it just the same. He had once saved my life. I wasn’t able to save his.
Suddenly all I could think about was Ahmed’s love of westerns. It now made more sense than ever. The best ones always feature a loner on the wild frontier, someone who never looks for the spotlight or needs to take credit for doing the right thing.
I’d left the Agency for all the right reasons. No regret. But standing there next to my old friend, that’s all I could feel. I somehow owed him justice.
What would Gary Cooper do? Right, Ahmed?
Of course, I had no way of knowing that I was about to find out.
My high noon was coming.
BOOK TWO
MASQUERADE
CHAPTER 24
THE ROOM was as hot as hell. It reeked of sweat and mold and something even worse.
Fear.
That’s him. He’s arrived.
The impeccably dressed man they all called the Mudir, the Governor, came walking into the room with a black duffel bag casually draped over his shoulder as if it were filled with laundry or whatever else someone might carry around who wasn’t actually a mass murderer.
Without a word of greeting to the thirteen men seated on the folding chairs in the basement of the mosque, he placed the duffel on a metal table with rusted hinges and slowly unzipped it. One by one, he removed the guns—all Russian made and all of them chosen for a specific reason, a feature or attribute that would help ensure the greatest amount of casualties.
Finally the Mudir spoke.
“Six of you will use the AS Val,” he said, holding up the assault rifle often used by Spetsnaz, the Russian Special Forces. “Its integrated suppressor will silence your rounds and delay the initial panic. The fewer people who are running, the more of them you can kill.”
The Mudir then lifted the AK-47, explaining that another six men would be stationed at the three main staircases connecting the lower level to the main concourse. There would be two men per staircase, both positioned halfway down the steps so as to ambush all those trying to escape from either level. “The two shooters will stand side by side. One aiming up, one aiming down. Fish in a barrel.”
All the men in the room had been embedded in the US for close to five years. They were well versed in American slang and idioms. They all spoke English fluently. None of them were married. All of them had jobs. These were the requirements.
Lastly, the Mudir raised the MP-443 Grach, the standard-issue semiautomatic pistol of the Russian military. He explained that all twelve men would be armed with the pistol in addition to their assault rifle. “It will function as backup should your rifle jam.”
That took care of the weapons portion of the presentation. The Mudir next discussed timing and transportation. As he spoke he began seeing what he expected. A few of the men were stealing glances around the room, doing a head count to themselves. They were confused by the math.
The Mudir kept referring to the dozen men who would take part in the attack, but there were thirteen of them in the room. Was someone going to play a special role not yet discussed?
Yes.
“Are there any questions?” asked the Mudir.
One of the men raised his hand. The Mudir nodded at him. Permission to speak.
“Why are there thirteen of us here if only twelve are needed?” the man asked.
The Mudir smiled. The trick to turning men into murderers was to show them how little control they had over their own fate. Life was not precious. It was not special. It wasn’t anything.
And if you truly believed in what you were doing—your god and your cause—then life was yours to take from others at any time.
It required radical thinking to radicalize people.
“I didn’t hear you,” said the Mudir, walking toward the man who had raised his hand. “Can you repeat what you said?”
No, he couldn’t. All the man could do was stare at the MP-443 Grach in the Mudir’s hand before literally pissing himself in his folding chair. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.
“I’m not,” said the Mudir.
Raising his arm, he pumped a single round from the semiautomatic pistol right between the man’s eyes. The shot was so clean the man barely moved as blood poured out the back of his head like water from a spigot.
The Mudir returned to his large duffel on the table, looking around at the twelve remaining men who would carry out the attack on the train station on July 4th.
“Does anyone