True Faith and Allegiance

29

Two members of Abu Musa al-Matari’s Fairfax cell rolled into the city of Fayetteville, North Carolina, just after eight p.m. Even though cell leader David Hembrick wasn’t with them, the men followed instructions he had given them, and they proceeded directly to coordinates programmed into their vehicle’s GPS.

Namir drove while Karim sat in the front passenger seat, his Uzi down between his knees in a gym bag.

They obeyed the traffic laws to stay out of any trouble, but as long as they kept their weapons hidden they knew they had little to worry about. Karim was Egyptian by birth, but he’d become a U.S. citizen at the age of eighteen. Now, at twenty-five, he was a college graduate with a degree in international studies, and he worked part-time as a waiter in a restaurant just outside Landover, Maryland. He paid taxes and he kept his documentation in order, and there was no reason for anyone around here to be suspicious of him.

Namir was born in the United States to Lebanese parents, he was a citizen and a high school graduate, and, like Karim, he’d been radicalized over the past few years by watching ISIS propaganda and slowly moving from mosque to mosque around the D.C. area, seeking out the most conservative teachings. They’d both found the same mullah in Baltimore, a man who’d directed them to an online ISIS recruiter promising them the peace and eternal bliss they would never find living in the belly of sin that was America.

They’d never met before the Language School in El Salvador, a testament to the mullah’s ability to compartmentalize his recruits in case one was ever rolled up by the FBI.

But now they were here, on their first mission. The other three had remained up in Fairfax County; the day before fellow cell members Ghazi and Husam had killed the DIA woman and were now back at the safe house, but Karim and Namir were told by David Hembrick that he had confidence in them, and the two of them could handle the Fayetteville assignment as a team.

The GPS took them down a middle-class residential street called Lemont Drive, lined with small 1960s-era homes set back on flat full-acre properties. There seemed to be at least one pickup truck in every driveway or carport, and U.S. flags adorned flagpoles in many of the front yards.

Namir was driving, and he also had his phone live-broadcasting video from his front breast pocket. He knew Mohammed would be watching the feed right now, so he was extra careful to do everything correctly.

“Very slowly,” said Karim as he scanned for the address he was looking for.

“Not too slowly,” replied Namir, as he kept the speedometer around ten miles per hour. “We don’t want to draw attention.”

“Yes, well, turning around if we miss it will draw attention, too.”

“Yes, yes,” said Namir, but he did not slow down.

The house was on the left, halfway up the street, and they almost did miss it, but they did not slow when they passed. A white Ford F-150 sat parked in the drive just outside the carport, and a bearded man in a dirty gray T-shirt and jeans climbed out of the driver’s side. In one hand he carried a bag of fast food and an extra-large soda, and in the other was a mobile phone; he was talking on the phone.

“Is that him?”

“I don’t know. He does not have the beard in the photograph.”

“It’s him. American commandos wear beards. They think they blend in when fighting in the caliphate.”

By now they had passed the yard, as well as the next property. “What are you doing?” Karim asked.

“I am turning around. You should shoot him before he gets in the house.”

Karim pulled the Uzi out of the bag.

“No. The AK. Use the AK.” Namir pulled into a driveway to turn back around, speeding up his movements.

“Why not the Uzi?”

“He is big. We are too far away. Use the AK.”

Karim put the Uzi down between his legs, grabbed the black AK-103 from between the seats and hefted it. He switched the selector from semiautomatic to fully automatic, he rolled down his window halfway, and rested the polymer hand guard of the weapon below the barrel on the glass of the partially opened window.

Karim said, “Hurry, now. Don’t let him get inside.”

“Yes, yes!”

Mike Wayne was dog-ass tired after a thirty-six-hour land-nav training evolution, and the smell of his own BO almost made him want to take a shower before he ate his chicken sandwich and fries.

Almost. He hadn’t eaten anything since the power bar he’d downed around noon, so he’d shovel some shitty fast food into his mouth as soon as he got inside to his kitchen table.

He hung up from his call with his sister and pocketed his cell phone, and walked to the carport door of his modest home. He fumbled with his dinner and the keys for a second, then put the key in the lock. Just as he turned the knob, out of the corner of his eye he saw a gray SUV pull up in front of his driveway and stop.

But before he even turned to check it out, he heard an unmistakable sound, one he’d last heard two weeks earlier on the Syrian — Turkish border.

An AK firing a full-auto burst.

