Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 65

Surrounding the town’s most famous well was a small, paved square. Ringing the square were street vendors and all sorts of small shops. Harvath, in the backseat of the pickup truck, took it all in from beneath his burka.

Yusuf was driving. Qabbani sat in the passenger seat next to him. The Hadids had already been dropped off.

“Have you seen enough?” Yusuf asked, his eyes on the road in front of him. He was very uncomfortable driving through the center of town.

“Keep going,” Harvath replied. “I’ll let you know.”

Yusuf did as he was told and continued forward.

According to the CIA, the town contained around ten thousand people. The few ISIS members he saw tried to blend in with the locals, but they were easy to spot.

Out gathering intelligence, supplies, or simply functioning as lookouts, they had a ravaged, battle-hardened look about them. Their faces were stern and their eyes took in everything.

None of them wore fatigues. They were dressed in civilian clothes. Traditional headdresses known as keffiyehs hung loosely around their necks. All of them had facial hair.

The biggest giveaway, though, was their weight. While the townspeople were sickly-thin, the young ISIS members were healthy and fit. None of them appeared to have missed any meals.

To be posted to this town meant you were plugged into the elite of ISIS. And, as in any totalitarian system, there were two classes — those at the top, and everyone else.

The leaders of ISIS and their inner circle of fighters lived very well. They had their pick of houses, cars, and female hostages to serve as concubines. The rest of the organization, though, was suffering badly.

Because of the ongoing international efforts against it, their rank and file, aka cannon fodder, had seen their wages cut in half, their rations reduced, and their medical care dry up. But their faith kept them marching forward into battle.

Online, slick social media campaigns kept the fighters rolling in and helped to recruit followers around the globe willing to carry out attacks in their own countries. No matter how bad things got, ISIS seemed only to grow in number and influence.

“Do you want to drive by the house?” Yusuf asked as they left the square and headed north.

Harvath had a bag in his lap. Inside was his phone. He could see what the drone overhead was seeing. His earpiece allowed him to communicate back home to Langley.

“Not just yet,” he replied. “Let’s drive past the main mosque and then check the route out of town.”

Yusuf shook his head. He thought Harvath way too brazen. But Harvath had made him the same promise he had made Qabbani.

He was going to take care of them and their families. It was an opportunity Yusuf never could have imagined. If the American remained true to his word, which Yusuf prayed to Allah he would, every risk he was being asked to take would be worth it.

Harvath had chosen this route so that they passed the tiny storefront that functioned as the local police department. With ISIS in town, the police would have been bought off. He wanted to assess their level of professionalism.

He noted two officers, seated outside, smoking. They were unkempt. Their uniforms were wrinkled and one had a large stain. These were not law enforcement officers who took pride in themselves, much less their chosen profession. They wouldn’t pose a problem. The problem would come from the ISIS members themselves.

As they neared the mosque, Yusuf almost hit one of them. The man had stepped out from a parked vehicle to stop traffic. Several of his colleagues wanted to cross the street to attend early-evening prayers.

Yusuf didn’t see him and slammed on the brakes at the very last second. He came so close that the man slammed his hand down on the hood of the pickup.

Oh shit was the first thing that went through Harvath’s mind as the man raged at Yusuf in Arabic.

To his credit, the Syrian kept his cool, apologized, and begged for forgiveness, his eyes cast down.

The ISIS man, though, was spoiling for a fight. Grabbing the driver’s side door, he yanked it open.

Harvath had already put his phone in an interior pocket, dropped the bag to the floor, and had his hands under his burka, where he was cradling an AK in his lap.

He had multiple extra magazines strapped to his chest, the PalaFox SIG Sauer tucked in the Sticky holster at the small of his back, and all the extra grenades that hadn’t been used at the saltbox. If these guys wanted to rock and roll, he was going to give them the best damn gunfight they’d ever seen.

Maintaining his calm, he met Yusuf’s eyes in the rearview mirror. The man was panic-stricken. Harvath nodded slowly, trying to reassure him.

The ISIS fighter yelled for Yusuf to get out of the vehicle. Yusuf put it in park and did as he was told. Two of the ISIS fighters crossing the street came over to see what was going on. Harvath assessed each one, deciding who he was going to shoot first. This was turning into a goat rodeo real fast.

Sizing up the combatants, he had decided to first shoot the guy hassling Yusuf, when he heard the front passenger door opening. Qabbani had decided to get out and intervene.

Harvath couldn’t believe it. Yusuf knew how to handle these sorts of things. Harvath had seen him in action multiple times. Qabbani should have stayed in the truck. He was going to get himself and everybody else killed.

No sooner had he stepped out of the pickup than the lead ISIS fighter started yelling at him to get back in.

Harvath could see Qabbani break the beams of the headlights as he crossed in front of the vehicle. The ISIS people didn’t like his insolence.

The lead fighter grabbed the front of Yusuf’s shirt and snapped at one of his buddies to intercept Qabbani.

No sooner had the man begun to move than Harvath saw Qabbani reach beneath his robe.

Oh shit, Harvath thought again. Don’t let it be a gun.

Apparently, the ISIS members were all on the same wavelength because immediately, the guns that they had kept out of public view, came flying out and were trained on Qabbani.

Harvath was now in a no-win situation. The minute he started shooting, either Yusuf or Qabbani were going to die. He could only save one of them.

Another person might have thought to save Qabbani. With his cancer, Yusuf was already dead. But that wasn’t how Harvath operated.

He and Yusuf went back all of maybe thirty-six hours, but they’d been in the shit together. First and foremost, Harvath was loyal. If he had to choose whom to save, he was choosing Yusuf.

It would all be for nothing, though, if fucking Qabbani didn’t stop right where he was. If he kept walking closer to Yusuf, there wasn’t going to be a thing Harvath could do for either of them.

Thankfully, one of the ISIS men punched him in the chest with the nubby barrel of a Škorpion machine pistol and halted his advance.

Wrenching the crooked farmer’s arm from beneath his robe, the ISIS man pulled it up into the light of the driver’s-side headlamp and showed what he had been reaching for — a bag of dates.

Harvath couldn’t believe it. The man had almost gotten everybody killed over a bag of fucking dates.

The ISIS men seemed to appreciate the irony as well, as they began laughing.

The man with Qabbani snatched the bag and shoved him back in the direction he had come from.

The man standing with Yusuf slapped him in the face, laughed, and pushed him back in the truck.

Arguing over the bag of dates, the three ISIS men crossed the street toward the mosque.

Yusuf sat down and pulled his door shut. Harvath didn’t dare say a word. He watched the Syrian grip the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. He was enraged and channeling every ounce of it out and through the frame of the car.

Once Qabbani had climbed back in and closed the door, Yusuf put the vehicle in gear. He made sure no one else was attempting to cross the narrow street to get to the mosque and then lifted off the clutch and rolled forward.

As soon as they started moving, Harvath asked, “Are you okay?” It was a stupid question, and he knew it, but he had to ask it anyway.

Yusuf had been forced to swallow his pride on so many occasions that he no longer choked on it for long. “I’m fine,” he replied. “Let’s get this over with.”