The Ethan Galaal Series: Books 1 - 3

by Isaac Hooke

  Dmitri activated the light mounted to the Picatinny rail of his rifle and turned the selector ring from infrared to white. He descended the musty passageway and when he reached the bottom, he stepped with contempt over the headless lump of flesh lying at the base of the steps.

  He found emir Al Taaraz bound and gagged in the center of the room, beside a table covered with torture instruments.

  Dmitri left three ex-Spetsnaz behind to arrange the trap for the cleaners the DIA would undoubtedly send. He ordered his men to rig the place with C4 and assume overwatch positions on the rooftops of neighboring houses. When the cleaners arrived, his soldiers would spring the trap.

  The cobbler departed in a different vehicle to be interrogated by some subordinates. Dmitri didn't expect any useful information to be gleaned from the man.

  He drove Al Taaraz back to the Islamic State barracks assigned to himself and his team. Once there, Dmitri had the man cleaned and fed, then he questioned him personally.

  The emir had no recollection of what he had divulged to the Widow. Dmitri had him check his smartphone, and all his email accounts. As expected, the outgoing messages and call log were clear, given the absence of a working cellular network. The inbox of his Yahoo email accounts contained trivial items, while the 'draft', 'sent' and 'trash' folders were all empty.

  On a hunch, Dmitri called up one of his old friends in the GRU on his satphone, and had him look into recovering the email folders. The Russian foreign intelligence agency had moles at Yahoo who could look at the data in any account. Dmitri was well aware that when a customer deleted an email from a free provider such as Yahoo or Google, the actual messages were never actually removed from the servers. That was the cost of so-called free, "private" email: when someone else hosted your data, it was never really private.

  An hour later Dmitri received the call he was waiting for. Two messages had been crafted in the draft folder of one of the accounts but had been deleted shortly after. The first message read:

  Please delete the contents of this folder when you get this.

  The second contained a series of cryptic numbers.

  Dmitri showed it to Al Taaraz, who explained the numbers indicated the date and time for a rendezvous with his private courier: a man he used to communicate with the acting leader of the Islamic State.

  "When the courier receives the oral missive from my messenger," Al Taaraz explained. "He will begin the journey to Abu Afri."

  Ah, so that was what the Widow was after. She was never happy with the arms and the legs—she always strove for the decapitating blow.

  "Abu Afri is in the Al Hadar region?" Dmitri said.

  "Yes, but no one knows where, except the couriers." Al Taaraz's eyes widened with sudden understanding. "They mean to murder Abu Afri? We must radio warnings to the spotters."

  "By all means," Dmitri said. "Though I doubt Abu Afri will receive the warnings in time." The senior leadership feared those unencrypted radios more than anything in the world, except perhaps pigs. As did the couriers. Though it was possible a spotter who knew a courier might pass the information along in time. Possible, but unlikely.

  A knock came at the door.

  "Come in," Dmitri said.

  Boris entered.

  "Sir, urgent news," the lieutenant told him. He glanced at Al Taaraz uncertainly.

  "Speak freely," Al Taaraz said, as if he were the man's commander. "There are only friends in this office."

  Dmitri suppressed a smirk. Friends? For as long as you continue to pay me, perhaps.

  Dmitri nodded and Boris continued.

  "We have received reports of a ground attack," the lieutenant said. "Ten Islamic State fighters manning a checkpoint at the southern city limits are dead from gunshot wounds to the head. A member of the Khansa'a brigade was among them."

  Al Taaraz clenched a fist. "The resistance will pay for this," he exclaimed.

  "The resistance?" Dmitri smiled wolfishly. "Ten headshot wounds. That is not the work of the resistance." The news only confirmed his suspicions regarding the Black Widow's destination. "Come, Boris, we must gather the men."

  29

  Ethan and the others rode in a rusty blue Hyundai Accent. Earlier, he had overtaken the vehicle on the highway and forced the driver to pull over at gunpoint. They duct-taped the hands, feet and mouth of the Iraqi, then carried him into the grass about five hundred meters from the road. He would have to worm his way back on his own.

