FIFTY-SEVEN
Haz Mirza had spent an hour shaving his body earlier in the day, in keeping with his religious beliefs. He would die within hours, and he wanted his corpse purified in Muslim tradition. He was certain he’d be denied a proper burial by the men who would kill him this afternoon, so as a display of personal purity for his trip to heaven, he shaved and cleaned himself thoroughly.
When this was done he’d dressed himself in a crisp white shirt, light green denim pants, and his best pair of Adidas running shoes, then checked his equipment in his backpack. His folding-stock AK was loaded with thirty rounds, with a second thirty-round magazine taped to the one in the magazine well for a quicker reload.
There were more magazines of 7.62-by-39-millimeter ammunition, as well as a Beretta semiautomatic pistol, loaded with 9-millimeter hollow points.
The pack also contained two improvised explosive devices that were small enough to be hurled once the delay fuse was struck. He didn’t know if he’d have enough time to set the fuses and to throw them, but he liked the idea of the potential damage the pipe bombs could add to the equation.
The rest of his team would be similarly armed, although two men also wore large, bulky suicide vests.
Of his nine men, he’d managed to cajole five into the operation. He was confident that four of that number would actually go through with it, but the questionable cell member, Mirza decided, would not dare threaten the operation by going to the polizei.
Today’s objective was not to achieve a tactical victory; with five or six men and no support from Tehran, this would be impossible. His objective was, rather, to make a loud and violent political statement.
And he was confident he would achieve that mission today.
At four p.m. he climbed aboard his red Vespa Primavera scooter and headed towards the center of Berlin, and at four fifty he sat outside a café on Wilhelmstrasse, just around the corner and down the street from the rear of the U.S. embassy. His heavy backpack rested on the sidewalk between his feet, and an Americano coffee remained untouched on the table in front of him.
He’d placed his mobile on the table next to it, with his Threema messaging app open. A new message flashed on the screen, and he lifted up the device.
The text filled him with excitement, pride, and terror.
Ten minutes, brother. In position.
His second-in-command would lead the first wave, though in truth, it wasn’t much of a wave with only four men. Still, Mirza’s plan had been designed to create maximum chaos with minimum personnel. The four men would park their car on Unter den Linden next to Pariser Platz, as close to the embassy as possible. They would climb out as one, and then they would all four spray Kalashnikov rounds at the men and women in sight at the front gate, and then at the windows on the upper floors beyond that.
Mirza knew the upper floors contained the offices of the senior members of the embassy, including the ambassador, Ryan Sedgwick. Sedgwick was a close friend and political confidant of the president of the United States. And although he held out no hope his operation would kill the ambassador himself, by targeting the upper floors, he knew he increased the likelihood he would kill someone in a position of power and thereby cause real pain to America.
Mirza would be a part of the second wave, or perhaps he alone would serve as the second wave, depending on whether Faisal showed up here at the café in the next five minutes. Either way, Mirza would wait until five p.m. exactly, and then he would sling his backpack in front of his chest, climb onto his scooter, and make the two-minute drive to the rear of the embassy. By then the attack would have begun in the front. He planned to pull his rifle even before he stopped, leap off the bike as it was still moving up the street, and shoot the two or three guards who stood on the sidewalk there. Then, if he was still standing, he would rake the upper rear windows of the embassy and shoot any Americans he saw running out the rear of the building.
If Faisal came, then they would double the damage, but even if he didn’t show, Mirza felt powerful, a warrior who could almost single-handedly bring the Great Satan to its knees today.
This was a martyrdom mission, for all of the men in the cell. Mirza held no illusions otherwise. But the twenty-four-year-old Iranian felt confident that his act of bravery would spur others on around the world.
Haz Mirza also knew that Tehran would vilify him, disavow him, discredit him. But he didn’t care. His God was not the god of European sanctions relief; his God was Allah, the one true God, and he only lamented that his nation’s leadership had replaced Allah, sacrificing Him on the altar of open trade.
He looked down at his phone and typed out a response.
I will see you in paradise, brother.
He took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly.
Mirza was in the middle of this calming technique as a man in a business suit appeared from behind him, stepped in front of him, and sat down at his little table. The Iranian was taken aback, but he tried to hide it. What does this asshole want?
“Ja und?” Yeah? Mirza said in German.
The man leaned closer and gave off an insincere smile. In Farsi he said, “Good afternoon, brother. My name is Tarik. I know you don’t think you have time to talk to me right now, but I assure you, this is a conversation we need to have.”
Mirza started to reach for his bag on the ground between his feet.
The man wagged a finger in the air in front of him. “There are two men with rifles pointed at your head. If you draw that Beretta pistol you keep in your messenger bag, they will have no choice but to kill you, and that would be a great shame.”
Mirza swallowed hard, then did as he was told. Somehow, he and his men had been uncovered.
He had no idea who this stranger was. He wasn’t German, and he wasn’t American. He appeared to be an Arab, but he wasn’t speaking Arabic. In fact, he spoke excellent Farsi.
“What do you want?” the Iranian asked, his hand still lingering next to his backpack under the table.
“What you and your brothers are about to do is admirable. I support it in theory, even though your own nation does not.” He smiled. “I have personal experience with my nation’s leadership not appreciating me and my talents, but I won’t bore you with my story.”
