by Joshua Hood
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
Mason took a cigarette from Zeus, and after sticking it in his mouth, lit it from a battered Zippo. He blew a cloud of smoke toward the low ceiling.
“Latif is dead,” he told Renee. “Well, I’m pretty sure it was him. Someone shot him in the face. But they took Boland.”
“Wait, what?”
“Boland’s gone,” he repeated. “They knew we were coming.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. How about you tell me?” he asked, giving her a hard look.
Renee never liked this side of him, and she wasn’t going to put up with it. “What are you trying to say?”
“The source—who was it?”
“No idea. Anderson said he was going to check him out.”
“Anderson, huh?”
It was no secret that the task force commander didn’t like Mason, but Renee didn’t think that he would send his own men into a trap, no matter how much he hated Kane.
She said evenly, “You know what they call you back at the task force?”
“What’s that?” he demanded
“They call you Conspiracy Kane,” she informed him. “Maybe it was just a bad op. Did you consider that?”
“I don’t think so. I think someone is playing us.” Mason bent closer and whispered into her ear, “Be careful who you trust when you get back. I don’t know where this thing is going, but the last time we got involved in something like this—”
“Wait, you’re not going with us?”
“I hate to break up your little chat, but the birds are inbound,” Warchild bellowed from his place near the wall.
Mason ignored him. “I still have guys out there. I need you to find David. Ask him if he knows anyone named al Qatar,” Mason said, getting painfully to his feet.
The sound of the approaching helos could be heard in the distance as Mason and Zeus headed for the door. As the Libyan peered out into the street, Mason turned to Warchild and said to him roughly, “You think you can manage getting them to the birds, or do you need me to hold your hand again?”
Warchild glared at him, pantomiming a pistol with one hand and turning it over before extending it toward Mason. It was the sign for “enemy front,” and Mason looked the man square in his eyes before flipping him the bird.
“See you soon,” he said before stepping into the street.
CHAPTER 18
* * *
Abu al Qatar was tired of waiting. He rechecked his watch impatiently and then decided to head outside for some air. The satellite phone he clutched in his hand was supposed to have rung ten minutes ago. It was obvious that the Americans still didn’t take him seriously.
“Where are you going?” his lieutenant Ali asked from the other room, where he was setting up a video camera.
“Outside,” he answered curtly.
“Emir, is that wise?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Americans have eyes everywhere, and they are probably looking for the commando,” he said, pointing at Boland, whose eye had swollen shut.
“He is not a commando, he is a man who fights for money. Besides, they have no idea that we have even taken him yet.”
“Yes, but is it wise?”
“Ali, you set up the camera, and let me do the thinking, okay?”
“As you wish, Emir,” the man said, turning back to his work.
Al Qatar headed out into the sunlight, slipping gold-rimmed sunglasses over his eyes. He knew that by the time the Americans learned he had taken one of their men, he would already be over the border, and Boland would be dead.
Crossing into Iraq didn’t bother him, but what weighed heavily on his mind was the fact that most of his men were still in northern Syria trying to take the border town of Kobani. That meant he had to make the trip with only a handful of his fighters.
He took a cigarette from a pack of Marlboro Reds, which he had gotten hooked on while in American captivity, and after lighting it, he greedily sucked in a lung full of smoke. The safe house was less than a day’s drive from the Iraqi border, and al Qatar knew that his men would be waiting for him at the crossing. Everything was going according to plan, and as soon as his American contact called, he could move on to phase two.
Not that the mission had been easy so far. Despite all the careful planning, he was lucky to have made it out of the city alive, especially after being chased through that tunnel by someone he could only assume was another American. Al Qatar had been shocked to see the frag come bouncing out of the tunnel, and only by the grace of Allah had he avoided being hit. That stroke of luck just showed that he had been chosen to strike the fatal blow that he knew would shock the Americans into finally leaving his country.
The satellite phone chirped in his hands, and he quickly brought it to his ear. Unable to hide the exasperation in his voice, he said, “You are late.”
“I had a meeting with the president. Are you at the safe house?”
“Yes,” al Qatar lied.
He was at a safe house, just not the one the American spy was referring to.
“When are you leaving?”
“In a few hours,” he lied again.
He might be working with the American, but he didn’t trust him, and he had learned long ago not to reveal more than he needed.
Al Qatar had learned that lesson the hard way during the five years he spent in the American prison the CIA had set up outside Baghdad. The time there allowed him to learn much about his captors, including their language, but it had been the worst experience of his life. At times he wasn’t sure if he was going to survive to exact vengeance on the man who had killed his brother.
“The next part of the plan is the most important. I need to know that you understand what is expected of you.”
“We have gone over this already. I will use the coordinates you have given me to attack the ship as it comes into the Persian Gulf. My men are already there.”
The man on the other end coughed nervously. “What about Tal Afar?”
“It will take place in the morning. We have already paid the general, and he has promised that his men will not put up a fight.”
