Cry Judas “The Fedayeen Force”

Chapter One

November 11, 2000

Machmued and his companions lay frozen in their beds of soil and wet leaves, their forms broken by the mottled patterns of green and brown fatigues. Together they had formed a triangle, each with an arc of 120 degrees, insuring overlapping observation and fields of fire. The three survivors could taste the dregs of the burning undergrowth on their lips and in their mouths. Sooty residue of gray-black ash clung to their wet uniforms while grit caught in the creases of their bodies, irritating and reddening the folds of their dark skin. A stench of decaying swamp combined with the pungent smells of scorched trees and acidic embers invaded Machmued’s senses, drying his throat, stinging his eyes, assaulting his sinuses. An eerie tension lay over the quiet, sodden woods. No more than the hush of the drizzling rain dripping off the trees broke the stillness.

Machmued ibn Mu’tazz was second in command to Salal l’Rahal, the overall leader of the fedayeen force. To him fell the detailed planning of Jericho, the first armed military operation against the heartland of the United States. This undertaking had been a necessary and calculated decision, or so Salal had argued before the ICO, the Islamic Conference Organization. The attack was designed to cause the Americans to reassess their Middle East foreign policy. Destruction of the Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal at the mouth of the Cape Fear River would send a signal to the American politicians.

The Jericho plan had directed Machmued to distract the Americans while Salal, the leader and architect of the attack, led a smaller group of men against the prize objective of the assault—the nuclear power generation facility abutting the military installation. Salal’s portion of the mission against the power plant was in the hands of Allah and a tactical nuclear device powerful enough to destroy the power plant’s reactor.

If successful, Salal’s dirty bomb would melt down the reactor’s core and rupture its protective containment building, causing another Chernobyl. The releases of radioactivity, borne on the winds, were to then cause the spread of a toxic cloud all along the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

Unknown to Machmued, mired in his own set of tactical problems, Salal’s effort had been sabotaged. Lieutenant Colonel Matt Gannon, Sunny Point’s commander, had survived an assassination attempt and was able to thwart Salal’s piece of the mission. Now the Americans were in the process of mopping up. An occasional distant clatter of sporadic, small arms fire perforated the sputter of smoldering brush.

The three men had rested about thirty minutes when a flicker of movement to his left caught the Arab terrorist’s eye. Without realizing, Machmued tightened his grip on the folded stock of the AK-47 and issued a low, sharp hiss from between his teeth, alerting his two companions. In silence, they adjusted bodies and weapons into tighter firing positions. Nerves and senses strained to full alert. Anticipation was thick and palpable.

Bounding from the tree line, four does, followed by a large eight-point buck, entered a small clearing. They stopped and turned to look back, ears up, noses aimed into the wind, poised for further flight. The deer stood frozen, suspended in time and motion. Then, without warning, the buck snorted and pawed twice at the turf. He tossed his antlered head, whistled to his harem, and then sprang to the northeast without a sound. His white flag of a tail flashed on each quickening bound across the soft sandy earth. His four female companions delayed for half a heartbeat and then moved as one to follow his lead. Without a doubt something spooked the deer, something along their back trail.

The three extremists searched the area from the perimeter of their undergrowth-camouflaged hideout, seeking initial signs of movement, waiting for the coming of the enemy.

***

Amid much angst and debate, the Islamic Conference Organization had gathered and decided to authorize and finance the Jericho mission. The fedayeen had come ashore, along with Hurricane Kate, just to the north of the town of Southport on the night of November 10th, 2000. The resilience of the town had been tested over and over again since its founding in 1792, and now Kate challenged its survival once again.

The Compass Rose had been the invader’s ship. The vessel had carried the clandestine force of over two hundred fedayeen freedom fighters on a suicide mission to the heartland of the Great Satan itself. Now the greasy, bitter smoke from still-burning bunkers marked her watery grave. She was an oily black pyre, her decks awash, her twisted and massive wreckage blocking the Cape Fear River’s channel like a cork in a bottle.

The first indication of the presence of the American Ranger force in the windy, rain-soaked woods had come with the wink of the muzzle blast from an M-16A1 5.56mm rifle shot. A soft burp announced the launch of a 40mm grenade. The unexpected response had startled and shook Machmued’s confident fedayeen force, setting them back on their heels.

