WELLS REACHED INTO THE POCKETS OF THE DEAD man’s gown, came out with sticky, bloody fingers and a ring that held two dull metal keys. A tap on his shoulder pulled him up. Gaffan pointed to the barracks, raised a finger: One. Inside.
Wells stepped to the left side of the open barracks doorway. He heard a nervous scuffling, the slow breathing of a man trying too hard to be quiet. Gaffan stood across the doorway. Wells tapped his chest, pointed inside, indicating he’d go in first. He lowered his AK, pulled his pistol and flashlight.
Gaffan nodded: When you’re ready. Wells stepped inside and—
Dove sideways as a half-dozen rounds studded the concrete above him. He cut the flashlight, crawled beneath a cot, fired twice blindly into the corner. He didn’t have much chance, but with the silencer he didn’t have to worry about giving away his position. Gaffan tilted his rifle into the doorway and fired three shots.
“Surrender,” Wells said. The jihadi fired again, banging shots over Wells’s head. “Surrender. Save yourself.”
Wells wanted to keep at least one jihadi alive. With the lieutenant dying, this guy looked like their only chance. But they were short on time. The militia was probably already coming. “Grenade,” Wells called to Gaffan.
“Grenade?” the jihadi said. He sounded young. And spooked.
“Three seconds. One—two—”
“I surrender.” A man stood.
Wells caught him in the flashlight beam. He looked unhurt, aside from minor cuts on his legs. “Raise your hands.” Gaffan covered as the man came forward, hands high. Halfway to the door, the man reached up—
And turned on a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.
The room was simple and spare, with thirty cots, fifteen against each long wall. Each cot had a wooden peg pounded into the wall above it. Most were empty, but AKs hung from four. Wooden shelves at the back held a mix of Western and Arab clothes, along with several pairs of the heavy leather sandals that Saudis favored. One shelf held a half-dozen copies of the Quran and other books that might have been infantry manuals in Arabic. Four photos of the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba were taped up, no other decoration.
“Lie down. Face-first.”
He did. Gaffan threw handcuffs on him, and Wells pulled him up and tugged him out. Up close, the guy was young and pitiful, with tiny acne scars; a flat, wide nose; and a scraggly beard. He wore plain white underwear and a dirty gray T-shirt. His arms were scrawny and his legs nearly hairless. The runt of the litter. Probably the reason he’d stayed in the barracks.
Outside, he licked his lips nervously as he saw the lieutenant’s body. Wells dragged him away from the carnage, pushed him down, waved Gaffan over. “Guard him,” Wells whispered. “See if he’ll talk. And we only use Arabic when he’s around.”
“What are you doing?”
Wells nodded up the hill at the farmhouse.
“John—listen.”
Wells heard a diesel engine, distant but growing stronger. He nodded. And ran.
HE FOUND THE FRONT half of the farmhouse turned into a makeshift classroom, a dozen desks arranged before twin whiteboards. Wells turned them over, but they were blank on both sides. He imagined lessons about weapons, basic infantry tactics.
A door at the back led to the kitchen. Inside, two refrigerators hummed. The counters were spotless, and so were the glasses and plates that filled the rough wooden shelves. These guys handled KP duty themselves, no need for Halliburton. So far, Wells had found nothing but proof of a well-run camp. The person who’d created this place had been through advanced infantry training and served in a real army for years.
Upstairs, three doors came off the landing. The first led to an empty bedroom. The ubiquitous poster of the shrine at Mecca filled one wall. Shirts and jeans and two thobeS hung in the closet. But the room smelled faintly musty, as if it hadn’t been used for weeks.
The second door was locked. Wells tried the larger of the two keys he’d found in the lieutenant’s pockets. It slid in smoothly, and he stepped inside. The bedroom was smaller than the first. A thin black blanket was piled at the foot of the bed, the only sign of mess Wells had seen in the house. A green duffel sat on the floor. Wells reached in and found a dark blue uniform. The uni didn’t have name tags or rank insignia. But on its right biceps, it had a black patch with the words “Special Forces” stitched in Arabic in gold. And on the left, a triangular version of the Saudi flag.
He flipped over the duffel bag. Shiny black leather boots clattered to the floor, followed by a black leather belt, elbow and knee pads, goggles, heavy plastic gloves, and an open-face ski mask. Wells wasn’t sure if he was looking at a real Saudi Special Forces uniform or just a very good copy.
The rest of the room was unremarkable. The closet held more gowns, two shirts, two pairs of pants. A wooden desk was empty except for a Quran, a pocket-sized green notebook, and a Saudi passport in the name of Talib al-Majood. Wells stuffed the notebook and passport into his windbreaker.
