by John Weisman
And sensed someone behind him.
He swiveled. Ducked.
Not fast enough.
He took a strike from something hard. The blow came upward, glanced off his left shoulder, then his head, knocking off the qarakul.
Charlie grunted, raised his arms to defend himself. But the guy was just too big. Too quick.
Used a long tire iron. Caught Charlie under the arm. Smacked him off the dolly. Stomped his hip. Rolled him. Kicked him in the ribs. Knocked the breath out of him.
Charlie flailed at the guy’s feet and legs, but couldn’t reach them.
Charlie was thinking knife. Gotta get to a knife.
He carried three. Two were local. One was special.
But there was no time. No way.
No way because he was being rolled. Like a fricking barrel. Kicked and struck and rolled.
Back out toward the road.
Which is when he caught a glimpse. Saif Hadi’s flattened nose and thick eyebrows were all he could see because the sonofabitch was wearing a hood. Just like he’d worn in Iraq for all those beheadings.
It was surreal. All Charlie could think in that heartbeat of shock and recognition was Bogie’s line, Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
Meanwhile, Saif, who had probably never seen Casablanca and never would, was grunting and cursing as he kicked Charlie toward the car, careful to stay away from Charlie’s arms and hands.
Careful because he understood that Charlie, legless, was a grappler. A ground fighter.
Saif was snarling, growling, muttering as he kicked.
Charlie couldn’t make it out at first, because oh, shit, he realized through it all, Saif was speaking Arabic and Charlie was thinking in Pashto.
Then it came to him. Saif was saying, “I will kill you Mr. José, fuck you, Mr. José, fuck your mother, Mr. José, I’m going to kill you slowly, kill you, Mr. José.”
Over and over.
Charlie thought, This is not real.
But it was.
So Charlie knew what he had to do.
Catch Saif’s foot.
Twist and roll.
Break his fricking ankle.
Bring him down.
Then kill him.
But it wasn’t happening.
Saif was keeping his distance. Dancing around, kicking from behind.
Using the tire iron.
And the blows were taking a toll. Charlie took one at the base of his spine that felt like a Taser hit. Shot numbness right into his brain.
His arms, which had been up around his ears like a boxer’s to protect his face, dropped.
Which is when Saif smacked him upside the head. Smacked him good, too.
Because everything went white.
Then black.
13
Murree Road, Dor River, Pakistan
February 14, 2011, 2057 Hours Local Time
Charlie struggled back into consciousness slowly. Little pieces of life ebbing and flowing. Like breathing, which was hard to do. And trying to figure out why everything was so fuzzy. And why it was so dark. And what was rubbing against his face, his head, his lips. And why he couldn’t feel his hands. And why there was constant noise. And where the fuck was he?
The last question was the easiest. He was in the trunk of a car. The car was moving at a pretty high rate of speed over a paved road that needed work. And it was cold.
Everything else was up for grabs.
He worked his shoulders. There was considerable strain on them. That was because his arms were pinioned. They were bound behind his back, overlapping so that his right palm touched the inside of his left forearm and his left palm the outside of his right forearm. From the feel of things, he’d been secured with duct tape. Lots of it.
He rolled slightly. He’d been dumped facedown. He opened his eyes wide. Nothing.
Of course not. There was a bag over his head. That was the roughness.
He rolled slightly to his left. Came up against something hard and rough and cold. Like a big stone or something. He edged away from it to give himself space. He’d stored one of his knives under his tunic on the left side. Not that he could reach it.
He jiggled. It was gone. The second knife had been attached to his belt, and that one was gone, too.
That left the third. The knife Charlie called his Blaber knife.
Charlie had once worked with an officer named Pete Blaber, who’d gone on to command B Squadron at Delta and afterward had written The Mission, the Men, and Me, one of the best books on leadership Charlie had ever read.
When they worked together Blaber was an Airborne Ranger major, and he happened to witness Charlie do something very dangerous for a master sergeant: cold-cock an asshole Ranger captain. Left him prone out on the ramp of a C-130, because the captain had been about to do something that would have cost several members of Charlie’s platoon their lives.
