“Yes, sir. At fifty yards the silencer’s range limitation won’t be a factor. Looks like there’s a little spot near the infil point that might work,” said Hodges, pointing to a rocky outcropping.
Mackey pressed the remote and showed a closer image of the two small houses and large barn. “Cascaes will lead team one into the larger farmhouse. Moose, Ripper, Jensen, McCoy, Stewart, Santos, and Smitty—you’re team one. I’ll take team two into the barn. It’s the most likely place to keep the Sarin. The bombs are heavy. Not the kind of thing you carry into the living room. Team two is Perez, Cohen, O’Conner, and Woods. We’ll all be in chemical suits. We move through nice and slow, eliminate all targets, and secure the bomb if it’s there. The chem-suits are just a precaution, but once we confirm the Sarin, we’re blowing it in place, not taking it with us. Ernie P., I know how you love blowing shit up. Make sure you have enough C-4 and a long-ass fuse. We don’t want to be anywhere near that Sarin when it detonates. Jones and Koches are team three. You’ll get that small building in the back. Satellite and drone intel confirms at least six Hajjis have been in and out of the main house. We haven’t seen activity in and out of the barn or smaller house, but that doesn’t mean no one’s there. If we do this right, we’re through the doors at oh-four-hundred and dusting off twenty minutes later.”
Cascaes stood up and walked to Mackey. “We’re going in unrehearsed, but this should be a straight forward mission. This is sensitive, gentlemen. We’re taking down targets on an ally’s soil without their permission. This is not an official operation. The birds will be on the ground waiting for us to get out and dust off. Prowlers can’t stay on station more than twenty minutes without raising questions. We move silent and efficiently. Hodges, you’re going to be alone out there on overwatch. Watch your six, and make sure you get your ass to the chopper when it’s time to go. Team one is on chalk one—teams two and three on chalk two. For now, we stay here in the hanger until it’s time to go. Check comms and weapons, eat some delicious MREs, rack out, and be ready to haul ass.”
Chapter 32
Qatar – Sunset
Abdul Aziz thanked Allah for seeing him through the border crossing without incident. The caravan of cars had arrived a few at a time at the small warehouse located only a couple of kilometers from the stadium. They had driven past it on their way to the new safe house, and Abdul had felt his heart pounding in his chest when he saw the stadium for the first time. It was a massive structure and would be filled with so many Infidels. He felt immense pride in his choice of targets.
Once they arrived at the warehouse, the men ate a simple meal of food they had brought with them, and unrolled bedding that had been left for them at the warehouse. They would sleep and try to keep focused on their mission and eternal reward. They fought off any of their hidden personal fear with inspirational images of their leader, Abdul Aziz, leading them into Paradise. Abdul had failed to mention to his men, including Rasheed, that he had no intention of dying with the rest of them. He was too important. He would get everyone into position, leave the stadium, and make the call from a safe distance.
Once the men were settled in for the night, Abdul called Rasheed on a new disposable cell phone.
“Assalamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullaahi wa barakato,” said Rasheed quietly from a small motel.
“Wa alaykum assalam,” replied Abdul. “You are safe?”
“Yes. A small motel in a remote location. An hour from the target. Everything is fine. The vehicles are right outside our rooms. We’re watching them. I don’t think there are any other guests at this motel. I await the final instructions.”
“Excellent. The match begins tomorrow night at six o’clock. You will attack at seven, so the stadium here is already full. We will attack shortly after you. Our attacks must be close together.”
“We’ll meet again in Paradise,” said Rasheed, thinking about his friend Jamal.
“God willing,” said Abdul, even though he wasn’t planning on being in Paradise for quite a while yet.
Chapter 33
Al Udeid: 0300 Hours
The men had woken up from a few hours of uncomfortable sleep on the hanger floor and quickly packed up their gear. They hustled to the stealth Black Hawks and took their positions inside. The crew chief gave the pilot a thumbs-up, and the pilot radioed the hanger security officer to open the hanger doors. The massive doors slowly slid open, and the pilots started their rotors. Only the SEALs had ever been on stealth helicopters before, and the rest of the team was amazed at how quiet they were. The machines moved forward and lifted off out of the hanger with only the slightest of sub-woofer background noise.
The two Black Hawks rose and banked southwest staying fairly low at two thousand feet. Once they were over the desert, they dropped even lower and flew at 150 knots towards their target. Thirty minutes after they took off, two Moon Dog prowlers blasted down the runway and shot off into the moonless night. They hit five hundred knots at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet only a moment later. By the time the birds were approaching the target, the Prowlers would be high overhead, making sure that the birds were invisible, and that no one on the ground could detonate any explosives electronically.
The pilot’s voice on the lead helicopter spoke quietly into the crew chief’s headset. “Time to target, sixty seconds, over.”
“Roger, sixty seconds, over.” The crew chief yelled at Mackey, who had a full chemical suit on with night vision goggles over it. It was cumbersome. “Sixty seconds!” he yelled at Mackey, who gave him a thumbs-up. The rest of the men returned the hand signal.
