The Hammer of God

by Tom Avitabile

“Listen, this is Jamal. Don’t waste my time and give me the CIA station chief this instant.” He looked up at his men smiling. “Technically there are no CIA officers in Egypt.”

  The other end connected with a beep sequence that meant the call was being recorded. “Rumson. Who is this?”

  “Earl, this is Jamal. The Islamic Brotherhood has captured an enemy of Islam and he will be tried and executed in accordance with Muslim law.”

  “You are illegally detaining the personal representative of the President of the United States of America and that is an act of war. You must release him immediately.” The “not the CIAStation Chief’s” tone was stern and unwavering.

  “You are wasting your breath, my time, and his few remaining minutes.”

  “What do you want, Jamal?”

  “A trade: the Ambassador for Sheik Alzir El Benhan.”

  “Who?”

  “You’re wasting time.” Jamal closed the cell phone, dropped it to the floor, and stamped it into pieces.

  ?§?

  “Who?” President Mitchell was having a bad day already. Now his Secretary of State, Charles Pickering, was playing “Name that Terrorist” with him.

  “He was the mastermind behind the influenza attack. We have him in a maximum security prison in Indiana.”

  “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  “This is trading.”

  “Are you saying there’s a difference?”

  “Yes. It’s one for one. And it’s back channel, not trading out in the open.”

  “The world already knows Greely has been abducted. When he suddenly pops up, Chuck, they’re gonna know!”

  “We can generate some heat in Turtle Bay and make it look like the kidnappers unilaterally acceded to the will of the United Nations. Only we’ll know it’s one for one.”

  “Yeah, and about that, it’s only one for one if you don’t count the dozen or so who were killed to kidnap the ambassador and you don’t count the 26,000 estimated flu deaths this ‘Sheik’ caused,” the President said sharply, then added, “And how is he a Sheik, all of the sudden?”

  “Ambassador Greeley is an outstanding American who fought for this country in uniform, gave of his personal wealth to myriad charities as a civilian, and serves his country in a class one post to this day as Ambassador A.E. amp; P. Your personal representative. We have to consider this opportunity to save his life as a serious matter.”

  “Serious matter? Ah hell, Chuck!”

  “Sorry, wrong choice of words. Of course, you are serious. I meant that this terrorist offer is serious.”

  “Look, if we do this ‘trade’ then every Ambassador Extraordinary amp; Plenipotentiary who works for you, for me, becomes the coin of the realm to every fanatic with a grudge against the U.S. or General Motors for that matter. You know that.”

  “The alternative is to show the world we can’t get our ambassador back.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Maybe 24 to 36 hours. Then they’ll either kill him, contact us, or, worse, send out an Al Jazeera video.”

  Mitchell turned to his Chief-of-Staff, Ray Reynolds. “I want to know if I have any military options. Press the Egyptians hard on where they are holding him. Get me any international law — hell, even diplomatic protocol — that we can have Susan wave at the Security Council up in New York. And for God’s sake hold this tight.”

  “I agree,” Pickering said. “We must consider this ‘close hold.’ The press would have a field day.”

  “Screw the press. I don’t want his wife, Stella, to raise any false hopes of a trade until, and if, it becomes the new policy of the United States.”

  With that, the men left the room. Mitchell looked out the window into the Rose Garden. He knew that any effort through the U.N. was futile; international law didn’t cover this unless the U.S. was going to accuse Egypt of being complicit. Besides, his own administration’s Middle East initiatives would preclude strong-arming a friend in the Security Council. At best, a public display of condemnation was a publicity stunt that could possibly have misdirection value if U.S. forces had to go in. Mitchell also knew committing U.S. forces, to invade a sovereign nation — an ally — was risky business. On the other hand, to let an ambassador die, only to protest it to the world afterwards, seemed like a damn bad use of a good man’s life. Yet, to save him by any means of negotiated release meant to hang an open season hunting tag on any official of the U.S. Government. For a moment, Mitchell had a terrible thought: Why couldn’t they have just killed him. He actually shook his head to erase that insane, cold-hearted notion.