The door in front of him splintered right in front of his knees, and he felt a blow to his right hip that staggered him but did not knock him down. He wore a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol at the four-o’clock position under his T-shirt, but now he was only thinking about cover.

He dropped the bag of fast food and his drink, got the door open, fell inside, and crawled forward on his elbows.

He knew he’d taken a round right in the hip joint, he was bleeding like hell, and he could not stand up. With a blood-covered right hand he pulled his .45, rolled onto his back, and aimed at the closed door.

And with a blood-covered left hand he pulled his mobile phone out of the pocket of his jeans and called 911.

And then he looked at the floor around him. Wayne was a medic in Delta Force, and he knew what all this blood meant. There was four times the amount of blood he’d expected to see from a GSW to the hip. He felt sure the AK round had slammed into his hip and either tumbled around inside him or broken into pieces. His femoral artery had been clipped and ruptured, and from the location of the hole Wayne knew it was too high on his body to tourniquet.

Too much blood lost too fast.

An ambulance could roll up his driveway right now with a team of vascular surgeons in the back, and he would probably still bleed out before they could save him.

Mike Wayne realized he was a dead man.

After a few seconds to come to terms with his fate, he looked back down the sights of his pistol, and he willed his door to open. More than anything in the world he wanted to shoot the guy who’d just killed him.

Just then, his phone was answered, “Nine-one-one, do you need police, fire, or ambulance?”

Mike kept his voice strong. “Gray GMC Terrain. Two occupants.”

“I’m sorry?”

The phone dropped from Mike’s hand. The pistol stayed up for a few seconds more, but his hand would lower and then come to rest at his side in a pool of blood before he was able to get one last target in his sights.

In the training at the Language School in El Salvador, the cell members had practiced firing their weapons while seated inside cars. The cars they used had been old junkers lying around the property, and none of them had had any window glass. Karim had misjudged the recoil of his Kalashnikov, because he’d propped it on the glass of the partially opened window to shoot, but as soon as he opened fire, the glass shattered, and the rifle dropped off target. He’d seen the last few rounds hit the street just twenty feet in front of him.

But by the time he lifted the rifle back up to his shoulder and pointed toward the carport door across the street, he just saw the boots of his target as he crawled through the door.

Karim shouted from the passenger seat. “Damn it! He got away!”

Namir said, “Get out and finish him! He is wounded!”

Karim did not move. “You do it!”

Musa al-Matari’s voice came over the speakerphone now. “Karim! Brother! You are a brave lion! I saw you shoot him! He’s in there bleeding to death. Go! Finish it. But hurry! And take the phone, so everyone in the caliphate can see your bravery.”

Karim took the phone from Namir, opened the car door, stepped out onto Lemont Drive, then raced up the driveway. As he ran he held the weapon at his hip and began sweeping it left and right, ready to engage anyone else out here who might have a weapon.

As he passed the F-150 on his left he saw a huge splatter of blood on the carport and a shining smear on the broken glass of the outer door. He swiveled around in front of the door, brought the rifle to his shoulder, and opened the outer door. He got ready to open the wooden door, but an idea occurred to him. He took two steps back and opened fire, emptying his entire magazine.

This done, he stepped to the side of the door, reloaded, then entered the small house.

The bearded man lay on the floor, ten feet from the door. A pool of blood around him. Bullet holes in his T-shirt. He was clearly dead. A pistol lay inches from his right hand. A cell phone lay next to his left hand.

Karim realized the man had been waiting for him to come through the door so he could shoot him.

He held up the phone’s camera on the scene while he muttered “Allahu Akbar” a half-dozen times.

Then he spun out of the doorway and sprinted back to the SUV.

Namir met him in the driveway, and Karim climbed back inside. With screeching tires the SUV sped down Lemont Drive, right past a seventy-five-year-old man wearing a U.S. Army Special Forces baseball cap on his head. He’d come outside once he’d heard what sounded to him like an AK-47 firing what had to have been two fifteen-round bursts, a sound he hadn’t heard in person since the jungles of Vietnam.

He walked down his driveway just as a vehicle sped in his direction. He didn’t recognize the SUV, so he noted the make and model, as had the victim, Mike Wayne. But the old Green Beret standing in his driveway also noticed that the GMC had Maryland tags.

He turned around to head back inside for his phone.

Namir and Karim were miles from the scene within minutes of the shooting. They headed north on I-95, still careful to stay within the posted speed limits, both men fighting the amped-up effects of the adrenaline in their bodies.

