2
NEAR RAQQA, SYRIA
WHEN they reached Ain Issa, Batta found that their hidey-hole for the night was not a warehouse but an abandoned stable, its stalls empty, its concrete walls pocked with bullet holes. Batta was too tired to ask. He threw down his bedroll and slept as hard as he ever had.
He woke to find Mahmoud and the others drinking coffee. Just like old-time cowboys only they were sitting on beach chairs instead of hay bales and Ajmad was playing a video game on his phone. Batta’s ankle burned like he’d barbecued it.
“Might start calling you Sleeping Beauty instead of genius,” Girol said.
“Time is it?”
Girol ignored the question until Batta looked at his watch for the answer: 9:16.
“Nah, stick with genius.”
“Cigarette?” Mahmoud said.
Batta hadn’t smoked since college, but this morning seemed like a good time to start. He lit up, and took the last beach chair. It was neon green, with a tropical theme, palm trees and coconuts. Nice. He rolled down his sock, found a blister on his ankle the size of an oyster shell but not as pretty. He would cover it in moleskin and hope for the best.
“How do we feel about last night? It was good for you, was it good for me? Anyone?”
Mahmoud sucked on his cigarette. Ajmad jabbed at his phone.
“Going to Raqqa,” Girol mumbled. “Right?”
“Unless Durette calls it off.” But Batta knew Durette wouldn’t call it off. He would leave the choice to them, and they’d made their choice.
Girol closed his eyes: Then let’s not worry about it.
They spent the morning watering and feeding the horses. No one bothered them. Batta figured the stable’s owners were refugees, over the border in Turkey. At noon, he powered up the satellite phone for a call to the Special Operations Group base in Gaziantep. The sat was probably an unnecessary precaution. The Islamic State wasn’t running real-time surveillance on mobile networks—not yet. But better safe than headless.
Durette picked up right away, and Batta heard the series of beeps and hisses that meant the encryption was working.
“Sir.”
“So far, so good?”
“Ran into a pickup with six red team last night. All gone now.” Batta sketched out the skirmish.
“I hate coincidences,” Durette said. “Maybe we should bring you back.”
“You’d have four angry men down here.” A lie. Mahmoud and Ajmad just wanted their money, Batta would be happy someone else had decided for him, and Girol didn’t get angry.
“No one’s bothered you today?”
“Not a soul.”
“Give me the coordinates. I want to see it myself. Call you back.”
“I’ll text them.” Batta hung up, sent Durette the location.
Thirty-five minutes later, his phone buzzed.
“Still there,” Durette said, without preamble. “The truck and the bodies, too. I think it was bad luck. Anything else, they would have fetched the bodies already. But you want to turn around, I get it.”
“What about Abu Ibrahim?” Batta felt safe using the cover name on this encrypted network.
“Just emailed his final go.”
“Our eyes in the sky?” The drones.
“As promised.”
“Then we’ll leave at sunset. Back here by dawn.”
“We’ll be watching. Insh’allah, my friend.”
“Not you, too.”
“Good luck, then.”
—
THE AFTERNOON passed interminably. Girol broke apart his AK, cleaned it, oiled it, rebuilt it. Then he blindfolded himself and repeated the exercise. Batta did the same with his Makarov, mainly to prove he could. Mahmoud and Batta squabbled about whether Mahmoud could call his girlfriend. Mahmoud agreed to wait until they returned from Raqqa. Batta dressed the blister on his ankle and stretched his legs and back every way he could imagine. But the night didn’t come.
The horses were jittery, too. Batta offered Baraq a sugar cube and nearly lost a finger.
“He doesn’t like you because you’re so fat,” Mahmoud said.
Fear and impatience ground together. Batta couldn’t remember feeling so uncertain about a mission. Paradoxically, he wanted nothing more than to start. The sooner he started, the sooner he finished.
