by Ted Bell
The audience was a strange mix of clean-cut young Muslim men, freshly arrived and beardless, who were staring at the imam like he’d just dropped down from paradise. The others were young black men, and boys, poor folk from the ’cane just outside the fence who’d come to learn about a religion that promised to justify and explain all the hate they felt toward their own country, its white rulers, its wars against the poor and downtrodden all over the world. Stoke saw the kid Ali, who’d invited him tonight, sitting one row back, and nodded to him.
The Wizard finished his reading, closed the Koran, and looked directly at Stokely. “Will Ali Baba rise?” he said in his weird little voice.
Stoke stood up.
“We welcome a new brother tonight,” the imam said, “a new soldier in our worldwide jihad against the nonbelievers. Brother Ali Baba, have you something to say to us?”
“I have received a calling to fight the people until they say there is no God but Allah, and his prophet is Muhammad, peace be upon him.”
Stoke sat down, and the imam continued.
“We are all servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the sake of the religion of Allah. It is also our duty to send a call to all the people of this world to enjoy this great light and to embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam.”
The audience all responded with some phrase in Arabic that Stoke didn’t know so he just moved his mouth along with them. The imam picked up his Koran and stepped back from the podium.
“I now call upon our brother Ishtar to close this evening of praise and enlightenment. Let the truth be known.”
Ishtar stepped up to the plate and got right down to it, clearly addressing the young black brothers in the audience. He said:
“You better watch what the fuck flies outta yo mouth
Or I’ma hijack a plane and fly into your house
Burn your apartment with your family tied to the couch
Slit your throat so you scream, only blood comes out
I see the world like it is, beyond the white and the black
The way the government downplays historical facts
Like the CIA trainin’ terrorists to fight
Build bombs and sneak box cutters onto a flight
When I was a kid the Devil himself brought me a mike
But I refused the offer ’cause God sent me to strike
And you can’t fathom the truth so you don’t hear me
You think it’s all just a fucking conspiracy theory
That’s why conservative racists are all runnin’ shit
And your iPhone is tapped by the federal government
I’m jammin’ frequencies in ya brain when you speak to me
Technique will rip a rapper to pieces indecently
Pack ya weapons illegally, ’cause we ain’t never hesitant
We snipe-scoping men in black surrounding the president.”
AN HOUR LATER, STOKE, HAVING HEARD the Glades’ poet laureate, Ishtar, let the truth be known, was sitting on one side of a two-inch-thick piece of Plexiglas looking at his beautiful Fancha on the other side, each talking on the prison phones provided. There was a long line of inmates to either side of him, all talking to their mamas or their wives or their girlfriends.
“How you doin’, baby?” he asked her, putting his hand on the glass. She reached up and placed hers against his.
“Missing you. Tell me you’re coming out soon.”
“I am, I am. I’m getting close here. I’m on the inside of the bad guys, just what I came here to do.”
“How long, honey?”
“Few days. A week at most.”
“I saw the baby doctor today.”
“Everything good?”
“It’s all good, Stokely. As soon as you make it all good.”
“Aw, baby, you know I will.”
“How do I know?”
“Well, because when I say I will—Hold up a sec.”
A woman had just taken a vacant seat about five chairs to the right of Fancha. It was that same shooter who’d tried to kill him twice, once in the street, once in his own damn apartment. She wasn’t a blonde now. She had flame-red hair, cut short, but he’d know that face anywhere. She wasn’t looking his way and Stoke could tell by the intense way she was talking on the phone and staring straight through the glass at somebody that she hadn’t made him yet. He also knew she could glance his way at any second. He twisted his head slowly left to get a look at who she was talking to.
Ishtar.
“Baby, I gotta go. Now.”
“I just got here. I drove all the way up from Miami to see you and you gotta go? Damn!”
“I’ll explain later. I promise. But now—Oh shit.”
She’d seen him. Her eyes went wide, and she stared straight at him. She started talking urgently into the phone indicating Stoke with a couple of head nods in his direction. Ishtar leaned forward and peered down the line until he saw Stokely.
