Free WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller by J.T. Brannan

deep down there was simply nothing there, years of capitalism and secularity and greed and corruption eating away at the moral fiber of the nation until there was nothing left but blind automatons, slaves to the marketers and advertisers who sold the bland and mundane products of the companies who really ran the country.
    His years in America had been insane, like living in a Disneyland populated entirely by spoiled children. Every day there had made him nauseous, but he had put on a façade of acceptance, shown himself willing to adapt to American ways, pretend to be impressed with American customs. He knew it would be expected of him, and would bear fruit in the future, when he could use the relationships he would develop there.
    Know your enemy.
    He had known it was also expected of him by the House of Saud itself, which prided itself on its relations with America. After all, she was the main consumer of its oil, Saudi Arabia’s multi-trillion dollar industry, and – as was continuously stressed to him by the more senior members of the royal family – good relations with the US were of paramount importance to the regime’s survival.
    Not that Quraishi wanted the regime to survive.
    On the contrary, he was fundamentally committed to the wholesale destruction of the corrupt, West-loving House of Saud.
    And he knew that with the fall of the Great Satan would also come the fall of the hated monarchy which ruled his belove d country; the country which contained both Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in the entire world, now defiled by the presence of the US military.
    He ignored the fact that he was a part of that same monarchy; it was blood only, and not soul.
    His soul was committed to Allah, and Allah alone.
    And unlike many of his freedom-fighting contemporaries, he was intelligent enough to see that he could use his position, his connections, to further his cause, may Allah forgive him.
    H e had used his intelligence, his knowledge of Western and Saudi governments, his worldwide connections, to create a new group, an organization of such blessed purity that it made all others pale in comparison.
    Harakat al-jihad al-Islami al-jazirat al-‘arabiyah.
    Arabian Islamic Jihad.
    The beheading of Brad Butler had been filmed, and would be posted on the usual websites when the time was right. When the power of his organization was ready to unleash havoc on an unsuspecting world.
    His disguised appearance was absolutely necessary; he was far too well known in Saudi Arabia to show his r eal face, or use his real voice. Vehemently opposed to the Saudi royal family, there was no way that his followers would agree to suborn themselves to someone from that same royal line, tainted as it was with western corruption. There weren’t many who would accept that Quraishi accepted the façade of his position, his public life, only to enhance the probability of success for his real calling in life as The Lion, feared head of the AIJ.
    Quraishi was still smiling as he remembered slicing through the neck of that Western tool of propaganda, the CNN journalist Brad Butler, when an assistant knocked at his office door and brought in his cup of jasmine tea.
    Quraishi thanked him, then quickly ushered him out when he heard the buzzing of his secure telephone.
    ‘Yes?’ he answered when the man had left the office.
    The message was good, and the smile remained on Quraishi’s face as his contact talked. An agent of Jemaah Islamiyah, a freedom fighting group within the Indonesian archipelago with who m he had developed a good relationship over the years, the man on the phone updated Quraishi on their recent operation; stage one in The Lion’s master plan.
    Yes, Quraish i considered as he sipped quietly at his tea, all the pieces were coming together nicely.
     

8
    Trying to move through jungle was an arduous physical prospect at the best of times; carrying an unconscious body on his back, an equipment satchel and assault rifle slung over