Sobhy shouted at Smythe over the wailing sirens, the helicopter blades and the voices of the prisoners.
“The prison is under security lockdown due to a threat of a possible riot. Please drop to the ground and assume this position, Mr. Smythe, and ask your men to do the same. No one is exempt, even the warden. Look at him!”
A prison guard standing a few feet from the Knighthawk signaled to the pilot to kill the engine.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Smythe was half squatting, not yet decided whether to obey the command or not. “We don’t have time for this—these men need to be on that helicopter now if we are to make it on time. Sobhy, ask the Warden to call it off—”
“He can’t, not even God! It’s triggered automatically and is operated remotely by the Ministry of Interior from Qena. Please Mr. Smythe, you’re endangering everyone!”
Smythe looked at his watch and did a quick mental calculation. It was six forty-two a.m. He had less than three minutes to board the helicopter with the prisoners and head to the nearby Wadi Abu Shihat military airport. A Gulfstream IV jet was fueled up and ready to fly them to Naples in under two hours and forty-five minutes. That would leave them a little under fifteen minutes to transfer the prisoners to Scampia Park where the exchange would take place.
“Major Sobhy—run me through what’s going to happen in the next ten minutes.”
“The Ministry is now monitoring the inside of the prison via closed-circuit cameras. They’ll perform protocol verifications with the security personnel inside. In about five minutes a police helicopter will fly over the prison to make sure there are no escape attempts and everyone in the courtyard is lying face down. Anyone moving or not on the ground will be shot point blank including you, sir.”
Smythe thought hard then made a snap decision.
“I need a favor.”
“I wouldn’t do anything stupid, Mr. Smythe.”
Smythe scanned the scene. The Knighthawk was ready to fly, and the Delta Force men were hovering over Nabulsi and Madi, who had instinctively dropped flat on their stomachs with their hands on their heads. He looked at Sobhy and assessed one last time if he could trust him. To determine if the Egyptian was capable of doing what he was about to ask of him.
“In the next forty-five seconds my men and I will get on that helicopter and fly out of here. I need you to run back inside the prison and speak to whoever you need to speak to and explain to them not to fire on us once we are airborne. If at any point we feel threatened, we’ll fire first. Do I make myself clear, Major Sobhy?”
“You are insane, Mr. Smythe—you and your men will get killed, I guarantee it!”
“A lot more people are going to die if we don’t get on that helicopter right now. Every second counts, so you need to trust me, Major.”
Smythe turned and bellowed his instructions to the Delta Force men. “In the Knighthawk! Now!”
“Up, up, up, up!” A Delta Force operator shouted at Nabulsi and Madi as another one tugged at their shirts to get them to rise and start heading to the helicopter. The Jordanians clung to the ground like turtles. The prison’s security protocol had been hard-coded in them. Smythe had to act fast to break that circuit.
He squatted on the ground, at eye level with the two men.
“Do you want to spend the rest of your lives in this miserable place?”
Their eyes spoke for them.
“Your only chance is to get in that helicopter now.”
It worked.
The helicopter rose vertically in the sky. Smythe tried to see if Sobhy had gone back inside the prison to deter any possible interception as he had asked of him, but the mini-sandstorm the helicopter had stirred had reduced visibility to zero. Within a few seconds, The Devil’s Throat was dwarfed in scale as it transformed into a mere aerial view.
In the chopper, Smythe explained to the crew what had just happened on the ground, as the Delta Force operators looked at him with growing admiration. Even though Delta Force was instrumental in assisting the FBI to set up its own Hostage Rescue Team in 1983, over the years, a spirited competition had grown between them. This sibling rivalry was for now suspended inside the helicopter.
The crew chief and gunner of the Knighthawk, who had clearly never seen any live action, listened with wide eyes as Smythe alerted them of a possible intercept in the next five minutes.
Smythe felt Nabulsi’s hand on his shoulder trying to get his attention in the midst of the excitement.