His expression told Stoke all he needed to know. He’d been made. Completely busted. And he had barely minutes to do what he needed to do.
“I love you,” he said to his fiancée and hung up the phone. He got to his feet slowly and tried to walk slowly toward the guard at the door; he could feel Ishtar’s eyes burning a hole in his back every step of the way. The hack pulled the door open for him, and he said in the guy’s ear, “White woman with short red hair. Talking to the huge black con. There’s a warrant out on her. Miami-Dade PD. Murder and attempted murder. Arrest her soon as she leaves this room. Call it in right damn now before she makes a run for it.”
Then he stepped outside into the green concrete corridor. A guard was assigned to escort him back to his cell.
“Listen to me,” Stoke said quietly as they headed back to his cell block. “I am a federal agent placed inside this facility on a matter of national security. I’ve just been made by a con and I need to speak to a guard named Figg immediately. Okay?”
“Fuck you talkin’ about, Smokehouse?”
“Call the warden, goddamn it. Tell him Mr. Jones is in trouble. Tell him I need Figg to meet me at the imam’s cell in two minutes or less. Call him on your radio now or believe me, your career here is over.”
Stoke looked the guy in the eyes until he got on his radio and asked to be patched through to the warden’s office. Stoke was walking very fast and the guy had to hustle to keep up with him as he spoke.
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry about that. Figg will be waiting for you.”
“Appreciate that. Can I speak to Figg?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, handing the walkie-talkie to Stoke.
“Sergeant Figg, the little imam must be immediately removed from his cell. Toss his cell now, before anyone gives him a heads-up. He’s got a hidden laptop somewhere that contains vital national security intelligence. He’ll scrub it clean if you don’t get there right this second. Understand?”
The imam’s cell was open when he got there two minutes later. Three corrections officers were tearing the place apart.
“Got it!” a guard said, holding up a small black Dell. It had been sealed in three watertight plastic bags and hidden inside the toilet tank. Not where you’d go to look for a computer, underwater.
“Thank you,” Stoke said, taking the Dell. “Now if you could get me the hell out of here as quickly as possible? Also, have the warden immediately call the CIA agent-in-charge in Miami and relay what just happened, I’d appreciate it. I need an officer to drive me to Miami as well.”
“Car will be waiting out front, Mr. Jones.”
“Did you get the redheaded girl coming out?”
“We did. She’s being Mirandized and charged right now.”
“Man, this is turning out to be one fine day,” Stoke said as he raced away, a guard on his heels to let him out of prison.
FORTY-ONE
COUNTY SLIGO, IRELAND
COMMANDER HAWKE HIMSELF,” the commanding officer of the British Army commando unit said, easily
managing to make the greeting sound distinctly unfriendly. Alex ignored him and climbed in through the rear hatch of the black Saxon AT105C command vehicle. There wasn’t a lot of room in these damned battle taxis, so Alex Hawke and Major Masterman assumed uncomfortably chummy positions.
There was a turret on top with a 7.62mm machine gun in the highly unlikely event any of the enemy combatants trapped inside the safe house ever got anywhere within a mile of the major’s heavily armored hideout.
Hawke smiled at the army man, still fine-tuning exactly how he was going to go about this. Masterman smiled back, a man appallingly sure of himself. He was short, beefy, had narrow eyes the color of lead, a stubborn, cornerstone chin, and wore a moustache of the old wing commander variety.
Beneath the two men’s smiles lurked a great deal of tension. Hawke let it build to an uncomfortable level, forcing Masterman to speak first.
“Everything all squared away up on the hill, I take it? Talked some sense into that pompous ass from Scotland Yard, did you?” the major asked. “And that pipsqueak policeman, what’s his name, Drummond? Worked with him once. Talked about nothing but tea roses. Closet poofter if you ask me. I asked you a question about them, I believe.”
Hawke looked at him, expressionless.
