by James Hunt
Burke continued to watch the screen, arms folded, his back to the room. What had begun as a rescue mission had quickly devolved into something else.
The shaky helmet cam vaulted forward as Bravo Team advanced, taking out two more shooters as they peered out from cover, trying to fire back. Another man suddenly jumped out, appearing to escape, but then turned around with a pistol aimed directly at the helmet cam. Bravo zeroed in on him. A loud burst followed as the man’s head split open. His lifeless body plummeted to the bloodied floor.
Burke took a step forward and spoke with more urgency and caution. “Damn it, don’t kill them all.”
But it was too late. The gunfire had ceased, leaving a faint wave of smoke in the air. No one in Bravo appeared to be hit, but the same couldn’t be said for the gunmen, who had seemed surprised to find anyone else at their hideout. The room watched in shocked stillness as the helmet cam scanned the area near the front entrance, where multiple bodies lay splayed and riddled with bullets.
They didn’t look to be part of any special forces or army. They wore plain, casual clothes—T-shirts, slacks, jeans, sneakers. Whoever they were, it seemed they had laid a claim to the abandoned plastics factory and its crates of presumed chemical agents.
“How many do you count?” Burke asked over his headset.
Eggers continued to scan the room. “Looks like five of them. All males, late twenties.”
“Five?” Burke asked. “No, I counted six. Make sure you find him. We want him taken alive.”
The president’s line was silent, and Angela knew that wasn’t good.
Director Thaxton, however, decided to chime in. “The sixth man is all that matters right now. That’s priority. Now, move out so we can get a chemical team in there.”
Burke turned to her, covering his headset mic. “Duly noted.” He turned back to the screen, slightly disregarding her, and watched with intensity as Captain Eggers led the search outside the plant for the elusive sixth man. In the distance, far beyond the hole in the fence, they could see dust clouds rising above the tree line.
“What the hell is that?” the president shouted into the phone out of nowhere. “How many men are they looking for?”
“One, Mr. President,” Burke said. “And I think he just got away.”
“Holy hell,” the president said. “I want air support. Deploy the helicopters, I don’t care. I want these ISIS bastards stopped!”
“We’re on it, sir,” Burke answered.
Angela released her grip on the armrests and placed her palms flat on the table, leaning forward with a sigh. “What about my family?” No one in the room had an immediate reply.
Burke pivoted around, his face dropping slightly and mirroring the same disappointment evident in Angela’s. “We’re going to keep looking. This is big, though. We’re close.”
“Oh, this is big, all right,” Sutherland said from his chair. “More ISIS fodder for the trough.”
“Agent Sutherland, please,” Thaxton called out, clearly not amused.
Angela said no more but simply listened as side conversations sprang up in the room, a release after the strain of the intense raid. The president signed off, citing a meeting with his cabinet. Bravo Team had evacuated the factory and repositioned outside the gate, waiting for the chemical team to arrive. Perhaps a better search of the area would reveal more clues about her family’s location. Suddenly a buzz came over the speaker phone, followed by a woman’s voice.
“Chief Drake, sir. You have an urgent call to your office. With your permission, I’d be happy to transfer it.”
Drake swiveled his chair toward the phone. “Yes, Barbara. That would be fine. Who is it?”
“A Mr. Peter Graves with the British Intelligence Service.”
Drake looked up, taken aback, with a curious expression on his face. He made eye contact with Thaxton and then shrugged. “Go ahead and send him through.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Drake leaned closer to the conference phone as the call clicked over with the faint hiss of static in the background.
“This is Chief Drake.”
The voice on the other end was hushed and panicky, almost as if the speaker was struggling to catch his breath. “This is Border Patrol Chief Milton Drake, yes?”
“Yes, it is. Speaking. How can I help you, Mr. Graves?”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news. The Islamic State knows what you did. They know that you’re actively searching for the location of your agent’s family, and they are very displeased.”
Angela froze and listened as fear gripped her heart. Burke turned and leaned against the table, directly over the phone, as everyone listened in stunned silence.
“How do you know this?” Drake asked.
“Because they are holding me prisoner. And… have told me to contact you to emphasize that they know who you are and can reach any of you at any place at any time.”
“Where are you?” Burke shouted. “When and how were you captured?”
“I cannot divulge that information. They just wanted me to let you know that a new video message will be sent within the next ten minutes in response to your actions against them. And this time, it’ll be public.”
“Mr. Graves. Please. Speak to me,” Drake said. “We need more information.”
“I’m afraid that is all I can say.”
The call ended with a click as the ranking government officials looked at other, speechless. Angela knew that things had gone bad very fast. Her family wasn’t in the warehouse. Blood had been shed. And she now feared the worst.
A Message
Doug awoke with his head resting against the coarse concrete wall of the darkened cell. Someone was at the door again, and this time Doug didn’t have the energy or physical prowess to fight back.
He longed for nothing more than to hear his daughters’ voices. A large knot on the back of his head pounded, and his bruised face throbbed. His sides hurt. One eye had swollen shut, and every part of his body ached.
