The American had surrendered as soon as he’d run out of ammunition. Azim was still gone and the professor wasn’t interested in telling him anything about his whereabouts. Since the professor had Azim’s rifle, he’d assumed that he had somehow overtaken the Palestinian and shot him. Saleem wondered how the man had pulled it off. If it had been anyone but Azim, he was confident that the professor would have been killed within the hour of his misguided escape.
He walked up to Rhinefeld and looked into his weathered face. The tan that he’d had when they’d first arrived was beginning to fade. It was easier to imagine the middle aged white man as someone’s soft grandfather.
Saleem considered the type of man it took to attempt an escape, only to return for his friends. He risked death when he’d already gained freedom from his captors. It wasn’t hard to be impressed by the stranger’s courage.
Saleem returned to the hot plate and grabbed the handle of the pot. The water had cooled some but was still hot enough to cook the noodles a second time. He stared at the brave American and thrust the pot into the man’s face.
Rhinefeld let out a shriek as the scalding water soaked his flesh. The water had turned the flesh on his forehead and cheeks a deep crimson. He opened his eyes and saw the man walking away from him, satisfied with the results of the cruel act.
Rhinefeld watched as Saleem went back to his cot and stretched out his legs on the olive green canvas. The other men in his company were lingering about, apparently bored.
Despite being tied to the pillar, Rhinefeld was glad he had come back to the hospital. He now knew that the students were alright. They hadn’t been punished for his actions. This was the reason he was able to push the pain from his mind. The knowledge of the students’ safety comforted him more than rest and food could.
Rhinefeld scanned the room; there was an empty cot but no Azim. It didn’t matter but he wondered where he’d gone just the same.
15 miles East of Quneitra
Tom Kingsley crouched low behind the boulder. Despite his efforts, the grenade had dropped dangerously close to the truck. Pieces of the frag body exploded through the radiator and into the engine block, stopping the vehicle cold. A white plume of acrid smoke and steam rose from the hood as soldiers jumped from the smoldering wreck.
Brad was a good two hundred yards down the mountain’s easternmost slope. He high crawled through thick brush. He turned around and looked for Kingsley but it was impossible to see anything through the dense weeds and burnt grass.
As much as he hated to leave Kingsley, he turned and continued toward the edge of the mountain. Six minutes after the grenade, a sporadic volley of gunfire broke out. They had found Kingsley. A deep and loud percussive crack followed the spurt of shooting. It was the Cheytac; Kingsley was engaging the soldiers with the sniper rifle. Several more shots rang out as the Green Beret kept the unit of Syrian troops at bay. Brad listened as he neared the corner of the mountain. Kingsley couldn’t stay in his position long.
The Syrian Army had a large contingency of troops and weapons on the road. Kingsley would have to scale the mountain and hope to outrun the pursuing Army long enough to get lost in the valley on the other side. Brad hoped that his friend would do this but he kept hearing the deafening pop of the Cheytac’s enormous rounds. The troops were returning fire with regularity. Then a quick burst of gunfire was followed by a long period of silence. Brad’s eyes welled up with tears as he stood to a low crouch and got a foot on the mountain. Kingsley’s rifle was no longer contributing to the racket.
The other side of the peak was steep and cropped by a low valley that was joined to another string of mountains. The DIA agent stood up once he had traveled far enough around the bend not to be sighted. He skirted the base of the peak for several hundred yards until the ground began to rise up to a massive ridge line. He climbed to the top of the ridge and lay down just under the lip of the brown earth. Reaching out in front of himself he drug his body up the rest of the distance and peered over the ridge. The ridge was flat for a few yards and then it abruptly sank off into a great dry valley. At the bottom was a gathering of tents and makeshift homes. He was going to avoid the village at all costs.
Brad desperately wanted to scale the mountain to his back and bail out Kingsley. But he knew that he was only thinking with his emotions. If not for the Green Beret, Brad likely would have died in the Syrian prison. But Kingsley was right. The nineteen hostages far outweighed either of their lives. One of them had to get to the students.
