by James Hunt
“I should kill you now, but you are too important to us right now. That was strike two. Next time, I kill both your daughters right in front of you. We’ll record it as we separate their heads from their bodies and send the pictures to your wife. And then… you die.”
Doug opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, only groans.
“The truth is, Mr. Gannon, the government is not searching for us.” He paused and laughed to himself. “They’re waiting by the phone for us to call. No one is going to save you. No one…”
Suddenly, he felt the kick of a hardened boot across his back, sending him into a pain-induced spasm. Then the room emptied, the door to his cell closed, and he heard the lock slam into place. He had never felt so much physical pain and hopelessness before. As the reality of the situation set in, he drifted from denial to bargaining. There had to be a way to negotiate and save his daughters. There had to be a way.
First Strike
Angela swerved through her neighborhood streets, well over the speed limit, on the way to the patrol station, holding her cell phone against her ear.
“Mom, I can’t give you all the details right now. I just want you to know that it’s very serious, and we’re working on rescuing them.”
Angela’s mother, Mary, was in hysterics. Angela knew the risk in telling her but felt that her mother deserved the truth.
“Was it the cartels? I told you to get out of that job! Why did you have to join the Border Patrol? Why couldn’t you have just stayed at home and raised those beautiful girls like a normal woman?” Mary sobbed into the phone, barely listening to anything Angela said.
She understood that her mother was upset and that her father would get an earful soon. Her parents lived in Pittsburgh, where Angela had been born and raised, and they had been wary of her new life in Texas. But after Doug’s layoff, the young family had had to move where the work was, and the optronics engineering plant in Del Rio offered a good salary and had even paid for their move from Columbia, South Carolina.
“Mom, listen to me. You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Not even your father?”
“Yes. You can tell Dad, but you have to keep it to yourselves. The rescue plan is going to be a secret operation. But it’s going to work, I promise.”
Her tires squealed as she took a sharp right turn at an intersection. Calling her mother, she felt, was necessary. Doug’s widowed mother, Cindy, lived in California, and Angela didn’t know if she could bring herself to call her yet. But how could she not? Cindy had a right to know. Besides, if the video went viral, they would find out anyway, in a much more shocking and detrimental way.
“I have to go now,” Angela said, feeling nervous and sick inside.
After her initial outburst, Mary seemed to have calmed down, offering Angela some solace. “Are you going to be okay? What can your father and I do?”
“Just be there when I call back,” Angela said. “It won’t be long.”
They said their good-byes, with Mary telling her she would be praying. Angela hung up the phone. She was now only a few miles from the station, dreading the next call she had to make but wanting to get it over with before reporting back to work. She stared ahead as the flat road zoomed by and the sun shone above a thick cumulus cloud in the afternoon sky.
She scrolled for Cindy’s number and made the call, but the phone went to voice mail. As she pulled into the station parking lot, she tried again, only to receive the same automated message that read the number, digit by digit, and then asked the caller to leave a message.
“Cindy, call me, please. This is Angela. It’s important.” Angela was almost relieved that she didn’t answer. Once the FBI or CIA or whoever was in charge rescued Doug and the children, it would be so much easier to talk. The rescue would be a modern-day success story—a sign of heroic triumph over terrorism. She could only hope.
She parked in a corner spot, a good walk from the building, which sat atop a slight hill, with a large American flag flapping in the wind on a tall silver flagpole. She turned off the ignition, glancing up at herself in the rearview mirror. She had changed into a clean uniform just as Chief Drake had advised. Her blonde hair was pinned back behind her ears in a bun. Her dry, puffy face was nearly absent of makeup because, what would be the point? No matter what she applied, it was sure to go runny soon from tears of either sorrow or joy. She hoped more than anything for the latter.
***
The mood was tense in the familiar conference room. All the power players were there: Chief Drake, Assistant Director Thaxton, Special Agent Sutherland, Agent Lynch, Agent Hopper, and of course the man Angela knew as Chief Special Agent Burke of the CIA.
As the members sat, Burke commanded the room, standing in front of the projection screen, which displayed a satellite image of the “hot zone,” as he described it, in which key analysts had narrowed down the location of the terror cell.
A separate image on the screen displayed running feeds from the perspective of several field agents who were staked out and ready to move in. The jerky images were similar to what Angela had seen during the FBI raid the night before. She still hadn’t told Drake the truth about that evening, but she considered it the lowest of priorities as she watched Burke briefly explain the details behind Operation Rat Snake.
“After surveying a dozen vacant buildings in the old industrial area, we’ve narrowed our search down to two locations: an unassuming outpost deep within the Appalachian Reserve, some fifty miles outside Del Rio, and a single-structure plastics factory which was purchased by a foreign investor from the United Arab Emirates only months ago. While it was difficult to trace the exact location from the video upload, we were able to determine that its faint signal originated in these areas.”
Angela was impressed that they had amassed so much information so quickly. Perhaps it was time for the FBI to step aside and let Burke and his teams take over. Thaxton and her team listened quietly, scrolling down the screens of their laptops, which displayed the same feed Burke had projected on the screen.
