The Socotra Incident

by Richard Fox

  “Botha! What did I tell you about working for Arabs?” Moshe stormed past them both and grabbed Botha by the scruff of the neck.

  “Moshe, hey, buddy. If knew you’d be here, you think I would have taken this job?” Botha said.

  “I thought the terms of me letting you live were pretty clear after I caught you delivering rockets to Hamas in the Sinai,” Moshe said, punctuating his words with a slap across Botha’s face.

  “I got expenses, man. Those Arabs weren’t Hamas, and they were paying cash.” Botha held up a bundle of euros, which got slapped out of his hand.

  “Think I was kidding?” Moshe pulled a pistol from its holster.

  Botha fell to his knees and begged in Afrikaans as Moshe aimed at the man’s forehead.

  “Moshe,” Mike said, “we need a ride out of here.”

  Rising dust from more vehicles rose in the distant sky.

  Moshe lowered his weapon, put his fingers to the mike on his throat, and spoke in Hebrew.

  “Get the money on board. We’ll split it up later,” Moshe said. Israelis tossed thermite grenades into the trucks and ran for the Cessna.

  “Hey, you let me live, and no charge, ja?” Botha said.

  The Somali woman sat outside a mud house, her sons clutching at her. She wailed over the body of the shirtless Somali man.

  “What about them?” Moshe asked.

  “Leave them alone,” Ritter said. A father was dead. Dead for minding a strip of dirt in the middle of nowhere. More collateral damage in a war waged from the shadows that the public could not fathom.

  It’s worth it, he thought. Please God let this be worth it.

  Chapter 6

  Shannon uncapped a black marker and drew an X on the map of Somalia where Ritter and Mossad had interdicted the payoff.

  “The alpha fell through. Where are we on the beta?” Shannon asked her team.

  Irene traded a glance with Tony.

  “Ma’am, if we go through with the beta, the second- and third-order effects are…are severe,” Irene said.

  “We’ve spent years on the network. A little longer, and we might get an actionable lead on the senior leadership in Pakistan,” Tony said.

  “Noted. Where are we on beta?”

  Tony hit a button on a keyboard, and the target packet popped up on the screen: it was the passport photo of a man in his early sixties, a thin gray-and-white beard over a bulbous face with bloodshot eyes. Natalie thought he looked like a lecherous Santa Claus.

  “Suleiman Al Nuami, head of the Abu Sayf financial network. Given his personality assessment, history, and proclivity for micromanagement, he will know where the Somalis sent the nuke for pickup,” Irene said. “The last call from the leader of the Somali team at the last dry hole satellite phone was to Suleiman’s personal cell phone. We don’t know the contents of the call, but…” She shrugged.

  “It’s more than enough,” Shannon said.

  The screen flipped to a satellite view of a metropolitan area. A pin on a large building.

  “Our source in his entourage says he’s at the Cèdre Hotel in Beirut on other business,” Irene said.

  “Excuse me?” Natalie said. “I’m sorry—I’m new here. But if this guy is the linchpin for financing terrorist attacks and we know where he is, why is he still breathing?”

  “Because he’s an idiot, Ms. Davis,” Shannon said “and an invaluable idiot at that. Suleiman is sloppy, predictable, and too much of a narcissist to ever change how he does things. As such, we’ve followed his trail of stupid to terrorist cells, arms shipments, and bank accounts across the Middle East and the Muslim world.

  “You’re new, which is why you need to learn this lesson: Use the dummies to lead you to the ones too smart to get caught. Given the situation, Suleiman has reached the limits of his usefulness,” Shannon said.

  A moment of silence passed as Shannon waited for any objection from Natalie.

  “Is he keeping to his other pattern?” Shannon asked.

  Irene blushed and waved at Tony.

  “Yes, he’s scheduled a visit through a local provider later tonight,” Tony said.

  Shannon looked at Natalie, her lips pressed into a thin line.

  “Natalie, this is going to fall on you,” Shannon said. “You’re going to Beirut, and you’re going to get Suleiman to tell us where the nuke is.”

  “Wait. Can we back up real quick?” Natalie asked.

