The basements of the safe houses they stashed him in never had any windows. When he heard the footsteps on the stairs, he opened one eye long enough to see the first rays of sunlight falling down the stairs, backlighting Khan. Well, that was something, al-Zaeim conceded. The sunlight meant it was morning; and that meant he was finally being released from his dungeon to join the others upstairs for breakfast. To an Iraqi, that should be the most wonderful meal of the day, when families met over thick, black coffee, khubz bread, honey, yogurt, cheese, molasses, eggs, jam, olive oil, tomatoes, cucumbers, and dates. Al-Zaeim’s mouth began to water at the thought, but he had not seen any of those delights for many months. Now, it would be weak tea in a cracked cup and a slice or two of tasteless bread, perhaps with some olive oil. That was the most he could hope for in this hellhole of Raqqah.
Unfortunately, there was no putting it off. Like a groundhog coming out of his hole, al-Zaeim knew it was time to be seen. After all, this was Friday, the Holy Day, when Khan gathered the faithful for the midday Salat al-Juma, the weekly congregational prayer service for their followers. That was when he would be transformed into the all-mighty Caliph of the Islamic State, and deliver his carefully scripted speech to the excited throng. First, however, there were purification rituals he must perform. Whether he was in league with the Devil or not, he had not consigned his soul to the Pit of Blazing Fire quite yet. He must bathe, don clean clothes, and put himself in the proper religious mindset for the service.
The Crusaders and Infidels had put a $1 million bounty on him months before. While Raqqah remained the ISIS capital and the headquarters of his Caliphate, Khan told him the city was now filled with heretics, traitors and informants, all drawn here by the bounty. That was why the frequent relocations were necessary, Khan told him, although Al-Zaeim was not concerned. Aslan Khan and his two younger brothers, Batir and Mergen, always seemed to know when to move him, where he should go, and how they should get there. Was it sixth sense, divine guidance, or paid informants? There was no explanation for it. The Khans simply knew.
So far, each of the many attempts on his life had missed. From the pulpit, he proclaimed it was because Allah had selected him for greater things, had laid His hands upon him, raised him up, and protected him, because he was on a Holy Mission blessed by God and had been Chosen. Regardless of the odds they faced, he told his followers that Allah would never permit the godless Crusaders and the Heretics to touch His Caliph. That thought filled them with confidence, and it still did. However, in his heart of hearts, al-Zaeim knew Allah had nothing to do with it. The only reason he was still walking the earth and delivering his firebrand speeches was the deal he made with Aslan Khan, the Satan in the flesh. None of the forces arrayed against him — not the Russians, the Syrians, the Americans, the Iranians, not even the cursed Israelis — were half as evil as Aslan Khan.
He found it ironic that all those countries hated each other much more than they hated ISIS, but that didn’t stop them from dropping their bombs and competing to see who could be most destructive. So far, the Russians were by far the worst. He had come to think of Putin as a large, drooling, one-eyed child with a wart on his nose, smelly feet, and big toes, who had snuck into the neighbor’s garden and was now amusing himself by stomping on all the flowers and vegetables. The Americans could be just as brutal, although they would later apologize if any of their bombs actually hurt anyone. Their naïveté was astounding.
Abu Bakr Al-Zaeim’s real name was Ibrahim Awad al-Badri. He had been a hapless itinerant preacher making the rounds of the villages and small mosques west of Fallujah in Anbar Province. He would scrounge a meal here and a dinar there, all the while avoiding the evil eye of Saddam Hussein’s secret police, the Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma. That was, until Aslan Khan and his brothers heard him speak in the small village of Habbaniyah. When he finished and the room emptied, it was Mergen Khan who took him politely but firmly by his elbow and escorted him out a rear door into the alley where his older brother Aslan was waiting.
