The Ethan Galaal Series: Books 1 - 3

by Isaac Hooke

  Picking up some bike gloves from a street hawker along the way, Ethan met Mufid at the designated hour. The shopkeeper had managed to procure a static climbing rope, fifty meters in length, precisely as asked. He also gave Ethan the intel he had requested previously—the GPS coordinates of various Islamic State buildings, including the destination of the scientist's motorcade—on a memory stick.

  "Do I get my money now?" Mufid asked.

  "I do have a small amount for you, yes." Ethan paid Mufid the Syrian pounds he had obtained from the money changer.

  Mufid accepted the amount with a puzzled expression. "Where is my fifty thousand?"

  Ethan wrote an IOU in Arabic for the amount of fifty thousand US dollars, signing it with an alias Sam used in the Middle East. "Bring this to a US embassy."

  "But there are no US embassies in Syria!"

  "Then go to Turkey or Jordan. Or wait until the US embassy reopens in Damascus." The embassy had closed down in February 2012, and probably wouldn't reopen for some time.

  Mufid threw up his arms theatrically. "But that could be years from now! This is ridiculous. You promised me fifty thousand."

  "And so I did. You're holding it in your hands."

  Mufid fumed a moment longer, then pocketed the note. "American embassy, you say?" He stamped his foot loudly. "To hell with you and your American friends! What help have the Americans ever given us? While Assad was busy gassing us with his chemicals, the Americans watched idly, never coming to our aid. But now that the Islamic State has come, the Americans suddenly show an interest again. The West is full of two-faced, cynical, selfish liars concerned only with their own national welfare."

  "I won't disagree with you," Ethan said. "But are you done your little tirade? Good. Because here's what I want you to do for me in the coming days."

  He instructed the shopkeeper to buy a piece of flatbread from the bakery at eleven thirty in the morning each day, and then to wait at a nearby street corner until twelve thirty. He was to continue that daily routine until Ethan showed up to retrieve the bread.

  "Why should I do this?" Mufid demanded. "You have not paid me my due! You have given me a pittance, along with a useless piece of paper."

  "Do this," Ethan said. "And I'll give you the same pittance the next time we meet. And maybe another piece of paper."

  Greed flashed in Mufid's eyes, though he quickly hid it. The 'pittance' Ethan offered was likely the same or more than the clothing store pulled in after a month of sales. For a chance to earn double or triple that amount with very little work, of course Mufid would jump at the opportunity—it came as no surprise when the man eventually consented to the task.

  Ethan slid the coil of rope over his shoulder and hiked to the building across from his target. Once there, someone actually buzzed him inside that time. He had come earlier than the previous night, which may have had something to do with it.

  At the rooftop he surveyed the steel supports holding up the water tanks. Four bars held up each tank, though they were all fairly corroded. The television antennas were little better.

  Ethan looped one end of the rope around the steel support of the water tank closest to the courtyard anyway. He threaded roughly half the rope through the bar, then tossed both ends over the ledge. The dangling cords gathered into a pile on the dried grass of the courtyard below.

  Ethan placed the bike gloves beside the ledge and tested the rope, grabbing both sections and leaning back to put his weight on the anchor. When he was satisfied that it would hold, he let his body dangle entirely over the edge. Seemed good.

  He returned to the snipe position on the far side, dropped, and set down the Dragunov. He retrieved his phone and readied himself, taking a few deep breaths. Then he activated a timer on the cellphone and stuffed it in his pocket. He scooped up his rifle, dashed to the far side of the rooftop and yanked on the bike gloves. He grabbed the two sections of climbing rope and slid them between his legs and up across his right buttock, over his chest, about his left trapezius muscle, across his upper back, over his right deltoid muscle, along the outside of his right palm, finally looping the twin strands over his hand and gripping the ropes firmly between his fingers. The dulfersitz method.

