by Rick Jones
Faizan, as he was trained to do, denied everything. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No.” Ali walked close to Faizan with his hands clasped behind the small of his back and looked deep into Faizan’s eyes. Pinning him with a stare for a long moment, Ali could not detect fear or betrayal, only an impartial measure. Stepping back, Ali commented, “The CIA has trained you well.”
Again, Faizan denied having any knowledge of the drone.
And again, Ali questioned him along this line of denial.
“When my people train,” Ali said, “I always make sure that my recruits remain true to themselves . . . and to me. While you were working the obstacles, my soldiers went through every pack in search of contraband. Why? Because I know that not all recruits are who or what they seem to be. Usually, we look for photos or trinkets that remind them of their families, which is forbidden since such items are constant reminders as to what they left behind. So, we take great measures to show them where they are going without such remembrances slowing them down. But when we found a mini drone inside your pack, al-Samara, we knew you are not the man you claim to be. You’re not even a true Arab, are you?”
“I am in league with the cause,” Faizan answered. “I am a soldier of Allah.”
Ali proffered a sinister half-smile. “Normally, I would ask you to provide me with quotes from the Koran to prove otherwise, but I’d be wasting my time because the CIA trains their people well. I’m sure you know the Koran forwards and backwards as I do; every page, every line.”
“Ali, whatever it was that you found inside my bag, it was planted. It makes sense.”
“You have no enemies here to do such a thing. In fact, I believe the head of your friend—which you removed, I was told—is stuck on a wooden pike as a show of his cowardice.”
“Omar was a coward who deserved what he got,” Faizan lied.
“Really?” Ali leaned against the rock of his throne, crossed his arms, and regarded Faizan with a critical eye. Then: “I suppose it’s possible,” he added. “But your bag was never out of your sight outside of training, and everyone was out there with you. All of them, meaning there was no opportunity for anyone to make a move to plant or retrieve the device at will. And none of my people would do such a thing, since I know them as well as I know my brothers.”
Faizan felt like he was being hemmed into a corner. “What I speak to you, Ali, is the truth. And may Allah be my witness to what I say as fact.”
“If you believed in Allah at all,” Ali returned. “Which I’m sure you don’t.” Slightly cocking his head to one side, Ali asked, “The drone, what was its capabilities? Audio? Video? What?”
When Faizan shook his head in denial of knowing anything about the drone, Ali ordered his men to force the operative to his knees, which they did with the encouragement of their weapons as they jabbed the points into the small of Faizan’s back.
With his arms remaining crossed, Ali said, “Answer my questions truthfully, and you may survive this.”
Faizan knew otherwise, however; his position fully compromised.
“First, tell me your name.”
“You know my name. It’s Jinan Samara.”
Ali hesitated a moment before he singled his man to bring the butt of his rifle down against Faizan’s back, which he did faithfully, and hard, the action causing Faizan to grunt and wince against the blow.
“That was a precursor of what’s to come if you continue this charade,” Ali told him. “If you persist with your obstinacy, trust me when I say that we will bring out our knives to drive from you the answers I want.”
Faizan continued to kneel with his eyes facing the floor.
And then came a flurry of questions:
. . . Did you use the drone? . . .
. . . To what capacity? . . .
. . . Does the CIA know our position? . . .
. . . Did they receive any audio or video portions? . . .
Faizan denied everything.
Then as promised, Ali had Qadir pull out a knife that was long and wickedly keen. It was also the same knife he handed to Faizan when ordered to make an example of Omar.
“Now,” said Ali, “if I don’t get the answers I want, then I will order Qadir to cut you into pieces small enough to fit in your mouth and make you eat. Is that clear?”
When Faizan did not respond, Ali appeared so incensed that the muscles in the back of his jaw worked. Then he repeated the questions:
. . . Did you use the drone? . . .
. . . To what capacity? . . .
. . . Does the CIA know our position? . . .
. . . Did they receive any audio or video portions? . . .
With Faizan continuing his gamut of denials after every question was asked, Ali nodded to Qadir, a predetermined gesture for the man to respond accordingly.
After ordering his team to hold Faizan down, Qadir grabbed Faizan’s hand, forced the forefinger to stand solo from the rest, and with the blade so sharp, he hacked at the base of the forefinger and removed it from the knuckle, a clean severance that dropped the digit to the dirt floor, where it looked like a grub in the minimal light.
Faizan clenched his teeth to hold back the cry as pain as hot as magma spread throughout his hand and wrist.
“Consider this,” Ali told him. “You have nine fingers and ten toes left. Nineteen chances to tell me what I want to know. If you remain stubborn in your efforts to comply, then we start fileting your flesh from your muscle, and then your muscle from bone. And believe me, you will wish for death. But my men are expert practitioners at what they do. They will take away straps of your skin and then bands of muscle, while keeping you alive for days.”
Faizan’s white-hot pain was now beginning to edge towards the elbow region.