Aslan Khan was a large, powerful man, much bigger than his brothers and twice the size of the scrawny preacher. He was devoid of any humor or humanity. With a thin smile on his lips, he grabbed al-Badri by the front of his cloak, pulled him close, and whispered into the little man’s ear, offering him a simple proposition. Khan would make him the most powerful Imam in the country, a man who would be listened to, revered, and respected by millions. He would transform the pathetic itinerant preacher into Abu Bakr al-Zaeim, “the Caliph, the Commander of the Believers, and a Leader of Men,” like his seventh-century namesake. Together, they would purify the Middle East, clearing it of all Crusaders, heretics, and nonbelievers. Al-Badri was stunned at the scope of the man’s ambitions. Surely, this must be a joke, he thought. But he knew who Aslan Khan was, and one did not refuse an offer like that from a man like that and live to walk away.
“Me? But how?” al-Badri asked as he looked down at himself. “I am not…”
“You will be,” Khan cut him off and locked his eyes on the little man’s. “You will, if you do exactly what my brothers and I tell you to do. You will be taught each step to take, each word to use, how to deliver them, and what to do. Is that perfectly clear?”
To reinforce his point, Aslan turned toward his other brother, Batir, who stepped behind a dumpster and dragged a captured Syrian colonel into the center of the alley. The man was large, not as large as the Khans, but still wearing his soiled uniform. Without taking his eyes off al-Badri’s, Aslan seized the colonel by the throat with one hand, lifted him off the ground, held him there in midair, and slowly strangled him. Al-Badri could not believe what he was seeing. The colonel fought to break Khan’s grip, twisting and kicking, to no avail. Khan’s grip was like a vice. His point finally made, he squeezed even harder and snapped the colonel’s neck. His body went limp and Khan tossed it aside as effortlessly as one would dispose of an empty paper bag.
Khan then turned and locked his eyes on al-Badri. “From this moment forward, you will be known as Abu Bakr al-Zaeim, the Caliph of the Islamic State, and you will do precisely what we tell you, won’t you? There will be no questions, no arguments, and no disobedience. Is that perfectly clear?” Al-Badri nodded woodenly as he began to comprehend the fiery depths of the bargain he had just made. Aslan Khan was indeed the Devil in the flesh. He breathed fire, made human sacrifices, ate babies, drank human blood, and would skin a pathetic little man like Ibrahim al-Badri alive if he dared cross him.
Aslan Khan paused at the bottom of the flimsy wooden staircase to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally, he walked across to the cot where al-Zaeim lay and found him sitting up, smiling up at him like the half-wit he was. Good, Khan thought. Today was Friday, and he needed al-Zaeim alert and in possession of all his faculties. With a structured and practiced speech, a podium and a microphone, and the Black Flag hanging on the wall behind him, the transformation of this desert preacher into a mesmerizing orator was amazing. It was truly a gift from God, one Aslan Khan did not have, and he knew it.
The Khans were professional soldiers, not religious fanatics. Powerfully built, Aslan had been a heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler on two Iranian Olympic teams, as had his younger brothers, Mergen and Batir. That is where they met Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s brutal, psychotic eldest son. It was Uday who recruited Aslan into the Fedayeen Saddam, his father’s private Praetorian Guard, where Aslan Khan became a feared regime enforcer. Two years later, he transferred to the Republican Guard, where he became a highly-decorated combat officer in the first war with the Americans and rose to the rank of colonel. Later, he learned to fly and was handpicked by Saddam to be one of his personal pilots.
After the Americans crushed the Iraqi Army and overthrew the regime in the second war, Aslan Khan found himself on the run, like the rest of the country’s political and military leadership. The old national leadership had been mid-level bureaucrats, hack army officers, and regime sycophants. Rather than seek out legitim
ate leaders to rebuild Iraq, the Americans chose to prop up an incredibly corrupt Shia regime that was loyal only to themselves and the mullahs in Iran. After months of hiding, Aslan Khan had his flash of pure genius. If Iraq needed a leader, Aslan Khan would create one. His brothers found Ibrahim al-Badri, half-witted desert preacher, and turned him into Abu Badr al-Zaeim, the “Caliph,” who would rekindle the centuries-old Muslim dream of reestablishing the seventh century Umayyad Caliphate that once stretched from Morocco through Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. They would begin in the rugged “no-man’s land” between Syria and Iraq, selling the fairy tale of Islam’s glory days and driving out the Crusaders, the westerners, the secular, the nonbelievers, and the heretics with fire and sword.
