by Scott Blade
I could see fear in his eyes, which made me think of Mrs. Warren and how horrified she must’ve been. The guy said, “Six. There’s six of us.”
I smiled because he was telling the truth.
Romey said, “You guys work for Danner?”
He nodded.
I looked around the room, kept the Glock pointed at his kneecap.
The room was a huge living room with all of the typical furnishings and fixtures that a normal family would have. There were bookshelves lined with books and photographs. There was a big oak coffee table with a bucket of ice and beer stuffed in it. Then I saw something that I was expecting.
On the center of the coffee table was a Koran. A big leather-bound book like it belonged in a museum and not in a family home.
I asked, “That’s Danner’s?”
“Everything here is.”
“How are you two involved? You’re too young to be ex-military. Unless you’re both flunkies.”
The white guy was rolling back up on the sofa. He held his nose back and said, “We’re part of ISIS.”
He said it like he was proud of it, like he wore their flag with pride.
Romey asked, “How’s that possible?”
“What, because I’m white I can’t serve Allah? Praise be to him.”
Romey stared at me, disbelief in her eyes.
The white guy said, “Ever heard of the internet?”
I asked, “You were recruited?”
He nodded.
“They were probably contacted on social media. Facebook or whatever. ISIS has been doing that for years. American kids are easy to talk to these days. They go online and pretend to be lost souls, make friends with young Americans who actually think that they are lost souls and they just talk them up,” I said and I looked back at Romey.
“They’re homegrown?”
“That’s probably what Danner’s old man found out. Danner’s probably here to recruit fighters and sympathizers for ISIS. You know? Taking advantage of our youth.
The Arabic guy had rage surging up in his face.
I said, “Don’t even think about it. I’ll plug your knee.”
“You won’t do that. Cops have rules.”
“Kid, do I look like a cop?”
He looked at me, up and then down. He looked at Romey and then he let the rage go.
I asked, “The guy upstairs, is he deaf or something?”
The white guy said, “She’s not a guy and she’s asleep. Sleeping pills.”
I looked back at Romey, who said, “Widow, Fatima.”
CHAPTER 53
ROMEY HANDCUFFED the two guys together. It turned out to be luck that there were only two because she only had two pairs of cuffs.
We left them cuffed and walked to a grand staircase just beyond the living room in a huge foyer.
Romey ran up the stairs. I stayed close to her and ready to shoot anyone who came out at us. But there was no one. We found four bedrooms upstairs. The first three were completely empty and dark. The last one had a figure sleeping in a California king bed on top of the covers.
Romey switched on the light, which only turned on a lamp next to the bed. No overhead lights. There weren’t even any light fixtures on the ceiling to turn on.
She didn’t hesitate. She ran straight for the figure and rolled her over.
I walked quickly to an open door, Glock pointed straight out. I leaned in and flipped on the light. It was an empty master bathroom. It was very nice. Marble counters. A huge walk-in shower with rainforest showerhead.
The weapons business had been lucrative for the Danner family. That was for damn sure.
I looked back at Romey. She had a huge smile on her face. She said, “It’s her. It’s Fatima. She’s alive.”
CHAPTER 54
I WONDERED why Fatima was in Danner’s bed, but I didn’t say anything to Romey about it. I didn’t want her wondering too. I could already imagine.
The guy had said, “She’s asleep. Sleeping pills.” Which implied that they had been keeping her drugged, maybe with worse things than sleeping pills, but she looked alive and didn’t have a scratch on her. Which was good news.
Romey slapped her lightly on the face a few times and said, “Wake up. Wake up.”
After a moment, her eyes rolled open like she had been woken from a deep sleep.
“She’s coming to.”
I nodded. Romey was excited. She had wrongly accepted that Turik had been guilty of murder and treason. She had accepted like everyone else. And now we had a small win. She had found Turik’s wife and she was alive. She seemed in good health. Of course, the hospital and cops would insist that she get a rape kit, which would tell an entirely different story. I presumed so, anyway. But she was alive. She had all ten fingers and all ten toes, which was far more than I could say for previous captives that I’d come across in my life.
I said, “We should move downstairs.”
Romey said, “We should call Kelly.”
“You sure that’s what you want to do?”
“What else is there? We got them by the balls.”
I said, “I mean, you sure you want to call this in and say we found them alive?”
“We can’t murder them. We got two of them now. Their testimony will be enough. Let’s get her downstairs and we can call Kelly. My guys will get her with a literal army of armed cops. We can ambush Danner when he comes back. It’s over.”
I nodded.
Fatima opened her eyes completely and was in shock. She acted like she didn’t know where she was. Which might’ve been true. They probably took her and drugged her.
She spoke in a disoriented voice. She asked, “Who are you?”
“My name is Dominique Romey. This is Jack Widow. We’re here to help. I’m a cop.”
Dominique? I thought. That wouldn’t have been my first guess.
Fatima looked at me like she recognized me. Her eyes widened, which I guess meant that she was scared by my looks.
I said, “Don’t worry. We’re the good guys.”
