"You have not moved off your backside since returning home," the elder al Khobar continued. "Is this the way you wish to spend your life?"
"You are in the way," Assola said blandly.
A spark of fiery rage erupted in his father's eyes. The older man marched over to the VCR. Grabbing it in his powerful hands, he wrenched the machine from its resting place in the entertainment center. The last Assola saw of it, the VCR and the precious movie it contained were sailing out the window in the direction of the Red Sea.
"I was watching that," Assola complained unhappily.
His father threw up his hands. "What am I to do with you, Assola?" he implored the heavens. "I have offered you employment a hundred times."
"I do not like construction work," Assola sniffed. He had always made it clear what he thought of the business through which his father had made his billions.
"It is no wonder," the senior al Khobar scoffed. "You are too weak to even lift a hammer. If not a laborer, you could be an office worker, yet you show no aptitude for finance or sales. I would make you a janitor, but you are too lazy even for that. You are no good at anything."
The words did not sting. In truth Assola could not disagree. He had never shown interest or aptitude for anything in life.
He finally struck a deal with his father. It was too great a shame for him to stay at home. The old man would give him his inheritance early if Assola agreed to leave Saudi Arabia and never come back. For Assola al Khobar, the agreement was worth every penny of the 250 million dollars he received.
Rich and feckless, Assola wandered the Arab world for several years searching for anything that might spark some life in his terminal case of ennui. It was fate coupled with boredom that led him to Afghanistan during the height of that nation's guerilla war with the old Soviet Union.
Assola was enjoying a forbidden drink in a ratty bar in Faizabad when the explosions started.
The dirt floor of the bar rocked from the impacts outside. Bottles crashed from collapsing shelves. Men yelled and raced for the exits. In fear for his life, Assola bolted after them, hoping they would lead him to safety.
They led him directly into the mouth of the attack. The five Russians MiL helicopters had flown in from a base in Tajikistan to the north. They swept down on Faizabad like Apocalyptic horsemen. The very air shrieked in pain.
Missiles exploded flaming trails of orange from wing rocket pods. The four-barreled machine guns mounted in the noses rattled deafeningly, spitting death-dealing lead at the scattering hordes. All around, people screamed.
But they were not screams of fear. These men of Faizabad reacted like trained soldiers.
As the Russian helicopters swept around for another pass at the city, weapons were brought from a wood-and-grass hovel. Cowering in the street at the rear of a rusted Rambler, Assola got his first up-close view of both the famous American Stinger missiles and the infamous mujahideen.
The swarm of MiLs had spun around. The lead helicopter was nearly upon them when a scraggly-faced old man swept a Stinger to his shoulder. With a casualness that could not but impress Assola al Khobar, the man aimed and fired.
The missile flew a steady course into the under-carriage of the nearest MiL. The helicopter dutifully exploded.
It dropped from the sky like a wounded beast. Behind it a cloud of acrid smoke filled the air.
To Assola's horror the remaining four helicopters burst through the shroud of black smoke, weapons blazing. Three more were taken out as easily as the first. Assola was relieved when only the fifth remained. His relief lasted up until he realized that there were no fighters near him and that the helicopter was heading his way.
Terrified, Assola began crawling rapidly away. Beside the Rambler his shaking hand struck something soft and wet.
The mujahideen fighter, on whose bleeding chest Assola al Khobar had dropped his hand, groaned. An unused rocket launcher lay in the frozen dirt beside the dying man.
Assola grabbed the fighter by his shirtfront. "Get up! Get up!" he pleaded.
The man shook his head. "I am shot," he wheezed.
Assola's eyes were wild. The ground shook. All other sounds were muted by the ferocity of the MiL's pounding rotors. The helicopter was nearly upon them.
"But you must shoot it down!" Assola yelled.
"I am dying," the man gasped. Pinkish froth bubbled from between his parted lips. "You must do it."
Assola's eyes went wide. It was the first thing anyone had asked him to do since he'd failed to take out the garbage for his mother back in Saudi Arabia. "What do I do?" Assola asked, panicked.
They were spotted cowering in the dirt. The nose machine guns of the MiL roared to life. With every inch the gunner drew a more accurate bead.
"Point it and fire!" the man screamed in what would be his final words.
As the mujahideen fighter breathed his last, Assola wheeled, missile in hand. Before he even knew it, he had depressed the fire button. The Stinger shrieked to life.
The missile roared off Assola's bucking shoulder. As if suddenly possessed with a mind of its own, the rocket soared into the smoke-streaked Afghan sky. It made a beeline straight into the belly of the approaching MiL.
Like the others before it, the helicopter erupted in a flash of blinding white. Streaking acrid smoke, it plummeted to earth, crashing in an explosion of splintering wood into the very bar at which Assola had been imbibing.
Assola al Khobar gasped. His breath made hot puffs of excited steam in the frigid air.
"Did you see what I did?" he exclaimed to the dead man at his feet. He stared at the burning bar, eyes alight with a fresh fire. A fire of purpose.
And in the ensuing flames that burned the building to ashes, Assola al Khobar was reborn.
The mujahideen accepted their new member joyfully. Even though Assola shied away from direct confrontation with Soviet forces over the ensuing few years of the rebel war, his pockets were deep. That made him a friend.
For his part Assola reveled in his game of war. He had discovered late in life that his destiny did not lie in driving nails or welding beams, as was his father's wish. Assola al Khobar realized that the thing in life he liked most was dealing death. Preferably from a great distance, so as to ensure the safety of Assola al Khobar.
When the timetable for Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was signed in Geneva in 1988, Assola's contacts around the world were already firmly in place. His segue into global terrorism was as graceful as a dance step from one of the old Fred Astaire musicals he used to watch from the air-conditioned comfort of his father's sofa.
He proclaimed the wholesale murder he dealt in as holy, wrapped himself in the banners of jihad. And as time wore on, he actually began to believe the religiousness of purpose he continually spouted.
But the truth was, if the infidel world were suddenly, miraculously wiped off the face of the planet, Assola al Khobar would simply turn his attention on his fellow Muslims. For the renegade Saudi millionaire, killing was a lot like potato chips. It was just too good to stop at one.
IT WAS ASSOLA AL KHOBAR'S greatest victory. Therefore, it was Islam's greatest victory.
America had been brought to its knees. The world's only remaining superpower was helpless to react:
The Ebla Arab Army soldiers that he now commanded marched through the streets of America with impunity. It was a show of both strength and defiance.
Al Khobar had insisted that the Arabs parade every two hours-to mock the helpless nation in whose side he had shoved the knife that could not be removed.
Every time the occupying army went out on maneuvers, television stations from nearby Los Angeles sent dozens of helicopters into the air. At the moment the aircraft buzzed like angry hornets above the column of tanks as it made its way up a closed section of the Hollywood Freeway between Santa Monica Boulevard and Ventura Freeway.
Assola al Khobar could not help but be reminded of that first MiL he had shot down so many years ago.
This wasn't the first time the Ebla Arab Army's American detachment had plunged brazenly en masse onto this bleached-out stretch of multilane highway. However, it was the first time Assola al Khobar had gone along for the ride.
Al Khobar posed boldly, half-out of the open lid of the desert tank's broad turret. One military boot was pressed in a cocky stance against the thick metal bulwark at the lip of the opening. White sun beating down atop his checkered kaffiyeh, al Khobar surveyed the land beyond the barriers of the freeway as if it were his own.