by Peter Nealen
CHAPTER 9
Aziz wasn’t the kind of man who could ever really mentally blend in in the Middle East. Oh, he could certainly play the part; he had the mannerisms and the dialects down, better than he would ever admit. He’d never wanted to be a HUMINT guy, and he’d gone to great lengths to hide the fact that he had a certain talent for it. He’d been a good enough mimic that he’d even dallied with going into theater as a kid, as much as his father had been adamantly against it. Only joining the Army had changed that, and when they’d tried to put him in Intelligence instead of the Infantry, he’d really come to understand just how much he hated the idea of immersing himself in his heritage to that extent. So he’d fought tooth and nail, failed every test they shoved at him, been as bigoted and self-loathing an anti-Arab racist as he could be, until they finally sent him to the Infantry.
He hadn’t been any great shakes as a shooter. He knew it, deep down, but he clung to the identity of a grunt and a doorkicker like a lifeline, anyway. Shooters were tough guys. Shooters hated Arabs. He fit right in. And he didn’t have to act like an Arab.
He could never really articulate his antipathy for his heritage. It had far less to do with 9/11 and the wars to follow as it did with a fundamental rebellion against his very traditional Muslim parents. He liked booze, and he liked women, and that was about where his thought processes on the matter ended.
And yet, here he was, wearing a man-dress and keffiyeh, walking the streets of Khadarkh City in the early afternoon, looking for a tea shop or hookah bar, the specific kind of place where he might find the kind of people he was looking for. The kind of people that he really, deep down, didn’t want to find.
He hadn’t spoken to anyone since slipping into the outskirts of town, pulling the man-dress on over his khakis. He felt naked with only his knife, Makarov, and a couple of spare magazines on him, though the man-dress was good for concealing both weapons. He just wished that Brannigan, in his infinite wisdom, had seen fit to send backup.
No, send the dirty Arab to mingle with his dirty Arab cousins all alone. If he was being honest with himself, he knew that the thought was a lie. He was the only one who had any hope of blending in in Khadarkh City, especially given the fact that the Iranians had already swept through and rounded up any Americans, and presently had them under the gun in the Citadel. But Aziz rarely bothered with introspection when simple resentment would work. Brannigan had been an officer. That was enough for him.
He stopped in front of a café on the outskirts of the souk, just outside the crumbling wall of the Old City. Expressionless, he scanned the clientele. They were almost all younger men, most of them bearded. It was a familiar beard, too, covering the jaw and chin, with the upper lip shaved. It was generally known as the “Wahhabi Beard.” These guys weren’t on Khadarkh just for work. No one wearing that beard ever went anywhere just for work.
The sheer number of Wahhabi Beards beneath glaring, sullen eyes told him that he’d come to the right place. None of these men were going to be friends of the Iranians. Hell, these fanatics considered the Shi’a to be worse than the infidels, even the Jews.
He sat down at a table by himself, acutely conscious that his own facial hair was not in keeping with the rest, which would make this more difficult. But then, not all of the “Brothers” could afford to appear to be Wahhabi, so he mentally prepared to play that role. He certainly knew enough of the verbal cues to pass himself off as even more of a frothing lunatic than these idiots, as much as he might hate himself for every word that came out of his mouth.
He silently vowed that he’d demand a bonus, just for this. Not for the risk of being found out, tortured, and beheaded. They were all running that risk. No, he was going to demand more money for having to dirty himself by spouting Al Qaeda bullshit.
He got his chai and sipped it. Like every other place in this wretched part of the world, it was more sugar than tea. Of course, if it hadn’t had enough sugar, he would have bitched about that, too. Aziz was in the habit of complaining, even if only in the silence of his own mind.
After a long silence, one of the wiry Wahhabis came and sat across the table from him. “As salaamu aleikum,” the man said. His face was lean and hard, his eyes dead flecks of black with no soul behind them.
“Wa aleikum as salaam,” Aziz replied, taking another sip of his tea.
