by Chase Austin
Eddie was a part of an elite black ops team - Task Force 77 - jointly overseen by the NSA and the US military. It was created to execute the toughest missions, penetrate the most dangerous locations, often through means that no government could overtly authorize. Except for a handful of individuals, no one (not even the President of the US) knew the exact size of this team or how many assets it had.
Eddie was one of TF-77’s best snipers. Right then he had no idea that while he was finding his targets, he was on the crosshairs of someone else’s weapon. It would be the easiest of his predator’s kills, but the shooter wasn’t there to assassinate him. His orders were clear. His client wanted him to make sure that the sniper and his partner, Sam Wick, finished their mission successfully.
Eddie’s partner - Sam Wick, who at the moment was hiding in plain sight some sixteen hundred yards away and closer to Eddie’s targets - was widely considered to be the best among the current crop of TF-77 assets. With a hit rate of ninety-five percent for the last five years, he had rarely come back without results from his missions. He stood 5’11 and his weather-beaten face had a rugged attraction, not least because of his unreadable sea-blue eyes, bright with intelligence. With his slicked-back black hair and athletic build, he seemed like a man always on a mission. His looks, and his ability to speak seventeen languages with a neutral accent, including Arabic, Urdu, and Hindi, made him an excellent choice for deployment in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. He considered himself to be an orphan, that is, until seven months ago, when during a mission in Poland, he stumbled onto some key information about his parents and the possibility that they might still be alive. Someone called ‘Professor’ was the key to this puzzle, but so far, he had been unsuccessful in finding anything substantial about his parents, or about this faceless man.
For the last few months, Sam had been stationed in Afghanistan, tailing Abdul Basit, a Taliban commander.
Z knew everything he needed to know about Wick and Eddie because of the one page brief about given to him about both his targets by his client. He knew that they were Americans, but why they were here, he had no idea. For Z it was an opportunity where the task was simple and the payout, huge. Easiest money ever made.
He had tailed Eddie and Wick from the city using a tracking device glued to the belly of the Ford in which the duo was traveling. He watched them separate at the edge of Zangabad, with Eddie taking the Ford to the foot of a desolate hill with a better vantage point of his target. Z instinctively followed the Ford.
Lying on his belly, Z checked Eddie’s position and then the position of his target from the glass. The target was a single wooden door in the middle of a vast territory, roughly sixteen hundred yards away. It was too far even for Z’s own comfort.
Would Eddie be able to take the shot? Z didn’t know but he would soon.
Eddie repositioned himself. Facing North, bleeding sweat, he lowered his eye to the glass, aiming towards the door. Crosshairs tracked to a distant one-room set. Sixteen hundred yards out. Everything was fumes.
His crosshairs tracked back, measuring, calculating the distance. He was back on target.
Z, a hundred yards behind Eddie, watched with interest. It was an impossible shot, almost.
Eddie’s crosshairs wobbled on the first dark shape. He muttered to himself, ‘Aim small. Aim fucking small’.
He could not see the obscured face, only a black mass. A prayer susurrated from his dry lips. He fired.
The shooter followed the shot through his own glass. The shot echoed for eternity. Seconds later, a red mist painted the hut’s wall.
The shooter felt an unknown elation and a touch of jealousy. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. He had just seen Eddie - one of the best in the sniping business - get a 10 on 10 shot, and move on to the next target without wasting time.
Z saw another man going down.
Z then saw Wick in the distance, sprinting. A Beretta in his hand. His shooting hand rose in the air and the bullets pierced the last surviving man. The three men didn’t even get a chance to properly lift their weapons.
Wick vanished inside the door and now both Eddie and the shooter could only wait. Some twenty minutes later, Wick emerged from the door carrying a wounded body.
Wick ambled towards the open Toyota and put the injured man on the front passenger seat. He then vanished again behind the door. Z quickly fetched a high-priced camera from his bag. He had to click some photos as proof.
Five minutes later, Wick reappeared at the door with a new body. Running towards the open SUV, he put the body on the back seat and then ran back to the hut again. The third time when he reappeared, he took control of the SUV and the four-wheeler finally accelerated. Z soon realized the reason for his hurry. With the first blast that rocked the terrain, the one-room hut had started to crumple to the ground. The earth began shaking and the ground had started to vanish in an unending pit.
Z kept on clicking pictures in rapid succession, documenting everything.
From the corner of his eye, Z saw Eddie gathering his things and he slowly crawled back to hide himself. Soon, the engine growled, and the SUV lurched forward. Z didn’t follow Eddie but remained at his place, watching the trail of dust left by the Ford. He just kept on clicking pictures.
As both Wick and Eddie raced away to get out of the sight, Z opened his bag and took out a satellite phone. The call was answered on the second ring, as if the man on the other side was waiting for him.
“They have saved two men and bombed the bunker,” Z reported.
“What about you?”
“They don’t know about me.”
“Send me pictures,” the man ordered.