A caliph is an odd Islamic mixture of a messiah, a guide, a redeemer, the 20th Imam, and Muhammad’s successor. Many had claimed that title over the centuries. The Sunnis believe he is yet to come, while the Shia believe he is already here, in hiding, waiting. Whichever, the Caliph was the emotional centerpiece that Aslan Khan needed to inspire the masses, and the pathetic figure of Ibrahim Awad al-Badri was quickly tailored to fit that large suit. As al-Zaeim’s fiery message was fine-tuned and word of a new Caliph spread across the land, the new fundamentalist uprising spread like a wildfire, and ISIS was born. Images of racing columns of enthusiastic soldiers in white pickup trucks, black flags waving in the sun, and dramatic beheadings soon filled the six o’clock news in the West.
Aslan Khan remembered seeing that famous American children’s movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” in Baghdad as a child. With loud noise, smoke, and flames, “the Mighty and All-Powerful Oz” terrified the Munchkins and generations of children. However, when the little dog pulled on the Wizard’s curtain, the world saw there was only a white-haired old man back there working all the levers. Aslan Khan was no white-haired old man, however, and no one was going to pull open his curtain and live to tell about it.
With al-Zaeim as their public face and a flood of idealistic international volunteers, ISIS filled the power vacuum in northern Iraq, pushing the Army back to Mosul in the east, to the Turkish border in the north, Fallujah in Anbar province, and the suburbs of Baghdad itself. In Syria, the Assad regime was barely holding on. ISIS’s only opposition were outmanned Kurdish militias, a few Syriac Christian villages, and an obscure Antioch Orthodox Christian sect in the far north. After they seized the oilfields in northern Syria and Iraq, the money rolled in, enough to purchase all the modern arms they would need and to stuff the pockets and stomachs of their fighters.
Everything was proceeding according to Aslan Khan’s grand plan until the price of oil shot up to $100 per barrel. While that fed the ISIS bank accounts, it fed Vladimir Putin’s even more. Soon, the “barefoot boy with the big feet” in Moscow decided to flex his muscles by moving Russian Air Force jets and his elite SPEZNAZ commando units into Syria. The truth was, Putin couldn’t care less about the moribund Assad regime but he did care about Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and the rest of Eastern Europe. Reducing Syria to rubble was the perfect way to demonstrate that Russia was once again a world power and that the Americans were incompetent fools. Finally feeling good about himself, Putin looked for another garden to stomp on and turned his bombs and missiles on ISIS. Soon, Aslan Khan’s grand offensive across northern Iraq ground to a halt under a relentless pounding from Kalibr cruise missiles, Sukkoi-35S fighter jets, 152-millimeter assault guns, and even the occasional American Hellfire missile. Despite their fanatical zeal, ISIS’s ill-trained and lightly-armed volunteers were no match. They were battered and pushed farther and farther back toward Raqqah, even losing their oil wells.
Once the long retreat began, al-Zaeim’s speeches became more and more crucial to ISIS’s very survival. Like Al Qaeda before them, Khan knew ISIS needed a morale boost, they needed more volunteers, and they must either regain the initiative or die. Attacking Russia was impossible. Even if they could get a Shahid inside the Kremlin with a suicide vest, Putin would never change his policy. Western Europe was equally hopeless. ISIS had already struck Paris twice, Brussels, even Istanbul, and nothing happened. No, the only target where they could have a major impact was America itself. It would require a series of surgical strikes against the American military to degrade its morale, its capabilities, and its leadership that would force them to pause and draw back. If it didn’t, ISIS would soon collapse.
Aslan Khan strode across the basement and stood before the cot. His Friday speech would require al-Zaeim’s full faculties, but that wasn’t the only important item that they needed to discuss that morning.
