Born of War (2 page)

A
man stood on the edge of a small one-lane highway deep in the woods of northern New Hampshire. He stared at the sign that said
DEER MOUNTAIN CAMPGROUND
as he walked back and forth. He held a cell phone to his ear as he pulled his long black hair back behind a sweater cap. His hair extended down below his collar and was stringy, matted, and oily. It had been days since he'd had a shower.

He was both short and small. He had been on the road for days without stopping for anything but gas, chips, and Cokes. He would remain on the move for the next few days. Movement was survival.

“Yes, that is right.”

The signal was weak and, like an old television antenna, he turned and turned again trying to hold on to the words.

Omar pressed the cell close to his ear. He could feel the heat of both the pressure and the warmth of the telephone as he unconsciously squeezed it tighter.

“Yes, my brother, the front doors. The glass ones. No one will stop you.”

He had a vision in his mind of the days that he spent at the same church. His mother secretly took him on Sundays to the rented school gym. Later, his father screamed with disapproval when he learned that the boy and his sister were going to a Christian school.

It took another relative to give him the reason to reject his mother's Christian world. It wasn't that he accepted his father's religion. His father was weak and failed to accept the true teachings. He was determined to take a different path.

“The last one has left.” The voice was clear. Omar could see in his mind the clearing of the parking lot, as each of the “redneck” trucks left. Omar had taken pride in his Honda Civic being much smaller than the trucks. It was old and smelly but it meant that he didn't need transportation from his mother. They had laughed at him at Daphne High School but his humor always saved him.

Omar was, from the beginning, an outsider. He knew it and had adapted himself well over time.

“Now. Strike now!” he yelled the words, catching himself, looking around the woods to make sure that no one heard his scream.

Omar had left Mobile the day before, driving through the night. It was nearing the end of Ramadan. He knew that Allah would give him compensation for helping kill the nonbelievers. Once all was in place it was critical that he leave his brother behind. They had planned it this way for months. He had left the car he stole from his mother in a campground parking lot. It was the last one near the most northern entrance to the Cohos Trail. The pathway went deep into the dark woods turning west and then north towards the Fourth Connecticut Lake.

She will get it back.
He dismissed the thought as quickly as it came into his mind.
I will get word somehow to my sister.

The car could remain there for days without question—people would think he, like others, was out hiking the trail or camping in the shelters and lean-tos that were spaced near the lakes.

As its name suggested, the Fourth Connecticut Lake was one of four lakes that formed the headwaters of the Connecticut River. Each small body of water, something slightly bigger than a pond but still classified as a lake, was part of a chain that went deep into the forest of northern New Hampshire. The trail followed the stream to the north and to the Fourth Lake, and then, only a short distance beyond, it crossed an opening. Omar had been here before. He was looking for the small disc embedded in a concrete marker that had a line through its middle. With one step over the disc he would be out of the United States of America.

“Come on, my brother. You will be entering into a special place. You will pass through the gate! Your bravery will be spoken of by the most fiery of warriors and the smallest child will scream out your name!”

It would only be a flash of a moment. Omar was actually jealous.

I must be a true believer.
Once faith overcame fear, it all became easy.

Omar had been Eddie's cheerleader for several years now. They had become friends early on. Both would hide in the woods near the shoreline of Mobile Bay where they had a secret camp. It was a refuge, especially when their parents would start waging war with each other. They had this in common. Eddie's parents eventually had a bitter divorce. His father quickly remarried while his mother filled the trash cans with empty vodka bottles she hid in brown paper bags. The can would rattle when it was moved.

With Omar there was the bitterness but never the divorce. His parents were bonded by the anger they carried from the yelling.

But there were good times. Growing up on the bay, the two boys would hunt squirrels together, and fish, and wait for the red tide. The water would suddenly change and the shore would, in a matter of hours, be covered with fish struggling to breathe.

They would bring plastic buckets that they would fill with fish and cook on the campfire at their hiding spot surrounded by stones pulled from the shoreline.

The church was no better than their homes. They were the odd ones, often bullied by the jocks. Omar was small, always thin, but with a certain amount of strength. Eddie was the opposite, always round but never strong. Omar was also foolhardy. He was expelled from the Vacation Bible School once for jamming his finger into another child's eye. Blood ran down the child's face as he wailed away. Omar was known for his ability to go beyond.

