First Strike (7 page)

“
Heeeeeeelllllpppp!
” he groaned as the ladder picked up speed.

Dewey charged toward the ladder and grabbed it, but he couldn't stop it. Calibrisi's weight, the sharp angle, the length of the ladder—it all had too much momentum.

“
Dewey! Stop it!
” Daisy screamed.

Dewey's eyes went left. If Calibrisi fell, he would land on a blue stone terrace. From two floors up, there might be a broken bone or two. Dewey thrust his left leg between two rungs and slammed his shoulder into the side of the ladder, letting out a loud grunt as the steel crunched against him and stopped. It teetered at a precarious forty-five-degree angle.

With his left shoulder and left thigh against the ladder, Dewey held it, preventing it from moving any more.

He glanced up. Calibrisi had one hand on the copper gutter and the other on the ladder, holding on desperately. His brow was furrowed, his face beet red.

For a few moments, there was only silence and the sound of Calibrisi's heavy panting.

Suddenly, the back door of the house opened. Vivian Calibrisi stepped outside. She saw Dewey, intertwined like a pretzel with the ladder, and her eyes scanned up the brick wall, where they followed the black smears of paint to where they concluded, at the corner of the house, and her husband, now at the top of the ladder, dangling from a combination of ladder and gutter. She slowly shook her head.

“Serves you right, stubborn old mule.”

Dewey glanced in her direction. “Hi, Vivian,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Hi, Dewey.”

She walked over to Daisy. Together, they stood looking at Calibrisi clinging on to the gutter for dear life, with Dewey pressed against the ladder like a linebacker against a tackling dummy, holding it still.

“Are you going to just stand there?” asked Calibrisi, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Dewey.

“All of you!”

Dewey glanced at Daisy, then, ever so slightly, let up on the ladder. It slid a few inches.

“Stop!” yelled Calibrisi. “What the hell are you—”

“I told him to hire a painting company,” said Vivian.

“Last time I did that, they spilled paint all over the flowers! Now get me down!”

“There's more than one painting company,” said Vivian, shaking her head. She stepped back toward the door.

“I agree,” said Dewey.

“Fuck you,” whispered Calibrisi.

“Can you stay for dinner?” Vivian asked, smiling at Dewey.

Dewey nodded. “Sure.”

Vivian looked up at Calibrisi. “By the way, you have a phone call.”

Calibrisi's face went from beet red to a slightly darker shade.

“Vivian!” he yelled. “
Take a message!
”

Dewey let the ladder slide another few inches.

“That's not a very nice way to speak to your wife,” said Dewey.

Dewey let go again, the ladder sliding another inch or two. He turned and caught Daisy's eyes. She was laughing.

Calibrisi shut his eyes. He was quiet for several moments. Finally, he opened them and looked down.

“My apologies,” he said to Dewey, calmer now.

“Apology accepted,” said Dewey. “Now how about your wife?”

Dewey nodded toward the door, where Vivian was still standing, about to go back inside.

“Vivian,” said Calibrisi, “love of my life, my sincere apologies. And if it wouldn't impose too much hardship on thee, would you be so kind as to take a message?”

“Will you hire a painting company?”

“Yes, dear,” he said.

Dewey looked up at Calibrisi.

“Okay,” said Dewey. “Chill out. On three. Pull yourself along the gutter.”

Dewey took three deep breaths.

“One, two,
three!
” He launched and hit the ladder with his left shoulder. The ladder flung right a few inches. Dewey repeated it. With each strike, the ladder moved a few inches until, finally, it was straight.

Calibrisi climbed down. He stood in front of Dewey.

“Thanks.”

Dewey nodded. He reached for his shoulder.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“So how was your trip?” asked Calibrisi.

“Good.”

Just then, Vivian opened the door.

“He won't let me take a message,” she said. “He says it's important.”

Calibrisi looked at Dewey.

“Who is it?”

“Rick Mallory.”

