True Faith and Allegiance

23

The opening play of the Islamic State’s worldwide operation to draw American soldiers en masse back into the Middle East did not begin with Sami bin Rashid and Musa al-Matari’s fighters in the United States. It began in Sicily, and it was carried out by three young Islamic State plants in the flow of war refugees from Syria.

The men had been trained in an underground ISIS camp in Raqqa, then traveled in the mass immigration out of the war zone from Syria into Turkey, then through Bulgaria and Romania, before leaving the refugee flow and slipping illegally over the border into Hungary. When they made their way into Slovenia these three men were met by other ISIS operatives, already living and working in Europe, and here they were outfitted for their operation.

A total of six operatives, including the three newcomers to Europe, crossed into Italy, then spent a full day on the highways heading south. Down at the tip of Italy’s boot in Reggio Calabria, they stole an eight-meter fishing boat with a small Zodiac launch tethered to it, and they sailed across the Strait of Messina over to Sicily.

They anchored in a quiet cove through the daylight hours, then sailed back out into the black Mediterranean in the late evening, using their mobile phones to give them precise geo-coordinates and directions to a point off the coast of Fontanarossa, a sleepy Sicilian beach community. Here the three young men from Syria climbed into the rigid-hulled inflatable Zodiac launch and began heading west toward the beach in the pitch-black night.

Naval Air Station Sigonella was a fifteen-minute drive to the west of Fontanarossa. Considered the hub of America’s U.S. Naval Air operations in the Mediterranean, Sigonella served as a main support station for America’s ongoing attacks against ISIS targets in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and other U.S. operations against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates all over North Africa. Flying time from Sigonella to Syria was roughly two and a half hours, and it was barely a quarter of that to northern ISIS positions in Libya.

Sigonella base was well protected with guns, gates, and guards, and local police were on the lookout for any disturbances in the area that might indicate a threat to U.S. personnel. But on this early morning, the waters of the Med to the east of the base were perfectly quiet other than the approaching Zodiac. The rubber boat came into the shallows without use of the motor. The three men climbed out into waist-deep water and tossed their paddles back in.

They didn’t bother with pulling the little RIB to shore, anchoring it to the ocean floor, or fixing it to a dock with a line.

No, they would not need the small watercraft again.

Each man carried an H&K submachine gun with several extra magazines, and all three carried a suicide vest, double-sealed in plastic garbage bags. The gear had been provided to them by the three ISIS operatives already living in Europe, and they’d guarded it with their lives since picking it up in Slovenia.

Together the three Syrians scanned the shore in front of them, saw no one around, and then waded out of the water, ran up the sand, and dropped down in the deep grasses by the side of the road. On the other side they saw just what they were expecting to see: a quiet community of one- and two-story homes with tiled roofs.

The nominal leader of the three men, so appointed because he carried the mobile phone with Google Maps on it, pulled the device out of a waterproof bag and looked it over. It took him a moment to orient himself, and when he did he realized they’d drifted too far south on their approach in the RIB. Softly he pointed to the right, and to the others he said, “Two blocks that way.”

They donned their vests and checked one another to make sure everything was set up correctly. And then they stood and set off up the beach road.

On a street called Via Pesce Falco the small kill team turned left, began running along fenced and gated front yards, making an effort to stay out of the streetlights but sacrificing pure stealth for speed. The last in the group was the man with the mobile phone to his face; he searched the map on the device for just the right house.

Halfway up the street he stopped abruptly, and the men ahead of him ran on a dozen meters before realizing their mistake and returning to take a knee next to him on the darkened sidewalk.

There was nothing special-looking about this house on his right; it was one of dozens on Via Pesce Falco. The property next to it was just a sandlot with tall sea grasses, so they used this to make their way around back. Here they jumped the rear fence, and the first gunman arriving at the sliding glass door at the rear of the property waited till his two colleagues caught up to him. He tried the door, found it to be locked, and then he wiped sweat from his brow.

With a nod to his partners, he turned his MP5 around in his hands and used the butt of the weapon to shatter the glass by the door latch.

He unlocked the door, and the three terrorists moved into the darkness of the home.

This house was a four-bedroom rental property. At present it was rented as off-base living quarters for four United States Naval officers, all lieutenants in their twenties. They were all bachelors, and all pilots of the F/A-18 Hornet.

It was against Italian law and Navy regulations for personnel to carry a firearm off base, but twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant Mitch Fountain always snuck his nine-millimeter Beretta M9 home with him. He knew he’d get a serious reprimand if he was ever caught, but he did it anyway. He was from South Dakota, he’d grown up around guns the way many grow up with footballs, and the thought of fighting a war against terrorists without so much as a pistol next to where he laid his head at night rubbed him the wrong way.

