Born of War Read online

  “Breakfast?” the clerk asked as he paid for it all with another well-used ten-dollar bill.

  “Yeah, the breakfast of champions.”

  She laughed.

  “See you later.” She smiled.

  She will be on CNN tonight. He opened a Red Bull and sipped it as he walked out to the van. This time, he pulled out of the station and turned to the north.

  “It just doesn’t feel right.” The senior agent of the TFOS team in Richmond had more than a decade of experience. She watched the video feed from the holding cell at the jail. The two women in their burqas with the niqabs pulled back sat in silence with their hands folded. They were too content.

  “Have we checked all of their contacts?”

  “Yes. All that we know.” The other agent had been up all night. “They didn’t have a lot of money.”

  “What was the final count?”

  “About two thousand dollars.”

  “But they have been a regular channel for some time?” She knew the answer but was going over the points both in her head and out loud.

  “Yes, we picked up the trail several months ago. We got the okay and started monitoring their calls. A lot to Kenya.”

  “That made it easy.” It took out a lot of the guesswork when the calls were being made to central Africa. The red flag went up the pole.

  “You know how much funding was needed for Oklahoma City?” The bombing of the courthouse was a classic plan and execution. “Just over four thousand bucks.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. The terror money trail doesn’t have to be very wide nor very long.” She sensed what they found was just the tip of an iceberg.

  “And they have said nothing to each other since?” She gazed at the monitor while she spoke.

  “Not a word.”

  “They look too content. It is as if they know the other shoe is going to drop.”

  “Yes.”

  “Something is going on.” The senior agent knew that an alert too early could send someone underground. The only thing worse would be an alert too late. “I am going to call Washington. We are too close to too many things to just let this sit.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Karen Stewart started to laugh.

  It was an uncontrollable and painful laugh as she looked at herself in the side mirror of the truck. She saw a red-dotted face with dirt outlining the edge of her nose. Her teeth were yellowed and she was burned from the equator’s sun. It was a stranger in the glass. A horribly ugly stranger.

  But what made her laugh was the hollowed look around the eyes. She had lost so much body weight that the person she was staring at was the petite teenager that she always hoped she would return to one day. Her belt had been pulled up to the first notch, and still the pants sagged. She laughed as she thought of how her dresses would fit over her new frame.

  God, will I ever get home? She didn’t want the thought to enter her mind. They were back down now to Xasan and the old man, who was the driver. They had followed the river south to the point where another road cut to the southwest. She had never paid attention to the sun, but as survival called for it, she was observing everything in her power. They were headed away from the riverbed and into the country.

  “Peter?” He had become so ill that they had let him ride in the bed of the truck when the road was passable. It wasn’t a favor so much as Xasan got tired of lifting the dead weight back into the truck. Every time they made him walk with the jab of the rifle he would shuffle a hundred yards and then collapse.

  But if the truck ran into a mud hole, all, including Xasan, had to get out and push. They would go a mile and then get stuck again. It was an endless loop. For some time they had not seen another human. She sensed, however, that they were heading towards a war.

  “Peter?”

  “Yes, my lady?” He had become delirious over time.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Fine, a little hot, but fine.”

  The rain, the mud, and his fever soaked him through.

  “We will stop.” Xasan held up his rifle. It was the first time that Karen thought he wasn’t sure where he was going. There was some confusion on his face as he argued with the old man. Finally, the driver got out of the cab and they walked down the road as if to compare thoughts about the direction in which they were headed. They turned and started to walk back. At the truck, the old man swung the door open and began to climb back in when he suddenly stopped. He grabbed his chest, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell back into the mud.

  “What did you do?” Xasan screamed as he pointed his rifle towards Karen.

  She ignored his yelling and knelt down next to the body. Doctor Stewart felt for a pulse on his neck. She could feel the whiskers of his gray beard as she pressed her fingers into the place where there should have been a pulse.

  Without thinking, she started pushing on his chest. His body sank down in the mud until it hit the hard surface below. She continued to push, repeatedly, pushing and pushing with one hand over the other. She kept pushing without feeling the hunger or exhaustion of the days in captivity.

  “Come on,” she muttered out loud.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Xasan put his rifle over his shoulder and stare at the process.

  And she continued to press, pushing as hard as she could.

  Suddenly, the old man’s eyes opened up and he started to cough. He pushed her arms aside as if he could not understand why this stranger was beating on his chest.

  Xasan sunk to the ground. He started to cry.

  “Allah?” He said the word almost as if it were a plea to understand what had happened.

  The old man had survived a heart attack.

  Karen fell back on her rear end.

  “He needs some aspirin.” She said it as if there was a nearby pharmacy that could provide a bottle. Xasan got off his knees, walked around the truck, opened the door on the passenger side, reached into the glove compartment, and took out an old bottle of Bayer aspirin.

  “What?”

  She wanted to scream.

