Born of War (21 page)

K
aren Stewart started to laugh.

It was an uncontrollable and painful laugh as she looked at herself in the side mirror of the truck. She saw a red-dotted face with dirt outlining the edge of her nose. Her teeth were yellowed and she was burned from the equator's sun. It was a stranger in the glass. A horribly ugly stranger.

But what made her laugh was the hollowed look around the eyes. She had lost so much body weight that the person she was staring at was the petite teenager that she always hoped she would return to one day. Her belt had been pulled up to the first notch, and still the pants sagged. She laughed as she thought of how her dresses would fit over her new frame.

God, will I ever get home?
She didn't want the thought to enter her mind. They were back down now to Xasan and the old man, who was the driver. They had followed the river south to the point where another road cut to the southwest. She had never paid attention to the sun, but as survival called for it, she was observing everything in her power. They were headed away from the riverbed and into the country.

“Peter?” He had become so ill that they had let him ride in the bed of the truck when the road was passable. It wasn't a favor so much as Xasan got tired of lifting the dead weight back into the truck. Every time they made him walk with the jab of the rifle he would shuffle a hundred yards and then collapse.

But if the truck ran into a mud hole, all, including Xasan, had to get out and push. They would go a mile and then get stuck again. It was an endless loop. For some time they had not seen another human. She sensed, however, that they were heading towards a war.

“Peter?”

“Yes, my lady?” He had become delirious over time.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine, a little hot, but fine.”

The rain, the mud, and his fever soaked him through.

“We will stop.” Xasan held up his rifle. It was the first time that Karen thought he wasn't sure where he was going. There was some confusion on his face as he argued with the old man. Finally, the driver got out of the cab and they walked down the road as if to compare thoughts about the direction in which they were headed. They turned and started to walk back. At the truck, the old man swung the door open and began to climb back in when he suddenly stopped. He grabbed his chest, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell back into the mud.

“What did you do?” Xasan screamed as he pointed his rifle towards Karen.

She ignored his yelling and knelt down next to the body. Doctor Stewart felt for a pulse on his neck. She could feel the whiskers of his gray beard as she pressed her fingers into the place where there should have been a pulse.

Without thinking, she started pushing on his chest. His body sank down in the mud until it hit the hard surface below. She continued to push, repeatedly, pushing and pushing with one hand over the other. She kept pushing without feeling the hunger or exhaustion of the days in captivity.

“Come on,” she muttered out loud.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Xasan put his rifle over his shoulder and stare at the process.

And she continued to press, pushing as hard as she could.

Suddenly, the old man's eyes opened up and he started to cough. He pushed her arms aside as if he could not understand why this stranger was beating on his chest.

Xasan sunk to the ground. He started to cry.

“Allah?” He said the word almost as if it were a plea to understand what had happened.

The old man had survived a heart attack.

Karen fell back on her rear end.

“He needs some aspirin.” She said it as if there was a nearby pharmacy that could provide a bottle. Xasan got off his knees, walked around the truck, opened the door on the passenger side, reached into the glove compartment, and took out an old bottle of Bayer aspirin.

“What?”

She wanted to scream.

Xasan gave her the bottle. She opened it and gave the old man two white tablets. She then stood up and took the bottle to the back of the truck, lifted Peter's head, and gave him two tablets.

“We need some water,” she said.

Xasan went back to the cab and pulled out a two-liter plastic bottle and handed it to her. She gave Peter a drink and then gave the old man a drink as he was about to sit up.

Xasan pointed to the old man and said something in Swahili.

Peter lifted up his head as if the aspirin had had an immediate effect.

“He says that man is his father.”

Karen stood up in the confusion of the moment. She had saved the life of someone who would have shot her without hesitation the day before.

“I want to go home.”

No one heard her.

“C
aptain Tola?” The commanding officer of the CSPMAGTF-Crisis Response on the ground signaled to him to come over to the operations tent. Tola was readying for another night's patrol when the C.O. gave him the signal to talk.

“Yes, sir.”

“I need to speak with you a minute. Let's go over to the one.”

