Takedown

by Brad Thor

  Walking over to Mohammed, Jaffe plunged the shears into his trouser leg, narrowly missing his thigh, and began cutting. As he did, he said, “The problem all along with this interrogation has been respect. I can see it in our friend’s eyes here. He doesn’t respect us. Do you, Mohammed? You’ve got nothing but contempt for us, because when it comes down to the real dirty stuff, the physical stuff, we let our Libyan pals do it for us.

  “Well, if I don’t have your respect, I just don’t think I can take it.”

  It was obvious from the look on Mohammed’s face that Jaffe had hit the nail right on the head. The al-Qaeda man wasn’t afraid. He felt nothing but contempt for his captors. But that was all about to change. Now that he was naked from the waist down, he could see the American was serious, very serious.

  For a man who took so much pleasure from life via the organ between his legs, the torture Mohammed was about to face was hideously personal. In his most disturbing dreams he doubted he could have ever come up with something so repulsive.

  When the American came back with the device, he writhed in his chair and struggled against his restraints—anything to stop the tube from entering his penis. His struggles, though, were entirely in vain. The American grabbed his organ in a death grip and inserted the tubing most violently. Once the tip was in, the man began feeding the rest of the tubing after it.

  When Jaffe felt it was in deep enough, he looked at Mohammed and said, “You know the information I want.”

  “Go to hell!” Mohammed screamed.

  Jaffe raised the Guardian Protection Devices canister so that Mohammed could see his thumb slip under the safety mechanism and said, “I can’t go to hell today. I still have so many more things to do.”

  The shrieks of wretched agony were instantaneous. So horrible were they that even the two Libyan intelligence officers burst into the room, certain that the Americans were either filleting or disemboweling their prisoner alive.

  As Jaffe sent another shot of pepper spray into the terrorist’s penis, Mohammed screamed at the top of his lungs for it to stop, his body absolutely rigid from the pain. Tears streamed down his face, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

  Jaffe had no intention of letting up. The pain this piece of human waste was prepared to unleash upon America was nothing compared to what he was being subjected to at this moment. Jaffe had never known hate as strong as he felt it right now. What god could ever support what al-Qaeda did in His name? Jaffe wanted nothing more than to watch this man die, because he knew if anybody was going to hell, it was Mohammed bin Mohammed.

  Jaffe let up for a moment only to watch the man’s body go slack against his restraints and his chest heave for air.

  Then, without warning, he gave the man another blast.

  Mohammed’s body tried to leap off the chair as if it were a thousand degrees.

  Jaffe should have worn earplugs. Mohammed had the lungs of a lion.

  He kept the button depressed on the pepper spray, determined to drain every last drop into the monster in front of him until in addition to the screaming he suddenly heard another sound—gunfire.

  Eighty-Nine

  With his phony diplomatic Libyan passport, Abdul Ali found the security at the twenty-four-story Libya House easily navigable when he arrived. His Libyan dialect was flawless and he demanded that the man behind the reception counter pick up the phone and dial the ambassador’s office straightaway.

  When the ambassador’s assistant answered, the receptionist spoke several words, waited for a response, and then, satisfied, hung up.

  After being offered a seat and told the assistant was on his way down, Ali berated the man by asking how anyone could sit at a time like this. Libyans placed a high value on courtesy, and to berate another in public was considered extremely rude. The receptionist was not stupid. He’d met this man’s type before, and he knew that regardless of what his passport said, he was no diplomat. In fact, he’d met enough arrogant intelligence agents to know that’s exactly what this man was. The receptionist had long ago developed a theory that there was a farm somewhere back in his homeland where they grew these insufferable assholes by the truckload.

  Moments later, the elevator doors opened and out strolled the ambassador’s assistant accompanied by a rather large man who Ali assumed was part of Libya House’s security detail. The assistant walked over to the reception desk, chatted briefly with the man behind the counter, and then studied the visitor’s passport, scanning through it a page at a time. Finally he made his way over to Ali.

  After exchanging the customary Libyan greetings, the assistant offered his hand and introduced himself. He did not offer the passport back. “I thought I knew all of the Haiat amn al Jamahiriya operatives stationed in New York,” he stated. “Why is it we haven’t met?”

  Ali remained calm, as well as somewhat aloof—the attitude he felt best suited the role he was playing. “Because I am not stationed here,” he replied. “I’m based in Washington.”

  The assistant brushed the explanation aside. “You stated you have business to discuss with the ambassador?”

  “Correct.”

  “I hope you can appreciate that with everything going on today, the ambassador is quite busy. Why don’t you share the nature of your business with me and I will pass it along.”

  Ali feigned a smile. The weapons he had hidden beneath his specially crafted suit weighed heavily on his tired body. “If the business I have been sent to conduct was at the level of an ambassador’s assistant, I would happily do so, but my visit is for the ambassador’s eyes and ears only.”

  The assistant was not fond of the visiting intelligence officer’s smug attitude. “And why is it that we were not alerted to your arrival?”

