Sting of the Drone

30

“Can you tell me about the ferries? We’re new to San Francisco,” the taller young man asked.

“Fairies?” Ahmed Bahadur stared at the two young men. They were in white shirts with black ties and nametags. Bahadur wondered if this was some kind of trap. He did not want to say much, did not want to reveal his accent. “What is your role?” he said.

“We convert people,” the other young man said.

Bahadur quickly turned his back on them and walked onto the boat to Sausalito, a man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, perhaps taking the afternoon off, going home at midday.

“That is not what we are supposed to say,” the taller young man said to his colleague. “You scared him. You keep that up and you will be sent back to Salt Lake.”

Bahadur climbed to the aft deck and then farther up to the top open deck. “I don’t know how you have lived among these kafirs,” he said to the man in blue blazer. “They deserve what we are going to do.”

Ghazi Nawarz did not turn to look at him. “You should wear sunglasses. They all wear sunglasses. You would blend in better.”

“Two years ago when I was told to move to Australia and run things in that region for our organization, I shave my face and I wear their costume. That is enough,” Bahadur replied. The boat jerked as it began to move away from the pier. The two men were alone on the upper deck, as Ghazi had hoped they would be. “You have done well. Qazzani must be very pleased with you,” Bahadur said.

“Four drones have been shot down, one we crashed, and one we hijacked,” Ghazi said, looking back at the Ferry Building as the boat moved into the Bay. “We will do more of that, but they have hundreds left, so we are using their media, their courts, their Congress. Indirectly, of course.”

Bahadur snorted. “You are soft, you have lived among them too long, my friend. What we are going to do in their subways will hurt them much more. Then we tell them it will get worse unless they really leave Afghanistan, unless they stop the drones. They will understand pain. Pain will work. It always works.”

A fourteen-meter sailboat crossed ahead of the ferry, pushed by the wind toward the Golden Gate Bridge. The wind served to muffle the conversation between the two men standing next to each other chatting and looking out at the view.

“You see that big fortress on the island over there? It’s a prison. They say it’s impossible to escape from it,” Ghazi said. “How many prisoners do you think they have in it?”

Bahadur looked hard at Alcatraz. “If they have small cells like at Bagram, they must have ten thousand men in there. How many of them are Arabs? How many are our people? Maybe we should also demand their release?”

Ghazi laughed and turned to face Bahadur. “There are no Arabs, no Pushtuns, no prisoners at all. It’s empty. It is for tourists.” Bahadur frowned. “You see, Ahmed, you do not really understand these people. I do because, yes, I live in Canada, I live among them.

“But I also have a blood debt because of my father. And therefore I will help Qazzani kill them. And you and your boys will kill them. But killing them will not stop the drones. They will only send more. The only way to stop them is to use their media, their laws, their politicians. That way we make their own people stop the drones and decide to really leave Afghanistan. We make it their choice.”

Bahadur shook his head. “I trust you because Qazzani trusts you, but you are not one of us anymore. You look like you belong here, you act like you belong here, you even sound like you are from here. But we must work together. We need to have our attacks happen at the same time. My bombs go off in the old subways. Your computer guys cause crashes in the new metros. We destroy their Christmas. Here, take my plans and the timing. Don’t worry, it’s on one of your special sticks. They will erase when you read them.”

The man in the suit thrust out his hand as if to shake, but with the thumb drive in his palm. The two men shook hands without speaking and then Bahadur climbed down from the upper deck. Alone, looking out at the bridge, Ghazi fingered the thumb drive he had just put in his pants pocket.

He knew the attacks on the subways would infuriate the Americans again, just when they were getting used to the idea that they were invulnerable to any more terrorist attacks in their homeland. His attacks on their drone program would also make them know they were not invulnerable. But would it make them leave Muslim lands, would it make them stop the drones? Would even the political pressure from within America be enough to stop the drones? He wasn’t sure.

And if it didn’t work, should he continue? Or should he take his inheritance from his father and the matching money from Qazzani and just disappear, maybe to Brazil, South Africa, or New Zealand? It was a lot of money. He could live well. But he would always be looking over his shoulder and they would always be looking for him. Somehow they would find him, someday. They had taken forever to find Osama, but they finally did. And while Osama was waiting for them, he lived a horrid life, cooped up in that wretched house. I cannot live like that, Ghazi thought, waiting for them to come for me.

He had tried to be not just a Canadian, but a Global. It had worked, up to a point. He knew his way around in cities on every continent, where to get the best meal, the best wine, the best woman. Even without his father’s money, he had stashed millions from the cyber crime in safe-deposit boxes all over the world. But no place was home, no cuisine, no traditions were his. He had never known a real emotion that drove him, until now. And that emotion did not have its roots in Vancouver, or Chelsea, or Saint-Tropez, or Hong Kong. It came from the Pushtun homeland and it was blood. It was not about Allah, or some myth about virgins waiting in an afterlife. No, it was about tribal duty, family duty. It was about vengeance.

So this, he knew now, was his fate. A short, but exciting life. Choice had been an illusion after all. There was no future, not for him, not now, just duty. This was going to be it, the vengeance, the statement, the accomplishment that would go down in history like 9/11, like 7/7 in London.

The boat shook as it docked in Sausalito, breaking his thoughts. He moved quickly to get off the boat. There was something he needed to buy in Marin.