Mitch was the only one of the four in the house who did this, and consequently, when he woke at four-thirty a.m. to the sound of breaking glass downstairs, he knew it was up to him to investigate. He grabbed the Beretta from his nightstand, flipped off the safety, and ran out of his little room and toward the stairs.

As he arrived he saw three men coming up the steps, illuminated by a night light plugged into a wall socket there.

When he realized they were carrying shoulder-fired weapons, he did not hesitate.

Fountain fired three rounds at the sight of the ascending attackers, hitting one man squarely in the throat, the chin, and the top of the head.

And then Navy Lieutenant Mitch Fountain was killed by a fully automatic burst of the second gunman’s MP5.

The second gunman then stopped on the stairs, turned, and chased after his dead colleague, who was now sliding down the stairs back to the ground floor. He began taking the man’s suicide vest off him, while the third terrorist ran into the second-floor hallway.

The three other Americans were still in the process of waking up; the initial crash of broken glass had happened less than twenty seconds earlier, after all, but they grabbed a ball bat, a tennis racket, and a folding combat knife, and they all came running out of their rooms.

The ISIS gunman in the hall saw the three men pour out of their rooms at once, he let go of his sub gun, and he reached for the pressure switch swinging freely from the cuff of his left arm.

A quick toggle of the safety and a press of the plunger, just as the first American swung a baseball bat at the side of his head, and his job was done.

The second floor of the little villa erupted in fire, killing all four men instantly.

Downstairs, the one remaining ISIS operative fell onto his dead comrade, knocked there by the blast above, then he finished retrieving the vest. He held it in his left hand as he darted out the front door of the home, out into the street, where he turned to his right and took off to the west.

Many of the homes on the street were employed as off-base housing for the air station, this he had been told, although he’d been given no specific secondary target. He ran alone through the dark as lights came on in houses all around, car alarms blared from the explosion, and he looked for more U.S. Navy to kill.

Forty-five seconds after leaving the target home he settled on the largest villa on the street, ran up the drive, and arrived at the front door just as it opened. A man in a bathrobe stood there, searching for the origin of the explosion, but he was knocked down by the young terrorist.

Both men fell to the floor, more people came down the stairs next to them, and the terrorist put a thumb on the detonators of both suicide vests, and jammed down on the plungers simultaneously.

The President of the United States sat in the conference room on Air Force One and looked at the four computer monitors on the wall. As Nebraska crept by, 38,000 feet below him, he conferenced with the secretary of defense on one monitor, the secretary of state on another, the attorney general on the third, and the director of national intelligence on the fourth.

And here in the conference room on the 747, Chief of Staff Arnie Van Damm sat off to the side.

SecDef Bob Burgess continued his rundown of events. “Nine innocents dead in all, including seven Americans. Five junior Navy officers, four of whom were Hornet pilots in a squadron currently flying ground support operations in Libya and Syria. And a lieutenant commander who was killed along with his wife. He was the new chief of air traffic control at the base. He’d just arrived at Sigonella three days earlier and didn’t yet have housing set up, so he was staying in a bed-and-breakfast near the beach, a few doors down from the pilots’ off-base rental.”

After a pause, Burgess said, “Two more dead were Austrians on holiday, a husband and wife. Two Italians dead as well. Five wounded, two of these seriously.”

Mary Pat Foley added, “An Islamic State website we’ve deemed credible announced the attack five minutes after the first reports, put up testimonial videos of the attackers, even mentioned the name of one of the dead American F-18 pilots. There is no doubt that this was an ISIS operation, and no doubt they had specific targeting information.”

The President asked, “How the hell did they know the exact address this guy was staying at? And how did they know the lieutenant commander was staying in the B-and-B up the street?”

Foley replied with obvious frustration. “We still do not know. The DoD and the entire IC are running tests on all networks, looking for any hints of new penetration that might have exposed these men. So far, nothing.”

Ryan said, “This is like the Commander Hagen incident, another attack on the Navy.”

Burgess said, “Except this time the attackers are ISIS, not a Russian college dropout. But, yes, their intel is every bit as good and difficult to account for as the Hagen attack in New Jersey.”

Ryan said, “Okay. That’s our immediate threat abroad. Any chance this attack indicates that Abu Musa al-Matari is in Europe, and not, as we’ve been fearing, on his way here?”

Mary Pat Foley spoke up now. “Doubtful. The Islamic State’s Foreign Intelligence Bureau has its own European operational leadership. They all live there, work there. Hell, most of them were born there. Al-Matari wouldn’t be on home turf in Europe the way a dozen other men of his rank would be.”

