Khomeini's Boy: The Shadow War with Iran

by Bryce Adams

  Celestine poured half of his whiskey into her empty glass, with all the deliberateness of someone who had gotten excellent grades in chemistry. Then she stared off into Bangkok’s steam and neon.

  Still not looking at him, she asked, “And what about that sarin you inhaled, Mister Hayes?”

  He locked his fingers together and squeezed them tight, trying to stop the tremor in both forearms. He replied, “I took my antidote in time, but still…Celestine, that was a lot of gas, and it was my second exposure to the shit. The doctors on our naval base in Bahrain thought my nerves would heal, but once they saw I wasn’t about to die on them, they got me out of there pretty quickly. Nobody at the base wanted to be responsible for answering questions about why an American civilian was getting on-site physical therapy for a nerve gas attack. So Wayne appeared with a big fucking check and told me to keep my head down for a while.”

  Ambrose opened a battered leather wallet and produced a purple and yellow bank card. “And since for some reason I never closed my Thai bank account, I bought a one-way first class ticket from Dubai to Bangkok on Air Emirates, and then told Wayne to find me if he could.” He shrugged. “Now that I’m here, I might as well stay for a while. The hospitals are good, I like the weather, and apparently now I’ve got a foreign consultancy with the Israelis. Things have been worse.”

  Celestine sighed, “You read an entire dossier on me before reaching Syria, but I volunteered to work with you again, and I don’t even know who you are.”

  Ambrose picked up her hand and shook it without letting go. “My name is Ambrose Rutherford Hayes, and I’m from Astoria, Oregon. On my dad’s side I’m a direct descendant of one of the worst presidents in American history. My mom is pure Scandinavian, like a lot of Astorians, and I grew up speaking Norwegian around the house. I haven’t been back to Oregon since my older sister was dying of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2002, but I still call my parents twice a year, on Christmas Eve and Norwegian Constitution Day.”

  “Norwegian Constitution Day?”

  He smiled. “It’s a thing. Drink up.”

  They kept drinking until they had the courage to brave the monsoon, when they both went their separate ways. Ambrose never apologized for lying to her in Syria. Above them, triple-arcs of lightning turned the storm clouds purple and provided accents to the golden Buddhist stupas that punctuated the Bangkok skyline. Neither of them noticed that Ambrose had left a wrinkled photograph at the bar, under an empty whiskey bottle. It showed a boy with sad eyes, standing on top of a dead man and holding a Kalashnikov, wearing a bandanna with a slogan that eventually robbed the world of a very good piano player.

  Dedications

  To my parents, Ron and Barb, who made the foolish parenting choice of always saying they loved me and wanted me to be happy.

  Special thanks to people who read the early draft of this book, including Gabe Le Chevallier, Michael Ferguson, and my dad. I look back on that draft with chagrin, and you were all instrumental in delicately telling me that it I shouldn’t quit my day job. Big, big thanks also go to Jacob Bartruff, who designed the maps in the front of this book, in addition to giving me a very uplifting initial take on the second reader’s draft of this book.

  Lastly, extra special thanks to my lovely partner, Sarah, who put up with the world’s most annoying breed of animal: the aspiring writer.

  Last-lastly, thank you for reading this. If you didn’t make it this far, well, thanks for trying anyway.

  About the Author

  Bryce Adams is a lawyer by training with a background in energy and natural resources law. Prior to this, he was a budding academic who focused on Islamic politics. After several years spent realizing that he wasn't monomaniacal enough to complete a nine-year degree, he left with a Masters and called it a day. Now he lives in his childhood home of Portland, Oregon, where he spends his spare time hating on everyone who isn't fortunate enough to live in the microbrew capital of the world.

  Despite being generally content with his life, Bryce would trade it all to be a backpacker in his mid-20s again, when he survived the Phuket Tsunami (by being on a sheltered island), saw an Afghan firefight (from the Tajik side of the border), and probably saw a ghost in a Balinese jungle temple (seriously).

  To keep up on Bryce's writings and generally-well-informed take on world politics, connect with him at his blog, Beauty and Terror: A Guide to Planet Earth, located at beautyandterrornow.wordpress.com.

  Want to see more of Ambrose Hayes? Never fear—he’s coming back…and he’s bringing a few new friends.

  An Exclusive Sneak Peek:

  Lonely Jihad

  “We are the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. We have arisen by the will of Allah to bring death upon the infidels, wherever they may hide. Our peace is the edge of a sword, and we will accept no truce other than your complete submission to Sharia. The call to prayer shall ring out from the White House, and from a muezzin atop the Eiffel Tower. Your whore women shall wrap themselves in purifying black, to hide their sickness from godly men. If you think you can stop us…come and try. Allah never tires of butchering your filthy sons.” The man in the black mask spoke into the camera. He had cold blue eyes that were the ideal canvass for manic fervor. His American English was perfect.

