The Secret Soldier jw-5

by Alex Berenson

  “If I were Aziz, I’d be mad they named such a lousy street after me,” Gaffan said.

  “He’s got plenty of others to choose from. Anyway, he’s dead.”

  “You think they could be keeping Kurland here? Seems almost too quiet.”

  Wells understood what Gaffan meant. The neighborhood was poor but not chaotic. Wells guessed most of these houses were filled with the migrant laborers who did the menial jobs the Saudis wouldn’t. In times of crisis, they would buckle down and hope to be ignored. Armed men would stand out. Apparently, the police were making a similar calculation and focusing their attention on neighborhoods where jihadis had a stronger presence.

  Six blocks on, Aziz Street dead-ended at an electrical substation. Wells made a U-turn, pulled over beside a house better lit than its neighbors, knocked heavily on the front gate. A man stepped out. He was too dark to be Saudi. Indian, probably. “Salaam aleikum.”

  “Aleikum salaam.”

  “I’m looking for number thirty-eight Aziz.”

  “This is number eighty-one. Thirty-eight is that way”—the man pointed toward downtown. “And on the other side. Near the mosque.”

  The location made sense. The mosque would draw traffic, helping to hide the jihadis’ coming and going. “Is the mosque number forty-two?”

  “No, maybe thirty-two, thirty-four.”

  “Do you go there?”

  The man was no longer interested in the conversation. He backed away with slow, careful steps. “Good luck, mister.”

  WELLS ROLLED TOWARD THE mosque’s narrow minaret. Four buildings down from the mosque, a twentysomething man sat on the flat roof of a two-story house, his legs dangling over the front. He could have been trying to cool off. But he didn’t seem relaxed. He shifted his attention up and down, from the helicopters to the Jeep and back. To the northwest, the center of the city, a shot clipped the night, a big high-caliber round. Then another. The kid popped up, looked toward the downtown office buildings.

  Wells drove without slowing, past the house, the mosque, and the storefronts. Three blocks on, the street hooked right, then merged into a grimy avenue. “You think it’s the one with the guy on the roof?” Gaffan said.

  “I think we need to find out.” Wells swung onto the avenue, past a long, low warehouse, and then turned right and right again, circling the warehouse. Aziz Street was three blocks down.

  A police helicopter picked them up again. Wells slowed. It slowed, too. It was barely two hundred feet up, its rotor wash rattling the Jeep’s windshield. Wells didn’t see how they could get close to the house with the helicopter on them.

  Then he had an idea. He drove past the mosque, didn’t turn onto Aziz. Halfway down the next block, he pulled over. The chopper stayed on them.

  “I’m getting out. I’ll walk to the next corner, go left. You loop past the warehouse again, come back, park a block past the house on Aziz. Don’t rush it. Let the chopper stay with you. If he follows me instead, I’ll keep walking this way. In that case, make the loop, come back, pick me up a couple blocks down.”

  “You want to use the copter to distract the kid?”

  “I’ll go in the back of the house. He’ll be focusing it. Give me a couple minutes, let the chopper get bored and peel off, then come in the front.”

  “What if it doesn’t get bored?”

  “Come in the front anyway. Worst case, we’ll go out the back, ditch the Jeep.”

  “Worst case, they close off the neighborhood and trap us.”

  “They’re spread thin. They’re running roadblocks all over the city and they have no reason to focus on us in particular.”

  Gaffan shrugged, conceding the point. “You gonna take your rifle?” They’d stowed their vests and M-16s in the spare tire compartment but kept their Glocks under their seats.

  “No.” Wells reached under his seat for his pistol and silencer, slipped them in a white plastic bag imprinted with a cartoon chicken and the logo of Al Baik, a chain of popular fast-food restaurants in Jeddah. “Nobody ever thinks the guy holding a bag of chicken is a threat.”

  Wells stepped onto the street. The spotlight fell on him with almost physical force. Gaffan shifted into the driver’s seat, and the Jeep rolled off. Wells shuffled along the curb, as if he had nowhere to be—I’m just a guy heading home to eat some fried chicken in my concrete living room. The helicopter hesitated, its light shifting between Wells and the Jeep. It decided on the Jeep and moved away.

