He felt the chill of the coming evening. He had not noticed it the previous night because then the bodies of his brothers had been pressed close to him.
The Leader was a remote figure, pacing in the sand and staring back often into the last of the light from the sun's setting. Often, he peered in the gloom at the watch on his wrist, then looked up to scan the far horizon where a quarter of the sun's circle, blood red, teetered on the desert's limit. Ibrahim did not dare to interrupt him.
Instead he thought of his home and his family.
Ibrahim Hussein's father sold electrical goods from a business one street behind the Corniche in the town of Jizan. His father, and Ibrahim recognized it, was dominated by melancholy. His wife, Ibrahim's mother, had died four years before from peritonitis; she should not have done — but the incompetence of the medical staff at the clinic, and their panic in crisis, had killed her. His father was a prosperous man in his community and drove the latest model of Mercedes saloon, but inescapable depression ruled his life. Ibrahim, the medical student at university, had identified his father's symptoms as readily as he knew of the incompetence at the clinic when his mother had died unnecessarily. Like a lost man, with only the ignored company of his daughters, his father padded the corridors and living room of the family home, forswore his fellow traders and spoke only of the profit and loss from the business in the street behind the Corniche. Before Ibrahim's mother's passing, his father had mourned two Sons.
Aged only three at the time, Ibrahim could not now recall the news coming to the family home — brought by an imam — of his eldest brother's death in the Jalalabad region of Afghanistan. Now he knew that he had been caught without cover on a track that traversed a cliff slope. Often, the image came to his mind. His eldest brother, escorting a supply train of mules, on a bare path with a cliff face above and below him, had been spotted by the pilot of a Soviet gunship helicopter: cannon fire and rockets had killed him, his fellow jihadists and their beasts.
He could remember well enough the death of his middle brother — the news had been brought to his father by the same imam. It had been on a sweltering day two months after the invasion of Afghanistan by the Americans, when every air-conditioner in the family home had been turned to full power, that the imam had reported the loss of Ibrahim's middle brother, killed near Kandahar with others of the 055 Brigade by the carpet-bombing of the giant B52 aircraft. His middle brother had followed Ibrahim's eldest brother into the ranks of the foreign fighters who had struggled to resist the invasion of Afghanistan, first by Russians and then by Americans. His middle brother had taken cover in a concrete-roofed bunker, which the explosive had collapsed; he might have been killed outright, or left trapped to suffocate slowly in the dust-filled darkness. It was not known.
A complex web of emotions had brought Ibrahim Hussein to this illicit border crossing, used by fighters and smugglers, where a track crossed from the Kingdom into Iraqi territory. At their heart was his feeling for his father, and the wish to give his parent cause for pride that would lighten his acute depression. And it was for revenge, to strike back at evil forces, and to show the world the determination of a young man's Faith…His mother had died because the Kingdom's rulers starved Asir Province of resources, and those corrupt rulers cohabited with the kaffirs, the unbelievers. His eldest brother had died in defence of a Muslim land raped and invaded by unbelievers. His middle brother had died at the hands of the worst of the unbelievers. He believed his own death, his own martyrdom, would liberate his father from melancholy.
He could barely make out the body shape of his leader against the darkening horizon. Then, far away and near to where the sun had been, he saw two pairs of pinprick lights. Now, the Leader came, shadowy as a wraith, towards him, and stood at his side. The hand rested on Ibrahim's shoulder, and he felt the reassurance of its power squeezing his collarbone and the ligaments there.
The voice was soft, the words spoken almost with gentleness: 'I told you, you were not rejected but were chosen.'
He nodded, unable to speak.
'Chosen for a mission of exceptional value, for which you are honoured and respected.'
'I hope to fulfil the trust placed in me.' Pleasure coursed through him.
'It is a mission that requires from you a degree of unique dedication.'
'You have the promise of my best…'
The Scorpion ground his fingers harder on to the boy's bone. It was difficult for him, in his exhaustion, to playact either kindness or concern for a medical student who had declared himself in love with death. But it was important to hold his belief.
'It is a mission that demands of you total obedience to the instructions with which you will be provided. Are you capable of obedience?'
'I believe so.'
'Please, listen carefully to everything I tell you.'
'I will do so, my leader.'
Under the balaclava, his mouth froze out a brief smile. He heard the boy's adoration and admiration for him, but did not seek it. The boy sought praise. He could give it if necessary; however false.
'Without dedication and obedience, the mission for which you are chosen will fail. If it fails, that is a great victory for our enemies.'
'I have dedication and I have obedience. I seek the chance to demonstrate them.'
Another boy with bright eyes, his Faith gleaming…What made him different from those in the two pickups speeding across the darkened Iraqi sands towards distribution points was the ability to walk well. His judgement had been made after he had seen them stride towards him: some had been awkward or heavy in their step; some had looked to the side and flinched when they came close to him; some had been hesitant to the point of almost tripping. This boy had a good step, had not hurried, had not looked around him, had walked as he would have on a pavement at home. That had dictated the choice made by Muhammad Ajaq — the name lived only in the recesses of his mind. The name that existed in the intelligence files of his enemy, and on the lips of those with whom he fought, was the Scorpion — and now, he grimaced, he was the Leader.
'Ibrahim, do you have military training?'
'None. My brothers did. My eldest brother was martyred fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. The other was martyred in the war against the American invaders of Afghanistan. I seek to match their dedication, to be worthy…'
They all mouthed this shit. All the boys recruited by the gatekeepers in the mosques — of Riyadh and Jeddah, Damascus and Aleppo, Sana'a and Aden, Hamburg and Paris — spoke of the roots of their commitment. He was not a martyr, had no wish for suicide, and thought those who did were fools and deluded…But he needed them. They were the lifeblood of the war he fought. They took his opportunities of attack into defined areas of exactness that were otherwise unreachable. No shell, rocket or bullet fired from whatever distance had the same accuracy as a martyr bomb, or created matching devastation and fear. So he lived with the shit. He massaged the boy's shoulder and talked softly — as if the boy was his equal.
'What you need to know, we will teach you.'
'So that I may achieve success for my mission. Thank you.'
'Have you been prepared in the matter of resistance to interrogation?'
He felt the boy flinch. 'No.'
Of course, the gate-keeper would not have talked of capture, of torture, of the failure of battery-powered circuits. The possibility of failure would have weakened the boy's commitment. Sometimes a back-up electrical circuit was built into the car bomb, or the bomb in the belt, so that it could be remotely detonated from a distance if dedication died or a device would not ignite. Sometimes a sniper with a long-barrelled Makharov watched the advance of a bomber through a telescopic sight and would shoot to kill if will or circuit failed. A boy, this one or any of those now riding in the pickups towards the cities of Iraq, would know too much of recruitment and transport routes, safe-houses and the personnel who commanded their mission — he would talk if he was captured alive and tortured to make rivers of pain. But Ibrahim Hussein could not be followed with a telescopic sight when he travelled to his target.