Chapter 17

The Recruit: An Assignment

Jake, also known as Muhammad Muhammad, was trying to plan a trip out of town to blow up someone with an IED. When he arrived home, he opened the door to his apartment only to see his recruiter with his finger to his lips indicating to be quiet. Jake entered the room and shut the door. The recruiter held up a note. I have an assignment for you but first, turn on the radio as loudly as you can without making so much noise that there will be a complaint. Jake did as he was told. Then the recruiter whispered in his ear,

“We will not be meeting anymore. You will receive your assignment through a code in the newspaper. I will show you the key to decode the newspaper. You must memorize it while I am here then I will take the key with me for destruction.”

Jake memorized the somewhat complex key. The recruiter showed him how the system worked. First, an advertisement would appear asking for anyone knowing the whereabouts of “a different name each time” please call “a different number each time”. The name and the number were both pieces of code which when decoded would tell the opening line of the advertisement that would appear in the following day’s paper. That second advertisement would have the actual instructions for the assignment.

The recruiter had today’s paper with him and showed Jake the advertisement. He asked Jake to decode it using the key he had just memorized. Jake did and found that the opening line of the next day's advertisement would be “Lost Sabot kitten”. That advertisement would contain the instructions for his assignment.

The recruiter wished him good luck and left, but he wondered why Jake wasn’t being given a martyr’s assignment.

Jake eagerly hurried home after work the next day with the newspaper. He quickly found the advertisement and  decoded it.

It stunned him when he was finished. There was an address where he was to go, and the name of the tenant he would find in that apartment. He was to buy a gun and when the tenant opened the door; he was to fire three shots into his gut, then closeup two into his head, drop the gun and walk calmly away. He should take the gloves he would wear with him, go directly to a mall and drop them into the first garbage can he saw. Then buy all new clothes at the mall, go to a washroom and put them on. Then drop the old clothes in different garbage containers as he left the mall. He was also to buy a paper every day and watch for further assignments.

Jake was not stunned by the directions. It was the victim. He would kill his recruiter. He figured the guy must be a traitor of some type but it didn’t matter that much to him. Jake enjoyed killing people.

Jake had no trouble finding an ex-con who would sell him a gun. The next day he was ready to go. He knocked on the recruiter’s door. He held his gloved hands behind his back. Jake could tell that the guy looked through the peephole and when he opened the door, he was angry and asking what Jake was doing there. He only got two words out before the first three shots laid him down and the last two ended his life. Jake dropped the gun and walked away.

After his trip to the mall to get rid of the gun, clothes and to buy new clothes he dropped by his parole officer’s office for a required check-in. He couldn’t help smiling through the obligatory questions.

The next day there was another code in the paper and the following day they instructed him to go to a local park and pull the cap off the end of a swing set and take what was inside. When he did, he found a thousand dollars. Jake was looking forward to his next assignment and hoped that it would come soon.

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