He came from Beirut. He came from war. His name was Waleed Omar Bilal, but not many remembered that name. Namir was what everyone called him—those who feared him, and there were many of them, and those who respected him as well.
Namir. Leopard.
They had started calling him that because of his ability to strike without warning and disappear into nothingness.
No one knew when he would come, or from where. All knew that when he left, there would be death and destruction in his wake.
The name had originated in a small village in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.
He and his small band of men had ambushed and captured an American convoy of thirty. He had killed most of the men and, after torturing the survivors, had left them to die in the heat.
Namir. That’s when his men had started calling him by that name.
Namir had known war all his life. He was born during a Lebanese army bombing raid in the valley.
He had seen his parents murdered by Maronite Christian guerillas.
That horrific incident stayed with him. He grew up being reared by neighbors and militants.
The earliest memory he had was of his parents dying.
The strongest emotion he had was hate.
Hate for Christians.
Namir’s first kill happened when he was eight years old.
It wasn’t planned. His gun went off when he was playing with it and killed an old villager.
He fled the place and joined a wandering band of armed militants. War became not just his solace, but his profession.
The militants Namir had joined were a splinter group of Hezbollah, the group that had waged a political war, and sometimes terrorism, against Israel and America, and had persecuted people of other faiths.
Having grown up in a toxic environment, Namir quickly found he was better at military strategy than any other militant in his group. And that he liked killing and torture.
He also found he was uninterested in the ideological beliefs of the Hezbollah.
He killed the leader of his group when he was twenty-five. Took over the cell, which was fifty strong. Turned it into a Mafia-style gang and ruled over a small village in the Bekaa Valley.
Product and money. Only those two mattered. Religious killing, fanaticism, creating a caliphate—all that was of zero interest to him.
He still had a burning hatred for Christians. He killed them where he could.
However, he didn’t allow his emotions to get in the way of his business.
The valley was broad and flat, a hundred miles northeast of Beirut, high up against the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. It had orchards, wineries, and factories for handmade carpets.
The village used to make wine at one time. Now it was better known for its hashish fields.
Namir’s gang controlled hundreds of acres of such fields, the villagers effectively serving the bandits. Hashish sales, however, were being rapidly overtaken by the manufacture of Captagon, an addictive drug that helped fighters stay awake for days and fight like zombies.
Namir had converted four houses in the village into laboratories, the hub of his multimillion-dollar income.
It was when he turned thirty-five that it all came crashing down on him.