One of the downsides of LED technology was that it made hiding out in caves a lot easier. A single battery could provide light for days. But it also created a vulnerability. Power supplies tended not to be as widely distributed and redundant as they used to be.
Rapp reached down and flipped the cable off the battery, plunging the cavern into darkness.
Shouts became audible almost immediately, but sounded more annoyed than alarmed. Rapp could tell that the voices belonged to two male Arabic speakers, but picking out exactly what they were saying was difficult with the echo. Basically a little name-calling and arguing about whose turn it was to fix the problem. When all your light came from a single improvised source, occasional outages were inevitable.
One of the men appeared a few seconds later, swinging a flashlight in his right hand but never lifting it high enough to give detail to his face. It didn’t matter. From his youthful gait and posture, it was clear that it wasn’t Halabi. Just one of his stooges.
Rapp aimed around the corner and gently squeezed the trigger. The sound profile of the crossbow and the projectile’s impact were both outstanding. Unfortunately, the accuracy at this range was less so. The man was still standing, seemingly perplexed by the fletching protruding beneath his left clavicle.
Rapp let go of his weapon and sprinted forward, getting one arm around the Arab’s neck and clamping a hand over his mouth and nose. The man fought as he was dragged back around the corner, but the sound of their struggle was attenuated by soft ground. Finally, Rapp dropped and wrapped his legs around him to limit his movement. There wasn’t enough leverage to choke him out, but the hand over his face was doing a pretty good job of suffocating him. The process took longer than he would have liked and he was gouged a few times by the protruding bolt, but the Arab finally lost consciousness. A knife to the base of his skull finished the job.
Rapp slid from beneath the body and was recocking the crossbow when another shout echoed through the cavern.
“Farid! What are you doing, idiot? Turn the lights back on!”
Rapp yelled back that he couldn’t get them working, counting on the acoustics to make it difficult to distinguish one Arabic-speaking male from another. He loaded a bolt into his weapon and ran to the battery, putting the flashlight facedown in the dirt before crouching. The illumination was low enough that anyone approaching wouldn’t be able to see much more than a vague human outline.
A stream of half-baked electrical advice preceded the sound of footsteps and then another young man appeared. He didn’t seem at all concerned, once again proving the grand truth of all things human: people saw what they wanted and expected to see.
Rapp let the terrorist get to within fifteen feet before snatching up the crossbow. This time he compensated by aiming low and left, managing to put the projectile center of mass. No follow-up was necessary. The man fell forward, landing face-first in the dirt.
Certain that he wasn’t getting up again, Rapp reconnected the battery. He was likely going to need the light. Things had gone well so far but, in his experience, good luck never came in threes.
Support for that hypothesis emerged when a man who was apparently distrustful of the sound of falling sand bags sprinted around the corner. Rapp’s .22 was in an awkward position to draw, so instead he grabbed one of the bolts quivered on the crossbow.
The terrorist had been a little too enthusiastic in his approach and his momentum bounced him off one of the cave’s walls. Rapp took advantage of his compromised balance and lunged, driving the bladed head into his throat.
Not pretty, but effective enough to drop the man. As he fell, though, a small pipe sprouting wires rolled from his hand.
Not again.
Rapp used his boot to kick the IED beneath the man’s body and then ran in the opposite direction, making it about twenty feet before diving into a shallow dip in the ground. The explosion sent hot gravel washing over him and he heard a few disconcertingly loud cracks from above, but that was it. The rock held. He rolled onto his back, pulling his shirt over his mouth and nose to protect his lungs from the dust. The smart money would be to turn tail and call in a few bunker busters, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. If Halabi was there, Rapp was going to see him dead. Even if they entered the afterlife together with their hands around each other’s throats.
The sound of automatic fire started up outside but Rapp ignored it, pulling the Volquartsen and using a penlight to continue deeper into the cavern. Coleman and his boys could handle themselves.
The cave system turned out to be relatively simple—a lot of branches, but almost all petered out after a few feet. The first chamber of any size contained a cot and some rudimentary medical equipment—an IV cart, monitors, and a garbage can half full of bloody bandages. All of it looked like it had been there for a while.
The second chamber appeared to have been set up for surgical procedures but wasn’t much more advanced than something from World War I. A gas cylinder that looked like it came from a welder, a tray with a few instruments strewn across it, and a makeshift operating table streaked with dried blood.
And that was the end of the line. The cave system dead-ended just beyond.
“Shit!” Rapp shouted, his voice reverberating down the corridor and bouncing back to him.
The son of a bitch had been there. They’d brought him to treat the injuries he’d sustained in Iraq and to give him time to heal. A month ago, Rapp might have been able to look into his eyes, put a pistol between them, and pull the trigger. But now he was long gone. Sayid Halabi had slipped through his fingers again.
CHAPTER 2
AL MUKALLA
YEMEN
SAYID Halabi carefully lowered himself into a chair facing a massive hole in the side of the building he was in. Shattered concrete and twisted rebar framed his view of the cityscape stretching into the darkness. A half-moon made it possible to make out the shapes of destroyed vehicles, collapsed homes, and scattered cinder blocks. No light beyond that provided by God burned anywhere in sight. Power had once again been lost and the city’s half a million residents were reluctant to light fires or use battery power out of fear that they could be targeted by the Saudis.
It hadn’t always been so. In 2015, al Qaeda had taken advantage of the devastation brought by Saudi Arabia’s air war in Yemen and mounted an attack on Al Mukalla. Government forces had barely even gone through the motions of fighting back. After a few brief skirmishes they’d run, abandoning not only a terrified populace but the modern weapons of war—battle tanks, American-made Humvees, and heavy artillery.
After that stunning victory, a glorious glimpse of what was possible had ensued. Strict Islamic law was imposed as al Qaeda took over the governance of the city. Roads were repaired, public order was restored, hospitals were built. Sin and destruction were replaced by order and service to God.
A year later, Emirati-backed soldiers had driven al Qaeda out, returning the city to the dysfunctional and corrupt Yemeni government. Since then, nothing had been done to rebuild, and the Saudis’ indiscriminant bombing continued, slowly strangling hope. Hunger, disease, and violence were all that people had left.
A lone car appeared to the east, weaving slowly through the debris with headlights extinguished. Halabi followed it with his gaze for a time, wondering idly where the driver had managed to find fuel and listening for approaching Saudi jets. None materialized, though, and the car eventually faded from view.