Primary Target

by Jack Mars

  “Watch it! Incoming fire!”

  Gunfire erupted all around them, like a swarm of angry wasps. Luke dove to the floor. Something cut a sharp path across his right shoulder. There was a slice, then stinging pain. Metal shredded. Glass shattered somewhere.

  Luke crawled across the floor. He was hit in the shoulder. He could barely get a look at it. He looked at the three SAS guys who were still clipped in.

  “How’s it look?”

  One of them shrugged. “Flesh wound, Yank.”

  The sudden roar of the Minigun was earth-shattering just above Luke’s head. He slid away, ears ringing instantly. The SAS guy, Gilmour, rode the recoil, arms bouncing, his face a blank inside his face mask. A burst of fire came from the barrel.

  Luke watched out the cargo door.

  Gilmour was dialed in. The pickup had passed beneath the chopper. A line of bullets strafed the back of it. The man on the truck’s heavy gun did a death dance and came apart like a straw doll. The back tires exploded and the welded metal over the back windshield punched in. The pickup rolled to a stop.

  “Nice shooting, Gilmour.”

  Gilmour raised a hand in reply.

  Suddenly, another burst of machine gun fire hit the chopper. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. THUNK THUNK THUNK. Gilmour’s body jerked and he fell away from the gun. More glass shattered up front.

  Luke hit the floor again.

  Gilmour was with him, screaming. Luke crawled to him.

  The rest of the SAS were already unclipping.

  “Medic!” Luke shouted. “Medic!”

  Instantly, the medic was there.

  Gilmours’s teeth were gritted in pain. His eyes were wild and mad. His breathing was fast. “I got hit,” he said. “I got hit. Dammit to hell, man!”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know. Everywhere.”

  The medic cut open Gilmour’s jumpsuit. He felt beneath Gilmour’s body armor.

  Gilmour screamed in pain.

  “We’ve got to get this shit off him,” the medic said.

  Luke looked at the two remaining SAS guys. He pointed at one of them. “You! Next man up! On the gun! Don’t get shot!”

  Another burst of gunfire hit the chopper. More bullets ripped up metal.

  “Stone!” the pilot yelled over the intercom. “We’ve got instruments down. We can’t keep taking hits like this. We’re going to lose this bird.”

  “Take evasive action,” Luke shouted.

  The chopper pulled up abruptly. It made a steep climb and banked hard to the left. The medic nearly fell over sideways. Luke clung to the floor, his fingers gripping metal slats. Another burst of gunfire came.

  An alarm in the cockpit began to sound.

  BEEP, BEEP, BEEP…

  The pilot’s disembodied voice said: “Too late. We’ve got mayday. A rotor’s been hit. It’s wobbling. It’s not going to hold. We either land or we crash, but we’re going down.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Uh… none.”

  Gilmour was screaming.

  “It’s all right,” the medic said. “You’re hit, but it’s all right.”

  The guy with him yanked away Gilmour’s armor. There was blood everywhere. Something had been cut to ribbons.

  “Aw, Jesus!” the medic said.

  The chopper began to spin crazily. The pilot was trying to regain control—the chopper spun hard left, then spun all the way back again hard right. The desert was coming toward them with frightening speed. The chopper was spinning, but seemingly under the pilot’s control.

  “My rudder’s going. It’s shuddering. I’m about to lose it.”

  Everything seemed like a bad dream. The chopper moved horizontally at fantastic speed, maybe fifty feet above the ground.

  “Stone!” Ed Newsam said in Luke’s ear. “You guys are hit.”

  Luke shook his head. “I know that.”

  “Put it down!” one of the pilots shouted. “Just put it down!”

  It dropped with a sickening lurch, three stories in one second.

  The pilot’s voice was resigned. “Mayday, mayday. Assume crash positions.”

  Luke stared up at the safety straps dangling. There was no way they could any of them could get there and tie themselves down in time. He reached down and hugged the floor as hard as he could. His fingers gripped metal slats. This was his crash position.

  The world zoomed by with dizzying speed. They were twenty feet from the ground.

