“As you know, Mr. Ortiz, our teams are based on SEAL principles. But of course not with SEAL salaries. You’ll be very pleased with your take-home pay. I would suppose your clearance is up to date?”
“Of course.” Buddha restrained himself from running a finger underneath his collar. It was choking him. “About the benefit package?” he asked. “I hear you have a tuition assistance plan?”
“Correct. For approved educational institutions.”
From the corner of his eye, Buddha caught a photograph of Rip Taggart that suddenly appeared on the TV screen. The streamer below read: HOSTAGE IDENTIFIED AS FORMER MEMBER OF SEAL TEAM SIX.
Buddha felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. Oh, merde!
“So when can you start?” the gray man asked.
Chapter Nineteen
Virginia Beach
Alex Caulder’s ruck, helmet strapped to the outside, lay tossed onto an armchair missing an arm near the front door of his ramshackle cabin on the beach. It contained his go-to-war gear prepared to be snatched up on his way out the door once he received the one-hour recall. Grab weapons from the Cage Room and he was armed and dangerous.
Two vehicles sat parked on the sand out front of the cabin. The beach itself served as a driveway. One vehicle was an ancient psychedelic-painted VW bus revived from the 1970s, the other, Caulder’s vintage purple-and-red Ford Bronco with the top sawed off. They complemented each other in a weird way. Where else could you have found such buggies parked together except in front of a run-down Cape Cod–looking fishing shack, gray paint peeling from it like scabs from a wound? A surfboard rested upended to one side of the single entrance, balanced on the other side of the door by fishing rods thrown across an old car seat with rusted springs.
The first time Buddha Ortiz had come with the team for a cookout, he marveled at how much the shack reminded him of a miniaturized version of the haunted house in the old Psycho movie. There was even a “Bates Motel” down the road.
The lair inside also matched Caulder’s free-spirit persona. It had two rooms, a living room and a bedroom, with the kitchenette on the enclosed end of the back porch deck. The living room was cluttered with climbing and diving gear, books strewn about at random, posters on the wall, and old-timey vinyl record albums for the record player with its needle arm and spinning disc plate. The décor matched the twenty-one-inch TV set from the 1960s.
Tibetan prayer flags hung on a line across the open ceiling. A full-mount snarling black bear stood guard in one corner over a sofa draped in a parachute canopy. The Grateful Dead howled from the record player, proving that it worked.
Caulder’s preferred method of sweating out recall was to sweat it out in bed—and not alone. Sweat-out noises issued from the cabin’s single tiny bedroom, accompanied by the Grateful Dead and the crash of the incoming tide in the background. Kelly, the hot blonde from Anabel’s quinceñeara, had her long legs latched around his waist in a death grip that wouldn’t let go. The bed came equipped with bedsprings Caulder had picked up cheap at Rob’s Second Hand Store. They creaked and crackled in disjointed, athletic rhythm.
His cell phone sounded Charge!
Not now! Not now!
Still, he rolled off the blonde to check it out. He looked surprised and started searching for his jeans.
Kelly laughed. “Are you coming or going?”
He slapped her playfully on her bare bottom. “Reminds me of Einstein—you know? His theory of infinity? Infinity is the time between when you come and she goes.”
Kelly made a face. “I don’t get it.”
“Get dressed. I’m late.”
Twenty minutes later he roared up at the county courthouse in his Bronco with the hole in the muffler. He was too late for the hearing he had forgotten about. His ex-wife, Erica, and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Dharma, were leaving the judge’s chambers where Erica was petitioning for an increase in his child support. Erica was also a blonde. Blond was his favorite color. Except Erica’s blond came tempered with a stick of pure mean.
Dharma had gone gothic since Caulder last saw her. She came out of the courthouse garbed out all in black, including black lipstick and hair dyed coal-black. Everything black except for a skunk stripe of bleached white through her hair. She ignored Caulder as he trotted up the courthouse steps toward them.
“Congratulations, you owe me money,” Erica greeted him, her streak of mean coming out. “And if you don’t get current on your payments, that’s called contempt of court.”
