“May I help you?” she asked in Pashto.
“My name is Simon Wells, and I’m Raja’s English teacher,” Hawk began in his best Pashto. “He hasn’t been in class for three days, and I was concerned about him. Is he around?”
The woman turned her head and yelled, “Raja! Your teacher is here to see you.”
She turned to face Hawk.
“Are you his mother?” Hawk asked.
She nodded.
“Your son is a good student.”
“He works very hard.”
Hawk heard a few soft giggles and looked behind her to see two young teenaged girls scampering down the hall. They weren’t wearing burqas and were promptly scolded by their mother for allowing another man to see them without proper covering.
After a few moments of awkward silence, Raja slipped up behind his mother.
“What is it mother?” he asked.
“Your teacher is here to see you. He’s been worried about you. Said you haven’t been in class for three days.”
Raja scowled. “He must be mistaken.”
She turned toward her son and gestured toward Hawk. “Perhaps you can speak with him yourself about this mistake.” She then shuffled away.
Raja slipped outside and joined Hawk on the stoop, shutting the front door.
“What are you doing here?” Raja asked in English. “An American coming to my house doesn’t look good for me with the rest of my family.”
“I was concerned about you. You haven’t been to class in three days.”
“I’m not getting a grade in the class, am I?”
Hawk shrugged. “It depends. Do you want one?”
“I appreciate you wanting to help and checking up on me, but I don’t need you coming around here. It’s not good for me or our family.”
Hawk glanced around and noticed no one nearby paying particularly close attention to their conversation. Nevertheless, he decided to step out of plain sight. He tugged on Raja’s shirt, gesturing for him to follow him around the corner.
“What do you want?” Raja asked once they were more hidden.
“I saw you vanish in the market a few days ago after class, and I don’t think that you intended for that to happen, did you?”
Raja shook his head.
“Who were those men? And what did they want? I can help you if you’re in trouble.”
“You? Help me?” Raja looked away and stared in the distance. “You’re just an English teacher. You don’t know what these guys are like.”
“What guys?”
“I shouldn’t really talk about this.”
Hawk put his hand on Raja’s shoulder. “I’m your friend—your teacher. You can talk to me.”
Raja drew back and crossed his arms; he seemed to contemplate whether or not he should say anything. He took a deep breath before he spoke. “I don’t know if you can help, but I will tell you about what happened.”
Hawk edged closer and bent down as Raja spoke in a hushed voice.
“My cousin drives a truck for an export company down to Chabahar in Iran twice a week. He lives in Delaram to the northwest of us, but I am his contact here. When people need special things imported, they make me call him and arrange for him to pick up goods for them.”
“What if you were to refuse?”
“They would kill my mother and my sisters.” He paused for a moment. “But I sometimes want to help them. And on this particular trip, I had to go with him.”
“Did you want to help them the other day?”
Raja looked at his feet and kicked at the sand. “Maybe.”
“What did they make you do?”
“It’s not what they made me do—it’s what they are doing.”
“And what is that?”
“I can’t talk about it. They’d hurt my family. But it’s not good. Part of me wants to go along with them, but part of me doesn’t. How do you say it? I’m torn?”
Hawk smiled and nodded. “Yes, torn is the right word if you are having a difficult time deciding between two things.”
“It’s very difficult for me.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me? Sometimes it makes us feel better to share with a friend when we’re struggling with a decision.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wells, but I can’t. Not now anyway.”
“I understand,” Hawk said. He patted Raja on the back and walked away. But not too far. He needed to keep an eye on him.
***
AN HOUR LATER, Hawk watched from a nearby rooftop as Raja walked toward a small building about half a kilometer from his house. Raja strained as he pulled a cart covered with a blanket. During his conversation with Raja, Hawk had slipped a small bug with a tracker beneath the boy’s collar.
Let’s find out what this is all about.
At this point, Hawk’s reconnaissance mission was hanging on by a thread. Not much in the way of intel had been learned nor had he been able to discover Nasim Ghazi’s whereabouts. But he had a feeling that maybe Raja and the poorly-explained reason for his absence might lead him to Ghazi at best, at worst to some secret terror cell. Either way, there was nothing but upside for Hawk if he managed to gain some information out of this meeting.
Thinking quick on his feet, Hawk created a makeshift blind out of some clothes hanging on a line and a cardboard box lying nearby. It wasn’t his best work on the fly, but it was sufficient in that moment.
He peered through his binoculars at the structure and jammed an earbud into his right ear to listen in.
Hawk watched Raja drop his cart and enter the building, the door creaking as it opened and shut. It sounded like Raja slid a deadbolt into place.
“Raja, did you bring what I asked?” came a familiar voice.
“Yeah, it’s all there.”
The sound of a deadbolt sliding was followed by the door opening. A man wearing a keffiyeh with his head down, popped outside, stooped over, and looked around. When he seemed convinced no one was there, he ripped the cloth off the top and smiled. Stacked high in the cart were blocks of C-4 explosives. The man re-covered the cart and pulled it inside. The door shut behind him again as the lock slid into place.
