by Sean McFate
“Wildman had disappeared, so Kylah and I took you home. Put you to bed. We talked.” He wasn’t looking at me. He was eyeing the meeting point. “It was pretty inevitable after that.”
I didn’t say anything. I was starting to see how I must have looked to Kylah in those first few weeks. And to Boon.
“She was just killing time, Locke, until the right thing comes along.” He paused. “Just like the rest of us.”
I thought of what Kylah had said, about Boon being a damn dirty Buddhist in bed. I couldn’t help myself.
“What was she like?”
Boon smiled and shook his head, and for a while I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he said, “A long time ago, I knew a woman in Chiang Mai. I was just out of jump school. She was older, rich, maybe married. She called me chawna—peasant. She was always laughing, especially when I ran my tongue up and down the back of her neck, and afterward, she would lie back and tell me to do whatever I wanted, as long as I did it very slowly, and it pleased her. I still remember the smell of her khao soi Mae Sai. And the taste. Salty and spicy and slick.”
“And that’s what it was like with Kylah?”
“No,” Boon said. “It wasn’t exactly the opposite of that.”
I stared at Abu Nadel’s meeting place across the street, not sure what to say. Boon was a weird dude.
Finally, he broke the silence. “Do you remember that brothel in Sudan?”
I knew the one he meant. It had been a hard week, one of the hardest of my life. We’d gotten into a firefight with a separatist army and another outfit hired by an oil company. Some of the fighters were no more than boys, barefoot, carrying knives and rocks. We’d done what we had to do and Jimmy Miles, ever vigilant to our moods, thought we needed some R&R.
“I remember the woman you chose,” I said. She was dark, black, and huge. Not fat, but tall. She towered over Boon. It seemed like an odd choice at the time, and still did.
Boon nodded. His eye was to his riflescope. “A woman stepped out of the enemy position,” he said. “She was almost naked, just beads . . . necklaces . . . but she seemed important. She didn’t come toward us. She just stared at me. Into me. You understand.”
“You shot her,” I said. “Was she the first woman you ever killed?”
“No.”
I wasn’t surprised. Americans thought of Thailand as an exotic beach, but it had a violent side. Boon did two tours in the special forces as part of Narathiwat Task Force 32, fighting the Runda Kumpulan Kecil, known as the RKK, a ruthless Islamic terrorist group that murdered Buddhist monks collecting alms and villagers going about their work. They killed schoolteachers, politicians, and civil servants. They torched schools simply because they flew a Thai flag. Boon was no sheltered innocent. I knew the world.
“She was the one,” he said. “After all the others, she was the one who got to me. And that woman, at the brothel . . .” Reminded him of her. I knew that feeling. Of course I did. It was natural, but dangerous. It needed to be killed away.
“I cried the whole hour I was in the room.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was the most open Boon had ever been with me. I suspected it was the most open he’d ever been with anyone. Why me? Why now, on a scalding-hot rooftop in northern Iraq?
“Do you remember your choice?” he asked.
That surprised me. “I do,” I said tentatively.
“Me too. That’s why I stay with you,” he said.
I hadn’t slept with a woman that night. I had bought something far more profound and dangerous: a solo concert from an older woman, sung in the Dinka style. The music had been outlawed in 1989, when Islamists took over the country. I had paid far more for the song than Boon had paid for his hour, but maybe the music had been redemption for us both. Until that moment, I didn’t even realize he had heard it.
“Chiang Mai, huh?” I said, thinking back to his earlier story. “I spent time there.”
Boon put down his binos. I guess he wanted to see me clearly, or maybe I’d finally surprised him. “No shit. When?”
“Between high school and college. I took a year off, to do a solo walkabout around the world. I spent a summer as a novice at the Buddhist monastery there, teaching English and seeking enlightenment.”
“What happened?”
“My visa expired.”
“Farang”—white foreigner—Boon chuckled. My enlightenment had been lost to paperwork, what could be more farang than that?
