makes her stiffen. Somebody falls to the floor right above her.
In seconds, a jihadi with a gun and bloody knife slips through the cellar door, spilling enough daylight to let her to know she’s facing a killer all on her own.
Was it also long enough for him to notice her crouched in the corner? She doesn’t think so. Emma definitely can’t see him in the dark. She can’t even hear him. Since he came down the stairs he hasn’t made a sound. She’s trying to be super quiet, too, but worries even breathing will give her away. She starts taking short breaths, but can’t stop shaking as she holds the gun. Maybe he can hear that. Maybe he’s right there. She stares at the darkness in front and to the sides of her.
“I see you,” he says softly.
How?
But she doesn’t doubt him. And he sounds close
.
You’ve got a gun, she reminds herself over and over. But he’s moving closer. He just took a step and made a squishy sound. Blood. Gotta be. She tenses. She’s wildly tempted to shoot, but holds her fire. If he doesn’t know where she is, she’d be giving herself away.
There … she hears him again.
Oh, God. Does she ever.
He’s coming closer.
• • •
Lana, Ludmila, and Will run to the woodpile. Pine scents riddle the air. So does smoke. The drought-stricken forest is burning up ahead. At least one of those fiery choppers must have crashed into the trees.
Will peers over the thick stack. “There’s a deer trail over to the right,” he says. “We might even get around most of the smoke heading that way. We got us a little onshore breeze that comes up in the afternoons around here. It’s going to push the smoke and fire this way. Away from wherever those birds crashed.”
Lana looks around. Smoke’s plenty thick where they are. Up ahead it’s so dense it looks clotted.
Will leads them to the trail. Lana has to choke down the urge to cough. Ludmila’s doing the same. But the smoke also gives them cover. Taking the good with the bad.
They draw closer to the fire as they move along the meandering trail, and hear the eerie crackle of flames shooting up towering firs fast as squirrels. The boughs are brilliantly red, spilling cones that look like splashes of fire as they fall. On the ground, they spark the brittle underbrush. Heat wafts over them.
Lana can’t see how any of the Delta Force operators could have possibly survived. First, both of those choppers were blasted into fireballs. Second, they crashed. Third, the jihadis would have been on them like hyenas.
Skirting the fire line, they spot the first helicopter’s roasting carcass and take cover behind a closely knit stand of trees. Lana guesses the second incinerated bird went down over the lake. She’s about to tell Ludmila and Will her three reasons for turning around when they spot a soldier with blackened skin, shirt all but burned off his back. He’s stumbling in their general direction, his eyes on the ground.
What Lana and her cohorts don’t see are the eyes looking down on the soldier, staring from a camouflaged deer blind in an ancient oak.
• • •
Tahir Hijazi commands the coalition of ISIS and Al Qaeda jihadis from the tree’s thick limbs. He ordered a small tactical squad to try to take back the house quickly. They failed. Now Tahir guides the rest methodically. He advances them with the cold calculating precision of a man deeply versed in killing, much as he’s orchestrated this entire operation, with help from Fayah, for many months now.
He watches the badly scorched American soldier stumble away. He’ll die, Tahir thinks, either from the burns or the bullets of the jihadis, and will never know the real nature of the historic ISIS and Al Qaeda reconciliation that will soon become known to everyone. Its shocking culmination will be on full display here in the heart of America. Undercover for more than twenty years, he’s been providing information and disinformation, depending on the time, place, and people. He’s been playing the perilous role of a double agent, always looking for threats from every conceivable direction. But also delivering deadly blows when others least expect them.
That was what he expected to do today, because Tahir has played the game consummately well. He’s carefully enticed the world’s top jihadi operatives into a grand ambush by the Americans. A deadly sting operation worthy of his long career.
A few years ago he accepted that he couldn’t keep playing the double agent forever. His CIA handler insisted he’d be killed if he didn’t relocate to the U.S. So precisely when the cyberwars began in earnest, Tahir arrived in Bethesda—a suburb home to so many spies and government officials. Both he and his handler believed having him in the town would play well with the men Tahir was duping in Al Qaeda and then ISIS. And it had.
Tahir hatched a plan to cripple the monstrous forces heaping shame on Islam with their ceaseless slaughter of innocents: He would lure them to America with the promise of chainsawing to death Lana Elkins, the U.S.’s most celebrated cyberwarrior, along with her daughter. They leapt at the opportunity, knowing Steel Fist’s execution would trigger a violent backlash against American Muslims that could drive many into the ranks of radical Islamists. Moreover, every move would be captured on camera to inspire jihadis worldwide.
How could they resist such powerful bait from a trusted confidante and proven killer?
He planned each step down to Emma’s abduction by Fayah, an old comrade.
