The Sheik felt the heat of the TV light on his face and started saying his prayers under his breath. Then suddenly all hell broke lose. Gunshots rang out and he was knocked to the floor. After the yelling ceased, he was stood up and the blindfold lifted as they swept him out of the room. He briefly saw one of them in the mask down with blood pouring from his head and two more crumpled in the corner by a fallen camera.
Out in the hall, a man in an FBI windbreaker grabbed him and said, “Do you want to live?” The man shook him roughly. “Do you want to live?”
“Yes… yes…” Aliz said in exhausted rasps.
“Then tell us your network. Where did you base your operation out of? Tell us, or we will shoot you right now as if you were killed by the Brotherhood.”
The Sheik spoke without thought. “Philadelphia. The Al Alaxa safe house…”
“Good, good choice Aliz. You will live. Now tell us more.”
Based on the information supplied by Sheik Alzir El Benhan, the FBI monitored and unraveled the Al Alaxa support network. First observing and learning the depth of its tentacles, then in one fell swoop, arresting and detaining 143 known operatives. That haul became a secondary treasure trove of other contacts that led to other networks. All this made Brooke’s star shine brighter than any other agent. The little show Dr. Fusco’s Psy-Ops division put on for the benefit of the Sheik garnered more funding and personnel for itself. The agents chipped in and had a phony Oscar done up and engraved with the name Chet Ballard. It stated, “Best Actor in a Crime Drama.”
Happy to be back in an American prison with its culturally correct food menus and proper prayer mats, Alzir’s last iota of self-dignity arose from the fact that he remained true to the sacred oath they made to each other as they ran for their lives through the Hungarian forests. Alzir never betrayed his brother and never revealed the existence or location of “the key.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Redrock Delta team was on strip alert at Prince Sultan AFB in Saudi Arabia. 20 operators, 4 pilots, 2 crew chiefs were at “Jump Ready 1.” The support personnel, mobile air conditioning units, and food trucks would not go on the rescue mission, should the call come. But while they were on the tarmac under the boiling sun, it made the men’s lives easier.
Every man on the team was capable of not only finishing but also winning a triathlon with 40 pounds of field equipment strapped to his frame. Every one was an expert-marksman who shoots rounds everyday. All had medic, explosive, munitions, and communications training. In short, one of these guys, by himself, was a wrecking crew of enormous proportions. Twenty of them were an unstoppable force. Yet they were helpless without knowing the location of the ambassador. The Deltas were as forward deployed as they could be without starting a small war. All except for two of them.
Master Sergeant Bridgestone and Sergeant Ross were haggling in Farsi with the street merchant over some bags of rice and flour. Both had acquired impeccable accents and their weather beaten, sun-browned, sandstorm-cracked skin left little doubt to any Arab that they were from the desert. As Bridgestone relentlessly kept dismissing the quality of the man’s goods in an attempt to lower the price, Ross kept his eye on the door of the small building across the way. The haggling stopped when he saw her enter the front door. Bridgestone, as “reluctantly” as he could play it, handed over a few coins and took possession of the bags. They were off in a second and headed toward the building. Ross was prepared to jimmy the front door with the bar he had under his traditional robe, but to his surprise, the door was open. They both ascended the squeaky stairs, taking in the smell of evening meals being prepared and the occasional voice or cry of a child reverberating off the walls of the hallway. With only a look between them, they pulled their Sig Sauers out and Ross crouched low as Bridgestone went in high through the door of the apartment in the back.
They caught her in the bathroom. She quickly scrambled, not to cover up out of any sense of privacy or humility, but to reach for a gun she had resting on the edge of the bathtub. Bridgestone got there first and pulled her wrist up hard, forcing her to rise. Ross covered her mouth to muffle any screams. They carried her off to the bed and placed her over the side, her head to the floor and her body bent at the waist. From that position, she would have to fall to the floor before she could do anything else. Ross replaced his hand with a gag made from a torn sheet that Bridge handed him. They tied her arms behind her back. She struggled but to no avail against men who were three times her weight.
Ross put his foot on the back of her neck. In Farsi he said, “Where is your boyfriend? Where is Jamal holding the ambassador?”
She struggled but didn’t speak. He stepped on her finger and applied pressure until he heard her catch her breath.
“Salinda, please. You will not be able to endure what we are prepared to do to you if you don’t tell us where that dog of a man of yours is holding the ambassador.”
Both Ross and Bridgestone were under operational orders to play the role of disaffected Muslim moderates looking to ward off confrontation with the U.S. If Salinda did survive this “interrogation,” she would only be able to report to her cell members that some other Arabs roughed her up. Of course, that would be right before her terrorist friends killed her for suspicion of betraying them anyway.
Ross tried to convey this dead-end logic to her. “Salinda, you are now tarnished. Even if you don’t tell us anything, none of your people will believe that you didn’t tell us something, especially when they see how horribly disfigured we are going to make your face. They will kill you as an insect, without thinking. After all, you are only a woman.”
In fact, Ross was thinking exactly the opposite. This woman was tougher than most men, but he and Bridgestone were prepared to kill her. She was deemed an enemy combatant by the NCA. And when the National Command Authority speaks, non-coms like them are paid to listen. Neither of them had any identification on them, and no one would be able to make a connection between them and the USA. They were totally on their own. If caught, they could at best be declared mercenaries. They were truly ghosts.
Bridgestone forced Salinda’s head right so she could see her right hand as Ross placed his foot over her ear so she couldn’t look away. He then produced a pair of pliers and grabbed her middle fingernail with it. He gave it a tug as he tried to convince her to talk.
“We can do this twenty times if you stay conscious, Salinda. Then we can wait and start snipping off bits of each finger for a few hours. Oh, and look, here’s some adrenaline.” He produced a syringe. “A shot of this and even the pain of having your genitals removed with a hacksaw wouldn’t knock you out.”
She made her first human sound, muffled as it was through the now saliva-soaked gag.
“By Allah’s will, you are going to talk. You are going to talk, now or later. You are going to talk, all in one piece, or in pieces. But, Salinda, you will talk.”
Her middle finger nail pulled back and tore off with ease. She stiffened and gurgled through the sheet.
“This could take a long time, Fasol,” Bridgestone said to Ross.
At 19:00 hours, the chopper’s radio squawked. “Target Alpha located. GPS downloading. Mission is a go. Repeat. Go.”
The twenty men scrambled into the helicopters as the big hoses that kept the turbines going from the support truck on the apron were disengaged. Within 30 seconds of the alert message, Foxtrot Alpha and Foxtrot Bravo, the mission code name identifiers for the teams of MH60s and AH64-D Apache Longbows, were wheels up and out.