Chapter 2
The Louvre Museum, Paris.
The man was among the many who stood gazing at the naked woman. His flight had landed at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport that morning. As an American visiting Paris for pleasure, the first thing he went to do was to see Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ Grand Odalisque at the Louvre. He liked the Mona Lisas and the Venus de Milos of the world, but nothing gave him the peace he always sought, as the Grand Odalisque did. It was a figure depicting a young woman supposedly living in the harem of an Eastern Sultan. The painting brimmed with exoticism, eroticism, and the sort of sexual availability that the women of Western Europe were thought not to possess. It was a striking study of female beauty and at the same time an illustration of male desire warping the image of women.
His heterochromatic eyes, the blue left eye and green right eye, were hidden behind a pair of Gucci blue-rimmed sunglasses. A gold earring pinioned his right earlobe. He looked sharp and alert in a bespoke three-piece suit, but that facade of sophistication hid a serpent that not even his closest confidante knew about. Standing in the thin crowd, he checked his Rolex, still set to US time zone. The culmination of years of hard work was finally coming to a closure today.
No one knew how he had looked when he was twenty, thirty or forty. His face had undergone multiple plastic surgeries over the years, so much so that he himself barely recollected how he may have looked in the beginning. He didn’t even think of it anymore.
Rumor had it that he was once an undercover agent and assassin for hire for one of the USA agencies. Prior to that he probably worked as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and then as a vital asset for the CIA and NSA, and at some point, he came in contact with either the ISIS or Al Qaeda where he became their best soldier. But no one knew the truth or his real identity. From the moment he could remember, he had always lived with aliases and cover. His current alias was ‘The Professor’ and he was fine with it as long as he got what he wanted. And right now, he only wanted one thing–annihilation of a nation that had betrayed him and his loyalty.
The Professor opened the image gallery on his cell phone and looked at a picture. Sam Wick was standing on the verge of the burned police station in Helmand, Afghanistan. The next image was of Wick driving an open Toyota while the blast
rocked the terrain behind him.
‘Kid, you are doing exactly what I want you to.’ He smiled.
He swiped right with his thumb. The next image was a monochrome one – of William Helms, the director of NSA and the custodian of TF-77 - having dinner with his wife and daughter at his home.
‘Now let’s see what you can do.’ He smiled again.
The plan had been set in motion two years ago. He and his small team of assassins, hackers, strategists, and political pawns had spent the major part of their lives in multiple cities in the USA, studying them as no one ever had. No one knew that until just before the plot started to take shape, he had been called Masood Akram – a half Iraqi and half American. It was another of his aliases helping ISIS to keep their flags high. That mission had been a job meant for a lone wolf, and he had completed it with perfection. But for this mission, he needed people who were not afraid to kill or be killed.
His first recruit was a cleric in Pakistan, Irfan-Ul-Haq, AKA The Cleric, whose job was to use every tactic in the book to route American aid to the ones who would not hesitate to kill and die.
His next hire was Ed McCarthy, AKA Yasin Malik, an American who had converted to Islam from Christianity. His job was to hire and train the recruits using the money arranged by The Cleric.
The third piece of the puzzle was to get the weapons and explosives deliver to the target locations, which his team had taken care of.
During all this, in one of his visits to Paris he had met Fleur – a breathtaking French beauty and an art curator by profession. For her, he was an independent filmmaker. Sparks flew between the two and before anyone could say what, they were married. The following month, he and Fleur arrived at Houston and stayed at the Onyx – a 7-Star hotel at the Marina – Houston’s biggest mall. For her it was an amazing honeymoon, for him it was a chance to recce the hotel which was one of the targets. He filmed elaborate videos of Fleur on the pretext of his love for her, but the aim was to capture the moving images of the hotel and its security.
The GPS waypoints and videos were the means to train people to navigate the buildings like pros despite the fact that they had never ventured out of their small towns and cities into hotels like this one. He knew that the city police or the SWAT teams could not withstand a military-style assault. He and his team planned everything with a huge amount of research and deep site recces and now it had to be carried out with clockwork precision to be effective.
For the last two weeks, everything had been coming together at breakneck speed, but something was amiss. There was no fun! The intelligence agencies had no inkling about the attack, which wasn’t surprising, but the Professor wanted them to know and act and then fail in their attempts. That would be real entertainment. They will squirm and wiggle and yet submit to his will and planning. That would be the real victory.
When he got the intel about someone named Abdul Basit capturing a CIA agent in Afghanistan, his brain started to work overtime. According to his sources, Basit worked for Irfan-Ul-Haq, the Cleric from Pakistan who was working for him. That piece of information gave him an idea. Using his sources, he decided to relay the intel to the CIA, hoping that they would at least try to save their agent… and then they would get the information about the planned attack, which he wanted to happen. But then the CIA director, Walter Raborn, had done something entirely unexpected! He involved TF-77. It was a startling move, yet even the Professor could not have thought of a better way to inject more excitement in the proceedings. From the time he heard of TF-77’s involvement, he activated one of his contractors, Z, to keep an eye on Wick and Eddie, only to make sure that they complete their mission, and get the information about the impending attack.