“Are you really going to set us free, or will you take us to Guantanamo?”
“Look me in the eyes, Mr. Nabulsi, because I’ll only say this once. Someone out there has authorized you to be set free. My job is to get you both to your final destination safe.” He turned his attention to the pilot, who was describing their trajectory to the airport.
Smythe kept his ears open to what the Jordanians were saying, confident they were still oblivious to his command of Arabic.
Nabulsi held his hand out and looked to the sky to pay tribute to his maker.
“Alf hamd we shukr leek ya rab! Alf hamd we shukr leek ya rab!” He let out a deep sigh and glanced at Madi, who was mute as a mouse and a hair away from fainting. Nabulsi shook his hand and hugged him.
“Mu oltelak ana men set seneen enohom ma rah yetkhalu ana? Mu hayk ana oltelak?”
Smythe kept looking away to avoid raising their suspicion. Nabulsi was reminding Madi how six years ago he had assured him they would never be abandoned.
It was one of the Delta Force men who first glimpsed the tiny Egyptian helicopter on the horizon even before the Knighthawk pilot confirmed it.
“We have a fast-approaching bogey at eleven o’clock. A Black Hawk.”
Instinctively, the gunner armed the Hellfire missiles and clutched the trigger, waiting for further instructions.
“Black Hawk, Black Hawk. This is Knighthawk 4-3-2 of the Multinational Force and Observers. We are authorized to fly over this airspace by order number Alpha-Bravo-Oscar-Lima-0-6-1-1-2-0-1-1, issued by the Egyptian armed forces. We are cleared to land at Hotel-Echo-2-6, Wadi Abu Shitat airport in under eight minutes. Please identify yourselves.”
The crackling of the radio and the ensuing silence was instantly ominous.
“Black Hawk, Black Hawk, please identify yourselves immediately. You’re coming in awfully tight.”
Nothing. The pilot turned to Smythe. “Your call, sir.”
“What’s our response time if they fire on us?”
“Nil, sir. They’re too damn close. If they release a missile it’ll take us out. Whoever shoots first lives, that much I know.”
Shit. Shit. Fuck. This wasn’t how this mission was supposed to pan out. Smythe looked out at the Egyptian Black Hawk and pondered its unknown intentions. His eyes moved erratically between the unidentified helicopter and the young gunner’s hand clutching the missile trigger. A quick decision was required.
The captain spoke again. “Agent Smythe. Now or never.”
The Black Hawk was no longer just a dot on the horizon, but a clearly visible foe in the sky with the potential of ending their lives in a few short seconds.
“Try one last time.” Smythe was pushing their fate to its limit. Large beads of sweat trickled from his forehead down his shirt collar.
“Black Hawk, Black Hawk. We intend you no harm, please identify yourselves.” Nothing again. No response from the oncoming aircraft.
Smythe took a deep, resolute breath, his heart sprinting at some insane tempo.
“I hate this damn job.” He put his sunglasses on and looked away. “Take them out.”
The voice of the Egyptian pilot breaking the silence in the aircraft breathed life into Smythe.
“Knighthawk 4-3-2. This is Black Hawk November-India-Sierra-Romeo 7-1-0, Egyptian Police, Department of Prisons. You are all clear to land at
Hotel-Echo-2-6, Wadi Abu Shihat Airport. Apologies for the radio silence—we had another communication going on at the same time with Major Sobhy. He sends his regards. Have a safe trip.”
Smythe dug his face in his hands and exhaled far more air than he would have thought his lungs could store. The Black Hawk changed direction and before long disappeared from the sky.
FIFTEEN
Sunday, November 6, 2011, 3:02 a.m.
Manhattan, New York
Blackwell paced around, fire crackling in his chest, obsessively glancing at his watch every few seconds knowing they were just an hour away from Seth’s first deadline at four a.m. If his demands were not met by then, he would kill four hostages every ten minutes until five a.m., after which he would kill everybody else.
