Primary Threat

by Jack Mars

  “How do I sound?” Swann said.

  Luke thought about it for a second. “Like Sinatra.”

  Swann was operating a high-altitude drone that was going to shadow the chopper. As was often the case, Luke and Swann would be in communication throughout the mission. For Luke, it made more than just operational sense. It was like having an umbilical cord, connecting him back to the real world.

  Home and hearth—there was something very appealing in that.

  “You want me to sing?” Swann said.

  “Nah, your speaking voice is good enough for me,” Luke said. “Thanks, Swann. Keep in touch. Keep us alive.”

  “Will do,” Swann said.

  Luke took a deep breath. It wasn’t a full one—the air caught at the top of his lungs. He looked at Murphy and Ed. “Ready, boys?”

  He picked up his rucksack, and the other men followed suit. The Black Hawk helicopter was on the pad fifty feet away. The chopper’s engines whined into life as they approached. The four rotor blades began to turn, slowly at first, then with increasing speed. Luke reached the cabin and climbed on board.

  Murphy and Ed were right behind him.

  A moment later, they were off the ground.

  * * *

  The chopper flew low and fast.

  Luke went up front to the cockpit. A man and a woman in visor helmets and green camouflage flight suits sat facing dark sky through the cockpit windows, and a bewildering array of glowing controls and displays practically against their knees.

  These were Luke’s favorite two pilots, Rachel and Jacob.

  They were old friends of his, and they’d flown together for years. Both of them were former U.S. Army 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The 160th SOAR were the Delta Force of helicopter pilots.

  They made an odd-looking team.

  Rachel had dark auburn hair. She was brawny like the old Rosie the Riveter posters. Big arms, big legs, big all over, and barely an ounce of it fat. She was tough, like most women in professions that were once thought to be man-only. She was funny. She could even be a little bit lewd.

  Physically, Jacob was nearly the opposite of Rachel. He was thin and reedy. He looked nothing like your typical elite soldier. He didn’t joke much as much as Rachel, and his jokes had a tendency to fall flat. But his calm under fire was legendary, almost surreal. He was probably one of the ten best helicopter pilots alive on Earth.

  “What’s up, kiddies?” Luke said. “You guys working for Big Daddy these days?”

  “We’re working for you,” Rachel said. “Big Daddy said Stone was headed out on another suicide mission. We wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

  Luke laughed. “Nah. Didn’t you hear? We’re just going to pop into a mosque, pay our respects to Allah, and pop right back out again.”

  “Beirut’s the place to do it,” Rachel said. “Lovely this time of year. The explosions really light up the sky.”

  “And the screams of the maimed and the dying?” Jacob said. “Like a symphony.”

  Luke didn’t know what to do with that one.

  “Let me know when we’re getting close,” he said.

  He went into the back, sat down, and strapped himself in.

  They were flying low to avoid radar. The Mediterranean buzzed by below them, maybe fifty meters down, almost close enough to touch. Luke watched its inky darkness zipping past. He guessed they were moving at over a hundred miles per hour.

  An image came to him—his son, Gunner, sitting in Becca’s lap. They were at the country house, and Becca was smiling. In an instant, the image changed. Becca, all in black, a young widow, at Luke’s funeral. Gunner, growing up, growing older, all without a father in his life.

  Luke hadn’t called her from Greece. He hadn’t called her from Cyprus, either. The security of the mission was everything now.

  It was for the best anyway. He had come back from one mission, and was going right back out on another. There was no sense worrying her. There was no sense finding out that Zelazny’s or Chevsky’s body had turned up somewhere, and the TV was somehow implicating him.

  There was no sense having her hang up the phone on him again.

  He took a deep breath.

  Despite the Dexie kicking in, and the excitement that always brought him, he found himself drifting. It was hard, he supposed. Being married to him must be hard. When he got back to the States, if it was possible, he would try to fix that.

  The flight passed quickly. He was still lost in a dream when Rachel’s voice jerked him back to reality.

  “Stone?”

  Luke grunted. “Yeah, baby?”

  She laughed. Somehow her laugh was like piano keys tinkling.

  Luke smiled at that.

  “We’re going to be there in ten minutes. We’ll come in over the beachfront, pass low over the city, and after that, we’re going to be at that mosque in no time. If it all looks clear, we’ll touch down in the parking lot to let you out. If it’s hot, you’re gonna have to rope. Either way, I suggest you guys start thinking about getting ready.”

  Luke stared out the window at the lights of the approaching city. From here, you’d never guess it had been an active war zone—sometimes hot as hell, sometimes a little less so—since the late 1970s.

  It could be the beachfront of Miami up ahead.

  He glanced at Ed and Murphy. They were both waking up from their own reveries. This was often when Luke gave his team a pep talk, or their marching orders.

  This time he didn’t bother. These guys knew exactly what to do.

  “We’re ready,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  September 8

  12:15 a.m. Lebanon Daylight Time

  (5:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time—September 7)

  Near Al-Khattab Mosque

  South Beirut

  Lebanon

  Ali Barbir sat in the truck, saying his prayers.

