Chris Cornell / Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah (Part 9)

Fragments of a future narrative

It was early; Point Blank was just opening. Raheel waited “inside the all Black SUV. Looking out the window. I could see the snow on the ground. Men outside the store.”

Something felt off. “I don’t know why. But it did.”

Raheel lingered, speaking with the informant. “He said to take my time,” on the one hand. But also: “He kept urging me to go in. I finally did.”

The unease persisted, but Raheel walked towards the door. “I was dressed in my black sweat pants, Black Hoodie and Black sneakers”; went inside.

“He had on white Islamic clothes,” John Dean, the store’s manager, noticed as he entered.

“I saw John Dean at the counter,” Raheel recalled. “I approached him.”

“People are nervous about the process,” John told me, describing first-time gun buyers. “And that’s pretty natural.” With Raheel, “nothing really stuck out.”

“He suggested the M-15,” Raheel wrote. “I picked it up. Held it in my hands. I liked how it felt.” He filled out the ATF form.

“Chris initially failed the background check,” John Cornell, Raheel’s father, believes, adding that “the FBI did something to make him pass.” So he could purchase the weapons: grounds for arrest, for a heavy sentence.

“That’s not what happened,” John Dean countered, describing Raheel’s as a delayed approval. “Really not unusual.”

The sale: two Armalite M-15 semi-automatic rifles; 600 rounds of ammunition. $1,900 cash.

“Ohio Man Arrested for Alleged ISIS-Inspired Plot on US Capitol, FBI Says,” one headline screamed that afternoon.