But the Americans underestimated the firepower and skill of jihadists, as they had so many times before. As soon as the choppers were shot out of the sky, Tahir knew his own plans had also gone down in flames and that nothing could stop the jihadis he’d cultivated for so long. The forces that were to ambush his presumed allies were dead.
Now, against his every wish, he must command a military operation to murder the very people he wanted to save. The irony is as horrid as it is unavoidable—if he is to continue working as the U.S.’s most valuable agent in the radical Islamist underground. Only his CIA handler, the director of the agency, the President, and the very highest echelon of the intelligence community have ever been aware of the role he’s played, or how critically positioned he’s been for so many years. “Need to know” hasn’t been applied so strictly to anyone since the height of the Cold War.
He looks down from the deer blind in disgust, watching a fighter from Jordan level his rifle on the soldier. But the Jordanian lifts his eyes from his rifle sight. Tahir sees why: two women and a man are rushing to aid the wounded American. The jihadi is doing what Tahir has done many times: waiting until the four come together so he can gun them down all at once.
The smoke forces Tahir to use binoculars. A dark-haired woman is in the lead. She’s now less than twenty feet from the burned man. Tahir focuses on her. Lana Elkins … just as he suspected.
She’s a gutsy woman. He’s disappointed she’ll have to die. But he hasn’t survived by making decisions based on sentiment. He’ll have to remain a double agent until he can set up ISIS and Al Qaeda again. He has no choice, not if the U.S. is to prevail in the long run.
He watches as Lana’s death begins to play out. He thinks of Emma and Sufyan, knowing his nephew will suffer terribly for the killings. They’ll kill Emma as they planned, and at some point Sufyan will see her execution by chainsaw.
Tahir tells himself to be resolute. This is war.
But he has seen Sufyan’s love for Emma. The boy spoke of it in Lana’s living room. He remembers Emma’s tears when she professed her deep feelings for his nephew. And he remembers his own words to them: “If you are ready to die for love, then you must be ready to kill for it.”
The Jordanian is sighting Lana and the others that very second. Three more jihadis come up behind him. They raise their rifles, too. They are silent predators, as quiet as the death the four rescuers will soon know.
Elkins reaches for the soldier. Her companions step behind her. The four are now close together.
Four shots ring out in fast succession. The lethality is devastatingly effective. All the bodies crumple to the ground. Whatever they found noble in their mission dies as Tahir watches, cheek still pressed to the stock of his rifle.
He’s shot the Jordanian and the three jihadis by the man’s side. A fifth now appears, staring at Tahir, eyes wide at what his commander has done. He’s already on his phone, surely alerting the others. Tahir has known this Al Qaeda fighter since they fled Afghanistan together. As the man darts toward a tree, Tahir shoots him, too, declaring his ultimate allegiance.
Tahir has killed for Sufyan, for the boy’s future. He has killed for love.
He sees Lana staring at him. She looks shocked. She staggers, like she’s dizzy for a second or two. But maybe she also sees that the deaths he’s delivered will not be enough. At best Lana and her cohorts have only the slightest chance of succeeding, as Tahir judges it highly
unlikely the jihadis can be defeated by two women, two men, and a soldier who looks like he’s dying.
But Tahir knows nothing of the veterans who’ve established a perimeter around the house. What he would recognize now, if he could see them in their ball caps and hunters’ camo, is a fierceness he knows well: the strength that comes from making a firm and final decision to defend decency.
• • •
Lana watches Tahir race toward them, tells her companions to hold their fire as she kneels by the soldier, who’s collapsed to the ground.
“Pull him out of sight,” Tahir orders. “We can’t take him. We are outnumbered two to one.”
“No we’re not,” Will says. “I don’t know who you are—”
“He’s with us,” Lana interrupts.
“—but we’ve got six combat vets securing the house.”
“Not enough,” Tahir says. “It will be guerilla war in this forest.”
“Which is burning down,” Will responds. “We can drive them like animals right into the arms of my buddies out there.”
“The jihadis are all headed to the house, right?” Lana says to Tahir.
“That is correct.”
“Then we just have to make sure they can’t retreat. And they won’t know we’re behind them.”
Tahir nods, but Lana senses his uneasiness. She has worries of her own. “What about the heat-seekers? Will they use them on that place?”
“No, they want the victory on camera. They will die before giving that up.”
“That’s what I figured.” Web propaganda savvy, as always.
Will calls in the plan to the chief, who tells him they’ll be ready.
Lana and Tahir carry the soldier to the base of the tree with the deer blind.
She, Ludmila, Will, and Tahir circle back, making sure they’re well behind the invaders. Much of the forest is burning, but they glimpse men up ahead advancing along both edges of the fire line.