  “Suleiman likes prostitutes, and you can pass for one of the Russian working girls in Beirut,” Shannon said. “The Russian mob flooded the market after they lost South Korea to the Filipino gangs,” Tony said.

  “Time out. Flag on the play. All stop.” Natalie slammed a fist against the table. She felt her face flush with a simmering rage. There were lines she wasn’t going to cross, and there was no way in hell anyone would tell her to do something like this with a nonchalance of asking her to pick up bagels for the morning meeting.

  “Why the hell do you know that?” Natalie asked Tony. “No, more importantly,” she said, changing her attention to Shannon, “do you expect me to sleep with him and think that will magically make him tell me where the nuclear bomb is?” Natalie said.

  “No, Natalie. You’re not going to sleep with him. Here’s what you’re going to do.”

  Natalie had seen women wearing the full-length black niqab in Iraq but had never thought she’d wear one. Being covered from head to toe in black cloth—to “protect one’s modesty,” as it was explained to her—struck her as social nihilism. Don’t look at me. Don’t think of me. Don’t talk to me. Wearing a niqab was to be nothing; a woman became someone only when she was at her home.

  She stopped to look in a mirror and adjusted her veil. Her eyes were visible and dolled up with an embarrassing amount of mascara and eyeliner. She had a thin strip of visible skin to close the deal; might as well doll it up.

  She’d questioned wearing the niqab in socially liberal Lebanon, but if a visiting Saudi was going to have a visit from his “wife,” then that visitor should look like she was from a country so conservative that she couldn’t even drive a car. The “service provider”—the Lebanese pimps were too good to refer to themselves as such—specialized in such visits.

  “The things I do for my country,” she muttered as she moved down the hallway, her black robes hissing against each other as she went. She took some comfort in knowing the robes would mask her face from the hotel’s surveillance.

  She knocked on her target’s door and waited. Heavy footfalls approached, and the door opened to the length of the security chain. Suleiman was shirtless, a pseudo sweater of black-trending-to-gray body hair covered his shoulders and chest. A short beard covered a red and puffy face. His eyes were dilated and quivered in their sockets.

  “You have the pills? No pills, no point. No pills, no date,” he said.

  Natalie held up a small prescription pill bottle and shook the little purple pills within as she batted her eyes.

  “Right here, darling,” she said. She choked back a gag, thankful for the veil covering her face.

  The door shut, and the chain clattered free. Suleiman opened the door and waved her in. He wore a frightfully small, black Speedo, anathema to all American men but fitness models, and nothing else. He had the body composition akin to the Pillsbury dough boy and a serious case of psoriasis down his legs.

  Suleiman slapped her on the rear as she walked past. The touch startled her as if he’d hit her with a cattle prod, not sausage fingers.

  “Nice, just like I ask,” Suleiman said.

  Natalie resisted the urge to punch him in the throat. She held up a finger.

  “Let me call in,” she said.

  Suleiman snatched the pill bottle from her and popped the lid open. He put three pills in his mouth and started chewing. Natalie felt her heart sink to her knees; her whole plan had just gone out the window.

  “Get started sooner.” He sat on the bed and waggled his eyebrows at her.

  “Ca
ll in. Get ready,” she said and went into the bathroom.

  She locked the door behind her and tore off her veil and headpiece, cursing under her breath. She reached for the faucet and saw a small mirror with lines of white powder on it. She turned on the faucet and used the sound of pouring water to mask what she was about to do.

  An earpiece went in, and she turned on a cell phone inside a small purse. She shook the cell phone, as it took its sweet time finding a connection.

  “Natalie? Status,” Shannon said in her ear.

  “We’ve got a problem. He took three doses of the neurotoxin before I could stop him,” Natalie said quietly.

  “Given his weight, the injection you have might still be enough,” she said.

  “He chewed the pills. Have one of the eggheads tell me how long it’ll take for it to take effect on someone in the three-hundred-fifty-pound range.” She looked at the small mirror; the faint remains of two lines were in sequence with the rest of whatever drug Suleiman had laid out. “And he’s high on something else, some other stimulant,” Natalie said.

  “Hurry! It’s working!” Suleiman yelled to her.

  “That might counteract the poison. Get what we need,” Shannon said.

