Chapter 1

         Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean: 3:35 a.m. February 06th 2007

         Black.  The sound of roaring engines was almost as overwhelming as the utter darkness.  But then again, in the dark, was the only real place of comfort.  The face of a darkly tanned man peered from behind a black mask only revealing his dark brown eyes.  Five and a half minutes out.  28 seconds.  I have to be quick.  Have to be merciless.  There’s too much at stake.  Today you must be Haj Najid.  The soft glow turned to a pale blue and the screen of the PDA showed the blueprints of a large airplane.  Red dots moved slowly through the hallways and some stayed stationary in small rooms.  Ten seconds.  Move.  Haj opened a small hatch that led into the corridor down the hall from the office where he would find his first target.  Hoisting himself up from the hatch, Haj quietly replaced the hatch.  A security guard would be walking his patrol right around the corner.  The sound of feet brushing the tope carpet were becoming louder.  Waiting until the sound began to become more soft, Haj peered around the corner.  A thin man walked lazily down the short hallway.  Haj moved from around the corner careful of the sound his feet might make on the carpet.  Stealth was easy on such a soft surface.  Closing the final gap between them, Haj clamped his hand down on the man’s mouth with his left hand and struck the security guard in the back of the neck.  The man collapsed into his arms.  After hiding the body back near the hatch to the cargo hold, Haj rechecked his PDA.  Only one more guard stood between him and his target.

         “President John Brady will be participating in a conference in Rome, tomorrow afternoon to spearhead the United Coalition of Anti-Terrorism campaign, where he will meet with several nations’ ambassadors and leaders to discuss...”
         “Mr. President.”
         A wide shouldered man in a black tuxedo muted the television, “Yes, Greg, come in.”
         “Your son is on the phone, sir.  Line one,” The head of security stepped back out of the room and closed the door behind him.  Brady lifted the receiver of the phone by the couch, “Jacob?”
         “Dad, I’m sorry to call you so late, but Anna is having one of her fits again.  I just don’t know what to do, she’s starting to scare me, the way she’s talking.  I’m afraid she’s going to do something to hurt herself.”
         “Jacob slow down, is Anna off her prescription again?”  The president stood and began pacing in front of the television. 
         “I told her she needed to be taking...”
         
         Haj Najid dropped the body of the head of security in the closet behind the office where the president was having a conversation with his son.  Pulling a PDA out from his jacket he scanned the screen.  All red dots were where they were supposed to be.  Opening a new program, he opened the tab labeled communication.  A message appeared on the screen, “Confirm Cut Communications.”  Haj confirmed and replaced the PDA in his pocket.  Back in the hallway, he scanned left and right and moved towards the door of the president’s office.  Have to be quick now, two minutes, twenty seconds. 
         He could hear the president in his office, “...you there?  Jacob?”  The masked man’s brown eyes closed momentarily, head bowed.  They opened cold, determined.  Haj turned the handle to the door, opened it quickly and smoothly swinging it shut behind him.  President John Brady stood with his back to him, still holding the phone in his hand.  He turned to face him.  Anger and confusion flashed across his face.  Move. Now.  Najid leaped in and slammed his knee into the stomach of the president.  The man’s shock made him easy to spin.  Haj locked his arm around his throat.  Brady flailed punching at his captor.  The grip tightened.  “Don’t fight it.  It will be over soon.”  The president flailed for only a few moments more.  “I promise, it will be over soon.”  Haj lowered the president’s body to the floor, pulled a syringe from his waste pack.  He looked at his watch, one minute, forty seven seconds.  He finished injecting the serum into the presidents arm.  Stood and walked to the armoire by the window.  Opening the door, he separated the dress shirts to each side of the armoire.  From his hip pack, he pulled two large rectangles of C-4 and stuck them to the back of the wall, placing a detonator and setting the backup timer for two minutes, thirty seconds.  Closing the doors of the armoire, he pulled his PDA out.  He looked at the red dots on the screen.  All were stationary except one, who was moving towards the bathroom.  He would walk right past the presidents office.  Haj moved quickly to the president grabbing his hands and pulling him near to the door.  He looked at the screen again, he was rounding the corner.  He could hear his footsteps.  Wait, wait.  A shadow passed under the door.  Haj flung the door open crashing it into the unsuspecting security officer.  The man crashed into the wall, trying to regain his feet.  Haj grabbed the man’s arm twisting him to face the wall.  The guard moaned loudly at the pain in his shoulder as Haj grabbed him by the chin and top of the head, twisted mercilessly.  A loud series of cracks echoed through hall and the man’s body dropped limp.  He looked at his watch, one minute, twenty five seconds.  Haj ran back in the office and hefted the president’s body on his back.  He moved into the hallway and began his descent back to the cargo department. 
         Back in the cargo hold, Haj strapped a large pack to his back.  He also secured the unconscious body of John Brady to his front.  He looked at his watch, ten seconds.  Haj pulled his PDA and executed the command to open the cargo doors.  The sound of the roaring engines and turbulent wind exploded in the cargo hold.  The door opened, Haj staggered forward, struggling to stay standing.  Wind ripped at his clothing as he and the president leapt out the back of Airforce One.  The sound of the engines began fading, the sound of rushing wind taking its place.
         Free falling through the air, Haj held a small cylinder, flicked a safety switch up to reveal a small red button.  He watched the large plane growing smaller in the distance.  It has begun.  A split second later, the side of the plane where the president’s office had been exploded opening a giant hole in the side of Airforce One.  The concussion and sound of the blast hit Haj a moment later, rolling him in the air, spinning his body and the president.  The turbulence passed so there was only the rushing air past his face, Haj checked his altitude.  1500 ft.  He scanned the deep blue ocean beneath him, if he had calculated right, there would be his ride home somewhere below him.  After a moment of looking he saw it.  A blinking red light in the distance.  A red light on a small motorized boat.  The wave from the crashing plane would not capsize the raft.  He knew because as a Navy Seal, he had experienced larger waves than even the President’s own crashing plane could cause.  I will survive these waves.  Allah help me survive these waves.  550 ft.  A thunderous explosion erupted about a mile off.  Haj opened his chute and slowly descended towards the red light.