Charlie just stood there, waiting for the captain to regain consciousness so he could call the MPs and end Charlie’s career.
Then Ranger Blaber, who’d seen and heard the whole thing from the get-go, trotted up to Charlie. “Get the hell out of here, Ranger,” he told Charlie. “I’ll handle this.”
He pointed to the captain, who was rolling onto his stomach so he could puke. “He’s an idiot. He shouldn’t be put in charge of changing lightbulbs.”
Blaber looked at Charlie. “Did you hear me, Master Sergeant? Go! Vamoose. Di-di-mau.”
It was Ranger Blaber who later gave Charlie some valuable advice. “Always prepare for the worst-case scenario,” he told him. “If you do that, nothing will surprise you, because you’ve already factored in what to do when everything, absolutely everything, turns to shit.”
Charlie had taken Ranger Blaber’s words to heart. Both as a Ranger and later, at CIA, he’d always tried to conceive of what the worst that could happen to him would be—and then prepare for it. So he referred to his backup gun as the Blaber gun; his extra water, Blaber water. And his last-ditch when-it-all-goes-to-hell knife was his Blaber knife.
Which is why Charlie now rolled far enough to put himself on his side, but careful not to roll onto his back. He flexed his fingers. Good news: Saif hadn’t taped his hands, just his wrists and arms.
2104 Hours
He maneuvered himself so he could get his left hand under his sheepskin vest and rough-knit tunic. He yanked, clearing the cloth from his waistband. Pulled it up as far as he could.
Because duct-taped to Charlie’s back, just to the left of his right kidney, was his Blaber knife, a SO6 Micron tanto.
It wasn’t very big. Forty-eight millimeters long and three millimeters wide, with a forty-six millimeter blade. But taped where Charlie had taped it, it could survive just about any pat-down, which obviously it had.
He pulled a corner of the tape, which he’d affixed before he’d left Afghanistan, and eased it down. It took skin and hair with it, but Charlie didn’t give a damn.
Pulled the two-by-two patch of tape off, letting it stick to his fingers so he wouldn’t lose it.
And while the knife was still stuck to the tape he used his left thumbnail to open the blade. Pulled it free of the patch. Began to work it against the tape binding his wrists and arms.
The road was getting increasingly rougher. Charlie worked the tiny blade. He could feel himself cutting his arms as well as the tape, but it didn’t matter, just so long as he didn’t nick a vein.
What felt like a hairpin turn set him back some. He almost lost his grip on the knife.
But he held on.
2107 Hours
His arms were free. He cut the cord holding the bag around his neck and pulled it off. He still couldn’t see anything, but at least his breathing was unhampered. His head still hurt like hell. He examined himself. He could feel blood above his ear. His nose was stuffy. He probed and touched coagulated blood.
Work through it, he told himself. Drive on! The main thing is to keep th
e main thing the main thing.
And the main thing here was Saif Hadi al Iraqi. The main thing was that Saif had to die.
The next question was, Where were they headed? Was Saif taking him to ISI?
Charlie doubted it. If that had been the case he would already be hanging naked, suspended by chains wrapped around his stumps while they used cattle prods on his privates or dunked his head in a barrel of water. Paki enhanced interrogation techniques were seriously enhanced.
No, Saif was doing this solo. Charlie’s instincts told him it was personal. So either he was delivering Charlie to the Haqqani Network, or he was going to perform a ritual slaughter. Like during Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice at the end of the Haj.
Charlie had seen it often enough. The sheep or goat was held down, struggling. Its throat was cut while the slaughterer repeated the name “Allah,” as a sign that life is sacred.
Just like all those beheadings he watched videos of in Iraq. Listening to the victims’ screams as they realized it was for real, while the slaughterers, like Saif, repeated “God is Great,” or quoted the Quran’s Sura 8/12: “Behead the Infidels and cut off their joints.”
