Authors: Joshua Hood
It wasn't that he didn't trust Simmons, but Cage had learned long ago that successful operations needed to stay compartmentalized.
“So he was in Syria on a visit?” Bradley asked.
“Well, actually, he was there on behalf of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS in Iraq.”
“Whoa, hold on. There is a connection between them as well?”
“Yes sir. Baghdadi needs al Nusra's fighters to back his power play in Iraq.”
“Craig, I thought you said he wasn't going to be a problem,” the president said pointedly to his cowed chief of staff.
“Mr. President, this is all speculationâ” O'Neil began.
“That is not entirely accurate,” General Madewell suddenly added. “As much as I hate telling two army boys that they are right,” he said with a barely perceptible smile, “I believe that they are dead-on with their assessment.”
The president shot an angry glance at O'Neil. Cage knew this was not what Bradley wanted to hear, especially given that he'd already dodged one bullet in Syria. Bradley had no interest in tempting fate, but the facts they were presenting didn't give him many options.
“How long before the media finds out that we have two helos down?”
Cage seized control of the discussion. “Sir, there isn't any media in the area, and even if there was, who cares? The media isn't the problem here; the problem is the fact that unless you authorize us to put more assets in the area, we aren't going to be able to ascertain if the two targets are down or get our men out.”
“The last thing I want to do is send troops back to the Middle East,” the president warned.
“No one is asking for more troops,” Cage said. “We know they are heading to Iraq. If we can slip the reins off the task force and get a few eyeballs across the border, we have a good chance of nipping this thing in the bud.”
“Damn it, Duke, you're asking for a lot.”
No matter what the president decided, Cage was done watching politicians tiptoe around the fact that there was still a war going on. He believed firmly that a storm was building on the horizon, and in the end, the president was going to be seen as either a coward or a hero. It really didn't matter to him which one.
“General Madewell, do you agree?” Bradley asked, turning his gaze to the JCS chairman.
“The Joint Special Operations Command was built for this type of thing, sir. If you want to smash it before it gets out of hand, all you have to do is give the word,” Madewell replied.
Bradley was wilting under the triple attack. “So are we talking about limited strikes, or what?”
“I think we let the commanders see what they can do with a limited footprint; maybe put a handful of advisors on the ground, and then we just pound the shit out of them,” the general said, not wanting to limit his options.
“What about our guys on the ground?”
“Well, hell, sir, that's not a problem at all.” General Madewell smiled, his famous Texas drawl on bold display. “You give me the word, and I'll have a couple of F-18s bomb those assholes back into the Stone Age. Then we'll walk on in and get our people back.”
Bradley looked like he was in pain. This was exactly the course of action he didn't want to take, as Cage knew very well.
“Damn it, okay, go get our people back. But I want your word that this is going to stay contained.”
“Mr. President, please,” O'Neil begged.
The president held up his hand again to forestall any further argument. To Cage he said, “Get it done.”
“Yes sir,” the SecDef replied, fighting the impulse to pump his fist in victory.
S
avage 6, this is Edge 2. We are coming in hot from the northeast. How copy?” The pilot's voice sounded calm as Renee studied the map spread out in front of her.
“Edge 2, Savage 6 Romeo, you are cleared hot.”
The strike team was running low on ammo, and by now the men at the other crash site were most likely dead. It was a somber, frustrating feeling, but with the F-18 Hornets on station, Renee felt a glimmer of hope.
She had passed the pilot their grid, and now they were hunkering down, waiting for the Super Hornets to clear the street.
The 20 mm cannons made a tearing sound as the first F-18 came in low. The men on the roof yelled, “Hell, yeah,” as the Hornet's pilot strafed the jihadists before pushing the throttle forward and kicking in his afterburners.
While Renee waited for the second aircraft to roll in, she could tell that the rest of her team obviously didn't approve of Mason's and Zeus's arrival. They looked mistrustfully at the two men talking in the far corner, but no one had the balls to say anything.
Warchild in particular stared hatefully at Mason. He had told Renee in no uncertain terms that he considered Kane a traitor, and he made no effort to hide his contempt for the man, despite the fact that Mason had saved their lives a half hour before.
The pilot came back on the net, forcing her to focus. “Y'all might want to keep your heads down on this next pass. We're gonna drop some JDAMs to your east to clean up some of the mess.”
“Roger that,” she replied. The Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, was a satellite-guided bomb, and even though Renee knew it was extremely accurate, she still put a warning out over the net.
“Tell the guys on the roof to keep their heads down,” she relayed.
“Yeah, we got it,” Warchild said with a sneer. “You just listen to your radio, okay?”
Renee rolled her eyes. Nothing she did would ever be good enough for Warchild.
She carried the radio over to where Mason was seated and immediately noticed that he'd been hit. Both men looked like hammered shit, and she knew they had to be operating on fumes.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
Mason took a cigarette from Zeus, and after sticking it in his mouth, lit it from a battered Zippo. He blew a cloud of smoke toward the low ceiling.
“Latif is dead,” he told Renee. “Well, I'm pretty sure it was him. Someone shot him in the face. But they took Boland.”
“Wait, what?”
“Boland's gone,” he repeated. “They knew we were coming.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don't know. How about you tell me?” he asked, giving her a hard look.
Renee never liked this side of him, and she wasn't going to put up with it. “What are you trying to say?”
“The sourceâwho was it?”
“No idea. Anderson said he was going to check him out.”
“Anderson, huh?”
It was no secret that the task force commander didn't like Mason, but Renee didn't think that he would send his own men into a trap, no matter how much he hated Kane.
She said evenly, “You know what they call you back at the task force?”
