2016 - Takedown

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Let the faranji speak first,’ he said, ‘and then we will decide what to do with him.’ He turned back to McGovan. ‘Most of my fighters have lost friends and family,’ he said, ‘brothers and fathers on the battlefield, of course, but also wives, mothers and children killed by bombs, shells and bullets. No one who fought for the Americans and their friends in those countries can expect any sympathy or forgiveness from us.’ He paused for a few seconds, holding McGovan’s gaze. ‘And no mercy either.’

  McGovan nodded in acknowledgement. ‘I fought there because at first I believed what I was told, that we were there to protect the people from their brutal rulers, end the torture and the killings, and give them the chance of the peace, prosperity and freedom that we in the West enjoy.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It was all a lie, of course. It was never about helping the people. It was about oil. Sure enough, we removed one set of brutal rulers, but those the Americans installed to replace them were little if any better than those we had deposed. And, worst of all, we Westerners, British and American alike, showed ourselves to be no less capable of brutality, torture and killing. For that I hang my head in shame.’

  ‘As you should,’ said Saif al-Islam.

  ‘I lost all faith in my religion, and in my country,’ said McGovan. ‘As you know only too well, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people have died, not because they were fighting against us, though some were, but because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some were killed by their own countrymen because they were Sunni, or because they were Shia, or because they were Kurds, but many more were killed because they chose the wrong moment to walk down the street, drive in their car or even attend a wedding when American and British bombs, missiles, drones or heavy weapons were raining destruction on our supposed enemies. And the dead were always described as “terrorists”, of course, even when they were women, older people or tiny children. The officers and politicians never admitted their errors. Never apologised for the civilians they killed.’

  Saif al-Islam stared at McGovan with unblinking eyes.

  ‘Even after most of the forces were pulled out, when they realised that they were fighting a battle they could never win, still the pain and suffering continued. Thousands crippled and poisoned, an economy that cannot support its people.’

  ‘We are aware of the damage that your country did to ours,’ said Saif al-Islam. ‘But what has turned you against your own people?’

  ‘Shame,’ said McGovan. ‘I am ashamed of what they made me do. The men and boys we captured were held in military prisons of which the very existence was denied, and many of those held there were tortured over and over again, for months and even years. Some were water-boarded, taken to the point of drowning, then revived, at least a hundred times. Others were beaten to a pulp, abused, sodomised, and some were murdered. Or they were handed over to different torturers – Iraqis who had last practised their skills on behalf of Saddam Hussein, and Afghanis every bit as cruel as the Taliban we were supposed to be fighting. Some victims, hooded and manacled like prisoners from the Middle Ages, were flown out of the country for even more extreme interrogation and torture by short-or long-term allies, like the Jordanians and Libyans, whose brutalities in the infamous secret prisons they operated were not restrained by even the faintest pretence of Western values.’

  ‘You were there?’ asked Saif al-Islam. ‘You took part in the torture?’

  McGovan held Saif al-Islam’s gaze. ‘Yes. I was at Abu Ghraib.’ He saw the ISIS commander’s eyes narrow in recognition of the name. Abu Ghraib – Arabic for the ‘Place of Ravens’ – was also known as Baghdad Central Prison even though it was twenty miles west of the Iraqi capital. The American military had controlled it from 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, until they handed it back to Iraqi forces in 2006. When Saddam Hussein ran Iraq, the prison kept as many as fifty thousand men and women jammed into its twelve-by-twelve-foot cells, with torture a daily occurrence and weekly executions. When the Americans took over, they retiled the floors, cleaned the cells, repaired the toilets and filled it with suspected terrorists, mainly civilians scooped up in random sweeps and at military checkpoints, or on the word of often anonymous tipsters. And while the executions stopped, killings and torture were again a regular occurrence at Abu Ghraib.

