The Secret Soldier Read online

  “Just got them last week, and already you’re on the road.”

  “We didn’t want to wait.”

  “Enjoy yourself.” The agent handed back the passports, and they rolled ahead.

  In Manama, they found the apartment easily. Curtains covered the living-room windows. When Omar peeped out, he saw only an air shaft. Beside the couch was the locked chest Nawif had told them to expect. It held two Beretta pistols. Four short-stock AK-47 assault rifles, wrapped in chamois and smelling of oil. Extra magazines. Twelve Russian RGD-5 grenades, rounded green cylinders with metal handles molded to their bodies. They were the simplest of weapons, metal shells wrapped around a few ounces of explosive, triggered by a four-second fuse. Omar picked one up, fought the urge to juggle it.

  “Let me see,” Fakir said. Omar ignored him. Fakir grabbed a Beretta, pointed it at Omar. “Let me see.”

  “Put it down. You know what Nawif said. Treat them with respect. Next week you can have all the fun you want.”

  Now next week had come. Omar steered the Mercedes down the eight-lane avenue that led into downtown Manama. Skyscrapers loomed ahead, glowing in the dark. In the cars around them, women sat uncovered. Across the road was a building hundreds of meters long, with a giant LCD screen displaying brand names in Arabic. A mall. Omar wondered what the inside looked like. A traffic light turned yellow in front of them, and he stopped for it, ignoring the honking behind them.

  “You shouldn’t have stopped,” Fakir said.

  “No need to rush.”

  “You know, you hide it well. How scared you are. If I weren’t your brother, I wouldn’t see it.”

  “What is it you want? Tell me. Or I won’t go any further.”

  “I want you to believe. Otherwise, you shouldn’t be here. Because you’ll chicken out at the last minute.”

  “Don’t worry about me, brother. I’m ready.”

  Fakir squeezed Omar’s shoulder. “Good.”

  “Good.”

  The light dropped to green, and Omar steered them toward the apartment. Fifteen minutes later, they parked outside. Omar grabbed the blue bag and climbed the building’s narrow stairs as Fakir huffed behind. Omar didn’t know who had rented the place, just as he didn’t know who had bought the Mercedes or arranged his passport. Nawif had said they would be kept in the dark for their own protection. Omar didn’t even know why Nawif had told them to attack this particular bar. He saw now that he had been treated all along like a disposable part. But Fakir was right. The time for questions had passed.

  At the apartment, the other two jihadis, Amir and Hamoud, waited. Omar unlocked the chest, splayed the weapons on the floor. He stripped off his thobe, put on his Levi’s and T-shirt and hiking boots. In the bathroom, he shaved and gelled up his thick black hair and sprayed on his cologne. He brushed his teeth, too, though he wasn’t sure why. A knock startled him, and he dropped the brush.

  “Come on, brother. It’s almost midnight. It’s time.”

  Omar looked himself over in the mirror. He wondered whether he could back out. But the other three would go ahead regardless. He would be proving only his own cowardice. “All right. Let’s pray, then.” They faced west, to Mecca. Together they recited the Fatiha, “The Foundation,” the first seven lines of the Quran’s first verse. “Bismillahi-rahmani-rahim ...”

  In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful

  Praise to Allah, Lord of the Universe

  Most gracious and merciful

  Master of the day of judgment

  You alone we serve and ask for help

  Guide us on the straight path

  The path of those you have favored, not of those deserving anger,

  those who have lost their way

  “We have nothing to fear tonight,” Omar said. “When we wake, we’ll be in paradise.” The justification was predictable, ordinary. Yet its very familiarity comforted Omar. He wasn’t alone. So many others had taken the same journey.

  Fakir tucked a pistol in the back of his jeans and stuffed the grenades and AKs and spare magazines into a black nylon bag. Amir and Hamoud took the other weapons. They slung loose-fitting nylon jackets over the rifles. Anyone looking closely would see the telltale curve of the magazines, but no one would have the chance to look closely.

  On his disposable phone, Omar called Nawif. “We’re ready.”

  “Go, then. And remember that Allah is protecting you.”

  Omar wanted to keep talking, to invent a conversation that would end with him telling the other three that the mission had been called off. Instead he hung up. “It’s time,” he said.

