by A. J Tata
As the terrorists stacked against the wall, Mahegan tapped O’Malley, the sign to shoot once the first man opened the door. The two hand grenades that Mahegan had rigged using the kite string exploded and created the havoc he desired. O’Malley’s AR-15 was on single-shot mode, and he fired it exactly four times, two of which might have been overkill on the bleeding men who had been first in the building. The flames that churned at the front of the wooden building were enough for O’Malley to use the iron sights. He shot the third and fourth men in their heads, dropping them instantly. He watched as O’Malley put two more bullets in the dying men, who had been first to enter the building.
Mahegan felt the momentum shifting his way, their way. Ever since he had been ambushed in Pinehurst he felt as though he were at least one step behind. Now, in this tactical setting, he had some control, could use his skills.
He tapped Owens, who had found the three men in the small ditch to the northwest of the property, where Mahegan had expected them to coalesce. It was an obvious rally point: well concealed, large trees for protection, and positional advantage above the building. Mahegan had built the fire to seduce the terrorists into believing that they were resting and drying out, which they desperately needed to do.
Owens used his AR-15 to snap off two quick shots, then he angled the rifle to take a third shot at a running man, perhaps the last of the group to be alive. As Owens was sighting, Cassie tumbled into him, knocking his aim off course.
“Damnit,” Owens said.
“What the hell?” Mahegan said, turning around. Cassie was attempting to get up, holding her pistol in her good hand. Her other arm was in the sling.
“Sorry,” she said, sheepishly. “Was trying to help.”
“Focus, Patch,” Mahegan said, turning back around and ignoring Cassie.
“He’s in the truck. I’ve got a shot—Damnit, what the hell?”
Cassie bumped Owens again as she was standing up in the thick underbrush.
“I swear to God that was an accident,” Cassie said. “I’m not used to this sling.”
They watched the pickup truck disappear up the mountain road as if it were a vanishing ghost.
Mahegan stared at her from his kneeling position. They had killed six of seven terrorists. Probably would have had seven of seven if Cassie hadn’t stumbled.
“Why are you even moving?” Mahegan asked her.
“Pain,” Cassie said. “I’m eating some pain right now and just needed to move.”
Mahegan eyed her suspiciously, wondering if she had intentionally caused Owens to botch the shot. Refocusing on his plan, he said, “Sean, help Cassie and Savage. Apparently she’s not as able as we thought. Get them to the remaining two trucks. Get inside and turn the heaters on. Look out for IEDs or booby traps. Doubtful but possible. They hadn’t planned on us living.”
“Roger that, boss,” O’Malley said.
“Patch, let’s you and me go inspect these dudes.”
“With you,” Owens said.
And like that, they were all moving as if they were back in Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria. The teamwork, the comradery, all of the things that Mahegan had lived for and fought for. True, he loved his country, but he loved his men even more. He had fought for them, and he would die for them. Those emotions came back with force as he and Patch Owens slowly moved across the hardpan in front of the smoldering building in the middle of the night in the Pisgah National Forest.
They inspected each dead man. They had papers and documents in their pockets. Without taking the time to analyze anything, Mahegan and Owens stuffed everything in their cargo pockets. The two men who had entered the booby-trapped building had died instantly, shrapnel chewing off half their faces. They were burned badly and hot to the touch. Mahegan scraped whatever charred remnants of information he could from their outer tactical vests and cargo pants pockets. They collected four AR-15s and twelve magazines of ammunition. Two of the men also had Sig Sauer pistols, not unlike Mahegan’s Sig Sauer Tribal but not nearly as well kept. One of the two men in the ditch was still alive.
“One head shot and one in the upper chest?”
“Lucky to get the head shot,” Owens said.
“This guy’s moaning. Let’s see if we can’t patch him up and get him to talk,” Mahegan said. “Also, grab the uniforms off the others. I think you and Sean are burned with your pants.”
“Trackers?”
“Yes.”
“Roger. I’ll go get one of the trucks and we can slide him in the back,” Owens said. “Help me get the uniforms.”
