Alex Berenson: The Secret Soldier

The hole was about twelve feet deep. Wells peeked down, saw metal rods embedded in the wall that seemed to serve as a crude ladder. But the hatch was too narrow and the cell too deep to allow him to glimpse the entire space below. Unless he squatted down and put his face to the hatch, he couldn’t see Kurland or the kidnappers.

BAKR COULDN’T BELIEVE THAT Kurland had knocked over his chair. Crazy American. He and Abdul flipped it up, ignoring Kurland, who was yelling and waving his stump, blood leaking from the gauze. Bakr reached for his knife, but Kurland thrashed his head sideways so he couldn’t get a clean stroke. Bakr tried to grab his chin, but Kurland snapped his jaw like a wild dog. “Get the morphine,” Bakr said to Abdul. The syringes were in the first-aid kit, in the garage.

“We don’t have time—”

“I want the video to be clean, not this screaming—”

“The video, the video, you’re insane—”

“Do it!”

WELLS HEARD THEM YELLING and backed away from the hatch and dropped onto his hands and knees. They didn’t know he was here. For the first time, he thought he might succeed. He was far enough from the hatch that the jihadi climbing out wouldn’t see him, close enough to be able to kill the guy cleanly. “This is stupid,” the man below said. His feet pounded on the metal rungs, rising step by step—

The man’s hands emerged and the top of his head, thick black hair. He rose through the hatch as if he were materializing from empty space, a magic trick. He swung his head around, defenseless. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose as he saw Wells, and Wells leaned forward and put the tip of the silencer to his forehead and pulled the trigger and blew off the top of his head with a 9-millimeter kiss—

And gravity had its way with his corpse and sucked him back into the cell. Wells stood up, knowing he had only one chance. He stepped toward the hatch, and without hesitating put his hands at his sides and stepped through the hole like a kid jumping off the high dive—

He fell through. Halfway down he caught his shoulder on one of the rungs embedded in the wall. He twisted sideways and wrenched a knee as he landed. He stumbled forward over the legs of the man he’d killed. He braced himself against the wall, without a shot—

ABDUL FELL THROUGH THE hatch, dead, and before Bakr could fully register what was happening, another man plunged into the cell, wearing a bloodstained gown, a pistol in his hand. The man landed awkwardly and fell forward, toward the side of the cell, and Bakr looked at him and then at Kurland, and knew what he needed to do—

WELLS TURNED HIMSELF AND raised the pistol, but he was late, too late—

BAKR SCREAMED “ALLAHU AKBAR!” and drove the knife into Kurland’s belly, a killing stroke, Bakr knew, even as the man in the corner finally got his pistol up and the rounds tore at him, two in his arm and two more in his chest and a marvelous black warmth filled him—

WELLS FIRED UNTIL HE had no ammunition left and pushed himself up and hobbled across the cell. The blood splashed out of Kurland and pooled on the concrete. Bakr had torn through the big arteries in his stomach. Wells knew he couldn’t do anything, but he knelt before Kurland and pressed his hands to the wound and tried to stanch the flow. “I’m sorry,” he said. Kurland’s eyes were closing, but he locked on Wells when he heard the English.

“American?”

“Yes.” The blood seeped around the knife blade, around Wells’s hands.

Kurland’s eyes drooped. “Stay with me,” Wells said. He pushed harder. Kurland groaned.

“My ring. My wife. Ring.”

Wells saw the stump, the left hand missing, and understood. “Your wedding ring.”

“Tell her—” Kurland’s breath came fast. His voice was a whisper.

“Tell her—” Wells said.

“Tell her I fought.” His head slumped forward, and he was gone.

WELLS CLOSED HIS OWN eyes and leaned against the wall in a room with two men he’d killed and a third he’d failed to save. He would have world enough and time to consider how he could have saved Kurland. What he should have done differently. What his next move would be. Whether Saeed or someone else needed to pay for this atrocity. For now, he closed his eyes and sat in silence for eternity, or a minute or two. Until he heard someone in the garage above.

“John,” Gaffan yelled. “You in here?”

“Down here.”

“We clear?”

“Clear.”

Gaffan’s footsteps clanked over the plates. “Everything okay?”

“No,” Wells said quietly. “It’s not even close.”

THE SAUDIS COULD BE VERY CHARMING WHEN THEY HAD TO BE.

And they had to be to calm the fury after Graham Kurland’s death. After ten years and two frustrating wars, Americans had lost patience with Islamic terror — and with Saudi Arabia, which seemed to be its biggest backer. The fact that the kidnappers had mutilated Kurland became a closely guarded secret; the national security adviser called it “the kind of detail that could start a war.” Plenty of Americans wanted war anyway. The day after Kurland’s death, protestors surrounded the Saudi embassy, and polls showed that forty-six percent of Americans wanted to invade the Kingdom. The president asked for calm, saying that the United States needed to investigate. Blaming the Saudi government would be premature, especially since the government’s forces had nearly rescued Kurland, he said.

Abdullah and Saeed also spoke out. In carefully managed interviews on CNN two days after Kurland’s death, the men expressed sorrow for his killing and vowed to punish the perpetrators.

“Un-Islamic,” Abdullah said. “A tragedy.”

“Terrorists,” Saeed said. “A crime.”

The next day, Abdullah flew to Chicago for Kurland’s funeral. The service and burial were closed to the public, but the reports that the king would be attending sparked promises of protests. Despite pleas from the Kurland family, the president, and the archbishop of Chicago, hundreds of demonstrators tried to reach Holy Name Cathedral, but police in riot gear faced them down.

At the funeral, the president was cool as ever. “Graham could have chosen to serve anywhere. He was that big a donor,” the president said in his eulogy, and the mourners laughed politely, as they were meant to do. “But he wanted to go somewhere difficult. He wanted to make a difference. I hope that the way he died isn’t all we remember about him. That would be the truest tragedy.”

When it was Barbara’s turn to speak, she stood blankly before the mourners, shaking her head until her children came and led her down. Afterward, though, she found her voice. With a dozen Secret Service officers and FBI agents around her, she led Abdullah outside the cathedral to the makeshift pen where reporters and camera crews waited. In her long black dress and mourning gloves, she stood awkwardly next to the king, not quite touching him.

“I know in my heart that this is a good man,” she said. “He’s suffered, too. They killed his granddaughter two weeks ago. Graham liked him. Graham believed in diplomacy. Graham wouldn’t have wanted war.”

Graham wouldn’t have wanted war. The whispered words were played over and over. A week after the funeral, only twenty-seven percent of Americans wanted to invade. The Saudis did their part, too, arresting dozens of men, and making sure that every arrest was reported. “We won’t rest until all these criminals are in prison or dead,” Mansour said. “We’ll do whatever’s necessary to prove we’re a faithful ally.”

THE ROLE WELLS AND Gaffan had played was never disclosed. Officially, a Saudi task force had tracked down Kurland with the help of tips from Saudis appalled by the kidnapping. Off the record, Duto told his favorite scribblers at the Times and the Post that the CIA and NSA had provided crucial tips. Duto explained that the rescue had failed because the first man into the underground cell in Mecca, a Saudi Special Forces soldier named Jalal, fell as he entered and didn’t get a clean shot at Ahmad Bakr. The agency trusted the Saudi account of the rescue, because CIA operatives had interviewed Jalal and found him credible. His story also matched the physical evidence, Duto said.