Alex Berenson - The Secret Soldier

Wells had a problem now. Killing these men wouldn’t be difficult. But he still didn’t know if they were the right targets. He had no proof that 42 Aziz Street was connected to the kidnappers — or even that this house was actually 42 Aziz.

Narrow alleys ran along the sides of the house. Wells picked his way to the back-right corner and flattened himself against the rough concrete. The house was twenty feet high, and the guy on the roof, Usman, would have to lean almost straight over the corner to see him. Wells unscrewed the silencer and slipped it into the front-right pocket of his gown. He shifted the Glock to his left hand, holding it by the barrel now, high across his chest. The footsteps on the roof creaked closer. The back door snapped open and scraped against concrete. Wells pulled back his head and listened as the man in the house stepped into the yard. On the roof, Usman paced.

“I don’t see anything,” the man in the yard said.

“Me either,” Usman said.

The man in the yard walked toward the corner where Wells was hiding. Wells waited, waited, then spun left, popping out from the alley. He swung the Glock with his left arm, a downward clubbing backhand, quicker than a looping right hook and nearly as powerful. The man’s eyes opened wide, and he tried to raise his own pistol—

But Wells drove the corner of the Glock into the left side of the man’s temple, the soft spot just above the eye. The man grunted and sagged sideways. Wells stepped up and swung his right fist into the man’s belly. The man grunted again, his breath rushing out of him, giving Wells a whiff of the curried chicken he’d eaten that day. He dropped his pistol and toppled forward. Wells got under him and held him and hit him once more with the butt of the Glock to be sure he was out. He was skinny, maybe one hundred fifty pounds. Wells lowered him easily and laid him on the ground. In a couple hours, he’d wake up feeling like a car had run him over. But he would wake up.

The guy on the roof, Usman, yelled, “Is everything okay?” Wells shifted the pistol to his right hand, ran inside, found himself in the kitchen, a small, tidy room that also smelled like curried chicken. “What’s going on?” someone at the front of the house said. Hassan, the third jihadi. Wells ducked toward the refrigerator. Hassan lumbered through the house and stepped into the kitchen holding a big black pistol in a two-handed grip.

Wells grabbed Hassan’s hands and forced up the pistol. Hassan pulled the trigger, and the gun fired uselessly into the ceiling. Wells lifted his right leg and stomped down on Hassan’s foot. Wells was wearing ankle-high black motorcycle boots. Hassan was barefoot. Three of his metatarsals snapped with a crack nearly as loud as the pistol shot a moment before. He dropped the gun and fell sideways and screamed. Wells let Hassan hit the floor and then kicked him in the chin to shut him up. His eyes rolled back in his head and two teeth popped out, sticky red with candy-cane blood. This one would wake up feeling like a truck had run him over.

Usman, the guy on the roof, was left. “Hey. What’s happening?” he yelled down. Wells waited to be sure no one else was coming, then stepped through two stifling rooms and strode up the stairs. He stopped at the top step. A corridor ran the length of the second floor. At the back of the house, a rickety spiral staircase led to the roof.

Wells moved down the corridor as the door to the roof opened. He hid himself in a foul-smelling bathroom as Usman ran down the spiral stairs and into the hall. When Usman had passed, Wells stepped out. “Raise your hands.”

Usman stopped, looked over his shoulder at Wells. Wells raised the pistol and Usman stretched his arms over his head. His hands were empty.

“On your knees.” Usman hestitated, then ran for the front stairs. Wells aimed low, at his ass, and squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The pistol’s silenced shot was no louder than a gassy belch. Usman screamed and stumbled forward, sliding onto his knees.

“Hands up.”

Again Usman raised them.

“Where’s the ambassador?”

“What ambassador?”

The answer was a confession. Everyone in Saudi Arabia knew what had happened to Kurland. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know.” Usman braced himself, stood, stumbled for the stairs. Wells lifted the pistol and shot him again twice, high and lethal in the back. Usman grunted and flopped against the wall and slid down, a slow, ungainly death. Blood dripped out of his mouth when Wells flipped him over. He tried to speak, but Wells couldn’t understand his mumbles. Already Wells regretted the fury that had made him pull the trigger. Dead men tell no tales.

Wells left him, searched the upstairs rooms. In the front bedroom, he found two AKs, a Quran, a week of Saudi newspapers, and a tattered Victoria’s Secret catalog tucked under a mattress, the saddest piece of not-quite-pornography Wells had ever seen. A closet held a half-dozen thobe s in various sizes and jeans and long-sleeved shirts neatly folded on top of a hard orange plastic case. Wells swept the clothes aside, picked up the case, and carried it into the bedroom. It wasn’t heavy. He clicked open its oversized black latches. He found a basic medical kit, the kind a paramedic might carry — gauze and bandages and scissors, latex gloves, masks, bottles of pills and tubes of antibiotic, a thermometer, and a stethoscope. The supplies all appeared a couple years old. Wells wondered if something more interesting was hidden inside. He turned the case over, emptied it, but didn’t find anything.

In the bathroom, he found three passports hidden in a plastic bag taped to the back of the toilet. Wells relaxed slightly when he found that they all had recent Lebanese entry and exit visas — near-certain proof that these men were jihadis who had trained at Aziz’s camp.

“Ambassador? Ambassador Kurland? Can you hear me?” he yelled in English. But the house was silent. When he returned to the front steps, Usman was dead. Wells checked his pockets, found only a cheap disposable Nokia. A burner. He turned it on, flipped through it, but the registry was empty. Either the call logs had been deleted or it had never been used. He stood up as he heard a woman singing downstairs in Arabic, the voice startling him until he realized it was a ringtone.

Inside Hassan’s gown, Wells found another phone, a disposable Nokia identical to the one he’d taken from Usman. Hassan grumbled semiconsciously as Wells took it. Its monochrome screen showed a 966 number, the Saudi area code. Wells let it ring until the call went to voicemail. A few seconds later, the mailbox icon lit up. Wells pushed 1, listened to a man saying, “Hassan. No package tonight. We’re not finished yet, and it’s too close to curfew. I’ll bring it tomorrow. You’ll have plenty of time. Peace be with you, brother.” Wells riffed through Hassan’s pockets but found only a Honda motorcycle key, presumably for the bike behind the house.

Footsteps in the alley pulled him up. He drew his pistol, hid himself against the wall beside the kitchen door. “John,” Gaffan whispered. “You there?”

“Yeah. Long time no see.”

Gaffan walked in. “I’m sorry. I got lost.” Gaffan nudged Hassan’s broken foot. “Looks like you handled things.”

“Let’s get the other one inside, shut the door.”

Wells and Gaffan put the two jihadis Wells had immobilized on their stomachs, cuffed their hands and legs. The first jihadi, the one whom Wells had pistol-whipped, breathed slowly and unevenly. Wells filled a plastic jug with lukewarm water from the tap, poured it over the guy’s head, got only a few guttural mumbles. He peeled back the guy’s eyelids. His pupils constricted slowly. Wells had hit him in just the wrong spot, and he had a very severe concussion or slow bleed from a skull fracture. Skull fractures were becoming a specialty for Wells. Either way, the guy was useless to them. He needed real medical care, and it would be days before he could answer any questions. Only Hassan was left.