of the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba were taped up, no other decoration.
“Lie down. Face-first.”
He did. Gaffan threw handcuffs on him, and Wells pulled him up and tugged him out. Up close, the guy was young and pitiful, with tiny acne scars, a flat, wide nose, and a scraggly beard. He wore plain white underwear and a dirty gray T-shirt. His arms were scrawny and his legs nearly hairless. The runt of the litter. Probably the reason he’d stayed in the barracks.
Outside, he licked his lips nervously as he saw the lieutenant’s body. Wells dragged him away from the carnage, pushed him down, waved Gaffan over. “Guard him,” Wells whispered. “See if he’ll talk. And we only use Arabic when he’s around.”
“What are you doing?”
Wells nodded up the hill at the farmhouse.
“John — listen.”
Wells heard a diesel engine, distant but growing stronger. He nodded. And ran.
HE FOUND THE FRONT half of the farmhouse turned into a makeshift classroom, a dozen desks arranged before twin whiteboards. Wells turned them over, but they were blank on both sides. He imagined lessons about weapons, basic infantry tactics.
A door at the back led to the kitchen. Inside, two refrigerators hummed. The counters were spotless, and so were the glasses and plates that filled the rough wooden shelves. These guys handled KP duty themselves, no need for Halliburton. So far, Wells had found nothing but proof of a well-run camp. The person who’d created this place had been through advanced infantry training and served in a real army for years.
Upstairs, three doors came off the landing. The first led to an empty bedroom. The ubiquitous poster of the shrine at Mecca filled one wall. Shirts and jeans and two
The second door was locked. Wells tried the larger of the two keys he’d found in the lieutenant’s pockets. It slid in smoothly, and he stepped inside. The bedroom was smaller than the first. A thin black blanket was piled at the foot of the bed, the only sign of mess Wells had seen in the house. A green duffel sat on the floor. Wells reached in and found a dark blue uniform. The uni didn’t have name tags or rank insignia. But on its right biceps, it had a black patch with the words “Special Forces” stitched in Arabic in gold. And on the left, a triangular version of the Saudi flag.
He flipped over the duffel bag. Shiny black leather boots clattered to the floor, followed by a black leather belt, elbow and knee pads, goggles, heavy plastic gloves, and an open-face ski mask. Wells wasn’t sure if he was looking at a real Saudi Special Forces uniform or just a very good copy.
The rest of the room was unremarkable. The closet held more gowns, two shirts, two pairs of pants. A wooden desk was empty except for a Quran, a pocket-sized green notebook, and a Saudi passport in the name of Talib al-Majood. Wells stuffed the notebook and passport in his windbreaker.
He checked his watch. Two-twelve. He’d been up here five minutes already. He peeked out the bedroom’s narrow window, which looked east toward the center of the valley. The diesel engine was closer now, though he couldn’t see any lights. He was putting a lot of faith in the gate. Too much, probably.
He hustled for the third door. It was locked. Neither key worked.
Wells pulled his pistol, fired two shots at the doorjamb. He raised a leg and kicked through the door, tearing it from the lock. He twisted against the wall of the corridor, away from the door, in case someone was inside, though he hadn’t heard anything, and anyone in the house would probably have joined the firefight long ago.
Inside, a simple office. Two steel desks sat back-to-back. A black Ethernet cable was coiled on the floor, but Wells didn’t see a computer. A black-painted supply cabinet sat beside the door. Wells pulled the handle. Locked. He tried the second, smaller key. After a moment’s hesitation, it fit.
The cabinet had four steel shelves. Weapons and boxes of ammunition cluttered the top two: AKs and two partially disassembled M-16s. On the third shelf, two shoe boxes. The first held credit cards, cell phones, and two car keys, one Chevy and one Toyota. The second was filled with wads of one-hundred-dollar and twenty-dollar bills held with tatty rubber bands, along with a dozen passports — all Saudi, except for one Jordanian. Wells took the car keys but left everything else.
A nasty-looking short-barrel assault rifle with a wide, angular stock lay on the bottom shelf. Wells thought the rifle was a Heckler & Koch. Gun nuts loved H&K. So did Deltas. Which meant that the Saudi Special Forces units probably used them. These men had gone to great lengths to impersonate Saudi soldiers. Or else, even worse, they really
In the desks, he found an engineering textbook in Arabic, a copy of a helicopter operations manual, detailed maps of Mecca and Medina and Riyadh, uniform name tags and patches, and what looked like day passes for a Saudi military base. He scanned the place once more, hoping for a laptop, but it was gone or hidden too well for him to find.
He grabbed the duffel bag from the second bedroom and threw the shoe boxes and the junk from the desk inside it. He took a last look around the office. If he had another hour, or even more a few minutes. But he didn’t. He heard faint shouts, men’s voices cutting through the dry night air.
The militia must be at the gate.
Time to go.
AS HE LOPED DOWN the ridge toward Gaffan, Wells remembered how he’d once thought that a firefight in Afghanistan belonged in a Goya painting, a vision of hell on earth. The scene below him was less obviously violent but more surreal. Gaffan stood next to the Suburban, holding the arm of the jihadi they’d captured. His touch might have seemed almost friendly, brothers getting ready for a road trip — if not for the thick black hood that Gaffan had pulled over the kid’s head. Five bodies were sprawled behind them. To the north, the crashed Suburban lay on its side, an elephant felled by an unseen dart. Norman Rockwell, as commissioned by the Devil.
Around the corner, metal tore at metal, a heavy groaning sound.
Wells reached the Suburban, handed Gaffan the duffel bag and the key to the Toyota. “See if it’ll start. Take the bag and him with you.” He grabbed an AK from one of the dead jihadis, then unlocked the Suburban and slipped the key in the ignition. Despite the bullet holes in the engine block, it started smoothly.
Wells turned on the Suburban’s lights, put the truck in gear, angled it so it faced up the rocky ridge that led to the farmhouse. The ridge stretched at least two miles past the house, ending only at the flanks of the Lebanon range. He grabbed the clothesline from his pants, ran it through the steering wheel, behind the driver’s headrest, back through the wheel. He knotted it tight to minimize the play of the wheel.
On the other side of the hill, another collision. Then an orchestral crash that could only be the gate going over. The militia wouldn’t need long to move it out of the road. Wells checked that the AK’s safety was on. He jammed the butt of the rifle against the gas pedal and shoved the muzzle against the front of the seat. The pedal flexed down and the truck took off, heading up the hill.
Wells dove out of the truck, landing hard on his right shoulder, which had taken more than its share of abuse over the years. A bolt of lightning exploded down his arm. He guessed he’d dislocated his shoulder again. He ran for the Toyota, pulled open the front passenger door, slid inside, his arm loose at his side.
THE JIHADI THEY’D CAPTURED wasn’t in the car. Wells heard a faint banging coming from the trunk. Gaffan drove silently, heading over the ridge south of the barracks, the same way he’d approached. Wells peeked back at the Suburban. The truck was headed up the hill. The militia would naturally chase it first.
They topped the ridge, and the Toyota thumped over one of the men that Gaffan had killed a few minutes before. Wells banged his shoulder against the passenger door. Another bolt of lightning down his arm. Wells gritted his teeth.
“You think that’ll work, buy us extra time?”
“Let’s hope.”
“You think we left intel back there?”
“Probably.”
“This turned into a real shitshow. A Delta crew would have done it right. Or your guys.”
Wells didn’t want to argue. He wanted to sit in the dark with his eyes closed and count the seconds until he