  “The Prophet Muhammad—peace be upon him—said, ‘By the One Whose Hand is my soul, no one is injured in the path of Allah, except that he comes with his wound on the Day of Resurrection, its color the color of blood, and its scent that of musk.’”

  He paused, thinking briefly of the many wounds he had suffered in his short time on this Earth. Allah had given him this life as a test of faith. He understood that now. All of his days had been leading to this moment.

  He took a deep breath and glanced around.

  The truck was small, more a delivery van than a truck. It was in the parking lot of a large bakery, surrounded by trucks of a similar type. Every morning, very early, these trucks and vans emerged from this lot, delivering fresh bread throughout the city and even into the countryside.

  Indeed, the night-shift workers were inside the cinderblock building right now, baking the bread, pastries, and other delights. In a few hours, the drivers would begin to appear here, and start loading their deliveries. Ali could smell the bread baking—the scent was strong enough to almost make him faint with desire.

  Ali was going to make a delivery of a different kind.

  Up the steep hill from here, at the top of a narrow, winding street, was the old Al-Khattab Mosque. The mosque was a phantom. Ali had attended services there as a child, and he remembered these, but he remembered them as part of a vague time, long ago. Al-Khattab was legendary for its age, and for the famous sheikhs who had shared their wisdom there over many years. But the truth was, the place had been closed as a house of worship for a long time.

  Something else had been happening there in the recent past, but either no one knew what that was, or no one was willing to say.

  It did not matter now. There would be infidels there tonight. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the next. Ali’s prayers had been answered. He was finally selected for martyrdom. He had been waiting in this van for the past two nights, and he would wait as many nights as it took. He would wait years.

  For a long time, this life had seemed to him a curse. He was born with a facial deformity tha
t could not be fixed—at least, not in Lebanon. His skull was misshapen, and this pulled his face badly out of alignment. His mouth and nose were too far to the right. His left eye seemed stretched and was bigger than his right. His teeth were a disgrace.

  He could not bear to look at himself in a mirror. He was twenty-one years old, and no girl or woman had ever looked at him with love, or attraction. Almost none were willing to speak to him. His own parents, as much as they did love him, seemed ashamed.

  He would never marry, he would never be blessed with children, he would never be a householder and have standing in his community. He would not pass on his name, nor his blood line. He was a dead end.

  For years, he had cried himself to sleep at night, alone in his room, silently weeping. He stayed silent to spare his parents the worst of this ordeal.

  Why? Why would the Merciful One curse him in this way? Why even give him life, if this was the life he must endure?

  Only gradually did he come to understand what his purpose was.

  His purpose was to be strong, stand tall, and sacrifice himself. He was not a man who Allah called to martyrdom. Allah had sent him here as a martyr. Ali had been marked at birth—before birth—to be one who sacrifices everything in the struggle.

  Already, this knowledge had brought him the camaraderie of the mujahideen.

  Soon, it would bring honor to his name.

  It would bring his parents redemption.

  It was Allah’s plan for him, and as always, Allah’s plan was perfect.

  As he waited, he heard the chop of a helicopter passing overhead somewhere nearby. Was it the helicopter of invading infidels? Perhaps he would know soon. Of course, many helicopters passed overhead in Beirut.

  But he prayed that this would be the one.

  Next to him, on the passenger seat, a radio set squawked into life.

  “Ali? Brother?”

  He picked up the radio. “Yes.”

  “Are you ready?”

  He nodded. He took one last deep breath, nearly rolling in ecstasy at the smell of the bread. Everything was perfect. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Good. Because it’s time now. You know what to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “May the Peace and the Passion of Allah be upon you.”

  “Thank you, my brother.”

  Ali switched off the radio, turned the key in the ignition of the delivery truck, and put it in gear. He rumbled out of the parking lot, moving slowly. The truck was heavy—much, much heavier than it would be if it were loaded with bread. He must be careful driving on the pitted roads up to the mosque.

  He smiled to himself, and tears began to stream down his cheeks.

  “May all my sins be forgiven, may the Mighty One accept my sacrifice as jihad, and may I see His palace in Paradise this very night.”

  * * *

  It was what they called a “touch and go.”

  The chopper touched down, Luke, Ed, and Murphy scrambled out in three seconds, then the chopper lifted off and was gone again.

  Luke watched it for a couple of seconds, flying without lights, rising over the city and disappearing out toward the sea. Soon it was just a shadow, a dark smudge against the night.

  The drop off had gone well. They had flown in here and no one had fired a shot.

  “That was easy,” he said.

  The three men moved quickly across the weed-choked lot, submachine guns out and ready. The blacked-out mosque loomed just ahead—its dome and single minaret reaching toward the sky. Luke’s night vision was on, showing him a glowing, surreal world. Murphy and Ed were on either side, and just behind, a wedge formation. They both seemed simultaneously relaxed and on hyper-alert.

  “Status?” Swann said in his ear. Swann was in an office somewhere on the outskirts of Metro DC, piloting a gossamer drone at high altitude, far above the reach of any ground-based anti-aircraft guns.

  “We are on the ground. How’s the sky look?”

  “All clear… for now.”