  ‘I saw innocent people tortured and killed there,’ said McGovan, quietly. ‘I looked the other way while these atrocities were taking place and then I helped to sanitise the prisons and torture chambers. I hid the evidence, cleaned up the blood and even buried some of the victims. I have not had an undisturbed night’s sleep ever since. It has burned into my conscience and it has changed me as a man, to my very core. I owe it to those people to take revenge, to force my fellow Britons to understand what has been done in their name and what the consequences will be.’

  ‘And you are now, what?’ asked Saif al-Islam. ‘Now you are no longer a Christian. Now you say you have stopped being a crusader.’

  ‘I am a Muslim. I converted while I was in Iraq.’

  ‘You were allowed to become a Muslim?’ Disbelief was written across his face.

  ‘I did it in secret. I was schooled by an imam who was held there for two years. I watched as the Americans tortured him and the British stood by and did nothing. I saw them beat him and humiliate him, and all the time he just smiled. I used to speak to him afterwards, to see if there was anything he wanted, and he said he already had everything he needed because he was serving Allah and that was all that mattered. He taught me about Islam and about Allah, and now I’m a Muslim and will be until the day I die.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Very well, Englishman,’ Saif al-Islam said. ‘If what you say is true, then we fight on the same side and for the same cause. But the attack you seek to make will be at the risk of your life. Even if you succeed, you are unlikely to emerge alive. Does that not concern you?’

  McGovan shrugged. ‘The thought of death doesn’t frighten me. And it won’t deter me from doing what I believe to be right.’

  The ISIS commander gave him one last searching look, then turned to his men, many of whom were still regarding McGovan with intense suspicion or hatred. ‘The faranji is a true believer in our cause,’ he said. ‘He is willing to atone for the wrongs he did to our brethren in Iraq and Afghanistan, even at the risk of his own life. While he remains under our protection, you are to guard him as you would guard me.’ He turned back to McGovan. ‘So if your attack is to take place,’ he said, ‘what do you need from us?’

  ‘Money, arms and at least a dozen jihadists within the UK from whom I can select a group to support the attack. They must all be men whose loyalty and obedience to you are absolute, and men who would rather be martyred than betray our plans.’

  ‘All such things might be possible,’ Saif al-Islam said, ‘providing you can convince me that it is the best use of our men and resources.’ He allowed himself a brief smile. ‘Our Arab friends are generous, but even their generosity has its limits. If the targets you have described can be successfully attacked, that would, of course, be a great blessing to us and the cause we serve. But many men before you must have dreamed of such a thing and none has ever been successful, or even come close.’

  McGovan could tell the ISIS commander was tempted but was still more than a little suspicious of him. ‘That is undoubtedly true,’ he said, ‘but perhaps they did not possess the resources or manpower you can command, and lacked the skills that I possess. Skills I am prepared to put at your disposal.’

  Again there was the briefest flicker of a smile from Saif al-Islam. ‘And yet, for all the particular skills you may possess, your most valuable asset in such an attack might be the colour of your skin. You may be able to pass without challenge in places where men such as we …’ he waved a hand languidly around the circle of his men watching them ‘… would be subject to instant suspicion.’

  He studied McGovan from beneath his eyebrows. ‘However, there remains the question of trust. We know who
you are and what you may be capable of,’ he said, ‘and your words seemed to be spoken from the heart, but that does not mean we can be certain that we can trust you.’ He thought for a few more moments. ‘My men will now take you back to the Turkish border, where others will be waiting to escort you. Return with them a week from today and I will tell you my decision.’ He turned his back and strode out of the room as McGovan’s escorts replaced the foul-smelling hood over his head, tied his wrists behind him and hustled him outside to the Landcruiser.

  CHAPTER 2

  McGovan spent the next week maintaining his cover as a tourist. He stayed at a modest hotel in a small resort town two hours east of Dalaman on Turkey’s Turquoise Coast. Unlike his fellow guests, he did not use the swimming pool during the day or frequent the bar in the evenings, and those other guests who had noticed him at all would have been hard put to describe him other than as an aloof, monosyllabic Englishman who had spent most of the week sitting on the terrace with his nose in a book or running up a viciously steep track through the pine forests cloaking the hills that fringed the sea.

