Clandestine-IsaacHooke-FreeFollowup (14 page)

"Any updates?" Ethan asked his fellow operatives.

"Did you hear the alarm last night?" Aaron said.

Ethan shook his head. "Slept like a baby." That wasn't entirely true, but he hadn't heard any alarms.

"Well, the journalists are free."

"Holy shit that was quick," William said.

"When I see an opportunity, I take it," Aaron bragged. "I'm not one to dawdle. Unlike you guys."

Ethan forced a smile. "Any problems?"

"Nope. The operation went off without a hitch. I didn't even have to kill anyone." He frowned. "But fricking journalists, I tell ya... they were French, you know. Kept asking me where the
hélicoptères
were. And I was like, yeah, sure, I came rappelling in on an MH-60 Black Hawk just around the corner. Finally they got it into their thick skulls that no helos were coming, and that they'd have to go into hiding.
"
 

"What did Sam say?" Ethan asked.

Aaron shrugged. "Haven't told her yet."

"Does she even know the journalists were here?"

Aaron was silent a few seconds. "No."

"I'll bet she'll be real happy when she finds out," Ethan said sarcastically.

"Why wouldn't she be? I did my job. What I was sent to do."

"I think she would've preferred that you had involved at least one of us," Ethan said.

"Are you sure it's not
you
who would've preferred that, you who claim to be the biggest lone wolf of us all? Listen, I discovered an opportunity and acted upon it. Ask for forgiveness rather than permission, right? It's how we get things done around here. Speaking of which, what have you done since we arrived? Oh wait, you must be too busy asking for permission. I remember when I used to work for the CIA. It took forever to get shit approved. I had like ten bosses above me, and each one had to approve my op before I could get the go-ahead. All it took was one chickenshit manager above me to veto the whole thing. Eventually it got to the point where I'd had enough. I started doing the ops while I was waiting for approval. And if my bosses didn't grant their consent afterward, fuck 'em. I got a helluva lot done."
 

"I'm guessing you had to ask for forgiveness often while working at the CIA."

Aaron smiled wolfishly. "Let's just say there's a reason I'm not working there anymore."
 

Ethan glanced at William. "Any news?"

"I've managed to recruit a few locals to act as my eyes and ears," William said. "It's not difficult. The Caliphate isn't well-liked here. Sure, the citizens openly sing the praises of the Islamic State, but once you take off the muj fatigues and get them alone you'll hear a different tune. Amazing the intel a few packages of illicit cigarettes will buy you."

Ethan thought of the fifty thousand dollars he'd promised Mufid and felt silly. Then again, he doubted William could acquire solid intel through the promise of cigarettes alone.

"What about you," William said. "What are you working on?"

"I've lined up a few locals," Ethan said. "And sent Sam the coordinates of some government compounds I've spotted. I should have more things lined up for her shortly."

"That's code for I got jack shit," Aaron mocked.

"I've also installed Regin in the computer lab," Ethan said.

"I already did that the first night," Aaron said.

Ethan stood. "Night guys."

* * *

Every morning, Wolf Company established a checkpoint at a different location. Ethan wanted to gather more intel on the Chinese national, but he had to wait until he was stationed a little closer. He could have potentially gone on a toilet break, and then commandeered a car at gunpoint, but the heavy road traffic prevented that from being any more feasible.

Each night he checked the draft folder of the gmail account he shared with Sam, and two days later he decrypted a message that read:

Identity of national: former Chinese nuclear scientist Shi Tou Mao. May be helping Islamic State construct a nuclear weapon. Can you prove the scientist's intent, and upon positive correlation, determine the fissile supplier and terminate the scientist?
 

Ethan left a return message:

Will prove intent and terminate upon positive correlation. If airstrikes are available, I have potential coordinates.

He doubted any sort of airstrikes were forthcoming. The West had performed a few limited bombing runs in Iraq, but so far Syria seemed off limits. Although if Sam leaked the coordinates to the Assad regime, there would almost certainly be a strike of some kind. Hopefully not a wildly inaccurate barrel bomb. Even so, before there could be any airstrikes Ethan had to confirm that the scientist actually lived in the building.
 

