A sensor on the nose locked onto the sparkling building. Four fins at its tail extended outward. It adjusted the angle of its fins. Added lift, stability. No longer plummeting, it flew.
So many things had to happen for these men to arrive at their deaths. Start with the invention of the internal combustion engine. Follow with the development of Europe and the Americas and the rest of the world creating a ravenous appetite for oil, which created oil rigs and refineries and massive wealth for desert princes. Then global supply chains, trade agreements, secure shipping routes, and the law of the sea. Negotiated arms sales, too. Add in the vast edifice of Western science. Computing and radio technology. The space race and the microchip. Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex. And other, subtler developments. American-pioneered methods of high-value targeting. The post-9/11 explosion of private military contractors. It took all of the massively complex, interconnected modern world to bring these men their deaths. It was a shame they were incapable of appreciating it.
Juan Pablo opened his eyes. On the screen before him lay the same building, now with more figures in the street nearby, exiting the funeral. A flash whited out half of the screen. When it disappeared, the building was altered.
“Hell, yeah,” someone said. They called for permission for another strike. Time passed. Permission was granted. Figures emerged out of the back of the building, running. Another flash whited out the screen, and when the flash disappeared some of the figures were motionless.
Juan Pablo didn’t know who they had killed, or how the survivors would react to what had happened. He knew he felt satisfied by the day’s work. He was a highly paid mercenary, using skills he had learned from the Colombian military, from American Special Forces, and from his own long experience in ugly, dirty war zones, to fight an ugly, dirty war against a primitive enemy. Perhaps this was the future of war, and if so, good. In a war like this, it did not matter how many fanatics swarmed to your side. It did not matter if you stirred the passions of the people by demonizing the government or the capitalists or the Liberals or the Conservatives or the Catholics or the Protestants or the Muslims or the Jews. What mattered was the global, interconnected system that generated the wealth and the technology that ultimately would determine the fate of this war, and the wars to come. That system was civilization. It was progress.
Hundreds of miles away, just outside the courtyard of the ruined and blasted building, a boy stared up into the sky. His mind, though full of pain and terror, willed itself to prayer. And he whispered of the day of reckoning, and of the paradise that is the truth, and of the hell that is the truth. And then he was gone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist without the efforts of so many people. First, there are those who read through many drafts of these chapters, providing edits, feedback, and ideas—Christopher Robinson, Lauren Holmes, Matt Gallagher, Elliot Ackerman, Lea Carpenter, and especially my wife, Jessica, who in addition to reading countless drafts helped with research, assisted during interviews in Colombia (occasionally while nursing a newborn), and provided sanity checks during the crazy-making process of writing a novel. Then there is my agent, Eric Simonoff, who stuck by me for six years of writing without ever applying the least pressure on me to hurry up, and whose opinion I greatly valued as the work neared completion. Finally, there is my editor at Penguin Press, Scott Moyers, and his assistant editor, Mia Council, who helped refine the novel into a tighter, better-structured, and far clearer whole. And I should add Jane Cavolina, my incredible copyeditor.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Princeton University’s Lewis Center of the Arts Hodder Fellowship provided me the time and resources to write and research, and I’m humbled by their generous faith in my work. Also, the brilliant and intellectually omnivorous John Ptacek provided invaluable research assistance through Hunter College’s Hertog Fellowship program.
Various scholars and experts gave their time as I was trying to find my footing in tackling this subject. I’m grateful for the advice and expertise of Ethan Kapstein, Jacob Shapiro, Stephen Kalin, Robert Karl, Quil Lawrence, Gavin Kovite, Molly Kovite, Roy Godson, Deni Béchard, Abbey Steele, and Brian Castner. Jacob Siegel, my old friend and podcast cohost at Manifesto!, also helped me argue out a lot of the ideas I wanted to engage with in the novel.
While in Colombia, I often stayed with Juan Antonio Restrepo and Ana Isabel Velásquez. Along with Blanca Nora Cardona and Luis Gilberto Velásquez, they looked after me, fed me and my ravenous children, and showered our family with love, while Juan and Isa’s daughter Sara Restrepo put in amazing work as a research assistant, particularly in arranging interviews with a wide range of people from judges to academics to ex-military to politicians.
I’d like to thank my parents, Marie-Therese and William Klay, and my four brothers, who in addition to being caring and supportive also helped at various points, connecting me to people who proved pivotal to the book. And I’d like to thank my mother-in-law, Adriana Velásquez, who was a wealth of information on Colombian Spanish and on Medellín, in particular.
I’m also indebted to those who gave their time for interviews, especially Paul Angelo, Hernán Hincapié, Luis Fernando Delgado Llano, Fabio Valencia Cossio, Juan Gomez Martinez, Pablo Hernandez, Pablo Emilio Angarita Cañas, Shawn Walker, Matt Wilson, Andrew Slater, Jason Everman, Joe Reagan, Jhon Jairo Díez, Dr. Samuel Muñoz, Ángel David Marín, Gloria Lia Velásquez, and others. I relied on a variety of books and articles and essays from journalists, fiction writers, poets, and scholars for this novel. Among these individuals and works are:
Elliot Ackerman; Lynsey Addario’s It’s What I Do; the Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library; Matthieu Aikins’s “Last Tango in Kabul”;