  Ethan slid the rifle strap over his neck so that the weapon hung over his chest and wouldn't interfere with his descent, then he rappelled down, his right hand functioning as the lead, his left hand behind him serving as the brake. He eased the rope through his fingers, letting it slide over his body as he dropped. He twisted his torso slightly downward to ease the friction pain on his groin, and he pushed off from the wall with his boots as he went.

  When he reached the bottom of the three-story building, he extricated himself from the ropes and then pulled on one section, hand over hand, until the entire cord was free of the anchor and the far end dropped at his feet. Then he picked up the rope pile and sprinted through the dark courtyard.

  He temporarily stowed the rope behind a shrub and then grabbed the wide, flat rim of the cinder block fence and hauled himself up.

  The street below was quiet, the pavement clear of obstructions.

  Ethan lowered himself back inside the courtyard and stopped the timer on his cellphone.

  Forty-five seconds.

  Exfil route, good to go.

  19

  In the computer room of the barracks, Ethan loaded up the memory stick Mufid had given him. On it were the GPS coordinates of several government installations, including a local courthouse used to administer sharia law. He also found a photo to go along with the latitude and longitude of the building where the motorcade brought the scientist every day. It looked like a repurposed industrial complex, no doubt converted into a weapons research facility. Ethan forwarded all of the information along to Sam. She would probably leak the information to the Assad regime after he performed the hit—there would be a few barrel bombs dropped in the days after, no doubt. Whether they hit their targets or not was another story.

  Sleep proved difficult that night. It felt particularly hot and stuffy in room three-ten; Ethan lay atop his sleeping bag, his loose clothes drenched in perspiration, his flushed face throbbing in time to his heartbeat. It didn't help matters that he kept mentally reviewing the planned hit. When the time came, he felt confident he could carry out the assassination without a hitch, but there were many variables that could go wrong. There always were with something like that, which was why he had tried to keep the plan simple.

  He also dwelled on Alzena. When Shi was dead, the militants would almost certainly ask the scientist's wife if her husband had been in contact with any strangers lately. The wife would mention that the neighbor had arranged for Shi to meet a Jordanian only a few nights before. Members of the Khansa'a Brigade would visit Alzena. Ethan had coached her on what to say via their shared email account—she was to claim she had never personally met the Jordanian. If she was asked to reveal her email exchange with the man, she would tell the Khansa'a that it was her habit to delete messages from her inbox and sent folders, because she liked to "keep her account clean," and so she had no record of the correspondence. She had promised Ethan she would delete everything save for a select few emails from the last year, that way if the Khansa'a forced her to log in to her personal account, her story would appear true. Also, when they revealed that her Jordanian friend had assassinated the scientist, her shock would be real—Ethan had left out that small detail.

  He had considered urging her to go into hiding, but somehow he doubted she would. Besides, if she kept her wits about her she should be fine.

  At least, that was what he told himself. He only hoped that her brother wouldn't complicate things.

  A little after midnight he eventually found sleep, only to be awakened an hour and a half before sunrise for first prayer.

  Over the next couple of days the checkpoints proved too far to realistically make the hit site. Each morning as Wolf Company drove out to the latest random checkpoint, nerves always gripped Ethan, but when it
became obvious that the militants were proceeding far past the necessary neighborhood, his stress quickly ceded to impatience.

  By the third wasted day Ethan had become extremely antsy. If any of his fellow mujahadeen asked him a pointless question, or a civilian looked at him the wrong way at the checkpoint, he was liable to explode. When one young passerby called Ethan a pig under his breath, Ethan nearly pulled his rifle on the character.

  He sensed his window of opportunity closing. The Caliphate was seeking to consolidate its hold on existing territory, and units were being vacated from the compound daily. Wolf Company might be reassigned to Kobane or another city any time. And even if he stayed, the longer he waited to complete the hit, the greater the chance of something going wrong. Someone might discover and remove the rope Ethan had left stashed on the rooftop. The scientist might relocate to another apartment, or change the hours he left for the research facility.

  If William or Aaron were still in the city, he would have involved them, because the operation was hanging by a thread as far as Ethan was concerned.