He checked his watch. Two-twelve. He’d been up here five minutes already. He peeked out the bedroom’s narrow window, which looked east toward the center of the valley. The diesel engine was closer now, though he couldn’t see any lights. He was putting a lot of faith in the gate. Too much, probably.
He hustled for the third door. It was locked. Neither key worked.
Wells pulled his pistol, fired two shots at the doorjamb. He raised a leg and kicked through the door, tearing it from the lock. He twisted against the wall of the corridor, away from the door, in case someone was inside, though he hadn’t heard anything, and anyone in the house would probably have joined the firefight long ago.
Inside, a simple office. Two steel desks sat back-to-back. A black Ethernet cable was coiled on the floor, but Wells didn’t see a computer. A black-painted supply cabinet sat beside the door. Wells pulled the handle. Locked. He tried the second, smaller key. After a moment’s hesitation, it fit.
The cabinet had four steel shelves. Weapons and boxes of ammunition cluttered the top two: AKs and two partially disassembled M-16s. On the third shelf, two shoe boxes. The first held credit cards, cell phones, and two car keys, one Chevy and one Toyota. The second was filled with wads of one-hundred-dollar and twenty-dollar bills held with tatty rubber bands, along with a dozen passports—all Saudi, except for one Jordanian. Wells took the car keys but left everything else.
A nasty-looking short-barrel assault rifle with a wide, angular stock lay on the bottom shelf. Wells thought the rifle was a Heckler& Koch. Gun nuts loved H&K. So did Deltas. Which meant that the Saudi Special Forces units probably used them. These men had gone to great lengths to impersonate Saudi soldiers. Or else, even worse, they really were Saudi soldiers.
In the desks, he found an engineering textbook in Arabic, a copy of a helicopter operations manual, detailed maps of Mecca and Medina and Riyadh, uniform name tags and patches, and what looked like day passes for a Saudi military base. He scanned the place once more, hoping for a laptop, but it was gone or hidden too well for him to find.
He grabbed the duffel bag from the second bedroom and threw the shoe boxes and the junk from the desk inside it. He took a last look around the office. If he had another hour, or even a few more minutes… But he didn’t. He heard faint shouts, men’s voices cutting through the dry night air.
The militia must be at the gate.
Time to go.
AS HE LOPED DOWN the ridge toward Gaffan, Wells remembered how he’d once thought that a firefight in Afghanistan belonged in a Goya painting, a vision of hell on earth. The scene below him was less obviously violent but more surreal. Gaffan stood next to the Suburban, holding the arm of the jihadi they’d captured. His touch might have seemed almost friendly, brothers getting ready for a road trip—if not for the thick black hood that Gaffan had pulled over the kid’s head. Five bodies were sprawled behind them. To the north, the crashed Suburban lay on its side, an elephant felled by an unseen dart. Norman Rockwell, as commissioned by the Devil.
Around the corner, metal tore at metal, a heavy groaning sound.
Wells reached the Suburban, handed Gaffan the duffel bag and the key to the Toyota. “See if it’ll start. Take the bag and him with you.” He grabbed an AK from one of the dead jihadis, then unlocked the Suburban and slipped the key into the ignition. Despite the bullet holes in the engine block, it started smoothly.
Wells turned on the Suburban’s lights, put the truck in gear, angled it so it faced up the rocky ridge that led to the farmhouse. The ridge stretched at least two miles past the house, ending only at the flanks of the Lebanon range. He grabbed the clothesline from his pants, ran it through the steering wheel, behind the driver’s headrest, back through the wheel. He knotted it tight to minimize the play of the wheel.
On the other side of the hill, another collision. Then an orchestral crash that could only be the gate going over. The militia wouldn’t need long to move it out of the road. Wells checked that the AK’s safety was on. He jammed the butt of the rifle against the gas pedal and shoved the muzzle against the front of the seat. The pedal flexed down and the truck took off, heading up the hill.
Wells dove out of the truck, landing hard on his right shoulder, which had taken more than its share of abuse over the years. A bolt of lightning exploded down his arm. He guessed he’d dislocated his shoulder again. He ran for the Toyota, pulled open the front passenger door, slid inside, his arm loose at his side.
THE JIHADI THEY’D CAPTURED wasn’t in the car. Wells heard a faint banging coming from the trunk. Gaffan drove silently, heading over the ridge south of the barracks, the same way he’d approached. Wells peeked back at the Suburban. The truck was headed up the hill. The militia would naturally chase it first.