Images of Albert Voss on his knees, begging for his life before being shot in cold blood rippled through Blackwell’s heart. Four good men executed in the line of duty. How were they ambushed? Seth was calm and composed when he killed them. There wasn’t an ounce of remorse or guilt in his voice after he did it. He’d shown them he didn’t just talk about his threats, he made true on them.
Delusional, that’s what Blackwell had been when he’d hoped Seth sparing the day care in Detroit would set the tone for the rest of the operation. Later when the bodies are retrieved, somewhere in Virginia or Maryland or DC, four women will get the call every FBI spouse has been dreading since the first special agent was killed in 1924: “We regret to inform you your husband has been killed. He died valiantly in the line of duty to protect other innocent lives. He joins the rank of the few dozen agents the FBI has lost along the years. While his valor will be acknowledged in public, due to the sensitive nature of the operation, the Bureau cannot reveal any details about the circumstances of his death.”
Blackwell recognized the futility of tormenting himself with thoughts of things he couldn’t control and turned his mind elsewhere. At the table, Nishimura was back chewing that damn gum as if nothing had happened. Blackwell remembered a time when he too was able to accept death as a normal part of this job. Young and callous and stupid were qualities you only appreciate once they’re gone.
Eddie Grove sat a few chairs away from Nishimura, his boot-clad feet on the conference table and his notebook on his lap like a lover. Even though he had come across as the coolest customer in the room, he too was now glancing at his watch as the minutes to the deadline ticked away. Having stepped in the minds of terrorists as part of his job, maybe Grove already knew how all this would pan out in the end.
Monica, who had been on the phone for most of the past hour whispering with Benny Marino, was also unnerved. Back in the day, she used to smoke when things came down to the wire, and if she still did, she must have been dying for a long satisfying drag to take the edge off.
Robert Slant dashed in, phone in hand and laptop under his arm, hardly able to contain himself. Blackwell realized Slant and Natasha Shaker hadn’t been in the room for at least a few hours. Slant’s eyes were gleaming. He turned to Monica, who was still on the phone.
“I have something.”
Monica signaled him to sit down.
Blackwell whispered to Slant,“What’s up?” but he had a game face on and wasn’t going to tell until he had the whole room listening.
Eddie Grove raised his eyes a few degrees, then put his feet down and stopped typing.
Slant dropped in his chair between Nishimura and Grove, his feet tapping on the floor rhythmically. He grabbed a pen and began twirling it between his fingers while his other hand tapped on the table in perfect sync.
Nishimura stopped chewing his gum. He and Grove focused their attention on Slant.
Blackwell’s eyes burned through Monica impatiently. Hang up the damn phone and let’s hear what Slant has to say.
When she was done, she strode back to the table. “Where the hell have you been, Bob?”
“Iyad Malki.”
“He had what? Who? What are you talking about?”
Nishimura came to his aid. “Iyad Malki is the third Iraqi suspect on the MI5 list who was in contact with Prince Omar Al Seraj back when he was a student in London. The only one of the three on that list who is still unaccounted for.”
Slant observed Nishimura with admiration, as if he was noticing his existence for the first time.
“Exactly. We have a solid lead.”
Monica moved closer, sat down, then motioned to Blackwell to sit down. “Go ahead, Bob.”
“A couple of years ago, the German Bundeskriminalamt ran a joint week-long training event in Wiesbaden, which I attended. One of their senior agents, Oliver Fruehauf, spoke there. He specialized in refugee communities living in Western Europe.”
Monica’s eyes widened. “I remember that. I got called back to DC and had to miss it.”
“Fruehauf spoke about how the profiles of Iraqi refugees trickling into the UK had changed by the late nineties. No longer just the wealthy liberals and disgruntled Shiite, but an increasing number of young, radicalized Sunni Islamists. Many with active ties to Al Qaeda were slipping in with less than honorable intentions.