  At the end of the week, he checked out of the hotel and rendezvoused with his escort in a supermarket car park on the outskirts of the town. He was taken back to the Syrian border by the same route as before, but this time, having once more slipped under the border fence and made his way down to the wadi, he was driven to a different safe-house, much deeper inside Syria and very close to the border with Iraq. The same ISIS commander, Saif al-Islam, was waiting for him. ‘I never sleep more than one night under the same roof,’ he said, in explanation for the change of safe-house. ‘The faranji have spies and informers everywhere, and the skies are full of their aircraft and drones. So we move by night and go to earth before the dawn.’

  ‘Infrared surveillance cameras can still see you in the dark,’ McGovan said.

  ‘Indeed so, and many martyrs are already in Paradise as a result, but as you see, may Allah be praised for His mercy, I have been spared for the great task, the holy jihad we pursue.’ His eyes had been raised Heavenwards as he spoke, but he now switched his shrewd gaze to McGovan’s face. ‘Now, to the point. In order for us to be sure we can trust you, you must carry out a trial task for us.’

  ‘You want to test me?’

  ‘Of course. You wouldn’t be the first spy who has tried to infiltrate our ranks with stories of conversion. We need to separate the wheat from the chaff.’

  ‘And if I refuse your test?’

  ‘Then you will be treated as chaff. Are you refusing?’

  McGovan smiled easily. ‘I had expected to be tested, and I will carry out any task you ask of me. I am more than happy to prove my commitment, and my worth. What’s the task?’

  ‘The US Army training team,’ Saif al-Islam said, watching him closely, ‘is based at an Iraqi Army base near Mosul. You are to kill the leader of that team. If you succeed, we will give you the help you seek.’

  McGovan thought for a few moments, then nodded. ‘First I will need all the intelligence information you have on the target and the base where he is operating. I’ll need mapping of the area, aerial photography of the compound, if possible, details of which forces, Iraqis, Americans or British, are mounting the guard on the base, the ORBAT – the Order of Battle – of the training team on the base, and the VRN. Sorry,’ he said, as he saw the ISIS commander’s blank expression. ‘Acronyms are an occupational hazard in the armed forces and it is a habit I’ve found hard to shake, I meant the registration number of the vehicle he uses. Once all that is assembled, I’ll need three or four days to prepare. I’m assuming you can obtain weapons, plastic explosives, timers and so on.’

  ‘We have already assembled everything you need,’ Saif al-Islam said. ‘But you will not be making the attack in three or four days, you will attack the base tomorrow night.’

  McGovan frowned. ‘I’ll study the intel and mapping, then tell you if that schedule is possible.’

  ‘No,’ Saif al-Islam said. ‘You will not. I will tell you what is possible, not the other way round. And I’m telling you that you will do it tomorrow night. That is your test. Accept or decline.’

  McGovan glanced round the room at the dozen ISIS men, who still stared unblinkingly back at him, each with an M-16 or M-203 slung over their shoulders, and then he spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Very well. It shall be tomorrow night. Inshallah.’

  He spent the next twenty-four hours studying every scrap of information they could put in front of him. To an untrained eye, the Iraqi Army base appeared a daunting target. The outer compound of the sprawling site was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, punctuated by four watchtowers. Each was manned by armed guards, and at intervals between the watchtowers arc lights illuminated the fence at night. At the heart of the base was an inner compound, with a steel-mesh fence topped with coils of razor wire. The outer fence was patrolled by Iraqi guards, but the inner one was guarded by American troops. American and British soldiers both operated from within that compound.

  ‘Not easy, is it?’ one of the ISIS soldiers said to McGovan, peering over his shoulder at the surveillance images of the compound he was studying. One of ISIS’s British Asian jihadists, the man had a strong Black Country accent, which sounded utterly incongruous in the heart of the Syrian desert.

  McGovan turned to him. ‘It’s easy if you know how,’ he said.

  ‘What – even though there are two barbed-wire fences and all those armed guards to get past?’

