A moment later, Abdul came running out of the home. “Let’s go,” he screamed. The group went on to the next two homes. There were no Russians living in any of the four houses.
When the explosion occurred, the van from As Sukhnah, which had been carrying nine armed men when it pulled onto the M20 highway an hour earlier, had just finished dropping off the last two gunmen in front of a marked home. The two gunmen paused for a moment to recuperate from the concussion of the explosion and then used a battering ram to break open the gate to the wall. As they stepped through the opening into the courtyard, a European man was walking out of the front door of the home. The European froze when he saw the two Syrian army soldiers in front of him.
The lead gunman raised his AK-47 to his shoulder and fired a single round, hitting the foreigner in the right side of his chest. The victim’s legs buckled and he fell to the ground in a seated lotus position. His eyes contained only fear and astonishment, his mind unable to comprehend the event. The trailing gunman walked around his partner, passed behind the man now seated on the walkway, and bounded up the front steps of the home. The first gunman calmly walked up to the man on the ground and raised his weapon, the muzzle only a few feet from the head of his target. He fired a single round and the man’s head exploded, the corpse now falling backwards onto the sandy earth that would shortly be soaked in blood. Clumps of skull with hair tissue still attached were scattered in the sand.
Inside the home, which had the same floor plan as the other homes in the neighborhood, the second gunman headed down the hall. A woman came out of one of the bedrooms. She was middle-aged with light brown hair. She had thrown on a bathrobe to go investigate what had happened outside, her imagination assuming something bad but falling well short of reality.
“Stop,” yelled the gunman as he leveled his weapon at her. “Russian?”
The woman froze in fear, unable to speak.
“Russian?” shouted the gunman. He was stationary, his weapon at his shoulder and pointed at the woman.
A loud and sharp sound startled the gunman — the noise of a rifle round being fired. The woman was hit in the head, the round killing her instantly. The bullet had been fired by the first gunman, who had entered the home after he killed the man outside. He stepped around his partner and walked down the hall. He kicked open the bedroom door opposite the woman’s bedroom and looked in, flipping the selector on his weapon upward one notch with his thumb, enabling full automatic fire. He squeezed the trigger. Twelve rounds were fired before he stopped. A teenage Russian boy now lay dead.
The gunman turned and walked out. As he passed by his partner, he simply said, “I hate Russians. Filthy atheists.”
The other three homes were all entered. They were empty.
The sedan carrying Abu Muhjid, Faraj and the driver turned back around to head back to the northwest toward the Russian Tall King radar set. As they drove, Muhjid heard metallic pinging. He started to wonder if there was something wrong with the engine of their car. “What is that sound?” he asked to no one in particular. As the last word left his mouth, a round came through the rear window. Muhjid ducked instinctively, his mind suddenly realizing that the sounds he had been hearing were bullets hitting the car. “Floor it,” he yelled to his driver. “Where is that coming from?”
As the last word came from his mouth, a loud explosion pierced the air a couple of hundred meters behind the car. The C-4 had detonated, its chemically induced force instantly cutting through the steel pedestal that supported the large Chinese radar array. The radar toppled to the ground, its delicate framework unable to support its own weight. The array twisted and warped as it collapsed. No one would be repairing this particular radar.
Even better, thought the Archer, whoever was shooting at their car had stopped. Muhjid did not need to tell the driver to take full advantage of the lull. He thought about the situation and came to the conclusion that the last remaining target, the Russian Tall King radar, would have to wait for another day. It was getting too dangerous on the base and their sedan had been identified. “Head for the exit corner.” Muhjid pointed off to his right.
The driver continued to accelerate, only now turning the car to the right, heading northeast toward a corner of the base. If they could make it, they would be half a mile south of the M20 highway. The base had a sand berm around the perimeter and the car would not be able to drive over it, but the sooner they reached a far corner of the base, the further they could run before soldiers arrived. The car traveled across the hard desert sand without problem, covering the last half mile to the northeast corner in under a minute.
The car came to stop just inside the corner of the berm. Muhjid told each man to get out and start toward the highway. He removed a block of the remaining C-4 explosive from the bag and placed a delay fuse into it, setting the timer for the maximum delay of two minutes. He placed the block back into the bag and placed the bag of explosives on the driver’s side floor. He got out, taking his weapon with him. As he stood up straight, he looked back toward the interior of the base and smiled — no one was following them. He turned and scurried over the berm. When he reached the other side, he began a fast jog toward the highway. In the distance, from the direction of the town, he could hear sirens. On the base itself, sporadic gunfire could be heard.
As he neared the highway, he saw what he had been praying for: a blue Nissan pickup truck was parked on the edge of the road. It had been the last vehicle in the morning convoy to leave As Sukhnah. He finally reached the truck and got in. The driver of the sedan was in the middle of the front bench seat. “Where’s Faraj?”
The driver looked at him. “With Allah,” he said. Faraj had been hit in the neck and killed by the round that came through the window of the sedan. It was his fate. In the excitement of the moment, Muhjid had never noticed.
“Let’s go,” said Muhjid. He shook his head and then said a silent prayer to thank God for watching over him this day.
The pickup truck headed toward As Sukhnah. It was not limited to 100 kph. Somewhere behind them, the van had picked up all nine of the gunmen and was heading toward a spot in the desert where the men had parked their cars. They would abandon the van there and return to their families. They had succeeded in killing three Russians, only one of whom was a legitimate target. They had also killed a young Arab child who was completely innocent. But in the blast that destroyed the building, most of the men of two shifts had been caught on site. Five Iranians, twelve Syrians and, most importantly, nine Russians radar technicians had died in an instant. The timing of the explosion could not have been better. Such was the randomness of warfare.
A communiqué from al Qaeda in Iraq was posted to several Islamic websites. It read:
In obedience to the command of Allah, and in support of His religion, and to defend and avenge the oppressed in the Levant, the soldiers of the Islamic State of Iraq, in cooperation with our Islamic brothers in arms in the Levant, carried out an attack today. The action was conducted at an air base in the eastern region of the Homs Governate and operations of the infidel government in Moscow were targeted. All of the targets of the operation were completely destroyed. The representatives of the infidel government who support the criminal regime in Damascus, are warned to leave the Levant and all Islamic lands. This operation was conducted on the morning of 14 September.
The international press quickly picked up the story. There was no doubt that the claim by the political wing of al Qaeda in Iraq was genuine — the first sentence of the communiqué had been posted ninety minutes before the attack occurred. An update added the detail after the fact.