  The pilot’s voice: “Prepare for impact.”

  “Be cool,” Ed’s deep voice said. “It looks okay.”

  A burst of gunfire hit the tail of the chopper. Thunk—thunk—thunk—thunk—thunk. Bullets ripped up metal.

  They were closer to land now, much closer.

  The chopper dropped out of the sky.

  It fell like a brick. SMACK. The impact was hard, the jolt going up Luke’s spine and through his body. His face bounced off the floor.

  Everything stopped.

  Another burst of gunfire strafed the chopper somewhere.

  That wasn’t too bad.

  “He’s dead,” the medic said, shaking his head. “Dammit!”

  * * *

  The fight had turned.

  The militia had started with the element of surprise, and all the initiative. But in wide open desert, they were no match for the overwhelming firepower of the two remaining Black Hawks. Big Ed Newsam was the door gunner for his chopper, standing there like a mountain, tearing up the pickup trucks and jeeps.

  Luke and the SAS men bounced out of the downed chopper. They ran from one ruined, smoking vehicle to the next, killing whatever opposition they encountered. Most of the militiamen on foot were running away across the desert to the north and west. They wouldn’t get far.

  The metallic rattle of the big guns from the choppers came from over there.

  Duh-duh-duh-duh.

  Luke’s little squad was walking now, guns out. The cluster of tents was just up ahead, flaps billowing in the desert wind. A tall man in flowing brown robes and a head wrap stood at the doorway of the largest tent.

  “Don’t kill him,” Luke said. “We need him.”

  The man’s beard was dark, with streaks of gray in it. His eyes were piercing. He seemed angry, confident, and not at all afraid.

  He said something in Arabic.

  One of the SAS guys turned his rifle around and butted the man in the face. Instantly, the man fell to the ground. His hand went to his jaw. The angry look on the man’s face only became angrier.

  The SAS men looked down at him.

  “That’s for Gilmour,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  1:30 p.m. Arabian Standard Time (5:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

  A Safe House

  Baghdad, Iraq

  Luke watched the militia leader from the corner of the room.

  “In a moment,” Big Daddy Cronin said, “if you won’t give me the answers I’m looking for, I am going to hold your feet to the fire. Do you know this saying?”

  The militia leader was sitting on a wrought iron chair. It looked like it might have had a seat cushion at one time, but that was long gone. Now there was just the rusty metal that made up the chair.

  The man had black hair to go with his long black beard. Both were streaked with gray. His shirt and pants were gone—he was stripped to the underwear. He was thin and very fit, like a man who got a great deal of physical exercise on short rations of food. His boots and socks were gone—his feet were bare. The right side of his face was swollen from the blow with the rifle butt.

  The man’s hands were manacled around the back of the chair, the chain looped through the chair’s openings, and was cinched tight. He was belted to the seat with a leather strap. His legs were out straight. His feet were bound together with heavy tape around the ankles, and were held in wooden stocks, making it impossible to move them. Moreover, the way he was strapped to the chair, and with his le
gs encased in wood, he had no leverage.

  Big Daddy Cronin waited for the Iraqi translator to finish speaking. The translator was a slim, balding, middle-aged man in a nondescript, short-sleeved green uniform with no markings of any kind. He had a pencil-thin mustache. He wore heavy sandals on his feet. He could almost be a nurse, or a doctor, if doctors wore sandals.

  There were five men in the room. Big Daddy, the translator, the heavily bearded mujahideen who had only recently commanded a militia, Ed, and Luke. Luke thought it better if Trudy and Swann missed Big Daddy at work.

  Montgomery was not here. Apparently, he had run into trouble because of the death of the SAS man Gilmour. Monty had authorized them to go al-Barak’s compound, but not on to the militia compound. Big Daddy and Don Morris had given the order anyway. As far as Big Daddy was concerned, the SAS men were on loan to the CIA.

  Big Daddy and Monty were no longer on the same page about this. There was some talk of Monty being recalled to London. As far as his superiors were concerned, Gilmour’s death was on his hands.

