LAHORE, PAKISTAN
ONE YEAR LATER

The narrow streets of the old city contained one of the worst slums in the world. Filth, squalor, and despair were daily accompaniments to the lives of Pakistan's lowest of citizens —the poverty-stricken Punjabi Muslims. Smaller and darker-skinned than the rest of Lahore's populace, the most fortunate among them were doomed to lives of mind-numbing menial labor, while the balance found themselves sucked up into the ranks of street urchins, beggars, and homeless. Their plight was one of subcontinental Islam's dirty little secrets, and it turned the stomach of the man sitting in the stolen Toyota Corolla outside the tomb of Muhammad Iqbal, poet and ideological godfather of modern Pakistan.

A devout Muslim, the man was humiliated to see how the promise of Muslim brotherhood had been denied the Punjabis. Pakistan was a hypocritical tangle of class divisions, and nowhere was that more evident than in the role of women. Beyond the fortunate women of the privileged classes who participated in think tanks, ran charity organizations, wrote novels and plays, and even occupied a handful of token positions in General Musharraf's cabinet, were those who suffered the daily horrors of domestic abuse, gang rape and murder at the hands of small-minded men professing their love of Allah and their devotion to the Muslim faith. Many, many times the man wished his employer's ultimate target was Pakistan, but it wasn't. As horrible as this country was, there was another that was much more evil and in much greater need of an all-powerful, cleansing blow.

His target emerged from the building across the street right on time. Every Wednesday like clockwork, the diminutive professor from Pakistan's oldest and largest university —the University of the Punjab —visited the old city for lunch. He was a man of strict routine and consistency —traits that had served him extremely well as a scientist, but which were about to lead to his undoing. As the professor unchained his small motorbike and pulled into traffic, the assassin set down the newspaper he had been pretending to read and started the car.

Two blocks before the university, the professor was still oblivious to the stolen Corolla following him. That was about to change. Approaching a busy intersection just before the campus, the professor watched in his mirror as a blue Toyota sped up as if to pass and then suddenly came swerving back hard to the right.

Bystanders screamed in horror as they watched the helmetless professor slammed to the pavement and then dragged beneath the Corolla for over half a block before the undercarriage of the speeding car spat his mangled, lifeless body into the street.

A mile and a half from the Lahore International Airport, the assassin abandoned the stolen car and covered the rest of the distance on foot. Once he was safely ensconced in the first-class cabin of his international flight, he pulled a weathered Koran from his breast pocket. After repeating several whispered supplications, the assassin turned to the back of the book and removed a coded list of names, hidden beneath the tattered cover. With the scientist from the University of the Punjab taken care of, there were only two more to go.

36° 07' N, 41° 30' E
NORTHERN IRAQ

Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 3rd "Arrowhead Brigade," 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT) had spent enough time in Iraq to get used to the sound of enemy rounds plinking off the armor plating of their eight-wheeled infantry carrier vehicle, but ever since they had driven into the small village of Asalaam, one hundred fifty kilometers southwest of Mosul, things had been dead quiet.

The village was one of many around the Christian enclave of Mosul known for its religious and ethnic tolerance. For the most part, Muslims and Christians throughout the area lived in relative harmony. In fact, the name Asalaam came from the Arabic word for peace. It wasn't the locals, though, that the SBCT soldiers were worried about. A stone's throw from the Syrian border, foreign insurgents were one of the greatest threats they faced.

The men had seen their fair share of ambushes in Iraq, including a devastating suicide attack within the confines of their own base, and none of them intended to return home in anything less comfortable than an airline seat. Body bags were out of the question for these soldiers.

Second Lieutenant Kurt Billings, from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was wondering why the hell they hadn't seen anything, when the vehicle commander of the lead Stryker came over his headset and said, "Lieutenant, so far we've got absolutely zero contact. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is moving out there. I don't even see any dogs."

"Must be pot luck night at one of the local madrasas," joked the radio operator.

"If so, then somebody should be manning the village barbecue pit," replied Billings. "Stay sharp and keep your eyes peeled. There's got to be somebody around here."

"I'm telling you, sir," said the vehicle commander, "there's nobody out there. The place is a ghost town."

"This village didn't just dry up overnight."

"Maybe it did. We're in the middle of nowhere. These people don't even have telephones. Besides, who'd care if they did dry up and blow away?"

"I'm sure there's an explanation for why we're not seeing anybody. Let's just take it slow," said Billings. "Do a complete sweep of the village and then we'll dismount. Got it?"

"Roger that, Lieutenant," responded the vehicle commander as their Stryker began a circuit of the village.

For this assignment Billings had organized his men into two, eightman fire, or assault, teams. The first team, designated Alpha, was with him in the lead armored vehicle, while Bravo team, under the command of Staff Sergeant James Russo, followed in the second Stryker. Their assignment had been to check on the status of three American Christian aid workers based in Asalaam, who hadn't been heard from in over a week.

Copyright © 2005 by Brad Thor