  They didn’t bother to wipe down the apartment. Nawif had told Omar that it couldn’t be traced to them. Further proof of their essential disposability.

  JJ’s was barely five hundred meters away. They trotted through the narrow streets, following the path they had traced the week before. They didn’t speak. No one stopped them, or even noticed them. At this hour the neighborhood was largely deserted, the guest workers who largely populated it home for the night.

  They turned a corner, and Fakir saw the bar’s sign shining green and white just a block away. JJ’s Expat. Music filtered through the windows. Fakir took his brother’s hand. “I’m sorry I said you were scared.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not anymore, though.” A lie.

  “That’s good, brother.”

  A few meters from the bar, Omar slowed his pace. “Remember, don’t start until you hear us open up,” he said over his shoulder to Amir and Hamoud. He wanted to add something else, but he had nothing left to say.

  Covering the last few meters took no time at all. The noise rose. He heard people talking in English, a woman singing. He was dreaming and couldn’t wake. He had two grenades in the front pocket of his windbreaker. He had a sudden urge to blow one now. Only he and his brother would die.

  He didn’t.

  JJ’s main entrance was inside the building that housed the bar. A corridor connected it to the street. Fakir stepped into the hallway, Omar a step behind. Two bouncers, big men in red T-shirts, stood just outside the entrance. Fakir walked confidently toward them, his chubby body jiggling under his T-shirt. When he was three steps away, he reached behind his waist and pulled the black 9-millimeter pistol.

  “Hey—”

  “Allahu akbar,” Fakir said. He pulled the trigger, and the pistol sang its one true note. The shot echoed in the corridor, and the bouncer touched his chest and looked down at his hand. Fakir shot him again, and he screamed and fell. The other bouncer tried to turn, but Fakir pulled the trigger again. The bullet caught him under his arm, and he grunted softly and collapsed all at once.

  ROBBY DUKE WAS ON his sixth Carlsberg and feeling no pain. After his last trip to the bar, he’d scooted next to Josephine. She’d made way without protest. A soft glaze had slipped over her eyes and she’d squeezed his arm a couple times, always a good sign.

  Her eyes drooped. He leaned in for a kiss, but she raised a finger and pushed him off. “Not a chance, Frodo.” The fact that she was still calling him Frodo was definitely not a good sign. He didn’t argue, though. She had the kind of knockers he loved, big and full, a real handful.

  “Hey. Quit staring at my breasties. They’re available to first-class passengers only.” She smirked. “Notice anything about this place, Frodo?”

  Robby turned his head. He felt like he was looking through a snorkel mask. Six pints would do that. JJ’s was hopping. Three tall black blokes—American sailors, no doubt—towered above the crowd. On the screens overhead a new soccer match had begun, Manchester City and Tottenham. He couldn’t tell what she wanted him to say. “You mean that girl in the corner? The one with the lip ring.”

  “Not her. She is cute, though. I mean the whole place. Notice anything?”

  “It’s pretty chill. Wouldn’t expect it in Bahrain.”

  “But you would, see. You know, Emirates, we fly to New York. Tokyo. Buenos Aires. Sydney.”

  “You’ve been all those places.”

  “Not yet. But a bunch.”

  “I’ve been to New York,” Robby said proudly. “It was awesome. Times Square and all that.”

  “Shush. And everywhere we go there are these Irish bars with DJs and tellies playing live football. I swear, even in Dublin it’s just like this. Even in Ireland the bars have lost whatever made them authentic and turned into replicas of themselves.”

  “Dublin. Fantastic, innit?”

  “I give up. You’re missing the point.”

  “I get your point. People like the same stuff everywhere. So what? We’re all the same in the end. A few drinks, have a good time, a few shags. More if we’re lucky. Settle down with the missus, get old, piss off. Remember that song, got to be twenty years old. ‘Birth! School! Work! Death!’”

  “The Godfathers. But that’s what you don’t get. We’re not all the same. Not everybody wants this stuff. We think they do because it’s what we want—”

  Robby was sick of hearing deep thoughts from this flight attendant who was nowhere near putting out for him. He stood on the bench, threw his fists in the air: “Birth! School! Work! Death!” Around him, Beyoncé sang: ‘All the single ladies...’ The girls danced and raised their arms, and the bar descended into the beautiful drunken majesty of Thursday night.

