by Brad Taylor
Nothing happened. All she heard was a slight slapping of the wall. Then the lights blazed on in the room.
Oh shit.
She coiled her legs underneath her, preparing to close the gap and shorten her trigger time between targets. She rose into a crouch, focusing on her front sight post, when the sharp sound of breaking glass cratered the silence.
The two men began yammering, then she heard the sound of running feet. She waited a minute, then inched toward the entry and peeked out. The hallway was empty.
She raced to the door the asset had described, ripped out her lockpick set, and went to work. Not nearly as experienced as the rest of the team, it took her several minutes to break the lock free, the time beating her down as she reflexively looked over her shoulder for the two men to return.
She felt the tumblers click and slipped inside the office, snicking the door closed behind her. She surveyed the room in the soft glow of her flashlight and saw three desktop computers.
Which one? She didn’t have time to do all three, and the damn asset hadn’t mentioned more than one system.
She went to the back of the computers, finding their Ethernet ports. Two had CAT 5 cables running out. The one on the left had nothing. Gotta be it. Unless the damn asset was wrong about the air gap too.
She powered down the system, plugged the automated cloning device into a USB port, and fired the computer back up. When the screen reappeared, she followed the prompts to clone the hard drive. After hitting YES to the question about proceeding, she got an hourglass with a digital bar showing twenty minutes remaining.
She moved to the opposite side of the door, Glock at the ready, and pulled out her cell phone to call Pike. She saw the missed call from him and relaxed for the first time.
That explains the broken glass. All hell’s breaking loose now.
* * *
With no immediate threats on the bottom floor, we began flip-flopping toward the stairwell in back. No longer concerned with stealth, we simply mule-kicked every door that was locked.
Speed was my primary goal. I knew if they had Jennifer and realized we were coming for her, they’d evacuate and I might never see her again.
I entered the final office and saw the stairway to my front, fully illuminated from the inside. I heard feet pounding down the stairs and slammed up against the wall on the edge of the door, Knuckles on the other side. I heard Decoy and Brett still kicking doors one office over and so did the men coming down. Their chatter ceased, and I heard the distinct sound of rounds being chambered. They began a half-assed stealthy descent.
I raised my NODs to my forehead and caught Knuckles’ eyes. I did the universal finger across the throat, meaning take them without any noise. I had no idea who was above them and wanted to maintain at least some element of surprise. The suppressed UMPs were certainly quiet enough, but I didn’t want to risk an AK going off when the bodies hit the floor. Knuckles nodded and raised his NODs as well.
The two men stopped inside the stairwell, softly chattering. Eventually, they worked up enough courage to exit, but paid absolutely no attention to their rear security. They walked out with AK-47s at their shoulders, staring straight ahead.
When they cleared the frame and were about two steps into the room, I glanced at Knuckles. He nodded, and we pounced, breaking both of their necks in sequence like a macabre synchronized drill team, then softly lowered the bodies.
I called Brett and Decoy, getting them to our location. Knuckles and I positioned at the base and we flip-flopped up the stairs, two men pulling security while two went up a landing.
We reached the second floor and heard a racket down below, several men shouting and yelling in Arabic.
Knuckles said, “Looks like our exit’s fucked.”
With a single focus, I replied, “We’re moving too damn slow. Get up the stairs.”
We hit the third floor landing and exited, guns going left and right looking for a threat. I raced down the hall to the room Jennifer had used to enter and found an open window. Nothing else. Shit.
Knuckles entered behind me, saw my face, and returned to the hallway, an urgency in his expression for the first time. I followed in time to see Decoy and Brett close on the target door. Right behind them, we slid into the stack.
Across the frame, Decoy nodded and flung open the door. Brett entered first and went right. I went left, the muzzle tracking everything my eyes came across. I focused on a figure and centered the red dot on the eye orbit. And recognized Jennifer aiming a Glock at me. She immediately raised her hands, but didn’t say a word. I was almost catatonic with relief. The rest of the men piled in, saw it was clear, then got guns back out into the hallway.
Knuckles said, “Okay. What’s the play now?”
I didn’t respond, still savoring the fact that Jennifer was alive and out of the torturers’ hands. He repeated the question, and Jennifer said, “My radio went dead. I didn’t have time to call on the cell.”
Knuckles said, “Not your fault. Blame lover-boy here for not trusting you.”
It hit home that I’d made a mistake. Possibly a catastrophic one given the men downstairs. Jennifer rubbed a little salve into my wounds.
“It worked out for the best. If you hadn’t come in, we wouldn’t have gotten the clone. I was about to be in a gunfight when they went to chase you, leaving the door open for me to penetrate.”
Brett said, “Still ten minutes on this download. What do you want to do?”
I put the mistake aside, getting back to the mission.
“Shut it down,” I said. “Take what we have and move up to the fourth floor. Find a roof exit and get out of here while those guys search.”
We were on the roof in short order, making our way past clotheslines and air-conditioning units to the apartment building adjacent to the target. We reached the access to the floor below, and Decoy said, “What now? How are we going to exit here?”
