by Peter Nealen
Santelli just eyed Aziz with heavy-lidded eyes, his well-practiced bored look on his face. It was the look he had often used on young officers just before he cut them off at the knees. So far, he was decidedly unimpressed with David Aziz’ attitude. He sincerely hoped that the word he’d gotten about the man’s ability was on the level, because he was getting short on time.
“My name’s Santelli,” he said. “I’m putting together some names for a job, overseas. A job more along the lines of your previous profession.” Aziz’ eyes suddenly focused on Santelli a little more sharply. “Fact is, I need an Arabic speaker who is also well-versed in the local culture in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf, and since my first choice turned me down flat, he gave me your name.”
Aziz leaned back in his chair, a sneer of disgust on his face. “I’m not in the terp business, sorry,” he said.
“Not looking for a terp,” Santelli grunted. “This is too small an operation for that kind of specialization.” He passed over Villareal; he already knew the Doc’s conditions, and had warned Brannigan about them beforehand. That was the Colonel’s call. “I’m looking for a shooter who can interact with the locals, seamlessly.”
Aziz’ eyes narrowed. “Who told you I might be the candidate for that?” he asked.
Santelli snorted. “Does it matter? You’ve worn your veteran status on your sleeve ever since you went into graduate school. Don’t act like you’ve kept it some kind of deep, dark secret. I’m ninety-percent sure that part of why that woman stormed out just before I came in here had to do with you rubbing it in her face.”
Aziz leaned back again, watching Santelli more thoughtfully. “You’re very well-informed, Mr. Santelli,” he said.
“I make it my business to be,” Santelli replied, “especially when I’m recruiting. When I couldn’t get the guy I wanted, and he suggested you, I grilled him pretty hard. This is going to be a small team. I can’t afford to get sloppy.”
“What’s the job?” Aziz asked. Despite his air of lazy superiority, his interest was piqued.
“Hostage rescue mission. Private contract, on the island of Khadarkh,” Santelli said. “It’ll be high-risk, but the pay’s commensurate.”
Aziz was thinking about it, even as he tried to smooth his face into a look of studied boredom. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve always hated the Middle East. Not sure I really want to go back.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s why you changed your name from Daoud to David,” Santelli said. “Rocky told me.”
“Rocky sent you to me?” Aziz asked. Santelli could see the uncertainty in the man’s eyes. His sense of superiority was getting rocked, the more Santelli revealed that he knew about his past. And Rocky had told Santelli a few things about Aziz, things that had strengthened Santelli’s own misgivings about the man, but that also could be useful on the op.
Frankly, from what Rocky had told him, Aziz could be a massive pain in the ass, in no large part because he was too smart for his own good, and knew it.
Aziz looked up at the ceiling. Santelli sighed. He was increasingly convinced that the man was milking the theatrics for all they were worth. He stood up. “I don’t have a lot of time,” he said. He put a card with the directions Brannigan had given him on the desk. “Be here by noon on the 25th if you’re in.” He turned and left.
Aziz hadn’t said, “yes,” but he hadn’t said “no,” either. Santelli knew that they were getting really short on time to find another Arabic speaker, but all the same, he wasn’t sure if he wanted Aziz to come along or not.
***
“Finally!” Kevin Curtis whooped, as he looked up from the table to see the two men approaching the booth. “Took you long enough to finally get your ass out here to civilization, Joe!” He had a muscular, ebony arm around each of the stunning women sitting on either side of him, a platinum blond on his left, and an olive-skinned woman whose dark, smoldering eyes almost took away from the plunging neckline of her blouse. Both women overtopped him by a couple of inches. “Come on, sit down! Welcome to the fleshpots!” He grinned, perfectly straight, white teeth flashing in his dark face as he looked at Hancock. “What did you do to finally bring Silent Joe in out of the cold, Rog?”
“We’re not here to party, Kev,” Flanagan said as he sat down. “Which means, ladies, that I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to shove off for a bit. We’ve got to talk some business with Kevin, here.”
