It took him forty-five minutes to find a suitable truck. He found a one-and-a-half-ton box truck with the cab behind instead of over the engine, which was far more common in Afghanistan. He smashed the driver side window and let himself in. He used his pocket knife to strip the wires and hot-wire the vehicle and drove away in a matter of minutes.
The rain had slowed to a slow drizzle. It was just after 1 p.m., and Pat was double-parked next to his SUV, looking into the traffic circle. Inside the circle there were two police directing traffic. The traffic was heavy, and the vehicles were moving at less than five miles per hour. There were two lanes of traffic inside the circle. In the center was a large pillar built to recognize the hero Masoud, the lion of the Northern Alliance. Pat emptied the duffle bag and loaded an RPG-7 into the launcher, then pulled the bolt back, inserted a magazine and chambered a round into the AK-47. He tucked the SIG P226 into his belt.
He began to doubt himself, thinking he might have missed him. Wardak drove a white armored Lexus 470. He usually had a security vehicle ahead of him and one behind. The security vehicles were Chevy Suburbans. His security detail were all Afghans.
Then Pat spotted a black Suburban entering the traffic circle, followed by a white Lexus SUV. His target was entering the traffic circle. He pulled forward to the entrance of the traffic circle and waited. Cars were beginning to line up behind him. He could hear horns begin to blare, but he waited. The black Suburban passed him first, then Wardak’s SUV. Pat charged into the traffic circle, cut off the trail Suburban and got right on Wardak’s rear bumper. The Suburban behind Pat was flashing his lights, but he stayed behind Wardak.
The white Lexus turned off onto the next road. A police officer was directing traffic, and he signaled Pat to follow. The road was less congested, and Pat followed Wardak’s Lexus at thirty miles per hour, blocking the trail Suburban from passing him. He watched the lead Suburban turn right at the next intersection, and then he made his move. He checked his seat belt, and then he hit the gas. He hit the Lexus on the passenger side as it was turning the corner. Pat’s chest strained against the seat belt, and the sound of the steel on steel collision filled his ears. He kept the gas floored and pinned the Lexus against a parked van. He opened the door, slung the AK over his shoulder, grabbed the loaded RPG and extra rocket and jumped out of the cab.
As soon as he hit the ground, he fired the RPG-7. His first round went into the bullet proof windshield of the trail Suburban. The Suburban erupted into a ball of flame. Wardak’s heavy armored Lexus was extracting itself from being pinned between the box truck and the van. Pat could hear the groans of the metal on metal. He finished reloading just as the Lexus sprang free. Standing in the middle of the open street, he fired, hitting the rear of the Lexus seventy-five yards away. He dropped the RPG launcher and ran toward the flaming SUV with his AK at the ready.
Beyond the Lexus, he could see that the lead Suburban had stopped. Two men exited the Suburban on either side. He engaged both with bursts of automatic fire from his AK. He saw one go down and began to receive return fire from the second. He used the burning Lexus SUV twenty yards ahead of him as cover.
The rear passenger door to the Lexus opened. The lone security man from the lead Suburban made a dash across the open road to get to the Lexus. Pat cut him down with a burst from his AK and switched magazines. When he got to within five yards of the burning Lexus, Pat moved to the passenger side, exposing himself to whoever opened the door. Bullets whizzed by his head. He fired three rounds in the direction of the fire and ran to the open door.
A security guard lay dead on the road next to the open door. Inside the smoky Lexus, Pat could see Wardak. He had blood all over his face, and he was struggling with the seat belt. He was only able to use one hand and couldn’t free himself. He stopped what he was doing, and he looked directly at Pat. He didn’t say a word. Pat raised the AK and emptied the full magazine into his face.
Pat dropped the AK and ran back to get the SUV he had parked earlier. It took him fifteen minutes, and he was shocked none of the police stopped him. There were sirens, police, ANA soldiers and all kinds of confusion on top of the normal chaotic street traffic. Pat tried to stay under the storefront awnings because of the cameras on the huge surveillance aerostat that flew over Kabul.