Asgar’s men had really done a number on him, though Doug assumed they could have done worse for his attacking their leader. Looking back, had he another chance, he wouldn’t have attacked Asgar. He feared that he had ruined any chance of seeing his daughters and felt completely at the mercy of his captors. The paper still lay at his feet, slightly crumpled but legible.
The door opened, ushering in a beam of light from the hall. He looked up, trying to hide his fear. The two men were back. Salah Asgar—the purported leader—had addressed the men as Bosra and Nabil. Both men were towering in height, with chiseled jaws, light beards, and faces of stone. Their mouths never exhibited any expression other than a straight line of distaste. They were back, and Doug could only imagine what they wanted.
“Where is Asgar?” he asked in a strained voice.
Naturally, the two guards said nothing, only continued staring at Doug with stern, unblinking expressions, their rifles slung over their bulky shoulders.
Doug held up the paper and, in defiance, waved it around. “Your boss wants me to read this garbage? Not doing a thing until I speak to my daughters.”
The man on the right—Nabil, he believed—was slightly balding and different from his counterpart only because of his thicker, darker eyebrows and black eyes as intense as daggers.
Nabil stepped forward and held out an empty sack, no doubt meant to cover Doug’s head during his transport to the video room. He knew that the men would call his bluff eventually and drag him out of the cell if necessary.
But Doug no longer cared. He wasn’t going to give in. He locked his hands together, closed his eyes, and prayed like he hadn’t in years. And for one solitary moment, the burden of everything on his shoulders lifted. He opened them to find Nabil closer to him and holding out the sack.
“You come with us now. We take you to your daughters,” said Bosra, who was standing near the door. Doug was surprised to hear a tone of friendliness from the normally emotionless men. Perh
aps they felt as though they had inflicted enough damage on him—if such a thought was possible.
Nabil nodded in agreement as Doug slowly rose to his feet, wobbling in place. He stuck the paper into the pocket of his baggy orange jumpsuit and placed his arms at his sides as Omar brought the sack over his head, tightening it around his neck. The room went dark again as Doug’s warm breath blew back against his face from within the confines of the fabric.
Nabil grabbed his arm and yanked him away, turning and guiding him out of the room and keeping a hulking hand on his shoulder.
Bosra and Nabil led Doug along the hallway in his bare feet. His shoes, like his own clothes, had been confiscated. He tried his hardest to see beyond the stitched hood but could only make out the faint glow of overhead lights. Halfway down the hall he heard whimpering from another room, off to his right. It was coming from a little girl. He broke free of Nibal’s grip and charged the door, his heart leaping.
“Chassity, is that you?” He pounded on the thick door, guided only by his instincts.
“Dad?” her voice cried from inside.
Doug felt around for a doorknob, a latch—something. He found a handle and pulled it with all his might, but the door wouldn’t budge. He heard the charging of bulls coming after him, slamming him against the door and yanking his hands behind his back.
“I told you we should have tied him up!” Bosra shouted.
Doug heaved and struggled, only to feel his wrists bound together by a hastily tied rope. From behind him, Nabil pushed Doug’s head against the door in warning.
“My daughters!” he cried out. “You bastards. You promised!”
“Daddy, what’s going on?” Chassity shouted.
They hauled him away from the door by both arms as he shouted back through the stifling mask. “You’re going to be okay. I promise! I love you, girls, and I’ll see you soon!”
Their cries faded as Doug hit a set of double doors and nearly tumbled over.
“Keep moving,” Bosra said without offering any assistance.
With his unintentional momentum, Doug hit another door and stopped moving. He could hear the men chuckling behind him, which made the ordeal all the more worse. Nabil opened the door and pushed him inside. “Your audience is at hand…” he added.
Doug attempted to move past the burly man breathing against his hood but found himself pushed roughly inside. He tripped and fell, hitting the hard surface of the concrete floor, banging his eye socket while chipping a tooth in the process. He lay there, dazed, with the taste of blood in his mouth.
“Get him up,” an unseen man ordered.
Hands came from behind him and jerked him to his knees.
“Now take that bag off his face.”
The bag lifted up, and Doug tried to take in as much in as he could, though his vision was blurry from hitting his head. There was a spotlight on him, with several men watching from the shadows. A short, stocky man with a skull cap and dressed all in black stood near a camera pointed at Doug.
They had brought him back to the video room where he had been unmasked last time and paraded around as some kind of discovered treasure. He turned his head to see a large black ISIS flag draping the wall and a boy—no older than a teenager—dressed in green camouflage garb pacing behind him, unmasked and looking down at him.
“You there,” the man at the camera said. He was the same “director” as before, and he seemed to care for nothing except getting his shot. “Move a little to your left. You’re off center.”
Doug did as told as Nabil and Bosra leaned against the wall watching, their arms crossed and as indifferent as always. They had left the rope on his wrists, which made him feel even more defenseless and afraid. There was a lot of side chatter going on in the room, and no one seemed to really be paying any attention to him.
The boy walked past Doug to say a few words to the director, and they both looked his way. After their brief conversation, Doug watched as the shaggy-haired youth pulled off his headband and placed a black ski mask over his face.