  As the helicopter’s noise faded, Wells heard another half-dozen shots echoing from downtown. The police were busy tonight. No doubt the roadblocks had snared more than one unlucky criminal. Wells turned left on the nameless street just past Aziz. The chopper circled away, following Gaffan. Wells had a partial view of 42 Aziz, enough to see that the sentry on the roof was watching the helicopter. He walked past an alley that dead-ended at the back-right corner of the house. Two blocks up, he turned, paced back, timing his steps against the slow rotation of the spotlight tracing Gaffan. His window was narrow at best. In a few minutes, the police in the helicopter would either call in cars to stop the Jeep or find another target.

  Then the spotlight twisted away, toward downtown. A problem. Either the helicopter had broken off contact or Gaffan had gotten lost somehow. Either way, Wells had to go in now, while the sentry was still distracted.

  He jogged into the alley, the gown bunching around his legs. A step before the wall, he jumped up. In one motion, he laid the Al Baik bag atop the wall and wrapped his hands around the rough concrete. He dug in, pulled himself higher, all those push-ups paying off, and crawled on top of the wall. A dog barked from somewhere across the street, but the rest of the neighborhood stayed quiet.

  The house had a small concrete yard littered with plastic water bottles. A Honda motorcycle was parked in the corner, hidden from the street. Heavy shades covered the windows, allowing only faint light into the yard. A television inside played what sounded like an Arabic news channel. Wells pulled the Glock from the bag and jumped down. He landed on a plastic bottle and pitched forward, his fingertips grazing the concrete before he pulled himself up as nimbly as a running back keeping his knee off the turf. The bottle skittered behind him. The television muted. A man inside the house said, “What was that? Go check.” Then yelled, “Usman? Did you see anything back there?” From the roof, a voice yelled, “No, Hassan!”

  “Check again. Make sure.”

  Wells had a problem now. Killing these men wouldn’t be difficult. But he still didn’t know if they were the right targets. He had no proof that 42 Aziz Street was connected to the kidnappers — or even that this house was actually 42 Aziz.

  Narrow alleys ran along the sides of the house. Wells picked his way to the back-right corner and flattened himself against the rough concrete. The house was twenty feet high, and the guy on the roof, Usman, would have to lean almost straight over the corner to see him. Wells unscrewed the silencer and slipped it into the front-right pocket of his gown. He shifted the Glock to his left hand, holding it by the barrel now, high across his chest. The footsteps on the roof creaked closer. The back door snapped open and scraped against concrete. Wells pulled back his head and listened as the man in the house stepped into the yard. On the roof, Usman paced.

  “I don’t see anything,” the man in the yard said.

  “Me either,” Usman said.

  The man in the yard walked toward the corner where Wells was hiding. Wells waited, waited, then spun left, popping out from the alley. He swung the Glock with his left arm, a downward clubbing backhand, quicker than a looping right hook and nearly as powerful. The man’s eyes opened wide, and he tried to raise his own pistol—

  But Wells drove the corner of the Glock into the left side of the man’s temple, the soft spot just above the eye. The man grunted and sagged sideways. Wells stepped up and swung his right fist into the man’s belly. The man grunted again, his breath rushing out of him, giving Wells a whiff of the curried chicken he’d eaten th
at day. He dropped his pistol and toppled forward. Wells got under him and held him and hit him once more with the butt of the Glock to be sure he was out. He was skinny, maybe one hundred fifty pounds. Wells lowered him easily and laid him on the ground. In a couple hours, he’d wake up feeling like a car had run him over. But he would wake up.

  The guy on the roof, Usman, yelled, “Is everything okay?” Wells shifted the pistol to his right hand, ran inside, found himself in the kitchen, a small, tidy room that also smelled like curried chicken. “What’s going on?” someone at the front of the house said. Hassan, the third jihadi. Wells ducked toward the refrigerator. Hassan lumbered through the house and stepped into the kitchen holding a big black pistol in a two-handed grip.

  Wells grabbed Hassan’s hands and forced up the pistol. Hassan pulled the trigger, and the gun fired uselessly into the ceiling. Wells lifted his right leg and stomped down on Hassan’s foot. Wells was wearing ankle-high black motorcycle boots. Hassan was barefoot. Three of his metatarsals snapped with a crack nearly as loud as the pistol shot a moment before. He dropped the gun and fell sideways and screamed. Wells let Hassan hit the floor and then kicked him in the chin to shut him up. His eyes rolled back in his head and two teeth popped out, sticky red with candy-cane blood. This one would wake up feeling like a truck had run him over.