“I can make it go away, Samara, and give you the treatment you deserve that would make all this go away, if you answer my questions.”
Without waiting for a response from Faizan, Ali went ahead with another round of questioning:
. . . Did you use the drone? . . .
. . . To what capacity? . . .
. . . Does the CIA know our position? . . .
. . . Did they receive any audio or video portions? . . .
Faizan’s reply, however, came as a scream once Qadir severed not another finger, but the entire hand, which looked like an upside crab lying next to the severed grub of Faizan’s forefinger.
Ali continued to question Faizan. But Faizan remained true to his conviction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Command Center
The Green Zone
Baghdad, Iraq
The moment between Kimball and Shari, at least to her, was soul crushing. After staring into his eyes long enough to see that there was no spark of recognition at all, not even a flickering ember of recall, her mind started to whip up questions on its own. Is this what love was? A small piece of the mind that could be wiped away by a tragic moment. Was the heart not more than a muscle, but the seat of emotions?
When Kimball released her, it was as if he was letting her go for good, a final abandoning of what they could have had.
Looking at her as if trying to remember, he asked once more, “Do I know you?”
Though it was the second time he asked her, the punch to her emotions was just as hard, if not harder. The pain, for sure, as equally damaging to her heart. In another life, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t get the words out, the syllables locked deep inside her throat, along with the souring lump that was also beginning to form.
That was when Isaiah intervened—perhaps mercifully after seeing Shari’s response, or the lack thereof—by pulling Kimball aside and telling him that he was needed for a briefing of the situation.
Having been ushered away, Shari, if she didn’t feel alone before, felt completely forsaken.
The man she had loved had died on the day she called him back from the teetering edge that divided life and death.
CHA
PTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Command Center
The Green Zone
Baghdad, Iraq
Inside the command center, Kimball Hayden was seated inside a windowless office that had a large monitor attached to the wall. The monitor was showing an image in live time. As explained to Kimball, the Company had followed Ali’s convoy from the DWB encampment to a training camp in an area known as Dead Man’s Land, a place that was highly inhospitable, from a geospatial satellite. The man in charge of the Company was Daryl Jacoby, one of the leading principals who headed the Middle East subdivision from the Green Zone.
Jacoby, a man with a bit of a paunch and developing jowls, spoke with a booming voice when addressing Kimball, the only two people in the office.
“Ahmed Ali,” he began, “is the second lieutenant to the man we really want to put within the crosshairs, Junaid Hassad, who we have no idea where he is. Knowing where Ali is, however, will tell us where Hassad is.”
“And Hassad, if I remember correctly, is the absolute tip of the spear who is heading the reconstruction of the ISIS regime, now that the United States has pulled their forces.”
“That’s correct. By placing an operative inside the camp, it’s our hope to establish the whereabouts of Hassad and what he’s planning.” Jacoby pointed to the live coverage on the screen. It was an overhead view of an ISIS training camp in Syria, but distant to the Turkish and Russian forces to the north. “We’ve always had eyes on Ali,” he said. “What we needed was to get a man inside to acquire data, which we did. But he’s missed his last two check-in times.”
“You think he was compromised?”
“There’s a good chance of it, something we need to take seriously.” Then Jacoby used the keyboard before him to type orders to the screen, which changed from a live feed to a recorded snippet. “What you’re about to see was taken by a mini drone inside the cave system by our operative. The images are poor and so is the audio. But we’ve captioned the audio portion. What you’re about to see is Ali talking with two of his lieutenants about Hassad and an operation that’s going down in two months, with Hassad wanting the recruits ready by then.”
“Have you learned what the operation’s about?”
Jacoby shrugged. “Guesses at this point,” he answered, “based on intel from chats and encrypted interceptions. Though we’re standing short of making a confirmation, we believe that the unit will unite with Hassad’s cell to develop the manpower necessary and make a run at the oil fields in eastern Syria. They’re looking to build a funding network by tapping into the black market. Now that the United States has pulled out, making such a move only promotes bad behavior. Now that we have no military personnel to take precautionary actions against Hassad and Ali, we’re left with data gathering. We were hoping to learn of Hassad’s location with the use of the drone. But this was all we got.” Jacoby played the video, which was poor and grainy, the faces barely seen and would have been indecipherable if not for the confirmation by Faizan, who detailed who they were in later communications.
When the video ended, Jacoby went back to the live feed of the overhead view of the training camp. “It was our hope that Hassad would join Ali, so that we could invite a Reaper drone to take them out with a Hellfire missile. But things never seem to work out the way you want them to.”
He was right about that, Kimball thought. Plans always worked out on paper but rarely in the field. “You know why we’re here?” Kimball asked.
Jacoby nodded. “You’re search and rescue. Inside is a team of physicians, along with a priest who happens to be the brother of the Vatican’s Secretary of State, and our guy, all who need to be safely extracted.”