  Ali was more than prepared for the assistant’s questions. “At our diplomatic missions abroad, especially when it concerns matters of state security, it is not uncommon for messengers to arrive unannounced. You and I both know this. Now, please stop wasting my time and direct me to the ambassador.”

  “Interesting,” continued the assistant, determined to scrape some of the arrogance off this man. “But what is uncommon is for a messenger to show up in the midst of such unfortunate circumstances. I would think it more appropriate to have waited before making yourself known here. This is not a time for the U.S. missions of Arab nations to be holding clandestine meetings.”

  Ali nodded his head. “Waiting, of course, would have been a more prudent course, but the information I bring for the ambassador is extremely time sensitive.”

  “I’m sorry,” replied the assistant, “but without some idea of what this is in regard to, the ambassador cannot be disturbed. We have been placed on our highest security alert.”

  Ali smiled, and this time it was for real. “Tell the ambassador, Tripoli no longer wishes this facility to be used as a hotel.”

  “A hotel? What are you talking about?”

  Looking at the detail agent, Ali said, “Radio the agent with the ambassador right now and relay my message. Tell him that the Americans and their package are no longer welcome here.”

  The security agent looked at the stunned assistant, who, though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, nodded his head and gave his assent.

  The agent spoke into a microphone in his sleeve, and once a response came back over his earpiece, he turned and whispered it to the assistant.

  Looking at Ali, he reluctantly replied, “The ambassador will see you now. Please follow me.”

  Ninety

  Sizing up the two men as they ascended in the elevator, Ali thought about taking them right there but forced himself to wait. His attack was only moments away.

  Getting the ambassador’s undivided attention turned out to be the easiest part of the entire plan. Once the man had foolishly dismissed both his assistant and his security team from his private office, Ali stopped answering questions and began asking ones of his own.

  Once he had everythi
ng he needed, he forced the ambassador to call his assistant back into the office. When the smarmy little man appeared, Ali fought the urge to make his death long and painful and instead broke his neck, delighting in the rather delicate pop as it finally snapped. There was no other sound in the world like it, nor was there any greater feeling of power than to take another’s life with your bare hands.

  A little too high from the kill, Ali took a few deep breaths and relaxed. The next several minutes had to be perfectly smooth and without incident. He had come too far to fail now. Only one floor above where they now stood, the ambassador had confirmed that Mohammed bin Mohammed was being held and interrogated. The thought of how the Troll had betrayed him, had betrayed al-Qaeda once again, entered his mind, but he quickly pushed it away. There would be time to deal with him later. Right now, Ali needed to concentrate on the task at hand. There were still the ambassador’s security guards to deal with and then the two Libyan intelligence officers and four Americans guarding Mohammed.

  Knowing he was about to be killed, the ambassador made a run for the door and began yelling for his bodyguards.

  He had taken less than two strides when Ali felled him with a single silenced round. The damage, though, was already done. The security agents came charging into the room with their weapons drawn and upon seeing the ambassador and his assistant sprawled on the floor, opened fire.

  Thankfully, their shots went wide as Ali dove for cover behind the desk.

  The security agents managed to get off several more rounds before Ali found his opportunity, rolled from behind the desk, and took out each of them with exceptionally clean head shots.

  With the bodyguards down, Ali leapt from behind the desk. He had no idea if the shots had been heard by anyone else, but he didn’t want to wait around to find out. This would be his one and only chance to free Mohammed bin Mohammed, and either he would succeed or they would both die trying.

  Ali quickly found the items he needed, and once he had retrieved his diplomatic passport, he wheeled his little surprise toward the freight elevator.

  One of the few pieces of useful information he’d been able to squeeze out of the ambassador as the man blubbered for his life was that the Americans had welded their stairwell doors shut and that the only way to gain access to their floor was via the freight elevator. Though they were many things, stupid was not one of them. They had gone to considerable lengths to ensure their security. And who could blame them? The last thing they wanted was for someone like Abdul Ali to spoil their party.

  After prepping the door upstairs with the remaining plastique he had hidden inside his specially made belt, Ali returned to the ambassador’s floor and using the man’s keycard, swiped it through the card reader and summoned the elevator.

  When the elevator arrived, Ali looked up and saw that the hatch had been welded shut. He smiled. The Americans really had thought of everything. But he doubted they had a contingency plan for what was about to happen next.

  Swiping the card again on a reader inside the elevator, Ali punched the button for the next floor, positioned his surprise aboard, and headed for the stairwell. Things were about to get very interesting.

  Ninety-One

  From the streaks of blood on both the floor and along the wall of the elevator, it looked as if the ambassador had stumbled inside after being shot and had managed to swipe his keycard and press the button for their floor before collapsing.

  “Don’t touch him!” commanded Jaffe as the two Libyan intelligence agents rushed into the elevator. Until he knew what the hell was going on, he wanted everything taken very slowly.

  That plan, though, fell to pieces when the agent they called Hassan leaned down close to the ambassador’s face and could hear the sound of breathing. “He’s alive!” he shouted.

  Jaffe gave a rapid series of orders and after sending Harper for the medical kit and telling the two Libyans to back out of the elevator, he stepped inside to have a look for himself.

