Shock Wave, page 22
Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight.
Naji put his left hand on Maysoon’s waist. “What’s the harm? I think you want to as much as I do.” He pulled her in. His breath fogged her glasses.
Maysoon stopped counting. Her time was up.
CHAPTER FORTY
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.
Bridget pushed the door open. She put her head through and peered into the darkness. Just barely, she could see the slimy one’s back. “Naji” the girl had called him. Maysoon stood in front of him, looking over his shoulder.
Bridget nodded.
Maysoon leaned toward Naji and they kissed. She put her hands on his head to hold him in place.
Bridget moved to the stairway and went up three at a time. She turned left in the hall and reached the back door in a few steps
As Bridget took hold of the door handle, someone grabbed her hair from behind and pulled with such force that she fell flat on her back and banged her head on the floor. She was dazed.
Ra’ed fell on her, put a knee on her chest and took hold of both her wrists. He leaned in, his face over hers, his hair matted from sleeping, his nightshirt hanging loose. He spat in her face.
Bridget’s head throbbed. Her side wound ached. She raised her right leg to hook Ra’ed’s head, but he evaded the move. All his weight was on her chest. She had trouble breathing. Her vaunted martial arts skills failed her.
Naji came to the top of the stairs out of breath, his eyes wide. Ra’ed shouted something at him in Arabic. Then Maysoon came up behind Naji. Her headscarf hung off her hair. Her face was flushed.
“Ahhh,” Ra’ed said. It was clear in any language that he understood what had happened.
Ra’ed flipped Bridget over and put his knee in the small of her back. She fought, but he was too strong. He pulled her right arm up between her shoulder blades. “Do not move or I will break it. I swear by Allah.” He pulled harder.
Bridget cried out in pain and stopped fighting him.
Ra’ed issued an order. Naji pushed Maysoon out of the way and ran down the steps. Ra’ed used his free hand to pull Bridget’s hair and twist her neck so she was forced to look at Maysoon.
“I see that you had help. We will deal with her, also. Maybe I will let you watch.”
The large man Bridget called Ballou came out of the bedroom, looking half-asleep. Ra’ed said something and Ballou reached into the room to get a rifle.
Naji returned with the handcuffs and leg irons. He and Ra’ed put them in place, cuffing Bridget’s wrists behind her back this time. She let her body go limp on the floor.
Ra’ed stood and brushed himself off. “Stand up, American bitch.”
Bridget struggled, using the wall for support. As soon as she was up, Ra’ed slapped her with the back of his hand. She staggered. Maysoon let out a small scream, cut off by a look from Ra’ed.
As Bridget recovered, he took hold of her throat and pressed her against the wall. His beard dripped with spittle. The veins on his forehead looked like they might burst.
“If you do this again, I will kill you and everyone in this house. Do you understand?”
Bridget didn’t respond. Ra’ed squeezed her neck harder.
“Yes, yes.” Her voice was raspy. She glanced at Maysoon. The girl was leaning against the opposite wall shaking. “She did nothing,” Bridget said.
“Ach!” Ra’ed pulled Bridget forward by the neck, then slammed her against the wall again. “Even now you lie to me.”
He issued another order and Ballou took hold of Bridget. Ra’ed went to Maysoon and slapped her. She cried out and collapsed. Her glasses flew down the hallway and hit the far wall as an older woman came around the corner from upstairs, pulling her robe tight around her nightgown. Maysoon ran to her.
Even though it was in Arabic, Bridget could more or less follow the shouting match that came next. The woman was angry at Ra’ed first, then at Maysoon, then at Naji, then back to Ra’ed.
Then the woman moved toward Bridget with her fists raised and screamed at her in English. “What did you do? You used my daughter. Now we are all in danger!”
Ra’ed held the woman off and forced her back to Maysoon. He turned to Bridget. “The woman is weak and her daughter is a whore, but she is right about that.”
