And if they were challenged too hard, Algiers and Tripoli were cutthroat killers.
Behind the three Middle Easterners, a semi-trailer sat in the rain, its doors still shut. Inside, all the equipment they’d be taking into the U.S. had been split into locked plastic cases weighing fifty pounds each. A dozen boxes for each cell, roughly six hundred pounds of weaponry per group.
The cab had been uncoupled from the trailer minutes earlier, hitched to an empty trailer waiting here, and then it left the abandoned airport, heading back to the west.
The white, nearly featureless An-32 rolled to a stop in front of the three men and their cargo, the stairs came down and splashed in a deep puddle. The copilot descended the stairs, then chocked his own wheels while the pilot shut the aircraft’s engines off.
The pilot and copilot walked up to the three men standing in the rain and they all shook hands. The pilot spoke in accented English; al-Matari assumed he was Bolivian. “It’s raining very hard, señores.”
This was Guyana during the rainy season, so al-Matari knew the rain should come as no surprise to anyone, certainly not a South American cargo pilot.
The runway was one thousand meters, which, as far as al-Matari was concerned, was more than long enough, because he’d been told the fully laden aircraft would need nine hundred meters for the takeoff roll.
But the white-haired pilot fixed his eyes on the semi-trailer. It was clear there was a problem. “What is the final weight of the cargo?”
“One thousand eight hundred fifty kilos.”
The man shook his head. “No way we can take off in this rain.”
Al-Matari all but lunged at the pilot now. “What are you talking about? Planes fly in the rain all the time.”
The man shook his head, pointed to the airstrip behind him. “That, my friend, is a gravel runway. Gravel! If there is a rejected takeoff, with the amount of weight we will be carrying, my brakes will be worthless. I won’t be able to stop before the end of the runway. There is simply not enough room.”
Al-Matari wasn’t having it. “Then I suggest you don’t reject the takeoff.”
The pilot rolled his eyes, but al-Matari stayed firm. “We are not waiting on the weather. We take off now, or you do not get paid.”
“Yes, well, I want more money.” He jerked a thumb to his copilot. “We both do. Five thousand more U.S. Each.”
Al-Matari had anticipated something like this. He thought about just killing the men when they landed in the USA, but that would compromise their mission.
He swallowed his anger and said, “I pay five thousand more. Total. You two can split it or fight over it. I don’t care. But we load up now, and we fly now. Do you understand?”
The captain looked at al-Matari angrily for a moment, then motioned for the men to begin loading the plane.
Al-Matari’s two men, the pilots, and al-Matari himself all worked together to place the sixty hard plastic containers inside the aircraft. The boxes were numbered on the top, one through five, so al-Matari wouldn’t have to open them to determine which container went to which cell.
The copilot secured the load while the three rain-soaked Middle Easterners grabbed their own luggage, then climbed aboard with rolling duffels and large backpacks.
The An-32 took off to the north in the rain — there was no rejected takeoff to worry about, and by the time they’d climbed over the clouds they were leaving Guyana airspace and heading out over the Caribbean Sea.
Musa al-Matari had nothing to do for the next several hours but sit and wait for the next phase of the operation to begin, so as soon as the plane reached a cruising altitude, he strode back to his containers and looked them over, running a hand over the rough plastic crates inside the netting holding them in place in the cargo bay.
Most, if not all, attacks done in the name of ISIS by so-called remote radicalized attackers in the United States had employed weapons purchased in America. The United States was rife with small arms, after all. It was a nation where one could walk into a store and walk out with a firearm twenty minutes later. A thousand dollars would buy you a quality carbine rifle, although special features like holographic optics, enhanced grips to better control the recoil, flashlights that attach to the front of the weapon, and extra magazines, could easily double this price. And with $500 to $800 you could purchase the exact same handgun used by most American law enforcement agencies, as well as many of America’s best special operations units.
But these purchases, despite what many who know nothing about guns think, require paperwork, a show of identification, and a near instantaneous but nevertheless effective check of a national database of those legally prohibited from purchasing a firearm.
There were ways around this: one could buy a gun from a private seller in his or her home state without jumping through the same hoops one would have to jump through when dealing with a federal firearms licensee, meaning someone in the business of selling guns. But these private purchases were still subject to laws and required making contact with unknown parties who might or might not be with the government or might or might not find themselves curious enough about the purchaser to contact the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Even though none of al-Matari’s cell members had criminal records with felonies or domestic battery charges, had been adjudicated mentally ill or, as far as he knew, were under investigation by law enforcement or intelligence agencies, he decided it was still too dangerous for his Language School operatives able to buy weapons in America legally to do so. Every time one of his cell members stepped into a gun shop and asked to look at an AR-15, an AK-47, a pump-action shotgun, or even a handgun, it would invite scrutiny on the cell member, and scrutiny was one thing al-Matari was trying to avoid.
Two-thirds of his cell members looked Arab, whether they were born in the USA or not, and the Yemeni assumed all Americans were suspicious of all Arabs, and would send the FBI after anyone making a gun purchase.
Plus, one simply could not purchase fully automatic weapons in the U.S. without lengthy wait times, paperwork, and additional scrutiny, and the same went for short-barreled rifles, which were much easier to conceal than a full-sized AR-15 or AK-47 pattern rifle.
He and his two subordinates had instead decided to bring the guns in from out of the country and distribute them to the twenty-seven cell members.
The Saudi had acquired all the gear, and the Yemeni had to admit the man had done an admirable job. Originally, the Saudi had planned on purchasing weapons from Mexican drug cartels, but an easier and better option presented itself. He explained to al-Matari that he managed to arrange a shipment of military small arms from Venezuela to be driven over the border to an airport nearby in Guyana, where a few thousand U.S. dollars ensured the airport would be closed for the night and the security officer working there would accidentally leave the gate open.
Venezuela did not have much in the way of food or democracy, but what it did have in abundance were crime and weapons. They were ranked the eighteenth top purchaser of weapons in the world, and the Venezuelan military’s controls on these arms had grown lax in the past few years.
A colonel in the Bolivarian Armed Forces, desperate for money in the economic disaster that was Venezuela these days, agreed to sell whatever small arms and explosives the mysterious man who contacted him via e-mail wanted. Money was placed in an offshore numbered account and the number was given to the colonel, along with assurances more money would be transferred in as soon as the weapons were delivered.