He made it back to Camp Blackhorse by three thirty. He went to the gym, lifted, ran five miles on the treadmill, showered and returned to his B-hut to work on Jessica’s task list.
When he entered the B-hut, he looked at the phone he had left on his desk before departing in the morning. He had five missed call messages from Mike. Pat called him.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked.
“I was at the gym.”
“We need to talk.”
“Where and when?”
“Tomorrow. Meet me at ISAF headquarters.”
“Where in ISAF?”
“Out front, by the security checkpoint. Meet me at ten.”
The next day, Pat attended the morning battle update briefing. The Corps commander was not in attendance, and there was no mention as to why he was missing.
Pat arrived early and waited for Mike in front of the ISAF headquarters building. He watched him as he approached. He was limping more than normal. As he got closer, Pat could see he was very tense.
“Follow me,” he said, then he took Pat through security. They went into the building and then down a flight of stairs into a labyrinth of corridors until they arrived at a nondescript office with a security guard in civilian clothes posted outside. Inside the office stood a thin man of medium height with curly hair, who looked to be about thirty. He was dressed in khaki pants and matching shirt with a gray hunting vest. He looked like he was about to go out on a safari.
“Pat, this is Tom Kerry. He’s my boss, the chief of station in Afghanistan.”
“Nice to meet you Tom.” Pat offered him his hand, but he didn’t respond. Apparently, Mike wasn’t the only person upset with Pat.
“I don’t have much time, so I’m going to get straight to the point,” Tom said. “Did you kill Lieutenant General Wardak?”
“I put about twenty .556 rounds into his face, so yeah, I’m pretty sure I got the job done.”
“You need to be very careful with your attitude,” he said, pointing a finger at Pat. “Do you realize what you’ve done to US-Afghan relations?”
“I killed a man who’s responsible for the killing or wounding of thirty-five Americans. That should improve US-Afghan relations. Hopefully now they realize that when they screw us over, they’ll pay a price.”
“Who authorized you to kill General Wardak?”
“No one did.”
“Mike didn’t know about it?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“It was not your decision to make.”
“I realize that, but I also realize that you people seem to have difficulty making decisions. We had solid intel that the camp was going to be hit, and yet what exactly did all of you great decision makers do about that? How do you explain that to the families of the soldiers who died yesterday? Next time do your job, and I won’t have to do it for you.”
“There’ll be no next time, Mr. Walsh. You’re going to be on the next plane out of Afghanistan, and whether or not that plane lands you in a black site prison is going to depend on me.”
“Nothing personal, sparky, but you’re going to need a lot more firepower than that guy outside the door if you think you’re going to be taking me anywhere,” Pat said. Tom’s face got red, and he slammed the tabletop next to him with his open hand. It made a loud slapping noise. “Mike, come with me.” The two left the room, leaving Pat alone to consider his fate.
The saving grace was the room had a coffee machine. Pat brewed a fresh pot of coffee and waited almost three hours for the door to open. The only person who walked in was Mike.
“What happened to Tommy the terrible?” Pat asked. Mike just shook his head. “Let’s go,” he said. They walked out of the bu
ilding together.
“Can we grab lunch? I’m starving,” Pat said.
“How can you be hungry? Do you realize how close you just came to dying in a secret prison?”
“I missed lunch. Are you going to tell me what just happened?”
“What just happened is that the ISAF commander intervened and decided that you did your country a service. He knows who you are. I guess you served under him in a past life. He decided that officially, Wardak was killed by the Taliban, and he decided that you’re going to go back to your job, where you’ll complete your one-year contract. And after that, you’re going to leave Afghanistan and not come back.”
“What did little Tommy, your boss with the Boston Brahmin accent, have to say about that?” Pat asked.
“The boss fought hard to put you in a cell in Eastern Europe, but the ISAF commander brought in the ambassador, and between the two of them, they got Tom to accept the decision.”
“It sounds like if I hadn’t decided to off Wardak on my own, he’d still be running the 201st.”
“Yeah, that’s about right.”
“I would’ve felt bad if I’d killed that bird, but with Wardak, I have no regrets.”
“It was a good call; but promise me you’ll stay out of trouble between now and March.”