  His personal assistant entered quietly and said softly, “Mr. President, the Speaker of the House is here for your 10:15 meeting.” Like so many other Americans that morning, Mitchell had to relegate any further thought of the ambassador’s dilemma to a far recess of his mind so that the rest of his brain could work on the matter’s of the Nation’s business.

  The Hiccocks started their Saturday twice. They awoke at 8:30, each thinking what the other was thinking, then acting upon it, so neither left the bed. At 9:10 they both collapsed into a deep sleep until 10:20, when Janice rolled over and opened her eyes.

  “Bill, it’s 10:20.”

  Bill spoke into the pillow. “Errrrmp.”

  She patted him on his butt until he lifted his head. “Good morning, almost afternoon.”

  They showered, dressed, and went to a local diner for breakfast.

  “No matter what, we are just looking,” Bill said. “We are not buying anything.”

  “Exactly. We’re going to see our options then sleep on it.”

  “We have lots of time. We don’t have to rush into anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  It was a beautiful, sun-shiny, day. They drove for 45 minutes to a store out on the highway that Cheryl’s sister had recommended.

  Forty minutes later, Bill was ruing the fact that they didn’t take the old wagon. Tied to the top of the Caddy was the big box holding the crib. Jutting out from the tied-down open trunk was the stroller box and the back seat was crammed with little blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. With over 300 I.Q. points between them, the one thing they did that was smart in ‘Babies R Us,’ was not commit to any gender specific color scheme or wallpaper.

  “Didn’t we say we were just looking?” Bill said, as he drove no faster than 40 miles per hour, lest the wind shear lift the crib’s box into somebody’s front grill.

  The nursery wasn’t ready yet. It wasn’t even a nursery, and it still had to be divested of the books, junk, and old exercise equipment that lived there. Bill put the crib, stroller, and other stuff in the garage. He then began tinkering with a lamp he started rewiring last winter.

  “I made you a sandwich,” Janice called out from the kitchen.

  “Just a minute.” Bill snaked the new cord through the body of the lamp and out the top. He left enough hanging out to be able to work with when he would wire the new socket to it, later, after lunch.

  The TV was on in the kitchen and CNN was all over the ambassador story with graphics and serious music calling it “Summit with Death?” They had silhouetted the grainy image of Greeley from the terrorists tape and it now flew back over the graphics of a masked terrorist as thunderous theme music played. Being CNN, there was a panel of talking heads who didn’t beat the living shit out of the one “Intellectual” who espoused that the taking of the ambassador was “justifiable” due to America’s continuing suppression of the Arab sentiments in the world. Instead, they simply went to commercial. Bill just shook his head.

  “Did you know him?” Janice asked.

  “Greeley? No, never met him, although I hear he was… is, a good man.”

  “The news is now saying his ambassadorial appointment was a political payoff for campaign contributions.”

  “Well, ain’t that a scoop! They are only about a hundred years late on catching on to that dirty little secret. But that’s the soft posts like Canada or Por
tugal, where some political appointee can’t screw it up too bad. Egypt is prime time, Class one. Those only get career Foreign Service Officers. The press is just looking for any way to slam Mitchell because he isn’t one of them.”

  “Because he isn’t a newsman?”

  “No, because he’s neither Fox news “Right,” or CNN “Left,” and they both hate that neutrality, like he was selling the secret formula of Coca Cola to the Russians.

  “So what do you think is going to happen?” Janice asked as she poured Bill and herself more iced tea.

  “Thanks. This is just a guess, but I’d say there’s a delta force or SEAL strike team warming up the coffee right about now waiting for someone to drop a dime on where the man is being held.”

  “What about Egyptian sovereignty?”

  “That’s covered under ‘Posse comi — fuck ‘em.’”

  It took a second for Janice to realize that Bill had just bastardized ‘Posse Comitatus.’