  Finally on the fourth day Abdullah situated the checkpoint within a workable distance of the apartment and Ethan could at last perform the hit.

  That morning's duty seemed longer than usual, and he couldn't shake the tenseness that permeated his body. He distractedly checked the IDs and cellphones of passersby. The day dragged on.

  Near noon, Ethan volunteered to buy bread for the unit. He hadn't asked for the privilege in more than a week, so he assumed Abdullah would allow it. And if not, Ethan would shortly excuse himself to the toilet.

  But Abdullah nodded in consent.

  "I go with you," Suleman announced. "You take too long, otherwise."

  Ethan smiled fatalistically. "Certainly." He had never expected the operation to be easy.

  About a block from the checkpoint, Ethan was about to feign intestinal cramping as a pretext for abandoning Suleman when he heard a commotion behind him.

  A young boy repeatedly shouted the word "lawbreaker" at the top of his lungs. He pointed at a chaperoned woman who wore a niqab; a small portion of her veil was absent around the eye area, revealing a thin slice of skin between her nose and forehead.

  Suleman turned back to deal with it. "Go!" he told Ethan over his shoulder.

  Finally fate had dealt him a favorable hand.

  Ethan hurried forward, feeding on the sudden adrenaline rush. When Suleman vanished from sight behind him, he ducked into a side alley and donned his balaclava. Around it he secured the headband containing the Shahada script. When he emerged, passersby readily made way before him, that masked, menacing mujahid with the sniper rifle.

  Proceeding thusly through the streets, he paused twice to make sure Suleman wasn't following, and he reached his destination about five minutes before noon. The motorcade hadn't arrived yet.

  He crossed the street to the apartment containing his hide. The long queue of people at the bakery snaked past the lobby, and he shoved through. At the entrance he pressed multiple intercom buttons, and for a moment feared no one would answer. He could feel the eyes of the people in line on his back.

  An old woman's voice finally came over the speaker. "Allo?" She was almost unintelligible for all the static that accompanied her voice.

  "I have a delivery," Ethan growled into the microphone.

  "A what?"

  "A delivery."

  "What kind of delivery?" came the answer.

  "A registered letter."

  The door latch didn't open.

  Ethan pressed more buttons. No one else answered. He didn't want to pick the lock, not with so many people watching. Still, he was an armed mujahid. What did it matter what the common people thought?

  He was about to retrieve his lockpick set when he noticed a blazer-wearing man standing nearby, away from the lineup. He appeared hesitant; he carried several piles of flatbread balanced in one hand, and a key in the other.

  Ethan pointed brusquely at the door. The man nervously stepped forward and opened it. Ethan was in.

  Fate, you are fickle indeed.

  At the top of the stairs, he produced his working bump key and inserted it into the lock of the rooftop door. He tapped the key with his phone and jiggled it, fumbling, wasting precious seconds. The lock ultimately opened and he burst onto the rooftop.

  He ran to the ledge and crouched to observe the street. No SUVs: either the motorcade hadn't arrived or he had already missed it. He would know soon enough.

  He set down his rifle and went to the opposite side of the terrace. The coil of rope and bike gloves were precisely where he'd stashed them. He threaded the rope through the water tank supports he'd picked out days before. Once the cord was properly anchored, he threw the loose ends into the rear courtyard.

  He tested the setup with his weight. The ropes held.

  Ethan taped a scathing note onto one of the water tanks, in full view of the doorway. The message was written in a local rhetorical style that was critical of the Islamic State, and implicated the regional Al Qaeda affiliated group, Jabhat al Nusra, in the kill. Mufid had helped craft the text.

  Ethan returned to the sniping position, low-crawling to the railless ledge. Still no motorcade.

  He retrieved the Dragunov, deployed the bipod, and rested it near the brink. He had considered naming the weapon—a throwback behavior from his SEAL days—but in the end decided that honor was reserved for American rifles alone.

