Takedown (27 page)

M
ike Jaffe bent down in front of his prisoner and whispered, “You are one heartless bastard, aren’t you?”

Mohammed bin Mohammed looked over at the bloody, slumped body of his nephew but said nothing.

Jaffe stood up and said, “That’s okay, though, because I’m a heartless bastard too. This is a battle of the wills, Mohammed—a clash of the Titans. But I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know if you’ve got what it takes to go the distance. Lately, you haven’t been looking so good.”

Mohammed tried to stifle it, but a chuckle escaped his lips.

Jaffe smiled at him. “The man’s got a sense of humor. How about that? Tell me, Mohammed. All those little boys you’ve buggered over the years, how do you think their senses of humor have fared? Do you think they’re pretty happy-go-lucky? Think they look back on having your flabby, sweaty body hovering over them, pumping away as a character-building experience?”

The smile vanished from Mohammed’s face.

“We found a lot of interesting souvenirs in that house of yours in Somalia,” said Jaffe, “and that got me to thinking. I’ve been going at this the wrong way, haven’t I? Like we say in Arabic, I want you to hold me
close
to your heart. But how do I get there?”

Walking over to the table near the door, Jaffe reached into a two-pocket olive-drab pouch and removed a small canister with a long piece of clear, flexible tubing attached to the nozzle. Holding it up so his prisoner could see it, he said, “You’ve seen one of these before, right? It’s pepper spray. It’s been around a long time, but it took a very clever man in New Jersey to realize that we’d been limiting ourselves in how we used it.”

Mohammed shifted nervously in his chair.

Unraveling the tubing, Jaffe continued, “Suppose you’re in your hotel room and somebody—a bad guy, let’s say—comes knocking on your door at three in the morning. We know he’s a bad guy, because what nice guy pounds on a door at that hour, right?

“Anyway, you’ve got your pepper spray in this hand, you unravel the hose with the other, slide it under the door, hit the button, and presto! All of a sudden the hallway is uninhabitable. Pretty neat, huh? But wait, there’s more.

“I know the guy who makes these things. He’s sold tons to our government. One night we’re sitting down having a beer and we’re talking about all the different tricks his stuff can do and suddenly it dawns on me. Pepper spray is biodegradable. If it enters your body, eventually it’ll be flushed out with no trace left behind.

“Now, if I’m close to your heart, I figure you’ll tell me what I want to know. The problem is, though, that we’re running out of time. So what’s the quickest way to a man’s heart? Well, in America we say it’s through his stomach, but in your case, I think it’s just a bit lower.”

Mohammed’s gaze dropped to his groin.

I
haven’t tried this yet,” said Jaffe as he stuck the tube into his mouth to moisten the tip, “but I gotta believe it’s going to hurt like hell.”

Removing a pair of EMT shears from his pocket, he threw them to Brad Harper and said, “Prep him. I want him as naked as the day Allah made him.”

Even if the two Libyan intelligence officers Rashid and Hassan were called back in to do the actual procedure, Harper knew prepping Mohammed for this made him a direct accessory to the man’s torture.

Up until this moment, neither he nor Jaffe had actually touched either of the prisoners. In all fairness, they’d danced dangerously close to the line of what was allowed, but they’d always stayed on the proper side of it. Now, though, Jaffe was telling him in no uncertain terms to jump right across it.

“Hello? Marine?” said Jaffe when Harper failed to act. “Anybody home?”

“Shouldn’t our two colleagues be handling this?” he asked.

“Who? Frick and Frack? They’re on their coffee break. Let’s not bug them. Besides, I think I’m going to add this to my repertoire, and I want to know firsthand how it works.”

“You’re talking about shoving that tube up his…” Harper paused, the image incredibly ghastly even for a marine.

Jaffe looked at him and said, “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue? You can say it, son. I’m going to shove that tube right up his piss pipe. His urethra, Franklin, if you want to get clinical. Once it’s up as far as it’ll go, then I’m gonna gas him with the pepper spray. If he’s ever had gonorrhea it’ll feel like the world’s best blow job, in comparison to this.”

Looking at Mohammed, Jaffe then asked, “You ever catch gonorrhea from any of those little boys you buggered?” He wasn’t expecting a response, and when none came, he turned to Harper and said, “What are you waiting for?”

The marine’s mind was made up. “With all due respect sir, I’m not able to do what you asked.”

Jaffe’s eyebrows went up and he replied, “What I
asked?
Son, I didn’t ask you for anything. I gave you a direct order and I expect it to be carried out. Now
prep
this prisoner.”

“Negative, sir.”

Jaffe was quickly losing his temper. “You want to piss in the tall grass with the big dogs, but you don’t want any to land on you. I’m disappointed, son,” he said as he grabbed the shears back from Harper. “I thought you had more backbone.”

