Traffick Stop, an American Assassin's Story (Paladine Political Thriller Series Book 3)

by Kenneth Eade

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  In the days that followed, Ayisha fulfilled her duties during the day and prepared for the assault during the night shift. She gathered extra ammunition, a little at a time, and equipment she had used for her raids, such as smoke and flash bombs, gas and gas masks, and grenades. She also put her hands on an extra black abaya, niqab and hijab – the largest sizes she could find. According to his plan, Robert would be going undercover as a Hisbah officer. At a local clothing store, she also bought some men’s trousers, a tunic and a keffiyah because she had some disguise ideas of her own.

  At the compound, there had been a call for volunteers to join forces with the armies in the north, to defend the city of Dabiq from the kufar. Dabiq was where the caliph had declared the ancient prophecy would come to pass and the kufar would finally be defeated there in a great battle. As a result, Raqqa was left exposed, but not altogether defenseless. Around every corner at any given time you could find at least half a dozen crazy armed militants who would shoot at anything that moved, and there were plenty of guns, bombs, anti-tank grenades and RPGs that could give any invading force a run for their money. Couple that with the fact that ISIS fighters would blend in with and even use civilians as human shields made them a fighting force that no modern army had ever faced before.

  Ayisha used the resources of her office and her position as a member of the Hisbah to research Boulem Halabi. At the records office, she was able to obtain a photograph of him, as well as uncover several addresses, any one of which could possibly be his residence. On the nights she didn’t have a meeting with Robert, she would sneak out to track Halabi down.

  Robert and Ayisha had to limit their meetings to avoid suspicion, but it was still important that she receive as much briefing as possible about the plan. At their last meeting, she received details on the mission.

  “So you understand our role will be to breach the facilities, one by one, kill the militants there and free the girls.”

  “Yes.”

  “We will usher them outside and provide cover for the Russians to load them onto the personnel carriers and then go to the next job.”

  “Yes, it’s clear.”

  “Are you forgetting to tell me anything?’”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the days we don’t meet, where do you go at night?”

  “On assignment.”

  “On assignment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without Zurfah?”

  “Yes, without her. Why?”

  “Why? Because I need to know everything. I usually work alone. When you work alone, the only one you have to worry about getting you killed is either the bad guys or yourself. When you work with a partner, if your partner screws up, it can get you killed faster than anything. Now what are you holding out on me?”

  “Me? Nothing.”

  Robert stared her down.

  “Take off your mask.”

  Ayisha turned her head away. If she showed her face, he would know she wasn’t telling the truth. She composed herself, and put on an innocent face.

  “Don’t give me that haram bullshit, I want to see your face.”

  Slowly, she removed her veil and niqab, leaving on only her hijab. Robert looked directly into her eyes, and Ayisha remained strong.

  “You’re up to something.”

  “Yeah, same as you.”

  “No, there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “That’s not true, Robert.”

  “I hope not for your sake, because if I think you’re holding out on me, this mission is over.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Robert kept a close eye on Ayisha’s building every night, as usual. This night, it appeared she was staying home for a change, which gave him relief. All he saw leaving the building was a man, which he felt was kind of unusual, given that Ayisha lived there and he thought the entire building would be an all-female residence. But he had seen a few men coming and going in the weeks past, so he shrugged off his suspicions.

  Ayisha wrapped her black keffiyah around her cheeks, trying to hide as many of her feminine features as possible, and walked with her head down. She carried her Glock in a shoulder holster underneath her clothes. In her bag, she had a black abaya, hijab and niqab – her standard uniform. She was nervous and charged with adrenaline, but, instead of shaking, it helped propel her forward on the task she must accomplish. She had not given Robert any of the intel she had on Halabi, despite the numerous times he had asked. She had never even mentioned his name. She just couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else but her doing this job. Halabi had to die but it had to be by her hand.

  She ducked into an alley and threw the abaya over her clothing and quickly wrapped her hijab around her head and donned the veils. She was ready. It was a long walk to Halabi’s apartment in what used to be the prestigious area of town. Halabi was a scumbag, but he didn’t pretend that this entire Islamic State was about Islam or Allah. It was more about what Allah owed to him and now he was getting it back. He was the ISIS equivalent of an oligarch, who clearly saw that the Islamic State was more about business than it was about Islam. It was, in fact, a fledgling mafia and he was one of the bosses. So long as he paid his bribes and acted crazy like everyone else, he could peddle his whores to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere for big money, not to mention the money that was to be made right there.

  Ayisha turned left on Al Moataz Street until she found the neighborhood she had staked out days before. It was a pearl in the middle of a rotten oyster, a place where the rich hid from the scourge and pestilence of the poor. An oasis of decadence in a desert of despair. She reached #13 Al-Waleed Street. If she was lucky and Halabi was at home, his number would be up tonight.

  One of Raqqa’s tormentors, be it Russia, the United States or France, had decided tonight was a good night for a bombing raid. The bombs started to explode about a mile away.