“After 9/11, these guys couldn’t operate under Britain’s tough new antiterrorism laws, so they were on the move to more lenient places like Scandinavia or Germany.”
“We checked all over Europe for Iyad Malki and found nothing,” Blackwell said.
“Yeah, here’s the thing, many Iraqi refugees trickling into Germany from the UK changed their identities. The Germans were running a blind scheme that would make it impossible for anyone to trace these guys back.”
That didn’t sound very intuitive or smart for a law enforcement agency, Blackwell thought.
“Why?”
“According to Fruehauf, many of those hard-core customers had fled Saddam’s persecution. A new identity protected them from the Iraqi secret service. Some of the best intel on that country came from these guys. Even the most radical nut cases were rooting for the same thing we all wanted—the quick demise of Saddam’s regime.”
“Surely the Germans kept a record of their original identities anyway?”
“Alex, we’re talking about the dying days of the Saddam regime. The Europeans were spooked by Bush’s saber-rattling and desperate to avert another war in the region. The Germans knew that leaving a paper trail linking these guys to their old identities could expose them to the Iraqis and end a valuable source of intelligence. They were hoping for a quick, bloodless coup or someone to assassinate Saddam, but not full-blown war.”
Blackwell pressed on. “How was this identity-change scheme implemented anyway?”
“The Germans issued preconfigured identity packages within the right age groups and ethnic backgrounds, and then had the Iraqis who wanted to opt in pick one at random.”
“Like out of a hat?”
Slant stopped for a beat as if to conjure a mental image of what Blackwell had just said.
“Yeah, something along those lines. The packages had German-notarized foreign birth certificates and letters of approved refugee status. The Iraqis used these identities to start new lives, get jobs, apply for driver’s licenses, open bank accounts and eventually become full German citizens.”
Blackwell was still skeptical. “The Germans willingly relinquished knowledge of these guys’ original identities?”
“They didn’t want to give up that information, but they knew they couldn’t do it transparently, again, to stay a step ahead of Saddam’s goons.”
“How’d they get around it?”
Slant smiled as if he’d been waiting for someone to navigate to this point of his story.
“They protected the information under seal with the highest office in the land, the office of the Bundespräsident—the German president. Although his role is mainly ceremonial, it’s also nonpartisan and immune to political pressure. The idea was that if one of
these guys ever got in trouble with the law, the investigating agency could at its discretion and as part of its criminal checks access that database of changed identities. It’s not a standard part of criminal checks across Germany. Only those in the know were aware of it, and to access that information they need a subpoena from a federal judge.”
Blackwell had understood. “The information on the changed identities was not available electronically at the local or federal levels. That’s why when we checked with the Europeans for Iyad Malki and his known aliases across Europe, nothing came up.”
Monica jumped on that. “How soon can we get a subpoena from a German federal judge to find out Malki’s new identity?”
“Best-case scenario—if the president gets on the phone right now with the chancellor and asks her nicely, maybe a day or two.”
“We don’t have that kind of time.”
“We don’t need that time, Monica.” Slant was smiling like the cat who knew something nobody else did.
Monica fired him a dirty look to cut to the chase.
“I tracked down Oliver Fruehauf and have been on the phone with him for the last hour. He told me this identity-change scheme only lasted a few years, and officially ended with the fall of Saddam.”
Blackwell did the historical check in his head. “So 2003, right?”
“Yeah. Which means at best only a few thousand Iraqis changed their identities since the scheme started in ’ninety-nine. Of those, only about four or five hundred were migrating horizontally from other Western countries. Those coming specifically from the UK were about one hundred to a hundred and fifty.”
Nishimura looked up from behind his computer. “Iyad Malki was a student at LSE until ’ninety-seven. MI5 lost track of him in 2002.”
“Exactly. So I thought if my hunch was correct and he did slip into Germany and changed his name, it had to have happened between 2002 and 2003. Here is where it gets interesting.” Slant paused for a sip of water, the entire room mesmerized and at his command.
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