Oakley began lining up for a pass from the west, when warning sensors shrieked in the cockpit, announcing a radar lock on Pyro 1-1.
Oakley shouted, “SAM!” as soon as he knew a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile was coming their way.
The automatic countermeasures on the Apache began launching flares as Oakley put the aircraft into a steep dive for speed and a corkscrew to outfox the approaching missile. Carrie Ann grabbed on to handles and watched a cultivated field fill up her windscreen and grow larger by the second. She closed her eyes, certain they would auger into the dirt, but Oakley pulled out of the dive and leveled out, sending Carrie Ann pressing deeply into her seat and her stomach retching.
The SAM passed by, but now they were only fifty feet off the ground and racing over the highway, just a couple hundred yards from anyone who survived the onslaught of Hellfire, cannon, and rocket fire. Carrie Ann saw tracer fire from heavy machine guns right over her, dancing by her cockpit from left to right, and then she heard a rapid punching sound below her feet.
Through the intercom she heard Oakley call out to her in a hoarse voice. “Carrie! Your ship!”
In the front seat Carrie Ann was surprised by Troy’s call, but she took her eyes out of her weapons screens and looked instead out the front glass. Simultaneously she grabbed the cyclic with her right hand and the collective with her left.
“My ship!” she said. She was about to ask just why Oakley was handing piloting duties over to her when he spoke again. His voice was weaker this time.
“I’m hit.”
“Where are you hit?”
“Took a . . . took a shot through the canopy. Might have ricocheted, but it’s got me in the neck. I’m bleeding pretty good.”
“Jesus,” she said. “We’re heading back.”
“Negative,” Oakley said. “Press the attack!”
Captain Davenport ignored her backseater and raced north away from the highway, low over the Euphrates, as more tracer fire whipped around her from multiple directions.
“Press the attack,” he said again.
“When we get back we can watch the gun cams together. We took out every one of those eight vehicles, and seventy-five percent of the personnel. That’s a good night’s work.”
Oakley did not respond.
“Oak? Hang in there, Oak, you good?”
“Roger that,” he said, but she could tell he was about to pass out.
And then she looked down at her screen, and saw her oil pressure dropping.
—
Captain Carrie Ann Davenport landed the wounded Apache in the middle of the open desert ten minutes later, raised the canopy, and unfastened her harness. The 160th Black Hawk helicopters that picked up the special operations forces in Ratla were minutes out from her position and inbound, and there were multiple Special Forces–trained medics on board.
In the meantime, she knew she had to stop Oakley’s bleeding and get him unhooked and ready for transport.
She crawled over the backseat, pulling a rag from her cargo pocket as she did so. The blood covering the left side of Oakley’s body was incredible, visible in the soft orange light of the controls and displays in front of him. He was unconscious or dead, she did not know which, but she would treat him the best she could, no matter what. She pressed the towel hard against his neck with her right hand, hopefully stanching the blood flow, and with her left she unhooked his harness.
It was twelve feet down from Oakley’s seat to the sand, and there was no way in hell any front-seater, much less a five-foot-four, 120-pound female front-seater, could get a wounded pilot down from there without help, so Carrie Ann didn’t even try. She just used her med kit to cut away his ABDUs, minimize the blood loss, and get controls, wires, and anything else out of the way that would slow down his movement to a hospital.
A single Black Hawk landed while the second provided top cover, and Carrie climbed back into the front seat to shut down the aircraft, getting herself out of the way while three fit men with beards fought to get the unconscious man out of his seat down to the stubby weapons pylon, and then handed off to four other men on the ground. He was placed on a backboard and rushed over to the waiting UH-64, and Carrie grabbed her rifle, Oakley’s rifle, and ran after them.
In the Black Hawk on the way back into Turkey she held Oakley’s hand tightly as she knelt down over him. Medics worked frantically on his neck, as well as another wound they’d found above his left knee.
A young man in full battle rattle and a beard seated just behind her touched her on her back, and she turned around to look at him. He said, “Our docs are the best. Your dad’s gonna be fine.”
She nodded at the joke, started to look back down to Oakley, and the young man said, “I’m Lethal.” He was the JTAC who had talked her into the target.
“Davenport,” she said.
“Just have to say, Captain, you fucking kicked ass back there. Your ship pretty much single-handedly destroyed any chance that ISIS could get their propaganda machine back up and running after the Navy blew the shit out of their building.”
She thanked him, knelt back down over Oakley, and saw his eyes were open and fixed on hers now. She smiled and tears dripped onto his face. “Hey!”
He smiled back. “Hey.”
“JSOC just said you and me kicked ass. That’s not so bad, is it?”
He tried to shake his head, but the backboard wouldn’t let him. He smiled. “Not half bad at all, Captain.”
—
An hour later, an A-10 was launched out of Turkey to destroy Pyro 1-1 with a five-hundred-pound bomb, making certain the enemy didn’t have anything to use as a propaganda weapon.
