by Don Bendell
She nodded at Pops when he got up and excused himself with the general.
“Folks, I want to introduce you to Sergeant First Class Fila Jannat. She will be involved in this operation, too. Sergeant Jannat is a decorated combat veteran, an intelligence and language specialist, an expert skydiver, an all-around athlete, and a fully qualified and highly trained member of our unit.”
She smiled and nodded at everyone in the room. Fila Jannat was an Iranian name, Charlie thought, and he wondered to himself what her story was.
Fila was born in Tehran to a very strict, traditional Shia Muslim father. Her mother felt sorry for her, as her father was so strict, but she could never show her concern for her daughter to him. The youngster was extremely intelligent and even as a young girl was always the most beautiful female in the room, whether faces were covered or not. Her body was as beautiful as the rest of her, and it developed very early. When she was fourteen years old, Fila was assaulted but not actually raped by her first cousin, and he was caught by her father. She was naked, as he had torn her robe from her, but she had fought the lad off successfully. The young man was severely lectured by Fila’s father and his own father, her father’s older brother. The boy was even given seven lashes.
Fila’s father made his decision about Fila as soon as he learned what had happened. His daughter had disgraced his family and would be stoned to death in an honor killing the next day in the square down the street. He intended to hurl the first stone.
Fila’s mother risked her own life and well-being by waking the young lady in the middle of that night. She gave her a handful of rials and told her that her own first cousin, who was a merchant, was traveling to Baghdad and would secrete her there. Her mother had tears in her eyes, but told Fila to leave quickly and make her way to the mother’s cousin and hand him the money. She said the man could be trusted and indeed he could.
In Baghad, she got a job in a downtown café and worked hard, saving money, and continued to grow even more beautiful. All was well, until she was spotted by several of Saddam Hussein’s top bodyguards one day walking with a coworker. She and the coworker were taken to one of the president’s opulent palaces on the Tigris River. The bullies soon learned that she and the young man were Shiites, and Saddam and those who were in his ruling class were all Sunnis. The men laughed while two of them raped her on a sofa, and while her friend wanted to help but watched helplessly. Afterward, she was escorted to the big gates on the giant compound and shoved out into the street. The young man was then sodomized and started crying, so one of the bodyguards put a bullet in his forehead while the others laughed. His body was dumped in the river.
It took two days of hiding and abject fear, but Fila made it back to the café. She sat down with the owner, who was a man who had been trained to run a restaurant while in New York City for four years. He spoke about his positive experiences all the time in America. It was with his assistance that she was finally able to get a one-way ticket.
On her way to America, Fila got into a conversation with the flight attendant. That woman’s husband was a Special Forces colonel commanding the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The couple were also very devout Christians. She ended up inviting Fila to their home in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Fila spoke for hours about her life growing up, and they all became close. They invited her to their church, and she became their foster daughter and ended up converting to Christianity. Before she graduated, she was adopted and became a U.S. citizen.
She had a natural bent for athletics and took to it in high school. Then, there was a little college, but she was so proud to become a citizen, and had such strong feelings against the oppressiveness, especially against innocent children and women, of fundamentalist Muslims like her biological father, that she felt the U.S. Army would help her self-actualize more than anything.
Nobody in any of her training units, starting with Basic and including Jump School, was anywhere close to as gung-ho and intense as Fila.
In recent years she had also joined Brigitte Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth and become even more impassioned about educating and putting an end to some of the horrible practices of Islam. Her C.A.G. selection and assignment to the Funny Platoon was the final step for her. She felt she had arrived, and she loved Detachment-Delta and the entire concept of it. Her experience was a lot different from the men’s experience, but ultimately, the overall mission was what mattered. The fact that she spoke level 4 Arabic and was totally and completely fluent in Persian made her one of the most invaluable members of Delta Force, man or woman.
Fila acted like just one of the boys between the two men, even juggling three cups of coffee at one point, which Charlie and Custer also did.