The two helicopters touched down gently on the sand, the doors slid open, and the men jumped down and began moving quickly towards the compound, except Hodges, who hustled towards the rocky tower about halfway between the landing zone and the compound. He climbed quickly to the top of the rocks and began settling into sniper mode.
Cascaes’ team moved single file towards the farmhouse. The area was silent. Only the sounds of their boots crunching across baked ground made any noise. The laser sites on their M4s made red dots on the door of the house as they approached. Cascaes looked at Moose and Ripper, who instantly moved around the back of the house to find the rear door.
Mackey and his four-man team moved to the barn, looking like aliens in their chemsuits and night vision. Cohen carried a small sniffing device in his left hand that would alert them to any Sarin in the air. In his right was a silenced Beretta. The rest of them carried M4s.
Jones and Koches slipped silently over a stone wall and headed to the small house in back of the farmhouse.
High overhead, the Moon Dogs were screwing up cell phone service for anyone within ten miles who might be awake at four in the morning.
“In position,” whispered Moose from the rear door of the main house.
“Go quiet,” replied Cascaes. He turned the doorknob slowly and pushed. It was bolted from the inside. So much for a quiet entrance. He stepped to the left and Raul Santos kicked the door as hard as he could below the knob. The old wooden door splintered, and the door flew open. McCoy, Stewart, Smitty, and Cascaes piled into the room. Santos took a knee and checked behind them. From the rear of the house, Moose and Ripper shattered their door and moved up a flight of stairs immediately in front of them.
In the front of the house, a guard was sleeping on a couch near the door. He woke up when the door was kicked open, but by the time he reached for his AK47, he had been double-tapped by McCoy right through his heart. They all hesitated and listened. Still no sound.
Moose and Ripper reached the top of the stairs and stepped into a small hallway. There were two doors on each side of the hall. Moose took the first one on the right and Ripper the first on the left. They each entered quietly. Moose found himself in an empty bedroom and backed out. Ripper was also in a bedroom, where a man was fast asleep. It didn’t give him any pleasure to kill a defense
less man, but Ripper put two rounds through the man’s head after making sure it wasn’t Abu Mohamed.
He backed out into the hallway and nodded to Moose, and the two of them walked to the next two doors.
* * *
Out by the barn, Ernie P. slowly pulled the barn door open while the rest of the team had guns at the ready. Jon Cohen held out the sniffing device but didn’t get any reading. “It’s safe,” he whispered. Mackey stepped into the barn with Lance Woods. A quick scan proved to them that they were in a large empty barn.
“Shit,” mumbled Mackey. “Search thoroughly. Check for cellars and look up the stairs in the loft.”
The team moved quickly, rummaging through every possible hiding place and coming up empty.
“Hey,” whispered Jon to Mackey. He pointed to a large empty crate. “No reading on the crate, but there’s maybe a trace by that pole. Maybe they spilled some a few days ago. Barely registers but there was Sarin in this barn.”
* * *
Earl Jones and Jake Koches moved quickly across a small courtyard to the rear house. Jake signaled that he was going around the front. Earl nodded and moved around the corner looking for the back door. As he turned the corner, he found himself face to face with a teenage boy, maybe sixteen or so, holding an old shotgun. The boy raised the shotgun and Earl just stared at him. Images of the kids in the truck cab flashed in his brain and he froze. In his earpiece he could hear Eric Hodges yelling at him.
“Earl!”
The shotgun blast threw Earl almost three feet onto his back. A split second later, Hodges fired a round that took off the top of the kid’s head.
“Overwatch to team three, Jones is down!”
Jake Koches had just gotten to the front door when he heard the blast, and he kicked the door open and bolted into the house. The tiny stone house was only one floor, with two rooms separated by a knee wall. Abu Mohamed had been sleeping on a couch in the rear part of the house when the shotgun woke him up. He grabbed his AK47 and pointed it at Koches, who fired two quick rounds through his chest and then a second two through his head from across the house. He raced through the rest of the house checking for other hostiles, desperately trying to get out the back door to Earl Jones. Jake made sure the rooms were clear and then opened the rear door, taking a knee and looking around the courtyard. He saw the dead kid and scanned the yard. Nothing. He moved quickly out of the house and found Earl on his back coughing.
“Earl!” he yelled as he dropped to his knee. In his earpiece, Hodges spoke quietly. “Jake, I’ve got you covered. Rear yard is clear.”
“Earl?” repeated Jake, grabbing Earl’s Kevlar vest. The shotgun blast had hit him square in the chest. The ceramic plate over Earl’s heart had stopped three of the four slugs, and the fourth had gone through Earl’s right bicep without hitting any bone or artery.
“I’m good. I’m okay,” said Earl, dazed.
Jake pulled a pressure bandage out of his cargo pant pocket and tied off Earl’s arm. “The house is clear. I took out one hostile, but I think it was the target. Let’s boogie to the bird.” He helped Earl to his feet, retrieved Earl’s weapon, and the two of them jogged back to the Black Hawks. “Skipper, team three is exfil. Target is KIA, over.”