Romey said, “Take your time, okay? We’re here to save you. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Fatima looked back at Romey and then burst into a fit of over-the-top gratitude. She grabbed Romey tight and hugged her like her life depended on it.
Romey asked, “Listen, there're still some bad guys out there. They are supposed to be back any minute. So we need to get downstairs.”
Fatima said, “Okay.”
She paused a long beat and then she asked, “Where are the rest of the police?”
Fatima had a strange accent. I couldn’t place it, but that was because it wasn’t out in the open. It was almost like a hint or trace of something familiar to me. I couldn’t place the Middle Eastern accent. Of course, that wasn’t surprising because they spoke with thousands of accents and dialogues. The Middle East was part of Africa, part of Asia, and arguably part of Europe. It was a melting pot, a converging point of a multitude of cultures and languages and accents and different incarnations of basically the same religions. And I was no expert.
Romey said, “Don’t worry. They are going to be here soon. We just need to call them. So let’s get moving. You can rest downstairs. Okay?”
Fatima thought for a long moment. Then she said, “No! No! There were some of them downstairs.”
“It’s safe. We have them locked up.”
Fatima grabbed hold of Romey, tight again like a bear hug. She begged over and over. She said, “Please? I can’t see them again. The things that they did! I can’t. Please?”
Romey looked up at me. I shrugged.
“Okay, honey, but I need to call in the reinforcements. We’re going to go back downstairs.”
Fatima said, “Please don’t leave me alone.”
That accent. It popped out again at me. Where is that?
“Okay. Don’t worry. We’ll be right back.”
I said, “I can stay here.”
Romey said, “I need you do
wnstairs. The others could pull up any second. You’d better search around for weapons and whatever else you can find. We may need to hold them off.”
I nodded. She was right. We didn’t really know that there were only four others out there. The two idiots downstairs might’ve been lying.
We got up and left the room. Romey turned back and said, “I’ll be right back. You just rest.”
Fatima nodded.
She said, “I meant that. The signal up here isn’t the best. I’ll have to go outside to call.”
I nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll check out the rest of the house.”
I watched her walk out the slider to the backyard. She stopped and stood over the pool, pulled her phone out and started dialing.
I checked out the two guys handcuffed together. They were still secure. I kept the Glock out, ready to fire, but I was sure they had told the truth that no one else was here.
I checked the rest of the downstairs, which was easy because all that was left were two doors. The first was a half bathroom and the other opened up to a cold, cement staircase that led down to the basement. The light had been off. It was pitch black. I flipped the switch and two hanging light bulbs, both about twenty feet apart, fought to come on. They finally did and I made my way down into the cavernous basement.
There was no sign of life.
The basement was half a storage area, like most basements were, and half something else entirely. The second part was the most interesting to me. But before I checked it out, there was one thing that I had to see first.
There was a wall with a small arsenal designated behind glass. I walked over to it, flipped anther switch, which lit up the wall by a single bright halogen lamp from the floor.
I had never seen anything like the guns on the wall. Not in a private collection. There were antique Colts, Peacemakers, rifles, and even muskets that looked like they were from the American Revolution. But there was one thing that I had to have.
There was a WWII Ithaca M37 Trench Pump Action Shotgun. I knew it was WWII because the damn thing still had a bayonet on the end of it. Which was a long spear tip thing that Romey would’ve described as wicked sharp. The blade must’ve been a foot long and razor sharp.
I smiled, stuffed the Glock 17 back into the waistband of my jeans and pulled down the Ithaca. I pumped it. It sounded useable, which it probably was. It was hard for me to believe that Michael Danner, Sr. would’ve polished it, oiled it, and taken such good care of it if it didn’t work.
The Ithaca M37 is named after the city where it was originally made, which is Ithaca, New York. And it is a fine, fine shotgun. It was trusted by American Armed Forces in every war from WWII to Vietnam and then police departments all around the country, even to this day. There are few substitutions.
I flipped it and looked into the port on the bottom. It was empty. Good thing I was prepared. I loaded it from the shells on my forearm sleeve. It held seven shells, leaving one left on my forearm sleeve.
I didn’t stop smiling until I went back to the other wall.
CHAPTER 55
I STOPPED SMILING at the other side of the room because of what I found.
There were two metal desks, two comfortable cushion desk chairs, and two desktop computers that looked very, very expensive.
Lined across the wall near the desks were huge terminals like something where Google would store its important information.
What is this? I thought.
On the other wall, there was a single huge map of the world and next to that there were a couple of smaller ones. All were political maps with drawn borders and red lines and complicated legends, explaining what the symbols meant.
The thing that really stood out at me was on a bulletin board.
I approached the board and studied it. It was completely filled with pinned photographs with words written in Arabic, which I couldn’t read. Not fluently.
I recognized four of the people from the photographs. One was of Turik. It looked like it was taken from his home. Fatima was in it as well. She was the second person I recognized. The next was General Carl, then Malory. All were dead now. All had big red Xs over their faces like they’d been crossed out. All except Fatima and Malory. I supposed it was because they didn’t realize that Malory was dead now.
