Use of Force

CHAPTER 85

It was a beautiful morning, sunny and warm. Tursunov had risen early, performed his ablutions, recited his prayers, exercised, and showered.

As he had done in Santiago de Compostela and Paris, he wanted to pay a preattack visit to the site he would strike next.

Dressed in a pair of khaki trousers, a white shirt, and blue blazer, he looked every inch the upscale Western visitor to the Eternal City. Not a single person he passed had any notion of the hatred he harbored for Rome and everything it represented.

It was the heart of Christendom. It was the enemy not only of ISIS, but of all true believers of Islam worldwide. Its conquest was a key ISIS objective.

The Prophet Mohammed himself had prophesied that two great Roman cities would one day fall to Islam — Constantinople and Rome. Constantinople, now Istanbul, had been conquered by Muslims. Rome was next.

And after Rome, Israel would fall. And after Israel, the United States and the rest of its allies. Armageddon would descend and a final battle between good and evil, Muslim against non-Muslim, would take place. With the help of the Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, Islam would emerge victorious.

And here he was, walking the streets of the enemy, about to help make the Prophet’s revelation come true. The pain he was about to inflict on Rome would be felt around the world. It would demonstrate Islam’s superiority over Christianity and rally even more to their cause.

Allahu Akbar, the Tajik whispered to himself. Allahu Akbar.

• • •

As he walked, he kept his eyes peeled for a tabaccheria. It was still early, though, and many stores were not open yet.

Smoking the last of his French cigarettes, he savored the taste and tried to make it last. When he had smoked it down to the filter, he made sure there were no police within view and tossed the butt into the gutter.

Exhaling his last draw of smoke, he thought about everything he had put in place for tomorrow. It was his most ambitious operation ever.

Shaheed willing to martyr themselves for the cause were easy enough to come by. Intelligent, competent, battle-tested men were something else entirely.

To winnow that pool down to experience with a certain weapons system, and then to hone that experience into expertise, was an undertaking like nothing else he had ever attempted.

He had taken twelve men, divided them into two-man teams, and convinced the leadership of ISIS that, given the right mathematical information, they could hit their target, sight unseen.

The leadership had challenged him to prove it. On a training range in the Syrian desert, with stakes and colored pieces of surveyor’s tape to represent the target, he had done just that.

And he did it not just once, but over and over again. His mortar teams were that good.

The part the leadership loved most about using mortars was that there was no device to defend against them. Once they had been fired, there was no stopping the attack.

They had the added benefit of not needing a martyr to get right up to a target before engaging. At a distance from the target, there was less chance of being discovered and the attack being disrupted. Once the pieces were in place, it was impossible to stop.

The shells had been loaded with their chemicals, and the mortar teams dispatched with their equipment to their designated locations. As instructed, they had activated their new cell phones long enough to confirm they were in place.

Unlike at Santiago de Compostela and Paris, here he would not be observing the attack up close. He would watch it unfold via webcam from the safety of his hotel room.

Before that, though, he wanted to walk where so many infidels would die tomorrow. And while there, he had something very special to retrieve.