At roughly the same time the Apache blew apart in the desert, Chief Warrant Officer Troy Oakley died on an operating table at Incirlik Air Base.
73
Alexandru Dalca had remained handcuffed on the long flight, and he was pretty sure he’d been given something that made him sleep, because when he woke on touchdown he felt especially groggy. But he shook it off as the plane taxied and finally jolted to a stop.
A man sat down in front of him; in the past few weeks, Dalca had gotten good at telling what was happening on the other side of his blindfold.
The man spoke with derision in his voice. “Okay, buddy. This is your stop. The President promised you would be released as soon as you gave us everything we asked for. You did your part, so now we are doing ours. You are free to go.”
His blindfold was removed, and he blinked several times to see the inside of the same airplane he’d first seen over a month earlier, the day he’d been shanghaied in Romania by American intelligence, and brought to the United States. Since then he’d been kept locked in safe houses, interviewed and questioned at length, often in marathon eighteen-hour sessions.
But now, to their credit, the Americans were fulfilling their side of the bargain. He checked his pockets and saw he had only some euros, his passport, and a few other things, and he wore the same clothes he wore when he’d been kidnapped, but none of this mattered. He just had to get to a computer or a bank, because he still had $11 million in offshore accounts.
Without a word he stood up from the chair on unsteady legs, walked past the bearded men in the cabin toward the open hatch, and went down the jet stairs to the hot tarmac. He looked around. He had no idea where in the world he was, but he didn’t figure it mattered much. He was out of the USA. He was free.
The stairs closed up behind him and the jet began to roll.
Dalca started walking to a terminal a hundred meters away.
—
Inside the aircraft Midas looked at Dom Caruso. “How long you give it till he figures out how fucked he is?”
Caruso smiled. “Not long at all, man. He’s a smart cookie. Once he finds out where we dropped him, he’ll know he’s screwed.”
Captain Helen Reid pushed the throttle forward and the Hendley Associates jet took off from Hong Kong International just fifteen minutes after landing.
—
At the same time a Gulfstream 550 took off from an airport a few miles to the west, a CIA employee sat in a dim sum restaurant in the Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood of Hong Kong. Across from him at the little table was a high-ranking member of China’s Ministry of State Security. It was an odd meal, but each man knew the identity of the other, so there was no real mystery between the two.
The American’s name was Spicer, and he sipped his Tsingtao beer and looked across at his tablemate. “We wanted to let you know that we are currently hunting very hard for a Romanian national by the name of Alexandru Dalca.”
The name meant nothing to the Chinese intelligence officer, and a cock of his head confirmed it.
Spicer added, “We’re pulling out all the stops. We haven’t found him yet, but believe me, Fang, we’ll get this guy.”
Fang had been delivered intelligence before by other agencies, and he realized that was going on right now. “Very well. But . . . why are you telling me this?”
“Because we think your organization might be looking for him, too. We want to be careful we don’t accidentally bump into each other and cause an . . . an incident.”
“I see,” said Fang, but he did not.
“What we are prepared to do is back off, for a week, and allow your organization to look for him . . . if that is something you are interested in doing. Purely for the safety and security of both of our nations.”
Fang nodded thoughtfully, though the truth was he couldn’t fathom what was going on. But it didn’t matter. He had been in the job long enough to know he was being passed something that he was simply supposed to pass on to his higher-ups. The Americans had a hidden agenda here, and if he had to make an educated guess, it had to do with America wanting this guy taken out of action, without America having to do it themselves.
He had no idea why the Ministry of State Security should care about any of this, but he smiled at Spicer and said, “I will convey your interesting proposal to officials in my organization. I assume you would like some sort of informal reply?”
Spicer said, “Not necessary. In fact, we request that we know nothing else of your actions on the matter. As I said, we will wait one week, and then we will pursue this man with the full force of our capabilities.”
Fang sipped his own beer. “Would you have any idea where this man you are looking so hard for might be found?”
Spicer shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, but if I just had to take a wild guess, I’d say he’s walking through Terminal One of Hong Kong International Airport right now, wearing a white shirt, khaki pants, and a black jacket. He’ll probably be sweating heavily, looking for a place to do some banking. After that he’ll spend as little time in HK as possible, before booking a flight out of the country.” Spicer downed the rest of his beer and said, “Only speculation on my part, you understand.”
Fang nodded slowly. “Of course.”
—
Spicer walked out of the restaurant a minute later with all the confidence in the world that Alexandru Dalca would be picked up in minutes. Other than the United States, no nation on earth had more against Alex Dalca than China. The danger that he could reveal something to the Americans about their operation to out American agents inside China would be bad for them, for the simple reason the operation was ultimately hijacked by ISIS and led to the death of many Americans.
Yes, China was after Dalca just as the United States had been after Dalca. But China had made no pledge to the man, and had nothing to gain by letting him live.