She turned to their daughter. More mean came out. “Dharma, this man is your father. In case you don’t recognize him.”
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” Caulder complained.
Erica sniffed. “We’ll just add it to everything else in her life you missed. And, by the way, your lawyer quit.”
Caulder’s cell buzzed, a distinctive sound dedicated to only one source. He glanced at the screen anyhow. A group text appeared: 999999. This was it! The recall! It was going down.
“Dharma, that’s his dog whistle,” Erica explained. It was one of the reasons they divorced. “Now, watch your father disappear.”
“I’ll take care of this,” Caulder promised, indicating the courthouse.
“Sure you will, Alex.” She had heard all his bullshit before.
Dharma regarded her father with an unnerving clinical detachment, but also with curiosity, as he raced down the stone courthouse steps and roared off in his purple-and-red Bronco in a haze of exhaust fumes.
Chapter Twenty
Virginia Beach
The big gray-and-mottled C-17 on the eight-thousand-foot runway at NAS Oceana had its turbo engines “burning and turning” and its ramp dropped to onload teams and support for SEAL Team Six. Personnel responding to the one-hour recall were already climbing aboard the aircraft when Bear Graves arrived at the airfield, an OD duffel slung over one shoulder, dragging another up the ramp. Caulder, Buckley, and Fishbait soon joined him, likewise laden.
Bear took a seat in the webbing with his team where he could see out through the open ramp to the fenced-in parking area beyond the flight line.
“Fucking media,” he groused. “Outing Rip like they did. Who the hell told them?”
Caulder, who looked like a hard day’s night, dropped down next to Bear, the canvas conforming to his skinny butt. “It was bound to come out. Doesn’t change anything for us.”
“What it means is we better get our asses in gear or pieces of Rip are gonna be hanging from a bridge somewhere.”
A flight of sleek F/A-18 Super Hornets streaked down the runway and out over the Atlantic before nosing straight up into a blue sky unmarred by cloud. Naval Air Station Oceana was a Master Jet Base, one of the largest and most advanced in the world, whose primary mission was to train and deploy the navy’s Atlantic Fleet strike force squadrons.
Bear checked his watch. It had been three-quarters of an hour since call-up began. He glared out past the open ramp, as though daring Buddha Ortiz not to show up. So far there had been no word from him.
Robert Chase boarded. Other than Buddha, he was the last of the team. He dropped his gear on the loading pad and flashed one of his grins. This would be his first combat mission with Six and Senior Chief Graves’s team.
“Chase,” Bear grumbled. “You got the initiators?”
“Four kinds. The—”
“What about the Nonel?”
Graves had never had to double check Buddha.
“Hey, Bear,” Caulder interrupted. “Cut the kid some slack. It’s not his first day at kindergarten. And we got to go wheels up. Give them the word.”
Graves checked his watch again. “He’s gonna come,” he said, as though saying it made it true.
“Let it go, Bear,” Caulder advised. “We’re all on our own paths, and Buddha’s path is out of here.”
Graves burned him with a look and resumed his vigil over the ramp. A ground crewman driving a hydraulics cart sped past and out of sight.
&nb
sp; Ricky Ortiz’s blue minivan pulled onto the fenced parking lot off the flight line with Jackie at the wheel. Mama wasn’t happy.
“It’s just till we get Rip,” he promised. “I owe him.”
“You owe us, Ricky. This school—Anabel’s dreamed about it since she was six.”
Ortiz cast an anxious glance at the C-17. It was about ready to move. He got out of the car and gathered up his go-to-war gear.
“I know, I know,” he tried to appease his wife. “It’ll all work out.”
He felt like shit, like a bad husband, a bad dad. But he’d feel even worse if he deserted Rip and the team when they counted on him.
“How? How, Ricky? How’s it going to work out? You going to sell Ricky Junior? You spent our savings on the quinceañera. And don’t say you’ll sell the house, because our mortgage is underwater.”
He reached to take her quickly into his arms before the plane got away. She pulled back.
