“Of course, of course, but…”
Khan leaned closer and told him, “I served in the Republican Guard in two wars, Professor, and I know how hard soldiering is in any army, even your Marine Corps. Men become unhappy with their lot, with their pay and living conditions, and about the things they are forced to do in distant, foreign wars. I think that is especially true for your black soldiers, the Hispanics, and other oppressed people, like the American-born Muslims. Do you think any of them would be partial to our cause?”
“Aslan is being delicate,” al-Zaeim smiled and leaned in closer. “Do you think you can recruit any of them — the blacks, the Muslims, or any other disaffected soldiers, ones who are now in, ones who may have gotten out?”
“What the Caliph means,” Khan continued the thought, “is, do you think you can recruit them and form an ISIS cell in your Fayetteville?”
Shaw frowned, and his eyes darted back and forth between the two men as their words sank in. “An ISIS cell?” he asked, as he finally understood what they wanted from him.
“Yes, back in North Carolina, in the Army base,” al-Zaeim confirmed as he looked at Khan for support. “They train those killers there and send them here to attack us — the Rangers, the Delta Force and the rest. You may not know this, but they tried to kill the Caliph last night, here in Raqqah. They sent the Delta force in helicopters in the middle of the night, and attacked the house he was staying in. They were trying to assassinate him, but we learned of their plans and had moved him just before they struck.”
“We have had enough of them,” Aslan Khan leaned forward and said. “The time has come to return the favor.”
Shaw thought about it for a moment, his mind racing ahead. “I uh, I suppose I could do something like that,” he finally conceded.
“That is excellent, Professor!” Khan smiled, “Because you would be much more useful to us back there than you will ever be staying here. But tell me, this Blue Ridge College of yours, do they ‘keep tabs’ on you, as you Americans say?”
“The college?” Shaw chuckled. “No, no, they wouldn’t dare. We have what is called ‘academic freedom.’ The more outrageous I act, the more I spit on the flag, insult the government, scream about capitalism and imperialism, or call for a revolution, the more they are afraid of me. But… you want me to go back there? To North Carolina?” Shaw asked, sounding profoundly disappointed. “I wasn’t planning… on doing that.”
“But if you do, it will be with a new purpose and on a truly meaningful mission that can decide the war we are in against the infidels,” al-Zaeim encouraged him.
“Allah abhors waste, Professor,” Khan added. “That is why he sent you here to us at this very moment, why the vision of the great Saladin appeared before you and me, and why he touched you with his sword. We have thousands of men who can go to the trenches and fight and die. What we don’t have, is a man like you who can go back and walk among our enemies.”
“Look at yourself,” al-Zaeim told him. “You are a blond, blue-eyed, American college professor. Dare I say, what they call an ‘egghead’? I mean no offense. We have such academics in our country, too; and no one takes them seriously. Am I correct?”
Khan reached out and put his hand on Shaw’s knee. “Do not be offended, my young friend. You were sent here by Allah himself, because you are precisely the right man, at the right time, and at the right place.”
“You are one of them,” al-Zaeim said. “You can freely enter that snake pit where all of their Special Operations leaders hide. They are the dangerous ones, the master criminals who direct the fighting here every day. With your leadership, with the right men around you, and with the right plan, you can strike them from the inside, kill their officers, tear at their heart, sow doubt and discontent in their ranks, and bring their entire operation to a halt.”
“Are you that man, Professor? Are you that leader?” Aslan Khan demanded to know.
“Yes, yes!” Shaw leapt to his feet, smiling, as if a dark cloud had suddenly been lifted from him. “I am. I am that leader!”
“Excellent!” Khan quickly answered. “We want you to stay here with us for a few days, while we work out the details. In the end, this will be a far more important task than the one you had in mind, believe me. You will be the leader of our cell and the tip of our sword.”
“I understand. Yes, I understand now.”
“And you will not be alone in North Carolina,” Khan told him. “My two brothers, Batir and Mergen, shall join you shortly.”
