Getting back to Pakistan had been a long and arduous task. It had started simply enough: an anonymous phone call from near his hideout in DC had brought the authorities with surprising efficiency. The FBI took the three men who had been sent to assist Shahim in an angry but one-sided struggle while Shahim himself slipped out a window into the night.

The AI had heard of the raid well in advance, even though it was unaware of the source of the FBI’s information. Shahim had pretended ignorance as the AI had informed him of the approach of the authorities and had stepped onto the fire escape as the bureau’s cars came down the street, leapt up on to the roof, and then from there he had jumped the thirty feet across the night to the top of the next building. For his own edification, he had waited there a moment and watched the men fight as they were apprehended. He had heard the struggle and watched the heat signatures of the men as they were wrestled to the ground and dragged away.

It had felt good. He had already helped humanity a little. Not enough to make up for what he had done that dreadful night in Islamabad, but it was a start, and soon he would have ample opportunity to atone for the rest of his sins.

While his Al Qaeda ‘brethren’ in the US and back in Pakistan assumed he had been captured with his cell, he had evaded the authorities and made his way slowly back to Pakistan. With no identification or money it was a long journey, even for a man of his talents. But after countless cargo ships, freight trains, and hitchhiked rides in the backs of trucks, the warrior had eventually made it back to his adopted home country. Predictably, his sudden reappearance in Peshawar three months after his assumed capture in America had brought immediate suspicion and accusation. How had he escaped? How had he evaded capture for so long? What had he told the infidels to buy his freedom?

Standing in the warehouse where he had been brought after he had approached one of his old contacts in the city, he sullenly but humbly answered their questions. But with his newfound purpose came a certain leeway he had not enjoyed before. The truth was that the Agent that called himself Shahim Al Khazar didn’t like these people. He did not agree with their cause or their methods, and while neither side in the global struggle the insurgents were involved in was above reproach, these so-called freedom fighters were, in Shahim’s opinion, a horde of hypocrites and tyrants. So when the impromptu tribunal that had been arranged to judge him began to criticize the integrity of the man that called himself Shahim Al Khazar, the Agent decided that it was the justification he needed to wreak some havoc upon the mockery of justice that stood before him.