Quest for Honor (12 page)

“Barely touched him,” Jim said. “Let’s go.” He had a 4-0 lead now and the grand championship was only one point away.

Saunders showed he wasn’t in as much pain as he’d let on, scoring with a hook kick that clipped Jim on the side of the helmet, then with a nifty counter, faking a backfist to the head and sneaking a punch into Jim’s midsection. Now it was 4-3. “Thirty seconds!” Gina yelled from the scorer’s table.

Jim made a quick decision. The kid was gaining confidence now; if Jim was too aggressive, he might make a mistake and give the kid an opening to tie the match. If it went to sudden-victory overtime, anything could happen. Jim’s knee was starting to weaken, and he didn’t dare trust it too much longer. He needed to force the kid into a mistake. Jim started moving backward, dancing away lightly, making it look like he wanted to stall out the rest of the bout.

Saunders saw his opening and went for it, launching a right roundhouse kick that Jim evaded, following with a spinning left backspin kick. Jim ducked underneath it and saw his opening. He launched his left leg from the rear, but instead of firing a front kick, he pulled it back slightly and twisted his body in midair around to his left, whipping his right leg up and around in a tight arc, sending the toe of his boot into Saunders’ face mask. Jim crashed to the mat as the crowd cheered and three corner judges screamed “Point!” He rolled over onto his back. Saunders was staggering backward, arms splayed out, and Tony was pointing two fingers at Jim. “Two points red! Match!”

Jim could hardly believe it. He hadn’t planned that kick; he’d seen the opening and just reacted. All the training in the dojo back home, all the sparring rounds with Sensei and the other black belts, it had all come down to one moment on the mat, in a town he’d never set foot in before. He rolled onto his back, arms and legs splayed out, savoring the moment, almost in disbelief.

“Hey, champ, you okay?” It was Tony, leaning over him and grinning.

“Yeah. Give me a hand, will you?”

Tony helped pull him to his feet. All of a sudden, Jim felt as if every muscle ached, and his bad knee was throbbing. What might turn out to be a monster headache was beginning to throb. His gi was drenched in sweat. He could barely raise his arms to pull off his helmet, but all that was forgotten when he looked at the scorer’s table and saw that beautiful trophy, a stylized eagle with wings spread. It would look very pretty on his mantle back home. Standing next to the table was an even prettier sight. Gina was applauding and flashing a dazzling smile.

There were handshakes all around, including one from Saunders. “Sorry about that first shot,” he said. “It got away from me.”

Jim rather doubted that, but instead he said, “No problem. Nice bout.”

“See you next time, sir.” They bowed to each other and Jim watched him leave the mat and get a hug from a perky blonde wearing a gi from the same club and a brown belt. He’ll get some consolation when he gets home tonight, Jim thought, and I’ll have a long, lonely ride. He’d already checked out of his hotel. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea; the hotel had an indoor pool with a Jacuzzi and that was mighty tempting right now.

“Congratulations!” It was Gina, beaming up at him.

“Thanks,” he said, shaking her hand and exchanging bows. “I’ll pay for it tomorrow, though.”

She cocked her head a bit. “You need to sit in a Jacuzzi for a while. That’ll make you feel better.”

“You know, I was just thinking the same thing. My hotel has one, but I already checked out.”

There was the briefest of pauses, and then she smiled. “I was planning to stay another night, and I think we’re at the same hotel. Why don’t you join me?”

He settled down in the four-person pool and let the water embrace him. Even without the jets turned on, it felt great. In the nearby swimming pool, a few kids were splashing, with their parents lounging alongside. Jim was glad none of them wanted to use the Jacuzzi. It would just be the two of them.

There’d been a bit of an awkward moment when they arrived, but Gina solved that by offering to let Jim use her bathroom to shower and change. When he emerged wearing his trunks, which he’d thanked himself for remembering to bring along, she was sitting at the desk, wearing a hotel robe and tapping on her laptop computer. Below the robe, her calves hinted strongly at the promise of very nice legs indeed.

“I’ll see you down there,” he said, and she smiled at him.