“Makes sense,” Ryan said.

“Plus,” Mary Pat added, “we do have some news on Musa al-Matari.”

Ryan said, “Good news, or bad news?”

Dan Murray said, “It’s not good. We’ve been trying to identify this ‘Language School’ the Yazidi girl told us al-Matari spoke of. We think we found it in the jungles of El Salvador, close to where the Guatemalan ex — Special Forces men had gone to teach a training class.”

Ryan said, “A group of jihadists in El Salvador didn’t get noticed by the local Feds?”

“No, but this place was way out in the sticks.” Murray frowned. “FBI agents toured through it yesterday. It had already been abandoned, totally cleared out, but there were enough shell casings around to indicate some serious training had gone on.”

“Small-arms training?”

“We found evidence of pistols, rifles, and small explosives. But just because we didn’t see anything else, that doesn’t mean they didn’t train on other weapons.”

“Size of the encampment?”

“Hard to say, because these were existing structures. They’d been around since the eighties and weren’t built for the use of the ISIS group. But from the burn pit, and from the locals who say they heard shooting for something like three to four weeks, we think we could be looking at a force between twenty-five and fifty pax.”

The AG went on. “If they are coming here, they’ll split up, obviously, groups of four to eight, I’d guess, but the good news is it’s not a compartmentalized operation. If we take down one of these terrorists, they will have knowledge of members from other cells.”

“Why would they train them together?” Ryan asked.

Mary Pat jumped in now. “That’s a good question. It flies in the face of normal practice. But al-Matari is a smart man. This wasn’t a mistake. He had an operational reason for putting everyone in the same place.”

Dan Murray said, “I widened the scope of my original investigation. Anybody who had been on the terror watch list in the past five years, men and women who were no longer under scrutiny, we checked out again.

“Almost immediately something popped up. A guy we had looked at once before was murdered last month in Hallandale Beach, Florida. He ran a 7-Eleven, was working at the counter with his wife when they were both shot to death. But nothing was stolen. Local police saw it as a robbery gone wrong, but we put men on it, interviewed the other employees. One of them said his boss had been talking about taking some time off to go to a language school in Guatemala. Right before he was murdered, he told his employee that his wife put the kibosh on the trip.”

Ryan’s eyebrows furrowed, but not from interest. He was an intelligence man himself, and this wasn’t much to go on, at all.

Murray knew Ryan wouldn’t be impressed by that alone. “We found another guy” — he looked down at his iPad — “named Kateb Albaf, a Turkish national who’d been in school at UC Santa Clara we’d had on the watch list a couple of years ago due to some of his radical statements to a reporter at a rally. We interviewed him, put a soft surveillance package on him for a couple of months two years ago, and determined he was just a student. He never knew we were interested in him.”

“Where is he now?” asked Ryan.

“Up until a month ago, he was back in California right where he was when we last saw him, but we found out he just went on a trip to Honduras.” Murray looked up from his iPad and to the President. “According to a classmate, he was going to spend six weeks at a language school — claimed a newfound interest in learning Spanish. We looked into his airline travel and they match the dates the Guatemalan commandos were away from home.”

Ryan said, “Wonder how good his Spanish is now?”

Dan Murray grumbled, “Probably not as good as his ability to build an S-vest.”

Ryan looked back and forth between Mary Pat and Dan. “C’mon. Tell me you have more than this.”

Mary Pat said, “We do. A second man formerly on the watch list, a twenty-six-year-old used-car salesman from Atlanta named Mustafa Harak, also told associates he was going to Central America to a language school. He says to Guatemala. The dates match up very closely to the Turkish national.”

Ryan rolled his head back and forth. He was seeing some distinct lines between all the dots. “Guatemala and Honduras both border El Sal. They flew into these other nations, bussed over into El Salvador, and learned how to shoot people and blow things up. You’re probably right, we should tail these men carefully now.”

Murray said, “Unfortunately, we cannot tail either Albaf or Harak, because neither of them are home. Their cars are there. But they are not.”

Ryan asked, “Credit cards?”

“Neither man’s cards have been used since before they went to Central America. Kateb, the Turk in California — his wife, Aza, has disappeared, too.”

Ryan said, “Shit. They’ve got tradecraft, and they are already pre-positioning.”

Foley nodded. “That’s right.”

Ryan said, “We managed to stop Abu Musa al-Matari’s first attack against the United States when his training camp was discovered on sat photos over Syria. This time he moves the training to El Salvador.”

Mary Pat said, “We’re looking into boats out of La Libertad, the closest port, just fifteen miles away. Of course flights out of San Salvador, too. Charters, cargo, anything that came up to the States in the past ten days.”