  Two sentinels sat by the entrance to the building. They rocked in their chairs and looked surprised when Ayisha approached and showed her badge.

  “Hisbah. Is Mr. Halabi at home?”

  “What do you want with him?”

  I want to shoot that mother fucker. That’s what I want.

  She had to raise her voice above the bombing. “I have to ask him a few questions on an ongoing investigation.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  Ayisha withdrew her ticket book from her abaya.

  “Should I write you both a citation for obstruction of a police officer in the performance of her duty? Let me see your I.D. cards.”

  They frowned, and the one next to the security panel buzzed the intercom.

  “Mr. Halabi? Hisbah here to see you.”

  They buzzed her in. Ayisha held the door open, turned her back to it and shot them both in the back of the head. As they fell onto the stairs, she waited to feel something. She had never killed a man before (not that she knew of) and had contemplated she would feel remorse, guilt, anything. As it was, she felt nothing for the two dead men or the fact that she was the one who had sent them to meet their maker.

  The bombing provided the perfect cover for her. She was prepared to shoot at anything that moved, but no doors opened after her entry in the building. She took the elevator to the penthouse. There was another guard outside Halabi’s door, sitting in a chair. She approached him, closely.

  “Hisbah.”

  “Let me see your badge.”

  “Alright, I’ll get it.”

  Ayisha reached under her abaya, and withdrew a large knife. Striking quicker than he could react, she rammed the point of it into his neck right under his chin, severing his carotid artery immediately. He slumped into the chair, bleeding, futilely holding the spurting gash as he fell unconscious. She riffled through his pockets for his keys and found a ring of them. She fumbled at the door with the keys, trying one at a time, until finally one turned in the lock. Her abaya was wet with blood.

  She grabbed her Glock, racked
the slide and pushed the door open, holding the pistol in ready position.

  “Mr. Halabi?”

  “How dare you come to my home!”

  A short man with a cropped beard and long hair followed the voice, then froze in the foyer in his silk robe, in shock at the sight of her. Ayisha aimed and shot him between the legs, in the repository of his heritage. He fell to the floor, screaming.

  “You bitch!”

  Ayisha heard Robert in her head, scolding her for coming here alone and for not taking the kill shot right away. “You must devoid yourself of all emotion,” he would say.

  Not this time.

  She pointed the gun at his knee.

  “I want you to feel the pain you caused me, but there is no amount of pain I can give you to equal it.”

  She shot first one knee, then the other as he squealed in pain.

  “You sound like an animal. Like one of your sex slaves you keep in the pens!”

  She shot him in the left shoulder.

  “Please! Please!”

  Good, he’s still conscious!

  “Do you remember Zia?”

  “Who?”

  “Zia.”

  He looked puzzled, confused.

  “Say her name!”

  “What?”

  “Say Zia’s name!”

  “Zia.”

  With his last words being her sister’s name, she dispatched him with a shot in the forehead.

  “Stop! Stop right there!”

  The words made her blood freeze in her veins. Standing behind the bloody body of Boulem Halabi was a young girl in a bathrobe, and she was holding a pistol aimed at Ayisha.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Ayisha froze, her finger still on the trigger. But it refused to move. Time stood still as the situation turned into a deadly standoff. The thought of killing an innocent person was weighing in on the calculation, something that would have never happened to Robert.

  The mission comes first. No witnesses.

  This woman, whoever she was, was defending herself from an intruder who had just shot and killed Halabi. The assassin in her was screaming: Shoot! Shoot! But the woman inside of her was questioning that adrenaline-fueled logic.

  Could this be one of the girls I’m doing this for?

  There was no time for reflection. In a split second, just as Ayisha decided to make a run for it, the woman fired, scoring a hit on Ayisha’s left shoulder, sending searing pain all over Ayisha’s body and putting her into shock.

  Her original plan was to shed the abaya and go out in the men’s clothes, so that no potential witness would have seen a woman leaving the building. That plan had to be scrapped for one in favor of survival. She was bleeding. She had to put pressure on the wound to stop it. But first she had to get out.

  She had no energy to run down seven flights of stairs, which was the original exit plan, so she took the elevator, gun in hand, leaning against the wall of it to keep her balance as the doors closed. When they opened, she would deal with whatever or whoever was there.

  Miraculously, when they did open, nobody was there. The sounds of the bombing must have covered up all of the gunfire. To Ayisha it seemed like hours and hours had passed, but it had been all of five minutes since she had entered the building. The two corpses were still slumped in their seats at the entrance, as yet undiscovered, which bought her a little more time. Now she had to make it home, without being discovered, and somehow make it to Robert, who was the only person who could help her, before she fell dead in the streets.

  Running on pure adrenaline for fuel, she turned at the first corner and ducked into the shadows. She tore some material off her hijab to fashion a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. As she tightened it around the wound, the pain was unbearable and felt like knives being thrust into her shoulder. Every step from that point on became more and more difficult than the one before.

