The Monroe Decision Read online

  He made his way to the back of the villa and a staircase that led to a basement. In a hallway were four very solid, locked doors, two on each side. From behind the doors, he heard the voices of the children.

  Aaron paced the hallway. I can’t let them out. That would just be chaos and nothing good would come of it for the kids. He decided to leave them and alert the police. But first he had to talk to his handler. He returned to the main floor of the villa and placed the call.

  The phone synched with the handler’s secure landline in Washington.

  “We have a problem.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  MONDAY, JUNE 6TH

  9:28 A.M.

  Warren Patterson, vice president of the United States, and Nigel Stafford, operations manager for the covert arm of the Council for Homeland Defense, had just finished a breakfast of omelets and fried potatoes served to them in Patterson’s office. It was morning and they had been waiting for a status update from Aaron.

  The phone pulsed and Stafford entered the security code and pressed the speaker button. “What do you mean, we have a problem?” asked Stafford.

  He looked across the large, elegant, cherry wood table at Patterson, who shifted his gaze off the network news programs.

  “There are a couple dozen children locked in rooms at the villa where the op went down,” replied Aaron.

  “What?” Stafford tapped his fingers on the table. “Monroe, I need you to clarify. Have the targets been eliminated?”

  “Affirmative. The two identified targets are deceased, plus one other. But there are a boatload of kids in the basement of the villa.”

  Vice President Patterson leaned forward against the table. “Monroe, this is Patterson. Are you telling us there were families in that villa?”

  “No, sir,” replied Aaron. “But there are a couple dozen children locked behind closed doors. I would hazard a guess that they are probably future brides and suicide bombers on their way to the so-called caliphate.”

  Patterson leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

  “Monroe,” Stafford spoke toward the phone, “you need to sanitize and get the hell out of there. You’re supposed to make the scene look like a rival faction of ISIS or al Qaeda did this. The Italians will be pissed if they find out that we went in unilaterally on their turf.” He thought for a moment, then asked, “Have you been seen by any of the children?”

  “Negative. The children are all secure behind closed doors.”

  The vice president leaned forward toward the phone. “This is Patterson again. Monroe, do you have a plan, or do we need to send a cleaning crew?”

  “Sir, I’ll take care of cleaning up the scene,” replied Aaron, “but the only option available for the children is to notify the police.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Aaron,” interjected Stafford, “be very careful. We can’t have this come back and bite us.”

  “Always,” replied Aaron.

  Stafford terminated the call and poured a glass of water from a silver carafe. “Shit! Mr. Vice President, that was absolutely not expected. My source never mentioned anything about children.”

  Patterson nervously rubbed his forehead. “Do you think Monroe will be able to clean this up and get out of there without the Italians tagging this back to us?”

  “Sir, if anybody can pull this off, it is Monroe. He’s the best.” He took a sip of water, then placed the glass back on the table. “He was my senior officer on the SEAL team. We did three tours together, one in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. He saved my ass more times than I can count. He’s smart. He doesn’t miss any detail, and he has the ability to focus on task better than anyone I have ever worked with. Under pressure, he sees things that others don’t. There is nobody that I have more confidence in.” Stafford rubbed his forehead for a moment, then continued, “But just in case, I think we should notify the rest of the Council.” “Agreed.” Patterson tossed his breakfast napkin next to his empty place setting. “This has potential to be a diplomatic nightmare.” He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’ll notify the president and I’ll leave it to you to talk to the secretaries.”

  Patterson left the room and Stafford spent the next thirty minutes back-briefing the remaining members of the Homeland Defense Council, which consisted of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as the secretaries of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TRIESTE, ITALY

  MONDAY, JUNE 6TH

  3:35 P.M.

  Aaron backtracked every movement he made since entering the villa. He was still wearing latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. It was also standard procedure for him to wear a loose, long-sleeve shirt during an operation like this to avoid scraping his skin against something that could leave a DNA sample. However, with temperatures in the mid-seventies, he had perspired some during the long walk and the gunfight. I had to dive to the floor so I probably left traces of perspiration there, he thought. He placed his weapon in his back holster and found the spot where he landed on the floor. He scrubbed the area with a sponge and some cleanser he found under the sink.

  While he was scrubbing the floor, Aaron’s gaze wandered toward the two dead terrorists. The leather satchel that Fadi Asadel had carried over his shoulder was on the floor next to his body. He picked up the satchel and found a Glock G19 compact 9 mm pistol and a brown leather bound notebook. He flipped it open and perused the pages of what looked like a ledger. Many of the numbers looked similar to numbers in English text, but the cursive Arabic of curved lines with dots above and below the characters was unintelligible. This could be a ledger that may contain information that could lead to identification of other terrorists, Aaron thought. This is worth hanging onto. He placed the binder back in the satchel and flung it over his shoulder.

  With his M11 back in his right hand and finger on the trigger, Aaron took one more slow and deliberate walk through the villa. He went back to the room with the computer monitors and used a computer mouse to scroll through the video images to ensure the camera at the front of the house did not capture and save any images of him. Finally, he checked to verify there were no other hidden cameras.

