Jama said to Qasim on the street, "You spoke and I felt Allah breathing on me. I know who you are and bow my head."
Qasim said, "And you are the American convict who wants to be one of us. I watched you go in a bank and look at it good and then steal a pistol."
"I'm known to rob banks," Jama said, "when I don't have nothing to do."
"Maybe you can be of use to me," Qasim said. "Come to Riyadh with us and we'll see." THE NIGHT OF 13 MAY 2003, they rode through the city, nineteen men, three of their four vehicles packing explosives, to come up on the British and American compounds and open fire with AKs and rocket grenades. Approaching Riyadh Qasim had said to Jama, "You can drive a bomb car if you wish."
He spoke easily, a man who knew his business, seldom in a hurry, looking at the next step.
"I'm not worthy," Jama said, "to become a saint for Allah this soon, my first shot."
"You don't have the desire to be a martyr," Qasim said. "I don't either. So we see if you have a desire to kill for Allah."
They attacked guard posts on the perimeter of the compounds, a Ford Crown Victoria ramming the Cyclone gate until it became tangled in the wire and the driver detonated the thousand pounds of explosives in the trunk. A Dodge Ram armed with four thousand pounds of TNT crashed a second gate, raced to the employee housing area, two-story apartment buildings on a curved street, and blew itself up, taking off the facade, the entire look of the buildings, and setting the apartments on fire. A GMC Suburban followed by a Toyota sedan crashed a gate to drive into the center of another housing compound and the SUV exploded.
Qasim watched Saudi employees of American companies buried in the rubble, an evening tally of 34 dead and 194 injured: blinded, arms and legs blown off, listed as injuries. Osama bin Laden said if our people work for foreign companies they become our enemies. If they accept money paid them, they become evil. Qasim, older than bin Laden, believed the point could be argued but accepted bin Laden's view. It made him important.
He watched Jama during the assault. Jama firing his AK at people rushing out of burning buildings, emptying a clip and shoving in another. A man stood in an upper room without a wall, the man looking over the edge of his floor. Jama took him with one shot and watched him fall to the street. He turned to the building across the way and shot two more in their apartment without a wall. A woman and a man who fell to the street. He was deliberate about his killing, taking his time to be certain of his shots. He watched the entrance of the building now, waiting for someone to come out.
He loves it, Qasim thought.
A woman came rushing from the entrance and he shot her. A woman with smoke rising from her burka.
Later, Qasim asked Jama, "What was in your mind when you shot the woman?"
He said, "Which one?"
"In the burka."
"She was on fire."
Qasim heard it as compassion, but thought, Would he care if she burned to death? He didn't want him to care, but never asked if he did or not.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JAMA WAS TWENTY-EIGHT NOW, his birthday coming on the day they left Eyl for Djibouti.
He rode in one of the five Toyotas rocking across the desert, catching the dust and gravel raised by the two in the lead. Qasim would be in the car directly ahead or behind them. Idris, next to Jama in the middle seats, told him, "We will be there in one period of twenty-four hours. Every two hours we stop to stretch our legs and piss. Twice a day we heat the spaghetti for you. Don't worry," Idris said in English, "these Somalis won't know what we're saying. Harry gave them an English test. He called them camel-fuckers and no one rose to cut his throat. He's with Qasim, but we change cars at times, so I talk to Qasim and Harry talks to you."
There were sixteen Somalis with AKs and their provisions in the five cars: a driver and the Somali in front with him pointing in the glare of distance to the road curving toward a pass through the slopes, telling the driver now to slow down, to watch for falling rocks, until Idris told him in Arabic to shut up. A third Somali sat behind Jama and stared at the back of his head while Jama looked out at the land where Arabs lived and went to sea as pirates.
He said to Idris, "You pretty good at hijacking ships, uh? Make enough to buy houses and expensive cars-why you need to turn me in?"
"So I can retire," Idris said. "Move to Paris. I said to Harry, 'Let's give the boys a tip, enough money to buy cigarettes for the rest of their lives.' Harry refuses to give you a quid."
"I quit smoking," Jama said, "during the time we getting payoffs from gangsters have mules smuggling cigarettes from North Africa to Europe, the Qaeda demanding a cut. We calling it the Marlboro Connection. I went up to Egypt and robbed banks for the cause, a few jewelry stores, and we into dealing hashish from Africa. Qasim says it cost ten million a year to keep the Qaeda running. Some of it Osama's laying down, the reason he hates everybody isn't with him. I saw him in Pakistan one time-not the easiest man to get next to. He kept watching me like he wasn't sure of my credentials. You ever hear bin Laden say anything funny? But I like working for Qasim, the man has his shit together. He's cool without knowing how to act it."
"Why is it," Idris said, "if you're devoted to al Qaeda, you don't blow yourself up for Allah?"
"Me and Qasim don't believe in it. We worth more to al Qaeda alive. There enough boys can't wait to go to Paradise."
Idris said, "Qasim won't talk to me."
"Why would he? 'Less he has a reason."
"Harry threatens to shoot him. He tells me when we stop to piss."
"Harry would give up five mil? Bullshit."
"He suggests we shoot both of you in the knees, so you can't run away."
"And have to carry us?"
"Get the Somalis to do it."
"Then he has to pay them extra. Threaten them to keep their mouth shut. All the shit that goes down," Jama said, "you work out when you're planning a jihad. It took three years to put 9/11 together. Any place you want to blow up can take a good year deciding how to do it. You pick a date, find out it falls during Ramadan 'cause you forgot? I can't ever look forward to the fasting. And the serious guys yell at me. I say if we doing it for Allah, what's the difference? They always yelling about something."
"You took part in the Riyadh bombings."
"My first jihad."
"You began working with Qasim, one of the big players, eh? How were you called at that time? Jama, or by your Christian name?"
"I'll tell you something," Jama said. "Only one man in this whole Arabian world knows my real name. He may even have forgot it by now."
"Qasim," Idris said.
"Ask him, see if he tells you."
"He's difficult to talk to."
"The man can be a wall."
"We could shoot him in the knees."
"See what it gets you," Jama said. "You're talking about a man sets off bombs like earthquakes. They become headlines in every paper in the world. He does it for Osama. They have a brother thing going. You can do anything you want to Qasim. Blind him, cut off his hands, like the Imams do you rob something? You never gonna get him to tell my name or anything about me."
"How can you be that sure?"
"I know him as I know myself."
"You kill for him?"
"We call it assassinations."
"Would you die for him?" IDRIS AND HARRY WERE standing side by side pissing in the road, the sun going down, the guards eating oranges that came from Israel. Idris said, "I ask him if he'd die for Qasim. Do you know what he said?"