“Calmate, guapa,” he soothed. “I’ll take care of it when I get back. That’s what I do.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do—take care of us. But you’re not doing it.”
She stormed back into the van. She sat rigid behind the wheel, fuming. Ricky leaned through the open window. She turned her head.
“Tell the kids I’ll be home in a week. Maybe less.”
“You tell them, Ricky.”
“Hey.” He reached and tilted her chin toward him. “I love you.”
She softened, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Come home to me, Ricky.”
“I always do.”
A Marine stood guard at the gate. Ortiz looked back once. Jackie remained at the wheel, not looking at him, just glaring straight ahead out the windshield. He clambered aboard the C-17 and dumped his gear with the rest. Graves and Caulder shared a quick look, but otherwise pretended to ignore Buddha until he settled into the middle row with Fishbait, Buck, and Chase, across from Bear and Caulder.
“You’re late,” was all Bear said.
“Are we gonna do this or just talk about it?” Buddha returned.
Graves suppressed a smile. He knew Buddha would come, just knew it.
The ramp closed, engines screamed, the C-17 lurched and began moving. Jackie Ortiz now stood outside the family minivan in the parking lot and watched the plane climb into the air and head east out over the Atlantic. She watched until it became a speck and finally disappeared into the distance, a woman sending her man off to war. Tears on her cheeks reflected sunlight.
“Ricky? Ricky, come back to me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Tanzania, Africa
The hangar at the far end of the Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania was reserved for special clients, such as those who had arrived over the weekend and were now preparing to depart on a private Embraer Legacy 650 jet chocked outside the open hangar door in the full African sunshine. Men clad in digital desert camouflage and wearing Black Watch caps or scarves rushed about loading gear onto the sleek blue-and-white aircraft.
To a man, they were a scary, tough-looking bunch that no one would want to encounter in the dark. Or spot near an American Embassy, a hotel in Jerusalem, or a train station in Paris. They were all young men and two women, a mixture of Middle Eastern types and Africans. The co-leader of this band of cutthroats was a proven fighter in his late twenties, a Chechen named Akmal Barayev. A man of middle height with a long, full face, a tight crop of curly black hair, and a swarthy complexion, he made his bones with al-Qaeda when he was sixteen years old and was currently assisting ISIS and Boko Haram expand across Africa.
He removed his combat vest and tossed it to another fighter who hustled past carrying a black-and-green flag inscribed in Arabic symbols. A ruthless smile touched Barayev’s lips. His mission in Tanzania had been a great success. Two days ago, flags like that one had flown at the bombed-out American embassy in the capital city of Dodoma. Sixty infidels had perished in the conflagration.
Two young women wearing traditional hijabs and four fighters were busy packing up computers and portable workstations in one corner of the hangar. Barayev stalked over and stood behind a tall, rather skinny man with bushy eyebrows who sat cross-legged on the concrete hangar floor staring at a TV monitor. Barayev knew little about Michael Nasry other than that it was rumored he was an American and that he and their superior, Emir Hatimal-Muttaqi, were tight. As co-leader, Nasry was in charge of “The Game,” which utilized social media to recruit jihadists from around the globe.
Michael leaned forward, scowling fiercely, as a news feed came up on the monitor showing a battered and bruised American identified by the streamer below as a former member of SEAL Team Six. Nasry studied that lean face. There was something familiar about it.
Suddenly, it came to him. His mind flashed back to Afghanistan and a night in Kunar Province. Gunfire sputtered from various quarters. He and his brother Omar, pursued by American SEALs hunting al-Muttaqi, attempted to escape through the village archway and into the mountains. Fire from above blocked their flight. Omar took a bullet in the leg and went down howling in pain and fear.
Michael could have kept running and possibly escaped. Instead, he went back for his brother, who had been taken prisoner and was weeping and begging for his life. He would never forget that night—the tap of a suppressed carbine that slammed a bullet through Omar’s skull while he was on his knees pleading.
