Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(24)

I tried not to shudder at the picture of an eight-year-old kid riding shotgun across the desert. “But something went wrong?”

“Men from our village came to my uncle. They asked him to go to our border with Iran and bring in a special load. They said if he refused, they would kill him.”

My brain fired shutter clicks as things began to fall into place. “What was this special load?”

“Men and weapons. A lot of Iranian soldiers were coming across the border, taking over villages, telling people they would hurt them if they talked, giving them money to stay quiet. Fal Mohammed wanted nothing to do with this, so he went to talk to an American on the FOB. I don’t know who. The man told him to bring in the soldiers and take them wherever they wanted to go. In this way, he said, the Americans would know how to find the Iranians. Then they would capture them.”

That struck me as crazy. But what did I know about military strategy?

“So your uncle brought them in.”

“Yes. He was very afraid. Afraid of the Iranians. And afraid of the Iraqis who made him go. That is why I went with him. So he wouldn’t be afraid.”

I stopped walking. Malik turned to me.

“He let you do that?”

“No.” For a moment, Malik’s expression brushed against gleeful. “I hid until we were many kilometers from Habbaniyah. By then, I knew we’d gone far enough that he wouldn’t have time to turn around.”

“You were brave.”

Malik shrugged. “He was my uncle.”

“So he kept driving?”

“He was very angry with me. But he had no choice. We picked up the men. One of them told me he was Quds and asked me if I knew what it meant. I said no. He laughed and gave me a coin. A Persian coin. He said our countries would someday become one, inshallah. Which means if God wills it.”

I nodded. Quds. I didn’t know much about Iran, but I’d heard of the Quds Force. Someone had described them to me as a hybrid of the CIA and Special Forces, and the deadliest fighting group in Iran. They were responsible for all foreign operations and had been designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Maybe that was why someone on the FOB had green-lighted Mohammed and Malik’s trip to the border. Capturing a member of Quds would have been a major coup.

But why give an American team a mission to capture the Iranians and then betray those same Americans?

“They had a lot of weapons,” Malik went on. “It took two hours to get everything into Fal’s truck. Then we drove them to a village and left them there. I took a video. With my camera. They never knew.”

The shock of that fell like a blow. Was this what the Alpha was after?

“A video of what, exactly? The trucks?”

“Yes. And the men unloading the weapons.”

“Malik, that video is very important.” My heart thudded in my ears. “Can you show me?”

But he shook his head. “After my uncle was killed, I gave my phone to Sergeant Udell. I didn’t want anyone to know I had the video. But I was scared to delete it. I knew it was important.”

I was breathing hard now, as if running a race. An eight-year-old kid dealing with this. But dammit, of all the people he could have given that to. “Why him?”

“Because I knew he would protect me. He’s a Marine. And Marines don’t do bad things.” His eyes were on me. “Except when they have to.”

Or when they themselves have gone bad. I was willing to bet a bottle of Blackadder whisky that Sarge had already given the recording to rogue elements in the CIA or the Alpha. Or more likely a copy; he’d want something for himself. If so, then the video wasn’t the intel Sarge had been sent to my house to find. Or the reason they were hunting for Malik.

Unless Sarge hadn’t turned it over, and they’d learned about the video from someone else.

Maybe the Alpha believed the video had ended up in my hands.

“Malik, who else knows about this video?”

“I told my mother and Sergeant Udell. Maybe they told people. I don’t know.”

I ran down the list. Mohammed and Haifa had known about the video, and they were both dead. Haifa had probably told PFC Resenko. He, too, had been murdered.

“Okay. Okay.” I’d follow that later. “What happened after you dropped off the Iranians?”

“Nothing. We never heard anything else about them. But pretty soon after that, people started dying,” Malik said. “First my mother and the Marine. That was the night you found me. Then came the ambush, when the Special Forces men were killed. Fal Mohammed said the bad Americans killed all these people because they didn’t want anyone to know about the Iranians and their weapons. A cover-up, my uncle said. And since of course he knew, he was also in danger. He told me the bad Americans didn’t know about me. Not yet. Not back then. But that was why I couldn’t keep the video.”

I gawked at him. “You’re telling me that Americans murdered everyone who knew about the Iranians and their weapons.”

“Yes.”

The world gaped open at my feet, a sudden and unimaginable abyss. What Malik was suggesting, without knowing it, was that there had been a traitor on our FOB. And not a small-time, slip-me-some-cash traitor.

This was high treason.

“Malik,” I said gently. “Is it possible your uncle was wrong? Could he have been working with the Iranians? Maybe he decided on his own to pick up these men and their weapons, and the Americans found out? That would explain why he was afraid and why he wanted you to leave.”