King's Ransom

by E H Jennings

  Dust swirled upward and rain started to fall as they began the two-mile hike. They could see faint lights in the distance.

  As they moved into the night, so focused were they on the lights in the west, on the compound they sought to siege, no one noticed Mick swinging the Land Cruiser in a large arc around the lake. He was heading north, in the exact opposite direction of the third rally point.

  • • •

  Lying flat on his stomach in the deep underbrush, Sayid Moussafi watched them through a pair of binoculars. There were three, not five as the Arab had initially surmised. They were at 1900 meters and closing.

  Sayid typed a message and sent it. The reply came ten seconds later:

  Dig quickly.

  Rolling out of the brush, Sayid climbed the slope and found the shovel. He then obeyed the Arab’s command and plunged the blade into the earth.

  • • •

  The meeting was held on the second floor, in a large room adjacent to Hassan Abdullah’s office. Once two bedrooms, the dividing wall had been sledgehammered, creating a space big enough for important gatherings such as this one.

  They had all filed in and taken their seats with minimal chatter. This was a business meeting.

  The Arab was sitting next to Abdullah and two other senior Hamas members on one end of the table, while the contingency from the National Syrian Coalition sat along one side, the representatives from the Free Syrian Army on the other.

  It was like a middle school lunchroom. Everyone sitting with their own kind.

  There were eleven men in total. The Arab studied them from behind steepled hands. The NSC had sent its Secretary General, Mostafa Safur, along with three senior members of the general council, Sabah Farzat, Yaser Gourani, and Ahid Yasri—three men that would never fully understand their significance.

  The FSA’s deputy chief of staff from the Aleppo Governorate sat at the far end of the table, flanked by two regional commanders, one from Aleppo, one from Homs.

  As Abdullah began the proceedings, the Arab focused his mind. His memory was photographic, bordering on eidetic, and he snapped a series of mental images. Ten men, all seated. Six to his right, four to his left. It was an interior room, no windows. There were two doors, one behind him and one to the right, both nine paces from his seat. The table looked like real wood but it wasn’t; it was some sort of laminate that felt like plastic. He ran his fingers over its surface and blinked slowly.

  The images were playing in his mind when a deep voice beckoned him from his reverie. “The brainchild of the Damascus operation,” Abdullah was saying. “…Faisah…inside intelligence… our greatest weapon…victory draws near…”

  Suddenly, ten sets of eyes were resting on him.

  Abdullah’s wide face smiled expectantly. “Go ahead, Faisah. Tell them about the American hostage.”

  The Arab nodded solemnly. His time had come.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Wow, I really missed this shithole,” said Mendez, breathing heavily as they continued to climb. The slope wasn’t steep but the terrain was tortuous and the soil was sandy, making every footfall cumbersome. “Hamas sure picked some damn fine real estate. Super cozy.”

  As they came to rally one, hidden by a thick copse of trees and bushes, they stopped to catch their breath. They spoke to one another through the bone mics, keeping their voices low.

  “There it is,” said Sampson, pointing to the large structure looming against the dark horizon. The smaller building next to it could barely be seen above the trees.

  “You know where you’re headed?” Carson asked Mendez.

  He nodded. “When I’m in position, I’ll say the word. Then I’ll start splittin’ turbans.”

  Carson watched the big man hulk out of sight and checked his watch—2053. They needed to storm the gates no later than 2100.

  He looked at Sampson. “You good?”

  “Yeah,” she said, still staring at the compound.

  “Sampson?”

  She turned to him.

  “I’m trusting you with my life and the lives of my family.” There was a long pause and he never looked away. “Are our interests still… temporarily aligned?”

  She was solemn. “They are.”

  Now he was the one looking away, toward the lights glinting among the trees. “You better get going.”

  She studied him a moment longer then moved out of the bushes. She was almost out of sight when her voice crackled through the bone mic. “Good luck.”