I could feel the tension in the men, all knowing they would last a millisecond on the street as American infiltrators. I looked around the roof, hoping for some answer to jump out at me.
Jennifer smiled, more calm now that she was in our hands, and said, “Time for a little Pike miracle action.”
I realized she didn’t think coming in had been a mistake.
I said, “You’re the miracle. We need to get you back into the apartment so you can get the van. We’ll keep doing the roof hop until we’re a safe distance away, then get to the street.”
Decoy said, “How the hell is she going to do that? Dressed like Catwoman?”
“Brett’s going to the apartment to get her costume. He’ll come back, she’ll change and exit. We’ll keep moving north.”
Brett said, “What? I don’t speak a lick of Arabic, and I’m dressed like a damn commando.”
“You’re black. It’ll give you an edge. Best we can do. Besides, you look like an Arabic commando with those clothes. Leave your NODs and UMP. Just take the pistol. You hit trouble, and we’ll be right behind you guns blazing.”
Brett muttered, “Always about the black man,” and turned to the roof access. Jennifer passed him the key and gave him directions.
We waited for eight minutes, watching car after car arrive at the target building. When he returned, he had Jennifer’s abaya and niqab.
She walked a short distance to put it on, pulling me out of earshot of the other men. “You know you screwed up here tonight. I was okay.”
She affixed the veil until all I saw were her gray eyes. She winked. “The after-action review is going to be murder. But I’m glad you came. No matter what they say tomorrow, I’m not sure I would have gotten the drop on both of those guys. I probably would have ended up calling you—trying to use a cell phone in the middle of a gunfight. You made the right decision for the wrong reasons.”
They shouldn’t have, because I was the man with all the experience, but her comments meant a great deal. I winked back and said, “I’m just glad you’re okay. Let’s g
et the hell out of here.”
34
The Ghost scraped down the alley in a dented and rusted rental he’d picked up in Sanaa, seeing the minaret for the grand mosque, but unable to find the entrance in the maze of side streets.
One of the oldest cities on earth, and once the capital of Yemen, Zabid had declined to a state of abject poverty, with the entire town reminding him of the refugee camps back home. Full of crumbling buildings constructed of homemade brick and mortar, all jammed together with little forethought to any overarching plan.
The drive west had been rapid on the arid desert road, with only two stops at checkpoints manned by hard men armed with AKs. He had no idea whether they were government, opposition, or simply bandits, but they let him pass. He had given himself an extra hour just for such difficulties and was pleased he had met so few. It gave him enough time to conduct a reconnaissance on the Al-Asha’ir Mosque, the location where he was told to meet the AQAP contact.
Squeezing through a gap that might or might not have been meant for vehicles, he saw the entrance to the mosque to his front. He killed the engine and waited, surveying the area. Nothing suspicious stood out. A man swatting a donkey pulling a cart, a couple of kids playing in the dirt, a lone woman clad in black carrying a bucket of water. The usual ebb and flow expected from such a town.
The mosque showed no activity. Eventually, a boy of eighteen or nineteen walked up the steps. Dressed in Western clothes consisting of jeans and a T-shirt, he held a newspaper in his right hand. The signal.
The Ghost gave him a few minutes, then followed. He found the boy in the large entrance hall, now deserted. The teennager saw him approach and waited, nervously shuffling from one foot to the other. The Ghost gave him the verbal bona fides and saw the boy visibly relax.
He said, “Khalid sends his regards and wishes to help in any way he can.”
“Good. I haven’t much time and am in need of his expertise. I require enough explosives to fit inside two shoeboxes, and I need it packaged in such a manner that I can place them in baggage for aircraft. Like the printer-cartridge bombs he made.”
“Carry-on baggage?”
“No. I’ll check the luggage holding the material.”
The boy nodded, considering, then said, “It can be done fairly easily. That is not much explosive. When do you need them? How soon are you flying?”
“I wish to leave tomorrow, but I am at your mercy.”
“It can be done.” The boy passed him a cell phone. “I’ll call you on this to tell you where to meet. It will be tonight.”
“One more thing: I require the explosives to be initiated wirelessly. Can you construct such detonators so that they will not draw attention?”
“You mean WiFi through the Internet, or by radio signal?”
“Internet. I will need at least five.”
“Easy. I can make them look like simple Western garage-door opener parts.”
“You? You will make the explosives and detonators? I thought Khalid was the expert.”
The boy smiled. “He is, but he has been teaching others. He was almost killed last year with Anwar al-Awlaki and knows he will eventually be found. I am your contact and will build your request. Don’t worry. Your detonators are simple, and you only require camouflage for the explosives, no complicated barometric timing devices or other things.”
“Fine. Build them as fast as you can. I’ll be awaiting your call. I want to drive back to Sanaa tonight.”
Eight hours later the Ghost sat in the shade of a dilapidated café, drinking tea and staring at the phone he had been given, willing it to ring. He was startled when it did, then surprised when the voice on the other end wasn’t his contact. He wrote down the instructions provided, paying particular attention to the directions he would need to navigate the maze of the town.