Shaw looked at him and frowned. “But it will be my cell? Mine to lead, as you said?”
“Of course,” Aslan Khan smiled and reassured him. “Allah has set another task before them, an equally important task which we have been planning for many months,” Khan added, putting his hands together and intertwining the fingers. “Like these hands and my fingers, when both plans come together and we strike, it will be a powerful blow that the Americans will never forget!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sherwood Forest, North Carolina
When Bob Burke dropped his retirement papers on the counter in Personnel at Fort Bragg, it came as a shock to a lot of people, and not just the Army. His hard-ass WWII sergeant major grandfather, who served thirty years in the airborne and had both the 82nd “AA” emblem and a parachute tattooed on his ass, never did understand. His Vietnam veteran, full-colonel father probably did, but didn’t want to admit it. However, whether they thought he was right or wrong, everyone knew he earned the right to do what he wanted without being questioned.
It would have been easy to heap the blame on his first wife, Angie Toler, “that… temptress!” his mother called her. They met while he was on R&R at Hilton Head after his last and particularly bloody deployment in Afghanistan. She was a drop-dead, gorgeous blonde with the face of a New York model, the body of a professional athlete, and the temperament of a Kansas tornado. When they came together, sparks flew like steel on flint.
A week later, she dragged Bob into her father’s Toler TeleCom office in Chicago and introduced him as her fiancé. Ed had heard this many times before, and remained surprisingly calm, assuming this was his daughter “acting out” again in another of her many twisted jokes. Usually, the guy was another slick, toothy tennis pro, or someone with more tattoos than brains whom she met in a trendy River North bar. This new fish, however, couldn’t have looked more different. As Ed rose and came around his desk, he found himself face to face with a short, compact young man who knew how to look another man in the eyes and shake his hand. His grip was like a vice, but those eyes! They were jet black and powerful, leaving Ed with the feeling he was staring down the twin barrels of a shotgun. And as his eyes locked on Ed Toler’s, the younger man made it clear that he was checking the older man out every bit as much as Ed was checking him out.
To top it off, Angie introduced him as an Army major fresh back from Afghanistan. An Army major? With his pain-in-the-ass daughter? Who the hell was this guy? Ed wondered. And what the hell was Angie trying to pull this time? She had both of her arms wrapped around him, as if she had no intention of letting go, and that “satisfied, sleepy cat” expression that told Ed exactly what the two of them had been doing all weekend. He’d seen that look on her dozens of times before, not that anything Angie did surprised him anymore. She was a grown woman, as she had made abundantly clear to him years before, and she was going to do whatever-the-hell she wanted, especially if he didn’t like it! Objecting, complaining, or even giving her the slightest hint of disapproval would only make it worse. After taking a second, longer look at her latest conquest, Ed found himself glancing around his office looking for the hidden video camera he knew she must have planted somewhere to record him making a fool of himself. After all, it had to be a joke, right? This one didn’t fit her mold at all. Especially those scars on his face, arms, and hands. Scars? No doubt there was a painful story behind each of them, leaving Ed to wonder how many more there were that he couldn’t see.
It took a few days, but the more Ed got to know this guy and understand his capabilities, the more Ed knew he could be exactly the leader he had been looking for. Angie didn’t know yet, but Ed’s health was failing. He was desperate to find someone who could take over his company, steer it into the future, and protect the jobs of his employees, whether that was what his daughter had had in mind when she dragged him to the office, or not.
Still, Ed Toler wasn’t completely stupid. He had made his share of political contributions over the years and had a few connections in Washington. As the days passed and Angie didn’t toss this new fish aside as she had all the others, Ed picked up the phone and called his local congressman. He hated the breed as a slippery, self-serving lot; but every now and then, they had their uses. “Barney, Ed Toler here,” he began. “I wonder if you can have one of your aides do a little research for me. Shouldn’t take long. See, there’s this guy…”
Two days later, the congressman called back, laughing nervously. “Ed, uh, I don’t know what that wildcat daughter of yours got you into this time, but most all that guy’s 201 personnel file has been redacted.”