  Xasan gave her the bottle. She opened it and gave the old man two white tablets. She then stood up and took the bottle to the back of the truck, lifted Peter’s head, and gave him two tablets.

  “We need some water,” she said.

  Xasan went back to the cab and pulled out a two-liter plastic bottle and handed it to her. She gave Peter a drink and then gave the old man a drink as he was about to sit up.

  Xasan pointed to the old man and said something in Swahili.

  Peter lifted up his head as if the aspirin had had an immediate effect.

  “He says that man is his father.”

  Karen stood up in the confusion of the moment. She had saved the life of someone who would have shot her without hesitation the day before.

  “I want to go home.”

  No one heard her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “Captain Tola?” The commanding officer of the CSPMAGTF-Crisis Response on the ground signaled to him to come over to the operations tent. Tola was readying for another night’s patrol when the C.O. gave him the signal to talk.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I need to speak with you a minute. Let’s go over to the one.”

  Tola followed the C.O. to a bunker on the far end of the compound. A Marine guarded a small structure made of sandbag walls with a tin roof covered by more sandbags. The guard stood next to the entrance with a locked and loaded M416. A line of tape encircled the structure with warning signs that said DO NOT CROSS. DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.

  A sign painted on a square of plywood and hanging over the entrance read COMMANDING OFFICER. Below the words there was a shield, which spelled it all out—SPECIAL-PURPOSE MARINE AIR-GROUND TASK FORCE—CRISIS RESPONSE. The Marine unit on the ground was a MAC, or Maritime Airborne Company made up of MARSOC critical skills operators. The unit was custom-designed and built for this mission. It had at its core a company
of Marines or CLT that had been formed out of the 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion.

  Tola liked the lieutenant colonel. They had done two combat tours together and it was clear that his boss was on the fast track even at this early stage in his Marine career. However, the winds of the reduction in force were starting to blow. Word had passed through the commands and then the media. The armed services were to be hit by a hurricane force. One in every three Marines was being laid off and returned to a different world. Only a few would survive the assault that was coming. The major, despite being very good, and decorated with two silver stars, had a fifty-fifty chance of staying on.

  And yet the dangers were not going away. Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda, and ISIS were raising the battle flag across several thousands of miles. The fundamentalists in the Philippines and the western Pacific didn’t even make page ten with their occasional car bomb. Gaza was on a mutual path with Israel that assured only more bloodshed. But despite all this, the military was being hit with crushing blows of force reduction. The Army was going down by a third or more. The Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force were following the same path.

  “We have some word. Some significant word.” He looked at his watch and then the two went into the bunker. In the center was a portable computer on a table with several stools in front of it. The computer was cleared for “Top Secret.” The Marine guarding the bunker from the outside carried two hand grenades. One was an M67 fragmentation grenade and the other had phosphorus explosive material that would burn at a thousand degrees when ignited. The computer and the satellite dish it was connected to would not survive. It mattered little, as the encryption was incredibly complex, but they would take no chance. Everything would be destroyed before it had the opportunity to land in someone else’s hands.

  “We have a videoconference in five minutes.” The major pointed to one of the stools for Tola. Another Marine was in the tent. He was a communications lance corporal. “Are we linked up?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The satellite has a fifteen-minute window.” The major and Tola pulled up the two stools.

  A screen showed the logo of central command.

  Suddenly, a conference room appeared with an admiral sitting at the end of the table, flanked by another officer.

  “Do we have everyone?” the admiral asked. “Is everybody up on the satellite?”

  A split screen showed another admiral who announced he was NavCent, and a third admiral who was commander of the task force somewhere at sea in the Gulf of Aden.

  “I am going to let my J-3 bring us up to date with the limited time we have,” said the first admiral.

  A Navy captain in a gray-blue-dotted camouflage uniform started to speak. Stitched into his uniform was the black-threaded insignia of a Navy SEAL.

  “Intelligence reported the DF-21 possessed by Al Shabaab was in a building in the city of Jilib.” The captain inserted video from a Reaper nighttime intelligence film. “We believe they only have one of these.”

  He played another video taken by a similar nighttime surveillance aircraft. It showed two helicopters move in and stop near the building; then small black figures seemed to pour out onto the ground.

  “SEAL Team Six sent in a team. It was a trap. The missile had been moved.”

  A bright flash appeared on the screen where the building once stood.

  It was clear that the team had been sent in to destroy the missile but, even more important, to confirm both its existence and its destruction.

  “Intelligence assets both up top and on the ground are trying to obtain more information.”

  The captain became somber.

  “We lost three SEALs last night.”

  Tola looked at his hand and then his watch. He knew that as they were engaged in the conference call, they were being watched. The broadcast went both ways. In a SCIF in Bahrain, the split screen showed the several commands across the theater. He knew that as long as the “carrier killer” was in Al Shabaab’s hands, the U.S. fleet would stand farther off the shores of Somalia. And with the carrier farther off at sea, the capabilities of the Hornets and F-35s would be stretched even more. There might be gaps in the air cap, and with them there might be gaps in response times.

