Primary Target

by Jack Mars

  Baylor nodded. “Let’s hear them.”

  “There are quite a few,” Stark said.

  “Journey of a thousand miles,” Baylor said.

  The general nodded. “Of course.”

  He looked at the papers again. “In general, we assume that none of these options bring Elizabeth Barrett back alive. That’s an unfortunate side effect of the situation. As I indicated in the briefing downstairs, special forces units of all kinds are conducting raids throughout the Islamic world as we speak. None have borne fruit thus far. We have no idea if Elizabeth is still alive, and as more and more contact is made with terrorist cells, militias, and enemies of all stripes, the odds of her survival decrease rather than increase. They decrease dramatically, in fact.”

  “Why is that, General?” Baylor said.

  Stark shrugged. “Good question, sir. Mostly, it’s because we’re blundering around like a wounded bull in a china shop. Working at this speed, we have no way of vetting the intelligence we are getting. A lot of it is bad. Most of it is incomplete. Whoever has Elizabeth sees what we’re doing, and if we appear to be getting close, they will likely become spooked and simply kill her. Or they may kill her because right now the eyes of the entire world are watching. For the terrorists, an Elizabeth Barrett beheading video is a powerful recruiting tool.”

  “Wonderful,” Baylor said. “So where does that leave us?”

  “If I may be frank…” Stark began.

  Baylor nodded. “Of course.”

  “It leaves us with an opportunity. We are the angry bull, and justifiably so. If Elizabeth dies, and even before she does, we are now free to engage and destroy many of our enemies with complete impunity. Does Hezbollah have Elizabeth? We don’t know. They might. We are free to punish Hezbollah for any role they may have played in this fiasco. What about the Assad regime in Syria? The Taliban? Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. We could decide to pacify the Sunni Triangle from the air, rather than on the ground. We know that the Iranians have previously allowed Al Qaeda operatives to cross their territory unimpeded.”

  Baylor listened, but didn’t say anything.

  “The beauty of this, if you will, is we can issue an ultimatum to all of our enemies in the Muslim world. Either they are with us or against us. The groups and places I named earlier must pull any and all strings they have to gain Elizabeth’s safe release, or we will begin a campaign of open warfare the likes of which they have never seen.”

  He paused. “Whoever did this has sponsors. And we can make anyone we suspect of being a sponsor pay dearly.”

  Baylor took a deep breath. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “But isn’t Saudi Arabia the most likely sponsor of whoever carried out this kidnapping?”

  Stark shrugged. “I don’t know. No one can know that for a fact. Does Saudi Arabia the state, and wealthy individuals in both Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni states of the Persian Gulf, sponsor Al Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist groups? Almost certainly. You know that. I know that. But Joe and Jane Sixpack don’t know that. And what’s more, they don’t really care. They just want someone to pay for this. We can decide who that is. Obviously, we’re not going to attack the Saudis. They’re allies of ours. But Iran? Syria? Hezbollah? Libya? It’s open season. Or can be, if we want.”

  “And so,” Baylor said. “The options?”

  “Many,” Stark said. “As you know, we have a great many military assets in the region. Tens of thousands of troops on the ground in Iraq. Tens of thousands of troops stationed at Doha. Jet fighters and bombers that can leave from Iraq, from Doha, and from Saudi Arabia. The Fifth Fleet controls the Persian Gulf, and the Sixth Fleet has destroyers and cruisers on standby in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Central Command has drones in the air twenty-four hours a day. I would suggest that we publicly give whoever is holding Elizabeth a twelve-hour deadline to release her unharmed. At the same time, we indicate to several bad actors in the region that they are also responsible for her well-being.”

