Task Force Desperate (7 page)

The video program beeped, and a link came up under the picture. Hank reached in and clicked on it, then maximized the video that came up.

The picture was of a shemaugh-swathed man in a green fatigue jacket, sitting in front of a black flag with Arabic lettering on it. It looked like every other jihadi propaganda video that had been floating around for the last thirty years.

The man started to speak in Arabic, followed a second later by an accented English voice-over. “Praise be to Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate. Muslim brothers everywhere,
as-salaamu aleikum, wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatu, wa bad
:

“
’Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, even if they are of the people of the Book, until they pay the
jizya
with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.’

“I address our Muslim brothers, subject to the oppression of the infidel West, who yet rise in the name of Allah to strike with us at the depraved Crusaders.

“All over the Ummah, they set their bases on Muslim ground. They kill our children, and rape our women. They defile our soil with their presence, and oppress the Ummah with their depravity. Their arrogance tells them that they are untouchable, that they rule land, air, and sea.

“But, my brothers in Islam, they are not invincible, they are not unconquerable. Allah has delivered them into our hands, as He once delivered them into the hands of abu Bakr, Salah ad-Din, and our dear brother, Osama, murdered in his home by the cowardly killers of the Crusader Americans. Just as Osama once struck at the Crusaders in Islamic East Africa, to show their weakness, so have we now struck at their necks, and destroyed their largest base in this ancient Muslim land.

“Yes, my brothers, the infidel base from which they sent their cowardly drones to murder our faithful brothers in Yemen, Somalia, and Oman has fallen, and we have taken many captives. We hold these hostages as a warning to the West; that if they act against the Ummah anywhere, these will feel the wrath of Allah, at our hands!” He shook his fist at the camera, and from behind him came cries of “Takbir!” and “Allahu akhbar!”

“See the loathsome infidel soldiers, humbled and broken at our hands,” he said, gesturing to his right. The camera panned to show about a half-dozen young men, dressed in tattered remains of uniforms or PT gear, kneeling on a concrete floor. Their hands appeared to be tied behind their backs, and their feet were tied or taped together. The back three had sacks over their heads, but the front three were uncovered. All of them showed signs of severe beatings, and one was hardly able to stay upright. His face was crusted with dried blood from one or several cuts on his head.

As the video continued, two more masked men, dressed in shabby fatigues and with some AK variants slung on their backs, stepped to the bloody-faced man and grabbed his arms. He didn’t resist as they roughly dragged him over to the black flag and forced him to his knees.

My fists were clenched, and my jaw was working with rage. I knew what was coming.

“
The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides,
” the shemaugh-swathed terrorist intoned, as he lifted a tapanga from the table in front of him, and stepped over to stand over the kneeling American. To cries of “Allahu akhbar!” he put the edge to the young man’s neck, and began to saw.

Blood sprayed, and the young man screamed, a horrible gurgling that died in a few seconds as his trachea was cut through. His murderer kept at it, sawing away at flesh, bone and gristle as blood drenched the remains of the man’s Air Force utilities, and the hands of the butcher that was killing him. With a few hacks and a couple of jerks, the severed head came free, and the terrorist held it up, to the now near-hysterical shouts of “Allahu akhbar! Allahu akhbar!”

“This will be the fate of all infidels!” he shouted. “Let the faithful take heart, and let the Crusader West tremble in fear! Allahu akhbar!” The video ended.

For a long minute, there was only silence. Deadly silence. Heinrich didn’t interrupt it right away.

“That poor bastard,” he finally said, “was Senior Airman Kyle Phillips. He was a data technician at Lemonier. Near as we can tell, the motherfucker who sawed his head off is Al Masri.

“Unfortunately, we can’t gather much from the video. Concrete floor, white walls; could be anywhere over there. One thing we can get is that they may not be keeping all the hostages in one place. We only saw six, and from what we’ve been able to ascertain, including the statements on several jihadi websites, they have a lot more than that.”

He sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. “Look, I’m sorry I had to show that to you guys. But we’re trying to get you any information that we can, and if the CIA has anything, they aren’t telling us.” He shook his head angrily. “We’re getting precisely dick in the way of support.”

“Do they want the hostages back or not?” Nick demanded. “They had a fucking JSOC compound in that base; they’ve got to have some information to help us out.”

“They don’t want any governmental fingerprints on it,” the Colonel replied. “At least not until they have a slam-dunk. If this goes south, the only involvement that they have is thirty deniable contractors.”

“They’re going to have a lot worse than that!” Alek exploded. “That poor kid is just the first. If they don’t get their shit together, they’re going to have a lot of dead hostages on their hands, not just thirty dead contractors they’d rather didn’t exist.”

“It‘s the Iran hostage situation all over again. They‘re dithering, and the administration doesn‘t want to risk an op going bad. Like I said, you guys are deniable. Hell, you’re more than deniable, you’re potential scapegoats. The mainstream media still hasn’t let go of the Blackwater meme.” The Colonel didn’t bother to hide his disgust.

“So what the fuck are we still doing here?” Bob snarled. “Let’s pull chocks and get the fuck out.”

“We’re still here because we’re getting paid to be here,” Alek said, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Not only that, but those poor bastards might have a fighting chance because of us.” He looked around. “Nothing changes. We find the hostages, and we call in the cavalry.”

“And if there’s no cavalry?” Jim asked quietly. “If they decide it’s too dangerous?”

“Then we kill, steal, and hijack our way to where they can’t say it’s too dangerous, and call them to pick the lot of us up.” There was a set to Alek’s jaw. I knew the feeling. None of us was comfortable with the situation, but we were even less comfortable with the suits back in the States playing politics with American lives. Just like Captain Van Husten had said, we had all taken the oath, and nobody ever released us from it. “Believe me, I’m not letting those fuckers off the hook.”

There was a moment of silence, as everyone absorbed the new reality. As bad as it sucked, there was no whining, no, “We’re screwed, man!” Just quiet, angry acceptance that the job was going to be harder, and likely, not all of us would be going home after it.

“If we’re going to go ahead and push on,” Larry said, “we’d probably better finish getting ready for this meet tonight.”

And with that, we got back to work.

Chapter 5

I
mad and I were sitting in the Defender, which we had idling on the dirt track about a hundred fifty yards from the entrance of the fence, watching the meeting place as the sun crept toward the hills to the west. Our loose shirts hid soft armor vests, pistols, and multiple spare mags. Tiny Bluetooth headsets were hidden in our ears.

“Not a lot of activity,” I observed. I’d expected more overt guards.

“He’s being cautious,” Imad said. “He seemed like the cagey type when I talked to him.” He stopped suddenly. “There. Just inside the fence.” I saw what he was talking about. There was a man standing there, in the increasing shade of the fence and a wide-topped acacia.

“Can you tell if it’s our boy, or one of his pals?” I asked.

Imad squinted. “Too dark, can’t tell. I think he’s a little too short to be our boy, though.”

I looked at my watch, checked against the position of the sun. “Almost sundown.”

“Yeah.” He pulled out his Kimber and brass-checked it for the third time. Satisfied, he holstered it and pulled his shirt back down over it. “Game time.” His voice was already slipping into his East African accent.

We got out and shut the doors. I walked around the front of the truck to join him, and he led off toward the farm. I kept about five meters distance, to the right and slightly behind him.

The farmhouse was surrounded by a five-foot sheet-metal fence, along which grew a row of acacias. The house walls were built from what looked like cinderblock, with a dusty metal roof. There was a lot of junk piled against the inside of the fence.

We walked slowly through the gate, if that’s what you wanted to call it. It was really just a gap in the fence. There were four young men standing or squatting around in the dusty yard, watching us intently. One of them pointed toward the house, but none of them spoke. Imad nodded to them, and we walked up onto the rickety porch. There were two windows and a badly-fitting screen door. I stationed myself next to the door while Imad went inside. I leaned my back against the cinderblock wall, and watched the four young bucks watching me.

