Violence of Action Read online

  “We’ve all been operating off of a lot of assumptions,” Chunk said, “But what just happened back there was real and I think it’s a red flag. And there’s more . . .”

  “Like what?”

  “You said this guy has been a complete nothing in interrogation, right?”

  “That’s right,” Lannon said. “He just mumbles scripture.”

  “But when we engaged him on Mingora, he easily confirmed the locations at Saidu Sharif Airport and the safe house in Kanju. Why would he do that?”

  “Because you told me you didn’t think he was Hamza al-Saud,” Watts said, slowly nodding. “He was worried we thought we had the wrong guy, so he talked enough to validate his legend.”

  “That’s right, and another thing,” Chunk continued. “When I pivoted to the safe house in Kanju where we whacked those guys ahead of the hit on the hangar, his reaction was totally inconsistent. When we brought up the hangar, he was filled with rage and pain—those were men he knew and maybe his brothers in arms. But when I brought up the dudes in the safe house, his reaction was more clinical. He steeled himself and stared straight ahead at the wall.”

  “It might have been new information to him,” Watts said.

  Chunk nodded. “Exactly, or if not, I bet he didn’t know those guys like the real Hamza would have.”

  “And the real Hamza definitely knew about the hit in Kanju, because it was the hit on the safe house that sparked the evacuation of the hangar.”

  “Exactly,” Chunk said, while Lannon looked back and forth between them like he was watching a tennis match.

  “Wait a minute,” Lannon said, getting up to speed. “If the guy in the cell isn’t Hamza al-Saud, then who the hell is he?”

  “A decoy,” Chunk said, saying the crazy part out loud. “We grabbed him off the X where intel said he was, he confessed to being al-Saud, and so we assumed we’d nabbed the right guy.” He looked over at Watts and flashed her a big smile.

  “Confirmation bias,” she said and chuckled.

  “Confirmation bias,” he echoed, remembering the conversation they’d had on the topic during the Beech 1900 exfil out of Mingora.

  Lannon swiveled his head back and forth between them as they savored their inside joke, perhaps even feeling a little jealous. “So now what the hell are we supposed to do with this guy?”

  “Prove Chunk’s theory right or wrong. At least now you have goals and fuck for your program. If something new shakes loose, call me directly.” Watts handed him a card with nothing but her name and the number for the sat phone she shared with Yi. “Thanks, Danny. I really appreciate your help.”

  “You really got sucked through the bunny hole this time, didn’t you Watts?” Lannon smiled and squeezed her arm. “I always knew you weren’t the type to just sit at a desk and crunch data. Knew it when I saw how you tackled the problem in the final exam at the Farm.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still just crunching data—only doing it for a different group that happens to be fire at getting things done.”

  “Well, good for you.”

  Chunk led them down the hall and away from the awkward memory lane conversation. They retrieved their weapons while Jen glared at them from her workstation.

  “Thanks again, bro,” Chunk said, extending his hand to Lannon.

  “Like I had a choice,” the CIA man said, gripping it with a frown.

  “Yeah, well, sorry to piss in your lemonade today, but we really do appreciate the access. We made serious progress because of it.”

  “Then it was all worthwhile. Sometimes it’s easy to forget we’re on the same team,” Lannon said, then gestured to the elevator. “I’ll escort you out.”

  Chunk nodded but glanced back at the monitor one last time, where the man he’d dubbed “Fake Hamza” in his mind was staring at the camera, unblinking, just as he had been when they’d arrived.

  Look at me getting my spook on, he thought as he finally had a chance to pack a fresh dip. I broke your jihadi ass and I didn’t even have to throw a punch to do it.

  CHAPTER 6

  new malden, united kingdom

  1821 local time

  Qasim Nadar hummed “Shape of You” as he walked down Cambridge Road fantasizing about dancing naked with Diba in the living room. He despised Ed Sheeran but he heard the damn song everywhere all the time, and tonight it had buried itself deep in his brain and he couldn’t get it out.

