The Identity Mine

XXI

‘Salaam, my friend.’

The old man greeted Abrahem with a warm embrace and held his shoulders firmly in his hands as he looked the younger man up and down in the darkness, the sound of waves crashing far behind them. Tariq Adel was elderly now but the fire of insurgency burned as brightly in his eyes as it had decades before in the killing fields of the Iran — Iraq war that had taken so many lives.

‘Every day, you make your father proud Abrahem,’ Tariq said. ‘He would have smiled upon you here as he smiles upon you now from Paradise.’

‘And I shall continue to do so, Tariq,’ Abrahem replied.

‘Come,’ the old man beckoned. ‘There is much to say.’

Abrahem followed Tariq up to the small village, an isolated group of low buildings huddled against the east African coast in the Harardhere District. Barren beaches stretched for miles to the north and south and there were no roads across the boundless desert wastes to the west. The village’s presence in the darkness was betrayed only by a handful of flickering fires, beacons in the absolute blackness around them.

Abrahem’s journey had been long, cramped aboard a tiny boat that had chugged its way out of the Persian Gulf and turned south along the coasts of Oman and Yemen, travelling through the night and all of the next day and then the following night also. The smell of grease, metal and smoke stained Abrahem’s clothes with the hated odour of western civilization, their love of oil and petroleum like an addiction surging through their veins. He was grateful for the fresh breezes billowing across the Somalian coast and rippling through his shirt as he followed Tariq to one of the larger buildings, built the old way from compacted earth that had been baked into bricks in the harsh sunlight. He wondered how many long centuries these homes had stood, lived in by people who had known nothing of the troubles that would face their ancestors.

Dark eyes watched him from the blackness, reflecting the firelight that glinted off the smooth metal of Kalashnikov AK–47 rifles slung over the shoulders of Islamist pirates. Their ancestors had likely also been men of the sea but fishermen, not the callous murderers who watched him now, devoid of any morsel of humanity. Abrahem could not say it out loud for he needed their assistance, but he despised their bigotry, their ignorance and their addiction to death and theft. To Abrahem they were no better than the infidel Americans.

The interior of the building was filled also with the smell of smoke, but this pungent cloud was wood smoke and seemed somehow clean compared to the chemical taint of the boat, which had sailed on south after delivering Abrahem at the pre — arranged location on Somalia’s dangerous shores. Fresh clothes awaited Abrahem and he changed eagerly as Tariq prepared food and drink for him nearby.

‘When will I be able to leave?’ Abrahem asked, and then realized what he was saying, offending his host. ‘I mean only that I have little time to complete my mission. The Americans will not be far behind me.’

Tariq smiled as he poured thick, sweet coffee and turned with a plate in his hand filled with meats, fruits and vegetables, the harvest of kings when compared to what little the unyielding soil of Somalia produced.

‘I know well what you mean,’ he replied as he handed the plate and the coffee to Abrahem. ‘As I know well what a rush the world is in these days, its people always thinking of tomorrow and never of today.’

Abrahem took the food gratefully as he sat down beside the fire, and with Tariq gave thanks to Allah for his safe journey and for the food before he began to eat.

‘The Americans never sleep,’ he replied, ‘they never cease activity, like machines. If I should falter or allow myself the comfort of sloth, they will be upon us.’

‘Then we shall deal with them then,’ Tariq replied without concern. ‘Now, it is time for rest. You have been successful so far?’

Abrahem nodded. ‘Everything is in place. The Americans will not know what has hit them. They will question everything that they are, all that they have become. They will never be the same again.’

‘Some would say that day has come and passed,’ Tariq replied, ‘during their World Trade Center attacks.’

Abrahem snarled.

‘Acts of cowardice! The killing of civilians, not soldiers. What men were they? They achieved nothing but to provoke America to rape and pillage across our lands in return! They claimed to have killed Americans in Allah’s name, but their own countrymen were bombed in their millions and all for America’s damned black oil!’

Tariq watched Abrahem for a long moment as he ate.

‘We strike back as we can,’ he replied finally. ‘We do not have armies and jets and bombs like the Americans. Open battle is not a possibility for us.’

‘It’s not the fight that matters,’ Abrahem smiled grimly, ‘but the outcome. The trade center attacks destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. They provoked our own leaders to hunt down Al — Qaeda, to kill Sheik Bin — Laden, to persecute our people while they profited from the fruits of our lands. Our lands. Do you know, Tariq, how many children’s bodies I dug from the rubble of Basra and Baghdad after the American raids?’

Tariq closed his eyes and did not respond.

‘Babies,’ Abrahem murmured, his eyes glazed, ‘their bodies burned to powder or torn to shreds. My own family…’

Abrahem broke off, blinked and lowered his chin so that Tariq might not see his grief as it wrenched at his heart and tugged painfully at the muscles of his face.

‘I know of your pain, Abrahem,’ Tariq replied finally. ‘It is shared by all of us, for there is barely a Muslim across the world that has not lost a member of their family to this scourge of our people.’

Abrahem nodded, keeping his head down and chewing on a slice of meat as he recovered himself.

‘I shall not stop,’ he said, ‘until I have changed the face of America. This will be my legacy.’

Tariq’s eyes widened as he looked at the young man before him, his face cloaked in shadows and his eyes dark with a vengeance that burned brightly and yet consumed the life force within him. The brightest stars, Tariq recalled, always burned the fiercest before dying young.

‘Your life is worth more than this,’ Tariq said carefully. ‘Be not wasteful with it.’

Abrahem’s dark eyes locked onto Tariq’s with a fearsome gaze.