  And then—weirdly—Robby was sure he heard the quick snap of a pistol shot. A branch breaking cleanly. Over the music pumping, over his own voice yelling. He looked around, sure he was wrong.

  Then he heard two more.

  FAKIR REACHED INTO THE nylon bag, came up with an AK. Omar grabbed the second rifle. Amir and Hamoud opened up outside, firing long bursts. Omar couldn’t see them, but he knew they were standing on the street, firing through the
windows at the bar.

  The bar’s front door popped open and four women in T-shirts and jeans ran toward them. Fakir unloaded a burst on full automatic. Two of the women flopped down in the corridor a couple steps from the door. The third tripped over a bouncer and started to scream in English before Fakir blew her head off.

  The fourth kept coming, screaming. Omar raised his rifle. His first shot spun her, and his second and third went through her back. She reared like a frightened horse and fell.

  It’s happening, Omar thought. It really is.

  INSIDE JJ’s, PANDEMONIUM. ROBBY Duke felt himself falling before he even knew he was hit. The round caught him in the left shoulder and spun him off the table. He sprawled on the ground and grabbed his shoulder, feeling the blood trickle under his fingers in steady pulses, not enough to be life-threatening right away.

  Bizarrely, the speakers were still pumping Beyoncé: “...shoulda put a ring on it—”

  The music broke off. Screams and shouts tumbled through the room.

  “I can’t—” “My leg—” “Call 119—” The Bahraini equivalent of 911.

  Above Robby, Josephine was screaming. He knocked the table aside, spilled his Carlsberg. Even in this madness, a tiny part of his mind regretted the loss of a good cold beer. He reached up, pulled Josephine down, covered her mouth with his hand.

  “Are you hit?”

  She shook her head.

  “Shut it, then. There’s enough shouting already. Right?”

  She nodded. He lifted his hand.

  “The police—”

  “These bloody camel jockeys aren’t going to wait for the police.”

  The lights were still on. Robby rolled to his knees and looked left. He didn’t see Dwight, but Cinzia was lying face-first on the table. Her brains were all caught in her pretty brown hair. A round had peeled off the top of her head. Lucky shot. Not for her. Robby wondered if he could get to the entrance. He peeked up as the doors opened and a group ran out—

  And a burst, full auto, echoed outside, and a woman screamed, “No, don’t—”

  Another burst ended her plea.

  “Jesus God,” Josephine shouted.

  He squeezed her lips shut. “We have to move—”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then you’ll die here.”

  He’d been to JJ’s enough times to know that the place had only two exits on the first floor. These twats were obviously covering both of them. But the balcony that overlooked the dance floor had some narrow windows that Robby was guessing opened onto an interior airshaft. If he and Josephine got up there, he could try to break them. Then they could shimmy to the roof and wait for the cops.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but they didn’t have time for a better one. Robby had been in the British army for four years after he turned eighteen. He’d served in Basra. Not too far from here. He knew the men outside. He’d seen what they did to their own, much less to foreigners. They wouldn’t stop shooting until everyone was dead.

  The firing started again. Bottles smashed open, and the pungent smell of whiskey filled the room. Most people had gotten under tables now or hidden in corners. Robby heard a dozen panicked calls to the police. He grabbed Josephine’s arm and tugged her, but she wouldn’t move.

  He couldn’t wait longer, not for this woman he’d just met. He let her go, crab-walked toward the stairs. And then he heard it. The hiss of a burning fuse. “Grenade!” he yelled. He dove forward, flattening himself on the floor. The training for grenades and mortars was simple. Get low and hope the shrapnel goes high. He heard it land, its metal shell bounce along the floor. It didn’t blow straightaway. It was an old one, then, with a time fuse—

  “Christ, throw it back—” he yelled.

