by James Hunt
“Where have you been?” Angela asked. “I’ve been worried sick.”
“Don’t be. You know I can handle myself.”
“I heard gunshots before we left. What happened?”
“Found a guy hiding under a cot in one of the rooms I was clearing. Sent him to join his friends, when another guy comes out of nowhere and fires at me. Took him out too.”
“What about Salah Asgar?”
“I can only assume he got away. Remember that trap door we found? There’s simply no opening it.”
Angela felt a rush of panic overtake her. The impending attacks were still in the works, and she hadn’t been able to do anything to stop them. “I called the Border Patrol and tried to warn the chief of what we found. He wasn’t very… convinced. He says all targets, soft and hard, are at their highest alert anyway.”
“You make it across state lines?” Burke asked.
“Yes,” Angela answered. “We’re in New Mexico right now. A town called Las Cruces.”
“Got it. You may want to keep moving. There’s no telling how far these attacks will spread.”
Angela gripped the phone tightly, nearly beside herself. “I’m not running from this. Not when there’s millions of lives at stake. I thought we had an understanding on that. A deal.”
“Remember the drone strikes?” Burke asked, not engaging her just yet.
“Yes,” Angela said, trying to lower her voice. Burke certainly knew how to press her buttons.
“Well. I’ve heard that they’ve already hit a series of low-key targets. Rural areas. Not many people around. The underground compound was one of them. I made it out just in time.”
Angela gasped. So it was true. The president’s drone strikes had already gone into effect. Good, she thought, but it still enraged her that her daughters had once been in the cross hairs of one of those strikes.
“It’s a done deal, Angela,” Burke said frankly. “As far as the government is concerned, they neutralized the ISIS cells, and they very well may have.”
“They’re underestimating this enemy. We have to do something. We have to—”
“We’ve done enough, don’t you think? How much more are you willing to sacrifice?”
Angela stood up. She had never felt so confused and disoriented. At least not in the past couple of hours. To simply sit on their information and hope for the best wasn’t an option. They had a responsibility to do something about it even if the entire government discounted them.
“I think it’s safe to say that I don’t have a job anymore,” she said with a sigh. “And I’m not going to put my daughters’ lives in any more danger. But I do have a plan and I need your help.”
“There’s something I need from you first,” Burke said.
“What’s that?” Angela asked.
“I need you to pick me up at a rest stop off of Interstate 10, just past the Texas border into New Mexico.”
Angela thought to herself. That was at least an hour away, and it was the middle of the night. She found herself extremely torn.
“How did you get there?” she asked Burke. It seemed a reasonable question.
“I hitched a ride from a truck driver. But he could only get me so far. Had to stash my weapons quite a ways back. We’re going to have to get them.”
She was willing to make the trip but wanted to reach a compromise first. Even though she was well aware that she had his car. “I’ll pick you up on one condition,” she said, knowing that she was holding the cards. Most of them, anyway.
“What’s that?” Burke said, sounding exhausted.
“That you help me stop this thing. You know we can do it. It’s the only way.” She waited for his response. Burke could be unpredictable, as she had learned, and she had no idea what motivated him beyond vengeance.
After a long pause, Burke responded. “Just come get me. We’ll talk about it then. I can’t guarantee anything until we figure out a plan.”
“I told you. I have a plan,” she said.
“We don’t have much time. So save your breath and hit the road.” Burke then said he had to go, and she heard a tinge of paranoia in his tone. It wouldn’t be long until the government came looking for him, he claimed. He told Angela to keep a low profile, drive the speed limit, and stay out of trouble.
“They’ll get you too,” he said.
Angela found the idea ridiculous. “I doubt we’re on the government’s radar with all that’s going on.”
“You’d be surprised what they consider a priority at times,” he said. With that, their call ended, leaving Angela with only one option. If she wanted his help, she had to leave the confines of her hotel to get Burke. Sometimes they didn’t see eye to eye, and their current situation was no exception. In a way, she got where he was coming from. Burke had already lost everything. His family was gone. Self-preservation was all he had left. Angela was insisting that he jump back into the fire. Convincing him was going to take effort.
