Osama the Gun

by Norman Spinrad

“—Playing the Madhi?”

  “Don’t play the innocent with me, Al Hadj Osama the Gun, I may now be a Brigadier General in the Nigerian Army, but I am also a Muslim who was your brother on the Hadj, and you can’t tell me that’s not what you were doing.”

  “Was I…?” I muttered. “The Madhi…? The Awaited One?”

  Surely Hamza was wrong! Never had I entertained the blasphemous notion that I might be revealed as the awaited champion who would lead Islam to final victory over the infidels!

  “Behold the face of your eternal enemy…?” Hamza purred at me slyly. “Behold the face of Osama the Gun…?”

  Surely Hamza was toying with my mind for his own purposes, just as the Nigerian high command had been using Osama the Gun for its own purposes all along? But had not I sought to turn my involvement in this civil war to my own purpose? I had said these things, and I had said them in a broadcast I had known would reach millions.

  And I had felt Allah speaking through me as I did, and that being so, was that purpose not therefore His? Would…would a man Allah had chosen to become the Madhi know that was his destiny until he saw it fulfilled?

  These were glorious thoughts. But their very glory was dangerous to the soul. And yet was that not the nature of true glory for a Muslim, to put his own soul in danger in the service of Islam? And must not the true Muslim surrender to the Will of Allah even at the expense of his own salvation?

  I shuddered. I must not dwell on such thoughts. No man should.

  “Very well, Hamza, let us say that our interests at least coincide,” I conceded by way of banishing them. “So we must keep all the jihadis here and yet each of the four other division commanders must have Ski Mask Jihadis of their own…”

  “Unfortunately, you have stated the unsolvable problem perfectly,” Hamza grumbled.

  “No, I have stated the solution,” I found myself saying, as if Allah were speaking through me yet again, and as I did, I realized how simple the solution really was.

  “It’s obvious,” I told Hamza. “I divide all my jihadis into five companies, something like 50 men to each company, each company on call to the general of a different division—”

  “Obvious! What’s obvious is that General Moustapha will never agree!”

  “Oh yes, he will. Because all of them will remain based here under the command of Osama the Gun, under Captain Osama, who will remain under the command of General Moustapha as far the troops in his division are concerned. The other division commanders will have to request Ski Mask Jihadis through him.”

  “Brilliant!” Hamza exclaimed. “He’ll love it!’ He eyed me narrowly. “Ah, would you mind if I presented it to him as my own idea? I’ll promote you to major if you agree.” He laughed. “Not so long ago, I was only a major, and now thanks to you, I’m a general, and I can make you a major myself.”

  * * * *

  The illusion worked so well that it led to a whole string of illusions leading one to the other, leading me to feel in the end, like a virtual Madhi, as those playing the war as a game on their video screens back in the dusty dried-up American heartland might be regarding Osama the Gun even now.

  General Hamza promoted me to major, and becoming a major, I took five of my sergeants, put them in command of the five companies assigned to the five divisions, and called them lieutenants now. Via the high command, the generals commanding the other four divisions were told that they must order up their Ski Mask jihadis through Hamza ten days in advance of their forays across the river into the Zone.

  Thus the absence of no more than a fifth of the jihadis from General Moustapha’s camp was never noticed by his troops and when they learned that Ski Mask Jihadis were now active all the way from the Niger in the west to Makurdi in the east, even they came to believe that jihadis were flocking to Nigeria as Osama the Gun had promised.

  The Biafrans too seemed to believe in the existence of these thousands of virtual jihadis, who were thus able to accomplish what a few hundred Ski Mask Jihadis and whole divisions of Nigerian troops could not. They abandoned their attempts to defend the south bank of the Benué and most of what had been the Zone from the Nigerians in order to use what troops they had to seal off their towns and farmlands between the Zone and the oil fields from the infiltrations and sabotages of the Holy Warriors of Osama the Gun.