The next two faces were white and looked British. Which I couldn’t have been sure about, but it made sense. This was like a vision board for assassination. They had done some heavy planning for this operation.
I stepped back. There was a table next to the bulletin board. It was in the corner. It had personal items on it, like family photographs. I almost dismissed them, until I looked at one. It was a photograph of a familiar face, only I wasn’t sure who. I wasn’t sure where I had seen that face before.
The good news was that it was a black and white picture that was clipped out of a newspaper. I reached out, left the Glock down by my side. I scooped up the picture and shattered the glass against the table. The noise was loud in the basement. It echoed, a low rumble that was dead in a fraction of a second.
I pinched the picture with one hand and dropped the frame. I flipped the picture back around. It was a folded-up, cutout newspaper clipping. I opened it all the way.
The caption told me why the guy was familiar. I had seen him before, long ago, way back in 2006. It was a photograph of al-Zarqawi. It read that he was dead. Killed in an American bombing, which I knew to be a cover-up.
I guessed Danner was straight up converted to ISIS. This was his basement. Which also made me think about his poor father again. The guy probably came down here, found all this stuff. He might’ve actually killed himself out of shame. Then again, Danner was a traitor to his country, which was a hard line to cross for any former Marine. But once it’s crossed, there’s no going back.
Killing his own father would’ve been just as likely as his father committing suicide.
Then I saw another clipping that was just out on the tabletop. I picked it up. It was from an Iraqi newspaper. There was a photograph of a living al-Zarqawi. It was full length. He was smiling. It looked more like it was taken in Europe than in the Middle East. I stared at it. It was London, no doubt about it. I could see Big Ben behind him. It was far, in the distance, and over his shoulder, but I’d recognize that huge clock face anywhere. Which was odd, because surely he was on a no-fly list. Then again, anyone can get a false passport and go anywhere. You only have to have the right connections.
In the photograph, al-Zarqawi wasn’t alone. He was holding hands with a girl. A teenage girl. She was dark skin, brown hair, and maybe fifteen or so.
There was writing too. This clipping had plenty of the actual article left over. Only it was in Arabic. It was probably anti-American propaganda.
The caption was also in Arabic, but the date wasn’t. The date was from 2005. Al-Zarqawi was alive and well.
I thought about Malory, remembered what he had told me. The brainwashing. The murder. The bombing of al-Zarqawi’s family.
Then I thought about the date: 2005. I remembered Malory’s daughter.
They had killed al-Zarqawi’s children. He had taken Millie hostage. He had tormented Malory with emails, saying nothing, only sending him photos and video files.
I had imagined the video and photographs to be the worst-case scenario. I had imagined rape and child abuse and horrible things done to a little, scared girl.
Here was a photograph of al-Zarqawi holding hands with a teenage girl. She wore a hijab, a head covering over her hair, like Marilyn Monroe would, trying to be in disguise. Trying to hide in plain sight.
The girl in the photograph could be Millie.
Then I thought about Turik. There had been no photographs of his wife at their house.
No one had ever seen her, uncovered in town. But the photograph that Maya had sent us had Fatima in a bikini, which was odd if she was supposed to always be covered.
Malory had gone on and on about brainwashing. Brainwashing can take years,
he had said. ISIS had been successful to a certain point. But what was brainwashing really, if not simply finding young minds and twisting them with propaganda, torture, and repeat—for years.
Brainwashing.
CHAPTER 56
SEVERAL THINGS HAPPENED ALL AT ONCE.
The first was that I heard, loud and clear, a vehicle outside on the drive. Heavy tires drug along the pavement, a full-sized engine hummed, and the body rocked on its suspension. It was a truck or SUV and it was pulling in, pulling up, and pulling close. I imagined headlamps sweeping over the driveway. I closed my eyes and backtracked in my mind. I imagined them sweeping and washing over Romey’s parked Mustang. Which they easily could’ve spotted. And they would’ve noticed it because even though we had parked it back in a nearby lot, it was still a parked Military Police Mustang and didn’t belong here. And I don’t know what direction they had driven in from.
I heard the slam of the parking brake, the death of the ignition, and three pairs of heavy boots hitting the driveway and scuffing in a heated panic. They knew we were here.
The next thing that happened was that I heard voices above. Male voices. The voices of two angry guys who’d just been handcuffed.
I didn’t wait to hear anything else. I turned and ran up the stairs.
I knew there was a chance of the two guys that we had handcuffed already being free, which meant that they were waiting for me at the top of the stairs. It also meant that Romey was a prisoner, which I had to assume anyway.
I would’ve liked to have a drone readout on the enemy positions. I’d love to have been briefed on the enemies’ capabilities, on Danner’s skillset, on the giant’s history. I would’ve loved to at least had the opportunity to have reconned them first. But I didn’t have any of that information.
All I knew was that there were six hostiles upstairs, counting Millie Malory.
The good news was that two of them were American and young and dumb, which equals inexperienced. But the bad news was that the giant had looked competent, maybe even a specialist.
I already knew that Danner had been a Special Forces Marine, ancient history now, but still dangerous. The last guy, I didn’t know.