  He paused. “At the end of twelve hours, if Elizabeth hasn’t been released, or if she has turned up dead by then, we unleash an all-out assault from the air. We destroy, as much as is possible, Hezbollah fortifications in southern Lebanon. We destroy Shiite training camps the Iranians have set up in the northwestern mountains of Iran. We also wipe out the Iranian fast boat navy in the Persian Gulf. All of them. Wipe them off the map. We fortify the whole thing with missiles locked on air force and naval bases in southern Iran, along the coast. If they even try to fight back, we destroy those assets, with impunity. We can do the same in the north, to their assets on the Black Sea.”

  Stark flipped over a page and scanned the next one.

  “Last but not least, we bomb Bashar al-Assad’s presidential palace in Damascus, and other compounds he has throughout Syria. Bomb them to dust. We can do the same to Qaddafi in Libya, if we want.”

  The room became quiet. Lawrence Keller considered that, far from eliminating problems that had been bedeviling the United States for some time, what General Stark was describing was the beginning of World War Three.

  Keller had bum-rushed David Barrett out the door. He was beginning to have an odd feeling about that decision. Stark never talked like this in front of Barrett.

  “What about the Russians?” Mark Baylor said.

  Stark shook his head. “The Russians are a shadow of their former selves. They’re weak. They’re focused on rebuilding their economy and their military. Yes, they are allies with the Iranians, with the Syrians, and with Hezbollah. But our intelligence indicates they won’t risk a shooting war to protect those allies. Not now. Not yet. Ten years from now, they might. All the more reason to take these steps now.”

  To Keller, it was clear that the general was not speaking off the cuff. He had come to the meeting with these ideas in his pocket. And he wasn’t speaking for himself. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had probably cooked up this plan years ago. Keller had to admit it had a certain grim logic. Except…

  “The Russians have nuclear weapons,” Keller almost said. But didn’t.

  Mark Baylor, the new President, was nodding. All eyes were on him. The ghost of a smile appeared on his face. He didn’t hesitate.

  “I like it,” he said. “Let’s do it. Start putting everything into place. Begin to lock on targets, and make it obvious that we’re doing so.”

  Baylor glanced around the room. His eyes fell on Lawrence Keller.

  “Let’s get a video team in here, and alert the media that we’re going to want airtime. We’ve got an announcement to make.”

  “What about allies and strategic partners?” Lawrence Keller said. “England, France, NATO, Japan, Australia… these people might want a little bit of a…”

  Mark Baylor waved that away.

  “I don’t want to hear a lot of debate about this, no matter how well intentioned. Let them all watch it on television.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  4:30 p.m. Arabian Standard Time (8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

  Hajin

  Eastern Syrian

  Near the Iraqi Border

  “My kind of place,” Ed Newsam said.

  The village was dusty and remote, a cluster of shacks and cinderblock one-story houses built along a narrow tributary of the Euphrates River. The water flowed dark brown here, and green reeds and scrub brush grew along the stream’s edge. The ground was a deep, dull orange fading to brown and tan. Chickens chased each other across the dirt paths. Tidy vegetable gardens were planted in rows behind people’s homes.

  To the north, in the far distance, rose rugged mountain peaks. Closer to the village, the surrounding area was as flat, and as hot, as a frying pan.

  “You can move here after we’re done,” Luke said.

  Luke and Ed walked through the village, catching the stares of the locals. They were accompanied by an Arabic translator, a cheerful young guy from the suburbs of Chicago named Greg Welch. Greg worked for the “State Depart
ment.”

  He made the little crow’s feet with his fingers when he said the words State Department. He thought that was funny.

  In Luke’s experience, CIA office people who rarely or never saw combat seemed to think a lot of things were funny, especially their own status and their cover stories. Undercover CIA agents and special operatives, and the people who staffed black site prisons, tended to think nothing was funny.

  “How’s your Arabic, Greg?” Luke said.

  Greg smiled. “It’s awesome. I’m fluent in the Mesopotamian dialect, as though I grew up here. I can speak Levantine, but some of the slang phrases are a little dicey. I’ve got some Middle Eastern blood myself, and I tan really well. There’s been talk of sending me undercover at some point.”