  I’m in love with the shape of you.

  We push and pull like a magnet do . . .

  He laughed and shook his head at the lyrics but instead of fighting, he just went with it—his humming morphing into outright singing and the rhythm finding its way into his stride. He never did this sort of thing, but today he just felt like . . . like getting his groove on. After happily cavorting his way down the block, he slid theatrically to a stop at the iron gate in front of the courtyard. He trotted his way to the front door, retrieved his keys from his pocket, and undid the lock. Then, with a wide Cheshire grin plastered across his face, he opened the front door and announced, “Diba, I’m home and I feel like dan—”

  The word caught in his throat and he promptly choked on his own saliva at the sight of the unexpected visitor sitting in the living room with his wife. Both Diba and the houseguest looked up and met his gaze, chameleon smiles on their faces. In Diba’s eyes he saw terror, and in Hamza al-Saud’s he glimpsed bemusement.

  “Don’t stop on account of me—you feel like what, Qasim?” the terrorist prince asked, getting to his feet to greet him.

  “That I . . . I . . . feel like dinner,” he stammered.

  “Oh, I could have sworn you were about to say you feel like dancing,” Hamza said, testing and prodding in his signature fashion.

  The wheels in Qasim’s mind were churning but, like automobile tires spinning in the mud, couldn’t gain traction. What was Hamza doing here? Why hadn’t he called first? In the three months since the wedding, he’d not heard a peep from the man, and now here he was—making a house call out of the blue? Qasim was so caught off guard he couldn’t even remember Hamza’s new legend . . .

  Damn it, why can’t I remember? What is wrong with me? I can’t call him Hamza.

  “Qasim, you remember Mr. Bijan, from our wedding?” Diba said, rising from her seat on the sofa.

  Thank God for you, Diba, he thought and forced a pleasant smile onto his face. Asadi Bijan, that’s Hamza’s legend now.

  “It is good to see you, brother,” he managed to say, thankful his voice didn’t crack.

  “You too,” the terrorist said and stepped up to give Qasim a back-slapping hug.

  After the embrace, Qasim took a seat on the sofa next to Diba, while Hamza settled into one of the two club chairs opposite the coffee table.

  “Diba has been filling me in on all the news from the last several months. It sounds like everything has been going well. I understand you are enjoying your new position at British Aero?”

  “Yes,” Qasim said. “I’m now the Program Director for Design Avionics and Software Integration.”

  “Congratulations,” Hamza said. “A well-deserved promotion.”

  “Thank you.”

  For the next thirty minutes, two conversations took place simultaneously. The pointless one between the three of them as they sipped tea and talked about benign, safe, and pleasant topics, and the heated, conflicted one unfolding silently in Qasim’s head. On the one hand, the terrorist’s arrival stirred feelings of dread and foreboding. The past three months had lulled Qasim into a false sense of security and normalcy. He’d slipped back into his old life and very much enjoyed his newfound respect at work and lovemaking with Diba. He’d even begun to consider the possibility that Hamza would never contact him again—a fantasy he, at times at least, embraced passionately. The communication blackout had been absolute, and he’d wondered if the terrorist prince had been killed or captured by the Americans, releasing Qasim from the growing sense of indentured servitude. At other times, memories of Eshan, his sister, and his father would fill his heart to bursting with rage and hate. At such times, he longed for Hamza’s return with a zealous craving so that he could exact revenge on their murderers. But, as the weeks had grown into months and he’d fallen into the routine of this life with Diba, such feelings had been coming less frequently.

  The events in Mingora—his recruitment into al Qadar, configuring the Pterodactyl drone, and piloting the attack on the American base in Afghanistan—felt like something that had happened a lifetime ago. No, not a lifetime ago . . . They felt like memories that belonged to someone else. It wasn’t him who’d done those things. It wasn’t him who’d pledged his fealty to the terrorist sitting in his living room. And yet it had been him. He had done those things. His subconscious refused to play games of self-deception. Even now, months later, he would wake in the middle of the night, bolt upright, gasping for air after pulling the trigger on the flight control stick to launch the Chinese-made HJ-10 air-to-ground missiles at the Kandahar Air Base in his dreams.

