Joint Task Force #2: America (3 page)

He took several deep breaths. Reaching around his waist, he ran his hand down the edge of his back. Around the waistline of his jeans, blood had soaked through to the point where the wetness slurped against his skin. He needed to wrap this up soon. Otherwise, he was going to lose consciousness because he was losing too much blood.

Tucker licked his lips. His head swam. He blinked several times to clear his vision, which seemed to swim in and out of focus. He shut his left eye and aimed over the top of the short barrel at the one called Sean. Sean led the two by a couple of steps. Tucker squeezed his finger slowly on the trigger, shifting the barrel slightly so it aligned itself with the front of the man. He pulled the trigger. The first shot hit the one called Sean in the stomach, causing him to arch forward. The second caught him
in the chest. Tucker shifted the pistol to the second man. The one called Casey began firing wildly in the direction from where the two shots had come. Tucker fired. The first bullet missed the man, but the second caught him in the chest just as he turned to run, causing the man to collapse in mid step. The pistol fell from the man’s hand, landing silently on the pine-carpeted forest floor. Tucker fired again. The third bullet caught the man in the head, causing it to jerk backward as he fell. The body hit the ground.

Tucker waited. The danger was past. The two were dead. If not, they would be soon. He looked toward the house. The balcony light shined outward, faintly outlining a peaceful backyard for anyone looking this way. He shut his eyes. He’d rest for a few moments and then force his way to the house and call for help. His breath came in rapid, short gasps. He’d be alright. He just needed a short breather to catch his breath and recapture enough strength to make it to the house and the telephone. Tucker faded into unconsciousness. He heard a slight moan from one of the two men he had shot, and then, as his consciousness evaporated, the sound of running footsteps approaching reached his ears. For a fraction of a second, a surge of panic nearly fought through the swirling fall into the darkness, but the loss of blood and the strength used to fight the killers were too much. Tucker passed out just as hands turned him over.

CHAPTER 2

AUGUST

THE GRINDING GEARS OF THE HEAVY TRUCK FORCED THE
dockhands to shout instructions and questions. As it inched closer to where the tramp freighter was tied up to the cement pier, the Africans sidestepped gingerly out of its way, shielding their night vision from the glare of the yellow headlights. Several times, the brakes squealed—metal on metal—as the driver stopped. He would then tap on his horn a couple of times, whereupon Jihadist supervisors would shove Africans toward the truck, shouting at them to shift or move waiting boxes and loose gear out of its path. Then, with a smile, the thin reed of a driver would rev the straining engine up again, the gears grinding more metal from the thin teeth, and the truck would inch forward again.

Mixing with the smell of the unburned oil spewing dark thick exhaust from the truck was the fetid odor of human waste floating in the waters of this hidden African inlet. The pipe leading from the Ivory Coast port city of Abidjan worked its way through the jungle and rain forest
of this West African country to pump unprocessed waste into the waters south of it. Tide and current carried most of the waste out to sea, but spin-off currents and high tide kept a large portion of the waste trapped inside this inlet of deep water. Floating on top of the languid water, the waste baked in the sun, soaked in salt water, and eventually drifted down to join the decades-old waste blanketing the inlet bottom. No fish lived in the inlet. They had either died or escaped years before.

The noise of the pier bothered Abu Alhaul. It bothered his bodyguards also. Standing in the shadows of the dilapidated warehouse, he watched the dockhands load the old freighter, occasionally glancing toward the truck working its way closer to the ship. Silently he wondered what they would do if the truck broke down before it reached the freighter. He reached up and stroked his dark beard, the thin white streak running along the right side hidden in the shadows of the darkness.

“I think we should return to the house,” Abdo said, briefly touching Abu Alhaul on the arm. “You must eat something, my brother. You haven’t eaten all day, and it isn’t as if you have the weight I do to compensate.” Abdo patted his huge stomach and chuckled softly. He licked his lips, his eyes darting to the dark African jungle that reached the edges of the inlet. “It isn’t safe here.”

“If it isn’t safe here, Abdo, then it isn’t safe at that hovel you call a house. It’s night. The Ivorians will be sleeping off their drunkenness, and the French will be staggering from bar to bar. The earliest anyone would come to investigate the noise will be morning. By then, you and I will be far away, and the ship will have departed.”

The grinding of the driver shifting gears drowned Abdo’s reply. Abu Alhaul dismissed his brother with a wave and stepped away from the warehouse, directly into the faint light of the single bulb burning over double doors that lead into the empty building. Missing glass from windows on each side of the rusted doors told how African dockworkers passed idle time. One of the doors hung
precariously from one huge rusty iron hinge, the bottom one missing, either broken off or stolen. Waist-high grass grew along both sides of the disabled door.

