New Dawn Underground

New Dawn

Underground

A Counter-Terrorism Thriller

by Amanda Matti

About the Author

Amanda Matti served six years in the U.S. Navy as an Intel Analyst and Russian Linguist, and is an Iraq War Veteran. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning Iraq War memoir A Foreign Affair, which tells the story of her 2005 deployment to Baghdad where she met her husband, an Iraqi

national who served as her translator. Her second book, Voicing the Eagle, chronicles her husband's story serving as an interpreter for U.S. forces during the Iraq War. Amanda lives in San Diego with her husband and their two daughters. To learn more about Amanda visit her website at AmandaMatti.com.

Synopsis

CIA analyst Elora Monro is determined to track down the mastermind behind an Iraqi militant terrorist group responsible for the death of her Delta Force fiancé. Posing as a Washington Post correspondent, Elora travels to the Middle East and embeds with the New Dawn Underground (NDU) militants under the guise of helping the group tell their side of the story to western media. Driven by vengeance and a quest for justice, Elora strives to gain enough intel while on the inside to destroy NDU from the inside out. Prepared to sacrifice her life to accomplish her mission, Elora is wholly unprepared for the enigmatic Zaidan Al-Sadiq, right-hand-man of the militant group’s newly appointed leader. Highly intelligent and intensely brooding, Zaidan helps open Elora’s eyes to the complexity of what’s going one beneath the surface of Iraq’s multi-dimensional political landscape - where things are rarely what they appear. Elora soon realizes nothing in Iraq is ever black or white and finds herself ensnared in a twisted net of passion, violence and political fallout. She thinks she’s got it all figured out when her world is once again flipped upside down. Will she listen to what may be the voice of reason in her head, or will she risk everything to follow her heart?

Prologue: The Raid
Northwestern Iraq - 12 March 2012

Two Black Hawk helicopters sliced their way through the pitch darkness of the Iraqi night. They had lifted off minutes ago from Balad Airbase just north of Baghdad and were en route to a remote area of northwestern Iraq. U.S. Army Major Brendan Jacobs and his elite Delta Force team readied themselves. Their mission was a Top Secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operation to capture or kill the mastermind of an Islamic militant group. Between his thumb and forefinger Jacobs clutched a small white gold band. The ring belonged to his fiancé Elora. She'd pressed it into his palm three days earlier with instructions to keep it with him for good luck. He held the ring to his lips for several seconds before slipping it into a small chest pocket on his uniform.

The Black Hawks flew low, tightly hugging the curvature of the Earth to avoid radar detection as they approached the rural compound. According to intel, the destination served as the northern base of operations and private residence of Malik Khalid, leader of the militant terrorist organization New Dawn Underground (NDU). The group had been

steadily growing in Iraq and was recently responsible for a string of coordinated bombings across Baghdad. NDU had detonated massive explosions at the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defense and the unofficial headquarters of an Iranian-backed militia. Dozens of Iraqis and several Americans perished in the attacks, including the U.S. Ambassador, Richard Casey, and three men in his security detail. U.S. intelligence agencies were conflicted as to whether NDU had specifically targeted Ambassador Casey or if he’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, the Ambassador's death prompted the U.S. to designate NDU a foreign terrorist organization, and Washington, along with the American public, demanded justice for the murder of the Ambassador and other Americans. That justice was now on its way.

"ETA two minutes!" the chopper pilot’s voice rang out through the comms headset in Major Jacobs’ ear.

The soldiers conducted a final lock-and-load check of their HK416 assault rifles and braced for landing. The raid was scheduled to begin at 0300 local time and was to be wrapped up with choppers back in

the air by 0345. That gave the team under an hour to locate and capture or kill Malik Khalid, get him on a chopper, and sweep the compound for intel. They had limited details regarding Malik Khalid’s identity. They only knew he was 30-35 years old, between 5'10" and 6'0" tall, born and raised in Baghdad, and spoke fluent English. It was not a lot to go on, but infrared satellite images of the compound indicated there were only 8 to 10 individuals currently inside. If worse came to worse, the Delta team would zip tie and haul them all back to Balad and sort out who was who later.

