The other three burst into applause at this mighty display of detective genius.
“I work with a bunch of idiots,” Tara mumbled. Then she said to the team, “I want all those videos reviewed again—every single Platte River tape starting with three hours prior to game time. Those two faceless suspects have to be on there somewhere. And I don’t care what database you have to tap into; I want names for both of these guys by the end of the day. Now get to work!”
Tara grabbed her papers from the table again. She walked straight to her desk, dropped the last four caplets from her Extra Strength Tylenol bottle into her hand, and swallowed them dry.
Wednesday, January 14
Barletta, Italy
The hot wind blew in the big cat’s face as he crept through the tall grass of the Namibian plain. A herd of impalas stood two hundred yards ahead. The stealthy feline carefully cut that distance by half. He scanned the herd and picked his victim. Not the smallest but also not the biggest. He wanted to make the effort worthwhile, but he did not want to bite off more trouble than he could chew.
He slowly raised himself into a crouch, his tail end lifting a little higher and wiggling back and forth. Steady . . . steady . . . steady . . . NOW! He bolted across the separation and was two-thirds of the way there before the impalas saw him coming.
Now it was their turn to run. They scattered, trying to confuse him, but he was intent on the single victim he had chosen. The young impala somehow sensed that it was the target. It broke right and made a mad dash for some acacia bushes. Too little, too late.
The cat was within five feet of the animal when something slammed into his side. He let out a yip as he flew sideways and rolled to a halt.
He felt the blood pouring down his fur and knew he’d been shot. This wasn’t right! This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! Panic set in as he heard footsteps coming toward him. He tried to get up but found he couldn’t move—not even to turn his head to see who had shot him. He closed his eyes as pain racked his body. His breathing was rapid and shallow. Then he heard the footsteps stop. He slowly opened his eyes and saw a man in desert camouflage standing above him. On his right arm was a patch of the American flag.
As the wounded cat watched in horror, the soldier raised his rifle, pointed it down at his head, and pulled the trigger.
Hakeem awoke drenched in sweat and nearly hyperventilating. He sat up in his bed and forced himself to take slow, deep breaths.
He had been having the cheetah dreams again ever since arriving in Barletta. The dreams had stopped when his house had been bombed and his family killed so many years ago. Now they were back almost every night, and he loved them. He loved the rush of the hunt and the power of the kill. But tonight, for the first time, his dream had taken an alarming turn.
Hakeem slipped on his pants and walked across the cold cement floor to the hall, taking a blanket from the bed with him. He had been confined to this house and its courtyard ever since arriving in Italy. He couldn’t argue with the wisdom of this decision, but it didn’t make it any easier. After two weeks here, he was going stir-crazy.
The one solace he had found was up on the tile roof of the three-story house that had become his home. The rooftop gave him a feeling of serenity as he looked down at the city around him. In this morning’s darkness the air was chilly and damp from the sea, and Hakeem wrapped the blanket tightly around his body. The Adriatic was much closer to the north, but he still had a more or less unobstructed view toward the eastern seaboard. He turned his face to where the sun would shortly rise as the sky began to lighten.
I’m a different man since coming here, Hakeem thought. Life among my people, and especially around al-’Aqran, has taken away the lingering effects of living so long in America. I am amazed at how soft I had become. I am ashamed at how I mourned for the people and things I left behind. But no more! My edge has been honed again. My barbs have been sharpened. I now live to die. And the days I have left will be days of honor.
The darkness continued to disappear, and the soft edges of the buildings around him became more defined. But what about this dream? I have always been the hunter. Never have I been the prey. What does it mean? Was it just the quzi I ate last night? Or, more likely, the four shots of arrack that I drank, chasing the three bottles of Peroni. What are dreams anyway? It’s silly to be concerned about them. Dreams are meant to be experienced, sometimes enjoyed, and then dismissed. It won’t be long before I am the one standing over the American with the rifle pointed at his head.
Just then, the first glimpse of orange broke the horizon to the east. Hakeem stood and removed the blanket surrounding him so that his body could absorb the warmth. It was a perfect moment—a connection between heaven and earth. The sun’s rays flooded over him, washing away the dream, washing away the past, washing away the doubts. As he stood there, he made a conscious decision to meet from this roof every sunrise that he had left here in Barletta—a number he knew was rapidly diminishing.
Chapter 26
Monday, January 19
Barletta, Italy
For the last six days, Mustang team had made it their lives to know everything there was to know about Via Nazareth—the street that contained both al-Arqam mosque and the house of al-’Aqran. According to the intel from Tara Walsh’s group back home, al-’Aqran was the founder and leader of the Cause.
Tara had given Mustang team some good information about this man, and Riley had used the daily hour-long drive to Barletta from the team’s base of operations in Bari to review the file. By now he nearly had it memorized.
Al-’Aqran, or “the Scorpion,” had been born Abdul Rahman Bey in the Iraqi village of Ar Radwaniyah, just outside of Abu Ghraib. In 1968, at the age of sixteen, Bey had joined the military just months before the bloodless coup that had put Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and the Ba’athists into power. Saddam Hussein had immediately been made deputy president and had soon become the country’s strongman. As with many in the Iraqi military, Bey’s loyalty was primarily to Hussein. In 1979, Hussein took power by making accusations of disloyalty in the Ba’ath Party and arresting sixty-eight of its members while they were gathered for a meeting. Bey had been part of the team that executed twenty-two of those arrested.
