Jihadi Apprentice by David Bruns

Author:David Bruns [David Bruns]
Format: epub
Publisher: Reef Points Media LLC

***

Al-Shabab Compound, Somalia

16 March 2017 – 0210 local

Muhammed eyed the shadowy bench carved into the wall. Tempting. He shook his head to clear his mind. If he sat down, he’d be asleep in nothing flat.

He climbed a rickety ladder to the top of the twelve-foot-high walls of the compound. From his perch, he could see for miles in all directions. Overhead, the star-filled sky looked like diamonds, so close that it seemed like he could reach out and scoop up a handful. That was the part he liked best about night watch: the stars. Back home in the US, with the city lights polluting the night sky, he’d be lucky to see any stars at night. On the rare occasions when the weatherperson said the Northern Lights had traveled down so they were visible from Minneapolis, he’d never seen them. Not even once.

The walls, six feet thick, made of brick and mud with a walkway on top that went all around the compound, made him feel strong, safe, invincible. Sure, fighting for al-Shabab wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, but it had its upside. Muhammed took a deep breath. Like the stars over the nighttime desert.

He blew out his breath . . . and his world exploded.

The earth vomited up great gouts of dirt and rock and fire. He was hurled off the wall into the courtyard, landing on his back, the wind knocked out of him. Then he watched as the wall he had just been standing on—six feet of impregnable brick and mud—disappeared.

Rock and dust rained down on him, a big chunk of shattered brick nailing him right in the forehead. Muhammed felt a warm stickiness cover his face and he struggled to stay conscious.

Just as suddenly as it began, the barrage from hell ceased. Another noise crept into his blast-deadened ears. A whirring sound, and the cloud of dust started to blow away.

Choppers.

We’re under attack.

Around him Muhammed saw men—his al-Shabab brothers—racing for the break in the wall. They carried weapons—where was his weapon? Muhammed tried to get up, but none of his limbs responded. He called out, but his weak voice was barely audible in his own ears.

Shapes, like hulking demons spitting fire, swept through the gap in the wall, and his brothers dropped like blades of grass. One fell across Muhammed’s body, but he couldn’t feel the man’s weight on his belly. That was bad. He tried to recall his battlefield first-aid training. Spinal cord injury? It all seemed to jumble together in his head, and he knew he was going into shock.

I’m dying.

Suddenly all he could see was his mother’s face. At that moment, all he wanted in the world was to talk to her one last time, to tell her he loved her and that his decision to fight for al-Shabab had nothing to do with how she had raised him. They offered him a place, a way to show his worth in a world where all his friends talked about were tweets and apps and Facebook posts.

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