  Faud had moved the afternoon before the attack. He and his command had traveled south to the outskirts of the coastal city of Kismaayo.

  “We move our chess piece.” The details of the attack had been reported to him. “Each time, when we move it, we need to prepare the last place for a trap.”

  “Praised be Allah. There were several martyrs from last night, but the Americans suffered as well.”

  “Yes, blessed are the names of those who are martyred.”

  Faud paused a moment.

  “We must keep our carrier killer on the move. We must keep them guessing. More time and more money will lead to us obtaining a second and a third device.” Faud said the obvious. “The Romans had over a thousand years here and they never knew that cinnamon came from India and not Somalia.”

  The people could keep a secret. The missile could be moved in a matter of minutes. It was the shape that was the concern. The missile had to be broken apart and reassembled on each and every move. The Predator would identify one long shape or one long truck. And so they waited for a rainstorm on each move. The winds gave them a chance that the Predator would not be on station. And they also waited for a certain window where the satellite was likely to be off its location. Al Shabaab knew how to work the system.

  “What of the hostages?” Godane asked the question.

  “The Amriiki was sent to find them. We have already told the infidels that we want five million apiece. The money will be raised every time they make an attack on us.” Faud did not tell him that they were not sure where the captives were, nor where Omar was.

  “They are gathering forces at Ferfer. We need to consider an offensive.” Godane looked at a map and pointed with his hand as he spoke.

  “The disease?” Faud asked.

  “Diseases are Allah’s will,” Godane did not hesitate to say in response.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The driver in the Honda Civic took the Quantico exit from Interstate 95, and as the car came down to the light, a police car, sirens blaring, pulled in behind. Wassef turned on his blinker and pulled to the side of the highway. As he did this, his hand felt the handle of the knife and moved it to the space between the passenger seat and console. He had learned the lesson from one of the tapes to roll down the driver’s window and put both hands in sight.

  Wassef knew that the gesture would make the Virginia state trooper feel more comfortable and that was the point. He smiled.

  “Hello, Officer.”

  “Good morning.”

  Wassef knew that his clean face and short haircut would also help to disarm the officer’s suspicions.

  “I am sorry, is there a problem?”

  “Yes, you have a taillight out.”

  “Oh, I will . . .” He started to open the door.

  “No, don’t get out. The traffic here is too busy. We have all these Marines going to work on the base.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Got your license and registration?”

  “Sure.” He pulled out his Virginia license with the name Wassef Hamri from Richmond, and the car’s registration.

  “Okay, where are you going?”

  “I am in school at William and Mary, and going to visit my aunt and uncle in D.C.” Wassef had done nothing wrong. His record was flawless, although he had never stepped foot on the William and Mary campus. He kept his face composed.

  “Okay. Get that light fixed. No ticket.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  He waited, took his time putting the license back into his wallet, and let the officer’s car pull out ahead of him. The trooper moved into the left lane, did a three-sixty, and took the entrance back onto the interstate.

  Wassef smiled.

  It is not as hard as
I thought.

  He drove the mile up the highway to the Enterprise rental location, and went in with both his license and a wallet full of money.

  “I reserved a van.” Again, it was a part of the plan that the vehicle needed to be reserved. If he had walked in without a reservation, wanting a van, it would raise questions. The license had him as being just over twenty-five.

  Shit, if that officer had thought about it! The clerk looked at the license and then handed it back to Wassef. His license was legitimate but his being in college at twenty-five was a stretch.

  “We have your reservation in order. You have the only van that we carry.”

  The young girl was perky for the start of a new day. She was particularly short with only part of her face visible just above the computer terminal.

  “Thank you.” He added the “thank you” and “sir” whenever possible. It was another tactic that made people take less notice of him. In fact, he was dressed in a white-collared shirt, khakis, a brown belt, and matching brown loafers, and he did it all so as to attract less attention.

  Amazing how terrorists can look so different. Wassef had wandered onto an online search of past terrorists one night. He looked at the photographs and thought of how his picture would soon be added to the lot. He would look different from the others. Perhaps they will use me as a guide for “how to look if you don’t want to get stopped.”

  “I will leave my Honda here on the lot if that is okay?”

  “Certainly, please park it in the back. We have a lot of people pulling in and out. It will be safer there,” she said pleasantly.

  “Absolutely.” He smiled.

  “And since you are paying with cash we need to have an extra deposit.”

  He frowned. And yet it was all part of the orchestrated plan. He would reluctantly pay the money. Wassef pulled out his wallet and gave her $300 in used twenties.

  “Here are the keys!”

  Wassef moved his Honda to the back of the lot, pulled out the FedEx box, and bent over so as to slowly slip the knife under the box. He knew that he was on a security camera and that the tape would later be pulled. He closed the door and locked the car with the key.