Veiled by Choice (Radical Book 3) Read online

  A battle that would cost most of Mosul’s imprisoned civilians their lives, including, most likely, his sister. Kaleb’s every muscle contracted. He wasn’t leaving for the Peshmerga’s remote training camp to wait for the news that his sister had died.

  A female soldier stuck her head inside the garage door. Fair hair hung down her back in a braid, but she had the look of an Iraqi. She met Ali’s gaze and said something in Arabic.

  Turning, Ali looked right into Kaleb’s eyes and spoke through the translator. “I expect you to board that Jeep to the training camp before sunset. Otherwise, you can return to America.”

  The soldiers behind Ali dispersed, taking their dehydrated bodies back into the perspiration-inducing heat in some fanatic attempt to contract heatstroke.

  Kaleb glanced to Joe, who seemed to be with the Peshmerga on the letting his sister die bandwagon.

  The female soldier walked farther into the garage and took a bottle off the pallet of plastic water bottles.

  Kaleb made a frustrated gesture toward the woman. “I thought you said no one was drinking because it’s Ramadan.”

  “Rosna’s Yazidi, not Muslim. Don’t you see the patch of the Sun Ladies on her uniform?” Joe nodded toward the woman as he sat back at the paper-littered desk.

  Uh, no, he was more worried about his sister being locked in a death-trap with a pedophile. If Joe and the Peshmerga wouldn’t help him, how was he going to save Ava?

  The Yazidi girl picked up a second water bottle. Her hand met Ali’s as she passed it to him. A tiny flicker of something passed between them as their fingers brushed. She smiled at the Peshmerga commander.

  Ali made a guttural noise and tore off the plastic water bottle cap. He drained it dry.

  “He’s Yazidi too now?” Kaleb glanced to Joe who’d started signing papers as matter-of-factly as if Ava wasn’t currently under the same roof as a pedophile. A pedophile!

  “No, Christian.” Joe pressed the power button on his laptop. “Ali was baptized a couple weeks ago.”

  Great, had Joe found someone else to proselytize?

  Ring. A buzzing noise penetrated the duralite of Kaleb’s backpack. He yanked down the zipper. His iPad lit up. Mom’s number appeared on the Wi-Fi-powered app. He hit Accept. He needed to ask her to pick up his waterlogged belongings. How had that flooding even happened?

  “Kaleb! That awful man just called. He said Ava was dead to me and I would never speak to her again.” Mom bawled.

  “Mom…” Kaleb’s voice died away.

  “I’m going to Aunt Hannah’s house. Please don’t call me until Ava’s free. I’m one step away from being admitted to a mental hospital. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t even get out of bed.” Choking sobs sounded from half a world away, along with the noise of Mom’s tears splattering against the receiver.

  Kaleb ran his dry tongue across his upper lip.

  “How long until that CIA friend of yours can get her out?”

  “I’ll get her out, Mom. You go rest. I promise I’ll get Ava out.” Kaleb lowered the iPad and stared out the half-open garage door toward the horizon. To the south, a haze of smoke rose over Mosul where his sister was imprisoned. He clicked End Call.

  Shoving his iPad back into his backpack, he swung the strap over his shoulder. There was only one thing for it. Find a non-CIA-monitored Wi-Fi signal in town and join ISIS.

  Once he’d joined ISIS and been ushered inside Mosul, he’d find his sister and get her out. Discovering an ISIS recruiter online must be easy enough since his teenage sister, who couldn’t even figure out walking directions to her school and back, had done it.

  CHAPTER 6

  Kaleb’s iPad beeped. Three hours into scouring pro-ISIS websites, he’d found a live recruiter. The smell of coffee beans filled the café, rising over metal tables, red-checked tablecloths, and a crowd of men who never stopped chattering. Outside the glass windows, the long rays of sunset had just begun to paint the sky.

  Evening hadn’t even arrived yet, along with the promise of that annoying Ali and his Peshmerga minions hauling him away to the Sinjar mountains, and already he’d found a live recruiter. ####, he was good at joining ISIS.

  A chatbox blinked on his iPad screen. The recruiter’s typed words popped up. Let the evil West die in their rage.

  Terrific. I’ll come join you and help you do that. Kaleb typed rapidly.

