Chapter Eight
Seated at a desk in a bombed-out schoolhouse in a village high up in the mountains of the tribal region, Safir scanned his laptop. The device was heavily encrypted, giving him security and the time he needed to gather his intelligence. Anyone trying to trace his location via the satellite feed he used to remotely access his social media accounts and e-mail would be bounced around Afghanistan and Pakistan, and possibly farther than that. They’d never lock onto him.
He was careful and methodical, two traits that allowed him to be effective. Since the onset of this war he’d known his role was not necessarily as a martyr of Islam, but as a new kind of leader in this ever-evolving struggle.
His plan would take the fight from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Pakistan and make it global, hitting the U.S. and their coalition allies at home by attacking both soft and hard targets. Malls. Large public events in major cities that drew a large crowd. Professional sporting events. Police stations. Military installations. Public transportation. Government buildings.
And, in time, the coup de grace: A catastrophic cyber attack that would shut down the power grid and cripple the financial systems, paralyzing the West.
But first he had a decisive blow to strike against the Americans.
They deserved their fate, delivered by him and others unwilling to allow the U.S. to control the world with their morally corrupt and greedy agenda. Safir saw it as his duty to give them a taste of what innocent Muslims the world over had suffered at their hands. Islamic Law, even the Bible, dictated that an eye for an eye was just punishment, and that’s precisely what he wanted to exact from the enemy.
Revenge. The opportunity to settle a personal score and avenge his family.
That and his hatred of what the intelligence agencies had done to him were the core of what drove him to pursue this holy war, rather than stay in the UK and make a comfortable living as a software designer for a company on the Forbes List.
The chance to hit America where it hurt the worst, and where it feared the most, was an unquenchable fire that burned deep in his belly.
He was only weeks away from making it happen.
Safir sat up straighter and cracked his neck from side to side, pushing back the anger trying to bubble its way to the surface. Since the attack on Bagram yesterday afternoon he’d been getting continual updates from various sources throughout the region and others scattered around Europe and North America. People heavily invested in their fight, who were eager to punish the West for their treatment of Muslims.
All the attackers had either been killed or captured, exactly as he’d expected. The local Taliban commanders had insisted upon the brazen daylight attack to show their men were unafraid and willing to become martyrs. Safir had used the opportunity to study the Americans’ response, and then gauge how the rest of the world reacted. He’d been neither surprised nor disappointed by the result.
With a few commands typed into the program he added the last of the video clips he’d edited earlier. Mostly scenes taken from smart phones during the attack, showing the attackers’ bravery in the face of overwhelming enemy force and superior firepower. He’d chosen the clips carefully and spliced them together into a video adding music and poignant lines from the Holy Quran.
He played it back twice and made some adjustments, making sure that all the metadata from the shots were removed before sending the file to the various social media sites he utilized. Within a few hours the video would be circulating around the globe, picked up by the media, intelligence agencies and supporters alike.
Pleased with the end result and confident that this latest piece of propaganda would garner them more sympathy and funds from abroad, Safir packed up his few items and left the schoolhouse. Outside, the sun was sinking behind the mountains. Three of his most trusted men were standing guard at the top of the trail that wound its way up the hill from the rugged road below where the truck was waiting. His lead bodyguard, Anwar, was dragging a man up the hill toward them. The man’s hands were bound behind him and he had a hood over his head.
“What’s this?” Safir asked Anwar in Pashto.
“Caught him watching us then trying to sneak down the mountain. He had this in his pocket.” His bodyguard handed him a badly creased piece of paper.
Safir unfolded it and scanned the contents. It named the village he was standing in, and the number of men Safir had with him. He nodded at Anwar and the man pulled the hood off the prisoner. “Who sent you,” Safir demanded in a cold voice.
Probably a year or two younger than him, the man shook his head, his eyes wide with fear. “No one. I heard people up here and came to investigate.”
“For the Americans.”
The man shook his head, his expression growing frantic. “No, please—”
Safir drew his pistol and shot him between the eyes. Anwar gasped in surprise and dropped him. The man hit the ground with his eyes half-open, his arms still secured behind his back.
Holstering his weapon, Safir turned and headed down the trail. “Get rid of him,” he said over his shoulder to Anwar. He had no tolerance for would-be spies. After Rahim’s death, they were being as careful as possible.
His best friend, Qasim, gave him a questioning look but didn’t say anything about the murder. “It’s done?” They’d met at university two years ago. They both had family from the same region in Pakistan and when that drone strike had collapsed the apartment building last June, it had killed dozens of innocent men, women and children in addition to the high-value-target the U.S. had been hunting.
Dozens of innocents including members of both Safir’s and Qasim’s families.
After that, their bond had been permanently cemented and they’d both vowed to go back home and support the fight. But their sympathies to the jihadist plight had quickly garnered the attention of the CIA and MI6.
“It’s done,” he answered with a nod. He was still angry that someone had been paid off to spy on him. At least the man was dead. By nightfall they’d have more than enough money in their offshore accounts to pay Omar and the insider they needed to mount this next attack.
Qasim gave a satisfied nod and walked to the truck. He climbed into the back beside Safir and waited while Anwar disposed of the body. They were about two kilometers down the steep, bumpy road when Safir’s satellite phone rang. Anwar directed the driver to pull over. Safir stepped out and walked a short distance away behind a group of large boulders at the side of the road to offer concealment while Qasim and Anwar stood watch, brandishing their AK-47s.
“My contact says we have someone sympathetic to us on the inside,” the man said in Urdu when Safir answered.
He’d been waiting weeks for this confirmation. “How reliable is this source?”
“He has never failed me before.”
“Does he work at the base?”
“Yes. He works for the Americans.”
Did he. “Doing what?”
“Menial things, mostly labor, cleaning.”
“And who is this sympathetic person?”
“An American soldier.”
Safir’s interest sharpened, but he was still skeptical and he wanted clarification. “He’s in the Army?”
“I did not ask. Perhaps the Air Force. It doesn’t matter.”
No, it didn’t. “He’s willing to help us in exchange for money?”
“Yes. Five hundred thousand U.S. dollars.”
A significant amount of money, but surely not enough to buy his cooperation in something like this. It had to be a trick. “And for that he’s willing to commit treason against his own people?” It made him suspicious.