Spicer hailed a cab. The American CIA officer figured the Romanian would be dead by the end of the day.
74
The light over the camera turned red at exactly eight p.m., and President Jack Ryan, seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, addressed his nation.
“Good evening. Tonight I want to tell you about some recent events of national and international importance. Several weeks ago, agents of the United States of America captured Abu Musa al-Matari, alive, here in America. Many details of his capture and subsequent incarceration must be kept secret to protect sources and methods, but I can say some things.
Through interviews with him, as well as the hard work of our military, intelligence, and diplomatic communities, we have uncovered key details about the terrorist attacks by the so-called Islamic State that have been carried out at home and abroad over the past several weeks.
“An intelligence leak of massive proportions took place here in the U.S. just over four years ago. It involved files of the Office of Personnel Management, and included a treasure trove of information about America’s federal employees. This hack was not perpetrated by a state actor, but rather by a company in India that an American firm with security clearances improperly partnered with. The material was copied by the Indian firm and kept on a computer server in India, and for several years this material was not exploited. Recently, however, the Indian company was compromised by a group of Romanian hackers. They obtained the data, realized what it was they had, and one employee of this concern sold some of the material to various foreign actors around the world with aims against the United States.
“We understand how the material was stolen and have made steps to make sure this will never happen again. We do believe we have retrieved all the electronic files, and are reasonably certain there exist no other copies, but we might never be able to know for sure.
“The loss of this material was, by any measure, an egregious failure of the United States government, and for that I am truly, truly sorry.
“Anyone who works in the military, federal law enforcement, or intelligence services in the United States swears an oath to America that states, in part, ‘I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.’
“Millions of men and women have served this nation with that pledge, with their faith, allegiance, and lives, but their best efforts were not returned to them by their government. Some, sadly, have recently lost their lives due to this fact. We owe all these men and women more than we can ever repay them. I owe them better. This shouldn’t have happened, but we will take steps to protect those still compromised.
“Upon learning the details of the OPM breach, my first inclination was to go back to the use of typewriters and then destroy the typewriter ribbons, holding all these crucial, sensitive documents in vaults protected by men sworn to preserve them and equipped to do so, no matter what the threat.
“But unfortunately, the world has moved on, and guys, guns, and gates alone can’t keep this material safe. We must work harder and put more effort into this, and I pledge to do that with my remaining time as your president.
“We also learned via interviews with Abu Musa al-Matari that the source for the material that exposed the members of the military and intelligence communities was a man al-Matari met in Kosovo some nine months ago. Through the diligent work of CIA director Jay Canfield, and DNI director Mary Pat Foley, along with the efforts of Attorney General Dan Murray, we have identified this man via human intelligence assets, as well as travel and immigration records. The man’s name is Sami bin Rashid, and he is not a member of ISIS, but rather a Saudi Arabian national and an employee of the Gulf Cooperation Council, an organization set up to further the political and economic aims of several oil-producing states. Our investigations show us that the objective of this man from the GCC in setting up the attacks in America was not to improve ISIS’s power and reach in the world. Instead, it was a cynical plot to increase the price of oil and to bring U.S. troops back into the Middle East en masse, to hold back Iran, the sworn enemy of many of these nations.
“Right now, many
disaffected Muslims in the world are considering radicalization, joining ISIS, taking up arms against the West. Many have already done so, and they have paid a high price. Each day here in America we are seeing the after-effects of al-Matari’s operation in the form of copycats. It is important for those considering such a path to understand that all the self-radicalized here in America who followed al-Matari’s actions to their death were not doing it in the name of the global caliphate as they had thought, but they were instead doing the bidding of cynical Saudi Arabian business interests.
“I wonder if those seeking martyrdom will actually receive martyrdom while killing and dying for billionaire businessmen. If you pick up a gun today with aims of terrorism in the United States, you aren’t working for ISIS, you are working for fat cats in the wealthy Persian Gulf. Reflect on that a moment.”
Jack Ryan then said, “The question remains: Were the actions of this man bin Rashid sanctioned by his government, or was he a lone wolf? Is Saudi Arabia a problematic partner, or a determined foe?
“As yet we do not have that answer, the Saudis have denied in the strongest terms any involvement, and as President I see it as my job to tell you when we do not have proof of something, the same as when we do have proof. We will not punish Saudi Arabia diplomatically or economically for the actions of this man, unless new intelligence comes to light that implicates the Saudi Arabian government.”
President Ryan looked quietly into the camera a moment before saying, “We were able to derive one more key piece of intelligence from the terrorist we captured. The physical location and key players of the Global Islamic Media Front. This is the very sophisticated public relations and propaganda operation that fuels much of ISIS’s lore around the world. Through their television stations, websites, and satellite radio networks they have raised the call for thousands of foreigners to go fight in the Middle East, North Africa, or in other regions where ISIS holds territory, or to stay in their homelands and fight via terrorist acts.