By 1980, Hussein had become concerned about the radical Shiite influence that was spilling across the border from Iran and its newly installed leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini. These ideas didn’t fit well with Hussein’s vision of a secular state. So he invaded Iran on September 22, 1980. Captain Bey was part of the invasion force that entered Khuzestan that first day. He spent the next eight years fighting that war to a stalemate.
Tired and disillusioned, Bey had left the military. His loyalty to Saddam never wavered, but he was concerned about the president’s judgment and tactics. Iraq was a powerful nation, but it was not powerful enough to win a conventional war in the modern era of treaties and alliances. Much later, Bey had watched with interest, but not surprise, as the Western forces easily toppled Saddam’s government during the Occupation of Iraq.
The First Palestinian Intifada in 1987 had greatly intrigued Bey. A small group, outmanned and outgunned, had the boldness to take on the superior occupying Israeli force. But although they had courage, they didn’t have enough vision. Rocks were fine; bombs would be better.
That was when the Cause was born and when Abdul Rahman Bey was reborn as al-’Aqran—the Scorpion.
Unfortunately for al-’Aqran, it seemed his vision was greater than his skills; for a decade and a half, the Cause languished in international obscurity. It was during that period that he blew off part of his face while experimenting with explosives. What the counterterrorism community hadn’t realized was that what seemed to be incompetence was really just al-’Aqran biding his time while Hakeem, his ace in the hole, was growing in power and significance.
Finally, when the time was right, the Cause had struck. And when they struck, it was not for freedom in Iraq or in belated retaliation for Saddam Hussei
n’s execution. Instead it was to restore the honor of an era gone by. It was to remind the world that not all the Iraqi people were willing to lie down and be America’s lapdogs.
Riley closed the file and turned off the reading light in the van. Lord willing, by the end of today, this Scorpion would be in an American cage.
The plan Riley had devised was based on the old football misdirection play—make the opposing team think the action is taking place on one side of the field while you run the ball down the other. Great in concept; difficult in execution.
Al-’Aqran was vulnerable two times each day: when he left his house with his six armed bodyguards to walk to and from the al-Arqam mosque for the morning Fajr prayer service, and when he repeated the journey for the afternoon Asr service.
At first Riley had thought that this adherence to routine was either die-hard religious devotion or simple foolishness. His opinion changed when the team had spotted three men hidden on the rooftops between the house and the mosque. Each had a Tabuk sniper rifle, and at least one of them had an RPG-7 antitank grenade launcher. Riley had to assume the other two were similarly equipped. What had seemed to be foolish routine was starting to look more like a trap.
There was one other wild card in this deck. Every morning a man appeared on the roof of al-’Aqran’s house. Because of where he positioned himself, they could never get a good look at him. He would appear while the sky was still dark and would disappear soon after sunrise. He didn’t seem to be armed, but he was still worth keeping an eye on.
A late-model Fiat Punto had been parked for the last three days fifteen feet down and across the street from al-’Aqran’s house. Riley had chosen this car to be the diversion. As al-’Aqran was returning from his morning prayers at the mosque, this little Fiat would blow sky-high. The explosion would do three things: First, it would create confusion on the ground. Second, it would draw out the rooftop snipers, who would then be dispatched by Mustang team’s own rooftop snipers—Khadi Faroughi and Billy Murphy. Third, the confusion would allow the rest of the team to burst out of the house where they would be hiding along al-’Aqran’s route, dispatch the bodyguards, and taser the Scorpion. The team would then carry their prisoner around the building and out back to where the vans were waiting. If all went well, ten minutes after the car blew, they would be on the SS16aa highway cruising back down to Bari.
Scott had sent the surveillance photos of the bodyguards to his crew in the ROU. He had hoped one of them might be Hakeem. But the crack investigation group had been able to identify each guard as long-standing in the European theater, thus making them expendable.
It was 5:13 a.m. when Mustang team’s two cargo vans turned down Via Agostino Samuelli, one short block west of Via Nazareth. Matt Logan, the team’s demolitions expert, slipped out of the second van and headed toward the parked Fiat while the rest of the team gathered in the rear of the second cargo van.
At 5:25 a.m., they heard three rapid knocks on the rear door, followed by two more. Kim Li opened the door and Logan jumped in.
“Done. A lot of flash, a lot of noise, a lot of smoke, but not a large blast radius. Should be zero collateral damage unless someone is actually in the car. Speaking of which, I also disabled the car’s ignition so we don’t have anybody driving off in the thing.”
“Good work,” Riley said. He turned to Khadi and handed her the detonator. “You know what to do. As soon as they’re in front of the building, set this thing off. Murph will pop snipers one and two, and you’ll catch three.” Then he turned to Murphy. “Either one of you misses your target, we’re toast. Got it?”
They both nodded, and Khadi gave him a smile.
