Sand and Fire

Book 5: A Parson and Gold Novel

by Tom Young

Genres: Action & Adventure; War & Military; Thrillers

Synopsis

From Tom Young, author of The Warriors and The Renegades, comes an explosive new novel of the war on terror.

North Africa. A jihadist leader has seized a supply of sarin gas left over from the Gaddafi regime and is wreaking havoc on an escalating scale. Gunnery Sergeant A. E. Blount—a Marine and the grandson of one of the first black Marines—sets out with his strike team to kill or capture the terrorist leader. Instead, they flew into a trap.

Many of the team are killed, the rest captured, and the leader threatens that he will execute one prisoner a day until U.S forces withdraw. Sophia Gold and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Parson, Blount’s friends and colleagues, rush to Libya to help coordinate rescue efforts. But the ordeal has only just begun.

Soon, they will all be fighting for their lives in the sand and fire of the desert.

Release date: July 10, 2014

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 384

Sample

CHAPTER 1

The fine sands of the Sahara Desert lifted into the sky and crossed the Mediterranean. Scirocco winds whipped the dust over miles of water, and the particles in the air added a golden tinge to the twilight’s glow. At Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Gunnery Sergeant A. E. Blount took a deep puff of his Cohiba, looked up at a blood-red moon.

Blount sat at a table outside the base coffee shop. From across the street, just outside the air station, he could hear the thump and pulse of music. Some of his Marines, along with sailors and Air Force fliers, were starting the evening early at the Route One nightclub. Blount cared little for the crowds, the dancing, the hookups of the nightclub. And, anytime he entered a club or restaurant anywhere in the world, his size invited stares. Blount stood six feet, eight inches. Two hundred and forty-five pounds, close to the USMC’s max weight for his height, but with the body mass index of a creekbed stone.

The big Marine did not begrudge the loud partying. Those boys needed to have fun while they could, because they might go into action any day now. The hopes of the Arab Spring were curdling into despair as terrorists took town after town in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Where unsteady administrations lacked control, Islamic militancy rushed into the vacuum. Revolutions had led to coups, and coups had led to chaos.

Blount, however, was going home. He had just wrapped up an exercise at Sig as a team chief with his unit, Fox Company, Second Marine Special Operations Battalion. His uniform bore the golden wings and canopy of a parachutist, and he held a hard-earned military occupational specialty: MOS 0372, Critical Skills Operator. Blount had put in for retirement with an effective date in three weeks. His twenty years of service had taken him through firefights in Fallujah, sniper duty in the Korengal Valley, even hand-to-hand combat in an Afghan cave. He still carried scars on both hands and under his right arm from the cave fight.

Those battles had earned him the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star with a combat V, the Purple Heart, and every right in the world to spend the rest of his days in peace. Tomorrow, the freedom bird would take him to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina. From there, he’d make his way to that big country house he’d bought on ten acres outside Beaufort for his wife and two baby girls. The girls didn’t like it when he called them babies. They were eight and twelve.

They’d like it when he got them that pony, though. He had a plan for those ten acres, and most of it involved a pasture. The rest he’d plow into a great big vegetable garden. As he’d sweated in the Sunni Triangle or shivered in the Hindu Kush, Blount had planned every square foot of that garden: two rows of sweet corn, a row of Irish potatoes, a row of yams, two rows of tomatoes, two of okra, along with rows for black-eyed peas, butter beans, string beans, bell peppers, and hot peppers. Squash and cucumbers, too. Of course, his family could eat only a fraction of that. Bernadette would freeze and can some of it. The rest he’d place in baskets, load into the back of his Dodge Ram, and donate to the local A.M.E. Zion Church. The church held suppers for the homeless every Wednesday night.

The sound of a door squeaking open behind him interrupted his thoughts of home. A young corporal, Tony Fender, came out of the coffee shop with a steaming paper cup.

“May I join you, Gunny?” Fender asked.

Blount blew out a long plume of cigar smoke. “You may,” he said.

With the tip of his boot, Blount shoved a chair out from under the table. He sat up straighter in his own chair and adjusted the blouse of his MARPAT camo. The tip of an aged and cracked leather knife sheath showed from under the blouse. The knife hung on a black web belt earned in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. A vertical red stripe on the belt indicated Blount’s status as an instructor trainer.