The screen door slammed, and a man spoke in Somali, greeting Imad. Maybe it was me, but he sounded nervous. I folded my arms loosely, trying to look non-threatening, while still being in a position to get to my gun fast.

The conversation continued in the house. I knew it could take a while. Members of tribal societies rarely get straight to business. There has to be a certain amount of small-talk and “getting to know one another” beforehand. I couldn’t understand more than a few words, but it seemed to be going amicably enough.

Outside was uncomfortable. Not only were the bugs coming out, including swarms of mosquitoes, which made me glad of the mefloquine that Colton insisted we take every week, but there was something else, a certain tension. The four guys in the yard kept watching me, without speaking. The two squatting near the west fence would occasionally talk to each other quietly, but I couldn’t pick anything out. There was none of the friendly welcome that could be heard inside.

The sun was below the horizon, and the sky was quickly going from orange to purple and black. The shadows were getting deeper, though one of the squatters was smoking, so I could see the two of them well enough. The heat was starting to recede. It was probably down to a hundred already, and felt comfortably cool. The air smelled of dust, shit, and smoke.

Voices from inside started to get more animated. Imad was getting insistent about something. It sounded like he was pressing his questions, and they weren’t being answered. The other man was making placating noises. My paranoia was starting to make itself felt, especially as one of the loitering young men in the yard walked around back of the house. Soon enough, the one who had been standing by the gate followed him. The other two stayed squatting by the fence, next to a pile of straw.

Imad was getting loud. Whatever the other man was saying, Imad didn’t like it. I carefully flexed the fingers of my gun hand. I could feel the situation going to hell already.

There was a crash from inside, and Imad let out a particularly vile curse in Arabic. It wasn’t just indignation; that was our gone-to-shit signal.

I came off the porch, one hand going for my gun while I pressed the push-to-talk with the other. “Wildfire, wildfire,” I sent, as my Springfield cleared holster and shirt. My off hand met the grip on the way up and out, and the tritium sights settled on the squatting man pulling an AKS out of the straw. My finger was already taking up the slack on the trigger as the gun came to full extension, and I fired, the .45 roaring in the evening quiet. The first round took him high in the chest, the second in the throat, and he crumpled back against the fence, his hand held uselessly to his throat to try to stem the spray of arterial blood.

His buddy was going for the Kalashnikov, but I lined him up as I went for the far side of the yard, and fired twice more. He collapsed on top of his buddy, half of the top of his skull blasted away. I needed to calm down. I was shooting high.

The other two came running around the side they’d disappeared around before, even as gunfire erupted inside the house. I cranked off the last five rounds in the gun at them, and they ducked back behind the cinderblock, as I jumped behind a pile of trash and rubble, dropping the mag out and grabbing a fresh one from my belt. The pile wouldn’t provide much cover, but I didn’t intend to stay there that long.

Even as I bunched my muscles to move again, one of them stuck the barrel of an AK-47 around the corner and opened fire, spraying the corner of the yard on full auto. The rounds cracked overhead and smacked into and through fence and trees, as I dropped to my belly, and tried to get a shot. In the background I could hear an engine roaring, and hunkered back away from the gate.

There was more gunfire from the far side of the house. It sounded like a .45, and was answered by a scream. The gomer shooting at me ran out of ammunition, and I took the opportunity to fire a couple of covering shots, then scrambled to my feet and ran for the back corner of the house. If I could circle around behind him while he reloaded…

The engine roar got louder, along with the sound of flying gravel, and then the Range Rover was smashing through the gate, and skidding to a stop. The windows were open, and two battle rifles were stuck out and began to spit flame. Heavy 7.62 rounds started pulverizing the corner where the shooter had been.

“Hillbilly, going around the southeast corner,” I sent. “Watch your fire.”

“Affirm,” Larry’s voice came back.