She walked out of the bathroom and approached the bed where Chassity and Lisa lay. She grabbed her dusty jeans hanging over a chair and pulled them on, trying to not to make too much noise. As she pulled the chair out and sat to get her shoes on, she glanced at the television. Her heart seized when she saw the images of a crime scene from earlier that day.
The mosque shooter, identified as nineteen-year-old Travis Durant from Austin, Texas. They flashed a photo of him, taken from one of his social media accounts. He had short blond hair and deep blue eyes, hollow and empty.
They then cut to an earlier scene in the parking lot, where Durant had been surrounded by police and subsequently killed in a shoot-out. A dizzying array of police lights filled the parking lot, followed by Durant’s Honda Accord riddled with bullets, shattered glass everywhere.
Angela reached for the remote control and turned the volume up just a hair. The reporter’s voice continued as the news recap displayed images of the mosque surrounded by crime scene tape, a collection of officers on the scene, juxtaposed against the parking lot where Durant’s life came to an end.
“Authorities are referring to this senseless murder as a ‘hate crime to the highest degree.’ Travis Durant, an Austin local and US citizen, followed a dark road into white supremacy and religious hatred. According to his multiple social media postings, he railed against Muslims and people of Middle Eastern decent. This morning, his bigotry turned fatal as he entered the Masjid Quabba Mosque, feigning interest, and soon after began firing at members, men, old and young alike, killing fourteen and injuring a dozen more.”
Angela placed both hands over her mouth in shock. She couldn’t believe something so horrible had happened not too far away. The reporter went on to say that authorities were investigating any links to white supremacist terrorist groups and looking to determine whether it was a “lone wolf” attack or not.
“This is bad,” Angela said softly to herself. She interlaced her fingers against her forehead and looked down with her eyes closed, speaking between heavy breaths. “What am I going to do now… how can I stop this?” She understood that ISIS could and would justify further attacks against the US based on the mosque shooting. The attack also took the focus off of ISIS.
Suddenly, Chassity lifted her head from her pillow and looked over at Angela, who was still muttering to herself, distraught.
“Mom?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Angela’s head went up as she startled. “Oh. Nothing, honey.” She quickly muted the television and changed the channel to an old 1970s rerun.
“I have to take a little drive,” she said, rising from her chair. “It’s important that you stay here with your sister.”
“I want to go,” Chassity said, sitting up fully. Angela knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“You can’t. Now look, I won’t be gone long. Probably be back before your sister wakes up. You two aren’t to leave this room. You don’t answer the door. Nothing.” She approached Chassity’s side of the bed and crouched down, b
rushing back her daughter’s dirty-blond hair. “Do you understand?”
“Yes…” Chassity said with a blank expression. There was a subtle change in her that Angela noticed. Almost as though her harrowing captivity had matured her by several years.
“Good,” Angela said with a kiss to Chassity’s forehead.
“I had a dream about dad,” Chassity said.
Angela stood up, purse around her shoulder, ready to go. Her face dropped, and she tried to hold back her tears.
“He’s here, Mom,” Chassity continued. “He’s all around us. Watching us. Trying to keep us safe.”
Angela smiled as a tear streamed down her cheek. “I don’t doubt it, sweetheart. I don’t doubt it at all.”
She said her goodbyes and turned to the door, reminding Chassity not to answer it for anyone. She didn’t know what was going on with her emotions. As she closed the door and stepped out into the night breeze of the balcony, she felt like a nervous wreck. The crushing lows came at the most unexpected moments. She trudged on to the staircase, trying to put on a good face. She wanted to feel hopeful about the future, but it was getting harder with each new obstacle blocking her way.
***
Following the carnage at his former hideout, Salah Asgar had indeed escaped. Many of his men were dead, and he wasn’t sure exactly what happened. He had heard gunshots, and Bosra, his loyal guard, had stormed into his room, telling him that they needed to leave. They fled through an escape tunnel leading to a car port concealed by camouflage netting.
