Strike Force Alpha (14 page)

‘Ajman, United Arab Emirates
The next day

The Burjuman marketplace was a crossroads of the world.

It was a huge open-air bazaar, four blocks around, located on the edge of a city known as
Imarat al Arabiyah al Muttahidah el ‘Ajmani
or, more simply, ‘Ajman. Sneakers from South Korea were on display here, next to radios made in Germany. Russian shawls were for sale next to Mexican herbal tea. South African ice cream, Colombian coffee. Shamrocks. Cactuses. Poppies. And everywhere, all things American. Computers, watches, TVs, VCRs, DVD players, baseball caps, record albums, CDs. T-shirts. Shoes. Socks. Underwear. There was a McDonald’s at one end of the marketplace, a KFC at the other. Huge Coke and Pepsi signs hung high overhead, dominating the square and providing the few patches of available shade.

Among the crowd of shoppers, Bassar Jazeer saw the man named Abdul Zoobu walking in his direction. Zoobu had been slowly making his way across the crowded marketplace for the past half hour, looking over his shoulder, scowling at anyone who came close. Finally, it was time to do business.

Jazeer owned an electronics shop right in the middle of the square. His was one of the few establishments in the Burjuman that actually had a roof overhead. It was a very busy place. The shop owner knew Zoobu from previous transactions. He was hard to forget. Tall, perpetually dirty, with one eye frozen deep in its socket, Zoobu was also known to be unstable. He was one of the few Arabs Jazeer had met who carried a switchblade; it was hidden under his robes. Zoobu was also in thick with Al Qaeda. He was a top mule, someone who delivered VIP messages, orders, or information to the lower cells. Ordinary people avoided him. On a whim, he could make a person disappear.

At least that’s how it used to be. The word around the marketplace lately was that Zoobu had become a marked man. Someone was gunning for him, and they were packing more than switchblades. His imminent elimination was said to be taking a toll on him. He was even more unstable than before.

Zoobu finally stepped into Jazeer’s shop. He lingered near some Singapore-made boom boxes while Jazeer took care of a customer. Once the customer had gone, Zoobu approached. Jazeer knew he was here to buy cell phones. Again.

“How many this time?” Jazeer asked him.

“Twelve,” Zoobu said urgently “But they must be clean.”

Jazeer was astounded by Zoobu’s appearance. The man looked terrible, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. And he really smelled. Jazeer wished he’d never done business with Zoobu. He was a dead man walking. But he was here now and he was known to carry that shiv, so Jazeer reached under the counter and took out a box of new cell phones. Each one was in a vacuum-packed, tape-sealed plastic case. For further “cleanliness,” no two were made by the same manufacturer. Zoobu studied each package as a jeweler would study a rare stone, except with shaky hands. It took several minutes in the brutal heat before he was satisfied.

“OK, so they are clean,” he said to Jazeer. “What is your price?”

“Fifty American each….”

“Too high,” Zoobu said. He was trembling. “I can find these things anywhere down here.”

“Forty-five….”

“I can get them for thirty,” Zoobu countered. He was looking over his shoulder again.

“Thirty-five and I’ll give you some calling cards….”

Suddenly Zoobu’s switchblade was against Jazeer’s neck. Its owner’s hand was shaking so much, Jazeer was sure his throat would be cut.

“Bastard!” Zoobu screamed.

But then he caught himself and thought a moment—and recovered his composure, such as it was. He was almost embarrassed. He put the knife away.

“OK,” he said. “It’s a deal….”

Jazeer quickly threw the phones into a used Macy’s bag. He would have given them to Zoobu for free at that point. He just wanted the man to leave. But he was a merchant and he couldn’t help himself. He suddenly asked the terrorist: “And how will you be paying for them today?”

Zoobu growled lowly but then reached into his robes, farther down from where he kept his switchblade, to his credit card collection. He pulled it out, thirty cards in all held together by a rubber band. He selected an American Express Platinum card and handed it to Jazeer.

Jazeer studied it for a moment. “This, too, is ‘clean,’ I hope?”

Zoobu replied: “It was stolen in Brussels this morning.”

