The camera angle zoomed out then, revealing a second man kneeling with his back to Usman, hands tied behind his back.
Duchess immediately recognized the man as Anthony Walters.
When an American citizen was taken captive by a terrorist organization, their photograph became a permanent installment on the daily intelligence briefings until they were either declared deceased or recovered alive. Along with the rest of the counterterrorism community, Duchess had spent the past day working against an almost constant backdrop of the hostages’ faces displayed on a screen at the front of her OPCEN.
But the smiling employee photograph of Walters stood in stark contrast to the video before her now—the portly man in his mid-forties appeared disheveled, his lower lip split and right eyelid swollen and bruised. He wore a polo shirt and khakis, likely the same clothes he’d been captured in, and despite Usman Mokhammed now brandishing a knife behind him, he appeared calm and strangely dignified as he faced the camera.
“Timeline?” she asked.
Lucios continued, “Twenty-four-hour deadline for the prisoner release, which puts us at 1400 Nigerian time, 0900 EST tomorrow. That’s when the next hostage will be killed, with an additional hostage every two hours until their demands are met. He says all deaths will be videotaped and the footage released on the world stage.”
On screen, Usman grabbed Walters’s hair, twisted his head back, and began sweeping the knife in sawing strokes across his throat.
The torrent of blood that flooded from the wound, spilling across Walters’s shirt, made Duchess cringe. It was the stuff of Hollywood slasher films, though anyone who’d viewed the ISIS decapitation videos ad nauseum—as Duchess had—knew at a glance that it was authentic.
Usman succeeded in severing the vertebrae, kicking the dead man’s body forward and hoisting his head aloft for the camera. The screen went black.
The entire OPCEN went quiet then, the hushed silence broken by Jo Ann at the adjoining desk.
“Administration is going to be playing for keeps after this.”
The sound of Duchess’s phone ringing almost made her jump, eliciting a primal response in the wake of the horrific video she’d just seen. She felt sick to her stomach, more so with the knowledge that the caller was almost certainly Senator Gossweiler demanding an update that Duchess didn’t have. What else could she tell him that he didn’t know already?
After a moment of hesitation, she lifted the receiver.
“Duchess here.”
To her surprise, it wasn’t Senator Gossweiler but a female Agency switchboard operator who responded, “The ISA has just landed in Abuja, and their team lead is requesting an update. Ground Branch requested I route the call to you.”
“Put him through,” Duchess said, putting the phone to her chest as she said to Jo Ann, “Line two, ISA.”
Jo Ann lifted her phone and tapped a button to patch into the call, and Duchess knew the connection was complete when she could hear the muted background noise of people conversing on the other end—the ISA team setting up their command post.
Duchess began, “This is the project chief for the Ground Branch presence in Nigeria. I’ve got you patched in with my head military liaison. How can we help?”
Despite her cordial tone, Duchess knew this was a delicate matter; even though the Intelligence Support Activity was unarguably the most elite and secretive intelligence unit in the US military, Project Longwing’s existence was compartmentalized down to a handful of politicians and top Agency officials.
A man with a pronounced New York accent replied, “Thank you for taking my call. We’re just getting set up at the embassy, and—”
Jo Ann cut him off, asking incredulously, “Bailey?”
The man went silent. “Who is this?”
“Jo Ann Brown, we met when I was with JSOC. The Somalia rescue.”
“Jo Ann—I didn’t know you went over to the Agency. I hope this means we won’t have the black hole of information that I usually get.”
“I was going to say the same.”
“How many people do you have in Nigeria?”
Duchess intervened, “We’ve got the usual staff at the embassy that you’ll meet soon if you haven’t already, and some local sources mostly focused in the northeast.” Frowning, she added, “We’re also overseeing a five-man team from the Special Activities Center, currently performing special reconnaissance at a Boko Haram camp in the Sambisa Forest.”
He asked, “You think they’ll be taken there?”
Jo Ann and Duchess answered “No” in unison, and Duchess hastily added, “We corroborated source intelligence about a buildup at the location in question, and that was and remains our only possible lead. The ground team has since denied that any hostages are present, and we expect it will remain a dry hole.”
Bailey responded, “Well my people are awaiting the arrival of our SIGINT birds, but that won’t be until tomorrow. Until then, we’re trying to run down facts from a few hundred intelligence reports.”
Jo Ann set a hand on Duchess’s shoulder, then pointed to herself and tapped her sternum twice. Duchess nodded.
Then Jo Ann said, “Bailey, let’s trade direct lines. If I get any information ahead of the curve, I’ll keep you linked in. I hope,” she added, “that will be a two-way exchange.”
15
I stuck my head through the hide site’s narrow entrance, looking and listening for any sign of enemy presence.
After Ian and I spent the past nine hours trapped under a reinforced tarp roof, the sunlight was blinding. Despite the hide site’s hot, stagnant air, at least there was shade—the forest floor was blazing hot, though the cries of birds in the trees overhead provided some assurance that there was no imminent danger.
Nonetheless, Boko Haram owned this entire forest and could appear anywhere at any time. And while my team were no strangers to operating behind enemy lines, doing so in the service of our primary mission—assassinating low-level terrorist leaders before they became too powerful and difficult to find—was one thing. Being thrown off course to operate far outside our realm of expertise, as with the current reconnaissance mission, felt altogether more dangerous. If we died now, it would be in the act of being the eyes and ears for a dedicated hostage rescue force, and even that to save members of a swollen US corporation.