  As she staggered back on autopilot, her vision became distorted and blurred. Her mouth was parched with thirst – the body crying out for liquid. All the while, her only thought and the only thing that kept her going was telling herself that she had to get to Robert. She had to reach him or it wouldn’t matter if ISIS found her because she would be dead before they would have a chance to execute her.

  When finally her neighborhood came into view, she saw herself at the end of her journey and began to feel relief. She had no idea where Robert’s hiding place was or if he was even there, but he was her only chance. Just as she reached the outer wall of her building, however, she collapsed.

  Some people may say God kept Robert in his observation post that night; others would say it just wasn’t Ayisha’s time. Robert couldn’t shake the suspicions he had had about the man leaving her apartment. The man he had seen was the only man he had ever seen leave the building at night. Something was fishy and his curiosity had kept him in his place. He saw the black figure collapse on the street and went to investigate.

  Ayisha looked up at the dark shadow hovering above her. He was dressed like an Islamic State fighter. First, she felt that she was a goner. This was it – it was over. Then she realized it was Robert and smiled with satisfaction right before she lost consciousness.

  Robert lifted her and hurried back to where he had stashed his motorcycle. He took a water bottle from his pack and splashed it on her face. He tried to wake her and get her to drink. It was no use. She had lost a lot of blood and was on her way out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  With Ayisha slung over the motorcycle like a shot deer, Robert took the shortest route out of the city, toward the last place he had met with the Russians. He used the special channel radio to call Lyosha and ask him for help. Thankfully, he agreed. When Robert made it to the rendezvous point, he could not feel Ayisha’s pulse anymore.

  Two men ran to the cycle and took Ayisha’s body and loaded her into a military ambulance. Lyosha put his hand on Robert’s shoulder.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is she snuck out dressed as a man. I suppose we’ll find out what she was up to if she lives.”

  “One thing is sure. She can’t go back there.”

  Robert agreed. First, it would be difficult to explain her absence. Second, it would be impossible to explain the gunshot. Robert and Lyosha boarded one of the tigers and followed the ambulance toward the Russian’s FOB. Robert was worried, but not so much about Ayisha as the operation. Lyosha was concerned with the same thing.

  “You know, if she dies, we will never know if operation has been compromised.”

  “I know. Maybe even if she lives we should call it off anyway.”

  Lyosha stared back at Robert. It was obvious he didn’t want to call it off. He also knew that Robert could be right. The operation depended on an element of surprise – Hisbah officers executing a raid. The shooting of this Hisbah officer, however, created all kinds of questions, and only one person could answer them.

  ***

  Finally, toward daybreak, the medic came back with a report. Robert and Lyosha were waiting outside the mobile hospital drinking coffee.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood. If it hadn’t been for you, she wouldn’t have made it.”

  “What are her chances now?”

  “Prognosis is good. Her condition has stabilized. Vitals look good. She’ll need some recovery time, which is hard in field. We should think about airlifting her to Damascus.”

  “Not until I get the chance to talk to her.”

  “She’s not conscious yet. I suggest you get some sleep. You can probably talk to her in morning.”

  ***

  Daybreak brought reality along with it as Robert waited by Ayisha’s bed for her to awake. A medic came to check her monitors and shot some medication into her IV. After he had left, Ayisha’s eyes opened.

  “I’m…I’m alive?”

  “Yeah, until I kill you, you are. What the hell happened?”

  “I’ll tell you, but can I have some water first?”

>   Robert poured her a glass of water from a bottle that was on a stand next to her bed, and set it on the table in front of her. She grasped the straw with her lips, and gulped the water until it was empty.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  Ayisha filled Robert in on all of the details of her emotionally charged assassination of Boulem Halabi, emphasizing that she knew that she had broken all of the rules and was the only one to blame for not only almost getting herself killed, but also jeopardizing the mission.

  “But I’ll be ready to go.”

  “Oh no, you won’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Even if you were in tip-top shape, which you’re not, it doesn’t mean this thing is still on. You’ve compromised us. Not only can we not use our original plan, they’ll be increasing security and maybe even moving the girls. You really screwed this one up.”

  “So, it’s off, then?”

  “That’s up to Lyosha, but if he still wants to go forward, and I doubt it, it’ll be without you.”

  “But…”

  “No buts! You’ve proven yourself to be untrustworthy. I can’t count on you in the field. You may have been willing to sacrifice yourself to kill this asshole, but I’m not willing to do that.”

  “Robert, I…”

  “There’s nothing more to say. You broke the code. You put yourself above the mission, above your compatriots. You’re done.”

  Ayisha hung her head. She knew that no display of feminine wiles nor amount of begging could change Robert’s mind. There were no mushy good-byes or showings of sentiment. Ayisha was to be airlifted out in the morning. She felt guilty for putting the mission at risk, but it didn’t stop her from feeling happy that she had sent that monster to hell.