“I tasted my share of khao soi Mae Sai while I was there, though. It’s quite spicy, if I remember correctly.”
Boon nodded. “It’s my favorite soup. But only if you get it in Chiang Mai. They don’t know how to make it right down south.”
I took a drink of water and wiped sweat with my head scarf. The roof was a sweatbox, no shade.
“I don’t think this is the place,” I said. “I think Abu Nadel gave us the first address he could think of. He isn’t coming back, or if he is, he’s taking us somewhere else.”
“Odds are better it’s a trap,” Boon said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, watching the empty building.
Boon shrugged. “Because if I think that and I’m wrong, it won’t kill me. If I think the other way . . .”
Wildman’s head popped up above the edge of the meeting site. He looked around, then back toward us. I gave a thumbs-up: coast is clear. He worked quickly, taping loops of detonation cord and blocks of C-4 to key points of the building. We didn’t have as many supplies since leaving Apollo, but we had plenty of C-4 and det cord. Wildman made sure of that.
Boon was right: better safe than sorry. That was why I’d sent Wildman down with the explosives and remote detonators. If I was going to be walking into an ambush, and I very well might be, I wanted to make sure someone was ready to blast me out.
Or blast us all.
Chapter 20
Nothing, Mishaal thought as he watched the attendant in his heavy thawb approach down the long hallway. I want nothing. I am nothing.
He was an inmate at the al Ha’ir prison south of Riyadh. It was the Kingdom’s primary detention facility and recovery center for addictions, whether to drugs or terrorism. The conjugal-visit wing felt like a boutique hotel, if you ignored the narrow windows and high walls. Most rooms each had an en suite bathroom and a big-screen TV, a king-size bed and shiny wallpaper. Only the Saudis deradicalize vicious terrorists with opulence, as if hedonism was a cure-all.
Opulence for everyone, that is, except Mishaal. Abdulaziz wanted his son punished and broken—the “old way,” he had said. Mishaal’s universe consisted of a cot, a lavatory, the Koran, and a prayer rug.
In the beginning he had lain on the floor, screaming from withdrawal. He had shat himself and drooled. His attendant had come. The prince had seen the man’s sandals from his prostrate position on the floor. He had reached for the man, anticipating relief, but the attendant had beaten him and left him lying in a pool of blood-streaked retch.
It had gone on like that for two days, alternating between sickness and beatings, until he had begun to forget who he was and where he was. Eventually, the room had gone dark, and he had slept. Later, he had hauled himself to a sitting position. He drank water straight from the sink, only to vomit it back. Then they beat him again.
Now he cowered, recoiling as he listened to the footsteps coming down the corridor.
“Get up,” said the attendant.
The prince didn’t rise. He stayed on his prayer rug, his head bowed to the west, toward Mecca. He tried not to look at the man’s feet, only a few inches away. He had the impression, somehow, that the prayer rug was a safe zone, that they wouldn’t beat him here.
“Get up,” the attendant said again. But the prince didn’t rise.
“You are a disgrace.”
The prince didn’t argue. He could feel disgrace leaking out of every pore of his body. He could no longer defy his father. He could not be anyone but who the old man wanted him
to be. The other path was too painful, and he feared pain most of all.
“You shame our world.” The man stepped forward, and Mishaal expected to be kicked again. He flinched, as he had flinched from his father when he was a boy.
Instead Mishaal felt the prick of the needle in his neck, then the relief as the heroin flooded his body.
“Shukraan,” he whispered. Thank you. “Shukraan. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.” God is good.
He heard the attendant—the cleric—scoff. He felt the man’s hot breath an inch from his ear. “The first one is free.”
The feet started to retreat, and Mishaal knew this was not an attendant but a messenger. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Thank God.
Chapter 21
At 1355, to my surprise, Abu Nadel arrived. He came quickly up the street with four bodyguards, all dressed in local fashion, sandals and Kalashnikovs. Two hustled inside without hesitating. The other two remained outside, standing casually, holding their AK-47s. It was a sorry display.
