Al-'Aqran

By John Michael Hurt

Book Description:

In 2001, Alex Trask a covert field agent for the CIA is in Egypt researching the financing of a dangerous terrorist cell. When things go horribly wrong, he is forced to face what he believes is personal responsibility for a tragic event that both changes the world and alters his life. Years later, still haunted by his failure and suffering from shock and loss, he leaves the Agency and chooses to move from the hectic life of Washington to the Caribbean to pursue the quiet life he believes can help him heal at last. This is not to be, and forces beyond his control once again draw him into a world where he struggles to make sense of both his own grief and a threat that challenges the world he knows. Will he be able to act to stop the crisis, or is the whole horrible event he believes he faces only an invention of a troubled mind seeking justification at last? The story draws him from the Caribbean to Britain and back to his old haunts to try to redeem himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462824823

John Michael Hurt

Author’s Cover Biography: John Michael Hurt has traveled widely as an international marketing coordinator, electronics system consultant and musician. He now lives in Tennessee where he works as a teacher, musician and martial arts instructor. He has published short stories and poetry in several periodicals. He edited and wrote comments for the autobiography of renowned martial arts master Tatsuo Suzuki. This is his first novel.

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Al-’Aqran

John Michael Hurt

Copyright © 2008 by John Michael Hurt.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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Contents

Introduction

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

 Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife Rosalynn, and my family, who seem to see things in me that I don’t that make it possible to carry on. I want to thank my old friends from my time in the Cayman Islands, the real Jim, Penny and Peter. I am also exceedingly grateful for my sources in the Central Intelligence Agency and for the help of Jim Currie of the United States Army War College for their indispensable help with details about weapons and protocol that otherwise would have been impossible to get.

Please note that the following is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.

Introduction

I began this story in 1996. Unfortunately, as I wrote, the events I was describing began to come true, and I got cold feet and shelved it. The events of September 11, 2001, the national concerns over torture at Abu Ghraib, and my concern over the penetrability of America’s borders have motivated me to complete this work. I have had to modify events in the story several times because bits and pieces of it happened and I had to change minor bits to make the events of the book fit what was going on in the real world, so it would be believable

In many ways, this novel is not politically correct. For this reason, some editors who otherwise liked the work would not take it. In the end, I realized I had to publish it or take the chance of ending up like my own protagonist, Alex Trask.

Prologue

At first there was nothing. And then Time gave birth to two sons called Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Ahura Mazda in the rapture of his creation seized the power of light and good, and he became its god. But his brother Angra Mainyu saw this and became jealous of Ahura Mazda, so he created a realm of darkness and anger and made himself a god as well. The two brothers will struggle until the end of the world when, in a final battle, one or the other must conquer. This struggle then created the shape of our world—a land of shadows, the crossing of light and darkness—and the lives of all beings would be the ground on which the war would be fought.

This is the creation story of the Zoroastrian religion, whose beliefs would inform the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

1

Ticket to Paradise

Grand Cayman Island, British West Indies, sits fifty miles south of the coast of Cuba.

On this night, a powerful storm pounded the west side of the island. One boat, a yacht, lay heeled over and jerked against her anchor, beaten by the fierce gale and pounding seas. She was a sixty-foot boat and her two masts threatened to roll her over and founder her. Her anchor was dragging in the soft bottom as she crept toward a lee shore of brittle ironstone. Two drenched and exhausted men, both darkly tanned and with short beards, struggled to stand on her deck, clinging with cramping hands to the safety lines.

What do we do now? one of them screamed through the terrifying racket of the wind and sea. He shook his head and used his hand to keep the water from his eyes so that he could see. The water struck horizontally now, almost a solid sheet of ocean whipping out of the northwest. He had to keep his mouth open to breathe.

Nothing! It’s too late now! the other man howled back. We have to leave the boat. If it breaks up or gets washed farther out, we will be drowned out here. We have to try to make it to shore before the storm gets any worse.

No! No! We can’t. the other cried. There is too much at stake! We would both be dead men. We can’t leave it on the boat. We have to think of something.

We will be dead men if we stay here! There is no time! We have a chance if we can make it to shore. The sea will take us in. We can salvage her later, and get it back. No one will find it. His fear showed in his eyes. He shoved Ahmad away from him and began pulling the straps tighter on his life jacket. You die out here if you want to. I’m going to take my chances getting in.