  Luke was sorry that Gilmour had died. He hated that it happened. But the office politics surrounding that death was not Luke’s major concern.

  The militia leader began to speak.

  “Yes, I know the phrase,” the translator said. “But I remind you that any forms of torture or coercion are against the laws of war.”

  “Is murdering an old man and his entire family in alignment with your laws of war?” Big Daddy said.

  The translator spoke for a few seconds, then listened to the bearded man’s response before speaking.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “How did you know the helicopters were coming?”

  The man shrugged. “People tell me things. How they know these things I cannot say. Spies, I suppose.”

  He glanced around the room. “The walls themselves have ears.”

  Big Daddy nodded. He looked around the room. It was a small, barren, empty place. The house was ugly, a squat structure made of cinderblock. This room was a perfect microcosm of the rest of the house. The walls were cracked and turning a sickly shade of green. Bare wires extended from the walls, attached to nothing. There was no electricity in here. The floors had been ripped up to bare cement. The room itself had no windows to the outside world.

  The house stood nearly alone in a neighborhood that was mostly rubble. It had been bombed and strafed with automatic fire. Nearly all of the homes had been destroyed. Insurgents had held out in this area for a time. Now no one at all was here.

  “Where do you think we are?” Big Daddy said.

  The translator spoke. The militia leader shrugged his shoulders. It was one of the few movements still available to him. Luke was surprised at how confident he seemed. The man had seen a lot of death. Any Iraqi who had survived this far into the war was on an intimate basis with murder. He had dedicated his life to his god, and had probably done many horrible things in that god’s name. Perhaps there was little left that frightened him. Perhaps he considered himself a martyr already.

  The man smiled. “I was hooded when I was brought here. I could not see. I have no idea where I am.”

  “Well, let me fill you in then,” Big Daddy said. “You’re nowhere. You’re not under arrest. No one has logged you in to any system. As far as anyone is concerned, you died in battle this morning with the rest of your men, slaughtered like a pig. You’ll notice I haven’t even tried to find out your name. That’s because I don’t care. Why would I care about the name of a dead man?”

  He waited for the translation to reach the man. When the translator finished, the man nodded. Luke thought he saw a subtle change behind the man’s eyes then.

  “Did they all die?”

  Big Daddy looked at Luke. Luke nodded.

  “Yes.”

  The man stared straight ahead now.

  “My name is Abu Ayyub Kamal. I was injured during the battle. I demand to see a doctor.”

  “You don’t look injured,” Big Daddy said.

  “I have internal injuries. I have been mistreated during captivity. I would like to see representatives of the International Red Cross or Red Crescent. I want them to know I am a prisoner of war in American custody.”

  “You’re not in American custody.”

  “Yes I am.”

  Big Daddy shook his head. “You’re not listening to me.”

  He went to a small table in the corner. There were several items on the table. Luke hadn’t looked closely at it before now.

  Big Daddy came back holding a small metal canister with a spout.

  “This is gasoline,” he said.

  He upended the canister and the amber green fluid began to flow onto the man’s feet. The man tried to move his feet, but the stocks wouldn’t move. They were weighted and bolted to the floor. Big Daddy also spilled some up the man’s legs.

  The stench of raw gasoline filled the room.

  The man shouted. Then he began to scream.

  “No! You must not do this!”

  “Scream all you want,” Big Daddy said. “There is no one to hear you.”

  Dutifully, wincing, the Iraqi translator repeated Big Daddy’s words in Arabic. The translator, a Shiite working for the provisional government, in all likelihood had no love for Sunnis, but even so… Big Daddy’s work, and the businesslike, matter-of-fact way he approached it, would make anyone wince.

  The blank, expressionless look on his face made things even worse. Big Daddy wasn’t even angry yet.

  He took a large Zippo lighter from his pocket and clicked it on. A four-inch flame appeared, yellow-orange and blue at its base.

  “This is what I meant when I said I would hold your feet to the fire. What did you think I meant?”

  “No!” the man said. “Stop! Please stop! I will tell you. I will tell you anything.”

