The Secret Soldier

Nawif handed them passports with their real names and photos.

“How—”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll need this, too.” Nawif tossed Omar a car key. “There’s a Mercedes outside. You’ll take a practice run this afternoon.”

The highway to Bahrain was flat and fast. They reached the border post in five hours, just after sunset. A Saudi immigration officer flipped through their passports.

“Just got them last week, and already you’re on the road.”

“We didn’t want to wait.”

“Enjoy yourself.” The agent handed back the passports, and they rolled ahead.

In Manama, they found the apartment easily. Curtains covered the living-room windows. When Omar peeped out, he saw only an air shaft. Beside the couch was the locked chest Nawif had told them to expect. It held two Beretta pistols. Four short-stock AK-47 assault rifles, wrapped in chamois and smelling of oil. Extra magazines. Twelve Russian RGD-5 grenades, rounded green cylinders with metal handles molded to their bodies. They were the simplest of weapons, metal shells wrapped around a few ounces of explosive, triggered by a four-second fuse. Omar picked one up, fought the urge to juggle it.

“Let me see,” Fakir said. Omar ignored him. Fakir grabbed a Beretta, pointed it at Omar. “Let me see.”

“Put it down. You know what Nawif said. Treat them with respect. Next week you can have all the fun you want.”

Now next week had come. Omar steered the Mercedes down the eight-lane avenue that led into downtown Manama. Skyscrapers loomed ahead, glowing in the dark. In the cars around them, women sat uncovered. Across the road was a building hundreds of meters long, with a giant LCD screen displaying brand names in Arabic. A mall. Omar wondered what the inside looked like. A traffic light turned yellow in front of them, and he stopped for it, ignoring the honking behind them.

“You shouldn’t have stopped,” Fakir said.

“No need to rush.”

“You know, you hide it well. How scared you are. If I weren’t your brother, I wouldn’t see it.”

“What is it you want? Tell me. Or I won’t go any further.”

“I want you to believe. Otherwise, you shouldn’t be here. Because you’ll chicken out at the last minute.”

“Don’t worry about me, brother. I’m ready.”

Fakir squeezed Omar’s shoulder. “Good.”

“Good.”

The light dropped to green, and Omar steered them toward the apartment. Fifteen minutes later, they parked outside. Omar grabbed the blue bag and climbed the building’s narrow stairs as Fakir huffed behind. Omar didn’t know who had rented the place, just as he didn’t know who had bought the Mercedes or arranged his passport. Nawif had said they would be kept in the dark for their own protection. Omar didn’t even know why Nawif had told them to attack this particular bar. He saw now that he had been treated all along like a disposable part. But Fakir was right. The time for questions had passed.

At the apartment, the other two jihadis, Amir and Hamoud, waited. Omar unlocked the chest, splayed the weapons on the floor. He stripped off his thobe, put on his Levi’s and T-shirt and hiking boots. In the bathroom, he shaved and gelled up his thick black hair and sprayed on his cologne. He brushed his teeth, too, though he wasn’t sure why. A knock startled him, and he dropped the brush.

“Come on, brother. It’s almost midnight. It’s time.”

Omar looked himself over in the mirror. He wondered whether he could back out. But the other three would go ahead regardless. He would be proving only his own cowardice. “All right. Let’s pray, then.” They faced west, to Mecca. Together they recited the Fatiha, “The Foundation,” the first seven lines of the Quran’s first verse. “Bismillahi-rahmani-rahim…”In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful

Praise to Allah, Lord of the Universe
Most gracious and merciful
Master of the day of judgment
You alone we serve and ask for help
Guide us on the straight path
The path of those you have favored, not of those deserving anger,
those who have lost their way

“We have nothing to fear tonight,” Omar said. “When we wake, we’ll be in paradise.” The justification was predictable, ordinary. Yet its very familiarity comforted Omar. He wasn’t alone. So many others had taken the same journey.

Fakir tucked a pistol in the back of his jeans and stuffed the grenades and AKs and spare magazines into a black nylon bag. Amir and Hamoud took the other weapons. They slung loose-fitting nylon jackets over the rifles. Anyone looking closely would see the telltale curve of the magazines, but no one would have the chance to look closely.

On his disposable phone, Omar called Nawif. “We’re ready.”

“Go, then. And remember that Allah is protecting you.”

Omar wanted to keep talking, to invent a conversation that would end with him telling the other three that the mission had been called off. Instead he hung up. “It’s time,” he said.

They didn’t bother to wipe down the apartment. Nawif had told Omar that it couldn’t be traced to them. Further proof of their essential disposability.

JJ’s was barely five hundred meters away. They trotted through the narrow streets, following the path they had traced the week before. They didn’t speak. No one stopped them, or even noticed them. At this hour the neighborhood was largely deserted, the guest workers who largely populated it home for the night.

They turned a corner, and Fakir saw the bar’s sign shining green and white just a block away. JJ’s Expat. Music filtered through the windows. Fakir took his brother’s hand. “I’m sorry I said you were scared.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not anymore, though.” A lie.

“That’s good, brother.”

A few meters from the bar, Omar slowed his pace. “Remember, don’t start until you hear us open up,” he said over his shoulder to Amir and Hamoud. He wanted to add something else, but he had nothing left to say.

Covering the last few meters took no time at all. The noise rose. He heard people talking in English, a woman singing. He was dreaming and couldn’t wake. He had two grenades in the front pocket of his windbreaker. He had a sudden urge to blow one now. Only he and his brother would die.

He didn’t.

JJ’s main entrance was inside the building that housed the bar. A corridor connected it to the street. Fakir stepped into the hallway, Omar a step behind. Two bouncers, big men in red T-shirts, stood just outside the entrance. Fakir walked confidently toward them, his chubby body jiggling under his T-shirt. When he was three steps away, he reached behind his waist and pulled the black 9-millimeter pistol.

“Hey—”

“Allahu akbar,” Fakir said. He pulled the trigger, and the pistol sang its one true note. The shot echoed in the corridor, and the bouncer touched his chest and looked down at his hand. Fakir shot him again, and he screamed and fell. The other bouncer tried to turn, but Fakir pulled the trigger again. The bullet caught him under his arm, and he grunted softly and collapsed all at once.

ROBBY DUKE WAS ON his sixth Carlsberg and feeling no pain. After his last trip to the bar, he’d scooted next to Josephine. She’d made way without protest. A soft glaze had slipped over her eyes and she’d squeezed his arm a couple times, always a good sign.

Her eyes drooped. He leaned in for a kiss, but she raised a finger and pushed him off. “Not a chance, Frodo.”