by Jeff Siebold
With surprising simplicity, the van drove south over the dirt streets, crossed some railroad tracks, and then stopped, engine running, still roughly. Catherine heard a conversation between two men, the driver Kabir and another man, and then they both laughed and the van started up again. In less than a minute Catherine felt the van leaning in a round-about, and then it exited part of the way around, and continued on what felt like a semi-paved dirt road. She knew they were in Syria now.
They drove in the dark for two and a half hours, crossing the Euphrates River once. The rest of the trip was quiet, but for the occasional backfire from the truck, and the monotonous hum of the tires. Then the van stopped and the engine coughed twice and was silent. Catherine waited patiently until Kabir pulled the tarp from on top of her and said something in Arabic, quickly and indistinctly while walking away from her. His body language was dismissive.
“Where are we?” she asked, walking quickly behind him to catch up. Even this effort made her feel like a foolish young girl. He didn’t respond.
Catherine looked around and saw dusty, stone buildings on both sides of the dirt street. The buildings were attached and they had been built of block and rock covered in plaster or concrete. They looked ancient.
Kabir walked to a framed wooden doorway with a closed door that looked like a hundred year old barn door. It had been painted red at some point, but now the paint had peeled, and the door showed more wood than paint. Kabir knocked and then pushed the door open. He walked in and left the door open behind him. Catherine Cook followed him into the building, not certain whether to close the door behind her.
Inside, the first room was warm and stuffy and the light was dim. She followed Kabir down a short hallway and found herself in an open room where several men were sitting in low, mismatched chairs, engaged in a lively conversation. Catherine’s eyes slowly adjusted to the limited light and she looked around the room. None of the men looked at her. Kabir had vanished through a door on the far wall.
Catherine stood still for a moment, not sure whether to follow Kabir or stay where she was. She looked at the men for direction. They ignored her. She turned around, looking back where she had come from.
“My dove,” she heard from behind her.
She turned back and saw Umar standing there, dressed in long robes of beige linen. His head was uncovered and his beard had grown substantially since she had last seen him. She felt a surge of excitement, of joy at seeing him again. Catherine ran to him.
“I’m here,” she said, suddenly breathless. “I’ve made it!” She hugged Umar and held on tight. He wrapped her in his arms and pulled her close.
“We can be married,” she said, happily. “Now we can be married!”
“Yes, well, it’s not that simple,” said Umar.
Chapter 46
Andrea was in the same building, working in the primitive kitchen when Catherine arrived. The sisters embraced and Andrea whispered, “You’re here, finally you’re here,” as she hugged her little sister. Silent tears streamed from her eyes. There were three other women in the room, cooking food over the warming fire. They were middle-aged and dark skinned and two of them had young children at their feet. Andrea didn’t introduce them.
“Come with me,” Andrea said, and she walked into a small bedroom directly off of the kitchen. Inside were two single beds, cots actually, one on each side of the room. The room was empty. The doorway was covered with a hanging curtain.
“We must talk quietly,” said Andrea.
“Alright,” said Catherine, in a low whisper. “I’m just so happy to be here!”
“It’s not what I expected,” said Andrea, hurrying to get the words out, and looking toward the kitchen. “I’m practically a prisoner here.”
“What?” asked Catherine.
“The other women watch me constantly, and they won’t let me go anywhere. I can’t participate in the planning with the men, because they don’t trust me. They say that I’ll turn on them in battle, betray them.”
“What have you been doing since you got here?” asked Catherine.
“Nothing. Washing clothes, cleaning, and cooking, mostly. They make me wear this,” she said, crying harder now, and pointing at the black hijab that covered her head and neck. “As hot as it is in the daytime, I can’t take it off. They won’t let me.”
“What about your husband?” asked Catherine.
“That never happened,” said Andrea, choking back another sob. “Instead, I’ve been passed around from man to man. They pray to Allah before they have sex with me. They say it is to help the warriors, to help the cause.”
* * *
“It’s pretty clear that we’ll need to extract them,” said Clive. He was sitting in his office in Washington, DC, with Kimmy and Zeke in a strategy session. Zeke paced the room while Clive fixed another cup of Earl Gray tea. Kimmy and Sally sat in matching club chairs, Kimmy with an iPad in her lap. They had arranged themselves around the low table.
Zeke was contemplating the rescue. “They may be having second thoughts,” he said, more to himself than the others.
“How do you mean?” asked Clive.
“Well, think about it. Syria isn’t where you want to be, no matter what your cause is. Syria is suffering from drone bombings and refugees and civil war and all the things that come with that. The economy is disrupted, people are leaving by the thousands, and the infrastructure is in shambles. The war and the bombing have been going on since 2011. Over four million refugees have fled from Syria already, and that’s from a country with about seventeen million people, nearly twenty-five percent.”
“Right,” said Clive.
“So two idealistic young women who romanticized a cause were enamored enough to make their way into the country. What would they find there?” he asked.
