Against All Enemies

Once in the valley, they found Mullah Omar Rahmani seated on a pile of blankets inside one of a dozen or more tents erected in a semicircle beneath several walnut and oak trees, and hidden from the east by patches of lemon vines. The morning prayers were over, and Rahmani was sipping tea and about to have some round sweet flatbread the Afghans called roht, along with some apricots, pistachios, and thick plain yogurt (which was a true luxury in the mountains).

Rahmani greeted them with a terse nod, then stroked his beard, which swept down toward his collarbone, terminating in a sharp point. His gaze, slightly magnified by a pair of thick wire-frame glasses, seemed permanently narrowed, which made it difficult to determine his mood. He’d pushed his white turban farther back to expose deep lines spanning his forehead and the lima-bean-shaped birthmark staining his left temple. His long linen shirt and baggy trousers hid his considerable girth, and were he to remove the camouflage-pattern jacket tightly hugging his shoulders, he might seem just a hair less intimidating. That jacket — old, tattered at the elbows — had been worn during his battles with the Russians.

Samad had to assume that Rahmani was not pleased with all the attention recently drawn to the area, although he might commend Samad for his quick thinking and ability to once more fool the Americans.

Rahmani lifted his chin toward them. “Peace be unto you, brothers, and let us thank God that we are here this morning to enjoy this food and to live another day — because the days grow more difficult for us.”

Samad and his men took seats around Rahmani and were served tea by several young men attending to him. A chill spread across Samad’s shoulders as he sipped his tea and tried to calm his breathing.

It was, admittedly, difficult every time Samad was in the man’s presence. If you crossed him, if you dared fail him, he would have you executed on the spot. This was not a rumor. Samad had watched the beheadings with his own eyes. Sometimes the heads would be hacked off. Other times they would be sawed off slowly, very slowly, while the victim screamed, then drowned in his own blood.

Rahmani took another deep breath, set down his teacup, then folded his arms across his chest, his black shirt and scarves pulling tighter across his neck. He studied them for a moment more, sending an icy pang into Samad’s gut, then cleared his throat and finally spoke again: “The Army has grown too unstable for us now. That much is clear. Khodai could have caused even more damage, and while I am grateful for the work your men did back in Islamabad, there are now many loose ends — particularly the agent our sniper spoke about at the hotel. We’re still looking for him. And now our new relationship with the Juarez Cartel in Mexico has been threatened because we were forced to kill their man. All of this means we must move more quickly.”

“I understand,” Samad said. “The CIA has recruited many operatives in the area. They pay well. It is hard for young men to resist. I have two men tracking one right now, a boy named Israr Rana. We believe he’s responsible for helping to expose the link.”

Rahmani nodded. “Some of us argue that patience will triumph. The Americans cannot and will not remain here forever, and when they leave, we will continue to train here, and we will bring Allah’s will to the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But I do not agree with sitting down and waiting for the storm to pass. The problem must be dealt with at its source. I’ve been working for the past five years on a project that will soon come to fruition. The infrastructure is in place. All I need now are the warriors to execute this plan.”

“We would be honored.”

“Samad, you will lead them. You will bring the jihad back to the United States — and you must use the contacts you’ve made with the Mexicans to do that. Do you understand?”

Although he nodded, Samad grew tense because he knew asking any favors of the Mexicans might both insult and incense them. Yet if he could somehow garner their support, his mission stood a far greater chance of success.

But how?

He would have to resort to hudaibiya—lying — as the Qur’an exhorted him to do when dealing with infidels.

“I must caution you and all of your men, Samad,” Rahmani went on. “Nearly one hundred of our fighters have already dedicated their lives to this plan. Some of them have already given their lives. There is much at stake here, and the consequences for failure are great, very great indeed.”

Samad could already feel the blade on his neck. “We all understand.”

Rahmani’s voice lifted as he quoted from the Qur’an: “Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him we shall bestow a vast reward.”

“Paradise awaits us,” Samad added with a vigorous nod. “And yet if we die and are martyred, only to be resurrected and martyred again, we will do it. This is why we love death.”

Rahmani narrowed his eyes even more. “This is why …Now, then, let’s eat, and I will discuss all of the details. The complexity and audacity of this mission will impress you, I’m sure. Within a few days, you will be on the road. And when the time comes, you will bring a message from Allah, the likes of which the Americans have never seen.”

“We won’t fail you,” said Samad.

Rahmani nodded slowly. “Do not fail Allah.”

Samad lowered his head. “We are his servants.”

Gandhara International Airport

Islamabad, Pakistan

Moore was en route to San Diego to meet with his new joint task force, and he was dreading the more than seventeen hours of travel time it would take to get there. As he sat at the gate, waiting for the first flight of his journey, he kept a wary eye on the travelers around him, mostly businesspeople, international journalists (he assumed), and a few families with small children, one of them decidedly British. Occasionally, he consulted his tablet computer, where all of his data was secured behind a double-encrypted password. Any attempt to access his computer without his thumbprint would summarily wipe the hard drive. He’d just pulled up some of the Agency’s most recent declassified reports on cartel activity along the border (he’d read the classified ones in a more private location). He was most interested in finding intel on Middle Eastern or Arabic links to that activity, but for the most part, the cases he reviewed were limited to warfare between rival cartels, most notably the Sinaloa and the Juarez cartels.

Mass graves had been turning up more frequently — some containing dozens of bodies. Beheadings and bodies hung from bridges were pointing to a rise in gruesome attacks by gangs of sicarios led by former Mexican Airborne Special Forces troopers. Government officials argued that the cartel wars illustrated the success of government policies, which were causing the drug traffickers to turn against one another. However, Moore had already concluded that the cartels had become so powerful that, in effect, they literally controlled some parts of the country and the violence was simply evidence of their gang law. Moore read one report written by a journalist who’d spent more than a year documenting cartel activity. In some of the more rural towns in the southeast portions of the country, the cartel was the only group the citizens could rely on to provide them with jobs and protection. This journalist published a half-dozen articles before he was shot seventeen times while waiting outside a shopping mall for his mother. Obviously the cartels did not like what he had to say.

Another report made a comparison between small towns in Mexico and those in Afghanistan. Moore had seen the Taliban engage in the same tactics and behavior as the cartels did. Both the Taliban and the drug cartels became much more trusted than the government and certainly more trusted than the foreign invaders. Both the Taliban and the cartels understood the power that drug trafficking brought them, and they used that power to enlist the aid of innocent civilians who were simply not supported or were even ignored by their government. For Moore, it was difficult to remain apolitical when you saw firsthand a government that was more corrupt than its enemies you were tasked with killing.

Still, the human atrocities committed by both groups helped Moore keep it all in perspective.

He flipped quickly through some of the crime-scene photos of Mexican Federal Police lying in blood pools, some brutally gunned down, others with their throats slit. He paused to stare at two dozen immigrants who’d had their heads chopped off, their headless bodies piled up inside an old shed, the heads now missing and nowhere to be found. One sicario was crucified outside his house, the cross set on fire so that his father and other family members could watch him burn.

The cartels’ brutality knew no bounds, and Moore had a sneaking suspicion that his bosses had bigger plans for him than they’d originally suggested. Everyone’s worst nightmare was for this violence to find its way across the border. It was only a matter of time.