The Marines were devoted to protocol and standards. They only fled the need to salute as to not accidentally miss an opportunity for rendering proper respect.
“Where in the hell are we supposed to go now?” Hasim questioned as they walked through the front door and into the main lobby. Iman shrugged and pointed to a security area. Several civilian, uniformed guards conducted their normal duties and chores. The Marines walked over and sought direction like tourists who harbor conspiracy theories, hoping to find out America’s secrets. The guards accepted the Marines’ paperwork and were then able to point the men to the correct corridor. One of the guards provided them with a suite number where they would be able to check into their new command. The men were thankful to have some sort of answer to concerned curiosity. Feelings of being lost slowly dissipated.
“This place is a sir factory,” Iman joked to Hasim as they continued to walk by one officer after another. Marine etiquette is to greet every officer in passing, whether they were outside to render salute or inside to render a verbal acknowledgment. Etiquette was starting to chip away at the excitement of two sergeants who were completely out of place.
Iman and Hasim carried all their belongings, slung over their shoulders, because they had no place to stay for the time being. They had no room to call their own. They were, at the moment, Marine nomads in search of their next command unit until they reached their newest destination.
Hasim opened an otherwise blank door labeled “Marine Administrations Office,” and the men presented their printed official orders to a clerk at the front desk. The clerk, and several others who followed, were confused by the Marines’ presence.
“We don’t exactly have…a barracks or anything,” a female Marine said through her thick makeup. The bun in her hair was pulled so tight that it seemed to stretch her forehead into blotched areas of redness. She was as lost to the printed documents as anyone else. “I’m going to call my C.O. and hopefully get an answer for you guys,” she chirped more toward the paper than to the Marines. She was very informal and the sergeants were not familiar with being talked down to by a corporal. Each of the men let her demeanor go uncorrected. They were in foreign territory and understood her to be their only ally.
The admin Marine hung up the phone and finally had some direction for the two unguided weapons. “Go up to the second floor to Room 220. Meet up with a…General Potts,” the corporal directed, glancing back and forth between her notes and Hasim’s face. She handed the written orders back to the sergeants. The corporal seemed to dismiss the senior Marines as she went back to work on whatever she was doing prior to their arrival. She rendered no formal acknowledgment of the seniors or their ranks. They offered no gratitude to the young woman. The men ignored broken protocols on both sides of the exchange and left the administration office.
Iman felt a little foolish carrying his sea bag through the halls of the Pentagon. Getting beyond security checkpoints with large bags was bad enough. Then to be one of only two Marines carrying all of his belongings around started to get very old very fast. He was relieved when Hasim pointed to Room 220. He looked at Hasim silently asking if they were ready to enter into mystery. The younger brother nodded and they walked into the room together. One behind the other, they dropped their bags in the doorway and stood at attention.
“General Potts, sir,” Iman said upon their arrival, “Sergeant Iman Sahar and Sergeant Hasim Sahar reporting as ordered.” The men stood with heels together. Their left arms were straight at their sides with hands curled into fists. With heads up and chests out, they offered the printed orders with their right hands extended only from elbows set at right angles. The general accepted their paperwork and told the men to stand at ease. Both of them moved in unison to relax a bit, with their hands folded behind their backs and their feet comfortably apart at shoulder-width.
General Gutzwiller looked the papers over and looked at each of the sergeants. “I’m not Potts. I’m Gutzwiller. Potts will be in shortly. Do you know who I am or why you are here?” General Gutzwiller asked the men standing in front of him.
Hasim answered, “Yes, General, we know who you are. I know we haven’t met before, but you were our Commanding General down at Gitmo for a while, sir.” Gutzwiller nodded. He instantaneously felt more comfortable with the men he had selected for the mission.
Gutzwiller relaxed then ordered the sergeants to do the same. The chasm of rank between sergeant and general made Iman and Hasim considerably nervous. Under normal circumstances, there would be a sea of people between them and General Gutzwiller. Yet they stood with him in direct communication. Even still, they were confused as to why they were called to the Pentagon. Both Marines would have been content to continue rolling in the mud with the enemy, and they hoped for a good reason to be standing so far out of place.
“I beg your pardon, General,” Iman started to question, “but we really haven’t received any guidance as to why we’re here or what our mission is, sir.” He silently begged to not have found his way into making coffee for a long list of officers. Then Iman continued, “We just received our orders and we were on a plane the next morning. Up until yesterday, we were detainees at Gitmo… So…”
Iman was quickly interrupted by Gutzwiller’s chuckled response, “So you want to know what in the world you are doing at the Pentagon?”
Iman smiled. Gutzwiller was a proper man who had scratched his way through the ranks of his career, but he was approachable and friendly. He welcomed the young Marine’s question and answered, “Your mission here is complicated. We’ll explain what’s going on as soon as everyone gets here. Then”—the general looked over to their duffel bags—“we need to get you guys a place to store that stuff.”
