The two militants were surprised to see the gaunt figure walking toward them out of the dry grasslands just south of al Hasaka, Syria. It was three in the morning, after all, and only lizards were walking this deep in the desert at this time of night. Sometimes they would see people flee the city by night, dragging their children with one arm and holding their pathetic bundles in the other. They were headed to Turkey via border crossings like Qamishli and maybe to Europe, if they didn’t die along the way. But walking? Into the city? From the south?
An opportunity, the first militant thought. Three weeks ago, their Chechen Muslim commander, Omar al Shishani, had seized a Syrian artillery base nearby, decimating Syrian Regiment 121. Since then, it had been quiet, and the militant kept boredom at bay by harassing passersby. The smugglers’ trucks paid well to travel through the Caliphate, and even some of the desperate refugees had valuables they would trade for safe passage. If they didn’t comply, and his mood was righteous, the militant wasn’t above beating them and destroying the few things they owned. The walkers were fair game, in his opinion, because they had chosen to flee the Caliphate. This gaunt stranger was fair game because he was entering the land born of martyrs, and an entry tax was a small price to pay for an eternity of bliss.
The second guard wasn’t as sure. He was almost sixteen, from the slums of Damascus, and he had joined ISIS primarily for food. And the promise of tawhid, mystical union with Allah. He wanted to be moved by faith. He wanted to believe there was a divine purpose to his life of crushing injustice. But for weeks, he had experienced only the daily grind of desperate people stumbling toward Turkey, just as his family had walked out of Damascus last winter when the rebels opened a gap. They were dead now, all but him.
So he watched the elongated figure emerge out of the grasslands, where no one had ever come from before, with a certain hopefulness. He countenanced the white robes against the dark night, and the corona of hair and beard. The stranger was bareheaded, save a white skullcap, and he carried no bags, but he had a jambiya—a curved dagger—tucked in his belt and a leather strap across his chest. He looked neither Syrian army nor Kurdish fighter nor fellow mujahideen.
“Madman,” the first guard said.
Prophet, thought Ish, the younger guard. He had been waiting for wisdom to emerge from this emptiness. He believed the teachings of his former imam: that the desert could drive men mad with the knowledge of Allah.
“As-salamu alaykum,” the older guard yelled when the stranger was less than fifty meters away.
The stranger kept walking toward them, slow and steady, holding their gaze until Ish looked away. When he looked back, the stranger was uncomfortably close. He had an empty look in his eyes, as if he didn’t know they were there. His hands were outstretched, palms up and cupped in supplication. He glanced up at the black ISIS flag above the former Syrian Army outpost, then stared straight into the younger man. Ish felt his heart explode with longing. Surely this was a holy man.
“As-salamu alaykum,” the older guard repeated, bringing his Kalashnikov across his chest as a threat, his finger on the trigger. The stranger stopped in front of him.
“Wa-Alaikum Salaam,” the stranger said calmly, his black eyes glittering like beetles but the rest of his face impassive. “I’m looking for a man,” he said in Gulf Arabic. “I believe he passed through here earlier today.”
“We were not here earlier today,” the guard replied.
The stranger reached behind his back with his left arm, pulled out a scimitar, and sliced the guard’s neck in one motion. The head fell one way; the body the other. Ish fell to his knees and began to pray, his forehead to the bloody ground, his body wracked with sobs.
“Then you cannot help me,” the stranger said, walking toward the city.
If Ish had looked up, he would have seen the smile of satisfaction on the formerly stoic face, the electricity of delight. Allah willed his arm to discipline and punish, but also to inspire. The Wahhabi had sensed the fear and longing in the second guard’s eyes, and he knew that he could give the young man what he desired: revelation.
The American white-knuckled his night-vision binoculars and watched the gaunt figure walk undisturbed into the Syrian night. He looked back at the outpost. The headless body lay crumpled on the ground and the second jihadi lay crumpled beside it, rocking back and forth in prostration.
“What was that?” he whispered, lowering the night-vision binoculars.
“Fuck if I know,” said his partner, lowering his, too.
“The guard didn’t even provoke him. He didn’t even have time to be an asshole. He just . . .”
“I know. I saw it.”
The second operative put the binoculars back to his eyes and watched the assassin walk along the road. The man wasn’t hurrying, and he never looked back. He was . . . Jesus Christ, the guy was strutting.
“You think that was our guy?” He was referring to the new intelligence requirements on the whereabouts of a missing Saudi princeling.
His partner, a former U.S. Navy SEAL turned CIA Ground Division, laughed. “No chance. We’re looking for a Saudi prince leading an ISIS death squad, not a lone sociopath with a sword. Not that one can’t be the other, but no sane person is going to just walk out of the desert alone.”
They set up the satcom array and called in the incident. Reporting bizarre murders wasn’t the assignment; the job was to keep eyes on the tactical situation and take out leadership, if the opportunity presented itself. But this was the first interesting thing they’d seen in days.
“I don’t get it,” the second commando said, still staring through his binos. “Three combat tours in Iraq. Two in Afghanistan, one in the Sahel. I’ve seen some fucked-up shit in my time, but I ain’t seen nothin’ like that.”
“FIDO,” his partner said. Fuck It Drive On.