While Naji and Ballou pointed their guns at Maysoon and her mother, Ra’ed forced Bridget down the first few steps to the basement. Bridget tripped on the chain and fell the rest of the way. With her hands cuffed behind her, she had nothing with which to soften the fall. Her left shoulder hit the concrete floor, but somehow her head was spared.
Ra’ed kicked her in the stomach. “Get up.”
Bridget couldn’t.
Ra’ed kicked her again, then grabbed her hair and one arm and dragged her into the cell. He dropped her in the far-right corner, away from her things. Then he took the mattress and half-full water bottle and threw them out of the room. He dumped the bag of supplies Maysoon had brought and stomped on them, then kicked them in Bridget’s direction.
“Do not move.” Ra’ed stormed out of the room and returned a few seconds later with a hammer and a large nail. He pounded the nail into the floor between Bridget’s feet, put a link of the leg chain over it and used the hammer to bend the nail down until its head dug into the concrete.
Ra’ed stood and looked at her, out of breath and red-faced. He went to the hook outside the cell and came back with the key. He uncuffed Bridget’s hands and recuffed them in front of her. “That is your only privilege. Do not lose it.”
He went out of the room again but reappeared with a large metal bowl. He threw it at her, and she had to raise her hands to deflect it. That shot a pain through her shoulder. Ra’ed turned off the light and closed the door. Bridget heard the bolt slide.
She fumbled in the darkness for the bowl and threw up into it. She put it between her knees, pushed the hair off her face and retched again. Bending over the bowl, she breathed in short, uneven bursts. She put her hands over her nose and mouth to prevent hyperventilation. It took some time for the feeling to pass.
Bridget leaned back against the wall, sweating and shivering. Her shoulder and head throbbed. The bare floor was cold. The room was pitch black and she couldn’t reach the light switch.
She moved the bowl to the side, stretched her legs and reached up to touch the tender spot on the back of her head. None of her physical conditioning or POW training had prepared her for this.
Bridget thought about what Ra’ed might do to Maysoon. She kicked at her leg chain. The girl had done a brave thing and now she would pay for it. She did it because Bridget had convinced her. Bridget was good at convincing people to do things they didn’t want to do, things that would hurt them and their families.
She kicked the chain again. Bridget needed to put such thoughts out of her mind. She had done what she had to do and it almost worked. There was no way she could help Maysoon now.
Bridget had to go back to basics—don’t panic, stay healthy, stay alive. But for what? It seemed more likely than ever that she’d never get out of that house.
* * *
In the hallway, Maysoon held onto her mother, but it was a one-sided hug. Mrs. al-Hamdani was busy staring down the two fighters and was showing no sympathy for her daughter.
Ra’ed came up from the basement. “Come. We go upstairs.”
“That is my bedroom,” Mrs. al-Hamdani said. “You will not—”
“Go!” Ra’ed leaned in, nose-to-nose with her, screaming and spitting. “Go or I will kill your daughter the traitor right now.”
Mrs. al-Hamdani pushed him away, daring him to hit her. But she complied. She picked up Maysoon’s glasses and led the girl to the stairs.
The men followed them up. Ra’ed went into the master bedroom and searched it. He opened every drawer of the faux-Louis XVI dresser and threw the contents onto the floor. He ripped all the clothes off their hangers and rummaged through the boxes on the closet floor.
He picked up a framed photo of Mrs. al-Hamdani’s late husband, the founder of A-HAI, and took it to the doorway where the women waited. “He would be ashamed.” Ra’ed smashed the frame against the doorpost, sending glass flying in all directions, then tossed what was left into the closet.
In the night table drawer, he found a small pistol and a box of ammunition. He put them in his pocket. Then he picked up the phone, yanked its wire out of the wall and threw it out of the room.
Ra’ed moved to the attached bathroom and came out with a scissors and a nail file. He walked up to Maysoon in the hallway. “Your cell phone.”
She stared at him as if in a daze, unable to face what was happening, what she had caused.
Ra’ed slapped her. “Phone!” Her hand trembled as she gave it to him. He turned to the guards. “Let them in.”