  As he backed out of the room, Aaron took one last glance at the video display from the camera over the front door. He saw a blue Alfa Romeo sedan with the white stencil POLIZIA on the side roll slowly to a stop in front of the villa.

  Someone must have heard the G38 rounds and called the police.

  He watched as two cops walked along the front of the villa. One was a large man with a full head of silver hair. The second was younger, with broad shoulders, short hair, and a moustache.

  When he saw them both approach the front door, Aaron moved quickly and exited the back of the house and ran past the dead body of the woman wearing the hijab. With long strides, he avoided stepping in a large pool of blood. He bounded down a wood stairway lined with pointed green cypress trees and onto a staircase going up toward what appeared to be a small garage. Aaron calmly walked up a brick road to a corner where he had a view of the police as they cased the villa.

  After repeated attempts at the front door, the officers walked toward the fence Aaron had scaled. One of the men leaned over the fence and became animated. He shouted something to his partner and they both drew their weapons. When the younger partner ran to their vehicle and made a call on the police radio, Aaron had seen enough to know the children would soon be discovered. He calmly walked past the Muslim cemetery and Roman amphitheater as the pulsating wail of several more police vehicles sped past him.

  Aaron slowly walked back up the steep hills and returned to the café at the Parco della Rimembranza. There, he sat at a small table under an umbrella as the waiter wearing a white shirt, black vest, and black tie approached.

  “What can I do for you?” asked the waiter in accented English.

  “Peroni, please.”

  The waiter bow
ed his head and turned. A few minutes later he returned with an ice-cold pint of Italy’s best beer.

  It must be. It says so right on the glass, Aaron mused.

  He picked up his smartphone from the table and dialed Sarah.

  “Aaron, where are you?”

  “Well I miss you too, baby,” Aaron replied sarcastically.

  “You’re funny. When will you get here?”

  “I just finished my job,” Aaron replied, “and it’s a couple hours from Trieste to Venice. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Okay. Be safe.”

  “You know I will. See you soon.”

  “I love you, Aaron.”

  “Love you, too.” He terminated the call.

  Aaron finished his pint as he watched a large freighter and a luxury yacht get underway from the piers and head out to the shimmering blue Adriatic. He paid his tab and walked to the tree-lined street at the Parco entrance where he had parked his rented BMW K 1600 GT motorcycle. He retrieved his backpack from the hardened saddle bags, placed the M11 and the leather satchel inside, and started the two-hour ride to Venice.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AEROPORTO MARCO POLO

  VENICE, ITALY

  MONDAY, JUNE 6TH

  6:00 P.M.

  The BMW rode over the E70 tollway like the wheels never touched pavement. The bike was perfectly balanced as the inline six-cylinder engine delivered smooth and powerful acceleration. The central spring struts easily absorbed any road surface imperfections.

  Aaron passed around the grass roundabout at the entrance to Venice’s Marco Polo airport and exited toward the Europcar rental return lot. An attendant wearing a ponytail, white shorts, and a green vest trotted out of the small hub with a clipboard in hand and met Aaron as he dismounted. He took off his helmet and as he turned and handed it to the attendant his gaze dipped to her V-neck blouse.

  She caught him looking and smiled. “Did you enjoy your ride today, Mr. Monroe?”

  “Yes, I did. Very much. Thank you.”

  “Did the BMW perform well?” she asked.

  “Yes, it did. This is a nice motorcycle.”

  “Good. Then I just need to look at the bike for a moment and you will be on your way.” She smiled and flashed her seductive brown eyes.

  Aaron watched her inspect the motorcycle as he removed his backpack from the saddlebags. When she was finished, she handed him the clipboard. As she circled three places on the attached document she indicated, “Please initial here, and here, and sign r-i-i-ight here. Shall we keep this on the credit card that you have registered with us?”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Monroe, and enjoy your flight back to America.”

  * * *

  NetJet had been Sarah’s preferred air-travel mode since she sold a map and directions app that she developed to Google several years earlier. She was a smart businesswoman and had since created and sold several software development businesses. Her rented NetJet was a mid-size Cessna Citation with enough room for five passengers and a two-person flight crew. On this flight, the only passengers were she and Aaron.

  Sarah Nejem was born in London and now held dual citizenships with Great Britain and the United States. She was the daughter of an Egyptian immigrant father and a British mother. In her early thirties, she was very wealthy — several billion wealthy, but it wasn’t always that way. While visiting their father’s home in Cairo when she was just eight years old, her parents and older brother were killed by a suicide bomber. After that, her grandmother struggled financially to raise her in what was then a middle-class neighborhood in the Kensington area of London. When she was accepted for an international scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she moved to the United States. Her grandmother passed away a year later, leaving Sarah with no living relatives.

  The NetJet Citation was parked at the Superjet International SpA private terminal. She and the crew had been on board for more than two hours watching the latest Star Wars movie as they waited for Aaron. The jet had been topped off with sufficient fuel to fly as far as the Azores islands in the Atlantic and the crew had completed their pre-flight checks.