The next day Abdullah finally set up the checkpoint within a reasonable distance of the apartment. Ethan volunteered to retrieve lunch that afternoon from the bakery across the street from his target, but Abdullah made Zarar go with him.

When he reached the bakery Ethan let the big Afghan enter by himself. Ethan waited on the pavement outside, studying the apartment. The three-story tall building spanned half the block, with a couple of decorative palm trees near the entrance. All the windows were canopied in the proper Muslim style.

About a minute passed and he wondered where the motorcade was. He checked the time on his cellphone. It was almost noon. Either he'd missed the vehicles or they weren't coming that day. Maybe the pickup had been a one-time thing.

The big Afghan emerged from the shop and he and Ethan started back toward the checkpoint. Right then three militant vehicles pulled up on the opposite side of the street. Ethan glanced over his shoulder and watched the mujahadeen form the familiar perimeter. When the Chinese national and his bodyguards emerged, the militants escorted them to one of the SUVs and sped off. The chances were high that the scientist indeed lived in the building.

That night Ethan had a reply from Sam waiting in the draft folder of the gmail account.

No approval for airstrikes from HQS forthcoming. Prove the scientist's intent, and upon positive correlation determine the fissile supplier and terminate the scientist.
 

Ethan wrote back two words. The seemingly random characters of encrypted text spanned half a page, but when Sam decoded it the message would read:
Will do.
 

Proving the target's intent would be tricky. Just because the scientist lived in the Islamic State and had an armed motorcade escort him from his apartment around noon everyday didn't prove anything other than that he was important to the Caliphate. That may have been a reason to terminate the man in and of itself, but as mentioned in her message, Sam wanted proof of the man's intentions. Ethan did, too. Gone were the days when he blindly killed for JSOC. He had developed a conscience after going to work for Sam. Taking on deep cover operations would do that to anyone, he supposed. He understood the enemy, but more so he understood how readily the White House had added relatively benign targets to the kill list in the past. Sam did, too, and was trying to distance herself and her team from that trigger-happy mentality.
 

Three days later when the checkpoint was finally situated close enough to the apartment once more, Ethan volunteered to retrieve lunch again.
 

"No, my turn today," Sab insisted.

"I have to use the toilet anyway. I'll pay!" Ethan raced off before Abdullah could make him take Sab with him.

While jogging, Ethan retrieved his phone and oriented himself with the offline map. He paused beside a couple of street vendors to make certain none of the members of Wolf Company were following him, and when he finally reached the bakery, the motorcade was already speeding off.

Ethan hadn't brought his balaclava with him, but he did have his Saudi headdress, which he had recently started to wear around his neck like a ceremonial scarf. He raised it, covering the lower half of his face, bandit-style. It wasn't a look uncommon to the mujahadeen of Raqqa.

He hurried across the road and, with a quick glance in either direction to ensure no other militants were in the area, he approached the apartment entrance. He studied the labels beside the intercom buttons. There were no obvious Chinese names. There was, however, a name plate missing beside the apartment labeled 2B. He pressed the different buttons, starting with 2B, until someone answered.

"
Allo
?" someone shouted over the speaker. "Mahmud?"
 

"Yes!" Ethan lied.

The lobby door buzzed open and Ethan entered. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and approached room 2B. He knocked, taking care to stand well away from the peephole.

He heard the shuffle of feet within and then a female voice came from the other side.

"Allo?" She sounded middle-aged. So the scientist had brought a wife with him. Either that, or he'd been given a woman. Her accent was indeterminable so far.

"I have a message for the Chinaman," Ethan said. He wanted to confirm that he had the correct suite, first of all, and rather than using the scientist's name, which the man may have changed, Ethan chose a derogatory term just as one of the neighbors might have done.