  The operatives discarded the empty chicken cages stored in the trunk and passenger seats of the sedan, and then transferred over their inventory from the old vehicle. Ethan attempted to abandon the Rio in the green steppe, but the low-lying subcompact got stuck in a small gully. Aware that every moment of delay allowed the courier to gain that much more distance on them, Ethan was forced to abandon the vehicle closer to the road than he would have liked. Sam considered torching the car, but decided that would draw more attention than simply leaving it there. So they removed the license plates from the Rio, loaded into the Accent and proceeded on their way.

  The new vehicle had three-quarters of a tank of gas, and proved more than capable of the speeds Ethan desired: he drove at nearly twice the posted limit and soon the vehicle had approached to within three klicks of the subject. Ethan decreased his speed to maintain that distance, not wanting the courier to suspect a tail.

  The steppe gave way in places to lime and gypsum, forming rocky outcrops, and the highway twisted around them.

  On the left, far to the east, clouds of smoke blotted out the horizon. That would be the Eastern Front, where the Islamic State fought against Kurdish Peshmerga forces for control of Kurdistan. The capital city, Erbil, was less than ninety kilometers east of Mosul. The smoke was from the usual fires the Islamic State fighters had set, igniting piles of tires and barrels of oil in the hopes of disrupting the laser-guided ordnance of bombers. The smoke had zero effect on GPS-guided payloads, of course, but it did protect moving targets.

  Traffic on both sides of the median was light. Farmers conveyed cattle and other foodstuffs in cars and pickups. Mujahadeen transported mortars and other war supplies in Mitsubishi flatbeds. A few Soviet-era APCs and the occasional Humvee rounded out the mix. Whenever he came close to overtaking another vehicle, Ethan always gave Sam warning so that she could temporarily hide the laptop and lower her veil.

  At the few Islamic State checkpoints, Ethan's ID always passed muster, though the guards told him to get his abraded photo replaced. No one otherwise recognized him. When asked why he was on the road, Ethan claimed to be traveling to a village in the Al Shorah region for a wedding.

  The militants never searched the vehicle—probably a good thing, because Ethan didn't want to have to do any more killing when the men discovered the A4s. The guards invariably ended the encounter by telling him to get off the highway as soon as possible.

  "It's not safe for an ordinary man and his sisters on the road," they would say.

  Ethan couldn't disagree there.

  After each checkpoint, he accelerated to make up for the lost time, laying off the pedal when he closed to within three klicks of the courier.

  "Pull over," Sam said about an hour and a half into the drive. "I've lost visual."

  "What? How?" Ethan steered to the shoulder of the road and stopped.

  He glanced at Sam's laptop. According to the top-down view, a swath of green intersected the highway up ahead, as if the grassy steppe had overgrown the road there. The red dot marking the Elantra flashed overtop, but there was otherwise no visual sign of the vehicle. A dirt road left the highway about five hundred meters past the area.

  "Has to be a canvas shield," Sam said. "He's pulling the car-switch ruse. Give me the binocs."

  "What about the Hornet?" William handed Sam the Zeiss.

  "No time." Sam lifted the image-stabilized 20x binoculars to her eyes. "I'm seeing three Elantras parked under the canvas. All black. Two parked on the right shoulder. One on the left. I think it's
the original Elantra. Yes, the courier just got out. He's crossing the highway. He just hugged the two men waiting at the other vehicles. They're all dressed the same. Even have the same mustaches." She paused. "I believe he's relaying the message orally to one of the men."

  "Are you sure?" William asked.

  "Of course I'm not sure," Sam replied. "I can't hear a word they're saying." She paused. "The other courier is talking now. Probably repeating what the first told him." She tapped the rim of the binoculars with her index fingers. "The third man just crossed the highway. He's entering the original Elantra. The other two are taking the new Elantras."

  "What if you're confusing them?" William asked. "You did say they were all dressed the same."

  Sam hesitated. "I could be wrong, yes." She paused. "The original car is on the move. The decoy."

  Ethan glanced at the laptop. The red dot moved, following the Elantra that emerged from the canvas.

  "I see it," Ethan said.