  Aaron tossed his backpack over his shoulder and stepped out of the shuttle. He entered the air-conditioned building through the automatic sliding doors, felt a chill, and shivered slightly. A middle-aged woman wearing a gray skirt and a gray, button-down top with a Superjet International logo on her shirt greeted him.

  “You must be Mr. Monroe,” she intoned. “We’ve been waiting for you for some time now.”

  “Ah, yes. I’m sorry for that. I just missed an earlier shuttle,” he teased.

  His greeter frowned, stood, and said, “May I see your passport, Mr. Monroe?”

  Aaron reached into his back pocket, pulled out his passport, and handed it to her. She flipped it open. Her gaze shifted between the passport photo and Aaron and he gave her a wide smile.

  “Mr. Monroe, did you pack your own bags,” she asked, “and have they been in your possession since you packed them?”

  “Yes, I did pack them last night and no, they have not been in my possession the whole time. They were in the possession of Sarah and should have already been loaded on the plane.”

  Aaron rolled his eyes. C’mon, you’re just making this difficult because you can.

  “Are you in possession of any weapons, Mr. Monroe?”

  “No,” he lied, knowing that the M11 pistols were in his backpack.

  “Very well, Mr. Monroe.” She handed him his passport. “Your aircraft is down the hall on the left and through the second set of doors. Enjoy your flight.”

  Aaron walked out of the double doors and onto the flight apron. He saw Sarah seated next to a window on the Cessna and heard her announce, “He’s here.” She stood and walked toward the open door behind the cockpit.

  Aaron stepped through the door to the aircraft and Sarah stood in the aisle with her hands on her hips.

  “Am I in trouble?” asked Aaron.

  “I’m just glad you’re here and we can finally get airborne,” she answered. They hugged, then Sarah kissed him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I wish you would tell me what you did in Trieste.”

  Aaron tossed his backpack on the seat next to the door. “It’s really not worth talking about. Let’s just go home.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN FLIGHT OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

  MONDAY JUNE 6TH

  8:20 P.M.

  Daylight was fading to darkness as the Cessna passed over the west coast of Portugal above the city of Porto. The cabin trim on this model of Citation was elegant black leather with bright metallic accents. Two seats on the right side faced each other and there was a small table between them. The left side had two seats similarly configured. A fifth seat faced the cabin door.

  Aaron faced the rear of the plane and he looked out of his window as they crossed the coastline. The shimmering lights of the mainland were in stark contrast to the darkness of the Atlantic.

  Sarah prepared four microwavable dinners that had been provided by Superjet International and delivered two to the cockpit before she sat with Aaron to eat.

  “Pasta e fagioli, Bacala mantecato, Risi I Bisi, and a bottle of Montepulciano. This is by far the best food I have ever had on an airplane,” Aaron said as he soaked up the remains of his pasta e fagioli with a slice of hot Italian bread.

  Aaron watched Sarah as she lifted her glass of wine to her lips. As the natural light faded to cabin lighting, her face had a luminous glow. She’s the most perfect woman I’ve ever known!

  The co-pilot stepped out of the open cockpit door with a handful of used plastic plates and set them in the waste area near the microwave and wine rack in the back of the plane. As he passed them on his way back to the cockpit, he said, “I just wanted to mention we’ll only have satellite coverage for network broadcasts for another thirty minutes. If you want to catch up on any news or sports scores.”

&nb
sp; “That’s not a bad idea,” replied Aaron. He helped Sarah clear the used microwave dinnerware and placed them in the same waste area that the co-pilot had. He pulled a small screen from behind the seat opposite him. “Can you dial in the BBC on the screen?”

  The co-pilot responded with his thumb up.

  Aaron returned to the seat next to Sarah and buckled his seatbelt. They could both see and hear the twenty-one-inch monitor and bulkhead-mounted speakers.

  The BBC anchorwoman reported that Kurdish Peshmerga forces had made progress in their fight to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State militants. “Also on the subject of the Islamic State,” she continued, “there is a report out of Trieste, Italy, today that a senior ISIS field commander was killed in one of the oldest neighborhoods in that city.”

  Aaron glanced sideways toward Sarah. She leaned closer to the screen.

  “Kameel Fatin was known as a fierce fighter and influential ISIS commander. It’s unknown why he was in Italy or for how long, but our sources have told us he was very high on the coalition capture or kill list. For more on this we’ll take you to our correspondent on the scene in Italy.”

  The BBC reporter was standing outside of the two-story tan brick municipal polizia headquarters in Trieste. There was a strong breeze that blew her hair into her face as she spoke into her microphone. “There were actually three found dead at the scene. There was Kameel Fatin, whom you already mentioned. There was another older man. His name was Fadi Asadel, and there was a third, a Muslim woman believed to be in her mid-twenties. There is speculation that this may be the result of a feud between rival terrorist factions. But what is very unusual about this” — the reporter on the screen moved aside and the camera panned the headquarters building — “is the polizia have unloaded two vans with as many as twenty-six children, ages eight to seventeen, that were taken into custody at the villa where this all occurred.”