American Terrorist (The Rayna Tan Action Thrillers Book 1) (7 page)

It was a sad day for Fatima and Ahmed when, three years earlier, the wife of Prince Saad, their father’s benefactor, passed away. She was the one who pushed her husband to support their father, Imam Abu. With her no longer around, the prince slashed the imam’s funding. The holy man had no choice but to call Ahmed and Fatima back to Iraq, where he personally took over their religious training.

It was devastating for the siblings. Once you tasted steak, plain oatmeal no longer appealed.

Fatima was introduced to potential insufferable suitors to be a “baby machine.” Ostensibly, she would be called a “wife” but, in actuality, the only real function she had was to pump out baby boys. She managed to quell the interest by spreading rumors about herself being infertile. When confronted by her father about this, she burst into crocodile tears, admitting it was true. An American doctor had discovered this during a routine checkup, a line her father bought. Yes, it was true Fatima was infertile, but this was discovered not by any physicians but empirically. She had hundreds of encounters of unprotected sex and never got pregnant.
 

Seeing that Fatima had no prospects for marriage, the imam loosened up on her and allowed her to work. Because of her experience in America, she was often hired as an interpreter and in understanding the protocol of dealing with Middle Easterners.
 

Fatima developed many repeat—and generous—clients. During the day, she was an excellent translator of the most complicated documents and situations. In the evening, she was more than happy to be the entertainment for traveling Europeans or Americans. The easiest were those who were there in the Middle East on short-term work assignments. They always had generous per diem allowances and were always on the lookout for a dalliance but, with fear of devout Muslims, were afraid to approach any woman wearing a hijab and even more afraid of the diseases that the available hookers were likely to have.
 

Ahmed, however, was another story. An unbridled stallion, he could no longer stomach his blowhard father’s interminable Friday sermons or any of his daily doses of religious piety. He joined Muslim Rock, a growing terrorist organization. Always strong and athletic, he developed skills with weaponry, explosives and martial arts. Within two weeks, he was enjoying the fantasy marauder’s life: death, destruction and inhumane violation of women.

A little more than a year after returning from California, Ahmed and Fatima realized the same things: they hated being back in their small Iraqi hometown; they were too independent to work for anyone else; and they were willing to do whatever it took to change their plight.

With age thirty getting closer on the horizon, Fatima knew it was only a matter of time before men would want to trade her in for a newer model plaything. Ahmed also realized he was going nowhere in Muslim Rock. He was not invited to be part of the elite leadership whose every whim was taken care of and where huge personal fortunes were gained. He was expendable and it would only be a matter of time before he was a step too slow and his life ended.
 

In assessing their predicament, the siblings realized this was the time to make their own opportunity if their lives were going to change. They dreamed of eating steaks at Morton’s, drinking French champagne, flying first class and driving European cars. To turn fantasy to reality would take vision, planning and execution.
 

Without any special skills or commercial ideas or inventions, they knew the only way to accomplish this was to have their own terrorist organization. While they would appear like and use similar methods to those of radical Islamic groups, their hidden goals were entirely different and entirely selfish. Ahmed and Fatima had no interest in a caliphate or jihad. Islam was not a cause but a key tool to satisfy their carnal desires for things of the earth and for power and wealth.
 

The first step was to appease their father and get him on their side. This meant swallowing a huge amount of necessary and bitter crow. Ahmed bucked up, quit Muslim Rock, went back to his father, and told him he wanted to help build a new truer form of Islam where Sharia law was practiced. His father was overjoyed and made Ahmed second in charge of his Islamic Center.

Ahmed had little appetite for religious study or meetings and was thankful Fatima was there. Without her, he could never stomach the bleak orthodox life of their hometown. Telling his father he wanted to protect her, Ahmed accompanied Fatima on her interpretation work to Damascus, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra where he could escape the stifling religiosity and indulge in his hedonistic, degenerate fantasies.
 

Brother and sister complemented each other—Fatima was brains, Ahmed was brawn. She was a calming counter to his impetuousness. She schemed hard for the new organization, recognizing the huge amount of competition. In addition to the big names splashed throughout the media, there were dozens, maybe hundreds of splinter groups, independent organizations and small cells, all vying for manpower and dollars.
 