Now that their mission was a success, he just had to wait for the American bureaucracy to start moving at its glacial pace to stop the attacks, while he stood appreciating the exquisiteness of Paris and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ paintings. He had made sure that the country that betrayed him would witness something that no one ever thought possible. And he would relish every moment of it from the comfort of his hotel room on a 50-inch television set.
Chapter 3
Saturday, 0100 hours, a Deserted Airfield in Texas
“You’ve sinned, Mahfouz.” Yasin Malik’s voice reverberated in the abandoned hangar. Standing on a platform, Yasin looked down on a 19-year-old young man. The man was Otis but in the camp people knew him as Mahfouz, and Mahfouz was on trial for his sins. “You’ve violated the sacred pact between yourself and Allah. You have betrayed your brothers. You’ve broken their trust, but Allah is kind. He wants you to choose your own destiny. So, what will it be, Mahfouz? What’s your destiny?” Yasin’s black eyes gazed at the impressionable young man.
“I deserve death.”
Twenty-nine other young men in three straight lines watched Mahfouz choosing his destiny with a certain defiance.
“Speak to everyone about your sin.” Yasin was the judge but the twenty-nine others were the jury.
“I broke the sacred pact when I asked one of my brothers about his family. The family that we have forsaken.”
“Mahfouz, why did you do that?” Yasin’s voice was pained.
Mahfouz remained silent.
Yasin looked at the sky and closed his eyes. “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. (We belong to Allah, and to Him we shall return).” He opened his eyes and observed his students.
He spoke with finality. “Your time has come.” Twenty-nine pairs of feet moved towards Mahfouz.
Mahfouz turned to face his executioners. In their eyes he could see a multitude of emotions — hate, fear, shock, rejection and…sympathy.
“Don’t worry, Allah will be kind,” Mahfouz spoke to his executioners. These boys were his brothers, and he wanted them to be strong.
Shahrukh, who was closest to Mahfouz, dealt the first blow. Mahfouz saw it coming and his natural instincts forced him to block it with both hands.
“Forgive me.” The two words immediately escaped his lips.
The first blow was the initiation. Then body blows and kicks rained on him. He took them all without putting up a defense. But his young, vulnerable body could only take so much. He fell to the ground, but none of his executioners stopped.
Yasin remained on the platform watching Mahfouz being trampled to death. His pupils had just passed the last stage of their six-month-long training magnificently. He now had twenty-nine merciless, trained soldiers who would do anything he wanted them to do. And today he wanted America to burn.
Chapter 4
Yasin Malik was in his private room, sitting on his knees, his hands placed flat on his thighs. “O Allah, forgive me, have mercy on me, strengthen me, raise me in status, pardon me and grant me the provision,” he murmured.
Shahrukh, a twenty-year-old young man and one of his star pupils, stood silently at the open door, waiting for Yasin to notice him. His eyes were alert, posture tense, gaze fixed on his commander. He didn’t dare interrupt Yasin during his Namaz. No one did.
“Subhanna rabbiyal a’laa. Subhanna rabbiyal a’laa. Subhanna rabbiyal a’laa.” Yasin turned his head, first to his right and then left. He opened his eyes unhurriedly and noticed Shahrukh at the door, watching his every move like a loyal servant.
Yasin got to his feet and put on his shoes. He gave Shahrukh a nod to let him know he was ready. Shahrukh nodded in return and turned around to alert the others.
Yasin smiled to himself, thinking of the fidelity Shahrukh and others had towards his words. From the day this had started, Yasin had vigorously sought boys like Shahrukh to be part of his army. They were loyal to the core and highly impressionable. What they lacked was training, and Yasin had polished them, to be both effective and efficient. Each one of them. Thirty in total. Now twenty-nine. Ready to plunge into anything with everything they had, at Yasin’s word.
Now was the time to test their mettle.
Yasin replaced his kufi skullcap, worn during the Namaz, with a white Islam
ic turban. Military green fatigues completed the rest of his getup.
Yasin had set up the training facility in the hangar of a deserted airfield, in the Texas boondocks where there was no hum of traffic or buzz of streetlights. Just crickets. Companions Yasin didn’t mind. In fact, ‘hangar’ was a very loose description of the space. It was more like a warehouse — high ceiling, cracked floor, rust eating away at the walls. The roller doors were up, and the entire structure seemed like it wouldn’t take more than a slight breeze to collapse it. The building was illuminated with flickering overhead lights. Outside, overgrown weeds snaked through the cracks. A field of dead grass stretched out in all directions revealing nothing but flat ground as far as the eye could see. But there was something else. Three Bell 205As and three Cessnas sat outside, ready for take-off.
