Traitors Within

by James Rosone

  Thinking for a moment, Mohammed realized the Arab was asking him if he would become a martyr. “I would, but I have no desire to die young. I have to support my mother and my younger brothers and sisters.”

  Sitting back in his chair, the Arab took a long drag on his cigarette, holding the smoke in for a while before letting it out. “That’s a fair argument. Then, would you be willing to help smuggle fighters into America?”

  Mohammed smirked, incredulous at the question. “We are in Pakistan. I only move people and weapons from Pakistan to Afghanistan. How would I possibly move fighters to America, on the other side of the world?”

  The Arab frowned and leaned forward. “I would arrange for you to obtain refugee status and go to America. Once you are settled there, I have an established trucking company where you would work for one of my associates. Are you interested in this?” asked the Arab. He hoped that this young man might yet prove to be the answer to his missing link. His previous driver had gotten himself in trouble with the American police and had been sent to jail; he would be deported after he had served his sentence.

  Mohammed thought about this for a moment. If he went to America, he could wire American dollars home to support his family. They would be well taken care of, and he wouldn’t have to worry about being caught every time he crossed the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

  “I would be interested in this proposition,” he replied. “What exactly would I do for this trucking company?” he asked.

  “My associate manages the trucking company in Chicago. They move freight from Chicago to other areas in the United States. From time to time, they also move freight from Mexico and Canada to Chicago as well. Because you have experience smuggling explosives across the border, we would use you to move special items as needed. You would also be paid a very good salary, $95,000 USD a year. For all intents and purposes, you would appear to be a normal refugee, just trying to make a new life for yourself.”

  The Arab began to show Mohammed pictures that told more about the company he would work for, the type of truck he would drive, the special compartments on the truck and how they all worked. Mohammed and the Arab talked for about an hour about the company, his new job and what he would be expected to do.

  Then the Arab told him something that gave Mohammed pause. “Your family would need to leave Afghanistan and move to Pakistan. They will be taken care of, but it will need to appear as if your family left Afghanistan because they were being targeted by the Taliban. A credible cover story will be created, and then they will have to live by it.”

  Once Mohammed was convinced of the necessity of this part of the plan, the Arab moved on. He told him, “You will be given several hours a day of English tutoring and learn about other subjects, such as big rig mechanics and some American history. You will also be schooled on what to say during the refugee application process and what to avoid saying. We have a person working in the American State Department who will shepherd your application through the process and see that it is approved.

  “Once in America, you will report to the trucking company and be given a job immediately. Your orders are simple—work hard for the trucking company, don’t get in trouble with the police, and don’t date any American women. You need to stay single and stay focused on your mission. Don’t travel outside the United States, unless it is for work. You are not to attract any suspicion.”

  Mohammed followed the plan and did as he was told. Almost a year went by. Then one day, he was informed that his refugee application had been approved. He would receive a residency card and work permit to live and work in America. Once he had established himself and held down a job for more than a year, he could begin the process of bringing the rest of his family to America, if he wanted to.

  Mohammed couldn’t believe the plan the Arab had talked about actually worked. Two weeks later, he arrived in Chicago and was met at the airport by Ibn Abdula, the man who owned and ran the trucking company he would be working for. Ibn Abdula set him up in a small furnished apartment and helped him get on his feet. Then Mohammed drove on several training routes, obtained his trucking license, and began driving on his own.

  After some time, Mohammed was contacted once again by the Arab who had brought him to the United States. “I believe you have shown yourself worthy, Mohammed,” he began. “You have been very faithful to us in all that we have asked you to do. Now I would like to offer you an even greater honor.”

  Mohammed swallowed hard. He had a pretty good idea what was about to be asked of him.

  Before he could speak, the Arab lifted his hand as if to say, “Wait.” Then he pulled out a suitcase full of cash. “I know that you said that you didn’t want to become a martyr because you needed to take care of your family, and I have great respect for that. However, if you are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, your brothers and sisters in the faith will ensure that your family wants for nothing. They will know that you gave your life for the ultimate cause, and they will be cared for in every way.”

  Mohammed just nodded. There was nothing else to say.

  *******

  Back in the safe house, the men were all still drinking their tea, weighted under the enormity of what lay before them. John, the only black man in the group, took his turn to speak. “It’s probably pretty obvious to you just from looking at me that my story is different from yours…but our Great Allah has brought me to this same destiny just the same. I was born here, and I did not know the teachings of the great prophet Mohammed until I was an adult, but now my eyes have been opened and I am ready to become a soldier in the great jihad.”

  *******

  John, unlike his Arab partners, had converted to Islam nearly five years ago; it was really a chance occurrence. A woman he had been dating, Miriam Abadi, was a Muslim, and over the months as their relationship grew, his curiosity to understand her religion did as well. Before that time, John hadn’t been a religious man and had believed in the words of Karl Marx: “Religion is the opium of the masses.”