“Sorry. What did you say?” Hawke said.
“I asked you if you’d squared everything away with those two fools up on the hill.”
“They’re not happy, but they understand.”
“And how about you? Do you understand?”
“Major Masterman, I know this is your operation. And that MI6 has no jurisdictional right to interfere or intercede on my behalf.”
“Correct.”
“But I must tell you, Major, that I absolutely insist on going into that safe house with the lads.”
“And, as I said to you over an hour ago, I absolutely insist that you remain here with me in the command vehicle until we’ve accomplished our objective. Secured the house.”
Hawke glared at the man, his eyes cold as winter rain, giving no hint of the furnace within. When he finally spoke, his voice was as sharp and hard-edged as Sheffield steel.
“Major, it is contrary to my nature to pull rank, but I’m afraid in the present circumstances, you leave me no other choice.”
“Pull rank on me?” Masterman guffawed. “Is that what you said? You can’t go high enough to pull rank on me, sir.”
“I’m afraid I actually can. You serve in the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire, according to your insignia.”
“What of it?”
“I am here today at the express request of an old friend. He has entrusted me with finding the man or men who have threatened not only him, but his entire family. One of the men inside that house may have murdered my friend’s godfather. I swore an oath to find that man. And I am honor bound to take direct action against him. Not after the fight. Now.”
“Rubbish. I’ve never heard such a farcical fairy tale in all my life.”
“I warn you, Major, do not ever insult me again. You’ve just called me a liar. Your entire career is on the line at this moment. I’m offering you one last chance to save it. Make your decision.”
“Bollocks.”
“As you wish. In the last half hour, I have spoken directly to my friend regarding this situation. He told me that should I encounter further difficulty in carrying out his explicit instructions, I was to call him on his private line immediately. I have that number on my mobile. Shall I ring it?”
“Of course, why not? This is rank insanity.”
Alex pulled out his mobile and punched in Charles’s private number. Masterman, seething and sputtering, seemed on the verge of spontaneous human combustion.
“Hello, sir, Hawke here. Still a bit of trouble at this end, I’m sorry to say…Yes, sir, Major Masterman is right here with me now.”
Hawke listened for a few more moments and said, “He would like to speak with you, Major.”
Masterman snatched the cell phone out of Hawke’s hand.
He barked into the phone, “This is Major Milo Masterman, Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire. Who the bloody hell is this?”
Hawke watched the man listening to the famous voice at the other end, his eyes growing wider, his hand beginning to tremble uncontrollably, and his face turning the deepest shade of scarlet Alex had ever seen.
Hawke, having no wish to humiliate the man further, quickly made his exit and went to join the young platoon commander, Lieutenant Sebastian Bolt, who would soon be leading the attack on the safe house.
HAWKE FOUND BOLT IN THE MIDST of three or four commandos, leaders of the assault group, crouched behind some heavy underbrush, each man doing a last-minute check of gear and weapons. The assault would commence in exactly twenty-five minutes. A roughly drawn layout plan of the Barking Dog lay on the ground. One man held a pencil light while Lieutenant Bolt went through a final brief.
“Two teams, Yankee upstairs, Zulu down. You’ve all memorized the layout of this target. Three floors, central staircase. Two rooms right and two rooms left on the top two floors, here and here. One room left, one room right on the ground going in. Exits front and rear. Shoot like a surgeon when you acquire a target and verify he’s armed.”
He looked at each man, making eye contact one last time, waiting for each to nod.
“Night-vision goggles are a huge advantage here; use them. The enemy may be disoriented, but they are highly trained and highly motivated terrorist fighters. They kill innocent women and children, and they will be more than happy to kill you. You all know what to do, so let’s do it! We go in twenty. Good hunting and good luck.”
“Lieutenant Sebastian Bolt?” Hawke said, kneeling down beside him. He was blond, ruddy cheeked, and surprisingly young, and Hawke suddenly felt his age.
