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CIA analyst Elora Monro is devastated. Her Delta Force fiancé was just killed during a failed raid on a terrorist compound in northern Iraq. Now, Elora is hellbent on tracking down the mastermind behind the Islamic militant group responsible for her fiancé’s death—the New Dawn Underground. Posing as a Washington Post correspondent, Elora travels to the Middle East and embeds with the New Dawn militants under the guise of helping the group tell their side of the story to Western media. Driven by vengeance, Elora strives to gain enough intel while on the inside to destroy New Dawn from the inside out. Prepared to sacrifice her life to accomplish her mission, Elora is wholly unprepared for the enigmatic Zaidan Al-Sadiq, right-hand-man to the militant group’s newly appointed leader. Elora quickly realizes Zaidan is far from a Jihadist extremist. Highly intelligent and intensely brooding, he helps open her eyes to the complexity of what’s going on beneath the surface of Iraq’s multi-dimensional political landscape. Elora discovers nothing in Iraq is ever black or white and finds herself ensnared in a twisted net of passion, violence, and political fallout. She thinks she’s got it all figured out when her world is once again flipped upside down. Will she listen to what may be the voice of reason in her head, or will she risk everything to follow her heart?
PrologueNorthwestern Iraq - March 12, 2012
Two Black Hawk helicopters sliced their
way through the pitch darkness of the Iraqi night. They had lifted off minutes
ago from Balad Airbase just north of Baghdad and were en route to a remote area
of northwestern Iraq. U.S. Army Major Brendan Jacobs and his elite Delta Force
team readied themselves. Their mission was a Top Secret Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) operation to capture or kill the mastermind of an
Islamic militant group. Between his thumb and forefinger Jacobs clutched a
small white gold band. The ring belonged to his fiancée Elora. She'd pressed it
into his palm three days earlier with instructions to keep it with him for good
luck. He held the ring to his lips for several seconds before slipping it into
a small chest pocket on his uniform.
The Black Hawks flew low, tightly hugging
the curvature of the Earth to avoid radar detection as they approached the
rural compound. According to intel, the destination served as the northern base
of operations and private residence of Malik Khalid, leader of the militant
terrorist organization New Dawn Underground, referred to simply as NDU by U.S.
intelligence. The group had been steadily growing in Iraq and was recently
responsible for a string of coordinated bombings across Baghdad. NDU had
detonated massive explosions at the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defense
and the unofficial headquarters of an Iranian-backed militia. Dozens of Iraqis
and several Americans perished in the attacks, including the U.S. Ambassador,
Richard Casey, and three men in his security detail. U.S. intelligence agencies
were conflicted as to whether NDU had specifically targeted Ambassador Casey or
if he’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, the
Ambassador's death prompted the U.S. to designate NDU a foreign terrorist
organization, and Washington, along with the American public, demanded justice
for the murder of the Ambassador and other Americans. That justice was now on
its way.
"ETA two minutes!" the chopper
pilot’s voice rang out through the comms headset in Major Jacobs’ ear.
The soldiers conducted a final
lock-and-load check of their HK416 assault rifles and braced for landing. The
raid was scheduled to begin at 0300 local time and was to be wrapped up with
choppers back in the air by 0345. That gave the team under an hour to locate
and capture or kill Malik Khalid, get him on a chopper, and sweep the compound
for intel. They had limited details regarding Malik Khalid’s identity. They
only knew he was 30-35 years old, between 5'10" and 6'0" tall, born
and raised in Baghdad, and spoke fluent English. It was not a lot to go on, but
infrared satellite images of the compound indicated there were only eight to ten
individuals currently inside. If worse came to worse, the Delta team would zip
tie and haul them all back to Balad and sort out who was who later.
Jacobs felt the chopper take a sudden dip
and descend. The Black Hawks landed on opposite corners of the compound just
outside the perimeter wall. Coming to a bumping halt on the ground, the
soldiers poured out of the bellies of the choppers.
Twenty-year-old NDU security guard Ahmed
Assad was patrolling the perimeter of the compound when he heard a low rumble
approaching from the depths of the blackened desert. He stood paralyzed in terror
as he watched a Black Hawk touch down a dozen yards from the compound's outer
wall. Fuck, Americans! Swallowing his fear, the young militant regained
control of his legs and dashed inside the compound's three-story building to
warn the others, including his uncle, Hakim Assad, who served as NDU's de facto
Chief Financial Officer.
"Amo Hakim! Amo Hakim!"
Ahmed bellowed for his uncle in Arabic as he stormed up the stairs to the
second floor of the compound. "The Americans are here!" he shouted as
he burst through a door leading into a living area. Inside, half a dozen men were
gathered around a large table cluttered with laptop computers, documents, and
random dirty dishes from a meal long over. They had already heard the choppers and
were taking countermeasures. They’d covered their faces with traditional
red-checkered head scarves, and several were destroying the laptops with
hammers while others stuffed documents into a cast iron oven to incinerate
them.