That was good enough for Jazeer. He started the electronic transaction but then happened to look over Zoobu’s shoulder to see a rather amazing sight: a helicopter was landing in the middle of the marketplace.

Now this was strange. It was not unusual to see helicopters flying
over
the bazaar. There was a military police base about twenty miles to the south in Dubai—and they had just bought a new copter. But to have a helicopter land in the middle of the square?

The next few seconds went by very slowly. The helicopter was black and there were soldiers in black uniforms hanging all over it. The helicopter was not making any noise. This was very odd. And there was another one hovering just above it. It wasn’t making any noise, either.

Then one of the soldiers hanging out of the side of the helicopter jumped out and Jazeer clearly saw the patch on his left shoulder. It was an American flag.

That’s when it hit….

“Praise Allah!”
Jazeer cried.
“No!”

The Crazy Americans were here….

The people in the square scattered, hundreds of them, all with great haste and in every direction. They didn’t need a CNN News Alert to know what was happening here. The grapevine in the Middle East was quicker than anything Marconi or Bell ever imagined. They had heard about the Crazy Americans. They knew of the people they’d plucked from their beds in the middle of the night and killed horribly. They knew about their car bombs, their itching powder, and the grenading of the bus. Unlike their cousins in Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen—pick a place—the people of ‘Ajman did not want to be an audience for this.

That’s why the square was virtually empty just seconds after the helicopter finally set down. The rest of the soldiers bounded out of it and began running right for Jazeer’s store.

Zoobu was waking up from a stupor as well, even though only a few seconds had gone by. He saw the chopper; he saw the huge soldiers with the patch containing the Stars and Stripes and the outline of the Twin Towers. That’s when he knew beyond all doubt that these people were after him.

Jazeer saw Zoobu take a CD from his pocket and try to snap it in two—but, for whatever reason, he was not able to do so. He even tried biting it in two, but this did not work, either. CD still in hand, Zoobu screamed and then ran up the store’s main aisle. Jazeer lost sight of him behind the racks of the used CD department.

The American soldiers arrived a moment later. Jazeer fell backward against the display holding his phone cards and lottery tickets. The soldiers seemed unreal to him. They were enormous. Their weapons, their helmets, their body armor. They looked right out of S
tar Wars,
at least the black-and-white version. Oddly, two were carrying hatchets.

Six of them ran in. Two went into a defensive crouch, weapons up, right in front of his counter. The other four went down the main aisle, moving very quickly, splitting up, looking to surround the hapless Zoobu. They quickly cornered him near a huge stack of CDs. Jazeer heard some shouting and then the sound of metal viciously cutting flesh. Once, twice, five times. Ten. Twenty. Fifty…It went on for the longest time. Jazeer could hear Zoobu’s body flopping about the loose boards at the rear of the store. The man’s screams, terrifying. Meanwhile the second helicopter flashed overhead again, this time much lower. It looked like a battle tank in the air. Above it two fighter jets that seemed to have the ability to hang in the air were doing just that, hovering ever higher above the scene.

Finally all was quiet at the back of the store. The American soldiers started exiting. The helicopter outside was kicking up a cloud of dust now. It was hard to see inside the store. The first two soliders departed; then two more ran by Jazeer. They were carrying Zoobu’s butchered body in an unzipped body bag.

Another soldier rushed by. He was yelling something into his radio. He didn’t even look in Jazeer’s direction.
Just one more,
Jazeer thought.
Just one more has to leave before they can get on their helicopters and fly away.

But the last guy out stopped right in front of him. There was a very disturbed look in his eyes.

He studied Jazeer for a moment and then looked at the copter waiting outside. The rest of his colleagues were already loaded onto the aircraft.

“You speak English?”
the American soldier yelled at Jazeer, trying to be heard above the commotion.

Foolishly, Jazeer nodded yes.

“You knew this guy, Zoobu?” the soldier yelled at him.

“He was a customer!” Jazeer yelled back.

Suddenly the soldier’s muzzle was pointed at Jazeer’s throat. There was a bayonet on the end of it. The blade still had Zoobu’s blood on it and now it was pricking Jazeer’s skin as well, the second sharp object against his throat in less than two minutes.

