[IC] Breaking the Chains

[Pepschep]

23rd of March 2018, 11PM
Durrat al-Bahrain
Kingdom of Bahrain.

The job wasn’t bad at all. It got George a nice stipend slushed through banks in his home country, Lebanon, a nice villa at the north end of the Southern bend of Atoll 3 in Durrat al-Bahrain with a big boat, girls, booze, and not a care in the world. Well, at least until his paymasters required him. But until then, George’s villa was the scene of a pretty solid party. The music stopped for a moment, upon which everyone present was herded unto the enviable yacht parked in the dock.

Dude, a fucking boat. Who wouldn’t want to get on that? Everyone there sure did but only around thirty ‘VIPs’ were allowed. They went on and the boat then went off into the Gulf. They cleared the shallow waters, saw the lights of Manamah, and reached open waters. The music was blasting, but none of those present were busy partying. The guys and girls who were VIPs were in fact from the Saraya al-Mukhtar. ‘The Islamic Resistance in Bahrain’, as their tagline goes, means ‘The Partisans of Mukhtar’ in Arabic. The name referred to Mukhtar al-Thaqafi who sought to avenge Imam Hussein and rose against his killers. And now that Iran didn’t have to bend over backwards to give the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, or any other Syrian rebel groups a kicking there was nothing that gave the rulers of the country the shits as quickly and effectively as General Soleimani’s crew.

Spotting no military-looking vessels around, the audio on the boat started playing ‘Sun is Shining’, all the while nothing appeared. The end of the song was the sign for three unlit speedboats to come out of the dark and to the back of the boat. George walked over and together with a few others and unloaded crates onto the Yacht. “Straight from Iraq”, one of the smugglers said. “Mainly Yugoslav shit. Got some North Korean things there too. And in general some old stuff like FALs, but our friends in Erbil gave us a few new things. German-made, so you know its good.” The gun merchant then showed that one of the boxes contained G36s and a large amount of ammunition. The first boat emptied, the second one was unloaded. “Look at this”, the smuggler said as he showed an MG53, the Yugoslav variant of the MG42. “Got you two of theses. The rest is all ammunition.” Smaller boxes were now unloaded. “These are tandem charges. If the BDF roll out an M60 or the Saudis pull an Abrams out, this’ll get them good. The rest is all random ammo, marked and well. There’s some plastique and old mortar rounds for IEDs.” The third boat was being unloaded, full of small arms ammunition and explosives as the smuggler said. “They’re yours now, man. Take good care of them.” He walked off into the third boat, which headed back north. The yacht was sitting on an impressive amount of hardware, something that had to be brought back as soon as possible. The boat went back, moored at the villa and the party continued – the boat strictly off limits.

---

2:30 AM

Sa’ad awoke and quickly slapped something to eat together, dressed, and got out of the door and to his car. It was a white four-door Ford F150, a picture of King Hamad behind the windshield and some construction materials in the back to hide the freight. From his place in the town of Sitra he drove down to the Durrat al Bahrain, to where the goods were imported. Driving somewhat recklessly, he finally arrived at the location of the party that had died down. The last guests had just left, and Sa’ad waited outside, signing with a flashlight before someone opened the gate and told him to get in. He opened the back door and removed the few construction materials from the back before a bunch of people turned up with crates of hardware, throwing it in the back and on the back seats. George briefed Sa’ad on what each box held. “That’s a bunch of ammo, 7.62. AKMs and whatnot. Here, old Yugoslav AKs.”

Sa’ad interrupted. “M70s?”

“Yes, exactly. There’s a few M76s too. And an old Yugo-made Buzzsaw. M53.”

“Good,” Sa’ad replied “but do you have something for me?”

“Oh yes. Look at this.”, George said before showing him a few cases of plastic explosives. “Here. Go get’em.” He said before throwing a box of 82mm mortar shells at him. “Enjoy yourself.”

“Hayhat minna zilla”, Sa’ad muttered before covering the boxes with tarp and locking them with bags of cement. A bunch of cinder block and two-by-fours were also thrown in the caged back. If the cops turned up he’d just be driving some leftover construction materials. But they never turned up before, so why would they now?

They never did. By dodging a demonstration or two Sa’ad made it to the shoe repair shop of Old Man Ali. He got out and knocked on the warehouse door, where the old shoemaker opened. “Hurry up,” he said, “They could be back any second.” Two other guys helped Sa’ad unload everything, stack it, and put it behind the wall of shoes and other junk. The explosives and related junk, however, Sa’ad put in his backpack and drove to his home. He had toys to play with, and the Nawasib would know.

[Kho]

Saturday 24th of March 2018, 07.00
Sitrah
Kingdom of Bahrain.

At exactly seven o'clock every morning, Ali Musa al-Abasi, better known as 'Sheikhna', 'Abu Musa', 'Sheikh Ali' or 'Hajji Ali', returned from the mosque and opened his shoe shop. At ten minutes past seven, the cassette player (the Sheikh could never really get over those) rattled to life and began playing, the Qur'an in the voice of that most grand Egyptian reciter, Abd al-Basit Abd al-Samad. By 15 minutes past seven, the 58 year old was seated on his stool, among the tables and shelves, the odd machine and innumerable pieces of leather, with his first set of shoes for the day.

Today, the shoes happened to belong to Zainab, a girl in her second year of Architecture at the University of Bahrain. She also happened to be a partisan of Saraya al-Mukhtar, and had actually managed to do a pretty good job of bringing more university students into the fold. It was, of course, a dangerous thing - government spies and affiliates had their tentacles everywhere. But the girl seemed to have some wit about her and was, as of yet, undetected. Or perhaps she had been detected long ago and they were preparing something...

You could generally tell quite a bit about a person from their shoes. A man in the profession for nearly four decades, Hajji Ali could tell considerably more. The completely worn out pair of black flat crocs before him said quite a bit. There was a level of conservatism, modesty - professionalism even. There was also a level of parsimoniousness - the shoes looked like they had been used non-stop for a considerable period of time, and replacing them did not seem to have yet become an option worth consideration. But then again, the upper was of good quality leather so she did not seem miserly when it actually came to buying something. There was a level of pragmatism and practicality too, and admittedly some taste if you were of the 'less is more' mentality. He could only imagine the utilitarian buildings someone like her would design. But there was one last thing that had to be considered, and that was the fact that the girl was an abaya-wearing tigress of Sahib al-Zaman. It was in her character to hide what could be hidden, whether physical or otherwise, and the shoes reflected that too.

At exactly 20 minutes past seven, the old man finished his observation of his customer's shoes and began working on them. The soles were worn thin and the leather would need restoration. It was going to be a lengthy process, but such was the price of battling the tide of modernity and technology and endeavouring to keep the traditional ways alive. His eldest son, Musa, would arrive at 07.30 - for he worked with him from Saturday til Tuesday every week - and the boy had always been rather deft with his hands. Musa would be able to deal with the leather while he focused on the simpler task of fixing the sole.

As he set to work, he allowed his mind to drift back once more to what had happened last night. Another shipment of weapons had come in. It was getting to a point now where the warehouse would soon have more weaponry stored inside than shoes. If a raid should occur it was more likely than not that they would be discovered. But a raid had never occurred, not even when tensions were at their highest in the '80s, why would it happen now? He was probably just anxious because a general meeting was taking place tonight. They would start drifting in from just after dhuhr time and the meeting would begin at 18.00, exactly one hour after Hajji Ali closed the shop. Things had been picking up in the last few months, and he knew that whatever would take place at tonight's meeting would change the rules of the game completely...