Abu Alhaul reached up and straightened his black headdress. African dockhands moved back and forth across the front of the truck, breaking up the yellow glow of the headlights. The workers, moving crates and boxes by hand, slid like a parting sea to allow the truck to creep closer to the freighter, never in danger of being run over unless they fell and refused to get up, able to wait the few minutes it would take the truck to run over them. Several patted the rusted fenders as they walked across its path to grab another box from the pier, lift it onto their broad shoulders, and with head down, walk toward the gangway leading onto the freighter.

“What if it breaks down?” Abdo asked. “We’d never be able to push the truck closer.”

Abu Alhaul, whose Arabic name translated to “Father of Fear,” replied, “No, we would have to shift the freighter backward.”

“Not right now we couldn’t. The truck needs to make another fifty meters. The water is too shallow to move the ship back. We would have to wait for high tide, and high tide”—he pulled the sleeve back on his robe and looked at his watch—“is three hours away.”

“Three hours from now, Abdo, the freighter must be underway. It must be out of here and fifteen miles out to sea when the sun rises. That will take it over the horizon and out of sight.”

The squeal of brakes reminded Abu Alhaul of the Egyptian teacher he and Abdo had had when they were growing up. A teacher who enjoyed trailing his fingernails down an old chalkboard, creating a chill-raising screech that caused his students to wiggle in agony as they covered their ears. He could still hear the old man’s laughter. Abu Alhaul also recalled the glazed eyes in what remained of the old man’s head after Abdo and he had smashed it in with bricks. It had taught him the value of terror. Of doing something so dramatic that those aware
of it capitulated to his leadership. He had watched, mesmerized, as the fear in the eyes of the old man had faded into the gaze of death. Then he had slowly sawed his knife through the man’s neck, realizing as the blood pumped from the arteries running along the sides of the neck that the man wasn’t quite dead. When he held the head up for Abdo to see, there was no doubt the teacher was dead, but even so, Abu Alhaul had looked down at the stump of the neck to make sure the blood had quit pumping.

The teacher had been a Coptic Christian; one of many in Egypt, but with this death—Abu Alhaul’s first—there was one less. In the life of a Jihadist, every death was important to remember and appreciate in the furtherance of teaching to the world obedience of Allah’s will. He softly mumbled “Allah Akbar” a couple of times. Someday the world would bend to his will for his will, was Allah’s will.

“It will make it,” he said softly as he turned to watch the truck.

“Uh,” Abdo grunted. “Let’s hope Allah is beneath the bonnet of that truck.”

Abu Alhaul glanced at his larger and younger brother. “Abdo, you blaspheme Allah’s name?”

“Oh, I would never do that, my brother. You and he are close friends. Since you two are so close, I have decided that I’m here to serve you.” He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and clasped his hands behind his back. “Allah just happens to be nearby.”

Abu Alhaul leaned closer to his brother. “Abdo, you must learn to be more respectful. While I understand your sarcasm and how little the will of Allah means to you, others who follow me would not.”

Abdo nodded and looked down. “They follow you; not me. I follow you, not Allah.” He glanced over at his shorter brother. “Someday, my brother, you will need someone who will risk his life to save yours.” Abdo pulled a white cloth from a side pocket and blew his nose. “Besides, where you go, I go. If you weren’t here, I would not be.” When Abu Alhaul failed to answer, Abdo lifted
his headdress and ran the cloth through his thick black hair, the long strands falling over his ears and down the back of his neck. “You know, my brother. Right now, as we stand here fighting the heat and mosquitoes so big they could carry you away to feast on you later, the cafés and restaurants of Cairo are bustling with activity. The cool breeze of the Nile would be winding through the city streets, bringing a welcomed relief from the day’s heat. We could be sitting, enjoying a small figan of coffee or tea, watching the tourists parade across—”

“In the new world, those tourists will stay in their own country, serving us,” Abu Alhaul interrupted, his voice hard and firm.

Abdo nodded, waited a couple of seconds, and added, “Of course, they will, but right now they are promenading through the heart of Cairo, and with them they bring a light of enthusiasm; a light of humor; a light of life. And, the women bring a light of legs.” He chuckled.

Abu Alhaul turned suddenly, slapped his brother, and snapped, “That is enough!”

Abdo’s eyes moistened. He rubbed the growing red spot on his bare left cheek. Sometimes, even he failed to understand the man who had risen to replace Sheik Osama.

