Warning Order (22 page)

Off to the side, the Libyan had a small camera out and was taking pictures of what was left of Anu al Qatar's man's face. He forced open the dead man's remaining eye and snapped a picture before moving to check the rest of the bodies.

“Where can you go?” Mason asked the young woman.

“My uncle has a house not far from here. He will want to know that his sister is dead,” she replied, motioning to the older woman, whose blood lay fresh upon the ground.

“Vehicle coming,” Grinch said over the radio, ending the conversation.

“How many?” Kane responded.

“One, maybe two.”

“Blaine, grab the truck.” He addressed the girl: “You need to get them ready to move.”

She walked briskly over to her aunt's corpse and struggled to lift the body. Zeus joined in to help her. As he did, he ordered the survivors into the back of the deuce-and-a-half.

Meanwhile, Mason walked over to the body he was hoping was al Qatar's. He ran his hands over the corpse and felt a bulge of papers in the man's pocket. He stuffed them down the front of his assault shirt, not having the time to check what they were, and flipped the man onto his stomach.

“Have fun in hell,” he muttered, taking a frag from his kit and yanking the pin free. Still holding the spoon, he jammed the frag into the sand, insuring that the spoon was held down by the dead man's weight, and then pulled his hands free.

He spit on the man's body and scanned the ground for anything he might have missed. Zeus yelled for him to hurry. The young woman jumped behind the wheel of the cargo truck and cranked the engine.

Mason completed his hasty search, but as he made his way over to the Humvee, he had a nagging feeling that he was forgetting something. Raising his rifle, he put a burst through the engine block, hoping it was enough to disable the vehicle, and jogged to the heavy cargo truck that was already rolling forward.

He hauled himself up into the cab, slamming the door behind him. He was going to ask Zeus why he wasn't behind the wheel, but the Libyan shrugged.

“She wanted to drive,” he said simply.

“Where are we going?” he asked her.

She slammed the vehicle into third gear and gently let off the clutch before mashing down on the accelerator. “To my uncle's.”

“I know that, but where does he live?”

“Not far from here.”

Mason shook his head. That's what he got for expecting military precision from a civilian. He glanced over his shoulder to insure that all the passengers were sitting down.

“Well,” he said, “if you're going to drive, you better drive fast.”

A
l Qatar was heading back to his command post when heavy machine gun fire kicked up from the east. The radio came alive with reports that Kurdish Peshmerga troops had just overrun the units he had sent to take the bridge. To top it off, al Qatar couldn't get Ali to answer the radio.

The day had gone well up to that point. His men had discovered fifteen Stryker armored fighting vehicles, twenty 120 mm mortars, and a hundred armored Humvees in a truck depot just south of the airfield. He knew that the Iraqi army hadn't bothered to destroy the ammo dumps before retreating south toward Baghdad, its soldiers having left behind crates upon crates of javelin missiles, AT-4 antitank weapons, and Mk-19 grenade launchers. But the sudden counterattack made it impossible for him to reach the airfield where the bunkers were housed.

News of his stunning victories had spread already, and men were flowing in from Syria and other parts of Iraq to join his army. The video he had released, taking credit for having sunk the USS
George H. W. Bush
, made al Qatar an instant celebrity among the violent jihadists lurking around the Mideast. He knew that it was only a matter of time before America brought its might to bear, but instead of being afraid, he was already making preparations for his final act of revenge.

“Where is Ali?” he demanded as he strode into the command post.

“They sent him to supervise the executions,” Jabar said, pointing at the bearded mullahs seated around a dusty table. “I have sent a man to retrieve him for you.”

Al Qatar ignored the men and instead began searching for his satellite phone.

“Where is the phone?”

“That is the least of our worries right now,” a round-faced man, dressed entirely in black, said from his place at the head of the table.

“It is
my
worry,” al Qatar replied.

“Forget the phone and sit down,” the man said harshly.

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi brushed a fleck of dirt off the sleeve of his black robes, willing al Qatar to respect him.

The self-proclaimed head of the newly established Islamic State of Iraq made no attempt to conceal his condescension, and al Qatar felt a spark of anger ignite within his chest. The bearded cleric had begged al Qatar to bring his fighters to Iraq after he chased the Syrians from Aleppo, but now that Mosul had fallen, he felt he needed to show who was really in charge.

“I believe we agreed that I would do the fighting, and you would handle the . . .
politics
,” al Qatar said, pronouncing the word with disgust.

“And nothing has changed. But why antagonize the Americans?”

“My desire has always been to destroy them, and my resolve is as strong as ever.”

“You have done an excellent job,” al Baghdadi commended him. “You have killed thousands of them without losing a single drop of Arab blood. Do you think that your luck will hold when they come here in force?”

Al Qatar had no patience for the mullah.

“As I have said, many times, I have a plan, and it isn't finished yet.”

“Very well, but remember that Allah does not bless the proud.”

Al Qatar hid his disdain for al Baghdadi's remarks. He knew his accomplishments thus far had come from careful planning, not from anyone's blessings. But at the same time, he knew he still needed Baghdadi's support.

“What would you have me do with
my
men, then?”

“We need to take the oil fields,” the mullah replied.

“I do not need any oil. There is plenty of fuel here.”

“The oil is not for you. It is for the movement. We need the money we shall receive from its proceeds.”

Al Qatar knew in an instant what all of this was about. These bearded sycophants were using him to build their own state, just as they used the Koran to control the mindless youths they convinced to turn themselves into martyrs.

A truck came to a grinding halt outside the building, and al Qatar could hear some of his men yelling as they slammed the doors. A man covered in blood rushed into the room.

“Ali has been killed,” he shrieked, holding up a bloody camera.