Now he lay back and enjoyed the warm water, trying not to think too far ahead. Just let it play out, he said to himself. But there would be one important piece of business he’d have to settle right away. He hadn’t seen a ring on her finger, but it never hurt to ask. Tony might not have the latest on her.

He saw her walking toward the pool, carrying a towel and wearing a green two-piece suit that was a bit too conservative to be called a bikini, but still revealing enough to display her well-toned body. She’d put her hair up, and her skin was lustrous, with a Mediterranean shade that spoke to her Italian heritage. “How’s the water?” she said, with another dazzling smile.

“Terrific,” he said, “and it’s about to get better.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mogadishu, Somalia

I
t was eight
minutes to ten, according to his watch. Three minutes later than the last time he’d checked. Simons wondered again if this was the smartest career move he’d ever made, or the stupidest. The problem with stupid career moves in this business was that you often didn’t get a chance to make more than one.

He fought to keep himself calm. It was a typically hot night, but fortunately there was a bit of a breeze coming in from the ocean. The main benefit of the wind was to dilute the stench of the city; any relief from the heat was just a welcome side effect. The Mog hadn’t changed much since Simons had last been here. He’d come ashore in December ’92 with Battalion Landing Team 2/9 as part of Operation Restore Hope. The memory of the name made him chuckle. Some politician had come up with that one, no doubt. Ten minutes after your boots hit the dirt in this rat-hole, you knew there would be precious little hope restored here.

“We have movement on the perimeter, sir”, a voice whispered in his earpiece. “One vehicle, approaching from the northwest.”

“Copy that,” Simons responded in a barely audible voice. The hidden button-sized mic would have no problem transmitting the words to the security team. He’d brought a dozen men with him on this op, Delta Force commandos from the Lemon’s detachment of Special Forces. There were a good number of them on the base, but even Simons didn’t know how many. He did know that in addition to the Delta detachment, there were Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Air Force Special Tactics, and some British SAS and German KSK, not to mention French Foreign Legion troops. The Deltas had brought two of the Germans with them on this mission, in fact, and somehow that made Simons feel good. His granddad would’ve been proud; old Reinhart Marske, God rest his soul, had fought as a
Fallschirmjäger
for Germany in World War II before being captured. Two years as a POW in America convinced him to come back in ’52 when the promises of the Worker’s Paradise in East Germany had started to dim. He brought along his wife and teenage daughter and found work in a factory in Fort Wayne. Hilda Marske wound up marrying Ted Simons, the star quarterback on her high school football team. Tom came along a few years later.

They were about a half-mile from the Hotel Shamo, and by day this would have passed for a commercial area, but the vendors had long since packed up and headed for home. Not much was done at night in the Mog, although Simons knew there were a few areas where fearless—or careless—Westerners could find a drink and agreeable, if costly, companionship in what was nominally a devout Muslim city. The warlords who controlled the Mog were just as interested in making a few bucks as anybody. Simons had been all over the world and that was the one constant he had found. Whether it was dollars, euros, rubles, or Somalian shillings, it was always the same.

“Should see his headlights turning onto the street, sir.” Simons looked to his right, and three blocks down the street he saw the glow, then the arc of the lights as the car turned onto the street and headed toward him.

“Anything else moving inside the perimeter?” Simons asked.

“Negative, sir. Only one vehicle, the one coming toward you, no foot traffic.”

The Deltas had set up a three-square-block perimeter around his location and could see anything that moved, thanks to their night-vision scopes. Ready to lend a big assist was the modified MD4-200 surveillance drone they were ready to deploy from a nearby rooftop. The yard-wide, German-built four-rotor helicopter had been brought along just in case Simons would be taken someplace else for the meet, something the station chief fervently hoped to avoid. Mogadishu was a big city and he wasn’t all that confident about the drone keeping up with a speeding car, if it came to that. The Delta commander had assured him they’d move instantly to cut off any vehicle’s escape if Simons found himself in trouble.

The car was a hundred feet away now and moving toward the curb. A name raced through Simons’ mind:
Buckley Buckley Buckley.
He forced the name away. William Buckley was the CIA station chief in Beirut in ’84 when Hezbollah snatched him from the curb in front of his apartment building. Three subsequent videotapes delivered to the CIA by the terrorists had shown Buckley being tortured in gruesome detail. His body was never recovered.

