Killing the Killers Read online

  At first, ISIS does not announce the kidnappings, or demand a ransom. No outsider knows where they have gone, least of all Kayla’s worried parents back home in Arizona.

  Temperatures rise into the high nineties, and the victims are granted small amounts of food and water. “Just a little bit,” one of the many other prisoners will later recall. “We were starving.”

  Another kidnap victim will add, “There was so little room [in the cell]. And it was dark, with no power. It was summer and it was so hot.”

  ISIS maintains several detention facilities to house those they kidnap. To prevent US satellites and drones from discovering their location, Kayla and the others are moved from one confinement another. Meanwhile, in Arizona, her parents try to maintain calm, despite growing panic.

  As the days pass, ISIS comes to a decision: the captives will be released, one by one. Among them is Kayla’s boyfriend.

  But not Kayla Mueller.

  She is an “American spy,” in the words of ISIS, and is tortured for evidence of her crimes. Her fingernails are ripped out and her head shaved. One cruel ISIS technique specific to the torture of women is known as “the biter,” using large tongs with metal jaws to clamp down on female breasts—always administered by a woman, in accordance with Islamic law. Another favored technique is to produce emotional terror by placing severed human heads inside a cage housing a female prisoner.*

  This is the life Kayla lives for three long weeks.

  Then the email is sent.

  Clicking on a link at their home in Arizona, Kayla’s parents open a short video. Their daughter, noticeably thinner and sunburned, looks into the camera. Her head is covered by a green hijab. Her lips are pursed and chapped. Her voice is raspy. Terror fills her bloodshot eyes as she speaks.

  “My name is Kayla Mueller,” she begins. “I need your help.

  “I’ve been here too long and I’ve been very sick.

  “And it’s very terrifying here.”

  That is all. The video image of Kayla remains on the screen, but she speaks no more. Her father, Carl, will remember feeling “catatonic” as he watches his daughter in such unspeakable torment.

  But this is just the beginning of the agony that Kayla Mueller will endure.

  Three months later, on December 2, 2013, Kayla’s recently freed boyfriend, Omar Alkhani, pretending to be her husband, takes the extraordinary step of locating his former ISIS captors in an attempt to free Kayla, who has now been held for four months. He begs for mercy and the release of his “bride.” Alkhani is placed in a detention cell with Kayla so that he can see her with his own eyes as he makes this claim. A high judge of the Islamic State stands with them, closely watching the interchange. Kayla is dressed head to toe in a black abaya. Her face is covered at first, but her guards pull back the veil for just a few seconds so Alkhani can confirm her identity. The captors tell Kayla she will not be harmed if she tells the truth.

  But she knows this is a lie. Alkhani’s brave action actually puts the terrified young American aid worker in a desperate bind. If Kayla acknowledges Omar as her husband after many months of claiming herself single, she will be executed for deceit.

  “No, he is not my husband. He is my fiancé,” Kayla states.

  For the charge of lying, Omar is detained and tortured by ISIS for seven weeks and one day. Among his cellmates during this time are American hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

  After fifty days, Omar Alkhani is released without a ransom, while Kayla Mueller remains a prisoner.

  The reason is simple: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has decided that the time has arrived for his American captive to become his fifth wife. As this sham matrimony is described throughout the ISIS caliphate, Kayla Mueller will be “married by force.”

  * * *

  The spring of 2014 marks seven months since Kayla Mueller’s kidnapping. She is being held along with James Foley and twenty-two other Westerners—Italians, Germans, Danes, French, Spanish, and British. Kayla is the only woman. As a reminder of the fate awaiting them if their ransom is not paid, ISIS decapitates kidnapped Russian engineer Sergey Gorbunov in March and shows the horrified hostages a video of his body.

  In April and May, fifteen of the Europeans are released after their ransoms are paid. Like America, the United Kingdom does not negotiate with terrorists. This leaves four Americans and three Britons in ISIS custody. The terrorists also keep hundreds of women from the Yazidi tribe of northern Iraq to use as sex slaves. Kayla is sometimes held with her fellow Westerners but at other times imprisoned with the Yazidi women.

  On May 11, emboldened by the many kidnap victims being set free, the Mueller family and relatives of other Americans being held hostage ask for a meeting with President Obama. The request is denied. After two decades of US involvement in ongoing wars in the Middle East, the president has taken a firm stand against any American military involvement in Syria. This precludes a rescue operation.

  Kayla Mueller in Turkey on June 9, 2013.

  So while Obama is sympathetic, he believes a meeting with the families will accomplish little. There is also the specter of possible bad press—that could lead to increased pressure for military action.

  “This was a clear reluctance to accept facts,” one critic of the Obama administration told the authors of this book. “Facts were being adapted to fit the political narrative.”

  Yet later that month, there are signs of hope. Shortly after the White House rejection, the Mueller family receives a letter from Kayla, smuggled out of Syria by released hostages.

  “If you could say I have suffered at all through this whole experience it is only in knowing how much suffering I have put you all through,” Kayla writes. “I will never ask you to forgive me as I do not deserve forgiveness.

