by Bentley, Don
It was time to finish the job.
FIFTY-NINE
Russian aircraft, heading one four zero, flight level three zero, this is American air traffic control. Return to your previous heading and altitude, or you will be fired upon. This is your final warning. Over.”
Boxer watched the drama play out in real time as the red diamond-shaped icon representing the Russian Flanker continued its turn toward the two blue square-shaped symbols denoting the pair of Army MH-60 helicopters.
As instructed, he had yet to activate his onboard targeting radar, but he didn’t need to. The AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles housed in his internal weapons bay were already receiving targeting information directly into their navigational computers from the orbiting AWACS.
Boxer looked at the tactical display for a split second longer, verifying that the Russian pilot had not complied with the radioed instructions. Then he raised the trigger guard on his stick and squeezed twice.
He heard the weapons bay doors open and felt the jet shudder as first one, then a second missile dropped into the slipstream. Exactly two seconds later, the rocket motors erupted into tails of flame, and the two fire-and-forget missiles streaked along the intercept courses their internal computers had calculated after accessing the AWACS’s radar feed.
* * *
—
Dmitri rolled his Flanker level and was lining up his shot on the helicopters when he received the first indication that something was wrong. His acquisition radar beeped for the briefest of moments, indicating a new target. But when Dmitri dropped his gaze from his heads-up display to the multipurpose screen showing the radar return, no corresponding icon was present. It was almost as if something had been visible for a split second and then disappeared back into thin air.
That unsettling thought triggered something in his already nervous mind. In a flash, he was back in a pilots’ class in which the instructor showed radar footage of American stealth bombers over targets in Iraq. The screen remained impressively blank except for the brief moment when the bombers’ internal doors opened to release their hidden ordnance.
But why would the Americans have a B-2 orbiting over Syria?
In his next heartbeat, Dmitri realized that he’d correctly identified the cause but not the source of the glitch in his radar. An ungainly B-2 wouldn’t be sharing airspace with him.
He was being hunted by a different type of predator altogether.
With a scream, Dmitri slammed the throttles forward and cranked his aircraft away from the American helicopters. He rocketed back to his initial altitude, all the while hoping against hope that the invisible American bird of prey had not yet loosed its ordnance.
His hope was in vain.
SIXTY
The icon on Boxer’s display representing the Russian Flanker joined with the pixels signifying his missiles with anticlimactic precision. One moment, the symbols were separate. The next, they merged and then disappeared from his display entirely. One Russian interceptor was splashed, the airspace was cleared, and Boxer had yet to make a single radio transmission.
Such was the state of modern air-to-air combat.
After confirming that no airborne threats remained, Boxer optically delivered a brevity code word to the rest of his flight, and then he changed course for the second and final portion of his mission. As the answering chimes from his wingmen echoed in his headset, the AWACS mission controller again transmitted over Guard.
“Russian aircraft in sector Charlie, this is American air traffic control. Effective time now, all Syrian airspace is under American jurisdiction. Any Syrian or Russian aircraft that attempts to take off from now until the airspace is reopened will be considered hostile and fired upon. I say again, any Russian or Syrian aircraft that enters the airspace from now until it reopens will be considered hostile and treated accordingly. American air traffic control out.”
Three minutes later, Boxer and his flight of four Raptors reached their loitering altitude and began to patrol, locking down Khmeimim Air Base, home of the remaining contingent of Russian aircraft in Syria. For the next twenty minutes, Boxer had orders to splash anything that tried to depart from the air base, preferably before the aircraft left the runway.
A new series of blips on Boxer’s radar designated a flight of B-1 Lancer bombers forming up just inside of Iraq, adding muscle to the Raptor’s stealth. If the Russians somehow didn’t get the message, and Boxer was forced to fire on another wayward Russian aircraft, the Lancers would roar in at supersonic speeds and render the air base’s two runways unusable with their payload of cluster bombs. But after what had just transpired, Boxer was fairly certain the Russians had received the message in the most unequivocal of fashions. What happened next would be entirely up to them.
Either way, Boxer and his band of invisible killers would be ready.
* * *
—
Russian threat neutralized,” Joel said, trying to keep the emotionless voice that pilots so carefully cultivated. He succeeded. Barely. But Colonel Fitz was under no such constraints.
“Hot damn!” Fitz said, screaming loudly enough that Joel didn’t need the intercom to hear the Colonel over the helicopter’s ambient noise.
“We cleared to the objective, sir?” Joel asked.
“Almost,” Fitz said, sliding forward in the jump seat. “The DIA case officer has a beacon. As soon as he triggers it, we’re in hot. Until then, we need to give him time to locate Shaw.”
“Roger that,” Joel said, “but our window closes in fifteen mikes. That’s when the Raptors run out of fuel and have to pull off station. When they go, we have to go, or else we’ll end up like that Russian bastard they splashed.”
“I got it, Chief,” Fitz said. “As soon as the beacon lights up, I want to be on the building’s roof. Get as close as you can, but we can’t hit the objective without the beacon.”
Joel acknowledged Fitz’s order with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, but he couldn’t help feeling a sense of dread as the mission timer on his multipurpose display ticked ever closer to zero. He didn’t know the DIA case officer in question, but Joel breathed a prayer for him all the same.