  “‘Get what we need,’ she says. ‘This mission will be easy,’ she says.”

  “I can still hear you,” Shannon said.

  Natalie winced and attached a needle to a syringe. She pushed an air bubble out and tapped it. This isn’t going to work, she thought. The pills were supposed to dole out the poison slowly and keep Suleiman weak while Natalie questioned him. His lust had accelerated the situation beyond what they’d planned and what they could control.

  Natalie readied two more syringes and kept one in her hand as she opened the door.

  Suleiman stood at the end of the bed, swaying from side to side.

  “Hey, you should be…naked.” His words were slurred, and he tottered on his feet. Natalie didn’t stop him as he fell, the fat of his ample belly billowed from his sides.

  She heaved him onto his back and knelt over him.

  “Hey.” She snapped her fingers over his face. “Can you hear me?”

  Suleiman’s eyes swam for a second before they focused on Natalie.

  “You’ve been poisoned with snake venom, courtesy of the black mamba snake, native to Africa. Enjoy the paralysis—it’s a known side effect.” She held up the syringe. “This will keep your internal organs from shutting down and allow us to have a quick conversation. Nod your head if you understand.”

  Suleiman just looked at her, his eyes wide.

  “That stuff works fast, doesn’t it? Blink your eyes twice if you understand.”

  Suleiman blinked twice.

  This guy’s going to die on me. He’s going to die, and then how the hell are we going to find the nuke? she thought.

  Natalie looked over Suleiman’s puffy limbs for an easy vein to access for the injection.

  “No time to do this right,” she said and stuck the syringe into the side of Suleiman’s neck. Suleiman hacked as the adrenaline went into his system. His hands and feet spasmed, and his breathing became deep and regular. Natalie tossed the syringe onto a TV stand. It bounced against a roll of Lebanese pounds.

  Natalie grabbed Suleiman’s fat face in her hand and twisted his head to look at her.

  “Black mamba venom liquefies the internal organs, and the entire process is rather painful according to survivors. You are going to die, right here right now, if you don’t answer my questions. Understand?” she said. Please talk to me, she thought.

  “Yes, yes. Give me cure now,” Suleiman said between labored breaths.

  “Where is the nuke?” Natalie said. Her fingers dug into Suleiman’s fleshy cheeks.

  “Nuke? No nuke. No nuke.”

  An ammonia scent wafted over them. Natalie looked down and saw a dark patch growing from Suleiman’s groin.

  “You just lost bladder control. The poison starts eating away at your very favorite bits, and if you don’t want your shriveled little cock to fall off, you better give me the location of the nuke in the next thirty seconds,” Natalie said.

  “Actually that’s not true. It should—” Tony said through her eat piece.

  “Shut up, Tony,” Shannon said.

  “Socotra! They have it in Socotra,” Suleiman whimpered and tried to bring his head up to look at his crotch.

  “Don’t move.” Natalie got up and went back to the bathroom. In the kit was an antidote for the poison and another shot of adrenaline.

  “Where the hell is Socotra?” she whispered.

  “An island off the coast of Somalia, a damn big island. Get more,” Shannon said.

  Natalie picked up both syringes and went back to Suleiman’s side. She stuck an adrenaline needle into his thigh and injected him.

  “Don’t give him any more adrenaline. His heart might stop,” Tony said.

  Natalie breath caught as she looked at the empty syringe. Had she just killed Suleiman?

  “Too late for that,” she said softly.

  “What?” Suleiman squealed. A new more pungent smell joined them.

  “Too late for you to keep control of your asshole. Tell me where it is on the island, and I’ll give you the antidote,” she said.

  “Abdullah’s village. I sent mujahideen to get it. They have to take the road…S3.” Suleiman’s face contorted in pain, and he broke into strained Arabic.

  Natalie held up the antidote.

  “English, Suleiman. You’re almost there,” she said.

  “S3…to an orchard, then a few hundred meters to the south. The damn Somalis have it there, waiting for the mujahideen.” He started wheezing as his face went from blue to purple.

  “When is the pickup?” Shannon said.

  “When will they get there? Where are they taking it next?” Natalie asked.