In the middle of the table sat a large teleconference phone. Burke had informed them that the president’s chief of staff was on the line and that the president would be joining them shortly. The covert operation was one of extreme importance for everyone in the room, and everyone at the very top of the government. But it was most important of all to Angela.
“Our teams are in position and will move once instructed. The sensitive nature of this operation is well known by each team, and they are under strict guidance to extract the family safely. This means that they have to be quick, silent, and precise.”
Angela watched as one of the cameras in for a closer view, capturing the members of Burke’s covert team. They were wearing light-green camouflage and looked to be Special Forces. Definitely military. She felt better already. As she glanced up at Sutherland sitting across from her, she could almost read the envy in his face.
Position Alpha, as Burke put it, was a modest outpost, a small building with no windows or extra floors. It hardly looked like a dwelling of any kind. It was surrounded by forest, and Alpha Team had taken position a safe hundred feet from the structure.
There was no movement outside or any opposition in sight, and Angela had her doubts about the location. Her heart raced, nonetheless.
Position Bravo was a stark contrast to the thick brush and trees of the Appalachian Reserve. The so-called plastics factory was a tiny building with pebble-strewn grounds surrounding it, and a tall barbed-wire fence, rusty and covered with weeds. Both places looked abandoned and unoccupied to Angela. She would need a miracle.
Burke stepped forward toward the conference phone, his headset in place, and began speaking. “Mr. Chief of Staff, is the president ready?”
“I’m here,” a voice said.
Angela could hardly believe it. It was the president’s voice, all right.
“Send the first team in,” he continued.
“Yes, sir.�
� Burke nodded and pushed the mic closer to his mouth. “Alpha Team, go.”
From the view of a single helmet cam, the five-man team rushed toward the building, one of its members carrying a door breacher. They went to the door, not wasting any time, and took positions at both sides, as the breacher man batted the door open with one full swing. They stormed inside with their rifles aimed and weapon lights darting around the darkened empty room.
“First room clear!” a man shouted.
The team spread out, searching the other side of a room divided by barren drywall. There were empty boxes, crates, and pallets in their path, but no sign of hostages or terrorists.
“Who owns that building?” Chief Drake asked, eyes plastered to his laptop screen.
“The county,” Burke answered. “It’s a parks and recreation storage shed.”
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s there,” Drake said.
“Better luck with the plastics factory,” Sutherland added with a sigh.
Suddenly, one of the team members stopped. “What’s this?” an off-camera voice asked. The shot then focused on two team members pointing their weapon lights toward a wall where a black ISIS flag hung.
From her seat at the end of the table, Thaxton gasped, drawing a terrified glance from Angela. Why the flag but no terrorists? The cramped, dusty rooms didn’t look as though they’d been occupied very recently. There wasn’t even any electricity.
“What the hell?” Drake said, scratching his face, perplexed.
Burke simply watched the screen with his back turned to the room. “It’s a message,” he said.
“To who?” Drake asked.
Burke turned his head to answer. “Something I’m sure you’ve seen with the cartels. Except in this case, these ISIS cells aren’t tagging their territory with graffiti, they’re using flags.”
Whatever the reason, it still didn’t make much sense to Angela. Why expose their presence in such an unmistakable way? She had hoped to see Doug and the kids, unscathed and relieved to be rescued. But as the team moved throughout the building, she realized that was not going to happen. Not yet and not there.
“All clear here,” the team captain said as his helmet cam scanned the room.
“Damn it,” Sutherland said under his breath. Angela felt the same way.
“They could have moved the captives to another location,” Burke said. “We have to expect that to be the case.”
On the conference phone, the president had said little. But just when Angela wondered if he was still there, his voice came through.
“What’s the status on Bravo Team?”
Burke quickly approached the phone. “They’re in position outside the old plastics factory.”
“Send them in, and pull out Alpha Team in case any of them come back. I want surveillance on that building.”
Burke talked through his headset, telling Alpha to move out and preparing to send bravo in. Angela watched, more nervous than before, as the helmet cam from bravo’s team leader captured their quick movement to the surrounding chain-link fence of the plastic factory.
Dressed in desert-camouflage fatigues, one of the men went to work on the fence with a pair of long cutters, making a hole for them to enter through. The team moved in, crouched low and moving with haste across the stone-covered ground. The single-story aluminum building came into sharper focus, with its boarded-up windows in full view.
Spiraling vines covered areas of the long building on both sides. The double-door entrance was chained shut, and the only other entry was through two rolling doors on a nearby loading dock, also secured by padlocks.
If her family weren’t in that building, Angela didn’t know what she was going to do. She wanted to trust Burke, and the government for that matter, and believe that her family’s fate was in good hands. But she certainly had her doubts.
