The Third Target (8 page)

The instant Ramzy said his name, the klieg lights shut down.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust, but when they did, I saw a gargantuan man
 
—six foot five, three hundred pounds at least, dark-skinned, and masked only by a thick, full, black beard without a touch of gray. He wore a black robe and a black skullcap and had a Kalashnikov and an ammo belt slung over his shoulder. He had small, suspicious brown eyes, which immediately locked onto my own and never wandered, making me even more uncomfortable than I already felt, surrounded as we were by armed men in the signature al Qaeda black hoods. Everyone stared at me as my feet were promptly chained to enormous metal spikes driven into the concrete floor.

We were in a cavernous bunker of some kind. It was as big as a football field, and tall and wide enough to park a jet plane or a few dozen tanks, though at the moment it was empty but for a couple dozen large wooden crates, a few pickup trucks, and some cots. On the metal table before us sat a notebook, several pens, and a digital recorder. I immediately recognized them as my own. Taken aback, I was about to say something when I noticed a smudge on the side of the recorder. It looked like blood. I said nothing. I didn’t want to
know how they had retrieved my backpack. I didn’t want to know what had happened to the boy who had taken it from me.

Even as I looked at him, and he stared back at me, it was still difficult to fully process that I was sitting across from the commander of the Syrian forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, commonly referred to in Western intelligence agencies as ISIS, pronounced “eye-sis.” Others called it ISIL
 
—the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
 
—while many in the media called it simply the Islamic State. But whatever you called his terrorist organization, Jamal Ramzy was fast becoming one of the most wanted men in the world. The American government had recently marked him a specially designated global terrorist under Executive Order 13224. The State Department had put a $5 million bounty on his head. Yet to my knowledge, no reporter had ever spoken with Ramzy, much less seen him face to face. Though he had been mentioned in a handful of articles over the past year, not a single profile had been written on him. Mine, I hoped, would be the first.

“Mr. Collins, you’re thinking about the reward,” he began, his face expressionless. “I can see it in your eyes. Let me give you a piece of advice. Stop.”

I wasn’t actually, not really, but just the way he said it made my blood run cold.

“You have thirty minutes,” he said after a long pause. “Shall we begin?”

Someone came up behind me and cut the ropes that bound my hands. My wrists were bleeding, but not terribly. They were aching, but I didn’t allow that to distract me. I pulled the pocket watch out and set it on the table. Then I reached for the recorder, started it, picked up a pen, and asked my first question.

“Is Jamal Ramzy your real name?”

“Yes.”

“When were you born?”

“January 6, 1962.”

“Where?”

“Irbid, Jordan.”

“Are you Palestinian?”

“You know I am.”

I looked up from the notepad. “I don’t want to make any assumptions,” I said carefully. “I want the facts straight from you.”

He just stared at me without blinking. “Yes,” he said at last.

“Where is your family originally from?”

“Hebron.”

“Was your grandfather killed in the 1948 war?”

“Yes, the Zionists killed him and all my uncles.”

“Then your family fled to Jordan?”

“They were ordered to leave.”

“By the Jews?”

“No, by the coward Arab leaders who chose to run rather than fight.”

This caught me off guard. I suspected it partially explained his apparent preference to spend more time fighting his fellow Arabs than the Jews. It was a thread I wanted to pull on, but there was no time. This was all background information. I needed to get to the real issues, and quickly.

“After high school, your family moved to the Gulf, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Bahrain first and Dubai?”

“Yes.”

“When were you in Afghanistan?”

“March 1980 to August 1983.”

“You were young.”

“I serve at the pleasure of Allah.”

Now I changed directions. “Why did you change the name of your organization to ISIS?”

“The Islamic State is not my organization,” he said. “Allah is our
leader. Islam is our path. Jihad is our way. Abu Khalif is our caliph. I am but a servant.”