  At the front of the mosque, Murphy darted up the low stone steps and tried the front doors. The doors were ten feet tall, made of wood, with long iron handles. They were old and probably rotting, but there appeared to be new locks on them.

  “Locked,” Murphy said.

  “Blow them?” Ed said.

  Luke shook his head. The building would be oriented toward Mecca. He moved around to the right of the building, a south and west facing exposure, guessing at what he would likely find here—windows.

  Sure enough, here they were. A line of tall plywood sheets covered what must have once been two-story-high stained glass, designed to capture and play with the light of the sun. He reached for the first plywood sheet and pulled it.

  It came out easily—it was still firmly attached at the top, but loose and bent at the bottom, where many hands had apparently lifted it over a long period of time. The plywood sheet was practically a door now.

  Luke looked back at Ed and Murphy. Ed was watching the right flank. Murphy had his eyes on the rear.

  “Watch for vagrants,” Luke said. “Squatters. Campers. We don’t want to make any mistakes in there.”

  He slid underneath the plywood, carefully spun his legs over the windowsill, and then gingerly stepped on the floor of the mosque. He was in. He took one slow step, then another. The floor felt like wood. Luke guessed it had been laid down at some point over the original stonework.

  The floor had a soft, squishy quality. It was old. A wrong step could push through it to whatever was underneath. It would be the easiest thing in the world to sprain or break an ankle if that happened.

  He scanned the wide open interior of the mosque. The domed ceiling was high above his head. His entrance had disturbed some birds roosting up there. A couple of them flew back and forth.

  The empty space was lined with two rows of tall stone pillars. A few of them had started to tilt at cock-eyed angles—the leaning Towers of Pisa, as mosque pillars went. That was a bad sign for the building. Structural integrity was gone. The substructure was giving way. At some point, those weakened pillars would fall. Then the roof would cave in. The place was a tear down, not a renovation.

  Oh well.

  He sensed Murphy and Ed behind him.

  “Swann, what are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know, man. I just work here. What do you see?”

  Luke shook his head. “Nothing. An old, empty mosque. It’s in bad shape. Looks like it’s still up because it can’t decide which way to fall.”

  There was a brief commotion inside the headset.

  “Luke? It’s Trudy.”

  “Hi, Trudy.”

  “Luke, I would look for an office area, maybe in a basement or on a second floor. Somewhere records might be kept.”

  “All right.”

  He walked through the open space toward the area on the north side, away from the tall windows. There was a lot of junk on the ground. Some overturned tables and chairs. A couple of old filing cabinets—these must have been dragged here from somewhere.

  He crossed the mosque and reached the far wall. There were three doors here, locked he imagined. He pulled the first door and it opened easily—it led to a large kitchen. He glanced in there, but it was as dark and wrecked as the worship space itself—probably not what they were looking for.

  Next to him, Ed opened a door. Inside was a shattered wooden staircase, probably leading up to a loft space of some kind. This was more promising, but the stairs were basically gone. It looked like some kind of water infiltration had eaten away at them.

  Luke opened the third door.

  A modern, rectangular iron stairwell spiraled down into the bowels of the Earth. There was a light on down there, maybe two stories below them. Another light was on two stories below that. It was a spare, utilitarian kind of staircase, nothing like the century-old mosque it was part of. It was more like something a person might find in a university build
ing, or…

  …a technology lab.

  The mosque is on top of a hill.

  “Oh my God,” Luke said under his breath.

  He looked back at Murphy. Murphy was near one of the crazily leaning pillars, staring up at it.

  “Murph, hold the fort.”

  Murphy waved. “Aye, aye, captain.”

  Luke gestured at the stairwell with his head. “Ed, come with me.”

  Luke folded his night vision up. He and Ed plunged down the stairs, light on their feet, moving fast, but keeping sound to a minimum. The stairwell was four stories high. There were no doors on any of the floors. It seemed to take just a few seconds to reach the bottom. Here was the only door.

  It was a heavy metal door with multiple plated locks. Luke reached out and pulled the handle. Unlocked.

  He opened the door.

  And found the secret.

  In front of them was a vast cavernous space. It was made of solid concrete—concrete floors and walls. The ceiling was at least two stories above their heads.

  A bank of overhead fluorescents hung down, the lights twitching and flickering. The light was almost too bright. Rows of computer consoles were in the near foreground. The consoles had small video screens with keyboard embedded in the desks in front of them. Above the space were four modern video screens.

  A row of tall black computer servers stood on racks, lights blinking. It was cold in here, noticeably colder than upstairs—a large industrial air conditioning unit was embedded in the wall to the right. Luke could hear it running.

  Everything was still on.

  At the far side of the space was a giant clear window—it went from the floor to the ceiling. On the far side was another huge space. It was empty but for a platform and some kind of scaffolding.

  “What the…” Ed said, barely above a whisper.

  He pointed, his arm scanning from left to right. Luke followed his finger. He hadn’t seen it at first. His mind was so busy processing the strangeness of a modern research facility hidden beneath a decrepit religious building from a previous century, that he didn’t notice the more shocking thing, the thing right in front of his eyes.