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  “But . . . ?”

  “But we’ve found no trace of him. No sightings. No signals. Just rumors.”

  “Still, it makes sense that he’d be there.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Trotsky said. “On the plus side, Raqqa has certainly been the capital of the caliphate for the past several years. We’re picking up lots of SIGINT out of there. The Americans keep finding and killing top ISIS commanders there in one drone strike after another. It’s practically become the drone strike capital of the world, there are so many high-value targets coming in and out. On the minus side, why would Khalif hunker down in a place so carefully watched? It’s not his style. And for all his talk of martyrdom, we don’t see him volunteering to lay down his own life for his team or his cause.”

  “Then why do all the other HVTs keep going there?” I asked.

  “Good question,” Trotsky said.

  “And one we don’t have the answer to,” Yael added.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’ve got no assets on the ground,” said Gingy, the guy from Israel’s Unit 8200. “We’ve got no spies, no moles, no human assets inside Raqqa to explain what’s going on. We’re trying to monitor calls and e-mails and movements of thousands of jihadists all across Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza, Iran, you name it. But our systems are overwhelmed. We don’t have the manpower to sift through everything we have.”

  “What about the NSA?” I asked. “Aren’t they vacuuming up everything? Can’t they help?”

  Yael took that one. “I’m sure they are, but they’re not exactly sharing what they have with us. And frankly, over the last two months, retaking Mosul and northern Iraq has been the top priority in Fort Meade and Langley and certainly at the White House.”

  “Not finding Abu Khalif,” I said.

  “No,” Yael said.

  “Could that mean Khalif might actually be in Raqqa, but you just haven’t isolated him yet?”

  “No, he’s not there.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “It doesn’t fit his profile.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The man just launched a devastating series of attacks on Washington and seven other American cities and towns,” she noted. “The American administration’s position notwithstanding, these were not the last gasps of a dying movement. This was a brilliantly designed and almost flawlessly executed series of terrorist operations with precision timing and deadly effect. You can’t put a plan like that together in a city that is being watched 24-7 by the Americans, the Russians, the Iranians, us, and the bulk of the Sunni Arab world, not to mention one that’s being bombed every few days. Everyone knows Raqqa is the ISIS capital, which means Khalif isn’t there. He may not be far away, but he’s not in Raqqa.”

  “Then where?” I asked again.

  “We have no idea.”

  My first reaction was raw anger. This was the best this elite Mossad team could come up with? He’s not in Mosul. He’s not in Raqqa. Beyond that, we’re clueless. Every armchair analyst in the world writing a blog in his underwear could come up with that. With a two-month head start, spy satellites, drones, thousands of spies and analysts on their payroll, and billions of dollars a year in U.S. military aid, how in the world could one of the premier intelligence forces in the world not be closer to catching the man who had killed their prime minister?

  I wanted to scream at someone—all of them.

  I’d left my brother and his family for this?

  I knew I had to calm down, take a deep breath. Of course they didn’t know. Not yet. That’s why I’d come. That’s why I wanted to help.

  But these weren’t kids. These were highly trained, highly experienced combat intelligence veterans. They’d hunted down a whole lot of bad guys in their day. They’d also been the team that had turned the eyes of the Mossad—and thus the Americans and the Jordanians—to Alqosh in the first place. These were good people—sharp, clever, outside-the-box thinkers. So why weren’t they further down the road?

  The answer—once I’d cooled down enough to accept it—was entirely obvious.

  Their prime minister and nearly his entire protective detail had been killed in Amman two months before, and the entire Israeli security establishment was suffering vertigo. Two weeks after the attack, the head of the Mossad had died of pancreatic cancer, further destabilizing the Israeli intelligence culture. Then came the joint U.S.–Sunni military push into Mosul and across northern Iraq. On top of all this, the new leader of this new unit was a woman who’d nearly been killed in Alqosh. How long was it since she’d been released from the hospital? How long since she’d turned down the new prime minister’s offer and been approved to take this post? Having come on board, hadn’t she needed to be brought up to speed on everything she’d missed while in the hospital and in rehab—mountains of field reports, cable traffic, satellite imagery, telephone intercepts, e-mail intercepts, and text message intercepts, not to mention countless meetings, verbal briefings by each of her new team members, and intense pressure from on high to deliver results?