  The Nigerian offensives across the Benué no longer encountered any Biafran resistance. The Nigerian troops would cross the river and advance a bit more than halfway through the Zone to no purpose beyond showing the Nigerian flag on “Biafran” territory, and retreat across the Benué at the first distant sound of approaching Falcons.

  The Americans no longer inflicted more casualties than needed to put the Nigerians to flight, the message seeming to be that they were no longer interested in anything but protecting the oil fields and pipelines well south of the new Biafran attempt at a defensive line as long as Nigerian troops were prevented from occupying the Zone and establishing forward bases.

  Thus despite several hundred thousand Nigerian soldiers under arms, the only real military action being taken against Biafra was taken by some two hundred and fifty Ski Mask Jihadis masquerading as many more.

  The southern bank of the Benué being undefended by the Biafrans and the Zone unoccupied, it was simple enough for a half dozen or more squads of Ski Mask Jihadis to cross the river a few days in advance of the next Nigerian incursion, and approach the southern end of the Zone, now the effective northern frontier of New Biafra.

  This, however, was defended by the Biafrans with more tenacity than the official border at the Benué ever had been, for what Hamza had long ago called a rabble of mercenaries was now an Igbo army defending the homes and farms and infrastructure of their heartland not against a federal army which outnumbered them, but only against a relative handful of jihadis who they outnumbered far more than they knew.

  But the Biafrans seemed terrified of mounting patrols into the southern margin of the Zone, there was no fixed perimeter of any kind to defend, only a porous region of farms, meadows, woodlands, small towns and smaller villages, and family compounds, easy enough for squads of four or five men to move through under cover of night and hide within during the daylight hours.

  The Biafrans did not have enough men to guard every building or compound or bridge over a stream, so they used what forces they had to seal all towns of any size at night, maintain road blocks, guard isolated police posts, post offices, countryside markets, and the like.

  In a way these deployments were effective against us. We could not lay our charges and graffiti-bombs in towns or even villages of any consequence, nor damage significant economic targets. We were reduced to targeting barns, the walls of family compounds, outlying schoolhouses, souks, granaries, even wells.

  But the face of the Ski Mask Jihadi was everywhere; on the walls of barns, compound enclosures, warehouses, your own house, whitewashed away only to appear reborn after new explosions now set to go off at any time of the day or night anywhere at all, wherever you might be. And my orders were to keep out of sight of soldiers or other armed men, but to show glimpses of the masked faces of the Ski Mask Jihadi to unarmed women and children when the opportunity to do so safely presented itself, and particularly at night.

  In military terms this might be petty and pathetic, but in terms of Hamza’s “psychological warfare” such intimate fear of random explosions, faces of an otherwise invisible enemy everywhere, frightening glimpses of green-masked men turned into green-faced demons in the tale-telling of small children and the superstitious, it was quite effective in keeping the Biafran populace in the region north of the oil fields terrified of the demons of the night known as the Ski Mask Jihadis of Osama the Gun.

  And while TV Biafra showed or spoke of none of this and neither United Nigeria Television nor Al Jazeera would be believed by the Biafrans, for mysterious reasons of their own, the Americans
would not allow them to interfere with either Biafran access to CNN or CNN’s ability to show the results of the actions of the Ski Mask Jihadis and interviews with live witnesses.

  So television spread the legend of Osama the Gun and the terror of the Ski Mask Jihadis far beyond our sphere of activity to the population centers in the south.

  What this accomplished in terms of crushing the Biafran rebellion and expelling the Americans from the oil fields was exactly nothing. Every jihadi knew it, and any undeluded Hausa or Yoruba too. United Nigeria could never reconquer Biafra as long as the Americans remained, no military force on Earth could drive them from the Biafran oil fields, and the Americans would remain until they had drained the last drop of oil.

  * * * *

  For the first two months of this stalemate, I had led one squad assigned to precede each of the five divisions on their pointless flag-showing excursions across the Benué into the Zone, showing the “flag” of Osama the Gun, as it were.

