Scott Mariani - House of War

The soldiers waited for all the men to enter the building, then for thirty minutes longer, for whatever strategic discussions they were engaged in to get well underway in a sense of security. Then the signal was given to move in and commence the assault.

And that was when it all went horribly bad. Taylor was twenty metres from the building and on the verge of launching his first grenade at the window when Ben saw an incoming RPG round streaking towards them from the edge of the rocky basin. Before he had time to yell a warning, the rocket-propelled warhead blew a crater right under Taylor’s feet, killing him instantly. Within instants, the air was thick with heavy machine-gun fire coming at them from all sides, and Ben knew the American intel had been even worse than previously thought. Task Force Red had been misled. A third contingent of militants had been en route to the meeting when they’d spotted the soldiers and opened fire from hidden positions all around the rim of the plateau.

Under aggressive attack, Ben’s unit found whatever cover they could and fired back. But then several of the insurgents inside the house came swarming out, shooting as they came. The task force were pinned between two enemy factions, with no longer any option but to fight their way out.

The battle was brief, intense and frenetic. In the midst of it Ben saw another of his SAS guys go down, hit in the thigh. Two of the Delta troopers were less lucky, one blown to pieces by another RPG round and the other fatally wounded in the throat by a rifle bullet fired from the house.

Then out of the corner of his eye Ben spotted Nazim al-Kassar and four of his men breaking from the entrance and running for the dusty black SUV in which they’d arrived. He fired on them, punching holes in the side of the vehicle. The SUV took off, wheels spinning in the dirt. Ben kept firing until his rifle was empty, shattering the windows and perforating the bodywork like Swiss cheese.

The SUV went into a wild skid and crashed into a low wall. Its driver burst through the windscreen in a spray of broken glass and blood, his face mangled to a pulp, his body sprawling lifelessly across the bonnet.

Ben drew his pistol and sprinted for the wrecked car, ignoring the bullets flying past him, intent only on stopping al-Kassar before he got away. He wrenched open the car door. Al-Kassar was in the back seat with blood on his face, clawing a pistol from his belt. Ben lunged inside the car, smacked the gun out of his hand and knocked him unconscious with three vicious strikes from his pistol butt. The elusive Nazim al-Kassar was now a prisoner.

Less than three minutes later, the fight was ended. The unseen attackers retreated from the edge of the plateau and into the surrounding hills, never to be seen again. The smoke cleared from the butcher’s yard of the village to reveal eleven dead insurgents on the ground, three more dead inside the building, and two critically injured. The rest had thrown down their guns and surrendered, evidently not quite so willing as all that to lay down their lives for Allah.

The task force had lost three men, Taylor and two of the Delta guys, as well as sustaining two further non-fatal casualties. Ben radioed in a CASEVAC chopper and the injured were airlifted from the scene along with the wounded prisoners. A grim death toll, to be sure. Ben was deeply upset about Taylor, and furious with the misleading US intel that had dropped them in the soup like that. But the task force had succeeded in its mission to snatch al-Kassar and several of his top aides. JTJ had just suffered a major defeat.

Or so Ben thought, as he returned to base that day with a truckload of prisoners in tow.

War and politics made for a terrible combination, yet the pair were inseparable bedfellows. As a commanding officer Ben was in possession of a secret British Ministry of Defence memo ordering the SAS under no circumstances to allow Iraqi prisoners to be handed over to the US Joint Special Operations Command, for fear that they might be whisked away by the CIA to some covert facility where they would be subjected to torture. The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal was still fresh, and the suits in Whitehall wanted no part of any dirty dealings – at any rate, that was the official pretence.

So, on their return, Ben was careful to hand the prisoners over to a regular US Army unit. This caused a major dispute with the Delta guys, because Delta were in effect the military arm of the CIA, under the shady umbrella of its Special Activities Division. Hence, the D-boys had their own dark agenda and secret orders. And now Ben was the party pooper. Tyler Roth was so incensed by his decision that the two of them very nearly came to blows following an angry argument that night.

Two days later, the politics of the situation came back to haunt Ben with a vengeance. Unaware of just who they had in custody because of the shroud of secrecy surrounding Special Ops missions, the regular army grunts holding al-Kassar and the other top-level JTJ prisoners slipped up on security discipline. Ben was having breakfast with a group of other SAS guys when he heard the news that Nazim al-Kassar and six of his associates had managed to escape while being transferred between military camps. Al-Kassar would never be captured again, and many more people would die while he ran free.

People like Samara .

Ben had smarted over the incident for a long time afterwards, wishing that he hadn’t followed his orders and instead let the Yanks do whatever the hell they wanted to Nazim and his henchmen. The incident had been one of the rotten experiences that drove a wedge between him and the military bureaucracy above him. Ultimately, it would be one of the reasons why he quit the regiment under something of a cloud, thoroughly disillusioned with the whole business and ready to move on.

But the memories were hard to let go of. Even after he’d left the military, he’d kept track of the exploits of JTJ. In 2006, the same year that Nazim’s mentor Abu al-Zarqawi had been killed in a US air strike, JTJ got itself a new leader and a new name. Along with much-expanded aspirations and confidence in its achievements it now became known as ISI, the Islamic State of Iraq.

Eight years after that, the name changed again. Henceforth the organisation would be called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. ISIL, for short. A name that became very well known indeed to folks in the West. And the rest was history: the bombings, the killings, the mass abductions, the media storms surrounding the filmed beheadings of hostages streamed across the internet.

All those years, Ben had always secretly wished that he might one day have the opportunity of running into his old friend Nazim al-Kassar again. Over time, he’d become resigned to the unlikelihood of that ever happening. Then the deal had been sealed in August 2016, when Ben had heard through the grapevine that Nazim al-Kassar was among a group of ISIL commanders blown to bits in a US air strike in Iraq.

To have seen him dead would have been preferable. But to hear him dead was good enough. Ben had been relieved that the world was now free of one more lunatic murdering scumbag.

And now here he was again. Walking about and looking very much alive after all.

Ben couldn’t believe it. Nazim al-Kassar, back from the dead and for some bizarre reason resurfacing in Paris, of all places. What could be the connection between him and a young woman like Romy Juneau?

That was a mystery Ben intended to solve. And if fate had chosen to cross his path with Nazim’s once again, it would be for the last time. Because only one of them was walking away from this alive.