Mirza moved his hand closer to the bag again. His Beretta APX Centurion pistol was in an outside pocket, just out of reach. “I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.”
Mirza’s eyes narrowed. “Do not reach for that gun, brother.”
“And if I do?”
“Do I really need to remind you of the men with rifles?”
“You are bluffing. There are no men.”
The man calling himself Tarik smiled, and he raised his left hand. One second later Mirza squinted his eyes shut in pain as multiple lasers targeted them. When he turned away from the light, the lasers turned off as quickly as they’d come on.
“Satisfied?”
Mirza thought of going for the gun anyway, diving to the ground. Surely he could get a single shot off into the chest of the man sitting at the little table here before he was killed.
But he didn’t move. “What is this about . . . brother?” Mirza asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm on the last word.
“Your nation has turned its back on you. It is weak, you said it yourself last night.”
“You are listening to my—”
“We know everything. And we can help you. This act today that you have planned, you think it is a blow to the enemy’s gut, but it is nothing. You and your men will all be killed before you make it to the gates. There will be no Shia retaliatory uprising. There will also be no glory in having your body ripped apart by lead in the open street, shot by eighteen-year-old American Marines on a rooftop.”
Tarik continued. “But if you simply come with me now, then I will help you exact the retribution you seek from the Great Satan.”
Mirza looked around. Rush-hour traffic clogged Wilhelmstrasse. He asked, “How will you do that?”
“You are strong-willed, well trained. Motivated. The rest of your team . . . lazy fools. I know you fought in Afghanistan, then led a platoon in Libya, a company in Yemen. You are a leader. You just need a different set of men under you.”
“My men are brave lions.”
Tarik sniffed out a little laugh, looked down at a Hublot watch on his wrist that Mirza imagined cost more than he’d make in five years driving tractor-trailers in Germany.
The Arab said, “Not for long, they’re not.”
“You will see,” Mirza said, but he recognized that the fact that this man knew about the impending attack made it likely others would know, and the four men rushing the embassy in three minutes would be cut down as soon as they climbed out of their car.
Tarik said, “Let me tell you what we are going to do. You and I will get up together, and we will go somewhere to talk. Your men will act without you, and they will fail, but you will live on to fight another day.”
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“All will become apparent when I take you to see what I have prepared for you.”
“You want to attack America, too?”
“Of course I do. More than you, perhaps, my young friend. But where you have all the heart in the world, I have the resources to put your talent to use.”
Mirza was bewildered by all this, but he looked over his shoulder, in the direction of the embassy. “If you have the power to save me, why don’t you save them?”
“Because I don’t need them. I need you, a leader. And you, the leader, you need men. I have men for you. Good men. Trained men. Your men.”
“My men?”
“Quds Force operatives. Strong. Brave. Committed. Forged by combat. Just like yourself.”
“Where are these men?”
“Here, brother. We will go and meet them today. And tomorrow, tomorrow you will do that which your nation is too afraid to do. That which you could never do alone.”
The two men stood slowly; Mirza could feel his legs shaking under him. It wasn’t fear, not completely anyway; it was the sense that everything was now out of his hands.
Tarik said, “Leave your pack and your phone. One of my men will get them.”
A black four-door BMW pulled to the curb, and an Arab man in a dark blue suit climbed out of the rear passenger side, stepped over to the table, and hefted the backpack without looking at the Iranian sitting there. He snatched the phone off the table, as well, and returned to the car.
Behind the BMW were three Mercedes SUVs, their windows blacked out. A rear door opened on the first SUV, and Tarik led Mirza towards it.
The young Iranian felt naked and alone as he walked, but he saw no other options.
And then, just as he lowered his head to fold himself into the vehicle, he heard the sound of gunfire over his left shoulder. It was blocks away. Still, it thumped loudly on the street.
Mirza could instantly identify the sound of one of the guns from his time in Afghanistan. It was an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon.
His men did not have this gun; it was an American gun.
Tarik stepped up behind him. “They are martyred to give you the opportunity to fulfill the mission that they themselves could not.”
Mirza looked at the Arab, and then he climbed into the car, pounding gunfire still buffeting the street around him.
Hades and Thor both took their eyes out of their rifle scopes as soon as the SUV door shut and they lost sight of their target, then began breaking down their operation as they looked back over their shoulder towards the sound of gunfire.
Thor said, “Hope them Marines fuck up those terrorists.”
“Sounds like they’re doing just that.”
“Get some!” Thor shouted now.
They headed back to their transport vehicle as Tarik, the man Mirza had been speaking with outside the café, and the rest of Tarik’s men all rolled off to the south.
“What do you think all that was about?” Thor asked.
“Dunno,” Hades answered, then added, “Don’t care.”
“I heard that. What’s next?”
“Tarik said we go back to the safe house and prep ourselves for extract.”
“We’re going back to Dubai?”
“Eventually, yeah. We wait for Tarik to finish whatever the fuck he’s doing here, and then we’ll fly back on his jet.”
“Shit, I was kind of liking it here.”
“Same,” said Hulett. “Still, we’ve wasted some terrorists, and we were even nice enough to leave a few for the Marines. I’d say we can be happy about what we’ve done.”
“And we got paid,” Thor added.
“Shit, yeah, we did,” said Hades with a grin.