“Redacted? What’s that mean?”
“It means someone took a big black marking pen and drew lines through all the good stuff. In the case of your Major Burke, that’s about everything in the damned file.”
“But why would they do that?” Ed asked, not understanding.
“In a nutshell, big-time national security stuff.”
“National security? You mean you couldn’t find out anything?”
“I didn’t say that. Given our ‘friendship,’ I called a colonel I know in the Pentagon. He peeked inside Major Burke’s real file. When he called me back, he said you and I could end up in Guantánamo hooked up to a battery charger if we keep poking around.”
“That little guy? You mean he’s some kind of super spy or something?”
“No, not a spy. Your guy’s third generation Army, and he graduated from West Point as the Cadet Commander. That’s a big deal. And he’s in the Infantry, so he’s probably Special Ops. And while the file’s mostly blank, it did contain a list of the medals he’s earned — one DSC, three Silver Stars, purple hearts, and a bunch of others you won’t find in a Cheerios box.”
“So, he’s a professional soldier, a war hero?”
“Probably one of the biggest, but we’ll never know, because it’s all classified.”
“With my Angie? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“You’re safe with either one, just don’t piss him off.”
Three months later, with many of his Fort Bragg 82nd Airborne, 77th Ranger Regiment, Special Ops, and Delta buddies in attendance, the wedding of Robert T. Burke to Angela Marie Toler nearly destroyed one of the fanciest country clubs in Wheeling, Illinois. The airborne guys even wanted to grab a C-130 and do a training “jump” onto the golf course, but the club wouldn’t allow it. Unfortunately, what the northwestern suburban Daily Herald called “the wedding of the year” proved no less incendiary and short-lived than the marriage that followed. While it lasted, however, the newlyweds were "hotter than a pepper sprout,” as Nancy Sinatra and Lee Greenwood called it.
Much as Angie knew what she wanted, her father knew what he wanted too. He continued pressing until “all the stars were in alignment” and was finally able to convince his new son-in-law that the challenges and opportunities at Toler TeleCom were worth his time. Angie also could be “uniquely persuasive,” but Bob had already been standing with his toes dangling over the edge for a long, long time. It was that last bungled Op in Afghanistan that was his last straw. He returned to Bragg, filed his papers, and never looked back.
Ed had built Toler TeleCom from the ground up. It was a growing, high-tech telecommunications software development firm in Schaumburg, Illinois, west of O’Hare, that provided telecommunications software, specialized hardware, and programming services to a wide range of private sector businesses. In recent years, Ed let Angie convince him to pursue Department of Defense military contracts. From the outside, DoD work looked simple enough and highly lucrative; and all Angie saw was the lucrative part. It took Ed about six months to realize how cut-throat and underhanded that business could be; but by then he had won some contracts, staffed up, and it was too late to back out. He hated it every time he had to go to DC and do the old Washington “two step” with the procurement colonels, but he was stuck.
His first day at Toler TeleCom, Bob showed up promptly at “0-Seven-Hundred.” And had to talk a security guard into letting him in the building. The only people he found inside were Ed and his Executive Assistant Maryanne Simpson. Apparently, they were the only two who ever came in that early, and Bob would make it three. When Maryanne asked him how he took his coffee, he quickly answered, “Hot, black, and often, Ma’am.”
She smiled. “A dumb question, wasn’t it? And it’s Maryanne.”
Ed loved his company and his employees. He loved his daughter, too; but Angie was an only child and as spoiled as they came. She saw Toler TeleCom as a large, pink piggy bank, and she intended to smash that sucker into a million pieces and grab the cash the first chance she got. All she wanted from Bob, other than to be a Superman in bed, was to stay out of her way. After all, why wouldn’t he? He knew absolutely nothing about telecommunications or business for that matter. After what he’d been through the last twelve years, all her new “boy toy” had to do was lie back and enjoy the ride. Too bad, she never discussed any of that with Ed or Bob. A “house pet?” No one would get a free ride in Toler TeleCom by marrying his daughter. He put Bob through a training program that taught him the business inside and out, from sweeping floors in the warehouse, to picking orders, assembly, equipment repairs, circuit design, customer service, sales, marketing, federal contracts, and finance.
