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Karim turned to find Farid standing a few feet behind him, a look of concern on his face. “Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“You do not look well. Excuse me for saying so.”
“I feel fine.” Karim lied.
“The men are ready.”
“Water?”
“Full rations, as you ordered.”
“Do they know we are leaving?”
Farid could not hide his own surprise.
“I didn’t think so.” Karim looked back toward the huts and their rusty tin roofs. The men were standing next to their packs, preparing for what they thought would be just another long march through the jungle. “Bring them over. Tell them to leave their packs.”
Farid barked out a quick order and the six men hustled over. They lined up from left to right, the distance from one man to the other a full arm’s length. They’d done it so many times over the last six months, they could simply eyeball the distance.
Karim surveyed his elite squad. Seven of them from left to right. The tallest was a hair over six feet, and the shortest a bit under five eight. They were all in peak physical condition. What little extra weight they may have carried on their agile frames was now gone. They were an impressive group with their broad shoulders, bulging muscles, and narrow waists. Their entire bearing had been changed. They stood straight, with shoulders back and chests out, their eyes front and center, waiting for an order. The posture alone had taken nearly a month. He’d had to transform them, slowly strip all the bad habits they’d learned fighting for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They had been encouraged to look down on the Americans and their formality of command. The way the Americans marched around like robots. Karim saw it for what it really was; an efficiency that stripped away an individual’s identity. It was one of the many things that made them such daunting opponents, and it was the foundation of their effectiveness. When an order was given they could move with amazing speed and efficiency.
Karim looked over the men and realized for the first time just how proud he was of them. He gave the order for the men to relax and then with a thin smile on his lips he said, “My warriors, Allah has told me you are ready. There is nothing more we can do here.”
“We are leaving?” It was Ahmed, one of the Moroccans.
“Yes. We will leave within the hour.”
One by one the men looked to each other. Some smiled. Others looked nervous. Karim saw this, stepped on his own anger, and told himself it was natural. As horrible as this place had been, it had served its purpose. It had become home to them. “I know some of you are anxious. Some of you are nervous, and one or two of you are probably afraid. All of these feelings are natural. When God asked the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh and decry the wickedness, he was afraid. So afraid, he ran in the opposite direction, where he ended up in the belly of the beast. Even one of the great prophets was afraid. It is normal to have such feelings. Even to doubt in our cause…our mission. We have each other, though. We have become family. We will keep each other strong, and we will not run. We will go willingly, and with great courage, into the belly of the beast, and we will inflict such harm and pain that the beast will no longer have the stomach to meddle in our affairs.”
A few of the men shouted and pumped their fists in the air. The more solemn ones simply nodded.
“To stay longer is to give the enemy more time to prepare.” Karim began to walk the length of the formation with his hands clasped behind his back. Now came the hard part. “I have not told you this until now because I did not want to distract you during your training.” He stopped at one end and looked back down the line. “The other two units have not been heard from in almost a month. It is feared that they have been intercepted.”
There were murmurs of shock and disappointment. “But there has been nothing in the news,” said Farid.
“That is true.” The men had access to two laptops with Internet links, and Karim encouraged them to read several U.S. newspapers every day. “I would hold out some hope if it had been reported in the papers. That would mean the CIA would have acknowledged their capture, and in turn they would have to document their treatment. The fact that there has been no word means they will drain them of everything they know.”
“Do the other units know of our plans?”
Karim looked at Fazul Alghamdi, whom he had fought alongside in Afghanistan. “Only in vague terms.”
“They know which city we will attack,” Farid said in an agitated tone.
“Yes, they do, but it is a big city. As we have discussed, there are many targets.”
Fazul looked forlorn. “They were good men.”
“Yes, they were. They were brave men, but they put too much faith in their belief that Allah wanted them to succeed.” Karim had spent a great deal of time as of late trying to sort this out. With the thoughtfulness of an imam he said, “Allah wants us to succeed, but he wants to challenge us. He wants to test us. He wants to see how committed we are to defeating our enemy.”
“We are all committed, Amir,” said Farid, speaking for all of them.
“Good. This is why I have preached preparation and vigilance. I have admonished
many of you for what I feel is a lack of respect for our enemy. You are weak if you fall prey to this. You are immature and you are afraid…like a schoolboy who is jealous of a pupil who gets a better mark on an exam. The truth is that the Americans are extremely good, and if we are not careful, we will end up like the others…captured and I’m sure tortured.”