“What's that?” he demanded
“They call you Conspiracy Kane,” she informed him. “Maybe it was just a bad op. Did you consider that?”
“I don't think so. I think someone is playing us.” Mason bent closer and whispered into her ear, “Be careful who you trust when you get back. I don't know where this thing is going, but the last time we got involved in something like thisâ”
“Wait, you're not going with us?”
“I hate to break up your little chat, but the birds are inbound,” Warchild bellowed from his place near the wall.
Mason ignored him. “I still have guys out there. I need you to find David. Ask him if he knows anyone named al Qatar,” Mason said, getting painfully to his feet.
The sound of the approaching helos could be heard in the distance as Mason and Zeus headed for the door. As the Libyan peered out into the street, Mason turned to Warchild and said to him roughly, “You think you can manage getting them to the birds, or do you need me to hold your hand again?”
Warchild glared at him, pantomiming a pistol with one hand and turning it over before extending it toward Mason. It was the sign for “enemy front,” and Mason looked the man square in his eyes before flipping him the bird.
“See you soon,” he said before stepping into the street.
A
bu al Qatar was tired of waiting. He rechecked his watch impatiently and then decided to head outside for some air. The satellite phone he clutched in his hand was supposed to have rung ten minutes ago. It was obvious that the Americans still didn't take him seriously.
“Where are you going?” his lieutenant Ali asked from the other room, where he was setting up a video camera.
“Outside,” he answered curtly.
“Emir, is that wise?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Americans have eyes everywhere, and they are probably looking for the commando,” he said, pointing at Boland, whose eye had swollen shut.
“He is not a commando, he is a man who fights for money. Besides, they have no idea that we have even taken him yet.”
“Yes, but is it wise?”
“Ali, you set up the camera, and let me do the thinking, okay?”
“As you wish, Emir,” the man said, turning back to his work.
Al Qatar headed out into the sunlight, slipping gold-rimmed sunglasses over his eyes. He knew that by the time the Americans learned he had taken one of their men, he would already be over the border, and Boland would be dead.
Crossing into Iraq didn't bother him, but what weighed heavily on his mind was the fact that most of his men were still in northern Syria trying to take the border town of Kobani. That meant he had to make the trip with only a handful of his fighters.
He took a cigarette from a pack of Marlboro Reds, which he had gotten hooked on while in American captivity, and after lighting it, he greedily sucked in a lung full of smoke. The safe house was less than a day's drive from the Iraqi border, and al Qatar knew that his men would be waiting for him at the crossing. Everything was going according to plan, and as soon as his American contact called, he could move on to phase two.
Not that the mission had been easy so far. Despite all the careful planning, he was lucky to have made it out of the city alive, especially after being chased through that tunnel by someone he could only assume was another American. Al Qatar had been shocked to see the frag come bouncing out of the tunnel, and only by the grace of Allah had he avoided being hit. That stroke of luck just showed that he had been chosen to strike the fatal blow that he knew would shock the Americans into finally leaving his country.
The satellite phone chirped in his hands, and he quickly brought it to his ear. Unable to hide the exasperation in his voice, he said, “You are late.”
“I had a meeting with the president. Are you at the safe house?”
“Yes,” al Qatar lied.
He was at a safe house, just not the one the American spy was referring to.
“When are you leaving?”
“In a few hours,” he lied again.
He might be working with the American, but he didn't trust him, and he had learned long ago not to reveal more than he needed.
Al Qatar had learned that lesson the hard way during the five years he spent in the American prison the CIA had set up outside Baghdad. The time there allowed him to learn much about his captors, including their language, but it had been the worst experience of his life. At times he wasn't sure if he was going to survive to exact vengeance on the man who had killed his brother.
“The next part of the plan is the most important. I need to know that you understand what is expected of you.”
“We have gone over this already. I will use the coordinates you have given me to attack the ship as it comes into the Persian Gulf. My men are already there.”
The man on the other end coughed nervously. “What about Tal Afar?”
“It will take place in the morning. We have already paid the general, and he has promised that his men will not put up a fight.”
“Good, everything is going according to plan.”
“Very well,” al Qatar said before hanging up.
He couldn't figure out if it was the Americans' arrogance that led them to believe they could control him, or if he was being lured into a trap. He knew he would feel much better once he reunited with Jabar, his lieutenant in Iraq.
Al Qatar's preternatural ability to show people what they wanted to see had saved his life when the Americans stuck him in their dank Iraqi prison. The interrogations had been worse than he could have ever imagined but once he learned how to tell them what they wanted to hear, he became useful.
He hadn't known anything about the weapons site where they had found him in 2003. The only reason he had gone there at all was because his brother had told him to, but the CIA refused to believe the truth. The bearded officers had tried to beat the answers out of him, but he never told them about the memory stick his brother had given him before Boland shot him in the face. Even if he wanted to tell them which files were on the stick, he couldn't, because he'd never had a chance to open it.
The water had been the worst, and he still woke up in the middle of the night with the panic of drowning pulling at his heart. Not until he realized that he needed useful information to give the Americans did the torture stop. Al Qatar learned how to gain the trust of the newer detainees, and they began telling him all about the insurgents operating outside the walls. Whenever the Americans took him to the interrogation boothsâwhere they kept their dogs, and the chairs they hooked to the car batteriesâhe would use the information to make the pain stop.
The Americans thought they had turned him, and after they assigned him a CIA contact, the fools let him leave prison.
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“Emir, it is time,” Ali said, pulling him out of his reverie.
The Iraqi tossed the cigarette out into the desert and came into the isolated shack, where Boland sat strapped to a wooden chair.
“I promised myself long ago that I would kill you,” he said, sliding his sunglasses to the top of his closely cropped hair.