  Bill added, “If they get a 20 on this guy, our guys will go in first, snatch him back, then spin it as a joint U.S./Egyptian intelligence op or some kind of bullshit so that the Egyptians save face.”

  “Okay, so now I feel better.”

  Bill was in the middle of going through a box of stuff in order to throw most of it out and put what was left in a smaller box from which, if he continued the process, he could whittle down the contents of the ten boxes that were taking up valuable baby space in the garage down to one. He was going through old checks and photographs when he heard a familiar voice.

  “You are human! You actually do normal stuff!”

  “Joey, I don’t believe it. I just found this in the box.”

  Bill handed Palumbo an old photograph: a picture of the two of them and some other guys standing in front of a pipe held up by two braced two-by-fours.

  “Hey, the high bar, Muzzi, Johnny ‘No’, Soccio, Mush, B.O. Look at the mop of hair on your head!”

  “Look how skinny we were.” Hiccock laughed as he tossed the picture back in the keeper box. “What brings you round this way on a Saturday?”

  “Something is bugging me and I thought I’d run it by you.”

  “Wanna beer?”

  “Nah.”

  “Okay, then shoot.”

  “You remember Brooke Burrell out of the New York Bureau office?”

  “Sure do. She was point on the whole virus thing and the poison gas tank plot in New York. Solid agent.”

  “One of the best. She and I had a talk, off the record. A lot of it was just agent-to-agent, you know? ‘How do I do this, how should I handle that?’ But she said one thing that…Have you heard the latest out of Egypt?”

  “That they took Greely to set El Benham free? Yeah.”

  “She had an inkling that Alzir knew he wasn’t going to be in custody long.”

  “Have they ever done this before?” Bill asked as he decided to throw out a desk calendar from 1999.

  “Not one for one like this, and if they have it’s usually a low-level or convenient grab. A local police chief or U.S. military captive. But it’s always reactive, almost improvised by them. This has pre-meditated all over it.”

  “And you’re telling me this because?”

  “Brooke had a sense about this guy knowing he was going to be sprung, and now she’s right.”

  Bill looked at him in a way that said, “So?”

  “This is a big play. They wouldn’t do this kinda thing if we caught Al Qaeda number 1. This Alzir guy is deeply connected to something else, something bigger.”

  “Bigger than potentially infecting and killing fifty million Americans? I don’t think I want to know what that could be.”

  “I want you, as a deputy director of the FBI, to authorize a guy who I have been following for a while. He’s Dr. Robert Fusco, a psych-ops guy who’s got some methods and practices that might give Brooke and us an edge.”

  “I am only dep director for stuff under my area.”

  “This guy is under your area and, besides, the funding can’t go on any record, so I need you to bury it in your SCIAD budget.”

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me. Is this one of your wild-assed ideas?”

  “Who was it who taught me to think outside the box?”

  Joey positioned it perfectly to create the maelstrom in Bill’s head. It raged there for a minute then he simply said, “You really think this is going to pay off?”

  “It’s got a good shot.”

  Bill responded in the affirmative by giving Joey the Boulevard Blades gesture of a fist with the thumb jutting out between the index and pointer fingers. Not that they knew it, but it was an actual gesture from the ancient Neapolitan society, meaning “to protect.”

  At 4:00 p.m. in the Situation Room beneath the White House, President Mitchell was being pushed to make a decision between two diametrically opposed evils.

  The Secretary of State was uncharacteristically lobbying hard to save the life of the man who worked for him. “Mister President, the ambassador is a prime asset of the United States. He is worth every effort to retrieve.”

  “Chuck, we can’t negotiate with terrorists. You’ll be setting a precedent that will have every American overseas being kidnapped round the clock,” the Chief of Staff needlessly reminded him. “The only option is military, if we get that lucky. Otherwise, the ambassador is now a combatant and prisoner of war.”

  The Secretary of State turned to Mitchell. “Mr. President, how can you sacrifice his life like this?”

