“I wonder how many of you have heard of the Muraja’at, the Revisions of the Salafist-Jihadist cause. These are what I have been studying.
“Many times in the past, I have urged upon you all to dedicate yourselves not simply to worship of Allah, may His name be praised, but also to hatred of others. But the Revisions teach us that this is wrong, that our beautiful Islam is truly not a creed of bitterness and hatred, even of those who think differently from us.
“The most famous of the Revisions are those of the Series for the Corrections of Concepts. Just as those who taught us hatred came out of Egypt, so also did the al-Gama’a al-Islamiyyas, who wrote the Corrections, and I now understand that it was they, not the teachers of bigotry and loathing, who were right.”
The Tracker’s phone in the embassy room rang. It was Gray Fox from Virginia.
“Am I hearing correctly or has something very weird happened?” he asked.
“Listen a while longer,” said the Tracker, and hung up.
On the screen, the uncomprehending Tony Suárez carried on.
“I have read the Revisions now a score of times in English translation, which I recommend to you all who speak and read no Arabic and to those who do in the original tongue.
“For it is clear to me now that what our brothers the al-Gama’a say is true. The governmental system known as democracy is perfectly compatible with True Islam, and it is hatred and lust for blood that is alien to every word ever spoken by the Prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace.
“Those who now claim to be the True Believers and who call for mass murder, cruelty, torture and the death of thousands are in truth like the Kharijite rebels who fought against the Prophet’s Companions.
“We must now consider all Jihadists and Salafists like those Kharijites, and we who worship only the one true Allah and His blessed prophet Muhammad must destroy the heretics who have led His people astray these many years.
“And we True Believers must surely destroy these advocates of hatred and violence as the Companions once destroyed the Kharijites long ago.
“But now is my time come to declare who I really am. I was born Zulfiqar Ali Shah, in Islamabad, and raised as a good Muslim. But I fell and became Abu Azzam, a killer of men, women and children.”
The phone rang again.
“Who the hell is this?” yelled Gray Fox.
“Hear him out,” said the Tracker. “It’s almost over.”
“So, before the world, and especially before you, my brothers and sisters in Allah, I pronounce my tawba, my true repentance, for all that I have done and said in a false cause. And I declare my complete bara’a, my disavowal, of all that I said and preached against the true teachings of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate.
“For I showed no mercy and no compassion, and must now beg you to show me that mercy, that compassion, which the Holy Koran teaches us may be extended to the sinner who truly repents his former sinful ways. May Allah bless you and be with you all.”
The screen faded. The phone rang again. In fact, phones were ringing right across the umma, the world community of Islam, many of them to give vent to screams of rage.
“Tracker, what the hell have you done?” asked Gray Fox.
“I hope I have just destroyed him,” said the Tracker.
He recalled what the wise old scholar at al-Azhar University had told him years ago when he was a student in Cairo: “The merchants of hatred have four levels of loathing. You may think you Christians are at the top level. Wrong, for you are also believers in the one true God and thus, with the Jews, also People of the Book.
“Above you come the atheists and idolaters, who have no god but only carved idols. That is why the Mujahideen of Afghanistan hated the communists more than you. They are atheists.
“But above even them, for the fanatics, come the moderate Muslims, who do not follow them, and that is why they seek to topple every Western-friendly Muslim government by exploding bombs in their marketplaces and killing fellow Muslims who have done no harm.
“But highest of all, a dog among the unforgivables, is the apostate, the one who abandons or denounces Jihadism, then recants and returns to the faith of his fathers. For him, forgiveness is out of the question and only death awaits.”
And then he poured the tea and prayed.
• • •
Mr. Abdi sat alone in his suite, a bedroom and office, in the fort behind Garacad, his knuckles white on the tabletop. The two-foot walls were soundproof but not the doors, and he could hear the sounds of the whipping down the corridor. He wondered which wretched servant had incurred the displeasure of his host.