Machmued had heard gunfire and explosions coming from the direction of the nuclear power plant, but there was no way of knowing the fate of Salal’s team, or the degree of their success.

Had it not been for the hurricane, Machmued thought, the fires would have completed the job begun by the demolition teams.

***

Named Smithville until 1887, Southport found its origins as a fishing and trading center, a quasi-military town under the protective battlements of Fort Johnson, built as part of the British coastal defenses in the mid-1700s. Southport served as the hub of Brunswick County, North Carolina, retaining its title as the county seat until 1975, but it never became a major port. The growth of other rival communities, such as Wilmington and the village of Bolivia, stole population and business but left the charm and warmth of the old South in the village at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

Hurricane Kate had washed over the shore and tossed aside stilt-platformed summer homes lining the seaside with a simple shake of her foam-specked curls. She battered the flimsy shore cottages into kindling in a matter of moments, and then swirled their remains into an odorous, salty flotsam of debris and insurance claims. Further inland, the hurricane’s aftermath was less notable—fallen power lines, a downed traffic light, a tree or two broken across the roadways, debris scattered over lawns. The smell and taste of rain and storm lingered in the wind, a twisted highway stop sign flailed against the diminishing gusts of air, and a glaze of water had already begun to retreat from once flooded low-lying highways and neighborhood streets.

A tattoo of fat raindrops brought by whistling, rattling winds cascaded upon the remnants of police and emergency vehicles at the SEP&L nuclear power plant, and splashed the charred trees of the 1,630 acre Sunny Point Explosives Terminal. Smoldering from a dozen brush fires, wisps of pearl-gray smoke embraced the ground. The lingering fires testified to the thick quantity of natural fuel that, despite the hurricane, remained dry enough to ignite during the storm and the terrorist attack on the base.

Kate’s fury had lessened as the northeastern winds abated, but it was only just before sunrise that the torrential rain and wind started to fade. The driving downpour had come in loud, boiling, wind-driven waves. Volleys of the vicious deluge boomed throughout the night and into the lifeless gloom of the early morning hours. The landscape was decked with a dismal pall, holding no near promise of improvement. Protective sand dunes, edging the shore and dividing the mouth of the river estuary from the Atlantic Ocean, melted before the tidal surge and the entire beach eroded like ice before a blowtorch. But the fires had not raced through the dry undergrowth. Instead they had sputtered and flickered. Earth and foliage had been too well-watered by the rains of Kate to sustain the conflagration anticipated by the Jericho planners. Jericho, a concentrated effort by the best of the combined terrorist forces, had failed—but just barely.

The Arab assault had not been without its successes. According to plan, the shattered hulk of the Compass Rose laid across the channel of the Cape Fear River, blocking ocean access to and from the port of Wilmington until her carcass could be cut up and removed. With a maximum effort and all the needed resources in place, it would take a month to six weeks before the channel would again be passable.

A flight of brown pelicans drifted in the waters just off the heavily damaged southern pier of the base. With indifferent curiosity, some convened motionless on the scattered pilings, watching the battle between the terrorist force and the American Rangers draw to its inevitable conclusion. An occasional distant clatter of sporadic, small arms fire perforated the sputter of smoldering brush. Infrequent explosive detonations rattled the otherwise still November morning.

The two towering PACECO cranes dominating the southernmost of the three ammunition wharves at Sunny Point were a mass of mangled steel, bent, and contorted, slopping over the edge of concrete and into the anchorage basin some twenty feet below. They clogged the shore and rendered the berthing spaces unusable until the wreckage was cleared. The efficient transfer of containerized munitions would be delayed for at least a year until construction of new cranes and facilities could be accomplished. All told, the damage to the facility, not including the administrative areas and bridges, would exceed two-hundred-million dollars. A million dollars damage per fighter, but still far less than planned.

Machmued’s face twisted into a smirk in his sleep. Not a bad night’s work after all.

***

Machmued was jolted back to his surroundings by a swarm of bee-like whines. Bullets whistled and knifed through the trees around Machmued’s team, assailing their ears with a snap and crack as bark shattered from trees and wet wood recorded the thuds of impacted rifle bullets.

A’asheer cried out.