“I have a bead on the front door,” Boon said, aiming through his Dragunov sniper rifle. “These two . . . they won’t know what hit them.”
I waited, watching the entrance. No one else came. At 1405, I made my way down to the street. There was no need to give Boon and Wildman instructions; they were used to covering me during arms negotiations and strategy talks. My headset was in clear view, letting Abu Nadel know I was in contact with my team. If he tried to take the headset, I wouldn’t let him. Boon and Wildman needed to hear the conversation. Long ago we had worked out code words that I would slip into the conversation: naturally meant “yes”; okay meant “no”; perhaps meant “everything is fine”; interesting meant “I need help.”
“Good luck,” Wildman said over the headset, as I did a functions check on my SCAR. I made sure my holsters were loose, for a quick draw. Walking into a blind meeting with armed men in a small space with no backup was foolish, but our options were limited. I could have taken Boon or Wildman with me, but being ambushed outside was a bigger threat. For all we knew, Abu Nadel, or whatever his name was, had sold us out to ISIS.
“You sure he’s worth it?” Boon asked over my earpiece.
“It’s okay,” I responded, meaning no. It was a question that had been on my mind, too. “But what’s life without risks?”
I walked across the street and entered the building. Two guards were inside the door, where passersby wouldn’t notice them. They walked me to the second floor, one ahead and the other behind, weapons drawn. Abu Nadel was waiting cross-legged on the floor with guards standing on either side of him. They were wearing black robes and turbans that covered their faces, like ISIS, and holding AK-47s.
I hesitated, an involuntary tell. Where had the additional men come from? There was no other door. They must have been here all along. But why hadn’t Wildman seen them when he was setting the explosives?
Abu smiled, then motioned me forward. A rifle in the back convinced me it was a good idea.
“It is a good thing to be underestimated,” he said in English. He was right, but the line was rehearsed. It was meant to show his confidence, but unfortunately for him, everything else gave him away. The nervous energy in the room. The way the guards kept glancing at each other, instead of watching me. Terrorists thrived on overconfidence; it was the best way to bend sacrificial lambs to a twisted worldview. Abu Nadel couldn’t pull it off. He was sweating like a horse. The room was hot, but not that hot. The man was out of his depth. I didn’t know yet if that was a good or a dangerous thing.
“You surprised me this morning,” he said, when I had settled across from him with my legs crossed. It was the local custom, and it provided access to my boot knife. Sometimes you bowed in wonder to the god of small things. Sometimes you planned them.
“Yes,” I said. “Now you know who you are dealing with.”
“A small team,” he replied. “Two Humvees, seven men. Good for stealth and speed, but lacking firepower. I know you have explosives on the roof and a sniper on the door. They are listening now. But you cannot kill your way out of this situation. You have no hope of leaving this city without my permission.”
Impressive. He must have had eyes everywhere. Wildman hummed Darth Vader’s Imperial Death March over the headset. Not helping.
“Perhaps,” I said, signaling to Boon and Wildman that everything was okay. “But you are fearful.”
He didn’t deny it. “And yet we both came. Why?”
I shrugged. “Because we each have something the other wants.”
Abu Nadel flicked his right index finger. A woman appeared in the doorway carrying a tea tray. She was covered in a head-to-toe burka with only a narrow slit for the eyes, the type favored by ultrareligious Muslims so that no visible skin would tempt men to corruption. A second woman, dressed the same way but quite overweight, followed with two platters of sweets. A man followed in black ISIS robes, no doubt the guard that pressed these locals into service.
So many people, and they hadn’t entered from the outside. Boon and Wildman would have seen them and alerted me through the earpiece.
“Decadent,” I said, as the first woman poured the tea, arcing it high into each glass, then pouring each glass back into the kettle. She repeated this cycle several times with mesmerizing skill. The cookies were fancy and fresh, made in a bakery. People were starving on the streets yet here were confections of indulgence. Abu Nadel was messaging me: This was his turf. Sinjar was in a desperate situation, he was not.
