Noor

“Basha! I’ve gotten out of more tight spots with a smile than a gun, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still carry one.”

Ahmed “Noor” Murad is the second member of his family to be recruited into Rainbow, the first being his father, Gamal Murad. Ahmed spent his formative years living around the world with his father on a variety of countries’ military bases. The longest of these stints were spent at Hereford in the UK during his father’s tenure at Rainbow. After attempting, and subsequently deciding against, an academic path in Europe, Ahmed followed in his father’s footsteps and enlisted in the Egyptian military.

Ahmed’s military upbringing and his father’s status as a former member made acceptance into Unit 777 a foregone conclusion. Wanting to expand his horizons, he took advantage of his father’s global connections to train, notably proving himself in the Delta Force admission exam. His heroic actions during a UN peacekeeping mission are what earned him Bishop’s invitation to join the newest iteration of Rainbow.

There’s a test they hit you with early in Delta. The instructor walks the trainee through the kill house showing them the dummies holding prop guns so they can get a feel for clearing the rooms. The initiate’s taken out of the house to gear up, and then they’re sent back in for the test. If they do what’s expected, they’ll move fast, and won’t miss a shot since they already know the dummy placement… It’s only once the test is over when the instructors reveal that every one of the dummies had their weapons removed while the trainee was outside. It’s a dirty trick, but it’s a damn good lesson.

That is unless you’re Murad Junior, in which case, your trigger discipline’s perfect on your first try and you act surprised when your instructors seem disappointed. […]

The standard recruitment program’s taking too long to produce results. Stakes are too high and the clock’s ticking too fast for me to ignore my contacts that can give us the best chance at a win. I knew Gamal from the tail end of his stint at Rainbow, and we’ve been in touch ever since. Even back then, I could tell his kid was built different. The legend goes that he’s been disassembling rifles since before he could hold a pencil.

What really surprises me is his attitude. Off field, he might be the sweetest man I’ve ever met. One important thing though: this kid absolutely has an attention disorder. It’s nothing that I haven’t seen on the field before. I don’t mind the fidgeting or trouble with eye contact. He respects authority in every way that matters and Dr Sebald’s determining a diagnosis that’ll help us find out if we need to make any adjustments to training. […]

There’s still some housekeeping. Ahmed hasn’t been briefed about Deimos’s identity yet. Given his close relationship with Morris’s daughters, that’s going to be an inevitability. Something I may leave to Galanos [Sorry, “Tante Gal” as he calls her]. I’ll also have to see about getting a dedicated prayer room up.

-- Paul Bishop, Rainbow Six