by Bobby Adair
“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Jalal admitted.
“And why did we leave the buses? Why are we walking?” Salim’s doubts were overtaking him again. He looked over his shoulder to see how close the nearest followers were. “For as long as we drove this morning, I wonder if we’re crossing the border.”
“Which border?”
“I’m guessing Uganda,” replied Salim.
“Why smuggle ourselves across? We have our passports.”
“It makes no sense to me.” Salim lowered his voice. “If our passports show that we’ve entered Kenya, they’ll look suspicious if we leave Africa from another country without a stamp for entering that country.”
“Unless they’re planning an operation in Uganda.”
Salim shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense either.”
“Why not?”
“If they wanted to hit something in Uganda, why bring us?”
Jalal looked around. “Mate, I don’t know how special you think we are, but you do know what we signed up for, right?”
“They could send anybody to Uganda. It’s easy to get fighters here. I’ll bet they even have training camps in Africa.” Salim pointed to the group of three ahead of them. “Those ones are German.”
“Germans? How do you know?”
“I heard them speaking German this morning when we first stopped. I heard some other guy speaking English.”
“British or American?”
“American,” Salim said in a low voice. “I think we all hold Western passports. If that’s the case, why send us to Africa? We’d be so much more valuable to the movement if they sent us back to our countries.”
“That’s what I figured they were planning all along. To send us back.”
“Right? So why drag us through the jungle into Uganda? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Jalal looked around as though there might be some answer in the trees that wasn’t readily apparent. “No, mate. It doesn’t make any sense.”
As the troop made their way down the slope, they eventually closed ranks. They came to a dirt road where a big Isuzu farm truck was waiting for them to load themselves up before heading west once again.
Chapter 39
In the late afternoon sun, Salim leaned over the side of the truck and saw tin roofs and a widening in the dirt road up ahead. A town, a small town. The truck rolled past several men with automatic weapons standing in the bushes. More men were in a position in the trees on the opposite side of the road, looking in the direction from which they’d come. They were guarding the road against anyone coming into town. Salim looked at Jalal with a question on his face, but Jalal was bored and staring at the floor. He never even saw the men guarding the road.
Whatever was happening, they were close to finding out something. Salim was sure of that.
The truck came to a stop and a cloud of red dust billowed around, dropping another layer on them as they coughed. The driver killed the engine, got out, and closed the door. The driver and his passenger came to the back of the truck. The passenger—the man in charge—held up a hand as some of the men in the truck started to get up. “Wait here,” he said.
Salim slumped back against the side of the truck. A few of the dust-covered men shared a look. They weren’t pleased. Salim wasn’t the only one whose curiosity was grating at his patience. The rest of the men kept their feelings more hidden.
Another half-hour passed with the men waiting. They shuffled in their seats. They looked around. They passed silent questions with their eyes.
“Assalamu alaykum.”
Salim looked toward the voice, a new man was standing on the ground at the back of the truck.
He said, “Each of you has completed your training.”
The speaker’s face was covered, whether to keep his identity secret or the road dust off, Salim could only guess.
“You will return to your home countries in the West. You will receive instructions on the way.”
Salim looked quickly to the sky and thanked Allah.
“Before you return, you need a cover story. You may be required to explain your absence from your Western lives. Your story will be that you lent humanitarian assistance to the people in this village who are in the midst of a typhoid epidemic. Do not drink the local water.”
The speaking man held up a plastic water bottle, the kind that Salim hadn’t seen since before boarding the last plane to Lahore a few months prior. “Drink only from the bottles provided, or you will get sick. You will see men in protective suits. Do not speak to them. They are from international aid agencies. They are afraid of typhoid. You should not be. You will be photographed helping these people so that evidence exists of your work here. When you return to your countries, the pictures will be provided to you. You will need to post them on your social media pages to build your story. You will be notified when to start doing this.”
Salim smiled inside. Helping sick people in Africa was a great cover to explain his absence over the past months. He might be able to make his escape back into American society without having to go to the FBI. Perhaps an anonymous life somewhere far away from his family in Denver, maybe under a new name, would be the key to getting his freedom back and putting this mistake behind him.
“Each of you will be assigned to a squad,” the man behind the truck said. “Your squad leader will tell you what to do. Listen. Do exactly as he instructs. One last thing—typhoid can successfully be treated for those who will accept medical treatment early. These people have gone without treatment for several weeks. Many of them are dying. Typhoid is an ugly disease at its end. Some of these people can be saved, but for the rest, your help will make their passing easier.”
The speaker pointed at the four men nearest the back of the truck. “You four, come with me.”
The man who had been a passenger in the truck selected four other men from the truck to follow him. Soon Salim and Jalal were included in a group of four and following a gruff man with a smelly, matted beard into the village.
Chapter 40
When Austin woke, he heard men’s voices nearby and felt the most wonderful cold water on his skin. He was lying on a bed of something soft and looking up at a familiar dark ceiling, though he couldn’t quite figure out where he was.