“I have heard of your reputation. They call you Zill Almaharib, but we both know you are just a paid assassin. That you can be hired to do almost anything.”
When I was at Apollo Outcomes, I would have barely registered the insult, but now the truth hurt. Was I still that man?
“Are you okay?” Boon whispered, inaudible to those in the room. He sensed my hesitancy.
“Naturally I stand by my reputation,” I said to Nadel. Yes, I’m fine.
“I have heard you kill the servants of the Caliphate.”
No use lying. “When I have to. I don’t believe in unnecessary violence.”
One of the guards shifted uneasily. Did he understand our conversation, or was he reacting to Abu Nadel’s surprise? “But you are an assassin.”
“Assassin, soldier, terrorist . . . humanitarian. They are different names for the same thing, depending on your point of view.”
Abu Nadel licked his lips. He was nervous. “You would have me believe that you fight for a better world?”
I wasn’t sure, but I gave him what he wanted. “Yes.”
“You are lying. You are a soldier for hire.”
“I choose my own jobs and my own causes.”
“Then why are you looking for the prince?”
I hesitated. There was only one answer: He was my ticket out. I wanted a new life, and that required money.
Abu Nadel must have read it on my face. “How much are you being paid?”
“One million dollars on delivery.”
“Alive or dead?”
“Alive. Do you think a father would pay a million dollars for his son’s corpse?”
“Yes,” Abu Nadel said.
I let the comment slide. There were too many possible motivations for such a statement. “Do you know where the prince is?”
Silence.
“Where is your master?”
“I am asking the questions,” Nadel said harshly.
I laughed. Harshness wasn’t his natural disposition. It was a robe he put on to survive in ISIS territory, or a habit he learned from his fellow holy warriors. The rough fit only made him more dangerous. He could shoot me in the face out of weakness, just to prove he was strong. One of the guards stiffened at my laughter, finger on trigger. I needed to cool the situation’s temperature.
“Fine,” I said, picking up my tea. I had no intention of drinking it until I saw Abu Nadel take a good sip. “But you don’t have to be so serious. I am trying to help him, not kill hi
m. Assassins don’t negotiate.”
Nadel took his tea without looking at the server. It was as if the woman wasn’t even there. “You don’t think ours is a worthy cause?”
“No,” I said flatly.
“Uh, Locke.” Boon’s voice in my ear. “Don’t pick a fight.”
“You don’t think this town is worth anything?”
“It’s worth a great deal,” I said, “to the people who live here. But Farhan doesn’t live here.”
“This is our home. These are our people. We take care of them.”
“Saudi Arabia is your home,” I said. Abu Nadel, or whatever his real name, blinked but said nothing. I didn’t need him to confirm that, like the young man in Mosul, he had come to Iraq from the Gulf States. It was obvious.
“The world is our home,” he said slowly. “All people need saving.”
“This thing with ISIS or Daesh or the Caliphate or whatever you call yourselves . . . it’s not going to end well for you. A better world built on blood? Conversion by the sword? Piety through crucifixion? Surely you see the folly of your crusade.”
He slammed his fist down, catching the edge of the cookie platter and sending a squadron of sweets through the air. The trigger-happy guard shouted, lunging for me. Before I could dodge, he jammed his AK-47 barrel into the side of my head, tilting me over. Reflexively, my hand pulled my Beretta and shoved it up to his balls, thumb cocking the weapon’s hammer. The other guard shouted at him in Arabic, telling him to stand down.
Abu Nadel held up his hand for silence. The gunman and I froze: his AK-47 barrel against my temple and my Beretta in his crotch. Tea poured out of the overturned glass, a dark stain on the carpet, spreading toward me. The gunman spit on my face but backed off, his rifle still trained on my head. I lowered my Beretta and sat upright, wiping the saliva off my cheek.
