Jihadi Bride, page 18
“Where were you?” Ziad repeated.
“At work,” Erik said, and struggled to keep his voice steady.
“Then you are also a slave. Like I was.”
Erik clasped his hands together and rested his elbows on his legs. “What do I do?”
“Mr. Petersson, if you hope to bring your daughter home, I think your best chance lies less with showing her she’s mistaken about Islam, and more with showing her that you’re her community. At least as much as the group she decided to join.”
“And how do I do that?” he asked. “I can’t even get in touch with her.” Except he had at least one other option.
“Perhaps you should pray,” Ziad said. “And trust that Allah does not give problems without also giving solutions.”
Erik thought of Matt de Kalb and wondered if Allah had a sense of humor.
* * *
Raqqa, Syria
12 May 15 – 1134 Local
It didn’t take long – a minute, maybe two – until the man’s screams stopped. Perhaps the man passed out, or perhaps the boiling water overwhelmed his pain receptors, either way, Abu Noor al Kanadi was glad when the shrieks ceased.
Across the crowded square, two hooded fighters stood beside a large, cast-iron cauldron. From within a cloud of steam that rose from the pot’s surface, a pair of arms stuck up over the side, chained together at the wrists. One of the fighters used a stick to hook the chain and dunk what was left of Mus’ab Saleh back into the boiling water and his body sank out of sight.
Farther down, another two hooded men escorted a woman into the square. The wife of the coward Mus’ab Saleh, she wore a simple white robe instead of the black abaya, her head uncovered, hands bound behind her back. A blindfold covered her eyes, the black fabric in sharp contrast against the pale skin of her face. Half-led, half-dragged, she was marched to the center of the square where one of the men kicked her in the back of her legs, and she fell to her knees.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” Mamdouh said.
“As am I,” al Kanadi said.
“Why do we need a North American? There are others ready to go right now.”
Al Kanadi shook his head. “It will be easier to negotiate border security when they’re from there. This one, in particular, would have been perfect. She even has her passport, and would have just been going home.” He glanced at his second-in-command. “Plus, there’s the narrative. Using a native-born will have far greater impact than a Syrian, or Iraqi.”
A hooded man in tan fatigues strode up to stand by the woman. He pulled out a sheet of paper and began to read. For the crime of aiding a coward who’d fled the battlefield, the woman would be put to death. When he’d finished reading the sentence, the man tucked the paper into a pocket and moved to a pile of melon-sized stones. He stooped to pick up a rock, hefted it a few times and then raised the stone over his head and brandished it to the crowd.
The girl remained on her knees, unmoving, her gaze vacant and fixed on the ground.
“She has given up,” Mamdouh said. “She cannot even bring herself to be scared.”
“Maybe she just has more courage than the man,” al Kanadi said.
The executioner advanced on the woman. He dismissed the black-clad guards with a nod and then faced the crowd again. He yelled and rotated in a circle, the stone displayed overhead like he held a piece of heaven itself, and when the circle was complete, he lowered the stone and stood over the woman.
Silence fell over the square, so quiet al Kanadi was able to hear the man with the stone mumble to the woman, though not what the man said. She did not move. The man cocked his arm behind him, paused, then threw. The stone struck the woman in the chest, knocked her back. She put down a hand to steady herself, struggled to remain upright, and then looked up at the executioner and smiled.
The executioner stooped and snatched up the stone. Raised it and smashed it down on the side of the woman’s head. Dislodged her blindfold and drove her to the dirt. The man raised both hands in the air and faced the crowd and then pointed to the pile of stones.
Al Kanadi studied the woman. When she’d looked up, he’d thought she might fight, and as the crowd advanced toward the pile of stones, he wondered what she would do.
The executioner stood with his back to the woman, oblivious that she’d pushed herself to her hands and knees. The hair over her left ear was matted red, and the blindfold had fallen down and uncovered one eye and through that eye the woman glared about the square. She pushed to her knees and stared at the brown-clad man and spat.
Mamdouh snorted.
“Stop this,” al Kanadi said as the executioner grabbed the woman by the throat.
“Impossible,” Mamdouh said.
“Do it.”
“They’ll tear us apart.”
“Then shoot them before that happens.” The bloodlust had not yet gripped the crowd, and it could be stopped if they acted now. The unexpectedness might even work in the Caliphate’s favor. The people would wonder why the execution was stopped, would fear the uncertainty of not knowing. “She has fight in her. She’s perfect. Save her.”
“She will not obey.” Mamdouh’s voice was fierce. “Look at her.”
The woman fought in the executioner’s grasp, clawed at his arm and even as her face turned red, she tried to spit again. The man flung her to the ground and then picked up his stone, stained red on one side. Several other people appeared behind him, tentative even though they held stones of their own.
“She will obey. You will see to it.”
“Me?”
