The Walking Dead

Another boy with bright eyes, his Faith gleaming…What made him different from those in the two pickups speeding across the darkened Iraqi sands towards distribution points was the ability to walk well. His judgement had been made after he had seen them stride towards him: some had been awkward or heavy in their step; some had looked to the side and flinched when they came close to him; some had been hesitant to the point of almost tripping. This boy had a good step, had not hurried, had not looked around him, had walked as he would have on a pavement at home. That had dictated the choice made by Muhammad Ajaq — the name lived only in the recesses of his mind. The name that existed in the intelligence files of his enemy, and on the lips of those with whom he fought, was the Scorpion — and now, he grimaced, he was the Leader.

'Ibrahim, do you have military training?'

'None. My brothers did. My eldest brother was martyred fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. The other was martyred in the war against the American invaders of Afghanistan. I seek to match their dedication, to be worthy…'

They all mouthed this shit. All the boys recruited by the gatekeepers in the mosques — of Riyadh and Jeddah, Damascus and Aleppo, Sana'a and Aden, Hamburg and Paris — spoke of the roots of their commitment. He was not a martyr, had no wish for suicide, and thought those who did were fools and deluded…But he needed them. They were the lifeblood of the war he fought. They took his opportunities of attack into defined areas of exactness that were otherwise unreachable. No shell, rocket or bullet fired from whatever distance had the same accuracy as a martyr bomb, or created matching devastation and fear. So he lived with the shit. He massaged the boy's shoulder and talked softly — as if the boy was his equal.

'What you need to know, we will teach you.'

'So that I may achieve success for my mission. Thank you.'

'Have you been prepared in the matter of resistance to interrogation?'

He felt the boy flinch. 'No.'

Of course, the gate-keeper would not have talked of capture, of torture, of the failure of battery-powered circuits. The possibility of failure would have weakened the boy's commitment. Sometimes a back-up electrical circuit was built into the car bomb, or the bomb in the belt, so that it could be remotely detonated from a distance if dedication died or a device would not ignite. Sometimes a sniper with a long-barrelled Makharov watched the advance of a bomber through a telescopic sight and would shoot to kill if will or circuit failed. A boy, this one or any of those now riding in the pickups towards the cities of Iraq, would know too much of recruitment and transport routes, safe-houses and the personnel who commanded their mission — he would talk if he was captured alive and tortured to make rivers of pain. But Ibrahim Hussein could not be followed with a telescopic sight when he travelled to his target.

He said, 'We put great trust in you, and you should trust us for our skills. Everything that can be prepared has been — but disaster can come from a sunlit morning, from a clear sky, without warning. There are successes, there are setbacks. I will not hide anything from you, Ibrahim.'

The lights, far away, became clear and the engines' sounds swelled as they approached. It was his tactic that the mention of failure, disaster, should be aired only at the end before they parted.

'Huge courage is asked of you. We believe of you that the courage will be found. They will use electrodes on your genitals, they will inject drugs into you, they will beat you with clubs and iron bars. You will be denied sleep. Shrieking noise will be played in your ears, and they will question you…and at the end you will face execution if you are still in this region or a lifetime of imprisonment if you are far from here. We will all be praying for your resolve, your bravery. Our ability to continue the struggle will depend on the courage we believe you have. God will be watching over you. Take a place with your eye on a crack in the ceiling, on a join of plaster between tiles on a floor, on a bar in the window, on what has been scratched on the floor and stay silent. Stay silent for a week. Give us time to dismantle and move. A week — do you promise me?'

He heard the small, stuttered answer: 'I will, a week, I swear it.'

'Whatever the pain?'

'Because I will be thinking of God.'

He cuffed the boy. He made that speech to all the boys sent across the frontier to him by gate-keepers, and they all swore to stay silent for a week…A day would be enough. He eased his hand off the boy's shoulder.