True Faith and Allegiance

The young doctor almost stammered his reply. “Well… uh… I did my two years of mandatory service in Turkey. Fifteen years ago. I was a medic, but they gave us some firearms training.”

“On pistols?”

“Yeah, a little, and rifles.”

“Well, I’m not giving you my SMG, so you get my Glock 19.” He held it out for Davi.

“Is it loaded?”

“Yes, no safety, so keep your finger off the fun switch till you’re ready to go bang.”

Sally and Davi stepped into the upstairs bathroom. Jack tried to get Sally to get into the tub for her protection, but she refused.

“Sal… that’s a cast-iron tub. It’s the safest place in this whole damn cabin. You will get in it.”

“I’m not sitting in a damn tub!”

“Mom and Dad will kill me if something happens to you.”

“Well, that doesn’t really matter, because I’m going to kill you for screwing up Davi’s proposal.”

Jack sighed, and looked to Davi. “Dude, I’m powerless with her. It’s up to you. You need to lock this door behind me, both climb into that tub, and point the gun at the door. Unless you hear me, Clark, or Ding calling your name, don’t unlock it, and shoot at anything that kicks or shoots the door.”

Davi nodded; Jack saw he would play ball. He just hoped he had some ability to control his iron-willed sister.

And with that Jack headed out of the bathroom and back down the stairs.

* * *

Abu Musa al-Matari parked far enough away from the GPS coordinates programmed into his phone that he knew it would be pitch-black before he and the other teams arrived at the cabin. Including al-Matari himself, there were eight: one from the Atlanta cell and two from the Santa Clara cell, as well as Omar and one more man from Detroit, and longtime ISIS operatives Tripoli and Algiers.

The leader of the Atlanta cell and one of her team had been killed just hours earlier in D.C. This left al-Matari with fewer attackers, but he felt confident in pressing on.

They all carried Uzis or AKs, as well as hand grenades, with the exception of Tripoli, who had an RPG-7, along with a Glock pistol shoved into his waistband in the small of his back.

Along the side of the road they turned on their walkie-talkies and put on headsets. They broke into four groups of two, with al-Matari taking Omar along with him.

The woods here were thick, oak and pine mostly, but each team had a phone that gave them their distance to their target pinpointed on a map. From the satellite view it showed the front and rear of the cabin had large open grassy areas, but the north and south sides both had wood lines within twenty-five meters of the walls of the large two-story building.

Al-Matari and Omar, along with the Atlanta man and the other Detroit operative, went to the north. Algiers took a Pakistani member of Santa Clara and would approach from the southwest to get a view of the cabin. Tripoli took the other Santa Clara member, and they would come up from the woods on the south.

Algiers and a twenty-year-old engineering student from Caltech named Jamal crawled on knees and elbows alongside a hill due west in the fading light. Algiers led the way, because he had one thousand times more combat experience than the young college student who, other than three successful bomb and grenade attacks in the past week and his three weeks at the Language School, had none.

After twenty minutes of advancing, they finally had a view of the front of the property, still across a gravel road and some two hundred meters away. Algiers knew al-Matari and the second team hitting from the north would still be several minutes from their position, and the team approaching from the southeast would be so deep in the thick woods there they wouldn’t have a view of the target until they were almost on top of it.

So he decided to set up here on a hill to lead the rest of the teams to the target and provide covering fire if necessary. He peered carefully through binoculars, noticed lights inside the building, but he also noticed something else. “There is no vehicle. How can someone get here without a car?”

Just then, the front door opened, and a man stepped out with a beer in his hand. He walked along a wooden porch, looking casually out at the wooded hills to the west.

Algiers held his radio to his mouth. “Yes. It’s him. I see him. It’s the President’s son. Drinking a beer on the front porch. He is not alerted at all.”

Al-Matari replied quickly. “Can you shoot him from there?”

“Possibly. I… have an AK, and I might hit him. But there is no optic on my weapon. If I miss he will flee inside and it will be harder for us to take him by surprise.”

“Wait, then,” al-Matari said. If the American was sitting around with a beer, then they should have no problem getting closer. “Do you see anyone else?”

“No one. There isn’t even a car in the driveway.”

“All other teams keep moving closer.”

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