Page 141 of Whisper

“It comes down to whether they can see the writing on the wall. Whether the jihadis can realize what’s in their best interest.” Ahmad shrugged. “Everyone breaks. Everyone talks. Some are just smarter than others. They talk faster.”

“Deep faith, hardened faith, is thicker than that. It doesn’t break, not that easily,” Davis said.

“You think Zahawi’s faith wasn’t strong?” Kris frowned.

“What’s Zahawi doing now?” David leaned back and crossed his arms. “He’s in Gitmo, and he’s the cell block leader for all the other al-Qaeda fighters there. He leads prayers. He says in every one of his tribunal meetings before the military judge that he is still anti-American. He still believes in the cause. He’s a true believer and he’s never changed from that. Giving up intelligence to us did not change his core beliefs, then or now. And—” David glared. “Torturing him didn’t help either.”

“Have you been checking up on Zahawi?” Ahmad looked at David like he’d grown a second head.

“I’ve seen men die for their faith.” David held Kris’s stare. “Deep, hard faith.”

A basketball stadium flashed in Kris’s mind, a swinging body. Like he’d seen it, like he’d been there. He closed his eyes.

“And we’ve all seen men turn greedy and give up everything they can for cold hard cash.” Ahmad lit a cigarette and blew smoke across the table toward David. “This guy wants the money. He wants a new life. Wouldn’t anyone want to get away from this hellhole?”

Hamid emailed Ahmad every few days now. After the video, it seemed that Hamid had reached some kind of level within the movement where he was trusted, where he was allowed to have his own cell phone and travel where he wanted, as he pleased.

On the frontier now, he wrote.Gathering medical supplies. Have not seen Zawahiri since the meeting. Two drone strikes yesterday. Many dead. I set three broken bones. We buried twelve bodies.

Kris and Darren reviewed drone footage and found two strikes in a remote corner of Waziristan. The pilot, as per his orders, had lingered over the site as al-Qaeda had come for their wounded and dead. All in all, twelve graves had been dug.

“Ask him for a target. Tell him we want him to identify a target for us to strike. To prove his bona fides.”

Three days later, Hamid emailed, saying a group of Taliban would be traveling from Pakistan through the mountains to Asadabad, Afghanistan. They’d be traveling at night, in cars with no headlights.

Kris and Darren waited through the long hours of the night, until the drones hovering over Asadabad caught sight of a two-car convoy snaking down the potholed, gravelly Kunar road through the mountains down from Pakistan.

Kris gave the order to fire.

Twin explosions burned the night, and in the morning, the wreckage of the cars was pushed off the road by the villagers. Blackened scraps of metal tumbled down the flinty ravine and came apart in a cloud of black dust.

Hamid had proven himself, at least with the first tests. Kris felt the pressure of Langley, of Ryan, of Director Edwards, and even of the White House breathing down his neck.Find them, kill themwas the mission, and he’d only had drones to work with for so long.

Now, Hamid had appeared like a gift from above.Find them… and use Hamid. Hamid could be an extension of Kris, inside al-Qaeda. Hamid could be his eyes and his ears, even his hands, if he got close enough. Hamid could be Kris’s weapons.

God, he hungered for Hamid’s access. They all did, from Kabul to Langley to DC. For what it meant. If Hamid was inside the inner circle of al-Qaeda, if he could get back to Zawahiri, they could make meaningful strikes against al-Qaeda. Hit them where it ached, like they’d hit the US. Where it hurt.

After seven years of frustrations, of failures, of devastation, and death, Kris needed a win. He needed something to check in the victory column. The ledger felt woefully imbalanced after seven years of his eyes seeing the worst of humanity crawl up from the darkness.

He could feel the desperation swimming in his veins. Clawing at his heart.Please, a win, please. He wanted to get the sons of bitches that had ripped apart the world on September 11, 2001. Do something to fix what had become of the world. Right some wrong, or at least provide the tiniest bit of recompense he could to the families of the three thousand souls who had died that day.

And he wanted to do this for David, too. Rip the men out of the world who had twisted and perverted David’s faith, his father’s faith, until David was certain Allah was dead. If they could just destroy this evil, crush it, eliminate it, maybe there’d be space for David’s faith to return. It was the closest he could get to David’s father, Kris felt. Resurrecting David’s father’s faith and freeing it from the darkness.

To get started, he had to get to Hamid.

KnoweverythingHamid knew.

And then unleash Hamid on al-Qaeda, weaponized by Kris’s own hands.

You have told the Americans about me, haven’t you?

Hamid’s next message came before Ahmad had a chance to explain.

I have, Ahmad wrote back.And you’ve made all of Jordan proud. Your king proud. Your nation, and the world, is inspired by you. The ummah will praise your name. The Americans all rejoice over you. And, habibi, you are the one they most wish to speak to you. Urgently. We must plan for your next moves. Keep you safe.

Hamid went radio silent for three days. Kris paced Camp Carson, from the command center to the runways to the helipads.

David found him at the helipads, walking the empty squares where the Blackhawks landed every evening. The ethereal dust haze hovered in the air, choking off the sky and settling over everything in a fine layer of grit. It felt like walking through ghosts, like some kind of otherworldly realm. The dust seemed heavy, the dust of shattered empires and millennia of history trapped within the borders of Afghanistan. The sun, trying to peak over the Tora Bora mountains, couldn’t push through the haze completely. Afghanistan was still on planet Earth, but the sun seemed farther away than it did back in DC.