Syrian Rescue

by Don Pendleton

  Or else.

  Mourad had a trick up his sleeve, for starters. He would promise the prisoners freedom if they accommodated his needs. Simply confess to entering Syria without permission and with devious intent—a crime of which they were, in fact, guilty—and they regained their freedom. What could be more generous, under the circumstances?

  Well satisfied with his decision and arrangements, Mourad settled back and closed his eyes.

  He had a long night still ahead of him and planned to look his very best before the cameras.

  * * *

  Deir ez-Zor Governorate

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK we’re waiting for?” Dale Walton whispered.

  Beside him, Roger Segrest shrugged. “Beats me. I thought they would’ve let us go to sleep by now.”

  Or put us all to sleep, he thought.

  The possibility of death had been on Segrest’s mind since the soldiers showed up at the crash site. Scratch that—since the plane fell out of the sky. There was no doubt that they’d be charged with spying and some variation of subversion, both of which were capital offenses at the moment, under martial law. Hanging, he’d been told, was the lawful means of execution, but he also knew that certain military units made exceptions in the field, without a gallows handy.

  Any way you sliced it, dead was dead.

  “It looks like they’re expecting someone,” Walton said, keeping an eye out for the guard who had forbidden conversation between prisoners.

  “Some higher-up,” Segrest replied, lips barely moving. “Maybe someone from the Ministry of Defense.”

  Of course, he might be flattering himself. Upon his arrest, Segrest had identified himself, giving his name, rank and serial number. As the third-highest ranking US official to visit Syria since the civil war began, his name would mean something. Not to the captain who had captured them, perhaps, but to his superiors at headquarters. The same held true with Sani Bankole, a rising star at UN headquarters.

  “We can’t just disappear,” said Walton.

  And the devil’s advocate in Segrest’s head replied, why not?

  Officially, they weren’t in Syria. Bankole’s party and his own were booked into the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad for a weeklong conference on issues that included Syria, along with the ongoing turmoil in Iraq and nuclear negotiations with Iran. Their whole itinerary had been printed in advance, supported by a list of shadowy witnesses at the hotel. Who was to say they could not simply disappear?

  There’d be a major stink, of course. Four diplomats—Qabbani and his sidekick didn’t count; they weren’t on record as being involved in the proceedings—couldn’t simply drop off the face of the earth without some ripples spreading. At some point, possibly next week, four anxious families would hear a suitably redacted version of events. A plane crash in the desert, possibly, with searches underway. If commercial jets with hundreds of passengers could vanish on routine flights, why not a small aircraft with nine aboard, somewhere in the troubled Middle East?

  The flip side of that coin was the publicity Syria’s regime could get by parading enemy agents across the world stage. The president could strike a martyr’s pose, perhaps gain sympathy in quarters where he had been losing friends. And Moscow, doubtless, would be pleased by the embarrassment to Washington.

  However it played out—whether he wound up being executed, jailed or sent home in disgrace—Segrest supposed the rocket that had downed their plane had also finished his career at State. No one could publicly accuse him of a screwup, but he could forget about promotion, and he’d likely be encouraged to resign.

  “Whatever happens,” he told Walton, “keep in mind the nature of our mission. It’s above top secret. You acknowledge nothing, ever.”

  “Understood.” His aide looked doubly worried now, causing Segrest to feel a fleeting pang of guilt.

  “But, hey—don’t worry. They’ll most likely hold a press conference, rip Uncle Sam a new one and send us packing.”

  “I hope so,” Walton said.

  Segrest studied the soldiers who surrounded them and thought, I hope so, too.

  Compared to the alternatives, a premature retirement sounded pretty sweet.

  * * *

  BOLAN PATCHED THE wounds on Azmeh’s side and left biceps. His guide’s assessment had been right; the bullet had just grazed him. While he cleaned and dressed the injuries, Bolan was conscious of the time. He couldn’t know if anyone aboard the Hind had called in to report contact with enemies or sent off a Mayday signal as they dropped out of the sky, and he’d prefer to be on the move again before another chopper showed up on the scene. As far as Bolan knew, the opposition fighters had nothing in the way of aircraft, meaning that the helicopter he’d shot down was army or air force.

  He had joined battle with the government, although they didn’t know it yet.

  The second beacon they had followed from the crash site wasn’t moving. There were several explanations for that: the missing passengers might have camped for the night with whoever retrieved them, or they could have been forced to change clothes and discard their belongings.

  Worst-case scenario, they could be dead now, waiting for the jackals and hyenas to arrive.

  “Do you think we’ll find them?” Azmeh asked as Bolan secured the last of his bandages.

  “We’ll keep trying,” Bolan said.

  “And if the army has them? Then, what?”

  “Then you’ve got another call to make,” Bolan replied. “Whether you want to see it through or take a pass.”

  “I am no friend of the regime,” Azmeh said.

  “No. But if the odds get any worse…”

  “We made a deal. I stay until the end, whatever that may be.”

  Bolan nodded and shook his guide’s hand. “Deal.” He checked the GPS again. “We’ve got about another seventy miles.”

  Unless somebody else got in their way.