"You just missed him," the woman shouted through the door. Now that he'd heard more of her, Ethan noted the distinct lack of a Chinese accent in her Arabic, lending credence to the theory that Shi had been given a local woman. Probably part of his hegira promise.

Ethan doubted she would open the door to a stranger, not while her husband was gone. As such, there was really only one other question he could ask in that moment without arousing suspicion.

"When will he return?" Ethan demanded.

"Eight o'clock tonight. Who should I say called?"

"The neighbor."

Ethan went back to the stairwell and, trying to decide upon his next course of action, lingered there on the steps.

He heard a door open in the main hallway beside him. Peering past the edge of the stairwell, he saw a fully-veiled head poke out of room 2C, the adjacent apartment. The faceless woman glanced both ways, forcing Ethan to duck from view.

The door shut softly and the pad of footfalls approached his position. It sounded like one person. She was leaving the apartment unchaperoned?

Ethan hurried up the run of stairs, moving quietly. He glanced over his shoulder twice, worried the niqab-wearing woman would spot him before he reached the intermediary platform and rounded the bend.

He waited there, halfway between the second and third floor, and listened as those footsteps quietly descended. He carefully returned to the second floor and caught a glimpse of a black abaya as the woman rounded the bend of the platform that led to the first floor. She was definitely alone.

He paused, and considered breaking into the apartment she had vacated next to his target. But he realized he was being presented with a far better intelligence gathering opportunity.

Conscious that the militants were still waiting for him at the checkpoint, Ethan followed the woman to the lobby, and watched as she hesitantly opened the front door and scanned both directions. Then she hurried outside.

Ethan moved to the glass door and was about to pursue when he realized the black ghost was headed to the bakery. She went right to the front of the line: the baker knew about her transgression, then, and was complicit in it. Ethan wondered if he could use that somehow.

"Abu-Emad, where are you?" Abdullah's voice crackled impatiently over the radio, startling him.

"You're breaking up, emir," Ethan said, turning the radio off. It was a lame excuse, but given the low quality of the radios and the interference from all the buildings, Abdullah would likely believe it.

A few moments later the woman emerged from the bakery with several loaves of bread the size of manhole covers balanced on her head, beneath a plastic container filled with milk.

She hastened across the street, almost getting struck by a Kia Rio. The driver cursed her, telling her to find a chaperon or next time he'd run her over.

Ethan retreated up the stairwell, momentarily hiding from view.

He heard the front door open and close, followed by the soft pads of her approach. She appeared at the bottom of the stairs and climbed halfway up before she noticed him.

T
he black ghost froze, her body flinching. Though he couldn't see her face beneath the niqab, he could almost sense her blanch. When she spoke, Ethan heard the cold terror in her voice.
 

"Please, I was just buying milk and bread for my baby." Her words, a heartbreaking whimper, were slightly muffled by the niqab.

Ethan still had the lower half of his face veiled by the keffiyeh so that he looked like a mujahid bandit. "Come." He gestured up the stairs.

"Please—"
 

"Come!" Ethan said more firmly.

She approached. When she passed him, the milk container on her head slipped to one side, but she steadied it with shaking, black-gloved hands.

"Don't hurt me," she said as he followed her up the stairs.

Ethan purposely remained silent. He couldn't let the pity he felt interfere with his job.

At room 2C she fumbled with her keys, struggling to open the door one-handed.

Ethan, well-aware that Abdullah and the others would be wondering where he was, relieved her of her burden so that she could use both hands.

He followed her inside the apartment, stepping onto an intricately-patterned Turkish carpet that had seen better times—the edges were frayed, the colors faded. Ethan could see the living room and a side hallway from where he stood. A green polyester accent chair with flared arms squatted in front of a small glass coffee table. A similar polyester couch was positioned across from it. The synthetic material appeared somewhat worn, and Ethan guessed both were hand-me-downs. A polished counter separated the living room from the foyer.
 

Ethan placed the bread and milk on the counter. "Go feed your baby."