The Secret Soldier

image. “His name was Ayman.”

“This is what you didn’t want to talk about before.”

“Yes.”

“He was a friend of yours?”

“Not a friend, not really. But we looked out for each other. People thought he was stupid. Like me. They said he was a traitor. He wasn’t a traitor. He asked if he could leave, and they said no, and he left anyway. They caught him the next day and brought him back.”

“And put him in the cell.”

“Yes.”

“And didn’t give him any food.”

“No food, okay. He had no water. On the third day, Aziz made us watch. This is what I didn’t want to say before. We lifted the lid, and Ayman was begging for water. Begging and promising he would tell. Whatever Aziz wanted. His face. His lips. They were black. And his eyes—” Meshaal stopped. “And Aziz told us, this is what happens to traitors. Then we put the lid back on.”

AZIZ HAD BEEN TESTING the ventilation equipment. Wells was certain. He needed to make sure the cell wouldn’t suffocate the captives he planned to hold. By running away, deserting, Ayman had made himself the test case. But Aziz hadn’t needed to kill him. He could have provisioned the cell, plucked Ayman out a week later, lesson learned. Death from dehydration was pure cruelty, a dark fire far worse than the slow twilight of starvation.

Wells wondered if Aziz had prayed the night he’d put the lid back on. Probably. Probably with special fervor. Like the Bible, the Quran was filled with tales of man’s cruelty to man. And yet Wells couldn’t believe that Allah wanted the prayers of a psychopath.

Wells had never met Aziz, never seen the man, didn’t even know his real name. But for the first time in years, a righteous fury burned his blood. He wanted to strike down this man who had amused himself by torturing one of his own soldiers. The word was smite. He wanted to cast lightning upon Aziz.

“Stop the boat,” he said to Gaffan.

Gaffan brought the engines to idle. They were about fifty miles south of Cyprus, out of the main shipping lanes, no other ships within five miles. Wells stripped down and dove into the sea. The water was cool and dark and briny, almost medicinal, and Wells scissors-kicked and then dove as deep he could. With the boat beside him, he was a fearless swimmer.

Far below the surface, he rubbed his fingertips together until the last scarlet traces disappeared in the murky water. He’d find blood enough in the days to come.

Meshaal went below again, curled up, slept. Wells let him. Eventually the interrogators in Guantanamo would take another pop at him, but Wells didn’t think they would hear much more. He’d gotten what the kid had to give.

For now he tried to think through the questions the kid’s story raised. The answers were disturbing. Why did Aziz need to move the ventilation equipment? Because he’d built another cell in Saudi Arabia, and he didn’t want to buy more gear because he feared it could be traced. Why did he need an underground cell? For a captive. For a kidnapping. The obvious target was a Saudi royal. But Aziz had told his men that they’d be fighting American soldiers. Maybe he’d said that to motivate them. Maybe he was aiming at a Western housing compound, as Meshaal thought. The compounds had private American security forces along with official Saudi protection.

Or maybe… maybe Aziz thought he could get at the ambassador. But Wells couldn’t see how. The ambassador rarely left the American embassy, and when he did, a small army protected him. But Aziz had close to sixty men, a small army of his own. Their training wasn’t up to American standards. But their willingness to use suicide attacks was a huge tactical advantage.

Now the United States had to send a team to search what was left of the camp — and quickly, before Hezbollah decided to demolish it and the evidence it held. Raiding the camp now would be easy. Even so, a raid might not happen quickly. Before it could, the most powerful officials in Washington — Duto and the secretary of state and the national security adviser — would have to admit that they should have hit the camp already instead of leaving the attack to Wells. Then they would have to reach the obvious conclusion: The United States needed to go in now. And if Hezbollah and the Lebanese government didn’t agree, Langley would have to commit a CIA team with enough backup firepower from the Deltas to convince the militia to stand down.

Wells hoped Duto and the other big names — they liked to call themselves “principals”—would move quickly. Even so, Wells couldn’t see how a raid could happen in under forty-eight or seventy-two hours, which was already too long. If Aziz had been dismantling the camp for a month, he had to be close to striking. And the Saudis weren’t going to stop him, though they might be surprised when they saw his target.

Wells wished for a sat phone. But wishing was useless. They simply had to wait for darkness and then ease their way into the coast. The Cranchi could run in very shallow water, more proof of its speedboat roots. They didn’t need a harbor, just a quiet beach far enough from a village that they could ditch the boat and wade in. They’d sleep on the ground, and in the morning buy a phone or an Internet connection and get to Nicosia.

They could even leave Meshaal if he slowed them down. They’d get him back. He didn’t speak Greek and didn’t have a passport. He wasn’t getting off Cyprus on his own. Their first priority had to be making contact and getting to a safe house before the Cyprus cops found them and started asking unpleasant questions.

AFTER SUNSET, THE SEA glowed, streaks of white and black mating with every wave. They were ten miles south of the southwestern tip of Cyprus. The island glowed faintly through the night’s humid haze. “Land ho,” Gaffan said.

“Bring us in, then.”

“Aye-aye, cap’n.” Gaffan was trying for an English accent, not very well. “We’ll drink a pint o’ grog, have our pick of the lassies.”

Suddenly, Wells realized that they weren’t speaking Arabic. Hunger and heat and fatigue were making them sloppy.

“What are you saying?” Meshaal yelled.

Wells grabbed Meshaal’s skinny biceps, dug his fingers in tightly enough to feel the tendons flex. “Quiet.”

Cyprus wasn’t quite the cradle of civilization, but it was close. People had lived on the island for at least five thousand years. In other words, the coast didn’t have a lot of empty beachfront left for a landing. Hotels and villages speckled the shoreline, their lights glimmering. A mile out, Gaffan cut the engines. They floated silently, listening to cars on the coast road and a party at a hotel that sat behind a wide beach.

“Now what?” Gaffan said.

“Maybe we ought to find a slip, a real harbor, and dock there and walk away. Dare somebody to stop us.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. But if they see us wade in like we’re crossing the Rio Grande to pick peppers, how’s that gonna look?”

“They didn’t teach this at the Farm?”

“They did, but I forgot.”

“Too bad. Would have come in handy.”

At least Gaffan got the cosmic absurdity. They’d successfully raided a terrorist training camp. Now they couldn’t figure out how to ditch a speedboat without getting caught. Wells pictured stepping off the Cranchi, walking through a sleepy village. If they were dressed better or spoke Greek or didn’t have the kid, maybe they could pull it off. But not this way.

“Find a stretch where the houses look empty, and we’ll just have to go for it.”

Gaffan chugged slowly east. Then they caught a break. The lights disappeared as the coast road swung behind a hilly ridge covered with scrub and cypress. The ridge sharpened into low bluffs too steep for houses. A wide white sand beach lay between the bluffs and the sea.

“We’re not going to do better than this,” Gaffan said. “Protected, no houses, smooth water.”

Wells looked at Meshaal. “We’re going to land there, and then we’re all getting out. You’re going to have to walk through the water.”