The fact that the general used the word store with regard to placing their belongings let the men know that their time at the Pentagon would be limited. They would not need to get comfortable because they would surely be moving out sooner than later. It was just as well for Iman. He had no interest in being a general’s administrative assistant or some colonel’s coffee go-getter. Iman had joined the Marines to fight enemies destroying life across the globe. He wanted nothing more than to do just that.
Minimal conversation filled a quiet corner of the room between Gutzwiller and his newly recycled Marines. The general invited small talk and tried to get his subordinates to relax in the brass-filled environment. The air between the senior man and those in his direct command was awkward, but was finally relieved when General Potts and Special Agent McKenzee walked into the room. The sergeants returned to previously established positions of attention in meeting General Potts. The generals and Special Agent McKenzee were relaxed and seemingly lighthearted. They tried to get the junior Marines to act in the same demeanor and eased attitude until the leaders finally realized proper Marines would not rest to anything other than an explanation. The sergeants stood ready to follow orders but had deeply unanswered questions running through their minds over and over. Why are we here? What is our mission?
Civilian by nature, the CIA agent asserted more than his share of authority without considering anyone else in the room. “Alright, gentlemen,” Special Agent McKenzee chopped into the tension, “we’ll get right to it then. The reason you are here is because you are well-trained, highly proficient, dedicated Marines. You’re second-generation Americans, so we can rely on your home-grown patriotism. You speak Arabic. You are practicing Muslims. And your work down in Gitmo let us know that you don’t have any problems playing the part.” McKenzee was brash in his compartmentalization of the men, but he was accurate nonetheless. The agent had an impersonal approach that rubbed people the wrong way at first, but the sergeants considered undeniable accuracy in his description. Iman ignored offense.
Hasim, however, did not turn a blind eye to McKenzee’s bold comments. Rather, he glared at the special agent and questioned, “I’m sorry. Who are you?” He set aside that the civilian was standing between two very high-ranking officers of the
Marine Corps. Gutzwiller and Potts at least had the decency to introduce themselves and treat the sergeants with some level of mutual respect. However, the man cloaked in his black suit made no effort to extend an olive branch to the Marines before getting straight to business. Hasim, unlike those who had clawed their way through a desert of politics to earn stars on their collars, was not able to conceal his discontent at McKenzee’s boldness.
The generals remembered their first meeting with McKenzee and sympathized with Hasim. Potts cut Hasim off before the young Marine made an error in judgment by planting the agent into the floor. Potts identified McKenzee. Once Iman and Hasim heard “Central Intelligence Agency,” they knew their mission at the Pentagon was well beyond that of administration and coffee. CIA. The acronym alone saved McKenzee an unexpected visit to his dentist. Hasim concealed his contempt for the agency, reentered the world of military protocol, and accepted his new fate. Maybe making coffee and doing paperwork isn’t that bad after all. The Marine joked silently within because he knew the agency offered nothing other than dangerous missions with no true expectations of return.
ENCROACH
Plausible deniability. Special Agent McKenzee’s words rattled around inside Iman’s head. Months of planning and training with the CIA agent chipped away at the sergeants’ spirits. Their time back in their beloved Corps was short-lived. McKenzee made sure of that. Iman and Hasim had to stop getting haircuts and shaving their beards. They were no longer allowed to visit the Pentagon because they were no longer Marines. Their personal belongings were condensed further. Their assigned and quietly paid apartment had nothing more than a light, a toilet, and two bedrolls. They were allowed to keep their Korans and continued to pray. They assimilated into the minimalist Muslim culture shared by so many extremists throughout the world, the same culture that allowed terrorists to walk away from possessions and willingly detonate their bodies into innocent crowds.
Iman and Hasim found the same shared culture of minimal-living extremists as they shifted from the streets of Washington, D.C., to the deserts of southwest Asia. United in purpose, the brothers committed to their roles so convincingly that they knew how to blend into the enemy in small villages or wide-open terrain.
Iman and Hasim bounced around in the back of a small pickup truck. Unsettling soreness worked its way into the backs of their legs and buttocks as muscle battled against the metal of an old truck-bed. They were on an open trail in the vast desert of Afghanistan, well away from their empty apartment in Washington. They stared at armed militiamen riding with them in the back of the truck. AK-47 barrels wobbled around with the gunmen’s bodies as the truck ran over rocks and sand. They were on fast approach to rocky and impassable mountains, unreachable by mechanized force.
Plausible deniability. Iman continued to think as he tried not to stare at enemy rifles. He recalled McKenzee’s explanation, “You guys are now ghosts. We’ve erased you from the system, so only a few people know who you are. You don’t have anything on record, so nothing can be hacked or given up to the enemy. Additionally, you can’t be traced back to America, so Uncle Sam won’t get blamed if a bunch of women and children get blown away. Your team will be the only group that can identify you once you egress. In the event of Mission Accomplished, you will be returned to the system and reinstated completely across the board. In the event of Mission Failed, it won’t matter because you will be dead.”
Iman tried not to grit his teeth at the memory of McKenzee’s arrogant dismissal toward a dismal future. He thought to himself, If I survive this, I’m going to kill that guy. Then the truck screeched to a halt. One of the militiamen in the back stood and fired his rifle one time into the air. A moment later, his shot was answered by another from the hills.
