He started the motor and rode toward the trawler engulfed in flames with the remains of the hull listing, sinking, smoke spewing from the hot water. Merk called out, “Tasi… Inapo… Tasi… Inapo…” guiding the rubber boat back and forth like a farmer plowing a field.
Merk drove over the body of a dead guard; he steered around the next smoky corpse, when Tasi breached off the port side, screeching a victory squeal. She leapt onto the gunwale, startling Merk. He embraced the dolphin and strapped her on the side of the boat.
Inapo leapt onto the port gunwale. He, too, squealed a victory whistle. But all was not well.
Chapter Four
At zero-dark-hundred, A Navy SEAL climbed on a boulder alongside a deserted road on the outskirts of Jaar, Yemen. From the perch, the SEAL dialed a pair of night-vision binoculars and panned it over low-slung houses across the city. He swept the infrared lens from west to north until his eyes fixed on a laser-painted marker on the upper wall of a low-rise building.
Confirming another SEAL had painted the target, he took out a laser-gun, sighted the target, and fired a laser on the terrorist headquarters, painting the wall above the first laser mark. He turned on a Satcom and pressed an encrypted code, waiting a few seconds to signal again.…
UP MARKET SQUARE from the target building, CIA clandestine operator Alan Cuthbert strode in the middle of the dusty street toward a closed teashop. He felt his Satcom vibrate two times under the dark blue Bedouin tob, and knew the target had been painted. That was the first check of three he needed before ordering the drone strike, the last steps in the kill chain.
Cuthbert picked at grains of sand in his brown bushy beard. He tapped his knuckle on the shop door, scanning the street behind him in a city that had been fought over by three factions: the Shiite Houthi fighters, who ousted the former Yemeni president in January 2015; al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula; and Saudi-sponsored military guard. In an air of paranoia, Cuthbert watched a young boy head down the silent street away from him, toward the target house.
He thought about intervening to save the boy from harm, then erased the idea. Anxious to meet the recruited CIA asset named Bahdoon for the first time, Cuthbert knew better than to tap the door again. He waited, eyeing the street, when he heard a creak of the floorboard inside, followed by footsteps approaching. The door opened. A diminutive Yemeni man, clean-shaven, dressed in an Italian designer suit and tie, startled the CIA operator, who stepped inside. Bahdoon’s appearance belied the troubles his nation suffered in yet another civil war.
Wearing wire-rimmed glasses, Bahdoon offered Alan Cuthbert a seat at a wood table. The Oxford style, short-cropped hair caught the agent off guard, too; so did the lack of facial hair. On the table sat a tin teapot. What threw Cuthbert off even more — there were no bodyguards in the shop. Stranger still, Bahdoon didn’t pat him for weapons. They sat down. On the chance of the tea being spiked, the agent waited for the host to sip first, before he poured a cup.
“Yemen tea is good for your endurance,” Bahdoon said, sipping.
Cuthbert took a sip and watched the top-secret asset’s eyes, then said in code: “The stars are aligned,” referring to the terrorist safehouse being laser-painted. “But we still can’t drink tea on the moon.” Again that was code, asking Bahdoon to give the second of three confirmations before Cuthbert ordered the drone strike and then exited Yemen by boat later that night.
“Hmmm, you are strapping,” Bahdoon said, sipping. “You know what they say.”
“About what? Size? Strength?”
“…Drones.”
Cuthbert shrugged. Bahdoon sipped the tea and placed the teacup on the side beside the saucer. He flipped the saucer over, removed a note taped to the bottom, and handed it to the agent. Cuthbert unfolded the paper, read three numbers of mobile phone SIM cards with RFID identifiers. He took out a smartphone and scanned the numbers with a secure mobile app. He uploaded the image, swiped it to an encrypted cloud, and pressed “send,” forwarding it to CIA analysts back in Langley’s Drone Counterterrorism Unit, tasked with operating the military drones in countries, such as Yemen, where no US troops are based.
“Are drone strikes your life’s work?” Bahdoon asked, pouring more tea.
“Nah, bagging terrorists is my sweet spot,” Cuthbert said.
“What about the ones you have killed? Their spirit lives on.” Bahdoon took a sip.
“Huh? Who are you referring to?”
“Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Anwar al-Awlaki,” he said. “Zarqawi was the builder of training camps. A brute. He was the founder of ISIS when he sprang from a Jordanian jail in 1999. Awlaki, the graceful American preacher, has been more alluring dead since the 2011 drone attack. It helped launch ISIS’s radical jihad. Awlaki’s impassioned speeches live on YouTube and on the dark web. They are some of the most persuasive recruiting tools for jihadists. The one on the Afterlife spoke to Muslims the world over on how to prepare for death.”
Alan Cuthbert held up the piece of paper, saying, “Yeah, I read the transcript. He used the analogy of two planes striking each other over India. Death came fast to those passengers.”
“Instantaneous, like a drone hit,” Bahdoon said, lowering his voice. “I heard Houthi rebels are in Zinjibar scouting the port for mercenaries. Be vigilant.”
Cuthbert nodded, tapped his smartphone, noting, “Even if you shut this off, there’s a second battery in the internal clock that’s still ticking.”
“The men sleep with their mobile phones shut off at night. But they have scouts and runners, children looking out for their safety,” Bahdoon said. “There, you must be careful. When you leave, move swiftly. Follow no one in uniform. Those men are AQAP.”
When the Satcom vibrated against his waist, Cuthbert knew the CIA and NSA had confirmed the RFID numbers belonged to the terrorists sleeping down the street in the laser-painted building. With SIGINT confirmed, he stood up and nodded to Bahdoon, placed an envelope packed with euros on the table, and nodded again. Bahdoon spread the money out and lifted a note in the stack. He opened it and read a list of weapons. “First weapons to be delivered in three days,” Cuthbert whispered. He shunted out the door, thinking, This is our first drone strike in Yemen since the civil war erupted. The war forced the CIA to pull its assets out of the country.
Outside, Cuthbert gazed down the street to the building at the end of the square. He saw no one and headed the other way. Lurking behind a food cart, the young boy flicked a laser-pointer on the agent’s back, marking him. Cuthbert pressed a hot button through the Bedouin tob. It signaled the CIA reachback operator, the expert at the joystick of the Predator C drone at the drone base in Djibouti, who, in concert with a CIA analyst, would fix the target. That gave Cuthbert half an hour to drive out of Jaar to Zinjibar and escape by boat in the port city.
As Alan Cuthbert ambled around the bend of the street, flanked by a mix of clay bricks and modern glass and steel buildings, he heard a blade scrape against a stucco wall. Without looking back, his heart raced, his blood pressure elevated, goading him to take longer strides. His eyes scanned the arid street in front of him. His steps hurried. The blade sound scraped louder, then vanished, replaced by the patter of footsteps approaching from behind.