There was no disguising the crack as the instrument of torture, probably a semirigid camel crop, rose and fell, nor did the rough timber doors mask the shrill screams following each lash.
Ali Abdi was not a brutal man, and although he was aware of the distress of the mariners imprisoned in their anchored vessels out under the sun and would not be hurried if extra money could be extracted by delaying, he saw no reason for maltreatment—even of Somali servants. He was beginning to regret ever agreeing to negotiate for this pirate commander. The man was a brute.
He went ashen white when, in a pause in the flogging, the victim pleaded for mercy. He was speaking in Swedish.
• • •
The reaction of the Preacher to the broadcast worldwide of the devastating words of Tony Suárez was almost hysterical.
As he had not given a sermon online for three weeks, he was not watching the Jihadist post when it broadcast. He was alerted by one of his Pakistani bodyguards who spoke a smattering of English. He heard the end of it in stunned disbelief, then replayed it from the start.
He sat in front of his desktop computer and watched in horror. It was phoney—of course it was phony—but it was convincing. The likeness was uncanny, the beard, the face, the dress, the backcloth, even the eyes—he was looking at his own doppelgänger. And his voice.
But that was nothing compared to the words; the formal recantation was a death sentence. It would take many weeks to persuade the faithful that they had been deceived by a clever fraud. From outside the study, his servants could hear him screaming at the figure on the screen, that the tawba was a lie, his recantation a foul untruth.
When the face of the faraway American actor faded, he sat, drained, for almost an hour. Then he made his mistake. Desperate to be believed by someone at least, he contacted his one true friend, his ally in London. By e-mail.
Cheltenham was listening, and Fort Meade. And a silent Marine colonel in an office in the U.S. embassy in London. And Gray Fox in Virginia, who had the Tracker’s request on his desk. The Preacher might be destroyed now, Tracker had told him. But it was not enough. He had too much blood on his hands. Now he had to be killed, and he had laid out several options. Gray Fox would take it to the commander of J-SOC, personally, and he was confident it would go for discussion and judgment right up to the Oval Office. He didn’t know what that judgment would be, however.
Within minutes of the e-mail out of Marka, the exact text and the precise location of each computer and the owner of each computer were proven genuine. The placing of the Preacher was completely beyond doubt, the complicity at every level of Mustafa Dardari the same.
Gray Fox was able to get back to the Tracker within twenty-four hours, on the secure line from TOSA to the embassy. The news was not good.
“I tried, Tracker, but the answer is no. There is a presidential veto on missiles on that compound. It’s partly the dense civilian population all around it and partly the presence of Opal inside it.”
“And the other proposal?”
“No to both. There will be no beach landing from the sea. Now that the al-Shabaab have reinfested Marka, we do not know how many there are or how well armed they are. The senior brass reckon he could slip away into that labyrinth of alleys and we’d lose him forever.
“And the same applies to a heli-borne drop on the roof, bin Laden style. Not the
Rangers, not the SEALs, not even the Night Stalkers. It’s too far from Djibouti and Kenya, too public in Mogadishu. And there is the danger of a shoot-down. The words ‘Black Hawk Down’ still cause nightmares.
“Sorry, Tracker. A great job. You’ve identified him, located him, discredited him. But I guess it’s over. The bastard’s inside Marka and unlikely to come out, unless you can find one helluva bait. And there’s the problem of Opal. I guess you had better pack up and come home.”
“He’s not dead yet, Gray Fox. He has an ocean of blood on his hands. He may not preach anymore, but he is still a dangerous bastard. He could move west to Mali. Let me finish the job.”
There was silence on the line. Then Gray Fox came back.
“OK, Tracker. One more week. Then you pack your kit.”
As he replaced the phone, the Tracker realized he had miscalculated. In destroying the credibility of the Preacher throughout the entire world of Islamist fundamentalism, he had intended to force his target out of his bolt-hole and into the open. He wanted him on the run from his own people, devoid of cover, a refugee again. He had never intended his own superiors to call him off the chase.