SIXTY-ONE
MANBIJ, SYRIA
How are you feeling?” Sayid said, taking a knee in front of me.
The question was probably rhetorical, but I decided to answer anyway. Beacon or no beacon, Frodo was my friend, and more than that, he was my brother. He, like me, was part of the special operations fraternity and I knew that he would never quit. When all else failed, I had faith in my brother. Faith that he would move heaven and earth to find me. But in order for him to work a miracle, Frodo needed time. Time that only I could give him. To give it to him, I needed to keep the shithead in front of me talking instead of sawing. With my hands bound and my body nearly broken, I had just one thing left to use to distract the homicidal jihadi—my wit.
“Better than you must have felt when I smashed your nose,” I said. The new gaps in my teeth gave me a lisp that was somewhat at odds with my tough-guy persona, so I doubled down. “Were you a good-looking dude before? Can’t really tell with your face like that.”
I saw the blow coming and tried to turn my head with the punch, but didn’t quite manage it. My reflexes were a bit on the slow side, and the Syrian seemed quite practiced at beating unarmed men. His fist caught me on the corner of the chin, snapping my head to the side. I managed to keep all my remaining teeth, but blood poured into my mouth as another clot or two came loose.
Perfect.
“Do you know who I am?” Sayid said, grabbing me by the hair so that we were eye to eye.
“Not really,” I said, blood and saliva drooling from my mouth. “But don’t take it personally. You inbred shitheads all look the same to me.”
Another blow, this one landing just behind my right ear. The room spun, and I would have toppled over
if not for the jihadi bearing my weight.
“My name is Sayid. I am here to kill you.”
“Maybe I do remember you,” I said, my words starting to slur. “Is your sister the one with the tight ass and curly hair?”
Sayid stomped on my broken ankle and the pain made me vomit. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take.
Then again, maybe this wasn’t the worst way to go. If he stayed the course, sooner or later Sayid would beat me unconscious, and death would surely follow. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would probably be better than the alternative.
“Come, come, Sayid,” Mr. Suave said. “I can’t have you beating Mr. Drake beyond recognition or killing him outright, which is what I suspect he’s trying to goad you into doing.”
Like I said, the dumb jihadis had died a long time ago. Though, to be fair, I wasn’t convinced the speaker actually was a jihadi. I didn’t know what Mr. Suave’s play was, but he didn’t seem to be cut from the same cloth as Sayid and his ilk.
“Got to keep my face recognizable so you can zoom in when you saw my head off?” I said, directing the question at Mr. Suave.
“Mr. Drake,” Mr. Suave said in English, “I’m afraid you underestimate me. Yes, your friend will soon feel the bite of the barbarians’ knives. But that is not to be your fate. As I told you before, you are much too important to business.”
“What kind of business?” I said.
“The business of chaos.”
“Chaos brought on by your new chemical weapon?”
“Very good, Mr. Drake,” Mr. Suave said with a smile. “But not in the manner in which you think. We’ve learned our lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. The key is to keep your government interested in Syria while not provoking them into a protracted military response.”
“Do you think this shit up yourself,” I said, trying to process what Mr. Suave was saying, “or does your cabal get together for weekly strategy sessions?”
“I’ll admit, my strategy requires a delicate balance,” Mr. Suave said. “But it is certainly worth the trouble. When your government focuses its collective attention on a country like Syria, American dollars follow. Billons of them. And those dollars inevitably find a home in the pockets of men who offer to bring about the stability your politicians so desperately crave.”
“Men like you?”
“Among others.”
“You never intended to use the chemical weapon?”
“Oh, it will be used, Mr. Drake, just not against America. Remember, we need balance. We want to keep your attention and treasure fixated on Syria, but we have no desire to become another front in your never-ending war on terror. The ISIS Neanderthals learned this lesson the hard way.”
“You aren’t a jihadi?”
The Iraqi’s smile turned into a disapproving frown. “Mr. Drake, you disappoint me. I told you, I’m a businessman. The jihadis, you, your compatriot, and even the chemical weapon—these things are just means to an end.
“Now,” Mr. Suave said, brushing nonexistent dust from his slacks, “I’d love to continue our conversation, but I have somewhere else to be.”
“Maybe we can talk later?” I said.
With a smile of regret, Mr. Suave shook his head.
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Drake. Your scientist wasn’t much of a double agent, but he did understand chemical weapons. Though it took him a time or two to get the formulation correct—am I right?”
Mr. Suave winked as if he’d just made an inside joke. I looked back at him, waiting for the punch line. My confusion must have been evident, because his smile slowly turned to a frown. “Come, come, Mr. Drake—I truly thought you were better than this. Do I really have to spell it out for you?”
“I guess so,” I said, still not understanding. “Getting the shit kicked out of me tends to fuck with my world-renowned powers of deduction.”
Mr. Suave sighed as if I were a particularly dim-witted student. “Your symptoms, Mr. Drake. They were long in coming, but surely you’ve noticed them by now?”
