by Aiden Bates
DeWitt picked up the narrative again. "Local authorities don't necessarily trust the information a hundred percent. There are a lot of potential issues there. The picture could have been altered. The guy could be a lone wolf, so inspired by the hate he spills online that he took it upon himself to act. They're investigating, but they're still on high alert."
Toledano nodded. "Just because this particular attack happened, and turned out to be White Dawn, doesn't mean the next one won't be one of the ones they've been hearing about."
"Right. So they asked for 'assistance' in hunting down a possible terror cell." DeWitt grinned, wolfish and nasty. "Note how they didn't specify which terrorists they want us to look for."
Trent chuckled, but he kept his voice down. "That's pretty clever, sir."
Dewitt gave a wry shake of his head. "Don't I wish I could take credit for it. Just because someone got to the Secretary of the Navy doesn't mean everyone under him is on board with that order. Our orders here are to seek out any terror cell that may be involved with attacks here in southern France. No specifics were given beyond that."
"Awesome." Floyd's grin split his face.
"All right. We'll be putting in at Toulon this evening. We've been provided with separate quarters in town, near the base. Both the locals and our commanders would prefer that we keep our presence here as quiet as possible, although some things just cannot be helped. Get your things together. We'll disembark with the rest of the crew and head out under cover of darkness."
Trent all but sailed through his preparations. He could hardly believe this was his life. He had no actual proof Mal was in the same country he was. He could have hacked the Narbonne governmental systems from Timbuktu if he wanted. Still, the possibility sent a little thrill of excitement up Trent's spine. What if he got to see Mal again? What if they passed in the street?
What if he just grabbed Mal, put him on the boat when they left, and took care of the problem that way?
Once darkness fell, the unit divided into two vans and headed to an old house just outside of the base in Toulon. It wasn't a great house, but Trent had definitely bunked down in worse places during his career. This one had four walls and a roof. It even had a functional, if anemic, heating system. They would be just fine. They had four bedrooms, three of which had two bunk beds, and one of which had two twin beds. Chief and DeWitt took that one and left the rest of the men to pick their bunks.
"It's like summer camp all over again!" Buelen clapped with delight. "I feel like I'm twelve!" He checked his weapons and put them away.
"I didn't go to any rich kid camp." Tinker stowed his equipment and gave Buelen a long, hard look. "Did your summer camp feature a Mossberg 500?"
Buelen flipped him off. "I'm not from Texas, jackass."
"That's enough of that." Van Heel stepped in between the pair. "I am from Texas, and we didn't bring pump action shotguns to summer camp." He winked at Trent. "Pump actions are for sissies."
Chief assigned men to guard duty for the night, and Trent drifted off to sleep secure in the knowledge that the next day would see them called into action.
Chief had a chore list drawn up the next morning. It was perfectly fair and equitable, and it put Trent on bathroom duty for the first day. He was sure the Master Chief was just messing with him. He had to be.
They would go out in recon teams of four men, for three to five days at a time. They had a few clues to go on, but every team brought back a few more. Their local associates gave them information too, although they didn't seem to be pursuing the case with quite as much vigor as Trent would have expected.
Trent wondered about that. Then again, the SEALs had been told to stand down from pursuing White Dawn. Maybe the locals had, too. Maybe it wasn't even a bad thing. Maybe the decision makers, the people who invited military personnel from another country to come in and hunt their terrorists, suspected some local folks might have some sympathies for White Dawn. Maybe they didn't want to test that.
Maybe Trent needed to stop overthinking it, put his head down, and do the job in front of him.
His turn to go out into the field and do recon came on the third foray. They didn't send all of the guys from one room on these hunts. Trent went out with Fitzpatrick, Kulkarni, and Iniguez. They'd gotten a tip from a concerned local, relayed through the Narbonne police and the navies of both countries, that some men around one of the mosques in Nimes had been acting out of character.
According to the information sheet Kulkarni read as Trent drove, the men had barely qualified as observant six months ago. They might have abstained from drinking during Ramadan, or at least they didn't drink where the Imam could see them during Ramadan. Six months ago, it was like the men had become "possessed." They'd suddenly decided to grow their beards out, dressed only in traditional clothes, and berated anyone who shaved or dressed in Western fashions. They railed against the Imam himself, insisting he was "caving to the West" and had no respect for the traditional values of Islam.
All eight of the men had been born and raised in France.
It was a story all of the SEALs had heard before.
Trent spoke Arabic better than the rest, so he approached the family of one of the men. He claimed to be an acquaintance from a job they'd had together. The man's mother hit him with a shoe and screamed at him. "I won't have another one of you lying white animals coming here to twist another of my children and make him into a monster!"
Well, that was pay dirt if Trent had ever heard it.