“You know who he was buying those phones for?”

Jazeer had his hands up; they were flailing. He shook his head no—a lie.

“No?” the soldier screamed at him.

“No! No!”
Jazeer was yelling back, even though tears were now running down his cheeks. Zoobu was not as crazy as this American.

Two of the soldier’s colleagues jumped off the copter and ran up to him. Using urgent hand signals, they were telling him that they had to leave.

But he was ignoring them.

“You knew, didn’t you?”
the soldier bellowed at Jazeer instead.

Finally Jazeer had to scream. This man was going to kill him anyway. He could not die telling a lie.

“Yes!” he cried. “I knew….”

He could see the man’s finger begin to squeeze the trigger. The other soldiers were still shouting at him, but he was not paying attention. Jazeer was expecting a bullet to his brain at any moment, his last breath nigh. But then the soldier screamed at him again.
“Hands out front!”

Jazeer immediately laid his hands on the counter. He thought the soldier was going to handcuff him. He opened his eyes just in time to see the ax coming down. It severed his hand just below the wrist. He saw blood; he saw pieces of bone. It just didn’t register in his brain that these things belonged to him. Before he could leap away in pain, the soldier grabbed his left hand, forced it down, and proceeded to chop it off, too. Blood gushing again, the pieces of bone actually made a noise hitting the wall behind him.

Jazeer collapsed in shock. The soldier stood over him and in perfect Arabic hissed: “If you have no hands, you will be of no further use to Al Qaeda!”

Then the soldier threw a handful of playing cards on top of Jazeer and left.

One card fell next to where Jazeer’s head had hit the floor. He could see it perfectly, through fading eyes. It was a photo of the New York Twin Towers, with the message
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
printed beneath it.

Below that, scratched in pen, was written:
Dave Hunn, Queens, New York, was here.

That night

The twenty-four prized horses were released into the corral to the beat of castanets and skin drums. Two trainers with whips began running the horses around in a clockwise motion. There was much snorting and crying coming from the Arabian champions, each as white as snow. As the taped percussion rose, the horses were made to run even faster.

All this was to the delight of six people sitting in the luxurious viewing box overhanging the huge yet virtually empty equestrian arena. This was the immediate al-Said Shaeen family. Two sons, an uncle, a mother, a grandmother, and a young daughter. Sitting in the middle was a seventh person, the family’s patriarch. The man named Farouk. He was not so happy.

It was a rare occasion when the running of his prized horses could not cheer him up. It was usually the highlight of his week. But Farouk just could not enjoy it today, even as the trainers whipped the horses harder and they began to run at breakneck speed, butting and biting one another in a mad dash to stay ahead. Farouk was worried about his patron, Prince Ali. He’d been acting very irrational, more so than usual. The indiscretion over in Bahrain had been cleaned up, as the others had been, but these things were getting harder to do and more expensive all the time. Ali had also been missing office work at Pan Arabic in the past few days, putting valuable deals on hold. Worse, he’d been seen meeting with a known Al Qaeda minister right
in
the offices of Pan Arabic itself, a very dangerous thing to do. How many eyes were about, trying to link Pan Arabic and the Saudi establishment with high officials of the
jihad
organizations? This kind of behavior frightened Farouk, and it frightened Ali’s other associates, too. They had many things going on. They had many secrets to keep.

The horses ran faster and faster and Farouk’s daughter was yipping with delight. One horse fell in the scramble and broke its hind leg. The family cheered. The trainers were delighted, too. But Farouk hardly noticed.

His thoughts were still far away.

An hour later, they were all back in his summer palace outside Riyadh, Farouk in his own bedroom, his current wife in hers.

Farouk was tired, so he would forgo fucking one of his Filipino servants this night. He lit a cigarette and walked out to his balcony instead. The streetlights of Riyadh burned before him. What a dull place…. He felt a breeze at the back of his neck.
Must have left the door open,
he thought. He finished his cigarette and threw the butt off the balcony. His cleanup crew would dispose of it in the morning.

He walked back to his bed, took off his satin robe, and climbed in. No TV tonight, either, he thought, tying a rubber band around his long chin whiskers. He would just go to sleep.