Wait! Ahmad cried hopelessly as the other flung himself from the heaving deck into the sea and began stroking for the shore, pushed on by the driving wind and waves. He was quickly lost from view in the froth of the wind and sea.

Ahmad, desperate and deserted, crawled along the plunging deck through the surges threatening to wash him overboard. He grabbed the railing and pulled himself up to a standing position. There was nothing he could do by himself. Maybe they could recover the boat after the storm. He fumbled for the straps on his own life jacket. The yacht heeled over hard again. As he bent to gather his courage and to get a breath through the sea breaking over his head, there was a sharp crack and a cable snapped free from the mast and hit him in the back, knocking him into the crashing water. For a moment he was stunned, then he was choking and struggling for shore. The last thing he remembered was being slammed into the rough, sandy bottom, and the jagged ironshore cutting his feet as he dragged himself bleeding and gagging up the beach out of the surf. Ignoring the sharp whipping leaves of the palmettos, he collapsed behind a low wall, sheltered from the wind. Through the driving rain he saw the shadow that must be Tariq lying not far away, then he was unconscious.

The wind passed through all four quarters and the morning dawned clear and bright. As the storm increased, the boat drug her anchor, but instead of pulling her out and foundering her, the fickle ocean only pushed her up onto the shallow sandy bottom and grounded her on her starboard beam with the white of her hull facing the sea. That was where the coast guard cutter spotted and boarded her. Finding no one, they called the police to search the beach for survivors. They took the two men to the hospital, but by afternoon they were transferred to the jail.

Evening was angling the orange sunlight into the Alexandria townhouse when Alex unlocked the door. He walked in and turning locked it again behind him. Standing in the hallway, he paused automatically to listen. There were no sounds—but there were spaces where sounds had been. Missing laughter, a keyboard that was not rattling in a bedroom, no dropped coat hanger, no sound of telephone conversation in the other room.

These are the sounds ghosts make, he thought. Not sounds that shouldn’t be there, but sounds that should be there and aren’t. The distant traffic in the street amplified the silence. Throwing his workout bag in the corner, he fumbled for the light switch. Sometimes these days Alex hated to be here. He felt like that now. It was a feeling of always anticipating something, like there was someone in the next room about to speak, a shoe about to drop, but he knew there was no one there now.

Alex pitched himself down in a battered old recliner chair and turned on the television with the remote that lay on its arm, but turned it off again before the picture even came on. He got up and walked to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked down into the twilit street. A streetlight popped on as though it had been waiting for him, joining the others in that pink-orange glow that hovered like an aura over Alexandria. He went into the kitchen to get himself a beer and saw the light flashing on the old crummy answering machine he had refused to replace for years. As always, he thought about getting a new one. There were some old messages on it that needed to be erased. It still had one from Ana asking him where he was, and why he hadn’t picked her up from a meeting on K Street. He punched the button and the machine jerked into life. The noise was strangely out of place in the quiet house—it filled the room and echoed down the hall. The voice had a pleased, almost smug tone to it.

We found you a boat! the voice proclaimed proudly in the answering machine’s metallic rasp. The voice was Jim’s. She’s in damn good shape. Sixty-foot motor sailer, custom built. Hundred and sixty-five horse Perkins diesel. Taken into custody by the authorities last week from some guys who had stashed about a ton of dope in her. They got foundered in a storm. Sorry, but they took all that out. A reserved chuckle as Jim laughed at his own joke and Alex smiled at that. "We’ve got ’em in jail at George Town awaiting trial—they won’t talk to anybody—but you know the seizure and forfeit laws down here. She was automatically forfeit. Seriously man, she comes up for sale next week, but you’ll have to outbid everybody. I expect you’ll need to come up with $180,000 Caymanian. Sorry, but you know you can’t bribe anybody down here buddy, at least I can’t. I think she’s just what you’re looking for, but you better hurry ’cause she won’t last and that’s for sure. Give me a call, and let me know when you’re headed down. Adios, amigo."

Alex punched the button to turn it off and plopped down on the sofa. By the time he had stopped staring blankly out of the window and picked up the phone, the busy streets of Alexandria were lit only by the decorative streetlamps and shop windows. The next morning, he began packing.