  Usman, the guy on the roof, was left. “Hey. What’s happening?” he yelled down. Wells waited to be sure no one else was coming, then stepped through two stifling rooms and strode up the stairs. He stopped at the top step. A corridor ran the length of the second floor. At the back of the house, a rickety spiral staircase led to the roof.

  Wells moved down the corridor as the door to the roof opened. He hid himself in a foul-smelling bathroom as Usman ran down the spiral stairs and into the hall. When Usman had passed, Wells stepped out. “Raise your hands.”

  Usman stopped, looked over his shoulder at Wells. Wells raised the pistol and Usman stretched his arms over his head. His hands were empty.

  “On your knees.” Usman hestitated, then ran for the front stairs. Wells aimed low, at his ass, and squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The pistol’s silenced shot was no louder than a gassy belch. Usman screamed and stumbled forward, sliding onto his knees.

  “Hands up.”

  Again Usman raised them.

  “Where’s the ambassador?”

  “What ambassador?”

  The answer was a confession. Everyone in Saudi Arabia knew what had happened to Kurland. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” Usman braced himself, stood, stumbled for the stairs. Wells lifted the pistol and shot him again twice, high and lethal in the back. Usman grunted and flopped against the wall and slid down, a slow, ungainly death. Blood dripped out of his mouth when Wells flipped him over. He tried to speak, but Wells couldn’t understand his mumbles. Already Wells regretted the fury that had made him pull the trigger. Dead men tell no tales.

  Wells left him, searched the upstairs rooms. In the front bedroom, he found two AKs, a Quran, a week of Saudi newspapers, and a tattered Victoria’s Secret catalog tucked under a mattress, the saddest piece of not-quite-pornography Wells had ever seen. A closet held a half-dozen thobes in various sizes and jeans and long-sleeved shirts neatly folded on top of a hard orange plastic case. Wells swept the clothes aside, picked up the case, and carried it into the bedroom. It wasn’t heavy. He clicked open its oversized black latches. He found a basic medical kit, the kind a paramedic might carry — gauze and bandages and scissors, latex gloves, masks, bottles of pills and tubes of antibiotic, a thermometer, and a stethoscope. The supplies all appeared a couple years old. Wells wondered if something more interesting was hidden inside. He turned the case over, emptied it, but didn’t find anything.

  In the bathroom, he found three passports hidden in a plastic bag taped to the back of the toilet. Wells relaxed slightly when he found that they all had recent Lebanese entry and exit visas — near-certain proof that these men were jihadis who had trained at Aziz’s camp.

  “Ambassador? Ambassador Kurland? Can you hear me?” he yelled in English. But the house was silent. When he returned to the front steps, Usman was dead. Wells checked his pockets, found only a cheap disposable Nokia. A burner. He turned it on, flipped through it, but the registry was empty. Either the call logs had been deleted or it had never been used. He stood up as he heard a woman singing downstairs in Arabic, the voice startling him until he realized it was a ringtone.

  Inside Hassan’s gown, Wells found another phone, a disposable Nokia identical to the one he’d taken from Usman. Hassan grumbled semiconsciously as Wells took it. Its monochrome screen showed a 966 number, the Saudi area code. Wells let it ring until the call went to voicemail. A few seconds later, the mailbox icon lit up. Wells pushed 1, listened to a man saying, “Hassan. No package tonight. We’re not finished yet, and it’s too close to curfew. I’ll bring it tomorrow. You’ll have plenty of time. Peace be with you, brother.” Wells riffed through Hassan’s pockets but found only a Honda motorcycle key, presumably for the bike behind the house.

  Footsteps in the alley pulled him up. He drew his pistol, hid himself against the wall beside the kitchen door. “John,” Gaffan whispered. “You there?”

  “Yeah. Long time no see.”

  Gaffan walked in. “I’m sorry. I got lost.” Gaffan nudged Hassan’s broken foot. “Looks like you handled things.”

  “Let’s get the other one inside, shut the door.”