Mackey was still in the barn when he heard Koches. There was no Sarin and now no one to ask about it. “All right, that’s it. Team two is out. We go through the rear house on the way out. I need a picture of the KIA over there. Team one, you clear?”
Inside the house, upstairs, Ripper and Moose answered the question with repeated bursts from their M4s. “We’re clear.” Cascaes and the men downstairs waited for Ripper and Moose to come down the steps, and then the eight of them ran back towards the helicopters.
Mackey and his team took a quick picture of what was left of Abu Mohamed and then raced back to the extraction zone. “Hodges! Get your ass back to the bird!”
Two minutes later, two Black Hawks silently flew across empty desert back to Qatar airspace.
Chapter 34
Langley
Dex had spoken to Mackey and Cascaes after they landed back in Qatar. They were all disappointed at missing the Sarin and losing the opportunity to interrogate Abu Mohamed, but at least the world had one less illegal arms dealer peddling death. After the debriefing, Dex went home and showered and slept for five hours. When he returned to the office, his mind was racing. He called Kim.
“You wanted to see me?” asked Kim as she walked into Dex Murphy’s office. “Morning. Have a seat. I think I might have an idea about the Qatar target.”
“Something other than Al Udeid?” she asked.
“I was reading a week’s worth of newspapers last night after living here all month. I came across a story about FIFA.”
“FIFA? Like the video game my son plays?” she asked.
“No, the actual Football Federation. Soccer, whatever. So listen—the Emir of Qatar is a huge soccer fan, right? He builds this new high-tech, air-conditioned stadium and allows alcohol in the special sports fan zone to attract an international soccer crowd. He really wants the big games played in his country. So, the Executive Committee of FIFA decides where the World Cup is played every year. Qatar is getting the big game. Coincidently, the guy that runs the executive committee has a ten-year-old daughter who magically has two million dollars put into her bank account right before the decision is announced.”
Kim nodded. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I think I remember hearing about that a few weeks back. It isn’t a new story. But the Qatari World Cup isn’t for another few years.”
“Right—Not until 2022. I’m not saying that this is about the World Cup, but it just made me think about the stadium. I looked at their schedule. Man U is playing Spain in two days. Those teams will pack the stadium. The stadium holds forty-five thousand plus. Would make for a helluva target, and the game will be broadcast live. If the NWJ wanted to make a big splash, that would do it.”
Kim put her hand over her mouth. “Jesus. This whole time I was so focused on the airbase…”
“Not just you. We all were. But if they were to successfully detonate a Sarin bomb inside a packed stadium it would be a disaster.”
Kim thought for a second. “Look, we don’t trust the emir, but there’s no way he’d allow this to happen in his stadium. He wants the big games, you just said so yourself. He wouldn’t allow this to jeopardize the World Cup and the future of soccer for his country. We need to bring him into the loop. We’ll need Qatari security to assist.”
“Kim, when the target was our airbase, it was our problem. If it’s the stadium, you’re right, we’ll share the intelligence, but it’s their problem. Our guys don’t run security for a foreign soccer stadium.”
She frowned. “You’re going to leave the safety of forty-five thousand fans to the Qatari police? They’re going to need our help.”
He shook his head. “It won’t fly, Kim. We’ll alert the emir, but that’s it. The team doesn’t get involved. I’m going to talk to the boss and tell him about this possibility. We still don’t have anything solid that points to the stadium, just my crazy hunch.”
“Your crazy hunch that I happen to agree with, Dex. We have to warn them immediately.”
Dex called Kim back into his office right before the end of the day. It had been another exhausting day, working with the analysts who were still pouring through thousands of records trying to garner some information that might support their theory on the stadium attack.
When Kim entered Dex’s office, she looked as exhausted as he did. “What’s up?”
“POTUS called the emir, personally. After he told him about our theory and the possibility of Sarin being used, the emir called his security council together. The President suggested that maybe they cancel the game, but the emir asked the President if we’d cancel the Super Bowl because of a terror threat, and that was that.
The emir is having his Security Council mobilize the army to help with gate security.”
“The entire Qatari Army is what, eight thousand troops?” asked Kim.
Dex nodded. “They’ll have three thousand troops stationed all over the stadium, inside and out. They’ll search everyone coming in.”
“And if they blow the Sarin in the security line?” asked Kim.
Dex shrugged. “They’ll do the best they can. They’re not canceling the game. And the emir’s right—we wouldn’t cancel the Super Bowl.”
“Our people are better at this, Dex.”
“It’s not going to happen. Save your breath. The boss spoke to the President, and the President says the emir is handling it. Thanked us for the tip. We’re out of it.”
Kim rubbed her eyes. “This sucks, Dex.”
“Go home. Get some sleep, see your family, and take tomorrow off. Come in late on Thursday.”
She stared at him coldly. “Just in time to watch Fox News cover the mass casualties at the stadium?”
“Go home, Kim.”
She got up and headed out.
Chapter 35
The Team Page 12