At a later point one team would be brought into the operation to act as a standby backup for Charlie and Fila, when the time was right, in case they got into trouble.
During a break in the briefing, Charlie and Jace both started getting acquainted with Fila, and Charlie said, “Hey, my nickname is Pocahontas, but guys call me Poke, and he is called Custer. What kind of nickname did they give you in the platoon?”
Fila’s face turned bright red, and she smiled shyly. “Booty,” she said.
Custer laughed and said, “Why did they call you that?”
Charlie said, “If you would have looked when she walked in, man, there would not be a question in your mind.”
She was embarrassed and slapped Charlie across the arm, saying, “Hey, Poke, I lift weights and do lots of squats. Okay?”
“I’m not complaining, Boot-Tay,” he said, and laughed, as did Custer. “It is working very well. Keep lifting.”
Rozanski seemed to be getting to the end of his PowerPoint and suddenly spoke directly to Charlie and Fila.
“Sergeants Strongheart and Jannat,” he said, “this is where you two come into the overall picture. As we have seen, Davood Faraz Dabdeh is fast becoming the new Osama bin Laden. He is wealthy, well connected, and has the total backing of Iran. He is younger than bin Laden, charismatic, insane, and totally ruthless. The man is attracting all the young disenfranchised Mideastern zanies. You two will infiltrate the country of Iran by means of a high-altitude HALO infiltration with O2 and wearing skis,” he said, referring to High Altitude, Low Opening jumping.
Charlie stood and said, “Excuse me, General Rozanski, is it?”
The pudgy man nodded, his face reddening at the interruption.
Charlie was grinning. “General Rozanski, somebody has been watching too many James Bond movies. I do not know about Sergeant Jannat, but I do my skiing on holidays, and we are trained to plan our own methods of infiltration. With all due respect, my boss will give us our mission, and we will all sit down and plan the best method of infiltration, which often is not the popular one of those who do not do our work, a HALO operation.”
Rozanski got huffy, saying, “Now, see here, Sergeant, I want to tell you right now—”
Pops jumped up, interrupting, saying first, “Sit down, Charlie.”
“Yes, sir!”
Pops went on, “General Rozanski, Sergeant Strongheart is correct. We plan the execution of our own operations, and Sergeant Strongheart and Sergeant Jannat will have the most say-so, as it will be their asses on the line.”
Rozanski was not used to being spoken to by a colonel like this, even if he was retired. His roommate from West Point was chief of staff of the U.S. Army, too. He was not afraid to play that card, and had before. He would threaten it now, as that usually handled any problems.
He said, “Well, Colonel, we have spent months upon months and many man-hours putting together this operations order, and we want it followed to the letter to ensure mission success. If you need to get the order from the chief of staff of the army . . .”
“Screw your cousin!” Pops said angrily. “You do not come into this compound, in fact, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army does not come in here, without my blessing. It is not your chair-polishing ass being risked
in the most dangerous country in the world for Americans. General, do not come into our compound and try barking orders to my people, especially when you are now a civilian. My operators are the very best in the world at what they do, men and women. We do not lower the bar to allow them into this unit, and we do not lower the bar on our standard of excellence or our operational readiness. Now, if you want to start over, General, and conclude your briefing with the suggested mission, we will coordinate that with the powers that be in MacDill, Langley, DC, or wherever we happen to speak to people, and we will develop our own operational plan for execution of that mission. There is zero compromise on this. Now, would you care, sir, to start over?”
The general stood in a fury, his fists balled, and suddenly a voice shocked him.
“Sit down, General Rozanski,” Kerri Rhodes, the national security advisor to the president barked. “As ordered, and with the colonel’s knowledge, the commander in chief has been listening to this briefing over my scrambled phone, and he wants me to put him on speaker.”
The beautiful White House executive set her cell phone on the briefing table and said, “Go ahead. Mr. President.”
The familiar voice came over the expensive cell phone. “Thank you, Kerri. General Rozanski, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Rozanski said meekly.
