As the first light started to break through the window of the small mud-brick house, Yousef carried his rug out into the garden, laid it out pointing to the west, and prepared for his morning prayer. The others, his guards and Umarov, joined him for the dawn ritual.
Mecca. Just to the west of that peak.
The wall of purple mountains to his west was rising out of the darkness.
Yousef looked at the others as he thought of the home of his religion. An imaginary compass line pointed to Mecca from his valley. It followed a point just south of the largest peak on the western wall of rocks. He checked it once on Google Earth and was surprised to see that the computer’s extended line crossed the path he had envisioned — from the valley, west, over the tall peak, and then continued on for fifteen hundred miles to Mecca.
They will never see it. The thought struck him as he looked at the men bent, on knees, next to him. They would never see the white pillars of Mecca or touch al-Hajar al-Aswad, the Black Stone.
Yousef al-Qadi had traveled regularly to the city during his youth. His family drove through the desert, across much of Saudi Arabia, to the hajj every year. Yousef ’s memory as a child was the crush of people. Strange people from different lands with mixtures of languages and strange looks, most he could not understand. His stepsister would hold his hand tightly, cutting off the circulation, and scold him when he would wander off. His stepmother would yell at him at the first signs of a runny nose or cough. The crush of people carried the risk of illness, and the stepmother would always blame the child of the gardener’s daughter as the reason her other children became ill.
But the hajj also gave him an early sense of the power of his faith. Millions would travel to Mecca, but hundreds of millions believed. Most would never be able to travel to the center and source of their religion, but still they believed. Many would give their lives because it was Allah’s will, because they believed.
A true Muslim state. This was Yousef ’s dream for his people.
Saudi Arabia was not the true Muslim state. Its leaders were false prophets.
He looked up to the mountains that formed the little valley that surrounded his small apple orchard. The Americans waited on the other side of the mountain range. Those same mountains went to the south as far as he could see and, for over a thousand miles, to the north as well. The mountains to the north had been given silly Western names by the infidels: K2, Everest, and others.
As Pakistan had torn itself away from India, it was now his mission to pull these people away from Pakistan. Yousef carried with him a small map of his dream. It had a black outline that went well beyond Afghanistan, east into the Waziristans, both north and south, and the tribal areas north of the Khyber Pass. It extended down to the south, beyond Quetta. It went west into Iran. The West had created many of the countries of this world. Certain tribes that held the power had created many. But it was the original land that he sought.
A state that would be a harbor for true believers.
Yousef smiled at the thought.
Hasbun Allah wa ni’am al-wakil. He will be my guardian. The challenge will not be the Americans. They will go away. The challenge will be the tribes. Yousef knew that only a bold warrior could unite the people. It would take an evangelical fervor. It would take credibility. He had to be known. The name Yousef would be carried on the lips of both the young and the old. He would be the one.
“How is the plan?” Umarov asked.
Yousef looked around for a moment and then, deciding it was safe, pulled Umarov close to him, watching carefully for the others.
“The Chicago cell is in place and is just waiting to be activated. The Canadian cell is activated. They just need the nuclear core. And our little pilot is on her way.” Yousef smiled.
And then he laughed out loud.
“The little girl.” Yousef spoke the words as he looked to the mountains beyond. He had seen her trying to play soccer in Danish Abad with a ball made of socks and plastic bags. He knew she was perfect after her brother had introduced her. No one had connected her to Samullah. She was driven. She would not fail. She would go to Canada. She would tell them she was there for help with her leg. She would pass through customs without question. The limp would distract. But she now she had been trained. She was a quick learner. Despite her leg, a frozen knee torn apart by a fall from a bridge in Danish Abad to the rocks below, she was a natural athlete with perfect hand-and-eye coordination. She was the perfect pilot. They never would have suspected that she could fly anything.
“How about the technician?”
“He will help us build our own bombs.”
“We are ready.” Umarov stood above Yousef.
“Yes.” Yousef stayed on his knees, rolling up his rug. Despite its journey with him, the rug still seemed to hold its bright reds and blacks and blues. “All we need are the nuclear pits.”
The fifteen kilograms of highly enriched uranium would look like a shiny, metallic tennis ball. It would be the core in a larger ball of gelignite explosive. The end product would look like an oversized basketball wrapped in rolls of tape with small wires coming out from under the tape. The explosion would compress the neutrons of the nuclear tennis ball with such force that a most brilliant flash would follow. Even if it didn’t reach the level of a chain reaction, the debris would be deadly for a hundred years.
“We need to move.” Umarov did his job well. Survival meant never staying too long, never stopping in the same place twice. That had been bin Laden’s mistake.
“The newspaper man will be coming soon.” Yousef looked at the mountain range as he spoke.
Umarov’s scowl telegraphed his thoughts. He feared bringing in a stranger. A stranger always bore risks. Yousef understood this.
“The trucks are ready?”
Umarov nodded. “I will get them.”
Yousef knew that his wife and sons would be ready. She obeyed well. He stepped into the mud-brick house, its thick walls keeping the night chill inside. During the blistering heat of the summer, it provided relief. But at this hour the rooms were frigid.
“Come, now.”
“We have something to eat.” She handed him a wheat pancake.
“You are a good woman.” He didn’t compliment her often. He never said it in front of others.
She also had the two boys with their backpacks and rugs rolled up. Both were chewing on their pancakes. The little girl was sound asleep.
“You will travel in the second truck.”
“Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’um.” She praised Allah during this difficult time.
Yousef ’s wife had never been a particularly attractive woman. He had picked her out of the group of sisters because she had the reputation of being the most obedient. But, more important, she had brought him two healthy boys and a daughter. As a consequence, he took no other wives. It gave her a special status. She was the only wife of Yousef, the warrior, and she believed in his dream of an Islamic state.
I will take more wives when this war is over, Yousef told himself. Like his brothers, who each had three or four. But no matter, she would remain Yousef al-Qadi’s first wife and the mother of his oldest son.
“We are traveling well to the north.”
Yousef had been to the valley before. It was well protected, with a deep cave on the far southern end. The road to Peshawar was just over the mountain. The Konar River passed nearby. It was well within the Pakistani border, but that seemed to matter less and less as the Americans became more aggressive. Most important of all, the valley was well protected by the Pakistani Taliban. The TTP had a network of villages that surrounded the southern end of the valley. It was one place that the Pakistan Army would not venture into.