‘Do not worry yourself, Tariq. Every last ounce of my being will be used to its full potential and America will suffer the agony of its loss for a thousand years. They will pay for what they have…’

Abrahem fell silent as his eyes rose to the sky somewhere above them outside. The wind rumbled and he could just make out the whisper of the waves rolling onto the nearby beach, but something else caught his attention. Something unnatural, rhythmic, man made.

Abrahem dropped his food and grabbed Tariq.

‘We must leave, now!’

‘Why?’ the old man asked, confused.

‘The Americans. They are already here!’

‘Lone Warrior, Ranger One, in — bound Bullseye, ETA two minutes.’

Ethan heard the pilot of the Sikorsky SH–60 Seahawk call his position in the darkness, the horizon outside invisible and the cockpit aglow with green digital instruments, and then the co — pilot looked over his shoulder and give a brief thumbs — up to the occupants in the rear.

Ethan sat alongside Lopez in a jump seat, and around them sat an eight man team of US Navy SEALS, part of the Navy’s Special Warfare Insertion division. Both he and Lopez has been flown out of Basra as part of a Carrier On — board Delivery flight to the USS Harry S. Truman, which had replaced the damaged USS Carl Vinson.

The elite troops surrounding Ethan were heavily armed and already briefed to expect resistance, and despite their training and skill listened patiently to Ethan as he spoke to them through his microphone.

‘The target is Abrahem Nassir and he must be captured alive. We have evidence that he left Iraq and travelled on a merchant vessel down the coast of Somalia, and the carrier group’s radar data suggests he made landfall here within the last hour. His assistance is essential to us if we are to prevent the attack that we believe he has planned. The capture of Nassir or any of his lieutenants may prevent another Pearl Harbor or nine — eleven.’

Ethan nodded once to clarify that he was done and the team leader gave him a thumbs up and moved alongside the Seahawk‘s port side door, ready to lead his team out on rappel lines already coiled in preparation on the deck. He felt the Seahawk dip as it began to descend toward Somalia’s rugged coastline, plunging downward and pulling Ethan up into his straps with negative G — force as the helicopter plummeted from the sky.

Suddenly Ethan’s head was pulled down and his butt slammed against the seat as the Seahawk pulled up at the last moment, its rotors hammering the sky outside as the side doors were hauled open and he saw the SEALS hurl out their rappel lines and without hesitation they jumped in a rapid but orderly queue out of the helicopter and into the faint light of dawn outside.

Ethan held his position, knowing better than to get in their way as the soldiers deployed. A rush of sea air hit him, cold and brisk and vibrant, and was followed by a waft of jet fuel and then the crackle of small arms fire as the SEALs hit the beach and encountered the enemy.

‘Let’s go!’ he shouted.

Lopez moved instantly as she clipped herself to the port rappel line and launched herself out into the vigorous downwash of the helicopter’s rotors. Ethan followed on the starboard line and they plunged downward together, Lopez crashing into the surf at the edge of a broad beach that was just visible in the faint light.

Ethan crashed down alongside her and they both dashed up the beach as staccato bursts of gunfire raked the sand around them, returning fire from the SEAL’s M–16 rifles clattering up into a tightly bunched gathering of low buildings perched on the edge of the beach.

‘There’s too many of them!’ Lopez yelled above the gunfire.

Ethan could see multiple flickering fires amid the buildings and among them at least twenty rifles firing back at the SEALs storming up the beach. To his right two of the SEALS switched their firing mechanisms to the M–16’s underslung grenade launchers. Two grenades popped in graceful arcs over the rifle fire of their comrades and thumped down amid the enemy.

Ethan shielded his ears as the grenades detonated with bright flashes of light, clouds of lethal shrapnel scything through the armed militants defending the buildings as screams competed with the gunfire. The SEALs immediately began charging into the hail of uncoordinated fire, advancing by sections with each man covering his buddy and presenting a continuous and withering field of fire to their enemy.

The Seahawk had pulled back from its vulnerable hovering position, climbing rapidly as it turned away and moved to cut off any escape route to the north.

‘Come on!’ Ethan snapped.

He jumped up and began running south down the beach, keen to cut off anybody who might make a dash from the cover of the village. The damp sand slowed his sprint as though he were in a childhood dream and fleeing from some unthinkable monster from the depths of his imagination. He struggled up the bluff, Lopez alongside him as they crashed through dense fields of long grass clogging the bluff.

‘Enemy.’

Lopez’s harsh whisper slowed Ethan and he crouched down, his chest heaving for air as he heard the clatter of machine gun fire nearby. Above it, faint but audible, he could hear the sound of running feet beating a hasty retreat toward their position. Ethan looked at Lopez and saw that she already had her pistol gripped firmly in both hands.

Ethan checked his own weapon and then he leaped out into plain view and aimed into the dim light to see a crowd of women and children rushing toward him, panic in their eyes as they staggered to a halt and threw their arms in the air with a crescendo of cries and pleas for mercy. All were dressed in long, black burqas, only their eyes visible as they held their arms aloft and shielded their children with their bodies.

Ethan lowered his pistol as Lopez moved out of cover alongside him, lowering her own weapon as she surveyed the terrified villagers.

‘Abrahem Nassir,’ Ethan snapped, keen to entrap the villagers while they were still in fear for their lives and perhaps figure out where their target had gone. ‘Abrahem Nassir?!’

One of the women turned and pointed over Ethan’s left shoulder, toward the south, and Ethan instinctively glanced in that direction.

‘Ethan!’

Lopez’s startled voice alerted him, but it was too late. Ethan turned back in time to feel something club him across the side of his head and the gloomy beach reeled as he was hurled to the ground. He saw Lopez being overpowered, realized with the last of his consciousness that many of the women concealed in the burqas were in fact men, and then everything went black.