         Madrid, Spain.  February 7th
         
         Falling.  “...mr. President...can...hear me.”  Lights are so bright.  Why is my head pounding?  “Where am...I?”  Explosion.  Jacob. 
         “ What the hell is going on?  Who are you?”  A dark haired man sat in front of John Brady, tossing the sulphur stick away.  They were in some kind of warehouse.  The terrorist’s gear was laying organized on a table a few feet away.  John blinked at the light, adjusting his eyes.  Actually the room was fairly dark.  Dim red light filtered in through slated windows glinting off dust that floated through the large mostly empty room.  It’s dawn.  He twisted his head trying to relieve the pain in the back of his head and neck.  The man rose staring at him.
         “What do you want?”  The man paused in front of him.  “Can you understand me?  Do you speak English?”  The man turned and began walking towards the table.
         “Yes.  My name is Haj Najid, as of this morning, you are dead Mr. President.”  The man’s middle eastern accent was not hard to recognize.  Not after having spent the last two and a half years of his presidency working with Iraq, and Afghanistan to find some alternative to mass murder and suicide bombings.  Their history and cultures had proved far too complex thus far to produce any profitable or measurable increase in peace.  Najid pulled off his shirt which was soaked.  Brady realized for the first time that he also was soaked from head to foot.  Stepping into the light hanging over the table with the gear on it, showed Najid’s back.  Large scars slashed across the top of his back and sides. 
         “What is it you want with me?  My country will not negotiate with terrorists.”
         “I would not be so sure of that, but even if it is true, this is only the beginning.”  Najid pulled a large bag out from under the table, pulled the drawstring open.  The cold made Brady shiver, but he fought it back.  I can’t show him weakness.  I am the President of the United States.
         “Why didn’t you kill me?”  Najid took a dark blue long sleeve shirt from the bag, pulled it over his head, his lean body showed through the snug fitting shirt.
         “You know how this works.  You’re worth more alive than dead.  Dead you’re a martyr.  Alive you are weak.  Your country is vulnerable.  I will not tell you more than you should know.  It is better for you if you do not know.  Otherwise, there will be only one way out of this for you.  If I tell you everything I have planned than that makes you a liability, and makes me a lousy terrorist.  For your own good and the good of your country you should focus on one thing.  Do what I tell you and I give you my word, things will not go so badly for you.”  Najid continued to pull more dry clothes from the bag and hang his wet clothes over the empty end of the metal table.  “I have another stop before we can move on.  You will stay here.  You have been injected with a tracking device.  I will know if you move more than a foot from where you sit now.  If you move, I will activate the pack beneath your chair which is stuffed with enough C-4 to bring down this warehouse.  If things go well today, I will be back with another friend and we can move on.  If the operation goes poorly...well someone will find you eventually, and you will have other problems to face.  Have I made myself clear enough for you?”  Najid finished lacing his boots and stared the president in the eyes.  His eyes were cold, empty.
         “Yes, I understand I must stay.  I don’t understand what this is about.”
         “You don’t need to understand.  All you must do is not move.  If you move, you die.  That is all you need to understand for now.”  Najid opened the top of a small aluminum briefcase on the table.  He lifted a MK23 pistol from the case and a silencer and placed them in a small back pack.  Five clips followed the pistol, two flash grenades and three frag grenades.  A couple of electronic devices Brady did not recognize and a PDA were all also placed in the pack.  He lifted the pack to his shoulder and turned to face him again.  He stood for a moment, then turned and began walking for the steel door at the end of the warehouse.
         “Najid.”  He paused without turning.
         “Why do you kill?”
         “To save the lives of many others.”  He opened the door and closed it behind him.  A deadbolt snapped in place.  Brady leaned over and looked below his chair.  A large canvas bag was placed directly beneath his chair.  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, a slight reprieve from the pounding aching in his head.