“Still got that old KA-BAR, Gunny?” Fender said as he took his seat. “They could have issued you a new knife, you know.”

“I’ll keep this one.”

His grandfather had carried that knife in the Pacific. Grandpa had served as a Montford Point Marine, one of the first black men to wear the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor. The knife had a more recent history, too. Not a lot of people knew about that. Just the Marines who were there at the time and a couple of folks from other services—an Air Force flier named Michael Parson and a real sharp Army interpreter named Sophia Gold. But Blount didn’t like to tell war stories.

“We’re gonna miss you, Gunny. You sure you can’t stay with us a while longer?”

None of your business, Blount thought. This boy Fender wasn’t a bad Marine; he just talked too much. Hair cut in a proper high-and-tight. Small tattoo on the inside of his left wrist—nothing badass, just a girl’s name. Anne.

Blount took another pull at his cigar. The tip reddened like the moon above, and he held the smoke long enough to make it clear that was the only answer Fender would get. In the distance, twilight blurred the outline of Mount Etna’s summit. Blount had heard the story of some ancient philosopher who threw himself into the mouth of Etna, an active volcano. Maybe the dude just got tired of dumb questions.

“Didn’t mean to pry,” Fender said. “Sorry about that.”

Blount exhaled, tapped away a round of ash the size of a shot glass. “It’s all good,” he said.

“If you don’t mind my asking, Gunny, I’ve always wondered what your initials, A. E., stood for.”

“You can keep wondering, Corporal.”

Before either man could say anything else, a loud crump sounded from across the street. The thud came almost in time with the thumping of music. But it stopped the music. A power failure, maybe? Then Blount heard screams.

The two Marines looked at each other. Blount dropped his cigar and crushed it out with his heel.

“Let’s get over there,” he said.

With a clatter of overturned chairs, Blount and Fender sprinted for the front gate. The German shepherds in the K-9 compound just inside the perimeter fence began barking; even they knew something was wrong.

Blount ran up to two Navy MPs manning the gate, flashed his ID. Both MPs held rifles and stood guard behind concrete barriers. One spoke into his radio, called for backup. Blount understood why they held their position instead of rushing to help at the nightclub. Whatever had just happened at Route One could serve as a diversion for terrorists trying to get inside the base.

“What’s going on?” Blount asked.

“Don’t know,” one of the MPs said. “Some kind of blast, but it sounded weird.”

More screams came from inside the club. Blount could see people stumbling out into the parking lot.

Blount charged across the road. Fender caught up behind him. Some of the victims pouring out of Route One had bloodied faces and arms. Blount saw no serious injuries like limbs torn off; perhaps it was worse inside. He forced his way through the door as nightclub patrons staggered past him.

Inside, at least twenty people lay on the floor amid shattered furniture and spilled beer. Some wailed and writhed while others lay silent. Some moaned and cursed in English and Italian. The air smelled of explosives, sweat, perfume, and . . . feces. Somebody had lost control of his bowels. Blount looked around, still saw no one with severe trauma. But some of the people on the floor weren’t moving at all. A couple others were twitching uncontrollably. Blount kneeled beside a man suffering from convulsions, placed a hand on the man’s shoulder.

The man rolled over and tried to look at Blount. He wore black jeans and an Under Armour polo shirt. Anchor tattoo on his bicep. Young guy, maybe twenty. A sailor out on a Saturday night.

“Where are you hurt?” Blount asked.

The sailor shivered and arched his back. Mucus ran from both nostrils. The man’s eyes looked strange; his pupils had shrunk to pinpoints. He tried to speak.

“Can’t . . . can’t.”

“You can’t what, bud?”

“B-b-b . . . breathe.”

Just a few feet away, Fender tried to help an Italian girl. Her black dress clung to her thighs, the fabric wet with something. Blount caught a whiff of urine. On her knees, she pitched forward until she went down on all fours.

Fender put his hand on her back. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

The girl muttered something in Italian, and then vomited onto the floor.

Blount put it all together.

“Nerve gas!” he shouted. “Fender, get out of here!”

The corporal looked over at Blount, glanced around the room.

“I ain’t leaving without you, Gunny.”