Hawk smiled to himself as he placed the voice. There was little doubt in his mind that it was Nasim Ghazi.
“In two days, I need your cousin to be here for a special delivery—one that is going to Kish.”
“Kish?” Raja said. “His route doesn’t go that way.”
“We need a special favor.”
“He can’t do that. The truck belongs to the company he works for. He can’t just drive it wherever he wants, especially to Kish.”
“Tell him to get creative. Be persuasive. There will be a healthy compensation if he does. If not, there will be consequences.”
There was a pause.
“I’m sure your cousin would rather take time off for this special trip than he would for a funeral.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell him.”
Hawk watched the door swing open and Raja exit the building. Hawk gathered his belongings and stole across the roof and onto the ground, heading straight to a pay phone. He needed to call Alex.
CHAPTER 36
ALEX TIPPED BACK HER MUG to drain the final drop of coffee before leaving The Golden Egg and heading back to work. As she started to stand up, she felt a hand press down hard on her shoulder, forcing her back into her counter seat.
“Going somewhere?” came an ominous voice.
Alex turned around, relieved to see her friend Mallory from the CIA. Alex then shot Mallory a look. “Don’t do that to me again, okay? I’ve had enough threats over the past few days.”
Mallory shrugged but leaned in close to Alex. “Probably not the best way to say hello, but what other appropriate ways should fellow spooks say hello to one another?”
Another look.
Mallory slid into the seat across from Alex. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”
Alex took a deep breath. “So, th
is is a nice surprise. What brings you here today?”
“I think you know that I always thought it was wrong what the agency did to you, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.” Mallory slid a white letter envelope across the table to Alex. “Until now.”
“What is this?” Alex said, cracking open the envelope and peering at the flash drive inside.
“Let’s just say it’s your get out of jail free card.”
“So, this has nothing to do with what I’ve been working on?”
Mallory shook her head. “Not at all—well, at least, not that I know of.” She paused and looked around the diner before continuing. “Let’s just say if you ever run into any trouble with Simon Coker, this will make it go away—and go away quickly.”
Alex held up the envelope. “Thanks for this. You have no idea what this means to me.”
“It’ll mean a whole lot more if you ever need it. Just remember that you didn’t get it from me.”
***
BACK IN HER OFFICE, Alex settled into the chair at her desk when her phone rang. She glanced at the “unknown” glaring back at her on the phone’s small display screen. Who was on the other end determined how her day might go, and she was desperate for an easy day as she wanted to continue her research. She contemplated ignoring the call, but if it was Hawk, she needed to talk to him.
“This is Alex,” she said after she finally picked up.
“Alex, this is Hawk. We need to talk.”
“Yeah, we do. Big stuff happening that you need to be aware of.”
“You’re telling me. Something is going down in a couple of days. I don’t know what, but it’s big.”
Alex leaned back in her chair and tapped her pen on her knee. “I think I know what it might be.”
“What have you heard?”
“There’s been some chatter about a possible attack in Bahrain.”
“That makes sense based on what I'm about to tell you—but Bahrain? What would make a good target for terrorists there?”
“The U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, not to mention the Fifth Fleet.”
Hawk gasped.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“Al Hasib is going for their own version of Pearl Harbor.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I finally found Nasim Ghazi, and I saw what he’s working on. Several hundred pounds of explosives are heading toward Kish along the Iranian coast in two days. If it makes it there, that C-4 is going on a boat to Bahrain—guaranteed.”
“Think you can stop him?”
“I’m not sure when they’ll be shipping it out, which pretty much means I have until tomorrow night to stop him.”
“I’ll notify Blunt.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I don’t want him calling in drones to destroy a truck as it treks across Iran, and I certainly don’t think it’d be a good idea to bomb anywhere in Afghanistan with a drone.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“Do you after what he did last time?”
“Good point. I’ll hold off on telling him until after you eliminate Ghazi and the threat. If I don’t hear back from you by tomorrow evening, I’ll have to tell him.”
“Fair enough. I’ll call you soon.”
Hawk hung up and Alex exhaled. She didn’t like keeping secrets from Blunt, but Hawk was right. The last time she clued him in, Blunt did exactly what the program wasn’t supposed to do—unless she’d been manipulated into joining Firestorm under false pretenses.
Maybe that’s just Blunt’s way of getting me to go along with his plan. Maybe it’s all a lie.
At that point, it didn’t matter. If Hawk didn’t stop Al Hasib’s next attack, innocent American soldiers were going to lose their lives.
CHAPTER 37
HAWK RETREATED TO HIS HOUSE and began scheming. Since he knew where Nasim Ghazi was, killing him was the least difficult portion of Hawk’s assignment. It was securing the explosive devices that presented him with the biggest challenge.
To do so, he needed help. And he wondered if it was a task Raja would willingly assist in. Hawk bristled at the idea of employing the same threatening tactics against Raja and his family that Ghazi and Al Hasib used. But if it was the difference in saving thousands of lives, Hawk decided he could live with it. He’d ask before he’d strong-arm Raja.