They topped the ridge, and the Toyota thumped over one of the men that Gaffan had killed a few minutes before. Wells banged his shoulder against the passenger door. Another bolt of lightning down his arm. Wells gritted his teeth.
“You think that’ll work, buy us extra time?”
“You think we left intel back there?”
“Probably.”
“This turned into a real shitshow. A Delta crew would have done it right. Or your guys.”
Wells didn’t want to argue. He wanted to sit in the dark with his eyes closed and count the seconds until he could pop his shoulder back into place. But he needed Gaffan to understand. “You still don’t get it. Nobody but us was going near that camp. DoD or the agency wouldn’t send men in unless they were sure of finding an active cell on the other end. Too risky. Too many lawyers saying no. And in a couple days, a week at most, there wasn’t gonna be any place to raid. They were moving out.”
Gaffan didn’t answer. Wells didn’t know whether he’d accepted the truth or was just tired of arguing.
Three minutes later, they reached the Jeep. High on the ridge to the northwest, Wells saw a low fire. The SUV had crashed. The militia would have found it was empty by now and would be figuring out where to go next. No doubt they would reach the logical conclusion: south. Wells and Gaffan had a decent head start, but they would probably radio ahead to their units in Baalbek. They wouldn’t know exactly what they were looking for, but they would block the main valley road anyway.
Wells and Gaffan had to get out of the valley before daybreak, back to the coast. Fortunately, the mountain checkpoints were manned by the Lebanese army, which ran independently of Hezbollah. Or so Wells hoped.
Gaffan stopped beside the Jeep, but Wells put a hand on his arm. “No.” Switching cars would take time they didn’t have, and they were better off leaving the jihadi in the trunk.
They left the Jeep behind, headed east on a low gravel road that was shielded from the mountains. “Where to?” Gaffan said.
“South, then west, when you can. We’ll take the road that runs up high on the ridge.”
“Then south again?”
“North.”
“Back toward the camp.”
“Yeah, but west and above it. There’s a pass that cuts through the mountains north of here. We’ll get to the other side, close to the coast, ditch the car.” Wells left the next question unspoken: Then what?
“Then what?” Gaffan said.
Wells wanted to find a place to hide, talk to the kid and then to Shafer about what they’d found. But the militia wouldn’t need long to trace the Jeep. Wells was on a fake passport, but Gaffan wasn’t. By sunrise, every militiaman in Lebanon would be after them. Maybe the cops, too, if Hezbollah decided it wanted the government to be in on the search. If the militia captured them, it might execute them on the spot. Being arrested wouldn’t be much better. Wells wasn’t eager to spend the rest of his life in a Lebanese jail. And they wouldn’t get any help from the agency, not without firm evidence that connected these jihadis to the earlier attacks. Which they didn’t have.
“Back to the coast. The boat. Unless you want to stay in Lebanon.”
“I’ll pass.” Gaffan turned right along a narrow gravel road and right again at a silent village that was no more than a few concrete shacks at a four-way intersection. They were on pavement now. They rose through three switchbacks and intersected a narrow two-lane road that ran north-south along the flanks of the range. Gaffan made a right, taking them north. Wells saw headlights along the valley floor to the east, but the escape plan had worked for now. The road through the village was quiet. It was possible that no one was after them because the militia were trying to figure out what had happened at the camp.
The ridge road had no guardrails, not even a white line to mark the edge of the pavement. It simply broke into gravel and fell away. Gaffan had no choice but to flip on his headlights and slow down. Wells checked his watch again. Two fifty-eight a.m. A long night behind, a long night ahead. And six more bodies to add to his inventory.
“You bust your shoulder again?” Gaffan had been in Afghanistan when Wells dislocated the joint the first time.
Wells didn’t want to think about his shoulder. “You get anything from the kid?”
“His name. Meshaal. Other than that… He’s scared out of his mind. You saw him. Not exactly the first team. I don’t think he knows much.”
“We’ll see.”
SOON AFTER THEY CRESTED the pass at Qammouaa, Wells saw houses to the west. Farmers and tribesmen had lived in the valleys between the Lebanon range and the coast for thousands of years. Fortunately, the road stayed empty as it swept northwest, curving around a hillside. Beneath them, villages glowed in the dark all the way to the Mediterranean. To the right, a gravel road led to an unfinished mansion, rebar poking from its second floor. Three forty-five a.m. Even the most dedicated fishermen wouldn’t be up for at least another hour. Wells tapped Gaffan.
“Up there.”
Gaffan swept the wheel right and bounced them up the road, which circled behind the mansion to a half-built garage. “Nice and quiet. First smart move tonight.”