  Carson reached rally two when he heard movement to his right. It was a soft rustle, a subtle attempt at concealed movement, but he knew they were footsteps. He pressed the rifle against his shoulder and angled toward the sound, keeping low. The sounds were slight but they were there. And they were getting closer.

  He found cover and pulled the sig off his ankle. It had a suppressor and would be far stealthier than the HK. He slipped his finger inside the trigger guard when suddenly the movement was behind him. He pivoted hard, sweeping the gun at chest level. What he found were two smiling faces.

  “You’re gettin’ rusty, soldier,” said Mick, decked out in full battle gear, an HK similar to Carson’s slung across his shoulder. “A real MP operative would’ve never fallen for that.”

  Carson flipped them both the bird. “Fuck you.”

  The plan had been impressively simple. Stonehill had not one, but three private jets. One was in Gstaad, another in Rome, and the third was in Bern. Right after the group left Stonehill’s chalet, Stonehill himself had made the hour drive to Bern, flown his G500 to Paris, picked up Connor, and flown him into a private airstrip east of Aleppo.

  From there Stonehill had met Mick north of the lake and made the exchange. Soon after, Connor and Mick were both gunned up and ready to join the fight. They had found rally two without issue.

  Connor was still smiling when he tossed Carson a fresh can of Copenhagen. “Come on, big brother. Let’s do this shit.”

  • • •

  The rifle had been buried in an airtight case, pristinely protected from the elements. Sayid had no idea how long it had been buried or how the Arab had done it without drawing attention, but he supposed it was time to stop questioning the man. There were never answers.

  He had it mounted on a tripod and watched as two others emerged from the woods and joined the assault party. Where the hell they had come from he didn’t know, but somehow the Arab had been right again. There were now five, just as he had predicted.

  One of the men split off from the others, hustling hard to the north and west, toward Sayid. The man passed within a hundred yards of him; Sayid kept the crosshairs on his head the entire time.

  When the man moved beyond his sightline, Sayid swung the rifle back to the east and found the others were no longer there.

  They were moving in a dead sprint toward the compound.

  He aimed his gun toward the men on the rooftop and made the call.

  • • •

  “Forty yards,” said Connor, into a separate frequency.

  “Two sentries at the south entrance,” added Mick. “Anything to the north?”

  “I’ve got eyes on one. Won’t be a problem.”

  Connor had swept to the northwest and was advancing hard on the compound, just as Mick and Carson were from the opposite direction. It was a dual assault. Despite being dramatically outgunned, they had the element of surprise and had to make it count.

  Carson switched back to Mendez’s frequency. “Fifteen yards, closing fast,” he said. “Enemy contact in five seconds.”

  For a moment, there was nothing.

  Then his mic crackled again.

  “Targets…engaged.”

  • • •

  Raul was not happy. He had been on night watch every night for the last three months, save the few nights Faisah had volunteered to take his place. It was an extremely unpleasant task, made worse by the fact that everyone was drinking and he wasn’t.

  As if he needed more reaso
n to be aggravated, the little man named Madi had been following him around like a gnat for the last hour.

  The diminutive Iraqi was a genius; they all knew that. He certainly had no utility as a warrior. Abdullah had brought Madi on as an analyst at the behest of top Hamas leadership. He weighed barely a hundred pounds and had palms as soft as a baby’s ass. The fact that he was still alive spoke poignantly of his shrewd mind.

  Raul lit a cigarette and paced the roof’s edge. He offered Madi one but the little man declined, opting instead to continue educating Raul on issues he cared nothing about.

  Then he saw it.

  For the first time in three months, Raul saw movement on the grounds.

  He had just lifted his arm to point when his head exploded.

  Standing next to him, Madi opened his mouth to scream but never got the chance. The bullet entered his mouth and connected with the back of his throat, promptly removing the back half of his skull and scattering his formidable brain all over the mud brick rooftop.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Sayid’s timing was perfect.