Jacobs felt the chopper take a sudden dip and descend. The Black Hawks landed on opposite corners of the compound just outside the perimeter wall. Coming to a bumping halt on the ground, the soldiers poured out of the bellies of the choppers.

Twenty-year-old NDU security guard Ahmed Assad was patrolling the perimeter of the compound when he heard a low rumble approaching from the depths of the blackened desert. He stood paralyzed in terror as he watched a Black Hawk touch down a dozen yards from the compound's outer wall. Fuck, Americans! Swallowing his fear, the young militant regained control of his legs and dashed inside the

compound's three-story building to warn the others, including his uncle, Hakim Assad, who served as NDU's de facto Chief Financial Officer.

"AmoHakim! AmoHakim!" Ahmed bellowed for his uncle in Arabic as he stormed up the stairs to the second floor of the compound and burst through a door leading into a living area. "The Americans are here!"

Inside, half a dozen men gathered around a large table cluttered with laptop computers, documents, and random dirty dishes from a meal long over. The men in the room had heard the choppers and were taking countermeasures. They’d covered their faces with traditional red-checkered head scarves, and several were destroying the laptops with hammers while others stuffed documents into a cast iron oven to incinerate them.

"Leave the rest!" One of the masked men shouted to the others. "Grab the detonators and get to the tunnels." Another man swiped two mobile flip phones off the table as the group abandoned the room.

Fearing the gates into the compound may be booby-

trapped, both Delta Force team used explosives to breach two portions of the perimeter wall on opposite sides. Once inside they conducted precision sweeps across the yard as they moved toward the main building. A pair of soldiers located the compound's main power supply and cut the electricity, plunging the building and yard into total darkness.

The militants inside scrambled down the stairs to the ground floor and passed through a doorway behind the stairwell leading to a small kitchen. The men filed across the dark kitchen, feeling their way to the door of a small storage closet. The first man to reach the closet yanked the door open, jumped inside and frantically slid his hands up and down the back wall searching for a latch. Once his fingers found the latch, he slid it to the side and a small hinged door popped open in the false wall. The men squeezed through the tiny door one-by-one and scurried down a ladder that dropped into an escape tunnel.

Before it was his turn to slide through the escape door, Hakim stopped in his tracks and spun around to push his way back into the kitchen. "The external hard drive," he whispered wide-eyed in frantic Arabic to the man behind him.

"Leave it," the masked man replied.

"We can't. It contains the only complete list of account numbers. Without it we are fucked. I have to go back."

"No." The man pushed Hakim back toward the escape door. "You go into the tunnels; I'll get the hard drive."

The masked insurgent doubled-back through the kitchen and poked his head out the doorway beneath the stairwell to scan the area. It appeared the Americans hadn't breached the main building yet. He darted through a doorway across from the stairs, snatched a small black hard drive off a shelf, shoved it in his pocket and sprinted back to the kitchen. Stepping into the kitchen, he charged forward in the direction of the storage closet but had the wind knocked out of him when he slammed into what felt like a brick wall.

Major Jacobs had entered the kitchen seconds earlier, cleared it, and was falling back to exit when he collided with the masked insurgent. Significantly larger and heavier than the insurgent, Jacobs was able to maintain his footing following the collision

while the insurgent collapsed flat on the floor.

"Kef! Don't move!" Jacobs commanded in Arabic as he shoved the barrel of his rifle down into the man’s masked face. "Show me your hands!"

The insurgent froze in surrender with his hands palms up next to either side of his head. Unable to confirm if the masked man was their primary target, Jacobs opted not to put a bullet in his head in case they needed to pump him later for intel. Jacobs was about to radio for backup to assist in securing his detainee when a loud clatter came from inside the small storage closet. For a split-second, Jacobs took his eyes off the man on the ground to assess the possible new threat.

The insurgent seized the opportunity and made his move, performing a lightning-fast leg sweep that threw Jacobs off balance. Springing to his feet, the militant followed it up with a skillful butterfly kick that sent Jacobs flying across the kitchen. Jacobs slammed hard onto his back and his rifle landed several feet away. The insurgent tried to make a run for the storage closet, but Jacobs twisted and got a hand on the man's leg tripping him up before he could slip inside the pantry. Jacobs pounced on top