The six-man team split up, as one group veered left and headed toward the door, then up two steps, where the man in front snapped the chain with a pair of bolt cutters. As the chain fell to the ground, the bolt cutter stepped aside. The men lined up at the side of the door, one hand on their rifles, and the other on their partner’s shoulder.
At the command to move, the team kicked open the double doors and stormed into the factory with their weapon lights illuminating their path. It was hard to see anything on screen, as the factory was very dark inside. Angela could make out some machines, covered in cobwebs, and one long conveyor belt stretching across the plant floor. From what they could see so far, the second raid mirrored Alpha Team’s in that there wasn’t anyone to be found.
Bravo Team worked together, clearing a large central room as dust particles drifted down like snowflakes in the rays of light coming from their weapons. The helmet camera veered over to the corner of the assembly floor, where long, rectangular crates were neatly stacked on top of one another.
The sight caught Burke’s interest, and he asked the Bravo Team captain to get a closer look.
The captain did as asked and called other team members over to help investigate. From the outset, something seemed odd about the crates. They weren’t covered in dust, cobwebs, or debris like everything else in the room. They looked as though they had been recently put there, completely out of place. As the captain circled the four stacked crates, they saw no identifiable markings.
“What is that?” the president’s voice asked over the conference phone.
“I count five crates,” Burke answered. “They’re currently investigating.”
“Open them up, but make sure they watch their backs,” the president said.
“Yes, Mr. President,” Burke said. He then approached the projector screen while talking into his headset. “Captain Eggers, go ahead and get a look into those crates, but make sure your men are covered. Be careful, there could be IEDs or booby traps in there.”
In the view of his helmet cam, the team captain waved some of the other men over to help him.
“We’re going to take that one off and open it,” he said, pointing to the top crate. The men slung their rifles over their backs and lifted the crate up from opposite ends, carefully setting it down.
“It’s got some weight to it,” one of the men said.
Captain Eggers scanned the top of the crate to see that it had been nailed shut. He called over the breacher man, who pulled a crowbar from his bag.
Angela watched the events unfold, intrigued but heartsick not to see her family anywhere on the screen.
The team cracked open the top of the crate and lifted it up, revealing a heap of packaging straw. Captain Eggers stuck the barrel of his rifle into the straw and started poking it around.
“Yeah, definitely something in there,” he said, kneeling.
Angela kept her eye on Burke, who had resorted to pacing the front of the room. Why had he picked the two locations? Was he really that certain that the terror cells would be in either? As she watched the captain’s gloved hand reach into the crate, the biggest question on her mind was why they hadn’t mobilized more teams and covered more locations.
Suddenly her fist swung down and hit the table. Until everyone looked up at her, she didn’t even realize that she had done it.
“Are you all right, Agent Gannon?” Chief Drake asked with a raised brow.
“I’m fine, sir. Just feeling a little frustrated.”
“What is that?” the president asked through the phone.
All eyes went to their laptops as Burke and Angela looked at the projection screen.
With both hands, Captain Eggers held a sealed canister about the size of a large thermos. The canister was white and had a noticeable red biohazard symbol stenciled on it. Sensing the obvious danger in holding something marked with the distinctive linked half-circles, Captain Eggers placed the ominous-looking canister back inside the crate and felt around some more.
“There’s more in here,” he said. “A whole bunch more.”
“Burke!” the president shouted over the phone. “What t
he hell is this? Pull them out and get a chemical team there immediately.”
“I’m on it, Mr. President,” Burke said. “Captain Eggers, get your men out of there and stand by. We’ll get a HAZMAT team out there ASAP.”
Eggers wasted no time directing his team to clear the building. But just as they assembled, they saw a group of unexpected visitors standing fifty feet away at the front entrance, armed with rifles of their own.
For a moment, everything went silent in the factory, in the conference room at the Border Patrol station, and on the president’s line.
Dressed in black, the six intruders began shouting. They raised their weapons as Captain Eggers ordered his team to take cover. His helmet-cam slipped to the side, making it hard for those watching the live video to see what was going on. Angela heard gunfire from the intruders, who were shooting at the Bravo Team. What had they stumbled upon?
“Damn it, Burke. What the hell is going on over there?” the president shouted over the phone.
Burke watched the chaos unfold on screen. He showed neither panic nor fear. He pushed the microphone of his headset closer to his mouth and told Eggers to get a handle on the situation.
“Could be ISIS. Count about six of them. Take ‘em out if you need to.” Gunfire blasted back over his headphone.
“They got us pinned down!” Eggers shouted.
Angela gripped the armrests of her seat as everyone else remained oddly quiet, their eyes locked onto their laptop screens. This isn’t how this is supposed to go, she thought.
Eggers’s helmet cam steadied enough to let them better see the intruders—young men with short black hair and thin beards—scramble for cover themselves as Bravo Team returned fire in rapid, concise bursts.
One of the men foolishly charged Bravo from behind a bottling machine. He took three shots to the chest and collapsed on his own AK-47. Bravo advanced while ducking gunfire from the remaining shooters, who were beginning to fall back with their sporadic gunfire.