“Are we brothers?” the other man asked, coldly. “I do not know you, nor do I remember seeing you in Al Jubail.”
“I came by another route,” Aziz replied. “Until two days ago, I was killing Houthis north of Sana’a.”
No expression disturbed that dark, cold visage. “Indeed? A worthy cause,” the other man said, his voice as flat as his eyes. “What brings you here?”
“The Council determined that my skills were best used here,” Aziz replied. “The apostates’ boldness is more dangerous here than even in the Yemen.”
“Indeed,” the other man replied, though whether or not he agreed was impossible to say. “What are your skills?”
“Who is asking?” Aziz demanded.
“I am Abu Sayf,” the man said.
Aziz felt his hackles rise. He’d heard that name, despite his professed indifference to Middle Eastern affairs. Abu Sayf had popped up in Yemen a few years before, quickly making a name for himself through a combination of unrestrained brutality and sadistic cruelty. He had not been seen or heard of for some time, though a few people had suspected that he had gone to join the growing ISIS insurgency in northern Iraq and Syria, following the fall of Mosul to the combined Kurdish and Iraqi forces. That he was here on Khadarkh was not a good sign.
Or perhaps it was a good sign, as far as their mission went. If there were that many Al Qaeda bad guys on Khadarkh, then trouble and chaos was brewing, regardless. Aziz just wasn’t sure it was a good sign as far as his personal survival went, and he ranked that rather higher than the mission.
“I am Abdul Rahman al Ramadi,” he said in reply, picking the name of an AQI terrorist whom he knew for a fact was dead. He’d seen the corpse. He was just hoping that Abu Sayf didn’t know the same fact, at least not with the same certainty.
“I thought you were dead,” Abu Sayf said, in the same low, dead voice, that probably would have sounded threatening even if he had just been ordering tea.
“Which is precisely what we wanted the Amriki to think,” Aziz answered coolly. “I had to go into hiding for a while.”
He tried not to hold his breath while he waited to see if the black-eyed psycho in front of him was going to buy it, or call the alarm and get him killed. He wished, not for the first time, that the man-dress had a slit in the front that he could reach the Makarov through. He was still determined to put a 9mm through Abu Sayf’s skull before he died, however he had to get at the gun.
But the terrorist seemed to be satisfied. “Welcome, Abdul Rahman al Ramadi,” he said. “You are just in time.”
Aziz cocked an eyebrow. “We already have enough people in place to move?”
Abu Sayf nodded. “There are enough to begin. We have waited too long as it is. The first steps will be taken tonight, before the demonstrations disperse.” He smiled coldly. “Though our friends have made sure that the demonstrators are staying later and later.”
That was no surprise. Toward the end, before Yemen had descended into all-out war, the demonstrations and unrest had gone from mid-afternoon affairs to a constant, background roar. Aziz had done enough research to backstop his paper-thin cover to know that much.
“The assets are being put in place to strike at two of the apostates’ patrols here in the city tonight,” Abu Sayf continued. “Several of the Al Qays loyalists will doubtless be killed in the process.”
Which would provide the Al Qaeda operatives with more resentment and outrage to feed. This island was more of a powder keg than they’d realized when they’d first taken the job.
Under other circumstances, that would be a matter of more than a little concern, and Aziz’ reflex
was to further resent having taken the job in the first place. The analytical part of his mind, however, recognized the potential advantage for what it was. If this particular Sunni-Shi’a flashpoint was about to blow, it could potentially create enough chaos for them to get in and out under cover of the fighting. It would still be risky, certainly. Doing anything in the middle of a firefight usually is. But he was already thinking ahead to what he would have to do to make sure that things didn’t calm down after the bombings.
It also meant that he had very little time in which to prepare and act. He’d have to find a way to disengage from the Al Qaeda terrorists long enough to get back to the rest of the team and report.
“We could certainly use your help, Abdul Rahman,” Abu Sayf was saying. “A brother of your experience, having fought the infidels in the name of Allah for so long, should surely have some advice to give, particularly to our younger fighters.”
