Salah’s men were prepared for anything. Back home, they wore their uniforms proudly, which ranged from desert tan military fatigues to a more urban gray patterns, similar or identical to U.S. Army uniforms. In America, however, they were required to blend in amongst the population. Casual T-shirts and jeans, polo shirts, and trim or no beards at all were the standard. The less attention they brought to themselves the better.
Many of the men had traveled far to be there, having been alerted to the meeting days prior. Those given the call were eager to hear what their respected leader had to say. Not everyone had been summoned, and such an exclusivity fed the anticipation in the air.
They sat in rows across the floor where crates of Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles sat open in the corner. The dimly lit room provided an equal amount of illumination and shadow. Quiet chatter ceased the moment the door opened and Salah entered, flanked by two high-ranking security men, Bosra and Nabil, both with thick beards and white caps on their heads known as Taqiyahs. Back home, they were known to have carried out public executions against apostates, spies, and anyone who failed to adhere to the strict doctrines of ISIS. They were both feared and respected, providing Salah with a level of quiet awe whenever he entered a room with them at his side.
Silence fell as he took center stage, dressed in a long white robe with a checkered keffiyeh head scarf tied around his head. He was a tall man, skinny with a narrow beard that reached his chest. The men knew that their leader had not called the meeting for just any reason. There was news to be told. The time to strike was near.
Salah began his speech by first leading the men in prayer. They bowed their heads and prayed to Allah to provide them with the strength to slaughter their enemies, no matter who stood in their way. Salah then raised his head and thanked them for arriving on such short notice.
“Brothers, I am more impressed today with your discipline and readiness than I was last time we met,” he said with the gravelly baritone of an experienced lecturer. It had been two months since their last meeting.
“And today, I invited you here to discuss our next phase in establishing a caliphate in these United States.”
The young men applauded as though a switch had ignited their passion. Bosra and Nabil turned from their corners in the room and stared into the crowd, not saying a word. The cheers quickly died out, replaced by silence. Salah smiled slightly in response, looking out at the crowd with fondness.
“I know you are excited,” he continued. “For so am I.” His face went stern again. “But remember, you must hide your emotions, conceal your tendencies. The time for celebration is not yet upon us. Our leaders are watching us from afar. They have confidence in the mission, but the Americans will stop at nothing to wipe us out if we expose ourselves.”
The crowd looked on as the generator hummed in the back of the room. Salah, who looked strangely pale that evening, cleared his throat and continued.
“I say to you, brothers, that this mission carries with it an extreme risk. You may never see your families again. Once we awaken the beast, many of us will die or spend the rest of our lives in a prison cell. The Americans experiment is a great injustice unto the world, something our people have suffered under for a very long time.” He jabbed a finger at them. “And it is up to you in this room tonight to send a message to the Americans that their reign of terror is over!”
The crowd launched into a frenzy of applause once again. This time, however, Salah didn’t seem to be bothered by it, but instead basked in their evident motivation and enthusiasm. He opened his mouth to speak, and the young men went quiet, not wanting to miss a word.
“We’re only as strong as our cause, and, my brothers, our cause is great. We give thanks to Allah for getting us this far—for getting us into America—because He is the guiding light in our lives, and we will stop at nothing to make Him proud.”
Salah stopped suddenly as his eyes narrowed, scanning the crowd, but none of the men would make direct eye contact. He then spoke slowly and with conviction. “Caution. Prudence. Dedication. Devotion. Discipline. These are the basic tenets we must live by to make this mission a success. All of this is threatened when we lose sight of our purpose.”
He stopped and cleared his throat again, looking away from the crowd, then turning back and zeroing in on them with foreboding dark-brown eyes.
“I announce to you this evening that we have a threat from within. And while this threat involves one among us, we are all culpable. Even myself.” He then stepped forward, his voice booming with passion. “Because when one of us commits an offense, it reflects on us all. When one slanders the prophet, he slanders every one of us.”
Clear confusion became evident throughout the gathering as the men looked around in uncertainty. Salah looked on with a penetrating stare, not eyeing anyone in particular, which made everyone even more uneasy. He then turned to Bosra at his right and signaled into the crowd. Bosra nodded and stepped forward toward the men, with Nabil following suit from the other side of the room.
More confused glances followed as the two towering men rushed to the middle row and yanked one bushy-haired young man up by the back of his shirt. The man shouted as they led him to the front with his hands held behind his back. Murmurs of fear rumbled throughout the crowd.
“What is this?” the young man cried out. “What are you doing?”
Salah said nothing in response as Nabil pushed the man onto his knees. Dust flew into the air. Salah stared down with his eyebrows furrowed. The man looked up, trembling, his boyish face stricken with fear.
“Mahir Kouachi, I remember your father,” Salah said. “He died a martyr at the hands of Americans during their invasion of Iraq. Before he died, I promised him that I would see to it that you were taken care of. I owed him because he was a good man.”
Salah then took a step back, shaking his head. “And this is how you repay me!” he shouted with a slap across Mahir’s stunned face.
The crowd looked on, stunned but hesitant to speak or move. No one, it seemed, knew what was transpiring. But things didn’t look good for their singled-out brother.
