by Jeff Siebold
The building was wide, gray and squat, with a flat roof, and it was two stories in height. It had been marked by shelling, as had most of the nearby structures, and was essentially windowless on its south side. Catherine’s room was on the second floor, to the north.
There were perhaps 20 rooms in the building, and one bathroom on each floor, which was actually a hole in the floor and a water pump. The structure looked as if it had originally been a hospital or the Turkish equivalent of a convent, or perhaps a dormitory, but now it was a hostel, a jumping off place for would-be supporters of the Islamic State. As best Catherine could tell, there were eight other people in residence, two men and six women. A few seemed to know each other in small groups of two or three, but most kept to themselves and waited, as Catherine did. She had been warned not to trust anyone, to stand by and wait silently. It was a woman’s place to be patient and stoic, to be silent and to await her husband’s direction. Or, in Catherine’s case, her future husband.
And yet, the hours passed slowly. She busied herself by thinking of the cause, the purpose and the great need that she was here to help fulfill. It was transcendental. After all, it had started in the seventh century with Islam and hadn’t changed at all since then. The urgency was as real now as it must have been those many years ago.
Two brothers ran the hostel, along with their wives. They were in their 40’s, Catherine thought, although their faces looked to be 60 years or older, lined with deep creases and aged by the heat and wind. They each had permanently tanned faces from the sun and gnarled hands with dirty, broken nails. One, Abu, had lost three fingers of his left hand. That’s how Catherine could tell them apart. They were surly and abrupt, and treated their guests with disdain. But, it was a place to stay.
Once approved, she would be escorted across the border to Kobane, just south of her present location, and then to Aleppo where she would be with Umar again. He would take her to the camp, and there they would be married.
We have come a long way, Catherine thought. The Arabic Student Group had helped them with the arrangements, the leader Asad, actually, and two of the others. They had organized it and timed it perfectly. With their help, Catherine and Andrea had made their way before they were missed. The trip to Washington Dulles airport from the UVA campus was an evening excursion in a student’s blue Kia. The girls took only what they needed, one small suitcase each. The Lufthansa flight from Washington, DC to Ankara left late Friday night and, after a stop in Munich, arrived mid-afternoon the next day.
They were met at the airport by an ally, a woman dressed in dark green slacks and a matching headscarf. She wore a coverall topcoat as an admonition to modest dress. The woman, who said little and never shared her name with the girls, was in her thirties. She was gaunt and wore no jewelry. Once outside the airport she signaled a taxi, which took them all to the train station.
During the ride, the woman leaned back over the front seat toward the girls seated in the back of the cab. “Here are your tickets to Konya,” she’d said. “You should have your passports ready, too.” At the train station, they waited in line and when their train was called, they boarded. Catherine remembered the train ride. It was dark and cold by the time the train left the station. But the train car was fairly modern and the train ran on a high speed rail.
Once in Konya, in the south of Turkey, they boarded the bus for the final leg of their journey. Catherine remembered the hope and happiness she felt, knowing that she would soon be with Umar again. When they had first met in Virginia on his visit three months ago, she had immediately been taken with this tall, handsome, dark-haired man. Although he was ten years her senior, he treated Catherine with respect and courtesy, and it was evident that he was drawn to her. She remembered noticing the vast difference between this man, who had seen war and the realities of life, and the boys she had dated occasionally on campus.
They had met at an ASG meeting where Umar was speaking to a group of students about the war in Syria. The ASG leader introduced him as a professor of sociology at Gaziantep University in Gaziantep, Turkey. When Umar took the podium, he succinctly outlined the causes of the current struggle in the Middle East and discussed both sides of the conflict, both the Sunni and the Shia points of view. Catherine listened attentively, amazed at his understanding of the issues and their history, and drawn in by his presence and his confidence.
“There is no simple solution to all of this,” she remembered him saying. “The fires of this conflict are fifteen hundred years old and have been stoked in each century with the flames of oppression.”
Later, after the lecture, she had gathered the nerve to approach Umar.
“Yes, I saw you in the audience,” he’d said. “You are very intense. It is in your eyes.”
Catherine had always thought of herself as plain, a simple looking girl with simple tastes. But she had felt something different, something personal and important about this cause. She had been drawn to it, and to Umar.
“You must be in a relationship,” Umar continued, “a pretty woman like you. So, would it be presumptuous of me to ask to see you again?” He paused, looking into her eyes, and Catherine had suddenly felt her heart beating faster.
“We could meet for coffee,” he said, “and discuss the cause.”
That was how it had started, followed by dinners and long nights of discussion. They talked until early dawn about the countries of the Middle East and their leaders, wars and conflicts. They talked about the warriors and the fighters and the martyrs. They talked in general terms about the use of social media in the fight, the bombings, the drones, the recruitment process. Catherine had never felt so alive, so involved in a cause as she did when she was with Umar. And then, she’d awoken one morning to realize that she was in love with him.
At first she had hinted about wanting to be involved in the conflict, wanting to help. “How fulfilling it would be,” she’d said, “to have a hand in helping. To actually do something, instead of just talking about it.” She was also thinking about her sister, Andrea, who was a nurse.
