If it was not for the presence of Gholam Javad, Al-Qassam did not see how he could have gotten the recalcitrant bomber even this far. But working together they had managed to do so and their ambitious mission was going exactly as first envisioned. That growing realization and the excitement accompanying it was something that he was presently trying to keep tamped down inside himself. Things had gone far too well to be jeopardized by a careless mistake brought on by sheer giddiness.
But as far as Gholam Javad was concerned, he was having the time of his life. For most of his entire existence, this Iranian air force veteran had dreamed of sitting in the pilot’s seat of a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress. His uncle, who once bore the high responsibility as a chosen chief pilot for the royal family of the Shah and had commanded a converted Trans World Airlines B-17 in that capacity, would have been so proud of him.
It did not matter in Javad’s mind that his uncle, an avowed secularist supremely loyal to the throne, would most likely have been summarily tortured and executed in the modern Islamic Republic of Iran. Nor did it ever enter Javad’s unusual sense of reality that his uncle would have recoiled in utter horror of who Gholam was flying for now, and why.
No, those thoughts had never entered his head. All he cared about was the realization of an often dreamed of opportunity to fly his one obsession in life. He was finally at the controls of a real Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, just like the American actor Steve McQueen in The War Lover.
Yahla al-Qassam wondered about Gholam Javad from time to time, but allowed his peculiar companion to savor his present flying experience with minimal interruptions. They had all struggled so hard to get to this point and Al-Qassam had by far driven himself the hardest. There had been so much along the way to overcome, so many things in his own life that guided him to this defining moment. So many sacrifices that had been made.
To his own way of thinking, the Iranian leader understood far better than most what the word ‘sacrifice’ really meant. After all, Yahla al-Qassam was not even his real name, he had not let his birth name cross his own lips for several years now. There were others who knew but they were very few in number and mostly in the very highest echelons of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and could keep a secret as well as Qassam could. Furthermore, they had more than a passing interest in his continued well-being and made every effort possible to protect one of their most valuable human assets.
The one now called Yahla al-Qassam had been born in the mountainous northern reaches of Qazvin Province, in an area close to the fading remnants of the ancient fortress known as Alamut. It was where Hassan-i Sabbah, the leader of the Order of the Assassins and also known in medieval history as the ‘Old Man of the Mountains,’ once ruled from.
As a young boy Yahla had been known as a sort of child prodigy possessing a rare mixture of inner determination, leadership abilities and a very high intelligence. His parents were both devout Shi’a, who in turn came from a long lineage of other devout Shi’a going back to the time of Ali ibn Abi Talib. Zealously faithful in their beliefs they made certain this son of theirs, so blessed by Allah and The Prophet Muhammad, would be as well versed in his religious upbringing as he was in other matters involving a more formal education.
During his childhood and this deep immersion into his family’s theology, combined with the imagination of an adventurous boy living in the middle of so much history, the one now called Yahla al-Qassam became increasingly aware that he was linked to some sort of important destiny.
After all his family could claim direct lineage to the Prophet himself, along with many others who had shaped the surrounding world in which he lived in. He had been told repeatedly that he was especially blessed for as long as he could remember, and had become quite conscious as well as comfortable in that fact. Yet in his mind, a question remained as to exactly what that important destiny might be.
Some years later, while studying architectural engineering at the prestigious University of Tehran, he had finally come to the full understanding of what that predetermination must be. The year was 1978 and Iran was engulfed in the ongoing struggle between a secular head of state and the Shi’a cleric known as the Ayatollah Khomeini. Like so many of his fellow students, the young man from Qazvin Province found himself in the streets far more often than in the classroom, protesting against the ruling Shah and supporting the exiled ayatollah.
When Shah Pahlavi abdicated his throne a few months later and departed the country in disgrace, the ayatollah returned from his forced exile in sacrosanct triumph. Millions of Iranians watched as their proclaimed religious messiah stepped off a chartered Air France passenger jet, and Yahla had been in that crowd when they exploded instantaneously with an indescribable shared joy at the ayatollah’s return.
But the fight for an Islamist Republic of Iran was far from over. There were many betrayers to be dealt with internally as well as the venting of long-held external animosities toward The Great Satan, the despised United States of America. The young man raised under the shadow of Alamut had been there from the very beginning, from the sacking of military armories and dealing with government forces still loyal to the Shah, to the execution of those same traitors.
Then came the day when he and 500 other ‘students,’ marching under the banner of The Muslim Students of the Imam Khomeini Line, took over the American Embassy in downtown Tehran. With the implicit assistance of the newly-formed Islamic republic, they had collectively thumbed their noses at the Great Satan for 444 days by continually brutalizing their hostages and costing President Jimmy Carter any chance of being elected to a second term.
Within another year following the release of the American hostages, the fledging Islamist Republic of Iran was embroiled in a devastating war with the neighboring country of Iraq. The Iranians were pushed back by the well-trained Iraqi military forces and the Iranian Army, long at war with itself, was showing every sign of collapsing. As a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who remained fanatically loyal to the Ayatollah, the man now called Yahla al-Qassam had been one of many in taking drastic measures to turn their precarious situation around.
