by Frank Perry
Pakistani named Masood. They became brothers in arms, nurtured in battle. At the time, they were fighting the Soviet Union. Ironically, they were supported by the American CIA. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, al Qaeda ran training camps where angry young men learned the deadliest arts and formed bonds based on mutually dark motives.
When Razzaq returned to Jordan, he was jailed for three years as a Mujahedeen militant, considered a threat to their national security. He emerged as a homicidal radical who began plotting attacks on the countries he felt were ultimately responsible for murdering his family and pressuring the Jordanians to detain him, the United States and Israel. He fled to Pakistan soon after leaving prison where he began his association with Osama bin Laden.
Razzaq wanted to overthrow the Government of Jordan, which he considered to be a puppet state. His plans were discovered and Jordan sentenced him to death in absentia. He avoided Jordanian justice by finding hiding places in Europe, then back to the Middle East and South Asia. He supported himself through handouts from Islamic relief organizations that were actually terror support cells. He formed an independent terrorist group on the border between Afghanistan and Iran, teaching his students how to use guns, explosives, poisons and chemical weapons in civilian attacks. Throughout the 1990’s his whereabouts were never discovered, yet he was successful planning and executing the most deadly attacks of the decade. After the US failed to capture him at Salkhaid, Razzaq was fanatical about his next attack.
American Terrorist
As an American-born Muslim, Malik Iqbal Asif Masood's conversion from an average teenager to jihadist began at his suburban Chicago mosque, in Villa Park. He was easy prey for the preachers of hate. His Pakistan-born father had been sent to prison in Illinois for arson after a fire at his bakery spread to an adjoining apartment building in which someone died. Malik was fourteen. Absence of a father figure at home made him particularly vulnerable to radical teachings.
He was popular in school, enjoyed athletics and claimed he would be a major league baseball player when he grew up. But after his father’s conviction, Malik avoided his peers and began spending his free time at the local mosque. It was here that he met a militant Pakistani radical who had fought in Kashmir, a region disputed between India and Pakistan. His father had served in the Pakistani Army, operating with the British before immigrating to the states. This vicarious relationship created a bond with his new friend. In reality, Malik was victim of an insidious recruiting scheme.
He became obsessed with joining the fight for Kashmir independence. As his indoctrination continued, people manipulated him with criticism that he was “too Western.” To prove them wrong, he began wearing Islamic clothing and tried to grow a beard. He studied the Koran as interpreted by his friends at the mosque. They actually discouraged this behavior so that he wouldn’t be noticed in American society.
He became disdainful of Western women, berating them for their revealing clothes and loose mannerisms. He scared his mother, a native Chicago Catholic woman, enough that she became fearful of him. This response heightened his fervor.
By seventeen, Malik wasn’t a full-blown convert to fundamentalism. His fanaticism began to soften through peer association at school and growing sexual urges. His rhetoric mellowed about creation of an Islamic state in America. He was spending less time at religious studies and drifting away from his Islamic friends. So, in order to rejuvenate the conversion effort, members of the Islamic cabal invited him to see a graphic video of Muslims fighting in Chechnya and Afghanistan. His fanaticism rekindled, and he made an ill-fated trip to Pakistan and an al-Qaeda camp.
He had just turned eighteen. To pay for the trip, he stole money and a credit card from his mother, leaving a note behind saying that he was going to regain the honor of his surname by fighting in some unidentified conflict. His mother was heartbroken and terrified. Within three weeks of Malik's departure, she got a letter from him sent from Pakistan. Based on this clue, she and her sister-in-law flew to Pakistan, and through her husband’s relatives, gained assistance with Pakistani security officials to help locate her son. She had almost no money and lived in poor circumstances while searching. It took three months to track down the teenager. He was eventually located in a mosque in Kashmir.
He denied he’d been to the terror camps, but it was a lie.
