Read Online The Fourth War by Chris Stewart - Free Book Online Page B

effects; a picture of his wife and two children, beautiful daughters—early twenties, blond, smiling, their arms around their father’s neck. An eighteen-inch bronze statue of a bucking stallion sat next to the picture of his family. Beside that was a fist-size piece of granite enclosed in glass, a gift from a close friend who had climbed Mount Everest. Beside the chunk of granite was a picture of a smiling Palestinian girl with a news clipping attached, a Knight Ridder dispatch from the West Bank town of Abu Qash:
    Rofayda Qaoud—raped by her brothers and impregnated—refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the unwed teenager a razor with which to slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family’s “honor” through murder.
    Armed with a plastic bag, razor, and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter’s room last Jan. 27. “Tonight you die, Rofayda,” she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda’s wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of “No, mother, no!” After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick.
    Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid succession. “She killed me before I killed her,” says the 43-year-old mother of nine. “I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family’s honor.”
    The clipping reminded Petate that he wasn’t only fighting for his daughters, but for other daughters too. The Palestinian girl deserved to live, just like his daughters did.
    Staring blankly past his personal effects, the general shuddered, an angry determination building in his chest.
    His deputy knocked and entered. “Sir,” he said simply. Petate turned slowly as he held up his hand, unwilling to break his thoughts. The deputy waited quietly. The general brought his fists together and pulled them to his chin.
    â€œWe will not suffer this,” he said after a full three minutes of thought.
    The deputy nodded. “Sir, I agree.”
    Petate tapped his chin with his fists, then stood and leaned against the side of his desk. “Watch the U.S. agent,” he said, his voice gravelly and low. “His real name is Peter Zembeic. He’s one of Thomas Washington’s men and has a serious nose for the fight. He’s had a hand in some of the most significant intelligence operations of the past half-dozen years; but he’s also a cowboy, the kind who has a hard time staying in the box. That makes him nervous, but Thomas still loves him and uses him every chance that he gets. So I want you to keep a man on him twenty-four hours a day. Never, and I mean never, let him out of our sight. Move our people around, use whatever assets we have, he is our only priority now. I want to know what he knows, I want to see what he sees, I want to smell what he smells and think what he thinks. If the Americans locate the warheads, he will lead us to them.”
    The deputy nodded. “But sir, he’s just one man. Do you really think he will lead us to the—”
    â€œYes, I do,” the general cut in. “And let me tell you something about this agent and what we are dealing with here. Remember the battle at Kirkuk in the early days of the Iraqi war? Zembeic was there with a dozen CIA and paramilitary men. They were in a convoy, heading out of the city after the rebels had taken over, when they came under attack. Half his men went down in the first thirty seconds. Two of their Humvees were taken down by RPGs, killing almost everyone inside. Zembeic and his remaining men fell back and called for chopper extraction. As they waited, a couple rebels fought their way forward, moving toward the burning Humvees. Zembeic realized it