The car pulled to the curb in front of him, engine chugging sluggishly. Simons could see it was a Nissan, at least ten years old. The left rear door opened up and a short Somali stepped out. “Mr. Simons?”

“Yes?”

“Sudika sends his greetings and felicitations,” the man said carefully in English.

“I thank him for his hospitality,” the CIA agent said, completing the coded acknowledgement.

The Somali stepped aside and motioned to the dark interior of the car. “Please, come with us. It is just a short drive.”

Simons took a breath, calmed himself as much as possible, and folded himself into the car. Just before sliding in, he thought he caught a glimpse of a dark shadow flitting somewhere overhead, but the sputtering car engine kept him from hearing the rotors of the drone.

When the blindfold was removed, he was sitting in a bare room, with the only light coming from a lamp on a side table. In front of him was a rickety wooden table, with another chair on the other side. Moving his head slightly as if to loosen his neck, he used his peripheral vision to glimpse each of the armed men standing behind him and to either side.

He had been blindfolded in the car and they’d driven for about seven minutes, according to his watch. The Deltas were on top of things, though; twice the commander had whispered into Simons’ earpiece, assuring him the drone was on the job and they were keeping pace in their own vehicles. He’d acknowledged them with a couple of coughs. When he’d been helped from the car, he was casually frisked, but he’d brought no weapon, and they missed the button mic, which looked like every other button on his white shirt. Now he just had to wait, and he was able to relax a bit. Had they intended to kill him, he’d be dead by now; if they’d been sent to kidnap him, he’d either be on his way to some nameless dungeon or the Deltas would’ve intervened.

The door in the wall facing him opened, and a Somali woman entered with a pitcher and two glasses, which she set on the table. Without making eye contact with Simons, she turned and shuffled back through the door. The next person to step through was a black man of medium height, wearing a dark shirt and slacks. His close-cropped hair and beard were flecked with gray, and he wore black horn-rimmed glasses. His features were more central African than eastern. He sat down in the empty chair.

“Good evening, Mr. Simons,” the man said, in English with a hint of a Swahili accent. “Thank you for agreeing to this meeting.”

“I presume I am speaking with Mr. Yusuf Shalita, otherwise known as Sudika,” Simons said.

Shalita smiled. “Yes, that is my name. As to the nickname, I think that was invented by some creative Western reporter some years back.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Shalita?”

The Ugandan looked past him at one of the guards and said something in Somali. Simons sensed movement behind him, then the opening and shutting of a door. He risked a glance behind him, and the guards were gone. “They are right outside the door,” Shalita said. “A word from me and they will be here in two seconds.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Simons said.

The Ugandan narrowed his eyes. “Your country wants me in custody, or dead, Mr. Simons. You might possibly be able to kill me with your bare hands before the guards could stop you.”

“It would be a suicide mission, and we don’t do those,” the CIA agent said. “You should also know that if I do not emerge from this room in perfect health, you will never leave Mogadishu alive.”

Shalita smiled. “I think we understand each other. Well, to business, then. Are you familiar with the Katabolang mosque incident in Afghanistan?”

Simons felt a bit of a chill. “I would consider it more than an ‘incident’. I would call it a massacre of innocent children.”

“The children were killed by American tanks.”

“Let’s not play games, Mr. Shalita. Your people set that up. Our troops didn’t know there were noncombatants inside. The video of the bodies was on the Internet almost before we finished counting them.”

“I know. I was in command of that operation.”

Simons leaned forward, putting his hands on the table, trying to control his anger. “Did you think you’d fool anybody with that stunt?”

Shalita shrugged his shoulders. “There were enough who believed it happened the way we wanted it to appear. Many young men joined our jihad after that video was posted. Some of them may have questioned our version of the incident, but they came anyway. Many of your journalists apparently believed our version as well, from what I read in the days to follow.” He casually poured water from the pitcher into each of the glasses, setting one of them closer to the American. “Please, I know you must be thirsty.” Shalita took a healthy swallow from his glass.

