15
"What in the name of Allah is going on over there?"
The man who now called himself Zaki Abar lowered his binoculars and gave the young man standing next to him a sharp look. "Do not swear upon the name of Allah, glory be to Him."
Muhammad Jabarrah gave Zaki a sour look. "Not all of us share your… intense interest in religion. That does not mean we do not share the same devotion to the cause."
Zaki sighed. He'd learned long ago that a certain amount of latitude was necessary in dealing with the wildly diverse range of beliefs within the far-flung army of the Islamic jihad. There was a powerful temptation to see the alliance as monolithic, a united army of God, holy and righteous, marching together beneath His holy banner of jihad. That mistake was common enough in the West, and especially in the United States, where the activities of groups like al Qaeda and Maktum were seen as representative of Islam as a whole.
In point of fact, however, most Muslims cared little for politics, or for the struggle between the faithful and the West. One key purpose of Maktum was to educate the faithful worldwide, to show them that the decadent American giant could be brought down as the prophet Dawud had brought down the giant Goliath. America could be fought, could be defeated with the help of Allah, praise be unto Him. Within the ranks of the movement itself there was an astonishing array of belief and practice — Sunnis and Shi'ites, Sufis and Ismailis, puritanical Wahhabis and reform-minded Ahmadiyas — and even those individuals like Jabarrah who seemed to have no faith, no belief in Allah at all.
The unbelievers, the mere fact of them, bothered Zaki at times, but he'd long ago decided that the best course was to leave their souls in the hand of Allah, blessings upon His name. There was little Zaki himself could do to argue them into paradise, and too stringent an insistence upon observance of the sharia might even drive such men from the movement.
And Maktum desperately needed fighters such as Jabarrah, men with a fanatic's hatred of America and the West, but with the cold, hard, calculating minds of born killers.
So Zaki said nothing, raising his binoculars to his eyes once more, and studying the long, low shape of the submarine surfaced ahead.
There was a heavy swell running beneath a slate-gray sky — the precursor to the fast-approaching storm system. The waves were high enough to almost entirely obscure the submarine's deck, though the bluff, sharply rectangular conning tower rose above the dark water like a cliff.
It was the Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen, obviously enough, its hull such a dark gray as to appear almost black. There was no flag above the sail, and no number on the hull; one of the PLAN subs in the region would have been flying the bright red flag of the PRC.
Through the binoculars, he could see a number of people on the sub's forward deck. They appeared to be a ragged lot, most without shirts, some completely naked, none in anything like a uniform. They appeared to be bathing, squatting or standing on the deck and using sponges and buckets of water to wash themselves down. Several uniformed men stood nearby, armed with assault rifles, so Zaki assumed that these were the prisoners Captain ul Haq had told him about over the radio.
"It would appear," Zaki said after a moment's study, "that those are our new guests. It looks like they're having a seawater bath."
"Do you seriously think it a good idea that we take them aboard? We don't have the facilities to care for prisoners."
"And you believe a submarine does?" Zaki chuckled. "Believe me, my friend. They will think their quarters on board Al Qahir palatial compared to what they had on the Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen."
"It was not their comfort I was thinking of," Jabarrah replied. "It was the difficulty of guarding several hostages. And it was particularly the danger of holding hostages. If the Americans find out—"
"And how are they supposed to find out?" Zaki asked with a shrug. He glanced up at the solidly overcast sky. "This rendezvous was specifically arranged to take advantage of this approaching storm. The American spy satellites cannot see through a solid cloud deck."
"You underestimate their technology."
"And you fear their technology as if it were magic. It is not. Remember the lesson of Vietnam. Remember the Russians in Afghanistan."
During the war in Vietnam, a poor and tiny country, with few technological assets, had managed to hold the American tiger at bay for ten years, and ultimately to wear him down to the point that he'd given up. In Afghanistan, the Soviet giant had been defeated by a handful of the faithful, mujahedin armed with antique weapons and a few hand-me-downs from the Americans. A crafty, determined, and dedicated fighter could always outlast the giant, no matter how imposing his arsenal of military toys.
"I remember," Jabarrah said, nodding. "And I also remember the Americans in Afghanistan… and in Iraq. They have learned their lessons from Vietnam very well indeed, and we cannot stand up to them face-to-face and survive. They have technologies to see in the dark and to see through storms. It is magic, of a sort. And it is a magic that your reliance on Allah will not be able to balance."
"All things are possible for Allah, the powerful, the compassionate, the all-knowing," Zaki said. "And all things are possible for those who trust Him. All the technology in the world could not withstand His wrath."
Jabarrah turned sharply, eyes blazing. "Yes? And where was His wrath when the Americans descended upon Afghanistan? Where was His wrath when their aircraft and missiles and smart bombs found our bases and our headquarters and our training camps and our arsenals and reduced them all to flaming debris and shattered bodies? Where was His wrath when their Special Forces came, digging us out of our caves and mountain redoubts? Where was His wrath when they overthrew the Taliban and imposed the rule of their puppets on the nation?"
"Gently, my friend. I am not your enemy." Zaki was about to say something about the ways of Allah being mysterious, but decided against it. Jabarrah, he knew, had lived in Afghanistan for many years, had had two Afghani wives and a son who'd fought for the Taliban. Both wives had been killed during the bombing of Kandahar; the son had been missing since the American assault on Tora Bora, had probably been one of thousands buried alive inside one of the caves during the bombings there.
Jabarrah, Zaki thought, had every right to be bitter. What he didn't yet understand was that it was useless to blame Allah for the murders of his family, that sometimes the ways of Allah were beyond human comprehension. All Zaki could do with such a man was to exercise patience, and trust that Allah would bring him back to the true faith in the end.
"I have no answers for you, my friend," Zaki said simply. "I do not know the mind of Allah. But I do know that the Americans, though powerful, are not Allah, and do not have His power."
Jabarrah gave Zaki a scornful look. "They could have one of their Los Angeles or Seawolf submarines thirty meters away from Al Qahir, right there." He pointed at an empty path of ocean off the yacht's port side. "It could be lying in wait, lurking just beneath the surface, watching every move we make, perhaps listening to our very words, and you would never even be aware of it!"
Zaki sighed. "If that is true, why should we even bother to continue the fight? Why not simply give up, assume that Allah has abandoned us, and flee while we still have our lives?"