  The sound bite stopped on a close-in picture of his masked face. The words Terror’s Messenger appeared below the image as CNN’s frosty haired anchor came back into view, with the video image floating on the screen to his upper right.

  “Indeed, these latest words from the ISIS spokesman calling himself ‘al-Urgani’ are the most chilling yet.” The man looked down at his notes in feigned contemplation, then continued apace. “As viewers have no doubt discerned from his voice and Caucasian appearance, this al-Urgani does seem to be our worst fears realized: an American who has dedicated his life to the ISIS jihad. One cannot help but wonder: is this man an anomaly, or are we seeing the birth of a new domestic terrorist movement, one which goes abroad to receive lethal training, then returns home to continue the job that al-Qaida started on 9/11? I’ll turn to my panel.”

  After the perfunctory introductions of a senator on the Select Intelligence Committee, a conservative pundit, and a retired army colonel with a ludicrous amount of metal on his chest and the title “senior military analyst” emblazoned beneath his talking head, the anchor invited comments from the panel.

  The colonel spoke first. “I think you’ve hit on an important point here, Peter. The true danger of a group like ISIS isn’t that it will be able to affect change in a long term political sense—there simply aren’t enough of them to do so—but rather that they are creating this dangerous negative zone, if you will, where marginal loser-types who have washed out of their own cultures can go to receive the type of lethal training that wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere subject to western law enforcement. And where they go once they’ve gotten that training, it’s anybody’s guess.”

  The anchor nodded. “I know this is a subject near and dear to your heart, Colonel Shenzo. You led elite teams in Iraq that frequently had to battle foreigner fighters, to the point that you once described Iraq, on this very program, as ‘more internationalized that the Olympics.’ Do you think we’re just seeing another version of that same internationalism here?”

  “Sure looks like it, Peter. But this version is even worse, I think. After all, you didn’t get Americans flocking to Iraq to battle against the coalition forces when we were trying to stabilize the country. This is a new type of evil, and I’m terrified that our leadership isn’t prepared to do what’s necessary to stop—”

  “—While I can’t go into details, I can say with all confidence, Colonel, that your assessment isn’t the final word on this,” the senator cut in with his reedy New Englander accent, “My committee has been talking about this issue all week in closed hearings, and we’re seeing some truly robust plans come out of the Pentagon—plans that will leverage local alliances with the full capacity of America’s military to degrade
and destroy these cowards in their holes.”

  “Such as?” The colonel’s round face, half-Japanese and half-Hispanic, opened up in fake credulity. He was breaking the rules, and a million viewers knew he was breaking the rules. Irony and sarcasm in the realm of punditry were more verboten than a million fucks or shits.

  “You know I can’t go into that, Colonel Shenzo. But suffice it to say—”

  The conservative pundit overshot them all. “Look, here’s yet another place where the current administration’s addiction to committees and buzzwords has come back to bite them. They haven’t got the plans or we’d already be seeing them in action. I’m sorry, Senator, but that’s just the way of it. Admit it: President Obama has no plan to destroy these thugs who call themselves ISIS. He’s flying blind, and the best we can hope is that Americans don’t die by the thousands when the president panics and just throws soldiers at the problem. No amount of that is going to keep us safe, domestically or internationally.”

  Colonel Shenzo nodded and added, “I think you’re right. Destroying a group like ISIS is going to take something much less conventional, and having recently been part of our military brass, I don’t see who has the creativity or the will to gamble on that type of solution.” Very few viewers would have consciously marked how much self-discipline and predictive ability it took to keep a mild speaking voice while still getting a word in edgewise during a prime time cable news roundtable.

  The senator groaned. “So what’s your plan, Colonel? Care to attend a few committee hearings and give us your take on this?”

  “You wouldn’t like that.”

  The anchor tried to break them up, but the senator wasn’t having it. His voice raised as he said, “No, no, let’s try this out. Alright, Colonel—what do you do about some maniac like this guy on the screen? How’re we gonna get him without a military response? Do you think this guy is just gonna go home some day after he sees the light of reason?”

  Shenzo replied, “You get at this guy by breaking him. You sneak some moles into the ranks, then you get them to start sending out miscommunications to the other members of ISIS. Everyone starts doubting everyone, the leadership begins internal purges, and ISIS tears itself apart from the inside out. Like a street dog full of parasites.”

  The anchor got his word in edgewise. “And this sort of disinformation campaign, Colonel—you believe this is possible? Does the United States or its allies in fact possess the sort of expertise it would take to run this operation?”

  “Well that’s the fucking question now, isn’t it?” Shenzo’s hand materialized from off-screen holding a brown drink in a short tumbler glass full of ice. Then Wayne Shenzo drank two shots of bourbon in a single gulp in front of a million people, FCC be damned.