He got the lady Sayeda Sahnoune, to calm down. "I'm not really a friend of your son's, Sayeda. I think he's been recruited by some dangerous individuals. You just confirmed it. If we can get him out and back on the right track, we'll do it. They're using men like your son, good Muslim men, to do their dirty work, but they don't care about him. They don't care about you. Help us help you and your family. Tell us more about these lying men."
Sayeda Sahnoune scoffed, but she invited him and his team in for tea. Once she'd poured them some tea, she explained what had been going on.
Her son, like many others, had a decent job in textiles, but he'd lost it as the process became increasingly automated. He'd had a girl he wanted to marry, but her family wouldn't allow it since he couldn't support them. Sayeda Sahnoune had to agree with them, given the circumstances. They had the rest of their lives, a year or two to get on their feet couldn't hurt.
Her son had a few friends who were in similar circumstances. A new man showed up, claiming to have the answer to their prayers. All of the "boys" — men in their twenties — started to turn to an increasingly harsh interpretation of their religion. Sayeda Sahnoune thought it was odd, but her son was taking things more seriously than he had been.
Then he started to bring more men home. These men weren't Algerian, and if they were Muslim, Sahnoune would eat her headscarf. They spoke French with English, German, or American accents. They chased her from the room when they met and started to abuse the Imam when they got to the mosque. Little by little, her down-on-his-luck-but-still-good son turned into a stranger.
Then he and his friends left, about a week ago. She didn't have a problem if they wanted to search his room. They could talk to his sister or his brothers if they got home. "I just want someone to stop him before he does something bad, before he gets convinced to do something evil." She covered her mouth for a moment.
"Have you spoken to the authorities about your concerns?" Trent leaned forward, but he didn't touch her.
She shook her head, sending dark curls everywhere. "No. They don't care about us. They think we're not really French, even though I was born here, his father was born here, he was born here…it won't take much, I think, for them to send us off to a country we've never seen."
Trent held his comment back. He didn't think France would actually expel its Muslim population. Sure, some pundits in the worst sort of papers called for it. Some pundits in America demanded the same thing. They were loud voices, but loud voices that spoke alone.
That said, if enough people became fearful anything could happen.. Sayeda Sahnoune had to live here, as a minority in her own country. Trent wasn't going to try to tell her how she should feel about anything when it was happening to her and not to him. "We'll try to bring him home, Sayeda. I can't make any promises, but we'll do what we can."
When they left, armed with a hint about an abandoned abbey in the Camargue, Iniguez whacked him on the shoulder. "What are you thinking, dude? That poor lady is going to sit there and believe we're going to bring her dupe of a son back to her, all shiny and safe and sound, and you know damn well that's not going to happen."
Trent shrugged. He kept his eyes on the driver's headrest as Kulkarni took the wheel. "I didn't promise her shit, Iniguez. I told her we'd try, and I do want to try. These guys are some down on their luck normal guys who got sucked into what's basically a violent cult. It happens all the time. It happens back home, too. A bunch of young guys who haven't hurt anyone yet aren't the mission. The mission is to stop an attack and to keep those guys from hurting anyone. Right?"
"Okay," said Fitzpatrick, "but you get we're not here to hold their hands. We're not social workers."
Trent had to chuckle at that. "No. We're not social workers."
They headed to the Petite Camargue. This was the type of deployment Trent was more used to. They spent a few days sneaking around lakes and marshland, avoiding detection, and poking into the ruins of buildings that spanned thousands of years of attempts at human habitation. They found a few signs of recent visitors — potato chip packets, plastic water bottles, and shotgun shells.
Trent woke up with a flamingo nudging his arm one morning. That wasn't the best awakening he could have had. He wasn't sure what was worse, the flamingo's stink or the way Kulkarni kept laughing at him.
By the end of the fourth day they finally hit pay dirt. They hadn't found their budding terrorists, but they'd found evidence of their passage. The remains of a camp had been set up in an old chapel overlooking yet another marsh. Someone had left a Quran behind, and Sayeda Sahnoune's son had evidently dropped his ID during their hasty departure.
It might not have been an accident. When Kulkarni turned it over, someone had defaced it. In very small writing, they'd written, I thought these men were good Muslims. They were going to help us get control of our lives. They only want to watch Muslims bleed. Be wary of White Dawn.
Iniguez blew out a long, low whistle. "I think we should probably get this back to Chief, what do you think?"
"I think that's something we can all agree on." Trent hid the ID in a pocket.
"I'm sorry. I did believe the worst of that kid."
Trent nudged his shoulder. "Hey. I didn't disagree. I just thought he could be helped. And maybe he can." He patted the pocket. "Not necessarily by us, and not necessarily today. I don't think this is a four man job, even if we are SEALs."
Chief, when they got back, agreed. "We've been burned by these White Dawn fuckers before. I want to go in hard when we come up against them." He turned to Trent. "Don't you think this would be a good time to give your buddies a call?"