When she’d heard that Catherine was dating someone, Andrea had visited the campus to meet him. The sisters had always been close and had always watched out for each other. The trip from DC to UVA was an easy ride, and Andrea had spent a weekend with her sister.
Initially, Andrea was suspicious and concerned that her sister was dating a older man of Middle Eastern descent. They had both grown up in Fairfax, and although they had classmates of many ethnicities, they had spent their formative years in a WASP household. But once Andrea met Umar, everything changed.
“I can see how much he loves you, sis,” said Andrea, after they’d met Umar for lunch. “He’s so proper and polite. And he really seems to care about you. He treats you very well.” Andrea had watched her sister go through a series of bad relationships with boys in her college, attaching her heart to one, then another, only to have it broken into tiny pieces. With Catherine, it was always “all or nothing.” And her selection of boyfriends was a mystery to Andrea, as Catherine chose one bad boy after another. Most of them had treated her like dirt, used her and cheated on her. “I like him,” Andrea said, meaning Umar.
Over the next two months, Andrea visited Catherine almost every week. She was living in a rented apartment in Georgetown and working at the hospital. The work was demanding but not really fulfilling for her. As a new nurse, she spent much of her time with bedpans and cranky patients who she woke up in the middle of the night to give medicine or draw blood. Her schedule was packed and the work unrewarding. More and more she looked forward to her visits to UVA.
During one visit, Catherine had approached her sister with an idea. In a rush she’d said, “Listen, I would really like to help in the conflict in Syria. And I know you would, too. You’re not happy at the hospital, with the bureaucracy and the doctors and the schedule and all. You’ve told me that. Imagine what we could do to help if there were no limitations on us, no restrictions.”
“Oh, no, I could never do that, sis,” she’d said. But at that moment the seed was planted.
Andrea began to picture herself as a healer, a nurse on the front, helping the fighters who were injured in the battles. Saving lives and healing soldiers. And her interest grew.
Chapter 37
“Allah be praised,” said the youngest man, Ismael. “We cannot be stopped. We will be as victorious as Muhammad was in Mecca.”
The four others sitting in the metal warehouse in Culpeper all nodded in agreement. They sat in folding chairs around a six-foot long table with their Qur’ans opened. They were preparing for midday prayers. The table was littered with food wrappers and brown bags, and there were three medium-sized paper cups on it, holding Coke products.
Earlier, they had been discussing the FBI raid in Charlottesville, and the loss of their brothers in this fight, this jihad.
“Ismael, you must be careful. The raids in Charlottesville took five of us…we have to do what we can, but we must be careful,” said Jari. “It is not good to take the medicine so often. Save it for the fight.”
In fact, Ismael had been on a steady diet of captagon tablets over the past two days. He hadn’t slept, and he felt great, unbeatable. He felt fearless.
“I say we go now, tonight,” he said. “I say we take the fight to the infidels!”
Asha’ath noticed that Ismael’s rhetoric was becoming wilder, and that the young man was quite restless, quite anxious. “Be calm, young Ismael,” he said. “We must do this according to the schedule. It’s an important and symbolic part of the attack.”
“I know,” said Ismael. “But I don’t think we need to wait until Tuesday. We should attack now, today, and scatter them all.”
Asha’ath sighed to himself. “It is only two more days,” he said to the group. “Think of the glory to come. We can wait. It will be worth it, my friend. Besides, we have much to do before we are ready.”
* * *
A’isha, Gabby, looked deep into the dimly lit warehouse and saw the folding tables with the explosives and the vests neatly placed on top of them. She saw the other five of the faithful, restless and anxious in the stark space.
Ismael was, of course, pacing and talking. He and Jari would go west with Gabby to the second target. Amed and Asha’ath would leave to go east, soon, and make the first strike.
Pakeezah was there, too. She was a student originally from Iraq. Her name meant “pure.”
As the coordinator of social media for the cause, Gabby knew that she would be gone well before the strike occurred. She had planned on returning to the university, to keep the railroad going and to bring others to fight. But with the recent FBI raid in Charlottesville, she would have to move to another location, perhaps to London or Turkey.
We are on our own now, she thought. The rest of the faithful were no longer coming. The FBI raid at the university had resulted in two deaths and the arrest of three more. Their small group of six was committed, now, to strike quickly, before one of those arrested was coerced by the authorities to reveal what they knew. But admittedly, she thought, they don’t know much.
* * *
“I’m still chewing on Roger Taylor’s assassination,” said Zeke. “There has to be a time sensitive event that is the underlying motive here. It’s about all that makes sense.”
“Why would you take that risk, killing an FBI agent, unless you had something much, much bigger to lose?” Clive asked. “And very soon, so the FBI wouldn’t have time to react properly. I think you’re spot on.”
It’s been a month since the cruise ship murder,” said Zeke, “and we’ve identified Roger Taylor’s killer and his connection with the terrorists at Virginia. Closing down that terror cell resulted in our closing down the ‘underground railroad’, as you call it. But I can’t help but think there’s more to this.”