Then there was the issue of timing. If Raja’s cousin arrived in two days time, that gave Hawk a small window to take action—and succeed. If Raja’s cousin came too close to the time of the transport’s arrival, he jeopardized the mission. If just one thing went wrong and he got captured, he knew those explosives would roll on down to Kish and wind up on a boat for Bahrain. The opportunity to thwart the attack would be gone, and Alex would be flying blind in D.C.
That left him with only one real viable opportunity—the next evening. If successful, he’d have enough time to dispose of the explosives and escape Zaranj before anyone else was the wiser. And the cover of night gave him the best chance at success. It also gave him the best chance to survive.
The Maghrib call to prayer started to echo throughout the city over the various mosques’ loudspeakers. Hawk poured himself a glass of wine and sketched out rudimentary schematics of the building he’d observed Nasim Ghazi working in. With one more casual pass by the building in the morning on the way to class, Hawk would make his final determination regarding his approach.
***
THE NEXT MORNING, Hawk arose early and headed to class. With everyone observing morning prayer, the streets were relatively empty. Hawk thought to himself that if he were ever going to be a thief in a Muslim country, it’d be too easy to know when to strike. There’d be five good opportunities each day.
But Hawk wasn’t planning on entering a life of crime—he was simply intent on stopping it. And if he blurred the lines as he went, so be it. Courage when facing men with nothing to lose required a loose adherence to the rules of engagement. In Hawk’s line of work, success was measured through results, not the means by which he took to get them. No family holding the bloodied and lifeless body of a loved one would care if he followed a litany of prescribed rules. An assassin’s life was ruled by one thing and one thing only—eliminating the target.
Hawk shuffled past the building and circled it twice, making certain no one was watching him. He crept around the back and tried to peek in the dingy windows. Nothing. He only found one other entrance, a pair of large double doors. He surveyed it for a moment and made a mental note about how he would go about entering the facility and creating an inescapable kill box for Ghazi.
As he circled the building for a final time, he thought he heard a noise. A shadowy figured vanished behind a nearby house.
Someone was watching him.
CHAPTER 38
NASIM GHAZI RETURNED FROM PRAYERS with a fresh sense of mission. He’d been cooped up far too long for the past few weeks preparing for his most ambitious assignment yet. He’d spoken with Karif Fazil once through an encrypted website and once on the phone. The moment the explosives were on their way to Kish, he’d call him again to make sure Al Hasib’s operatives could carry out the rest of the plan.
If it were up to him, he’d be there on site to witness firsthand the dramatic take down of a U.S. Naval ship. But he’d have to bask in the glory elsewhere and watch the news reports on television. If Al Hasib was successful, the number of people looking for Ghazi would increase exponentially. Perhaps a bounty would be placed on his head. And at this point, Fazil regarded him as the organization’s most important asset.
But Ghazi knew better. He was the brains behind the operation, the reason for Al Hasib’s modest success to this point. The general population around the world had likely never heard of Al Hasib nor knew who they were or what they stood for. But they would after this. There’d be articles written about them while television personalities opined about Al Hasib’s motivation and reason for their success. And Ghazi would laugh at it all, knowin
g that the very people who would grow to hate him the most were the ones who not only made him that way, but also trained him.
A smile spread across his face at the mere thought as he soldered more wires in constructing another pound of C-4.
He thought about his long journey to get to that point—about all the people who disparaged Islam to his face, about how he buried Carl Butler a long time before. That period of his life seemed surreal, except for the pain. He’d strike back at the very heart of the thing those people who mocked him revered the most and believed to be invincible: the U.S. military. It’d be glorious as Ghazi imagined the imagery playing on televisions screens around the world behind somber newscasters. Meanwhile, he’d be dancing in the streets along with millions of his Muslim brothers.
His pleasant thoughts ended abruptly when someone rapped on the back door. Ghazi put down his equipment and crept toward the door with nothing but a knife in his hand. He peered through the crack before opening it.
“Raja!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s about my cousin. He said he can’t get access to a truck at work.”
“Tell him I will take care of that for him,” Ghazi said. “Just tell him to be on time and have his export license. I will make sure he has something to drive, and if he doesn’t show up, tell him he better be getting as far away from here as possible. Because if I find him, I’ll gut him.”
Raja drew back as Ghazi pointed the knife at Raja. He nodded and exited quickly.
Ghazi pondered for a moment about alerting Fazil and aborting, but he eventually decided against it.
If he had to drive to Kish himself, he would. Nothing was going to stop him from putting Al Hasib on the international map.
Nothing.
CHAPTER 39
HAWK CALLED ROLL before he began teaching. Despite being labeled an introductory class, the majority of his students entered with a firm grasp of the English language. Over the prior few weeks, it had grown to an impressive understanding. And while he hoped they would utilize their new English skills in ways that would improve their lives, he discovered that they were instead using their knowledge to watch American reality television.
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