They felt euphoric about their operation, and even more so because Mohammed had watched it all live. He’d signed off so they could concentrate on their escape, but he’d praised the men over and over for their great success.

As they drove north they talked about returning to the safe house and telling David Hembrick about their killing of the infidel, and self-consciously they discussed how the video would look when the Islamic State PR people put it to music and effects and broadcast it out all over social media.

They thought they were home free, because other than the old man they’d passed near the shooting, they’d seen no one who could have possibly known what they had done, and they doubted he’d even noticed at all.

But they made it only as far as exit 61, which is to say, they didn’t make it far at all.

Four North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers had been parked in two vehicles at the Lucky Seven Truck Stop when a call came out saying a gray GMC Terrain had been involved in a shooting on Lemont Drive. One of the witnesses reported that the vehicle had Maryland plates, and that gave local law enforcement a hint that the perpetrators might show up somewhere northbound out of the city.

And I-95 was local law enforcement’s immediate choice, as it served as the spine that went up and down the eastern seaboard.

The troopers raced their two Dodge Chargers out of the truck stop, down the on-ramp, and then they took up positions in the median facing northbound.

Four minutes and twenty seconds later a gray GMC Terrain drove by with two men inside.

The Dodge Chargers were V8s and they probably would have had no problem catching up to the 185-horsepower, four-cylinder rental SUV while in reverse, but they stayed back for a moment. Only when the troopers in the lead vehicle saw that the car they were tailing did, indeed, have Maryland plates did they turn on their lights and sirens.

The Terrain did not stop, which was just fine with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers. By now dispatch had said there was a soldier from Fort Bragg dead in his own home back on Lemont Drive. These troopers had no problems at all with this felony stop turning a little rough.

Ten minutes later they had a helicopter overhead, six more vehicles in pursuit, and a roadblock across I-95.

The GMC saw the roadblock, slowed quickly, and turned to shoot off into the grassy median to try its luck going back southbound, but a cluster of silver-and-black highway patrol vehicles instantly and professionally boxed it in.

The GMC stopped horizontal to the highway, troopers poured out of their cars and SUVs, and shotguns, AR-15s, and pistols were pointed at the vehicle’s two occupants from multiple directions.

Inside the Terrain, Namir used his shaking hands to initiate a Silent Phone call with their handler. When he answered, Namir screamed into the phone. “We are surrounded by police. By God’s will, we killed the infidel, but there are many armed men around us now. What do we do?”

The man they knew as Mohammed had Namir pan the phone around in various directions, confirming they were, in fact, completely surrounded by law enforcement.

Over the phone’s speaker the two young men heard Mohammed’s calm voice. “You have done well, my brothers. Now you must surrender without incident. Don’t worry. I will dispatch forces to liberate you. I’ll send a team down today.”

“Yes, Commander Mohammed. Thank you, sir.”

“But leave your phone on, and place it on the dashboard so I can film your arrest.”

A minute later the AK and the Uzi came flying out the side windows of the GMC Terrain, then Karim raised his hands out of the passenger side, and Namir did the same out of the driver’s side. By now there were twenty-two State Highway Patrol vehicles on the scene, and the helicopter continued circling overhead. More than forty men and women kept weapons trained on the two suspects.

Following the orders of law enforcement as broadcast through the PA of one of the trooper’s vehicles, Namir opened his car door slowly, reached out with his hands in the sky, and walked backward to a point in the middle of the highway. There he was told to lower to his knees and lie facedown, with his ankles crossed and arms away from his body.

With Karim still reaching out the window with his empty hands, two officers moved forward to cuff Namir in the street. They knelt down, one put a knee in his back—

And then the entire scene erupted in a flash of light.

The two North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers flew through the air in the explosion.

In the GMC Terrain, Karim crouched down behind the dash, first thinking someone had opened fire. But as debris rained down on his car and smashed his windshield, he looked out over the dash and through the spiderwebbed glass. Namir had been blown to bits, along with the two troopers. More members of law enforcement lay on the ground, clearly injured.

Karim’s ears rang; Namir had not activated his suicide vest, so Karim had no idea what had happened.

And he never would.

His own suicide vest detonated ten seconds after Namir’s, and the Terrain exploded in a ball of fire, firing projectiles out in all directions and injuring more of the troopers all around.

Above the highway, the helicopter had to bank to avoid the plume of smoke and debris that shot straight into the sky.