Strike Force Bravo (15 page)

He took another deep, troubled breath. Suddenly he felt old and tired. But he pressed on: “Now, I'm sure I can read your minds. You are asking: ‘Remember our snipers in Washington? Remember how they met their end?' Yes, brothers, I do. But that was just a drill. That taught what to do as well as what not. With this new assault, the Americans will be stung for a very, very long time. The confusion we will sow, the chaos we will create, it will rock them to their foundations. Indeed, they may never recover, not fully anyway. And isn't that what our ultimate goal is? To get a knife right into their heart and give it a twist?”

Kazeel paused again, caught his breath, and then continued: “We have so many people standing by, sleepers, in their cities, in their suburbs, just waiting for our call. So many martyrs, it will be impossible to subdue them all. And even if half or two-thirds were somehow caught before they acted, that would still mean plenty will be free to carry out the big plan.”

He looked each man in the eye now. “So we are so very close, my friends,” he said slowly. “And so many things are already in place. We have the launchers. We have the funding from our
judus.
We have their guidance. Their expertise. And we have God's blessing. What more do we need?”

He looked around the room again.

“Just one more thing, brothers,” he answered his own question. “We need the missiles.”

But the seven men never did look up at him. Kazeel repeated his earlier question: “You have found
nobody
to deal?”

A long silence. The wind blew again outside. Al-Saki finally spoke up: “We have, brother. Just one….”

Kazeel's eyes lit up a bit. “Praise Allah. Now that's better. Why would you withhold such positive information from me for so long?”

“Because of who he is,” al-Saki said.

Kazeel seemed confused. “Tell me his name.”

Al-Saki finally looked Kazeel in the eye. “It is Bahzi. He will deal.”

This took Kazeel by surprise, but in the same moment he knew why his friends had been so reluctant to speak the name.

Usay Bahzi was scum. He was an Iraqi, strike one in Kazeel's book. He was a Ba'ath Party member and one of Saddam's former legion of black-market arms dealers. Bahzi fled to Pakistan just hours before the U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad and transitted through Iran and Afghanistan on a diplomatic pass and a suitcase full of money. He now lived under an assumed name in Karachi, Pakistan.

Kazeel intensely disliked the Iraqi. He was well known as a sneak, a liar, and a cheat. But he also had extensive contacts in arms markets, both legal and not. He had access to everything, including anthrax, biotoxins, radioactives. But his customers sometimes wound up dead—always after money had already changed hands. He was a dangerous person and dealing with him would be a dangerous undertaking.

But time was running out. Kazeel's
judus
were impatient types, and the pressure was on him to perform unlike ever before. How he wished for the old days, before the Americans finally woke up.

He snapped his fingers and Uni was there with a cup of hot water.

“No one at Pan Arabic ever rose to the top?” Kazeel asked the seven glumly.

They all shook their heads no. This was a cut that went deep. Prior to the failed attack on the
USS Lincoln,
Kazeel and his cohorts had been financed in large part by a Saudi prince who owned the Pan Arabic Oil Exchange, a huge company that controlled nearly a fifth of the oil leaving the Persian Gulf. By siphoning money from their oil profits, this Prince—His Royal Highness Prince Ali Abu Abdul Hamini el-Saud Muhammad—had supported many of Kazeel's terrorist activities, including his role in 9/11.

But on the same day as the attack on the
Lincoln,
not an hour after the carrier had been saved, a chartered airliner crashed into the headquarters of Pan Arabic in downtown Riyadh. Everyone inside the multistory building was killed, as was everyone on the plane. The crash was somewhat lost in the headlines surrounding the
Lincoln
's near-miraculous escape. But the startling fact was this: onboard this charter plane was none other than the man who ran the company itself, Prince Ali. Why would Ali—along with several of his closest friends—want to die by plunging their charter plane into his own building? The assumption was that it was a bizarre mass suicide, as Ali and his band had been very involved in the
Lincoln
attack. But other reports said the pilot of the plane was actually an American agent and that he'd
intentionally
carried the Prince and the others to their deaths. An American dying as a martyr? This did not make sense to anyone. But neither did the mysterious circumstances surrounding the crash.