They quickly removed the uniforms from two of the dead men and bundled them up.
“Okay, this is a pretty good haul. Do that and then we’ll figure out our next move,” Mahegan said.
Owens returned quickly with a Mitsubishi extended cab black pickup truck. It looked relatively new. Owens helped him with the wounded terrorist, and they slid him into the bed.
“He’s got a sucking chest wound. I put an MRE wrapper on it and wrapped some flex tape around his chest. This guy was carrying a damn U.S. combat ration.”
“That’s good news. Means they’re running out of shit to eat,” Owens joked.
Mahegan said, “Let’s get rolling.”
They were in the Mitsubishi and pulled up next to O’Malley, who had Savage lying down in the back portion of the cab and Cassie sitting in the passenger bucket seat.
“Where to?” O’Malley asked through his open window.
“These things probably have trackers on them. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they had drones or if they were setting up ambushes along the roads, so keep some distance,” Mahegan said.
“Where we going?” O’Malley asked.
“To Target,” Mahegan said.
As he looked through the windshield, the first round fired from the drone was headed directly at the windshield.
CHAPTER 27
ALEX RUSSELL HUGGED HER KNEES IN THE FREEZING COLD AS THE wind whipped past her. The temperature had dropped significantly, and she was not properly dressed for an evening on top of a windswept mountain in late September.
She used a night vision goggle to observe the activity down below, wondering what was happening. She had seen three trucks leave but only one return. What did that mean?
Had Mahegan rescued Savage and the others?
She began having another one of her nightmares, though she was wide awake, shivering and needing the needle. She needed her pills, too, so she dug a cold hand into her pocket and shook the bottle with a disappointing rattle. She could tell there were only a few pills left in the prescription bottle. She chewed hard through two clonazepam, swallowing them dry. Almost instantly she felt her mind begin to smooth out, but she stayed with the dream, her fugue state.
She became Ameri Assad, her alter ego. Ameri was a bad, nasty bitch.
Ameri had meant to kill Mahegan on that road, but he had vanished into the woods before she could react. Not usually Ameri’s problem, but silly Alex had taken her meds, confusing the issue as to who was truly in charge. If it were Ameri, well, she shot first and asked questions later.
While Alex Russell still had questions for Jake Mahegan and what he had seen on the ground during Operation Groomsman, Ameri Assad couldn’t give a rat’s ass. To kill him now would leave Alex’s questions unanswered, but Ameri was fine with unanswered questions even if they were important questions to Alex. Awake and disoriented, Alex gave way easily to Ameri, who would appear instantly, like a doppelganger.
The moon sweeping the sky and stars swirling around her, she stood in the middle of the night appearing as disoriented as she felt. She lifted her arms upward as if she were doing a sun salutation, but to the moon. Chuckling to herself, “Yes, a moon salutation. Perfect.”
She ran her hand along the smooth contours of her Berretta pistol, removed it from her hip holster, and placed the barrel in her mouth. She bit onto the hard metal, tasting gun oil, smelling the round that was chambered. She placed her f
inger on the trigger mechanism and felt that it was taught, maybe a pound or two of pressure to fire the hammer.
She laughed a deep-throated laugh, the barrel bouncing on the roof of her mouth. This was how Ameri felt about Alex, that Alex deserved to die for what she had done. Combat stress, posttraumatic stress disorder, other stressors such as what was happening right now in the valley below her, all combined to make Ameri well upward and outward.
Ameri made Alex begin to pace on the ridgeline between the towering birch and pine trees, muttering. For four years Ameri had been torturing Alex. Sleepless nights, endless days, relentless thoughts. Twenty pounds lost from a lithe frame that couldn’t bear to lose ten.
But somehow she stuck with it. Stayed with the unit and stayed with Savage, who never let a loyal soldier leave his grasp. And while she knew where Savage had been, in the mine shaft, he was of limited use, other than to serve as bait for Mahegan, which had worked. Now she had no idea where they were but was certain they would be back, either as captives or hunters. Her perch was just fine to watch the action and strike when she wanted.