Blount thought for a second. If they’d gotten exposed to nerve gas, it was already too late. He felt all right, though. If he’d inhaled sarin, he’d know it. But he could still touch a droplet of it and get exposed through his skin. Didn’t matter. These people needed help. And he did not have the only thing that could help them.

“Go to the fleet warehouse and tell ’em you need all the auto-injectors they can give you,” Blount ordered. “I’ll check the clinic. These folks all gon’ die if they don’t get some antidote.”

“Aye, aye, Gunny.”

Outside, flashing blue lights of military police cars and ambulances pierced the deepening twilight. Sirens split through shouts and screams. Blount and Fender pulled out their ID cards, held them aloft as they pushed their way to the base gate. No sense getting shot by an excited cop. MPs now swarmed the guard post. Some headed into the nightclub.

“Looks like a nerve gas attack in there,” Blount told an MP. “They show all the symptoms. I’m coming back with some antidote kits if I can find ’em.”

One of the cops started to ask a question, but Blount ignored him. Blount ran past a sign that read NAS SIGONELLA. THE HUB OF THE MED.

At the clinic, Blount gripped a door handle, pressed his thumb on the latch release, pulled. Locked tight. He shook the door in frustration. But he saw a light on in an interior room. Someone moved around inside. The gunnery sergeant banged on the door and began yelling.

“Open up!” he shouted. “Open up!”

A woman in Navy fatigues came to the door and unlocked it. She wore the insignia of a lieutenant commander in the Nurse Corps. Black hair tied in a bun. Rimless glasses.

“Ma’am,” Blount said, breathing hard. “We got a mass casualty event right outside the gate, and I’m pretty sure it’s nerve gas.”

“I thought I heard something,” the nurse said. “How do you know it’s nerve gas?”

“Symptoms,” Blount said. “Drooling and twitching. Ma’am, we gotta get out there with some antidote. You got any?”

The nurse frowned. “Wait a minute, Gunnery Sergeant,” she said. “Atropine is a controlled drug.”

Blount felt a surge of impatience. People were dying out there.

“Sweet Jesus, ma’am,” he said. “You folks gave it to me to carry in Iraq. I didn’t need it there but I need it here.” He used to keep doses right in his pocket. Why couldn’t he have it now?

The nurse picked up a phone and dialed a number, maybe the main hospital on the other side of the base. When someone answered, she said, “I have a Marine here who says that incident off base involves chemical weapons. You might want to get your chem response ready in case he’s right.”

In case I’m right, Blount thought. The Marine Corps taught me those symptoms. She thinks I’m just some dumb bruiser.

Blount followed the nurse down the hall and into a storage room. She unlocked a cabinet and began searching, but not nearly fast enough for Blount.

“Where is it, ma’am? Can I help you look?”

The woman unlocked another cabinet, motioned across its shelves. Blount rummaged, knocked over bottles and boxes. He found a case of the old Mark 1 kits, pairs of injectors stored together in vinyl pouches.

“Wait, Gunnery Sergeant,” the nurse said. “I have to . . .”

Blount didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. He grabbed the Mark 1 kits and a box of medical gloves, took off at a run.

A memory of childhood came to him. Back on the farm, in the summer of his tenth year, his beagle puppy was bounding around the trash barrel. The pup carried something white in its mouth. Young Blount called to his dog and took away the object, a screw-on cap from a plastic jug. Around the trash barrel lay several empty jugs, each bearing the label of an insecticide used in the tobacco fields.

“Stop it, Digger,” Blount said. “You ain’t supposed to play with that.”

Young Blount walked back to the weathered frame house where he lived with his mother—and his father, whenever the man wasn’t off on a drunk. The puppy followed him home, playful as ever. Blount went inside and turned on the television. After the old set warmed up, Blount tried all three channels but couldn’t find any cartoons. So he went back outside to play with Digger.

He found the pup lying in the weeds, trembling. Vomit covered its front paws. Green diarrhea issued from the other end. Digger looked up with misty eyes. He didn’t have the strength to wag his tail.

Blount wrapped the puppy in a burlap sack and ran down the dirt road to the most reliable source of help he knew—his grandfather. He found Grandpa on the porch, smoking a Camel and reading the newspaper.