  McGovan gave him a cold smile. ‘You’re not a trained soldier, are you, my friend? The base may look daunting with all those watchtowers, barbed wire and guards patrolling it, but if you think about it, who will be guarding those fences? It won’t be crack troops, will it? And you can be certain they won’t be dedicated to the task they’ve been given. The men on guard duty will be the ones who happen to have pissed off their commanders recently. They won’t want to be there either, because it’s dark and it’s cold, and they’d rather be in bed asleep, or playing Warcraft on their PCs. They’ll be staying under cover as much as they can. And because there’s a barbed-wire fence, they’ll be relying on that to keep out intruders. If we fire a rocket into the base, all hell will break loose, of course, but I guarantee that I can be in and out through both those fences without any of the guards hearing a sound or seeing anything but dust blowing over the desert.’

  Just before sunset the following night, once more escorted by four ISIS fighters, McGovan climbed into one of their 4x4s and was driven towards the Iraqi border. The only weapon he carried was a pistol, though he was as effective with that in close-quarters combat as any less well-trained soldier armed with an automatic rifle. He wore a light pack on his back, containing two sophisticated IEDs. A trained demolitions expert in the special forces, he had put the devices together himself, moulding the plastic explosive into pieces of right-angled steel section to create devastating shaped charges that would concentrate the force of the blast in one direction. Both devices were triggered by pressure release switches, designed to activate if pressure was placed upon them or if existing pressure was taken away. He then checked the detonators, tested the firing circuits and loaded everything into his pack.

  Night had fallen before they reached the frontier and they crossed into Iraq without incident, once more using one of the many smugglers’ tracks on which everything, from food and drugs to explosives and heavy weapons, was traded across the porous borders.

  The Iraqi Army base they were targeting was another three-hour drive beyond the border. They reached the area just after midnight and left the 4x4 in dead ground, a dip in the desert floor that hid it from view unless you were standing almost directly on top of it, then made their way onwards on foot. The arc-lights around the fence were illuminated, but they cast small, intense pools of light directly below them, which made the areas of fence between them seem even darker by comparison. The guards in the watchtowers were motionless, bored and inattentive. Some appeared to be doz
ing or were perhaps even fast asleep. The only creatures patrolling the fence were not soldiers, but the prowling feral dogs that were as ubiquitous in Arab countries as crows in an English cornfield.

  McGovan lay in cover, assessing the guards and establishing the routine of their patrols – or at least the routine of those who ventured beyond their shelters – but he spent as much time watching the movements of the wild dogs around the fence line. Well inside the outer fence, close to the inner one surrounding the American and British area of the base, he could see refuse bins overflowing with garbage. If he could see them and smell the stench on the breeze, the feral dogs would certainly be well aware of them. As he watched, he saw a steady stream of the braver animals, bellies to the ground, squirming under the barbed-wire fence, then padding across the compound towards the bins.

  McGovan nudged one of the ISIS fighters in the ribs and breathed in his ear, ‘Those animal tracks are going to be our way in as well.’

  While two of the fighters remained outside the compound to give them cover, the other two belly-crawled forward with McGovan and slid under the wire after him as the prowling dogs backed away, eyeing them suspiciously. One emitted a low growl, resenting the interruption to its evening routine, which caused one of the guards to glance in that direction and sweep the beam of his torch across the compound. McGovan and the ISIS fighters had already flattened themselves to the ground and lay motionless, almost invisible. After a moment, the guard, convinced that whatever he had seen or heard was only the dogs arguing over a choice bit of refuse, turned away.

  A moment later, McGovan saw a flare of light and the red glow as the guard lit a cigarette. If he needed any additional sign of the guards’ carelessness and unpreparedness, the cigarette had provided it. The flare of flame from the soldier’s lighter would ruin his night vision for some minutes and smoking the cigarette would distract him from his duty. If the guard heard a noise, he was as likely to think it was his sergeant out on an inspection as an intruder breaking in, and would be more concerned with getting rid of his cigarette end before he was put on a charge than anything else.