Two kids were speaking in a language he was familiar with, but didn’t understand. He noticed his friend Emmanuel’s wife looking down over him, pressing a wet cloth against his face.
She said, “Drink.”
Austin tried to lift himself up on an elbow, and she leaned over to assist. One of the children brought a cup to his mouth. He drank. When the cup was empty, Austin asked for more, but his stomach roiled. He rolled away from Emmanuel’s wife and threw up most of the water onto the dirt floor.
The boy made a noise to express his disgust and his feet shuffled away as Austin laid back. Austin weakly said, “Sorry.”
The children both ran outside.
Emmanuel’s wife urged him to sit back up. Austin scolded himself for not remembering her name, but it was an African name and had too many syllables and way too many consonants. “Take water again. A little.” She held the cup to his mouth. Austin sipped and laid back.
He felt dizzy. He felt confused. He stank badly enough to smell himself. Every part of him ached—his joints, his back, and mostly his head. He lolled his head over to the side to look at Emmanuel’s wife on her knees beside him. “Thanks.”
She smiled. A closed-lipped smile at first, then a broad smile that showed her perfect white teeth. The oddest thought crossed Austin’s mind—that a diet rich in natural, unprocessed foods must be excellent for dental hygiene. They all had great teeth here.
He rolled to his left as another wave of nausea threatened to spill his last sips of water into the dirt.
Emmanuel’s wife made a soothing sound—the kind that mothers instinctively make when caring for sick children—then dipped the cloth back into the bucket and rubbed it over his
face, arms, and neck.
The sound of the children’s voices outside changed. Deeper voices joined them. Emmanuel’s familiar voice said something to his son.
Feet shuffled through dirt, and bodies brushed through the shed’s narrow door. Then voices were inside and Austin opened his eyes to see two men in yellow Tyvek suits with AK-47s in their hands. They stood over him, hunched down under the shed’s low roof.
Austin closed his eyes and waited for the bullet.
Chapter 41
Her mother was an Olympic silver medalist. And every time Eric brought it up in front of strangers in the cafeteria, she wanted to take her tray and smack him in the head hard enough to make his thick, red hair pop right off his head. But she didn’t, of course. Instead, she smiled and looked at the disbelief around the table. Nobody ever believed it.
“No,” Eric’s old friend Robert said.
Olivia nodded to confirm and continued to chew her food.
Robert asked, “So your mother is really a Russian Olympic medalist?”
Olivia swallowed, took her billfold out of her purse, opened it up to the pictures she had saved inside, and laid it on the table for everyone to see.
Eric had seen it before and took the opportunity to shovel food into his mouth. He had to shovel. He had such a mound on his tray that if he ate at a normal pace, he wouldn’t finish before their lunch break was over. Olivia couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t obese.
She flipped the photos in their little clear plastic sleeves. She found the old one of her mother on the platform, hands raised, and a medal around her neck.
Robert—without asking—reached out and scooted the wallet closer. He leaned over as did his coworker Joan. “She’s gorgeous,” Robert said.
That wasn’t unexpected. Olivia had heard the comment too many times for it to have any impact.
Joan was a little more catty. “I was expecting—”
Of course, she didn’t finish. Everyone expected female Russian athletes from the mid-eighties to look like brutish men full of growth hormones. Olivia’s mother was nothing like that. If she’d been taller, she’d have looked like one of those magazine cover models.
“What did she earn a medal in?” Robert asked with a vaguely lustful look in his eyes, glancing first at the photograph, and then over to Olivia. There was a strong resemblance between the two, though Olivia thought she had nothing close to her mother’s beauty.
“Biathlon,” Olivia answered.
“You have her eyes,” Robert said. It was what guys always said when they saw a picture of her mother. It probably wasn’t even true. What Olivia thought it meant was, “I want to have sex with you and pretend you are your mother.” Comments about her eyes never got guys very far with her.
“I don’t watch the Winter Olympics,” Joan told the table, “What’s a biathlon?”
“Skiing and shooting.”
“Skiing and shooting?” Joan laughed. “Are you kidding? In the same event?”
Olivia often wondered what it was about most Americans that made them so laughably proud of their ignorance of any sport that wasn’t American-style football. “Google it.” She took another bite of her salad and thought again about smacking Eric with the tray.
“So, is your father Russian, too?” Robert asked.
“American, I guess.” Olivia answered.
Idly, Robert added, “My dad’s from Iowa. His family was surprised when he married a girl from Michigan.”
Everyone laughed politely.
“So,” Robert turned his attention back to Olivia, “Your mom is Russian, your dad is American. Did you grow up in the States?”
“Some,” Olivia answered. “I was born in Texas.”
“Texas?” Joan asked. “I’m from Midland.”
“We moved to Pakistan when I was little. We lived in Islamabad until I was thirteen. Then we came back to the US. I’ve been here ever since.”
“So you learned Russian from your mother?”