A moist splat was followed by a sudden red splotch, appearing first at his neck then at a second hole where his eye had been. Machmued half-rose, trying to find the source of the enemy. He saw movement to his left, swung his rifle and began to squeeze the trigger to sweep the area with fire.

A sharp pain blossomed at his right temple as the American’s high-velocity bullet struck and Machmued swam into the black void of unconsciousness. He never saw the Ranger Squad that had been tracking the three men throughout the night and killed his two companions. The fedayeen commander’s last conscious thoughts were of the Malak, the angels spoken of in the Koran. The memory of what he had learned as a child of the Kiramun Katibun, the 360 angels responsible for the life of each true believer and who record men’s deeds, flashed through his mind. He hoped they would write well of him.

***

A light switched on somewhere within his brain. Machmued’s return to a semi-conscious state from the deep coma rattled him. His senses were activated in part and he was assailed by the unrecognized, yet familiar antiseptic scent of hospital sterility. He had been wounded several times before; medical facilities had become almost a second home for him.

He listened to the soft swirl offered by the air conditioning. A distant murmur of voices caught his fragile attention. A quick mental inventory of his body spoke volumes, telling him he was badly injured. Machmued was reluctant to open his eyes, fearful of what he might, or might not, see.

On the edge of disgorging whatever rested in his stomach, he floundered in a cold sweat, feeling anxious, jittery, and uncertain. The taste of anesthesia was bitter in the back of his mouth and throat, both feeling sore and jagged, as if cut by the worn blade of a razor. His eyelashes were stuck together, a consequence of a fine coat of petroleum jelly over the lids of his deep-brown, almost-black eyes. By gentle probing, he discovered bandages swathed his skull from which sprang a low, dull pain, throbbing with every beat of his heart. His fingers passed over a thin, plastic shunt poking out through a bandage on his head, the result of the surgical incision draining fluid from the area of trauma. From the corner of his eye, he could see an intravenous drip, hanging from a metal pole near the bed frame, leaking drops of some clear solution through a needle inserted into his left forearm. Despite all, Machmued felt a temporary safety in the environment he occupied.

The commander of the destroyed Jericho ground force shifted and tried to raise his right arm. His mouth felt parched—a lingering effect of anesthesia and tubes inserted down his windpipe during surgery just a little more than a day earlier. He seemed unable to move either his arms or legs which, he soon discovered were restrained by leather and metal shackles secured to the frame of the hospital bed.

One of the ICU orderlies, accompanied by an armed escort, had removed Machmued from the surgical recovery area to a private room in the prisoner section of the hospital. A Navy sentry with a 9mm pistol strapped to his hip stood watch twenty-four hours a day outside his door. A photo authenticated ID, issued in cooperation with the hospital and then validated by the CIA, was a requirement for access to the prisoner. The guard assiduously scrutinized the credentials each time the room was entered. Once inside, the bearer’s actions were monitored by two closed-circuit cameras, revealing all dead spaces in the room’s visual field.

Machmued heard the click of a lock, the rattle of keys, the squeak of a door, and hasty footsteps approaching his bed. Without difficulty, he feigned sleep. A cool hand touched and then rested on his wrist, taking his pulse. He was startled by a woman who spoke to him.

Welcome back, the female voice said in Arabic. Here, open your lips and I’ll give you a few ice chips to suck on. They will moisten your mouth and ease the soreness in your throat.

Machmued opened his eyes which, little by little, focused on the dark-haired nurse above him.

Your throat will be a bit scratchy for a while, but it’s nothing to be concerned about, and the headache will subside in due course. Are you in any other pain?

Machmued did not respond.

You gave us quite a scare, you know, the nurse continued in a bright and effervescent manner.

Where am I? Machmued asked in Arabic.

The nurse peered at him through her prim, professionally styled glasses, waited a pulse beat, and responded in Arabic.

You are at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, just outside of Washington, D.C. It is the seventeenth of November. You were brought here from Fayetteville, North Carolina by a United States Air Force medevac flight three days ago. You have undergone neurological surgery for a gunshot wound. The bullet pierced your skull.

How long have I been here? Machmued croaked. He opened his mouth to receive the proffered spoonful of ice chips.

Just over two days, came the reply. You’ve been in a coma, but now, since you have revived on your own, you will be in little danger from your injuries. The worst has passed.