Mahir held the side of his head as sweat dripped down his forehead past his widened eyes. “My leader…” he began in a daze.
Another resounding blow to his face came this time from Nibal. “You do not address him unless spoken to,” he said gruffly.
Mahir said no more as Salah took a step past him and raised his arms to address the room. “Mahir has betrayed us. He has disgraced his father’s memory and his family’s trust.” Without disclosing any details, Salah leaned down inches from Mahir’s terrified face. “Your family members will pay the ultimate price, I can assure you.”
Mahir opened his mouth to speak, his mind racing, but nothing came out. Salah rose and turned to the crowd. “One mistake, my brothers, and we lose. That’s all it takes. It has come to my attention that our brother, Mahir, has spoken with the enemy. He is, in fact, a spy.” He then looked down at the frightened Mahir at his feet.
Mahir looked around the room in a panic. “It’s not true! I am not—”
Another smack came across Mahir’s head as he tried to shield himself.
“But you are a spy,” Salah said looking down at him, as a disappointed father might do.
Mahir raised his head with tears streaming from his eyes, a deep look of shame embedded across his face.
“How did we find out?” Salah asked him. “Because we have people everywhere. On all levels. All reporting to me.”
Mahir looked down, ashamed. He then looked into the stoic crowd for mercy. “I told them nothing!” he cried out. “I talked to a few Americans that’s all. I was trying to recruit them. Trying to do Allah’s will!”
Salah stared at him for a long, quiet moment. “You are weak, Mahir. And your carelessness is a threat to us and our mission.”
Mahir wiped the tears from his face, remaining on his knees, a defeated man who knew what was to come next. Salah looked at Nabil and nod
ded.
Nabil pulled a long bowie knife from the sheath on his belt, yanked Mahir’s head back, and drew the blade across his throat.
The crowd gasped. Salah watched impassively as blood gushed from the open wound. Mahir’s eyes widened with shock, as though he had not expected such swift retaliation. The room remained silent as vacant faces stared ahead.
“Leave this world, young Mahir,” Salah said. “May Allah judge you accordingly.”
Mahir gargled and gasped his last desperate breaths. Nabil released his grip on Mahir’s hair and pushed his head down. His body slumped over his knees as a thick puddle of blood formed slowly beneath him. His legs twitched with his wheezing until he went still on the floor.
Salah nodded again at Nabil and Bosra. In response, they lifted Mahir and carried him away past the silent crowd.
“Give him a proper burial,” Salah said, signaling to the door. “It’s the least I can do for his father.”
Bosra and Nabil nodded back, holding Mahir by his arms and legs, spilling blood along the floor as they moved. Salah then turned to the crowd without an ounce of remorse in his eyes.
“All part of Allah’s plan. This is where we are at, my brothers. No room for error.” He stepped forward with a deadly serious glare from his dark coal eyes. “And if any of you decide to betray me, the very same will happen to you.”
The men said nothing. Their frightened faces were all that Salah needed to see. Having made his point, he continued in a much calmer tone. “In one week, we deliver our first full-scale attack. Those are our instructions. The moment we’ve been waiting for has arrived. If there is a man among us not ready for the task, raise your hand now.”
Salah stopped and looked into the crows, finding no objections. “Good,” he said, smiling. “Let us prepare for battle.
2
Standoff
It was in the high eighties in Del Rio, Texas, a small border city one hundred fifty miles west of San Antonio. The United States Border Patrol had a busy presence in the area, and their hands were often full with long hours and meager assistance from the federal government and Homeland Security.
From her first year on the force, Angela Gannon had seen many disturbing trends in drug and human trafficking. She had heard the stories about terrorists sneaking across the border. She had seen the waves of migrant children apprehended and held in limbo at the border station. She'd seen a lot of things. But nothing could have prepared her for the day ahead.
She sat in the passenger seat of a white four-door Chevy Tahoe, parked atop a hill overlooking a desert valley along the Mexican border. She raised the binoculars to her eyes. The day was already warm, and she wore a dark-green, short-sleeved Border Patrol uniform that fit snugly against her thin, athletic frame.
She scanned the fourteen-foot fence a half mile beyond the valley, conducting a line watch as her partner, Captain Jorge Martinez, in the driver’s seat beside her, munched on a small bag of Fritos.
They had been on watch the past three hours, in a state of heightened alert. But their intense readiness had waned in the last hour as they saw little more than tumbleweeds roll by and coyotes skitter from afar. They were both starting to wonder if they had been called to another false alarm.
Angela had longed to work for the border patrol, but the path to her burgeoning career hadn’t come over night. In high school, she had joined the ROTC program, followed by four subsequent years in the army that had shaped her for a future in law enforcement. At twenty-seven, married with two children, she was astonished to think about how much had changed in her life.
Like most days at work, Angela sported a blonde ponytail, minimal makeup, and exhibited a calm demeanor. Relatively new to the profession, she took her job very seriously. Sometimes, it seemed, more seriously than did Martinez, who had been on the force for six years.