Tola followed the C.O. to a bunker on the far end of the compound. A Marine guarded a small structure made of sandbag walls with a tin roof covered by more sandbags. The guard stood next to the entrance with a locked and loaded M416. A line of tape encircled the structure with warning signs that said D
O
N
OT
C
ROSS.
D
EADLY
F
ORCE
A
UTHORIZED
.

A sign painted on a square of plywood and hanging over the entrance read C
OMMANDING
O
FFICER.
Below the words there was a shield, which spelled it all out—S
PECIAL
-P
URPOSE
M
ARINE
A
IR
-G
ROUND
T
ASK
F
ORCE
—C
RISIS
R
ESPONSE
. The Marine unit on the ground was a MAC, or Maritime Airborne Company made up of MARSOC critical skills operators. The unit was custom-designed and built for this mission. It had at its core a company of Marines or CLT that had been formed out of the 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion.

Tola liked the lieutenant colonel. They had done two combat tours together and it was clear that his boss was on the fast track even at this early stage in his Marine career. However, the winds of the reduction in force were starting to blow. Word had passed through the commands and then the media. The armed services were to be hit by a hurricane force. One in every three Marines was being laid off and returned to a different world. Only a few would survive the assault that was coming. The major, despite being very good, and decorated with two silver stars, had a fifty-fifty chance of staying on.

And yet the dangers were not going away. Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda, and ISIS were raising the battle flag across several thousands of miles. The fundamentalists in the Philippines and the western Pacific didn't even make page ten with their occasional car bomb. Gaza was on a mutual path with Israel that assured only more bloodshed. But despite all this, the military was being hit with crushing blows of force reduction. The Army was going down by a third or more. The Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force were following the same path.

“We have some word. Some significant word.” He looked at his watch and then the two went into the bunker. In the center was a portable computer on a table with several stools in front of it. The computer was cleared for “Top Secret.” The Marine guarding the bunker from the outside carried two hand grenades. One was an M67 fragmentation grenade and the other had phosphorus explosive material that would burn at a thousand degrees when ignited. The computer and the satellite dish it was connected to would not survive. It mattered little, as the encryption was incredibly complex, but they would take no chance. Everything would be destroyed before it had the opportunity to land in someone else's hands.

“We have a videoconference in five minutes.” The major pointed to one of the stools for Tola. Another Marine was in the tent. He was a communications lance corporal. “Are we linked up?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The satellite has a fifteen-minute window.” The major and Tola pulled up the two stools.

A screen showed the logo of central command.

Suddenly, a conference room appeared with an admiral sitting at the end of the table, flanked by another officer.

“Do we have everyone?” the admiral asked. “Is everybody up on the satellite?”

A split screen showed another admiral who announced he was NavCent, and a third admiral who was commander of the task force somewhere at sea in the Gulf of Aden.

“I am going to let my J-3 bring us up to date with the limited time we have,” said the first admiral.

A Navy captain in a gray-blue-dotted camouflage uniform started to speak. Stitched into his uniform was the black-threaded insignia of a Navy SEAL.

“Intelligence reported the DF-21 possessed by Al Shabaab was in a building in the city of Jilib.” The captain inserted video from a Reaper nighttime intelligence film. “We believe they only have one of these.”

He played another video taken by a similar nighttime surveillance aircraft. It showed two helicopters move in and stop near the building; then small black figures seemed to pour out onto the ground.

“SEAL Team Six sent in a team. It was a trap. The missile had been moved.”

A bright flash appeared on the screen where the building once stood.

It was clear that the team had been sent in to destroy the missile but, even more important, to confirm both its existence and its destruction.

“Intelligence assets both up top and on the ground are trying to obtain more information.”

The captain became somber.

“We lost three SEALs last night.”

Tola looked at his hand and then his watch. He knew that as they were engaged in the conference call, they were being watched. The broadcast went both ways. In a SCIF in Bahrain, the split screen showed the several commands across the theater. He knew that as long as the “carrier killer” was in Al Shabaab's hands, the U.S. fleet would stand farther off the shores of Somalia. And with the carrier farther off at sea, the capabilities of the Hornets and F-35s would be stretched even more. There might be gaps in the air cap, and with them there might be gaps in response times.