They both had been students at the Baptist school. Omar was the first to doubt the teachings. He would ask questions that were meant to push the teachers to their limits.

It was there, at the school gym, in fourth grade, when a larger fifth grader had cornered Eddie and started pounding him with his fists. Omar, no more than half the size of the bully, had jumped on his back. Omar reached for the eyes but the kid shook him off like a bear, slinging him against a wall of lockers. It didn't matter. Omar didn't quit. He was born to be a great fighter.

After the fight, Eddie followed Omar wherever Omar led. Later, he would be the first one that Omar converted to Islam.

Thereafter, they both were in the same grades at the public school and then at Daphne. After graduation, they started college in nearby Mobile. And, as students together in the small college, they joined the madrasa at the same time, each working late, mopping the floors, and learning the Koran, sleeping on mats on the cold linoleum.

A short time later, two others joined the group. But the older ones at the madrasa made fun of them, accusing them of having a false belief and not being dedicated enough to the teachings. Those were the older Muslims, virtually none born in the United States, often brought to Mobile by the shipping work. Like a fraternity, the older ones from Qatar and Iraq and Iran would never let the younger converts into the inner order.

Omar and Eddie were two of the first on campus to have full-grown beards even before it had become popular with the other non-Muslims. Omar's was always straggly, with bare cheeks that took away any uniformity. Eddie had a full beard that swallowed up his already round face and made him look much older. Omar laughed at him.

“You look like you pasted it on.” He tried to pull on Eddie's beard. “Bought it at a beard store!”

But that was all some time ago. And now Omar was tired.

The leaves were changing color in the mountains of New Hampshire even though it was only the end of July. He had made this trip before, several times. He knew it well. The crossing allowed him to visit the others in Toronto without the government of America knowing he had even left the country. It was the other fellow Muslims that shared his hate for America's society. The border crossing had become more difficult after September 11th for someone with a beard. Every piece of luggage had been torn apart, the car stripped down to its bare metal. So he found this other route. He had crossed over and back again several times.

The letters, he often joked, were the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI.

Omar had spent the last few days at Eddie's apartment shaping the charges so that all would fit into the vest, and running a wire down the sleeve of the long black trench coat that Eddie would wear. In the weeks leading up to the plan, they stayed up late at night, praying and talking, often sleeping for no more than an hour or two just before daylight.

When last together they ate a simple meal, prayed, and then hugged.

“You know it is important that I leave.” Omar said.

“You will make it.” Eddie didn't seem sad or doubtful.

 

 

“You will step in and scream out the words of praise.” Omar's instructions were well rehearsed. “Allah be praised!”

Omar had spoken to Eddie often of who should be the first. He knew that Eddie did not think that being the first meant being less. Both of their journeys would lead to the same place but Omar's would be longer and far more painful.

“I am walking across the parking lot.” Eddie's voice shook through the phone.

Omar could sense the movement as the voice wobbled. He saw, in his mind, a teacher inside looking up. It was the new school. Omar knew of the pride that the church had in opening the new building. And Omar could see the old security guard running towards the door.

There was a moment's silence.

“I am here,” said Eddie.

 

 

The teacher looked into the round face of the man, at his beard and chalky white skin, just beyond the glass doors. But for the doors, they could touch one another. His eyes were cold, brown, and focused. It was as if he was looking through her. He was that mad dog with his head tilted slightly down, but his eyes bored a hole through her.

The guard was still on the far end of the hallway and the children were shuffling towards their classes. Cathie felt the continuous tug of a child behind her.

“Go to your class now!” Cathie glanced backwards and saw the twins. They started to cry.

Cathie grabbed the two doors, shoving her hips into the center where they pivoted open and wrapping her arm through the loop of the two handles. With her other arm, she shoved the one child backwards.

“No!” She yelled. “No!”

The stranger yanked at the doors but she did not budge. He shoved his shoulder against the glass and bounced back in almost a comical fashion, like a tennis ball caroming off a practice wall. He bounced once, and then again. And just as he did so a second time the wire was tripped.

The flash pushed everything into darkness.

“Hello?”

The cell phone went silent. With the silence he knew it was over.

Omar made one other call overseas.