"Shukran, thank you," Machmued said. The coolness of the spoon touched his tongue. His eyelids grew heavy and he slipped back into the world of foggy unconsciousness, reliving his life in the fedayeen and the battle he had survived less than a week earlier.

Machmued ibn Mu’tazz was born in Lebanon, his father a successful and very rich man who had capitalized on his skills as an international banker. The son’s early years had been without want. He was spoiled and pampered. His adolescence was spent at his father’s home and the villa on the Mediterranean with all the perks of the rich including the swimming pool, the cars, and the servants.

Then the war in Lebanon had come, and with it the Jews and the Americans. Machmued’s life changed quickly. Gone were the luxuries. Death, calamity, and destruction fell across the country that had once been the jewel of the Middle East.

The nation had been steadily destroyed by anarchy, factional rivalries, and competition for power. The commerce of the nation, its banks, his father’s business, and the cities fell in ruin. Central government and national identities were a thing of the past. Terror reigned.

Machmued’s father was one of the fortunate few who escaped without loss of life to his family, but his wealth, his dreams of the future, were left behind, tied to a land devastated by ravaging bands of armed men. Now all that remained was exile. Machmued’s family had been forced to eke out a living on the fringes of power in the financial district and commerce of Egypt.

Their adopted home reeked of turmoil in a time of sorting between the extremism of the radicals and the moderation urged by Anwar Sadat. The universities became the melting pot and breeding grounds for political sentiment in the country. There, the constant harangue of the Jews’ evil, sponsored by their American puppets, became loud and strong. Machmued’s generation condemned Sadat for the Peace Accord signed at Camp David and its betrayal of the Arab people. Militancy grew to be a cause and the banker’s son soon learned that, while not all militants are terrorists, all terrorists are militants.

Enrolled by his father in the University at Cairo, Machmued wandered into adulthood strident in the belief that the Jews and Americans had stolen and destroyed his birthright. Unsure of his direction and future, he grew to be more aware of his Arab heritage and the political implications of his Islamic civilization. Both he and his father fell in with the fedayeen who railed against the Jews and their American sponsors.

Over time, he found himself—with his father’s approval and encouragement—more and more involved in the Palestinian cause and in agreement with the arguments made by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the fedayeen. By the age of eighteen, Machmued the student had become a leader in one of the larger, more radical militant groups at the university. He graduated from militant to terrorist when he participated in his first two fedayeen ambushes of Israeli soldiers. They had struck on the border between Egypt and Israel, killed six Israelis, and plundered their weapons before returning to the safety of the barren Sinai. But it was with the operation of November 1985 at Gander against the returning American peacekeeping battalion from the Sinai that Machmued graduated to the full rank of a future terrorist leader.

Chapter Two

Machmued had worked for over a year putting the operation together. Jericho was rehearsed. The details of the plan were practiced time after time in the remote reaches of the Idehan Marzuq Desert of Libya. Only when the multinational force of terrorists was trained to Machmued’s satisfaction and determined to be ready by Salal himself had they abandoned their desert sanctuary to embark on the Compass Rose. Their movement across the Atlantic Ocean to their North Carolina targets went undetected. So far as Machmued and Salal knew, the security of the operation had not been breached and they held the key of surprise.

The 218 paramilitary terrorists had disembarked from the Compass Rose to begin their dispersion into Sunny Point almost without incident. But even the best of plans are good only until the first shot is fired.

Jericho, Machmued thought in reflection, was doomed from its very beginning.

Within twenty minutes, all of the months of planning to facilitate Jericho went to hell in the fog of battle and the lethality of an American ambush.

No quarter was asked and none given in the brutal, bloody fight for Sunny Point. Machmued’s trained and disciplined teams dissolved into carnage, but no white flags of surrender appeared. The commander of the elite American force demanded surrender, but there was to be no admission of defeat. Radical militant Arabs spat back their defiance as the few who considered capitulation were dispatched by their own dwindling number of comrades. Trapped, desperate, and with no hope of escape, the finest of the terrorist militia were determined to show the Americans they were not afraid of death—but fedayeen discipline broke down in the darkness of night and confusion of battle. The rout of the extremist force began and the combat had become an American turkey shoot.