  “By God’s will, we will be together again soon,” she concludes. “All my everything, Kayla.”

  * * *

  More hope: just days after receiving Kayla’s letter, another contact reaches the Muellers from Syria. This time, it is ISIS sending an email to the Mueller family. The terrorists wish to set Kayla free, exchanging her for a Pakistani woman being held by the Americans for her role in killing US soldiers in Afghanistan. If this demand is impossible, ISIS states, it would instead accept 5 million euros—roughly $7.3 million dollars—for Kayla’s release.

  To show “proof of life,” just as in the video clip sent so many months ago, the terrorists ask the parents to respond with questions to which only Kayla would know the answer.

  Carl and Marsha Mueller are weary—and wary. There is no telling whether or not ISIS has any intention of releasing their daughter. “They tortured us with their emails,” Carl will recall. “And they reveled in it.”

  But there is no choice. If the Muellers want to see their daughter again, the game must be played.

  The Muellers respond on May 25.

  “Music is ________?” they ask.

  * * *

  Three days later, in a graduation speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point, President Obama sends a new message to ISIS, toughening his stance. It is just four months since his “JV” comments, and the spread of ISIS power throughout Iraq and Syria now seems unstoppable. The terrorist army is closing in on the Iraqi city of Mosul, yet another instance where a hard-won American victory in the Iraq War is reversed by ISIS advances.

  “The most direct threat to America at home and abroad remains terrorism,” the president tells the cadets.

  However, Obama stops short of promising any confrontation—and is actually hiding a major development. A short time ago, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the same special warfare group that coordinated the bin Laden mission three years ago, approached the White House about another daring raid. This time, instead of ending the life of a madman, JSOC plans a mission to rescue Kayla Mueller and all the Western hostages from ISIS captivity. New information from an unnamed nation acting as one of America’s intelligence partners suggests that the kidnap victims are being held outside the city of Raqqa, one hundred miles south of the Turkish border. There, in an abandoned compound near an oil field, they are under heavy guard.

  But this intelligence is thin and dated. By not having a military presence in Syria, the United States lacks the ability to produce the “exquisite intelligence,” a term common in the national security community, that could green-light military action. In the absence of hard data, any rescue force is in extreme peril should the situation on the ground have shifted. The chances for failure are high. On the other hand, it is not always possible to know the precise details of every mission. Risks are a part of any raid.

  This places President Obama in an uncomfortable situation. He has repeatedly insisted that America will not send its troops into Syria. To do so now would be a complete reversal of his foreign policy. The American public is weary of war. Conflict in Syria, a nation that does not represent a clear threat to the United States, would undermine the gravitas of his administration. Until now, in the words of one senior US official, the White House “did not want to recognize this as a problem they needed to solve.”

  So the president is conflicted. He can no longer ignore the fact that American lives are at stake. Kayla Mueller, James Foley, Peter Kassig, and Steven Sotloff could be murdered at any time.

  Thus, Obama is prepared to green-light a rescue mission. But, as with the bin Laden raid, the odds must be in America’s favor. There cannot be another Black Hawk down.

  Yet there is major risk in waiting.

  Indeed, the measured caution and the White House bureaucracy will eventually doom Kayla Mueller, James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig.

  There are three conditions necessary to launching a successful hostage rescue: proof of life, a grid showing the likely imprisonment location (such as a street or house number), and final approval from the president. The Special Forces operators tasked with any rescue are always on alert, having trained extensively for such scenarios. Yet it is very often the last step—final approval—that holds up the actual mission. The time it takes to move up the chain of command to the president, who must approve all operations into an active hostile war zone, can be hours—or months. And as commandos await orders to launch, restless kidnappers very often move their victims to new locations.

  This is on Barack Obama’s mind as he wraps up his remarks to the newly commissioned West Point lieutenants. For the first time in public, the president does not rule out commando operations to fight terror. He says quite clearly: “The United States will use military force, unilaterally, if necessary, when our core interests demand it—when our people are threatened, when our livelihood is at stake, or when the security of our allies is in danger. In these circumstances, we still need to ask tough questions about whether our actions are proportional and effective and just. International opinion matters, but America should never ask permission to protect our people, our homeland, and our way of life.”

  Left unsaid is that an audacious rescue plan is now in the works, designed to penetrate US forces deep into the heart of ISIS-controlled Syria. The level of risk is far beyond that of any hostage rescue attempt in recent memory.* As always, intelligence must be verified. This necessary but laborious process precedes the lightning-quick execution of the mission itself, described by one top administration official as “Slow, slow, slow, slow—BANG!”

  The question is, when will the president of the United States ride to the rescue?

  * * *

  On May 29, ISIS sends an email reply to Arizona: “Music is EVERYWHERE.”

  This is the correct response to the question posed by Kayla’s parents—something that only Kayla might say.

  Even better, another short video clip accompanies the email. The young woman tells her parents that she feels healthy and then repeats the terrorists’ demands before the video ends. Unknown to the Muellers, Kayla has recently been moved from a cell so small she could not stretch out, into a bigger room with three other women. Anticipating her release, Kayla has been doing push-ups and other exercises to get strong for the journey home.