Al Qatar felt his face pale and was aware that the men at the table were staring at him. “I am afraid that I must attend to this,” he said softly, fighting to hold his composure. “I want you to know that I remain your most faithful servant and promise that I will not abuse the faith that you have placed in my hands.”

“We can ask for nothing more,” Baghdadi said, getting to his feet.

Al Qatar waited for everyone to leave. Shouts were coming from the next room, and as he walked through the door, his men refused to meet his gaze.

“What happened?”

“They placed a grenade under Ali's body, and it killed Oman when he went to check on him,” Jabar said, standing next to the man who had blood covering his shirt.

“Who did this?”

“I do not know, but they brought this back with his body,” the man replied, holding out the mangled camcorder.

Al Qatar snatched the black recorder from the man's hands, noticing the melted edges and the bloody fingerprints smudging the casing. The lens was shattered, but when he punched the play button, the device came to life.

The screen showed a young girl on the ground and two of his men ripping her shirt. She spat at one of them, and he heard Ali's unmistakable chuckle as one of the men slapped her across the face.

“Is she too much for you?” Ali asked with a laugh.

“You bitch,” one of the men cursed, punching her in the face before throwing her to ground.

The camera bobbed as Ali focused in on her face. The man closest to her head grabbed her hands and pinned them under his knees. Another hand came into view, and twisted her nipples hard before slapping her across her breasts.

The man's belt jingled as he unbuckled it, and a moan of desire escaped from the fighter's throat as he fumbled with her pants.

Suddenly there was a dull smacking sound, and as Ali panned up to the man who was holding down her hands, a jet of blood splattered across his face.

In the next instant, the clear image became jumbled, and the screen shook as Ali fumbled to turn the camera. His fingers must have brushed across the internal microphone, because the sound became hollow and distant. Then the camera lens was pointing up at a mixture of sky and brown earth.

The picture bounced as something fell in front of the camera, but the autofocus kicked in, and a second later, al Qatar was staring at the side of Ali's shattered face.

Al Qatar clutched the camera tightly, praying that the man who had killed his friend would show himself. His fingers were wet with sweat against the plastic body of the camera, and he could feel his heart beating in his ears.

Out of the silence came a voice, and a man was standing in the frame.

“I am not going to hurt you,” the man said.

“I need a new shirt. Do you have one?” the girl replied.

The man knelt down, the wires of his radio snaking up to the headset attached to his forehead. Al Qatar at first thought he must be a Kurd, but then he saw the man's rifle, and knew he was from the West.

“Who are you?” the girl demanded.

“My name is Mason, and I'm an American,” he said.

Al Qatar wanted to smash the camera as the battery indicator beeped on the screen before cutting off. How could the Americans be on his trail already? He had just released the video that very day. There was no way they could react that quickly.

“Where did they go?” he demanded, turning on the man who had found the camera.

“Answer the emir,” Jabar barked, slapping the man in the back of the head.

“They headed north in one of our trucks. I sent men after them, but I think they might be heading to the border.”

“If they cross the border, I will kill you, do you understand? Take as many men as you need, but find them and bring them back to me,” al Qatar screamed.

“Yes, Emir.”

“Find them before the sun goes down.”

“Of course. Consider it done.”

For the first time in a long while, al Qatar felt a surge of fear as he turned his face away from the men. If the Americans were already here, then he had to get to work before they launched an attack. Almost as an afterthought, he rushed into the room where he kept his gear and snatched his bag off the floor.

“How did they get find us so quickly? Were we betrayed?”

“I do not know, but we still have much work to do,” Jabar replied. “Ali was a brave man, and he knew what was expected of him.”

“I need you to take this,” al Qatar said, grabbing from the bag the black box that Khalid had given him.

“Already?”

“I do not know how much time we have left. Take as many men as you need, but be sure that you emplace all of them,” he said, holding up what looked like a USB drive and showing it to Jabar. “Plug it into the port that is labeled ‘Transmit.' Do you understand?”

“What do I do after I plug them in?”

“Come back and help me prepare the attack on the airfield.”

Jabar took the plastic box and headed out of the room, leaving al Qatar on the bed.

He began digging his fingers in his face. He felt his nails cut into his cheek before he balled up his right hand and shoved it into his mouth, biting down hard to stifle the scream building inside him.

No matter what happened, he promised himself, he would make the American bleed for what he had done to Ali.

T
he area outside the task force hangar was alive with activity as a pair of V-22 Ospreys flared above the tarmac. Their huge turbo props blasted up a cloud of grit as they settled to the ground.

Renee had never seen the tiltrotor aircraft before, and since she didn't really have anything to do, she had become a de facto liaison for the different units flying in. She still didn't know if she was staying or going, but Sergeant Major Mitchell had told her not to pack her stuff up yet, so she was trying to stay busy until she was given an answer.

The Pentagon had sent word to Anderson that it planned to use the airfield as a staging base, and for the time being, the task force was back under the Joint Special Operations Command's control. Something big was in the works, and their tiny corner of the airfield had become a very busy place.

C-17 transport planes and Chinook helicopters had been dropping off men and supplies for the last ten hours, and already more than four hundred members from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division's First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment were housed in the hangar next to Task Force Eleven. The paratroopers had been working all night, unloading pallets of parachutes and ammo in preparation for what Renee assumed was an invasion.

“Excuse me, ma'am, I need you to step away from the aircraft,” a marine said, holding up his hand as he strode out of the back of the Osprey.

“Are you in charge?” she asked, stifling a smile.

“No, ma'am, but I seriously need you to take a few steps back,” he said as his hand slipped down to the pistol on his hip.

“What the hell is going on here?” a tall, rangy man with a thick grayish goatee and a scar running up the side of his face demanded from the back.