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  “A hundred meters center of aim. If you shoot farther, you must raise the aim point a notch for every fifty meters.”

  “Ammunition?”

  “It has a fully loaded magazine. That should be enough.”

  The patrol gathered together at the Ethiopian front gate. They all bounced up and down several times in what looked like some kind of dance but it served a practical purpose.

  “No noise?” Moncrief asked Parker. He wanted to know if Parker heard anything jingling as he hopped up and down. If so, he had a roll of black electrical tape to keep it still. They and the patrol were totally silent.

  It wasn’t until they had gone more than a mile and crossed the valley that they got the news. Parker was in the center of the patrol. Moncrief was near the front. One, then another, stopped to raise a hand. It was barely visible in the low light. Parker knelt down with one knee on the rocky ground. He heard the slight sound of movement and then saw Moncrief approach.

  “What’s up?” Parker whispered.

  “They didn’t just come out here tonight to do a random patrol.”

  “What?”

  “They saw some movement last night. And they suspect that a splinter group is going to attack MSF tonight.”

  “What is their plan?”

  “They are going to set up an ‘L’ and catch the Al Shabaab fighters on their way back. Lock and load.”

  Damn, Parker thought. Tola and the others would not be happy that he was out on a patrol, getting ready to enter into a firefight.

  “Don’t worry. They want you to just stay back and see how we fight.”

  As if one can stay back in a combat patrol. It is the “stay back” part that usually gets you in trouble.

  Parker slowly, quietly, pulled back on the bolt and chambered a round. He felt for the safety and put his thumb on it. He could feel the grooved safety flip switch and thought of which way it needed to be turned if he wanted to fire.

  The patrol continued in the dark, following the wall of the valley on the other side of Ferfer. The medical clinics and stations were on the far side of the valley and were lit up like circus shows. He watched the people, particularly in the MSF encampment, moving around as if there was nothing to fear from the darkness. He could see the line of people still in the dark, waiting to be treated. It seemed that the line had only gotten longer as the day progressed. The people were squatting or lying down on blankets, waiting their turn.

  They cut through the bush for most of another hour until they came to a high spot that paralleled a ravine. The line of soldiers stopped and the senior man slowly came back, pointing out a spot for each man to take. Parker could see through the low light that five of the men had been turned on the far end so as to face up the ravine. If the enemy pulled back into the ravine after the attack they would be walking into a plowed field.

  And then they waited.

  Eventually he heard well into the distance the sound of a gunship. It seemed very far away, as if it were on another mission.

  They waited in the dark and silence for what seemed to be hours. Suddenly, the moon broke out between the clouds and, when it did, for only a short moment, Parker thought he saw movement.

  Pop, pop, pop, pop!

  Bullets started to fly across from where they were and he saw people scrambling at the MSF station. Some were ducking behind rocks. Some looked like rag dolls that were picked up and thrown about in a lifeless flop. Still, the patrol held its fire. They were too far away. Another round of shots was fired and then Parker saw movement in front of him, as if the Al Shabaab patrol was going in for the kill.

  At that same moment, the helicopter noise suddenly got louder. It appeared without notice, breaking through the cloud cover. The yellow flashes of the Ethiopians’ helicopter’s guns streaked down to earth like a Roman candle spurting out flame.

  The helicopter’s fire was between the MSF camp and their patrol.

  They are knocking them back, Parker thought. The attackers will retreat and their retreat will take them to a place of supposed safety. Their meeting point would be in the ravine. They were running directly into a trap.

  The bush suddenly got quiet. The helicopter pulled off. Moans and screams could be heard across the valley from the encampment, but in front of Parker it was silent. He waited. He looked to his side to see another soldier, tense, with his weapon on his shoulder.

  Then Parker thought he saw movement again.

  Again, the moon broke through the cloud cover for a moment. It was the worst possible thing that could happen to the attackers. With a glance, Parker looked from left to right and counted five men going down into the ravine. For an eternity, the Ethiopians held their fire.

  And then the rounds went off.

  A red flare was popped somewhere to his left. In the red light, Parker could see the fighters below firing blindly into the dark, while the Ethiopians struck their targets. He saw an object fly up into the air to his left and then heard the rumble of a hand grenade. Shots continued to be fired.

  Suddenly, out of the darkness, a figure ran straight at the Ethiopian soldier to Parker’s left. The Ethiopian soldier fired one shot, but it missed, flying just above the attacker as he raced toward them, up the side of the ravine. And then the Ethiopian’s gun misfired. He frantically pulled the slide back but in that nanosecond the jihadist would be on top of him.

  Parker stood up, aimed, and squeezed. He never heard the sound, but felt the rifle kick back into his shoulder. It was well aimed, striking the man in the right shoulder. Parker knew by the way the attacker was holding his weapon that the right shoulder was his dominant side. Parker didn’t want to kill him.

  He twisted around in the dark and fell to his knees.

  They had a wounded prisoner.

  Captain Tola was not happy.

  “You did what?”

  Moncrief looked sheepish as he stood in the group that had gathered in a dimly lit tent in the Ethiopian compound. Their captive, who was visibly shaking, sat handcuffed to a metal chair. A white bloodstained bandage was wrapped across his shoulder.

