by Brad Taylor
The Ghost looked at the man with his eyes barely open, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth where the electricity had caused him to bite his tongue.
Allah, deliver me from this pit. Help me on my path.
The torturer said, “Your choice. So you know, when we tire of the electricity, we begin with the real pain. With knives.”
He bent down and began yanking on a pant leg, giving the Ghost a clear view of the front door so far, far away. Freedom he would never see again. He was staring at the portal, transfixed at the thought of escape, when it shredded inward in a blinding flash.
The shockwave from the detonation flattened the torturer to his front and disoriented the others. Before they had even comprehended there had been an explosion, multiple men entered the room, firing wildly.
The man on the floor bear-crawled down a hallway while the other three began firing back. Caught in the middle, the Ghost simply hung like a rack of meat, praying he wouldn’t be hit.
He saw two men in uniform go down, but more poured through the doorway, while still others fired through the windows. The three torturers continued to shoot, until one by one they were silenced. After about a minute, all that he heard was the stomping of feet and the shouting of commands. Eventually, one of the men focused on him.
When questioned, he lied, saying he was a Saudi Arabian citizen who had been kidnapped. He stated it must have been for ransom. One of the police cut him free from the chains. As he was gathering his clothes he saw them bring in the primary torturer. Alive.
He knows the truth. The Ghost couldn’t allow the man to be taken for questioning, especially if it was questioning like he had just endured. The man would give him up in a heartbeat.
Only half-feigning rage, he screamed and raced across the room, picking up the broken iron hinge of the door as he went. Using it like a dull axe, he feverishly hammered the torturer in the skull, getting in three solid blows before he was pulled off and thrown to the floor, with all gun barrels now trained on him.
He screeched that the man had tortured him, then began to wail as if he was traumatized. A heated argument began about his fate. As he had hoped, some of the men sympathized with his actions. The commander looked at him with pity and ended the discussion. He was left alone, but the barrels all remained on him constantly now. He stared at his torturer, trying to catch a rise and fall of the man’s chest. He saw none. He watched the commander leave the room to the outside. He knew his mission was done, but was feeling some comfort in his ability to escape to fight another day.
He collected his dishdasha and felt the weight of the traitorous cell phone his contact had given him, along with his Saudi passport. He gave a silent prayer of thanks that he had left the Jordanian passport in the car. Having two passports of two different men would have been hard to explain. He then remembered where he had gotten the phone and felt a stab of fear. There was no telling who or what that cell had contacted, and eventually these men would take the phone from him and scan it. At the very least he needed to delete the call history. He pulled the phone out as surreptitiously as possible. And saw he had two missed calls and a text message.
Where are you? Call me soon. Your package is ready.
It was from the contact, and he’d called while the Ghost was being tortured. The boy didn’t know what had transpired. Didn’t realize the Ghost was now viewed as an enemy. And he’s built the explosives.
On the far side of his truck, Wilcox was nervously fidgeting with his weapon, trying to determine if the fight was over or just paused. He was in constant communications with his team sergeant in the truck to his rear, but neither could see anything except shadows moving through the windows.
It had taken all of his self-control not to run to the breach and begin coordinating the assault, especially when he saw the men he had trained wildly shooting through the windows from the outside. He had settled for simply taking cover behind his vehicle. His team sergeant had actually made it to the left side of the breach before being ordered back. Now, they waited in the silence. He knew he should hide in the truck again, but there was no way he would, given the danger.
Eventually, he saw Bashir exit the building, and he waved his team sergeant over.
Bashir said, “It’s a torture house. Inside are about fifteen men, all showing signs of terrible abuse. One was being tortured while we assaulted.”
Both Americans had witnessed plenty of such houses in Iraq and had no desire to enter this one. Seeing a circle of hell like this would live a long, long time in their dreams.
Wilcox said, “What about Khalid?”
“Not here. There were four men, all dead. One killed by a prisoner.”
Serves that bastard right.
“Well, let’s get ’em back, get ’em medical attention and question them. They’re all the intel we’re going to get.”
“We don’t have the space for that. We had planned on a maximum of five detainees. Not fifteen.”
“Call for transport. Get a bunch of trucks out here.”
Bashir said nothing for a moment.
“What? Why’s that a bad idea?”
“Because you are here. I’ll have to call an ordinary army unit, and they can’t see you. They don’t even know you’re in the country, and the word will spread rapidly.”
Bashir saw his expression and continued. “It doesn’t matter. They will have no information. I have seen this before. Most will be unable to describe much because of the torture, and the few that can will have nothing to offer. We have what we came for in the cell phones we found inside.”
Wilcox considered the information, trying to find a way around. Eventually, he acquiesced, with a caveat. “Okay. Here’s what we do. Go get a biometric profile of every one of them. See if any ping. If they do, we bring them along. If not, we add them to the database. When you’re done, call for the transport. Leave a team of guys here to guard them while the trucks are on the way.”
“I cannot leave a team here, in this town, without protection. It’s too dangerous. The insurgents may attack for revenge. Either we all stay, or none stay.”
