Joint Task Force #2: America

by David E. Meadows

  The grinding of the driver shifting gears drowned Abdo’s reply. Abu Alhaul dismissed his brother with a wave and stepped away from the warehouse, directly into the faint light of the single bulb burning over double doors that lead into the empty building. Missing glass from windows on each side of the rusted doors told how African dockworkers passed idle time. One of the doors hung precariously from one huge rusty iron hinge, the bottom one missing, either broken off or stolen. Waist-high grass grew along both sides of the disabled door.

  Abu Alhaul reached up and straightened his black headdress. African dockhands moved back and forth across the front of the truck, breaking up the yellow glow of the headlights. The workers, moving crates and boxes by hand, slid like a parting sea to allow the truck to creep closer to the freighter, never in danger of being run over unless they fell and refused to get up, able to wait the few minutes it would take the truck to run over them. Several patted the rusted fenders as they walked across its path to grab another box from the pier, lift it onto their broad shoulders, and with head down, walk toward the gangway leading onto the freighter.

  “What if it breaks down?” Abdo asked. “We’d never be able to push the truck closer.”

  Abu Alhaul, whose Arabic name translated to “Father of Fear,” replied, “No, we would have to shift the freighter backward.”

  “Not right now we couldn’t. The truck needs to make another fifty meters. The water is too shallow to move the ship back. We would have to wait for high tide, and high tide”—he pulled the sleeve back on his robe and looked at his watch—“is three hours away.”

  “Three hours from now, Abdo, the freighter must be underway. It must be out of here and fifteen miles out to sea when the sun rises. That will take it over the horizon and out of sight.”

  The squeal of brakes reminded Abu Alhaul of the Egyptian teacher he and Abdo had had when they were growing up. A teacher who enjoyed trailing his fingernails down an old chalkboard, creating a chill-raising screech that caused his students to wiggle in agony as they covered their ears. He could still hear the old man’s laughter. Abu Alhaul also recalled the glazed eyes in what remained of the old man’s head after Abdo and he had smashed it in with bricks. It had taught him the value of terror. Of doing something so dramatic that those aware of it capitulated to his leadership. He had watched, mesmerized, as the fear in the eyes of the old man had faded into the gaze of death. Then he had slowly sawed his knife through the man’s neck, realizing as the blood pumped from the arteries running along the sides of the neck that the man wasn’t quite dead. When he held the head up for Abdo to see, there was no doubt the teacher was dead, but even so, Abu Alhaul had looked down at the stump of the neck to make sure the blood had quit pumping.

  The teacher had been a Coptic Christian; one of many in Egypt, but with this death—Abu Alhaul’s first—there was one less. In the life of a Jihadist, every death was important to remember and appreciate in the furtherance of teaching to the world obedience of Allah’s will. He softly mumbled “Allah Akbar” a couple of times. Someday the world would bend to his will for his will, was Allah’s will.

  “It will make it,” he said softly as he turned to watch the truck.

  “Uh,” Abdo grunted. “Let’s hope Allah is beneath the bonnet of that truck.”

  Abu Alhaul glanced at his larger and younger brother. “Abdo, you blaspheme Allah’s name?”

  “Oh, I would never do that, my brother. You and he are close friends. Since you two are so close, I have decided that I’m here to serve you.” He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and clasped his hands behind his back. “Allah just happens to be nearby.”

  Abu Alhaul leaned closer to his brother. “Abdo, you must learn to be more respectful. While I understand your sarcasm and how little the will of Allah means to you, others who follow me would not.”

  Abdo nodded and looked down. “They follow you; not me. I follow you, not Allah.” He glanced over at his shorter brother. “Someday, my brother, you will need someone who will risk his life to save yours.” Abdo pulled a white cloth from a side pocket and blew his nose. “Besides, where you go, I go. If you weren’t here, I would not be.” When Abu Alhaul failed to answer, Abdo lifted his headdress and ran the cloth through his thick black hair, the long strands falling over his ears and down the back of his neck. “You know, my brother. Right now, as we stand here fighting the heat and mosquitoes so big they could carry you away to feast on you later, the cafés and restaurants of Cairo are bustling with activity. The cool breeze of the Nile would be winding through the city streets, bringing a welcomed relief from the day’s heat. We could be sitting, enjoying a small figan of coffee or tea, watching the tourists parade across—”

  “In the new world, those tourists will stay in their own country, serving us,” Abu Alhaul interrupted, his voice hard and firm.