  Bismillah, are you a believer, my brother?

  His FB messenger icon flashed to the front of his screen, along with a woman’s avatar. You dumped me. Why are you messaging me?

  Cassie. Perfect. He’d messaged her hours ago and he needed to get his business with her finished before he entered Mosul. Any chance you could pick up my waterlogged belongings from my apartment’s leasing office, and get my truck from the mechanic, and maybe mail my rent check? He couldn’t ask Mom to do it with her nearing a nervous breakdown. He should have Cassie buy some fans too to dry out all his stuff.

  Cassie’s avatar blinked. Two months in, I say, “let’s be exclusive,” and you say, “I don’t do commitment.” Now you want me to do your entire #### laundry list of chores?

  I’m overseas. It’s really important. Cassie—

  The recruiter’s chatbox popped up again, asking theological questions.

  Kaleb typed furiously. Allah=supreme being. Muhammad=great guy. Let’s go kill some unbelievers! When can I come to Mosul? That should cover it. He flipped back to his FB messenger app.

  The “…” symbol showed, then Cassie’s message popped on the screen. Fine, I’ll do it because I’m a great person, but you aren’t.

  Thanks, Cass! You’re the best. Kaleb switched to the ISIS recruiter’s chatbox. The guy was still typing. Could the dude take a Mavis Beacon course or something and hurry up already? His grandmother typed faster than this terrorist.

  With a ding, the FB messenger app popped to the front. I thought you were ready to settle down, get the little house in suburbia and kids some day.

  I’m never having kids. He hadn’t lied to Cassie. She’d just somehow twisted “let’s chill and watch Netflix” into “of course, I’d love to be your Prince Charming.”

  You’re a moron.

  Sorry? Was that what Cassie wanted to hear in order to agree to save all his belongings and go pick up his truck? He had at least twenty thousand dollars invested in all his apartment’s furnishings, not to mention that his social security card and birth certificate were in there too.

  The recruiter’s chatbox popped to the front of the screen. A blue hyperlink glowed.

  Kaleb clicked it. A real-time beheading started playing on the screen, complete with Arabic chants and sword waving. He’d dissected cadavers before, so it’s not like he was going to have nightmares over one grainy video clip.

  Shoving his chair back in this ear-piercingly loud coffee shop, Kaleb leaned over the iPad screen to type.

  A man wrenched the iPad from his hands.

  “You’re under arrest, traitor!” The screamed words half-ruptured his eardrums as a horde of Peshmerga soldiers ran in front of him. That #### commander, Ali something, ripped the iPad from his hands, breaking the $1000-dollar screen of his brand-new electronic device.

  “Hey!” Kaleb jumped to his feet, jiggling the particle board table. “That’s my iPad.”

  “You tried to join ISIS.” The translator glared at him.

  “No, I didn’t, idiot.” Kaleb grabbed for his iPad. The hulk of Ali’s massive body intervened. The Peshmerga soldiers swung their AK-47s toward him.

  Ali and the translator exchanged words in Arabic as Ali scrolled through the now-cracked screen of Kaleb’s iPad. The translator puffed out his narrow chest. “Then, why does your iPad say, ‘I will come join you’?”

  “I don’t actually support ISIS. I’m just pretending to support them so I can get inside Mosul and save my little sister.” Kaleb plopped down on the table and seized his coffee mug, since obviously he wasn’t getting his iPad back any time soon. The
coffee had a weird scent, like someone had grabbed a can from the exotic spice section and violated his coffee mug with it.

  The translator drew his narrow nose together. “Tell that to the judge.”

  The soldiers threw Kaleb off balance. Hot liquid burned across his pants. The Peshmerga men yanked his hands behind his back and shoved handcuffs around his wrists.

  “Hey, you’re cutting off circulation!” Kaleb yelled. “My ulnar artery is losing blood flow.”

  Rather than causing the morons to loosen the handcuffs, his words got a dozen assault rifles pointed at his heart.

  The translator fingered his rifle’s trigger. “Or should we execute him now? Terrorists like you killed my father in cold blood.”

  “ISIS cut my sister’s unborn baby from her womb,” another man said in broken English.

  Ali raised his hand and the soldiers turned to him.