“Good, everything is going according to plan.”
“Very well,” al Qatar said before hanging up.
He couldn’t figure out if it was the Americans’ arrogance that led them to believe they could control him, or if he was being lured into a trap. He knew he would feel much better once he reunited with Jabar, his lieutenant in Iraq.
Al Qatar’s preternatural ability to show people what they wanted to see had saved his life when the Americans stuck him in their dank Iraqi prison. The interrogations had been worse than he could have ever imagined but once he learned how to tell them what they wanted to hear, he became useful.
He hadn’t known anything about the weapons site where they had found him in 2003. The only reason he had gone there at all was because his brother had told him to, but the CIA refused to believe the truth. The bearded officers had tried to beat the answers out of him, but he never told them about the memory stick his brother had given him before Boland shot him in the face. Even if he wanted to tell them which files were on the stick, he couldn’t, because he’d never had a chance to open it.
The water had been the worst, and he still woke up in the middle of the night with the panic of drowning pulling at his heart. Not until he realized that he needed useful information to give the Americans did the torture stop. Al Qatar learned how to gain the trust of the newer detainees, and they began telling him all about the insurgents operating outside the walls. Whenever the Americans took him to the interrogation booths—where they kept their dogs, and the chairs they hooked to the car batteries—he would use the information to make the pain stop.
The Americans thought they had turned him, and after they assigned him a CIA contact, the fools let him leave prison.
• • •
“Emir, it is time,”
Ali said, pulling him out of his reverie.
The Iraqi tossed the cigarette out into the desert and came into the isolated shack, where Boland sat strapped to a wooden chair.
“I promised myself long ago that I would kill you,” he said, sliding his sunglasses to the top of his closely cropped hair.
The American said nothing, refusing to look at the camera standing before him.
“You are what they call the strong, silent type. Well, that is fine; I do not need you to speak. But I would like to tell you a story.”
He grabbed a fist full of the man’s hair, jerking his head back.
“The day before your president sent his army into Iraq, my brother was sent to a little place outside of Samarra. He was a member of the Special Republican Guard, and God sent me to accompany him that night.”
Al Qatar pushed Boland’s head forward and moved over to the table where Ali had placed a long, curved dagger. He picked up the knife by its gold inlaid hilt and waved it near the man’s face.
“You Americans thought that Saddam had hidden his chemical weapons in the middle of the desert, even though everyone told you that he had already moved them. How easy it is to make you believe a lie.”
“Just do what you’re going to do,” Boland said gruffly.
Al Qatar’s eyes flashed with anger, and he laid the blade on the man’s exposed neck and savagely slashed upward onto his face.
“Do not be rude. I am telling you a story,” he hissed.
Blood flashed from the wound and began pouring down Boland’s cheek and over his beard.
“As I was saying, we managed to get there before you and your commandos came in, but while you were looking for the gas, my brother gave me the weapon that I will use to kill more than any weapon of mass destruction. You killed him for nothing,” he yelled, slamming the blade into Boland’s thigh. “You stopped nothing, and now you will die, for nothing.”
He left the dagger quivering in the man’s leg and stepped away from the camera, taking a mask from Ali. Slipping it over his head, it revealed a white skull painted on the black fabric.
“I took this off one of your men in Ramadi. He was a commando like you,” he said, pointing up to the blood stains near the neck. “But unlike you, he died quickly,” he said, stepping back into the frame as Ali turned on the camera.
“This video is for the infidels fighting their illegal war in Syria, and this man stands as proof of what I say. Look at his face and tell me that I lie,” he began, pulling Boland’s head back and letting Ali focus on him. “I stand in judgment of this man and of the invaders of the Fertile Crescent, and swear that you will drown in the blood of your oppression. Allah be merciful, for I will not.”
The Iraqi forced Boland’s head all the way back, exposing his neck, and yanked the blade out of his leg. The American cried out in pain as al Qatar slid the blade slowly into the man’s neck, careful not to cut to deep.
He wanted him to suffer, and he slowly cut around the back of his neck, feeling Boland squirming beneath the blade. He took his time, twisting the blade and then began sawing back toward his Adam’s apple. Looking at the camera, he pierced the man’s jugular, allowing the bright red blood to spurt free. He looked at the camera and smiled behind the mask before viciously stabbing the blade through the side of his neck and leaving it there.
“This man’s death will look like mercy in the days to come,” al Qatar proclaimed icily. Then he let go of Boland’s hair, and his head lolled grotesquely to the side.
CHAPTER 19
* * *
From the cockpit of the Beechcraft King Air 350, David Castleman watched the sun receding slowly below the horizon in brilliant hues of red and purple. From his perch, thirty thousand feet above Mosul, he had a front row seat to the brilliant sunset being unveiled across the Iraqi city. He allowed himself a few moments to savor it before turning his attention back to the task at hand.