The blond pouted. The brunette gave Flanagan a sultry stare. “We’re interested in business,” she said.
“Not this kind, darlin’,” Flanagan said. “Sorry. Beat it.”
The brunette sighed, then kissed Curtis on the cheek. “We’ll see you later, baby,” she said. “Don’t keep us waiting too long.”
The women slid out of the booth, and Curtis watched them go wistfully. Then he turned to his old friends.
“See, Joe, this is why you were single for so long,” he said. The short, stocky man seemed to almost bounce with energy. “I’m surprised even Mary’s put up with you.”
“He and Mary broke up,” Hancock put in helpfully, smiling as Flanagan turned a glare on him.
“What?!” Curtis exclaimed. “When did this happen?”
“A few weeks ago,” Flanagan said. “Can we get to the business at hand?”
“A few weeks?!” Curtis was almost beside himself. “You’ve been single for that long, and you didn’t come here to let Uncle Kevin hook you up with a Vegas beauty? What the hell is wrong with you, Joe? There are hundreds, hundreds of gorgeous women who would be all over you in a minute, if you weren’t such a…”
“We’re not here to talk women, Kev,” Flanagan said, trying to head things off before Curtis really built up a head of steam.
“There is always time to talk women,” Curtis replied. “You should know this by now.”
“I take it you’ve been having a good run?” Hancock asked.
Curtis grinned widely. “Easiest job in the damn world, brother!” he said. “You would be amazed at how many people in this city have somehow learned how to lose at poker. Even Joe here could clean up, with his flat, dead face.”
Flanagan looked at Hancock tiredly. “Do you want to tell him about the job? Because he doesn’t seem to want to listen to me.”
“Wait, job?” Curtis asked, his voice suddenly comparatively hushed, as he leaned forward. “What job?”
“If you’d shut up about poker and booty calls for ten seconds…”
“Brannigan’s got a hostage rescue mission laid on,” Hancock said, before Flanagan could get going in turn. “Short fuse, high-risk, strictly hush-hush.”
“Are you going?” Curtis asked Flanagan. The bigger man nodded. “Then of course I’m in,” Curtis said. “What have we got for firepower?”
“Still at the recruiting stage right now,” Hancock said. “Though I’m sure the Colonel has a few things in mind already.”
“Give me an hour…make that two hours, to say my goodbyes,” Curtis said. Flanagan rolled his eyes. “Then we’ll get on the road. After all, somebody’s got to keep an eye on Closemouthed Joe, here.”
“Are you sure we can’t leave him behind?” Flanagan asked, as he and Hancock got up.
“Don’t lie,” Curtis said. “I was the first one you thought of. ‘I’ve got to get Kev,’ you thought. ‘I can’t go into a war zone without Kev.’”
Hancock just chuckled and shook his head as he headed for the door. They had a long drive ahead.
CHAPTER 4
There was very little detail that could be discerned about the room from the video. The place looked dark, except for the bright work lights that had been set up, focused on the twenty-five figures in various modes of dress kneeling on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs. Unlike many other such videos that had been circulated over the years, there was no flag against the wall; there was only bare, white stone, though there might have been a hint of dark mosaics along the top of the screen. Armed men in plain khaki f
atigues, carrying what the practiced eye could identify as Chinese Type 03 rifles, stood on either side of the frame, in front of what might have been thick, marble columns.
Five corpses were lying on the floor in front of the hostages.
Another man, clad in the same khaki uniform as the guards stepped forward. His hair was close-cropped and his lean face was half covered by a neatly-trimmed, black beard. His dark eyes bored into the camera.
“These five men behind me are dead for one reason,” the man said, in precise, only slightly accented English. “To ensure that you know that we will not hesitate. They were unarmed, and did not resist. We killed them anyway. The same fate awaits the other twenty-five behind me, should any American aircraft or warship come within the Strait of Hormuz, or pass closer to this island than Bahrain.”
He squared his shoulders. “We now control the Strait. The Western powers and their apostate allies in the so-called ‘Kingdom’ of Saudi Arabia no longer have a place in the Persian Gulf. Accept this as a fact, or watch these men die. I assure you, their deaths will be far slower and less merciful than those their colleagues faced.”
