Use of Force

CHAPTER 22

Diverting the Reaper north of Al Jmail, they found Umar Ali Halim’s compound right where the SAT phone salesman had said it would be.

Set in the barren desert outside Riqdalin, the only glimpses of vegetation came from humble, family-owned farms with neat rows of irrigated agriculture.

Locals grew modest quantities of dates, almonds, grapes, watermelons, olives, and tomatoes — but only enough to live on. There wasn’t enough arable land or fresh water for much else.

As the drone circled above, it fed back a series of images. Double doors, large enough to drive a truck through, secured the entrance. A ten-foot-high wall surrounded the rectangular compound. There was a main house, a guesthouse of some sort, what appeared to be a barn, a handful of vehicles under a sun shade, and a smaller structure without windows.

Stacked stones framed two outdoor animal pens. A handful of men milled about carrying rifles.

From Afghanistan to Somalia, everyone on Harvath’s team had hit targets like this before. They could almost do it in their sleep.

But Harvath had a rule about walled compounds: never go over a wall you could go through and never go through a wall you could go around.

He’d seen guys get shot off walls, fall off walls, and torque knees and ankles landing hard off walls.

One this size would require a ladder, preferably two. The first to put a sniper in place to watch over the courtyard, the second to get another team member up and over, who could then open the double doors from inside.

Special operations teams often used lightweight, collapsible ladders. The problem was that Harvath’s team didn’t have one, much less two.

Even if they had, he wasn’t sure ladders were necessary. Halim was a smuggler and Harvath had yet to meet one who didn’t have at least one alternate way in and out of his compound. It was just a matter of finding it.

Two hundred meters south of the compound was a large warehouse surrounded by chain-link fence, topped with razor wire. From what the phone salesman had told him, this was where Umar Ali Halim housed his “customers” before they were sent off in leaky, unseaworthy boats for the death cruise to Europe.

Mustapha Marzouk, the graduate student in chemistry from Tunisia, whose trail the CIA had sent Harvath to track down, had stayed in that very warehouse. He was sure of it.

When the Italians had interviewed the three survivors from the doomed fishing trawler, they had spoken of being kept in a long, metal warehouse-type building. It allegedly had large roll-up doors and ventilation fans at each end and was surrounded by razor-wire fencing — just like the images captured by the Reaper.

Harvath tried to remember all the details from the stacks of files he had gone through at the blue lockhouse back in the States. It was less than three days ago, but it already felt like weeks.

There had been so many horrible refugee accounts, he couldn’t get through all of them. Many hadn’t even been translated, only those the CIA felt had the greatest intelligence value.

The tales of torture and gang rape by Halim and his men were some of the worst Harvath had ever read. There were two details in particular, though, that he thought might prove helpful, but that he needed more information about.

As part of the operation, the CIA had assigned a handful of SSOs, or Specialized Skills Officers, to Harvath’s team. SSOs were subspecialists in a wide range of areas. One such SSO was named Deborah Lovett, and she was based out of the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

Lovett was not only fluent in Italian, but she was well connected and had been working the Mustapha Marzouk/Umar Ali Halim investigation from the Italian side.

She knew the files backward and forward. Once the Reaper had located Halim’s compound, Harvath had begun asking Fayez about its specifics. He had visited only a handful of times, dropping off phones or coming to deal with technical issues. He didn’t know about secret ways in or out. So, Harvath had reached out to Lovett via text.

When her number came up on his satellite phone a short time later, he hoped she was calling with good news.

“What have you got?”

“I went back through all of the refugee interviews like you asked,” she said. “The beatings usually happened inside the warehouse. They were a form of punishment, as well as a warning to the others. The rapes, on the other hand, happened outside. Apparently, Halim’s men prefer privacy for those.”

“What about the torture?”

Lovett could be heard flipping through her notes. “Victims were hooded or blindfolded and then taken someplace else on the property. It was described as dark, with a low ceiling and no windows. Sounds like an interior room or maybe something underground.”

Harvath doubted it was something underground. In fact, it sounded as if it could have been the windowless structure he had seen in the drone footage.

Shifting gears, he got to the heart of why he had contacted her. “What about any passageways or tunnels? Anything about alternative means in or out of the compound?”

“No. Not, specifically. But I may have found something interesting.”

“What is it?”

“About a year ago, Halim had raped a Sudanese woman at his compound. Unlike his men, who rape the refugees and then throw them back inside the warehouse, he brings the women to his bedroom.

“He has a big four-poster bed that was allegedly stolen from one of Gadaffi’s palaces. He likes to tie women to it as he has his way with them.

“Apparently, the Sudanese woman fought back and he beat her, severely. She lost consciousness. He waited for her to come back around and then he raped and beat her again. She didn’t remember much after that. Except for one thing — being dragged down a long hallway.”

“Any idea how long?” Harvath asked.

“No.”

“That doesn’t help us much.”

“Maybe this will,” Lovett offered. “Another Sudanese refugee remembered the night the woman was taken and raped. There was a terrible storm. When she was brought back to the warehouse, her clothes were damp, but not soaked.”

“Which means they probably dragged her outside in the rain, put her inside a vehicle, and drove her back to the warehouse.”

“There’s just one problem,” Lovett replied. “It was Halim, not his men, who brought her back. And the pair didn’t enter the warehouse through one of the exterior doors. According to the report, there’s a small office at the back of the warehouse that’s always kept locked. Halim stepped out of the office, dumped the Sudanese woman on the floor, and then disappeared back inside.

“None of them saw him again after that. A truck picked the refugees up the next morning, took them to the coast, and they boarded a boat that actually made it far enough to be rescued by the Italians.”

It certainly sounded to Harvath like there might be a tunnel, just not connected to the main house. He thought about what Lovett had told him.

If it was raining, if the Sudanese woman was unconscious and couldn’t reveal its existence, if the front gate was all locked up for the night, and if Halim didn’t want to wake his men to take her back to the warehouse, he might have used the tunnel.

Those were a lot of ifs. Ifs got people killed. But ifs were a part of what he did for a living — a big part.

And, as he didn’t want to go over the compound’s wall, there was no other choice but to see if a tunnel existed.