  But in reality, the Muellers are losing faith in the American government. They desperately want to pay the ransom. Their choices are to go to jail for defying the “no concessions” law or passively to wait for a US rescue operation.

  They choose to wait—but grow frustrated by the lack of communication.

  “ISIS was being more truthful to us,” Marsha Mueller will one day recall.

  * * *

  As the summer of 2014 begins to unfold, James Foley, Kayla Mueller, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig are simply helpless. ISIS is becoming more violent and arrogant. America and the world are watching.

  But doing little else.*

  American journalist Steven Sotloff (center with black helmet) talks to Libyan rebels on the Dafniya front line, fifteen miles west of Misrata, Libya, on June 2, 2011.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SEPTEMBER 2, 2014

  RAQQA, SYRIA

  MORNING

  The woman with 157 days to live hides her panic.

  Sadistic ISIS thugs have just shown Kayla Mueller video of Steven Sotloff’s beheading. This comes just three weeks after James Foley suffered the same fate. Kayla well knows that two of the British hostages were also recently beheaded. These were her friends, men with whom she shared her thirteen months of captivity. It is beyond her imagination that they would ever suffer such a horrible fate. Kayla struggles to keep her own fear in check, trying not to think about Mohammed Emwazi, the British-born ISIS soldier who sliced the throats of Foley and Sotloff. But Emwazi is a constant presence in her life, a jailer she sees almost every day. She is well aware that he could appear in her doorway at any time, butcher knife in hand.

  Lack of food makes Kayla’s dire predicament worse. Today, like every day in captivity, Kayla is hungry. Her jailers do not feed her much. Breakfast is bread and cheese. Dinner is rice or macaroni. She was long ago stripped of her Western clothing and forced to don a long abaya, hijab, and veil.

  Despite her plight, Kayla remains strong, even rebellious. She does not back down when Emwazi threatens her. He is fanatical about his radical Muslim ideology and berates Mueller for her Christianity. “If you don’t convert to Islam, this will happen to you—we will behead all of you.”

  Beheading becomes Kayla’s greatest fear, preventing her from attempting escape. But each time Emwazi gloats that Kayla must convert to Islam, she quickly fires back, stating that she will never abandon her Christian faith.

  In this way, Kayla contains her emotions, hiding her fear and putting forth a veneer of defiance. So far, the ISIS men have not touched her, although they delight in raping the captured Iraqi women. The fact that she is off-limits offers Kayla hope. She thinks this is because she is an American, and has no idea she is being saved for al-Baghdadi.

  One other bit of news: there are rumors among the hostages of a failed rescue attempt two months ago by Americans.

  What Kayla doesn’t know is that those rumors are true.

  * * *

  July 3, 2014. Two Black Hawk “Night Stalker” helicopters pass low over the Euphrates River and flare into a hover outside an oil refinery on the edge of Raqqa. It has been four hours since this covert hostage rescue mission went “wheels up” in the neighboring country of Jordan. In almost total darkness, a dozen Delta Force commandos flew over the hostile Syrian desert. Americans are about to fast-rope to the ground, then immediately advance toward their target with guns drawn.

  In the skies above, two direct action penetrator helicopters (DAPs), armed with rockets and heavy-caliber machine guns, circle in search of ISIS ground troops. Farther up in the dark nighttime sky, drones survey the surrounding landscape. The United States does not make a habit of penetrating Syrian airspace, so little is known of the country’s government air defenses. Even less is understood about the terrorists on the ground, although it is assumed that an armed response will be likely.

  The Delta Force rescuers believe the hostages are being held in buildings on the grounds of the refinery. They know this because Danish photojournalist Daniel Rye Ottosen was held here just three weeks ago, before his government paid a $2.3 million ransom for his release. Ottosen returned to Denmark, where he was interviewed by FBI agents on June 22. He told them exact details of the prison in which Kayla Mueller and the other hostages were being held. Based on that information, the White House approved the rescue mission. Special Forces personnel traveled from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to a secret location in Jordan, where the raid was rehearsed.

  Once the operation was set in motion tonight, the four US helicopters encountered vicious winds and hellish sandstorms during the long flight to the refinery target. The exceedingly difficult journey is made worse by the near-certainty of combat.

  Shortly after landing, the dozen Delta Force “snake eaters”—as they are often called for their willingness to do anything to complete a mission—are greeted by a wave of automatic-weapons fire. Black-clad ISIS fighters temporarily pin down the Americans.

  Temporarily.

  Within moments, the terrorists take such heavy casualties from the circling DAPs that they fall back to wait for reinforcements. So many members of ISIS are killed that they never return to confront the Americans. Only one American is wounded in the fighting—helicopter pilot Michael Siler suffers a shattered leg when an ISIS round penetrates his cockpit. Not having the option of landing, seeking medical assistance, or even taking medication for his pain, Siler will fly five more hours without landing until the mission is complete.