Simons leaned back, folding his arms, resisting the urge to lunge across the table. “Did you bring me here to brag about that…
incident
? I have better things to do with my time.”

Shalita leaned forward, folding his hands on the table in front of him. He glanced downward for a second, then his eyes met the American’s. “You may not believe me, Mr. Simons, but I have deep regrets over that incident now. Very deep regrets indeed.”

Simons said nothing.

Shalita averted his eyes after a few seconds, then bit slightly on his lower lip, sighed, and blinked his eyes a few times. He’s trying to compose himself, Simons thought. If it’s an act, it’s a good one.

Then the Ugandan looked back at his guest. “I will come to the point, Mr. Simons. In recent months, since Katabolang, I have thought much about that incident, and about my role in it, in this endless jihad. I have prayed every night to Allah for guidance, and for his forgiveness.”

“Good for you.” Simons immediately regretted the words. This was not the time to antagonize this man. Something was happening here.

“I understand your skepticism, but I would ask you to believe me when I tell you this: I have decided it is time to end my role in the jihad. I have done many things, Mr. Simons, for which I have deep regrets. Whether Allah will someday forgive me, I cannot say. But before I meet him, blessed be his name, I wish to make things right, as much as I am able.”

“Go on.”

Shalita took a deep breath. “I am willing to give myself over to American custody. I am willing to tell you everything I know about al-Qaida, which I can assure you is a substantial amount of information. I also know a great deal about al-Shabaab, and about the various pirate groups that prey on your shipping off the coast.”

Simons fought to keep his features impassive. The mother lode of intelligence was within his grasp. Not just al-Qaida, but al-Shabaab, the Somali terror group. Throw the pirates in for good measure, and it was a potential treasure trove of incalculable value. What he said in the next few minutes might lead to an end to what was becoming known within the Company as “The Forever War”, but which the new administration in Washington, increasingly distancing itself from reality, now called “overseas contingency operations”. “I am…intrigued, Mr. Shalita,” he finally said. “I’m sure my government would be most interested in your offer.”

“I have some, ah, requirements, in order to secure my cooperation.”

“I assumed as much. And they are…?”

Shalita sat back in his chair, hands still folded on the table. Simons flicked a glance at them; they were perfectly still. “Immunity from prosecution, in civil court or by military tribunal, by any nation.”

“I will pass that along to my government. But we may not be able to guarantee the cooperation of other governments. Some of them may wish to extradite you for trial on charges stemming from crimes you committed on their soil.”

Sudika waved a hand dismissively, then his eyes narrowed. “Before I surrender myself, I must see in my hand a letter, signed by your president, guaranteeing this immunity and also promising that I will not be subjected to…what did your former vice president call them? Oh, yes: ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ or something like that.”

Simons couldn’t suppress a smile. “I’m sure you’ve heard that our government has publicly renounced those kinds of things,” he said.

“I have indeed heard that,” Shalita said, “and we both know, Mr. Simons, that it is still happening, in your prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere. If your news media finds out about it and asks questions, your president and his people will say they knew nothing about it, they will solemnly condemn it, they will blame the previous administration, and promise a vigorous, transparent inquiry. Then they will proceed to cultivate whatever intelligence was gleaned by these techniques. They will fire a few underlings and promise never to let it happen again. And it won’t, until the next time.”

“I think we both understand how this game is played, Mr. Shalita. Now, do you have any other conditions that I can take to my government?”

“Yes, I do,” Shalita said. “But I am very serious about that letter, Mr. Simons. When I have that letter in my hand and have satisfied myself as to its authenticity, I will surrender myself into your custody and give you a piece of information that I am sure you will be most interested in.”

“And what kind of information would that be?”

“I know the location of the man who is now the de facto leader of the jihad. I can tell you how to defeat his security precautions, which are much more elaborate and lethal than what your SEALs found in Abbottabad.”

“If you are speaking of Ayman al-Zawahiri, I’m sure we would be interested in learning more about him.”

Shalita shook his head. “No, not him. Someone far more important. This man is beyond your reach at the moment. But I can tell you where he is. Then you will have to decide whether or not you wish to go there and get him.”