That wasn’t what the “fierce and dreaded” Angie had in mind. The more time Bob spent at the office and the faster he excelled at the business, the faster their relationship went straight into the crapper. That was one reason the marriage didn’t make it much past the first anniversary, but the job did. By then, he found himself in his own office on the second floor, next to Ed’s, and he had gained the respect of the employees, the unions, and the banks, earning the title Executive Vice President, which sent Angie into an even more violent rage.
From his hospital bed, shortly before he died, Ed named Bob company president. Bob and Angie had separated months before and there wasn’t a thing she could do to about it, except scream and file for divorce. Bob’s relationship with the company’s key clients, lenders, and employees were strong, and there was nothing she could do about that, either. Still, even though he was president and chairman of the board, whenever he called on customers and handed them one of his Toler TeleCom business cards, they assumed the slightly built young man must be “the telephone guy,” who had come to fix their phones.
After he moved to Chicago, Bob hung his Army uniforms in the back of the closet and closed the door on that chapter of his life, figuring they wouldn’t fit after six months. Somewhere, he had read that was the half-life of old uniforms and bad memories, like the ones he brought back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They continued to ricochet around inside his head, leaving him to hope that one day they would learn to fade away in the closet with the uniforms.
Unfortunately, when “the telephone guy” came to the aid of a damsel in distress in Chicago, he found himself butting heads with the city’s infamous DiGrigoria crime family. Three months later, Bob and Linda’s wedding wasn’t held in a posh country club like his last one. It was a proper military wedding in the new Fort Bragg Conference Center with old friends. When they returned to Chicago, he was determined that nothing like that would ever happen again. No more dustups, no more tussles, and no more firefights. After all, he now had a family and a business to run.
Three months later, he got a phone call in the middle of the night. One of his longtime Delta NCOs, Vinnie Pastorini, had run up some
serious gambling debts in Atlantic City. By the time Bob got there to pay off the markers, Vinnie had mysteriously taken a header out the fifth-floor window of a high-rise casino. An accident? Not very damned likely. Suicide? Even less so. No, if Vinnie went flying out the window, he had help; and when you do that to a Delta, payback is going to be a bitch. It’s that kind of a fraternity. And as for “the telephone guy?” If the mob chuckleheads in New York had any idea who they were messing with, they never would have touched a Delta to begin with. They would have run back to Brooklyn while they had the chance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Raqqah, Northern Syria
Henry Shaw spent the next four days closeted inside the small house with the Khans, the three guards, and Abu Bakr al-Zaeim, being grilled on strategies, tactics, techniques, weapons, and explosives. ISIS’s normal exit routes from Syria were slowly being closed off and their enemies were inexorably tightening the noose around Raqqah, strangling ISIS’s supply of food, weapons, and their lifeblood, motivated volunteers. So, if Shaw’s mission was to accomplish anything, he must move quickly and strike the Americans hard; because once Raqqah fell, the caliphate would collapse and be nothing but a memory. Unfortunately, while they now wanted Shaw to return to America as quickly as possible, he had no passport, no papers, and few clothes, all of which he had left in the hotel in Sanliafa. The Turkish secret police, the MIT, had seized all that, including his passport, and would have notified the American FBI field office in Ankara. By now, his photograph would be posted at every border crossing and airport in Turkey, from Edirne to Yuksekova, and across the region.
When he mentioned these problems to al-Zaeim, the Caliph dismissed them with a wave of his hand as if they were minor technicalities that Khan and his men would attend to. “Fear not, Professor,” al-Zaeim told him. “It might take them another day or two, but we shall get you home safe and sound. Allah would never forgive us if we don’t.”
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 11