“Surely,” Aziz agreed, taking another sip of his tea even as his guts twisted. He should have picked a more obscure kunyah. He hadn’t realized that Abu Sayf would hold Abdul Rahman al Ramadi in such respect as to want to immediately include him in the chain of command and the planning process. Though, when he looked in the other man’s cold, dead eyes, he thought suddenly that Abu Sayf’s obsequiousness was not driven by respect at all, but rather suspicion. He felt a chill. He was in this deeper than he’d expected; if he slipped, even a little, in the next few hours, he was going to be killed. And Abu Sayf would not make it quick or merciful.
Well, I’ll just have to make sure I shoot you in the face as soon as it looks like the game is up, won’t I?
“Come, my brother,” Abu Sayf said, standing up. “There are many places to go before the night’s attack. We have dispersed the brothers in cells throughout the city, to avoid the watchful gaze of the apostates. You should meet with some of the more important ones.”
Aziz rose to join him, feeling like he had a heavy, cold lump of lead in his stomach. If I live through this, I’m never doing recon in an Arab city ever, ever again.
***
“He’s still not back,” Santelli whispered. “He’s overdue.”
“Do we go looking for him?” Childress asked.
Brannigan shook his head. “He’s a big boy,” he said. “And we knew that he might not be able to disengage on the set timeline if he got deep enough. His job is to sow chaos; we’ll give him some time to sow chaos. Besides, if a bunch of palefaces show up in town too close to his arrival, it just might get him killed.”
“Presuming he’s not dead already,” Hancock said ominously.
“Which was always the risk taken,” Brannigan pointed out. “And we’ve got on-the-ground recon to do, ourselves. We’ll keep our ears to the ground. If he makes it back, we’re good. If he doesn’t, we’ll have to improvise.”
Despite his words, Aziz’ absence was bothering Brannigan a lot, not least because it was highlighting just how thin a thread the entire operation was hanging from. If the least thing went wrong, with the numbers they had, the entire show could go entirely to crap in a heartbeat. Then they’d all be dead, and the hostages right along with them.
But we’re the best chance they’ve got. How many more will that bearded psychopath murder before the powers that be get their thumbs out?
“Keep an eye out for him,” he instructed. “If he manages to get a duress signal out, then we can see about going in after him.” They had at least arranged such a signal, though whether or not Aziz would get a chance to use it was unknown. They’d brought four of the burner phones from Dubai, and Aziz had one. If he sent a text that looked like a random mishmash of letters, numbers, and symbols—but in a pattern that had been, in fact, determined beforehand—then he was in trouble and needed help.
They didn’t have the facilities to keep the phones charged, not out in the rocks, so they were turning one on every thirty minutes, top and bottom of the hour. So far, there was nothing. So, either Aziz was on mission, or he was dead. Those were pretty much the only options.
“Let’s go,” Brannigan whispered to Childress. He would have taken Flanagan, but Childress had proved to have a slightly better skillset when it came to moving silently through the dark. Flanagan might have disputed it, but Brannigan had made the call, based on the gawky man’s performance on point the first night. Recon would be him and Childress. Flanagan would have plenty to do once they commenced the assault.
Slowly and silently, the two of them climbed out of the narrow channel, clambering over the rocks until they were back up on the higher ground, and started moving toward the dark silhouette of the Citadel. The sun had been down for half an hour; there was still some light lingering on the western horizon, but it was dark enough that they could move with some confidence that they wouldn’t be spotted.
Unless the opposition had NVGs or thermals. So far, they hadn’t seen any indication that the enemy had such equipment, at least not the checkpoint troops, but it never paid to assume. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That had been Brannigan’s planning mantra for what felt like ages, and it had never let him down.
They had less than a mile to cover to get to a good vantage point to observe the Citadel. They had to cross the coastal road once more, but fortunately there was no traffic on it at the time they reached it, so a quick dash sufficed to get them to cover on the other side without incident.