Al Kanadi grasped Mamdouh’s shoulder. “You will break her. Mold her into the weapon we need her to be. I can trust no other,” he said. “Now save her. Before the crowd tastes blood.”
At the executioner’s feet, the woman struggled back to her knees. A stone lobbed from the crowd caught her in the leg, another struck the ground near her head, and against this backdrop, the executioner raised his stone over his head.
A concussion of gunfire erupted beside al Kanadi, and Mamdouh strode into the square. He fired his rifle into the air again, then trained it on the executioner and yelled at the crowd. The executioner paused, and the crowd pressed at his back, and Mamdouh fired another burst, this time into the front row of the crowd. Bodies fell to the dirt, and the executioner dropped his stone and held his hands in front of his face. The crowd surged once more and then began to melt away as the people panicked and ran.
Al Kanadi pushed through the people, into the space Mamdouh claimed around the woman. He stared at her, pinned under Mamdouh’s knee. “Clean her up and bring her to me. We have a lot to do.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DRAGGED FORTH
Outside Ottawa, Ontario
12 May 15 – 1305 Local
Erik plugged his ears to drown out the sound of bullets. The two men on the shooting range hadn’t acknowledged him yet, so he waited, counted the minutes on his watch. After one staccato-like burst, the men straightened and let their rifles hang from single-point slings and then began to saunter the thirty yards toward the back of the range where Erik waited. When they got closer, the slighter of the two men pulled off his shooting gloves and made eye-contact. “You Petersson?”
“That’s right,” Erik said and extended a hand.
The man walked past Erik and laid his rifle on a picnic table.
“De Kalb asked me to speak with you,” Erik said.
“He did, did he?” The man shed his shooting vest and placed it beside his rifle. “Well, I’m Chris. That Neanderthal over there is Mad Mark.”
The other man stood over boxes of ammunition and held an empty magazine in his hands. He glanced at Erik and grunted and then grabbed a box of bullets and began to reload and the bullets made a steady, metallic rhythm as he slotted them into the magazine.
Chris sat at the table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “What did MDK say we should talk about?”
Erik looked downrange. It had been a long time since he’d had to do this type of ass-sniffing. He hadn’t missed it. “About the 1st Middle East International Brigades. He said you needed people to help out in Syria.”
“You want to go to Syria.”
“That’s right,” Erik said and sat across from Chris.
Chris stroked his designer beard and studied Erik, then abruptly turned to the other man. “Hear that, Mark? He wants to go to Syria.”
Mark grunted, did not look up from his magazine.
Erik suppressed an urge to leave. His every instinct told him these two were posers, former rent-a-cops or sheriff’s deputies who got off on pretending to be ex-special forces. But de Kalb had vouched for them, said they knew their business. He forced himself to remain seated.
Chris looked back, teeth bared in a smile. “Why not join the army? Wouldn’t that be safer?”
“Our army’s not in Syria,” he said. “De Kalb said your outfit could help.”
“MDK talks a lot. Things in the field look different from the view in corporate headquarters.”
Erik nodded and tried to recall Chris’s biography from the website for the 1st Middle East International Brigade. It had said United States Special Forces, but that could mean a lot of things. Plus, he was pretty sure corporate headquarters consisted of Matt de Kalb and one other guy, not a huge team for an organization that claimed to help Westerners fight with the Kurds against the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Private security, he thought. Never changes.
Erik had considered private security after Audray died. Back then, some companies offered a thousand dollars a day, ninety days on, thirty days off. He and Arielle could’ve toughed it out for a year, maybe two, but he’d known it wouldn’t work. Plus, he knew most contractors never left. They’d commit for a few years to make money and ten years later would still be at it, never confident about the backgrounds of the other contractors. But things were different now, and the important thing was that these men could get him into Syria.
Chris lit a cigarette. “What do you think, Mark? Think we should let him go to Syria?”
“He looks too old.” Mark’s gravelly voice matched his hulking body.
“Mark’s right.” Chris held up his hands as if he was helpless. “You’re too old.”
“I’m probably the same age as you guys.”
“The fuck you know about us?” Mark glared at Erik with his too-far apart eyes.
“What I can see, like any good soldier.” Erik pointed to his face, and the black bracelet on his right wrist slid down his forearm. “Isn’t that what you’re looking for? Soldiers to fight?”
“Easy, fella, Mark got his nickname in the United States Marine Corps,” Chris said. “Oorah!”
Mark shifted his glare to Chris and then back to Erik.
“Don’t let him fool you though, he wasn’t a grunt, just a pretty flyboy,” Chris said. “Tough as that is to believe.”
“Fuck you,” Mark said and went back to his magazine.
Chris’s shit-eating grin widened. “Seriously, fella, what are you gonna do in Syria? You look like you’re more used to sitting at a desk than in a bunker.”