Brad opened his back pack and tucked the MP5 away. He was going to slip into the shadows and stay there until he got to Quneitra, no need for the weapon before then. Brad surveyed the rough terrain and the sky above. It would be rough going. The surface of the ground was getting rockier and the footing less stable. Darkness would be falling in the next hour and it looked as if a storm would be rolling in.
27
Quneitra, Syria
Day 8
Brad had walked through the night, using only the illumination of the moon to guide him. He had seen a flashlight in the assault pack but there was no way he would risk alerting someone to his presence by using it.
Now, he lay flat on his belly and stared at the crumbling buildings and rusting concrete structures of Quneitra through a pair of binoculars. The terrain had leveled into a flat swath surrounding the city.
The sun was just beginning to peak to the East. He planned to skirt around the circumference of the town and survey the layout before entering under the cover of darkness. He would have to remain at least a mile outside of Quneitra’s perimeter to avoid detection; it would take nearly a full day. He needed his strength.
Brad decided to back track to an outcropping of rock that he had passed a half mile back and hide himself in a small cavity in the face of the rock. There he would eat and rest to charge his batteries for the coming assault.
• • •
Saleem didn’t care which students he took, they were faceless to him. He grabbed Tracy Peters and Matt Ward. Matt tried to talk him out of bringing Tracy but Saleem smacked him hard across the face and drug her along anyway.
They were whisked into another room. Matt saw the same red flag with black Arabic writing. Tracy murmured something indiscernible. Matt looked to her with the best comforting face that he could. The sounds from her closed mouth slowed and then stopped.
Saleem spoke in English to a camera in the corner of the room.
“The West has murdered our people, without any accountability.” He said staring into the lens. His eyes were dark, with large hollow sockets and circles that lined the skin next to his nose. He hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time in the last three days.
“Since the foundation of Saudi Arabia’s association with the United States, our people have been tainted by lies. America doesn’t want us to be democratic so that we will live better lives, they want us to become a people who are swayed by money rather than our beliefs.”
“Why do they work so hard to convince us that our way is wrong?” He asked rhetorically. Saleem’s body didn’t move as he spoke, which added to his already mechanical presence.
Matt and Tracy were directly behind him, their pale and thinning faces giving the video an eerie sense of doom. Matt moved closer to Tracy. He didn’t have any comforting words. He just wanted his proximity to give her whatever reassurance it could.
“Since that day, when the great Saudi Nation fell from honor, our people have been swept away by every kind of vice. Now the same polluted thoughts and desires that have corrupted the minds of your own youth have infiltrated ours.” Despite his motionless body, Saleem’s voice was peppered with emotion.
Matt closed his eyes and started to pray.
Suddenly, as if being awakened from a deep sleep, Saleem’s arms began to flail about wildly, controlled purely by surging anger. He was working himself up into a frenzied rage.
Tracy whimpered. Matt opened his eyes and looked to Saleem. Sweat was drippin
g from the Arab’s dark forehead. Matt didn’t feel the fear that he had expected to. Saleem had raised his rifle.
Matt looked to the terrorist. The man’s eyes were uncaring, steel beads of indifference.
Saleem thumbed the metal above the wooden stock on his AK-47 and slid his index finger past the trigger guard. He squeezed.
Lead bullets flew out of the end of the rifle and collided with the wall. Hard flecks of cold concrete rained down over the students. Matt instinctively threw his arms around Tracy, who was screaming, as the wall continued to shed layers.
Saleem released the trigger and studied his quivering prey.
Tracy clamped her eyelids shut. Her body trembled violently.
Saleem aimed the rifle again and pulled the trigger. Matt’s back was slammed against the wall as several searing rounds burned through soft tissue and muscle.