“That’s right.”
Jacoby zoomed in on the premises of the training camp and said, “Somehow, your team of six needs to penetrate a training camp that houses fifty-two terrorists, find the assets, and extract those assets to safer havens, which also includes our man on the inside.”
“Fifty-two terrorists.” Kimball said this out loud to himself, the Vatican Knight calculating the man-to-man odds, which were almost nine to one.
“That was the last headcount by our operative,” Jacoby added, “after three were executed in front of others as examples. We’ll give you the coordinates, the weapons, and the transports necessary to mobilize your team. You’re in because the U.S. government has decided to stay away. And my job, as a black-ops manager, is to neutralize the enemy without the assistance or aid of the U.S. military. That’s where my person comes in. She will assist in matters that are twofold. One: she is to neutralize Ahmed Ali. And two: she is to acquire all electronics for data gathering so that we can track Hassad’s movements.”
“She? Are you talking about Ms. Cohen?”
Jacoby nodded. “She’s a newbie to Green Zone operations, something she chose after leaving the Bureau, but someone who’s learned enough to know what she’s doing. She’ll be a great asset to your team. And the only thing your team has to do is to cut her a path. She’ll do the rest.”
After considering the size of the hill that housed the tunnel system on the screen, Kimball added, “There’s a lot of tunnels inside that hill. Navigating won’t be easy.”
“It’ll be easy enough,” Jacoby returned. “You’ll be fitted with an NVG tablet about the size of a cellphone. It is to be worn on your upper arm close to the elbow. Once you enable it, you’ll be represented by a red dot within the mapped-out lines of the cave system that were charted by the mini drone. It’ll also have your target sites of where the hostages are being kept, as well as Ali’s chamber, which, of course, is Cohen’s optimum mission.”
Kimball nodded as he continued to stare at the screen. What he was watching were men jumping and scaling obstacles while clambering underneath roped netting, under a blazing hot sun.
And then from Jacoby: “You leave tonight,” he told him, “in two choppers that will land approximately three clicks from the campsite. You move in, extract the hostages including our inside man, if he’s still alive, and allow Shari to perform her agendas.”
“That’s asking an awful lot when we’re talking about fifty-two people here.”
“Most are kids, teenagers, those who were conscripted. My best guess is that most will run off into the wilderness. Some will stay, of course, fearing the consequences. And few will be seasoned, I’m sure, but something I’m sure your team can handle, or so I’m told.” Jacoby turned to Kimball to view the man’s profile, which was strong and angular, and then: “They say that the Vatican Knights are never seen until it’s too late. I’ve also been told that one man is feared by most in the Middle East . . . Someone who is seen as an angel to some and a demon to others. They call him the Devil’s Magician. Know anything about that?”
Kimball remained silent as he stared at the monitor with fixed eyes, leaving Jacoby to wonder if the Vatican Knight heard him at all.
When Kimball didn’t respond, Jacoby resumed the one-sided conversation with a clear-cut order, “Your team leaves at midnight.”
Kimball remained unemotional, an automaton, the man keeping his eyes pinned on the screen that overlooked the ISIS training camp, which was now silent, then said, “The woman, Shari Cohen. I’ll need her biographical record if she’s going to work with my unit. I need to know every facet of her skillset, her abilities, her weaknesses.”
“She comes highly regarded, Mr. Hayden. You’ll find no other who is capable of performing her required duties.”
And Kimball had no doubt that this was true. When he first saw her, when she embraced him like a long-lost companion, this action piqued his curiosity since he did not remember her. There was no doubt that she knew him and knew him well. Perhaps mentions in her biographical report and her history would bump his memory.
“I need to know everyone under my command,” he added. “Especially on delicate missions.”
Jacoby appraised the Vatican Knight with a sidelong look and through a narrowed eye. Then he stood up, went
to a filing cabinet, rifled through a catalogue of manila files, grabbed one, then tossed it on the desk before Kimball. “Shari Cohen,” he said. “Everything you need to know about her is in there.”
The file was about an inch thick. Kimball grabbed it.
“Anything else?” Jacoby asked.
Kimball held the file up. “I’m good.”
“I’ll need that file returned to me complete with every page intact.”
It was the last communication between the two as Kimball exited the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Shari Cohen’s Office
The Command Center
The Green Zone
Baghdad, Iraq
Shari could not find any solace knowing that she was not even a particle in the memory of Kimball Hayden’s mind when there was a light rapping on her door. Hooking a finger to expertly wipe away tears that only a woman can do without ruining her mascara, she said, “Come in.”
When Isaiah entered, he carried a smile that was sheepish by design. “Remember me?”
Shari didn’t hesitate when she stood up, rounded her desk and took Isaiah into an embrace, a hug that was long and, at least for her, convenient. As soon as they parted Isaiah noted that Shari had been crying. The whites of her eyes had a red and rheumy thickness to them.
