by Sean McFate
“You okay?” It was Boon over my earpiece.
“Give us the word and we’ll send those buggers straight to Allah,” Wildman said. I knew his finger was on the detonator trigger. I closed my eyes and considered my next words carefully, since they might be my last.
“Perhaps,” I began (I’m fine. I’m in control.), “you could tell the prince I come in peace, but that I need to see him at once. His life is in danger. Other men will come who are less . . . deferential.”
“I will pass along the message.”
“No,” I said, reaching for a cookie in a show of exaggerated calm, “you will tell him now, since he is here.”
Chapter 22
Silence, except for the sharp intake of Boon’s breath in my ear. Then Wildman whispered, “You’re fucking me.”
I waited, watching the room. Everyone looked so tense that I couldn’t help but smile. Chords played in my head, Gottschalk’s “A Night in the Tropics,” an orchestra tangoing with itself. I’d guessed right, that much was clear, and the infectious swooping rhythm of the notes were the sound of my happiness, but also my caution. Gottschalk, a nineteenth-century Cajun pianist who took Europe by storm, died at forty in the Empire of Brazil, at the height of his powers.
I popped a cookie into my mouth, to show that I was at ease. It was truly delicious, surprisingly so. It tasted like marzipan, with a soft center, baked within the last few hours. If I closed my eyes, I could taste belle époque Paris on a balmy midsummer’s evening. But I wasn’t about to close my eyes. Not even to blink.
“Good, right?” It was the guard on Abu Nadel’s right.
“Absolutely,” I said, tossing another one in my mouth, as the prince removed his turban and black robes and sat cross-legged across from me, as if this were merely a casual business meeting. I wasn’t fooled by his ease. The tension hadn’t left the room.
“Abu Nadel, as you call him, was once a baker in Aleppo. He has laid in quite a stash of supplies.”
“My compliments to the chef,” I said. “But surely he didn’t bake these for me? He didn’t have time.”
“No,” Farhan said. “You’re right. He didn’t bake them for you.”
Farhan did not look like a Saudi princeling but rather an Army Ranger. He was over six feet tall and stacked. His beard had the dark black of a man in his twenties, yet his eyes watched me like a man double that age.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Wildman said over my earpiece. He didn’t need to see the prince to know he was part of our world. He could hear it in his voice.
I started to respond in code that I was fine. Then I noticed. Farhan wasn’t eating. I put down my third cookie, hoping the food wasn’t poisoned.
The prince chuckled. “The sweets are fine, but I won’t eat while others go hungry, even though this extravagance was prepared to celebrate my return.”
Poor Abu Nadel, I thought, to have his great gift spoiled. “You recently arrived?”
“In the night, hours before you. The road was more dangerous than I anticipated.”
And it was only getting worse.
“Why?” I said, shoveling in another sweet. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.
“Why return?”
“No. Why grow that hideous beard?”
Farhan smiled with ease. “I came to Syria nearly two years ago. There were twenty of us then, old friends, mostly sons of the men who worked for my father. We would gather at our madrassa in Riyadh. One Friday after prayers we met a man our age, a boy, really. He had grown up in Homs, Syria, but fled the Shiites. The situation, he said, was very bad. Civilians being gunned down in the street, children starving. People burned alive.”
“Assad is ruthless.”
“That night, all twenty of us declared jihad to save our brothers. It was easy to find sponsorship in the Kingdom. A week later, we were fighting in the Farouq Brigades.” He paused, but he didn’t look away. “A month later, only three of us remained.
“That’s when Abu Muhammad al-Adnani found me. He commanded the Emni, the ISIS special forces. He told me I was God’s chosen.”
I had heard of the Emni, but thought it was battlefield legend.
“The next day I was driven to Adnani’s camp in the desert outside Raqqa. There were a dozen recruits: Moroccans, Egyptians, a Tunisian, an Indonesian, two Germans, a Canadian, a Belgian, and a man from Virginia. They dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and told us, ‘We are here.’ We thought to ourselves, ‘What’s going on?’ When I looked more closely, I realized there were cave dwellings around us. Everything aboveground was painted with mud and invisible to drones. Each dwelling received two cups of water a day. The purpose was to test us.”