Matt collapsed. His chest heaved involuntarily and he could feel warm fluid flowing beneath his shirt. He could hear Tracy screaming but she sounded muffled now, like she was shouting through a pile of blankets. He looked down at his shirt. Red soaked through liberally. Tracy held a single blood soaked hand up superficially protecting his chest from any further onslaught.
Saleem turned his back to the spectacle and nodded to his man that was behind the camera. The Arab reached up and pressed a button on the mounted video camera. Saleem flung his head over to where Tracy sat.
“Take her back.” He ordered in Arabic.
Another of Saleem’s men slung his rifle over his shoulder and moved forward. The man’s face was opposite of Saleem Nejem’s. He appeared unprepared for what had just transpired.
“Leave her with the others and clean this up. We will need the room again in an hour.” Saleem said coolly, as if he had just ordered the man to pick up a pizza, or take out the trash.
• • •
Brad was awakened by the distant gunfire. He reached for the assault pack that he had been using as a pillow and removed the MP-5 and two flash bangs. He stuffed three of the four magazines of ammunition into his cargo pocket and jammed the last one into the magazine well. He left the bag, along with the remainder of the MRE’s.
The sun was disappearing periodically behind a network of thick stratus clouds as he emerged from the outcropping. He trotted back to the observation point he had been at earlier. The city still sat in all its decrepit glory, lonely and undisturbed.
The gunshots were alarming. He tried not to imagine what it was like for the students as he half sprinted toward Quneitra.
He aimed for a small house-like structure with a collapsed roof. All sides of the supporting walls had long since buckled around the foundation. The building was adjacent to the first in a series of homes and other small buildings on the eastern perimeter of the city. He used the jagged peaks and valleys of the crumbled building to hide as he positioned himself for a better view of the town’s main street.
Brad looked at each window in the building next to his. He noticed every crevice, every hole and every shadow. Anything that a sniper could make use of, caught his eye. He studied each feature for several minutes. When he was satisfied that no one was observing, he moved to the building. He crawled under a partially collapsed porch and surveyed the street.
Quneitra was in ruins, crushed by a war in its past that Brad knew little about. Brown patches of roasted grass dotted an apocalyptic landscape. Due to the heavy use of concrete and stone block during its construction, many of Quneitra’s structures were still standing, despite being replete with bullet holes and massive craters.
He crouched low under the porch’s overhang and shot forth, digging in to loose sand with his heels. Brad ran in a dead sprint toward a building across the street and jumped through the empty frame of a large window.
Inside the room were the sparse details of a forgotten age. All that remained of the wallpaper was a few tattered pieces of mold stained hibiscus flowers. Dozens of wooden chairs were scattered about, most of them broken; several of them charred black.
Brad found the remnants of an industrial kitchen. In one corner was a dismantled oven range and a set of deep freezers, black mold caked around their yellow door seals. He walked the long hallway, following the length of the kitchen and discovered a narrow staircase in the back. Brad took his time ascending the stairwell with the MP-5.
His feet rolled heel to toe in a slow, silent fashion, following the end of the rifle. At the top of the staircase, Brad found another empty room.
He peered through a window on the second floor. He could see the neighboring building. Its dilapidated roofline leaned against the structure and continued perpendicular to the street for twenty yards. Its sunbaked shingles held tight to a layer of rotting plywood that sprawled out before him like a wave.
Brad climbed out of the window and dropped onto the spine of the A-frame. The wood sagged but held his weight easily. He crouched down to a squat and crept to the end of the building, keeping an eye on the street. At its end, the crippled roof slanted down dramatically, its edge dangling just four feet above the ground. Brad jumped down and moved quickly to the next structure.
Inside, he found the remains of a defunct machine shop. He navigated through a maze of broken lathes, band saws, drill presses and various pieces of dismantled equipment. Everything had been stripped of essential wiring and parts that had value.