“Not what they expected, I’d wager,” said Clive. “Once they got there, I’ll bet they thought it had all gone pear shaped.”
Gone pear shaped, thought Zeke, short for a disaster.
“No,” said Kimmy, “drone bombs, armed skirmishes, closed markets and businesses, a total disruption of ordinary life. Utilities and roads and communications are tenuous at best, and there’s no social life, no normalcy.”
“You’ve been through that in Israel, right?” Zeke asked her.
“I have,” she said, suddenly somber from the memories.
“When the girls left, they were following a dream, a cause. They were probably envisioning themselves married to warriors fighting the fight for freedom,” Zeke continued. “I don’t think they expected what they found.”
“After talking with their friends and their parents, I don’t think they know what they signed up for,” said Clive. “It’s sure to have given them pause.”
“So then, the plan?” asked Zeke.
“Yes, now to the plan,” said Clive.
* * *
The University of Virginia campus was abloom with colorful flowers this late spring day as Zeke drove his rental car onto the campus. The sky was clear and cloudless. He parked and entered the administration building, to meet with Professor Fareed once again.
In a moment, the secretary ushered him into the office.
“Good day, Professor,” Zeke said, once he was seated in front of Fareed’s desk.
The small man looked across his desk at Zeke. “Yes, good day.” He was polite, but bothered, even distracted.
“I need to ask you a few more questions,” said Zeke.
“Half of our Arabic Student Group have been killed or arrested,” started Fareed, “and your FBI has been here to ask me a lot of questions already. I’ll tell you what I told them. I had no knowledge of any bombs, of any guns, of any terrorism. I had no idea that those students were here for anything besides an education!” Fareed was getting louder, his words coming more quickly.
“Yes, we know, Professor,” said Zeke, quickly. “I’m here for another reason.”
Fareed stopped and took a deep breath. He waited.
“I need a ticket, to take the railroad out of here,” Zeke said.
* * *
“The information I got in my interview with A’isha,” said Zeke, “well, Gabby, leads me to believe that the terrorists were recruiting college kids and sending them to Syria via underground railroad to help with the war there.”
“Seems like it,” said Clive.
“Two of the terrorists that we have in custody, Fakhir and Sa’ood, confirmed it in their interrogations with the FBI, and named Aleppo as their base of operations in Syria. Now, we need to find the underground railroad tracks that lead to Aleppo.”
According to Sa’ood, who appeared to be the weakest link in the UVA chain and was beginning to realize the seriousness of his position, students who volunteered were driven to Washington Dulles airport, typically on a Friday afternoon after classes, where they would fly through Munich to Ankara. A train would then take them to Konya, where they would board a bus for the last and longest part of their journey, a four-hundred twenty mile ride to Mursitpinar Bucagi, just across the border from Kobane. And then there was a wait on the Turkish side of the border, a wait in a hostel until one of the faithful from northern Syria came for them.
The intelligence had been pieced together, and the route had been confirmed as much as possible. And now, Zeke was setting out to replicate the last portion of the journey.
“The first part of your excursion should be easy peasy,” said Clive, as they planned the approach. “It’ll be after the bus ride that things might get dicey. So we’ll fly you into Konya and get you a gun when you get there. I have friends in Turkey.” He said it as if it were a small matter.
“I think you may have friends everywhere,” said Zeke.
“Pretty much,” Clive nodded. “Not Aleppo, though. Sorry. Aleppo is presently a stronghold of the Islamic State.
“I’ll be thinking that there may be some IS sympathizers on the bus ride,” said Zeke. The route through Turkey is southeast, toward the Syrian border, after all.”
“Pretty much a sure thing, I’d guess,” said Clive.
“So, we need to get one of our prisoners, one of the UVA terrorists, to arrange the meet,” said Zeke. “We have the phone numbers from their cell phones and we have the receipts for the tickets and travel arrangements, places to stay planned in advance.”
“Right, the papers we found at the duplex apartment in Charlottesville,” said Clive. He sipped his tea.
“The key will be the lodging in Turkey, across the border from Kobane,” said Zeke. “If they’re expecting me, I can go there directly from Ankara and await the contact from Syria. If they buy it, they’ll come to take me to Aleppo, to the IS camp.”
Professor Fareed had given Zeke the files of the students who were members of the Arabic Student Group. Clive’s agency had quickly scoured the files and extracted the useful information. The best information was students’ home addresses and passport numbers. The passport information, provided by the FBI, showed recent trips to Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Yemen via a number of interim stops.
“The route they use takes them just north of Kobane, providing the best access to Syria and then Aleppo,” said Zeke. “I don’t think we have time for the entire trip, but if I can get close, north of Kobane, I can work my way in and wait for the contact.”
“Right,” said Clive. “Let them take you across the border and on to the camp.”
“Yes, and from there, I have several options.”
“And those are?”
“I can call in the cavalry. The US Aircraft Carrier Harry S. Truman is patrolling in the Aegean Sea, less than 700 miles west of Syria right now,” said Zeke. “Or, I can get the girls out, which might be a better play. After all, we will be in enemy territory.”