The Beechcraft was the latest ISR, or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, platform in the CIA’s clandestine arsenal. Its sophisticated bank of instruments allowed the skilled intercept officers to monitor all radio and cell traffic in the region.
“Sir, are we running an op in Syria?” one of the signal officers asked over the gentle hum of the Pratt & Whitney turboprops.
“No,” David said, squinting against the rays of light that flashed over the patchwork of green fields and khaki sand spread out like a quilt below them.
“I’m picking up some chatter.”
“What’s the frequency?” the spy asked before entering it into one of the radio displays.
Most of his subordinates called him Mr. David, and with good reason. The spy had been at the forefront of the war on terror since 2001, and he had no equal when it came to tracking the enemy, many of whom had become expert at hiding in plain sight.
His expertise was in finding patterns hidden among the innocuous data he received from informants and other assets he had set up around the Middle East, and his many successes were the reason he was the CIA’s number one man in the task force. But that had begun to change lately, starting the moment Colonel Anderson took over tactical command of the task force.
The relationship between the military and the CIA had gone through its share of growing pains. Neither side fully trusted the other, but they had always made the relationship work. However, Colonel Anderson wanted only one thing from Mr. David: the agency’s ability to operate outside the letter of the law.
“Tomahawk Base, Sickle 1, LZ is clear,” the radio said.
“Roger that, Sickle 1. Do we have accountability of all personnel?”
“All personnel are accounted for. You are cleared hot on crash site.”
Mr. David’s frown reflected on the glass of the cockpit. He realized that Colonel Anderson had played him.
What he couldn’t understand was why. He’d always supported the colonel, and even if he didn’t agree, he made sure that his assets provided whatever intel they needed. So for the colonel to cut him completely out of an operation seriously pissed him off.
The Iridium sat phone vibrated in his pocket, yanking him from his ruminations. As David Castleman lifted it to his ear, he motioned for the pilot to take him back to Erbīl.
“It’s me,” Mason Kane said. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Are you secure?”
“No.”
“What’s your count?”
“Four, minus one package.”
“Who are you missing?” David asked, his blood running cold.
“Striker 5 has been taken, and we are compromised.”
“Christ, what the hell happened?” the spy asked, breaking protocol.
“Latif is dead,” Mason replied calmly. “You need to talk to Renee; I gave her a name.”
“What about you? Can I bring you in?”
The phone was silent as Mason considered something. “I need access to Safehaven,” he replied finally, referring to the spy’s master list of safe houses in the region.
“Mason, what the fuck is going on?” David demanded. He wasn’t used to being kept in the dark, and no matter how much he trusted Mason, he didn’t feel comfortable giving him that type of access without knowing why.
“Look, I already have your pass code; I was just trying to do the right thing. The task force has been compromised, and until you figure this shit out, I’m going dark.”
“Mason, I need you to—” David began, but the line had already gone dead.
He knew that Mason Kane didn’t rattle easily, but for him to deny a pickup and to break off any further communication, things must have really gone south. Whatever had happened, Anderson had made sure that David wasn’t around to play any part in the operation. Now there was nothing left for him to do but go back to Turkey and try to figure out what the hell was going on.
Someone was going to pay.
CHAPTER 20
* * *
What’s the plan, boss?” Grinch asked as Mason slipp
ed the battery out of the sat phone. The team had reunited and stationed themselves in a bombed-out house near the first downed helicopter.
“We get T.J.’s body,” he said simply.
“And then what?”
“Then we are on our own.”
At first glance, Dean “Grinch” Fitzgerald came off as a country bumpkin, but beneath his deep southern drawl was one of the sharpest men Mason had ever met. Born in western Tennessee, he’d been raised by his grandfather, a Cherokee who’d married a white woman after coming home from the war in Europe. The man had sought out the tranquility of the forest as a means to quiet the demons he had brought home, and it was in that needed sanctuary that he taught his grandson everything he knew.
Dean had joined the army as soon as he was old enough, and, like Mason, he had volunteered for the Ranger Battalion. Mason had worried that the man would have a hard time adapting to the “black” side of the house, but he’d done nothing but surprise him. He was a valuable asset, and Mason knew that Grinch hadn’t even begun to realize his deadly potential.
Mason had already filled them in on what he and Zeus had learned from the man they had interrogated in the tunnel, and as they waited for darkness to fall, they were trying to come up with a plan of action.
“So we’re going back into Iraq?” Blaine asked finally.
“Looks that way. If anyone has a problem, now’s the time to say your piece.”
“I never thought I’d have to see that place again,” Grinch said honestly.
Mason knew exactly what he was feeling. All three men had spent a considerable amount of time in Iraq and lost more friends than any of them would ever admit. Mason felt like he was being forced to revisit the scene of a crime, and they all felt the fear of uncertainty.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, but we owe it to Boland.”
“You think he’s still alive?” Grinch asked.
Mason had been trying to answer the question since leaving the strike team to its helicopters. He knew deep down that the chances were pretty slim.