“Definitely. Should I keep paying Ibrahim?”
“No, don’t. Your secret agent status has been revoked.”
“All right, then. Take care of yourself, Mike.”
“You too, Pat, you too.”
Chapter 8
Dabiq, Syria
The bodies of the eighteen Syrian officers and pilots were arrayed on their knees, facing Mecca as if in prayer, with backs to the sky and a severed head perched on each. The victims’ blue aviation coveralls were soaked with blood, and the flies were beginning to swarm. The butchers, clad in desert camouflage uniforms and body armor, began to load into the waiting pickup trucks. Among the last to load was Mohammed Emwazi, a man known in the West as Jihadi John and to his friends as Ahmed. He was hurriedly directing the cameraman to capture some final shots before he too could depart.
Ahmed quickly snatched the memory card containing the footage from his cameraman and hurried toward the road, where a late-model Nissan Patrol awaited. Although it was late in the afternoon on a cool mid-November day, the Kuwaiti jihadist began to sweat as he approached the vehicle. He feared Abdul-Rahman, and his anxiety grew with each step. When he reached the white SUV, the fully tinted rear passenger window descended, slowly revealing a very displeased face that caused Ahmed to perspire even more. Ahmed had been taking orders from Abdul-Rahman for the past ten months, yet the man remained a mystery. Abdul-Rahman kept his distance from those beneath him.
Abdul-Rahman Al Ghaneem was also a Kuwaiti. In Arabic, his first name meant “servant of the most merciful,” and his family name, Ghaneem, meant “prosperity.” Although he was very rich—his family owned one of the largest holding companies in Kuwait—Abdul-Rahman was anything but merciful. He was short of stature, thirty-four years old with a hawkish beak for a nose, intense dark eyes, closely manicured black beard, powerful muscular body, and an aloof superior manner so common to the highborn in the region. Born outside the wall of Kuwait City to a prominent trading family in Jahra, Kuwait, Abdul-Rahman was the fourth son from his father’s third wife. His birth order and standing within the family made a prominent role in the family business impossible. It has always been expected by the Kuwaiti monarchy that the families who benefited most from the defense business contributed the most. From an early age, Abdul-Rahman had been groomed by his father to enter military service.
Jahra was an ultraconservative city located forty-five minutes to the north of Kuwait City. Hostile to outsiders and tribally loyal to the Al-Sabah royal family, it was the recruiting grounds of choice for the Kuwait National Guard (KNG) and the other elite security forces within the emirate. Abdul-Rahman was a major in the KNG Counter-Terrorism Battalion. A graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the US Special Forces Q course, and the US Marine Corps Staff College, Major Abdul-Rahman was the recipient of the finest training available to a Kuwaiti Special Forces officer.
Abdul-Rahman’s family name and background were not known to Ahmed; he only knew the man was to be feared. It was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph himself, who’d placed Ahmed under Abdul-Rahman’s control, and he had no doubts about what would happen to him if he failed in his duties. The group beheading of the airmen was supposed to be the warm-up to a grand finale, which was scripted to be the confession and ceremonial decapitation of the captive American aid worker. Unfortunately for him, something went wrong with the plan, and it was now Ahmed’s duty to explain it to the boss.
Hours earlier, while loading the prisoners onto the trucks, misfortune had struck. The docile behavior of captives in Ahmed’s videos was always helped along by the secret administration of drugs to the prisoners. Sprinkling sedatives into a starving prisoner’s food was a tried and true method to create a compliant captive. Ahmed was not sure if Kessig, the American, had gotten the wrong dose or the wrong drug. What he did know was that the former American Ranger turned out to be anything but compliant.
When the guard had lowered the tailgate on the Toyota pickup truck and ordered Kessig to load, the prisoner had struck. Despite having his hands bound behind his back, the wiry American managed to swing his hands under his feet and place a stranglehold on the guard. A second guard quickly ended the attack with an AKM rifle shot to the head, saving his friend, but also ending any possibility of filming the script as planned. The 7.62mm rifle round fired at point-blank range made it impossible to film a close-up of the American. Ahmed was not even sure if it would be possible for enemy intelligence to identify the American when his latest opus was released to the public.
