Know your enemy.
He had known it was also expected of him by the House of Saud itself, which prided itself on its relations with America. After all, she was the main consumer of its oil, Saudi Arabia’s multi-trillion dollar industry, and — as was continuously stressed to him by the more senior members of the royal family — good relations with the US were of paramount importance to the regime’s survival.
Not that Quraishi wanted the regime to survive.
On the contrary, he was fundamentally committed to the wholesale destruction of the corrupt, West-loving House of Saud.
And he knew that with the fall of the Great Satan would also come the fall of the hated monarchy which ruled his beloved country; the country which contained both Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in the entire world, now defiled by the presence of the US military.
He ignored the fact that he was a part of that same monarchy; it was blood only, and not soul.
His soul was committed to Allah, and Allah alone.
And unlike many of his freedom-fighting contemporaries, he was intelligent enough to see that he could use his position, his connections, to further his cause, may Allah forgive him.
He had used his intelligence, his knowledge of Western and Saudi governments, his worldwide connections, to create a new group, an organization of such blessed purity that it made all others pale in comparison.
Harakat al-jihad al-Islami al-jazirat al-‘arabiyah.
Arabian Islamic Jihad.
The beheading of Brad Butler had been filmed, and would be posted on the usual websites when the time was right. When the power of his organization was ready to unleash havoc on an unsuspecting world.
His disguised appearance was absolutely necessary; he was far too well known in Saudi Arabia to show his real face, or use his real voice. Vehemently opposed to the Saudi royal family, there was no way that his followers would agree to suborn themselves to someone from that same royal line, tainted as it was with western corruption. There weren’t many who would accept that Quraishi accepted the façade of his position, his public life, only to enhance the probability of success for his real calling in life as The Lion, feared head of the AIJ.
Quraishi was still smiling as he remembered slicing through the neck of that Western tool of propaganda, the CNN journalist Brad Butler, when an assistant knocked at his office door and brought in his cup of jasmine tea.
Quraishi thanked him, then quickly ushered him out when he heard the buzzing of his secure telephone.
‘Yes?’ he answered when the man had left the office.
The message was good, and the smile remained on Quraishi’s face as his contact talked. An agent of Jemaah Islamiyah, a freedom fighting group within the Indonesian archipelago with whom he had developed a good relationship over the years, the man on the phone updated Quraishi on their recent operation; stage one in The Lion’s master plan.
Yes, Quraishi considered as he sipped quietly at his tea, all the pieces were coming together nicely.
8
Trying to move through jungle was an arduous physical prospect at the best of times; carrying an unconscious body on his back, an equipment satchel and assault rifle slung over his shoulder, and cradling a shotgun in his arms, meant that for Cole, it was now even harder. Especially as he didn’t have a machete to hack his way through the thick undergrowth, and he had a mob of well-armed and dangerous gun dealers chasing him.
He tried to keep his pursuers at bay by throwing the odd hand grenade or firing a blast from the shotgun; one advantage he had was that they would want Khat back alive, whereas he could fire at them with no such considerations.
He’d chosen the shotgun for work in the jungle as it was a weapon perfectly suited to the environment; with a relatively short range and scattershot effect, it did the maximum amount of damage at the short, dangerous distances typical of jungle combat.
Even though it was night, the air remained thick and hot, and the tall trees blocked what little light came from the moon and the stars. It was both a curse and a blessing; it made it almost impossible to see where he was going, but it would also make him a much harder target for the people following.
Cole’s heart raced as he pulled himself over ancient tree stumps and tangled vines, the exertion terribly intense. But he had fought in the jungle before, and the sickening harshness of the environment could never overwhelm him. Such feelings were perfectly natural to Cole, who had known little else his entire life. First there had been selection, and then training, and then a lifetime of operational missions. And not one bit of it had ever been comfortable.
And in fact — despite the danger, the sharp hit of adrenalin, the pain in his straining muscles, his searing lungs, his wildly pumping heart — he felt at home, the chase through the ferocious jungle something that was comfortingly familiar to him after being so long adrift.
Yes, he thought happily as he turned into the dense blackness of the jungle behind him, illuminating it briefly with the muzzle flash of his shotgun, the sound of its strident bark almost deafening in the enclosed area as he unleashed another two shells at his unseen enemy.
Yes.
I’m home.
Cole’s heart stopped as his right foot slid down a bank, his balance gone, and he tumbled over in to the pitch black waters of the Siem Reap River.
He collected himself immediately, cursing himself for making such a mistake. But he could use the river to lose the people who relentlessly followed him; and so he moved the still-unconscious Khat into a lifeguard’s retrieval position, one of Cole’s arms secured around his chest as he side-stroked across the muddy river.
The shouts of men came from the far side only moments later, yells and panicked splashing as they too slipped and slid into the water. Cole wondered if they’d seen him, but the soil of the bank erupted around him just seconds later, the men emptying their assault rifles in his direction, and Cole’s question was answered with frightening certainty.
Cole thought them crazy; in the eerie jungle half-light there was no way they could guarantee missing Khat. But Cole realized that the thrill of the chase, of the hunt, was upon the men now; this particular group might not even have realized who they were chasing, or why; only that there was someone who had caused trouble back at the market, and who needed to be caught. Or killed.
But the time for thinking was later, and Cole pushed Khat onto the far bank, dropped the shotgun and swung the AK off his shoulder, finger pressing the trigger as soon as his grip was secured, spraying the far side of the narrow river with powerful 7.62mm rounds. The rifle on fully-automatic fire emptied its magazine in just five seconds.
Cole had heard a cry, a scream; but pressing his advantage, he ejected the magazine, hands operating in the dark to instantly insert another and spraying the riverside once more until the gun clicked empty.
He was rewarded with cries of pain, guttural shouts, pleas for help, and knew it was time to press on back into the jungle. The men on the far side were out, but their screams would soon attract others, and then this side of the river would be swarming with them.
He turned to pick up Khat’s body, and was horrified to see an empty space where he had left him. Cole looked harder into the green-black gloom, wondering if the body was just covered in shadow, but he could make out a depression in the mud where Khat had been only moments ago.