“Chain-of-command, please. No backtalk.”
Outside, the air was cool and dry. Wells relaxed enough to feel just how exhausted he was. And how dirty. Sweat curdled on his skin. Dried blood covered his forehead. A steady fire burned from his biceps to his fingertips. If he didn’t fix his shoulder soon, the nerves would be permanently damaged.
“Help me,” he said to Gaffan.
Gaffan looked doubtful.
“I’ll show you.” Wells put Gaffan’s left hand on the outer edge of his shoulder, the right on the meat of his biceps. He put his own left hand between them.
“On three, you push up and forward. I’ll guide it.”
“Don’t I need an M.D. for this? At least a nursing degree?”
“Hard. On three. One. Two. Three—”
Gaffan pushed. Wells closed his eyes, and the world was nothing but pain—and he guided his arm up, up, and—
Into the socket and relief. He leaned against the Toyota, tears flaring from his eyes.
“Didn’t hurt a bit,” Gaffan said.
A thump from the trunk spared Wells from having to reply. They popped the trunk and tugged the jihadi—Meshaal—out. He started to crumple, but Gaffan put a shoulder under him. Wells pulled off the hood, and Meshaal blinked in the moonlight, his lips blubbering. Wells wondered how the jihadis had planned to use Meshaal. Maybe as a suicide bomber. He wouldn’t be much of a soldier. But he wasn’t screaming, and he hadn’t tried to take off. He might be manageable.
“Can you stand, Meshaal?”
The kid nodded, not asking how Wells knew his name.
“Stand, then.” Meshaal firmed his knees.
“How old are you, Meshaal?”
“Twenty.”
“Really, how old?”
“Eighteen.”
Nobody senior would have told him anything, not intentionally. But he’d surely picked up information. Wells needed to shake it out—without hurting him. Torture was off the table. Lie, steal, kill, no problem. But no torture. Not after what had happened in Jamaica. And especially not after the Midnight House.
Then he had an idea, a way to use the fact that they spoke Arabic and had come in without helicopters or fancy equipment or uniforms. The lie would work only if the kid wanted to believe. But Wells thought he might.
“Take off Meshaal’s handcuffs. We can tell him now.”
“Tell him.” But Gaffan made the words a statement, not a question, and uncuffed Meshaal.
“Meshaal, do you know who we are? We’re from”—Wells pointed over the mountain, east—“Pakistan. Do you understand?”
Meshaal shook his head.
“Sheikh bin Laden sent us to find you.”
“Sheikh bin Laden.”
“These men you trained with, they’re not part of his plan. You are.”
“Those were my brothers.”
“They said they were your brothers, but they were traitors to the cause. That’s why they treated you so badly.”
Meshaal stepped back. “You know about that?”
“Of course. We’ve been watching.”
A unit this size had to have an outcast. Put twenty men together—whether at a frat house or a training camp—and group dynamics demanded a pariah. A zeta male. Meshaal fit the role perfectly.
“But you killed them.”
“We had to. We talked to them, but they wouldn’t listen. And this mission that they’re on, the sheikh doesn’t want it. Do you understand?”
Meshaal bobbed his head slowly.
“But you put me in the trunk. You put a hood on me!”
“There wasn’t time to explain then. We did this to free you. All of it. Now we have to go. And you’re coming. So you need to put on the pants and shoes we have for you”—the blue uniform pants and boots, which Wells hoped would fit—“and then you sit with us in the car. We’re going to the coast, and we have a ship to take us away. After that, we’re going to have a lot of questions for you.”
“Then where are we going?” Meshaal was suddenly enthusiastic. He could choose to believe he was with two men who had killed everyone he trained with and were going to kill him, too—or two men who had rescued him from his misery at the orders of Osama bin Laden, the ultimate jihadi hero. Soon enough, the holes in the story would become too obvious for him to ignore. But for now he was rolling with it, and Wells wanted to encourage him.
“I’m not supposed to tell you that. But can I trust you?”
Meshaal nodded.
“Swear to Allah that I can trust you.”
“I swear to Allah. You can trust me.”
“We’re going to Gaza. A special mission.”
“Gaza.”
“Yes. Let’s go. But no more questions until we get out to sea. No talking at all.”
Without another word, Meshaal pulled on the boots and the pants, which were a size small and made him look even sillier than before. He slid in next to Gaffan. Between the three of them the Toyota smelled so bad that Wells could hardly breathe. But no matter. They lowered its windows and rolled down the hill toward the coast. Toward the sea. And escape.