  It seemed the appropriate thing to do, even though it meant I risked my own life five times more frequently than any of my jihadis for my apparition was always greeted with enthusiasm by the general in command as a boost to their troops’ morale, sorely in need of any enhancement of baraka they could get, appropriate bravery for a legendary leader whose legend among the Nigerians was only enhanced thereby.

  But my first four such missions taught me that the risk itself was yet another illusion in what had become a war of illusions. We would cross the Benué at night, but since the Zone was now unoccupied by the Biafrans, there was no reason to hide during the day, and we would cross it in daylight, timing the march so that we arrived at its southern margin at nightfall.

  It was then merely a matter of stealing stealthily into the populated region through woods, ravines, grain fields, streambeds, avoiding the towns, villages, marketplaces, and roadways guarded by Biafran troops, hiding during the day and planting charges at night by the usual pathetic targets, and then retreating safely back to the Benué. As we had no interest in confronting Biafran troops, so they had even less in venturing out of their defensive positions to seek out the green-faced demons of the night.

  But on the tenth such mission, things went wrong. This was an incursion through the eastern end of the Zone roughly south of Makurdi. All went as usual as we crossed the Zone, penetrated some ten or fifteen kilometers into inhabited countryside the first night in Biafra, mining a well, a barn that had already been graffitied but for some reason not destroyed, something that might have been a roadside bus shelter, sleeping through the next day by a small stream in the bottom of a wooded ravine before venturing forth after sundown to plant the remainder of our explosives and graffiti bombs.

  We came upon a small marketplace deserted for the night and several kilometers from the nearest village. There were half a dozen or so wooden sheds, a well, what appeared to be a tiny schoolhouse, and a small wooden church. Nothing appeared to have been hit before, and while my memory of that brave old priest in Notre Dame still made me reluctant to destroy infidel temples, graffiti-bombing them was another matter, and this one, its whitewashed walls as yet unblemished by green paint, was too good to pass by.

  Call it the command of Allah to mercy upon innocent women and children, Muslims or not, call it the preservation of the honor of Islam against the commission of useless atrocity, I saw no gain in slaying schoolchildren at their lessons, women buying food, or even infidels at prayer.

  So I ordered my men to set their timers for the hour before dawn on Sunday, which was two days hence. Two I sent to dig holes beside the schoolhouse, plant explosives in them, cover them up, and hide their graffiti bombs in the nearest shrubbery, aimed at what would be the ruins thereof. The other three I sent to mine the sheds, while I myself dropped a charge down the well which might or might not go off, and then turned my attention to the church.

  Thus the schoolhouse would be destroyed when there were no children in it, explosions would not wreck the marketplace while it was thronged, and when the Christian infidels were awakened by the noise and rushed to the scene, they would behold both their marketplace and schoolhouse destroyed by the Ski Mask Jihadis and the face of Osama the Gun leering down at them from the four intact walls of church he could have just as easily have blasted to flinders but which in his mercy and that of Allah he had spared.

  There was shrubbery at a good distance from one long wall of the church and I planted a graffiti bomb at an ideal range there, and a large tree behind it where I lodged one in the branches, but when I came around the other side, there was no good cover, and I found that I would have to dig a small hole and cover it with leaves.

  There were leaves scattered about, and I began to gather them—

  But suddenly there was a growling, a snarling, a barking, a frantic pattering of running paws behind me, I whirled and saw four or five mangy skeletal canine creatures—domestic dogs turned cur, wild African dogs, wolves, I could not tell—rushing towards me, tongues lolling in slaver out of gaping mouths full of sharp yellow teeth.

  There was no time for thought, I whipped my Chinese slide-gun around to bear, held down the trigger, and tore them all to bloody pieces before they could even get near enough to die at my feet.