         Wiping sweat from his head, he continued walking down the long narrow corridor.  His footsteps echoed through the natural stone cave that had become their base of operations.  One could understand why the Americans were having such a hard time with locating their cells in such a mountainous area, riddled with caves.  These caves must have been built by Allah to shelter his people.  At least, that’s what was told to all of his people.  The caves at least were much more bearable than the sweltering heat of the desert.  Extreme heat was something one never got completely used to.
         “Najid, Assim is ready for you.”
         “Allah protect you.”  Najid walked past the security guard into a well lit and ornately furnished room.  Art and colored sheets hung from the wall and several golden lamps lit the room.  A large skin of a tiger lay on the ground near Assim’s desk where he sat staring thick dark brown envelope.  The room was actually not overly fancy, but compared to the rest of the men’s dwellings, Assim lived in luxary.  Two large officers stood inside the door.  Abdi and Halif.  They were Assim’s personal guards. 
         “Come, Najid, please sit.”  Assim looked up meeting his gaze.  Najid bowed, then walked towards the chair to sit.  The leather chair was another luxury Najid had not had in years.  Najid met Assim’s stare, silent for several moments.
         “I have been watching you for some time, Najid.”  Najid’s heart skipped for a moment.
         “And have I displeased you?”
         “No, quite the opposite.  I have been impressed by the success of your missions.  You have risen as a leader amongst your men.  I have heard tales of your ability to walk into nearly impossible situations and arise victorious.  I hardly believed the rumors, but I have seen you train, and I am beginning to believe that the rumors may not be false.  You have talent Najid.”
         “Thank you, Assim.  Your approval means more than you can imagine.”
         “I believe that Allah has gifted you to be the sword that will cut our enemies throat.  At times Allah lifts a certain man up to be his horse upon which he will lead his people to victory.  I believe that man may be you, Najid.”
         “I am at a loss for words, I have trained my whole life to be Allah’s tool to destroy the enemy.  I will do whatever Allah desires.”
         “Many men train their whole lives only to be shot their first day in battle, or to flee where they should stay and fight.  Some men, whom Allah deems less valuable alive will give their lives as a sacrifice to see his enemies destroyed.  And some men will give their whole lives to lead in the background, never receiving honor for what they have done.  You, Najid are Allah’s tool whom he desires to deal a mighty blow to the enemy.  And if you are strong.  If you are fearless to the end.  And if Allah indeed is protecting you, you may one day return to your people to be honored as you will deserve.  Are you ready to perform your duty to Allah?”
         Najid stood, taking a deep breath and lifting his head high.  “Allah is my life, to him I would fight through the deepest lines of my enemy to protect.  To him I would gladly lay down my life.  For him, I will happily destroy any enemy.”
         “You are faithful to Allah, for that alone, you will be honored.  Sit Najid.  Let us talk now of how you may prove to Allah your allegiance.” 
         Sitting, Najid wiped his hands on his pants, the sweat this time from the pounding of his heart rather than the heat.  Assim smiled at him and pushed over the documents in the folder that was sitting before him.  An actual personal assignment.  This had never happened before.  This meant that he was finally getting where he wanted.  Finally gaining influence and trust.
         “The folder is not to be opened until you are safely in your own room.  You will find all the information for your targets to be accurate and safe.”  Targets.  I have more than one target.  Why was I chosen?  “A jeep will take you to the helipad tonight at midnight.  By 6:00 am tomorrow morning you will arrive at your prep zone.  Pack up anything you might need as soon as you get back to your room.  I cannot stress how vital this mission is.  You have been chosen for this mission because I believe you have in you what it will take to complete this mission.  Should you fail, your assignment will immediately pass to Khalil.”  And by fail, you mean die.  Why was Feroz not chosen in the first place?  He has far more precedence for a mission like this.  Perhaps he also is on a mission.  “Do you understand Najid?”
         “Yes.  I will not fail.  Thank you.”
         “You are dismissed.”  Najid turned to walk out the door. 
         “Najid.”  He paused, turning to face Assim.
         “Allah protect you, my friend.”
         Najid bowed low, turned and walked out the door holding the sealed document containing information that would change the course of the rest of his life.  My time finally has come.  I will not disappoint you Allah.

         Turbulence buffeted the plane.  Najid awoke with a start.  Although the cargo planes provided nearly invisible travel, one did pay for it with the lack of accommodations.  Najid shifted, twisting his back.  Leaning against his pack had not proved to be the most comfortable of ideas.  Not that the wooden crates around him would have offered any better seating.  8:27 a.m.  We should land in less than an hour.  The three hour flight had offered little sleep, but this was no vacation.  This was his first real mission.  His second objective.  Haj pulled a brown envelope out of the bag sitting next to him.  He pulled out a stack of photographs.  He paused at the first.  John Brady looked younger, less stressed.  He was speaking at some large public square, obviously passionate about whatever the speech concerned.  He slid the picture under the rest.  The next picure was a younger man.  He was forty two to be exact.  His gown and large hat seemed to fit him the way he stood, pretending to be so holy.  Forty two was young for a pope.  Only one year into his papacy, this pope had become very political.  It seemed he actually desired to make a difference with his position.  That would end today.