“As I said, it is done.” He spoke only those words and then hung up. They would know all the details later. It was important that they heard something from him directly. It confirmed what he had been saying for months by the Internet.

Omar looked at the cell phone briefly again and then tore it apart. He searched for a rock and pounded the phone into fragments and then threw it all, except the chip, as far as he could, into the woods on the other side of the trail. It scattered across the forest floor like a handful of gravel. He carried the chip with him on the hike and when he came to the Fourth Connecticut Lake, he took a handful of mud from the shoreline, wadded it up around the chip, and tossed it as far as he could, deep into the center of the lake. Two ducks were startled by the splash of water and took off in flight. He washed his hands off at the edge of the lake.

His wife, Fartuun, would meet him at an opening on the other side of the border. She was a Somali from the Toronto community. Fartuun looked like her father. They had such thin faces that it appeared their skin was stretched over their skulls. Their eyes were sunken. She had a light complexion, smooth hair, and a small pointy nose. She was a descendant of the first of the human race, thought to be over a hundred thousand years old. The bones of her ancestors were found in the hills of Ethiopia.

 

 

Omar had decided that he needed a wife, as it was the custom and charge of the Koran. He had met her father during one of his trips north, and Omar and Fartuun had married a year ago.

 

 

Fartuun would support him and follow his edicts. The only world Fartuun knew consisted of several city blocks in Toronto. She would not know everything. She was to bear his children. His jihad was his and his alone.

His journey had always been planned.

Z
ip! Pop!
!

The round tore through the mud wall, causing a puff of red and orange dust to explode on the rear side with the speed of a pin being stuck into a child's balloon. “I told you not to cheat!” Gunnery Sergeant Kevin Moncrief growled at the taller man braced against the wall in front of him. Moncrief was the monitor standing to the man's rear, holding the man's body armor jacket with his thumbs tucked under the arm openings. It was mainly a place to put his hands, as they felt useless without a weapon in them. A stub of a two-dollar cigar stuck out of the corner of Moncrief's mouth.

“Sometimes!” The cigar slanted Gunny's grin. Jet-black eyebrows accented dark skin he inherited from his father. Unlike his father, however, his hair was cropped close in a Marine high and tight. It was a significant change from his heritage. Moncrief was a descendant of Taza through his father. Like Taza, he had a pleasant and open countenance that the people of the great mountain shared. Taza was the father of Cochise, from a tribe of Indians that eventually settled in Waco, Texas. Gunny was born in Waco and raised in the Texas sun.

A target vibrated behind the wall. At first glance, it appeared to be a man. The bullet had ripped through the center of its head, knocking it backwards on a hinge. It was supposed to move into a firing position just around the corner of the mud wall. But it had not made it as of yet.

The moving target was called a T-20. An armed terrorist would roll out, around the wall, within the specific time set in the system. The top half of a man, dressed in the clothing of Al Shabaab, with a beard, head wrapped in a black cloth, and wearing an old version of a camouflage utility jacket, would appear. This guerrilla torso was mounted on a computer-controlled Segway. It was a sophisticated moving target meant to act like the real terrorist it simulated.

The shooter, in a well-worn desert camouflage tactical shirt, stood still behind the wall with his Heckler & Koch P-30 automatic pistol raised. Its hammer was still cocked, the slide still forward, indicating that another round was chambered. It also meant something else.

Parker smiled. It was the first time he had smiled in some time. It was a smile tucked behind a short brown beard. His long brown hair, topped with a frayed baseball cap, was flecked with gold from days upon days in the direct sun. The blue eyes could not be seen behind the tinted protective lenses of the Wolf Peak Edge wraparound sunglasses. He was much taller than his monitor standing behind him.

“You said do it with less than a magazine.”

Parker held the pistol in front of Moncrief with the barrel pointed away and up, prompting Gunny to hold out his hand and Parker to drop the magazine into it. The gunny held it up to look. The sun reflected off the two shiny .40 caliber brass rounds still in the magazine.

“Two left.”

“No.”

Parker pulled the slide. Another round popped out of the weapon and Moncrief caught it as it flew through the air.

“Three. You know better.”

“But you aren't supposed to shoot them through the wall!”

Parker shrugged.

“Let's do it again.”

 

 

“What the hell?”

