by Bentley, Don
The legion of policy analysts and think-tank fellows who’d tried to understand Syria’s religious fault lines and tribal intricacies had completely missed the point. At their core, people craved stability and safety, and ISIS offered both in spades. Provided, of course, that you subscribed to their malignant form of apocalyptic Islam.
Nobody’s perfect.
A haunting whistle echoed through the truck’s cabin as my driver filled the silence. Other than acknowledging the fighter’s instructions, he’d said nothing so far. At first I’d assumed that he was just quiet, but the whistle made me think otherwise. As he transitioned from the first verse to the chorus, I recognized the tune—“Hotel California” by the Eagles.
Not exactly on the jihadi top ten list.
Shifting in my seat, I looked at the boy, considering.
The Glock tucked into my waistband dug into my skin as I moved, reminding me of the easiest way to resolve the situation. Now that I had a vehicle and was clear of the ISIS checkpoint, the choice of what to do with the oblivious teenager should have been obvious. Shaw’s life was in greater jeopardy with each second, and the fanatical death cult that held him was in possession of a chemical weapon.
A weapon they intended to employ against a Western target.
Every minute I delayed brought the terrorists a minute closer to success. Yet somehow, I couldn’t draw my pistol and bring this portion of the operation to a close. With his pitiful attempt at a beard, my driver didn’t exactly resemble a hardened ISIS killer. Acne covered his cheeks in red splotches, and his hair hung low over his forehead in an unkempt mop. Every so often, he’d shake his head to force the thick curls from his eyes. The teenager more resembled a sheepdog than a terrorist.
In a sane world, he’d be arguing with his mom for ten more minutes of Xbox time. But this wasn’t a sane world, and the AK-47 lying on the seat between us wasn’t an Xbox controller. At the end of the day, he’d made a choice, and choices have consequences.
I leaned forward, easing the pistol from its hiding place with my right hand while raising my left over my head in an exaggerated stretch to hide the motion. I needn’t have bothered. Other than a quick glance at me, the boy kept his eyes on the road. As I steeled myself for what would happen next, he pursed his chapped lips together and began to whistle the same tune in a perfect note-for-note rendition.
Setting the Glock on the seat beside me, I looked at his profile and made my decision.
“You like the Eagles?” I asked, the words sounding incredibly loud in the harsh silence.
The boy jerked as if slapped. “Yes,” he said, his Arabic coming in fits and starts. “Sorry. Wrong. Haram.”
Haram—forbidden by the sharia law that governed the Caliphate. A haram violation could be punished by death, depending on the severity of the offense. People who listened to music might escape with just a beating, while someone caught smoking could be crucified for their sin. The law and order ISIS provided came at a steep price.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I like their music, too. Do you speak English?”
The boy snapped his eyes toward me, his stare finding mine in the dim light. A range of emotions flickered across his face as he tried to decide how to answer. Fear, confusion, and perhaps even hope made fleeting appearances. Finally, his features settled into a world-weary resignation that looked tragically out of place on a face so young.
“Yes.”
Now that he was speaking his adopted language, the boy’s accent was unmistakable—American, just like mine.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Ali.”
“Where are you from, Ali?”
“Chicago.”
Chicago—home to one of America’s largest concentrations of Pakistani immigrants. In an instant, the boy’s story unfolded in my mind as clearly as if I were reading it from an intelligence report. His Muslim parents had immigrated to escape the uncertainty of Pakistan, hoping for a better life. If I had to guess, Ali had been no more than four of five at the time—old enough to remember fleeing, but too young to understand why.
“Why are you here?” I said.
The openness I’d seen in Ali’s features evaporated as he shot me a hard look. “To fight for the Caliphate. I want to be a good Muslim.”
His answer had the staccato feel of rote memorization. Of something he’d said often in response to endless questioning. He thought that I was testing him.
“So, are you?” I said.
“What?”
“A good Muslim?”
Ali looked at me again; this time his expression was unreadable.
In that moment, I thought I’d lost him. Radical Islam targeted the vulnerable—boys who had not assimilated to their new cultures, who lived their faith with the fervency of the young, who were only too happy to answer a call to arms to defend that faith against infidels if it meant that they could belong to something greater than themselves.
But then he spoke.
“I don’t know.”
And with those three words, I knew I had an opportunity, no matter how slight. I’d come back to this land of nightmares and cruelty to save a life.
Perhaps I could save two.
“Ali, what’s your mom’s name?”
The driver who was not a boy but not yet a man swallowed, his too-large Adam’s apple rising and falling in his slender throat. “Iffat.”
“Did she know you were coming here?”
His shaggy curls bounced as he shook his head.
“Would she be proud of what you’ve done? Proud that you joined the Caliphate?”
Another long swallow and then, “I used to think so. Now . . . now I don’t know.”
I’d let go of the pistol’s cold metal, but still my heart raced. Up until this point, we’d been just two people having a conversation. A haram conversation perhaps, but still, just a conversation. What I was going to say next would change that. Yet my lips formed the words anyway. When I left Syria this time, I intended to leave without regrets or not at all.
“Do you want to go home?”