  With a nod, the translator looked at Kaleb. “The commander says to content ourselves with taking you to jail. The judge will sign the execution order after he determines what intelligence you have given Islamic State. We will notify our forward units. Even now, ISIS may be preparing an attack based on your information.”

  “I didn’t give ISIS any information.” Kaleb jerked his hand up. The handcuff yanked his hand to a halt, the metal links digging into his wrist and spine.

  None of the men clasping rifles and breathing down his neck seemed to have the slightest inclination to believe him. This was absurd!

  “Hey, you.” Kaleb struck the closest soldier with his elbow as the cuffs bit into his flesh. “I’m not a terrorist.”

  The man didn’t even speak English. Kaleb groaned.

  That wretched Ali gave the order and another Peshmerga soldier rammed him with the butt of an AK-47.

  As the soldiers marched Kaleb outside, the translator leaned closer and hissed into his ear. “I’ve lost three dozen comrades to ISIS this month alone. If the intelligence you gave ISIS causes another one of my brothers to die, I’ll enter that jail and kill you myself.”

  A numb feeling spread through Kaleb’s hands, and it wasn’t just the effect of his ulnar artery vainly attempting to squeeze blood through his strangled wrists.

  Five Days Later

  Decaying human feces mounded around Kaleb. Rats played amidst garbage. His chained feet stretched out in front of him as he sat in a dark cell in an Iraqi jail.

  Kaleb yanked against the chain. The fetter dug into his skin. About four days and twenty-three hours ago, he’d moved from stressing about when the Iraqi Kurds would release him to stressing about if they were going to release him.

  Had the Peshmerga really meant that about beheading him? He swore every curse known to man. Sweat trickled down his face, wasting what little hydration he had left in his body because, oh yeah, this jail celebrated Ramadan.

  A shadow fell across the painted bars. A key grated in the lock.

  “If I die of heatstroke, the American embassy is going to sue you!” Kaleb yelled.

  The door swung open. “You’re an idiot, you know that?” Joe stood, feet spread apart, hands in his pockets, beside an Iraqi jailer.

  Breath slid from Kaleb’s lungs. “Can you get me out of here? I have to save my sister.” He jumped up from the filthy concrete. The fetter caught his leg. He stumbled. His hand splattered into a gooey substance as he narrowly avoided face-planting in a pile of dung.

  “You tried to join ISIS.” Joe looked down at him.

  “To save my sister. I’m not going to let Ava die!” One, now excrement-covered, hand on the wall, Kaleb hauled himself to a stand.

  “It’s not some game, you know.” Joe gestured to the prison bars and row after row of concrete jail cells. “Every guard here has lost a family member to ISIS in the last three years.”

  Bending, Joe inserted a key in the lock. The chains fell from Kaleb’s ankles. With a groan, Kaleb wiped the disease-infested slime off his hand onto his sweat-soaked jeans. “Am I free to go?”

  “As long as you stay away from that recruiting site.” Joe motioned him out of the cell. “You would have been beheaded five days ago, but Ali halted the order until I got back.”

  A sharp feeling slid across Kaleb’s neck as his throat constricted. His scalene muscles contracted, keeping his head very securely attached to his shoulders. He was definitely buying Joe and his wife some kind of lavish baby gift as a thank you once he got back to America. Assuming, of course, he still had a job left in America. Had Cassie thought to purchase some fans to dry his water-damaged belongings?

  “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours ignoring all my actual work to petition every level of Iraqi government to release you. I only barely succeeded. Iraq’s patience with those joining ISIS is worn very thin. Now that America has withdrawn from Iraq, they make the decisions, not the U.S.”

  “You don’t understand.” Kaleb gestured across the long hallway of jail cells and reeking stench. “I have to save my sister. I have to go back to that recruiting site.” As bad as these last five days had been for him, he at least wasn’t getting raped by a pedophile. If he abandoned Ava, she’d die in Mosul.

  Joe sighed. Turning, he motioned Kaleb toward an office where a heavy metal desk sat illuminated by fluorescent lights. The metal chair legs jiggled against the concrete floor as Joe took a seat. “You’ll never get into ISIS through the recruiting sites.”

  “My sister did.” Kaleb pushed hard on the hand sanitizer dispenser and started killing 99.9% of the infestation of germs on his hands.