  I’m a murderer, he reminded himself, and he felt ashamed.

  But then, as if in counterpoint, his subconscious sparked a different part of his mind—a video clip he’d watched of his lifelong best friend’s murder.

  Three men asleep in a safe house, one man on each sofa and a third on the floor. Then the door on the opposite wall is blown off its hinges. Something arcs into the room and a brilliant flash of light washes out the picture. After a second, the feed refreshes and three American operators, dressed in tactical gear and wielding assault rifles, enter with extreme prejudice. The three men who had been sleeping jum
p to their feet. Two of them scramble for AK-47s, while the third man—Eshan—reaches for a pistol. The Americans open fire. Eshan is shot in the chest and looks down, almost in surprise. Then the back of his head explodes . . .

  “Qasim?” Diba said, snapping him from his fugue.

  “Yes,” he said, blinking twice.

  “Mr. Bijan asked you a question,” she said, with that nervous look in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said turning to Hamza. “I tuned out there for a moment.”

  Hamza flashed Qasim his trademark easygoing smile. “I said while Diba makes dinner, how about you and I take a walk?”

  “Yes, it’s a very nice night for a walk,” he said and, resisting the urge to look at Diba, got to his feet.

  I don’t need her permission, nor do I want to see the wounded expression on her face that will distract me during the critical encounter to come.

  Turning his back on her, he left the flat to walk with Hamza down Cambridge Road.

  “Your wife is even more beautiful than the last time I saw her, and that was on your wedding day when a bride glows most vibrant of all,” Hamza said. “You are a lucky man.”

  Qasim nodded, feeling both possessive and gratified at hearing another man speak about his wife in such a suggestive way. “Your unexpected visit today caught us both by surprise, but please do not read anything more into it.”

  The terrorist laughed. “Be honest, Qasim. You were beginning to think I’d forgotten about you . . . that maybe I had forgotten our mutual commitments?”

  Qasim shook his head. “No, never.”

  “It is natural for a man to become seduced by this life of excess and moral depravity. The West is full of forbidden fruit. Once tasted it is impossible not to savor the sweetness. I am no different. We are both educated, worldly, introspective men. I understand how difficult it is to lead a double life—like a two-headed dragon, one life is always trying to devour the other.”

  Hamza’s metaphor perfectly captured his quandary; it was as if the man had a window into his very soul.

  “Yes, it feels that way,” Qasim said, finally being honest. “What do you do when you feel like you are beginning to lose your way?”

  “I remind myself of what they have taken from me,” Hamza replied, his demeanor that of the cold and calculating mastermind Qasim had first met in the hangar in Mingora. “I remind myself of what I have lost and what I have still yet to gain. Have you forgotten what they have taken from you? Do you need me to remind you?” Qasim shook his head, but the terrorist sage continued anyway. “Your father . . . your sister, Saida . . . your best friend, Eshan . . . everyone you loved—murdered and stolen from you.”

  Qasim clenched his jaw and his hands balled into fists. “I have not forgotten. Not a day goes by that I don’t tear the stitches from the scars to let the blood run fresh.”

  “Do you feel like dancing now, my friend?”

  “No,” he said, the warrior inside fully reawakened.

  “I have been busy these last few months, busier than you might expect,” the terrorist said, the heels of his black leather wing tip shoes clicking on the sidewalk as they walked nowhere with purpose, “recruiting talent, raising funds, negotiating with suppliers, plotting strategy, and planning operations.”

  Qasim nodded, suddenly very curious for details and yearning to be read into al Qadar’s plans.

  “I have a new general in our ranks—a warrior who has been fighting the Americans for nearly twenty years, a legend who has slipped their nets more times than I can count. Maybe you have heard of him—the Lion of Ramadi?”

