Traitor (22 page)

“Jesus,” replied Turner looking more closely at the screen. “I didn’t know that!”

“Yup, they’ve spent years building tunnels throughout the desert to hide their camps,” lied Carson convincingly, causing more than one coughing fit amongst his DoD team. “Anyway,” he continued more honestly, “who’s to say that Nick isn’t being delivered back in that plane?”

“To a different location?”

“These landing areas get torn up. They’re just dirt tracks, only good for a few landings.”

Turner looked almost convinced which surprised Carson, who hadn’t even convinced himself.

“Mr. Carson, it looks like they’re going to make a landing.”

“Sir?” a hand shot up a few desks over. “I have what could be a truck about three miles out from that location.”

The specialist flicked the main screen to his colleague who had spotted a truck. The image was very poor due to the distance and quality of the Hawkeye’s camera but something moving was indeed visible.

“Well spotted,” said Carson. “Now people, let’s time this right. I want a flyover with faces in the open!”

Turner grabbed his cell and desperately tried to call Reid. Her cell was switched off. He turned to Carson. “I need to contact the CIA team!” he said urgently.

“We’re all DoD here I’m afraid,” smiled Carson. “CIA don’t trust us with their numbers.”

“Will someone get me in contact with the CIA plane!” shouted Turner in frustration.

“Deputy Director Turner, I have Barry for you,” called a voice from across the operations center floor. A CIA team member had heard Carson’s bullshit and contacted Barry to update him.

Carson looked at his watch and noted the progress of the CIA team in their plane. They were fifteen minutes out. His orders were clear. A clean kill. Nothing else was acceptable.

Carson willed the AN-24 plane to land. He needed to know who was on it before the CIA team had a chance to complicate matters.

Turner watched the same screen, willing the plane to take its time. He had been informed that the warren holes and tunnels were utter nonsense. The desert was a dark hole in surveillance without the need for any burrowing. Camps came and went in the millions of square miles of barren and featureless terrain. Stumbling across one on satellite imagery was the equivalent of winning the Powerball every week for a year. It just didn’t happen.

DoD had an agenda, one Turner was unaware of and one he certainly wasn’t going to sit back and let happen. He wanted Nick Geller in custody. Period.

The first moment Frankie knew there was an issue was when the CIA team leader started yelling at the pilots.

“Can’t this fucking thing go any faster?!”

The answer was as succinct; they were travelling as fast as they could.

The CIA Team Leader jotted down the new coordinates and walked into the cockpit, handing them over to the pilot. He took the note and set it aside. He had already altered their course.

“ETA twenty minutes,” he said, before the team leader could protest.

The team leader made his way back into the main body of the V-22 Osprey and was met by a sea of faces keen to know what was happening.

“Well?” prompted Frankie.

The team leader opted to let Barry update them. He dialed his number and hit the loudspeaker, explaining who was listening in.

“They’ve picked up another plane. We don’t know who’s on it but it seems Carson is hell bent on shooting the shit out of it,” said Barry, bringing them up to speed.

“And?”

“And there’s a chance it’s your boyfriend,” he said, immediately regretting taking out his frustration on Frankie.

“Uncalled for,” said Flynn, shaking his head in disgust.

“Pathetic,” said Reid.

Frankie remained unphased. Her boyfriend had died four days ago. The Nick Geller they were chasing was just a man she had known in a previous life.

“So what’s the rush, they’ll beat us—” she halted in mid-speech when she was suddenly thrown across the cabin and slammed into the side of the Osprey as it was blown across the sky, rocking wildly from a blast.

“You have a go,” said the DoD specialist from NCTC into the headset of the F18 pilots, thousands of miles away, above the Sudanese desert.

“Roger. Commencing reconnaissance run,” one replied, throwing the afterburners forward and rocketing towards the target. They had a two-minute window to catch the disembarking occupants while they waited for their inbound truck.

Staying just out of sight, they sped in low and would slow down over the area to ensure the best possible angles for the reconnaissance cameras to pick up even the tiniest detail on the pass.