“He is here,” Khan announced.
“The American? And you still believe this is something we must do, Aslan?”
“It is something you must do, al-Badri,” Khan said, using his real name, as he often did when they were alone, to remind the preacher who he really was. “The American could be very important to us. So test him. Stoke his fires. Tell him Allah has laid a holy burden upon his shoulders, and he must do what you tell him to do.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I shall talk to him,” al-Zaeim repeated as he looked up at the big man. “But I am so tired, Aslan. I barely slept last night. All the explosions and the moving around… must we keep doing that?”
Khan looked down at him. “Do you know what those explosions were?”
“No, no, but they were loud, so loud.”
“Do you remember the first house we put you in last night, where you ate dinner in the kitchen with the guards? What was it you had? Hummus and bread? Perhaps some goat?”
“Yes. Hummus and bread… but the goat was bad, mostly fat.”
“And then they moved you.”
“Yes, yes, they moved me, but the explosions…”
“The explosions were when the American Delta Force attacked that first house with helicopters and a company of Iraqi infantry. They went there to kill you.”
The Caliph stared up at him, open-mouthed. “The first house? To kill me?”
“Yes, but we were waiting. We killed half of them, shot down two of their helicopters, and sent the rest of them running.” Al-Zaeim continued to stare at him, so Khan told him, “Our people in Iraq learned of the raid so we moved you and were able to stop them.”
“They came here? The Delta Force? To kill me?” al-Zaeim whispered.
“Those were the first explosions. The really loud ones came later, when they hit the house with two Tomahawk cruise missiles and blew it to bits.” Al-Zaeim could only stare up at him, speechless. “If you don’t believe me, when we go to the warehouse later, we will drive past the house so you can see the rubble and the two big holes in the ground for yourself.”
“No, no, I believe you, Aslan. I heard the explosions and I believe you.”
“That is good, because the Delta Force comes from Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They are not done with you, al-Badri. They will keep trying, so we must return the favor. That is why you must meet with this American professor Shaw.”
Al-Zaeim did not look happy. “Yes, yes… and you have spoken with this man?”
“My brothers did after he arrived last night.”
“And he checks out? For what you want?”
“To the extent one can ‘check out’ an American who is turning against his own people. A radical college professor? Only Allah knows what is in his heart.”
“Yes. No one likes a traitor, do they?”
“No. But we cannot ignore the opportunity this fellow presents us.”
“No, no, we cannot.” Al-Zaeim fidgeted nervously. “But after the attack last night, you are certain he arrived clean? No tracking devices or bugs? No weapons?”
“Well, he was carrying a pistol and a large knife.” Al-Zaeim’s head quickly snapped around and he looked up, very concerned. That made Khan smile. “Do not worry, he used them to eliminate a squad of Syrian soldiers at the border… single-handed.”
Al-Zaeim’s mouth fell open. “
One man? A squad of soldiers? How do you know this?”
“Do you remember old Garayev?”
“Old Garayev?” He frowned. “Your uncle’s cousin? Is that old goat still alive?”
“Very much so. He was the one we sent to bring Shaw down here from Sanliafa. He said they ran into a Syrian patrol near the border.”
“Didn’t they have money for bribes?” Al-Zaeim asked.
“Of course, but something went wrong. The Syrians drew their guns, so Shaw killed them, all of them.”
“With a pistol and a knife?”
“That is what old Garayev said.”
“Did Shaw say anything to him?”
“Unfortunately, the old man speaks neither English nor Arabic, and Shaw knows no Turkmen… and after what happened, I suspect Garayev was too afraid to ask.”
“But a college professor? To do a thing like that?” Al-Zaeim shook his head and chuckled. “What does this fellow teach? Murder and mayhem?”
“No,” Khan laughed, “sociology. But do not worry, my brothers searched him carefully anyway. To his credit, Shaw followed our instructions to the letter — no cell phone, no computer, and no electronics that could contain any GPS tracking chips.”
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 6