Wilcox knew what he said was true, with insurgents attacking anyone in uniform throughout this area of Yemen. What went unsaid was that Bashir had no leadership beyond himself. There was no noncommissioned officer corps to speak of. Unlike Wilcox, he had no team sergeant to rely on to accomplish the mission.
He said, “All right, all right. Get the profiles, then leave as much food and water as you can, and tell them medical help is on the way. That’ll get ’em to stay until the army trucks get here. If they’re as beat up as you say, they’ll probably just sit for a while anyway.”
Bashir waited a beat, then nodded and began issuing commands.
The team sergeant spat in the dirt and said, “Guess we’d have been better off staying in the rear, huh?”
Wilcox looked at the sky. “No. I don’t think so. Bashir wants nothing to do with these guys. At least we’ll get the bio data. If we hadn’t been here, we wouldn’t even have gotten that.”
37
So you’re telling me we risked all of this for nothing? The Taskforce couldn’t get anything off of the computers that will give us a handle on Lucas?”
Kurt read my expression from the VPN and said, “No, no, it wasn’t for nothing. We did get an incredible treasure trove of information related to Hezbollah operations, including apparently a possible operation in the Netherlands. We just didn’t get anything specific for Lucas. There were over a thousand names in the system you hacked.”
“Run the names through all the airline databases leaving Lebanon in the last three days. He’s in there somewhere. We get a match, and we’ll follow up.”
I knew I was grasping at straws, but didn’t want to let it go. We’d barely made it out of the Dahiyeh last night, with several more bits of high adventure before we had linked up with Jennifer and the van, to include Jennifer having to subdue a civilian in the apartment stairwell. I didn�
�t want to believe all of that work had been for nothing. Bringing the team in, attacking the heart of Hezbollah, and getting out by the skin of our teeth. It made me seethe.
“Pike, the names are in Arabic. We can’t run them all against every database. We’d end up with a hundred false positives. We did scrub the list for phonetic spellings of English names, but that list is still in the hundreds. We don’t even know why they’re in the database. They could be targets or on the payroll. There’s just no way to tell. Give the analysts more time. They’ll come up with something.”
“We don’t have time. The envoy’s only got a few more days before he reaches Qatar, and he’s in very real danger if Lucas is after him. What about infidel? Any of those names cross-checked with the term infidel?”
“Unfortunately, no. Infidel is in there, but the cross-check wasn’t on the data you brought back.”
Dammit. Should have stayed until we had everything from the hard drive. I knew that was just twenty-twenty hindsight talking, and I’d made the right call. Then I remembered what he had said earlier.
“What was that about a hit in the Netherlands?”
“Nothing much. Something to do with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Apparently, Hezbollah was looking at an operation against the STL, but they’ve been talking about that for years. We did a scrub, and the only thing remotely related is the death of an investigator in a gas explosion. The police have already closed the books on that one, though. They did a thorough investigation because of the nature of her work and some strange forensics they discovered, but they found absolutely no linkage to anyone related to Hezbollah. None.”
Because they’re looking for the wrong race and religion.
I said, “The case officer here thinks Lucas was a hired gun for outside work precisely because he wasn’t tied to Hezbollah by ideology and he was Caucasian. Run those phonetic names against the flight records leaving Amsterdam to Beirut for three days after the death of the investigator. Is that necked down enough? There can’t be more than a couple dozen flights, and no way would Lucas have hung around. If he had anything to do with the explosion, and he’s in that list of names, he’ll pop.”
I saw Kurt turn and yell at someone behind him. He wrote instructions on a piece of paper, handed it to a man outside of camera range, then returned.
“That won’t take but a few minutes. But you’re really grasping at straws.”
I smiled. “Better than nothing. We got a team here ready to go.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Even if this does pan out, I need to get Council approval before you guys go hot-rodding after Lucas.”
“I know, I know, but we need to prep now. We’re going to need equipment because we’re flying commercial. Can you get a bundle ready to drop? If we don’t get anything on Lucas, it won’t go anywhere. We don’t need Council approval for that.”
Kurt said nothing. I could tell he thought the entire thing was wasted effort and that I was just wishing for a break. Getting a bundle operational was a lot of work, much more than simply building it. In addition to the equipment, Kurt would have to start planning flights to a bunch of tentative drop areas, including both the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which meant diverting aircraft and building covers for their operations. I pressed him.
“Sir, I know it’s a long shot, but—”
Before I could finish, he turned from the screen and took a sheet of paper. I held my breath while he read it. He said something to the analyst offscreen, pointing at the sheet. He nodded and returned to the VPN.
“I don’t know how you come up with this stuff. Two names matched. Both Canadian citizens. One leaving within twelve hours of the gas explosion, one three days later.”
Yes.
“Run those two names against Beirut flights for the last forty-eight hours. See if either of them were here and left.”
The analyst returned in seconds, and Kurt said, “One name. Canadian. Left yesterday, headed to Dubai.”
Bingo.
“Send me the data, and get me Oversight Council approval to go to Dubai.”
“Wait. This is pretty thin. I’m not sure I can convince the Council to let you go. Hell, I’m not even sure I’m convinced. You’ve got your company—supposedly working in Syria—which has mysteriously acquired three new employees in Lebanon, who will now all trek to Dubai. I’m not sure the evidence is worth the risk to exposure.”