  "The other two cars are pulling onto the road," Sam said, keeping her eyes glued to the binoculars.

  On the display, two more vehicles emerged from the canopy, traveling side-by-side.

  "Okay, go," Sam said, not looking from the Zeiss.

  Ethan accelerated from the shoulder of the road. "So who do we follow?"

  Sam didn't answer.

  Ethan glanced at the laptop. Both vehicles were black, and otherwise indistinguishable. "Sam?"

  The two Elantras neared the dirt road; the rightmost vehicle abruptly took it, driving off into the steppe. Ethan prepared to do the same.

  Sam returned the binoculars to William. "We stick to the main road." On the laptop, she panned the Predator's camera, focusing on the car that remained on the highway.

  "Are you certain?" Ethan said.

  "Positive. I studied the footage you recorded of the meeting earlier. I don't know if you noticed, but the original courier had a nervous habit of rubbing his nose. The man in the Elantra that turned off? He rubbed his nose before entering the vehicle."

  "The wonders of 20x zoom," William commented.

  "So we're following the new courier," Ethan said.

  "We are." Sam typed rapidly into her laptop. Probably notifying HQ of her decision.

  Ahead, the green canopy was stretched over the highway on four steel posts. When the Accent passed underneath, the canvas momentarily blotted out the sun.

  Ethan ignored the dirt side road and continued along the main route, closing to within three klicks of the new courier. On the laptop, a red dot no longer highlighted the target: Sam kept her eyes glued to the screen at all times, not wanting to lose the Elantra.

  Twenty minutes later, Sam announced: "Take the next side road."

  He glanced at the laptop. Sure enough, the vehicle had left the highway.

  Ethan pulled to the shoulder of the highway and drove onto the bumpy rural road, which proved little more than compacted dirt and sand. He planned to maintain his three-klick distance but since the route proved empty, save for the target, Sam ordered Ethan to increase that distance by another fifteen hundred meters, letting the curvature of the Earth hide them behind the horizon. Just to be on the safe side.

  They passed tiny, seemingly abandoned villages composed of mud brick houses. There were no mosques. Nor were there any checkpoints or any other signs of the Caliphate. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad. It was possible the Islamic State was trying to hide its leaders in plain sight by blending in with the rural Sunni tribes. Then again, Ethan and the others may have simply followed the wrong courier.

  The landscape grew bleaker: the green steppe yielded to rocky outcrops more often, and sometimes desert plateau. It was only going to get worse, Ethan knew.

  The opening lines of Beethoven's Fifth quietly issued from Sam's laptop. Some kind of alert sound.

  "Damn it," Sam said.

  "What's wrong?" Ethan asked.

  Sam exhaled heavily. "I just received word. The men I sent to retrieve Al Taaraz encountered resistance. One of them was killed in a bomb blast at the cobbler's house. The other two took fire from the surrounding buildings, and narrowly escaped with their lives."

  "That means..."

  "Yes. Al Taaraz has escaped."

  "Do you think he remembers we made him summon the courier?" William asked.

  "It's possible," Sam answered.

  "Then wouldn't he use the spotter network to relay a warning to the Shura council?" William said.

  "The Shura members won't break radio silence outside of certain agreed upon dates. They won't get anywhere near a radio until then. If Al Taaraz wants to notify Afri, he's going to have to use a courier."

  "One of whom we're following right now," Ethan said.

  "Exactly."

  "He might have other couriers," Doug argued. "Or people who can get in touch with them."

  "It's possible," Sam agreed. "But we're still a few hours ahead of any other couriers. The mission is a go."

  Ethan drove on into the bleak Iraqi landscape.

  "We should have killed the Accent driver," Doug said into the quietude. "Damn it. We've left too many loose ends."

  "Probably," Sam said. "But we didn't know Al Taaraz had escaped at that point."

  "It would've been a wise precaution," Doug retorted. "You made a mistake. Admit it."

  Ethan leaped to Sam's defense. "Human compassion is never a mistake. It's what separates us from the men we fight against."

  "Is it?" Doug said. "Then maybe that's why they're winning."