“Can we dispense with the monkey dance?” he asked. MDK would’ve told Chris everything he needed to know, that Erik had been an airborne trooper, fought in Somalia and Bosnia, and gathered on-the-ground intelligence as a HUMINT operator in Afghanistan, working on his own or with one or two others for support. He toyed with the bracelet on his wrist. “Can you help me or not?”
“Oh, we can do it, don’t worry about that,” Chris said.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Just trying to figure out your motivation.” He blew a cloud of smoke in Erik’s face. “You want to talk about your daughter? MDK mentioned something about that.”
Erik tensed. “She’s in Syria, with the Caliphate.”
“Ouch,” Chris scrunched up his face. “That explains a lot.” His shit-eating grin returned, and he smacked the table. “You want to be like that Dutch guy, the Jihadi hunter who went and found his son.”
“If it helps to think of it like that,” Erik said.
“Can you believe this shit, Mark?” Chris said. “You couldn’t make it up if you tried.”
Mark grunted.
“So, you don’t want to fight. You want to find your daughter,” Chris said.
Erik nodded. “I’ll fight, if I have to.”
“What if we say no?”
“De Kalb said –”
“MDK’s full of shit,” Chris said. “He’s not the one risking his ass down range.”
Erik looked down and balled his hands into fists.
“What are you gonna do?” Chris chuckled. “Hit me? Mark’ll be using your face for a boot brush before you ever touch me.”
Erik glanced at Mark, who kept on jamming bullets into magazines. The man was huge, perhaps twice Erik’s size, and looked capable enough to follow through on the threat. “I’ll go with or without you.”
“Not if I report you to your cop buddies.”
He realized De Kalb and Chris had talked more than Chris was letting on. “Why would you do that?”
Chris’s smile reappeared. “It never hurts to develop good relations with the police. I doubt they’d be too pleased at you heading to Syria.”
Erik snorted and shook his head.
“So now you have your excuse.” Chris’s lip curled in a sneer. “You made the effort, tried your best. Your daughter would be proud. Now, why don’t you get the fuck out of here?”
The words stung, so close to what Audray had said before his last deployment. He’d been home from Afghanistan for maybe two months when he’d been asked to go back – intelligence officers were in short supply, and he was needed. Audray had not seen things the same way.
“What about Arielle?” she’d said. “Every time the news mentions a soldier killed, she hides in her room.”
“I won’t even be leaving the base,” he’d said. “This is important.”
“She’s eight years old, she doesn’t know that.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I can’t do this again, not so soon.”
“You can,” he’d said and taken her by the shoulders. “It’s not that long, and we could use the extra money.”
“We don’t need the money,” she’d said. “We need you.”
But a month later he was on a flight back to the sandbox. At the airport, he’d tried to apologize.
“I’m sorry.” He’d been awkward in his uniform, an added layer of distance between him and Audray. “Arielle will understand when she’s older.”
Audray held her head high and blinked back tears. Anyone watching would have thought they were tears of sorrow at the departure of her husband. “I’m sure she will.”
He’d moved to hug her, but she’d brushed him away. “Just leave.”
Not knowing what else to do, he’d left. Three months later, she’d slit her wrists in a warm bath while Arielle was at her grandparents.
No, he wouldn’t walk away again.
He stood. “I’m going, no matter what you do. Tell my colleagues, I don’t care. I’ll find a way.” He spun and strode toward his car. The sooner he put this place behind him, the better.
“Wait,” Chris said.
He froze. Footsteps approached and then Chris was beside him.
“I’m just fucking with you,” Chris said, his toothy smile back in place. “Testing you to see how bad you want this.”
“A test?”
Chris nodded. “Don’t get all bent out of shape,” he said. “If we’re going to be working together, I want to know where you’re coming from.”
“Then we’re good.”
“Yeah, we’re good,” Chris said. “And if things work out, you’ll be helping us at least as much as we’re going to help you.”
Part of him told him to keep walking, to avoid putting his life in the hands of this man, but it would be undeniably easier to go with their help than without it. He glanced again at the bracelet on his wrist.
You Are Not Forgotten.
He took a deep breath and let Chris lead him back to the picnic table.
* * *
Raqqa, Syria
14 May 15 – 1212 Local
Abu-Noor al Kanadi was impressed.
The woman sat a few feet in front of him, on a stiff, metal chair under the beam of a flood light. There was a hood over her head and in the fifteen minutes since she’d been brought into the bunker, she hadn’t moved once. If he remembered right, she’d taken the name Hafsa, which meant lioness. Whoever had picked that name had chosen well.
He nodded at Mamdouh, who yanked the hood off the woman. She blinked and scrunched her face against the light. A long, gouge ran up the left side of her face, and her hair was kinked and greasy, but under the cuts and dirt, perhaps some strength.
“Do you know who I am?” al Kanadi asked.
The woman stiffened and turned her face in his direction.
“I said, do you know who I am?”
The woman was silent and Mamdouh grabbed a handful of her hair and wrenched her head back. “Answer when he asks a question.”