  Qasim turned to look at Hamza. “I thought he was only a myth.”

  “No, but he would have the world believe as much.”

  “Will I get to meet him?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because he wants to meet you,” Hamza said with a smile. “I’ve told him many stories about you. The two of you are the future of al Qadar. You are the yin and yang of the organization; it is time that you start working together.”

  Meaning what, Qasim thought, his insecurities getting the better of him, that we are opposites? That he is strong and violent, and I am weak and cerebral?

  He forced his expression to remain neutral. “I will be attending the International Defense Global Exhibition in the UAE next month. British Aero is an exhibitor. If you both can travel to Dubai, we could meet then.”

  Hamza smiled. “Yes. Yes, that would be perfect—both the location and the timing. I will make the arrangements. In the meantime, be watching the news this week. The Lion of Ramadi and I have something noteworthy planned.”

  Qasim’s stomach suddenly felt heavy. “Will you tell me what it is?”

  The terrorist pursed his lips with indecision. “Wouldn’t you prefer to be surprised?”

  “But what if I can help?”

  “I don’t think so. This is a boots-on-the-ground operation against a Navy SEAL squadron in Iraq—like the ones who killed our brothers in Pakistan. It is a mission of vengeance, but no drones are involved. Regrettably, there is nothing you can contribute.”

  Qasim put a hand on Hamza’s arm, stopping the terrorist in his tracks. “I have been conflicted these past three months, it’s true, but it’s not because I lost my faith in you, our cause, or Allah. I’ve realized something important about our adversary and our mission.”

  “And what is that?” Hamza said, turning to face him.

  “We can never forget that we are engaged in asymmetric warfare. We must exploit as many American vulnerabilities as possible in every engagement to achieve disproportionate effects.”

  “Go on . . .” Hamza said, curiosity bright in his eyes.

  “The British are always in my headspace—their music, their ideology, their propaganda. They make me paranoid, anxious, and stoke feelings of guilt. We need to do the same to our adversaries.”

  “You’re talking about PsyOps?”

  “Yes. This is what made the Lion of Ramadi so powerful—and a legend. He got into the American’s headspace. They were afraid of him. Just the threat of his presence impacted their operations and tactics.”

  “I agree, which is one of the reasons I recruited him into al Qadar. So, tell me, brother, what is it that you propose?”

  Qasim laid out his plan, praying to Allah as he did that he would be able to deliver on it, while Hamza listened without interruption. When finished, he said, “What do you think?”

  “I think al Qadar is only just beginning to see what you bring to the table,” Hamza said, clutching Qasim by the arms. “We don’t have much time, but you have the green light. The present operation in Iraq is already in motion, but I’ll provide you with all the intelligence I can on the target and the timing. If your instincts are correct, your plan will amplify the impact tenfold of what we are trying to accomplish. Allah has clearly brought us together for a great purpose.”

  Qasim felt himself beaming like a schoolboy. He couldn’t help it. The charismatic terrorist prince had that effect on him. Perhaps their partnership was Allah’s way of bringing out his gifts and providing a path to fulfill his purpose.

  “You will need black hat assistance to execute the plan you suggest,” Hamza said. “Do you remember how to access our dark web email client?”

  “Of course. I check it regularly despite having never received a communication from you.”

  Hamza smiled. “The fewer fingerprints we leave in cyberspace the better. Use great care, Qasim. The Americans have eyes and ears everywhere, even in the underground and darkest of places.”

  Qasim nodded. “I’ll be a ghost.”

  “You will also need a secure workspace,” Hamza said, stroking his neatly trimmed beard while turning to walk. Qasim fell in beside him.

  “I agree,” Qasim said. “The British counterterrorism units are robust these days and watch all of us with ties back home. With the promotion, I’m respected at the office, but they’ve never really accepted me as one of them. We must assume there are eyes on me at all times—perhaps even ears in my home.”