One of the most desperate of those drastic measures involved the creation of the Basij Mostazafan, or ‘Mobilization of the Oppressed.’ What became commonly referred to as the Basij was the brainchild of the Ayatollah Khomeini himself, and was seized upon by the Revolutionary Guards to combat the superior military advantages of their Iraqi foes.
Made up mostly of a corps of teenaged boys between the ages of twelve and seventeen, the Basij became a symbol of Iranian theological resolve. Best known for their human wave style of attacks, they were sacrificed by the hundreds of thousands to clear the way for the far better equipped, professional Iranian military units, including many elements of the Revolutionary Guards themselves.
Thus was the symbiotic relationship between the Basij and the IRG, or Sephah. Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen would recruit male youth for the Basij, usually from the ranks of the very poorest and downtrodden. The pauperized families of these martyrs-to-be were promised financial compensation, as well as other opportunities that to this juncture had never existed for them.
Their sons, many little more than children, were given a rudimentary training course of some two weeks and sent to the front. Each was issued a key by their Sephah superiors, a key that would supposedly unlock the doors of heaven to enjoy divine blessings. Sometimes, almost as an afterthought, they might be hastily armed. Often times they were not.
Their recruitment was done by the Sephah, their training was conducted by the Sephah and in the field they were commanded by the Sephah. To complete this wretchedly pathetic symbiosis, they willingly sacrificed their lives upon the express orders of those very same mentors.
Early in the war, the Iranians attempted to use donkeys and other animals to clear the innumerable minefields in which the Iraqi forces excelled with markedly deadly effect. However, this experiment was soon deemed unsuccessful, as the animals would scat
ter in every direction after one or two of them detonated a mine. What was needed were sweepers who would follow orders, staying in perfect lines even as others that they called friends were blown apart on either side.
The Basij’s initial reason for existence was to provide a ready supply of such mine sweepers. The widespread utilization of these child volunteers became so refined that the young boys would wrap themselves in funeral shrouds before starting their advance, making it easier to give what was left of their bodies a proper burial after detonating a mine. There was never a shortage of these volunteers.
The man called Yahla al-Qassam had experienced a heady rise in his prominence during this ghastly period. As an IRG member he recruited, trained and then ordered innumerable Basij youth to their deaths. He took great pride in these units, among all others his were always the most highly motivated and ready to die. Often enough his biggest difficulty was keeping them reined in until the proper time. The young boys often wanted to run to their deaths instead of purposely walking forward, keeping those ever important perfect lines in their near suicidal formations.
His superiors noted al-Qassam’s innate leadership abilities and loyalty to the cause, and soon earmarked him for bigger and better things. Within two more years he was in southern Lebanon, advising a ragtag bunch of mostly Shi’a Lebanese militants who called themselves the Hezbollah. The assignment had been a herculean task in the wholesale killing zones of southern Lebanon. Whoever the opposing militias did not manage to dispose of, the Israeli Defense Forces summarily finished off.
Nevertheless, that hard fact also served as a major culling effect in improving the Hezbollah ranks. Combined with proper training and guidance from Sephah, along with tacit supply and logistics links furnished by the neighboring Syrians, this formerly vagabond group rapidly morphed into the premier terrorist organization of their kind.
It was during this period that al-Qassam assumed his current name. It had a far more local ring than his old one of Persian lineage, and his Shi’a Lebanese comrades appreciated the lengths that he took in proving worthy of their loyalty and trust. The IRG operative made it a point to learn their local dialect of Arabic, rather than speaking to them in his native Farsi as many of his Sephah peers had done. His new comrades responded in kind, and soon enough he found himself firmly emplaced as not only one of the golden ones in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, but also in the eyes of the increasingly dangerous Hezbollah terrorist movement.
After the successful completion of several operations of limited scope, Yahla al-Qassam soon found himself involved in bigger, far more lethal schemes. When others thought in terms of car bombs, he came up with the idea of trucks packed with high explosives. While others were content to murder select individuals, he instead saw the real value of not only kidnapping them for some sort of renumeration but also in using the event as a major propaganda coup.
Deftly playing the psychological shock involved in abduction for maximum effect, al-Qassam would dangle the hapless hostage’s continued well-being like so much red meat in front of ravenous mass media outlets. The right date, the right time, the right circumstance, the right pronouncement, all figured into a complicated game of human perception, human feeling and human frailties. And each time he proved himself a master in each.
Lastly, when he did decide to commit outright murder, the Iranian thought in much grander terms than one or even a few victims. If the truth be known, it was his innovation and operational skills that led to the deaths of hundreds of foreign troops assigned to Lebanon as peacekeepers. Some of these operations were so well planned and executed they occurred near simultaneously, including certain suicide bombings in Beirut that left behind massed piles of dead and broken bodies.
These rabid attacks ultimately led to the evacuation of those American, French and Italian forces that had been sent to that unhappy land, to keep a peace no one else really seemed to want. Their removal, along with the growing disarray of the official Lebanese government, allowed Hezbollah to expand exponentially in both size and capability, becoming a de facto shadow government on its own. Yahla al-Qassam could take a large amount of credit in that emergence.