  Luke thought of his own time undercover as a Western jihadi in Iraq. The bloodstained images passed through his mind in a flash. He glanced at Greg again.

  “I don’t know if I’d recommend that.”

  The three men wore casual TV reporter war zone clothes as they entered the village—utility vests, heavy boots, cargo pants, and T-shirts. Greg Welch wore a floppy sunhat. They all carried sidearms, even Greg Welch, although he was just an “embassy staffer.”

  The chopper had dropped them off on a flat sandy plain a quarter mile outside town. What they didn’t want to do was drop in suddenly, fully armored, and possibly retrigger the trauma of the original raid. They wanted this to go as smoothly as possible.

  They were in Syria now, and Syria was not part of the war. They walked in, moving slowly and deliberately, not trying to hide or defend themselves. They were not invading or infiltrating a sovereign nation.

  They were just visitors, policemen actually, here to ask a few questions.

  Everyone knew already.

  People stood in front of their small homes, as still as statues, watching them pass. In the best of situations, Ed Newsam’s sheer size would bring stares, but this was more than that. It was as though the people of the village had been waiting for someone to come.

  It was as though they were ghosts, the ghosts of their former selves, the people they were before the raid. Those people were gone and these ghosts were here, and the ghosts knew what the young man from their village had done, and they were waiting for the hammer to drop again.

  They came to the house. It was a small cinderblock home, painted pale blue. The paint was faded and chipped. The plants in the front yard were dried out and dead. Much about the house seemed shabby and rundown, as if the people inside of it had given up. A rusty metal chair sat near the front door. An old man had just risen from it.

  The man was small and bald. He was thin, and probably only in his fifties, but something about him seemed ancient, and heavy. His skin was dark. He wore a light gray jacket over what looked like a T-shirt, and some kind of thick bandaging. He moved his upper body gingerly, as though his back had been injured and he was in terrible pain.

  Down below, his right pant leg was cut off above the knee. A very basic metal prosthetic device was attached with leather straps at his knee and thigh. He leaned on a wooden crutch. His right leg was gone from the knee down.

  He waited for them to walk up the path.

  “Abbas Antar?” Greg Welch said.

  The man nodded and waved his hand toward the open door.

  “Come in,” he said. “Come in.”

  * * *

  “The drinks are sweet hot tea,” Greg Welch said. “The pastries have almonds and honey. Very nice, very traditional Syrian hospitality.”

  Luke and Ed sat in the small living room of the modest house where Hashan Antar—the man now known across the world as Ahmet—had grown up. The furnishings included an upholstered love seat with two matching chairs. An intricate red and gold rug hung on one wall. On the other walls were family photographs. Luke noticed with a twinge the framed photos of two young teenagers, a boy and a girl, featured prominently.

  Just before Luke sat down, his eyes scanned a shelf of porcelain and ceramic figurines, cups, and jewelry boxes. It was a high shelf, one of two. The one below it had numerous hardcover and paperback books on it, all with titles in the Arabic alphabet. The upper shelf was better. Among the various knickknacks and paddywhacks up there, things that normally wouldn’t catch Luke’s interest, was something unusual. Lying on its back, screen upward, was a flat, dark blue mobile telephone in a plastic casing.

  If Luke had to guess, he would say that it was a satellite phone. He would like very much to pick up that phone and scroll through the recent incoming and outgoing calls.

  Abbas Antar’s wife, a heavyset woman in a black headscarf who they knew to be Eva Antar, but who Abbas had not introduced by name, had brought out a folding table and placed a ceramic teapot and tiny tea cups upon it. A moment later, she had returned with a plate of small, flaky pastries. Then she went out again. She did not smile, make eye contact, or speak at any point.

  Abbas took a seat in one of the chairs.

  Greg Welch stood near the corner of the room.

  “Please,” Abbas said, indicating the food and drink.

  Luke sipped his tea. It was hot and very, very sweet.

  “We are here because we want to ask you a few questions,” Luke said. He waited for Welch to translate.

