Abu Mahmoud begins a journey to fulfill his personal jihad after enduring religious and ethnic discrimination and witnessing his father's murder in Detroit. Just out of high school in Colorado he enlists in the U.S. Army and is sent to South Vietnam, where he relishes any chance to kill. After going AWOL to Bangkok, he travels to Jakarta and then goes on a pilgrimage to Mecca. While there, Abu Mahmoud learns the Soviet army has invaded Afghanistan. He immediately volunteers to help out the occupiers. Years later, as commander of Afghanistan's Jihadist Front military wing, the Lebanese-born Abu Mahmoud brings together a large number of Islamic guerrillas to attack from the sea the world's two largest petroleum terminals.
Lorraine Valerie Forster epitomizes the failure of American politicians to understand what forces drive some Muslim factions to want to destroy the United States and why jihadists are willing to die for a cause in which they so fervently believe. The new President is blindsided by a lack of intelligence on Abu Mahmoud and the Jihadist Front's strategies and tactics. U.S. intelligence agencies know nothing of Abu Mahmoud's background of when he lived in the United States or when he served with U.S. armed forces in the Vietnam War.