Ameri forced Alex’s mind back to that awful day four years ago during Operation Groomsman. The memory was fuel for Ameri’s ability to materialize. Without the haunting confrontation, Ameri would not exist. Ameri knew that those PKCzeta shots had begun to erase the memory of the brutal bombing that she had watched in real time and then hundreds of times over and over in slow motion, seeing the Hellfire missile strike her sister’s SUV and then the JDAM bombs raining down like lethal lawn darts, exploding and maiming.
Yes, Alex Russell had given the valid target order to kill her sister, though she had not known her sister, Fatima, was in the convoy.
The trauma, the despair, the wanting to take it all back but knowing that she couldn’t. Two words. Valid target. Two words said so many times they became meaningless.
And why had she given the clearance? The intelligence seemed to signal that al-Baghdadi was in the convoy. Intelligence provided by Cassie Bagwell and her special intelligence team in Mosul. Unrelated to JSOC, Cassie’s intel unit provided high-value target information to General Savage’s killers. Even if al-Baghdadi had been in the convoy, would it have been worth the loss of her sister?
No, of course not, which was why Ameri Assad appeared before her like an apparition, scolding her, dominating her, and now guiding her to a righteous solution to her problems.
Ameri removed the pistol from Alex’s mouth slowly, reminding her who was in charge. She aimed the pistol at Alex’s forehead and made a “bang” sound.
Bang.
Yes, it was Alex’s voice and Alex’s hand, but it was Ameri who was alive in her mind. It was Ameri who could return Alex to full mental health or take her down a spiraling path of insanity. Ameri’s solution, of course, meant that she would in effect work herself out of a job. If she resolved Alex Russell’s mental issues by killing Savage and Mahegan, or at least having someone else kill them, then Ameri would be able to let go and be with her sister, with Allah.
So Ameri grabbed Alex Russell’s face by the chin—of course it was Alex’s hand—and made her stare at the memory that Ameri played like a high-definition video in Alex’s mind.
Savage had been there, next to her in the forward command post. His dominant aura permeated the small van as they had leaned close together, shoulder to shoulder. She could smell his sweat.
Savage had turned to her as they watched the Predator streaming video of the SUVs flying down the road in column toward a high-walled compound a mile away.
“Need to make the shot in the next fifteen seconds,” Savage said.
Alex hesitated, taking deep breaths. She knew her sister was getting married to a man from Bulgaria. She had been invited but had kept her Syrian lineage hidden all these years. She couldn’t afford to give away her identity just yet. She had been raised in Newark, New Jersey, as Alex Russell, not Ameri Assad, her birth name. Thirty years ago, when Ameri was just a toddler, her father had turned on his brother, the president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, attempting a coup that was never reported. An Et tu, Brute type of internal attack that failed. Hafez had no problem personally executing her father and mother while sparing Ameri and her sister, Fatima.
Ameri turned on another Netflix original in Alex’s mind. This was a movie of when she was four years old and playing in the dirt lot next to their home in Damascus. She and Fatima were pushing a baby carriage with their prized porcelain doll, a gift from a visiting dignitary, someone who had met with their uncle, the president. It was a Queen V Fashion Royalty Doll, and they had no business bouncing it around in the rocky, windswept field. But Fatima and Ameri were sisters and best friends, just a year apart in age. Ameri was the eldest and therefore was responsible for Fatima. They took turns holding and rocking the valuable doll as they stood next to their home in the Malki neighborhood. Beautiful jasmine trees lined the road, and even at that young age Ameri appreciated that she lived in a good neighborhood flush with other children her age. But Fatima was her best buddy. They were taking turns holding the Queen V doll that they had named Queenie, or Kuayni in Arabic.
Fatami began trying to sing the Syrian lullaby, “Fly, fly, dove . . .” as Ameri was handing Kuayni to Fatima. Ameri looked over her shoulder. Two black SUVs stopped in front of their house. Three men carrying small machine guns exited the first. Two men from each SUV went into the house, and she heard gunfire. One man from each SUV walked directly toward them. Ameri pulled Fatima close, each clutching Kuayni. Suddenly, one man snatched her by the waist, her cotton dress fluttering in the breeze, her white socks falling around her ankles over her shiny black shoes. She screamed as another man snatched Fatima.