  Then one day, when Miriam’s father was talking to him about Islam, it all suddenly clicked. He felt like he had purpose; he felt love and acceptance from a family, something he had never really known while growing up. He converted to Islam and then began to study the Quran faithfully as he was instructed. He began to attend the same mosque as her family and really fell in love with the religion.

  John and his fiancée married several months later, and for the first time in his life, he felt complete. His life was moving along smoothly for the next couple of years, until that awful day that changed his life forever. There was a horrific terrorist attack by a man claiming to be a member of ISIS against a gay nightclub in Austin, Texas, that shook America to its core. This was the first time in many years that a mass-casualty terrorist attack had occurred, and it scared people. During the following days, verbal attacks against the Muslim community rose across the country, especially in Texas, until one day, it exploded in Dallas.

  John’s wife had been attending their mosque for Friday prayers with her family just as she had countless other times. John was at work when a group of men who perfectly fit the stereotype of uneducated Islamophobic rednecks pulled up to the mosque and opened fire on everyone in it. Many were killed in the maelstrom of bullets, including Miriam.

  John was devastated by the death of his wife and the senseless violence perpetrated by these ignorant fools. He was a police officer, sworn to protect his community…yet he could not protect his own wife. He changed that day. He went from being an outgoing, humorous guy to one who brooded in silence. Between the benefits that had been offered by the police department and Miriam’s employer, he received a large amount of money from his wife’s life insurance policies; with the money, he took an extended leave of absence from work and made the pilgrimage to the Kaaba to become closer to Allah in his greatest hour of need.

  John spent the entire month of Ramadan in Mecca, asking Allah why he had taken his wife from him and what he coul
d have done differently to have saved her. During that time, he attended a class being taught about jihad—not the minor jihad of war, but the great jihad, of abstaining from worldly temptations to keep oneself pure for Allah. During one of the training sessions, a man who appeared to be quite wealthy approached him.

  “I would like to offer you dinner, if you would be interested in talking more about jihad with me. I want to understand what the American concept of jihad is, and how it translates into what the Quran talks about.”

  John accepted the offer, although he was a bit suspicious about the man’s intent. The two men spent many hours over the next few days talking about the great jihad, the loss of John’s wife, and how it appeared that the West was in a near-constant war against Islam. During one of their conversations, John mentioned, “I would like to get revenge on the men that killed my wife.”

  “Why haven’t you?” asked his new mysterious friend.

  “The men were caught, and they are already serving a prison sentence. They are out of my reach.”

  John’s friend replied, “You should seek revenge against the society that fostered this type of anti-Islamic environment.” Then he spoke at length about the Crusades and explained how each religious group came to the rescue of their faith when it was under assault. “You should consider coming to the aid of Islam and those being oppressed in America,” he encouraged.

  After Miriam’s death, John had developed such hatred for those who despised his faith. He blamed them for the killing of his wife. It did not take too much convincing to get John to agree to meet again in the future and talk more about how he could potentially get the revenge that he sought.

  John went back to Dallas and his job, though he was now a changed man. He spent a lot of time listening to some of the more radical teachers of Islam on the radio and internet. He read plenty of books, and mostly, he kept to himself.

  When his Saudi friend called one day and said he was traveling to Dallas and wanted to meet up, John was more than willing. It was during this meeting that John agreed to be a part of Allah’s plan to bring judgment on the American people.

  Two years had gone by before John received a message that his time had come, that he was to travel to Chicago and be prepared to carry out Allah’s judgment and become a great martyr for Allah and his murdered wife.

  *******

  While each of the men had a different story for how they had arrived at the safe house that night, they were all united in their belief that their plan was righteous. Before the final prayer for the evening, they each took turns standing in front of the ISIS flag, filming their suicide videos. These were to be their last testament of their devotion to Islam and to the cause of liberating their Muslim brothers from the tyranny of the West. Each of them, in their own way, encouraged others to join the struggle—to use their lives to further Islam either through peace, the ballot box, or through the sword. Once their recordings were completed, they collectively participated in the final evening prayer before they tried to get some rest. Some of them weren’t able to get very much sleep—not so much because of fear, but because of excitement. They were about to take part in the righteous war, and Allah would have a great reward waiting for them.

  Chapter 14

  Valentine’s Day Attack

  Chicago, Illinois

  Union Station, Platform Nine-Eleven

  It was still dark outside, and the wind howled in from the direction of Lake Michigan. Fahd pulled his scarf tighter across his face as he tried to block the biting wind from hammering his face. He shivered as he did his best to push the incredibly heavy suitcase up the handicap ramp to gain entry into Union Station. Had the suitcase not had wheels, he doubted he would’ve been strong enough to carry it the distance he needed to.

  Once inside the station, he was greeted by the hustle and bustle of the morning commuters. Slowly, Fahd guided his suitcase past the throngs of people as he made his way down to the underground station yard. Looking at the various station numbers, he eventually spotted the track he was looking for. His handler had said he needed to move the suitcase to track nine-eleven, which was roughly in the center of the underground structure.