“Watch the friendly ahead,” warned the first pilot to his wingman.

Both of their headsets buzzed to life. “Make sure they know you’re there,” ordered Carson, listening in and watching the scene play out thousands of miles away. “We wouldn’t want them getting in your way.”

Both pilots tweaked their direction slightly, thereby reducing the distance by which they would clear the Osprey. Within a second, both had blasted past the Osprey on either side at almost four times its speed. It rocked wildly and dangerously behind them.

“Shit! We may have cut that a little closer than we should,” said one of the pilots.

“Are they still in the air?” asked Carson.

The pilot looked back, just to make sure. “Yes.”

“Then you didn’t.”

Nearing the target, they began to slow down, aiming their cameras at the group of men scrambling on the ground to find cover at the sight of the US warplanes. A couple of bullets buzzed past the planes but it really was the equivalent of taking a knife to a gunfight, a very large and powerful gunfight.

“Okay, hang back while we check the images we have,” instructed Carson to the pilots.

With the new Caliph due to arrive any minute, Nick felt it was a good time to make a move. He had his video and the next phase of the plan was in place. The new Caliph was an issue but he was hoping that an enlightening conversation with his next group might elicit a change in the Caliph and a further endorsement of Nick and the original Caliph’s plan. Everything came down to money, and for Al Qaeda and a number of the fundamentalist groups Nick was looking to unite, that came from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

The four armed guards protecting Nasim’s small bunkroom were not a welcome sight. Nor was the information that Nasim would not be flying Nick anywhere by order of Ibrahim. Nasim was far easier to imprison than Nick and without him, Nick was trapped. It was a clever move by Ibrahim and far less confrontational than trying to imprison Nick.

Making his way to ‘discuss’ the situation with his ‘brother’, Nick heard a noise he shouldn’t have.

“Ibrahim!’ he shouted as loud as he could in the center of the camp.

Ibrahim appeared warily, a hundred yards away from the main building. He had no business being there other than to avoid Nick.

“Thunder,” he said, strolling casually towards a furious Nick.

Nick shook his head. “That, brother, was a fighter jet’s sonic boom.”

Ibrahim looked around the sky in a panic.

“Where is the Caliph’s landing strip?”

Ibrahim pointed to the area the clap of noise had emanated from.

“How far?”

“Twenty, thirty miles.”

Nick looked out across the empty sky. “They must have tracked him. Tell them to stay away from here!”

“I have no way to contact them,” Ibrahim shrugged despondently. “We will stand and fight!”

“They will massacre us. How can we fight warplanes!” replied Nick. “You have an evacuation plan?”

Ibrahim nodded.

“Well, let’s GO!”

Almost as soon as the faces were extracted from the images being beamed back by the F18s, the facial recognition software had identified them. Hit after hit confirmed the faces as the son of the former head of Al Qaeda Zahir Al Zahrani’s son and his bodyguards who were well known to the authorities.

Carson had a decision to make. With no identification of Nick and, as far as they could tell, every individual accounted for amongst the twenty two men that had landed in the AN-24, should he send in the jets or let Barry and the CIA and Delta team deal with them?

He checked his watch. Barry’s team was still ten minutes away.

“What’s the ETA on the truck?” he asked.

“Two minutes,” came the reply.

“Take it out.”

Twenty seconds later, a flash in the corner of the main screen was all the confirmation they needed. The truck was out of the equation.

“Mr. Carson?” One of the CIA analysts attached to the team had ventured over to the DoD area.

“Yes?” he replied distractedly.

“We’re hearing that Al Qaeda has chosen the young Zahrani to take over as leader.”

Carson spun back and stared at the collection of men cowering in the desert thousands of miles away, looking down like some kind of god deciding if they were to live or die. “Are we 100% confident that Al Zahrani is the new Caliph?”

The resounding answer was yes.
To kill or not to kill?
he asked himself.

“Turner, it looks like you may just grab yourself a genuine live and nasty Al Qaeda leader. If you don’t fuck it up!” Carson turned back to his team. “Tell the F18s to offer whatever support the ground team requires.”