He reached for a glass of water.
“Then the training began: hours of running, jumping, push-ups, parallel bars, crawling. By the second week, we were each given an AK-47 and told to sleep with it between our legs until it became like a third arm. One day during training, the Tunisian collapsed from exhaustion. They beat him, but he could not stand. So they tied him to a pole in the desert and left him there. We never returned.”
Savages, I thought.
“We were sent to Aleppo, where I killed many enemies of the Caliphate. But I came to realize that the jihad was a farce, and I a murderer.”
A guard put a hand on his shoulder in sympathy. Farhan didn’t flinch. He hadn’t looked away. He was testing me, like the desert had tested him.
“I fled, knowing the punishment was death. Outside of Aleppo, I ran into a group of refugees. They cried and begged me to spare their lives, as if I were a monster. I helped them.”
I nodded. I knew that transition. I had made it myself. But I’d never been a monster. Right?
“We moved northeast, sprinting and crawling toward Turkey and freedom. We were ambushed. I tried to fight our attackers off, but they were too many. Most of the refugees were slaughtered. When I awoke three days later, I was chained to a bed in a Riyadh cell, my father standing over me. Six months, I played the dutiful son, but I thought only of the friends I had abandoned here.”
I nodded again. I knew that feeling, too, that you’d abandoned the only things that mattered in your life. “You came to fight?”
“I came to rescue them.”
“Then call your father.” I handed him my sat phone.
“You don’t know my father.”
“It’s the only way.”
“My father is head of Saudi intelligence, black-ops division,” Farhan said. He was watching for my reaction. I didn’t have one. “He is a killer.”
“He wouldn’t offer a million dollars to have you back, alive, if he didn’t care.”
The prince scoffed. “A million dollars is nothing to my father. I had a second cousin who went on a $20 million Paris shopping spree and skipped out on the bill. Her second uncle paid her debts to preserve the family name. The year before I left, my father spent $100,000 in bribes to get our family slaves travel visas into the EU. Yes, I said slaves. Are you surprised? Rafik”—he motioned toward the baker—“was born a slave. His family has served us for generations. It is the Saudi way.”
“Call your father.”
“He will kill her.”
“Who?”
Silence. For the first time, Farhan glanced away.
“Who will your father kill?”
“His wife,” a voice said from behind me, and I turned to see a beautiful young woman with feline eyes, a delicately hooked nose, and a cascade of black hair.
“You’re Iranian,” I said, before I could stop myself. Iranians were Persian, not Arabic, and like all ethnicities, they had distinctive features, if you knew what to look for.
“I’m American,” she said. “From Los Angeles.”
She had a modern woman’s attitude about her social place. But even more important, she had a very swollen belly.
“How long?” I asked.
“One week, if I make it full term.”
Farhan was st
aring at me again. He seemed to think this was a superpower. It was growing tiresome. “Will you help us?” he asked.
“Your father won’t kill her. Not if she’s carrying your child.”
“That’s why he’ll kill her,” Farhan said.
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Because he’s already tried. The men who ambushed us on the road to Turkey weren’t ISIS. They were working for my father.”
I didn’t believe it. “Are you sure?”
Farhan nodded. “My father’s majordomo was with them. He was directing them. I saw him on the battlefield, and I recognized his white suit. Even in the dirt, he always wears a white suit.” My heart sank. Farhan must have seen it falling down my chest. “You know him?”
I nodded.
“He hired you?”
“Worse,” I said. “I called him two hours ago. He’s on his way.”
Chapter 23
The ISIS militant’s torso exploded, flinging viscera at the Iraqi army prisoners lined up against the wall. Milliseconds later, a loud thunderclap echoed in the valley. The prisoners flinched and waited, their eyes still closed. They thought the executions had begun.