Alex sat within the dark oak walls of a booth at Clyde’s in Chevy Chase, just outside D.C. surrounded by flags, crewing paraphernalia and brass and mirrors. Across from him sat a big, stout man wearing what was probably the only bolo tie in the Washington, D.C. area. Tal was a Texan. He liked for everyone to know it, so he tended to wear a Stetson and clothes with a western twist. Boots all the time. In the agency, he pulled a lot of weight. He had been Alex’s boss for a long time, but had never been Alex’s friend. There was always a sense that beneath the gruff good old boy there was a complex machine operating that filtered everything and everyone into categories of useful / liability / threat. Ana had despised him. Ana had been right about people most of the time. Alex slid down another oyster and took a pull from the ale at his right hand. He gazed at his own face in the mirror behind the bar and automatically scanned the room behind him, an action born of habit and instinct.

Damn, Alex. As bad as we need Arabic speakers now, what with the war and now Iran, I hate for you to go off like this. They say they’re gonna put more assets back on the ground. Hell, they might put you back in the field.

Alex thought about the mess the department was in, the infighting, the changes of leadership, the new director’s promises of reform, the struggles with the justice department, the scrutiny of the senate, the bumbling of the administration.

No, I’m really gone this time. he said. The look on his face affirmed it.

Weyull, you know what they say. Kremer cackled in his slightly annoying Texas accent, You never really quit. What’chu gonna do now? Any idear?

Yeah, well, that old saw’s wrong this time. I’m going to go to the islands. Maybe start a little charter company or something. I’ve got friends down there. I’ve got some compensation coming from the agency. Anyway, I’ve gotta get away from this shit. This town, Jeez. He shook his head. Do you even remember what it’s like in the real world, Tal, I mean away from all this crap?

Kremer chuckled and played with his drink coaster. He looked up with a smile, but the expression in the steel gray eyes didn’t match. There ain’t no real world, buddy. Just the one you make. You oughtta know that by now.

Yeah, well unless you’ve got a better idea, I’m going to go make another one somewhere else.

Naw, I didn’t mean nothin’, Kremer looked into his beer to read the future and gave one quiet chuckle. "Be pullin’ out here sometime soon myself, I guess. Your idear sounds about as good as any I’ve had lately for sure."

Alex rehearsed in his mind all the reasons for his move, looking for the big mistake. "You don’t quit the agency, the agency quits you." He had heard it a hundred times. Beat them to the punch. He knew it was coming. Cairo had been too much for him, for them. He was compromised and if what had happened there ever got out, if the whole affair ever got publicized, a lot of people in high places would take heat. After Cairo, he had been working at a desk for years being quietly buried alive, and that didn’t make it. He was only reminded of Ana by being there, and the job made him feel useless somehow. Almost all of his work now was just translation. Calls from some unimportant Iraqi politician to his girlfriend. Conversations of no more than wishful thinking between alleged militia members. So, it was time to jump ship. Kremer had fussed a little at first about all the money we got invested in you as though it were mandatory and scripted, but he didn’t try to con or bully Alex into staying. Alex felt that Kremer was letting him go a little too easily, and that made him feel resentful and apprehensive. Maybe despite what Tal had said, he saw that it was time. Alex had done all the paperwork and the debriefing. This was his exit interview.

Well, I’ve gotta to be going, Alex said and rose from the table. He looked down at Tal and he didn’t know if he liked what he caught in those eyes for a second. Something hidden. Yeah, no question, I’ve been here too long, he thought.

Yeah bub, well, you stay in touch, he said with that big Texas grin that Alex often found transparently insincere.

As though the CIA might not be able to find me, the thought made him laugh to himself. They shook hands, and Alex left the cool of the restaurant, squinting into the heat of the early Washington summer and the crowds and noise of Wisconsin Circle. But they were right about one thing, Alex frowned as he walked along, The work never really left you. It had cost him too much, too many lives, in a very real way it had cost him his own. One more time he threw up the mental walls that he used to shut out memories, pushed them back down into the box he had made for them so he could lock them away again for a while. He moved through the heat and the upscale Washington lunch crowd, and suddenly he felt as much a stranger as if