There he was: Abu Khalif, Ramzy’s younger cousin, the true leader of ISIS. I had been told by reliable sources that Khalif
 
—not Ramzy
 
—should be my real target. But I was not ready. Not yet. I would have to come back to this.

“Your faction was called al Qaeda in Iraq,” I noted. “Now it’s the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Why the change?”

“Again, it is not my faction, Mr. Collins,” he said calmly. “Abu Khalif is our leader. And it is the movement of Allah, not our own. At any rate, the original name was given by Ayman al-Zawahiri. But we no longer serve him. He is a traitor to Islam. Abu Khalif told him to repent. He chose not to. We are no longer responsible for what happens to him. We do not wish to be identified with anything connected to a traitor.”

I was about to ask another question, but Ramzy continued.

“Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Collins. We do not serve al Qaeda. There is no reason to have this in our name. We serve Allah only, and Allah has given us a simple mandate: reestablish the caliphate. We have started in Iraq to bring down the apostate leadership there. But this is about more than just Iraq. Al-Sham, as you must know, is the Levant, the East, the place of the rising sun. This is our focus.”

“Beginning with Syria?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Assad is a criminal. He has never been a true Muslim. He must be dispatched to the fires of judgment, with his family and all those loyal to him. Assad is a doomed man. But he is just a piece in the puzzle, you might say.”

“What are the other pieces?”

“The entire Levant,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Again, I don’t want to assume anything, and I don’t want my readers to assume either,” I said. “You’ve mentioned Iraq and Syria. Do you also plan to take over Lebanon?”

“Of course.”

“Turkey?”

“Yes.”

“Cyprus?”

“Yes.”

“Palestine?”

“Of course.”

“Israel?”

“Palestine,” he replied.

“I mean the Jewish State of Israel proper,” I clarified, adding, “inside the pre-1967 lines.”

He stared at me. “
All
of Palestine,” he said, his voice rising for the first time.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Just trying to be clear. What about Jordan?”

His eyes narrowed. “How many times must I say it, Mr. Collins?” he said, barely restraining the anger in his voice. “
All
of Palestine.”

“Very well,” I said. “These are the boundaries of the Islamic kingdom your leadership envisions?”

“The initial boundaries, yes.”

I raised my eyebrows. “There’s more?”

“This is enough for now.”

“So this is a multistage plan?”

“Yes,” he said. “We have declared jihad to bring down the blasphemous regime in Baghdad and the equally apostate regime in Damascus. But we will not rest until we bring down every leader, every government, until every man, woman, and child is governed by Sharia law, by the will of the Prophet, peace be upon him.”

“At the moment, you are waging war on two fronts
 
—Syria and Iraq. Will there be a third?”

Ramzy paused. I doubted he was authorized to go that far. After all,
that
would be news
 
—ISIS declaring war on a third front.

“Yes,” he said at last.

Surprised he was being so candid, I immediately sought to clarify. “You’re going to open a third front?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“Very.”

“Against whom?” I pressed, assuming it was Israel but not wanting to put the words in his mouth. “Who is the third target?”

Ramzy leaned forward in his seat, his eyes dancing. “Anyone who betrays the Palestinian cause, anyone who helps the racist Zionist regime,” he said with real emotion in his voice.

“Do you mean the United States?” I asked.

“Anyone who betrays the Palestinian cause will pay dearly,” Ramzy replied.

He wasn’t being precise, but he wasn’t denying that it was the U.S. either, I noted.

“Are you saying ISIS is planning to strike inside the U.S.
 
—on the homeland
 
—at American citizens traveling abroad, at military bases, companies, et cetera?”

“We are about to launch a Third Intifada, Mr. Collins,” he said flatly. “But this will be unlike any that has gone before
 
—the scale, the magnitude. You have not seen anything like this. Those who betray the cause of Islam to obtain a false peace with murderers and criminals
 
—they will burn. All of them will burn.”

So it was true. I furiously scribbled down every word, terrified the digital recorder might fail. Abu Khalif and Jamal Ramzy and this breakaway al Qaeda faction were about to target the U.S. and Israel, and with them the latest peace process that was reportedly sputtering to a failure like all the others before it.

