by Isaac Hooke
He was hauled to his knees; there were only two masked men in the room. Where had the third gone?
My family.
Sure enough, the third masked man returned from the direction of the kitchen, marching his family into the room. Isam suddenly felt like he couldn't breath. He would do anything in that moment, as long as the men didn't harm his family.
The militant forced the group to kneel in front of Isam. Under the light from their weapons, he saw that his two kids were cowering in fear, while his wife, her face uncovered, stared at the intruders with obvious hatred. It shamed him that his wife was stronger than him in that moment.
I must be strong, Isam thought. He filled himself with hate. I will not give in to these infidels. I will tell them nothing!
The third man left once more, vanishing down a side hall, maybe to look for other members of his family. The intruders couldn't know that they had gathered every member of the household already.
"What do you want?" Isam said. He had tried to make his voice hard, but couldn't help the subtle tremor that permeated his words.
"You have been helping Dawla interrogate people at a certain black site," one of the masked men said. "Where is this site?"
Isam glanced at his cowering children.
Do not give in to the infidel.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Isam said.
The masked man stepped forward. He produced a pistol and held it to the head of his youngest child, his son Fahd, aged five.
"Tell me the address."
Isam stared at his boy, and felt himself breaking. He couldn't allow his only son to die.
He opened his mouth, but then he saw his wife's face once more. The hatred had never left. If anything, it had deepened, smoldering worse than ever before.
She was right, he knew. He could not give in to these infidels, no matter what.
Isam immediately smothered his paternal instincts. He no longer felt anything for his son. Not a thing. For him, the boy had died the moment the intruders stepped into the house.
That was what separated man from beast: a man could rise above the internal wiring of his brain and overcome the most powerful of instincts. Faith conquered all.
And if Allah required the death of his son, then so be it.
ETHAN'S FINGER was on the trigger of the Glock, the muzzle pointed at the boy's head. The illumination from Doug's WeaponLight lit the scene.
"Give me the address!" Ethan shouted.
The doctor flinched, but his face abruptly hardened. "Do it." His eyes blazed with hatred.
Ethan could tell with a certain degree of confidence when a man was bluffing. There were certain tells, tics, microexpressions.
And this man was dead serious.
The doctor was going to sit there and watch as his child was executed at point blank range, believing the whole time he was doing the right thing and that his son would go straight to paradise.
"Stand down," Doug whispered quietly beside him. He was clad in combat fatigues, and wearing a balaclava, like Ethan—clothing donated to them by the resistance.
Ethan and the others already knew the address. They had followed the doctor to the suspected black site that very morning. No members of the Islamic State had come to escort him—the doctor had driven all the way on his own. So Ethan was very well acquainted with the address already. Still, he needed to hear the man say that location; needed to know that they could trust any intel he gave. Because what they still didn't know was whether a certain high value target awaited them at the black site.
Ethan gazed at the defiant doctor a moment longer, then glanced at the kid. The boy's eyes were terrified. The hatred for the infidel that rotted the souls of so many others in that land had not yet taken root. The boy was innocent.
For a moment, the burning face of the child from his nightmares flashed into his mind. He dismissed it.
Ethan lowered the Glock.
The doctor broke into a wide grin. "You are a coward. You must be from the West, where all the cowards come."
"No, I just hate killing kids," Ethan said.
"How's it look out there," Doug said into his unencrypted radio.
Three members of the resistance were outside, on the rooftops of nearby buildings, ready to alert them to the first sign of trouble.
"All clear," a voice returned.
William entered from the hallway, back from his search of the house. He carried a syringe. "I found his supply of scopolamine."
The doctor glanced at the syringe and shuddered.
11
Ethan lay prostrate on the rooftop of a small house, peering through the 4x fixed mag scope attached to his A4. A PVS-22 night sight attached to the forward rail of the rifle gave everything a bright green hue in the moonlight.
He ran the scope from left to right across the dye house in his sights. The building was three stories tall, including the rectangular, central superstructure on the roof, which occupied roughly half the area of the preceding floors.
A cinder block fence enclosed the facility. A pair of armed militants guarded the main entrance, while two more patrolled the inner grounds. Another two observed from a second story walkway that girthed the building, and a final pair watched from the rooftop, making a circuit about the superstructure.
The woman prisoner was apparently held in one of the interior rooms, in an office area past the mechanical room. The doctor had sketched a quick floor map of the plant for them. Many areas remained blank, as he had seen only parts of the interior, but the operatives had committed the doctor's map to memory nonetheless.
The doctor. Ethan thought of the earlier interrogation session, or rather the lack thereof. It was the strangest thing: the doctor had seemed about ready to allow his son to die, but when they sequestered his family in a different room and prepared to inject him with scopolamine, the man had surrendered. Either he had been putting on a show of defiance for his family, or he feared the drug more than anything. Maybe it was a combination of both. It made Ethan wonder what terrible things had been done to Sam.
"So, what do you think?" Doug said from beside him.
"They're definitely guarding someone valuable," William said from his other side.