The chief executive of the Free World went on. “I want to thank you on behalf of the citizens of the United States for your uniformed service to this nation, and your continued service to this nation as a civilian.”
Rozanski was shocked. “Well, thank you, Mr. President. It has been my honor.”
The President went on. “But I want to make myself perfectly clear, you see the old man they call Pops with the short gray hair and ugly face sitting across from you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you want to name-drop,” the CINC snapped, “that ugly old man goes golfing with me every time he is in DC, and we have teed off out by the O-Club there at Bragg a couple times. If you ever invoke your cousin’s name to get your way with or ever disrespect that ugly old man again, I will direct him to have Master Sergeant Charlie Strongheart, who is a true American hero and a genuine American badass, stomp you into a puddle of blood and mud. Do I make myself perfectly clear, sir?”
“Yes, Mr. President. I am sorry, sir.” Rozanski could barely breathe, he was so upset and embarrassed.
Charlie felt a hand squeeze his thigh, in a reassuring, not a sexy way. He knew it was Fila’s. He barely looked over, and they gave each other almost imperceptible smiles. Custer did not miss that and gave Charlie a glance of approval, too.
After a brief few words of encouragement to the assembled group as well as specifically to Poke, Booty, and Custer, the President bid them all adieu.
Weasel stood up and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, before we continue, let’s take a ten-minute potty break. Smokers, go outside that door there and smoke ’em if you got ’em.”
Charlie, Pops, Custer, Booty, and Weasel met at the pop machine and simultaneously started chuckling.
Pops said, “Good thinking on the break, Top. That’ll give him a chance to lock himself in a stall and bawl his eyes out.”
Ten minutes later, they reconvened, and Rozanski had apparently composed himself. In actuality, he was infuriated and already doing what he always did, trying to figure out how he would get revenge. For now, though, he would conclude his briefing with the mission and would forget about his long-planned operational phase.
“Ladies and gentlemen, to recap,” he said, “Davood Faraz Dabdeh is a brand-new Osama bin Laden in the making, with the complete backing and support of Iran. He is receiving excessive amounts of funding from members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia, as well as funding sources in Syria and Palestine. We cannot afford to have him around much longer, because each day his security heightens and his popularity soars. Most importantly, he has the full support and backing of the most radical mullahs. Your mission, Sergeants Strongheart and Jannat, is to infiltrate the country of Iran, breach his considerable security, and facilitate his demise in a malicious manner. You are then to exfiltrate from the country of Iran without being detected. It is of major import that nothing connects this operation to the United States of America.”
Custer raised his hand, smiling. “General, you said ‘facilitate his demise in a malicious manner.’ That isn’t your expression, is it?”
Rozanski started grinning himself, and said, “No, Mr. Daniel. That is not my expression. I think I would have used the word ‘assassinate’ or ‘execute’ or something. One of our executives came up with that.”
There was a relieved chuckle in the room and Fila chimed in, “How about ‘pop a cap in his jihadist ass’?”
The room burst out in laughter, and even Rozanski laughed, maybe a little too hard.
Weasel added, “Well at least it’s better than ‘terminate with extreme prejudice.’ ”
Charlie stood and said, “It seems this might be an operation more suited to a singleton, than both of us going in. No offense to Sergeant Jannat at all, but why must she risk her life on this operation?”
Pops interrupted. “We will discuss her exact role in our mission planning, but the feeling is that you could pose as a couple, and she speaks Persian as her original language and also speaks Arabic at a level 4 fluency. She knows all the habits and nuances in Iran and Iraq, too, if you would have to E and E there. She grew up in Iran and then moved to Iraq before coming to the United States. On top of that, she is a C.A.G.-qualified operator, and is a good backup to take out Dabdeh in case you get killed or wounded.”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie replied. “Fine with me if you have confidence in her.”
Pops stood and said in a conciliatory voice, “General Rozanski, we really appreciate the hard work you and your staff put into the J2 and J3 on this assignment. We can accomplish this mission and will begin planning immediately.”
