Abdul Ahmed Ashmani had never been camping before. Though he was from Saudi Arabia and his extended family included much Bedouin blood, he'd never even slept in a tent, never mind tried to live in one.
But that's what he'd been doing, he and three othersâtwo guys named Muhammad Abu and his cousin Azi. They'd been staying in two tents on the edge of the Whispering Falls campgrounds for the past two days.
The tents were very small, made of thin plastic and cord, and though easy to set up, they had a tendency to collapse if the wind blew too hard. And due to the campsite's location, the wind seemed to be blowing hard just about all of the time.
This was not Ashmani's climate, not his pleasure, not his country. He'd gained entry to the United States three years before the 9/11 attacks, paying a French-speaking tour guide to allow him aboard a ferry leaving Quebec for Portland, Maine, without having to show a passport. The bribe was just $100. He worked as a cabdriver in Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, before eventually moving west to Buffalo and finally to the large Arab enclave of Detroit.
Here he lay hiding among a sympathetic population, avoiding U.S. government sweeps following 9/11, working as a busboy, a waiter, and a used-car salesmen. Two weeks
ago, he was contacted by an Al Qaeda operative posing as a U.S. correspondent for Al-Jazeera TV. His orders were for Ashmani to move farther west, to this campground, and hook up with his fellow operators. Many rides on many Greyhound buses followed. When he arrived in the nearby town of Horseshoe, he was as surprised as anyone to find his cousin Azi waiting at the bus stop to pick him up.
The two missiles were here, two launchers, too. They had both arrived with the two Muhammads, the soccer players, on schedule, with no problems. There was a reason this particular campsite was so windy. It was practically on the edge of a mountain so high, when winter came thousands of people would go skiing here. But it also presented a clear view of the vast lower Colorado plains. And a few miles away, just slightly to the southeast of them, and about a thousand feet below, was Denver International Airport.
Big airliners took off and landed here all day and night, every hour, every minute, or so it seemed. The afternoon of his first day here, Ashmani sat on the edge of the cliff and counted the planes taking off. In two hours, nearly 50 aircraft of all shapes and sizes took flightâand that did not take into account just as many landings. Ashmani was amazed. He'd spent eight hours once in Mecca Airport waiting for the only flight of the day to land ⦠. But 50 takeoffs in two hours? Where the hell were all these Americans going?
One of these planes would be the team's primary target; if they had time and opportunity, they would try for two. Exactly which airplane they would choose to shoot down first had been left to the fates. They had a fresh cell phone hidden in the Muhammads' tent. When it rang, they were to set up the missile and then shoot it at the biggest airplane to take off inside the next 10 minutes.
At least this was the plan. Other teams, like them a combination of sleepers inserted into the United States years before and “soccer players,” had not been so lucky in trying to hit their airliners. Ashmani's team had been led to believe, again by their original orders, that by the time they got to shoot at their targets at least five planes would have been
shot down already. Yet there had been nothing about anything like that in the American media.
Ashmani knew America was a very screwy place. Its people were also highly unpredictable. For their own security reasons, none of the sleeper/hit teams had had any contact with one another before moving forward. They communicated solely by ringing various cell phones. So neither he nor anyone else in his team had any idea why the previous attempted shoot-downs had failed.
But the rumor that an American special ops team might be knocking off the other cells had been a source of worry. Footage of just such a team had been shown all over American TV for the past three days, along with strident denials by the U.S. government that such a team was on the loose. Of most concern to Ashmani's cell was that these vigilantes, if they existed, might actually be the Crazy Americans, the scourge of every Muslim from Algeria to the Philippines. It was a frightening thought, as no one wanted to deal with
them
, promises of martyrdom or not.
Allah be praised, after all this Ashmani just wanted to shoot the damn missiles and get the hell home.
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It was now almost 8:00 A.M., local time.
The four men had just finished their morning tea when Ashmani heard an odd beeping noise, electronic and muffled.
He didn't know what it was at first. He was sitting close to their raging campfire, the crackling wood distorting the sound at first. But then Azi stood up, nearly tripped over the campfire, and scrambled toward his tent. He looked both excited and frightened. That's when it hit Ashmani.
It was the phone. It was ringing.
Their orders â¦
Finally ⦠.
“It is the signal,” Azi confirmed. “It is time to shoot ⦠.”
The two Muhammads went into action. One of them threw Ashmani his watch. Ashmani was the timekeeper. He noted the time on the fake Rolex. Eight-o-five A.M. It was a Saturday.