Finally, the sun dipped low and a dusky orange tinted the sky. Batta powered up the sat phone. No messages. So they were cleared for takeoff. From here on, he would leave the phone on so that the drone pilots could call them with warnings. To make sure the drones didn’t target them accidentally, Batta’s GPS handheld secretly doubled as a transmitter. He could use it to send a radio signal marking them as friendly. But any jihadis with wide-spectrum receivers in the vicinity could track the signal, too. They might not know what it meant, but they would know their side wasn’t sending it. So Batta was leaving the transmitter off. As long as he and the others were mounted, the pilots should have no problems recognizing them. They had to be the only group of four men on horses within fifty miles.
They saddled up. As the sky turned black they heard the sunset Muslim call to prayer, the Maghreb, whispering to them from the south. As if the jihadis wanted to remind them where they were going. Mahmoud leaned over his horse, spat in the dust. Batta had never seen a Muslim respond that way to a prayer call.
Mahmoud must have caught the surprise on Batta’s face. “Daesh, they’ve ruined it. Every word. Let them pray until Allah sets them all on fire.”
They came to a rutted two-lane road whose edges crumbled into the featureless desert. To the west, taillights chased the last glimmers of sun. To the east, the road was empty.
“M4,” Mahmoud said.
The front line.
“Look both ways,” Batta said, and followed Mahmoud across.
Ain Issa’s glow faded. Only the moon and the stars lit their way. The night was silent except for the breathing of their horses. This land had no irrigated crops, not even much trash, only knee-high green bushes scattered at random. The soil was dry and sandy, an ugly red-orange under the moonlight. Say what you wanted about the Islamic State, it wasn’t a real estate play.
Unlike their route the night before, this path seemed to be exclusively for horses. Batta saw occasional piles of manure, no tire tracks.
No one spoke for two hours, until Mahmoud raised his hand to indicate a stop. “Fifteen minutes for the horses.” Baraq had worked up a lather. Batta wiped his flanks, gave him as much water as he could drink. The GPS showed that they had ridden twenty-one kilometers. Another thirty to go, three hours of riding, plus stops. They were aiming to reach the pickup spot a few minutes before midnight. They had a narrow window, a half hour at most. Every minute raised the risk that a random patrol would spot them.
Batta pulled the sat phone, found a single text from ten minutes before. C. C for Clear. The drones, their secret protectors, circling in the darkness. “Good night for this,” he said, just to hear his voice.
They rode. “Careful here,” Mahmoud said after about half an hour. They came over a rise and Batta saw they’d reached cultivated land, straight-edged fields split by narrow dirt roads. Beyond the fields, maybe two kilometers south, a few dozen lights glowed. The village was bigger than it seemed. This part of Syria no longer had a working electrical grid at night. Only buildings that had their own generators could stay lit. Probably a few hundred houses and a couple of larger structures. The wind carried the sound of humming generator engines.
“This way.” Mahmoud led them to an irrigation channel, twenty feet wide and ten deep. He tied a handkerchief over his mouth, urged his horse down an eroded dirt wall.
Batta followed—and too late realized that the channel carried runoff, not freshwater. It was nearly dry, no risk of drowning, but the stench of animal waste stung his nose. The leftov
er fertilizer coated his tongue with a foul chemical taste. Worse, their passage stirred up clouds of flies. The horses flicked their tails wildly. Batta forced himself to hold the reins instead of swatting. Mahmoud hadn’t mentioned they’d be riding through what was essentially an open sewer. No wonder he’d been so confident that they wouldn’t hit checkpoints. Batta leaned close to his horse and tried not to think how long they’d be down here.
Ahead, Mahmoud kicked his horse into a fast trot. Batta urged Baraq to follow. They passed under a narrow concrete bridge. Baraq didn’t like the enclosed space, the sudden darkness. He stopped abruptly. “Come on, boy.” Batta felt the horse quivering under him. He feared Baraq might rear up, smash both their heads against the concrete. He squeezed Baraq’s flanks until the horse stepped tentatively forward and they escaped.
“Next time, gallop him through,” Mahmoud said. “When they run, they’re not scared.”
Next time? Batta would have no chance to control the horse if Baraq panicked at full speed. But as they neared the next bridge, Batta decided to trust the smuggler. He kicked Baraq into a gallop and the horse surged through.