 

9

OLD QUARTER

ALEPPO, SYRIA

The Old Quarter was really not a neighborhood. That is, if a neighborhood was considered homes, families, schools, and shops, a place where people lived, where children grew up, where fathers and mothers left for work in the morning and returned at night, where gardens were planted out in front of homes and tended to with pride. No, this was not a neighborhood. Not anymore.

It was wreckage now, every building pocked with holes, and many little more than concrete rubble, the occasional steel rebar beam jutting into the air. The dull staccato of automatic weapon fire was the sound track. Even now, after midnight, every few minutes the silence was interrupted by a fusillade, as fighters on both sides battled for title to the neighborhood that had once been. The families were long gone. All that was left was the Syrian Army, a few dozen American UAVs flying overhead, and ISIS.

Garotin sat in the backseat of an extended-cab pickup truck, staring at the screen of his iPad. On it was a blueprint grid of the square mile directly in front of him. His soldiers were represented by small red dots; the enemy forces were green. Garotin had a cold, hard expression. He didn't smile much, but if he did, he would certainly be smiling now. By dawn they would take the Old Quarter. Which meant they would control the southern and eastern flanks of Aleppo. After that, the Syrian Army would have no choice but to withdraw.

The forces of ISIS were coming ineluctably closer and closer to Damascus.

“
Drone!
” came a voice over the walkie-talkie. “Thirty–one–two. Above the train station.”

The man next to Garotin, Bakr, his deputy, glanced at him.

“Should we move the men?”

“No,” said Garotin.

“There are at least twenty men near the station,” said Bakr.

“If we move the men, the United States will understand that we can see the drones at night,” said Garotin. “It is worth much more than twenty men to have them not know. Do as I say.”

The truck was dark, save for the glow of the iPad. Garotin lit a cigarette and sat back and watched. For several minutes, the scene was eerily dark, punctuated by the sound of gunfire every now and then. Suddenly, the telltale high-pitched scream of a missile could be heard, followed by an explosion, just a few blocks away. This was followed by another missile, then another explosion. There were four in all.

Screams came from the walkie-talkie. After several moments, someone came on the line.

“We're hit.”

Bakr could see flames dance above the rubble a few blocks away. He raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Move toward the train station.”

“I have casualties. I don't know how many men are alive.”

Garotin reached over and took the walkie-talkie from him.

“Move to the station,” he barked. “
Now!
”

Garotin tossed the walkie-talkie back to Bakr.

“Tell ammunitions to meet them with RPGs,” ordered Garotin.

“We have a week's worth of RPGs,” said Bakr. “Maybe less. We're running out.”

“What do you mean, we're running out?”

“I told you this, Commander. I told you this yesterday. We're almost out.”

Garotin nodded, remembering. He took a last drag on his cigarette, then flicked it out the window.

“Yes, you did,” he said. “We'll have to do this with what we have.”

“Bullets are in short supply as well,” said Bakr.

Garotin paused, deep in thought. His face showed disappointment.

“How much do we have?”

“Two weeks at most,” said Bakr. “I don't see how we can move across the river without more ammunition.”

Garotin nodded, understanding. He gestured to the door, indicating for Bakr to leave him alone.

“Just get them to the train station,” said Garotin. “By dawn I want a line of attack to the east of the hospital. Let me worry about the ammunition.”

 

10

PORT OF TAMPICO

MEXICO

The guns were sanitized. There were no manufacturer engravings or other identifiers on any of them. And they were all precisely the same model: M4 carbine, blackish-gray, gas-operated, magazine-fed, telescoping stock, Picatinny rail, vertical forward grip, 14.5-inch barrel, semiautomatic and three-round burst firing capability, .223-caliber or 5.56×45mm NATO cartridge.

It was a favorite of most counterterrorist and Special Forces units because of its combination of compact size and vicious firepower; it was the model of choice for close-quarters combat and urban warfare.