He looked at me and then at the road. His face scrunched up as the hardened visage of a would-be terrorist returned to the unformed planes and angles of a teenage boy. A single tear wormed its way down his dirty face.
Ali wiped at the tear with the back of his hand and cleared his throat with an embarrassed cough. Turning to face me, he opened his mouth.
But before he could speak, the windshield shattered in an eruption of glass.
THIRTY-SIX
The screech of metal on metal filled the cabin as our truck thrashed from one side to another. My head smashed into the passenger’s-side window despite my seat belt. For the second time in the same day, I saw stars. If I ever made it out of this godforsaken country alive, I would start wearing a crash helmet.
Permanently.
“What?” Ali said, the word coming out in a long croak. He hadn’t been wearing his seat belt, and blood leaked from his mouth in ropy streams. Two of his teeth were missing.
I shook my head, trying to piece together what had just happened.
We’d been rammed—T-boned, to be exact. The impact had occurred on Ali’s side of the truck, but I couldn’t see the other car’s headlights, which meant that the driver hadn’t wanted to be seen. Which meant that the crash had been intentional. Which meant . . .
“Get down!” I screamed, reaching for Ali’s bony shoulder. But now, the seat belt that kept me from harm only moments ago thwarted me. The locking mechanism snapped the belt across my chest, stopping my fingers inches away from the boy’s shirt.
“What?” Ali said again, his brown eyes still glazed.
“Down!” I said, thumbing the seat belt release button with one hand as I grabbed his triceps with the other.
My fingers circled his warm flesh, and I was in the
process of dragging him to the floorboard when more glass shattered. This time, I heard the accompanying bark of automatic-weapons fire rather than the shriek of metal on metal.
I jerked Ali to the filthy floor mat, forcing his thin frame into the narrow space beneath the dashboard, covering him with my own body. I was already too late. I’d felt him spasm and now a warm, sticky wetness spread across my hands.
“You’re okay,” I said as glass shards filled the cabin, catching the moonlight like desert snowflakes.
But Ali was not okay. His breath gurgled as he whimpered, blood pouring from multiple chest wounds. If I’d had a trauma kit and a medevac helicopter on standby, maybe he’d have stood a chance. But I didn’t. I had my bare hands and a dying boy who was crying for his mother.
Ali shuddered twice and then expelled his final breath with a wet cough. One second he’d been alive; the next he was gone. Once again, I’d been spared. Once again, the person I’d hoped to protect was dead. As life left Ali’s body, something inside me died. Despite my best efforts, Syria had won. Again. Maybe that’s what came from trying to do good in a place infused with evil. Maybe death and destruction were all that Syria had left to offer.
But that was okay. Death and I were old friends.
Turning from Ali’s body, I set the whole of my being toward finding a way to survive the next few minutes. This single-minded intensity wasn’t driven by concern for my own life. Instead, I wanted to live long enough to do one thing—kill Ali’s murderers. Every last one of them. I didn’t know why we’d been ambushed or by who. I didn’t care. I just knew that the men who had been foolish enough to take this boy’s life would pay for their mistake with their own.
An eye for an eye and blood for blood. This was a sentiment even Syria could understand.
Keeping my body pressed against the truck’s floor, I patted the floor mat until I found my Glock. As soon as my fingers touched the pistol’s cool metal frame, I pulled it to my chest and wormed between the seats. Pushing myself into the back of the cabin, I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out when my shattered ankle banged against the truck’s interior. Rounds continued to smash through the glass and punch into the truck’s metal frame, but my new vantage point put me in the eye of the storm.
Shooting a vehicle’s occupants was harder than it seemed. A truck was filled with glass, metal, and all manner of plastic and composite obstructions, and each material had the potential to alter a bullet’s flight path in unpredictable ways. If I could duck out of the direct line of fire, I would stand a pretty good chance of surviving the initial ambush. This meant that if my attackers really wanted me dead, sooner or later, they’d have to check their work in person, and since the ambushers had gone to the trouble of ramming us, instead of just spraying our vehicle from a distance, I was fairly certain they intended to check their work.
The barrage of lead continued for several more deafening seconds. I used the time to orient myself so that I was lying flat on my back, head toward the driver’s-side back door, feet facing the passenger’s side. Holding the pistol in my right hand, I eased my left up along the door, finding the locking mechanism and ensuring it was released. Then I huddled on the floor, trying to make myself as small as possible while waiting for a break in the storm of flying lead.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Just when I thought I’d gone deaf from the reports of multiple AK-47s firing on automatic, I realized the shooting had stopped. Propping my good leg underneath me, I reached up with my left hand to grab the door handle while I held the Glock in my right, pointed at the driver’s-side window. I took short, even breaths, trying to calm my racing heart while waiting for the next act to begin.
My odds of surviving were not high, but to have any chance at all, I needed to exercise tactical patience. Not an easy proposition when I just wanted to lay waste to my unseen assailants, but necessary.
So instead of moving, I kept still and concentrated on my breathing. As I waited, I pointed the Glock toward the threat, bisecting the driver’s window with the pistol’s stubby front sight post.