The two men stepped aside, and the women picked their way through the debris to sit on the green-and-white frilly comforter on Mrs. al-Hamdani’s bed.
Ra’ed stood in front of them. “My obligation to respect you and your house has ended. Any problem—any problem—and I will do what I have to do.”
He left the room and closed the door.
Maysoon’s mother looked at her with more anger in her eyes than the girl had ever seen. “How could you?” she asked through clenched teeth. Then she slapped Maysoon in the same spot Ra’ed had hit.
Maysoon stopped breathing. Her mother had never struck her before.
“You betrayed the movement. You betrayed me. And you betrayed yourself. Now, what will become of us?” Mrs. al-Hamdani put her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“Umi,” Maysoon said. She put her hands on her mother’s shoulders but the woman pushed them off. Mrs. al-Hamdani turned to look at her daughter. Her anger gave way to disappointment, then despair. Then she couldn’t look at her daughter at all anymore.
Mrs. al-Hamdani lay down and turned away. Maysoon stayed on the edge of the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks.
A few minutes later, there was hammering, first at the bedroom door, then at the door from the bathroom to the hallway. She saw Naji climbing up a ladder outside the window. He raised a hammer and nailed it shut.
“Umi, what will we do?” Maysoon sobbed.
Her mother didn’t move or open her eyes. “Pray, stupid girl. Pray that Allah eases Ra’ed’s anger before he kills us.”
Maysoon composed herself. “Ayman will be home in the morning. He will get us out.”
“Oh, Allah!” Mrs. al-Hamdani opened her eyes now and pushed herself up on one elbow. “I hope he does not come home. Ra’ed is more likely to kill him than to kill us.” She lay back down and started sobbing again.
Maysoon’s body slouched. She lay down next to her mother. How could she have been so stupid? So, so stupid. She let the enemy use her. She turned her back on her people, put her family in danger, debased herself by kissing that worm, Naji, and maybe ensured that the hostage would be killed.
No. She would not spare a thought for that woman. She was evil, and Maysoon had her own problems to worry about. Even if Ra’ed didn’t kill them, she would have to live with the betrayal, the humiliation. What would she say to Ayman? To Iyad? Maysoon would be an outcast with no future, no education, no husband. It would be better to die. At least then, they would have to honor her.
How had she not thought of all this before?
She looked at her mother. She had never seen her so angry. But the anger wasn’t the worst of it. The disappointment in her mother’s eyes was far worse.
Maysoon put her glasses on the nightstand, turned her face to the pillow and prayed for the second time that day. “Allahuma aghfir li . . .” O Allah, forgive me all my sins, great and small . . .
She had been a good girl all her life. Surely, Allah would forgive her, provide her with a way to be free of the shame she had brought on herself and her family. Surely, he would.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Faraz’s overnight stop was a tent city in a remote corner of a Saudi military base. They kept the A-HAI men well away from the soldiers, but Faraz saw the lights of the base buildings and the efficient perimeter security. And the American weapons.
He sipped tea with several of his men as Saudi soldiers handed out breakfast bags with bread and hard-boiled eggs. Pots of tea brewed on camp stoves. The buses idled nearby.
The men ate and checked their weapons without being told. They had been ordered to put their costumes away. Iyad made clear it was time to get serious.
Assali arrived in a Humvee from his night of relative comfort, courtesy of the base commander. There had been no chance for Faraz to get anywhere near a sat phone.
The boss joined a conversation between Iyad and a Saudi officer well away from the rest of the men. The officer seemed to be explaining something, pointing to the men and the buses, then toward the road that led north out of the base.
Assali nodded and said something to Iyad, who made a half-bow to the officer, then walked toward Faraz and the other men.
“Yalla shabaab.” Let’s go boys.
* * *
Will’s wakeup call from Liz Michaels came at five a.m. He was downstairs and dressed for action when Sergeant Peretz pulled up in an SUV half an hour later.
“They wouldn’t tell me anything on the phone,” he said through the window.
