by Kenneth Eade
Ali smiled. “Thanks for helping me with the boxes.” Robert nodded.
With Ali in the lead and Robert taking up the rear, they walked single file along the road until they were out of sight of the border fence. Al-Rai was still controlled by ISIS. It would have been a straight-shot two-hour drive from nearby Tal Abyad, but that city was now occupied by the YPG and various rebel factions which called themselves the Free Syrian Army. They were not expected to be friendly to foreigners on a pilgrimage to ISIS.
After about an hour of waiting, a double-cab Toyota Hilux truck pulled up with one driver and two men in the bed holding AK-47s. Ali helped the girls in and negotiated passage for Robert, who paid with a wad of lira. The driver advised them to wait as he and Ali went to pick up the crates. Upon their return, the driver and one of the militants stacked all the crates into the bed of the truck and they all piled into the double cab, with Ali and Robert up front with the driver and the girls in the back seat. Al-Rai was a short drive from the border. In the darkness, they approached a checkpoint.
“This is the Islamic State.”
As the checkpoint which was composed of a group of armed vehicles manned by terrorists came into focus, Robert counted four armed militants with their AK-47s raised. An unarmed man sat at a table in front of them. The truck slowed down and stopped.
“You have to get out and show him your documents,” Ali advised.
They all exited and stood in line, with Robert in the front. He showed the man his Turkish passport and his Daesh visa while Ali stood by. One of the armed guards frisked Robert, and then stood back, indicating he was all clear. The bureaucrat looked up at him with no emotion.
“The entry fee is 100,000 dinar, 20,000 Syrian pounds or 100 dollars.”
“He said…”
“I understand.”
“Do you have dollars?’
“Yes.”
“One hundred.”
Robert paid the fee in dollars, and Ali counted out the fee for the girls from an envelope that had been put into his charge. The man stamped Robert’s visa and indicated he was free to go. The girls did not fare as well. Ayisha made it through the inspection process just fine, but all of a sudden, one of the guards began screaming at the third girl. He raised his weapon at her and so did the other two.
“What is it?” the bureaucrat asked.
The guard held out a cell phone he had found hidden in the girl’s abaya.
“Haram!”
The guard handed the phone to the bureaucrat and he threw it on the ground and smashed it into pieces under the heel of his boot. Ali calmed him down with some more money.
It was dark, but Robert could see enough of Al-Rai to remind him of Aleppo. Many of the buildings had been destroyed by air strikes and bombing. There were a few operating cars, a lot of burned-out ones, and Toyota trucks containing ISIS patrols making their rounds on the streets. They pulled up into a yard which was full of broken and abandoned vehicles.
“You can rent a car here.”
Ali began to negotiate with the proprietor who was wearing a black headband with Daesh insignia.
“He says he has no more cars for rent, only sale.”
Robert motioned toward the girls. “How are they getting to Raqqa?”
“These Daesh fighters will take them.”
“Will they take me?”
“You don’t want to even ask. Last week, I saw them chop this guy’s head off. Like this!”
With his flat hand as a knife, he put it against his throat and “sawed” it. “Then they put the head on top of his body. You can ask them to take you to a recruiting center and, after training, they’ll give you a gun. They might do that. But if they find you alone on the streets, they’ll just kill you.”
“Ask the guy if he has any motorbikes.”
Robert negotiated a deal on a Chinese motorcycle, which was his preferred mode of transportation anyway. He said good-bye to Ali, and shook his hand. Then he rode away.
Robert stopped at the shell of a bombed-out building about two blocks away, and stashed the bike. He reached into his pack for his field glasses, lifted them to his eyes and focused on the car lot. Now there was nothing to do except wait and make a plan on the fly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Robert didn’t have to wait long. About an hour later, a large cargo truck pulled up. The driver of the Toyota and the two jihadists jumped out of it and offloaded the supplies from the bed of their Toyota onto the utility truck. Then they piled back into the Hilux with the girls as several men from the utility truck loaded more supplies from the warehouse of the car lot. Robert watched them stack boxes and boxes of ammunition, rocket launchers and guns into the bed of the cargo truck. He wished he could blow it up right then and there. After the loading, the truck stayed there for a while.
They aren’t moving.
Robert couldn’t let the trail go cold. He had to stay on Ayisha’s trail. The only question was how. If he followed them on the motorcycle, chances were pretty good he would be noticed and possibly caught. It wasn’t the best option, but if it was his only one, so be it.
I have to try to get into that truck if I can.
Robert examined the vehicle. Painted in camouflage, the heavy duty truck had three axles and appeared to be armored. There was an unmanned machine gun post mounted on the top of the cab, but it could be easily accessed by a man inside. They were loading the supplies onto the truck’s open bed, which was manned by an armed militant who was sitting in the corner of the bed with his rifle raised in the air. It would be practically impossible to slip onto it undetected.
Robert scanned the possible routes the truck would follow. It would be a gamble, but he had to get on it somehow.
But how?
Any decision you make in life depends on the opportunities that are presented. Robert simply had to wait for an opportunity and, if it didn’t arise, to have an alternative plan. He watched the truck carefully as they finished loading the contents, and then the Hilux pulled out, with the truck following it.