A second barrage of bullets wracked the truck, this time splintering the windshield as at least one gunman adjusted his firing position. The two seats in front of me jerked under the onslaught, chunks of fabric filling the air as round after round snapped past my head. About the time I started to believe that wedging myself against the floor really was going to save my life, a line of fire burst into life across my right leg. The leg without the shattered ankle.
Of course.
Swallowing a curse, I wriggled my toes and found that they still functioned in spite of the wetness spreading across my pant leg. Either the wound was bad or it wasn’t. At this point, maintaining my sweaty grip on the door handle was more important than stemming the stream of blood snaking down my leg. My assailants were coming, and I had one chance to get this right. If anything distracted me in that critical instant, a grazing wound to the leg would be the least of my worries.
As abruptly as it had begun, the second storm of bullets stopped. I took a breath. Let it out.
Did so again.
Waited.
Waited until the driver’s-side back window was darkened by the silhouette of a head.
I squeezed the Glock’s trigger twice in quick succession. The head jerked, and I was already moving. Flinging open the driver’s-side back door, I kicked off with my semi-good leg. Gunshot wound or not, my adrenaline-saturated muscles launched me completely out of the truck. One moment I was in a vault of blood and death; the next I was lying flat on my back in the middle of the road.
Time to get to work.
Rolling onto my shoulder, I spotted a crumpled form. It wasn’t moving, but as my old platoon sergeant used to say, anything worth shooting once was worth shooting twice. I squeezed the pistol’s trigger, and the man’s head disintegrated. The Glock’s retort reflected against the roadway, bombarding my already stressed eardrums, but I still heard an AK-47 answering my shot.
My new target was to the left, standing in front of the Toyota’s wrecked hood. If I’d bailed out of the cabin on my feet, his 7.62mm slugs would have torn through my chest and abdomen, killing me instantly. But I hadn’t. Instead, I’d flopped onto my back like a dying fish, and his stream of bullets had passed over me, shattering glass and pummeling the open back door instead.
He missed.
I didn’t.
I shot him twice in the abdomen, and once in the head as he fell.
Two down.
How many left?
Fragments of stone peppered my cheek as rounds hammered the road inches from my face. I kicked off the pavement, driving toward the underside of the car that had rammed my truck.
The newest gunman was using my lack of height to his advantage. I could see the muzzle flash from the AK-47 he was pressing over the top of the car, but I couldn’t see him. Since I was still alive, I figured that he couldn’t see me, either, but the situation favored him. If he kept sweeping his rifle back and forth, sooner or later, a burst would find me, ending our Mexican standoff. This was why I was sliding under the vehicle frame separating us as fast as my wounded leg could push.
Stone shards dug into my skin, opening furrows across my neck and back. I kept pushing. I saw a pair of shins. I kept pushing, pistoning my leg. The shooter’s AK-47 was rocking on automatic. If I shot him in the leg, he’d fall to the ground with his finger still on the trigger, and that would be bad.
Instead, I wormed my way closer, straining until I’d reached the far side of the car. Then I took a breath, pressed the pistol into my chest with a two-handed grip, and kicked myself out from beneath the car.
My leg screamed as my compromised ankle flopped against the ground.
The pain didn’t matter.
The bullet wound to my other leg burned as the pain-dulling shock wore off.
Th
at didn’t matter, either.
What mattered was the man standing spread-eagle above me.
I clipped his leg with my shoulder as I pushed out from beneath the car, and he looked down. His eyes widened.
My final thrust hadn’t carried me as far as I’d intended, and the car’s frame trapped my Glock against my chest. My assailant could have ended things then and there if he’d stomped on my head, but he didn’t. Instead, he tried to bring his AK-47 to bear. An understandable reaction, but wrong all the same. His rifle had more than a foot to traverse.
My pistol required just inches.
Squeezing the trigger, I angled the pistol over the car frame’s metal lip as hot brass cascaded onto my chest.
My first two shots missed.
The third didn’t. The 9mm hollow point blew through his groin, exiting his back in a spray of gore. He screamed something in Arabic and dropped his rifle. The hot barrel slammed into my head, burning my face. I kept firing. With a gurgled scream, the man toppled to the ground. I pulled him toward me, even as I pressed the Glock against his chest and kept pulling the trigger.
He shuddered as the rounds tore through his chest cavity, turning his internal organs to mush. I kept firing until through my scrambled senses I realized two things: one, my pistol was empty; two, the man was dead.
I dropped the Glock, my fingers searching for and finding the wooden stock of his AK-47. I pulled the rifle under the car with me, keeping the corpse in front of me as a shield in case there was another gunman. I heard a muffled sound and prepared to resume the gunfight before my damaged ears and addled brain identified the noise as a car engine roaring to life.
Easing my head around the corpse’s shoulder, I watched as the tires spun on a second truck. Thinking it was headed toward me, I seated the AK-47’s stock against my shoulder. But before I could fire, the vehicle spun around in a narrow doughnut and raced off down the road. I considered loosing a burst after the fleeing vehicle, but didn’t. Instead, I placed the rifle on the cold, pitted concrete, took a spare magazine from my pocket, and reloaded the Glock.