Moral Imperative (16 page)

Chapter 31

Outskirts of Mosul, Iraq

2:19am AST, August 16
th

Not a light in the sky. Clouds blanketed the area, portending doom. The air was heavy, like something had sucked out the oxygen and replaced it with a lingering breathless fog. These were good things for the small troop moving swiftly through the night. Not a word was said.

Hasan al-Mawsil stopped mid-stride, peering into the darkness with the night vision goggles the American had given him. His breathing measured, Hasan pointed with the index finger of his right hand like the compass of fate directing dark angels to their target.

Still without speaking, the American and his team left Hasan where he stood, fanning out in the night. Soon they were gone from his sight. He sat on a rock and waited, his job finished for the time being.

+++

The tiny village, ten crude homes situated in a rough L pattern, came into view moments later. Daniel had taken point. None of the others argued, each understanding the Marine sniper’s uncanny ability to sniff out danger and point unerringly toward the enemy.

He heard a dog bark in the distance, followed by a loud yelp. Probably a kick from its master. It didn’t come from the village, but farther north, maybe a click away. Noise carried in the desert.

Daniel filed the thought away as he released his grip, allowed himself to slip into the killer, the beast whose primal urges clawed to the surface. He’d tamed it over the years, released it only when needed. Daniel suppressed a growl when he saw the first signs of movement ahead.

Guard
, came the thought in his head. Without thinking, he signaled to the men behind him as he unslung the sniper rifle from his back and replaced it with his assault rifle.

Silent as death, only the light scraping of boots on the hard packed earth, the Brits pushed past Daniel. They would breach the perimeter, followed by Cal and the Bulgarians. Daniel and the Aussies would provide overwatch from afar while the rest of the team moved in to support the raid.

A silenced round spat twice, followed by the falling body of the ISIS guard hitting the ground. Daniel moved off to find more prey, the beast eager, panting for blood.

+++

Gene Kreyling checked to make sure the man he’d shot was dead, then followed his man Rango further into the village. A second later, Tango Number Two fell to the ground, three silenced rounds in the face from Rango’s weapon.

The guy from Mosul, Hasan, said there were twelve to fifteen ISIS men hunkered down in the small outpost. ISIS was supposedly using it as a processing station, sifting through the trucks carrying confiscated valuables and weapons on their way to an unidentified location. Hasan thought maybe this was where they were caching weapons for their army.

Kreyling wasn’t taking any chances. In his experience, if a native said twelve to fifteen, you best prepare for at least double that number.

A drunken shout came from one of the huts. Kreyling went that way, feeling Stokes and the others close behind. He heard the faint sound of three more guards taken down before he got to where the shout had come from. Had to be the Japanese. Those boys were good.

The shout repeated, this time more urgent, annoyed. Kreyling didn’t speak Arabic, but figured it was probably the commander calling out for his guards. He guessed he had maybe a minute before the man came out of the dimly lit doorway and actually did his job.

The British team of three stacked just outside the wooden portal, Kreyling in the lead.
Three, two, one
.

Kreyling smashed through the brittle wood, quickly entering the twelve by twelve space. A surprised half-naked fundamentalist looked up from where he was mid-thrust into the backside of a naked girl. There were two more watching, both sitting against the wall.

The observers had weapons. They died first, barely having time to get their hands off their crotches and reach for their triggers. Kreyling leveled his weapon at the open-mouthed ISIS commander.

“Go to hell,” growled the Brit as two bullets left his weapon and took the man in the throat, his head lolling to the side weirdly as he fell to the ground, blood gushing from the wounds.

With his two men guarding the entrance, Kreyling approached the girl cautiously. She looked shell-shocked, a single tear running from her blank eyes. Who knew how long they’d had their way with her.
Bastards
. The poor thing reminding the Brit of his own daughter, a fifteen year old spitting image of his ex-wife.

He lowered his weapon as she backed away, doing little to cover her exposed form.

“It’s okay,” he said, picking up a discarded blanket from the floor and handing it to her. For the first time, life flickered in the girl’s eyes as she grabbed the offered cover and brought it against her body.

Kreyling grabbed the flickering gas lantern from the ground and gave it to the girl. He saw bloodlines running down her exposed legs. His mind raged. This was why he’d come, why he’d left an easy job of ferrying rich businessmen around the world. There was absolute evil on this planet, ISIS being one of the many culprits. The innocent trampled by the whims of power hungry zealots who masked their ambition with religion.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, pulled by the sound of Arabic shouts from outside. The girl could wait.