  “Look, Charles, this ambassador makes over $200,000 dollars a year plus all expenses paid. There are dog faced G.I.s, who are just as valuable to me as he is, who die in shit-holes all over the world and their families barely live at poverty level. So they are both soldiers and, unfortunately, he is as expendable as they are. Chuck, what’s really going on with you? You know the damn policy as well as anyone, yet you continue to lobby for a trade that isn’t going to happen?” The President’s agitation was evident in the way he threw down his pencil.

  “I pushed Greely into this post, sir. He wanted out and I personally strong-armed him to take another tour. He is a close personal friend of Saudi Prince Ramalli; they were roommates at Choate. I needed him in that post as part of my mid-east initiative.”

  “God damn it, Charles, then get your head out of your ass. We send people to dangerous places and into jeopardy all the time. It may be a first for you, but, trust me, the bad news is you have to live with it.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Final Gambit

  Brooke took a deep breath as her hand rested on the latch to the Sheik’s cell. She hoped this would be the last time she’d have to do this. She hated it. But it was working. The last time, he wet himself as she approached. She wanted to let up on him a little because of it, but that would signal that she was weak. She had double-checked and made sure that she wasn’t hitting him in the same spots. That could result in real injury and cause internal bleeding. She wanted him healthy.

  Her hand pushed the door open. “What do you know about this?”

  She held up the front page of the N.Y. Post. On it was a frame grab from the Al Jazeera video showing the ambassador blindfolded, the jihad flag and AK 47’s around him, as a knife was near his throat.

  “Hey, shit for brains, what do you know about this?”

  “Nothing,” the Sheik said as he retreated to the corner.

  “Oh yeah? Well they want us to release you in trade for him.”

  “I know nothing of this. Except that Allah’s will be served. If it is his way that I will be saved, then so be it.” He half closed his eyes in a now rare, cocky gesture.

  It was too much for Brooke. For the first time, she wanted to wallop him in the jaw with the sock sending him reeling backwards and out cold.

  Instead, she grabbed her gun, turned, and fired at the men coming through the door. They returned fire, sending her spinning back and crumbling onto the floor, lifeless. The Sheik heard more gunshots i
n the hallway and the sound of men yelling and groaning filled the room. A man in a ski mask grabbed and held down Aliz as another jabbed a needle into his arm. The last thing he saw was Brooke crumpled on the floor.

  ?§?

  The Sheik awoke with a light shining brightly in his eyes. He was on his knees; his hands were tied behind his back. There were other people in the room. He turned and behind him was a banner with the words, “But One Answer.” There were two tall torches on each side. Two hooded men stood with M4 carbines across their chests. Everyone around him was hooded and in ski masks. One grabbed his face and turned it toward the light again. As the Sheik’s eyes adjusted, he saw that the light was atop a camera. He was being videotaped.

  Someone held his head back and a bayonet was drawn across his throat without cutting the skin. A man unfurled a scroll and read from it.

  “You are no longer a prisoner of the United States nor subject to its protection. The Scared Brotherhood of the Shores of Tripoli, in accordance with the traditions set forth by our founders, has captured and taken custody of you and has declared you as a Practical Prisoner of War. You are hereby sentenced to endure the same life, conditions, and final status as the one that has been kidnapped in trade for your life. Those who have murdered, kidnapped, and extorted so that you might be set free are now warned; your fate and that of Ambassador Greely’s are now inexorably one”

  Aliz squeezed his eyes at what seemed the conclusion of the speech. Surely that was when they’d cut his throat. He started praying to Allah aloud.

  It made for dramatic video. But instead of the knife separating his head from his torso, the man continued speaking.

  “To the abductors of our Sacred Ambassador Extraordinary amp; Plenipotentiary, his Excellency, Wallace Greely: every hardship, every discomfort, every trauma, and, ultimately, the fate of our ambassador, will be inflicted upon, and suffered by your Sheik. Therefore, the Sheik’s destiny and the ambassador’s are one, and in your hands.”

  The man released the grip on the Sheik’s head. The light went out and he was quickly dragged out of the room and thrown onto a cot in a small dark room.