Charlie had watched, even though it made him sick to do so. Watched because Know thine enemy was one of his credos.
Lying there, the Blaber knife in his hand, he decided that beheading was the deal. Saif the Iraqi wanted Charlie’s head on a platter. Or more likely in a bag: Look who I found.
2109 Hours
The knife was comically small. Charlie used Saif’s duct tape to build some bulk into the handle, leaving some of it sticky-side-out so he could keep a firm grip. He lay his thumb along the length of the handle, the handle across his fisted index finger, and wrapped tape around both fingers and knife, creating an inch-and-a-half talon that could either slash or stab.
Then he waited. Making himself stronger with every passing second. Making sure he kept the main thing the main thing.
2112 Hours
He didn’t have to wait long. He felt the car decelerate, veer to the right. Now he felt and heard gravel under the wheels.
The car came to a stop.
Charlie rotated his shoulders to ease the strain, then coiled himself like a spring.
He’d get one shot at this.
It was all about speed, surprise, and violence of action.
The same three tactical principles, Charlie thought, that Mohammed Atta used on September 11, 2001, against the crew of American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston’s Logan Airport. With a blade about the same size he was holding now.
You can kill with a blade of less than an inch if you know how to use it.
Charlie knew how to use it.
The car shuddered slightly. Charlie felt it shift as Saif got out.
Heard footfalls crunching on gravel.
The trunk opened.
Charlie was ready.
Saif wasn’t.
The Iraqi froze, eyes wide open.
Charlie had already launched himself.
He grabbed Saif’s hair.
Pulled his head down.
Right hand: blade tip up.
Charlie punched the tanto blade with all the force he could muster, straight from the shoulder.
Into Safi’s left eye.
Twisted, slashed, pulled his arm back.
Saif screamed. Instinctively, the man’s hands went up to his face.
Which was when Charlie’s left hand yanked Saif’s head down, smashing the Iraqi nose-first onto the jamb of the trunk.
He lifted Saif’s head and twisted, exposing the Iraqi’s neck. Stabbed into the carotid artery, worked the blade around real good, then cut his way out the back side of Saif’s neck.
Back-sliced across Saif’s forehead. Stabbed at the other eye. Missed.
Lost the knife. The tape had come loose.
Saif was struggling now. He was going into shock and he’d probably bleed out in a minute or so, but until then Charlie had to hold on.
So he smashed Saif neck-first into the edge of the trunk UHuhhh to crush his windpipe, then yanked his head up, got both his big, knotty thumbs into the man’s throat, and squeezed. Squeezed like hell.
Charlie was a strong man. Even with damaged hands. He kept the pressure on until Saif stopped struggling. Stopped moving. Stopped breathing.
Kept it up until the sonofabitch was dead.
14
Murree Road, Dor River, Pakistan
February 14, 2011, 2114 Hours Local Time
Charlie let go of the Iraqi and slumped back, breathing hard. His stumps hurt like hell because he’d put all of his weight on them. His hands were sticky slippery from Saif’s blood. He leaned over and wiped them on the Iraqi’s corpse.
Charlie didn’t like killing. He’d done enough of it over the course of his life not to like it. But he also knew, as do all true Warriors, that it was a necessary skill in the real world, and that through training, experience, and instinct, he was quite efficient at it.
He also understood a second truth: that some individuals just deserved to die.
Saif was one of those. Saif, who’d beheaded sixteen Iraqi policemen one after the other only because they were Shia. Saif, who’d disemboweled children in front of their parents to make a political point. Like most of his brothers in arms, Charlie Becker preferred peace to war. But they hadn’t started this war. Usama Bin Laden had started it. Charlie was where he was to help finish it.
Quickly Charlie checked the trunk. It held two cinder blocks and a short roll of what looked like fence wire. He tossed everything out, then pulled himself out of the trunk and rolled onto the roadside.
He looked around to get his bearings. Saif had parked next to a river with a pretty fast current. The road was about ten feet above the bank, separated by a low metal guard rail. Charlie looked up and down the road. No lights. No signs of life. Perfect.