Ahmed, the proverbial bull in a China shop, thought he could just out-muscle the others. Fatima nixed this approach and developed a deadly, thoughtful master plan. While the United States was a long-term goal, credibility needed to be established first. She tested a few possibilities of names before settling on “Tiger Claw Front,” a name that evoked might, ferocity and battle.

It was quickly decided there would be two components to Tiger Claw, drawing on the strengths of both: Brains, to be directed by Fatima; and Brawn, to be directed by Ahmed. The first order of business was to build a small core group.

Fatima began to post pictures of Ahmed as a warrior in the darkest corners of the internet. Purposely making themselves almost impossible to find, when they did appear, they showed up just for brief tantalizing moments. Fatima did this because she wanted to attract a super-nerd computer type. Within a month, she got the one she wanted—a misfit genius of radicalized parents.

Casey Thomas from Los Angeles was so excited to join Ahmed that he dropped out of college to come to Iraq. Fatima worked closely with Casey to build the Brains. Powerful computers were soon put to good use for recruiting, fundraising and building Tiger Claw’s mystique.
 

Ahmed was in his element in formulating Brawn with its incredible rush of power and potency, pillaging villages, raping women, killing or torturing any one he felt like, and drowning or beheading prisoners.
 

Casey had a buddy in the Philippines, Ferdinand Garcia, who was equally excited to be part of the new group. As Casey was responsible for recruiting and connecting with Americans, he kept his name. However, Ferdinand needed a more Muslim-sounding name and was christened “Nabil.” With Fatima overseeing Casey and Nabil, they set out to build an infrastructure of support, financial and otherwise.
 

The branding of “Tiger Claw Front” with Ahmed as leader began in earnest. (In their world, no matter how accomplished or competent, a woman leader was a non-starter.) Building their brand wasn’t hard. After all, he already had the necessary terrorist chops from his years at Muslim Rock. But one thing Ahmed lacked was personal on-camera charisma. Media-savvy Fatima knew there was no way they could compete with the glitz of the major terrorist organizations on their level—they didn’t have the people, they didn’t have the money to buy brand new planes, they didn’t have the money to buy automatic weapons and tanks.
 

Ahmed was already in top-notch physical condition but Fatima still brought in Mustafa, a personal trainer cum master swordsman. Ahmed couldn’t understand why. After all, rampage was inflicted with a pistol, grenade or assault rifle.

“Ahmed,” she told him, “everybody has a gun and you will also use armed weapons, but nobody has this.” Fatima opened a case to reveal a jeweled sword. A replica of an ancient Syrian blade, it was so realistic that it would fool all but the most ardent of historians.

Ahmed’s eyes bulged as Mustafa gave a demonstration of master swordsmanship. For the next year, Mustafa spent hours each day, helping Ahmed add muscle and tone to his body while also turning him into a master swordsman. In the evenings, Mustafa received his payment in Fatima’s private chambers. When she tired of him, Ahmed exercised his new swordsmanship abilities on his teacher.

There was also the delicate matter of involving their father. The mosque he headed was small potatoes, but it gave Tiger Claw Islamic credibility. The imam wanted those in the new flock to maintain a strict observance of Islamic law. For the imam, massive growth was not essential. The downside was that the father demanded access to all information. Thankfully, it was a right he rarely exercised.

***

As Fatima leaned her head against the bus window to use as a pillow before she fell asleep for the final leg of the journey to Toronto, a thought hit her that made her soul smile—she would soon be in America!
 

A restful few hours later, Fatima stepped off the Greyhound bus in Toronto and walked the block to Yonge Street. Toronto’s most famous street was a crazy, busy mixture of high-end designer shops, live theatre venues, drug dealing, sports jersey shops, pizza-by-the-slice joints, sex toy parlors, Jewish delis, homeless shelters and a huge mall that extended an entire city block.
 

