The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

be just wasting another bullet. That first one is liable to get the job done all by itself.” The highway patrolman paused. “Here, let me take a fast look. You’re probably worth more alive than dead to someone else, anyways.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Yahla al-Qassam leaned back slightly in the co-pilot’s seat, trying to relax as much as his excitement and the demands of The Uvalde Raider would allow. It was as if the infernal machine had a mind of its own, and was protesting in every way it knew how against those who now controlled it. Whoever had said the B-17 Flying Fortress was an easy plane to fly had never flown one, or was a fairly remarkable liar.

If it was not for the presence of Gholam Javad, Al-Qassam did not see how he could have gotten the recalcitrant bomber even this far. But working together they had managed to do so and their ambitious mission was going exactly as first envisioned. That growing realization and the excitement accompanying it was something that he was presently trying to keep tamped down inside himself. Things had gone far too well to be jeopardized by a careless mistake brought on by sheer giddiness.

But as far as Gholam Javad was concerned, he was having the time of his life. For most of his entire existence, this Iranian air force veteran had dreamed of sitting in the pilot’s seat of a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress. His uncle, who once bore the high responsibility as a chosen chief pilot for the royal family of the Shah and had commanded a converted Trans World Airlines B-17 in that capacity, would have been so proud of him.

It did not matter in Javad’s mind that his uncle, an avowed secularist supremely loyal to the throne, would most likely have been summarily tortured and executed in the modern Islamic Republic of Iran. Nor did it ever enter Javad’s unusual sense of reality that his uncle would have recoiled in utter horror of who Gholam was flying for now, and why.

No, those thoughts had never entered his head. All he cared about was the realization of an often dreamed of opportunity to fly his one obsession in life. He was finally at the controls of a real Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, just like the American actor Steve McQueen in The War Lover.

Yahla al-Qassam wondered about Gholam Javad from time to time, but allowed his peculiar companion to savor his present flying experience with minimal interruptions. They had all struggled so hard to get to this point and Al-Qassam had by far driven himself the hardest. There had been so much along the way to overcome, so many things in his own life that guided him to this defining moment. So many sacrifices that had been made.

To his own way of thinking, the Iranian leader understood far better than most what the word ‘sacrifice’ really meant. After all, Yahla al-Qassam was not even his real name, he had not let his birth name cross his own lips for several years now. There were others who knew but they were very few in number and mostly in the very highest echelons of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and could keep a secret as well as Qassam could. Furthermore, they had more than a passing interest in his continued well-being and made every effort possible to protect one of their most valuable human assets.

The one now called Yahla al-Qassam had been born in the mountainous northern reaches of Qazvin Province, in an area close to the fading remnants of the ancient fortress known as Alamut. It was where Hassan-i Sabbah, the leader of the Order of the Assassins and also known in medieval history as the ‘Old Man of the Mountains,’ once ruled from.

As a young boy Yahla had been known as a sort of child prodigy possessing a rare mixture of inner determination, leadership abilities and a very high intelligence. His parents were both devout Shi’a, who in turn came from a long lineage of other devout Shi’a going back to the time of Ali ibn Abi Talib. Zealously faithful in their beliefs they made certain this son of theirs, so blessed by Allah and The Prophet Muhammad, would be as well versed in his religious upbringing as he was in other matters involving a more formal education.

During his childhood and this deep immersion into his family’s theology, combined with the imagination of an adventurous boy living in the middle of so much history, the one now called Yahla al-Qassam became increasingly aware that he was linked to some sort of important destiny.

After all his family could claim direct lineage to the Prophet himself, along with many others who had shaped the surrounding world in which he lived in. He had been told repeatedly that he was especially blessed for as long as he could remember, and had become quite conscious as well as comfortable in that fact. Yet in his mind, a question remained as to exactly what that important destiny might be.

Some years later, while studying architectural engineering at the prestigious University of Tehran, he had finally come to the full understanding of what that predetermination must be. The year was 1978 and Iran was engulfed in the ongoing struggle between a secular head of state and the Shi’a cleric known as the Ayatollah Khomeini. Like so many of his fellow students, the young man from Qazvin Province found himself in the streets far more often than in the classroom, protesting against the ruling Shah and supporting the exiled ayatollah.

When Shah Pahlavi abdicated his throne a few months later and departed the country in disgrace, the ayatollah returned from his forced exile in sacrosanct triumph. Millions of Iranians watched as their proclaimed religious messiah stepped off a chartered Air France passenger jet, and Yahla had been in that crowd when they exploded instantaneously with an indescribable shared joy