Finally, Mahmoud led them out of the canal into an empty field. They had bypassed the village entirely. Its lights were a kilometer to the north. Fly bites covered Batta’s face. He’d have to ask the SOG doctor in Gaziantep what diseases flies transmitted. And get shots.
They walked until the smell of effluent faded. Mahmoud raised his hand and hopped down.
“You should have told us that was coming,” Batta said.
“Want to ride through town, Kareem?”
“We could have wrapped our faces.”
“I warn you now. Another one in three kilometers.”
Great. Batta pulled his phone, found he’d received another C for Clear text while they were in the sewer. At least the route seemed to be worth the trouble.
“Come on, let’s give them water.”
For the next two hours, the ride was uneventful, no checkpoints or Captagon smugglers. As they approached the Euphrates, the land once again turned green, fed by irrigation canals that stretched north from the muddy river. They came across clusters of farmhouses and another village, but Mahmoud found ways around all the settlements. For nearly twenty minutes, they followed another sewage channel, this one still damp with runoff, even more fetid than the first. Batta tried not to breathe.
They emerged only a few kilometers northwest of Raqqa. Here, the Euphrates kept the desert at bay. All the land around them was cultivated, and for the first time they couldn’t avoid traveling close to roads and houses. Mahmoud led them east through palm groves on a path that seemed meant as a foot trail, the gap between the trees barely wide enough for the horses. Cars sped along a road a few hundred meters to the south. They passed close enough to farmhouses to see the glow of televisions flickering inside. Even with the map and the satellite overheads, Batta hadn’t realized how claustrophobic this route would become. He felt as if they were working deeper into a cave with their flashlights fading. But Mahmoud led them without hesitation.
The groves to the south thinned. Through the open patches Batta saw the lights of a city in the distance. Raqqa. The killers in charge of the Islamic State made sure their capital had electricity. The difference between a centrally powered grid and individual generators was obvious.
They rode another five minutes before Mahmoud turned them off the path and into the grove. It was 11:47 p.m. They had left Ain Issa six hours before. They were less than a kilometer from the meeting site, but Batta couldn’t imagine how they could ride in without being seen. The groves ended just ahead, leaving open fields between them and the pickup spot.
Mahmoud dismounted.
“We tie the horses and walk. Through the grove and then there.” He pointed at an elevated path for tractors and carts. It dead-ended at the one-lane dirt farm road where they would meet Abu Ibrahim.
“You and your brother wait here,” Batta said. “We’ll get him, bring him back.” The presence of two men would be less strange than four, if anyone saw them.
Mahmoud nodded. Batta checked his phone, found another C for Clear only nine minutes before. He decided to call Gaziantep, make sure the pilots knew they’d be dismounted. Durette picked up after one ring.
“You see us?”
“In the grove.”
“Bill and I are walking the rest of the way. The brothers will stay with the horses. So, two on foot.”
“I’ll tell the pilots. Everything looks good. Normal traffic, fields are empty, no unusual movement in that ville to the north.”
“And you don’t see our guy yet.”
Durette paused. “They’re telling me they picked up a guy on a bike near the Equestrian Hotel.” The building was on the northwest edge of Raqqa, two kilometers away. “Could be him.”
“GTG.”
“TTYL.” The operators had adopted the habit of using texting slang at these moments, a backhanded way to defuse tension. How much danger can we be in if we sound like teenage girls?
—
BATTA STUFFED his pistol in his waistband and led Girol along the edge of the elevated dirt track. It didn’t offer much cover. The road to the south was about a kilometer away, but anyone who looked hard would see them. Worse, generators pounded in the village to the northeast, and the farmhouses there had more lights than Batta had expected.
Batta saw a man bicycling in the distance. Abu Ibrahim. He wore a backpack and rode cautiously over the rutted road. He gripped the handlebars rigidly, the tension in his arms and shoulders visible even from there. Good. A man who was about to flee the Islamic State shouldn’t look relaxed.