Trent had been exhausted, and his skin still crawled where the damn bird had nudged him. None of that mattered now. "Roger that!"
Chapter Fourteen
Mal climbed down the old stone wall. His baby bump, which was barely there, didn't have any noticeable effect on his ability to do things like this. That would change soon enough. He wouldn't think about that, couldn't think about that, not now. Instead, he focused on getting down the wall to the window.
Speaking of activities he wouldn't be able to pull off soon.
He paused when he got to the aperture and listened. No one inside the room moved or even breathed. It was probably as safe as it was ever going to get. He took a breath, put his hand on his gun, and slipped into the dark chamber.
Nothing happened.
He flicked a switch to turn on his night vision goggles. There wasn't much to this room. There was an old table with a set of cards scattered across it. Mal couldn't get enough light to examine the cards, but he'd have to guess they probably dated to about the nineteen forties. Anything older wouldn't have been likely to survive, not even in here, and the table had a distinctly twentieth century construction.
Once he'd ensured the room was clear he went to pull the rope, signaling it was safe enough for Morna. Technically, he supposed, Morna should have gone first. He was the tech guy, and Morna was "the fighter." They'd never stood on that kind of distinction, and Mal still felt protective of his little sister.
She shimmied into the room a few minutes later. "I thought that rim was going to give way for a minute," she whispered. "This old pile needs a maintenance plan."
Mal snorted. He couldn't disagree with her. All of the tourist brochures for the Languedoc showed beautiful old chateaux that looked like they'd just popped out of the pages of a history book. They didn't show dumps like this, ancient buildings long since abandoned. An old abbey, stuck out in the middle of nowhere overlooking some overgrown vineyard, didn't make the cut. It would never make the cut.
He wondered how many bodies lay buried under the vineyard.
He shook his head. Europe's history was bloody. Every place had a bloody history. It was just a matter of trying to keep that bloodshed in the past. That was what they were for, for crying out loud.
He and Morna inched out into the hallway. Their enemies had chosen their hideout well enough. An old abbey, rumored to be haunted, in an abandoned vineyard made a fantastic place to stash oneself away. Given the age of the place it had been built for defense. That meant the entrances were all easy to guard, even for a small group.
The only problem was, the bad guys never looked up. They just didn't do it. Coming in from the top worked every time, and Mal would never get sick of it.
They crept down the tower until they got to the second level. Once there, they found small rooms, without doors, that were mostly covered in dust. Mal and Morna moved with extra caution, trying to be sure their boots didn't wake anyone as they clomped on the bare stone floors.
They did find one person sleeping. He looked to be of North African descent, one of the Daesh allies White Dawn had working with them. Mal wasn't sure how to respond to that. As near as Mal could tell, White Dawn had every intention of using these men as scapegoats. Of course, if they were part of Daesh, Mal couldn't feel too sorry for them. He was overly familiar with collective blame, though.
The first floor brought some more sleepers, all North African as well. The O'Donnells weren't here for sleeping people. It might be easiest if they took them out now, before they could mount a defense, but Mal couldn't make himself do it. He just couldn't cut someone's throat in cold blood before they woke up.
On the ground floor they encountered their first resistance. They found one North African and one white man lurking near the stairwell. Mal couldn't quite understand why they needed to guard the stairwell, but apparently it was important to them. He stepped through and ran his knife across the throat of the white man, slicing through his White Dawn neck tattoo with a little more pressure than was strictly necessary.
Morna went for the other man, but he held his hands up before she could kill him. "I surrender!" he whispered.
Morna glanced at Mal. Mal glanced at Morna. "This never happens," Mal said.
Morna looked back at her prisoner. They were alone in the little room, which was lit only by an oil lamp. "There was that one time in Venice."
"That doesn't count." Mal looked their prisoner up and down. "Here's the thing. We're not exactly equipped for dealing with prisoners, see?"
The young man, probably around Mal's age, closed his eyes and muttered a short prayer. "I was desperate. Everything was crumbling around me, I was basically nothing. This man came along and said he'd teach us how to become what we were born to be, how to be real men again, but it wouldn't be easy. I should have known, yes, that it wasn't going to go anywhere good, but please,
I don't want to die because of a stupid mistake. I don't want to hurt anyone else either."
Morna let out an exaggerated sigh. "Look, if we survive, how do we know you're not going to turn us in to the authorities?"
He blinked, frozen into position. "You're not the authorities?"
"Wolves, my friend." Mal winked at him.
Morna smacked his arm. "Mal, you can't just go telling people we're Wolves. What part of a secret organization are you not picking up on?"
"For the love of God, Morna, Da had me splash it all over seventeen different countries' data mines. I don't think they're terribly worried about pretending we're hiding in the shadows anymore. I mean no, I don't think we're going to be running around in spiffy uniforms that say 'Wolves' in six different European languages, that would just be foolish, but come on."
"I'm going to die," their prisoner whimpered.
