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he was sent to Afghanistan, where he met the sheik himself, Osama bin Laden. He was there for the glorious strike on September 11, and also there for the fire that followed. Rounded up by the Northern Alliance and the Special Forces team with them, he was on his way to Guantanamo Bay when the prison he was in outside of Mazari Sharif—called Qala-i-Jangi—erupted in a riot. While most of the prisoners satisfied themselves by cowardly beating a CIA man to death and generally running around like lunatics, Rafik escaped, knowing how the riot would finish. He found out later that most of his brethren had died in the massive retaliation of U.S. firepower that followed.
    Returning to Algeria, he was a different man. The sheik had shown him that their fight was global. He now saw that the Near Enemy, like the government in Algeria, existed at the pleasure of the Far Enemies of the West. That’s who needed to be destroyed. They were the ones crushing Islam all over the world. Even now, with the shifting landscape of change sweeping the Middle East, the Far Enemy continually thwarted any attempts to return to the one true faith, instead championing a system of debauchery cloaked as democracy.
    Try as he might, he couldn’t convince the GSPC leadership. By 2006 he had at least convinced them to pledge loyalty to al Qaeda and change their name. He knew they did it for the publicity and that they had no desire to enter the global fight. They preferred pinprick strikes against the government of Algeria to any strategic global attack in the name of Islam.
    He had set out on his own, bringing with him a select number of trusted men. He’d worked nearly five years, patiently building his plan, while al Qaeda in the Maghreb remained somewhat of a joke in the fight for Islam. During that time, Osama bin Laden had been martyred, and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had become the prominent group. That was okay by him. In less than two weeks, he would make sure that al Qaeda in the Maghreb would cause more damage to the Far Enemy than all other attacks combined.

9
     
    J

ennifer came into the office as I was digging through a scattered pile of outdoor gear, looking for my neck light. I was hoping to be done packing before she arrived because she’d just give me shit about procrastinating. When I looked up, she was leaning against the doorjamb with her arms crossed.
    I said, “Did you put my neck light back in my duffel after you borrowed it?”
    We both knew she hadn’t touched the neck light, but it was worth a shot. As usual, I was packing on the fly. She, of course, had packed her stuff perfectly in one small suitcase before she even left for Assessment in North Carolina.
    “Pike, if you’d plan ahead more than five minutes, you wouldn’t be flinging stuff all over the office tonight.”
    Yesterday afternoon, we’d flown straight back to Charleston, South Carolina, to our little business called Grolier Recovery Services. Situated in an office complex on Shem Creek just outside of Charleston, we specialized in facilitating archeological work around the world. Jennifer had the anthropology degree to talk scientist, and I had the military background to talk to anyone who had an issue with the scientists. We did everything from laying the groundwork with the host nation and U.S. embassy to providing security on-site. A one-stop shop, so to speak. Just add pencil necks. It was a great cover, because it gave us a plausible reason to travel anywhere that had something of historical significance. Which was just about anywhere on earth.
    You’d think that a business plan with those parameters would bedead on arrival—I mean, really, how many Indiana Jones expeditions could there be at any given time?—but we already had real requests for quotes. Our splashy publicity hadn’t hurt.
    We had started the business with the proceeds we earned from finding an ancient Mayan temple in Guatemala. For about sixty seconds, we were all over the