  All of it took time.

  And then, of course, the White House—as risk averse as any I’d ever seen—was taking out every valuable source with a Hellfire missile before the Israelis could snag ’em and bag ’em.

  No wonder the team was running behind.

  I needed to calm down and cut them some slack—starting with Yael.

  58

  There was a knock on the conference room door.

  Shalit glanced at a security monitor, then pushed a button, electronically unlocking the door. A colonel burst in with breaking news—Abu Khalif had just released a new video, and it was about to be shown on Al Jazeera.

  Yael quickly turned on a bank of monitors behind her. On the largest flat-screen, mounted on the center of the wall, she put a live feed from the Arab news network based in Doha, Qatar. On four smaller screens, hanging by steel mounts from the ceiling, she brought up Israel’s Channel 2, Al Arabiya, CNN, and Sky News. Then she grabbed her chair and moved it to my end of the conference room, setting it down to Shalit’s right. This gave her a clear view of each of the screens. It also put her about five feet away from me.

  Yael turned up the sound on the center screen, and every eye in the room turned to Al Jazeera—except for mine, which I admit lingered perhaps a moment too long on this woman who had all but captured my heart yet was still treating me like a stranger.

  The new video was not yet running. Instead, the network was showing a still photo of Abu Khalif wearing his signature kaffiyeh and flowing white robes while their commentators were discussing what he might say.

  Shalit was riveted on the screen, undoubtedly listening for any tidbits of hard news the anchors might have. But Yael glanced at me quickly, awkwardly, and then looked away. I was dying to talk to her alone, to really know what she was thinking, to know why she was being so hostile. What had I done wrong?

  But then I heard the voice of the man who had murdered my family.

  “My name is Abu Khalif,” he began, looking straight into the camera. “I greet you in the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful, the only ruling judge on the Day of Recompense, the day of coming judgment. Truly all praise belongs to Allah. We praise him, and we eagerly await the day that he sends Imam al-Mahdi, the promised one, the rightly guided one, who will expand the caliphate over the entire globe and send the infidels into the hellfires forever.”

  The emir now went off on an interminably long and nearly incomprehensible rant about some ancient battle that occurred in the seventh century. I tried to focus, but my mind soon wandered back to the day I’d met Abu Khalif in Abu Ghraib, Iraq’s most notorious prison. I’d been hunting for an exclusive, and to my regret, I’d gotten it. Even now, I could still see myself stepping into that barren interrogation room. I could see the face of the man in handcuffs, wearing the orange prison jumpsuit. He had struck me as part religious fanatic, part terrorist mastermind—a serial ki
lling lunatic and by far the most dangerous and disturbing man I’d ever met.

  Back then, Khalif had sported a wild, unkempt black-and-gray beard. Now the beard was neatly trimmed. But those eyes had not changed. They were full of murder. They still haunted me, and I could literally feel the hair on the back of my neck stand erect.

  I forced myself to look away from his eyes, and only then did it strike me that this video wasn’t a wide shot like in Alqosh. This was a tight close-up on Khalif’s face. There was a bookshelf behind him, but it was empty. Apparently he had learned from his past mistakes. The last video had shown Khalif standing in the courtyard of a crumbling mausoleum, and Matt had immediately recognized the location. Then he’d quickly contacted me to let me know Khalif was in the town of Alqosh, on the plains of Nineveh, in the heart of northern Iraq, standing in the ruins of the tomb of Nahum, the ancient Hebrew prophet who had foretold the coming judgment of the wicked Assyrian capital. This time, there was nothing for foreign intelligence analysts to focus on, no clues as to what kind of building he was using or what city or even country he was in.