After the rebuke, the two men stood silent, watching the constant parade of Africans carrying the boxes up the narrow gangway, stepping down onto the deck, and then being directed various ways by the four Jihadists standing at the top. Like ants preparing a nest for the winter, the lines continued to move. Abu Alhaul couldn’t understand the words the Africans were exchanging, but the laughter and gaiety told him of their expectation of good wages for this job. The Africans were used to smuggling, so the idea of loading a rust-bucket freighter in the middle of the night was not new to them.

One of Abu Alhaul’s men held a clipboard, checking off an inventory list as the Africans paraded past him at the foot of the gangway. Two other Jihadists stood on the pier, each holding an AK-47. A short, squat man wearing
a straw hat and dressed in a western suit moved among boxes stacked a few feet from the foot of the gangway. Periodically he would stop one of the Africans and make the man stack the box being carried with the others. Each time he did it, the man with the clipboard scowled and looked toward the warehouse.

Abu Alhaul knew the man was searching for him, but in the shadows of the building as long as he remained motionless, his silhouette blended into the shadows behind the unshaded light bulb that lit up the four men assigned to guard him.

Forty minutes later, the truck squealed to a halt, its flat bed parallel to the stern of the freighter. Two of the Jihadist supervisors pushed and cajoled the Africans onto the bed to untie a canvas tarp covering the contents. The rear tires were nearly flat from the weight of whatever was tied down on the bed.

Two Africans untied two lines running from the highest point of the tarp to the top of the cab of the truck. The line running from the bottom of the tarp to the edge of the bed untied easily, but the heavy weight beneath the tarp and the shifting of the truck had pulled the fourth line so tight that several of the dockworkers pushed and pulled and argued as they tried to untie it. Finally, tired of the wait, one of the Arab supervisors angrily pushed his way through the growing crowd gathering to provide advice to the Africans on the truck bed above them. The Arab pulled the light robe up between his knees, reached up, grabbed a handhold on a stanchion sticking out from the truck, and pulled himself up. He pushed the Africans aside, knocking one of them off the bed and into the arms of the small crowd below. Cocking his head back arrogantly, the thin reed of a man whipped out a long knife and in one smooth motion sliced through the hemp line.

“Pull it away!” he shouted, jumping down.

Abu Alhaul smiled. He had made the right decision to entrust this mission to Tamursheki. This worshipper was worth more here in the spread of Allah’s word than wasting his time in some western university trying to become
a doctor. Those with the greatest ambition are easily the quickest to change directions when success and glory are promised. Tamursheki was such a man, Abu Alhaul thought, as he watched him move back toward the end of the gangway and pick up his clipboard again. Every movement needs an educated cadre who can do the little things such as Tamursheki did. It was indeed unfortunate that even such a disciple as Tamursheki couldn’t know everything about this mission. Such a disciple would be missed. In war, casualties happened, and sometimes those casualties had to be planned in battle. A master must be capable of sacrificing his own forces when it will help win the war.

The dockhands grabbed the sides of the dark tarp and pulled it, hand-over-hand, off the back of the truck, revealing the bottom half of a square container. The tarp caught on the forward edge of the huge thing beneath it. Grunting for a moment, the dockworkers jerked hard, ripping it free, cutting through the canvas like a knife. When the tarp cleared the truck bed, falling into a huge bundle beside the rear left wheels, a huge dark gray van sat exposed on the bed. Abu Alhaul’s eyes narrowed as he searched along the front side of the van until finally he saw the faint outline of a small door.

Several Africans rolled the tarp flat, then took the ends of it, folding it up and over several times before throwing their bodies on top of it. A couple others hurriedly wound rope around the tarp, tied it off, and jumped out of the way of the two who had folded the tarp. The two grabbed the ends and carried it across the dock. Abu Alhaul watched with suspicion. Suspicion was a key to survival when you attempted to meld into the local populace and you knew others wanted to see your head on the end of a stake. The two Africans swung the tarp three times, letting it go on the third. The heavy tarp fell, landing about two inches from their feet, causing the two men to jump back involuntarily. How stupid they were, but just as he needed people like Tamursheki with some sense of intelligence, he also needed those who were stupid like
these dockworkers who were already counting the money they thought to make tonight.

The two Africans laughed at themselves, with one pointing at the tarp and saying something in the local dialect. Abu Alhaul knew they intended to return later for it. Tarps such as this made excellent roofs for the thatch huts where many of them lived. It was too bad that none could return, but Allah demanded a lot in his service, and the life of a non-Muslim was as insignificant as a sheep. Without thinking about it, Abu Alhaul ground the ball of his right foot onto the pier.
As a sheep.