Up until recently his role in the jihad had been largely supportive, providing transportation and information, offering his home to fellow soldiers, and occasionally aiding in reconnaissance and intelligence collection. He had handled weapons, of course, but to his great shame, he had never wielded one against an enemy. That would soon change-before the next dawn, in fact. Still, just as he’d been taught at the training camp outside Fuqha, proficiency in weapons and their use was only a small part of an operation. In that at least the American military was correct. Most fights are won and lost before the soldiers even take to the battlefield. Plan, replan, then triple-check your plans. Mistakes are born of poor preparation.
His target of choice had proven unfeasible, not only given the limited number of soldiers under his command but also because of the target’s location. The hotel was one of the newest in Tripoli, with enough exits and floors and unknown entry points that it would take two dozen or more men to secure it, and that didn’t even take into account the on-site security force, all former soldiers and police officers armed with advanced weapons and backed up by a surveillance system second-to-none. Given time and enough resources, Dirar was confident he could make such a mission work, but he had neither at his disposal. Not yet, at least. Next time, perhaps.
Instead he had chosen a secondary target, one that had already been proposed by another cell-the Benghazi group, Dirar suspected-but was subsequently rejected by the leadership. No reason had been given, nor an alternative suggested, and like many of his compatriots, Dirar was tired of waiting while the West continued its crusade unchecked. Unsurprisingly, he’d had little trouble finding other cell members who felt the same, though the recruitment had been a hazardous affair, Dirar never knowing whether word of his plan had found its way to unwelcome ears, both from within and without the organization. Over the past year Qaddafi’s Haiat amn al Jamahiriyya had successfully infiltrated a number of cells, one of which had been led by a childhood friend of Dirar’s. Those nine men, good soldiers and true believers each, had disappeared into the Bab al-Azizia barracks and never come out-not alive, at least.
The secondary target was softer to be sure, and only peripherally responsible for the act it would soon be punished for, but if he succeeded, Dirar was confident the message would be clear: Allah’s soldiers had long memories and even longer knives. Kill one of ours and we kill a hundred of yours. He doubted he would reach a hundred here, but no matter.
Along with several of the café’s other patrons, Dirar stood up and walked to a shelf built into the café’s wall and took down a rolled sajada. As was required, the prayer rug was clean and free of debris. He returned to his table and unrolled the rug on the brick patio, taking care to ensure that the top was pointed in the direction of the Qibla, Mecca, then stood erect, hands at his sides, and began the salaat, starting with a whispered Iqama, the private call to prayer. He immediately felt a wave of peace wash through his mind as he proceeded through the remaining seven steps of the salaat, ending with the salawat.
Dirar finished with a lingering glance over each shoulder-acknowledging the angels that recorded each believer’s good deeds as well as his wrongful deeds-then cupped his hands at his chest and wiped his face with his palms.
He opened his eyes and drew in a deep breath. In His wisdom, Allah had seen fit to require believers to perform the salaat at least five times per day, before dawn, at noon, at mid-afternoon, at sunset, and in the evening. As did most Muslims, Dirar found the frequent rituals were as much a personal recentering as they were a tribute to Allah’s power and grace. He’d never spoken of this feeling to others, afraid it was blasphemous, but in his heart he doubted Allah condemned him for it.
He checked his watch. Time to go.
The only question that remained now was whether he would be alive to perform the day’s final salaat. That was in Allah’s hands now.
Though Driscoll didn’t consider their stroll through the Hindu Kush mountaineering per se, it was close enough to remind him of an old Everest saying: Reach the summit and you’ve only climbed half the mountain. Translation: Oftentimes getting back down safely was the real bitch. And for him and his team this was especially true: Mountaineers usually follow the same route up and down. He and his Rangers couldn’t do that, lest they risk ambush. To complicate matters, they were hauling along two prisoners, both of whom had so far been cooperating, but that could change quickly enough.
Driscoll reached a flat spot in the trail between a pair of boulders and stopped, raising his fist as he did so. Behind him, the rest of the team halted in near unison and crouched down. They were five hundred feet from the valley floor. Another forty minutes, Driscoll estimated, then another two klicks along the valley floor, then head to the LZ, or landing zone. He checked his watch: making good time.
Tait sidled up alongside and offered Driscoll a hunk of jerky. “Prisoners are starting to drag ass a bit.”
“Life’s a bitch.”
“Then you die,” Tait replied.
Handling prisoners was always dicey, and even more so in terrain like this. If one of them snapped an ankle or decided to simply sit down and refuse to get up, you had three choices: leave him behind, haul him, or shoot him. The trick was convincing the prisoners that only one fate-the last one-awaited them. Probably true in any case, Driscoll thought. No way he’d put two gomers back into circulation.
Driscoll said, “Five minutes and we’re moving again. Pass the word.”
The boulder-strewn terrain slowly leveled out and gave way to barrel-sized rocks and gravel. A hundred meters from the valley floor, Driscoll called another halt and checked the way ahead through the night vision. He followed the trail’s zigzagging course to where it bottomed out, pausing at every potential area of concealment until he was certain nothing was moving. The valley was two hundred meters wide and bordered by sheer rock walls. Perfect place for an ambush, Driscoll thought, but then again, the geography of the Hindu Kush made that more the rule than the exception, a lesson that had been passed down through the millennia, starting with Alexander the Great, then the Soviets, and now the U.S. military. Driscoll and their now- leg-broke captain had planned this mission backward and forward, each time looking for a better exfiltration route, but had found no alternatives, at least not within ten klicks, a detour that would have put their extraction into the daylight hours.
Driscoll turned around and did a quick head count: fifteen and two. Coming out with the same he’d taken in, a victory in itself. He signaled to Tait-moving-who passed it down the line. Driscoll stood up and started down the trail. Ten minutes later they were within a stone’s throw of the valley floor. He paused to check that nobody was bunching up, then started out again, then stopped.
Something not right…
It took a moment for Driscoll to nail down the source: One of their prisoners, the one in the number-four position with Peterson, no longer seemed as tired. His posture was stiff, his head swiveling left and right. A worried man. Why? Driscoll called another halt, brought the column into a crouch. Tait was there a few moments later.