"Leave the rest!" One of the
masked men shouted to the others. "Grab the detonators and get down to the
tunnel." Another man swiped two mobile flip phones off the table as the
group abandoned the room.
Fearing the gates into the compound may be
booby-trapped, each Delta Force team used explosives to breach separate
portions of the perimeter wall on opposite sides of the compound. Once inside,
they conducted precision sweeps across the yard as they moved toward the main
building. A pair of soldiers located the compound's main power supply and cut
the electricity, plunging the building and yard into total darkness.
The militants inside scrambled down the
stairs to the ground floor and passed through a doorway behind the stairwell
leading to a small kitchen. The men filed across the dark kitchen, feeling
their way to the door of a small storage closet. The first man to reach the
closet yanked the door open, jumped inside and frantically slid his hands up
and down the back wall searching for a latch. Once his fingers found the latch,
he yanked it to the side and a small hinged door popped open in the false wall.
The men began squeezing through the tiny door one-by-one and scurrying down a
ladder that dropped into an escape tunnel. Before it was his turn to slide
through the escape door, Hakim stopped in his tracks and spun around to push
his way back into the kitchen. "The external hard drive," he whispered
wide-eyed in frantic Arabic to the man behind him.
"Leave it," the masked man
replied.
"We can't. It contains the only
complete list of account numbers. Without it we are fucked. I have to go
back."
"No." The man pushed Hakim back
toward the escape door. "You go into the tunnel; I'll get the hard
drive."
The masked insurgent doubled-back through
the kitchen and poked his head out the doorway beneath the stairwell to scan
the area. It appeared the Americans hadn't breached the main building yet. He
darted through a doorway across from the stairs, snatched a small black hard
drive off a shelf, shoved it into his pocket and sprinted back to the kitchen.
Stepping into the kitchen, he charged forward in the direction of the storage
closet but had the wind knocked out of him when he slammed into what felt like
a brick wall.
Major Jacobs had entered the kitchen
seconds earlier, cleared it, and was falling back to exit when he collided with
the masked insurgent. Significantly larger and heavier than the insurgent,
Jacobs was able to maintain his footing following the collision while the
insurgent collapsed flat on the floor.
"Kef! Don't move!" Jacobs
commanded in Arabic as he shoved the barrel of his rifle down into the man’s
masked face. "Show me your hands!"
The insurgent froze in surrender with his
hands palms up next to either side of his head. Unable to confirm if the masked
man was their primary target, Jacobs opted not to put a bullet in his head in
case they needed to pump him later for intel. Jacobs was about to radio for
backup to assist in securing his detainee when a loud clatter came from inside
the small storage closet. For a split-second, Jacobs took his eyes off the man
on the ground to assess the possible new threat. The insurgent seized the opportunity
and made his move, performing a lightning-fast leg sweep that threw Jacobs off
balance. Springing to his feet, the militant followed it up with a skillful
butterfly kick that sent Jacobs flying across the kitchen. Jacobs slammed hard
onto his back and his rifle landed several feet away. The insurgent tried to make
a move for Jacob’s rifle, but Jacobs twisted and got a hand on the man's leg
tripping him up before he could get to the weapon. Jacobs pounced on top of the
masked man and the two rolled across the kitchen floor, wrestling for
dominance. As they scuffled, the insurgent clawed at Jacobs, tearing off his
reverse American flag patch from the right shoulder of his uniform.
When the pair stopped rolling, Jacobs
ended up on the bottom. He swung up and landed a solid right hook to the
insurgent’s face. The blow stunned his attacker long enough for Jacobs to reach
down and unsheathe his field knife from a holster near his thigh. With the
knife in his right hand, Jacobs stabbed at the man on top of him. The blade connected
with its target, ripping into the flesh on the left side of the insurgent's
lower back. The man cried out in agony as the blade flayed his skin, but Jacobs
failed to bury the knife deep enough to immobilize his assailant. The blade
sliced the man at an angle resulting in a gnarly gash but didn’t hit any vital
organs or cause debilitating injury. Jacobs drew back to stab at the man again,
when a gunshot rang out causing a deafening reverberation in the tiny kitchen.
While the two had been rolling across the floor, the insurgent had managed to
reach down and pull a 9mm pistol from an ankle holster above his right foot.
When Jacobs' arm came down to jab again
with the knife there was little force behind the blow and his arm sank to the
floor. The insurgent scrambled to his feet, revealing a point-blank gut shot
wound to Jacobs' lower left abdomen, just below his body armor. Jacobs pressed
a hand to his wound and attempted to reach for his rifle with the other, but
the insurgent stomped a booted foot on Jacobs' lower arm. The insurgent’s eyes
darted back and forth several times between Jacobs and the pantry door behind
him. Finally, he dropped to one knee, grabbed Jacobs by the front of his uniform
and yanked him to a sitting position. Jacobs cried out in pain and tried to
resist, but in one swift move the insurgent was behind him and had him in a
choke hold. Jacobs felt himself slipping toward blackout as the insurgent
tightened his arm around his neck, applying precision pressure to his carotid
artery. Seconds from passing out, Jacobs heard the thud of boots approaching
the kitchen. The insurgent heard them too. He released his hold on Jacobs,
letting him fall back to the floor. Popping back up to his feet, the masked man
looked down at Jacobs, aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger. He watched as
the bullet tore a fatal hole through Jacobs' throat. Convinced Jacobs would
remain forever silent, the insurgent spun around and made his getaway through
the storage closet in plain view of Jacobs. He slipped out through the false
wall and closed the small door behind him before sliding down the ladder and
escaping into the tunnel. As he scrambled down the tunnel, he ripped the
checkered scarf from around his face, balled it up and pressed it into his stab
wound to squelch the bleeding. Halfway down the tunnel he came across Ahmed and
Hakim.
