by Chase Austin
When he got the intel about someone named Abdul Basit capturing a CIA agent in Afghanistan, his brain started to work overtime. According to his sources, Basit worked for Irfan-Ul-Haq, the Cleric from Pakistan who was working for him. That piece of information gave him an idea. Using his sources, he decided to relay the intel to the CIA, hoping that they would at least try to save their agent… and then they would get the information about the planned attack, which he wanted to happen. But then the CIA director, Walter Raborn, had done something entirely unexpected! He involved TF-77. It was a startling move, yet even the Professor could not have thought of a better way to inject more excitement in the proceedings. From the time he heard of TF-77’s involvement, he activated one of his contractors, Z, to keep an eye on Wick and Eddie, only to make sure that they completed their mission and got the information about the impending attack.
Now that their mission was a success, he just had to wait for the American bureaucracy to start moving at its glacial pace to stop the attacks, while he stood appreciating the exquisiteness of Paris and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ paintings. He had made sure that the country that betrayed him would witness something that no one ever thought possible. And he would relish every moment of it from the comfort of his hotel room on a 50-inch television set.
Chapter 3
Saturday, 0100 hours, a Deserted Airfield in Texas
“You’ve sinned, Mahfouz.” Yasin Malik’s voice reverberated in the abandoned hangar. Standing on a platform, Yasin looked down on a 19-year-old young man. The man was Otis but in the camp people knew him as Mahfouz, and Mahfouz was on trial for his sins. “You’ve violated the sacred pact between yourself and Allah. You have betrayed your brothers. You’ve broken their trust, but Allah is kind. He wants you to choose your own destiny. So, what will it be, Mahfouz? What’s your destiny?” Yasin’s black eyes gazed at the impressionable young man.
“I deserve death.”
Twenty-nine other young men in three straight lines watched Mahfouz choosing his destiny with a certain defiance.
“Speak to everyone about your sin.” Yasin was the judge but the twenty-nine others were the jury.
“I broke the sacred pact when I asked one of my brothers about his family. The family that we have forsaken.”
“Mahfouz, why did you do that?” Yasin’s voice was pained.
Mahfouz remained silent.
Yasin looked at the sky and closed his eyes. “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. (We belong to Allah, and to Him we shall return).” He opened his eyes and observed his students.
He spoke with finality. “Your time has come.” Twenty-nine pairs of feet moved towards Mahfouz.
Mahfouz turned to face his executioners. In their eyes he could see a multitude of emotions — hate, fear, shock, rejection and…sympathy.
“Don’t worry, Allah will be kind,” Mahfouz spoke to his executioners. These boys were his brothers, and he wanted them to be strong.
Shahrukh, who was closest to Mahfouz, dealt the first blow. Mahfouz saw it coming and his natural instincts forced him to block it with both hands.
“Forgive me.” The two words immediately escaped his lips.
The first blow was the initiation. Then body blows and kicks rained on him. He took them all without putting up a defense. But his young, vulnerable body could only take so much. He fell to the ground, but none of his executioners stopped.
Yasin remained on the platform watching Mahfouz being trampled to death. His pupils had just passed the last stage of their six-month-long training magnificently. He now had twenty-nine merciless, trained soldiers who would do anything he wanted them to do. And today he wanted America to burn.
Chapter 4
Yasin Malik was in his private room, sitting on his knees, his hands placed flat on his thighs. “O Allah, forgive me, have mercy on me, strengthen me, raise me in status, pardon me and grant me the provision,” he murmured.
Shahrukh, a twenty-year-old young man and one of his star pupils, stood silently at the open door, waiting for Yasin to notice him. His eyes were alert, posture tense, gaze fixed on his commander. He didn’t dare interrupt Yasin during his Namaz. No one did.
“Subhanna rabbiyal a’laa. Subhanna rabbiyal a’laa. Subhanna rabbiyal a’laa.” Yasin turned his head, first to his right and then left. He opened his eyes unhurriedly and noticed Shahrukh at the door, watching his every move like a loyal servant.
Yasin got to his feet and put on his shoes. He gave Shahrukh a nod to let him know he was ready. Shahrukh nodded in return and turned around to alert the others.
Yasin smiled to himself, thinking of the fidelity Shahrukh and others had towards his words. From the day this had began, Yasin had vigorously sought boys like Shahrukh to be part of his army. They were loyal to the core and highly impressionable. What they lacked was training, and Yasin had polished them, to be both effective and efficient. Each one of them. Thirty in total. Now twenty-nine. Ready to plunge into anything with everything they had, at Yasin’s word.
Now was the time to test their mettle.
Yasin replaced his kufi skullcap, worn during the Namaz, with a white Islamic turban. Military green fatigues completed the rest of his getup.