  “As a gag,” he mumbled. “Allah.”

  Tola looked at Moncrief skeptically.

  “You shot him?” Tola asked Moncrief.

  “Yes, I did.” Moncrief was providing the cover story.

  Parker stood in the dark in the back of the tent. It would not have helped the situation for Tola to know that Parker was on the patrol, or that he’d fired the clean shot.

  “We have ourselves a prisoner.” The Ethiopian senior sergeant looked displeased as well. The 50th gave what it took. The few members of his unit who had ever been captured by Al Shabaab had been pulled in front of a camera and had their heads cut off, slowly. Al Shabaab would cut them from behind so that the pain lasted longer. They made a point of not cutting the artery until the last stroke. The sergeant was happy to handle this prisoner in the same way.

  “Whose prisoner is he?” Tola asked.

  It became a debate. The man who fired the shot had the right of possession.

  If Moncrief claimed him, the man would go into Marine custody. He would be interrogated and sent to Djibouti. Ultimately, it was a far better circumstance than if the Ethiopian 50th kept him.

  “What does he know?” Parker asked.

  The Ethiopian questioned the prisoner. The man mumbled something that suggested that he would never tell.

  “They killed more than twenty men and women who were waiting for medical care, and blew away six kids at the MSF camp.” Tola was not pleased with the slaughter, nor the fact that MSF had resisted allowing a protective guard. It didn’t matter to the world-news feeds that MSF had refused help. It only mattered that the media reported the MSF clinic was near to both Marines and local military posts.

  “Ask him again,” Parker interjected. “Tell him that if he is truthful, the Americans will take him as a prisoner. If he is not, the Ethiopians will keep him.”

  The translation was made and the man loo
ked up with large brown eyes as if a puppy had been whipped for a mistake. They waited in silence as the man thought through his choice.

  “The Americans will make Israel sound like a better place to go,” the Ethiopian sergeant added.

  The man started talking. He kept going, taking only short stops to gather his breath. The sergeant tried to interpret the run of words as quickly as he could.

  Parker only caught one word.

  “Mo-bi-lee.”

  “What did he say?” Parker raised his hand to stop the flow.

  “He said the Amriiki that killed in Mo-beel was nearby.”

  “Mobile?”

  “Yes, Mo-beel.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Wassef drove the van along the interstate, north towards Washington. He stayed in the center lane of traffic, letting the faster, more deliberate drivers pass him without notice. He followed a tractor trailer that had WALMART printed on its side. Soon, another truck came in behind him. Because the rig was as large as the Walmart truck, the driver could see that the white van was not the vehicle slowing traffic down. Wassef reached behind the seat for the sheet and felt the object below it.

  The radio reported a fire south of Dumfries.

  They will bring the engines when the smoke alarm starts. He knew that the man with the armory room would have the best alarm system possible.

  It would be tied into a police station that would know that a Class III collector lived there. The call would go out to both the Dumfries Police Department and the fire station. The whole police force would know his name and address. In the entire city, there were only a few names that would register so quickly with the call. One of those names might be the U.S. senator’s home; the other might be a federal district court judge. This address was just as important.

  They will try to enter but his body will block the door. Wassef kept running it through his mind.

  And then the first grenade will fall to the floor. He had the scenario correct. The first blast will stay within the room but will stun the firemen. They will then withdraw from the house. The second blast will cause the neighbors, all standing outside looking at the blaze, to run for their lives. The police and firemen will retreat from the scene. There will be no other option.

  The tractor-trailer started to slow down as it passed the first sign for the Pentagon exit. Omar had told him what to do.

  The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team would be getting the alert by now. The Bureau was not stupid. They would enter the containment room and start to pound the two women with questions. The questions would be neither calm nor cool, and with the excitement, the women would know what had happened.

  Not much longer. He held on to the steering wheel. He’d picked out a soft target, which was a military term to describe a target that was unguarded. But the target also had to be capable of making the front page. It required something that would make a statement to the world. He had the perfect soft target. Omar’s second cell would prove that the Amriiki could do more to attract the world’s attention to the jihad. Wassef would see the face of Allah. His name would be said with joy by millions across the seas.

  The HRT would not find the video he’d made until much later. In it, he spoke of Omar and the inspiration that Omar had given to others to join the fight. He had emailed a copy to several other jihadists in both Toronto and Minneapolis. And he emailed one to an address never used before in Kismaayo. It would circle the globe by nightfall.

  The van passed the Pentagon mall and Wassef took the exit to the George Washington Parkway. The law enforcement agencies would be getting the email alert in the next fifteen minutes but he didn’t need that much time. The White House would go to lockdown, as well as the Capitol. The president would be taken belowground. It did not matter.

  Wassef turned on his right blinker and moved across the lanes of traffic to the exit. He merged onto the Parkway and then took the highway to the south. As he did, the rumble of a Boeing 757 landing at Reagan came over his head. It was a Delta flight with a red, blue, and white coloring.

  The van traveled for only a few miles and then took the exit to Reagan. Wassef followed the loop around, passing the terminal, and then he started to head back up the Parkway to the north.