An older-model Jeep Cherokee awaited them—the perfect getaway vehicle. It was light, good for the terrain, and didn’t bring much attention to itself. They promptly left the hideout and the other men to their fate. From what Bosra told Salah, it had been a bloodbath. Their British operative had betrayed them, he explained, and joined forces with the Americans, the woman whose husband’s beheading had been recorded. She was among them.
“And the children?” Asgar asked.
“I am not sure,” Bosra answered, pushing the Cherokee at top speed over the bumpy dirt road and toward the interstate. Where they were going hadn’t been discussed.
Asgar waved him off and then glanced out the window at the gray desert sky. Morning would be upon them soon. “It matters not,” said Asgar. They have simply escalated the attacks. They’ve prevented nothing.”
Bosra grunted in response—his manner of approval—as he continued on into the unknown.
Asgar then provided the necessary instructions. “El Paso. There’s a place downtown. Somewhere we can regroup and contact the others. He glanced into the side-view mirror, taking his last look at the distant hideout, unseen by the naked eye. It wasn’t a crucial loss. Asgar’s network had safe houses and hideouts throughout the state of Texas. They had staked their flag and weren’t going anywhere, and very soon, the real war would begin.
From a high-rise apartment in downtown El Paso, Asgar watched the latest news reports detailing the mosque shooting from earlier that morning. The entire operation was a masterful stroke in his larger plan of civil unrest, fear, and disorder. Once his ISIS cells struck again, the message would be clear: the attacks against innocent Muslims in Garland were to blame. The news media were already playing along perfectly. Images of the shooter taken from various social media sites filled the screen.
Travis Durant was a loner. A ticking time bomb whose young mind had been radicalized by the dark recesses of the Internet. They were half-correct in their reporting. But what they didn’t know was that Travis had been recruited by ISIS to carry out the mission. Asgar had been quite impressed with the progress ISIS had made on the young American in such a relatively short period, and there were many more, just like Travis, ready to strike when the time was right, and that time was rapidly approaching.
He sat in the bedroom of one of his technical operatives, a young man named Dari Tarik. Dari had immigrated to America from Pakistan when he was four years old. And in that time, he had become more westernized than Asgar was comfortable with, but he had proved to be an asset to the cause. His computer skills and understanding of cyber warfare had helped him rise through the ranks of the sleeper cells. He would be rewarded for his service soon enough, Asgar had promised.
Asgar had changed from his robed attire into a conventional collared T-shirt and jeans. He had even removed his taqiyah as he felt it necessary to blend in, especially if the Americans were hunting him. He ran a hand down the thin gray beard, which reached his chest, and took a sip of hot tea from a mug offered to him by Dari.
Even with the multiple arrangements and calls that had to be made, his attention was held by the TV news reports. The mosque shooting dominated the news. It was inescapable. Asgar drew great satisfaction from this, and as he sat in Dari’s room, strewn with computer wiring, monitors, and other electronics, he took a brief moment to savor the chaos he’d had a hand in so carefully creating. The reporter continued the rundown of the timeline.
“At approximately 11:45 a.m., police pursued a black Honda Accord matching the description of the shooter’s car after he fled the Garland mosque.”
Aerial footage of the chase appeared. Travis’s tiny black car raced down the interstate, with a line of police cars following it, their lights flashing wildly. Asgar couldn’t help but admire the boy. Of their many recruits, he had seen few so dedicated to the cause. He watched the scene unfold with excitement. Bosra stood near the door, pistol at his side and watching over Asgar as always.
“This is wonderful,” Asgar announced, both to himself and Bosra. “The media will be picking this apart for a while, buying us even more time.”
Bosra nodded in response as the reporter continued with footage from the parking lot shoot-out. “It was here in this vacant Mattress Factory parking lot where police surrounded Durant and approached his car to arrest him. Durant, however, had no intention of going quietly. He fired at police officers after telling a 9-1-1 operator that his vehicle was rigged to explode—a measure experts believe was meant to keep law enforcement at bay.