Sometime later this rising obelisk amid a sea of human horrors returned to Iran, toying with a germ of an idea that by far eclipsed anything that any terrorist cell had ever attempted before. Ironically enough he owed much of this evolving brainchild to his Iraqi enemies, against whom his countrymen were still fighting.
The Iran-Iraq conflict had seen the first massive use of chemical weapons since World War One. The Iranians suffered tens of thousands of casualties when exposed to Saddam Hussein’s weaponized stockpiles, and the overall effectiveness of this hellish style of wholesale killing captured both al-Qassam’s eye as well as his imagination.
A nerve agent could be a spectacular tool in the maturing arsenal of international terrorism, and would be an act that would not only potentially cause tens of thousands of casualties, but would also spread fear and panic among millions of other human beings not otherwise affected. The actual employment and rippling aftereffects from this type of attack was sure to send far reaching shockwaves through any nation’s economic, medical, governmental and societal infrastructures. This would be true for even the most powerful nation on earth, the hated Great Satan of the United States of America.
Yahla al-Qassam had proposed his evolving succubus to his superiors in Sephah, who were enthusiastic of this intriguing plan from one of their best and brightest. They in turn took the idea to their ruling council of mullahs who considered it a divination from Allah himself, an assured way to strike a fearsome blow to the very heart and soul of the infidels who stood against them. More information was requested.
More information was given. Have whatever nerve agent chosen for the mission shipped into a port in Mexico, a third world country not well-versed in physical security measures or imported goods enforcement. Use freighters with Cuban registries for the transport of personnel and equipment, a nation with which Mexico shared close diplomatic as well as economic ties. Befittingly enough, Cuba was also quite friendly with the Islamic Republic of Iran as well as various terrorist groups, and had been willingly utilized for such activities before.
As in standard operating procedure for these sorts of strikes, three teams would be created to get the job done. One would be a reconnaissance group, the first to arrive to choose the best routes, set up safe houses and gather the needed human intelligence. Once they completed their task, they would be withdrawn for debriefing and a support team inserted to set up for the coming strike group, who would conduct the attack itself.
The nerve agent as well as the apparatus needed for dispersal would go in with the support team, then situated at a pre-chosen location along with the supplies and equipment needed for the strike group. While being moved, the weaponized chemicals and attending ancillaries would have every appearance of typical crop dusting implements bound for northern Mexico.
Each team would consist of proven Sephah and Hezbollah operatives, specifically selected for their skills and knowledge as well as physical characteristics to blend more easily into the general Mexican population. Their target would be a major city just inside the long, porous border with the United States; a city selected for size, significance, and the availability of surrounding remote areas.
The delivery of the agent would come from an aircraft capable of lifting and dispersing the considerable chemical payload. Finally, the strike team would escape back across the border in the ensuing confusion and panic, and arrive in friendly territory along with the support group within 72 hours of completing their mission.
Soon enough al-Qassam was working diligently to bring his personal angra mainyu into reality. At first he had calculated on using Sarin as the nerve agent, but his well-placed contacts in the Syrian intelligence services told him of a recent success that changed his mind. Aided and abetted by scientists working in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, they had combined their resources to
produce the chemical concoction known as VX.
VX was a more advanced compound than Sarin and had a far better shelf life, as well as a much longer persistence once distributed on target. Far more importantly for his intent and purposes, it was estimated to be one hundred times more powerful than the older Sarin agent. Following a good deal of bargaining and political maneuvering, a deal was struck with the Assad regime and the necessary arrangements made for delivery.
Now Yahla al-Qassam had his nerve agent, but then faced the problem of determining and procuring the proper means for delivery. Automatically his mind went to a large civilian airliner, yet there were a myriad of difficulties in using that sort of aircraft for such a purpose.
To begin with, it flew too fast and was not amenable to the modifications needed to properly spread the substance. More so, the taking of one would bring an immediate call for alarm. Prior terrorist acts had made the security around any commercial jetliner more formidable than ever before. Plus there was the likelihood of having passengers and a crew involved. The more one inserted the human element into such a complicated scenario, the higher were the odds for something to go wrong.
With the formation of contacts in Cuba and Mexico through mutual acquaintances, he came up with a thick folder detailing the types of civilian aircraft found in the Southwestern United States.
Most of the smaller civilian types of one or two engines were completely unsuitable, by his figures the airplane chosen must be able to lift at least 6,000 pounds. He then looked at the models used as crop dusters, designed specifically to spray farm fields with insecticides. However, he ruled them out in needing to carry more agent further than any of them were capable of. Plus, he figured he would need a crew of four and these crop dusters were single seat craft.
The utilization of a large, multi-engine aircraft like those used for fighting forest fires was a possibility, but almost all of them were located several hundreds of miles from the three potential targets topping his list. Coincidentally, most were also stationed at larger airfields where any suspicious activity could be quickly reported to the authorities. Something else was needed, something fairly local yet out of the normal mix of the three large cities he had circled on an old Rand McNally road atlas.
The Uvalde Raider: A Templar Family Novel: Book One Page 20