“They’ve picked up another plane. We don’t know who’s on it but it seems Carson is hell bent on shooting the shit out of it,” said Barry, bringing them up to speed.
“And?”
“And there’s a chance it’s your boyfriend,” he said, immediately regretting taking out his frustration on Frankie.
“Uncalled for,” said Flynn, shaking his head in disgust.
“Pathetic,” said Reid.
Frankie remained unphased. Her boyfriend had died four days ago. The Nick Geller they were chasing was just a man she had known in a previous life.
“So what’s the rush, they’ll beat us—” she halted in mid-speech when she was suddenly thrown across the cabin and slammed into the side of the Osprey as it was blown across the sky, rocking wildly from a blast.
“You have a go,” said the DoD specialist from NCTC into the headset of the F18 pilots, thousands of miles away, above the Sudanese desert.
“Roger. Commencing reconnaissance run,” one replied, throwing the afterburners forward and rocketing towards the target. They had a two-minute window to catch the disembarking occupants while they waited for their inbound truck.
Staying just out of sight, they sped in low and would slow down over the area to ensure the best possible angles for the reconnaissance cameras to pick up even the tiniest detail on the pass.
“Watch the friendly ahead,” warned the first pilot to his wingman.
Both of their headsets buzzed to life. “Make sure they know you’re there,” ordered Carson, listening in and watching the scene play out thousands of miles away. “We wouldn’t want them getting in your way.”
Both pilots tweaked their direction slightly, thereby reducing the distance by which they would clear the Osprey. Within a second, both had blasted past the Osprey on either side at almost four times its speed. It rocked wildly and dangerously behind them.
“Shit! We may have cut that a little closer than we should,” said one of the pilots.
“Are they still in the air?” asked Carson.
The pilot looked back, just to make sure. “Yes.”
“Then you didn’t.”
Nearing the target, they began to slow down, aiming their cameras at the group of men scrambling on the ground to find cover at the sight of the US warplanes. A couple of bullets buzzed past the planes but it really was the equivalent of taking a knife to a gunfight, a very large and powerful gunfight.
“Okay, hang back while we check the images we have,” instructed Carson to the pilots.
With the new Caliph due to arrive any minute, Nick felt it was a good time to make a move. He had his video and the next phase of the plan was in place. The new Caliph was an issue but he was hoping that an enlightening conversation with his next group might elicit a change in the Caliph and a further endorsement of Nick and the original Caliph’s plan. Everything came down to money, and for Al Qaeda and a number of the fundamentalist groups Nick was looking to unite, that came from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.
The four armed guards protecting Nasim’s small bunkroom were not a welcome sight. Nor was the information that Nasim would not be flying Nick anywhere by order of Ibrahim. Nasim was far easier to imprison than Nick and without him, Nick was trapped. It was a clever move by Ibrahim and far less confrontational than trying to imprison Nick.
Making his way to ‘discuss’ the situation with his ‘brother’, Nick heard a noise he shouldn’t have.
“Ibrahim!’ he shouted as loud as he could in the center of the camp.
Ibrahim appeared warily, a hundred yards away from the main building. He had no business being there other than to avoid Nick.
“Thunder,” he said, strolling casually towards a furious Nick.
Nick shook his head. “That, brother, was a fighter jet’s sonic boom.”
Ibrahim looked around the sky in a panic.
“Where is the Caliph’s landing strip?”
Ibrahim pointed to the area the clap of noise had emanated from.
“How far?”
“Twenty, thirty miles.”
Nick looked out across the empty sky. “They must have tracked him. Tell them to stay away from here!”
“I have no way to contact them,” Ibrahim shrugged despondently. “We will stand and fight!”
“They will massacre us. How can we fight warplanes!” replied Nick. “You have an evacuation plan?”
Ibrahim nodded.
“Well, let’s GO!”
Almost as soon as the faces were extracted from the images being beamed back by the F18s, the facial recognition software had identified them. Hit after hit confirmed the faces as the son of the former head of Al Qaeda Zahir Al Zahrani’s son and his bodyguards who were well known to the authorities.
Carson had a decision to make. With no identification of Nick and, as far as they could tell, every individual accounted for amongst the twenty two men that had landed in the AN-24, should he send in the jets or let Barry and the CIA and Delta team deal with them?
He checked his watch. Barry’s team was still ten minutes away.
“What’s the ETA on the truck?” he asked.
“Two minutes,” came the reply.
“Take it out.”
Twenty seconds later, a flash in the corner of the main screen was all the confirmation they needed. The truck was out of the equation.
“Mr. Carson?” One of the CIA analysts attached to the team had ventured over to the DoD area.
“Yes?” he replied distractedly.
“We’re hearing that Al Qaeda has chosen the young Zahrani to take over as leader.”
Carson spun back and stared at the collection of men cowering in the desert thousands of miles away, looking down like some kind of god deciding if they were to live or die. “Are we 100 % confident that Al Zahrani is the new Caliph?”
The resounding answer was yes. To kill or not to kill? he asked himself.
“Turner, it looks like you may just grab yourself a genuine live and nasty Al Qaeda leader. If you don’t fuck it up!” Carson turned back to his team. “Tell the F18s to offer whatever support the ground team requires.”
“Holy shit!” Barry exclaimed as he was fed the news of their teams’ ‘Go’ to capture the new head of Al Qaeda. He called the V-22 Osprey and gave them the news. “Lock and load boys,” he said, adding quickly for Reid and Frankie’s benefit, “and girls! Ten minutes!”
Chapter 50
Thanks to the F18s’ fly past, the Osprey pilot had an excellent image of the assault area. He altered course on their approach and came in behind the hill that obscured the landing site. A brief touchdown deposited the CIA and Delta teams out of sight of the terrorists before the Osprey continued up and over the hill. Armed with a .308 caliber mini-gun and .50 caliber Browning M2 machine gun, the Osprey could stand off in hover mode and lay down cover fire while the CIA and Delta teams initiated the assault on the ground.
Two snipers, one from each of the teams, were sent to the top of the small hill. They would provide targeted fire support for the two teams who would work their way around either side of the hill and perform a pincer movement. With the snipers on the hill and the Osprey on the other side of the landing zone, the terrorists were already boxed in, they just didn’t know it yet.
The snipers reached the small summit and were pleased to see almost half a mile of clear, open ground between them and the landing zone. Not great for their colleagues but for the snipers, they had the gift of an open field for targeting the terrorists. Just like the rest of the teams, they had all been shown the photo of Al Zahrani. He was the only target they had to avoid killing. Every other target before them was open season.