  The old man nodded. “I know. You are Americans?”

  Luke nodded. “Yes.”

  Abbas Antar spoke for several seconds. He spoke without pause, but his voice was calm and his face impassive.

  “You will forgive me,” Greg Welch said in English. “The Americans came in the darkness before sunrise one day. Big men, much like you. They came in battle helicopters, with heavy weapons, screaming and kicking down doors. They took my son and daughter away from me, and away from their mother. They also took my leg. They took our hope, and our futures. They broke us, and broke our village, and then they left as quickly as they came. There was never an explanation, and never an apology. And now they—you—are back. And you wish to ask me questions. Which is good, because I wish to ask you questions as well.”

  “I am sorry for your loss, and your pain,” Luke said. “I will answer your questions the best I can. But first, I am in a great hurry, and I must talk to you about your son Hashan.”

  Abbas Antar nodded. “Yes, I know. It appears that my son, who I love very much, is the most wanted man on Earth. I am a little surprised that it has taken this long for you to come to me.”

  “Has anyone else come?”

  Abbas shook his head. “No. I think that no one has identified him before now.”

  “How did you know it was him? Have you spoken with him?”

  Abbas made a face of exaggerated surprise. “No. I have not spoken with Hashan in more than eighteen months. Nor has his mother. You must understand that, after the American attack, he left here on a suicide mission. He would gain his revenge, not for Allah, but for himself. He was never a religious boy. He believed in science! He believed in enlightened thinking! The Greek philosophers, the Arab and European astronomers and mathematicians. Never the religious sages. He had no patience for it. But when his beloved sister and brother died, he went to die as well.”

  Antar’s voice choked and trailed off for a moment. He looked at the floor between his left foot and the simple metal platform that functioned as his right foot.

  “His mother and I did not agree with what Hashan wanted to do. We do not believe in war. We believe in peace. We wanted the best for all of our children. But with only one left, of course we did not want to lose him. We had hoped he would go to Jordan, and then perhaps to England. We told him this, and he became very angry. He broke away from us, and he cut off all contact.”

  Luke’s eyes nearly strayed to the phone on that top shelf, but he controlled them. He focused on Antar instead. The man was telling a compelling story. It was heartbreaking. It was beautiful, in its way.

  The wayward son, a tragic figure, who went away to die in war.

  When Antar looked up again, t
here were tears in his eyes.

  “We thought he was dead until today.”

  “How did you find out?” Luke said. “How did you know it was him?”

  The old man shrugged. “Our neighbors have satellite television. His face is all over the TV news. The cameras in Switzerland captured his image. They came and told us. Hashan is alive! He has done a great thing! When we saw what a great thing he had done, his mother wept for two hours. That poor girl. Now she will be killed by fanatics, and it will be shown on the television. Because the scripture commands it. An eye must be taken for an eye, and a tooth must be taken for a tooth.”

  He paused again and looked directly at Luke.

  “A life for a life. An important life for many unimportant ones. The life of your President’s daughter, for the lives of my son and daughter, and so many countless others. Don’t you agree that this is very wise? You, of all people, a soldier, must agree.”

  Luke didn’t know how to respond. Yes, he had been a soldier, but he had always thought of himself as in the business of saving lives. Kill these ones now, to save all these other ones later.

  How could he phrase this to make this man understand?

  “We are sad that Hashan did this,” Antar said. “We are ashamed of our only son.”

  Luke nodded. “I understand.” He gestured with his head at the shelf.

  “I am sorry to ask this. You have been so welcoming already. But may I borrow your satellite telephone to call my base? I have an account that will make the call free of charge for you. I just…”

  He raised his hands as if to show how silly it all was. He smiled awkwardly.

  “I left my own phone at the base by accident.”

  “Satellite telephone?” Antar said.

  “Yes,” Luke said. “There is a satellite telephone on your top shelf.”

  Antar eyed Luke. He followed Luke’s gaze.