“Yes, and the Syrian border appears to be somewhat like a sieve,” said Clive. “Millions of refugees crossing into Turkey and Greece.”
“It’s still a crisis in the European Union,” said Zeke. “That may actually be the better play.”
“Alright, let me get Sally in here and we’ll set up the travel details for you.”
Chapter 47
“Clive, we just don’t know what to do,” said Ronald Cook in his raspy, strained voice. His wife Constance’s sobs in the background were clear over the telephone connection. “The girls called from somewhere in Syria,” he continued. “They said they wanted to come home.”
“What time did they call?” asked Clive.
“It was about seven at night,” Cook said.
“Seven at night,” related Clive.
“So two in the morning in Syria,” said Zeke from his seat in Clive’s office. They had been roughing out a plan of attack, a way to find the girls, when the call from Ronald Cook arrived.
“What was the number on your phone? The caller ID?” asked Clive.
Ronnie Cook read the number back to Clive.
“Likely it’s a cell. We think they may be in Aleppo,” Clive said. “But we’re not positive.”
Ronnie Cook continued the discussion with Clive. The girls, it seemed, wanted to be rescued from the Sunni rebels in Syria. It had been a short, panicked call in which the girls asked for help. But they had shared no details, no locations. They didn’t know quite where they were.
They spoke for a few minutes more, and then Clive said, “I can’t tell you all of it, but rest assured that we’re not sitting still waiting on this.”
* * *
“I thought we might have to do a bodge job,” said Clive after he’d hung up the phone, “but you’ve already sniffed them out, and I suspect you have a plan to extract them.”
Bodge job, thought Zeke. A quick and dirty fix.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” said Zeke. He was standing, looking out the window at the busy DC streets.
“And?” asked Clive.
“Seems like the best way to get them out is to follow them in,” said Zeke.
“Quite so,” said Clive, and then, a touch sarcastically, “Well, give us a bell when you’re safe.”
“Don’t worry,” said Zeke. “You’ll be the first person I call.”
* * *
Catherine Cook was distraught. Her journey to this place had been long and difficult, and when she arrived, it was nothing like what she’d expected. Nothing like what Umar had told her it would be on their late nights together in Charlottesville.
“I thought we could contribute, that we could help in a significant way,” Catherine told Andrea. “If not through fighting, then with social media to attract others, or by helping with supplies and support, or medical assistance. This, though, this is horrible.”
Catherine had always been different from her classmates, different from her family. She stayed to herself and had, over the years, become a very private person. Some would say she was quirky.
“It’s not your fault,” said Andrea. When Catherine had first told her sister of her plans to move to Syria, Andrea was shocked and surprised. She spent weekends in Charlottesville with her sister, initially trying to talk her out of the plan. It seemed like a split from reality to Andrea.
“Andrea, this is Umar.” Catherine had introduced them that simply several months ago, and immediately, Andrea saw the reason for the changes in Catherine. Umar was tall, well muscled and dark, with deep black eyes and black hair worn fashionably long. He had an easy smile and a rich, deep voice, accented slightly.
“Hello, Andrea,” he said, with a smile in his voice. He sounded almost amused.
“Hello,” said Andrea, and she thought to herself, He’s beautiful. Catherine was a tall, lanky girl, too thin, even a little bit boney still. Umar was not the type of man that she normally attracted.
“We’re getting married,” said Catherine in a rush. “We’re going to raise a family and support the fight. We’re going to live in Umar’s country with his family and help in any way we can.”
Andrea wasn’t sure what that meant. But it wasn’t the first time that Catheri
ne had followed a man toward an ideology. In fact, Andrea remembered, when she dated, Catherine tended to embrace the personality of her mate and in a fairly short time she changed herself to reflect an image of his tastes, his beliefs and his perspectives, good or bad. She seemed eager to adopt his identity.
They had met with other Middle Eastern students on campus and in a short time, just a few weeks, Andrea hardly recognized her sister. The transformation to a submissive, deferring girl who obviously worshipped Umar was quickly completed. She began preparing Syrian foods and listening to Syrian music. She studied the Qu’ran daily and read the Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. She stopped watching television, calling it frivolous and unimportant, and focused her efforts single-mindedly toward the cause, the war. Andrea watched the transition, afraid for her sister.
But it was on a weekend a few months ago that Andrea’s mind was changed. Umar’s brother, Usman, visited the campus and stayed with his brother for several weeks. They weren’t twins, but Usman looked and acted a lot like his older brother, and when in town, Andrea found herself spending more and more time with him.
“Usman, how long can you stay here?” Andrea had asked the young man.
“I must leave in three weeks,” he said. “I must get back to Aleppo to help with the fight.”
Andrea liked the man. She found herself enjoying his company and even flirting with him occasionally. More and more when she was in Charlottesville, he was close by. It seemed as if they were becoming a pair.
* * *
“You’re going where?” asked Andrea. The emphasis was on the where.
