Ryan Burr

The goal of Yousef’s plan was threefold. One, take hostage a close family member of the Secretary of Defense of the United States of America. Two, terrorize the heartland of America, something any Islamic militant group had yet to successfully accomplish. Three, specifically attack a Christian entity, inflict damage, and execute the first strike in the final Holy War. The girl had to be taken hostage for the attack to have the most success. She would be bartered for the freedom of hundreds of brethren unjustly imprisoned in the dark interrogation camps stashed around Iraq, Afghanistan, and even on the land the bastard state of Israel occupied. This was a grand goal, but one that was important to deteriorate the unity of the United States. Many soldiers had died fighting for the imperialist government, but civilians were another matter. And how would those soldiers react when the cowardice of one of their civilian leaders was exposed? How could he send hundreds of thousands of his men and women to fight but not let his own flesh suffer? When he acquiesced to the release of soldiers so that his own loved one might live, all the while ordering his troops into far off lands for the conquest of their nation, then morale would crumble and infighting would ensue. It was the surest way of not only freeing their brethren, but also destroying the fiber of the American fighting machine. The second prong was to destabilize the innards of the country. So long they had been insulated from the conflict, watching it on Fox News or CNN. Knowing that a few of their sons and daughters were over in the sand and mountains, but not suffering the effects of war, of injustice, of fear. They had been culpable participants long enough. It was time to take the fight to the American, not just to America itself. The American needed to know what it was like to send their child to school one day and never see him again, to unknowingly hug their daughter for the last time. The pain, the suffering that had been reined upon the Afghans, Iraqis, and all of Allah’s people, would now pierce America like a poison-tipped dagger. They would understand what fear really was. They would taste the doubt and learn to question the shadows. And then there were the Christians. A nation full of so-called Christians, led by the Vatican in Rome; rich, arrogant, infidels all of them. A school full of Christians in the heart of a country founded on so-called religious freedom. Freedom only if you chose their religion. The Muslims in the United States were looked upon as second-class. Of course, they had brought some of that upon themselves because they had not risen up in the glory of Allah. But not all Muslims were as strong as these men. These soldiers would lead the Muslims by this action. They would show them how to strike down Christianity – the religion which had hijacked the one true God. The myths, the ludicrous mandates, the false prophets. Christianity was a stain upon Allah’s earth. And this was the most holy of all blows in the Holy War. The Christians had invaded the Holy Land a thousand years ago and then again when the atrocity of the state of Israel had sprung up among the believers. Many attacks had taken place against Christians, but not one on Christian soil, specifically designed to place a tactical strike, to put the Christians on the defensive, to deliver the first blow in the death sentence of blasphemy. Yousef had spent months fine tuning the plan. Sometimes he would wake from a dream in which he was participating as any one of the men on his team, driving up to the school, walking innocuously through the doorway, and then carrying out one of the five tactical assignments, always getting the girl out the door and then to the van driven by Abdul-Haseeb. They always seemed to end there.