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He stepped forward and slammed his fist into the back of the trailing man’s head, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. The other turned toward the sound, but Rapp twisted the assault rifle from his grip and arced the butt toward his head. He only needed one of them alive for interrogation. Two would just double the chances of a problem.
“No!”
Laleh’s shout was accompanied by her throwing herself in front of the man. Rapp barely avoided caving in the back of her head, redirecting the weapon’s trajectory at the last second.
He flipped it around and slid a finger through the trigger guard before lighting the kerosene lamp. “Do you know them?”
When she didn’t answer, he raised the rifle butt to his shoulder, taking aim at the head of the man behind her.
“Stop!” Laleh said immediately. “They’re my bothers.”
She moved to the unconscious one, rolling him on his back and cradling his head in her lap. Rapp kept the AK trained on the other.
“What are they doing here?”
The man in his sights answered in Arabic. “Coming to save our sister and kill a godless ISIS pig.”
“What did he say?” Rapp said, deciding to keep playing dumb on the language front.
“That they weren’t going to harm you. That they just came to take me home.”
In a lifetime of being lied to, that may have been the least credible one he’d ever heard. Setting aside for a moment the unvarnished hate in the man’s voice, he was rocking from side to side, apparently trying to decide whether running straight into automatic fire was worth the possibility of getting his hands around Rapp’s neck.
“Are they part of the resistance to ISIS?”
“What resistance?” she responded. “They are devout Muslims who welcome the coming caliphate. They were just protecting our family’s honor.”
Rapp tightened the butt on his shoulder and centered the man’s face in his sights. “I’m going to count to three, Laleh. Either you start telling me the truth or you’re going to spend the rest of the night scrubbing your brother’s brains off the wall.”
“Please!” she said, the panic rising in her voice. “They fought when ISIS first came, but they’re doing nothing now. They’re in hiding. We’ve lost. You’ve taken everything from us.”
Rapp lowered the weapon to his hip but kept the barrel lined up on the man. “Whether your brothers are part of it or not, is there an active resistance?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Tell this animal nothing!” the man said in Arabic. She responded in the same language. “I’m not telling him anything he can’t see with his own eyes, Mohammed. You are no threat to him and his army.”
She switched back to English. “My brothers and the men loyal to him talk. But that’s all they do. Talk.”
It was likely true. The combined forces of the entire world weren’t sure how to fight ISIS. A small group of untrained men huddled in a basement weren’t going to be able to do much more than get themselves killed. With the right mission and the right leadership, though, a compact, inexperienced force might be able to make a difference.
“I’m an American agent tracking nuclear material stolen from Pakistan,” Rapp said, deciding that there was no more time for caution. “I believe that ISIS is going to use that material in an attack and that the attack is being run out of Al-Shirqat.”
The man in front of him clearly understood and looked at Laleh. She shook her head slowly and spoke in Arabic. “I don’t know, Mohammed. He saved me from being burned. And I can tell you that he hasn’t touched me.”
“He’s lying,” her brother responded. “We know all about Eric Jesem. About the things he’s done. He’s not an American agent. Even CIA men have lines they don’t cross.”
“My brother doesn’t believe you’re an American agent,” she said.
“You mean he doesn’t believe that Eric Jesem is an American agent.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What do you know about him? About Jesem?”
This time her brother answered directly. His English wasn’t as good as Laleh’s but it was easily understandable.
“We know that he’s a butcher of women and children,” he said, his eyes scanning the room.
