Violence of Action, page 19
“Hold on,” Chunk said, clawing out the spent tobacco from his lip and tossing the wad in a trash can on the floor. “First, you claim to be the Lion of Ramadi, the most revered sniper in the history of jihad. Then you claim you’re a sniper for hire who’s killed hundreds of infidels and Kafir as Allah’s instrument of justice. But if you’re such a badass sniper, then how come last night you missed all the SEALs and shot your own jihadi brothers in the head? Were those all accidental kills?”
The man looked away, his gaze returning to the ceiling.
“I didn’t think so,” Chunk said with victory in his voice, then turned to Watts and gestured for her to follow him out of the curtain partitions.
“Let’s talk about where you were born,” Profant was saying as they walked across the open space out of earshot. Riker followed them and stood beside Chunk for this three-person huddle.
“What do you think?” Chunk asked her.
“He prepared a narrative and he’s sticking to it. Which, given his circumstances, is pretty impressive,” she said with sympathy in her eyes that Chunk suddenly found annoying.
“Well, he’s not the Lion of Ramadi,” Chunk said. “That’s for damn sure. Too young.”
“I agree.”
“But you think he was part of the operation that ambushed SEAL Team Two?”
She nodded. “Too many coincidences not to be, but there’s still a piece we’re missing. He claims to be a hired gun working for the jihadist movement du jour, but I think that’s also part of his script. The lone-wolf narrative doesn’t work. To pull this attack off he would have had to have logistical support.”
“And intelligence support,” Riker said. “Somebody had to provide the intelligence on where Team Two would be and then bait the trap. This guy is an instrument, but not for Allah. He’s working for somebody . . . somebody a helluva lot smarter than your average tribal warlord.”
“And we know that guy had to be the brainchild behind the weird PsyOps Facebook post,” Chunk added. “Because the two operations are linked.”
“I agree,” she said, then bit her lip.
“What?” Chunk said, seeing something fresh was on her mind.
“What do you think about me showing him pictures of Eshan Dawar and Qasim Nadar? It might be interesting to see what his response is.”
“No offense, Heels, but talk about confirmation bias. I mean, there are dozens of splinter cells out there,” he said, playing devil’s advocate. “Al Qadar is operating in Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. We don’t have a single thing to make us think they have any presence here.”
She nodded and sighed. “Yeah, I know, it’s just this operation has a similar vibe . . . if there is such a thing in counterterror.”
“You mean a similar evolution in tactics and sophistication like we witnessed with al Qadar’s combat drone program?” Chunk said.
“Exactly,” she said.
“I think the priority is to press this guy hard and figure out if there’s still an active operation underway,” Chunk said, wondering if the sniper attack on Team Two was only phase one of some broader plan. “Bowman won’t let us stay here in Erbil indefinitely, especially now that we got this guy and wiped out the compound. We need to figure out who else is in play before we get pulled back to Taj, okay?”
“Of course,” she said, nodding. “I’m on it.” She started walking back toward where Profant was interrogating the self-proclaimed Juba.
“Hey, Watts,” he called after her and she turned, eyebrows up. “Maybe show him those pics anyway . . . Why the hell not?”
“Sure,” she said with an inscrutable smile.
Why do I have a feeling she was going to do it anyway? he thought with a smile of his own. Best to let her tug at her knots.
“I want to stay,” Riker said.
Chunk looked at his LCPO with surprise. “Really?”
“Yeah, I wanna make sure the guy talks. He’s hiding something.”
Chunk imagined Riker giving Juba’s stump another squeeze. With a sigh, he clapped his hand on Riker’s shoulder. “I feel ya, bro, but let’s let the pros do their thing, okay? Heels is all over this.”
“Yeah, okay,” Riker said after a grudgingly long pause. “Wanna go for a run? Happy to kick your ass again.”
“How about we hit the weights first? Maybe you can deadlift half what I can today.”
“You’re such a dick,” Riker said with a chuckle. “I’ll take that bet.”
As they walked out of the hidden hospital, Chunk had to acknowledge that something was still missing. This was just too simple to be the end of it—a new generation Juba, hired by low-level shitheads like AAI to kill SEALs . . . nobody in that equation had the sophistication to have pulled the hit off. But if anyone could put the pieces all together, it was Watts. And the CIA guy, Profant, seemed to have his act together too. It was just going to take time, discipline, and patience.
And therein lay the rub.
That’s the thing about hunting, he thought, rolling his shoulders in anticipation of hitting the gym. Shooting a buck is easy. Properly positioning your blind and lying in wait until you lure him out into the open . . . well, that’s the hard part.
CHAPTER 23
special operations compound
erbil international airport
erbil, iraq
1712 local time
Whitney stared at the black screen of her laptop, which had timed out and gone dark while her mind wandered. “Juba” had stuck doggedly to his script, and despite her and Russ Profant’s best efforts, they’d not managed to shake actionable intelligence loose. She’d showed him the photos of Eshan Dawar and Qasim Nadar and neither picture had elicited recognition. And the sniper had looked at the images, if for no other reason than to satisfy his own curiosity. His nonreaction shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. She’d been sure her hunch that al Qadar was tied to the Erbil sniper attack had been right.