  Suddenly the emir’s message shifted gears, and I tuned back in.

  “Let all of humanity know the words of the holy Qur’an, that ‘he who deceives shall be faced with his deceit on the Day of Resurrection, when every human being shall be repaid in full for whatever he has done, and none shall be wronged.’ When Imam al-Mahdi comes, when the final judgment comes, every infidel will see the error of his ways. Every infidel will experience the flames of justice. But even now, the infidels have begun to pay for their crimes—in Amman and throughout the kingdom of Jordan; in Washington, D.C.; in Philadelphia and Boston and Chicago and Minneapolis and Dallas and Atlanta; and even in the remotest village in Maine. As of this recording, more than 6,300 criminal American souls have perished at the hands of the jihadists of the caliphate in just the last few weeks. We can praise Allah for his faithfulness.”

  The number jumped out at me. The president had told the nation that the number of deaths was 4,647. Taylor had also said another six thousand Americans had been wounded in the ISIS attacks. Maybe more had succumbed to their injuries. Then again, I wasn’t exactly about to depend on facts and figures provided by Abu Khalif.

  “I tell you today, let all who abide in the caliphate know—let the entire world know—this is only the beginning,” the emir continued. “Soon—very soon—the faithful warriors of jihad, along with all Muslims everywhere, will celebrate the festival of Isra and Mi’raj. This will be a celebration like no other. Together we will celebrate not just the journeys of the Prophet, peace be upon him. No—together we will celebrate the fall of the apostates, the slaughter of the infidels, the fulfillment of the prophecies, and the coming of the end of the age. O Muslims everywhere, glad tidings to you! Raise your heads high, for soon—very soon—you will see what the faithful have longed to see for so many ages. Keep your eyes fixed on Isra and Mi’raj. Remember what the Prophet, peace be upon him, saw on that blessed journey. Remember the night visions. Remember what was revealed in the heavens. It is coming, O Muslims. It is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”

  What was coming? I wondered. What was ISIS planning next?

  “All praise and thanks are due to Allah,” Khalif concluded. “Therefore, rush, O Muslims, rush to do your duty; rush to join our jihad. Time is short. The end is nigh. What will you say on the Day of Judgment? What will the scales of justice reveal? As our brother from Jordan—Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—first told you: the spark of the consuming fire was lit in Iraq. It spread to Syria. Now it has spread to Jordan. And it has spread to America, but more is coming—so much more. This spark has become a raging, uncontrollable fire. And this fire will intensify until it burns all the crusader armies in Dabiq. Let there be no doubt, O Muslims—Rome is falling. The Caliphate is arising. The hope of all the ages is truly coming to pass.”

  59

  “Thoughts?” Shalit demanded when the video had ended.

  Yael muted the TV, and for a moment there was quiet as everyone processed what they had just seen and heard.

  “Clearly another attack is coming,” Trotsky said. “Khalif says a celebration is coming because more infidels are going to be killed.”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Yael said, getting up and walking over to a large whiteboard hanging on the wall in between the maps and photos of ISIS leaders. “Khalif boasted that 6,300 Americans have already died at the hands of the jihadists, but he said, ‘This is only the beginning.’”

  “Plus he said, ‘More is coming—so much more,’” Gingy noted.

  “Right,” Fingers said. “And he said the attacks are becoming a ‘raging, uncontrollable fire.’”

  “So we’re agreed that he’s not just bragging about the attacks in the U.S. but signaling more attacks to come?” Shalit asked the team.

  Everyone nodded.

  Shalit turned to Yael. “Now it’s a question of location. Is ISIS going after the Americans again or heading to Europe—or coming here?”

  Yael said she was going to reserve judgment until she’d had the chance to review the transcript and go over precisely what was said, word for word. But her instinct was that Khalif meant both—more attacks in the States as well as more around the world, specifically in the West.

  “Why do you say that?” Shalit pressed, not indicating she was necessarily wrong but trying to better understand her thinking.