There were no individual cases to hold each weapon, thus maximizing volume inside the forty-foot-long steel shipping container. Like sardines in the proverbial can, they were arrayed in rows and stacked to the roof of the box. The container held about eight hundred guns in all and was the thirty-second container loaded to the teeth. Twenty-five thousand guns in all.

The weapons were manufactured in Mexico by a company called MH Armas, whose engineers had replicated the original design by Colt Manufacturing. They were knockoffs, but no less lethal than the standard offering.

A black-and-yellow mobile gantry crane lowered the container to the ship, stacking it on top of an already bulging checkerboard of forty-foot steel containers.

In addition to the containers filled with M4s, fifty-eight containers were filled with bullets. Ammo cans the size of mailboxes were loaded with 5.56×45mm slugs, then packed together in wirebound wooden crates and stacked on pallets. Pallets of the crates were stacked to the roof of the containers. In all, there were more than 330 million slugs about to leave for the trip to the Middle East.

But guns weren't the only fare on the weighed-down, freshly painted, 662-foot-long container ship. The containers closest to the front of the boat held contents much more valuable and much more lethal: stacks of HEATs, high-explosive antitank missiles. There were seventy containers filled with antitank missiles and ten containers with shoulder-fired, recoilless rocket launchers. They could take out tanks and other battlefield armament but were also extremely effective in urban environments. One well-targeted HEAT missile could take down half a building and easily kill a dozen men. Many cities throughout the Middle East were pockmarked with the legacy of the ubiquitous weapon.

Dawn approached as the final container was battened with steel cord to the ship. It would be a scalding-hot day; already the temperature was above ninety degrees. The sky was changing rapidly from gray to deep red as the sun approached at the eastern horizon. In many ways, a perfect day.

A tall bearded man named Miguel stood next to the base of the gantry crane. He took a last drag on a cigarette as he watched the final container settle into place. Next to him was a short, stocky man in khakis, a white polo shirt, and black cowboy boots: Mark Raditz. His skin, after less than a day in Mexico, was blaze red with burn. He was overweight.

“Were you able to deliver the other things I asked you for?” asked Raditz.

“Yes. The passport is with the money. It's Mexican, I don't know what name they used, but it's been cleared up through the proper authorities.”

“Can you trust the people who did it?”

“You can't trust anyone,” said Miguel. “I don't know the government official who arranged everything. But I wouldn't worry. If these officials didn't have their little bribes and corruption, they would all starve to death.”

“How much did it cost?”

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

“That's less than your fee.”

“Much less,” said Miguel, “but if you don't like it, perhaps I can send a refund to your office, Mr. Deputy Defense Secretary?”

Raditz sneered.

“How much money is left over?”

“The total amount of funds that you wired was eight hundred and eight million dollars. That was ten million more than the job, the weapons, et cetera. Subtract the fee for the passport as well as my fee for arranging the passport, and there is nine million six hundred and fifty thousand dollars left over. As you asked, I washed nine million into a new bank account. The details are with the passport. I converted the rest into euros, Visa gift cards, and pesos.”

Raditz nodded, staring at the ground.

There was an awkward moment of silence.

“I'm curious, Mark,” said Miguel. “You've never taken anything before. Suddenly you decide to take a lot of money. You arrange for a new identity. It's fairly obvious what's happening. My question is, why?”

“That's none of your fucking business,” Raditz said. “You know the rules. Drop the boxes and keep your mouth shut.”

“They might come looking for you.”

“They
will
come looking for me.”

“Do you expect me to not say anything?”

“That's up to you,” said Raditz. “But America does things to people who deliver guns and missiles to terrorists.”

“I'm like the FedEx man, that's all.”

Raditz shot Miguel a look.

“They'd kill Santa Claus if they found out he was delivering guns to ISIS. You should be able to retire after this one, with what I've paid you.”

“With what
you've
paid me?” asked Miguel, grinning. “You mean with what the United States of America paid me.”

“Whatever. But I wouldn't come back, not if you value your life. I'm saying that to protect you. You can listen or not. It doesn't matter to me.”