“Grandpa,” Blount called. “Digger’s real sick and needs to go to the vet.”

The old man folded his paper, crushed out his cigarette in a beanbag ashtray.

“What’s wrong with him, boy?”

“He’s throwing up and going to the bathroom. He’s shaking all over.” Blount thought for a moment. “He poisoned hisself.”

“What did he get into?” Grandpa asked. “Show me.”

Blount handed the puppy to his grandfather and ran back to the trash barrel. He returned with the empty jug. By then, Grandpa was getting into his pickup; Blount jumped into the truck’s passenger side. Grandpa looked at the jug’s label, started the engine. He’d placed the dog in the middle of the bench seat, right where duct tape covered a rip.

On the ride into Beaufort, the pup kept shaking and throwing up.

“Son,” Grandpa said, “we’ll see what Doc Albright can do, but I don’t believe Digger’s gon’ make it.”

Tears slid down Blount’s cheeks. He wished the old Chevy could go faster. Please, Lord, just let Digger have some medicine.

At the animal hospital, Blount ran inside with the dog in his arms. His grandfather brought the pesticide jug and showed it to the veterinarian.

“I’ll be right back,” Doc Albright said.

The veterinarian returned with a syringe. He didn’t even take Digger into the examination room. Right there in the waiting room, with the puppy in Blount’s lap, the vet pinched fur from the scruff of the animal’s neck, inserted the needle. Doc Albright depressed the plunger, and Blount watched the clear liquid disappear into his best friend’s veins. As soon as the needle came out, the beagle stopped shaking. The pup relaxed immediately. His eyes changed color. He wagged his tail, licked Blount’s thumb.

“That was quick,” Grandpa said.

“It usually is, if it works,” Doc Albright said. “Bring him back if he don’t look right tomorrow, but I think he’ll be fine.”

“What do you say?” Grandpa asked.

“Thank you,” Blount said. “Sir.”

On the ride home, Grandpa said, “I’m proud of you, boy. You found a problem, but you didn’t go squalling like a child. You figured out the situation and took action. That’s thinking like a man.”

Digger lived long enough to greet Private Blount on his return from boot camp.

Back at Route One, Gunnery Sergeant Blount found men in full MOPP chem-protection gear: gas masks, charcoal-impregnated suits, butyl gloves. Blount snapped on a set of medical gloves and went to work.

In the parking lot, he found the Italian girl in the black dress. Somehow she’d crawled or staggered outside. Lying on the pavement, she looked even worse. Sweat beaded on her cheeks as if she’d just run a desert marathon. Wrinkles radiated out from her eyes, her face contorted. She continued to heave, though nothing came up from her stomach. The girl made a primal groaning sound and spat out a mouthful of mucus and saliva. Blount took a knee beside her, pulled out a pair of injectors.

“I gotcha, miss,” he said. “I got what you need.”

He took the first injector, a plastic cylinder the size and shape of a felt-tip marker. Blount removed the yellow safety cap at one end, arming the spring-loaded needle at the other end. The girl moaned again and rolled onto her side. That position was good; it exposed the fleshy backs of her thighs, and Blount didn’t want to punch a needle into her bone. With his left hand, the Marine held her knees to keep her from moving again. With his right, he pressed the atropine injector to the girl’s upper leg.

A click from inside the injector told Blount the two-inch needle had rammed home. If the Italian felt pain, she did not show it. She only continued to twitch and drool. Poor girl’s nervous system is so jacked up, Blount thought, she probably can’t tell one hurt from another. He counted ten seconds and pulled out the needle. Then he uncapped the other injector, the one labeled PRALIDOXIME CHLORIDE.

He pressed the injector against her other thigh, felt the snap of the spring. After another ten-count, he removed the needle. Blount rolled the girl over on her back.

The wrinkles around her eyes faded as the muscles in her face relaxed. She coughed, glanced around, focused on Blount. Now she looked at him with the eyes of a human instead of a dying wild animal.

“Grazie,” she breathed. A barely audible whisper, but Blount understood.

He stretched out her sleeve and poked both needles through the fabric. Using his thumb and forefinger, he bent the needles into fishhook shapes so they’d hang from the dress. That way, other rescuers would know the girl had received one dose.