  And then it went. The bar shook with the impact. His ears turned inside out. For a couple seconds, he couldn’t hear anything at all. The grenade was maybe fifteen feet from him, too close. The shrapnel shredded his jeans, cut his thighs into ribbons, hundreds of needles stabbing him at once. He couldn’t bear to look back. He had tried, he’d tried to get her to move, and she wouldn’t—

  He looked back. He shouldn’t have. It must have landed practically on top of her. She was even worse than he expected, her breasts and belly pulped open, half her jaw gone—

  Another grenade exploded, on the other side of the bar. Robby could barely hear this one. His eardrums must be blown. The room shook. Part of an arm slung across the room. Jesus. A hand. A woman’s hand, red nail polish and rings. It hit the bar and knocked over a glass of beer. Guess we won’t be needing that one, Robby thought wildly. The beer or the hand, either.

  The game was obvious now. Pin them with rifle fire and then lob in grenades. With proper gear and a few mates from the 7th Armoured, he would have torn these bastards to shreds. But he didn’t even carry a knife anymore. He couldn’t do anything about it. Nothing at all.

  Still. He had to try. Plenty of people were still alive. In another three minutes they’d all be dead, these idiots singing to Allah all the way. He pushed himself to his knees and crawled for the stairs as another grenade, this one behind him, shook the room. Fortunately, he was wearing his favorite moto boots, thick leather and heavy rubber soles. They had a couple inches of lift, which in another life five minutes ago had come in handy picking up girls. His calves and feet weren’t too badly cut. But his thighs felt like they were on fire and he didn’t know if he could stand.

  The room around Robby was smoke and blood and bodies. He couldn’t put together a coherent picture of what was happening, only snatches, as though he were watching through a strobe light. One of the American sailors stood and threw a bottle at the main doors. He ran along the bar, crouching low, grabbing bottles and whipping them blindly as he went. “Go on,” Robby yelled. “Get there.” But the guy didn’t. Four steps away from the door, he went down, grabbing his chest, his legs still pumping.

  The stairs to the balcony rose behind a filigreed wall that divided the dance floor from the rest of the bar. Robby reached them, pulled himself up. He saw he’d gotten lucky. The guys at the main entrance couldn’t come in while their buddies outside were lobbing grenades. They waited by the door, shooting at anyone who moved and tossing in their own grenades.

  Robby guessed that when the police showed, the bastards on the street would turn to hold them off. Then the ones at the door would come in, mop up everyone in the room who was still alive. Maybe set the place on fire to boot. For now he had a few seconds to move. Move or die. Like Josephine, like Cinzia, like Dwight Gasser, the worst wingman ever. Dwight had never liked JJ’s. Robby couldn’t blame him anymore. Maybe God was punishing him for what he had said about his students. He was truly sorry. He closed his eyes. He wanted to rest. He was going into shock. He had to pull himself out. He grabbed his wounded shoulder and squeezed, jolting himself awake. Before the pain faded, he grabbed the banister and pulled himself up the stairs, ignoring the agony in his legs.

  Step, step, step. Rounds dug into the wood around him, but he kept moving. He reached the top step and saw, too late, the table laid sideways as a barricade. He lowered his head and drove his strong, stubby legs forward and smashed his undamaged shoulder into it. The table gave a foot. He reached an arm forward and yelled, “I’m English!”

  The table slid aside. Two men grabbed his arms, pulled him onto the balcony. He felt his wounded shoulder tear as they dragged him. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. He looked around. About ten people. No one seemed injured. These were the lucky ones. He was safe. For now.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  MONTEGO BAY JAMAICA

  “ONE-FORTY-NINE...”

  John Wells felt his biceps burn as he reached full extension. He held, held, lowered himself again. Beneath him, the world narrowed to a few square feet. The cigarette burns speckling the dirty green carpet were as large as canyons.

  “One-fifty.”

  Up Wells went, slow and sure. Outside, a spring breeze rolled off the Caribbean. In here, the air was humid, almost murky. Sweat puddled at the base of his neck, dripped off his bare chest.

  The room’s door swung open. Afternoon sunlight flooded in. Wells raised his left hand to shield his eyes and decided to see if he could get away with a one-armed push-up. Down he went, balanced on his right arm. He hadn’t tried one in years. Harder than he remembered. Or he was getting old. He tensed his chest, felt his triceps and biceps quiver, held himself steady.