He was saying ISIS would target those who supported
Israel
 
—and no nation was a bigger ally of the Jewish state than the U.S.
 
—but he was also using the term
intifada
. This was an Arab word for “uprising” or “revolution.” It literally meant a “shaking off.”

The First Intifada had erupted in the West Bank and Gaza in December of 1987. Though it had largely been a popular rebellion using stones and slingshots, burning tires, and Molotov cocktails, the uprising had prompted Israel to respond with mass arrests, tear gas, and shooting at crowds with live ammunition, and later with rubber bullets, all captured by TV crews who broadcast the images into people’s homes every night at dinnertime, in the U.S. and around the world. That intifada hadn’t won the Palestinians any new rights or freedoms. But it had created a public relations disaster for Israel, making the Jewish State look like the big, bad Goliath staring down the helpless, underdog Palestinian David. That had been the narrative of the international media, anyway, including the
Times
.

The Second Intifada had erupted in September of 2000 after the breakdown of Mideast peace talks at Camp David between President Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. That time, the Palestinian extremists had unleashed a wave of suicide bombers that struck Israeli buses, cafés, and elementary schools, followed by a barrage of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza at innocent civilians living in southern Israeli towns and villages. The Palestinians had vented their rage at the “Zionist occupation” but this time won little sympathy in the West from mothers and fathers who were horrified by the sight of Jewish children and their parents being blown up by Palestinian bombs and rockets.

“What will this Third Intifada entail?” I asked. “Are we talking about suicide bombers, rockets, IEDs, snipers, kidnappings?”

“I will not say more about this,” he said sharply, though I noted
he did nothing to deny these were all options. “You will see when it happens.”

“Fine, I understand; but just to be clear, are you declaring war on Israel and the United States?”

“No traitor is safe. Allah is watching. Judgment is coming.”

“Mr. Ramzy, I have just a few more questions,” I said.

I was still writing as fast as I could, trying to ignore the cramping in my hand.

“Be my guest,” he said, leaning back in his chair, suddenly seeming relaxed as if pleased with himself for what he had just told me.

I glanced at the pocket watch and winced. The time was going so quickly. Then I checked the digital recorder. It was still running. Hopefully it was really recording. I took a deep breath, sat up straight, and then leaned forward.

“I have two sources who tell me ISIS now has chemical weapons.”

For a moment, Ramzy looked taken aback, but he quickly composed himself. He said nothing.

“My sources say you’re planning to use them against Israeli and American targets during Hanukkah and Christmas.”

Jamal Ramzy didn’t blink. He just stared at me and remained silent.

I stared back, waiting. The man certainly had a flair for drama, but I had little doubt this was really the news he wanted to make.

“Is there a question there?” he asked finally.

“Are my sources accurate?” I asked point-blank.

“No,” he replied. “They are liars.”

I was floored. “Liars?”

“You heard me.”

I had, but I was not convinced. “Now wait a minute, Mr. Ramzy. Let me be clear about this. I have a very high-ranking source in a Western intelligence agency who has clear proof that you and your forces captured a cache of chemical weapons in north-central Syria three weeks ago, in late October, and that you have transferred these weapons to sites in Lebanon, western Iraq, and the Sinai in preparation for a major attack on Israel, and to sleeper cells in Canada and Mexico in preparation for attacks on the U.S.”

“These are all lies.”

I pressed on, undeterred. “This source tells me he has personally listened to audio recordings of radio traffic between two Syrian generals. One of them is frantically telling the other that one of their chemical-weapons storage facilities not far from Aleppo had just been overrun. The other is desperately calling for air strikes and ground-troop reinforcements, but the evidence indicates they were too late. Your men got there first and left with truckloads of warheads filled with chemical agents. There is further signals intelligence that your men are developing plans to hit New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv.”

“Your source is misleading you. You should get another.”

