Hail Warning

Two Years Ago Boko Haram Enclave — Jungle near Lagos, Nigeria

There was no grand ceremony to induct Boko Haram’s new leader into power. In fact, the ceremony indoctrinating Afua Diambu as leader of the sect was quite simple. Unknown to Afua, it had already been decided that the succession of leadership would go to him — even prior to his departure to complete his religious mission in Venezuela. Now that he had returned a hero, no one dared object to Afua taking the rightful place of their beloved and departed leader, Mohammad Mboso.

Each lieutenant in command of their own Islamic Boko Haram cell in Nigeria walked up to Afua and knelt in front of the true caliphate. Afua was sitting outside in the oppressive heat in a big wooden chair decorated to look like a throne. The high back of his chair was hand carved with reliefs of dozens of the Boko Haram’s favorite weapons: guns, knives and machetes. In recognition of Afua’s mission to Venezuela, the entire back of his throne had been carved with a relief of him firing a missile at a plane from a boat. As each of Afua’s men knelt in front of him, per ceremony, he tapped each on the shoulder with a loaded AK-47 with the safety off but with one finger placed on the trigger. Every time he knighted one of his men, Afua made sure his finger was on the trigger. This lethal posture held symbolism for the Boko Haram. It signified that Afua had the sanctioned power to kill any man that walked before him with a single twitch of his index finger. And each of his lieutenants demonstrated their devotion to Afua by offering their life to him.

It was a hot night and Afua was still weak from the ocean crossing. The injuries he had suffered in Venezuela were still healing. All in all, he felt like crap. In the back of his mind, he thought that this ceremony was ridiculous. But this was the way it had always been done. It went back decades, since the Boko Haram had come into existence. This was some idiot’s decision of how the transition of power should take place. Unless Afua wanted to exert the effort to change the ceremonial process, which he didn’t, he understood he would have to endure the ritual.

Afua felt cold, although he was perspiring. He missed the air-conditioned yacht, the cool ocean breeze but mostly, he missed being alone. The more he was forced to be around people, the more he resented them; however, this feeling didn’t carry over to his family. He enjoyed being around his family. The residence he had purchased in the heart of Lagos, prior to his departure, was now much too small to house his extended family. It was growing by leaps and bounds. It was time to find a larger air-conditioned house.

As the new leader touched the next potential rival on the shoulder with his weapon, Afua decided he would contact Obano tomorrow. Afua would request the realtor find him a much larger and more secure compound. After all, he was now the leader of the Boko Haram, and he had control of the organization’s purse strings. His salary had just increased to whatever the hell he wanted it to be, and he was ready to acquire a home suitable for someone of his newfound nobility.

Another man knelt, and Afua tapped him on the shoulder. He really felt like shooting the man instead. He recognized the man as Abubakar Buhari. He was one of the men who had masterminded the kidnapping of the young girls from the school. The Boko Haram had held the girls in captivity for many decades. They had enslaved them for so long that the girls grew to become women. Afua knew that most of them had been married off to Boko Haram warriors, and the others deemed unworthy or those that went crazy had been enslaved for either sex or work.

This was certainly something a Christian person would never do. But it was something that the radical Islam said was sanctioned in the Quran. When the girls were kidnapped, the passage that Abubakar Buhari had read to the world was: “and the hadith (the sayings of Muhammad) see slavery as being allowed, but only as an exceptional condition that can be entered into under certain limited circumstances. Only children of slaves or non-Muslim prisoners of war could become slaves, never a freeborn Muslim. They also consider manumission of a slave to be one of many meritorious deeds available for the expiation of sins. According to Sharia, slaves are considered human beings and possessed some rights on the basis of their humanity. In addition, a Muslim slave is equal to a Muslim freeman in religious issues and superior to the free non-Muslim.”

Being a closet Christian, Afua thought this was pure madness. He was educated enough to know slavery had brought the most powerful nation, the United States, to her knees. The act of slavery had practically destroyed their evil nation. Afua had no intention of continuing with this method of terrorism. There were other ways to get their point across that didn’t include kidnapping young girls. He felt that only cowards would prey on those who could not protect themselves, especially children. Had the men of Nigeria learned nothing? Tens of thousands of their own had been taken to America to become slaves, yet now, Nigerians were enslaving their people. It made no sense to Afua.

Afua sat on his wooden throne, refusing to touch the man knelt before him on the shoulder with the tip of his gun. The other men were waiting patiently for their turn in front of their new leader.

The AK-47 was so familiar in the hands of Diambu that the weapon felt like a biological extension of his own arm. He lowered the muzzle of the gun down toward the man’s shoulder, but he didn’t stop until the gun was pointed directly at Buhari’s heart.

“You are a coward,” Afua said, and he pulled the trigger.

The impact from the bullet entering the man’s body threw the jihadi back on his heels. For a fraction of a second, the man tried to stand, but his heart had already stopped, and he was literally dead on his feet. Inertia pushed him backwards. His sprawled arms landed in the middle of the huge campfire. The other men all watched in horror as their jihadi brother quite literally cooked to a crisp in the fire. Buhari’s clothes had caught on fire. His hair singed and flared. His skin blistered and sizzled. Afua looked at the man, but he felt nothing. There was one thing that did catch Afua’s interest. The man landed in a way that very much resembled a cross. A necklace with a crucifix pendant that Afua had bought for his mother flashed through his mind. With his empty hand Afua almost made a little cross over his heart, but he stopped himself with the understanding his men would probably interpret the action the wrong way — or possibly the right way — which was still the wrong way.

The next man in line walked in front of Afua and knelt. The new Boko Haram leader saw the man tremble. Afua touched him on the shoulder with the tip of the warm barrel.

An hour later, the ceremony finally ended with a loud and dangerous conclusion. Drunk men fired AK-47 rounds indiscriminately into the air.

When it was all over, a Jeep took Afua back into town to his family, and he returned to his new love of air conditioning.