First Strike: Loudoun County

2. Dominoes-1

CHAPTER 2

DOMINOES

“KER-BLAM!!!”

The suicide bomb blast killed dozens of men, women and children, including the bomber’s intended target, the President of the United States. He and the others were the unlucky ones. Or perhaps they were actually of the lucky multitude, given a left-handed gift from the gods so that they wouldn’t have to deal with the horrible, life-altering injuries the campaign rally’s survivors had been dealt by the bomber? That man had, of course, been killed by the blast as well. Such was the way of suicide attacks, after all.

The killed and wounded in the packed crowd had all been within 50 feet of the nondescript man who’d triggered the bomb vest he’d been wearing. That device, which had destroyed wantonly and with an almost devilish abandon, had been underneath the unremarkable man’s equally unremarkable and completely Western-looking clothing.

In the aftermath, the air stank of explosive residue and its constituent chemicals as well as the sad detritus that’s always left behind when humans violently pass into the afterlife. The ground at the epicenter of the explosion resembled a charnel pit of flesh, bone, blood and gore. All the tragic remnants of an evil act were there, in other words.

The wounded, with eardrums ruptured by the explosion’s overpressure wave, staggered about on legs fractured and torn, with arms equally as destroyed, and in such a state of shock they weren’t even aware of how badly they’d been mauled. It was as if a man-eating tiger had rampaged through a village composed entirely of the defenseless, taking its fill of vulnerable human flesh before it melted away into the surrounding jungle. Yet there was no screaming or crying or moaning, though there were plenty of still, broken bodies strewn about as carelessly as a child might scatter her dolls in a fit of anger. Horrible, heart-rending sounds would come soon enough, of course, as they always did after any great human calamity, but for now the newly silent air was almost completely motionless in the aftermath of what the bomber had thought of as Allah’s vengeance.

The killer had set himself up perfectly along the rally’s barricade. The Secret Service were patrolling it, sure enough, and the bomber could easily pick out just who they were and where they were and thus made sure not to come too close to them or to just as obviously avoid them. His entire demeanor was structured so as to prevent any clear threat whatsoever, in fact, just as his trainers and handlers had intended. He also knew he’d managed to avoid landing on any sort of special-attention list during his time in America, which was a fortuitous circumstance or the will of Allah or whatever. He’d received no pre-rally visit from the Secret Service or FBI special agent sent to check him out. He was innocuous and completely unremarkable, in other words, and he’d trained long and hard with his Quds Force handlers to look just the part.

It was those men – a pair of Iranians whose intense hatred of the United States easily matched his own – that had supplied his custom-built, plastique-laden and torso-fitted explosive device. It held a new type of extremely potent and highly stable plastic explosive his handlers had assured him was not yet known to the intelligence agencies of the US and its allies. It was also vacuum-sealed within its custom-made carrier vest to prevent its discovery by Department of Homeland Security bomb-sniffing dogs and handlers or any sort of infrared, millimeter wave, or other detection device known to be used by DHS.

As a final act of their demonic beneficence, the duo had also thoroughly instructed him in how to get close enough to the US president to use it. In his heart of hearts he knew he would soon deploy it to great effect. That’d he’d also die in the act if it was successful was of little consequence to him. He was a Taliban, a Pashto word used in both the singular and plural form. Simply put, he was a “student.” Personally, he’d been a Taliban been since he was a little boy barely able to speak. The ultra-fundamentalist Muslim religious movement dictated his entire life, in fact.

He’d first been instructed by his father and uncles in the great movement’s ways, and once they’d judged him ready, they’d sent him off to a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrassa, in neighboring Pakistan, which served as both a religious training academy and a finishing school in the more obscure, terrorism-related arts. Many young Taliban males had been educated and trained in this fashion, he knew, though he wasn’t personally acquainted with any of the others. All the better to keep operational security should he be discovered once he made it to America.

The young man’s entire 19 years of life to this point had been dedicated to the Taliban cause. For starters, the movement’s leaders had taken great care to ensure his “education” had never been discovered or noted by either US or Afghan as well as broader Pakistani intelligence, including his travel back and forth over the latter country’s borders.

He was an almost perfect cypher, in other words, and he took advantage of that fact by quickly aligning himself with US forces once he’d returned from his training. He’d proven himself helpful to American military forces and had never once given even the slightest hint of anything but absolute loyalty to the Afghan government and its US benefactor. He took care, as well, to never rise too highly lest he become the subject of heightened scrutiny driven by a curiosity about his helpfulness and reliability in a country where allegiances might shift on a dime, driven as they often were by a clan warlord’s directives.