"Are they following you?" Hakim
asked, his eyes scanning the tunnel.
"No."
"We thought they got you," Hakim
said as Ahmed flicked on a lighter so the men could see each other in the dark
tunnel.
"It was close - too
close." He glanced down at his side where he was pressing the scarf into
his wound. It was now soaked in blood.
"Are you shot!" Hakim asked,
noticing the bloodied scarf.
"No, stabbed. I'll live."
"Did you get the hard drive?"
The man reached into his pocket, pulled
out the sleek black external hard drive and gave it a small triumphant shake.
"Thank God," Hakim said with a
relieved sigh.
The three men continued out the tunnel to
where it dumped into a drainage ditch approximately 300 yards from the
compound. Their fellow escapees were lying in the grass just outside the tunnel
opening waiting for them to catch up. When they saw Hakim and the others emerge
from the shaft, they sprang up to continue their getaway.
"Down, back down!" Hakim
ordered. "They aren't following us." Hakim squinted into the darkness
toward the compound, but it was still in total blackness. "Who has the
detonators?" he asked looking around at the men. One of the escapees
crawled over to Hakim and placed the small flip phones in his waiting open
palm. Hakim handed one of the phones to the man with the stab wound; both
flipped the phones open and proceeded to punch a series of numbers on the
keypads.
Back at the compound, a mortally wounded
Jacobs was soon discovered by his fellow Delta Force team members. "Man
down, man down," the call went out over the radio. The team did their best
to dress Jacobs' wounds there on the kitchen floor before rushing him to one of
the waiting Black Hawks. The chopper lifted off into the night with Jacobs and
several team members, leaving the rest of the unit behind to finish sweeping
the compound and bagging evidence.
The Delta Force Commander radioed the
situation room back at Balad airbase where the General and other high-ranking
officers who'd planned and organized the raid were anxiously awaiting a mission
status report. "Primary target NOT yet located. Team is currently sweeping
for intel and searching for possible escape tunnel access. One team member
injured and medevacked to Balad. Permission to extend mission deadline by twenty
mikes to locate the escape point and track targets."
"Damn, this whole thing has gone
fucking sideways," the General spat from within the situation room,
ensuring he was muted to the team on the ground before he made his comment.
"Pull them out of there and send in the drone to light the place up before
shit gets even worse."
The officer in charge of comms flipped the
switch to connect the General with the Delta Force team. "Negative, extract
your teams and prepare for Liz Taylor," the General commanded. Liz Taylor
was the code phrase for Plan-B, sending in a Reaper drone to level the compound
with Hellfire missiles strong enough to penetrate and destroy any subterranean
bunkers or tunnels.
"Roger," the Delta Force unit
leader responded.
The Delta Force team evacuated the
compound and fell-back to the remaining Black Hawk. As the chopper was lifting
into the air the compound exploded into a massive ball of flames reaching
hundreds of feet into the desert sky. The explosion was so powerful it rocked
the Black Hawk, tossing the men inside around like shoes in a dryer.
"We have NOT cleared the blast zone!"
the Black Hawk pilot radioed. "Repeat: We are not yet clear!"
"What the hell is going on out
there?" the General in the situation room roared as he banged a fist on
the table. "Who cleared the drone for launch?"
"The drone hasn’t fired its missiles yet
sir," the situation room communications officer replied shaking his head.
"It wasn't us."
"What's your status?" the
General barked, addressing the Black Hawk pilot.
“The blast reverb rocked us but we’re okay.”
The insurgent escapees watched as the
flames from the compound licked up at the night sky, illuminating the surrounding
desert. Hakim and the man with the stab wound both stared expressionless into
the flames, their thumbs still resting on the green SEND buttons of the flip
phones in their hands.
Jacobs was still semi-conscious as the
chopper screamed across the black void racing back to Balad Air Base. From
where he was lying, he had a perfect view of the night sky out the Black Hawk’s
open door. He stared in awe at the millions of stars stretching across the sky
in a magnificent arc, wrapping the desert in a sparkling blanket. His thoughts wandered
to Elora, and he whispered to the stars that he was sorry he let her down. He
thought of his two children, thirteen-year-old Bryce and nine-year-old Brooklyn,
and asked God to watch over them. Halfway between the compound and Balad, Major
Brendan Jacobs exhaled a final labored breath and slipped peacefully into the
night.
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