Clusters of fedayeen fighters, maintaining cell integrity when they could, broke off from the main body and sought to infiltrate, Machmued among them. The few who chose the river were discovered by six- to eleven-foot-long saltwater gators roused to a feeding frenzy by the smell of blood in the water and in the air. Still others, who did break out of the shrinking perimeter, became mired in the swampy bogs or lost their way in the heavy undergrowth, stumbling onto cottonmouth vipers that sank sharp fangs into the muscled flesh of ankles and calves.

Stealth was betrayed as panicked Arabs were startled by bobcats, deer, and wild boar darting from dens—their refuges during the height of the storm, explosions, and fires. The militants gave away their positions by firing without aiming into the undergrowth at fleeing, fearful shadows. Few survived the alien forest. Those who did lived just long enough to be killed, wounded, or captured by their American enemy.

***

A firm touch to his wrist awoke Machmued from his deep slumber. Darkness had fallen outside and the bright lights of the room troubled him as he opened his eyes. The woman was standing over him again, her gaze focused on her watch as she took his pulse. Her soft voice pierced the veil of his insensibility. You were very lucky, she said in English.

It has nothing to do with luck, madam, Machmued rasped in Arabic. It is fate -- my kismet. Allah, not your doctors, has decreed I should live, but I know not for what purpose.

He paused in contemplation, and then looked at the woman once again.

You are of Arab descent, no?

I am of Arab descent, yes. I came to America from Morocco as a child. My parents are both Muslim.

"Why, then, do you shame your family with your Western manners? Kam omroka, how old are you? Why have you not taken the chadra, the veil?" Machmued asked in a disapproving, weary voice.

I am a Christian and an adult woman, she replied, turning her back to him. Both disdain and ice touched her voice.

"So you have abandoned Allah and joined the infidels, as a Giaou Americai, eh?"

She faced him and frowned. The nurse then shrugged her shoulders in indifference to the remark.

"Let’s just say I am more comfortable in a belief that God has sent his Son to die for me, rather than a religion which demands my son die in jihad for Allah."

You blaspheme, Machmued said. The ache grew in his head.

Not at all. Here I have a choice my parents and grandparents never had. I also happen to prefer a culture that treats me as the equal of a man, not as one of his possessions.

Machmued was taken aback. For such boldness and blasphemy the religious police of Iran or Saudi Arabia would have straight away beaten this woman, or more than probable, split her tongue with a sharp knife. Clearly, living in the bosom of the Great Satan of America had corrupted her.

The nurse looked down with sympathy on Machmued’s bandaged form.

Allah must have had some strong second thoughts before deciding to spare your life, my Muslim friend. Do you speak English?

No, Machmued lied, just Arabic. I am very tired and the pain in my head grows.

It’s an after-effect of the anesthesia you were given and, of course, the surgery, she responded. The nurse lifted an edge of the light blanket covering Machmued’s gown-enshrouded body to check a bag hanging beneath the side of the bed.

What is your name? Machmued demanded.

Linda, the nurse replied.

No, what is your Arab name, the name given to you by your Muslim parents and Allah at your birth? Machmued insisted.

Nahla, she answered.

Do you know what this word, this name, means in our language?

Of course, she replied, a bit put off. It means ‘drink of water.’

Yes, you are correct, Machmued whispered in a strained, croaked schoolmaster’s voice. You are much the same in your manner as the ice you have given to me—cold. True Arab women serve their men with more respect than you do.

You must rest, the nurse scolded, ignoring the effort to remind her of her Arab ancestry. Enough talking. Now you must listen to me. It is important you urinate, do you understand?

She held up a clear, quart-sized disposable urinal by its plastic handle.

If you have not made water by the time I return, we will have to insert a urinary catheter. Do you understand?

Yes, but it will not be necessary, Machmued replied with some alarm. What she proposed to do was unthinkable. No woman had ever touched his body in such a manner. To even discuss such a thing was obscene, an insult to his person and his religion. Machmued would not permit this invasion of his privacy.

I would prefer a male to attend to my needs, Nurse Nahla.

’Fraid not, bucko. You’re stuck with me. You rest. I’ll be back later, she said. Without further explanation, she turned and departed the room.

There was nothing he could do but rest.