"Maybe, maybe not," Ethan said. "Either way, we have no guarantee it's Sam."
"No," Doug admitted. "We don't."
The doctor had no idea who the prisoner was. She had no scars, birthmarks or other identifying features on her face. She was not of spectacular beauty, nor ugly. The prisoner had a wide, slightly Roman nose, and big lips. That rather generic description could have matched fifty thousand women in the region.
Ethan continued to scan the plant with his scope. He saw what looked like a momentary spark come from the rooftop, and brought his reticule upward. The two guards there had paused near the southeast corner of the building. They seemed to be taking an extended break: Ethan saw the characteristic red glow of cigarettes.
"Since when do muj smoke?" Ethan said. "Check out the rooftop."
"You remember what it was like when we were embedded with the jihadists, don't you?" William said, observing the scene through his own A4. "The guys with the guns can do what they want. My brigade defied sharia all the time. The men played games on their phones. Watched Western movies. Listened to pop songs."
"Playing video games and watching Hollywood movies is one thing, but smoking?" Ethan shook his head. "Never seen a muj break sharia like that. Something doesn't seem right. Honestly, I don't think these guys are Islamic State."
"Look muj to me," Doug said. He, too, had the scope of his A4 to his eye.
"What about the men at the entrance," Ethan said. "They don't even have beards."
"So?" William said. "Jihadists come from all countries and nationalities. Maybe they're Chechen."
"All the Chechen fighters I knew had beards," Ethan argued.
"Then maybe they're Native Americans," William said. "I don't know. They're here, they have rifles, they're d
ressed in black... I'm going to say they're muj."
"If Sam is here," Doug interjected. "Does it really matter who's holding her captive?"
"No it does not," Ethan agreed.
"Good." Doug continued to observe the grounds. "The patrol just passed the entrance. Start your timers." Shielding his phone with his body, Doug tapped the screen.
Ethan and William likewise started their smartphone timers.
Pocketing the devices, the three of them donned their balaclavas over the earbuds and microphones they were wearing. Those were plugged into their phones, which would relay any voice or text messages via the encrypted RF transmitters hidden in the connected USB sticks. While the rebels had lent them Hytera radios, Ethan and the others preferred to use an encrypted band for their private communications.
Ethan returned to the trapdoor and took the steps to the first floor of the house. William followed close behind, while Doug remained on the rooftop. The building was unoccupied of course—the Islamic State had chosen an abandoned side of town to host its black site.
At the exit, William departed to a side alley, while Ethan proceeded forward, hugging the brick house. Resistance fighters watched from the surrounding rooftops, ready to provide backup, but he didn't find their presence all that reassuring. Firstly, he wasn't certain how much he could trust them. Secondly, they weren't highly trained soldiers. The resistance fighters were just as likely to shoot at Ethan and the other operatives as they were at the actual enemy.
He left the house behind and hurried at a crouch across the street. He reached the cinder block wall that enclosed the plant and flattened himself against it. He approached the edge.
Flames burned brightly around the corner, where two oil lamps illuminated the main entrance, providing light. In times of war and occupation, denying power to civilians was to be expected, but the power situation must have been dire indeed if the Islamic State couldn't afford to redirect some of the grid to an important site like this.
Loitering upon the road that led into the plant, the entrance guards stood equidistant to one another in the light. AKs hung menacingly from their shoulders; drums had been attached to both rifles, bringing the total round capacity of each to seventy-five.
Pulling back behind the edge, he said, quietly, "In position."
A moment later William's slightly muffled voice returned in his earbud: "Ditto. Starting countdown."
Ethan stopped the timer and, based on the result, he set the countdown on his phone to three and a half minutes and then pocketed the device. Keeping his back to the cinder block fence, Ethan slowly made his way around the corner toward the circular pools of illumination the guards stood inside.
His steps were practiced and precise; he lifted the sole of each foot very slowly from the ground, as though peeling away a sticker, and when his heel touched the surface in front of him, he meticulously rolled the foot flat. He was very much like a panther padding through the night toward its prey.
When he reached the proper range, he stopped, still shrouded in darkness. He withdrew one of the two Voron-3 blades he carried from its sheath. Though he could not see it, he knew the Russian-made 55-58 HRC stainless steel metal tapered to a deadly spear point in his grip.
He moved to the left a pace so that he wouldn't be in the path of William's knife, in case the other operative missed his planned throw. He double-checked his own range with Doug, who confirmed that Ethan stood exactly five meters away from the closest man. That was the trick with knife throwing: the muscle memory was trained to a certain distance, which was why even famous marksmen always threw from the same range.
Ethan and William had experience with actual throwing knives, but the Vorons were weighted and balanced differently, so the two of them had to practice extensively earlier, updating their neural pathways until they were confident they would not miss. Doug and the resistance fighters were ready to snipe the tangos if they did, of course, though at the cost of the element of surprise.
Knife in hand, Ethan waited. The seconds ticked past tensely. The waiting was always the worst part. When he was in the thick of the action, under fire and giving it as good as he got, he was completely fine. But waiting, that really tested the nerves. He thought of all the things that could go wrong, all the problems that could send the mission spiraling into failure. The holes in the plan piled up in his mind. He was going to miss the throw. He knew it.