Walking over to Mohammed, Jaffe plunged the shears into his trouser leg, narrowly missing his thigh, and began cutting. As he did, he said, “The problem all along with this interrogation has been respect. I can see it in our friend’s eyes here. He doesn’t respect us. Do you, Mohammed? You’ve got nothing but contempt for us, because when it comes down to the real dirty stuff, the physical stuff, we let our Libyan pals do it for us.

“Well, if I don’t have your respect, I just don’t think I can take it.”

It was obvious from the look on Mohammed’s face that Jaffe had hit the nail right on the head. The al-Qaeda man wasn’t afraid. He felt nothing but contempt for his captors. But that was all about to change. Now that he was naked from the waist down, he could see the American was serious, very serious.

For a man who took so much pleasure from life via the organ between his legs, the torture Mohammed was about to face was hideously personal. In his most disturbing dreams he doubted he could have ever come up with something so repulsive.

When the American came back with the device, he writhed in his chair and struggled against his restraints—anything to stop the tube from entering his penis. His struggles, though, were entirely in vain. The American grabbed his organ in a death grip and inserted the tubing most violently. Once the tip was in, the man began feeding the rest of the tubing after it.

When Jaffe felt it was in deep enough, he looked at Mohammed and said, “You know the information I want.”

“Go to hell!” Mohammed screamed.

Jaffe raised the Guardian Protection Devices canister so that Mohammed could see his thumb slip under the safety mechanism and said, “I can’t go to hell today. I still have so many more things to do.”

The shrieks of wretched agony were instantaneous. So horrible were they that even the two Libyan intelligence officers burst into the room, certain that the Americans were either filleting or disemboweling their prisoner alive.

As Jaffe sent another shot of pepper spray into the terrorist’s penis, Mohammed screamed at the top of his lungs for it to stop, his body absolutely rigid from the pain. Tears streamed down his face, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

Jaffe had no intention of letting up. The pain this piece of human waste was prepared to unleash upon America was nothing compared to what he was being subjected to at this moment. Jaffe had never known hate as strong as he felt it right now. What god could ever support what al-Qaeda did in His name? Jaffe wanted nothing more than to watch this man die, because he knew if anybody was going to hell, it was Mohammed bin Mohammed.

Jaffe let up for a moment only to watch the man’s body go slack against his restraints and his chest heave for air.

Then, without warning, he gave the man another blast.

Mohammed’s body tried to leap off the chair as if it were a thousand degrees.

Jaffe should have worn earplugs. Mohammed had the lungs of a lion.

He kept the button depressed on the pepper spray, determined to drain every last drop into the monster in front of him until in addition to the screaming he suddenly heard another sound—
gunfire.

W
ith his phony diplomatic Libyan passport, Abdul Ali found the security at the twenty-four-story Libya House easily navigable when he arrived. His Libyan dialect was flawless and he demanded that the man behind the reception counter pick up the phone and dial the ambassador’s office straightaway.

When the ambassador’s assistant answered, the receptionist spoke several words, waited for a response, and then, satisfied, hung up.

After being offered a seat and told the assistant was on his way down, Ali berated the man by asking how anyone could sit at a time like this. Libyans placed a high value on courtesy, and to berate another in public was considered extremely rude. The receptionist was not stupid. He’d met this man’s type before, and he knew that regardless of what his passport said, he was no diplomat. In fact, he’d met enough arrogant intelligence agents to know that’s exactly what this man was. The receptionist had long ago developed a theory that there was a farm somewhere back in his homeland where they grew these insufferable assholes by the truckload.

Moments later, the elevator doors opened and out strolled the ambassador’s assistant accompanied by a rather large man who Ali assumed was part of Libya House’s security detail. The assistant walked over to the reception desk, chatted briefly with the man behind the counter, and then studied the visitor’s passport, scanning through it a page at a time. Finally he made his way over to Ali.

After exchanging the customary Libyan greetings, the assistant offered his hand and introduced himself. He did not offer the passport back. “I thought I knew all of the
Haiat amn al Jamahiriya
operatives stationed in New York,” he stated. “Why is it we haven’t met?”

Ali remained calm, as well as somewhat aloof—the attitude he felt best suited the role he was playing. “Because I am not stationed here,” he replied. “I’m based in Washington.”

The assistant brushed the explanation aside. “You stated you have business to discuss with the ambassador?”

“Correct.”

“I hope you can appreciate that with everything going on today, the ambassador is quite busy. Why don’t you share the nature of your business with me and I will pass it along.”

