THIRTEEN

TWO WEEKS EARLIER

The massive Russian-built Mi-17 helicopter raced low, flying north over flat Yemeni scrubland in the dark, until the dawn’s early light opened up the sky and hinted at a massive expanse of desert ahead.

In the back, a man looked out a portal in the cabin imagining this very area two years earlier, when the heaviest fighting took place in the region, and then he shut his eyes, shuddering from the thought.

He’d not seen it himself; he’d been in Aden, to the west, at the time, but out here in the desert, not far from where he now flew, his brother had lost his life.

The man in the Russian helo was Sultan al-Habsi, but he had adopted the code name Tarik in the field. He was forty-seven years old, and he was the deputy director of operations for the SIA, Signals Intelligence Agency, the spy service of the United Arab Emirates.

After a moment, Sultan opened his eyes again and looked around the cabin, telling himself that, as the chief clandestine intelligence officer for the UAE, he would not think of his older brother Zayad today, only his mission.

He took a few deep breaths and realized that although a little sadness had crept into his thoughts, his overwhelming sensation was one of excitement. This was a great day, the beginning of his life’s purpose.

He would make his father proud, and his father was the crown prince of Dubai and the ruler of the United Arab Emirates.

Sultan al-Habsi might have been his father’s son, but he had been created by the CIA. The elder al-Habsi had been supported by the Agency for decades, and the son was brought along through academia and through the UAE military with an eye on a career in the intelligence services of his nation.

It was his destiny.

The Americans had always maintained good working relationships with the UAE in intel matters, but after 9/11, the necessity for “friends” in the Middle East grew exponentially, as did the amount of money the Agency was willing to spend on its allies’ intelligence services. At the time the UAE had little to offer, but the Americans decided their needs in the region were so great, they would design and build up an entire spy service for the Emirates, and then they would train local personnel to staff it.

The son of the ruler of Dubai was on every list the Americans had for quality candidates. He was unknown, having eschewed what little spotlight there was on the royal family in Dubai. He was smart, a polyglot, and well educated. And his father wanted him in the role.

Sultan spent months in the United States training with the CIA, and then he moved up the ranks of the SIA quickly, finally being chosen by his father to lead covert ops five years earlier.

Rashid al-Habsi had told his son what he wanted from the outset. As far as the father was concerned, the chasing of Al Qaeda on behalf of the Americans was just a sideshow; AQ was no great threat to Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Muscat. No, the real threat was Shia expansion; it had been so since the 1970s and it would be so until the day Iran was wiped from the face of the Earth. At that time, the Iraqi Shias and Lebanese Shias and Syrian Shias and any other Shias anywhere on the planet would again know their place: as impotent outsiders.

That was the goal of Rashid al-Habsi, and thus it also became the goal of all three of his sons. Zayad, the oldest, became an army infantry colonel. Saed, the youngest, worked in the diplomatic corps for the nation in Yemen, and the middle child, Sultan, took over the operational wing of the nation’s intelligence services.

All three brothers were in Yemen during the UAE’s proxy war there. Saed, the diplomat, worked at the embassy in Sana, and had been killed in a rocket attack three years earlier. And then, just over a year ago, Colonel Zayad al-Habsi, Sultan’s older brother, was killed in combat near the town of Ataq, when sappers made their way into his command post and detonated suicide vests.

The two surviving Rashid men, father and son, knew without question that the Houthi rebels had not coordinated either of these two attacks on their own. It was obvious the work had been done by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, specifically their clandestine unit known as Quds Force.

Neither seventy-year-old Rashid nor forty-seven-year-old Sultan had needed any more incentive to despise Iran, but the deaths of Zayad and Saed only poured gas on the flames of their hatred.

As his helicopter landed on the sand-strewn helipad at Ataq airport, his mind was now keenly tuned to his objective this morning. He wanted to be in and out of here in an hour, no more, and then head directly back to Dubai. There was still much to plan, but Sultan knew the importance of strong leadership in cajoling the rank and file into sacrifice, so he’d made this trip in person.

He climbed off the aircraft, accompanied by four Signals Intelligence operatives, as well as Hades and three more of the American mercenaries he had working for him. The Emiratis climbed into one large armored SUV with a driver waiting behind the wheel, and the Americans folded into an identical model that trailed behind.

The Americans were here to serve as additional bodyguards for al-Habsi, although none of them knew exactly where they were heading this morning. But Sultan knew, and when they took off south from the airport, every fiber of his being tingled and itched, so ready was he to get on with it.

The drive was less than ten minutes. Just south of the N17 highway, on the far side of a hill that shielded it from the road three hundred meters distant, they turned down a gravel drive before cresting the hill and continuing down on the other side.

And then he saw it. Sultan’s destination was a clandestine prison, a black site run by the UAE’s Signals Intelligence Agency. He had never been here in person, but he’d read the names and histories of every one of the prisoners kept here, and they, not his SIA staff at the location, would be his audience this morning.

The SUVs ground to a halt on the gravel road near the low and nondescript, yet large, concrete building.

Sultan walked up to Hades and his men as soon as they climbed out of their vehicle. “You will remain here.”

Hades nodded, then cocked his head a little. “You gonna tell me where here is?”

“This is a holding facility for Iranian forces captured during the war. I am here on an intelligence collection mission. That’s all you need to know.”

If the American mercenary had any questions as to why the UAE’s intelligence chief would need to come in person to interrogate some prisoner in the middle of a war zone, he made no mention of it. He and his men fanned out, kept their hands resting on the rifles across their chests, and looked out to the distance for any threats.