“How about we call it a day?” he asked with his hands on the wheel. The open bag of Fritos rested over his leg, nearly emptied. “My legs are asleep, and there’s nothing out here that we didn’t see yesterday.”
“We’re on high alert,” she responded, lowering the binoculars. “And I didn’t hear anything from headquarters yet saying otherwise.”
Martinez sighed. He then ran one hand across his trim black hair and scratched the back of his head. He was pushing forty but looked young for his age, tan with a boyish face and warm brown eyes.
He had gotten rid of his mustache recently, which had become just one of the changes Angela had recently noticed about him. He had been fidgety and distracted the entire week. She wondered what was wrong but didn’t want to pry.
“Headquarters has their heads up their asses,” he said, in response to her insistence that they stay on watch.
“Sure. But it’s been two weeks since we’ve seen some activity. I’d say we’re about due,” she said.
Martinez thought to himself and then leaned closer to her, turning down the crackling dispatch radio. “Lemme let you in on a little secret, Agent Gannon.”
Angela looked over at him, all ears.
“You’re green,” he continued. “I mean, you’re good, but you’re still green. I’ve been on stakeouts that serve no rhyme or reason to anything. They tell us, go here. Watch this sector. Sit and wait. Meanwhile, we leave a gap open over there. Drugs get in. People get in. It’s all political.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, genuinely perplexed.
“I mean that, according to the powers that be, sometimes to do the job right, we’re not supposed to do it at all.” He paused and looked out the windshield into the barren valley below.
Angela wasn’t naïve but she also wasn’t nearly as cynical. “Sounds like you’re suggesting that we’re wasting our time out here.”
He looked at her and smirked. “Not entirely. You’ve seen what we do. How hard you and I and all the agents work. What I’m saying is that there’s a weird priority to things as of late. And it has me a little concerned.”
Angela then asked him to elaborate. In turn, he waved her away and turned the dispatch radio back up. “I’d rather not be responsible for instilling low morale in fellow agents.” He then switched the subject quickly to something else. “How’s your Spanish coming along?”
She gave him a raised brow. “It’s decent. I mean, I wouldn’t have gotten this job without learning it.”
“Of course,” he said. “And are you teaching your children? Bilingualism is important to learn at a young age.”
“Yes, professor,” Angela said with a laugh.
Martinez whipped his head in her direction with a mock frown. “Excuse me?”
“Professor Captain Sir,” she responded.
“That’s better,” he said.
Angela glanced up. Her smile disappeared. She pointed in the distance to a white box truck driving along the empty dirt road in the middle of the valley, a billowing cloud of dust trailing behind it. She immediately went to the binoculars as Martinez grabbed the hand mic from the dispatch radio under the dashboard.
“What do you see?” he asked, holding the mic.
“Standard cargo truck. No license plate,” Angela answered. She kept careful watch as the truck barreled along at top speed, headed west. It was a suspicious sight to be sure, almost too alarming to be believed. Any trafficker in his right mind would be foolish to drive along the southern border without a licensed vehicle. Whoever was behind the wheel was asking for it.
“Two six, we have a box truck spotted in the valley. Driving at top speed. No license plate visible. How do you want us to proceed? Over.” They always had to ask permission, which frustrated the hell out of Angela.
“They’re getting away,” she said with a hint of impatience.
Martinez turned the knob on the radio up while clutching the hand mic. “Truck is going fast. Requesting permission to engage,” he said. However, all sense of urgency seemed lost on the responder.
“Negative, Bravo eight. Stay in position. Backup is on its way. Be on ale
rt for suspects on foot.”
Martinez and Angela glanced at each other in confusion. Martinez held the hand mic to his mouth as his eyes followed the truck quickly fading from their field of vision.
“There are no suspects on foot,” he said, “but we have an unlicensed vehicle driving toward Route 83 toward Los Villareales. What’s the word on that backup, over?”
There was a pause, as though the dispatcher was distracted. “Stay in position,” he said. “Possible diversionary tactic. Keep your eyes on that fence.”
Martinez held the radio, dumbfounded, as his thumb hovered over the clicker.
“We need to follow them,” Angela said, conviction evident in her bluish-green eyes.
“I know,” Martinez said. “But if someone slips under that fence with a pound of junk on our watch, it’s our asses.”
“It’s an unlicensed vehicle,” she said slowly, enunciating each syllable. “If that’s not a red flag, I don’t know what is.”
Martinez looked around, growing frustrated. He slapped the steering wheel with his freehand. “Where the hell is that backup?”
“Probably east of Starr County. We don’t have time for this,” Angela said.
The truck had disappeared under a mountain ridge—vanished. The only way to trail it was to drive down their steep lookout hill and try to catch up the best they could. Even if they were to follow, the truck would see them coming from a mile away.
Martinez looked past Angela’s shoulder out the window in deep concentration. There was another way down on the other side, where they could possibly cut the truck off before it emerged onto Route 83.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I have an idea.” He paused and then shifted the Tahoe into reverse. “We can still keep an eye on our spot and track this truck down. Hit ‘em up before they get to the highway.”
“You know what I think?” Angela said. She continued, without waiting for his response. “I think you want to catch these guys yourself.”
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