 

 

Faud had moved the afternoon before the attack. He and his command had traveled south to the outskirts of the coastal city of Kismaayo.

“We move our chess piece.” The details of the attack had been reported to him. “Each time, when we move it, we need to prepare the last place for a trap.”

“Praised be Allah. There were several martyrs from last night, but the Americans suffered as well.”

“Yes, blessed are the names of those who are martyred.”

Faud paused a moment.

“We must keep our carrier killer on the move. We must keep them guessing. More time and more money will lead to us obtaining a second and a third device.” Faud said the obvious. “The Romans had over a thousand years here and they never knew that cinnamon came from India and not Somalia.”

The people could keep a secret. The missile could be moved in a matter of minutes. It was the shape that was the concern. The missile had to be broken apart and reassembled on each and every move. The Predator would identify one long shape or one long truck. And so they waited for a rainstorm on each move. The winds gave them a chance that the Predator would not be on station. And they also waited for a certain window where the satellite was likely to be off its location. Al Shabaab knew how to work the system.

“What of the hostages?” Godane asked the question.

“The
Amriiki
was sent to find them. We have already told the infidels that we want five million apiece. The money will be raised every time they make an attack on us.” Faud did not tell him that they were not sure where the captives were, nor where Omar was.

“They are gathering forces at Ferfer. We need to consider an offensive.” Godane looked at a map and pointed with his hand as he spoke.

“The disease?” Faud asked.

“Diseases are Allah's will,” Godane did not hesitate to say in response.

T
he driver in the Honda Civic took the Quantico exit from Interstate 95, and as the car came down to the light, a police car, sirens blaring, pulled in behind. Wassef turned on his blinker and pulled to the side of the highway. As he did this, his hand felt the handle of the knife and moved it to the space between the passenger seat and console. He had learned the lesson from one of the tapes to roll down the driver's window and put both hands in sight.

Wassef knew that the gesture would make the Virginia state trooper feel more comfortable and that was the point. He smiled.

“Hello, Officer.”

“Good morning.”

Wassef knew that his clean face and short haircut would also help to disarm the officer's suspicions.

“I am sorry, is there a problem?”

“Yes, you have a taillight out.”

“Oh, I will . . .” He started to open the door.

“No, don't get out. The traffic here is too busy. We have all these Marines going to work on the base.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Got your license and registration?”

“Sure.” He pulled out his Virginia license with the name Wassef Hamri from Richmond, and the car's registration.

“Okay, where are you going?”

“I am in school at William and Mary, and going to visit my aunt and uncle in D.C.” Wassef had done nothing wrong. His record was flawless, although he had never stepped foot on the William and Mary campus. He kept his face composed.

“Okay. Get that light fixed. No ticket.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

He waited, took his time putting the license back into his wallet, and let the officer's car pull out ahead of him. The trooper moved into the left lane, did a three-sixty, and took the entrance back onto the interstate.

Wassef smiled.

He drove the mile up the highway to the Enterprise rental location, and went in with both his license and a wallet full of money.

“I reserved a van.” Again, it was a part of the plan that the vehicle needed to be reserved. If he had walked in without a reservation, wanting a van, it would raise questions. The license had him as being just over twenty-five.

Shit, if that officer had thought about it!
The clerk looked at the license and then handed it back to Wassef. His license was legitimate but his being in college at twenty-five was a stretch.

“We have your reservation in order. You have the only van that we carry.”

The young girl was perky for the start of a new day. She was particularly short with only part of her face visible just above the computer terminal.

“Thank you.” He added the “thank you” and “sir” whenever possible. It was another tactic that made people take less notice of him. In fact, he was dressed in a white-collared shirt, khakis, a brown belt, and matching brown loafers, and he did it all so as to attract less attention.

Amazing how terrorists can look so different.
Wassef had wandered onto an online search of past terrorists one night. He looked at the photographs and thought of how his picture would soon be added to the lot. He would look different from the others.
Perhaps they will use me as a guide for “how to look if you don't want to get stopped.”

“I will leave my Honda here on the lot if that is okay?”

“Certainly, please park it in the back. We have a lot of people pulling in and out. It will be safer there,” she said pleasantly.