He found himself facing a crisis of conscience. However he might vote as a citizen, as an officer and a U.S. Marine to boot, his commander in chief had his total loyalty. And that meant his obedience. Yet this he could not obey.
He had been given an assignment. It was not over. He had been tasked with a mission. It was not accomplished. And it had changed. It was now a personal vendetta. He owed a debt to a much-loved old man lying on a bed in an ICU ward in Virginia Beach and he intended to discharge it.
For the first time since cadet school, he contemplated resignation from the Corps. His career was saved a few days later by a dental technician he had never heard of.
• • •
Al-Afrit retained his horror picture for two days, but when it suddenly flashed up on the screen in the operations center at Chauncey Reynolds, it caused stunned shock. Gareth Evans had been talking to Mr. Abdi. The issues, of course, were ransom money and timescale.
Abdi had come down from twenty-five million dollars to twenty million, but the time was dragging—for the Europeans. It had been a week, to the Somalis a chronological fleabite. Al-Afrit was demanding all the money and he wanted it now. Abdi had explained that the Swedish owner would not contemplate twenty million. Evans was privately of the view that they would finally settle at about five million.
Then al-Afrit took over and sent his picture. By chance, Reynolds was also in the office, and Harry Andersson, who had been advised to fly home and wait in Stockholm. The picture made the three men sick and silent.
The cadet was held facedown over a rough wooden table by a big Somali, who had his wrists. His ankles were apart, each lashed to a table leg. His trousers and undershorts were missing.
His buttocks had been caned to a bloody mess. His face, turned sideways against the timber, was clearly screaming.
The reaction of Evans and Reynolds was to realize they were dealing with a sadistic madman. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The reaction of Harry Andersson was more extreme. He uttered a cry close to a scream and rushed to the bathroom. The others heard the retching as he knelt with his head over the pan. When he returned, his face was ashen save for two red patches, one on each cheek.
“That boy is my son!” he shouted. “My son!” He grabbed Gareth Evans by the lapels and hauled him out of his chair until they were face-to-face, inches apart.
“You get my son back, Gareth Evans, you get him back. Pay the swine what they want. Anything, you hear? You tell them, I pay fifty million dollars for my boy, you tell them.”
He stormed out, leaving the two Britishers pale and shaken and the hideous picture still on the screen.
11
On the morning of his martyrdom, Tariq “Terry” Hussein rose long before dawn. Behind closed curtains, he purified his body according to the ancient rituals, seated himself in front of the bedsheet draped on the bedroom wall with the appropriate Koranic passages, switched on his camcorder and recorded his final words to the world. Then he logged on to the Jihadi channel and sent his message worldwide. Before the authorities noticed it, it would be far too late.
He drove through a lovely summer dawn to join the first of the morning’s commuters, some coming from Maryland into Virginia, some going the opposite way, and many heading into the District of Columbia. He was in no hurry, but he wanted to time himself right.
To park in the nearside lane of a major commuter traffic artery could not be sustained for long. To be too early would mean that blocked commuters behind the stalled car would hammer their horns and attract attention. A state police car could well be summoned by one of the circling helicopters. It would have trouble penetrating the logjam but would duly arrive with two armed officers onboard. That was what Hussein intended, but not prematurely.
To be too late could mean the targets he had in mind might have passed by and he could not wait long for the next one. Just after ten past seven, he arrived at Key Bridge.
There are eight arches to this Washington landmark: five span the Potomac River, separating Virginia from Georgetown in D.C., two more on the Washington side cross the C&O Canal and K Street, and the eighth, on the Virginia side, spans the George Washington Memorial Parkway, another constantly in use commuter route.