One was apparently enough. The girl probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds. She’d have been gorgeous, Blount thought, if she hadn’t just been poisoned nearly to death. Her chest rose and fell evenly now. Blount left her and surveyed the mess around him.

The nurse from the clinic ran up, looked around, and bent over a patient. She held an injector to his leg. A few feet away, Fender worked on another victim. Blount threw the box of gloves to the corporal.

“Put these on,” Blount ordered.

“Aye, Gunny.”

Sarin tended to disperse quickly. Blount figured that was the only reason he and Fender hadn’t dropped dead like tobacco worms sprayed with malathion.

Yards away, between two parked cars, a man lay shaking on the ground. Maybe he’d stumbled that far before collapsing. Blount stepped over both moving and motionless bodies to reach him. Blount felt a shock of recognition when he saw the face, twisted and smeared with vomit: his old platoon commander, Lieutenant Kelley. At least a major by now. Kelley wore a white civilian dress shirt streaked with dirt, blood, and spit.

“Sir, it’s me, Blount. Sir, can you talk?”

Kelley showed no sign that he even heard the question. He let out a long keening sound through chattering teeth. Blount uncapped a set of injectors, pressed both of them against the officer’s leg. The needles snapped simultaneously, and Blount felt the antidotes coursing through the plastic housing of the injectors.

Please let this fix him, Blount thought. Please don’t let me be too late. Blount counted to ten, pulled out the needles.

Kelley entered some deeper form of spasms. The officer’s fists clasped so tightly that his fingernails cut into his palms. His head slammed against the front tire of the car beside him. His knees knocked together, and his skin took on a gray cast. In the course of two wars, Blount had witnessed all manner of dying. But he had never seen anything like this. Nerve gas turned its victims into ghouls right before it killed them.

From his training he knew that, in severe cases, you administered three doses, one right after the other. If this wasn’t severe, then the word had no meaning. He armed another pair of injectors, jammed them against Kelley’s thigh. Once again he heard the twin snaps. Kelley continued to twitch and shake. After ten seconds, Blount pulled out the needles and uncapped a third pair of injectors.

Once more, he jammed the injectors against Kelley’s leg, watched the spring-loaded needles strike through fabric and into flesh. He tried to hold the needles in place. In deep convulsions, Kelley wrenched and thrashed. As Kelley twisted to his left, he jerked his leg away from Blount’s hand. Both needles came out of the officer’s thigh. Blount found himself holding two injectors, each needle spewing liquid uselessly into the air.

“Damn it,” Blount hissed.

Blount stabbed the needles back into Kelley’s leg and held them there as the injectors emptied.

Kelley stopped trembling. Blount thought the triple dose had finally worked. But Kelley did not move at all. Blount yanked out the spent injectors and tried to roll the officer onto his back. The man’s eyes appeared dull and fixed, pupils constricted to dots. Kelley had quit breathing. No pulse, either. If those shrunken pupils saw anything, it was not in this world.

Blount stared for a moment, a fistful of Kelley’s shirt still in his hand. The antidote was supposed to work; he’d just seen it work fine on that girl.

He had shared long deployments and deadly firefights with this officer. But after all that, Kelley had to die like this? Without even getting a chance to fight back?

CHAPTER 2

The Omni Air International DC-10 rotated off the runway at Sigonella and climbed into the dusty Mediterranean sky. Blount had stayed up all night helping treat victims of the gas attack and load them into ambulances. At last count, the sarin had killed twelve American service members and four Italians. Twice that many people remained in hospitals.

Blount had wanted his final homecoming to be a joyous event, bringing him a sense of satisfaction and completion. Like the old song said, a time to lay down his sword and shield, down by the riverside, and study war no more. Enter a life of community and tranquility, family, and friends. Summer evenings with the girls on the porch, making ice cream the good kind of way, turning the crank by hand. Bass fishing and rabbit hunting.

But now he could feel only anger and guilt. Somebody had poisoned his friends and comrades-in-arms, along with defenseless civilians. Made them die in one of the worst ways you could think of. And for what? Even if the bad guys had any kind of legitimate grievance—and Blount didn’t believe they did—nothing justified their tactics. His own people had suffered worse than anything most jihadists had ever experienced, and his elders had overcome through dignity and nonviolence. Nothing excused terrorism. Ever.