“Officers bravely moved in anyway as Durant, as seen on this footage from the scene, made two different calls on his cell phone. One to his mother and another to an unknown number authorities have not been able to trace.”
To this, Asgar smiled to himself. He then turned to Bosra with a chuckle. “They call us savages, and yet we’re able to beat them at their own technology.” Heartily amused, he turned back to the TV.
“Durant fired six shots at officers and was shot himself as a result. Early reports indicated he was shot upwards of twenty-six times. Sheriff Ben Johnson, Garland Police Department, stands by his officers’ use of force in what he called a ‘kill or be killed scenario.’”
The scene cut to Sheriff Johnson, on the scene and wearing a sheriff’s hat and glasses, a dozen news microphones in his face. “I think it’s safe to say that after what this young man did, we weren’t going to take any chances. And it soon became clear to us that he was not going to allow himself to be apprehended. We believe this was a suicide mission.”
Asgar took another sip of tea and then muted the television with the remote. “Right you are, Sheriff. Right you are…”
A light knock suddenly was heard at the door. Asgar turned and signaled to Bosra to answer it. Bosra opened the door a crack to reveal their host standing sheepishly outside holding a plate of bread.
“I just baked some bread. Would Brother Asgar like some?” Dari, pudgy, in his early twenties, with shaggy black bangs and glasses, paused for a moment, meeting Bosra’s glare.
“And-And you, yourself, of course. Would you like some too?”
Asgar set his tea on Dari’s cluttered desk and waved the man inside. “Let him inside, Bosra. We need to talk, anyway.”
Bosra opened the door and stepped aside, not taking his eyes off their host. Asgar crossed his legs as his attention went back to the TV sitting on Dari’s dresser. He felt a sense of pride just thinking about what he had contrived
.
“Have a seat,” he said to Dari, signaling a chair next to him.
Dari set the bread down on his desk and sat. He appeared nervous and distracted. Normally, such body language would make Asgar suspicious. He had a knack for weeding out spies and seeing to their swift execution. But Dari had not been expecting him. And to have a leader of Asgar’s stature in the apartment with little to no notice would make anyone nervous. Dari was accommodating enough despite his awkwardness.
Asgar, however, hadn’t arrived at his one-bedroom apartment just because it was the closest place to hide. He needed a particular service from Dari. Something that would escalate the attacks and hit the Americans hard. And Asgar was ready to explain it all.
“Time is critical, young Dari. The Americans hit one of our most embedded locations, just thirty miles outside the city. With Bosra’s help, I barely managed to escape. In our haste, some important documents were left behind. They could know far more about our plans than we wish.” Asgar clenched his fist as his dark, fiery stare cut through Dari. “That is why we strike now!” He leaned in closer to Dari, inches from his face. “And I need your help to get our operatives up to speed. I want a video chat set up immediately, so we can disseminate orders. We need to discuss times, locations, and targets.”
Appearing overwhelmed, Dari leaned back and nodded, his mouth open, but he was unable to speak.
“You can do this, Dari,” Asgar insisted. “I know you can.”
“But the hack. It isn’t ready,” Dari said.
Asgar placed a hand on his shoulder but failed to comfort his nervous computer expert.
“The hack can wait. What I want is our men in position and ready. Can you get them on the line for me?”
Dari looked around. The television seemed to play the same scenes of the mosque reports in a loop. He pointed to the screen, expressing concern. “What about this? What are we going to do about this? They’re coming after us now. Killing us in our own mosques!”
Asgar resisted the urge to smile. He didn’t want to go into too much conspiratorial detail. It was best to keep Dari focused on the mission at hand. “I wouldn’t worry about those Muslims. They were not like us, Dari. They follow the Shia teachings of Islam. Which is precisely why so many of our Sunni brothers in Iraq are weeding them out.”