“All I know is that with help from your people in Washington, our technicians have identified a target. I will take you to the tech center.”
Will squeezed into the passenger seat. “Any update on Colonel Ben-Yosef?”
“He is awake and he is angry.”
“Angry?”
“He wants out. General HaLevy has ordered him to stay in the hospital, for now.”
* * *
At the tech center, Will found Major Drucker with Corporal Golani, the internet wizard. He was pointing at the shaded area of a map on his computer screen.
“This is the node your people found. And”—he zoomed in—“we have identified this area as the subcircuit from which the file originated. There are a hundred and twenty-seven subscribers.” Golani widened the view again. “You can see the location, the northeastern edge of what we call Greater Jerusalem, maybe eight kilometers from the Old City.”
“Looks like a densely populated area,” Will said.
“Very hostile, too,” Drucker told him. “We need to narrow it down.”
“This is not a tech issue,” Golani said. “We have gone as far as we can go. Now it is an intel issue. We need to know who lives there that might do this.”
“Ha,” Drucker said. “Any of them might do it.”
* * *
The buses stopped in late morning at a sunbaked crossroads. Faraz saw only sand and hills in all directions.
The last road sign they’d passed indicated twenty-five kilometers to “Al-hudud Al-Urduniya,” the Jordanian border.
The heat hit Faraz as he emerged from the bus to consult with Iyad and Bashar. Assali stayed in the air conditioning.
“We wait here,” Iyad said. “Not long, I think.”
“Wait for what?” Faraz asked.
“The rest of the men.”
* * *
Half an hour later, a long line of assorted vehicles arrived—sedans, station wagons, SUVs—in various states of disrepair. Many were dented and some belched gray smoke. Most had Jordanian license plates. They were empty except for their drivers.
“What’s this about?” Faraz asked Iyad.
“We cannot drive into Israel on tour buses. We split up, go into Jordan in small groups, then cross into Israel tomorrow. Some will be stopped, but whoever gets through will rendezvous at a safe house for the attack. Gather the men. I will provide the details.”
* * *
It turned out that the question of who in the communications subcircuit might have sent the manifesto was at least partly a tech issue.
Will watched while Corporal Golani downloaded a file of subscribers sent over by the service provider. Then Golani ran a comparison of that list with Israel’s list of suspected or known terrorists.
Drucker’s cynical view was not exactly true, but it wasn’t far off. Of the hundred and twenty-seven subscribers, eighty had surnames that were on the watch list for one reason or another.
“They could be terrorists or distant cousins of suspects or not related at all,” Drucker said. “It will take hours to sift through and figure out if any of them is a realistic potential source of the manifesto.”
“Send it to our people,” Will said. “If they work on it, too, the process should go faster. They might even know some things about those folks that you don’t.”
Golani looked doubtful. “I will ask for permission.”
* * *
Iyad led the effort to distribute the men among the vehicles, made sure their weapons and costumes were hidden in the cargo holds or under seats, and gave out a limited number of counterfeit IDs. The documents looked amateurish to Faraz, but Iyad assured him they were sufficient for the first border.
“You are with me in this one.” Iyad pointed to the lead SUV.
“Shouldn’t I be with the men I trained, to make sure they do their jobs?”
“No, Disco Boy, you will be with me.”
Faraz decided not to argue. Best not to raise Iyad’s suspicions any higher, although this would make it more difficult to get away or make a call. He got into the SUV as ordered. He sat in the backseat, alongside one of Iyad’s fighters, a quiet but competent man named Jamal.
The twenty-something driver twisted in his seat, showing Faraz a broad smile, and reached back to shake his hand. “I am Waleed. You are the American?”
“Yes. Khayal. How did you know?”
“Everyone has heard of the American jihadi who saved Ayman al-Hamdani from the garbageman.”
“I think the story has grown with time.”
“Of course! Enjoy it.” Waleed was clean-shaven, short and wiry, with unruly black hair and good English.
“And where are you from?”