  Big Daddy looked at Luke and winked.

  “Gets them almost every time,” he said.

  Luke raised an eyebrow. “Almost?”

  Big Daddy shrugged. He glanced back at the militia leader. “Once in a while, you have to go through with it.”

  * * *

  “I knew the boy, yes. The one you think of as Ahmet the Turk.”

  The militia leader Abu Kamal sat at a table in another room.

  Luke watched from the corner. He had taken part in a lot of interrogations, and it had made him a skeptic. These guys always knew the subject in question.

  They always knew the location of a secret hideout. They had incredible imaginations. They could spin fantastic stories with the when and the where and the why. They could describe high-level meetings that took place in cave complexes under inaccessible mountains, or at multimillion-dollar townhouses in London. And when you pursued the leads they gave you, it turned out to be smoke and mirrors.

  Kamal’s hands were still manacled, but the chain had been loosened. It looped under the table, and the table was also bolted to the cement floor. The effect was that it gave his hands much more freedom of movement than before. He used this freedom to smoke a home-rolled cigarette.

  His legs were completely free, and his clothes were back on. His legs were folded. He seemed completely calm now. He spoke in a conversational tone.

  “You think him a boy, probably, but he is older than he appears. He is from the village of Hajin, in Syria, just over the western border from Iraq. He is not a fighter. He is not strong, and he is not courageous. When he was in the camp, he failed most of the physical tests demanded of him. He was useless with weapons. I’m not even sure that he has been called by Allah.”

  “What good was he, then?” Big Daddy said.

  Luke had watched Big Daddy work before, too. He was still trying to decipher the man’s approach. Sometimes he instantly rejected what the interviewee was saying. Sometimes he played along like he believed it, then suddenly jumped on an inconsistency. Sometimes he just listened and drew the interviewee out, completely trusting, like he
didn’t have any strategy at all.

  There was a method to Big Daddy’s madness, but Luke had no idea what it was.

  Kamal shrugged and took a deep drag of his cigarette.

  “Everyone brings their own gifts. Ahmet is thin and handsome, almost womanly in his way—he is a temptation to women. He is very intelligent. He is an engineer and a scientist, and he is very good at languages. He learned Turkish and French as hobbies when he was a teenager. I believe he had hoped to move to Europe one day, though the war dashed those hopes.”

  To Luke’s ears, it sounded like a romantic story. The war dashed the man’s hopes.

  “Why would the war dash his hopes, if he is Syrian?” Big Daddy said. “Syria is not at war.”

  Kamal looked at Big Daddy. His face was calm but his eyes were hard. “I’m sure you well know that your war is a messy affair. It doesn’t recognize borders. Two years ago, just after the war started, your special forces conducted a raid at Haditha, in western Iraq. Documents taken in the raid suggested that Syrian smuggling networks had turned their attention from oil, precious metals, and ordinary people leaving for Europe. They were moving fighters from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia across Syria to Iraq. I can attest that this is true, as far as that goes.”

  Big Daddy nodded. “Go on.”

  “Your forces believed that the Syrian smugglers had set up a base of operations at Hajin, and were sheltering dozens of mujahideen there before they crossed into Iraq. That part was not true. It was, how would you describe it? Bad intelligence. A group of soldiers in helicopters conducted a cross border raid into Hajin. They found no fighters there, but killed at least a dozen civilians. This was one of your accidents. When your man Ahmet joined the mujahideen, he had just buried his younger brother and sister, who died in the raid. He was angry and broken, and he wanted revenge. He offered what skills he had. You might say these skills have proven very valuable.”

  “Where is the girl?” Big Daddy said.

  Kamal shook his head. “That I have no idea. I merely met Ahmet in the camps. His name was Hashan at that time. He tried hard, but was a bit of a laughingstock. I knew nothing about the operation he was sent on. Since he couldn’t fight, I assumed they would make a suicide bomber of him. You can torture me until I die, but I will save you the trouble by being honest. I rejoice that the brothers have taken your President’s daughter. But I don’t know where they took her, and I do not know what their plans are.”