What the hell am I doing?
He took a silent, deep breath, and called upon his sniper's discipline to steady his mind. Calmness returned. He could do this. He would do it.
The two men at the entrance were shielded from the rooftop and second floor by the fern-like leaves of date palms that grew along the service road inside the wall. The pair were visible to the ground patrol, however, though only for a short span of time. Ethan and the others had timed that patrol: the mujahadeen made a complete circuit of the grounds every seven minutes. The trick was to attack shortly after the guards had passed by.
The phone gently vibrated in his pocket as the countdown went off.
"Clear," Doug sent from his position on the rooftop.
Without conscious thought, Ethan extended his free hand, drew back his weapon arm, took aim, and launched the knife. The throw was spot-on, and the pure black, six and half inch long blade buried itself to the hilt in the closest militant's throat.
The man grabbed at his neck, gargling sickly.
The second guard spun toward his comrade; a soft thud, like a dart hitting a cork board, floated through the night. The second guard staggered, falling to his knees, the dark hilt of another Voron protruding from the back of his neck, courtesy of William.
Ethan emerged from the shadows; William did as well, from the other direction. The two of them caught their respective militants before the men hit the ground and dragged the bodies away into the darkness, to opposite sides of the entrance.
Doug raced past. "Let's go."
Ethan lowered the body to the ground and removed the knife from the militant's neck. He wiped the blade in the grass and hurried to the entrance. Concertina razor wire had blocked the inner path, but it had been dragged aside.
Within, Ethan found Doug and William waiting in the darkness beside three black-clad members of the resistance.
Ethan nodded to them and, alone, moved deeper into the compound. Under the moonlight he approached the three Iraqi Army Humvees that had been parked in the courtyard; he remained crouched, well aware of the eyes potentially watching from above. Moving between vehicles, he reached up under the dashboards and yanked the wires off the ignition switches in turn.
He joined up with the rest of the team on the west side of the building; the others had eliminated the two grounds patrolmen, leaving the bodies stacked in a neat pile beside a date palm. That left only the pair on the second floor walkway and the two on the rooftop.
Together the group approached the outdoor staircase to the second floor. Once more Ethan split from the others, and silently padded up the steps. He crouched beside the corner where the stairs joined the walkway and then waited.
"Clear," Doug said over the encrypted comm.
Ethan peered past the edge: in the dim moonlight he spotted the two guards moving away from him along the walkway. He unsheathed his second blade so that he gripped a Voron in either hand. Then he left his cover and started after the men. In that moment he favored speed over stealth; he used the militants' footfalls to conceal the noise of his own steps.
When he was two meters away, one of the guards unfortunately decided to look back.
Ethan was forced to close the distance early. He plunged the first knife into the carotid sinus of the man's neck, dropping him instantly. The second guard spun as Ethan launched his next blow. The act saved the man's life because Ethan missed the mark: the blade sunk into the meaty mass of the enemy's opposite shoulder. The guard screamed, managing to shove Ethan away.
Ethan withdrew his Glock but in the dim light he stumbled o
ver the body of the first man and started to fall.
The militant, still shouting, swung his assault rifle to bear.
As Ethan toppled, he released two nine-millimeter shots at the biggest target he could see in the dark: the militant's chest. The pistol's report sounded all too loud in his ears.
Ethan slammed into the walkway. Even with the adrenaline pumping through his veins he felt the pain in his back from the fall. That would hurt later.
The militant toppled beside him.
He heard a commotion on the rooftop and knew the two guards there were rushing forward.
So much for the advantage of stealth.
The mortally wounded militant was shaking violently in the dim light. Ethan dealt a final headshot.
Gunfire came from the rooftop. He forced himself to get up and then carefully leaned past the edge of the walkway, aiming upward with the Glock; assault rifle bursts sounded from the courtyard below before he sighted anyone, and two bodies dropped from the rooftop, landing with a thud on the pavement three stories down.
Looking over the railing, he saw Doug and William rushing toward the entrance, three resistance members in tow.
Ethan tried a door. It opened. He entered, crouching. He stood on a long balcony that circled the main floor of the dye house. He took a moment to orient himself to the directions of the compass, then peered through his NV scope. In the green illumination he saw several large, open-top metal cages below, holding what appeared to be large bundles of yarn. Those cages took up the majority of the space. Beyond them, he spotted the various machines involved in the dying process, including spindles, separators, and vats.
Several windows allowed rays of moonlight into the interior. Thanks to that light, the night vision picked up two green, humanlike blobs perched behind one of the machines.
"Two potential tangos on the northeast," Ethan said quietly. He wanted to check his phone to see where Doug and William were at, but was worried the light from the display would reveal him to the enemy. "Confirm your positions."
The tangos opened fire the moment the words left Ethan's mouth, and he ducked behind the balustrade, thinking the bullets were meant for him. But when no impacts or ricochets struck the metal rail, he realized the tangos targeted something else.