Kreyling put his finger to his lips, and motioned for the girl to stay where she was. She nodded mutely, wrapping more of the blanket around her body.

“Let’s go, boys,” said Kreyling, eager to send more of the bastards to their final resting place.

+++

There’d been fifteen men manning the ISIS outpost. They were all dead. No casualties for Cal’s team, just a couple of dings that Kokubu was attending to.

“That hut was stacked full of weapons,” said MSgt Trent, who’d just returned from inspecting the village with Gaucho.

“All kinds of stuff, boss,” said Gaucho. “AKs, M-16’s, even some HKs and Barretts. Ammunition is in the hut next to it.”

“Did you get video of everything? Faces too?” asked Cal. One of the things he wanted to make sure they had was proof of the guys ISIS was recruiting. They needed to know where they were coming from. A few snapshots and some video would give them what they needed. Neil would do the rest.

“I did,” answered Trent.

“Good. Moretti, can you take care of the weapons?” asked Cal. They’d brought enough explosives to dispose of any cache they couldn’t carry out.

The Italian nodded. “Give me five minutes.”

Cal looked at his watch. The helos would be there in just under ten minutes. One raid down, one more left before daylight. The Marine wanted to get as many missions completed before ISIS got wind of what was going on. With their army being pounded day and night by the international coalition, it was only a matter of time before ISIS either ran or made their last stand. Cal hoped they were stupid enough to fight back.

Chapter 32

West of Mosul, Iraq

3:41am AST, August 16
th

Aden Essa was beginning to regret his decision to follow his schoolmates to Iraq. Three weeks earlier, the twenty-year-old Egyptian was enrolled at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He’d studied business under the insistence of his father, and was less than a year from graduating. Once Aden completed his degree, he would be first in line to take over the family business, a small electronics company housed in a dingy third floor box in Cairo.

He hated the place, even though his proud father had spent years building it. To Aden, the shop represented all that was wrong with the Arabic world. The toil of hardworking Arabs who would never see the riches they so desperately deserved.

Aden envisioned a utopia, a land where Islam flourished after the defeat of the infidels. A place where goods and services were shared amongst brothers. No one would be hungry. No one would be without a home.

His college friends believed in the dream as well, and they’d watched banned ISIS videos on a university computer owned by the president of the university himself. The old crab had never installed proper security measures in his office or on his computer. It was an easy feat for the innovative young men to break into the room. Should the use ever be detected, it would be the head of the university who would be implicated.

Ever since ISIS moved into Iraq, the five friends had plotted their escape. ISIS was looking for warriors, men who would see the Word of Allah spread to every corner of the globe. Aden Essa wanted to be such a man. A hero to millions.

But now, driving the lead vehicle in a five truck convoy laden with toddlers and pre-teen boys, Aden’s doubt grew. He’d seen things. Terrible things. While it was one thing to watch a beheading on a computer, it was quite another to witness it first hand, to clean up the slimy blood from floors and walls. To smell the bowel waste and sour piss of dying men, women and children.

He wasn’t a warrior; he was one of hundreds, if not thousands, of janitors tasked with cleaning up the ISIS’s carnage. The first two times he’d vomited, violently. The older men had laughed at him along with two of his friends. The second time he’d thrown up in his sleep, memories of the smell still in his nose as he dreamt of the massacre reaped hours before.

Like a sailor gaining his sea legs, the smell and sight of devastation no longer unfurled his stomach. But his mind was not numb. He recognized the unholy and this was it.

Aden wondered what his mother and father would think if they knew he was driving a truck full of young boys to pleasure the perverted whims of supposedly holy ISIS warriors, only to be butchered when they were through. He pictured his younger brother, Rashad, who was only twelve years of age. Just like the boys in the back of the truck. The thought made him nauseous.

As he refocused on the dark road ahead, his headlights doing little to cut into the drooping blackness, Aden felt a jolt as the truck’s engine suddenly gave out. He slowly applied the brakes as steam and smoke rushed out of the hood of the vehicle, hanging lazily in the still air.

He checked his side mirrors and saw to his relief that the others had slowed as well. He’d seen more than one driver rear-end another by following too closely. None of those illiterate peasants knew how to drive.

Aden climbed out of the cab and waved to the man driving the next truck in line.

“Engine!” he yelled.