  In his mind, Ava was still wearing Minion T-shirts and shrieking as they went down Elitch’s Side Winder roller coaster. He didn’t even dare think what she actually looked like now. He’d get her back to America and she could get the therapy she needed. Soon, this would all be a bad dream. He just had to get the ISIS recruiter to invite him into Mosul.

  “It takes months to gain ISIS’s trust. A man on my team has been conversing with Mosul’s head recruiter since last year. The recruiter just invited our guy to enter Mosul as a recruit. If you sign this paperwork, you can take his place and go in.”

  Oh. Well, that worked. Kaleb brushed filthy straw off his jeans, but the stench of excrement still clung to him.

  “I have to warn you though, whoever goes inside Mosul will die. That’s why we haven’t sent one of our guys in.”

  Kaleb shrugged. “I’m getting my sister out. Where’s my M16?”

  “Not possibly die.” Joe looked over a stack of manila folders. “Not 50/50 on dying. Our special forces take those odds all the time. If you choose to take this lead and enter Mosul as an ISIS recruit, you will die, hundred percent certainty, a suicide mission.”

  “I’m taking the opportunity. Thanks, Joe. You’re a good friend.” Kaleb reached for the papers Joe held. Just hang on a couple more days, Ava. I’m coming.

  “If I was a good friend, I wouldn’t give you this opportunity. But I knew you’d say that, because I’d do the same thing.” Joe laid the paper in Kaleb’s hand. “Sign the top one.”

  Kaleb grabbed a pen out of a ceramic Army mug.

  “The second paper contains the contact information for the ISIS recruiter who one of our operatives has been leading on for a year now. His name is Omar. Last week, he asked our operative to cross the Tigris and meet him inside Mosul, but the risk was deemed too high.”

  Kaleb nodded. He started the first letter of his name on the blank paper. The ink gave out, pen dead. “I’m taking this operative’s place. Got it. Do I need a fake name?”

  Joe shook his head. “Our operative never gave the recruiter his legal name or much personal information. Are you a strong swimmer?”

  Kaleb blinked. “Yeah. I did the triathlon competition with our unit. Don’t you remember when we got second place at Ft. Bragg?” Oh wait, it had been a Sunday and Joe, like some overly zealous religious nut, had gone to church instead of competing with the rest of the unit.

  “Good. Because all the bridges have been destroye
d and the Tigris is in flood stage. You may very well die before you even get to your sister.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kaleb grabbed another pen.

  “Your mission is to call in airstrikes where ISIS forces are most congregated and the civilian death toll will be lowest.”

  “If I take a cell, it will be ruined in the river and then confiscated by ISIS.” This pen had dried up too. ####. Kaleb reached for a third pen from the mug.

  “You will have to contact me on an ISIS phone.”

  “Is that secure?” Kaleb tossed another useless pen in the gray trash receptacle. It crinkled the plastic trash liner, slam dunk.

  “There will be a daily password. Our team has decided that each day you will send me the name of one of the privates in our old infantry unit to let me know that your line is still safe to contact.”

  “There were only seventeen men in our unit. What do I use as a password on the eighteenth day?” Kaleb clicked the top button of another pen.

  “No one thinks you’ll make it eighteen days. Coalition forces will recapture all of Mosul soon and the civilian death toll will be high. If ISIS doesn’t catch you spying, you’ll die in an airstrike, or fall ill from the bad water and limited food supplies, or catch a bullet in the crossfire.”

  Fear churned through Kaleb’s gut, but he didn’t have time to focus on that right now. “All right then.” He placed his pen on the dotted signature line and scanned his gaze down the document. It outlined giving him immunity for joining ISIS. “I want Ava to have immunity too. I’m not getting her out just to have her rot in an Iraqi jail.”

  “It’s right here.” Joe pressed his finger against the last paragraph. “Also, I have a call to return from the FBI about you. Apparently, you interpreted ‘don’t leave town’ to mean ‘catch a flight halfway around the world?’ ” He raised one dirty-blond eyebrow in a less than impressed expression.

  Kaleb shrugged. He was working for the CIA now; that made it the CIA’s job to patch up things with the FBI. “Why does it say ‘all my female relatives’ will also be given immunity for joining ISIS? It should say Ava Schlensky. My mom didn’t join a terrorist organization.”