The loss of Prince Ali and his money had forced Kazeel to deal with people he would not have normally even spoken to. His
judus
were some of them. And Bahzi was certainly another. But Kazeel knew he had to adapt to survive, even if it meant dealing with the devil.

Kazeel remained quiet for a very long time. Finally he asked: “You can set up a meeting with Bahzi?”

His friends nodded yes. “We can,” al-Saki replied. “You say where. You say when. Just tell us…and it will be done.”

Kazeel's reply was interrupted by four gunshots—distinct, sharp, in the brisk mountain wind. Kazeel winced when he heard them but quickly carried on.

“Tell Bahzi the place will be Sat Put,” he said.

“And the time, brother?”

They heard four more gunshots; they came quicker than the first, but Kazeel hardly moved this time.

“I will inform the snake of the time and date later,” he said. “Carry this news to him, and make it clear I am plumbing the depths even talking about him….”

With that, Kazeel abruptly dismissed his guests with the wave of his hand. The men rose to their feet. Uni brought them their various outer garments. Woolen robes, bedsheets, in one man's case house curtains.

As they started for the door, Kazeel grabbed the man he considered his closest associate, Ali Hassan Wabi, a small elderly Kuwaiti with snow-white hair. Out of earshot of the others, Kazeel indicated to Wabi he had one more piece of business to conduct.

“I have a favor I must ask of you especially,” he said to Wabi.

“Anything, brother…” Wabi replied.

Kazeel lowered his voice. “I need new bodyguards. Can you help?”

Wabi paused a moment. “You mean, you want
additional
bodyguards, my brother?”

But Kazeel shook his head. “No—I must replace the ones I have now.”

Wabi was very surprised to hear this. Kazeel's Ubusk security people had been with him for years. They were considered the best in the business. It seemed like a strange time to change them out.

But Wabi knew better than to ask Kazeel why. “I will talk to my contacts,” he said instead. “And I will let you know.”

“Make it fast, my brother,” Kazeel told him before showing him out the door. “We have many challenging days ahead. Whoever you get for me will have to be the very best.”

Wabi didn't like the sound of that. He'd never seen Kazeel this nervous.

“Can you confide in me?” Wabi asked him. “What is the problem, brother?”

Kazeel paused a moment. He did not open up to people so quickly. But…

“Let's just say my escape from Manila was not as clean as it might have seemed,” he told Wabi. “I was a breath away from Paradise, and pray, brother, I do not want to go there so soon.”

“But you are now
here,
my brother,” Wabi said, trying to provide comfort. “And Allah be praised you are still in one piece.”

Kazeel just shook his head. He was suddenly on the verge of tears. “Brother, you don't understand. For the first time in my life I am looking over my shoulder. These people who almost had me in Manila. They weren't just some CIA group. They were the
Am'reekan Maganeen.
I'm sure of it.”

Am'reekan Maganeen,
the infamous Crazy Americans. The words sent a chill down Wabi's spine. The Crazy Americans were the secret special ops unit that had been sent against them—the 9/11 plotters—even before the attack on the
Lincoln
took shape. It was widely believed in the Islamic underworld that these special U.S. soldiers had been the reason the carrier survived that day. There was even talk that they had foiled the big attack in Singapore as well.

Unlike most U.S. special ops troops the
jihad
organizations had come up against, the Crazy Americans held to none of the conventions that other American units did. No Geneva rules of war for them, the Crazy Americans were terrorists themselves. They rarely spared anybody who crossed their path, especially anyone who was in on the planning of the 9/11 attacks. Their means of extracting information from those they collared was already legendary for its sheer brutality.

Wabi could not shake off the chill. This was not good news. With what they were about to do they certainly did not need this interference from these very dangerous, very brutal American troops. But he also felt sorry for Kazeel. The Crazy Americans' reputation certainly preceded them. They
always
got their man. If you were on their hit list, you were as good as gone. All this finally explained Kazeel's queer tension.