  Abdo nodded, waited a couple of seconds, and added, “Of course, they will, but right now they are promenading through the heart of Cairo, and with them they bring a light of enthusiasm; a light of humor; a light of life. And, the women bring a light of legs.” He chuckled.

  Abu Alhaul turned suddenly, slapped his brother, and snapped, “That is enough!”

  Abdo’s eyes moistened. He rubbed the growing red spot on his bare left cheek. Sometimes, even he failed to understand the man who had risen to replace Sheik Osama.

  After the rebuke, the two men stood silent, watching the constant parade of Africans carrying the boxes up the narrow gangway, stepping down onto the deck, and then being directed various ways by the four Jihadists standing at the top. Like ants preparing a nest for the winter, the lines continued to move. Abu Alhaul couldn’t understand the words the Africans were exchanging, but the laughter and gaiety told him of their expectation of good wages for this job. The Africans were used to smuggling, so the idea of loading a rust-bucket freighter in the middle of the night was not new to them.

  One of Abu Alhaul’s men held a clipboard, checking off an inventory list as the Africans paraded past him at the foot of the gangway. Two other Jihadists stood on the pier, each holding an AK-47. A short, squat man wearing a straw hat and dressed in a western suit moved among boxes stacked a few feet from the foot of the gangway. Periodically he would stop one of the Africans and make the man stack the box being carried with the others. Each time he did it, the man with the clipboard scowled and looked toward the warehouse.

  Abu Alhaul knew the man was searching for him, but in the shadows of the building as long as he remained motionless, his silhouette blended into the shadows behind the unshaded light bulb that lit up the four men assigned to guard him.

  Forty minutes later, the truck squealed to a halt, its flat bed parallel to the stern of the freighter. Two of the Jihadist supervisors pushed and cajoled the Africans onto the bed to untie a canvas tarp covering the contents. The rear tires were nearly flat from the weight of whatever was tied down on the bed.

  Two Africans untied two lines running from the highest point of the tarp to the top of the cab of the truck. The line running from the bottom of the tarp to the edge of the bed untied easily, but the heavy weight beneath the tarp and the shifting of the truck had pulled the fourth line so tight that several of the dockworkers pushed and pulled and argued as they tried to untie it. Finally, tired of the wait, one of the Arab supervisors angrily pushed his way through the growing crowd gathering to provide advice to the Africans on the truck bed above them. The Arab pulled the light robe up between his knees, reached up, grabbed a handhold on a stanchion sticking out from the truck, and pulled himself up. He pushed the Africans aside, knocking one of them off the bed and into the arms of the small crowd below. Cocking his head back arrogantly, the thin reed of a man whipped out a long knife and in one smooth motion sliced through the hemp line.

  “Pull it away!” he shouted, jumping down.

  Abu Alhaul smiled. He had made the right decision to entrust this mission to Tamursheki. This worshipper was worth more here in the spread of Al
lah’s word than wasting his time in some western university trying to become a doctor. Those with the greatest ambition are easily the quickest to change directions when success and glory are promised. Tamursheki was such a man, Abu Alhaul thought, as he watched him move back toward the end of the gangway and pick up his clipboard again. Every movement needs an educated cadre who can do the little things such as Tamursheki did. It was indeed unfortunate that even such a disciple as Tamursheki couldn’t know everything about this mission. Such a disciple would be missed. In war, casualties happened, and sometimes those casualties had to be planned in battle. A master must be capable of sacrificing his own forces when it will help win the war.