“Let’s go,” the militiaman said to Iman and Hasim. He spoke in a harsh Arabic tone, but they knew what he was saying without a second thought. They had lived among Afghani people, in a small village outside of Mazar-i-Sharif for several months after leaving Washington. Neither Iman nor Hasim had spoken English for several weeks, so the Arabic tongue came to them naturally as they questioned where the lightly armed group was going.
The armed escorts simply poked at the undercover Marines and pointed into the mountains. The steep terrain was foreboding but held some hope of success. They would climb the mountain to find themselves welcomed into an insurgent camp or into Paradise upon their execution.
Previous weeks spent in the village seemed to have paid off quickly. Iman and Hasim arrived in the small town and posed as men looking to join the cause. They had false backstories that held very few details. If anyone were to look into their pasts, nothing would be found other than tales from unknown times and obscure places. The newcomers had no family and had to work bottom-level jobs hoping to start conversations with villagers about where to go for a fight. Eventually, word spread and Iman was approached by an armed teenager. The kid had the answer they were seeking, and he took them to meet one jihadist after another.
Iman worked his way through a tightly knit network of terrorists. He began with quiet nods in back alleys. The nods turned into quick handshakes. Handshakes finally evolved into detailed conversations regarding Iman’s dedication to jihad. Iman was able to portray himself as a devout warrior and assured everyone he met that Hasim would serve with equal conviction.
Hasim, ever present with his brother, was given the opportunity to meet each of the terrorists within the small-town network as they manifested from the shadows. The Marines became regularly discussed topics among the villagers. They seamlessly plugged into a foreign stream of jihadists, and they were unsettled by the number of people who were willing and able to kill Americans.
After a great deal of consideration, the eager jihadists accepted that Iman and Hasim were holy warriors. A decision was made through a series of cloaked conversations and whispered winds. The brothers were to be taken deep into the mountains. However, acceptance was found on a razor’s edge. Two United States Marines were about to climb a mountain and ooze into the ranks of a terrorist organization based on their fake existence in a real war.
Every aching step up the steep hill landed in a pool of anxiety. Iman and Hasim were unarmed and surrounded by their enemy comrades. In addition to mental anguish and apprehension, their legs burned with physical fatigue. Time spent with McKenzee training them how to be jihadists took away from the time they would have trained as Marines. They were rail-thin but were hardly fit or capable of such a climb. They ached.
Small stones and bits of sand trailed down the side of the tall mountain path as the men reached central camp. They looked around as a makeshift city of canvas tents and poorly constructed buildings came into clear view. The air was cold, but the ground reflected the sun’s heat. Iman mentally noted yet another of the desert’s strange occurrences.
Iman and Hasim watched as their armed escorts were greeted with hugs around narrow shoulders and kisses on dried cheeks. The men atop the mountain were rested and fed. Everyone in camp seemed to be armed or within immediate reach of a weapon. What was once suspected to be a village was now confirmed to be a militant camp. Iman and Hasim felt that they had gathered enough information to support a full airstrike. More so, they felt an urgent need to flee. Yet each knew the end outcome of leaving too early. If they were rushed and left together, the village would spook and scatter. If one left without the other, the stay-behind would surely be shot. If they were both caught, they would both be executed for their treachery against Allah.
“Are these the men?” a man of obvious command authority asked. The harshness of the Arabic language and his affinity for smoking made him sound like he spoke through a glass tube full of nails. Iman and Hasim offered their greetings, but were silenced. “How can I trust you?” the man asked. “No one knows you. No one knows your family. Out of nowhere, you find us…” He paused and stared hard at the newcomers. The man was rightfully suspicious.
Iman then answered, “Rumors. We came to you based o
n rumors that holy warriors were resisting the American war. We just followed the rumors until they became true.” Iman swallowed hard hoping that his explanation would appease the jihadist.
The man glared at Iman. Hasim remained quiet. The brothers waited for his response. “Rumors?” The man questioned the validity of the answer. Then he nodded to the armed escorts. The rifle-wielding men poked Iman and Hasim at center spine. The men were guided by gunpoint to the center of camp. They followed the group leader until he stopped and turned around to face them once again.
“I want to believe you. I want to believe that you are true in your purpose, in the fight, in your faith…” He paused hard once again. The leader summoned someone over with a wave of his hand. A young man pushed a blindfolded teen into the makeshift courtyard and forced the kid to kneel. Then the leader pulled a pistol out of a shoulder holster dangling at his left ribcage. The older man handed the weapon to Hasim.
“How can I trust you?” the man continued. His pause was dramatic enough to invoke disingenuous intrigue from a surrounding crowd. “This boy was caught in an act of apostasy. We found him in the village handing out Bibles and speaking of Christ as a savior. He claims that Muhammad was a false prophet.” The man stroked his beard. “This is punishable by death. However, only a true believer, only a true son of The Prophet, can carry out this execution.” The man opened his palm to invite Hasim behind the boy. “Please,” the man said, smiling devilishly, “carry out Allah’s commands.”
Operation Jericho Page 5