Skip Neave looked up from the clipboard lying on the hood of his pickup truck. A cloud of red dust was cutting across the open field of the training center. A dirt road curved across the mostly grass field, but it was a clay-based soil and, without rain for well over a month, the clay had turned to powder. When the Polaris Ranger drove down the road with its knobby tires, a whirl of orange-tinted dust rose into the air.

Neave watched the cloud come closer, gauging the speed of the Ranger from the spin of the dust.

“He's going to flip that damn thing.”

Neave hadn't worry about a flipped Ranger when he was the command sergeant major of the elite 75th Ranger Regiment. In war everything was expendable except a fellow Ranger. He didn't give a damn about breaking equipment unless it resulted in the worst duty possible—writing the letter.

The Polaris Ranger was a safe bet. It had been specially fitted with brush guards and roll bars. It had extra rigging for the lights used by the Operational Training facility during the nighttime running around that they often did. But now he was retired, after eighteen combat tours and twenty-four years of Ranger duty, and working with a contractor. And the contractor didn't like replacing totaled Polaris Rangers.

The ATV pulled up short of Neave's truck, slamming on the brakes and, even with the knobby tires, sliding within arm's length of Neave's own brush guard.

“You got to see this shit!”

Neave didn't have a chance to start cussing his trainer. They had both worked together for nearly a decade running hard, long, deadly combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The trainer could be loud, while Neave was quiet, but both could be dangerous to the wrong people. They were both craftsmen, trained and experienced in their trade. The trainer used cusswords as nouns, vowels, adjectives, and everything else.

Neave didn't have a chance to start cussing his trainer. He knew the man couldn't communicate without the famous three interlinked words.

“What the hell?”

Neave's look translated into “it better be important.”

The trainer understood the stare. “No, really—you got to see this shit.” The trainer never wanted Neave to come see a shooter. This had to be something very special.

“Is it that Marine and his buddy?”

A retired Marine gunnery sergeant had recently been hired to work with some of the training groups that were cycling through the OT. The operational training facility, a farm that had been converted into a warriors' training camp with several million dollars, had first become popular with Army units in the region, and then with FBI Swat teams. Recently, the Marines had gotten on board, as it gave them a special place to fly in on the OV-22 Ospreys, always at night, from Camp Lejeune several hundred miles to the north for an assault on a building that OT had constructed on the far end of the farm. It was meant to be an embassy. It was meant to ensure that there would never be another Benghazi.

The O.T. wanted a Marine on staff to ensure that they cross-pollinated with the right language. O.T. wanted to be multiservice, whether Army, Navy, Marine, FBI, or the Los Angeles Police Department.

The gunny came with the credentials. He had served in Force Recon and was one of the few who had helped set up the training for transitioning some Force Recon Marines into the Special Operators that formed the new Marine Corps Special Operations Command.

However, there was a rub. With the Marine Corps' creation of a Special Operations force, it had two high-speed units. Force Recon had the mission of being dropped deep into enemy territory. A Force Recon team was a lone-wolf operation that survived on its own. In Vietnam and Iraq a Marine Recon team would be dropped on a hilltop, in the dead of night, and the helicopter would come back for them a month later. If the team was at the hilltop when the helicopter returned, they would be picked up. Some teams did not show up and were never seen again. A Recon Marine was the definition of a lone wolf. Parker and Moncrief were trained as Recon Marines and fought in Iraq with a deep insertion team that radioed in the location of targets well behind enemy lines. Their Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company slipped near to the Iraq tanks and then obliterated them with a two-thousand-pound GBU bomb dropped from a B-1 bomber. The Iraq National Guard had placed a bounty on both Parker and Moncrief's head.

Force Recon wasn't sure, however, that Special Operations was needed. The special operators were trained to be lone wolves as well, but Special Operations got one thing that Force Recon didn't get. It had the money. The Secretary of Defense wanted a Special Operations type of force. If the Marines didn't have a designated Special Operations force it missed out on the Special Operations funds.

And Special Operations got another thing that Force Recon didn't get. It had been given a name. The battalions would be called Marine Raiders. The Raiders were given the funding for Heckler & Koch German-engineered automatic weapons, suppressors, satellite radios, and combat-driven iPads. All of the high-speed units like the SEALS and Delta received the same type of funding. If the Marines wanted part of the Special Operations dollars they had to have Special Operations units. And they had one advantage over the SEALS. Like the Marine Corps, what was different was that a Marine unit had everything in support whether it was airpower, or artillery, or logistics. They didn't have to outsource anything. They were self-contained. And they could move, and move quickly.