The next shot hit the second jihadist’s center mass, pulping his insides. The carcass thumped to the ground.
The other militants spun around, looking for the source of the gunfire. Some of the prisoners opened their eyes, wondering why they were alive. Others waited, holding their breath. The lead jihadist started barking instructions, but his head exploded, followed by another thunderclap.
The militants ran for their Humvees, forgetting they had guns. Forgetting they could have gone ahead and shot all the prisoners, since it would have taken only a few seconds more. They were hardened fighters, but the explosion of their commander’s head had terrified them as nothing else had in the last two years.
The ISIS trucks kicked up stone as they accelerated away from the execution area and down the mountainside. The lead truck blew up first. A second later, the next two blew up, not from a single-source explosion, like a tank round, but simultaneous multiple explosions. The last two Humvees were shredded, their armor plating perforated like tin foil. The trail vehicle rolled off the ridge ledge on fire, tumbling end over end until it hit the valley floor and exploded.
“Hoo-AH!” Jase Campbell yelled, assessing the battle damage through his binoculars. “Good snipering, Black Jack. Way to move them down off that ridgeline into range of our heavy weapons.”
“Roger that,” Black Jack said flatly, as he heaved his fifty-cal sniper rifle off its bipod. He didn’t look toward the men he had killed. They were gone. On to the next job.
“Fucktards,” Campbell said, as he watched the prisoners scamper off, some looking to the sky in thanks. “They think Allah saved their sorry asses.”
“When it was the mighty hand of God,” Murphy said.
“Don’t I know it.”
Campbell watched the prisoners scatter. He had mixed feelings. He wasn’t sure they wouldn’t be trying to kill him and his fellow Americans six weeks, six months, six years from now. But at this moment, they were allies. Sort of.
“Let’s move out!” he bellowed. The three Vipers peeled off the landscape as if they were a part of it, their camouflage so effective, and made their way down the ridge to the kill site. As they approached, Campbell saw a militant injured and struggling.
“Halt,” he said. He stepped out and shot the man in the chest, then head. That’s what he liked about being private sector: sensible rules of engagement. That terrorist could have been wearing a suicide vest, to be detonated as a final act of religious nihilism. Campbell doubted it. Most of these militants were armed with old rusty Kalashnikovs. But you could never be too sure.
“All clear?” he asked the team, as he stared down at the dead man.
“All clear,” they confirmed, one after another.
He checked the sun. It was high. His watch read 1500.
A ring tone sounded in his earpiece. The timing of those office jockeys was always exquisite. It was like they were watching, Campbell thought, although he knew they weren’t. That was another reason he liked this job.
“Falcon Six, over.” Ten seconds later he nodded. “Wilco,” he replied and hung up.
“Command?” Murphy asked, striding through the carnage.
“Fun’s over,” Campbell said. “Duty calls.”
“Operation Urgent Vigilance,” Colonel Brooks said in his briefing voice. Forty officers and a handful of NCOs crammed into the briefing room in the Tampa, Florida, headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM). Large monitors hung on the walls, streaming in more briefing rooms from U.S. embassies and bases around the Middle East, making the total audience closer to 120.
“This is a flash mission,” Brooks continued, “and a top NSC priority.”
Pressed against a back wall was Andrea Lewis. She was the only woman in the room, and the youngest person, at thirty, by far. Dressed in tailored navy blue pants and a lavender blouse, she looked like a business executive. No one would have guessed she was a West Pointer with two combat tours in Iraq with U.S. Army Intelligence. Now she was a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, doing intel work at CENTCOM. Her husband was Special Forces, and they decided both couldn’t be in the military with two small kids. They knew too many army couples who had to leave their children with grandparents for fifteen-month tours, again and again. It was no way to raise a family, she thought, and she resigned her commission. Jack, her husband, was currently in Afghanistan for six months.