  * * *

  CAPTAIN NASSER AL-KASSAR frowned at the GPS device and shook it lightly, as if that would move him closer to his goal. Their progress, if he chose to call it that, seemed maddeningly slow, despite the fact that they were clearly gaining ground.

  “Still twenty miles,” he told Aziz Zureiq.

  “Another hour, at our present speed,” the sergeant answered.

  “Is there no way to drive faster?”

  “Certainly,” Zureiq replied. “At greater risk.”

  Al-Kassar knew that his driver was correct. They would reach the target a few minutes before eleven, more or less, if they were not diverted by a wadi or some other obstacle along the way, such as the damned nomads they had encountered some miles back. Not bad, but he was anxious to be done with this assignment after two wasted days. Already, his superiors were restless, carping at him about failure to perform. If he delayed much longer…

  Zureiq interrupted his train of thought. “Do we have a plan, Captain?”

  “Of course,” al-Kassar replied. A poorly formed one, at least. “If the invaders have been taken by government troops, we attack and seize them.”

  That crude course of action assumed that they were not badly outnumbered by the enemy. In any case, al-Kassar knew he must proceed to carry out his mission. He could not tuck tail and run away, when he had come this close to resolving the matter.

  “And if they were not picked up by regulars?” Zureiq pressed him.

  It was a possibility, of course. With close to fifty groups battling the regime, there was a chance, however small, that some of al-Kassar’s putative allies might have found the plane’s crash site by accident and recognized an opportunity to ransom hostages. In theory, al-Kassar was not supposed to fight with any of the other rebel groups, but he was not about to let some gaggle from al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood rob him of victory and leave him in disgrace.

  “Whoever has them,” he told Zureiq, “they are ours.”

  The sergeant said no more, apparently content to drive and think about his own role in the battle yet to come. And the
re would be a battle. He had no doubt of that. Unless whoever had retrieved the interlopers gave them up without a fight, he had no choice but to take them forcibly.

  That course suggested problems of its own. In order to fulfill his orders, posing as an army unit when he executed the invaders, he required sufficient men and military vehicles to make the filming realistic. Losses from whatever action he engaged in at his destination jeopardized that plan. Unless…

  If they were facing army regulars when they arrived on target, that could work to his advantage. That meant other vehicles for stage dressing, other equipment he could use to set the stage. He would have to kill the soldiers loyal to the president, but once they were disposed of, he could use their APCs, their trucks, whatever still remained, as he saw fit.

  And suddenly, al-Kassar experienced a flash of brilliance.

  What if any regulars he killed were actually rebels from the FSA, slain as they tried to help the outside agitators infiltrate his country? It was just a small revision in the script, for realism’s sake, and to support the motive of his faux soldiers in executing those they’d captured. Afterward, in daylight, they would backtrack to the UN plane and film it as well, to amplify the world’s outrage.

  Mission accomplished.

  Now, he just had to pull it off.

  * * *

  THE TRAITOR FEIGNED sleep after an exhausting day, watching his guards through slitted eyelids. The one nearest to him seemed drowsy, yawning frequently. The next one was twenty feet away and had his back turned toward the prisoners, intent on scouring the desert night beyond the campfire’s light.

  The captives had been taken to a crude trench after their evening meal, where they relieved themselves under the guns and watchful eyes of soldiers. The traitor had not been intimidated by that scrutiny, but he had worried that the Liberator pepperbox might fall out of his trousers in the process, exposing him. Thankfully, he had avoided any such calamity and still retained the weapon. He was constantly aware of it, and of the minutes slipping through his hands.

  It now seemed that he could not count on any outside help. Surely, if comrades from the FSA were coming, they would have arrived by now. The only thing postponing action was his own procrastination and the state of readiness he noted in the soldiers ranged around him.

  It was nearly ten o’clock, and in another hour, maybe two, the guards would be more weary, more relaxed, despite their orders to remain alert. In his experience, strict discipline could only go so far toward overcoming human nature and fatigue.

  The traitor craved refuge in sleep himself. Ironically, the longer he faked it, the closer he came to dozing off, and he could not afford such a lapse. To wake at dawn, with the whole camp stirring, would spoil any chance he had for the day. By tomorrow at dusk they could be in Damascus or some other city, where he would be thoroughly searched and disarmed before he was clapped in a cell.

  No. He must make his move tonight, sooner rather than later. If he could remain awake until midnight…

  Shifting positions slightly, silently, the traitor slipped his right hand underneath the left arm he was using for a pillow, found the soft flesh there, and gave himself a vicious pinch, grinding his thumb and forefinger together while his teeth clenched in reaction to the sudden pain. At once, the mist cleared from his brain, and he was wide awake.

  Not so, the nearest guard. His head was drooping now, as he slouched back against the fender of a truck. A few more moments, and—

  “Attention!”

  Instantly, the guard snapped upright, fumbling for a second with his AK-47, clicking his boot heels as he stood ramrod-straight before the sergeant of the guard. The sentry shed all signs of drowsiness and now looked embarrassed, even frightened, as he was discovered nearly sleeping at his post.

  “No problems here?” the glaring sergeant asked him.

  “No, sir!”