The man nodded and put his vehicle in park. Aden could hear the old gears creaking as the convoy settled in to wait. Hopefully the others wouldn’t just sit there.

The young Egyptian didn’t know much about vehicles other than the quick classes the gruff ISIS logistics man had taught them. How to add fluids. How to change tires. But Aden knew nothing about fixing an engine. They were supposed to be in good working condition.

With some effort, he popped the hood open, smoke billowing in his face. He immediately worried that the vehicle would explode, but then remembered his father saying that such things only happened in movies. His father knew about automobiles.

Trying to sweep the smoke away with his hand, Aden never felt the .50-caliber round that tore his body in half.

+++

The ambush worked to perfection. Once the lead vehicle was stopped by a well-placed round from Daniel’s Barrett, the convoy was a target ripe for the taking.

It didn’t take long for Cal’s concealed forces to dispatch the drivers and secure the vehicles. There were no guards, just untrained drivers.

MSgt Trent signaled the all clear. Front and rear guards posted without a word. The huge Marine grabbed the high handle on the back of the first truck and stepped up to bed level. He clicked on the red light on his vest, illuminating the cargo.

He estimated close to fifty boys of varying ages packed in. Scared. Trembling.

Trent hadn’t wanted to believe what Hasan had told them before stepping off. The Iraqi had somehow caught wind of the shipment from friends inside ISIS, men who were risking their lives to gain valuable intelligence for the resistance. Hasan was one of few middle men privy to the information. Trent gathered that the man from Mosul had a wide web of informants. He would have loved to know how that came to be.

“You’re safe,” said Trent. Some of the boys must have understood English because the whimpering started, then an exhale of relief flooded the compartment.

Chapter 33

Tal Afar, Iraq

7:07pm AST, August 17
th

For two days the assault leveled heavy casualties on his forces. In broad daylight and under the cover of darkness. The attacks never relented.

What first started as a trickle soon became a full blown leak of ISIS recruits fleeing the battle zone. Even when they ran, the Americans and their allies pounded them with bombs, riddled them with bullets and cut their throats with fine blades.

Weeks before, ISIS was the ravaging army, slicing its way across the Middle East. Now it was the international coalition, led by the Americans, who’d become the lurking shadows, death around every corner.

The Master digested it all. The whispered stories amongst even his most faithful followers spread like the plague. To make matters worse, the destruction was not contained to the battlefield. The hundreds of millions of dollars the leaders of ISIS had deposited with banks around the world either disappeared or were seized by the host country. It was an unprecedented move by the international community. Even his fellow Arabs were joining the hunt. He’d become the prey.

More detrimental was the nearly closed recruiting pipeline they’d so carefully fostered. Social media and a strong internet presence had allowed them to touch fundamentalists around the world, to rally them to the caliphate. Since the American president’s declaration, those sites were now in the hands of the Americans. Multiple times throughout each day new videos were posted. Not videos he’d crafted, but ones taken and produced by the Americans. Footage of his holy warriors killed in every way possible: sniper fire, machine guns, bombs, missiles and even blades.

The message to potential recruits was clear:
Join ISIS and we will kill you
.

His normally serene facade showed signs of breaking. Face caked in dust, robes torn and splattered with dried blood, The Master looked more like a vagrant than the leader of an anointed army.

Earlier in the day he’d ordered a score of captured deserters to die by firing squad. It was the only way to maintain control and discipline. His ears still rang from the event that was held in an abandoned gas station instead of outdoors. He couldn’t take the chance of being seen by drones and satellites.

Movement was impossible. Darkness didn’t help. The infidels’ technology negated any benefit night might bring. The Master did not like limited options. He liked remaining static even less.

They had him on his heels, struggling to maintain control of his forces. Luckily, ISIS commanders had enjoyed a decentralized command structure since their invasion of Iraq. They had The Master’s orders, and were trusted to carry them out as they saw fit. Failure would not be tolerated. And yet, failure seemed an inevitable conclusion.

The Master said a prayer, raising his hands in humble tribute, seeking the answers he so desperately needed.

+++

Erbil, Iraq

7:20pm

They hadn’t stopped since the attack on the American embassy days before. The team snagged rest when they could, but even the most battle-hardened were starting to feel the strain. For that reason, Stokes had ordered a respite in the Kurdish city of Erbil. They’d flown in on American Chinooks, the trails of smoke plumes rising from the ground behind them.