First things first. He checked Saif’s body—carefully—for documents, papers, ID, pocket litter. He stashed everything in his own pockets. He’d look through them later. He couldn’t find car keys, so he scooted himself to the driver’s side door, opened it, hoisted himself inside, and checked.
They were in the ignition. Better: Charlie’s padded dolly and his push-sticks were stashed behind the front seats. Also tossed in the rear were Charlie’s knives and a rolled-up black plastic garbage bag. Which Charlie unrolled.
And discovered a heavy, curved, razor-sharp butcher’s knife with a twelve-inch blade. A beheader. Saif was planning to extract revenge and take a souvenir, maybe to his al-Qaeda pals.
Charlie laughed. He couldn’t help himself, given the morbid irony that it had popped into his mind that he and Saif shared something in common: a favorite old adage. Don’t get mad. Don’t get even. Get . . . a head.
He crabbed back to the rear, took Saif’s body by the collar, trying his best not to get himself all bloody, dragged him to the guard rail, then pushed him under so the body would roll down to the riverbank.
He repeated the trip thrice, with cinder blocks, then fence wire, then garbage bag. By the end of the third, he was bathed in his own sweat. It was yet another episode during which he thought it would have been s-o-o-o much easier with legs.
Hyperventilating, Charlie peered over the edge. The slope wasn’t too bad. There was a fair amount of vegetation. He figured he could claw his way back to the car easily enough.
He tossed the cinder blocks and wire over the guard rail. Then he shoved Saif’s corpse and watched it slide two-thirds of the way down the scrub-covered incline.
Charlie followed, the big knife stuffed in his vest. He dragged Saif to the edge of the river. Rolled the body so it was parallel with the bank.
That was when he realized that he couldn’t do what he wanted to. Sans legs, it was impossible to drag Saif far enough into the river where it would be deep enough to sink him.
But he could do the other thing.
He maneuvered the body so that he could straddle S
aif’s chest. Then he unrolled the big, sharp butcher’s knife and set to work.
When he finished, he tossed the head into the river. A good throw—maybe thirty-five, forty feet. He saw the splash.
He did a quick forensics check. He was leaving behind a headless corpse with no ID. Probably not the first of its kind in this neighborhood, either. Charlie heaved the cinder blocks and the fence wire into the river. Policed the riverbank. Glanced up toward the road. The blood on the shoulder next to the guard rail would stay there. Nada he could do about it. That left nothing else to clean up.
Except himself, and the knife. He washed it first. Then he doused his hands in the cold water, rubbing his face only after they were clean. Then he soaked his vest, tunic, and trousers to get rid of the blood, wrung them out semidry, and put them back on.
He rolled the big knife back in its garbage bag, stuffed it inside his vest, and crabbed his way toward the car. On his way up the embankment, he decided not to report any of what had just happened. There was no reason to. It would just complicate matters. Charlie understood the system, be it Army or CIA: Give them a bone and they will chew on it. Don’t give them a bone, and they won’t have the opportunity.
He made it to the top, scuttled under the guard rail, and pulled himself inside the car. Only then did he give in to the fact that he was totally spent.
He put his head back and reconsidered his position. Was he doing the right thing in not reporting? Yeah, he was. But what about Saif’s ISI contacts? Had the Iraqi mentioned anything?
And if he had, would the Paks be coming after him?
Not necessarily. Charlie had seen this sort of thing in Iraq. The local services treated foreign nationals as disposables. Sure, ISI would make use of Saif, pay him well. But he wasn’t a part of their culture, or their clan. They’d use him and then forget him. Unless, of course, he had mentioned that he’d seen one of the Gitmo Infidels sitting outside a zam-zam shop.
But all of Charlie’s instincts told him Saif hadn’t said a word. Not to ISI or anybody else. Saif had said it himself: he wanted to kill Mr. José and do it slowly. He wanted revenge on Mr. José. It had been personal.