Idiots. They should have followed the thing in case it’s ambushed. Better for me.
The Hilux was obviously leading the way. Both trucks were heading in his direction. Robert saw it as a window of opportunity and wondered how wide the window would open and when it would close. He looked around, grabbed a bottle out of a pile of trash and, hunching low, came out of the shadows and onto the street. The Toyota was limber and quick, but slowed its pace to keep up the with big, lumbering cargo truck as it creeped forward in first, then second gear. By the time they had reached the first intersection, Robert was parallel to the truck. The sentry on the back hardly noticed him as they passed him, slowing to a full stop at the cross street.
Robert crouched and slipped underneath the truck, grabbing on to the undercarriage and pulling himself up as the truck slowly moved away. He locked his ankles and wrists into it like a trapeze artist and held on.
This was a bad idea. One bump and I’m history.
Thankfully, the truck didn’t rumble very far. Robert memorized every turn and direction with the built-in compass in his head, so he could reverse it and get back to his motorcycle. When the huge truck slowed, he peeked out and saw it approaching a compound of sorts. He let loose and fell to the ground with a thud, and remained still as part of the road as the truck passed over him. He flipped over on his belly and watched two sentries with AK-47s shine lights underneath the big truck and then wave them into the complex.
Robert watched as the sentries closed the double gate doors behind the truck, and crawled away while their backs were to him. He took shelter in a nearby abandoned and shell-shocked building on the street. He looked at his watch.
Four a.m.
Dawn would soon illuminate the landscape and reveal all its details which meant the night creatures, like Robert, needed to crawl back into their holes. He moved along the perimeter of the buildings, keeping a part of them as he looked for his own rathole. He found it in
a burned-out building which was close enough to the compound to observe Ayisha’s comings and goings, if there were any.
***
Ayisha and her two travel companions were ordered out of the truck and sent to a women’s barracks in the compound, a loosely organized group of buildings centered around a courtyard. She observed everything, committing it to her memory as sure as if she had taken a photograph. The barracks were plain, as she was accustomed to in the military, but less orderly and not neat. This was no summer camp for girls.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Two hours later, a woman, dressed in black, entered the barracks and screamed at the girls.
“Get up and get dressed for Shawish!”
Ayisha got up, dressed and was standing at attention almost immediately. It was like an instinct that had been hard-wired into her central nervous system during her military days. She covered her face with her veil because she knew it was haram for a female to reveal her face to a male who was not a relative. The other girls were still blinking and yawning when a male militant walked in, which Ayisha figured for a sergeant. He stood in the middle of the barracks.
“You are here to learn. To learn and to be tested. I am Shawish. That is my rank and you will address me as such. You do not need to know my name. I will be putting you through the vetting process and I alone will decide where you will be placed.”
He looked Ayisha up and down. “You come with me. The rest of you wait here.”
He led her into a bare-bones room with a desk, which was probably his office, and directed her to sit in one of the two metal chairs facing the desk as he sat down behind it.
“So you come from the land of the kufar?”
“Yes, sir. But I am grateful to have been selected to live in the caliphate.”
A sour look came over his face, like he had caught a whiff of some putrid smell, like an overflown chemical toilet.
“You may have passed some initial screening back in alwilayat almuttahida, but you must be vetted completely here before you can be admitted to the caliphate.”
“I understand, sir.”
He cleared his throat, this time looking into her eyes with a little softer manner. He was about thirty, with hair as black as coal and equally dark eyes. He had grown the trademark jihadist beard, which he seemed to wear as a badge of authority, or hid behind it as if it yielded some sort of unseen power.
“How much do you know of the Quran and Hadith?”
“I won’t lie to you, sir. I just recently dedicated my life to Allah and I’m still learning His ways. But I do know the Quran is His word and I have read it and use it in daily prayer. I’ve also read the Hadith in conjunction with my studies of the holy prophet Muhammad.”
Shawish didn’t smile, but he didn’t appear to be angry either, so she could tell he was probably pleased with her progress.
“I understand you have some military training?”
“Yes, sir. Before I saw the light, I did a tour in the United States Army.”
“You know that your role in the caliphate cannot include military service. That is only for men.”
“Yes, sir, but I want to fight the jihad.”
“We do understand the jihad is not a man-only duty. Some women, like the ones who came with you, will be trained to fight the kufar and sent back. If they are worthy, they will die as martyrs for Allah. If they are not, they will serve roles as wives of the brave fighters. You, however, may have the skills necessary to serve to enforce the Sharia law. Are you familiar with it?”
“Yes, I am.”
Ayisha had heard stories about the Khansaa Brigade or Hisbah, a woman-only morality police force who were rumored to be as brutal as the militants. Some women feared them even more than the jihadists because they had heard stories of women getting a beating from the Hisbah for talking too loudly on the streets or being without a male chaperone. The Hisbah were not soldiers, but they carried weapons just the same as the soldiers did. With all the restrictive fundamentalist rules imposed on women, they were an anomaly, as many things were in the Islamic State.