  “All prisoners accounted for?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “You still have two hours on duty. Do you need some coffee?”

  “Yes, sir, if you have—”

  “Go fetch it for yourself!” the sergeant snapped. “I’ll wait exactly two minutes, then put you on report.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The soldier ran off toward the campfire, every step he took pumping adrenaline into his system, driving out the fog of sleep. He would remain alert over the next two hours, certainly, then be replaced by someone fresh to finish out the night.

  The traitor made up his mind. He would wait a little longer, once the sergeant left, then seize the first chance he perceived to make his move. Take down the young sentry, seize his Kalashnikov—and whatever occurred from that point on was in the hands of Allah.

  * * *

  BOLAN WAS FORCED to slow as two camels crossed the trail illuminated by the Niva’s headlights, ambling toward the Iraqi border. They were trailing leads, but neither one was packing any cargo, nor had they been saddled. Bolan watched them go, then drove another fifty yards before he saw the tattered, flattened tents ahead.

  He heard Azmeh prepare his AKMS carbine. Bolan scanned the desert scene—two smallish tents, the fire burned down to smoking ashes, two more camels barely visible beyond his high beams—and quickly found the corpses. There were four of them, all clad in traditional Bedouin clothing, stained now by blood that had dried rusty brown.

  Someone had come across the camp and wasted it without a second though. Whether the nomads had attempted to delay their killers or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, Bolan couldn’t say. In either case, the end result had been the same.

  He steered around the tents and corpses, picking up the faint trail he’d been following, and accelerated once he’d cleared the skirmish site. Azmeh relaxed beside him, set his carbine down, but remained vigilant.

  “You think whoever took the survivors killed these guys, too?” he asked Bolan.

  “Most likely, but we’ll never know for sure.”

  That was the problem when a country turned into one massive free-fire zone. No one was safe.

  “In discussions of my country,” Azmeh said, after another moment, “I hear much about the regime and the resistance, very little about common people. The outsiders who pretend to help us say democracy when they mean oil, influence, power. If the truth be told, I don’t trust either side completely.”

  Bolan couldn’t argue with his logic. He had learned enough from history to know that even in a truly just war there were villains on all sides, as well as heroes. Sometimes the end result was worse than what had gone before.

  “The thing I focus on,” he told Azmeh, “is getting through the job. I try to see what’s wrong, right here, right now, and fix it if I can.”

  “Yes,” Azmeh agreed. “But when you’re gone, I must remain.”

  10

  “Fifteen minutes, General,” the pilot said over the helicopter’s intercom.

  Firas Mourad had not been sleeping, only resting with his eyes closed, but he felt refreshed as he sat up and peered out through the Mil Mi-8’s small window. It was a wasted effort, nothing but dark desert below him, indistinguishable from the surface of a vast, calm sea.

  He sat back, stretched his arms in front of him with fingers laced and heard crackling in his shoulder blades that told him he was getting old. Five years to go before retirement with full pension. Mourad had given up on rising to full general before he was released into civilian life, but this night’s work might make the difference. If nothing else, there might be ways to profit from it personally, though he had not worked out all the details yet.

  For the excursion, he had worn his “combat uniform,” a euphemism for most officers of Mourad’s rank, who never found themselves within a hundred miles of battle unless rebels overran their headquarters. The uniform was lizard-pattern camouflage, topped with a red beret bearing his badge of rank. The pistol on his hip, a 9×18 mm Makarov that he had never fired in anger, rode on a Sam Browne belt.

  Unbuckling
his safety harness, Mourad rose and tottered forward to the cockpit. Peering through its doorway, he looked over the pilot’s shoulder and out through the windscreen.

  The pilot noticed him and half turned to face the general. “Shall I contact the base camp, sir?”

  “No contact yet,” Mourad replied. “Wait until we have closed to half a mile.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He had revised his plan to take Bassam Fakhri by complete surprise, worried that the captain’s men might fire on Mourad’s helicopter if he dropped in out of nowhere in the middle of the night. It would be safer this way and still produce nearly the same effect, without giving Fakhri any time to prepare for the visit.

  Whenever possible, Mourad deemed it beneficial to keep his subordinates guessing, wondering what he might do or demand of them next. If they became too settled and secure, it gave them time to think, perhaps to plot against him.

  The court-martial he had in mind was risky and had not been cleared by his superiors. Mourad had planned it on his own. To seek permission was to risk denial—or, worse yet, to have his plan and his success co-opted by some full-fledged general who had not spent a minute on the project after rubber-stamping Mourad’s scheme. He had been relegated to the shadows more than once by higher-ranking officers, and Mourad did not plan to let it happen again.

  “Five minutes, General,” the pilot said. “If you’d be seated, please, and buckle up, I will alert the camp as ordered from the half-mile point.”

  Mourad retreated from the cockpit to his place in the front row of passenger seats. Across the aisle from him, Major Farzat appeared slightly airsick.

  “We’re almost there, Raed,” Mourad encouraged him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mourad restrained himself from laughing at the younger officer’s discomfort. Here was one he never had to fear. The major’s weakness was embarrassing at times, but on this night it offered reassurance to Mourad.