“Hmm,” said Clive. They were in Clive’s office, near the FBI’s Washington, DC building. They had participated in questioning some of the suspects arrested in Charlottesville who were brought to DC for detention and interrogation. They agreed that there wasn’t much information to be had from these young terrorists.
“There’d be no urgency with the underground railroad,” said Zeke. “That’s an ongoing activity. Recruit, assess, and isolate the fanatics, move them across the pond to Turkey, and then join the IS in Syria. But no critical event there that I can see. So there’s something else planned. Maybe something like the French attack last year,” said Zeke.
“Je suis Charlie,” said Clive, shaking his head and frowning. “Like that, or the Paris attacks afterward.”
“The Arabic Student Group members that we interviewed didn’t admit to anything,” said Zeke, “but it seemed pretty unusual that they claimed Sammy Patel was their leader. I still have my doubts about that. Sammy was a junior in college, and was what, twenty years old?”
“Yes, twenty,” said Clive, glancing at his notes.
“And he hadn’t been back to the Middle East for several years. His family actually moved to Virginia, Petersburg, when he started school in Charlottesville. His father bought a Days Inn Hotel there, and his mother helps run it,” said Zeke. “It would be pretty hard to run an underground railroad if you never visited the terminal. Plus, Sammy conveniently died in the FBI in Charlottesville, so we can’t interview him.”
“There are a lot of loose ends,” said Clive. “There are always loose ends, but this puzzle doesn’t seem to fit together quite right.”
“I know,” said Zeke. “Now add to that the makeup of the group. Most everyone we arrested were undergraduate students at the University. Some were fringe players, I’m sure, and a few were leaning toward fanatic. But none of them had a serious police record or a history of problems with the law. None of them were on any watch lists either.”
“And add to that,” Zeke continued, “the fact that the duplex they were taken in is leased to an Akram Muhammad, not one of those arrested.”
“I’d assumed that one of the other boys used the name to lease the place,” said Clive.
“Let’s check into that. Have someone show the photos of the students we arrested to the landlord to see if there’s any recognition. They could have made up the name, Akram Muhammad.”
“Could be they’re covering for the man in charge,” said Clive.
“I’m leaning that way, based on their reactions to our questions,” said Zeke. “I didn’t see the ferocity or fanaticism I’d expect in that group. You see more fanatics at a football game.”
“Like the Manchester Derby,” said Clive. “Quite so.”
“Assume there are others involved in this organization,” said Zeke, ignoring Clive’s remark. “What would take them away from the area, from the school? Perhaps a mission or a target of some sort?”
“What did you find in your interviews with the boys we arrested?”
“The responses were very consistent, too consistent. They each claimed that Sammy Patel was the leader.” Zeke extended his index finger as he summarized the points from his interviews with the UVA students. “Furthermore, they said that their responsibility was to recruit for the Islamic State’s cause, and in some cases facilitate transport to Syria. No one knew where the guns came from. The rest was a lot of ideology and blather. They were all still high on captagon.”
“Captagon? What’s that?” asked Clive.
“It’s a combination of amphetamines,” said Zeke. “The pills used to be produced in Syria, and some were smuggled out by IS faithful dressed as refugees in the huge refugee exodus. They were given to IS fighters and the rebels who had been fighting the Syrian government, and now they were going to be given to the Syrian freedom fighters in the European Union and the United States. The pills have the effect of stimulating the central nervous system, improving physical performance, increasing concentration and alertness, and giving one a feeling of incredible well being.”
“Interesting,” said Clive. “Then if taken by soldiers, that drug supp
resses fear and gives them the illusion of power and invincibility. It’s the perfect drug for terrorists on a suicide mission.”
“Indeed,” said Zeke. “During World War II, the Japanese kamikaze pilots took methamphetamine. Not much difference.”
“It makes sense that an experienced operative would be leading the group,” said Clive. “Someone with more direct ties to Syria and the terrorists. Certainly someone with more commitment to the cause.”
“It could be that these students were never exposed to that part of the organization. That they were just busily participating in the recruiting and meetings and doing college stuff,” Zeke continued. “On the fringe, and playing at being idealistic terrorists.”
“I could see that,” said Clive.
“I’m surprised that the stories were so consistent. No one stepped up to take responsibility, or to overstate their involvement, as you’d expect,” said Zeke. “Ahmed Isaac, the assassin, told me that he’d been hired by a man named Asad. When I was questioning him, he referred to Asad as if he were a grown man, an adult. He called him a ‘seasoned veteran of the struggle’.”
“Do you think he was trying to throw you off, old man?” asked Clive.
“Always possible, but I don’t see where he would benefit from that,” said Zeke. “And he was in so much pain that I doubt he could think that fast.”
“So, let’s make some assumptions,” said Clive. “Some working theories.”
“OK,” said Zeke. “First, let’s assume that we haven’t wrapped up the entire terror cell. That there is another component of it, probably some of its leadership, that is still out there somewhere.”
“Right,” said Clive.