People traveling early for the weekend. A full airliner. A big airliner.
A fat target.
Ashmani felt his heart start pumping rapidly. Real timing was called for here.
The two Muhammads finally joined them. They were the soccer players and thus the weapons experts. They soon had the first missile married to its launcher. Azi ran down the road to a preappointed spot from which he could see most of the eastern end of the campground and its main road as well. He whistled three times, loud and shrill. Everything was clear.
Ashmani double-checked the missile, another of his duties. The sighting device was turned on. The battery indicator showed a substantial charge. The weapon needed a few minutes to heat up. The two Muhammads took up a position right behind his tent and just 10 feet from the edge of the cliff. A small green steel barrier, similar to a guardrail on a highway, was located here, driven into the rock. It made for a perfect aiming spot.
Once they were set, Ashmani rushed back to his tent and grabbed his laptop. He'd downloaded many regular flight schedules for the airport below. Their orders were to shoot down the biggest plane possible. Only the big airline companies flew the very big planesâexcept for the odd charter or cargo plane. Ashmani ran his finger down the list for this morning, this date: United. American. Delta. Each had at least one plane departing within the next 15 minutes. Perfect ⦠.
He took out his binoculars, returned to the guardrail, and trained them on the airport below. There were five main runways; they crisscrossed one another at fifty-degree angles. Because the wind was always blowing from the west here, those planes taking off left from the runway nearest to them and frequently flew right over the campground itself.
Ashmani trained his binoculars on the northernmost runway. Five airplanes were waiting on a taxiway nearbyâa 747 was just pulling into position at the far end. It was a United Airlines planeâAshmani believed it was heading for Dallas.
Praise God!
he thought.
We're about to kill a bunch of Texans.
He scrambled back down to where the Muhammads had the weapon fixed on the guardrail. The weapon was warm, they told him. The sighting device was ready as well. Ashmani was very excited now. He whistled, the signal for Azi. Azi whistled back once. Then returned to the camp site. Everything was all clear.
Ashmani trained the binoculars back on the runway.
The big 747 was beginning to move ⦠.
Ashmani whispered another quick prayer, then took the glasses from his eyes. The next thing he saw was a bayonet, reflecting the early-morning sun, coming right at him.
It was strange, in that fraction of a second, when he could see the glint of this very sharp blade so clearly, yet the person behind it still somehow out of focus. He thought it was his cousin Azi, about to stab him, for some long-forgotten incident of their childhood. But then, in the next moment, he realized it could not be Azi, because he was lying on the ground next to the campfire with another bayonet sticking out of his neck, the wound gushing blood like red water from a garden hose.
Only then did Ashmani see the helicopter. It had swooped down from out of nowhere. It was big and white ⦠and
very
quiet. Armed men were jumping from it. They were dressed in black combat suits and carrying combat rifles ⦠with bayonets.
These men were brutally beating one of the Muhammads. They weren't simply shooting him. They were stabbing him, impaling him, stomping him with their big black boots. The screams were horrible, drowning out the now-departing United 747. It was flying right overhead at that moment, which to Ashmani seemed frozen in time.
The bayonet hit his knee first, then pierced his upper thigh. There was no painânot right away. He collapsed, though, falling onto the crazy man who was trying very hard not just to kill him but also to make him suffer before doing him in. They tumbled over together, Ashmani rolling
out of control and nearly into the raging campfire, winding up in the pool of blood still streaming out of his cousin. All of this was happening in an instant. It was slow-motion terror magnified.
But then something very strange and unexpected happened. The helicopter was still hovering silently right in front of the guardrail. A man was in its pilot's seat, incredibly firing a rifle down at the Muhammad who was still being stabbed by the others. Suddenly the Stinger missileâwhich the second Muhammad was holdingâwent off. All fire and smoke, it went right through the helicopter's open cargo door and smashed into the interior fuselage.
There was a violent explosion. The noise was tremendous. The remains of the missile went one way and the helicopter, on fire and spinning out of control, went the other. The copter plummeted to the plains below. In a second, there was nothing left in the air but thousands of sparkling ashes and a cloud of black smoke.
Ashmani found himself laughingâit had all happened so quickly, it almost seemed comical. But then he looked up and saw a gun barrel pointed right between his eyes. And the man behind the gun was not laughing. He looked at Ashmani coldly, almost as if he didn't realize his helicopter had just been blown out of the sky.
Then he mouthed the words:
Remember Nick Berg ⦠.
Then he pulled the triggerâand for Abdul Ahmed Ashmani everything just went to black.