  “Khalif wasn’t clear, and he wasn’t clear for a reason,” Yael replied. “He’s not trying to give away his game plan. He’s trying to dominate the global news cycle. He wants to be larger than life, larger than bin Laden. He wants to be seen as the most important and most powerful Muslim in the world. He sees himself as the leader of the caliphate—not just the Islamic State but the global Islamic empire. He truly believes he is going to take over the entire world. He’s trying to inspire more Muslims to join the caliphate, become jihadists, and bring their expertise and their resources to the team. Where he hits next is important, but I don’t believe that was his central point.”

  “You think this was a recruitment video?” Shalit asked.

  “Not primarily,” she clarified. “Though I’m sure it will function as one. Given all the success ISIS has had in recent days, I expect he’s going to have ten thousand new recruits by the end of the week. But I don’t think that was his main objective.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think Khalif put this video out not to tell his followers where he was going to strike next,” she said. “He put it out to tell them when.”

  “Soon,” I said.

  “Very soon,” Dutch clarified.

  “Yes, yes, but it was more than that,” Yael prompted. “He was clear. He was precise. Did anyone catch it?”

  The room was silent, and then Trotsky spoke up. “He mentioned the festival to celebrate Isra and Mi’raj.”

  “Exactly,” Yael said. “But why? What’s important about this festival?”

  She was circling the room now, trying to get the group energized, thinking, participating. Her entire demeanor had shifted. Her body language was no longer cold, no longer reserved. She was engaged, even passionate. Her eyes had lit up. It was clear she respected the men in this room enormously and loved leading this team.

  “The festival marks Muhammad’s journey to the Al-Aksa Mosque and his supposed visit to heaven,” Trotsky said.

  “Right,” she said. “This is a big deal in the Muslim world—the Night Vision and the Ascension. Where does it come from?”

  “The Qur’an and some of the hadiths,” Fingers said.

  “Good, good—which sura?” she pressed.

  Gingy took that one. “Seventeen. But why does it matter?”

  “Because we’re hunting a man who has a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence,” she insisted. “He memorized the Qur’an before he was nine. This is a man who eats, thinks, and breathes the Qur’an and the hadiths. I’m not saying he’s interpreting it correctly. But he
knows his stuff. Everything he says comes from his religious beliefs, and we’re not going to find him unless we can understand him. We need to outfox him, people. We need to get ahead of him, anticipate where he’s going next.”

  I glanced over at Shalit. He was sitting back in his chair and I detected a slight smile on his face. He, too, was enjoying Yael’s energy, her passion, her commitment to this mission. If Shalit had ever had any doubts about his choice to head up this team, I suspected they were long gone.

  Still, I wasn’t clear where she was going with this. But before I could ask her, she turned to me.

  “Now, Mr. Collins, since you supposedly have so much to offer us,” she said, her demeanor rapidly cooling, “perhaps you would like to enlighten us on the story of the Night Vision and the Ascension and why Abu Khalif might be referencing it?”

  Her voice held an edge once again. She was standing at the other end of the room, under the video monitors. I looked into her eyes. They were hard and unforgiving. She loved this team, but she wasn’t welcoming me onto it. She wasn’t accepting Shalit’s decision to bring me in without consulting her, without giving her the courtesy of a heads-up before springing me on her. Indeed, she was challenging my very qualifications for being in this room at all.

  I looked at her, then at the others in the room. They were waiting for me to answer. I could feel the tension mounting, and I was under no illusion that Shalit was going to step in and bail me out.

  This was my test, and I had about ten seconds to pass it.

  60

  I didn’t claim to have a PhD in Islamic theology, and Yael knew it.

  I certainly didn’t know much about the brand of Islamic eschatology driving the leaders of ISIS, though I’d been scrambling to learn everything I could over the last few months. I’d studied the Qur’an and the hadiths as an undergraduate majoring in political science. And I’d studied them more closely on my assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’d discussed them at length with various Arab government officials, scholars, and even terrorists I had interviewed in the field over the past decade.