At the word symptoms, the logjam preventing my battered synapses from firing finally cleared. I flashed back to the video I’d watched while sitting with Frodo and James in DIA headquarters what seemed like a lifetime ago. A well-dressed couple eating dinner together at an expensive restaurant. The epitome of happiness, right before the man’s hand had begun to tremble.
Just like mine.
Now it wasn’t confusion that Mr. Suave saw on my face. He clapped his hands as his smile returned. “Yes, yes! You understand now, don’t you?”
“Einstein,” I said, remembering the scientist’s distracted fidgeting during our initial face-to-face meeting months ago. At the time, I’d chalked his behavior up to nerves, and while I’d been right in my diagnosis, I’d been completely wrong about its source. Einstein hadn’t been nervous about being seen with me; he’d been worried about the effectiveness of his newly developed chemical weapon.
The weapon he was testing on me.
For the first time, everything made sense. Einstein’s unexplained sudden desire to defect. His refusal to work with anyone but me. It wasn’t because we’d bonded during my failed attempt to pitch him. It was because I was his patient zero, and his new weapon hadn’t worked as advertised.
A weapon that Einstein’s benefactors had undoubtedly paid him handsomely to develop.
Einstein had been playing both sides from the start, hence the terrorist minders who’d tailed him to our meet site. If I’d been able to extract him, he would have gone willingly and used his jihadi blood money to start a new life. But as soon as he learned that Colonel Fitz and his boys weren’t riding to the rescue, Einstein had hedged his bets and sold me to the jihadis to save his own skin.
I’m sure his financiers wanted to know why the first version of the weapon hadn’t worked as promised. To answer that question, Einstein would have needed unrestricted access to his lab rat.
Me.
“Einstein?” Mr. Suave said. “Is that the name you gave our scientist? You thought too highly of him. I think Rosenberg might have been more appropriate. That was the last name of the husband-and-wife team who provided your nuclear secrets to the Soviets, yes?”
“You know your history,” I said, trying to buy time as my thoughts cartwheeled. “I bet you’d kick ass on Jeopardy!”
“Joke while you can,” Mr. Suave said. “The new version of our weapon works quite well, but it doesn’t kill its victims outright. Instead, it slowly attacks the brain, much like mad cow disease. Unlike your CIA friend, you will still be alive after the cameras finish rolling today, but your lively wit will be a thing of the past.”
“Why design a weapon to maim instead of kill?” I said.
“Balance and focus, Mr. Drake. Once we expose you to the new version, your prolonged demise will be televised for the world to see. Your suffering will ensure that your countrymen, and their pocketbooks, remain focused on Syria. Your government may even attempt another rescue, and they might succeed. But for you, the end result will still be the same. There is no way to extract the mercury compound from the victim’s brain once the weapon is employed. Whether you die here or at home in your bed, you will spend your last days as a slobbering vegetable unable to control your own bowel movements. Good-bye, Mr. Drake.”
Mr. Suave spun on his heel and walked away without waiting for a reply.
Which was just as well, because, for the first time in my life, I was all out of snappy comebacks.
SIXTY-TWO
We are live,” the voice behind the lights said.
Next to me, a pair of black-clad jihadis grabbed Shaw, hoisting his limp body to his knees.
“How does it feel,” Sayid said, grabbing hold of my hair and pulling my ear next to his lips, “to know you’ve failed? You came back to rescue that man, and now you’ll watch him die. Just like your foo
lish akhu al manukeh asset and his family.”
Because I was still processing the fact that Einstein had exposed me to a chemical weapon, it took a moment or two for Sayid’s words to register. But once they did, the breath left my lungs in a rush. I turned to look at the Syrian, unsure if I’d imagined what he’d just said.
“Oh yes,” Sayid said, his scar-induced sneer deepening. “It was no accident that your asset and his family perished. Just like it was no accident that you and your now crippled companion drove through our kill zone. I knew all about your asset, Mr. Drake. I always knew. Just as I now know with one hundred percent certainty that the rescue you still hope for is nothing but a fantasy. No one is coming for you, Mr. Drake. Absolutely no one.”
The implications of what Sayid was saying were too staggering for my muddled brain to comprehend. Fazil’s death was somehow connected to the ambush that had maimed Frodo? How? Sayid was Charles’s asset. Had Charles tipped him off? Had Charles been feeding Sayid information the entire time? Did Sayid know about the beacon? Is that why they’d taken my underwear?
A flood of despair washed over me, crushing my spirit against the damp-smelling concrete.
Sayid was right, maybe more than he knew. I had faith in Frodo, but I also had to accept reality. Without a signal from the beacon, Frodo would never be able to persuade the President that I was still alive, much less that I’d found Shaw.
No one was coming.
Next to me, the jihadis holding Shaw began to chant, working up to a killing frenzy.
My fingers started to tremble.
The irony of the situation was not lost on me. The first iteration of Einstein’s weapon had failed, so I’d done his work for him and returned to this place of death just so the jihadis could hit me with a more potent version once they finished with Shaw. Worse still, the agony of the last three months had been for nothing. I’d come back to Syria to save a life. To make up for the broken promise that had killed Fazil and his family. I’d come to offer penance somehow, to atone for my sins.