Abdul-Rahman grew impatient listening to the groveling explanation Ahmed provided. The obsequious whining tone in which he blamed the guards for his own leadership failure was difficult for Abdul-Rahman to stomach. Having heard enough, Abdul-Rahman violently opened the door into Ahmed’s chest, knocking him hard to the ground. While Ahmed was pushing himself up with his skinny arms to stand, Abdul-Rahman kicked him in the face and then proceeded to kick him in the ribs and back until the cowering jihadist rolled into a ball and begged Abdul-Rahman to stop. Abdul-Rahman considered the failed IT salesman a pathetic excuse for a soldier and was badly tempted to shoot the British Kuwaiti on the spot, but instead he gave him a parting kick to the ribs before walking back to his vehicle.
Abdul-Rahman had no illusions about the quality and motivations of his troops. He knew for the most part they were neither soldiers nor true believers. He had worked with enough of them to know they were misfit serial failures drawn via YouTube and other social media to the romantic images of a global caliphate. The images of sex slaves, brutality, military victory, and a master religion were the dominant themes in his recruiting videos. Brutality was catnip to his audience. The caliphate was a magnet for the cruel and maladjusted. Poorly educated, unemployed, sexually repressed men dominated the ranks. The lack of any kind of selection process and even a remote semblance of discipline and training culminated in a Daesh force that was a complete menace to humanity.
Abdul-Rahman stemmed his anger, realizing he would have to spare the British Beatle, as Ahmed and his three British companions were often called. The shocking effectiveness of the perverted work Ahmed was doing was critical to his objective, and he couldn’t let his personal disgust interfere with the mission. More than one thousand misfits a month had begun flowing into the caliphate after Ahmed’s first production had hit the Internet back in August. There was no disputing that the skinny IT geek knew how to hit the right notes to resonate with the target audience. Ahmed was the Leni Riefenstahl of the caliphate. With that in mind, Abdul-Rahman jumped back into his vehicle and began the long drive back to his hometown.
Chapter 9
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Abdul-
Rahman was dressed in an immaculate white kandora with an equally immaculate white gutrah around his head as he relaxed in the waiting room, nibbling on dates while sipping Arabic coffee outside the private office of Sheik Meshal al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah. Sheik Meshal was the younger brother of the emir of Kuwait and was the deputy chairman of the Kuwait National Guard. The KNG was the only military force allowed to be stationed within the confines of Kuwait City. The palace was in the urban center of the city. Bland and unimpressive from the outside, the huge domicile consumed most of a city block. While the architecturally uninspired exterior was clearly lacking in curb appeal, the inside was magnificent. The three-story structure contained more than one hundred cavernous rooms, lavishly decorated and furnished in marble and gold.
The palace was just recently occupied, and this was Abdul-Rahman’s first visit to the sheik in his newly renovated home. While he was sure the seventy-three-year-old sheik was aiming for an exotic Arabian Nights theme with his choice of décor, he seemed to have just missed the mark and managed instead to capture something more akin to what Abdul-Rahman imagined a 1920s French bordello would have looked like. The sheik had a reputation for liking the ladies, and from this perspective, it was possible the décor was not an accident after all. His latest marriage, to a lovely nineteen-year-old girl, was his sixteenth. Although limited by law to only four wives at a time, the sheik was quick to divorce and remarry. His favorite wife had been with him for thirty-seven years, but the remaining three wives changed with the seasons.
While being ushered into the sheik’s office, Abdul-Rahman took note that he was meeting him alone, as was their routine. Unlike the gaudy décor in the rest of the palace, the office had the look and feel of a British private men’s club. Somewhat dimly lit with mahogany wood-paneled walls, deep red carpet, solid leather furniture, and a scattering of scenic paintings featuring hounds, foxes, and of course the mounted hunters. Abdul-Rahman had known the sheik since he’d served as his personal assistant while still a junior captain. He was distantly related to the sheik on his mother’s side, and that, along with his military record, was the strongest reason for his trusted position.
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