by Kenneth Eade
Robert was directed to a small room with no windows, and several dozen metal folding chairs. The walls were bare and the room sparsely populated with young people, mostly men. At the entrance, two young men took him inside and patted him down, then welcomed him.
“As-Salaam Alaikum.”
“Wa-Alaikum Salaam.”
He took a seat and tried to stay awake as Abdullah and several other speakers conducted their own version of “Islam 101.”
After Abdullah recited biblical verses which supported the jihad, the room darkened and a slide presentation flashed graphic images of brutal western drone attacks on wedding parties and family picnics, and bombing of schools and hospitals in Aleppo.
“This is the sad reality in which we live, brothers and sisters. We must resist the western thirst for money. It is a bloody thirst.”
After the shocking display of violence, slides depicting scenes of children playing in the streets, thriving markets and men gathered in the public square followed.
“The caliphate is a place where we can be free. Free in our worship and to live with one another in harmony.”
A slide flashed on the screen showing a smiling bride and groom, surrounded by family and friends.
“It is a paradise, where everyone has work and their own homes, equipped with everything necessary to fulfill your dreams of living as one under Allah.”
The house lights went on and Abdullah took a short question and answer period. After it, Robert approached the front of the room, where the two guards who had searched him had joined Abdullah. A smile broke out on the jihadi’s face when he noticed Robert.
“As-Salaam Alaikum, Asad.” He reached out his hand and Robert took it in his.
“Wa-Alaikum Salaam.”
“You look different in person.”
“It’s just me.”
“Forgive me, but I was expecting someone a bit younger.”
“I suppose the misery of this western life has taken its toll on me.” Robert hung his head.
Abdullah put his hand on Robert’s shoulder. “Don’t despair, brother. You have a family now.”
“Thank you.”
“Asad, part of the process is coming to these seminars. In order to prepare you, we must be sure you have the correct education. Do you know anything about Sharia law?”
“A little.”
“Here you will complete your education.”
“I understand. But I’m also anxious to begin military training.”
“All will come in due time once you reach the caliphate. Think of it as small steps. You must learn to walk before you can run.”
Robert nodded and smiled.
I’d like to run one right through you and your two buddies, you jihadist pig.
***
In the days that followed, Robert had nailed down Abdullah’s patterns almost to the hour. His favorite hookah bar seemed to be the dark, multicolored one on Geary Street, which he frequented alone whenever he had a meeting with a girl, and with two or three of his guards when he met with the men. Robert came early to the bar. It was open with a few customers seated in booths. He took one in the darkest corner of the place and ordered a sweet tea and a fruity mint hookah. He slipped into the men’s room and locked the door behind him. It was clean, but old, with worn fixtures and stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Robert stepped into a stall. He withdrew the Glock and silencer, and threaded it onto the barrel. He put the toilet seat down and stood upon it. He reached up, wiggled out a ceiling tile, slipped the Glock onto the tile next to it and pulled the loose tile back into place. Then he went back to finish his hookah. He preferred to dispatch Abdullah silently and with the Ruger, to silently shoot him in the booth and walk away quietly, but if he came with company, he would be ready for them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At 7 p.m., Robert watched Abdullah leave his apartment and join his two buddies downstairs.
Not a good start, but we work with what we have.
Robert reluctantly left the .22 at home and exited the room unarmed. He picked up their trail at the corner, mingling with the swarm of pedestrians on the street. As he surmised, they hopped the Geary Street bus.
Showtime.
He waited until the bus disappeared and took the next one about ten minutes later, stopping a short distance from the hookah bar. He walked to the bar, entered and made his way to the bathroom. On the way, he stopped when he saw Abdullah. Unfortunately, he had picked up an extra two. Now, they were a party of five. Abdullah smiled and waved when he saw him.
“Asad, why don’t you join us?”
Robert nodded and the two familiar thugs from the Islamic Center popped up to give him a pat down.
“It’s just routine; I hope you understand.”
Robert smiled. “That’s fine.”
They finished frisking him and sat down. Robert lowered himself into a chair across from Abdullah.
“Let me introduce you to everybody, Asad.” Abdullah motioned to the man sitting to Robert’s right. “This is Fadi. He’s one of our most promising soldiers. Allah has chosen him for a very special mission.”
Yeah, like blowing up school buses, I’ll bet.
Robert shook Fadi’s hand, imagining him strapping a suicide vest to his body. “This is Husam. He will be joining our ranks in Syria. His name means, ‘the sword.’” Robert shook hands with the young man.
Live by the sword, die by the gun.
“These two are my trusted assistants, Ghazi and Jafar.” Robert completed the pleasantries, and then excused himself to go to the bathroom.
Robert stepped onto the toilet, recovered his pistol and racked the slide. He slipped it into the pocket of his hoodie. If Abdullah decided to have him frisked again, it was going to be a very wild ride. He took his seat back at the table and listened to Abdullah drone on about the majesty of the caliphate – the perfect utopian society. The two on Robert’s side had to lean in over the table to hear Abdullah’s bullshit over the music.