Her secure mobile phone rang, vibrating on her desk next to her computer. She glanced at the caller ID and grinned. It was like the universe anticipated where she needed to go next.
“Hey, Bobby,” she said, pressing her phone to her ear and leaning back in the wobbly task chair.
“I got some good news and some bad news,” said the former Delta operator turned spook. “Which one do you want first?”
“Ooo, I love conversations that start off this way,” she said and meant it. “I’m a good-news-first kinda girl. Hit me.”
“I reached out to a fella I know at MI5 and after a good bit of begging—and the promise of a very expensive bottle of scotch, which you’re paying for incidentally—I got him to agree to connect you with a British joint counterterror task force that has Qasim Nadar on its watch list.”
“That’s great news,” she said, pushing off with her right foot and spinning a full circle in the squeaky chair. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is the team ain’t happy about it. In fact, don’t be surprised if the response you get is downright hostile.”
“I’m not worried. Collaboration is the name of the game in today’s counterterrorism world. I’m sure I can sweet-talk my way into their good graces.”
He chuckled. “Good luck with that. I’m sending you the contact information for the officer in charge on your high side. His name is Holden McLean. He’s with MI5, and he’s the task force lead.”
“Thanks, Bobby. I really appreciate this,” she said. “And do send me the bill for that scotch.”
“Anytime, Heels,” he said, using her insider nickname. “Oh, and one more thing, don’t make the rookie mistake and call them agents. What we call informants, the Brits call agents; what we call agents, they call officers.”
“Roger that, thanks for the tip.”
“Don’t be a stranger, Watts.”
“Back at you,” she said and ended the call.
She refreshed her confidential inbox over and over again until Theobald’s email showed up. She clicked on it, noted the name and phone number, then glanced at the clock icon in the upper right corner of her screen.
No time like the present to get shit done, she reminded herself and dialed the number.
“McLean,” a male voice said after the third ring.
She’d only made it halfway through her introductory spiel before he interrupted her.
“Let me stop you right there,” he said. “Watts, you said your name is, eh?”
“That’s right.”
“How do I put this delicately, Ms. Watts?” he said with uniquely annoying British indifference. “I don’t think this is going to work.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I haven’t even told you what I need yet.”
“Right, I know, but see there’s the kicker, because it doesn’t really matter what it is. Whatever it is, it’s of enormous importance to you, but not to us. When I connect you to Lucy Kim, our agent runner on the task force from MI6, she’s going to tell you to piss off straightaway. No feigning interest or nothing—just a piss off, mate and then a hang up. She’s like that and who can blame her? A third of East London are potential Islamic jihadists on paper. But you’ll be miffed, and rightfully so—us being close allies in the war on terror and all—so you’ll call me back and complain. Make no mistake, I’ll take the call and listen sympathetically, probably all the while checking my exploding high side inbox and maybe wondering what, if anything, my knackered wife will warm up for my dinner when I get home late tonight for the hundredth day in a row. Then I’m going to apologize and sound like I care, but let’s be honest here—I really don’t. And why would I? I don’t know you. Everybody here is very busy. We all have our own jobs to do, don’t we? We certainly don’t have time to do other people’s jobs, especially for the Americans who seem to have their own resources and budgets. And so, I think what would be best is if you submit your request in writing, and then I’ll have one of my junior targeters put together a nice, tidy package of everything we’ve got on Qasim Nadar and transmit it to you. All right? How’s that sound?”
Whitney pursed her lips, considered her reply, and decided to go with brutal honesty.
“That was quite a long-winded monologue, Officer McLean, and in the time that took, you probably could have had me on and off a conference call with your colleague. I know how hard you work, but it was still a shit response and not the level of professionalism or courtesy that I expected. So, let’s try this again. Hello, my name is Whitney Watts, and I believe that one of your countrymen might be a high-ranking member of a terrorist organization that launched two drone strikes that killed a dozen of my countrymen. I personally happened to be on the receiving end of one of those attacks. And while I narrowly avoided being dismembered myself, I was lucky enough to help identify the charred remains of a CIA colleague I’d been standing next to only moments before.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, his voice taking on a more serious timbre now.
“Have you had the privilege of smelling barbequed human flesh, Mr. McLean?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“That’s good, because every night before I go to sleep, I wish to God I could extract the memory of that smell from my brain.” An uncomfortable silence hung on the line, but she let it linger until he broke.
“I’ll talk to Officer Kim and have her contact you at her earliest convenience,” he said.
“I’d prefer to video conference with her. Let’s schedule it now,” she said, knowing it was harder to be a passive-aggressive asshole when you had to do it to someone’s face.
In the background, she could hear him talking to someone and she pictured him cupping his hand over the phone while he whispered to his MI6 colleague.
“All right,” he said through a defeated sigh. “Give us thirty minutes. You have my email address?”
“Yes, I’ll set it up and send you a secure link. Talk to you both then,” she said and ended the call.