“Occasionally we have women who don’t obey the dress or morality laws. And we need other women to enforce them. Are you familiar with the dress laws?”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
“How can we know you are not still attached to the kufar and their sinning ways?”
“I am here to witness their demise. As Abu Abdullah Nuaim Ibn Hammad said, ‘The black flags will come from the east, led by mighty men with long hair and beards; their surnames taken from their hometowns.’ ”
“So you know the story of the Black Banner Army of Khurasan from the Hadith?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you believe it is a revelation that will come to pass that we will defeat the kufar at Dabiq?”
“Yes, sir. Inshallah, in my lifetime.”
“Follow me.”
Shawish led the way outside to the courtyard. There, in the center of it, was a man on his knees, clad in an orange jumpsuit, like those used at Guantanamo Bay prison, his hands clasped together, begging. A man dressed entirely in black from head to toe stood behind him, the white handle of a sword sticking out from his belt.
“This man was discovered spying for the kufar. You will now witness the enforcement of the hudud.”
The executioner pushed the man’s head down with his boot, forcing his chin onto a cut tree stump. Then he removed his foot, drew the scimitar from his belt and held it high above his head, and then brought it whooshing down in a blow that severed the man’s head. It went rolling off into the dust while blood spurted from the severed neck like a gushing red fountain.
Ayisha felt like she would gag, but choked it back silently, keeping her eyes on the horrifying spectacle without wavering or blinking. She had seen this on ISIS propaganda videos but it was even more shocking in person. She wanted to scream, but she held it between the muscles of her throat. She wanted to vomit, but she tightened her stomach to quell its contractions. She pushed her red hot anger into the place deep inside her; that place she had created when she had decided to do whatever it took to find out what happened to her sister and to punish those responsible. And on her face, her mask remained stoic and stern.
Shawish’s lips formed a smile, and then he suppressed it. Contrary to the rookies he was used to breaking in from the west, he had a star pupil on his hands on the first day of class.
***
Robert noticed a lone woman being escorted from the compound on foot by one militant. They walked down the street a bit to an apartment building and disappeared inside. After about ten minutes, the militant emerged alone and made his way back to the compound.
That had to be Ayisha.
Only time and astute observation would reveal to Robert whether or not his charge was in the apartment building, had been shuttled out on one of the many vehicles he had seen leaving the compound, or was still there.
Ayisha followed the militant up the stairs to the third floor corridor. He opened one of many doors into a small room and handed Ayisha the key. After successfully passing her vetting process, she had been assigned this room, which they called her “apartment” on an all-woman floor. Four empty walls and a bare floor with some blankets for sleeping. There was a sink bolted to the wall, but the toilet was communal and only accessible through the corridor. Electricity was rare – and her apartment did not have it at all. There were candles to provide light and matches to light them in the corner of the room. There was no kitchen, but there was no more gas in Raqqa to cook anyway, so it didn’t much matter. She had a window that looked out onto the depressing streets. There was no mirror – nothing to remind her of who she was becoming or the girl she used to be. But her mission was clear – to find out what had happened to Zia and reign down hell and fury on all those who were responsible. She was not allowed a phone or any communication to the outside world. Her room was a virtual prison cell.
She looked out the window at the end of th
e afternoon, as her stress unwound and turned into heavy fatigue. No children playing in the streets, no markets filled with fresh fruit and vegetables. The black flags of the caliphate rippled in the dry wind from the top of every building. Men, some dressed in black costumes and others in western-type wear, and women dressed only in black abayas, drifted through the streets like black ghosts. It was a world without color, a bizarre and twisted All Hallows’ Eve. The streets were silent, save for the sound of the occasional car or truck. Music was non-existent. It was haram, and it had been banned.
Ayisha sat on the floor, straightened one of the blankets out and lay on it. She curled the other one up like a pillow and put her head down. It smelled musty and of dust and was itchy to her cheek. She resisted the urge to cry and pushed the tears down, way down into her stomach and locked them away there. There was work to be done and tears would not help.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Robert found his way back to the motorcycle, but a knight with a horse and no armor or weapon was an impotent one. It was time to go shopping. In the wee hours of the morning, he sped off into the countryside toward the border, keeping well off the established roads. He had estimated the location of the first ISIS checkpoint and carefully avoided it as he traversed the countryside of the Islamic State, looking for an easy fight.
Having been on many patrols himself, Robert knew that night duty was the most boring and, toward the morning after a long shift, all you wanted to do was sleep. He was counting on this fact being universal when he spotted the ISIS patrol beside their Toyota Hilux. They were milling about on the side of the road. Two of them were smoking, one was taking a piss in a ravine. The driver was hanging his legs outside the open door of the truck.
He knew that jihadi fighters were jumpy, trigger-happy and naturally full of adrenaline, so he didn’t opt for the friendly approach. He simply parked his bike out of the range of their eyes and ears, and scurried over to their location on foot, crouching down, staying close to the ground like a snake. Like it had been with the cargo truck, Robert would have seconds – perhaps fractions of a second – to make his move and it had to count. It was win or die.