I had no idea why Ramzy was denying all this, but I forged ahead. “I have another, a source in a different intelligence service in an entirely different country with no connection to the first source,” I continued. “He told me that a three-star Syrian general defected to a Muslim country at the end of October. He claimed an al Qaeda faction seized several tons of chemical weapons south of Aleppo within the last few weeks. He gave this Muslim country hard intel
 
—in terms of satellite phone intercepts
 
—indicating this al Qaeda faction is planning to use the chemical weapons against U.S. and Israeli targets during the Christmas holidays.”

Now Ramzy leaned forward and smiled. “What can I tell you, Mr. Collins? These are fanciful tales. I wish they were true. I do. But you’ve been fed a pack of innuendos, deceptions, and disinformation.”

“You’re denying ISIS has captured chemical weapons?”

“Yes.”

“You’re denying that you’re developing plans to use them in the next few weeks against the U.S. and Israel?”

“You read too many spy thrillers, Mr. Collins.”

I was getting exasperated and had to fight to keep my cool. “You just told me you’re going to launch a Third Intifada,” I reminded him. “You just told me it was going to be unlike any uprising we’ve seen before. You just told me the Zionists and those who support them will burn.”

“That I stand by,” he replied.

“Then why not just tell the world the magnitude of the operation you’re planning? It’ll be front-page tomorrow morning on the biggest newspaper in the world. It’ll be picked up by every other news outlet on the planet.”

“What I gave you already will be front-page news, will it not, Mr. Collins?” Ramzy pushed back. “ISIS announces a third front, a Third Intifada
 
—won’t that be picked up by every media outlet in the world?”

He was right, of course, but I had no intention of giving him the satisfaction of hearing it from me; not before I tried again to get an even bigger story out of him. “It’s news,” I told him. “But I doubt it will go viral. Not like it would if you confirm ISIS has chemical weapons.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Collins,” Ramzy replied. “And we were getting along so well.”

I was baffled. My sources were solid. Unbeknownst to each other, both had let me listen to the tapes in question and had even given me transcripts for my story. Neither source knew I was going to Syria
to try to confirm what I had been told. I hadn’t even made my plans until after I’d spoken to each of them and had suddenly received the e-mail from Faisal Baqouba about coming to meet Ramzy. This was a major exclusive. I had been sitting on it for more than ten days. It wasn’t going to hold much longer.

“Isn’t this the story you invited me here to confirm, the chemical weapons?” I pressed.

“No.”

“Then why have me come all this way and go through all this trouble, just to tell me what you could have announced in a press release?” I asked again. “Why stop short of giving me the story that would be the shot heard around the world?”

“Time’s up,” Ramzy said.

That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t have been thirty minutes. Ramzy was playing with me. But I had to keep my cool as I continued writing out my notes and flexing my aching fingers.

Suddenly he said, “Time to take some pictures.”

My pen stopped writing. I looked at him in disbelief, then watched as he snapped his fingers. I turned my head, and in through a side door came Omar and Abdel, surrounded by more men with machine guns.

I couldn’t believe it. They were alive. They were safe. They were here. Without thinking, I jumped up from my seat and tried to move toward them but realized
 
—almost too late
 
—that my feet were still chained to the floor. When I noticed several of the guards around us moving their fingers to the triggers of their weapons, I quickly sat down.

My colleagues were brought closer, and I noticed they were in shackles too. They were kept a good ten yards from each other and had a guard on each side. Still, they were smiling and looked no worse for the wear.

One of the guards handed Abdel his Nikon and gave him a few
instructions. Then the klieg lights powered back on, creating stunning conditions for a one-of-a-kind portrait of a key terrorist figure the world knew very little about so far. When all the preparations were complete, Ramzy nodded, and Abdel began snapping away.

Barely a minute later, Ramzy held up his hand and a guard grabbed the camera out of Abdel’s hands. The photo shoot was over.