Murray added to this. “They could have flown out of somewhere else, stopped and transferred along the way. But it’s all we have to go on.”

Ryan said, “There have to have been hundreds of planes that fit that description just landing at Miami International. Throw in Houston, L.A., Atlanta… Good Lord.”

Mary Pat said, “Jay and I will keep at it on our end, and Dan will keep the heat up on the domestic side. We’ve already notified Homeland Security to BOLO these guys.”

Ryan looked down to the artist’s rendering made from the recollection of the Yazidi girl. “It’s time to put Musa al-Matari’s face out there.”

Murray said, “I agree. We’ll say we think he’s here in the U.S., and he’s dangerous, tied to ISIS. It will get the coverage we need, although it’s not going to be hard for this guy to alter his appearance.”

Secretary of State Scott Adler had been quiet for the past few minutes, but he spoke up again now. “Mister President, back to the attack at Sigonella. There is something else you need to know. This might be a bad time to bring this up, but you will be questioned about it in the news conference when you land.”

When Adler said this, SecDef Bob Burgess visibly snarled. The two men could not see each other on the monitors, but Ryan noted Burgess’s reaction to the secretary of state, and this told him Burgess knew about the matter Adler was bringing up, and he wasn’t happy about it.

“What is it, Scott?” Ryan asked.

“One of the naval officers murdered apparently had his sidearm with him.” A pause. “Off base. Which is against Italian regs. Our regs, too.” Another pause. “It was found at the scene. One of the terrorists was shot by it.”

Ryan shook his head. “Scott…”

“Sir, I’m just the messenger. The Italians are pissed off, but I will tell them, very quietly, to kiss my ass. If they can’t protect our military in their country, then our military has to protect itself.”

This relaxed Burgess some, Ryan saw immediately.

The President held up a hand to his secretary of state. “No, Scott. Thanks for saying what I’m thinking, but no. You have to be the chief diplomat. I’ll talk to President Morello, smooth that over. If a reporter asks me about it I’ll say I can’t comment on the investigation.” He shrugged. “And then I’ll say I’m personally glad our Navy flier shot one of the bastards.”

Ryan looked over to Arnie Van Damm, who said nothing.

Burgess said, “Obviously, Mr. President, our concern now is for other military personnel at off-base housing around Sigonella.”

Ryan said, “And other locations involved with the actions against ISIS. Bahrain, Frankfurt. Incirlik. Shit… We’ve got bases all over Europe, and in some degree or another, they all have some involvement with our actions in the Middle East.”

Burgess said, “That’s right. And we don’t have the space on base to hold everyone and their families. Off-base housing is a necessity.”

Ryan said, “As far as I’m concerned, pilots are on the front lines. I want them on base. Special operations forces, all senior officers, too. As far as Sigonella goes, I’ll get President Morello to allow us to post guards off base, MPs, for the short term, while we try to get all our men and women inside the wire.”

Burgess said, “Sorry, sir, but that sounds like a capitulation to terrorists.”

Ryan said, “It’s not a capitulation to terrorists. It’s a capitulation to this damn intel leak that’s causing all this! We don’t know how big or wide this goes, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for our servicemen and — women to get nailed again by something we clearly don’t understand.”

Burgess nodded on the monitor. “Yes, sir.”

The videoconference ended a moment later, and immediately Arnie Van Damm slid his chair closer to Ryan’s.

“This is going to rekindle a lot of hostility to the policy in the Middle East.”

Ryan nodded. “A couple years ago nobody wanted another land invasion of Iraq. And nobody has ever wanted our troops in Syria. Fighting this war with special operations forces and airpower, along with the Kurds and the Iraqi Army, is getting the job done.”

Arnie said, “I agree, but if ISIS targets our bases in Europe or, God forbid, in the U.S., then you’ll get hit from the right to do more, and to do it faster. You’ll get hit from the left as well, who see it as an opening, although they’ve got nothing to fill it with.”

Jack nodded. “I believe in our policy. The price of my belief is taking those hits.” The President took a moment to look out the window down at Iowa as it slipped slowly by. He fought the anger welling inside him, born from the frustration that he could not fight that which he did not understand, and so far no one had been able to make sense of the seemingly random scope of the new threats to his nation. It was as if a cancer had crept in, slowly at first, but metastasizing and growing in speed.

He worried that Sigonella was just the next phase of the sickness, and if he and his people didn’t get a handle on this soon, this cancer would spread uncontrollably. Knowing that Musa al-Matari was somewhere out there, in play, made him wonder if Iowa itself could be the next front line in this fight.