The guards outside the front doors to the facility lowered their weapons, and Sultan and two of the SIA men headed through the building and out into the small asphalt courtyard in the center.

Here a group of prisoners had been assembled; they stood in a sloppy line, and many shielded their eyes from the sun, having only just moments ago been allowed out into the light this morning. They wore clean white jumpsuits, all had new sandals on their feet, and four armed guards ringed the perimeter with weapons.

Sultan looked at the men, walking up and down the line as if at a parade inspection. He was pleased. He knew they had all been given double rations, and exercised every day, for the past five weeks. They were still POWs, but they were all in fighting shape.

He had personally chosen every one of the men for his mission, wading through dossiers on the fifty-two prisoners here, selecting only fifteen for the operation he had in mind. They were the cream of the crop, or at least the best enemy soldiers the UAE had managed to capture alive.

Tarik knew who these men were. They were the true believers. Iranian fighters who were only too happy to race off to Yemen to fight with the Houthi rebels against America, the Jews, the Saudis, and the UAE. They weren’t intelligence agents, they weren’t intelligence officers, they were gunmen, but they were directly tied to Quds, and that made them perfect for Sultan’s objectives.

These men had been captured on the battlefield and kept here, some for years. They were committed and angry, and for Tarik they would be a difficult-to-manage, but incredibly potent, weapon of war.

He raised his fist in the air in front of them and shouted, “Allahu akhbar!” God is greater!

The fifteen men just stared at him in confusion. Some had assumed they were about to be shot when they were brought from their cells and lined up, although others thought it would just be another day in the courtyard doing calisthenics.

“Allahu akhbar!” Tarik shouted again. These men spoke Farsi, not Arabic, but while Allahu akhbar was Arabic, it was a ubiquitous chant.

The second time around some of the men repeated it softly.

Tarik shouted a third time, and now all voices joined in. The men were no less confused, but they were, at least, aware this stranger was trying to build a chorus.

Sultan put his arm down now. In Farsi he said, “My name is Tarik.” He spoke passable Farsi, a product of years of training, focusing on one nation, on one foe.

“My brothers. It is a great morning. You all have earned your freedom.”

The men looked at one another in utter confusion now, some still shielding their eyes from the orange sunrise.

He continued. “But you are not going home to Iran. Instead you will join me, your Muslim brother, in the existential fight against the West. We will deliver a blow straight into the heart of Europe, and together we will bring the Kaffir to their knees.”

Still, no one spoke. They’d all been sufficiently psychologically damaged while in captivity to the point where no leader rose among them to question the stranger with the Arabic accent.

“You are no longer prisoners,” Sultan al-Habsi continued. “You are confederates in our struggle. Mujahedin. Together we will combine our abilities, and we will be victorious, inshallah!”

One man finally spoke up. “The heart of Europe, you say?”

“Balé.” Yes, Tarik answered in Farsi.

“We will fight?” asked another.

“You will fight bravely, my brother. You all will. I have selected a righteous target, the destruction of which will do so much more to our mutual enemy than ten thousand of you brave fighters could accomplish here in Yemen.”

A new man spoke up. “You are Emirati. You are our enemy.”

Sultan had been expecting this. “Here, yes. I have been your enemy. That is true. But our mutual foe is of much greater importance to me—and should be to you—than any quarrel we have between one another. Tehran has left you here to die, and that is a disgrace, but Tehran will shine with prideful eyes on you for what you are about to achieve.”

“What is our target?” the same man asked.

“You will be armed and briefed, and you will be transported and housed. Then, a short time from now, you will conduct a coordinated attack in Germany. In Berlin. But your target, my brothers, is the nation that put you here. That took your lives from you.”

“Saudi Arabia?” one asked.

“UAE?” said another.

Tarik shook his head. “America.”

There was a pause, and then some fresh chants of Allahu akhbar, this time without Sultan having to lead the choir.

When the voices died down, one man stepped forward.

“I will not fight for your cause.”

Al-Habsi walked over to him, stood close. “You refuse to join your comrades, to wage holy war on the Great Satan?”

“If my commander orders me to, I will. But my commander is not here. Only you. A Sunni.”

Al-Habsi nodded thoughtfully, then turned and looked to the director of the black site. In Arabic he said, “You heard his wish. Put him back. Do not punish him. He is free to give his life away for nothing, instead of giving his life for the jihad.”

Guards rushed forward, took the man roughly by the arms, and dragged him back through a doorway in the corner of the courtyard. The fourteen remaining men watched this, and then all eyes turned back to the one called Tarik.

“He will not be joining us. A pity for him, but better this than to have a weak-willed fighter on your shoulder as you enter battle.”

“Is this a martyrdom operation?” a man at the end of the line asked.

Tarik walked to him, looked him over, then said, “If it is?”

The man’s chin rose, his eyes narrowed. “So be it, inshallah.”

The Emirati put his hand on the prisoner’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze along with a broad smile. “The answer to this question is, I do not know. It is my wish that we complete our mission, achieve our objective, and remain in this world for any fighting that follows. But the truth is, you might all die in glorious combat.”

He looked up and down the row of men, and he realized that, with only the one exception who had been returned to the darkness, he had chosen his fighters well. They hated him, that would never change, but he was giving them a chance for purpose, and for that they would die for him if the mission called for it.

And, more importantly, looking these men over, he knew one more thing. Each and every one of them was a killer. He could see it on their faces.

Sultan left the prison a half hour later, certain that he had the proxy fighters he needed.

Now, he just had to get them into Europe without them being detected, because they were known Quds operators, and anything they did would inevitably leave a trail back to Iran.