  Wells and Gaffan put the two jihadis Wells had immobilized on their stomachs, cuffed their hands and legs. The first jihadi, the one whom Wells had pistol-whipped, breathed slowly and unevenly. Wells filled a plastic jug with lukewarm water from the tap, poured it over the guy’s head, got only a few guttural mumbles. He peeled back the guy’s eyelids. His pupils constricted slowly. Wells had hit him in just the wrong spot, and he had a very severe concussion or slow bleed from a skull fracture. Skull fractures were becoming a specialty for Wells. Either way, the guy was useless to them. He needed real medical care, and it would be days before he could answer any questions. Only Hassan was left.

  Wells refilled the jug, poured water over Hassan’s head. Hassan shifted uncomfortably, opened his eyes, closed them quickly. Wells nudged his right foot. Hassan groaned and scrabbled sideways and stared up hatefully. Wells pushed him up so he was braced against the cabinets, and pulled over a chair and sat beside him. He hoped that a mighty helping of fear would do the trick. He didn’t want to have to hurt this man. The Midnight House was fresh in his mind.

  “Hassan. You need help. For your foot. We can get you help.”

  Hassan said nothing. Wells showed him the phone, the missed call. Hassan shook his head. “Who’s this? Who called you?”

  “Water. Please.”

  Wells got him a glass, tilted it to his lips. Hassan drank, cleared his throat in a low growl — and spat a runny mix of drool and phlegm and blood. It barely escaped his lips, slid slowly down on his chin. A tooth rolled out of his mouth and down his gown. “It was your mother. She wanted to screw. I said no.”

  Wells grabbed Hassan’s cheeks, squeezed his ruined face. “Tell us where he is.”

  “He’s in hell. Where he belongs.”

  Wells knelt beside him, reached for his foot. Hassan looked away. “What’s in the package?”

  “Your father’s balls.”

  “You’re going to make us hurt you.”

  “Do whatever you like.”

  But Wells found he couldn’t do anything. He wasn’t sure he could break this man with pain, and even if he could, he didn’t want to try. He reached into his pocket for his pistol, put the silencer to Hassan’s head. “I’m going to give you three seconds.”

  Hassan closed his eyes and mumbled the shahada, and Wells put the pistol away without even starting to count. Mock executions might not be physically painful, but they were still torture.

  “I’m Muslim, too,” Wells said. “And this is wrong. This isn’t what M
uhammad would have wanted.”

  “Now you tell me what it’s like to be Muslim. You find a hundred ways to be a fool.” Hassan grinned crooked and bloody. “Dance for me now. Dance for me and I’ll tell you where he is.”

  Wells squeezed his fists and fought his very strong urge to shoot Hassan in the head. “We’re going to find him. And you’re going to die.” Hassan shook his head, and Wells punched him in the stomach. Hassan slumped down onto the floor of the kitchen. Even so, Wells couldn’t help but feel that Hassan had bested him. He reached for electrical tape and slapped it over Hassan’s mouth so that he wouldn’t have to hear the contempt in the man’s voice anymore.

  A tug on his shoulder pulled him up. Gaffan. Wells had been so focused on Hassan he’d forgotten Gaffan. “Forget it,” Gaffan murmured. “Nobody can break a guy like that in ten minutes. Not you, not anyone. Now what?”

  “Go over the house, find what I missed.”

  But they didn’t find anything. The place seemed to be a cutout, a depot for men and messages to pass. Wells wondered if the “package” in the voicemail referred to Kurland himself.

  Wells listened to the message again, realized something else. It was just ten p.m. now. The curfew didn’t take effect for another hour. So the caller wasn’t in Jeddah. He was somewhere nearby but not close enough to come here with only a few minutes before curfew. One city, forty miles east, fit that profile better than any other. “Is the Jeep close?”

  “Just up the block.”

  “Then let’s go.” Wells took one last look around the kitchen, opened the back door.

  “Where to?”

  Wells pulled the door shut behind them and they left 42 Aziz behind. “Mecca.”

  CHAPTER 23

  MECCA. UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, WELLS WOULD HAVE BEEN excited at the chance to see the heart of Islam. Christianity and Judaism had holy sites, of course — the Wailing Wall, Mount Sinai, Bethlehem. But no faith was as closely tied to a single spiritual center as Islam was to Mecca.