Yasin had set up the training facility in the hangar of a deserted airfield, in the Texas boondocks where there was no hum of traffic or buzz of streetlights. Just crickets. Companions Yasin didn’t mind. In fact, ‘hangar’ was a very loose description of the space. It was more like a warehouse — high ceiling, cracked floor, rust eating away at the walls. The roller doors were up, and the entire structure seemed like it wouldn’t take more than a slight breeze to collapse it. The building was illuminated with flickering overhead lights. Outside, overgrown weeds snaked through the cracks. A field of dead grass stretched out in all directions revealing nothing but flat ground as far as the eye could see. But there was something else. Three Bell 205As and three Cessnas sat outside, ready for take-off.
The air was lighter compared to the heaviness of the city, but it was still hot and wet. The night breeze failed to give any respite. Yasin sweltered in the heat, but he had seen worse. He paid scant attention to it as he walked towards his mentees waiting for him in three straight lines next to a makeshift platform at the far corner of the hangar, the very place from where he had sentenced Mahfouz to death.
Chapter 5
The cadets bowed their heads as Yasin walked up to the dais. He turned to face twenty-nine pair of eyes. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscular forearms. His face was thoughtful and intelligent, but it betrayed no emotion. A warrior’s look was in his eyes. They all recognized the intensity — a mix of determination and ruthlessness.
To strangers, he appeared as normal as one would expect a person to be. He had a full head of thick black hair and a tanned face with a trimmed beard and a sharp mustache. People knew him as Ed McCarthy, a mild-mannered security guard at this deserted airfield, employed by an obscure North Dakota facilities management firm. On paper, his job was to take care of the airstrip and the hangar. The nearest town was fifteen miles to the north, and he rarely visited it. Whenever he did, it was always for groceries, which were always paid for in cash. The cashier never looked at him twice. No one ever did.
Seven months ago, Yasin had appeared in this town with three men. For the next thirty days they had worked on creating makeshift living spaces for thirty more people, a soundproof space that covered one-third of the hangar, a simulation room, and a makeshift kitchen. All this required cash. The money had found its way to him through Irfan-Ul-Haq, AKA the Great Cleric.
On the thirty-first day, the three men had left, leaving Yasin alone. Two days later, the first lot of fifteen men arrived and three days later, the next fifteen. And for the next six months they lived on that airfield, right under the American government’s nose, plotting the country’s downfall. Getting trained in hand-to-hand combat, the use of different kinds of firearms — assault rifles, submachine guns, and pistols —
in the soundproof cabins. They learned to handle grenades and worked with every known kind of explosive. The training also covered a detailed lowdown of guerilla warfare and the deadly Palestinian terror strategies of deep insertion. At the end of six months, Yasin had converted them into live ammunition, using the Taliban’s playbook.
At times Yasin found the process of turning a misguided American kid into a walking time-bomb bloody hard. He felt as if he would never succeed, or someday a SWAT team would raid the compound and take him and his whole operation down, but he persisted. He persisted, and persisted, in the name of Allah.
The training was regimented. The whole process of breaking and molding young distressed minds was divided into six major steps.
Step one was to prey on kids from dysfunctional or broken families; isolate them from their parents and their familiar surroundings. The kids were selected based on their age, mixed parentage and citizenship. They were young, had one Muslim parent and were American citizens with valid social security numbers. Some of them were from affluent families, several had parents who commanded wide respect in their communities, almost all had gone to good schools and been at the top of their class for most of their academic lives. But the most important thing they had in common was their extreme loathing for society.
Step two started with the teaching of Koran, Islam’s holiest book, in Arabic, a language these youngsters didn’t understand and couldn’t speak. This made them rely heavily on Yasin, who then distorted the message as and when it suited his purpose. The trainees were explicitly forbidden to contact their families, read newspapers, listen to radio, read any books that Yasin did not prescribe for them, thus creating a complete blackout. The cadets were given a new identity. None of them could ask anyone else about anything except what they were learning there. Talking about old identities or families or girlfriends or past life was forbidden; breaking this pact meant a death sentence. The mission was more important than small talk about one’s past.
The third step was to make these young men hate the world that they currently lived in. Every single day for eight hours all they had to do was to read the Koran. Many a day they were beaten, fed only dry bread and water.
The next step was to drill the concept of martyrdom glories. How when they would die, they would be received up with unimaginable pleasures and food, and how this glory was going to propel them to become heroes in their neighborhoods.
The penultimate step was to show them videos of how minorities were being treated in the USA, how men, women, and children were suffering and dying at the hands of the American administration and how American politicians were milking the country dry, letting the nation go to the dogs. The underlying message was that modern America didn’t care about their own and others, so those who supported the government deserved to die. At the end of these phases, the youngsters were ready to go out and fight because that was the only way to eternal glory.
The last stage of the training was to assess if they would hesitate to kill a fellow American, and that was why, even though Yasin came to know about Mahfouz’s breach of trust very early, he still waited till the last day of the training to sentence him to death at the hands of his mates. By sacrificing Mahfouz, he had made sure that his six months of regimented training was successful in weeding out any vestige of humanity from every cadet’s consciousness. Now, not a shred of emotion or doubt would cloud their minds when the time came for them to kill.