“Defense Intelligence Agency,” Brooks continued, “has unconfirmed intel that a freighter left Pakistan a little over forty-eight hours ago. It may be carrying nuclear weapons. Destination is believed to be Yemen, possibly al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or an affiliate.”
The officer next to Lewis let out a small gasp. This was a nightmare scenario they had war-gamed but hoped would never happen. Not all the planning exercises had happy endings.
“We’re looking for a group-three freighter, aft pilothouse, somewhere between Karachi and Yemen.”
Hell, Lewis thought. That’s like looking for one specific pickup truck in Texas. She hoped they had a license plate number.
“We don’t know the ship’s name or flag, and can assume the crew already changed them at sea since leaving their last port of call.”
Damn.
“Also, we can assume they switched off their AIS tracking device. In other words, they’ve gone dark.”
Double damn.
She eyeballed the map. Yemen had about 1,200 miles of coastline, almost as much as the United States eastern seaboard.
“CENTCOM is scrambling every available asset. Our job is to corroborate the intelligence so we don’t end up on a wild goose chase. We’re retasking satellites to cover the AOR. CIA operatives are on the ground in Pakistani ports, searching for details.”
Hoping to get lucky, more like it, Lewis thought. An operation like this was no doubt locked down. But not watertight. She wondered how it had sprung the leak that brought them all here. Somebody out there was in for a life-changing reward . . . if this whole story wasn’t bullshit. Which it probably was.
“Yemen is the problem,” the colonel continued. “It’s in a nasty civil war, so we have few assets there. We are reassigning all available HUMINT to this mission. If anyone is talking about this in the Middle East, I want to know. SIGINT, work up an emitter profile for this ship ASAP, and get it out to the fleet. Locate every ship that matches the profile, and we’ll whittle down from there.”
We’re looking for an ordinary ship in 1.5 million square miles of ocean, Lewis thought. We’re going to have to do a lot of whittling.
“Everyone else, I need you to search the databases for corroborating intel reporting. We have twenty-four hours, assuming a standard sailing speed. We’ll regroup in six.”
Not enough time, Lewis thought. Not even close. Better call the babysitter.
The Wahhabi stood on a small rise outside Sinjar, watching the convoy pass the ISIS blockade around the small city. He had watched for twenty minutes as they negotiated passage. He watched money being exchanged and fingers being pointed. He recognized the convoy’s leader, a human smuggler, and he knew Allah had provided him with an opportunity. It would be a failure of faith not to seize it.
He turned, and a fighter jet screeched overhead, coming up on him suddenly from behind. The jets were active, but they were more sound than substance, a sign of weakness and fear. He couldn’t see the bombs, but he could feel them exploding around the mountain. He could see the death clouds rising below its narrow spine.
There was talk among the mujahideen of Jordanian fighters bombing Muslims.
Haram! Forbidden! Most unclean! Jordan was the puppet of infidels, an Islamic nation joining the Americans and Israelis in killing fellow Muslims. Haram! The pilots should be burned alive for their sins.
He knelt, cupped his hands in supplication, and offered a prayer:
Allah is the greatest, who has guided me to this place. You created me and I am Your slave-servant. Let me be Your sword! Let me be Your Prophet! Continue to guide me to the man I seek. Bestow upon me the courage these unholy pilots lack. The courage to smite Your enemies face-to-face so that they may know Your judgment, and know themselves lacking. I seek refuge in You from my greatest evil deeds. So forgive me for what I am about to do.
The Wahhabi stood up and walked into Sinjar.
Chapter 24
The majordomo was clearly in a bad mood as he wiped the dust from his white linen suit. It was the same one he’d been wearing two days ago, but he’d had it pressed. He must have been staying at a five-star hotel in Erbil, sipping single malt Scotch in the sky bar, while I’d been crawling in a ditch. Still, the road from Erbil to Sinjar was rough and dangerous, even for a pampered majordomo with a guard of twelve black-ops operatives, which was why the man snapped his fashionable red handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his hands of the metaphorical road.