So Blount was mad, for sure. But what kept him awake now, even in his sleep-deprived state, were the questions. Could he have saved Kelley? Blount had let the needles come loose when administering the third dose, and some of the drugs had squirted onto the pavement. Would that wasted antidote have been just enough, just in time, to help his friend? Maybe not. But guilt was the enemy that stalked Blount in his dreams, and now that enemy carried even more ammunition.

As the island of Sardinia slid under the wings, a flight attendant came by.

“Is there anything you need, sir?” she asked.

Blount liked the civilian crews of these Defense Department charters. Always respectful and appreciative. They saw the faces of the warriors every day, so they had some idea of war’s cost. For too many folks back stateside, combat amounted to nothing but a reality-TV show. A channel to flip through between Wheel of Fortune and the Home Shopping Network.

“No, ma’am,” Blount said. “I’m good.”

What he needed waited a few thousand miles across that water. Bernadette and his daughters, Ruthie and Priscilla.

The DC-10 made a refueling stop at Naval Station Rota in Spain. Blount waited in the passenger terminal and saw a group of Marines who had just flown in from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Their battalion was attached to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Blount’s battalion was attached to another Lejeune-based MEU, the 22nd. A young sergeant dropped his seabag on the floor and sat next to Blount.

“Where you headed?” Blount asked.

“Getting on the boat from here, Gunny. Sailing out on the Iwo Jima.”

The USS Iwo Jima was an amphibious assault ship, built specifically for taking Marines to a fight. With all the recent trouble in North Africa, maybe a strong force floating in the Med would make terrorists think twice.

Blount knew well the mix of excitement and apprehension the Marines of the 24th MEU would be feeling about this deployment. Another challenge, another chance to back up your buddies and prove your worth to the organization you loved. But along with the anticipation came the fear of what might happen to some of those buddies.

In the snack bar next to the passenger terminal, Blount bought an egg sandwich and a half pint of orange juice. He didn’t really feel hungry, just tired, but he still couldn’t sleep. He sat in a booth, pulled off the sandwich’s top slice of bread, and shook black pepper onto the fried egg. Put the bread back into place. As he ate, he gazed idly at the snack bar’s display of a matador’s sword, cape, and felt hat. Then he ordered the only thing the snack bar made really well, a cup of café con leche. He stirred the Spanish-style coffee, sat down at another booth under a television tuned to CNN. The anchor handed off the broadcast to a reporter speaking live from Sigonella:

“The death toll has risen to twenty in the nerve gas attack on a nightclub outside the American naval air station here. Some officials have compared this strike to the 1995 Tokyo subway incident, when the Aum Shinrikyo cult killed thirteen people with sarin gas.

“However, the Japanese attack involved liquid sarin carried in plastic bags. Last night’s incident used weaponized sarin delivered by some sort of munition. Investigators say it appears an explosive device was planted inside the nightclub. The attack targeted only the club; the air station’s security was never breached.

“The base here remains on its highest level of alert, which the military calls Force Protection Condition Delta. So far, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility.”

A voice on the PA system called Blount’s flight. Blount swallowed the last of his coffee, then joined the passengers filing up the air stairs into the DC-10. Minutes later, the jet thundered away from the ground and banked to the west. Blount watched the wide beaches of Rota pass beneath him; across the bay, he saw the ancient port of Cádiz. Years ago he’d taken a walking tour of Cádiz’s Old Town and learned how this region had once come under the rule of Moors campaigning north from the Sahara. For centuries, swords had crossed at this meeting place of continents. He thought of the Marines about to board the Iwo Jima, and he wished them Godspeed.

Blount finally fell asleep after the DC-10 leveled off above the Atlantic. About two hours later, he woke from his nap with a blank mind. For just a second, he had to ask himself why he felt anxiety. What was wrong? Then all the events of the night before came back to him, with the image of Kelley as he trembled, drooled, then stared blankly out of dead eyes.

Kelley and Blount had fought together a decade ago across the rooftops and back alleys of Fallujah. The town hosted a hornet’s nest of insurgents, many of them not even Iraqi. Intel thought one of them might be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist infamous for the on-camera beheading of