  No sooner had the sound of my own gunfire died away than I was hearing more. Men were running out of the front entrance of the church facing the marketplace, at least a dozen of them, some shirtless, some pantless, some wearing nothing at all, as if the infidel temple had been serving as a brothel, and all of them carrying rifles of one kind or another and firing at my jihadis caught in the act of covering over holes by the schoolhouse. Caught in the open, they never even had a chance to fire back before they were cut down.

  But the three jihadis mining the sheds had not been immediately seen by the Biafran soldiers and opened fire on them while rolling for cover behind the sheds, taking down several of them from the flank before the remaining Biafrans could wheel about to fire on them.

  And before they could, I was running up from behind them blasting away from the rear, taking down three or four before the rest could even understand what was happening and turn to face me. By the time they did, I was down on the ground, rolling around and firing up at them in the darkness, presenting no good target for the bullets whizzing by my arm, my waist, my ear, whereas I could see them standing clearly in silhouette and got them all.

  The whole firefight could not have taken more than a minute or two. Two of my men lay dead and a dozen or more Biafran soldiers. There was silence. Surely anyone within a kilometer must have heard but there were no distant cries or the sounds of approaching engines or running feet, for no one was about to dare the demon-filled night now.

  But in the morning many people would come. They would surely find the bombs in the uncovered holes by the schoolhouse. And then seek out the others and probably find them. The Biafrans had at least died in the successful protection of a schoolhouse, a well, a few sheds. That was pitiful enough, but the death of my two jihadis had accomplished nothing at at all. And I had come within inches of being shot dead myself.

  Or had I?

  Or could I?

  When I returned to the encampment of General Moustapha’s division, I was told that TV Biafra had reported that courageous Biafran troops had slain two Ski Mask Jihadis in the act of saving a church, a schoolhouse, and a marketplace from destruction by a large force of these green masked terrorists, had shown the corpses as they were unmasked, and had speculated that one of them might have been Osama the Gun himself.

  “They claimed they had themselves two dead Osama the Guns, or rather two dead jihadis, one of which might be Osama the Gun, but they had no idea which,” Hamza told me. “It made them look quite ridiculous. At least they could have picked one of them and claim it was you, since no one in Biafra knows what you look like under the mask. Now their credibility—”

  “What did you
say?” I exclaimed.

  “No one in Biafra knows what you look like under the mask…?”

  But it had not really been a question. He had only reminded me of what I myself had said. Of what Osama the Gun himself had proclaimed in his only appearance before a camera.

  The mask of Osama the Gun is the face of the Ski Mask Jihadi!

  We are all Osama the Gun!

  “Osama the Gun cannot be slain!” I proclaimed to Hamza now.

  Hamza regarded me as if I had gone mad.

  “I can be killed, I almost was, it was this close,” I told him, holding up my right hand with the thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart, “but had I been killed, Osama the Gun would have lived on.”

  Hamza’s judgement of my sanity did not appear to have been enhanced. But he had not heard what Ali had told me of how Mexican revolutionaries had made a hero and a leader out of a mask and a costume that anyone could wear. So I told him.

  And them he understood. “If anyone wearing the mask might be Osama the Gun then everyone could be Osama the Gun, and if everyone wearing the green ski mask can be Osama the Gun—”

  “Then we have made him immortal in the eyes of the infidels. If I am killed, it is a death of little consequence. For the Osama the Gun we have made immortal, being an illusion who has never been a living man, cannot die.”

  Hamza had accused me of playing the Madhi in my television broadcast, and I had denied the very thought, nor did I believe that Allah had chosen me to become the Madhi now. But now, it seemed, in a way that neither he nor I had comprehended at the time, Hamza might have been right.

  For it had been Allah’s Will that I not become the Madhi but that I be used by Him to create the Madhi, a Madhi who was not a living man and could be made manifest by many men, striking fear into the hearts of the enemies of Islam and hope in the hearts of the Faithful, both real and illusion, the virtual Madhi which Osama the Gun had become.

  CHAPTER 30