  The dockhands grabbed the sides of the dark tarp and pulled it, hand-over-hand, off the back of the truck, revealing the bottom half of a square container. The tarp caught on the forward edge of the huge thing beneath it. Grunting for a moment, the dockworkers jerked hard, ripping it free, cutting through the canvas like a knife. When the tarp cleared the truck bed, falling into a huge bundle beside the rear left wheels, a huge dark gray van sat exposed on the bed. Abu Alhaul’s eyes narrowed as he searched along the front side of the van until finally he saw the faint outline of a small door.

  Several Africans rolled the tarp flat, then took the ends of it, folding it up and over several times before throwing their bodies on top of it. A couple others hurriedly wound rope around the tarp, tied it off, and jumped out of the way of the two who had folded the tarp. The two grabbed the ends and carried it across the dock. Abu Alhaul watched with suspicion. Suspicion was a key to survival when you attempted to meld into the local populace and you knew others wanted to see your head on the end of a stake. The two Africans swung the tarp three times, letting it go on the third. The heavy tarp fell, landing about two inches from their feet, causing the two men to jump back involuntarily. How stupid they were, but just as he needed people like Tamursheki with some sense of intelligence, he also needed those who were stupid like these dockworkers who were already counting the money they thought to make tonight.

  The two Africans laughed at themselves, with one pointing at the tarp and saying something in the local dialect. Abu Alhaul knew they intended to return later for it. Tarps such as this made excellent roofs for the thatch huts where many of them lived. It was too bad that none could return, but Allah demanded a lot in his service, and the life of a non-Muslim was as insignificant as a sheep. Without thinking about it, Abu Alhaul ground the ball of his right foot onto the pier. As a sheep.

  The sound of heavy machinery filled the air, riding over the noise of the dockworkers and the grinding gears of the truck. A huge crane started creeping along the tracks running the length of the pier. Several minutes passed before it stopped, the arm with the heavy crane positioned over the bed of the truck. The strain of the machinery ceased as the crane stopped moving. The grinding noise from the gears of the truck had stopped, and the driver had turned the engine off.

  “You, you, and you!” shouted the supervisor. “Get up here and help with this.”

  Three African dockhands leapt aboard the bed of the truck. One of them stopped long enough to run his hand along the flush edges of the small door leading inside the van.

  Abu Alhaul saw the man, but considering the future of the dockhands, singling out the action would accomplish little other than to slow up an already slow evolution, so he kept his tongue. He wondered briefly who the man worked for? CIA? French? African nationalist?

  Oh, yes, African nationalist, no doubt. This Mumar Kabir, who had at one time had been his number-one African leader, was building a rabble army north of Liberia and northwest of here. What did the African think they could accomplish? If it weren’t for the Arabs helping the Africans, nothing would ever evolve in this dark continent.

  Two of the Jihadists pulled themselves onto the top of the van. One motioned the crane operator to lower the hook, and when it was at head level, he placed the chains, handed to him by the other Jihadist, one at a time onto the huge iron hook. Then the two jumped down.

  The people on the bed of the truck leaped down. The Africans shifted farther away from the truck as the crane took a strain on the weight. The screaming of the straining engine of the crane preceded the lifting of the van until it was several inches from the bed. Then the noise seemed to steady as the van rose higher.

  The truck driver started the engine and eased the truck from beneath the heavy weight, knowing that if the crane lost purchase on the cargo, the drop would destroy his truck. Ownership of a commercial vehicle in the Ivory Coast was more important than protecting whatever it was they paid him to deliver. A television set. That was what he was going to buy with this money. All he wanted was the remainder of what was owed him and he was going to get the hell out of here; for whatever they were doing, he didn’t want to know. The less known is better sometimes.

  The flaking red hull of the freighter highlighted the dark van swaying minutely beside it. Abu Alhaul traced the slow pace of the van rising alongside the freighter. To his left, the Africans had resumed carrying the stuff from the pier onto the freighter. He looked at the top of the ladder and saw only two of his men. It meant one of the two missing would be at the stern of the ship, supervising the loading of the van. He was one of the Jihadist warriors. But where was the other one? Then he spotted him. The man in the western suit stepping off the bottom of the ladder had been hidden behind several large dockworkers as they worked their way up the narrow gangway. The man met Abu Alhaul’s gaze and headed toward him. Abu Alhaul took a further step into the shadows. Ignoring the approaching man, he turned his attention to the van that had now reached a level above the safety lines along the edge of the deck.

