Undeclared War by Dennis Chalker Page B

form of money exchange. A hawala usedtrusted people around the world as a way to transfer millions of dollars in cash without documents. Money was left in a hawala and the responsible person was simply told who to give it to.
    At the moment, Paxtun was holding over several million dollars in cash in an al Qaeda hawala. But that would mean little if he failed to supply Ishmael with what he needed. And Ishmael wouldn’t speak to an underling, even one as highly placed as Paxtun’s second in command. Arzee was a fellow Muslim, but he hadn’t proven himself in the jihad. That meant Arzee was off the hook in telling Ishmael the bad news. It was going to be Paxtun’s task, and that had him thinking quickly.
    â€œThere were just too many things that could go wrong with the shipment,” Paxtun said, “and a number of them did. Delays due to plain bad weather made the ship late. But we planned for that possibility. Now, we’ve just run out of time. Ishmael has told me to expect the time schedule to change again. He won’t tell me the operation, but he’s probably going to move the timetable ahead again.”
    â€œHe’s probably never told you his real schedule anyway,” Arzee said. “The man is more than paranoid about security. If anything, he’s gotten worse about holding back vital information until damned near past the last minute. He even kept the arrival schedule of his men to himself until they were practically waiting at the border. Ever since Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan back in March, Ishmael and his bunch have become even tighter about keeping things to themselves.”
    â€œWe have to accept the situation for the time being,” Paxtun said. “We’re in way too deep for there to be any way out for us now. There’s nothing we can do but carry on supporting Ishmael and his people. Besides, we owe them our lives and they have no problem in reminding us of that fact.”
    â€œWell,” Arzee said, “at least the money has been good the last couple of years.”
    â€œYes,” Paxtun agreed, “there’s no question of that. But that’s not going to help us. He wants firepower, a lot of it. And he’s going to want it right now.”
    â€œSupplying something like that’s going to be next to impossible,” Arzee said. “It’s not like anyone advertises heavy firepower and we can’t just buy the weapons he wants. Maybe if we had enough time to go out into the underground market….”
    â€œWhat did you say?” Paxtun asked.
    â€œGo into the underground market?” Arzee said. “I mean the contacts are there. But Ishmael didn’t want to trust any kind of black market to supply his needs. And to get what he wants would take time we don’t have.”
    â€œNo, no,” Paxtun said with excitement rising in his voice. “What you said before that.”
    â€œWhat?” Arzee said. “Just buy the stuff? There’s no way to really do that. It’s not like you can just walk into a gunshop and they’ll have the kind of hardware we need. Nobody carries that kind of military weapon, no matter what the movies say. And Ishmael is going to want the real deal. Full automatic fire and lots of it.”
    â€œSo what if we had a source of the guns and someone who could build what we wanted?” Paxtun said.
    â€œAround here?” Arzee said. “Where?”
    â€œSomething Nicholas was talking about a while back,” Paxtun said.
    Raising his voice, Paxtun called out, “Nicholas, get in here.”
    Nicholas Murat was a cousin of Arzee’s. As such, he and his brother Amman, held positions of high trust in the organization. This wasn’t a matter of simple nepotism. It was very common in the Arab community for a business to use many members of an extended family. Blood counted for a lot, and loyalties inside of a family were strong.
    At