“You. American,” the director said.
Doug’s eyes moved over to his largely shadowed frame.
“You memorized your words, yes?”
Doug nodded. “I want to speak to Salah Asgar. We had a deal.”
The director waved him away, shushing him. “Yes, yes. We make video first, then you get to talk to Asgar.”
Doug noticed the masked youth as the boy passed him by and stood on the mark behind him. “How old is he?” Doug asked the director. “He doesn’t look a day over fifteen.”
The director looked at Doug strangely in return and then turned away, ignoring him.
“What’s wrong?” Doug continued. “Couldn’t find an adult to put in front of a camera?”
Again he was ignored.
In one last plea, Doug turned his head to see the boy. “Listen to me, son. This isn’t right. These men are not your friends. Help me, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
A smack landed suddenly and hard on face—not from Nabil or Bosra or even the director but from the young man himself.
“Shut up, you American pig!” he sneered.
Doug turned his head and stared ahead, shocked, as the director gave the signal that they were recording.
***
Assistant Director Thaxton and the other FBI agents stood up after their mysterious British caller hung up. Special Agent Sutherland turned urgently to Lynch and Hopper. “Look this man up. Peter Graves. Run a database check on him. I want to know all there is to know about him.” He then turned to Burke, who had already walked away from the phone, his attention now on Bravo Team, which had moved a safe distance away from the plastics factory and the carnage and biohazards inside. “Special Agent Burke. What does the CIA know about this man?”
Burke turned to Sutherland with a blank stare. “I’ve never heard of him. Though I’m aware of the actor with the same name. He passed away years ago.”
Sutherland tilted his head in confusion, at a loss for words. “What? This some kind of joke to you?”
“Absolutely not,” Burke answered. “But it certainly seems that way to our enemies.”
“How about a trace on the call?” Lynch asked, excited. “The NSA should be able to get that in a matter of minutes, right? I mean, that call could be the best thing that’s happened here.”
“Good idea,” Sutherland said. He then leaned against the table, his red tie and ID badge swaying below him. “How about you get your NSA buddies on the line and get this thing figured out before these assholes upload another video?”
“I’d be happy to have them run a trace, but we can’t lose sight of the current operations. Not with so much on the line.”
Angela wanted to demand that her family be the center of their concerns. But she felt overwhelmed with everything that was happening on the screen and around her. She had a sick, dreadful feeling in her stomach, an ominous premonition of things to come.
Despite all the side conversations and distractions, Thaxton zeroed in on Angela and approached her with concern. “Are you okay?”
Angela turned to the unruffled assistant director, whose shiny brown hair always seemed to fall perfectly straight down to her shoulders. “Not really…” she said in a soft voice. “I’m scared to death, frankly.”
Thaxton nodded with a sympathetic frown, unusual for her normally stoic demeanor. “There’s still time. We’re closing in on them. I can feel it.”
“Thanks for your words,” Angela said, looking away.
She remained seated as Thaxton stood over her and placed a hand on her shoulder. Thaxton gave a reassuring smile, removed her hand, and rejoined the huddle of FBI agents on the other side of the table. Their words were just out of Angela’s range of hearing. She didn’t want to be in the room any longer, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave either. Not without hearing something about her family.
Burke was preoccupied on his cell phone, trying to get NSA offic
ials on the line, when suddenly his face dropped. “What are you talking about, it’s live?” He then raised an arm, snapping his fingers to get the FBI’s attention.
As they turned around, he pointed to their laptops. It didn’t take long for them to realize what was so important. “I need a trace on that number immediately. Yes, a name and address as fast as we can.”
While he was on the phone, Bravo Team began to buzz in through his headset, asking for an update.
Angela’s focus shifted to Sutherland’s laptop screen right next to her as he ran over in a frenzy. “Is it the same link as before?” Sutherland asked.
From the head of the table, Thaxton nodded. “I’ve got it.”
“Are they streaming live?” Lynch asked.
“Looks like it,” Hopper said as the light from his laptop screen reflected into his glasses. His startled expression from across the table didn’t give Angela any comfort. Sutherland had stopped typing but had nothing on his screen yet.
Burke managed to walk away from the projection screen to his own laptop. Angela watched as Sutherland went to largely blank website page with a black background and some tiny white Arabic writing in the top right corner. She didn’t know that the terrorists had a website or how they had managed to get one, but there it was.
“We need this URL passed through the NSA,” Sutherland said to Burke, who was too preoccupied at his own laptop to answer.
Angela watched as a spinning circle appeared in a video player in the center of the screen. Her body temperature was switching from hot to cold without rhyme or reason, and she could already feel a sense of shock creeping into her system.
Lynch looked up with tense anxiety. “Is this thing available live to the world, or is it a private URL like before?”
As if answering his question, the video player opened with a message superimposed over the black background that said A Message to America.
Burke spoke into his headset, telling Bravo Team to stand fast. He then glanced at Lynch with an answer. “Looks like this is going out everywhere.”