  The van wobbled about two feet above the height of the safety lines. Complaining gears matched with less strain on the engines, twisted the dangling cargo inch by inch across the edge of the deck. The engine pitch increased as the crane eased forward on its huge wheels, giving the arm better reach over the ship as the van inched forward. Beneath the van, a slight rise on the deck marked the helicopter landing pad. A yellow cross with a circle near the center of the ‘X’ highlighted the target for an approaching pilot.

  As his engineer had explained to Abu Alhaul, this was the only place topside that had the reinforced deck to support the weight of the van. The crane started lowering the heavy van toward the deck several feet below it.

  The sudden sound of snapping chains startled Abu Alhaul, causing him to cringe instinctively. Dockworkers dropped their loads as they ran. The chains spun through the buckles, smoke rising from the friction as the steel chain links whipped across the hook. The van tilted forward. The chain shot out, whipping across a supervisor standing to the right of the cargo. In the fraction of a second that the chain caught him, it snapped his spinal cord, bending the man’s head backward to touch the heels of his feet even as it continued a deadly swath through the dust rising as the cargo unceremoniously crashed to the deck.

  The stern of the freighter dropped nearly a foot in its draft before the water pushed it back up over two feet. The water of the inlet rushed between the ship and dock. The lines running from the bullocks to the ship groaned as they narrowed from the strain of the wave shoving the freighter away from the pier. The gangway fell, twisting to the side and tossing a couple of the Africans into the water between the ship and the dock. If any of the lines snapped, each would be like a razor whipping through the butter of human flesh. The deadly chain on the stern collapsed onto the deck, part of it still attached to the crane.

  The mooring lines held, jerking the freighter back to the dock where it bounced off the line of old tires mounted in a line just below the edge of the dock, serving as bumper guards. A cry between the ship and the dock cut short. Abu Alhaul gave little thought to the two Africans flattened between the ship and the pier, their bodies already crushed and floating toward the bottom of the lifeless inlet. After all, they were just Africans.

  Two of his men raced to
the stern. Supervisors ashore screamed and berated the Africans until they emerged from hiding to hoist the loads they’d dropped and resumed the time-consuming work of loading the vessel. Abu Alhaul watched, emotionless. There was little that could be done, if it was Allah’s will.

  “I hope the seals are unbroken,” Abdo said softly to his brother.

  Abu Alhaul shrugged. “It matters little, if they are.”

  “I think you may be wrong, my brother. If they are broken then people—spies—could determine what is inside the van.”

  “The world will know soon enough what is inside it.”

  “But surprises are better received when unexpected.”

  “Abdo, you worry so much. You must trust Allah as I do.”

  “It’s not Allah that bothers me, Abu; it is his followers—”

  “—of which we are.”

  Not all of the Africans continued loading the freighters. Some cautiously approached the stern of the ship, trying to see what had happened on the ship. Two Jihadists unpacked detection gear and were quickly waving the long wands around the van, sweeping the corners and the seals, looking for signs that a break in the container had occurred.

  Abu Alhaul seemed to be the only one calm as time continued to pass and it began to look as if they would fail to meet his timetable. He looked left at two of his guards. He nodded at the one with the long mustache and watched as the young man handed his AK-47 to his comrade. The man reached down and pulled a small package from a backpack leaning against a stack of wooden cargo pads. Glancing both ways, the man, crouching, ran to the truck. The driver had slid across the seat to the open door on the passenger side to watch the activity on the stern. The man slid onto his back and pulled himself under the truck. A few minutes later, he reemerged, looking toward his comrade, who had the automatic gun trained toward the truck. The comrade jerked his head, indicating the coast was clear. The man pulled himself completely out from under the truck, and with only a brief glance to assure himself the driver wasn’t in the seat above him, he ran back to his friend. Breathing heavily, he took his AK47. Then he looked at Abu Alhaul and, with a wide grin, nodded. When Abu Alhaul nodded in return, the man briefly touched his chin as a sign of respect and resumed his guard duties.