The video ended.
“That’s who we’re up against,” Brannigan said. The eight of them were gathered in his living room. A fire was burning in the fireplace, and the early afternoon sun was starting to peek through the trees to the east, throwing dappled shadows through the windows. “Chavez doesn’t have an ID on him, aside from a name: Esfandiari. No other details about him are available; whoever he is, he’s not a major player in any of the Shi’a groups that State or CIA is aware of. I think that narrows things down a bit.”
“Qods Force?” Flanagan asked.
Brannigan nodded. “I don’t think there’s any doubt. They’re being somewhat sneaky about it, refusing to identify themselves as such. But from what we know about the op so far, the way they handle themselves and their weapons…unless there’s some Shi’a secret society somewhere that’s paralleling the IRGC Qods Force in organization and training, the list of candidates gets pretty short.”
“They don’t really think that they can drag this out for very long, do they?” Santelli asked. “Hostages or not, nobody’s going to let them shut down the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely. Eventually, those hostages are going to be written off as ‘acceptable casualties.’”
“There will probably be a rescue attempt sooner or later,” Brannigan agreed, “but our employer is afraid that this guy is going to be true to his word, and murk the hostages as soon as the helos show up on radar. Reports are that they’ve got control of the airport and the harbor, as well as the citadel. So, we are going in to get the hostages out before that happens. Coincidentally opening this guy up to a full-scale assault.”
“How many are there?” Hancock asked.
“Unknown,” was the reply. “But considering they managed to neutralize the entire Khadarkhi Army—which, admittedly, was little more than a tiny parade-ground army in the first place—we can’t assume any less than a company reinforced.”
Aziz looked around at the little group, a skeptical grimace on his face. “And we’re supposed to do this with…eight guns?”
“Seven, actually,” Brannigan said. May as well get it out in the open and get the bitching over with. “Doc Villareal is going to be a non-combatant.”
“What?” several voices chorused.
“What, Doc can’t be bothered to get his hands dirty?” Childress demanded.
“He’s an MD who took the Hippocratic Oath,” Brannigan said, a note of warning in his voice, before Villareal could say anything. “He takes it seriously. I’ve accepted that.”
“That’s fine, for a Stateside hospital,” Aziz put in, apparently not catching the warning in Brannigan’s voice, or else disregarding it. “We can’t exactly afford dead weight, not with this few shooters.”
“And if Doc was dead weight, I’d take that under advisement,” Brannigan said coldly, fixing Aziz with an icy stare. “But I know Doc Villareal, I trust him with my life, and with all of yours. I can always find more shooters. I can’t always find the best combat medic I’ve ever seen.”
That time, Aziz got the point, and subsided, though there was still a bit of an I can’t believe this look on his face.
“As much as I hate to say it, sir,” Flanagan put in, “Aziz does make a good point. Seven shooters against a company plus, or more? How the hell are we supposed to pull that off?”
“Pure firepower isn’t going to do the trick,” Brannigan agreed. “So, we will have to rely on stealth, maneuver, deception, and guile.” He fixed Aziz with another stare. “That’s actually where you come in, Aziz.”
Their Arabic speaker blinked. “Me?”
“Have you ever been to Khadarkh?” Santelli asked. He’d been a close part of Brannigan’s initial planning.
“I might have,” Aziz answered.
“It’s a yes or no question, Aziz,” Brannigan growled.
“Yeah, I was there with my dad, about sixteen years ago,” he said, apparently deciding he’d pressed his luck with the towering, broad-shouldered Colonel enough. Brannigan was getting a bit irritated with their professor, not least because he was a last-minute addition, an unknown to any of them.
“How much of the local atmospherics do you remember?” Brannigan pressed.
“Enough to blend in after a bit of observation,” Aziz replied. “Oh, hell, I’m going to have to go mix and press the flesh with the fucking camel jockeys, aren’t I?”
“Uh, dude,” Curtis pointed out, “you’re an Arab. Aren’t you?”