But Gunny was a special contract at the training center. He came only when needed. He was, however, invited to use the farm whenever he liked. The ammunition and ranges were unlimited. Neave had seen him shoot.

This time he had brought a friend.

“I have all this shit to do before that Chicago SWAT team gets in tonight.” Neave preferred the military visitors. The farm had the creature comforts for the city boys. The woods had several villages of prefab cabins, all two to a room, which had been brought in by a convoy of flatbed trailers. Each cabin was simple but well equipped. The walls were made of unpainted plywood sheets, each room had two bunks with sheets and blankets, pillows, a closet-sized bathroom with a prefab shower, and even a mini-refrigerator. There was no time for a television, as the days were intended to be long, from dark to dark, and the nights very short. Still, for most of the visitors, it was a luxury to have something softer than dirt, and something dryer than a space under a pine tree. The Rangers and Marines were embarrassed to use them.

“Take a minute.” The trainer was persistent.

Neave hesitated. He did, however, have ultimate faith in his friend. They had spent too many tours, on too many missions, for Neave not to know when it was something important.

“We will take my truck,” Neave said. He wasn't going to eat dust in the Ranger or, even worse, follow it as it kicked up a trail of red and orange smoke.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

They drove more than a mile across the farm to a valley on the far back end. It was meant to be remote. The entire farm was encircled with two rows of fences, the first a simple multistrand barbed-wire fence with N
O
T
RESPASSING
signs. The second had the more serious W
ARNING
I
MMINENT
D
ANGER
sign that was meant to stop even the most casual deer hunter making the wrong turn or being too curious. D
EADLY
F
ORCE
U
SED
.

The road went through a small forest of planted pine trees, now grown to a height that shut out virtually all of the light below. On the other side of the forest, the road descended into a shallow valley. Large mounds of dirt formed a wall with a road cut into the side of the formation. Just short of the top of the mound, a parking strip had been laid down and surfaced with gravel. The roofs of the trucks remained below the crest. Another pickup truck, white with a red-orange coating formed by the dust, was parked there. Neave pulled in behind it.

“Good, no shooting.” There was no sound of gunfire. The trainer closed the door to the truck and the two crossed to a wooden stairway that topped the berm. The man-made ridge of dirt served as an insulator for wayward rounds. A platform with a long-planked wood table ran the stretch of the lookout. It had a framed tin roof that took the operators out of the sunlight. Sandbags were stacked on the range side so that it would take the oddest of ricochets to hurt an observer. On the other side and below, a mud village complete with walls and roofless huts stretched for fifty yards to both the right and left.

“Hey, boss.” Another trainer looked up from a portable computer.

“He wanted me to see this.” Neave was impatient.

“Yeah, this is pretty good. He is setting up right now for another run.”

“How many does this make?”

“This will be the third.”

“And?”

“Each one is faster.”

Neave watched two figures enter the village from the left. One followed the other. He looked at his watch as he saw the lead shooter lock and load his weapon.

The two moved in a methodical snake-like path with the leader cutting around the corner. Neave could see the T-20s lined up behind the different locations.

“You change them each time.”

“Yeah, none the same.”

The shooter moved, stopped, and shot. The target dropped. He had an instinct.

“Damn, is this Doc Holliday?” the trainer spat. His cheek was swollen with a pinch of snuff.

Neave didn't say anything. He glanced at his watch again. Another shot was fired. Another target popped backwards.

“What type of shots?”

“All head. Center of mass.” The trainer on the computer looked at the sensors.

Another pop and another target dropped.

“He put two through the walls.”

The shooter worked his way across the village, moving and shooting.

“How about a reload?” Neave asked as he glanced up to the range.

“Yeah, we did that on the last round.”

One round had added a few extra targets so that the shooter had to load another magazine. It was an additional test of concentration and aim.

On this round, like the first run, it took Parker only twelve rounds out of fifteen. He had finished working his way through the entire village.

“He passed two innocents.” The trainer looked at the T-20 targets as the computer reset the plastic jihadist warriors. Two dummy targets had been set up as innocent women.