  His instructions were simple: get to the center of the track and look for the chalk mark on the ground and on the support structure next to it. Once he found those marks, he was to stand there with the suitcase and wait until the next train arrived. As they arrived, he was to place the suitcase on its side with the long side of the suitcase running parallel to the length of the tracks. This would place the bidirectional charges in exactly the position they needed to be.

  Now that Fahd was situated where he needed to be, he stood there in the morning cold, holding his hands to his mouth. He breathed some heat into his hands in a vain attempt to keep them warm. He thought about this moment, the last few minutes he had left to live. In the next handful of seconds, he would forever change the lives of so many countless thousands of people—people who were heading to work on this Valentine’s Day morning, and probably had special lunch or dinner plans with their significant others.

  Today would change all of that. Today would be the first time since that fateful day in September of 2001 that America was attacked by someone other than a disorganized lone wolf attacker—this attack had been planned and coordinated for more than five years. Fahd’s only disappointment was that he wouldn’t be alive to watch the chaos that would surely unfold during this day of days.

  Suddenly, Fahd al Saud heard the whistle of the Milwaukee West train from Big Timber Road as the double-decker passenger car train slowed to a crawl, pulling all the way up to the front of the station. He looked nervously down at his watch; he was still on time. He searched the cement columns carefully, trying not to attract too much attention. He was looking for a small green X. Once he found the mark, he carefully placed the heavy suitcase he had been given down on its side next to the column.

  Fahd calmed his breathing by taking several slow, deep breaths. The train doors opened, and a wave of passengers began to exit the train, filling the platform with rush-hour commuters as people began the start of the new workweek. Fahd opened his eyes, carefully reached down to the suitcase, and pulled the cord with the detonator out from the top exterior pocket of the suitcase. As his fingers closed around the detonator, he gently squeezed the red button, and then his world went black.

  *******

  Tyrone Miller was anxious as the train pulled in to Union Station; they were already running nine minutes late, and he needed to catch his next transfer bus or he was going to be late getting to work. Tyrone and his wife had finally been able to move out of the violence-prone South Side of Chicago two years ago. He had been fortunate; he obtained a scholarship to work on a technology degree, which would ultimately be his ticket out of poverty and the deadly South Side. Now he worked in the IT department for a midsize firm in the Prudential Plaza. He and his wife were finally getting ahead and starting to fulfill that American dream of a house in the burbs and a good job in the city.

  As the train pulled into the station and came to a stop, the door opened, and Tyrone was one of the first people out of the train. He sprinted toward the entrance of the station, winding through several curves and hallways in the building. Then suddenly, he heard the loudest explosion of his life. He felt the reverberation of the shock wave through the floor. Then the blast wave hit him, knocking him down to his knees. The last thing Tyrone saw was the pieces of the roof above him starting to fall; then there was nothing.

  *******

  The blast wave from the explosion threw the commuter trains on both tracks nine and eleven apart, shoving them across the other tracks and platform lines like a child’s playthings. This added to the immediate human carnage as these platforms were bustling with commuters whose trains had also just arrived. The blast was so powerful that it blew through the ceiling of the underground rail center, sending the growing fireball and debris through the bottom floor of the thirty-five-story Riversi
de Plaza building located just above.

  The explosion, and subsequent implosion of the foundation and structural supports, made the building’s weight shift inwards, which caused floors one and two to crumble and collapse into the gaping hole below. The alteration in the structure of the building caused the east face of the edifice to crack and crumble to the ground, exposing most of the interior floors of the east side of the thirty-five-story building. Numerous fires started as burst water pipes and electrical wires began to interact with each other.

  Fragments of the explosive force that didn’t expand upwards escaped through the underground tunnel connecting the Adams Street entrance with the platforms below. This massive flash of a fireball briefly engulfed many of the pedestrians who were unlucky enough to be crossing this major intersection. Dozens of people were suddenly engulfed in flames as their winter coats, gloves, scarfs and hats easily caught fire.

  The attack immediately rocked the downtown heart of Chicago as hundreds of people were thrown around the streets, twisted, torn and crying in agony. Those who had managed to escape uninjured immediately began to help those who were in graver condition than themselves. Hundreds of people began to pour out of the various entrances of Union Station covered in dust, coughing and gasping for breath. It was the worst terrorist attack on American soil since the Twin Towers had fallen.

  *******

  Hanaa Nazari was a registered nurse, riding the bus on her way to work at the ER but lost in thought, daydreaming about the special evening her boyfriend had planned. It was their first Valentine’s Day as a couple. Hanaa was jolted out of her wistful reverie when she heard, and then saw, the explosion a block away at the Adams Street Metra entrance. An actual fireball raced out of the underground entrances, enveloping many of the pedestrians who were coming and going from the Metra. Hanaa’s bus screeched to a halt, causing the passengers inside to lose their balance and reach for something to grab. As the bus stopped lurching forward, Hanaa got up from her seat and moved toward the door.