Nor would he forget the shooter who stood there as cold as glacier ice and calmly pushed NVGs up onto his helmet to reveal his face. That face was the same as the one now appearing on the screen. It seemed Boko Haram had taken him hostage. By the looks of his face, his captivity would be far worse than the weeks Nasry spent as a prisoner of the Afghan Police after the Americans killed Omar and took Michael captive.
Akmal Barayev caught Nasry’s reaction to the screen and leaned over to peer at the image.
“Who’s that?” he asked in Arabic.
Nasry was wrestling with his emotions and unable to respond immediately. Finally, quivering from rage and in a voice edged with raw hatred, he replied, “That is the man who killed my brother.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dubai
Michael Nasry did get around. He laughed—which he rarely did—whenever Akmal Barayev referred to him as “the Caliphate’s most well-traveled warrior of Allah.” Travel was one of the perks of moving in Emir al-Muttaqi’s gloried circles.
Michael now sat in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, planted in front of a hotel computer playing an old-school video game. He wore a headset as he perched on the edge of his chair and, black eyebrows scowling, enthusiastically thrust and jabbed a game controller at the wall-mounted screen where a colorful cartoon character with a big ax and an even bigger head had crashed and frozen at a dead end in a magical world. Gaming was essentially Michael Nasry’s only source of relaxation and escape from the violent real world he inhabited.
“Take your time,” he chided the ax man as the character remained in limbo.
English was his first language, although that night in Afghanistan his brother Omar told the SEALs he was merely a raghead driver who didn’t speak it. He might have been American-born but, with his Middle Eastern looks, a checkered keffiyeh and a white robe would have turned him into a desert Arab sheikh.
The hotel’s wide window overlooked Dubai’s waterfront with its iconic futuristic skyscrapers. Included in the skyline was the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. Dubai’s hotel rooms were rated as the second most-expensive in the world.
Nasry, Barayev, and their entourage of busy little Jihadists occupied adjoining suites where they pounded relentlessly on laptops in their efforts to recruit warriors for Allah from around the world to build the New Caliphate. The secret to success in “the Game” entailed locating on social media—Facebook, Twitter, etc.—the disaffected of the world, the lonely, the restless, the rootless, those searching for meaning, and converting them into eager martyrs-in-waiting. Social media was like a gre
at supermarket for Jihadi recruiters. Nasry was the acknowledged expert in the field.
“Michael? Some assistance?” a voice in English called out from the adjoining suite.
Nasry tossed his game controller on the bed but kept his headset on as he moved to the other room where the six young recruiters who had accompanied him on the private jet from Tanzania were typing furiously. Two of them were women. It was acceptable in the UAE for men to dress Western, which they generally did, but women had to be protected in their modesty with head coverings and hijabs.
“Talk to me,” Nasry invited the man who had summoned him.
Instant messaging windows on the recruiter’s laptop opened to a Facebook selfie displaying an unattractive teenage girl with a sorrowful expression, buck teeth, and acne. “Marissa Wyatt, Oregon, USA,” the recruiter said. “Seventeen years old. Three months in development. Her grandmother is telling her to cut contact.”
“Where are you on the script?”
“The script isn’t working.”
“You make it work. Give me a lead.”
“She likes soccer, but she can’t play. She’s an asthmatic.”
Michael analyzed the situation, nodding thoughtfully before coming up with a solution. “She wants to be on a team,” he pointed out.
The recruiter sorted through his workspace and produced a sheaf of papers. “That’s in the script,” he acknowledged.
“That’s in the script. So what do you sell?”
“Camaraderie. Purpose. Opportunity for leadership—”
Nasry cut him off. “Family, dude. Always bring it back to family. Okay, what else?”
“We set up her Twitter feed. Make her feel important.”
Akmal Barayev appeared in the doorway wearing slacks, loafers, and a light blue button-down shirt that offset his black hair and swarthy complexion.
“We’re ready,” he announced.
Nasry held up a finger. Wait. He scrolled through Marissa Wyatt’s profile on the recruiter’s laptop. “Look at all the selfies,” he noticed. “Tell you what. Send her an Alex Morgan jersey, a Nikon DSLR camera, and forget about Grandma. She’s not going to be an issue.”
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