“No!” Ameri was reaching her hands out, clutching nothing but air. Fatima was doing the same as Kuayni shattered, its face oddly watching Ameri as she cried for her sister.
“Ameri!” Fatima shouted.
“Fatima!” Ameri shouted.
They were locked in separate SUVs. The men who had gone in the house quickly returned to the vehicles. Ameri heard one man say, “It is done.”
That was the last she had seen Fatima. A boat ride and a plane flight later, she was with a new family in Newark, New Jersey, crying herself to sleep every night, singing, “Fly, fly, dove . . .” and wondering where Fatima might be, longing for her.
Time marched on and assimilation became paramount. New friends, new sisters and brothers, albeit not blood, became her life. She even began to like her new identity as Alex Russell.
Alex had moved on, Ameri tucked securely in a file cabinet in her mind. But it turned out that the file cabinet was a weak prison cell door that Ameri easily breached on the day of Operation Groomsman.
The marvels of social media had allowed a curious but infinitely more objective Alex Russell to find Fatima. Fatima had met a young boy named Malavdi in the orphanage near her Syrian village. They became friends and then later became lovers. Malavdi had moved. He was a computer expert who lived in Bulgaria. He was an orphan, not unlike Fatima and Ameri. Fatima had returned to Syria, working in the refugee camps with the United Nations. She spoke many languages and had become invaluable as an interpreter for all sides of the conflict. She had met men such as her uncle Bashar, who was now president, without his knowing who she was, nor did she tell him. Fatima had also met men such as al-Baghdadi as she translated for Syrian rebel forces attempting to negotiate a land dispute. All of this was captured on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Then Fatima and Malavdi vacationed a few days near Gavril’s apartment on the Black Sea in the small town of Burgas. She became pregnant. There was an announcement on Instagram when they became engaged. The picture of Fatima and Malavdi holding each other with the Black Sea in the background warmed Alex’s heart. Her sister had found love. And as if to signal Ameri, Fatima had written, “Fly, fly, dove . . .” on the Instagram post and put the hashtag #sisters.
But Fatima, ever the optimist it appeared, insisted that
they get married in the village in which she had grown up along the Iraqi border near the town of al Hasakah, a confluence of five rivers that created the Khabur River, which fed the Euphrates. They were holding the wedding in a large compound in the tiny village of Marqadah, which placed them perilously close to the Iraqi border. The refugee camp was long gone, but her childhood village remained.
Of course as Operation Groomsman began to unfold, Alex Russell was in combat mode, focused. She wasn’t tracking the names of towns, just the legitimacy of the target on an open road. How could she know it was Fatima and Malavdi’s wedding party?
Stop it. Stop it. Ameri scolded Alex at her rationalizations.
“You gave the permission,” she said. Of course it was Alex Russell’s voice, but it was Ameri Assad talking.
She had given General Savage the “valid target” go-ahead for a mission that killed not only civilians but her sister.
And that son of a bitch Mahegan had seen the carnage firsthand. Inspected the bodies. Filed the report. Had information. Information that she still needed.
After Mahegan and his men had raided the wreckage, most likely executing the survivors, and then departed, she and Savage had flown into the scene with a small security team. She remembered the smell of burning rubber and flesh. The simmering heat that encapsulated the area like walking through invisible doors into an inferno. Then she put it all together. Hasakah. Marqadah. The towns. The road. The wedding date. Then the sound of her voice screaming seemed disembodied then as it did now with every nightmare. Did she know at the time that it was her sister charred black in the SUV? None of the bodies were recognizable. But she knew, and it was enough then to send her over the edge. When positive identification came back on the victims, Alex Russell took leave for two weeks, found her doctor through that liaison in the Caribbean, and finally wound up with her doctor and his Boradine experimental PKCzeta treatment. She ate benzodiazepines as if they were candy, anything to suppress the memory and the wild thoughts cycling through her mind.