For Stojan Valko, the endless raids had come as a welcome distraction. To the Bulgarian, idle time was not time well spent. Ever since his childhood, he’d had a hard time sitting still, staying in one place.

But now he allowed himself to relax if even for the briefest moment, standing on the roof of the boutique hotel where they’d commandeered the top two floors. He gazed out over the city, amazed that its citizens went about their day despite the war being waged just outside their walls. He knew it would be much different in Bulgaria, as it would be in most other civilized countries.

But this was not his homeland. It was land that had seen bloodletting for centuries. Its people numb to violence, even when it lived next door. The warrior in him knew that unless Iraq’s leaders rallied together for a common cause, they would always be vulnerable to threats like ISIS.

While it disturbed the proud man to see a people so easily cowed by terrorists, he relished the idea of being on the other side, of having the ability to kick jihadists back into their filthy holes. To kill them with his bare hands. Valko knew it was a fight he was willing to wage until his last breath, until his heart no longer beat its steady rhythm.

“You gonna get some sleep?” asked a voice behind him. It was Cal Stokes.

Valko did not shift his gaze.

“Soon,” he answered.

Part of him did not want to speak with the American. He felt too vulnerable, too close to his raw emotions. It was one thing to plan an attack with the young leader. That was business. It was quite another to be alone with the man, the one who’d given him the second chance.

Valko was not stupid. He knew what the others had thought, and he didn’t blame them. Had it been another member who’d revealed his relation to a terrorist, Valko would have been the first to ask for his dismissal.

Thanks to the American, that hadn’t happened. Yes, Stokes had kept him close, but he had not hovered, hadn’t micromanaged Valko’s actions. It didn’t take long for the Bulgarian to realize that Stokes was a good man, an honest man, a born leader. Not only had he led by example, always from the front, but he’d harnessed the strengths of each individual, somehow weaving together a powerful group of alpha males who were not used to taking orders. And all without the bravado of the leaders Valko had always looked up to. He had a gift.

It was a hard lesson to learn, but the actions of his new comrades could not be ignored. They’d completed their missions with precision, without harming innocent bystanders. Ruthless in the attack, the men also ushered the kidnapped Iraqis with care, always offering a smile or lending a helping hand.

Valko hadn’t known such duality was possible. His career was built on the warrior’s code, putting mission above all else. He’d never cared about the innocents really, always focused on the demise of his enemy. Let the doctors and nurses care for the others. That was how he’d always thought.

And now he found himself questioning, trying to figure out why he was that way. The only answer he could come up with was his brother, Kiril.

Somehow he knew his brother was still alive. It was the bond of twins, forever linked by some invisible thread. He’d never questioned it as a child, always assuming that other brothers felt the same. But they didn’t.

Over the years he’d felt his brother even though thousands of miles separated them. Sometimes he would feel a sudden stab of fear, for no reason at all. Other times it was a gush of pride warming his body even though he was doing something mundane like watching television. He knew what it was. It was Kiril. Kiril off becoming a stranger, becoming his enemy. He often wondered if his brother felt the same sensations. He probably did.

Valko never told anyone about their connection, especially after the revelation concerning his brother’s conversion. The Bulgarian wondered what it would feel like when Kiril died, when the last shred of air left his body.

“How’s Levski feeling?” asked Stokes. Valko had almost forgotten he was still there.

“Better. Kokubu stitched and gave medicine.” Georgi had taken a nasty fall in the last raid when he slipped over a concertina topped fence. The bloody gash on his arm would leave an impressive scar.

“Good,” said Stokes.

The two men stood watching the city’s nighttime routine, Valko not knowing what to say, and Stokes once again respecting Valko’s privacy.

“Okay. I’m gonna get a couple hours of rest. Enjoy the view,” said Cal, turning to go.

Before he knew what he was doing, Valko turned and said, “Thank you.”

Stokes stopped and looked back at him. Valko was a man of few words, not one to show emotion or gratitude. He wanted to thank the American for what he’d done, for trusting him when the others wouldn’t. He wanted to ask how he’d come to be the way he was, deadly as a viper and yet as caring as a treasured friend.

Luckily, he didn’t have to say anything. The Bulgarian could see by the look in the American’s eyes that he understood, that he knew that Valko’s simple thanks was more powerful than a heartfelt declaration from most other men.

Stokes smiled, nodded, and went on his way.

Valko turned back to the city, wondering where his altered life would now lead.