Sigler and the fourth man in their stack, Casey Bellows, visually scanned the rest of the room, while Adams moved directly toward the sleeping man, with Parker close behind him. A narrow beam of green-tinged light — invisible to the unaided eye — lanced from the AN/PAQ4 targeting laser mounted on the upper receiver of Adams’s suppressed Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifle. As seen through the night-vision devices each member of the team wore, it appeared as a bright, wavering point on the supine man’s forehead.
The sleeper stirred and opened his eyes.
Adams froze in mid-step. Below the brilliant spot of the laser, a pair of white dots appeared — the man’s pupils, fully dilated and reflecting only the infrared spectrum of light — staring right back at Parker.
Then the man rolled over onto his side, facing the wall.
Parker didn’t exhale the breath he was holding. Maybe the man was still asleep, maybe he was just playing possum; either way, in another three seconds he would either be bound and gagged, or bagged and tagged. Parker activated his own PAQ4, aiming at the back of the man’s head, as Adams moved in for the capture. Before the man could even begin to wake up, he was flipped onto his stomach. The flexi-cuffs were pulled tight around his wrists and a strip of olive drab ‘100 mile an hour’ tape was slapped over his mouth, to preemptively silence his uncomprehending protests and cries of alarm.
Adams gave a thumbs-up signal, indicating that the captive was under control, after which Sigler’s voice whispered across the net: “Room secure.”
“Roger,” Rainer answered. “Cipher Seven, we are ready for pick-up. Over.”
Cipher Seven, Doug Pettit, who presently sat behind the wheel of an up-armored M1151 HMMWV — a Humvee to the rest of the world — idling quietly with no lights showing, half a mile away, replied immediately. “Roger, Six. We’re on our way.”
“All right, boys,” Rainer said. “Clean up time.”
A falsetto voice cooed in Parker’s earpiece: “Knock, knock. Housekeeping.”
It was probably Jesse Strickland, who styled himself the team’s court jester. Someone groaned in response, but that was the end of it. The team went to work. Parker lowered his assault rifle, leaving Adams to look after the prisoner. He took a large green nylon pouch — a standard military-use body bag — from a pocket. He held it open so that Sigler could begin dropping stuff in. Everything but the furniture went into the bag: loose papers, books, articles of clothing and even a collection of empty soda bottles. There was no telling what might be worthwhile, and this was not the time or place to make such judgments. There would be plenty of time to sort through it all later, when they were back safely behind the wire.
Thirty seconds later, the eight men, along with two captives and three bags full of what might or might not be important evidence, hustled from the door of the house to a row of waiting Humvees. Parker heaved his burden through the rear door of the fourth vehicle in line and then climbed inside, slamming the heavy door shut and engaging the combat locks. Sigler settled into the front passenger seat and secured his door.
There was another round of radio check-ins, with each driver reporting their readiness, and then the convoy pulled away. Despite being in armored vehicles, the team remained vigilant. The mission had gone flawlessly to this point, but the last thing any of them wanted to do was jinx things with a premature round of self-congratulation. It took only a single roadside IED to ruin an otherwise perfect outing. They avoided the known patrol routes, where insurgents most often targeted occupation forces, and instead risked a course that led them through neighborhoods that were known to be sympathetic to the opposition, reasoning — or rather hoping — that Hajji would be less likely to blow things up on his own doorstep. Nevertheless, every man in the team knew that no amount of preparation and planning could guarantee success; luck always played a part.
This time, their luck held. Twenty minutes later, they rolled under the arch that guarded the entrance to Camp Blue Diamond. The mission had gone flawlessly. They had captured both of the al-Awda couriers and gathered a ton of evidence, without firing a single shot…or being fired at.
It was a great way to end their four-month deployment to Iraq.
TWO
The arrival of a helicopter at Camp Blue Diamond — formerly the An-Ramadi Northern Palace, where Saddam Hussein’s half-brother had once lived, and presently headquarters of US Marine Corps 1st Division — was a common enough occurrence that Jack Sigler rarely took note. Something about this one was different, though. The deep bass thump of the rotors beating the air above the Euphrates River, as the bird made its final approach, resonated through his body like an alarm and fanned an ember of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. He poked at the food heaped on his tray — two hamburgers, a mini-pizza and an unopened bag of Cool Ranch Doritos — but his appetite had disappeared.
Daniel Parker, seated across the table from him, instantly picked up on Sigler’s discomfort. The team’s only African-American operator, Parker had a round, youthful face that was incapable of concealing his emotional state. “Someone just walk across your grave, Jack?”
“I just remembered something I need to take care of.” He stood, and in a single deft motion, scooped up the tray, dumped its contents into a nearby trash can and flung it like a Frisbee onto the tray rack. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Parker stood as well. “Well that’s a coincidence. I just remembered that I need to take care of something, too.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You tell me.”
Sigler regarded his teammate and friend with a wan smile, an expression that seemed completely alien on his rough, unshaven face. With his shaggy hair and hard expression, Sigler had been often told he resembled Hugh Jackman, or more precisely, that actor’s film portrayal of the comic book superhero Wolverine; Wolverine didn’t smile.
Before Sigler could answer, the Motorola Talkabout radio clipped to his belt crackled to life. “Jack, it’s Kevin. I need you at the TOC.”
Parker’s eyebrows went up. “Damn, Jack. Spidey-sense, much?”
“I’m wondering that myself,” Sigler muttered. The ominous feeling that had started with the approach of the helicopter was blossoming into something like paranoia. He keyed the transmit button on the radio. “Be there in five.”
It took him only three minutes to walk briskly from the dining facility in the main palace building, to FOB McCoy, the smaller, walled-off compound where Cipher element had set up shop. Above the always-locked metal door was a crudely painted sign that read ‘Animal House,’ presumably a reference to the college fraternity in the classic John Belushi movie of the same name: Delta Tau Chi — Delta House. The sign had appeared one night, a few weeks after they’d arrived in country — most likely some jarhead acting on a dare — but Kevin Rainer, Cipher element’s commander, had left it there. Although their unit designation was supposed to be classified, why bother denying what everyone at Camp Blue Diamond already knew; Cipher element was part of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D, the US Army’s elite counter-terrorism interdiction unit, better known simply as Delta.
Sigler went directly to the tactical operations center (TOC) — known informally as The Lair—which served a dual purpose as both communications hub and conference room. Rainer was seated at the end of the long rectangular table, along with Doug Pettit and two other people — an athletically built, brown-haired man, and a woman — in civilian clothes. The man was Scott Klein, a CIA officer who had been working closely with Cipher element to disrupt communications between the different local insurgent groups, but it took Sigler a moment to recognize him; he was having trouble tearing his gaze away from the woman.