  Shouldering his weapon, Jaffe carefully approached the ambassador to check on his condition. The man was in bad shape, and what Hassan had thought to be the sound of breathing was actually the sound of the ambassador choking on his own blood. If they didn’t do something and fast, the man was going to die.

  Calling Rashid, Hassan, and his two other marines back into the elevator, Jaffe placed them along both sides of the ambassador and prepared them to carefully turn the man while he supported his head. On three, they began to roll him over, and that’s when Jaffe realized he hadn’t been cautious enough. The ambassador was indeed choking on his own blood, but he was also desperately trying to warn them not to move him. By the time Jaffe realized what was happening, it was too late.

  The improvised device rigged to the ambassador exploded in an enormous fireball, ripping the roof off the car, shearing the cables, and sending it plummeting into the basement.

  Ninety-Two

  Upon hearing the explosion, Ali ran back up the stairs and detonated a second device, blowing the welded door right out of its frame.

  He stepped into the freight area and saw the blackened elevator doors standing open, but nothing else. It was like an enormous gaping mouth with smoke billowing from its throat.

  His weapon up and at the ready, Ali began his search for Mohammed. Moving quickly, he swept into the first three offices along the hall and finding them empty, moved on. In the fourth, he found a television set, a cooking area with a sink as well as a table, chairs, and some couches, but nothing more.

  The next door was marked with both the English and Arabic words for washroom. He pushed the door open and quietly slipped inside. Having looked inside every stall and confident that they were all empty, he exited and continued his search. There were only about five offices remaining. The next was empty, as was the next after that. As Ali quickly moved toward the last three rooms, he found the next one he approached was locked. A handwritten sign identified its function as a sterile treatment room and listed a set of instructions to follow before entering. Abdul Ali kicked it open and inside found a surgical table, a medical recovery recliner, a wheelchair, various first aid supplies, and right in the center of it all a high-end Nova Medical Systems dialysis machine.

  The next room was the nerve center of the interrogation operation. The walls were covered with dry-erase boards, maps of the Middle East and Africa, multiple photographs of the al-Qaeda hierarchy, as well as various organizational and relationship diagrams. Desks were laden with audio and video equipment as well as monitors tuned to cameras that must have been positioned all over the floor. Seeing the image on the largest monitor, Abdul Ali turned and fled.

  Bursting into the room across the hall, he was ready to weep with joy. There, bound to a small, wooden chair was Mohammed bin Mohammed. Next to him, unconscious and severely beaten, was a man Ali had never met but most definitely knew of. The last he’d heard, the man had been in Canada. He had no idea Mohammed’s nephew, Sayed Jamal, had been taken prisoner.

  As he rushed to Mohammed’s side, he saw that he was naked from the waist down, his penis red and swollen beyond belief. “What unspeakable acts have they done to you, my brother?” he asked as he removed a knife and begun cutting away the restraints.

  At first, Mohammed didn’t want to believe his eyes. His body was so racked with pain and his mind was clouded by the horror of his torture. Surely it was some sort of trick. Then he saw Ali holster his weapon and remove a knife to help cut him free. It was Ali, wasn’t it? At this point, he didn’t know what to believe. “Is it you?” he asked, his voice hoarse from his screaming.

  “Yes, Mohammed, it is I. I have come to take you home,” replied Ali.

  Looking in the direction of his nephew, Mohammed asked, “And Sayed?”

  Ali reached over and felt the man’s pulse. It was weak, too weak. “I’m sorry. There is nothing we can do for him. He is not going to make it.”

  Mohammed hung his head. “At least his family is already waiting for him in pa
radise.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Americans took each one of his children and killed them. Then they took his wife. They made us both watch it on television, hoping it would force me to tell them what they wanted to know.”

  “And what did you tell them?” asked Ali, concerned that everything he had been through, everything they had risked might now be for nothing.

  Mohammed’s face was a block of implacable granite. “I told them nothing. Even while they killed Sayed’s family one by one, I told them nothing.”

  Ali looked at Jamal once again. His trouser legs had been sheared away, and his knees were a mass of bloody pulp. “What did they do to him?”

  “They used a drill,” he croaked.

  Ali had no intention of making his colleague relive any more of the brutality. “Can you stand?” he asked as he helped Mohammed to his feet. “I have a safe place I can take you.”

  Mohammed shook his head. “My pain is too great. They stopped my dialysis as a part of the torture. You’re too late. Soon I will follow Sayed.”

  Ali shook his head. “I have a hotel room near here with a small dialysis machine. You are not going to die, my brother. Not today. But we must get to safety quickly.”

  “I fear I won’t be able to walk very far. I have grown too weak.”

  Ali thought about it for a moment and then told Mohammed not to move. Leaving him, Ali went back out into the hallway and made his way to the dialysis room.

  After unfolding the wheelchair, he rifled through the cabinets until he found a pair of surgical scrubs big enough to fit Mohammed. He gathered a few additional supplies and was putting them all in a small bag, when he heard a voice from behind him say, “Don’t even think about moving.”