He swept through the facility quickly, taking a mental inventory of its items. At the rear of the building he found a massive hole in a supporting wall. Blackened pieces of broken concrete littered the ground in front of and beyond the opening. Brad stepped through the cavity and raised the sub-compact rifle to his cheek. There was a small entanglement of brush and another crumbling structure.
Instead of heading toward the other building, Brad walked alongside the brush and out toward the road that divided Quneitra. Across the street, an endless row of disintegrating edifices matched the buildings behind him.
The sky began to shed a light mist of rain overhead. A shiver ran through his body as he thought about how to proceed.
He stepped boldly onto Quneitra’s main access road, which ran straight through the town and served as its only major artery.
The street was divided down the centerline by a yard wide patch of tall grass and weeds that sprang from a raised bed. Brad got to the patch and squatted low enough to rest his buttocks on the back of his heels. His eyes poured over the street, studying empty windows, doorways, balconies, rooftops and garages. Quneitra was lifeless.
He was about to head deeper into the city when he heard it through the subtle drum of what had quickly turned into rain. It began as a low metallic clicking sound. In the distance, it morphed from a familiar mechanical stutter into the struggling pitch and fall of an engine cranking. The cylinders resisted, turning over and over in defiance, before firing and settling into a soft idle. The sound echoed like an eerie sonnet, bouncing off of the concrete skeleton that was Quneitra.
Brad shot across the street and ducked into a nearby doorway. He hunkered down behind the doorway and part of a cinderblock wall as the sound grew louder. He cocked his head sideways, which allowed him to keep an eye on the street but remain out of sight. Instinctively he tensed and drew himself in as the sound approached.
A late model Land Rover passed on the opposite end of the road in front of him, its white panels stark against the persistently beige landscape. Its driver searched the street and buildings opposite Brad’s position.
Brad’s heart pounded as it synced with an almost primal desire to stand up and riddle the SUV with bullets. He recognized Saleem Nejem from his internet video.
28
Quneitra, Syria
Brad waited until the Land Rover was out of sight before he came out. The rain was still falling but beginning to decline. He glanced down the street in Saleem’s direction. He had no idea how long the Palestinian would be gone but he intended on dropping in on the terrorist’s friends before he returned.
He sl
ipped around back and ran parallel to the street one block over. He kept the abandoned structures to his left, crossing the gaps between the buildings with trepidation. At first he jogged aggressively, breathing in through his nose and exhaling in short bursts through his mouth. But as the solitude of Quneitra embraced him and the image of his brother’s face–bashed and beaten, as he’d been imagining it–flashed across his mind, he picked up the pace until he was sprinting hard, bounding over rocks and debris as he weaved a path through the rubble.
He reached a bend in the road more than half a mile from where he’d started and slowed to a stop. Around the corner Brad spotted another of the white Land Rovers. Elation washed over him.
The building directly in front of the Land Rover was one of the larger standing structures. It was attached to a lower three and a half story building, by a long breezeway. A bright blue sign announced that the building was once the, ‘Golan Hospital’. Brad recognized it from the sat photo Kingsley had showed him.
Now it stood, pockmarked by thousands of large and small caliber holes, made by a multitude of varied weapons. Dozens of empty windows faced the street, keeping watch on the wallowing town. Years of warfare, followed by neglect, had rendered the facility as useless as everything else in Quneitra.
Brad pulled the MP-5 in tight under his arm and backtracked one block down from the curve. He crossed the street and headed for the back of the first building he came to. Brad moved up a block, until he stood inside an old apartment complex across from the hospital.
Toward the front of the complex he climbed another staircase and found a room with an unobstructed view of the front of the hospital. He stepped close to one of the windows and peered out. From his vantage point on the second floor, he could see through the windows on the ground floor. Most of Saleem’s men were there, spread out lazily on old army cots, their weapons carelessly unattended. The high pitched voice of a woman singer belted rhythmic melodies in Arabic over a small radio from a corner in the breezeway.
SANCTION: A Thriller Page 24