  Ethan wanted to tell him that the terrorists weren't winning, but looking at how war-torn Iraq was, he couldn't really argue the point.

  "You have to be a compassionless machine to win today's wars," Doug continued. "Why do you think DARPA is doing so much research into drones and other automated means of killing? Remove the human component. Remove the compassion. That's what wins wars, people. A robot army is every general's dream. Troops that'll obey every order without question. Without compassion."

  Ethan couldn't help but think of the burning child. He truly hoped the dawn of the robot army never came.

  Sam looked up from her laptop and stared into the same bleak landscape that Ethan saw.

  "That's always been one of my weaknesses," she said, in a rare moment of candor. "Killing a stranger is harder for me, versus killing someone I know."

  "That doesn't make sense," William said. "You don't know a stranger. It should be easier to kill them."

  "That's exactly my point," Sam responded. "I know nothing about a stranger. I could kill any of you in a heartbeat, if you betrayed me. Because I know exactly who you are, and what the world will lose. But a stranger… he could have a family with ten young dependents, children who would die without him. He could be a composer who inspires millions. He could be a scientist on the cusp of a cure that will save thousands of lives. He could be any or all of these things."

  "Or he could be some lowly goat farmer," Doug said bitterly.

  "But that's the thing, I don't know," Sam said.

  "Well the man who drove this car was definitely a farmer," Doug said. "Place still stinks of goats."

  Sam nodded slowly.

  "I still can't believe you'd find it easier to kill any of us, versus the farmer back there," William said.

  "Remember the qualifier I added," Sam said. "If you betrayed me. Of course I wouldn't find it easy otherwise. Well, I suppose even if you did betray me, it would be difficult. Emotionally at least."

  Ethan had to laugh.

  "What's so funny?"

  "Emotionally?" Ethan said. "What about physically?"

  "We should spar sometime," Sam said, amusement creeping into her tone. "Your jiu jitsu against my kung fu."

  Ethan grinned widely. "Kung fu? I've already won."

  Sam's eyes twinkled. "We'll see."

  DMITRI CROUCHED beside the Kia Rio that had been abandoned in the gully. The driver's seat was steeped in blood. More blood covered the backseat. It was defi
nitely the getaway vehicle, even if the license plate had been removed.

  Three Islamic State pickup trucks were parked on the road nearby, near his small convoy. The Sunni fighters had spotted the suspicious vehicle abandoned in the steppe about half an hour earlier, and had called it in via their spotter network.

  He touched the dried blood with one finger. A small, sticky portion coated his skin, outlining the lines and whorls of his fingerprint.

  "Are you wounded, my old enemy?" he mused aloud. "No. Of course not. This is the blood of one of your minions. You devour those men closest to you. It is why you are called the Widow."

  He finished his search of the vehicle. Anything of value had been stripped by the DIA operatives.

  Dmitri glanced at the nearby highway, where empty chicken cages lay abandoned near the shoulder. The operatives had procured a new vehicle for themselves, of course. Likely that of a farmer. The question was, where had they disposed of the body?

  Pyotr radioed from his search of the nearby steppe. "Kapitán. We found an Iraqi bound and gagged out here. He's still alive. Says he was robbed of his vehicle at gunpoint."

  Dmitri found himself raising a surprised eyebrow. In her prime, the Widow would have never made such a mistake. A living witness, left behind?

  Dmitri smiled. "You grow weak, Widow."

  30

  The green steppe was but a memory: the landscape had become flat desert intermixed with the occasional rocky outcrops. The ultra-fine sand of the desert—the "moon dust"—was coated in a layer of gravel. The road was no longer dirt, but compacted sand. The particulates in the atmosphere had thickened so that a dull orange haze hung above the distant horizon. Though the windows were closed, some dust permeated the Accent's vents, giving the interior an earthy, chalky smell.

  Ethan pursued the target vehicle doggedly across that moonscape. He was so focused on the road and distant haze that he almost forgot he carried passengers: when Sam spoke, it unsettled him slightly.

  "He's turning into a large village," Sam said, studying the laptop. "Pick it up, Ethan."