  I will not have much time. He began saying his prayers. His hands started to shake and he felt the sweat on his palms.

  “United 762, you are cleared for full stop, Runway 15, wind 320 at 5 knots. Tower is 119.1.”

  “Thank you.” The copilot for the Chicago-based Boeing 737 hit the mike button. He repeated the information. “Cleared for landing, Runway 15, wind at 320 at 5 knots. 119.1. Have a nice day.”

  “Yes, sir, it is a nice day,” the controller commented on the perfect blue sky over Ronald Reagan Washington National.

  The runway followed the compass heading of one hundred and fifty degrees, with the wind blowing in nearly the opposite direction, blowing straight into the nose of the aircraft at a bare five knots.

  “We might be able to taxi off at Lima.” The chief pilot swung the aircraft down the landing corridor at Washington. The runway’s altitude was just fifteen feet above ground level. The conditions were perfect for an easy landing. The air would flow over the wings in a perfect application of Bernoulli’s principle of flight. As the air curved over the wing, the molecules on top would speed up, causing the aircraft to actually be sucked up, away from the ground.

  “I will bet you lunch if you make Lima.” The copilot had trained in the Navy, as had the chief. They were used to putting the aircraft down hard. It wasn’t so much hard as it was making a firm planting of the machine on the earth. In the Navy, they both had tail hooks. United Flight 762 was not equipped with such. But with the wind in their face, the airplane could settle fast, and if the pilot hit it exactly on the white paint of the number 15, the aircraft had an outside chance of slowing down quickly enough to stop in front of the crossover before the turn to the taxiway. The first and closest taxiway was Lima, or the “L” taxiway.

  The flight had been uneventful. They pulled back from Chicago’s O’Hare with fifty-six passengers, including a Congresswoman and more than a dozen lobbyists. A retired Marine major general sat in the last seat in first class. It was the early bird out of Chicago.

  “Airspeed is on.” The copilot read out the numbers.

  “Flaps are full.”

  “Check.”

  The chief pilot loved Reagan. It took a special skill to turn the aircraft through the many turns required from passing over the radio tower at American University to a path that followed the Potomac. No aircraft could venture too far afield after September 11th. He felt like he was in his Piper Cub making the turns that made flying a joy.

  “Landing Checklist complete.”

  “Yep.” The copilot looked out over the Pentagon as the airplane continued to slow and drop from the sky.

  “Looks like a busy day.” The pilot was concentrating on aiming his aircraft just short of the number 15, expecting it to drift slightly in the final seconds before the wheels touched down.

  “Yep, we got a few.”

  Planes were lined up on the taxiway waiting for the landing craft to hit the ground, clear the active runway and let the planes on the ground move on to their takeoff.

  “What the hell?” The copilot saw a white van suddenly pull directly off the George Washington Parkway and onto the grassy knoll that was just beyond the water inlet at the end of Runway 15. He stared for a second as the van stopped and the door slid open.

  “Oh, shit!” He grabbed the control stick from the pilot and pushed the nose down. He had been trained in combat and on landings at sea in rough winds. He pulled back on the power and pulled up on the landing gear. It was an extreme measure.

  “What the hell?” the chief pilot started to resist.

  “We got big trouble and need to get it down now.”

  The airplane had no time to spin up the engines, or gain altitude, or bank to any direction. It had to shoot th
e runway and hope that some of the aircraft made it down now.

  “Hold on!” the copilot yelled. “Honey, tell the kids that I love them. I will always remember the night we first met at the Academy.” The flight recorder would be studied for years to come.

  He didn’t have a chance to glance back at the van. If he had, it would not have helped. The trail of smoke from the rocket-propelled grenade to the plane’s tail section was only a matter of yards. A strong-armed pitcher with a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball could have easily hit an aircraft landing at Reagan from the grassy hill just short of the runway.

  The burst shook the airplane, tearing through the back fuselage and ripping the vertical stabilizer from the aircraft. The copilot’s action saved most of the passengers on the front end. The aircraft slammed into the tarmac, skidding forward until coming to a stop. Reagan was closed down for two days.

  The security officer at Reagan had been making his loop when he saw the white van suddenly slow down, jump the curb on the Parkway and cut across the grass, just missing two trees. He reacted instantly.

  “Terrorist attack at end of Runway 15. White van. All assistance is requested.” He had served ten years with the Marine Corps Reserve and had been called up for Operation Enduring Freedom. His unit had provided security for more than one logistics convoy. He knew trouble when he saw it.

  The officer put on his blue light and siren. His Yukon hit the curb and bounced up in the air.

  “Come on.”

  The suspension held the truck stable as it careened onto the grass. The white van stopped and the officer watched in slow motion something that he was never able to erase from his memory. A man slid open the door to the van, picked up an RPG, and pointed at the aircraft that was just passing overhead. He stepped clear of the van so that the back blast did not blow into the vehicle. The streak from the grenade followed the aircraft, hitting it at the tail.

  The officer stopped the truck, jumped out with his Glock and aimed the white dot of the front sight on the center of the man’s chest.