Out of the thirty, Yasin had also chosen five to execute five unique jobs. Their given names were Taha, Habib, Sultan, Rahim, and Aslam. Their real names were Liam, Ethan, Mason, William, and Elijah, but not anymore. They were the youngest in the lot, from fourteen to seventeen years of age. Unlike the rest of the trainees on that airfield, these five were different and were treated differently. Yasin wanted more like them but soon found out that only those five had the right psyche and that they fit the criteria to a tee. Now, Yasin’s only job was to nurture them to be the best.
The target cities and the buildings had already been identified, code-named and broken down to their bare basics — subways, police station locations, sewer networks, train systems, electric grids, water supplies, government institutions, schools, malls, theaters. Weekly simulations augmented familiarity with the terrain. Mock battles in which different ground situations were replicated gave the young men a real feel of covering their bases quickly while taking care of any obstructions.
Still, Yasin knew that no training could prepare them to take on the FBI and the CIA, and that’s why the attacks were not aimed to seize control but to inflict maximum damage, and then immediately withdraw to avoid retaliation. The assault’s sole objective was ‘destroy and move’.
America wouldn’t even know what hit her.
Chapter 6
Yasin clenched his right wrist with his left hand, behind his back. His posture was erect and attentive, his gaze fixed on the twenty-nine men standing before him in silence. His lips quivered and slowly the words started to take the shape of a speech. He had practiced it a zillion times in the privacy of his room, but tonight was the real test for him. This was the last thing his men were going to take with them.
“Allah has created us for his worship and commanded us to be just, and allowed us, the wronged ones, to retaliate against our oppressor.” His words came out in a measured tone. “Today we are gathered here to commence the most pious mission bestowed on us by Him, that is, to avenge the deaths of millions of our brothers and sisters at the hands of this barbaric nation – America – and fix its broken system. Today marks the beginning of a new order where idiots will not occupy the top places. They will not tell us how to live our lives. This nation and its leadership must realize that every human life has the same value. It must realize that we have suffered enough, and we are done being at the wrong end of their bullets, bombs, and missiles. Today the bullets, bombs, and missiles will have new targets. The assailant will become the prey.”
Yasin paused to gauge his audience. They all were listening with rapt attention. “Our brothers and sisters are being killed and terrorized by America, within the borders and outside of them, and our brethren want us to do something. Today we’ll make them proud. We’ll teach this cruel nation a lesson on how to treat human life justly. America is our home too and a man cannot be blamed for protecting his home. This American system is beyond repair. Its hands are tainted with the blood of innocents and it’s time to return the favor in kind.” Yasin was almost at the conclusion of his speech. He could see the boys were charged up. It was time to give them one last push. “Allahu Akbar.”
“Allahu Akbar.” The boys shouted back.
“We are ready.” Yasin raised his right hand in the air.
“Ready to kill.” Twenty-nine right hands were up in solidarity. For the next few seconds, no one said anything. They just gazed at each other.
Yasin stared hard at the three men who would be leading the three teams in the battlefield. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Shahrukh Umar, and Saif al-Adel were standing there, leading the three rows. Six months ago, they had names like Max, Jacob, and Pete but now they were Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Shahrukh Umar, and Saif al-Adel. Others were instructed to follow these three on the battlefield because Yasin wasn’t going to be there. He had other things to take care of, like dismantling this facility so that when the uniforms came sniffing, they would find nothing.
Yasin knew that none of the twenty-nine mentees was going to come out of this mission alive. He had made sure of that. There wasn’t any escape plan. Surrender wasn’t even an option. Once they were in, they had only two options – Kill or Die.
He slowly got off the podium and strutted towards Khalid, the nearest of the three. “I have very high hopes for you,” he said.
“Yes, Commander.” There was pride in Khalid’s answer. Yasin’s smile in return was that of a proud father. Khalid’s actual father was the vice president of one of the American oil and gas majors and his mother was marketing direct
or in an Internet unicorn startup. They had no idea that their son, whom they thought was in his college dorm room, and right then probably asleep, was, in fact, getting ready to wage a war against his own country. They would, however, know it all too soon.
Yasin then paused near Saif and widened his hands for a hug, which Saif gladly accepted. He said, “Saif, make me proud.”
“Yes, Commander,” Saif spoke in Yasin’s ear. Saif’s actual father was a USA district judge and his mother an elementary school teacher. Their son, according to them, was on a foreign trip to Italy sponsored by his college. They had spoken to him only twice in the last six months despite the multiple options the world now had in terms of reaching out to people.
Shahrukh was last in the line. His father, a successful investment banker and his mother, an award-winning journalist, had been on the road for the last nine months for work commitments and believed that their academically bright son was at their home busy preparing for Harvard.
