The young al Qaeda fighter must have stood out among the others creeping up a mountain on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, trying to get a good vantage on a U.S. base.
Though armed with rockets and on the same deadly mission as his comrades, he was an American -- out to kill the soldiers of his own country.
Not long ago, he had been an altar boy, a kid growing up in a middle-class suburb on Long Island, New York, a teenager with a passion for baseball -- and the Mets.
Now he was known by his Muslim name, Ibrahim, or by his fighting name: Bashir al Ameriki, "the American."
It was September 2008, and it had been just a year since Bryant Neal Vinas, then 25, had left the United States in pursuit of a goal that became an obsession: to fight his fellow countrymen in Afghanistan.