“Absolutely.” He smiled.

“And since you are paying with cash we need to have an extra deposit.”

He frowned. And yet it was all part of the orchestrated plan. He would reluctantly pay the money. Wassef pulled out his wallet and gave her $300 in used twenties.

“Here are the keys!”

 

 

Wassef moved his Honda to the back of the lot, pulled out the FedEx box, and bent over so as to slowly slip the knife under the box. He knew that he was on a security camera and that the tape would later be pulled. He closed the door and locked the car with the key.

The van was white, which was perfect. It was so similar to a delivery van that the witnesses would hardly take notice. There was nothing that he had done so far that stood out.

Wassef adjusted the seat, turned the mirrors, and reached into his back left pocket, where he had folded a printout from Google Earth of the street address to which he was heading. He looked at his watch and realized that all was in place and he was on time.

The Koran calls for punishment for the disbelievers.
He repeated the thought in his mind over and over. The Koran was calling him to do something that he had never done before.

 

 

Wassef's van passed the entranceway to the Wind-view neighborhood at eight in the morning. It was important for him to be there at eight. He followed through the maze of streets, and passed signs that said D
EAD
E
ND,
where the cul-de-sacs held only a few homes.

The houses looked similar in shape and color. It was a neighborhood of consistency. Each yard had been cut, trimmed, and cleaned. And it was trash day. Gray plastic trash bins, all of the same size and make, were lined up on the curbs.

Trash day.
Wassef didn't like the idea. It was the first wrinkle in a perfect plan. It meant that he had to have the luck of Allah with him.

The Google map led him to the third cul-de-sac on the right. He had traveled the route several times on Google Earth. His tracking of the locations on the Internet would leave a trail for the FBI to pick up. But Wassef didn't need more than an hour. If the two women who provided his support were not at their house, the women had to keep their mouths shut long enough for it all to work. They never knew the entire plan but they did have an idea as to where he lived. An FBI HRT team would be at his apartment soon enough.

The Bureau's HRT, or the Hostage Rescue Team, did much more than just rescue people. It was a special team of operators trained in tactical operations. It had all of the toys and any type of transportation required. If Wassef hadn't heard the faint sound of the blades of a helicopter by now, his mission was a “go.”

The last house on the right of the cul-de-sac had roses in the front yard. They were the difficult type that required constant attention. The hybrids were red and white and the leaves were large petals of green. Wassef's mother, Matta, had roses even in the cold where they lived. The flowers were dormant for the winter but came back in the late spring. The cold helped. The months of subfreezing weather pulled the plant back into its roots. It gave the plant the chance to “reboot.” The bugs and diseases had less time to do their damage.

Matta would like their roses.
He thought of how much effort had been spent on these flowers. He thought of how it made the home different.

Wassef pulled the white van into the driveway. His heart started to beat quickly. If the plan failed, it was a harmless enough visit, although certainly odd. The police would arrest him, link him to the two women, and he would get a few years in prison. He would be on the news as an American jihadist. He smiled.

 

 

Wassef rang the doorbell and heard movement inside.

The corner of the porch had a Home Depot–type camera, made for night and day; however, it looked cheaply made and probably did not feed into anything more sophisticated than the man's recorder. He heard the fumbling of the locks.

I hope it is him.
Wassef feared that it would be a wife and not the man he had met at the gun show. He had prepared himself for the man.
If it is him, it is easy.

“Hello?” The man had on a white T-shirt, loose pants, and brown leather moccasin slippers. His tone was a question. It was likely that he had a revolver close at hand and a pickup truck in the garage that was covered with stickers such as NRA and hate for gun control.

“Yes, sir!”

“Oh, the boy from the gun show.”

Wassef held up the FedEx box with his left hand. Fortunately, there was no screen door. The man swung the stained-glass door to the inside.

“Yes, sir, good to see you again.”

“What on earth are you doing around here?” The question proved that the man was still unaware of what was about to happen.

“I found that my aunt lived just down the street and I remembered you. This was on your front porch.” Wassef started to hand him the FedEx package. It would not have been unusual. The man probably received parts and gun gear by FedEx all the time. Wassef knew that he was retired from the power company and probably did little except work on his guns.