  “Two days. Morning.” Suleiman’s eyes lost focus, and his head lolled to the side. She pressed two fingers to the side of his neck, but there was no pulse.

  “No, no, not yet,” Natalie said. She put two fingers next to Suleiman’s sternum and slid the last needle into Suleiman’s chest. It went in slowly, then sped up as it pierced something delicate. She depressed the plunger, then yanked the needle out.

  “Don’t die, you fucking pig,” Natalie said, her voice reedy. She straightened her arms and started chest compressions. Suleiman wobbled with each pump.

  “Natalie, it’s useless,” Shannon said.

  Natalie put her hand under Suleiman’s neck and lifted his head to open his airway. She opened his mouth and hesitated before breathing air into his mouth.

  “Natalie, he was dead the moment he took three hits of venom. Get out of there and follow your extraction plan,” Shannon said. “Good work.”

  Natalie dug the earpiece out and slammed it against the floor, breaking it with a snap of plastic. She pushed herself away from the dead man with her feet until she hit the foot of the bed. Suleiman’s head was turned toward her, half-open eyes staring at her.

  His was the first life she’d ever ended, her first kill. She stared at his body in the silent room, just a pile of meat in a puddle of its own filth now. No longer a person.

  “Get up. Get up and get out of here,” she said to herself. But she couldn’t move.

  What had Shannon said about him before Natalie arrived here? That Suleiman had funded suicide attacks in Israel. He’d supplied weapons to jihadis from Morocco to Afghanistan. He’d sent circuit boards to Iraq that were used in IED attacks on Soldiers and Marines. This wasn’t a good man, not one who deserved her sympathy.

  Natalie grabbed the edge of the bed and pulled herself up. She gathered up the spent syringes and put her veil over her face. She used the mirror to look herself in the eye and didn’t see a person without pain for ending a life.

  She snatched up the roll of bills from the dresser and left a part of her soul in the room.

  Chapter 7

  The pebble arced through
the air and struck the side of a Styrofoam cup.

  “One point,” Shlomo said. The Israeli tossed a stone at the cup a few feet from where he and Ritter stood against the battered hangar. It hit the lip of the cup and bounced in with a tink.

  “Five points. I’m at thirty-seven to your four,” Shlomo said.

  “This game is rigged,” Ritter said.

  “You bet a hundred shillings against a sniper, who makes his living putting a tiny bullet onto a target the size of a coin a kilometer away from him, and this is rigged?”

  “Yes, you put some sort of…rock magnet…in the cup,” Ritter said as he tossed another pebble, which missed completely.

  Shlomo scored another five points with his next toss.

  “Forty-two to four. Why don’t you just pay up now?” Shlomo said.

  “Maybe I’m just slow playing you. How much is a hundred shillings anyway?”

  “About a whole American dollar,” said Misha, another Israeli lounging in the shade of the hangar, a paperback book depicting a brightly colored armored figure battling some sort of tentacled and toothy space beast in his hands. The title was encrypted in Hebrew script.

  “Double or nothing next game,” Ritter said.

  A series of beeps came from a pack lying against the hangar. Ritter dropped a handful of rocks to the ground and pulled a beeping satellite phone from the pack. The code on the phone promised a message from Shannon. Ritter took the phone around the corner where the Israelis couldn’t watch him.

  He entered his password and was rejected. Odd. He looked around for Mike, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Ritter chewed at his bottom lip. There’s a nuke loose. To hell with protocol, he thought. He entered Mike’s personal code, which he’d learned by watching Mike’s thumb position as he entered the code over the years.

  A text message appeared on the screen:

  TGT LOC 39P ZP 0713 7533

  DELIVERY LOC MTF

  IL CAIUS POST DELIVERY

  RITTER NOT/NOT CAIUS

  Ritter relocked the message with Mike’s password and tapped the phone against his thigh. They had the location of the nuke but hadn’t been told where to take it. He didn’t know what Caius was, what it had to do with the Israelis, or why he was exempt from it. The Caliban Program used code words and terms when dealing with outsiders or when communications weren’t secure. If Ritter didn’t know the word, then it had to be something he wasn’t trusted to know about.