Hussein, on U.S. Route 29, approached the bridge, hugging the nearside lane of the six-lane highway. At the center point above the GW Memorial, he broke down. His compact slowed to a halt. At once, angry cars behind began to swerve past him. He got out, went to the rear and opened the trunk. From it, he took two red “broken down” triangles and placed them on the road.
He opened both doors on the passenger side to create a small box between the car and the parapet. Reaching in, he withdrew the rifle, fully loaded with forty rounds in two switchover magazines, leaned over the parapet and squinted through the scope sight at the columns of steel passing beneath. If anyone coming up behind him could see what a man between the two open doors was doing, either they did not believe what they were seeing or they were too busy wrestling with their steering wheels and craning over their shoulders to avoid being rammed as they pulled out.
At that hour, a quarter after seven, almost every tenth vehicle below the bridge is a commuter bus. The D.C. Metro service runs several of them, some colored blue, some orange. The orange ones are on the 23C route, which runs from the Rosslyn Metro station right through to Langley, Virginia, where it terminates at the gates of the huge complex known simply as the CIA, or the Agency.
The traffic below the bridge was not logjammed, but it was moving sedately, nose to tail. Tariq Hussein’s Internet research had told him which bus to look for and he had almost given up hope when he saw an orange roof in the distance. A helicopter wheeled and turned far out over the river. It would see the stalled vehicle in the middle of the bridge at any moment. He willed the orange bus to come closer.
The first four bullets, straight through the windshield, killed the driver. The coach swerved, hit a car alongside, stalled and stopped. There was a figure in a Metro service uniform slumped over the wheel quite dead. Reactions began.
Down below, the sideswiped car also stopped. The driver climbed out and began to harangue the bus that had hit him. Then he noticed the slumped driver, presumed a heart attack and produced his cell phone.
Horns behind the two stalled vehicles began to hoot. Some drivers also climbed out. One glanced upward, saw the figure on the parapet and yelled in alarm. The helicopter wheeled over Arlington and turned toward the Key Bridge. Hussein fired over and over again through the roof of the stationary bus. After twenty rounds, the firing pin met an empty chamber. He detached the magazine, reversed it and inserted the spare. Then he resumed firing.
Below him there was chaos. Word had spread. Drivers were leaping out of their cars to crouch behind them. Two at least were shouting into their cell phones.
br /> On the bridge, two women back down the line were screaming. The roof of the 23C service bus was being torn apart. The interior was becoming a charnel house of blood, bodies and hysterical humanity. Then the second magazine ran out.
It was not the rifleman in the helicopter who brought closure but an off-duty patrolman ten cars down the line on Route 29 behind the stalled car. He had his window open to let the cigarette smoke out lest his wife later detected the odor. He heard the shots and recognized the crack of a high-powered rifle. He got out, unholstered his service automatic and started running, not away from the shots but toward them.
The first Tariq Hussein knew of him was when the window of the open door beside him shattered. He turned, saw the running man and raised his rifle. It was empty. The running officer could not know that. At twenty feet, he stopped, crouched, took the double-handed position and emptied his magazine into the door and the man behind it.
It was later established that three rounds hit the gunman and they were enough. When the officer reached the car, the gunman was on the verge of the road, gasping feebly. He died thirty seconds later.
For most of that day, there was chaos on Route 29, closed as forensic teams took away the body, the gun and finally the car. But it was nothing as to what was happening on the GW Memorial Parkway beneath.
The interior of the Rosslyn-to-Langley commuter coach was a butcher’s shop. Later, figures released to the public told of seven dead, nine critically injured, with five major amputations and twenty flesh wounds, all inside the bus, there had simply been no cover from above.
At Langley, the shock among the thousands of staffers when the news came through was like a declaration of war—but from an enemy already dead.
The Virginia state police and the FBI wasted no time. The killer’s car was easily traced through the vehicle-licensing bureau. SWAT teams raided the house outside Fairfax. It was empty, but forensic teams, muffled in their overalls, stripped it to the plasterwork—and then to the foundations.