Indeed, he worked to stay more a low-level asset than anything else, stolidly performing his duties to the best of his ability, to the point where he’d even avidly taken part in the capture of several Taliban fighters, detailing their locations and likely threat to his American masters. Thus, when the opening in the form of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan had presented itself, Taliban leaders quickly seized on the opportunity.

Just last year, for example, they’d ensured he and many of his comrades had successfully made it aboard a multitude of US Air Force C-17 cargo jets, all fleeing Kabul. Those planes had taken them to America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” For a fact, the man meant to illustrate to them all just how brave they would indeed have to be to defeat him and his compatriots and their blessed movement, for he knew they had the numbers on their side in this idolatrous, wicked nation.

Thousands and thousands of Afghans – some of whom weren’t quite so desperate as they made themselves out to be, and more than a few who weren’t Afghan but, rather, Iranian, Arab, and even some from Chechnya and Dagestan – managed to pile into those planes. As was always the case with the fat, overfed and overconfident Americans, they either didn’t know enough about the ethnic differences among them all or they simply didn’t care, focused as they were on helping their supposed “friends” escape the Taliban as their fighters took province after province, city after city, town after town.

At any rate, his paperwork and identity documents had long ago been perfected. They’d previously been surreptitiously entered into the Americans’ databases and security systems by skilled hackers working for a section of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, which was extremely sympathetic to the Taliban. The entries included his electronic and biometric data, all of which was designed to withstand fairly rigorous scrutiny. Brilliant forgeries, they’d proved his bona fides sufficiently enough that the largely apathetic DHS and other US government three-letter-agency background checkers – who’d been looking into his past at the refugee resettlement camp he’d been transported to after landing in America -- had proclaimed themselves satisfied that he was who he said he was.

They’d then welcomed him with open arms and even helped support him while he was “integrated” – their word, not his – into his new country, complete with a small, subsidized apartment, cash payments, English lessons, and a decent and unexciting job that paid him more money than he needed, but which he’d carefully spent so that he could give the impression he’d bought wholeheartedly into what was called the “American dream.” He didn’t know about anything else, but his own dream had always been of the final, great use to which he’d be put. His entire reason for being was directed at that outcome and today would be the day.

Once he’d planted himself firmly in America the fact he despised everything about his new nation and considered it to be satanic in the extreme was something he had never allowed to appear, either by word or deed, for even just the barest second.

He’d successfully bided his time, playing the part of a grateful refugee and mostly non-religious person. He even stayed away from the mosque in his town, found not far from where the presidential event was being held, on the certainty it was at least under occasional security surveillance. He had even eagerly accepted the nickname his new American friends had given him. They called him “Al,” which was supposed to serve as a substitute for “Abdul-Ali,” the name on his identity papers. He’d played along, smiling and bowing and scraping and pretending at a gratitude for his American experience that he never in a moment had ever truly felt.

Now, though? Now it was the hour of his and his movement’s great triumph. Soon, he’d martyr himself and deal a grievous blow to his adopted country and greatest enemy.

The crowd around him suddenly broke into a loud murmur, with some even cheering a bit. Spying movement at the south end of the barricade, Abdul-Ali knew the American president would soon be near to where he was standing.

And right on time, here the American president was, now standing no more than twenty-five feet from him. Abdul-Ali was careful not to push or shove anyone out of the way or move suddenly toward the man, who appeared a little frail because of his advanced age and the weight of the office he held. The agents of the president’s Secret Service detail as well as the security forces no doubt circulating within the crowd, and even the spotters and snipers on the tops of various buildings near the reception area in which he was standing, would be extremely alert to any sort of movement that appeared out of the ordinary in any conceivable way. This, too, had been drilled into his head by his Quds Force trainers.

On the cusp of his great triumph, Abdul-Ali didn’t want to risk getting arrested or discovered and then shot, and so he stayed where he was, clapping and cheering just like everyone else was doing. He even held aloft a little American flag he’d brought along with him in case there were video surveillance and facial recognition systems present. As for the latter, his handlers had carefully applied very subtle prosthetics to his cheeks, his ears, his forehead and even his body. These were intended to spoof or throw off any recognition software.

They’d also relentlessly told him never to look up or at any cameras, but to never look like he was trying to avoid them either. Doing one or both of those things risked giving himself away, they’d said, though Abdul-Ali didn’t need to be told that. He wasn’t about to ruin it all now. He only needed a few seconds to do his job and carry out his sacred mission.

As the moment of his ascension neared, the Afghan refugee silently repeated the Shahada to himself. It was the Muslim profession of faith, spoken in Arab by all true believers everywhere: There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.

It would be his final message to the infidel president and his supporters.

Now the time was upon them all. There the president was, “pressing the flesh.”