Ali feigned a smile. The weapons he had hidden beneath his specially crafted suit weighed heavily on his tired body. “If the business I have been sent to conduct was at the level of an ambassador’s assistant, I would happily do so, but my visit is for the ambassador’s eyes and ears only.”

The assistant was not fond of the visiting intelligence officer’s smug attitude. “And why is it that we were not alerted to your arrival?”

Ali was more than prepared for the assistant’s questions. “At our diplomatic missions abroad, especially when it concerns matters of state security, it is not uncommon for messengers to arrive unannounced. You and I both know this. Now, please stop wasting my time and direct me to the ambassador.”

“Interesting,” continued the assistant, determined to scrape some of the arrogance off this man. “But what is uncommon is for a messenger to show up in the midst of such unfortunate circumstances. I would think it more appropriate to have waited before making yourself known here. This is not a time for the U.S. missions of Arab nations to be holding clandestine meetings.”

Ali nodded his head. “Waiting, of course, would have been a more prudent course, but the information I bring for the ambassador is extremely time sensitive.”

“I’m sorry,” replied the assistant, “but without some idea of what this is in regard to, the ambassador cannot be disturbed. We have been placed on our highest security alert.”

Ali smiled, and this time it was for real. “Tell the ambassador, Tripoli no longer wishes this facility to be used as a hotel.”

“A hotel?
What are you talking about?”

Looking at the detail agent, Ali said, “Radio the agent with the ambassador right now and relay my message. Tell him that the Americans and their package are no longer welcome here.”

The security agent looked at the stunned assistant, who, though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, nodded his head and gave his assent.

The agent spoke into a microphone in his sleeve, and once a response came back over his earpiece, he turned and whispered it to the assistant.

Looking at Ali, he reluctantly replied, “The ambassador will see you now. Please follow me.”

S
izing up the two men as they ascended in the elevator, Ali thought about taking them right there but forced himself to wait. His attack was only moments away.

Getting the ambassador’s undivided attention turned out to be the easiest part of the entire plan. Once the man had foolishly dismissed both his assistant and his security team from his private office, Ali stopped answering questions and began asking ones of his own.

Once he had everything he needed, he forced the ambassador to call his assistant back into the office. When the smarmy little man appeared, Ali fought the urge to make his death long and painful and instead broke his neck, delighting in the rather delicate pop as it finally snapped. There was no other sound in the world like it, nor was there any greater feeling of power than to take another’s life with your bare hands.

A little too high from the kill, Ali took a few deep breaths and relaxed. The next several minutes had to be perfectly smooth and without incident. He had come too far to fail now. Only one floor above where they now stood, the ambassador had confirmed that Mohammed bin Mohammed was being held and interrogated. The thought of how the Troll had betrayed him, had betrayed al-Qaeda once again, entered his mind, but he quickly pushed it away. There would be time to deal with him later. Right now, Ali needed to concentrate on the task at hand. There were still the ambassador’s security guards to deal with and then the two Libyan intelligence officers and four Americans guarding Mohammed.

Knowing he was about to be killed, the ambassador made a run for the door and began yelling for his bodyguards.

He had taken less than two strides when Ali felled him with a single silenced round. The damage, though, was already done. The security agents came charging into the room with their weapons drawn and upon seeing the ambassador and his assistant sprawled on the floor, opened fire.

Thankfully, their shots went wide as Ali dove for cover behind the desk.

The security agents managed to get off several more rounds before Ali found his opportunity, rolled from behind the desk, and took out each of them with exceptionally clean head shots.

With the bodyguards down, Ali leapt from behind the desk. He had no idea if the shots had been heard by anyone else, but he didn’t want to wait around to find out. This would be his one and only chance to free Mohammed bin Mohammed, and either he would succeed or they would both die trying.

Ali quickly found the items he needed, and once he had retrieved his diplomatic passport, he wheeled his little surprise toward the freight elevator.

One of the few pieces of useful information he’d been able to squeeze out of the ambassador as the man blubbered for his life was that the Americans had welded their stairwell doors shut and that the only way to gain access to their floor was via the freight elevator. Though they were many things, stupid was not one of them. They had gone to considerable lengths to ensure their security. And who could blame them? The last thing they wanted was for someone like Abdul Ali to spoil their party.

After prepping the door upstairs with the remaining plastique he had hidden inside his specially made belt, Ali returned to the ambassador’s floor and using the man’s keycard, swiped it through the card reader and summoned the elevator.

When the elevator arrived, Ali looked up and saw that the hatch had been welded shut. He smiled. The Americans really had thought of everything. But he doubted they had a contingency plan for what was about to happen next.

Swiping the card again on a reader inside the elevator, Ali punched the button for the next floor, positioned his surprise aboard, and headed for the stairwell. Things were about to get very interesting.