Khadi was beginning to fit into the team dynamics, and Riley was glad to see it. She would probably never fully understand the loyalty and devotion these men had for each other, but she was a professional. Riley knew his own strength of character, his competency, and his willingness to lead by example all combined with some X-factor to make him a man his teammates would follow to their graves. He didn’t expect Khadi to go that far, but he was pleased that she seemed willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.
“Okay, it’s time to get in position. You be careful,” he said to the two snipers, but his eyes were locked on Khadi’s. “Now go.”
Murphy and Khadi jumped out of the van, each carrying a case that held an M24 SWS.
Riley stared at the doors as they closed. Was he doing the right thing sending Khadi out to kill someone? It wouldn’t be her first time, he knew, and she had been trained to do this. In fact, she had the second highest shooting accuracy on the team—right behind Murphy. She was the right person, but was it the right thing?
His concentration was broken by Scott’s voice softly singing, “Riley and Khadi sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i—”
The song was interrupted by Skeeter’s large hand gently clipping the official team leader on the back of the head. Nervous laughter filled the van.
Riley surveyed the team silently. Wartime created strange relationships. Could there be any other situation with the power to bond together such different personalities and backgrounds? When men struggled together, suffered together, bled together, killed together, and grieved together, a connection was made that often went deeper even than blood.
“Men,” Riley said, “when I left this life a few years ago, I thought I had left it for good. When I came back, it wasn’t because I sought it out. It sought me out. I was living out my day-to-day just like you guys were. Then these little men with their big bombs came into my life and called me out. Well, since they called, I feel I’m obliged to answer.
“These terrorists took the lives of so many and destroyed the lives of so many others. One of the lives they took was my close friend Sal Ricci. Two of the lives they destroyed were those of his wife, Megan, and his baby daughter, Alessandra.” Riley took a picture of Meg and Alessandra out of his pocket and passed it around. “This is to remind you that these men’s victims are not just faceless statistics. It’s easy to get lost in the numbers of the casualty reports. But when you look at that picture, you’re looking at the faces of the victims. And when we go out there this morning and the bullets start flying and the blood starts spilling, remember this woman and this little girl.”
They all sat there silently looking at the floor of the van, processing what Riley had said.
Then a quiet voice began singing, “Kumbaya, my Lord, kumba—”
Another Skeeter slap to Scott’s head shut down the song.
“Come on, Skeet! You’re going to give me a concussion before we even leave the van,” Scott said, rubbing the back of his head.
Skeeter feinted like he was going to hit again, causing Scott to flinch. Everyone laughed and then started rechecking their gear.
Like the Predator team, each man carried a P90 submachine gun and a Heckler & Koch handgun. The only additional weapon the Mustang team members had was a Taser X26 holstered to their hips.
It was six o’clock; dawn would break in about fifty minutes. The time had come.
The house they now entered had been chosen because its front was on Via Nazareth and its rear was on Via Agostino Samuelli. It was a long two-story house inhabited by one man in his late fifties and two women whose ages seemed to fall on either side of his. The team had never seen anyone entering or leaving the home before 9 a.m.
Logan, Li, and Scott crept up the stairs to the bedrooms while Riley, Posada, and Skeeter looked around downstairs.
There was some rustling upstairs followed by the sound of glass or ceramic breaking. Then all was quiet again. Riley finished sweeping the first level, then went upstairs. There he found that the three occupants had been bound and gagged and brought into one bedroom. They lay scrunched together on a bed.
“Nice work, guys,” he said. “Scott, do your thing. And be nice.”
“You got it, Pach.”
Scott went over to the three and said, “Mi dispiace. (I’m sorry.)”
; The three didn’t seem to accept his sincerity.
“Non vi faremo del male. (We’re not going to hurt you.)”
Again their eyes expressed fear and doubt.
Scott reached over to the fabric that had been used to gag the man and gently pulled it down. The man looked like he wanted to scream but thought better of it when he saw Li fingering his P90. Scott asked him, “C’è qualcun’altro in casa? (Is there anyone else in the house?)”
In response, the man let out a flood of angry, fearful words, and Scott quickly replaced the gag.
“What’d he say?” Riley asked.
“He doesn’t like your mom.”
Riley affected a hurt expression. “He’s never even met her.”
“Okay, let’s try this again,” Scott said. “C’è qualcun’altro in casa?” He nodded his head up and down and then shook it side to side.
The man shook his head side to side.
“I’d call that a no.”
“Good job. Logan, Li, make sure they’re secure, then meet us downstairs.”
“Shouldn’t we bring them down with us? Be a whole lot safer,” Logan said.
“No, I don’t want them caught in the cross fire in case we have bad guys chasing us. You secure them well enough, and we won’t have anything to worry about.”
“You got it, Pach,” Logan acquiesced.
Downstairs, Skeeter and Posada had taken chairs from the kitchen table and placed them by the front windows. There they settled in for the long waiting game. At one point, there was a flurry of excitement as al-’Aqran and his entourage passed by on their way to the mosque. Riley watched their prey through a slight part in the curtains. This was the man who was ultimately responsible for what had happened at the Mall of America and at Platte River Stadium.
Monday Night Jihad Page 24