“Salaam,” he said, his voice neutral. “I trust your trip was comfortable?”
Hashem grunted. He waved his hand toward the engineer, who offered a nervous nod.
“Perhaps a tour before I offer you some tea?” Rafiq said, lifting his eyebrow.
The engineer cleared his throat. “Colonel… um, may I suggest we take the explosives out of the vehicle…”
Rafiq called into the open doorway and two men hustled out of the building to the back of the Range Rover. Hashem pegged them as Hezbollah, and men with experience. His brother knew how to pick men as well.
The engineer lifted the rear hatch and ran his hand over the cargo, looking for damage. Satisfied, he stepped back and indicated for the men to take the unlabeled boxes. Rafiq pulled a smaller carton from the stack and opened it. A three-inch device with wires on one end and a covered detector on the other fell into his hand.
“Passive IR trigger,” he said to the engineer. “You can teach my men how to make EFPs?”
The engineer nodded excitedly, his nervousness gone. “Explosively formed projectiles are my specialty, sir, and PIR triggers are the latest in remote detonation technology. I—”
Rafiq held up his hand to stop the engineer’s chatter. The man’s jaw snapped shut, and a look of worry crept over his face again.
Rafiq caught Hashem’s attention and gestured toward the door. “Please, brother, let me show you our operation.”
The interior of the house was cool. Hashem noted the AK-47s, loaded, adjacent to every window in the room. A long table with benches took up most of the space, and a small kitchen area occupied the far wall. Everything looked neat and clean. They passed into the next room, this one filled with bunk beds. Hashem did a quick survey: twelve bunks, all neatly made, and the floor swept.
A heavy steel door was set into the concrete wall. There was a loud clunk as Rafiq turned the handle and swung the door wide. He grinned at Hashem. “This was one of the reasons I selected this place for the training. Self-preservation in the event of an accident.”
The room beyond might have been a high-tech factory assembly line or a university cleanroom. The space was lit with overhead florescent lights, showing six men huddled over workbenches. They all wore white lab coats over their clothes and their long hair and beards were covered. Latex gloves covered their hands, and on each wrist the men wore bracelets that connected them to their workbench. Hashem raised his eyebrows and motioned with his head to the wrist tethers.
“ESD protection. Electrostatic discharge,” Rafiq said quietly.
The men looked up briefly, then returned to their work. A set of instructions, complete with pictures, was laid out on the table before each man. A tray of ingredients occupied the space beside each workstation.
Rafiq continued in a whisper. “Iraqi Shiite freedom fighters. They are learning the basics of making an IED — improvised explosive device. Of course, in the field they would not have these elaborate safety precautions, but in this room even a small explosion would have catastrophic effects.” He grinned at Hashem. “Caution is a virtue, is it not, brother?”
Hashem nodded slowly. He had always liked Rafiq, but his respect for his younger half brother was quickly growing. His investment in this young man’s education — university and otherwise — was paying off nicely.
The explosives engineer’s eyes widened and a grin spread across his face when he saw the training facilities. His nervousness evaporated as he became an instructor, pacing the room, coaching his students, and smiling when they succeeded.
At the end of the second day, Rafiq insisted that the engineer test each man individually on his skill and speed at assembling each type of explosive device. When this was done, Rafiq pointed at two of the men. “You have one hour to build an EFP with a passive IR triggering device. We will test them tonight.”
The chosen men exchanged glances then headed back to the workshop. The Iranian engineer started to follow them, but Rafiq stopped him. “They work alone.”
The whole crew ate a leisurely dinner as the sun set. Rafiq demonstrated an easy manner with his men, laughing with their jokes, but Hashem noted that they deferred to him in all things.
The men being tested joined them halfway through the meal. Rafiq called to them as they entered the room. “Any trouble? The weapons are ready for testing?”
The first man spoke in a confident voice. “Yes, Rafiq. I am ready.” The second man shifted his feet before nodding.
“You seem less confident, Kaleel. Do you need some additional time?” The movement around the table ceased as the men watched Rafiq. Hashem noticed his brother’s eyes — the gray had turned hard as stone as they bored into the man’s face.
“You are ready?” he asked again.
The man swallowed, but returned Rafiq’s gaze steadily. “I am ready, sir.”
“You are certain?”
The man nodded.
“Good.” Rafiq clapped his hands, then gestured to the two open spaces on the bench. “Eat. We have a long drive ahead of us tonight.”
It was full dark by the time they finished the meal and cleaned up. Outside, the thinnest sliver of a waning moon was just topping the horizon. Hashem’s Range Rover idled in the drive with a battered pickup truck parked behind it. He and his brother rode in the Rover along with one of Rafiq’s Hezbollah men.
Within a few minutes, they’d left the greenery that surrounded the river basin and entered the open desert. The Rover picked up speed on the highway, the driver keeping an eye on the pickup truck behind them. Hashem watched the sliver of moon climb higher in the sky.
Rafiq called to the driver to take the next left. He slowed and turned into a wadi, the headlights showing the barest trace of a road. As the minutes passed, the walls around them rose, but the trail smoothed out into a passable road. The Rover hit a large pothole, throwing Hashem against Rafiq. “Pardon, brother,” Hashem said.
Rafiq turned in his direction. His eyes were bright, his mouth half-open as if in expectation of a surprise. “You will be pleased, Hashem. Very pleased.”
He called to the driver to halt and opened his door, stepping out before the vehicle had stopped. He was armed with an AK-47, as was his Hezbollah bodyguard. Hashem’s hands instinctively touched his 9mm Stingray-C and the ivory handle of his knife before he exited the vehicle.
With the headlights extinguished, Hashem’s night vision returned slowly. Rafiq spoke in Lebanese with his two Hezbollah men, while the Iraqis milled about, talking quietly and smoking. Hashem sniffed the cigarette smoke and resisted the urge to pull out his own pack of Marlboros. The Iraqis who had built the IEDs stood near the back of the pickup truck, two dark shapes resting on the tailgate.
Rafiq clapped his hands for attention. “We go on foot from here. You two”—he gestured at the Iraqis—“carry your devices. And follow us at a safe distance.”
The group trudged deeper into the canyon, separating into small groups: the Hezbollah men with Hashem and Rafiq, the Iraqi trainees trailed by the Iranian engineer, and finally the two Iraqis carrying their improvised bombs. The trail took a turn into a wide canyon with a flat, sandy floor.
Rafiq called the Iraqis with the bombs to the front of the column. He placed his hand on the shoulder of the shorter, more confident bomb-maker, and with his other hand he pointed to a small pile of rocks three hundred meters away. “Place your device there with the PIR trigger facing to the east.” His palm floated to the arm of the thin Iraqi. Even in the dimness, Hashem could see the sheen of sweat gleaming on the man’s forehead. “You place your device by that outcropping, with the detector facing west.” The man’s eyes followed Rafiq’s finger to a spot a hundred meters closer to them.