35
Captain Brian Wilcox watched the men loading the back of the old Yemeni army truck and realized he still had time to back out. To let the Yemenis handle the mission without him. To follow the orders he had been given.
An operational detachment commander from the Fifth Special Forces group, his team was on loan to the CIA with the mission of training a special counterterrorist unit of the Yemeni police. Paid for with CIA dollars, the unit was arguably the best in the country. Wilcox should be proud of what he and his team had accomplished, and he was, but he was sick of hiding on post training while the men he taught went into harm’s way. But that was the deal made with the Yemeni government. No Western face on any assault. Training only.
In his heart, he knew it was prudent. With the troubles wracking Yemen, and the accusations made that the government was nothing more than a Western puppet—especially given the devastation of U.S. drone strikes on AQAP for the past few years—it would do more harm than good for a U.S. Special Forces team to be seen on an assault, giving the terrorists a propaganda coup. In truth, he knew he should feel lucky they were still operational at all, since every other unit had completely lost focus on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and become nothing more than regime protection against the opposition and protests rocking the country.
Still, Wilcox felt the unit had reached a plateau and that the only way to increase the effectiveness of the training was to see how the men operated on a live mission. Relying on what the Yemenis said after the fact, knowing their predisposition to whitewash mistakes and glorify every little success, was not efficient. It was like teaching all the plays on the practice field, then never seeing the team play a game. Being forced to only listen to the team tell him they’d won, when about fifty percent of the time the predator feed he watched in the JOC showed a different score.
To take them to the next level, he needed to at least see a couple of operations from the ground. So, he’d decided to go on this one. Just him and his team sergeant, not the entire team. And not to lead it. To simply observe.
His team sergeant saw his reticence and said, “Sure you want to do this? We’ll be crucified if word gets out.”
“Yeah. It’s the right thing to do. Just be sure you stay out of the fight. No running to the gunfire.”
The team sergeant smiled. “Shit. You know this’ll be another dry hole. Khalid’s not stupid enough to advertise his location like their intel says he did.”
Wilcox cinched the Velcro on his body armor. “Let’s hope so. No way do I want to get in a gunfight. A dry hole will show us plenty about how they operate, and there’s enough intel indicators to say the place is bad.”
The Ghost read the Arabic phrase spray-painted on the brick wall and stopped his vehicle. Right house. Larger than most, with a second story, it had a courtyard out front but was still dilapidated, with the courtyard walls crumbling in places.
As soon as he entered, he knew he was in trouble. Four men with AK-47s faced him, showing no sign that they were friendly. His contact was not in sight. To their rear several chains hung from the ceiling, and piles of soiled clothing lay about the room. What disturbed him most were the maroon stains on the walls and floor.
He said, “Is one of you Khalid al-Asiri?”
The first man spoke. “No, but Khalid sent us. It seems you might not be who you say you are, and we’re going to find out what’s true.”
“What do you mean? I was sent here by the Resistance. By a man named Majid. Surely you know this. Why do you not trust me now, after sending your contact to meet me?”
“Majid’s dead, and the Resistance says you might have killed him, after you killed our friends with a bomb. Maybe you’re an infiltrator for the far enemy.”
“What? That’s insane! They came to me. I didn’t seek them out. How could I be an infiltrator?”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
The Ghost didn’t bother to try running, knowing they would simply kill him. He raised his hands in the air. In short order, he was hanging from one of the chains, naked from the waist up. One of the men wheeled over what looked like a battery charger for a car.
Captain Wilcox felt the eyes of Lieutenant Bashir on him and said, “Wishing I’d stayed behind?”
Bashir said, “As long as you stay in back, I don’t mind.”
“Don’t worry. You’re in charge. I won’t do anything but watch.”
Unless things get ugly. Bashir was a good man and a good commander, but Wilcox knew he wouldn’t follow the Yemeni’s orders if they became engaged in a serious firefight. Something Bashir knew as well. The unit was about as good as any force he had trained, with every man hand-selected from the counterterrorist police force, but they were still junior varsity. Still at the level where they could do something stupid in a firefight, and if it came down to it, Wilcox and his team sergeant would take over the operation, their lives superseding the orders to stay hidden.
Wilcox felt the truck jerk to a halt and peeked out the corner of the tarp covering the bed while the men quietly deployed. He saw them fan out in a security perimeter while the breacher placed a charge on the front door. Swift and silent. Pretty good.
He was patting himself on the back when a wrenching scream punctured the air. Coming from inside the house. Then all hell broke loose.
36
Too late, the Ghost realized there was no convincing the men of his innocence. They weren’t looking for the truth. They were looking for a confession, and he feared soon they would get it. His body was racked in pain, his skin slick with sweat. He barely had the strength to raise his head, and they had just started.
One of the men applied the battery charger to his naked chest again, and his frame locked up in a rictus of agony, a screeching wail torn from his throat filling the air. As quickly as it came, the pain left.
“Tell us what you did. Who you are. My friend is losing patience and wants to start working below the waist.”