Thirty minutes gave her just enough time to use the facilities, grab a snack, and make herself a cup of coffee before logging into the call a few minutes early as the host. Chunk had turned her onto Bonefrog Coffee—a veteran-owned coffee company started by a retired SEAL—and damn if she wasn’t drinking two cups a day because it was so damn good.
Mug in hand, she returned to her desk and was relieved that her British counterparts did not ghost her. When the video conference went live, she was greeted by a window featuring a middle-aged, pale-skinned man with a receding hairline of curly dark hair sitting beside a woman of Asian descent who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties.
“I’m Lucy Kim, the agent runner on this task force. McLean tells me you want to get into my knickers?” the woman said with an angry estuary English accent that would make Ricky Gervais proud. “Why are you looking at me that way? Yeah, this is how I talk. I’m second-generation British-born Korean, grew up in New Malden.”
Whitney felt her cheeks get hot, taken aback by Lucy Kim’s onslaught.
“Nice to meet you, Lucy, I’m Whitney Watts. I work in the N2 shop for the Naval Special Warfare JSOC element presently prosecuting the al Qadar terrorist network in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and abroad. We’ve flagged one of your naturalized citizens, an Afghan-born immigrant who goes by the name Qasim Nadar, as a person of interest. We have limited information on him, but we believe he has ties to Hamza al-Saud and is connected to a series of drone strikes conducted by al Qadar three months ago in eastern Afghanistan against American and coalition forces.”
“The Kandahar attack?” Kim said.
“That’s correct.”
The MI6 officer nodded, clearly aware of the incident.
“You said you’re the agent runner for your task force?” Whitney said, assuming that agent runner was MI6 vernacular for what the US Intelligence Community called asset handlers.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Kim came back.
“You wouldn’t happen to be running Nadar by any chance, would you?”
Kim cocked a questioning eyebrow at McLean.
“I vetted her credentials,” he said. “She’s cleared at the highest level.”
The MI6 woman nodded and turned back to the camera. “The answer to your question is no. But Nadar is on our Level One watch list and a person of interest given his immigration status and occupation.”
“What is his occupation?” Whitney asked, pen at the ready.
“He works at British Aerospace as the engineering lead for avionics software integration on the Valkyrie stealth UCAV program.”
A lump instantly materialized in Whitney’s throat as this new and confirming puzzle piece clicked into place. Chunk’s going to flip when I tell him that Nadar is a drone avionics engineer.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Kim said.
“That’s highly pertinent information that we were not aware of,” Whitney said, her mind racing a thousand miles an hour. “Nadar traveled to Pakistan fifteen weeks ago. We believe he was in the city of Mingora when the al Qadar drone strikes were conducted. Now that I know he is an avionics engineer with expert drone knowledge . . . it changes everything.”
“It could be coincidence,” McLean said.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Does the name Eshan Dawar mean anything to you?”
“That name sounds very familiar,” McLean said, turning to Kim.
“Yeah, Dawar is on our watch list. He also uses the alias Javad Ahmad, but he disappeared from our radar several months ago.”
“That’s because Eshan Dawar was killed during a hit we conducted on a safe house in Mingora before the drone attack.”
“That answers that question,” Kim said with a look at McLean. “The Yanks blew his brains out.”
Whitney grimaced. “Yeah, it’s unfortunate. Sometimes the boys get a little trigger-happy.”
“But how does Dawar relate to Nadar?” McLean asked.
“They traveled together from Afghanistan into Pakistan. We photographed them in a hired vehicle at Torkham crossing fifteen weeks ago . . .” She stopped as an absurdly ridiculous, but possibly brilliant, epiphany occurred to her.
What if Chunk’s “fake Hamza” theory is right? Is it possible that Qasim Nadar and Hamza al-Saud are the same person?
“You looked like you were about to say something important,” Kim said. “Go on, spit it out.”
Did she dare read them in on Hamza? Could she trust them with the crown jewel of her investigation? Whitney refocused on the computer screen and met Lucy Kim’s eyes—guarded eyes that had greeted her with suspicion and mistrust from the get-go. But in those guarded eyes Whitney thought she saw her own reflection—a kindred spirit, a young CIA analyst who was trying to do the same impossible job in a “guard my rice bowl at all costs” environment. She remembered the MI6 officer’s opening salvo:
I’m Lucy Kim, the agent runner on this task force. McLean tells me you want to get into my knickers . . .
Who talks like that to a fellow professional they’ve never met? Someone who’s been burned but is still playing with fire. An agent runner whose carefully cultivated sources had been exploited and compromised by “colleagues” and “partners” she thought she could trust. A cynic who expects the worst but hopes for the best . . . Someone like me.
Yes, I think I can trust Lucy Kim.
Whitney took a deep breath and said, “We have Hamza al-Saud checked into one of our luxurious five-star detention facilities.”
Kim and McLean traded looks once again.
“You better not be taking the piss out of us, Miss Watts,” McLean said, turning back to fix her with a hazel-eyed stare.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“It means you better not be fucking with us,” Kim said, her interest suddenly piqued for the first time in this conversation.