Olivia nodded. Her reputation for languages was something Eric also bragged about.
“And Pakistani?” He asked.
“Urdu,” Olivia nodded. “I also speak Punjabi, Pashto, and obviously, English.”
“Jesus.”
Olivia shrugged. The languages had always been easy.
Robert said, “All the languages I know are things like SQL, Java, C++, stuff like that.”
“And English.” Eric laughed again, but the others only smiled.
“Are you in IT, also?” Olivia asked Joan.
“Project manager,” Joan confirmed. “How long have you worked with Eric?”
“Worked for him,” Olivia smiled.
“Oh, yeah,” Robert exaggerated, “Eric’s a manager now. I keep forgetting.”
“A year,” Olivia answered.
“Before that?” Robert asked.
“I’ve been with the agency since I finished grad school.”
“So the NSA is your first job?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God,” Robert laughed, “Well, start working on your resumé, or you’ll end up like him. He looks like he’s forty, but he’s only been here a few more years than you.”
More laughs.
Thankfully, the rest of the lunch conversation centered around Joan’s teenagers and Eric’s toddlers.
After they finished eating, Joan and Robert walked together down a hallway that led to the IT sections of the building. Eric badged in at the elevator, and when they were inside, badged again to access the third floor where both he and Olivia worked.
“What’s that thing you were working on before lunch?” Eric asked, “How’s that going?”
“With Salim Pitafi?” Olivia answered.
“Is that his name? Pitafi? The one from Denver.”
“Yes. He was passed to us by Harvey Singleton’s group. For a few years now he’s been taking an interest in radical Muslim websites. When he bought a ticket to Pakistan, he fell into our lap.”
“You’ve been monitoring him?” Eric asked.
The elevator door opened and both Eric and Olivia stopped talking. Eric directed Olivia to one of the dozens of glass-walled conference rooms situated around the edges of the cubicle farm. Once inside, they pulled up chairs across from one another at a small table.
Olivia said, “Once he landed in Lahore, he disappeared. Not a trace of him came up anywhere for three months.”
“Training camp?” Eric asked.
Olivia wasn’t ready to make that call for certain so she went through her analysis. “No debit card usage that I could find. Not a single phone call. His phone is still active on his parent’s account, but it’s been dead. He has relatives in Multan—that’s where his family is from.”
“First generation?”
“He was born in Multan,” said Olivia. “His parents immigrated to the US when he was young. He was three or four at the time.”
“So he’s been here all his life?”
Olivia nodded. “For all practical purposes.”
“In the same place?”
“In Denver,” she answered.
Eric asked, “And he flew out of Lahore yesterday?”
“A little after noon, local time.”
“Destination?”
“Nairobi,” she said.
“Nairobi? So maybe he was visiting relatives in Multan, and decided to go see elephants and giraffes?” Eric guessed.
“You know that’s unlikely.”
“I’m playing devil’s advocate,” Eric said. “Tell me why I’m wrong.”
Olivia didn’t take offense. Questions were part of the analytical process. “If this was truly a social visit to Multan, then why the silence? He didn’t use his phone. He didn’t post any pictures to his Facebook account. He didn’t log into any computer under his name or an alias that we’re aware of.”
“And he would have posted something?” Eric asked.
“He was an active Facebook user until about three or four mont
hs before he flew to Lahore. He posted pictures of ski trips, hiking trips, whatever. He even posted pictures of him and his buddies at the Denver Zoo.”
“When?” Eric asked.
“Six months before leaving,” Olivia said. “He was skipping classes at the local community college.” She didn’t mention that the community college was just fifteen minutes from her dad’s house. That detail wasn’t important, and it wasn’t relevant. It was only disturbing because the jihadist had lived relatively close to her father.
“Maybe he just got tired of Facebook.”
“Safari tours in Kenya are expensive,” said Olivia. “His family here in the US doesn’t have any money. At least, not the kind of money to finance a globe-hopping tour for their son. In addition to Salim, they’ve got two other kids nearing college age. They’ve got too much credit card debt and payments on two fairly new cars. They live paycheck to paycheck.”
Eric sat back in his chair and thought for a moment. “So the kid spent a lot of time surfing jihadist websites prior to dropping out of sight for a visit to Pakistan three months ago. Now he’s traveling around South Central Asia and Africa with no apparent way to pay for it. And we don’t know why. Are the parents in communication with the kid at all?”
Shaking her head, Olivia said, “Not a peep since he left.”
“Okay. I’ll send it up the chain and see how they want to proceed.”
“What do you think will happen?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know. They may send the FBI out to talk to the parents to see what’s up. They may put them under surveillance. Why don’t you keep working this and see what else comes out?”
Olivia said, “Something else already did.”
“What’s that?”
“Two other names popped up when I started looking before lunch. Both Pakistani-Americans, both took an interest in radical websites, both disappeared to Pakistan.”
“At the same time?” Eric was interested.
“One took off a month before. One took off a few weeks after.”
“Tell me about those two.”
