Drone

Ali had set up the Bravo training camp deep in the heart of the Yucatán jungle a few miles outside the small town two years earlier, before he’d begun his security work under Castillo. Infiltrating not one but two Mexican drug cartels had been the most nerve-racking experience of Ali’s short but violent life, but it was worth it. Quds Force plans in Latin America hinged on the success of his mission, and the last phase of the mission was about to begin.

Ali had brought four trusted Quds commandos to carry out the primary training duties while he was earning Castillo’s trust and setting the trap to lure the Americans into battle. The training camp had already trained three previous cycles of Bravo recruits from around the country.

On the current training cycle, the recruits were locals, mostly poor young campesinos looking for something more than the chance to dig in the dirt for yams or corn on their own miserable little plots of land or, worse, breaking their backs for a few measly pesos a day on the big fincas of the international conglomerates getting fat on NAFTA-fueled contracts. A few could read, a few could write, but mostly they were Ali’s “little chestnuts”—small, brown, and hard, like the ones his grandfather grew in the Zagros Mountains. Ali genuinely liked them for their easy smiles and endless capacity for suffering. Because of his religious scruples, Ali refused to allow female recruits to integrate with the men, though several women had served Victor Bravo’s organization honorably and ruthlessly over the years.

Ali wished he had an imam with him. This could be a field ripe for harvest for Allah. The mission of the Quds Force was to export the revolution worldwide, and imams were essential to that mission. But Victor had his own strange, syncretistic faith and would have opposed Ali if he’d shown up on his doorstep with Muslim missionaries. But Ali was patient. He knew there would be opportunities for the spread of Islam soon enough.

For religious instruction at the training camp, Victor had recruited an aging American Jesuit priest who drummed pagan liberation theology into their illiterate skulls. Father Bob exchanged his liturgical services for an endless supply of filtered cigarettes and the occasional bag of premium weed. When Ali’s Quds Force commandos arrived to begin their training duties, Father Bob began preaching against “religious fundamentalism,” but within a week, he disappeared. Ali reported to Victor that the old priest had returned to New York to tend to an ailing relative. The truth was the American’s throat had been opened by a razor-sharp commando knife and the old infidel’s bones were rotting in the bottom of a nearby swamp.

Besides their intensive physical training, the new recruits spent the first few weeks in weapons training, learning not only how to fire the weapons, but also how to break down and reassemble their AK-47s, which the Mexicans called “goat horns” because of the shape of the magazine. The jungle echoed constantly with the roar of automatic-rifle fire, but no one in the area seemed to notice or care. Local law enforcement had been paid to look—or, technically, listen—the other way, and nobody was being shot. In fact, Victor’s presence had saved the local police from the other cartels that used to prey on them.

Once the trainers were convinced the campesinos wouldn’t accidentally shoot themselves, they introduced them to the basic principles of land navigation, small-unit tactics, and maneuvers. By the time Ali arrived, they had become an effective guerrilla unit.

Ali easily assumed command of the training unit. In his absence, Ali’s name had been invoked frequently by the trainers with a mixture of awe and terror, and they regaled the impressionable young men with tales of Ali’s heroic exploits against the Western armies in the Middle East. Ali also had a natural command presence, and the fearsome Quds Force soldiers carried out each of his orders with an instant precision that also greatly impressed the peasant recruits.

Under his command, Ali marched the boys twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, and frequently tested their combat skills. Ali also used this time to repeatedly drill into his recruits the mission they were assigned.

“Where are you going?” Ali sang in a marching cadence.

“We’re going up north!” the Mexicans shouted back.

“They put up a fight?”

“We burn ’em all down!” they called out in breathless unison.

“Where are you going?”

“We’re going up north!”

“I can’t hear you!”

“WE’RE GOING UP NORTH!”

Mile after mile, chant after chant, they marched and marched and marched.

One afternoon, Ali marched the Mexicans deeper into the jungle for some real fun: RPGs—rocket-propelled grenades.