  The Arab’s phone buzzed as chaos erupted on the rooftop above them. The men at the table stopped talking and looked around, confused. Calmly, the Arab reached inside his kaftan.

  In a single motion, he pulled two Kimber 1911s and launched the lightweight table off the floor.

  Hassan Abdullah was the first to die as he swung the .45s in a tight arc, both hands firing. Six men were dead before the Arab took return fire. He propped the table against himself, using it as cover, and the first several rounds deflected. But he knew the laminate wouldn’t hold for long.

  Rolling to his right, he slid in behind Abdullah’s rotund corpse and returned fire. The shot from his right hand missed the mark, but the Kimber in his left hit the Free Syrian Army’s deputy chief of staff in the forehead.

  Gunshots rang out, and for several moments pandemonium consumed the room. One of the FSA commanders had an assault rifle and both remaining NSC members had pistols. The only thing was—no one knew who to shoot.

  The confused pause came to a violent end as the FSA commander held the trigger on his AK. The Arab dove behind a metal filing cabinet as bullets flew past his head and imbedded in the wall, dislodging chunks of mud brick and filling the air with dust.

  The NSC members had also sought cover, but one had been hit in the throat and was now lying out in the open, his hands clamped around the injury; blood poured from between his fingers.

  The last council member fired several rounds in the direction of the commander, causing him to fall back, and the Arab saw his opportunity. With his opponents on their heels, he sprung from behind the cabinet and fired two shots simultaneously, one from each hand.

  The result was lucky, if not miraculous.

  Both rounds found their mark. Both men fell limp.

  The man that had been struck in the throat was still writhing, a horrible gurgling sound coming from deep in his gut. The Arab slowly walked over to him. “I’m truly sorry,” he said, then put the man out of his misery.

  The sudden blow came from behind and drove the breath from his lungs.

  When the men hit the floor, Hassan Abdullah’s sheer mass broke several of the Arab’s ribs and knocked both pistols out of his hands. As Abdullah clawed at his throat, the guns scattered away harmlessly.

  It quickly became apparent that Abdullah was not only bigger, he was far stronger. In a matter of seconds he had the Arab pinned helplessly to the floor.

  “How dare you betray me, Faisah!” he screamed, blood rushing from the wound in his head.

  The bullet, despite being fired at close range, had only grazed him, carving a nasty gash along the left side of his face and knocking him unconscious. Blood spattered the Arab as Abdullah climbed onto him, his hands thrusting violently. The blood was warm and the Arab felt nausea rise in his stomach as he tasted its saltiness.

  The men thrashed. “You will die!” Abdullah screamed. “I will drive the life out of you! You will die a traitor’s death by my hand!”

  Despite arching his back and thrusting as hard as he could with his legs, the Arab could not wrench himself free. Abdullah was simply too strong, his weight too substantial. His fat hands finally closed around the Arab’s throat.

  The Arab forced his eyes open, but the room started to fade.

  Abdullah’s face contorted into a bloodstained smile. “Goodbye, Faisah.”

  • • •

  Sayid was not a trained sniper, but he found his skills were serviceable. The Arab had provided him with twenty rounds; by his count, he had killed eleven.

  When he used up the final magazine, he laid the rifle over and drew the Kel-Tec from his waistband.

  Sprinting back to the compound, he remembered the Arab’s final command:

  No matter what happens, get to the dungeons.

  • • •

  With Mendez laying heavy cover, breaching the Hamas compound had proven relatively easy. Carson and Mick shot the two sentries on the south side of the building, while Connor snuck up behind the single guard on the north and broke his neck.

  Carson and Mick entered the foyer and cleared it before moving down the hallway toward Connor’s entry point.

  Connor came in through a window and flipped up his NVGs. He cleared the room, then double tapped a cell member running toward him in the hallway. Both shots hit the man in the chest, killing him instantly.

  “I’ve killed a dozen but they’re pouring off the roof,” Mendez called out. “Watch your six! These ragheads are rowdy.”