As the man reached for the box with his dominant hand, Wassef pushed the box towards his chest and thrust the blade of the butcher knife into the center of his chest just below the sternum. He felt the resistance of the muscle as he pushed the blade all the way to the handle. He could feel his hand shaking as the knife struck deep.

The man gasped for air and reached out with his hands, grabbing his assailant by the shirt. Wassef continued to push at the blade. The man started to fall backwards but his hands held on to Wassef's shirt, pulling them both to the ground.

As the two started to fall together, Wassef felt the hilt of the knife push into his own chest. He was face-to-face with his victim, the man's gray eyes staring directly into his. Wassef felt the last warm breath pass over his face and smelled the sour breath of coffee that had been swallowed a short time before.

The two came to rest on the floor. Wassef had to pull himself out of the man's grip and then he rolled over onto the floor.

Odd.
He thought. The white shirt was stained with only a little red blood, as if there was just a small cut below.

Wassef's heart started to race. His fate had now been sealed. He stood up. Walking to the door, he peeked out and saw no activity on the street. He closed the front door behind him. He reached into the man's right pocket until he found a chain full of keys.

“It will be easy,” he whispered to himself. Wassef could not hear anyone else in the house. As Wassef moved past the man, he was struck by how the dead man looked, his two hands frozen in an imaginary grip, and his gray eyes looking at someone who wasn't there. Wassef moved quickly down the hallway to the back and quietly swung the door closed to the room.

 

 

Wassef sensed that when he saw his objective he would know it. He passed by the kitchen with the white Mr. Coffee pot on the counter next to a green coffee cup. He turned from the kitchen to the hallway that led to the garage.

Not in the garage.
He knew that it would not be outside the burglary alarm system. What he didn't know was whether it had its own system. The second door on the right in the hallway had three brass keyholes. They were all lined up from top to bottom above the knob. He started to search through the keychain, matching the make with the type of key. Time was no problem. The house remained quiet. There wasn't even a television on in the great room.

After three tries, the first key fit. He twisted it and felt it unlock. He did it again, going through several keys until another unlocked. Finally, he tried the third lock and it opened as well. He put his hand on the metal knob. The door was also metal and it was in a frame that was metal. He turned the knob but it didn't budge.

Another key?
He looked at the knob to see a fourth key slot. Again, he went through the keychain looking for one that seemed to fit. None came close. He tried the door again and it didn't budge. His hands started to sweat.

I can break it open.
Even with a metal door, if it came down to just one lock it was possible, but the noise would reduce his time before someone came. He leaned back against the hallway wall and considered the problem.

Possible!
Wassef thought. He slid his hand over the lip above the door and felt a fourth key.

“Allah is great.”

He turned the key and felt the door open.

He stopped, let go of the knob, and then went into the laundry room across the hallway. In the dryer, Wassef found several sheets and pillowcases. He pulled out a sheet and wadded it up in a ball.

The knob turned open, and as it did, he felt for a light switch. The room was the size of a typical closet but what was in it was not typical. The walls had racks of weapons, including Thompson submachine guns and Barrett .50 caliber rifles. Another shelf had pistols and another one had an open wooden box that was split into little slots. Each slot held a hand grenade.

The room smelled of gun-cleaning fluid and there were rectangular cans marked “gunpowder.”

Wassef was looking for only one thing. He found it in the corner behind the shelves. The man had bragged that he might have known who had one.

Wassef moved quickly, pulling it out and wrapping it in the sheet. He then turned back to the weapons closet and carefully took out a grenade, pulled the pin, and then slid the grenade back into the wooden crate. He did it again a dozen times.

One bottle of gun-cleaning fluid was on the shelf next to the pistols. He squirted the liquid in a stream around the wooden shelf and crate and then made a trail out to the corner of the door. Then Wassef turned off the light. He left the door slightly ajar and went back to the kitchen. One drawer was near several bottles of liquid that made up a makeshift bar. He opened the door to find a match, gathered up his load, and started out. Wassef lit the carpet near the streak of gun fluid and then turned the hallway light out.