There were prostitutes, professionals, punks... Racially, it was the most diverse place Fatima had ever been in. She was sure that in the two blocks she walked there were people from at least twenty countries—different shades of yellow, red, white, black and brown people, most speaking a language other than English. In other words, Yonge Street was great place to hide in plain sight, whether you were a gunrunner, a billionaire or a terrorist.

At three-thirty in the afternoon, she entered one of Toronto’s ubiquitous falafel shops, “Best Falafel.” Too late for a late lunch and too early for an early dinner, she was the only customer as she approached the order counter. The turbaned cook eyed her suspiciously.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes. Burger with fries, hold the onions.”
 

“What would you like to drink?”

“A cold Belgian beer.”

The fortyish man nodded—this woman passed the coded conversation. He took out a sign and hung it on the door. “Back in 5 minutes.” He motioned for Fatima to follow him out and locked the door behind them.

They walked half a block to a rooming house. The clerk at the front desk ignored them as they stepped into the elevator. When they were finally alone, the man said, “I’m Bobby. Nice to meet you. Allahu Akbar.”

“Allahu Akbar.”

They got off on the fifth floor and walked down the squeaky surface to Room 507. They entered a room in desperate need of a paint job, where Bobby’s hijab-wearing wife Aliya waited. She worked in Toronto’s huge film industry as a much-in-demand make-up artist but today she, like her husband, were contributing their services to the cause.

“Hello, Fatima,” she said, “we must move quickly if you want to be at the border before dark.”

“I have to. A single woman like me shouldn’t travel at night,” Fatima said.

“Of course.” Aliya took out a tape measure and took Fatima’s neck, arm and leg length measurements and had Fatima stand by the wall to measure her height.

“Done. Be back here in three hours.” Aliya handed Bobby the paper she wrote Fatima’s measurements on, then motioned the other woman to sit on the chair in front of the kitchen sink.
 

Changing one’s hairstyle was never as simple as it looked in the movies. It wasn’t so hard in Syria because Fatima’s hair was already the same color as Sabiya’s. It was much more complicated than throwing some ink on your hair and then getting a pair of scissors to hack off your locks, especially if you wanted to pass as an elegant, recently retired Baptist minister with salt-and-pepper locks.

Aliya used a picture Fatima took of Geraldine and her at the airport to shear Fatima’s longer tresses to a professional bobbed look. Then, she painstakingly colored Fatima’s hair, mixing various shades of dark gray and white to achieve a natural look. Then she shaped her eyebrows, cut her long eyelashes and applied heavy make-up, changing Fatima’s complexion from Middle Eastern olive to the pale, whiter skin of a Caucasian.

Bobby returned, arms full of shopping bags from the myriad of shops on Yonge St. Aliyah went through the bags, carefully selecting the perfect wardrobe. Choices made, she handed them to “Geraldine.”
 

“Put these on,” she ordered.

Fifteen minutes later, Bobby and Fatima looked at Aliyah’s handiwork in a full-length mirror: dark gray cowl neck tunic, comfortable light brown stretch chino cotton pants, black trendy heelless European flat shoes and a gold-plated chain necklace with six, glossy, oversized plate-glass stones.

“Isn’t the necklace a bit much?” asked Fatima.

“No, it’s intentional. It will draw attention away from your face. We don’t have enough time to give you a fake driver’s license and passport. However, you look enough like a Caucasian woman in her sixties to fool most border inspectors.”

“Just choose one who is not Caucasian. Get an Asian, a brown, Hispanic... they think all whites look the same,” advised Bobby.

Four hours later, Fatima crossed into the United States over Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls in Reverend Geraldine Swanson’s new car, an older silver Prius. She pointed at her throat to indicate how sore it was to the stern Hispanic man who was the border guard. When the guard asked her why she was going to the United States, Fatima replied hoarsely, “Conduct funeral. Need to save voice. Sorry.”

Realizing this senior citizen was an active person of the cloth, the guard waved her in and said, “God bless and get well soon.”

Five minutes after she crossed into the United States, Fatima pulled to the side of the road, got out a cell phone and made a call.

“Hello,” answered Ahmed.

“Good afternoon, sir. This is a courtesy call to let you know that your package has cleared customs and is scheduled for delivery in two days at its destination.”