Prior to leaving the US, Malik had come under the spell of the fanatical cleric Sheikh Abdul-Kardar Hussein Mohammed, then leader of a secretive outlaw Islamic movement. The Sheik was responsible for Malik’s initial brainwashing. His mother felt heartsick that she was losing her son to religious fanaticism. She wanted to believe he could return to the states and resume life as the young sports-mad child she had raised.
In trying to persuade him to return to the US with her, he would only rebut that she was an infidel, and therefore an enemy. He preached hate-tainted dogma that had nothing to do with religion. He was no longer the little boy she remembered. Following their last time together, she left fearing for her life. With the help of relatives, she made secret plans to go to the airport and return to Chicago, no longer hoping her son would return with her. Departing in the morning from the apartment she had shared with distant relatives, she was attacked by a mob and burned to death. She died screaming in the street. Malik did not participate, but he helped plan her murder. He was pleased with the result.
Several weeks later, he returned to the US to live with his mother’s family, who knew nothing about his role in her death. His fanaticism was hidden behind a veil of false grief and American upbringing.
Border Crossing
It was almost midnight when the Chevy Blazer, traveling from Montreal International Airport, slowed, then pulled off the road in North Chemin De Derby, onto a small dirt road cut into the dense woods. The car stopped less than fifty feet into the trees. It had entered the United States.
Like several border towns in Vermont, North Derby straddles the border, making a convenient portal for smugglers and illegal aliens to cross the border, bypassing US Customs and Immigration check points. This part of the Vermont border is a region melding two nations and cultures. Both French and English are spoken and town businesses are dispersed along both sides of the border, which is nothing more than a road. Technically, people were crossing the Northern border illegally every day simply by crossing the middle of the road.
With more federal funding, the Border Patrol increased manpower along the northern borders, but it’s impossible to safeguard against all illegal crossings. The Swanton Vermont sector includes 261 miles of International Boundary. 173 miles are land border and 88 miles are water boundary, chiefly the St. Lawrence River. The Sector has only eight stations to monitor activity along the border, with only a few dozen officers on duty at any one time.
At night, North Derby seems to disappear. With only 1600 residents nestled in rural mountain homes, it hardly qualifies for a zip code. For the two Russians, it simplified the effort to enter the United States by flying into Montreal under false Lithuanian passports, then driving two hours to the border.
Leaving the Blazer, the two men began walking another hundred feet to the edge of the woods defining North Derby Road. In punctuated Russian dialect, the driver wished his passengers success then departed. Both were oddly dressed for walking through the woods in casual slacks and colorful shirts not at all characteristic of the local residents. There was no one else nearby and after a cellular phone call, a car arrived in minutes, pausing briefly for the passengers to climb in.
Speaking Russian, the lead man said to the driver, “Thank you Boris, it has been a long drive for you.”
“Yes, my friend, but we now must drive eight more hours and we must not get caught.”
“Where is the identification I requested?”
“Under your seat, with a gun. There are guns under all the seats.”
The passengers armed themselves.
The senior man continued to speak whi
le the other passenger remained silent, “All seems to be in order. You have done well Boris, so be careful to avoid attention on the roads.”
Within an hour, both passengers were asleep. The car traveled on Interstate 91 heading south. They would be in New York in the morning to close some loose ends before driving on to Chicago the following day.
New York
Dennis Beal had always been the first person in the office on Long Island. His rise from dockworker came from hard work. He did not have any special attributes beyond very hard work and a desire to make money. He never finished high school, having joined the dockworkers at age sixteen when his stepfather got him into the union by vouching for his age and high school diploma. Physically, he was slightly below average height, and heavy around the belt line. His sandy colored hair curled naturally and, combined with his green-grey eyes and ruddy complexion, he wasn’t particularly attractive. He was fortunate to have met Kathy in his hometown of Port Elizabeth at the time of his new-found wealth; otherwise, she would never have looked at him twice. He realized that the attraction was only his ability to get out of one of the poorest and ugliest cities, but it didn’t