Machmued closed his eyes. Now it was a simple matter of time. He knew they would come for him. They would not wait for long. Perhaps Nahla had gone to fetch them. He sighed and slipped back into the dark void of sleep and the nightmare of the battle just recently fought returned.

***

The remains of the fedayeen defensive perimeter rested on berm pierced by a three-foot-diameter drainage pipe. As the last of the futile defense disintegrated, Machmued escaped from the noise and mayhem of the shrinking noose. He and two bodyguards slipped through the culvert and away into the darkness, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and what remained of the riverside battle and dwindling pockets of resistance.

Morning light found the three terrorists, overwhelmed in their weariness but somehow still alive, seven miles northwest of the river on the edge of less-marshy, carpeted, pine-needled woodlands. They had crossed the worst of the rain and windswept swampy terrain and were, for the moment, safe from the prying sensors and eyes of helicopter gunships flying low over the dense woods. The deluge of the hurricane, lingering fires, and ground-clinging smoke worked to their advantage, confusing the airborne arrays searching for them. In the diffused light of morning, they trudged on with increasing care through the pine forest covering to higher ground in the North Carolina countryside. The three continued northwestward for another two miles and then only stopped at Machmued’s signal.

We will wait here until nightfall, Machmued had said, glancing aloft, and lowering himself to the ground, and then strike out for the railroad line to one of the pickup points.

Acknowledged from the beginning as unrealistic, a provision for exfiltration had always been an integral part of the original Jericho plan. Three points along the government-owned spur rail line to the Sunny Point terminal had been prearranged. Team members from underground domestic cells would drive by the rally points once every three hours for the next two days to assist in the escape and evasion of the surviving fedayeen fighters.

Chapter Three

Two days after Machmued’s awakening at Bethesda, he was much stronger but still lightheaded and became clammy if he moved too fast. His appetite was returning and he had graduated from the use of the bedpan to a less embarrassing, unshackled but guarded trip to the alcove serving as a bathroom—although the effort still left him woozy and unbalanced.

Machmued’s square-shaped prisoner’s room was small and unadorned. The space had a desolate appearance and secreted a sterile, antiseptic hospital smell. Glossy white paint covered smooth concrete walls and ceiling, and the floor displayed a beige-colored, buffed tile. A substantial-looking painted metal door with an imbedded twelve-inch, square, reinforced glass viewing panel was the sole access to the room. The door, when closing, snapped shut with a stiff click as a dead bolt lock engaged. A key to release the catch was in the possession of the guard and could only be inserted from the opposite side.

Two side-by-side barred windows, quite high up on the wall, denied any view of the landscape. Through the casements, Machmued could see no more than an empty blue sky. The furniture consisted of a bed, a porcelain-topped table next to it, and a straight-back metal chair positioned against the wall. Upon the table rested a bedpan, a Foley catheter, and a package of plastic-wrapped wipes of some sort. A doorless and vacant wooden clothes closet was pushed against the opposite interior wall, positioned between the bathroom and the bedstead. To the left of the bed, in a deep alcove, there was a private bath equipped with a commode, a metal sink basin, and a single shower stall without a curtain.

Machmued was shuffling back to the bed from the toilet when the two interrogators arrived. One was dressed as a civilian; the other wore the uniform of an Army lieutenant colonel. On the lapels of the Class A green uniform jacket were the distinctive insignia of the Army Intelligence Corps, a sword pierced compass rose. That the symbol bore the same name as the ship carrying his strike force struck Machmued as an amusing irony.

The civilian was the larger of the two men. Machmued judged him to be in his late forties or early fifties, perhaps 6’ tall, with thinning, sandy hair. His complexion was fair, with a great deal of freckles and a pinched, tight-lipped expression about his taper-jawed face. He had the look of a bureaucrat about him, one not used to the outdoors—more a thinker than a warrior.

The uniformed Army officer was slender. About his thin right wrist, he wore what appeared to be a cheap emergency identification bracelet—the kind worn by those who have strong allergies or adverse reactions to certain kinds of medicines. His head was disproportionate to the remainder of his lanky body, larger but with the skin taut across the forehead and cheeks. His skull sat atop a long neck displaying an enormous Adam’s apple. Thin lips surrounded an otherwise generous