“Sir, come on! Yeah, it’s risky, but whether that’s Lucas or not, something is going on against the envoy. You know it and I know it. There’s still a couple of threads here that don’t make sense, starting with the computer bomb that Lucas gave me. The guy who was killed doesn’t match the description of the man that was supposed to conduct the meeting, and it still makes no sense for Lucas to kill him in the first place. We need to go with what we do know, which is that a host of people seem to want the envoy dead, with Lucas at the top of the list. And he’s in Dubai. The only good thing is that he’s working with the old itinerary, so we have some time to play with.”
I saw Kurt wince, and said, “Right? We have time to play with before the envoy gets to Dubai?”
“No. The decision was made to keep his itinerary the same. He’ll be in Abu Dhabi in three days, and Dubai the day after that.”
“Who’s brilliant idea was that?”
“State Department. The trip is too important, and changing the schedule would risk offending the very people he’s going to see. It was carefully chosen.”
“Well, that’s just great. Your call, sir.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll brief the Council, and I’ll put on a log-tech for your equipment requirements, but you still only have a name. How are you going to find Lucas?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t figure anything out before I get approval, understood? No more operational activity.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. We can’t do anything more in Lebanon anyway.”
While Kurt was getting a log-tech on the line, I caught movement behind me and saw Samir poking his head in the door. I quickly turned the screen blank and said, “What’s up?”
His face was ashen, like he’d just been told of a death in the family.
“I need to speak with you. Urgently.”
I turned the computer over to Knuckles and followed him out to the den.
“What’s going on? You look spooked.”
“My niece has been taken by Hezbollah. They want to talk to me about the deaths of their leadership. They suspect I had something to do with it. I told them no, and now they’ve captured her as leverage.”
Holy shit. I could see why he looked like he was going to puke. If he went into Hezbollah-land, he wouldn’t be coming back out. At least not in whole pieces. But he couldn’t leave his niece to the same fate. Even so, it had nothing to do with me. He had his entire clan to help him out.
“I’m sorry to hear that. We’ll be leaving soon. We can go right now if you need your house for a war council.”
“That’s not why I’m telling you. I’m not going to my people. They’ll go berserk. Probably just capture some other Hezbollah in reprisal. They don’t have the skill to help, and this could turn into a shooting war very easily.”
I said nothing, his words sinking in. He wants me to help.
I held up my hands. “Samir, I can’t do anything over here. I don’t—”
“I need surgical skill. I need to get her back without unnecessary bloodshed. Your skill. This has all happened because I helped you. Please. I will turn myself in and convince them I had nothing to do with the killings, but I want you to get her back.”
Kurt’s last command was still echoing in my head. “Samir, I really have no authority to do what you’re asking. I can’t risk my men and possibly start another Lebanese civil war. I’m sorry.”
“She’s nineteen, Pike. A university student. She knows nothing of war.”
Jennifer had entered the room and had heard
the last part of the conversation. She was staring at me, waiting to hear what I would say.
38
Inching toward the desk in the Dubai immigration line, every step forward built a sense of dread within the Ghost. He had had no trouble leaving Yemen, including obtaining the necessary items for his mission, but then again, not many have particular trouble leaving a country. It’s getting in that’s tricky. Now, he was about to find out if his forged Dubai visa, coupled with his Jordanian passport, would withstand scrutiny.
He glanced again at the picture within the passport, mentally comparing it to his own visage. It should be close enough. They were both clean-shaven, and he’d purchased attire that was suitable for someone from Jordan. He closed the passport and studied the immigration desk, the people drawn toward it as if they were being sucked up by a slow vacuum.
Watching two more travelers go through the routine, he noticed each stiffen during the interview, rigidly facing the official behind the counter. He wondered what they were doing. He watched the next man, and it hit him: They were taking a digital photo and conducting a retinal scan. Of every person in line.
He ripped open the passport again, trying to find if it had some means of digital storage. All he saw was a bar code. Surely the Jordanian’s retinal scan wasn’t in that, was it? The Hashemite Kingdom didn’t include biometrics in their passports, did they? If so, he was doomed, because the scan of his eye wouldn’t match the scan in the passport.
He looked to the rear, contemplating moving back into the terminal and claiming he had gone the wrong way. That he had a connecting flight. But he had no connecting flight. No boarding pass to present. The glaring lack of documents would invite scrutiny. Questions he couldn’t answer.
While moving inexorably forward, he studied the immigration officials’ actions and relaxed a little. It didn’t appear as if they were comparing anything. Simply collating data, like what had happened to him yesterday with the Yemeni police.
The thought brought a bolt of adrenaline, causing his face to flush and sweat to pop on his neck. Did the Yemenis share such data? Was there a database on the Arabian Peninsula that was fed by such sweeps? It wouldn’t matter that he had no reason to be suspected of anything. The scan in Yemen was for a Saudi citizen, not the Jordanian passport he held in his hand. The difference alone would get him arrested. Then, when they gave his bags a much more thorough search than normal, they would find the explosives.