The sat phone buzzed. A single word: Down.
“Down.” Batta threw himself onto the dirt. Seconds later, he heard what the drones had seen. A pickup truck rolled out from the village to the northeast. Not a Hilux, a rusted two-door Mitsubishi. Two men inside, none in the back. It bounced down the track that connected the village and main road. Batta and Girol were five hundred meters away, clumps in the dirt. Batta didn’t think the guys in the truck had seen them. He watched as the truck approached Abu Ibrahim, who pulled his bike out of the way. The men in the pickup had a short conversation with him, and then the truck rolled past.
“Not good,” Girol muttered. Batta agreed. The timing was odd.
Batta thumbed out a text: Anything else?
“Abort?” he said over his shoulder to Girol.
“Not sure what that even means, at this point.”
Batta had never wanted to cut and run worse in his life. His pulse was a snare drum in his skull. But Girol was right. They were fifty kilometers from safety, five hundred meters from their man. If the jihadis knew they were coming, they would face an epic dragnet. If not, they needed to finish this mission.
Anyway, they still had their eyes in the sky.
You are clear.
Batta stayed down for another minute in case the pilots had anything more to tell him. He hoped his courage would come back. It didn’t, but he stood anyway.
Abu Ibrahim had reached the meeting point. He stood leaning over his bike’s handlebars. Batta and Girol walked toward him. When he saw them, his back arched like lightning had hit him. He nodded vigorously but didn’t move.
Batta stopped walking. No reason to go farther. They would just have to retrace their steps to the grove. He waved Abu Ibrahim over with both hands. The Syrian seemed weirdly standoffish, but eventually he dropped the bike and cut across the field toward them, kicking up dust as he went. He was short and chubby and wearing only a short-sleeved shirt and jeans despite the cool night air. Batta pitied whichever horse Mahmoud chose for him.
Batta no longer liked Abu Ibrahim’s body language. Fear was reasonable, under the circumstances, but the guy seemed terrified. Maybe the guys in the truck had spooked him. Batta pulled his Makaro
v, held it by his side. No reason to give this man much rope.
Finally, the Syrian reached the narrow track where Batta and Girol stood. “Stop,” Batta said. Up close, Abu Ibrahim looked even worse. His shirt was wet with sweat and his eyes were fireworks in his face. He wore the backpack cinched too tight over his shoulders, like he was a geeky kid on the first day of school.
“Mighty,” Batta muttered in English. “Back up.” He wanted to create some space, give Girol a firing angle.
As Girol backed away, Batta stepped toward the Syrian. “Abu Ibrahim?”
“Yes. You are CIA, yes?”
Suddenly Batta realized what bothered him more than the guy’s abject terror or even the way he’d just called Batta out. The backpack. Abu Ibrahim knew the agency would resettle him with everything he needed. He knew he wasn’t supposed to draw any attention as he made his way out here. So why the backpack?
“What’s in your backpack?” For a moment, Batta flashed to those stupid credit card ads—What’s in your wallet?—and he wished more than anything that he was on his couch watching the Packers stomp his Lions again. Even before he’d finished the thought, he felt the sat phone buzzing in his pocket. He raised his pistol. “Take it off.”
“I can’t—”
Too late, Batta knew. He squeezed the Makarov’s trigger—
Whatever was in the backpack detonated and tore Abu Ibrahim into a thousand pieces. The blast wave caught Batta and flipped him end over end as easily as a craps player tossing dice. He landed on his back, semiconscious, in darkness so total that for a moment he wondered if he was dead already.
He blinked, blinked again, but the darkness didn’t go. He reached for his face, but when he tried to trace his eye sockets, nausea clenched his stomach. The blast must have shredded his eyes with dirt. The thought should have panicked him, but he felt strangely calm.
He realized, calmly, that he was in shock.
AKs rattled in the distance, and one close by. Girol. Then Whoosh overhead, a distant explosion, another. The drones and their Hellfires, Batta imagined.
The crack of a big gun, a heavy rifle. A man thumped down beside him.
The Prisoner Page 5