  “Ten-four,” said Carson, moving down the empty hallway. The lighting was poor so he kept his night optics down. Everything glowed green.

  “One dead,” said Connor. “I hear movement upstairs.”

  Mick and Carson had split up and Mick was clearing an office when someone lurched out from behind a desk. The man fired a single shot, which Mick dodged, then slammed the butt of his rifle into the side of the man’s head, knocking him unconscious. He then pumped a round into him.

  “Make it two,” he added.

  Carson moved in a crouch down the hallway. As he drew near the stairwell, he too could hear movement coming from the second floor. “We have to clear it,” he said. “We can’t risk going into the tunnels and taking fire from behind.”

  “Ten-four,” answered Connor.

  Carson made it to the stairs first. He stayed low behind the railing and listened. Something was wrong.

  “They’ve gone quiet.”

  Ten seconds later, Mick knelt down beside him. They kept listening and kept hearing the same thing: silence.

  “I don’t like it,” Mick said. “I don’t like it at all.”

  Carson laid flat and belly crawled to the base of the steps. The stairs were empty and the second floor appeared deserted. “Where the hell are they?”

  “Wait,” said Mick, raising a hand. “What’s that?”

  It was subtle, a slight pitter-patter coming from the top of the steps. Carson had already crawled back behind the railing so he didn’t see anything.

  But Connor did.

  He came sprinting into the foyer and screamed, “Grenade!”

  All three men hit the deck.

  • • •

  The explosion shook the floor just enough to knock Hassan Abdullah off balance. When it did, the Arab seized what was likely his only hope of survival.

  He rolled hard to his right, fighting Abdullah’s vengeful clutches, then turned harder back to the left. It rocked Abdullah backward far enough to free one of the Arab’s hands, which went straight to Abdullah’s waist.

  The Arab’s hand closed around the knife when Abdullah realized what was happening. He grabbed the Arab’s wrist and squeezed hard, digging nails into flesh.

  When the second explosion hit, the building shook so badly Abdullah was tossed onto his side, allowing the Arab to pull the knife free of its sheath.

  Abdullah lurched, but the Arab was quicker.r />
  He plunged the knife into Abdullah’s gyrating gut and thrust upward, puncturing and severing the man’s peritoneal cavity. He stepped to the side as Abdullah fell into the floor, prostrate and dying. He considered being merciful and ending his life in a humane way, as he had the NSC member, but he remembered all the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas and men like Hassan Abdullah.

  He remembered his family.

  So instead, he stood over him and watched silently as the terrorist died in a tomb of his own making.

  The Arab took out his phone and snapped three pictures, one of each of the dead council members, and sent them to the one person he trusted more than anyone else in the world. Perhaps the only person he trusted.

  He then raised both pistols and moved into the dark hallway.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  It wasn’t the first fragmentation grenade that got Carson, nor was it the flash bang that came after it; rather, it was the third blast that did him in.

  Connor had alerted them just in time to avoid certain death as the first grenade rattled down the steps and exploded on the landing. Carson had tackled Mick into a room along the hallway as shards of the steps, floor, and walls blew violently in every direction; Connor had hastily taken cover in a storage closet.

  All three men were back on their feet when the flash bang came down the steps, closely followed by a dense hoard of Hamas fighters.

  Though the flash bang grenade had done its job and temporarily stunned them, they had rifles shouldered and were sending dead men sprawling when the third grenade flew over the front line.

  Mick and Connor were far enough back to suffer only minor abrasions, but Carson had pressed in closer as the fight started. The explosion lifted his feet off the floor and flung him against the wall, his head ricocheting off a door facing.

  He couldn’t tell if he was still dazed from the flash bang or just concussed from the head trauma, but the whole room seemed to move in slow motion. Mick and Connor were applying pressure, spraying HK rounds at the soldiers descending the steps and taking heavy return fire. All Carson could do was lay lifeless and watch.