“My dad was an Arab,” Aziz replied. “My mom was an Arab. I’m an American. I fucking hate Arabs.”
“Aziz’ self-loathing racism aside,” Brannigan continued, “it seems that the local Sunni population, much of which belongs to the same Al Qays tribe as the royal family, isn’t terribly happy with their new overlords. There have been several reports of regular protests. Most of them have still remained relatively peaceful, mainly due to the disparity of firepower between the demonstrators and the Iranians.”
“And we don’t want the demonstrations to stay peaceful.” Aziz was nodding his understanding. He sighed. “It’s going to suck ass, but I think I can make that happen.”
Brannigan nodded. “You’re going to head into the city as soon as we make landfall,” he said. “The rest of us will lay up for the first day, unless circumstances on the ground mean we have to push in sooner.” He unrolled a printout. “Judging by that video, this is going to be our target: the Citadel.”
***
They planned, chalk-talked, scrapped plans, got onto several wild tangents that had to be reined in, and slowly hammered out a basic plan. Many of the finer details were going to have to depend on the situation they found on the ground.
“Dubai is our best bet for a staging area,” Santelli said. “It’s not even seventy-five nautical miles from the island, and it’s crawling with gangsters and black marketeers. Any gear that we need, and can’t get in legally, we should be able to purchase from the locals.”
“Does anybody in this group actually have underworld connections?” Flanagan asked. “I doubt that international arms dealers are going to have billboards up.”
“There are ways,” Brannigan said quietly. “I’m working on that part.” It did worry him a bit, but he had feelers out through Chavez, and already had a good idea of where to start looking, and discreetly asking, from having done some investigating of his own.
The truth was, they were way out on a limb on this operation. They could count on no international support if things went sideways. And with only seven shooters, there were innumerable ways that it could go sideways.
He was as exhilarated as he was worried.
“What can we take in with us?” Curtis asked.
“Anything not on any ITAR lists,” Santelli replied. International Traffic in Arms Regulations were nothing to screw around with. Get caught in an international port with the wron
g equipment, munitions, or weapons, without the requisite paperwork—which this crew didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of obtaining—and you would be looking at a very long stay in a very unpleasant place. “Clothes, minimal combat gear—though I’d suggest keeping that minimal, both because we don’t know what we’re going to wind up with, weapons-wise, and to keep things on the down-low. Airport security can get nosy.”
“We should be able to get consumables in Dubai,” Hancock said. “Food, water, batteries, that sort of thing. Shouldn’t attract too much attention.”
“I’ll get as much in the way of medical supplies as we can carry while we’re still Stateside,” Villareal said quietly. “Those will rarely get messed with, and I don’t want to trust anything we might get in Dubai. There’s enough sketchy stuff going on around that city that I wouldn’t be surprised that half of what we got was placebos and tissue paper.”
“That could certainly suck.”
“Especially if that’s all Doc’s going to be carrying, instead of ammo.”
“Knock that shit off,” Santelli snapped. His Boston accent was suddenly not quite as pronounced. “If you’ve got a problem with Doc, we can go out to the woodline and deal with it. This ain’t the fucking New Corps.”
“Fine,” Aziz muttered, not much louder than his earlier imprecation. “I’ll shut up.”
***
About an hour later, they were getting punchy. Brannigan could tell it was about time to wrap things up. And he had a long, hard day planned for the next day.
“Let’s knock off for tonight,” he said. “Everybody up and ready for some field exercise no later than 0630 tomorrow.”
There were a couple of muffled groans, mainly from Curtis and Aziz. Curtis suddenly spoke up.
“Before we quit, there’s one more thing,” he said. “Vitally important. This team needs a name.”
“No, it does not,” Flanagan said, raising his voice a little.
“Can’t use GI Joe,” Curtis continued, ignoring his laconic teammate. “It’s already taken, and even if it wasn’t, somebody would probably think it meant Mopey Joe over there,” he pointed to Flanagan, “was in charge.” He brightened suddenly. “I got it! The Liberators!”