All the better.
Robert tucked his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. With lightning speed and before Abdullah knew what was going on, he shot first Ghazi and then Jafar. When the shock began to appear on Abdullah’s face, Robert dispatched Husam and Fadi with shots through their armpits. Abdullah panicked. He riffled Ghazi’s jacket for his piece and was beginning to withdraw it when Robert smiled and shot him in the head.
“Allahu Akhbar, asshole.”
Putting the hood over his head, he quickly exited the bar. The bartender was oblivious and the hookah attendant was fixing a pipe for another customer. Robert slipped out the door without even being noticed. He walked away from Geary Street, ducked into an alley, wiped down the gun and threw it into a dumpster, then exited the alley in the opposite direction from whence he came. Then he doubled back, walked two blocks up and back over to Geary, where he grabbed the bus home.
Back at the hookah lounge, the attendant brought a tray of hot coals to Abdullah’s table to refresh the pipe. Shocked, he dropped the coals on the floor. The bartender yelled at him from the bar.
“What are you doing?”
“These dudes are dead, man!”
***
About the same time San Francisco PD got the call to roll to the hookah lounge, an alarm was going off at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia. FBI Agent William Wokowski jotted it down and headed to the office of NCTC director, Nathan Anderson. The office was state-of-the-art, equipped with all the bells and whistles of the control room below: high definition video screens with news feeds from all over the world, and a master computer which linked into the NCTC’s superior database of terrorist suspects. Anderson could have passed for an FBI agent himself, in his G-Man style grey suit, but there was one enormous difference between him and Wokowski – his agency had no enforcement authority. Wokowski was his liaison to the FBI, a holdout from the days Anderson had convinced the president to give his office some real teeth, and the big man had de
livered a set of dentures instead. Any lead the counterterrorism center received was passed on to the appropriate agency – whether that be the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security or local law enforcement.
Wokowski rapped on the half-open door of Anderson’s office.
“Come on in, Bill.”
“Thanks.” He placed the paper on Anderson’s desk and slid it over to him. “I thought you may want to see this report.”
Anderson picked up the paper and studied it. He frowned as a worried look took over his face. “Do you think it’s a copycat?”
“It has to be. Robert Garcia was killed in Aleppo.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The clenched hand formed into a fist and pounded the table until Ayisha Cullen thought her hand would bleed. Ever since her little sister had disappeared, she wasn’t very good at handling bad news. She looked up into the mirror but she didn’t recognize the girl looking back. Normally, she would wear makeup to accentuate her already positive attributes. Usually, she would be wearing a designer blouse and a skirt instead of a dull, plain abaya and hijab, which covered her shapely figure and beautiful blonde hair. But the entire body, except for the face and hands, is Aurat, and the wearing of makeup in public was strictly forbidden by her new faith, which she had adopted not out of religious curiosity, but for a different, more specific purpose.
Her sister, Zia, had voluntarily converted to Islam, to the shock of her father, a practicing Catholic. She said she wanted to be close to her Muslim roots. Ever since their mother, Farid, had died, Zia had given up all the trimmings of Christianity – including Christmas – and had adopted the Quran in place of her family. Ayisha, fiercely independent and self-confident, felt as if her sister had been brainwashed and was now part of some weird religious cult. She had known Muslims in school, and none of them were so fanatic. None of them lived the letter and rote of the Quran in their daily lives. Now she scolded herself for not having seen the signs in time. Recently back from a two-year tour in the Army, outgoing and extroverted and anxious to get back into the swing of things, she had been too busy with her social life to see that her sister’s had taken a bizarre turn. Now, all that was over. The police couldn’t do anything; the U.S. Embassy couldn’t do anything; not even her father could save her sister. It was up to her now.
Ayisha and Zia were always close, but they were opposites in every way. Zia was a “girly girl,” always playing house and trying on her mother’s most feminine clothes, while Ayisha was a tomboy in every sense of the word. While Zia was playing with her dolls, Ayisha was playing baseball with the boys. Captain of the girls’ volleyball team in high school, when she wasn’t at practice, she was busy with martial arts classes or the Scouts which she loved because of the comradery, discipline, and her love of the outdoors. Whenever Zia got into a conflict, and there were many because the boys were always after her due to her soft beauty, Ayisha was there to protect her little sister from the jealous girl or even the hormonally-charged aggressive boy. Ayisha graduated from high school with honors, which, along with her father’s wherewithal to put her through college, she could have had her pick of any university in the U.S., but, instead, she sought her own way and did it through service in the military.
Out of habit, she opened her jewelry drawer. Under normal circumstances, she would have felt naked going out without her bangles, but they caused a jingling noise and that could attract men, which was haram. She looked back at herself, sighed, and rose to leave the room. Today was the day she would break her father’s already torn heart. She would leave, as her sister did, without a word, not that many had been said between them lately anyway.
She logged in to her Skype account and a friendly face filled the screen.
“As-Salaam Alaikum.”
“Wa-Alaikum Salaam.”
“Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“Don’t worry. We will be with you every step of the way. We will join you up with your countrymen, and you will be with your friends.”
“Thank you, Kaseem.”
“Don’t thank me. Everything will be as it should be, InshaAllah. Rihlah muwaffaqah.”
She had passed their vetting process with flying colors. Her military background had been a liability, but she had converted it into an asset. In her service in the Army, she had learned first-hand all the evil, death and destruction the west had hailed down on the holy land. Her new friends taught her that jihad was defensive, not an aggression. It was a war of survival. She knew the western ways of combat and was a value to her new family because of this knowledge.
Ayisha looked back at her room, the one she and Zia had shared. She had left this room once before, had said good-bye to her childhood and returned to it a woman. Now as she closed the door, she realized that she was closing it on her life, and this may be the last time she would ever see it or her family again.
***
Robert settled his bill on the way upstairs. Before he packed up his things, he checked his messages, and found a PGP encrypted message from Rahbi Moghadam:
I am deeply in your debt. Would like to talk with you again before you leave.
He typed a quick message back indicating it was impossible, then packed up his things and headed for the Powell Street BART station. When he exited the bus at Powell, he dumped the Ruger into a garbage bin. He took the BART train directly to the airport and paid cash for a round-trip ticket on American Airlines to Philadelphia, using one of his burner driver’s licenses as an ID.
Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, Robert took the shuttle to Terminal D and booked a round-trip ticket to Athens with one of his American passports. When he checked in at the business class lounge, he was surprised to see Rahbi Moghadam sitting in the lobby. Robert flashed him a stern look, while at the same time admiring Rahbi’s quick thinking and solid resolve.
“I suppose you really did want to talk to me.”
“You can see that I did.”
“How did you know it’d be Philly?”
“I figured you wouldn’t want to fly through Kennedy because of their enhanced security.”
“I’m not sure it’s safe to talk here. Let’s meet in the bathroom.”
“The bathroom?”
“Humor me. I’ll go in first and grab a stall nearest to the far wall. You take the one next door, but if we hear anyone come in, we stop talking, agreed?”
Rahbi nodded. “All right, my name is Sam and yours is David.”
Robert left for the restroom. There were only four stalls – all open. He took the one against the wall. Shortly thereafter, he heard Rahbi come in and take the stall next door to him.
“Sam?”
“Yes, now make it quick. What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t want to stop at just one, Sam. I want to get all of them.”
“Nobody can get all of them.”
“If anyone can, you can.”
The door swung open.
“Shh!”
They waited silently until they heard the flush of the urinal, followed by the flow of water and the hand dryer.
“I have someone who’s going on the inside. A girl.”
“That’s suicide.”
“She lost her sister to them. She’s highly motivated.”
“Her emotion makes her a liability.”
“I’ve got another specialist on the case, but I want you instead.”
“Not interested.”
“Just meet her first, that’s all I ask.”
“I work alone.”
“You don’t have to work with the other guy. I’ll tell him to stand down. We can use him as backup, if need be.”
“It’s impossible. I can’t do it. It would be dangerous for both of us.”
“She’s fluent in Arabic.”
“And?”
“Just think about it.”
“Nothing to think about.”
“She’s ex-military, trained in hand-to-hand combat and a martial arts expert.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t care if she’s Bruce-fucking-Lee. Does she or you realize that she’s going up against a whole army of crazy-ass cutthroat killers?”
“That’s why we want you.”
“No way. Too dangerous.”
“It’s a good job. There’s a lot of money in it.”
“I already made enough money on the last one to keep me going for years.”
“Well, just so you know, she’s going in no matter what you do.”
“Then she’s crazy. And so are you.”
“She’s already on her way as we speak.”
Another swing of the door, followed by the closing of the stall on the other end and a gaseous symphony. Robert flushed the toilet, washed his hands and left the restroom and the lounge.
***
During the ten-hour flight to Athens, Robert dozed off and his thoughts drifted to Joelle. He imagined what had become of her after the raid in Porto Heli. He pictured the two of them diving off his boat into the crystal clear Mediterranean waters and her lounging on the sundeck as he sailed the boat into the horizon. When he woke up, the pleasantry of the dream was destroyed by the reality of Rahbi Moghadam’s jihadist bait. He couldn’t let that girl go into the snake pit without having her back. He would stalk her and kill every jihadi who tried to lay a hand on her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The wheels of the plane had barely tapped the tarmac when Robert lit up one of his burner phones and called the secure number.
“I’ll do it.”
“Great, but she’s already left.”
“Left? Where?”
“She’s on a flight to Istanbul as we speak.”
Shit.
“I’m on my way. Send me her flight info and pictures by PGP mail. I’ll need them as soon as I land.”
There was no time to go home, and there was nothing at home anyway. Robert’s identity was an illusion, and his documents, although all original, were scattered all over the world in safe deposit boxes at different secure secret locations and private banks. His Turkish passport was in a numbered safe deposit box in Austria, so he booked a flight to Vienna. From there, it was a two-hour flight to Istanbul, and he had no time to lose.