“Yes, sir, I am. You’re Commander Hawke, aren’t you? MI6? There was a pool as to whether or not you’d make it here in time. Or at all.”
“I made it.”
“Glad you did, sir, and honored. There’s a rumor floating round you conceived and executed the hostage rescue aboard that Russian airship in the middle of the Atlantic. From a submarine. True?”
“I was there, yes. Now, how can I help?”
“Can you help us identify the terrorist leader known only as ‘Smith’?”
“I cannot. No one on earth can, it seems. The invisible man.”
“Then all you can do is help us kill or capture as many of these bastards as possible. Plain enough, sir?”
Hawke grinned at the eager-to-fight young lieutenant. “You’re my kind of leader.”
“We have the element of surprise in our favor, sir. Four of their sentries in the woods have been taken out silently in the last hour. None of them had a chance to use his radio.”
“No one on the roof?”
“We’ve been watching that. You’d think they’d post a man up there. But, no. They did post an armed sentry out front. Stood by the door, smoked a fag or two, and went to bed about a half hour ago. All lights were extinguished. There has been no noise, no light, no sign of movement inside since.”
“Lieutenant, if Smith is in there, I’d like very much to take him alive. In other words, I’d rather have prisoners than corpses.”
“I understand. I’ll get that message out immediately. We’re using heavy loads, so a hit anywhere will take a man down without a kill.”
Bolt, like all the troops, was wearing a battlefield commo set inside his helmet. An NVG device was mounted atop the helmet. He turned away and spoke quickly into his lip mike, passing on the new orders to his second in command.
He produced a similar Kevlar commo helmet for Hawke who donned it, pulling the flip-up NVGs into position and checking them. He noticed white circles painted around the tops of all the black helmets around him. The white paint popped, like something under black light, and he asked Bolt about it.
“Recently developed. Highly reflective through NVGs. You’ll f
ind it very handy once we’re inside that house in the pitch-dark.”
Hawke grinned. “Our troops look like angels with halos.”
“That’s the general idea,” Bolt said, and looked at the digital countdown on his watch. “Helps you keep track of whose side you’re on.”
“The side of the angels.”
“You got it, Commander.”
“We go in twenty. I estimate a minimum of fifteen to twenty-five heavily armed IRA soldiers inside. All armed with AK-47s. We have microphones under the house and all we’re getting is snoring. Safe to say we have the element of surprise.”
“What kind of firepower do you have?” Hawke asked, checking his own M8 weapon, fitted with a noise suppressor, selecting a three-shot burst, and putting a round in the chamber. He also had a Kahr P9 9mm pistol in a Velcro holster strapped high on his right thigh.
“I’ve got two sections, twelve men in each, all armed with individual weapon IW-SA80s with noise suppressors, with the exception of my LMGs, light machine gunners. Each man also carries two ‘Bullet Catcher’ rifle grenades.”
“Never heard of them.”
“The grenade is simply pushed onto the muzzle of the barrel, and an ordinary 5.56mm round is fired into it. The grenade absorbs the bullet without damage and is projected toward the target up to 150 meters away.”
“Good. You understand why I want to nix the mortar emplacements on the hillside?”
“Yes, sir. I heard from them and I agree with your assessment. We learn more from captured maps, documents, and laptops than we ever do from dead enemy combatants. I wonder. Did Major Masterman agree with that no-mortar decision, sir? I’ve received no direct orders from him on that.”
“I didn’t ask for his opinion.”
“Radio must be down. I can’t raise him.”
Hawke didn’t say a word.
“Anything wrong, sir?”
“Lieutenant Bolt, for the safety of your men and the success of this mission, I think it best if you immediately assume full command of this operation.”
Lieutenant Bolt looked at Hawke carefully, thought a moment, then flipped up his tiny battlefield communicator mike and said, “Mortars, mortars. This is Bolt. Hold fire, repeat, mortars hold your fire until and unless you hear from me, personally. Roger that? The CO’s radio is down, all orders during this operation will come directly from me. Over.”