“Holy shit!” Barry exclaimed as he was fed the news of their teams’ ‘Go’ to capture the new head of Al Qaeda. He called the V-22 Osprey and gave them the news. “Lock and load boys,” he said, adding quickly for Reid and Frankie’s benefit, “and girls! Ten minutes!”

Thanks to the F18s’ fly past, the Osprey pilot had an excellent image of the assault area. He altered course on their approach and came in behind the hill that obscured the landing site. A brief touchdown deposited the CIA and Delta teams out of sight of the terrorists before the Osprey continued up and over the hill. Armed with a .308 caliber mini-gun and .50 caliber Browning M2 machine gun, the Osprey could stand off in hover mode and lay down cover fire while the CIA and Delta teams initiated the assault on the ground.

Two snipers, one from each of the teams, were sent to the top of the small hill. They would provide targeted fire support for the two teams who would work their way around either side of the hill and perform a pincer movement. With the snipers on the hill and the Osprey on the other side of the landing zone, the terrorists were already boxed in, they just didn’t know it yet.

The snipers reached the small summit and were pleased to see almost half a mile of clear, open ground between them and the landing zone. Not great for their colleagues but for the snipers, they had the gift of an open field for targeting the terrorists. Just like the rest of the teams, they had all been shown the photo of Al Zahrani. He was the only target they had to avoid killing. Every other target before them was open season.

As a result of spotting the F18s, the terrorists had not ventured away from the landing area. None had braved the open ground, staying close to the plane instead, no doubt hopeful that the F18s would disappear and let them reboard their plane and depart.

The Delta sniper set up his AX338 sniper rifle, alongside his CIA counterpart’s McMillan TAC-338. Both approved each other’s choice with a nod before zeroing in on the terrorists before them.

“Target acquired,” the Delta sniper said into his mic, quickly adding, “Target down.”

“Target acquired. Tango down,” said the CIA sniper.

Delta sniper: “Target acquired. Tango down.”

The commentary continued. Ten jihadists ceased to exist before the other jihadists had managed to squirrel themselves away into safer positions, outside of the snipers’ view.

CIA sniper: “Osprey, could you please stir up the nest?”

The V-22 Osprey had been hovering just outside the terrorists’ small arms’ fire range and had stayed out of the fight. The pilot swung the Osprey around and the M2 opened up. The .50 caliber bullets tore into the ground and had a number of terrorists running for cover, the very cover that protected them from the snipers. The snipers, once again, began their duck shoot.

“Jesus, guys!” shouted Flynn into the mic, as the Delta and CIA team were about to enter the battlefield. “Leave something for us!”

With the snipers and the M2 pinning the terrorists down, the CIA and Delta teams had an easy run into the killing zone. Working in four four-man squads, two CIA and two Delta, the teams approached the last few entrenched terrorists. A small cluster of rocks had proved an excellent defensive position for Al Zahrani and his last four bodyguards. Impervious to the long distance fire, it was down to the assault teams to break down their resolve.

Flynn directed the two Delta teams who converged from the east while the CIA team leader directed his two four-man teams from the west. The bodyguards, armed with AK47s, tried in vain to halt the advance but the onslaught of the highly trained operatives converging on them was overwhelming. The individual teams worked in tandem. Two men laid down cover while the other two moved forward and repeated the procedure. The teams literally walked across the open desert floor without so much as a single bullet in response from the pinned down bodyguards. As the teams reached the opposite side of the rock cluster, a number of flash bangs preempted the final assault into the small area that held Al Zahrani, further neutralizing Al Zahrani’s loyal bodyguards. Despite the overwhelming odds, two of the bodyguards were suicidal enough to try and stop the capture. Both fell to the ground, three bullets apiece, double tap to the chest and a kill shot to the forehead just to make sure. His other bodyguards dropped their weapons, just as Al Zahrani had done himself. Al Qaeda had just lost its newest leader, even before the world knew who he was.