10
YORK, ENGLAND, NOVEMBER 2007
The target was the very symbol of America 's power and prestige. Its destruction would be a blow at the. heart of everything they held dear, their capitalistic egotism, their imperialistic arrogance, their technological superiority.
Nothing and nowhere is safe from me, from us, he thought. That was the message he wished to send. It was the only message that had a chance of bringing the West to its knees, and that was what he wanted, a supplicant knocking at his door and begging to know how to make him go away.
The deaths would be minimal by comparison to 9/11, to the bombings in London and Madrid and Iraq, but there were names among them that would give pause to both East and West. If his time with Zarqawi had taught him anything, it was that no matter how many bodies were given up for cannon fodder, there were always more bodies to take their place. No, it was time to try something different, something spectacular, something that would burn indelibly into the hearts and minds of the enemy, something that would strike at their pride, at the very heart of who and what they believed themselves to be.
Further, the destruction of the cargo would throw down his gauntlet before his former masters in Afghanistan, a defiant gesture of independence. He meant them to know that he would not be intimidated or brought to heel, and from that moment on they would know it. After this,
they would have to treat him as an equal member. After this, his counsel would be valued.
Better, he would be feared. And with that fear would come respect. Isa and Abdullah would rank equally with bin Laden and al Qaeda. He would no longer follow, he would lead.
Yussuf and Yaqub had done well, recruiting from the Muslim communities in York and Leeds. He looked them over again. Most in their late teens, three in their early twenties, only one of them married, most of them with ordinary looks, and two actively unattractive. Again according to instruction, Yussuf and Yaqub had also selected as much as possible for surface ethnicity, dark skin, features tending more toward the African than the Arabic. Two of them were doctors. Four of them were engineers, which meant they had been trained to have a healthy respect for the laws of physics, and were conversant with the properties of electricity and the principles of elementary chemical reaction. Unafraid of complicated machinery, they were sons of Martha, they could make things work. He smiled at his comparison of these warriors of Allah to the Christian progeny of the sister of Mary, but only to himself.
They had been told as he had told Yussuf and Yaqub that this attack would be a second 9/11, only this time a simultaneous series of attacks on multiple targets in the West Coast of the United States: the airports of Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They were so inexperienced that they didn't even ask how they were intended to get past American security, notoriously tight since 9/11, but Akil told them anyway. Years had passed, the Americans had been lulled into a false sense of security by thinking that terrorist activity had been moved to the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan, it was time again to test their homeland defenses, over which he was confident they would prevail, to the greater glory of Allah.
Very little of this was true, of course. It was not time yet for any of them, not even Yussuf and Yaqub, to know their true target. Security must rest only with him until the last possible moment. He had told Yussuf and Yaqub to select educated recruits wherever possible, because in his experience the more education, the more effective the recruit, and the more long-lived, which meant a better return on the training investment.
"I know," he said in closing. "It sounds a little nonspecific, and at the same time a little… grandiose." He smiled. "But 'a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?'"
"The Prophet is wise," Yaqub said, and Yussuf nodded.
AMI refrained from pointing out that the words were from Browning, not Mohammed. If Allah was going to hand him a convincing quotation straight out of English 111, he was ready to accept it as a gift to further his argument. For one thing, it meant his time in America had not been entirely wasted.
Not that they needed convincing. Yussuf and Yaqub, coming ahead of him to York, had done well. The recruits were eager to volunteer their help, and their ideas came thick and fast. Most of them were improbable at best and fantastical at worst, and entirely unnecessary. For this job, all he needed were warm bodies with guns and two or three with a working knowledge of ordnance, which he could teach them himself.
He didn't tell them that, either.
Still, he knew better than to quash their enthusiasm, restricting himself to murmured comments that guided and instructed, never exhorted or dictated. At one point he said, "It is very important that events be synchronized in any operation." They agreed to that. Later he said, "Reconnaissance of the target we select is essential." Still later he said, "And of course we will need people familiar with the necessary materials. There will be training. We will be told where and when, and of course our travel will be arranged."
He was always careful to speak in the first person plural, and they responded, including him in their deliberations, deferring to his experience, following his extremely discreet and diplomatic lead.
He had selected York to recruit for the newest cell because he appreciated history, and York had one of burning Jews alive. The north of England had a growing Muslim community as well as a high rate of unemployment, fertile ground for the creation of a disaffected minority ripe for insurrection.
He had also chosen York as a good place to hide from his masters in the East as well as from the powers in the West, at least temporarily. He had never operated in England before this. Further, he well knew the al Qaeda leadership would not approve of his real target. Al Qaeda was interested in body count, not in counting coup. The infidel set too much store by life and not enough on the hereafter. To deprive them of what they held most dear, and to take it from as many as possible at the same time, was the mantra of the Islamic insurrection. Only when the West tired of being constantly under attack, so the thinking of his erstwhile masters went, only when Isa and his like had taken enough of those most precious lives would the enemy be defeated and Palestine be free once more.
He monitored a few select chat rooms and blogs on the Internet, and he knew the word had gone out to find him and bring him back into the fold, whether he was willing to come or not. They would find him, sooner or later, he understood that. But not yet, please Allah, not yet, not until he completed what he had set out to do. When he went back, it would be on his own terms, not as a supplicant, or worse, a prisoner. The humiliation of the prospect drove him to work even harder to hide his efforts from their sight.
He still controlled a great deal of their money, and they would want results for an investment of that size. They had left him alone after Zarqawi's death, partly because he was an undeniably effective operator, as he had showed these with the Baghdad bombing. They had been waiting, though, watching, hoping that if they gave him enough rope he would hang himself with it.
The image again called Adara to his mind, the slack sway of her body from the branch of the neem tree, the white knot of his shirt beneath her jaw, her eyes wide and dull in the moonlight. He accepted the memory, held it closely to him, embracing, accepting, owning the pain.
So often lately in the doing he forgot why. It was good to remember.
That evening he attended the first of several meetings with the young men carefully selected in advance by Yussuf and Yaqub, who had been in York for five months vetting prospective members. For this one meeting they were in the back room of a neighborhood community center, the door closed against the sound of the teen dance being held concurrently in the gymnasium. It was an inspired move on Yaqub's part, as most of their recruits weren't much older than the teenagers at the dance. Also very probably an opportunistic one, as Akil had observed Yaqub's dalliance with some of the more attractive young women. He did wonder occasionally if Yaqub's dedication to the cause might be a bit challenged by his hormones, but it wasn't a problem that hadn't come up before. He smiled to himself. So to speak.