“I will make my inquiries immediately,” Wabi told him. “I have heard of a protection outfit recently relocated to this area. Highly trained. Highly disciplined.”

He lowered his voice. “Blue-eyed Muslims,” he said. “Do you know the type?”

Kazeel's face lit up.
Blue-eyed Muslim
was a code. And upon hearing it, for the first time since arriving home, Kazeel actually relaxed a little. But then came the apprehension.

“You are talking about…?” Kazeel started to say.

“I am, my brother,” Wabi confirmed. “But I do not want to even say the name, as I don't want your hopes to soar, and then have it not come through.”

“But you must try to arrange for that!” Kazeel told Wabi anxiously. His voice became so loud Uni heard him from the kitchen.

“I will certainly try,” Wabi replied, now just in a whisper. “But as they are skilled, and loyal and disciplined and fearless, they, too, will have to be very well paid—”

“And they will be,” Kazeel said quickly. “Our new friends will pay the bill. Just talk to them for me, brother. Promise them heaven and earth. And please do so with haste….”

 

Wabi kissed him good-bye and climbed into his own armored SUV. His driver proceeded slowly down the steep hill.

The conversation with Kazeel had made Wabi nervous. Kazeel's escape in Manila had been harrowing. So why was he so suddenly in need of new bodyguards? Why would he not keep his own guys on and hire some more?

Only when he reached the bottom of the
boodi
did Wabi get his answer.

Out in the field next to the tank house he saw four figures lying motionless, facedown, in the short grass. They were Kazeel's bodyguards, the Ubusks who'd manned the tank house. Standing over them, smoking cigarettes, were the Pakistani intelligence agents, the men who had driven Kazeel here. They looked menacingly at Wabi and his driver as they rolled by.

But Wabi passed close enough to the field to see that each bodyguard had two bullets in the back of his head.

The price these days for falling asleep while working for Sheikh Kazeel.

 

Five days went by.

In that time, Kazeel ate little and slept less. He'd also installed a Roland antiaircraft launcher near the front door of his house. It was a leftover from Gulf War I, a present given to him by Saddam Hussein himself, back in friendlier times. Kazeel had been keeping it in storage in a cave nearby; the original idea was to sell it someday. But his second day back he sent to the village for its two engineers. They pulled it out of its hiding place and checked its systems, with a manual in hand. It was a little out of their league, but eventually they got it to turn on and come on-line.

Did it work? No one knew. Kazeel kept it up anyway, not so much for his own protection but just for the peace of mind he thought it would bring.

It was a stupid thing to do, because if a U.S. satellite spotted the missile battery an American bomber would soon be circling his house. But Kazeel didn't care. He was never so in fear for his life as these past few days. That's what the Crazy Americans did to you. They got inside your head. They got you thinking what they would do to you, the horrendous torture they inflicted on their victims before finally putting them to death. They were rumored never to sleep, hopped up on drugs, endlessly stalking their victims. Kazeel knew they had been haunting Prince Ali and his syndicate—and look what happened to them. In some really dark moments, Kazeel believed Prince Ali
did
kill himself simply because he knew the Crazy Americans would get to him eventually. The man was a multibillionaire, yet he could not outrun his ghosts.

Praise Allah, the Paki agents were still watching the road below. He'd asked them to stay on, as his temporary security force, until he could make his other arrangements. They'd graciously agreed, after a nod from the top in Islamabad. But the Pakis could not stay forever. They were not professional bodyguards; they were intelligence men. They had other things to do.

It was just another example of the turmoil in Kazeel's life. He did not want to deal with Bahzi but knew he would have to. Yet he couldn't go to Sat Put to see the Iraqi until he had some reliable protection. But time was running out. His
judus
were not the most patient souls. They had their own agenda and they didn't like things to go slow. The longer the plan dragged out, the better their chances of it being discovered. So it was always chop-chop,
toot-sweet,
hurry the hell up with them.