More participants were introduced and all aspects of the operation were covered by various experts.
At the end of day, Pops said to the Delta operators, “Can I buy you all a beer at the Green Beret Club?”
All agreed and met less than a half hour later on Smoke Bomb Hill, driving up over the curb and parking under pine trees across the street, as the place was always so packed. They went inside, ordered drinks, and got out of the main room, filled with civilian-garbed Special Forces retirees, as well as those still on active duty and wearing duty uniforms. The small group went out onto the adjacent enclosed porch and got a table in the corner, avoiding some of the loud chatter from within. On seeing the ages of the group and their manner of dress, long hair, and facial hair, everyone else there figured these were Delta Force operators. Several in the room knew they were, as some had served with each person. They ignored the Delta group, knowing they would want to be left alone. After two or three beers Weasel would always start to become philosophical, much to everyone’s delight. He grew up not far from Billings, Montana, the son of a third-generation cattle rancher. He loved the American Indian growing up and read many books on the subject. Whenever he had a little too much to drink, he would always try to impress Charlie with what he considered Native American folklore and philosophy.
His opportunity came when Booty said, “I could not believe what a jerk that retired general was. What was his name, Rozanski?”
Weasel took a long sip of beer and grinned, saying, “Yes, but you never let that interfere with accomplishing the mission. Since Poke and Custer both are here, I want to tell you a little story.
“There once was a young man who was a member of the Cheyenne nation. His father was a great leader in his tribe and was the leader of his family’s band, a leader in both war and in peace. When the buffalo disappeared, he was the man all turned to for words of wisdom, for he understood the buffalo and the seasons, even grazing patterns.
“Walking among the lodges, he would feel all eyes on him waiting, hoping for some word o
f comfort to let them know the buffalo would come, and with them would come the hides needed for the approaching winter months, and the food for their bellies, the tools made of bones, and the fun sitting around a fire at night wiping greasy fingers onto the arms and legs to comfort the skin treated so harshly at times by Father Sun.”
Here he paused to take a long drink from his beer and begin the next glass provided by Pops.
Weasel went on, looking out as if he were Chief Gall surveying a field of battle on the grassy plains of Montana, “Sensing the fear and apprehension, Fights the Bear would stop within the tribal circle and many would gather round. He would pause and survey the crowd, so his words would have greater effect when he spoke.
“Finally, he would say, ‘Hear me, my people, for my words have iron. Mother Earth is feeding her children, the bison, in the valley of the Greasy Grass, then they will move this way and will soon feed in our valley, maybe seven suns (days), maybe ten. The bear lives in my belly, too, but we have many rabbits here to eat, and berries, and fish in the river, and soon tatanka (buffalo or bison) will come here and our bellies will be full, our dogs will have bones, our lodges will be warm. Do not fear.’
“People would go about their way, feeling relieved and better and hopeful for the future, and his little son, Red Moccasins, would stare up at his dad with wonder and admiration, but without a cursory glance at his little boy, Fights the Bear would walk on to the games lodge for a game of chance with his friends. His oldest son, the apple of his eye, Angry Horse, had tried to count coup in the season when the snows melt, and he fought the mighty bear, but a grizzly weighing over one half a ton broke his neck and killed the young man. Privately, Fights the Bear wept.
“When Red Moccasin’s older brother died, it seemed to him like his father, the father of the youngest son, had died, too. He no longer looked at the little boy. He did not teach him how to hunt or fish or trap. But Red Moccasins was a young man of great wisdom who would also someday alleviate the fears of his tribe. He knew that his father, although he acted like he did not know him, actually loved him so much he feared he might lose another son if he loved too much. Red Mocassins knew that Fights the Bear was like all others and was also afraid. He was afraid of loss. Red Moccasins tried to speak to his father about this, but the old man would not listen. His heart was cold. So Red Moccasins decided to love his father for what he was, and grow up to be a better man, and he grew to be a mighty and wise chief and a great warrior and a leader among the dog soldiers and the strong-hearts.”