Ramzy walked over to me and handed me my backpack. I wasn’t sure I wanted it but knew there was no point in saying so.

“One more thing, if I may?” I asked.

“What is it, Mr. Collins?” Ramzy replied, beginning to sound annoyed.

“I would like to meet Abu Khalif,” I said. “Would you introduce me?”

Ramzy didn’t bat an eye. “That’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t speak to reporters.”

“Neither do you.”

“I made an exception.”

“Maybe he will too.”

“He won’t.”

“Is he still in prison in Iraq?”

“This is none of your concern.”

“Which prison?”

“You are treading on thin ice here, Mr. Collins.”

“But he still runs ISIS, doesn’t he?”

“Of course.”

“So he’s the one who gave the order to launch the Third Intifada, correct?”

“Abu Khalif is our leader.”

“So he makes the decisions?”

“That’s what leaders do.”

“Then why can’t I meet him? Why can’t I talk to him and get his
take on where this region is heading, where ISIS is heading? Just like you, he’s got a story to tell, Mr. Ramzy. Let me tell it.”

“You do not understand what you’re asking,” he replied, his eyes narrowing.

“I think I do.”

“Oh, but you don’t, or you would never have brought it up.”

Risking everything, perhaps including my life, I stood and stepped as close to Jamal Ramzy as my shackles would allow. He stiffened but held his ground. In my peripheral vision I could see his guards grow tense. But I didn’t care. I leaned in to Ramzy’s face and spoke to him man to man.

“Look,” I said, “you knew Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. You and Abu Khalif were sent to Iraq by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to help him establish al Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi was the face, but you and Abu Khalif were the brains. It was your ideas, your strategy, your tactics, your money, and your weapons that put Zarqawi on the map, right?”

Ramzy said nothing, but I went on.

“When Zarqawi was killed by that air strike in ’06, you and Abu Khalif wanted to take the organization in one direction. Abu Ayyub al-Masri and his forces wanted to go in another. For a time, Masri prevailed. But in the end, you and Abu Khalif outlasted him. Abu Khalif became head of AQI. It was he who brought you in as his chief of operations. It was he who decided to expand the mission, change the name, raise the stakes. It was he who ordered you to build an army strong enough to storm Syria and bring Assad’s head back on a platter. And in the end, it was he who broke with bin Laden and later with Zawahiri, and you supported him every step of the way. Am I right?”

Ramzy said nothing, but his eyes told me I was right.

“That must mean Abu Khalif told you to talk to me,” I continued. “Why? Because he’s about to start a new war, a war that’s going to
set this region on fire. You don’t want to talk to me about the chemical weapons? Fine. I’ve got two sources. I’ll run the story with or without your comment or his. But I’m giving you something no one else can, something money can’t buy. I’m giving you and your boss the opportunity of a lifetime, the opportunity to be the new face of al Qaeda, to be the new face of global jihad. Forget your blood feud with Zawahiri. Forget all the men in the caves. Their time has come and gone. Your day has arrived. But I can’t do it just by profiling the number two guy. I’m sorry. I can’t. I need to talk to the emir. I need to get him on the record. You know it. He knows it. So give me access
 
—exclusive access
 
—before the war begins, before
 
—”

I caught myself just in time. I was about to say, “Before you’re both dead.” But at the last moment I said, “Before you both go underground forever.”

When I was finished, I gave him a little space, a little time, to take the bait. But Jamal Ramzy did not bite.

“We’re done here, Mr. Collins,” he said through gritted teeth. “But know this: you have made a terrible mistake. You will not write one word about chemical weapons, or you will not live to see it printed. You certainly will not meet Abu Khalif. And you will never presume to lecture me again about what is best for our cause. You are an infidel, Mr. Collins. You and your friends are alive because Abu Khalif chose to keep you alive. You will continue to live until he decides your usefulness to him is over. And when that day comes, he will give me the order, and I
will
kill you
 
—all of you
 
—and believe me, I will take my time and make you suffer.”