The ground was getting steeper and rockier as they got closer, as the island rose toward the hill where the Citadel loomed. Childress slowed, picking his way through the rocks, looking for a spot with a good field of view while at the same time offering enough microterrain that the two of them could hide from prying eyes that might be watching for them.
He finally found a spot, less than a kilometer from the outer curtain wall, atop a small, rocky hillock, only a few meters from the water. The rocks were broken enough that they could get flat and blend into the terrain, and the constant noise of the waves would mask any sounds they made getting settled. They were still close enough to the Citadel that they crawled the last hundred yards, staying low and moving slowly. Scanning carefully for any movement near them, the two men settled down in the prone amidst the boulders, and Brannigan drew out the binoculars that had been among the short list of equipment they’d been able to bring from the States without raising eyebrows in Dubai.
The ancient stone edifice had been built on a rising escarpment that loomed above a sheer cliff that plunged down to the waters of the Gulf on the eastern coast of the island. An outer wall appeared to encircle the lower half of the hill, while the primary buildings of the Citadel stood amidst an inner curtain wall on the rocky promontory itself. A round tower bulked large against the sky, standing slightly taller than the blocky, U-shaped building that formed the main keep. Two more towers were visible on the barbican gate that thrust its way out into the Old City. There were lights on in the Citadel, though not many. Most gleamed from narrow windows in the keep, high above the lights of the city below.
There was enough illumination that Brannigan could see a decent amount of the top of the wall. He was looking for observation points, heavy weapons, and sentries. He spotted what looked like a sentry point on top of the round tower above the keep immediately, two men silhouetted against the dark blue of the sky. The binoculars were high-quality glass, even though they did not provide the same level of magnification that a good spotting scope would have. He carefully braced them against the boulder in front of him and cupped his hands around the ocular lenses, breathing carefully to lessen the jiggle of the image.
He couldn’t make out a lot of detail, even after several minutes’ study. But he was fairly sure that he could see a long tube leaning against the crenellations, just barely visible as the end sticking up over the battlements. Up that high, the only thing that could be was a MANPAD, a shoulder-fired Surface to Air Missile. So, even if they’d been able to bring helicopters, getting in that way would have been a bad idea.
He co
ntinued to scan the walls. There appeared to be several static sentry positions, though they were dark and hard to see; he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t missing one or two, at least on the south side. He wished he could get a good look at the entirety of the walls, but time was an issue. They’d have to hope that Aziz had gotten a good enough look at the city side of the Citadel to be able to fill in some of the gaps.
While they had certainly trained to climb the walls, the more he was able to study the real-world Citadel, the less that looked like a good idea. They didn’t have sniper rifles to take out those static positions, and they appeared to be pretty well-fortified against small arms fire from below. Not only that…he thought he saw movement, and tried to focus in on it. Yes, there were several roughly man-shaped dark specks moving along the top of the outer curtain wall. They had rovers, too. With time, they could determine the schedule for the rovers’ patrol routes, so they could be avoided, but the commotion of taking out the static sentries would doubtless bring the rovers running.
He kept thinking as he continued to slowly and carefully scan the wall. He hoped and prayed that Aziz hadn’t been rolled up and killed; the more he looked at their objective, the more he was convinced that starting a Sunni riot out in town was the only way they were going to have a hope in hell of getting in there. And even then, it was going to be a roll of the dice.
He briefly considered calling it quits and heading back out to the boats. The money wasn’t the object, even for the poorer mercs. He could help take care of them. He just had too few men to really be comfortable with this setup.
He stopped his scan. What is that?
The lower curtain wall took a sharp turn to follow the cliff back toward the main escarpment. And there, about twenty meters from the corner tower, he thought he saw a gap.
It took several minutes of study, during which he was alternately convinced that he was seeing things, and that there was, in fact, a sizeable breach in the wall. Finally, he handed the binoculars over to Childress. “Look just to the right of that closest tower, on the lower wall,” he instructed. “Does it look like there’s a break in the wall, just over the cliff, to you?”