  He turned off his radio and placed his right eye against the PSO-1 scope, leaving his left open for situational awareness. He extended the cylindrical sunshade at the end of the 4x magnification scope, then adjusted the focus ring.

  The PSO-1 was equipped with a stadiametric rangefinder, which he ignored—he didn't need it at that close range. Besides, he trusted the thirty-three meter measurement he had made with the TruPulse a few nights before.

  It was unnecessary to compensate for bullet drop at that range, and even if he wanted to the scope's elevation knob wasn't fine-grained enough—it operated in hundred meter increments. He didn't need to adjust for windage either: not even a breeze stirred the scorching air that day. Besides, at his current range he'd need a gale force wind to blow the rimmed 54mm bullet off target.

  He aimed the targeting reticule directly at the door. The three chevrons below the main crosshairs were for bullet drop compensation beyond one thousand meters, so he ignored those.

  With the scope set up, Ethan settled in for the wait.

  The seconds ticked past, becoming minutes. Ethan shifted impatiently. Surely it was long past noon, but he didn't dare check his smartphone: he had to keep his eye on that door. Doubts filled his mind, but he quashed them with the cold-hearted discipline of the sniper that had been dormant inside him for so long.

  And then the motorcade pulled up. Ethan steeled himself.

  The militants emerged and formed a perimeter around the SUVs. One of them calmly approached the entrance and pressed an intercom button.

  Ethan focused all of his being on that door. Most external reference points left him. There was only the trigger beneath his finger and the door within his reticule.

  The militants standing in front of the door moved away as it opened.

  The scientist and his bodyguards stepped into view.

  Ethan very slightly adjusted his aim and squeezed the trigger.

  20

  The recoil caused the stock of the sniper rifle to bite into his shoulder. The violent report echoed from the buildings. Bystanders ducked. Some screamed.

  Shi's body dropped like a ragdoll.

  Ethan rolled away from the ledge and out of sight of any militants below. He snapped the bipod closed on his rifle and scrambled to the exfil point. He heard shouts from the street behind him.

  He reached the far side of the terrace and wrapped the twin ropes about his body in the dulfersitz method. He slid the rifle strap over his neck, letting the Dragunov hang over his chest.

  He was about to leap
backward into the courtyard when he realized he'd forgotten the bike gloves. He knelt, yanked the gloves on, then stepped off the edge.

  He eased himself down in wide spurts, successively kicking off from the apartment. He descended a little fast, and slowed when the burn in his groin became too intense, well-aware that if the militants reached the rooftop before he'd vacated the courtyard, he was dead.

  The rope abruptly grew slack and he fell five meters before jerking to a halt, the cord cutting into his groin. Had the mujahadeen from the motorcade already attained the rooftop? More likely the rusty steel bar he'd used for an anchor had given way and lodged somewhere else, maybe against a television antenna, saving him from the fall.

  He continued the rappel, but the rope gave once again a moment later and he plunged the final two meters to the courtyard, hitting fairly hard. He rolled, expecting a water tower or antenna to barrel down, but nothing came. He tried to stand and gasped in pain—he'd sprained his left ankle.

  He bit down the agony and forced himself upright. He unwrapped himself from the rope and yanked on one end, trying to take it down, but the cord had lodged against something else up there and refused to budge.

  Damn it. He'd have to leave the rope where it was.

  Half running and half limping, Ethan crossed the dry grass; he flinched at the jolts of pain every step inflicted. His buttocks throbbed, too, from the rope burn; he touched the fabric there with one hand but his cargo pants seemed intact, luckily.

  He tripped on a small rock hidden in the grass and fell. He crawled to his feet, fully expecting a rifle report to sound from the rooftop at any moment, and with it, his world to blink out.

  It seemed an eternity, but by the time Ethan reached the cinder block fence, only a minute had passed since he fired the shot. He hauled himself over the shoulder-high block and down the other side. He landed on the sidewalk beyond, ignoring the surprised looks of the passersby.