by Roger Hayden
His legs felt stiff, as though he were moving on autopilot. A dry breeze swept past him, pushing him onward. With measured steps and his hands stuffed in his pockets, he continued to the front entrance. Suddenly, the doors opened, and out stepped one of the doormen seen before, a round, pudgy man of average build with darkly tan skin and a trim goatee. He held the door half open, scanning Travis up and down with a reserved expression of neither approval nor disapproval.
“How can I help you, sir?” he asked with an Arabic accent.
“I came to observe your services today...” Travis answered.
The doorman seemed a bit skeptical. “You are interested in joining the Muslim faith?”
“I am,” Travis responded.
Silence followed as the doorman examined him carefully. He then lowered his guard, smiled. “Of course. My name is Bari,” he said.
Travis pulled his hands out of his pockets and shook hands with a slight smile. “Hi. I'm Travis.”
Bari smiled and lowered his hand, folding them together at his waist as the door slowly closed. He wasn't done with the questions.
“Do you have family?” Bari asked.
“Yes,” Travis said. He then looked down with a hint of shame. “Unfortunately, they’re not interested.”
Bari nodded in solemn understanding. “I see...” His face then brightened and perked up. “Please. Join us,” he said, opening the door and extending his hand inside.
Travis saw a large carpeted lobby that led to a closed double-door entrance. From a small window, he could see the backs of the congregation lined up in rows and going to their knees in prayer.
“How did you find out about our mosque?” Bari asked him, seemingly out of nowhere.
Travis snapped out of his daze and turned to Bari. “I searched on the Internet. Heard a lot of good things about it.”
Bari smiled again. “That's great to hear. This way, please.”
Travis thanked Bari and followed him to a side room, looking up and admiring the high, vaulted ceiling above. Bari pointed inside where shoes were lined up neatly on shelves. “Please, if you will, sir.”
Travis looked down at his dirty sneakers and immediately made his way into the room. He took his shoes off and placed them on a nearly full shelf as Bari waited patiently. Noting Travis’s bare feet, Bari pointed to a foot-and hand-washing station in the corner.
“You may wash there before entering,” he said.
Travis nodded and walked along the tiled floor to the station where he dipped his feet into a porcelain tub and then washed his hands a nearby sink. Once clean, he grabbed a fresh towel folded on a stack and dried his hands and feet under the careful eye of Bari.
Bari's hand then moved toward a line of coat hooks along the wall. Travis, after all, had arrived wearing a jacket.
“Somewhere to hang your coat, sir?”
“That's fine,” Travis said, feigning a cough. “Feeling a little under the weather. If you don't mind, I'd like to keep it on.” He needed to conceal his weapons, for it was important to strike when the moment was right, and not a moment sooner.
Bari studied the scraggly boy before him, bare feet, black pants, and a blue windbreaker, deciding what to do with him. “That is fine,” he finally replied. “But you must wait until the first prayer session is finished before entering.”
He turned and led Travis out of the shoe room and toward the tall, elegant oak doors that led to the main prayer room.
“You're in for a treat,” Bari began excitedly. “Imam Rasheed is addressing us. He traveled all the way from Dearborn, Michigan, to speak.”
Travis smiled. “I read about that.”
Bari's eyes lit up. “So you know?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Travis said.
They stopped as Bari listened against the door, waiting with curious glances toward Travis out of his peripheral. “Tell me, Travis. When did your interest in the Islamic faith grow?”
In response, Travis turned to him, anxious and scratching his clean-shaven chin. “About a year ago.”
Bari seemed impressed. “A year? That's wonderful for a young man like yourself to—”
“Can I go in yet?” Travis blurted out.
Bari stopped, taken aback, and his smile dropped. “It shouldn't be too much longer, sir.” He listened against the door, eager to get Travis on his way. After a few awkward minutes, Bari turned the door handle and opened the door for Travis to pass.
Ahead were rows of men on their knees and raising their heads up from the floor, just as Travis had envisioned. The women were most likely praying in another room, but he had found an adequate target with the men. As he stepped inside the red-carpeted room, Bari's hand came over his shoulder, stopping him. Travis froze. Had he detected something?
“Please stay in the back, and try not to draw too much attention to yourself,” Bari whispered, pointing to a few Turkish rugs behind the last row. “Nothing personal. You wouldn't want to bring too much attention to yourself until we've had a moment to introduce you to our members.” He patted Travis's shoulder and sent him on his way with a parting phrase. “Peace be upon you.”
“And you as well...” Travis added, making his way toward the congregation. The door quietly closed behind him as he walked past framed photos of the Taj Mahal, the Masjid al-Maram, and other famous Muslim landmarks lining the walls.
He stopped at a pillar, placing both feet in front of a prayer rug. The congregation remained kneeling and staring forward as a white-robed and bearded Imam entered the room at the front and took the podium. His white taqiyah fit neatly on his head. His beard was blackish gray, and his eyes behind his glasses were stern and serious. He welcomed the crowd and began his opening comments.
Travis found himself too frozen to react. All he could do was stand there. He soon drew the attention of two men standing against the opposite walls of the room. They glanced over just as the Imam's head rose up from the podium. Travis couldn't think of a better time to act.
He unzipped his jacket with one quick thrust and unsnapped both small straps holding the pistols in their holsters. It was as though the room had frozen in time. A rush of adrenaline flowed through his veins as he yanked both handguns out, holding them into the air and fully prepared to commit an unspeakable act of unprovoked violence.
The men kneeling in front of him turned their heads, their faces frozen in disbelief. The Imam’s words faded as his calm demeanor slowly changed to fear. The two men watching from afar held their arms out in a panic.
“Hey!” the one from Travis’s right shouted out.
Travis scanned the line by methodically as the men jumped up and tried to flee. He stopped at one man who remained on his knees, frozen with fear and confusion.
“Gun!” someone shouted from the crowd as dozens stood up and vaulted for the exits.
Travis pulled the trigger, shooting the first man through the head. He collapsed to ground, eyes stunned, as panicked screams filled the room with men scattering in desperation. Travis aimed both pistols at the fleeing men and fired repeatedly, sending several of them writhing on the blood-soaked floor. He watched the mass pandemonium as the crowd nearly toppled over each other to get to the emergency exits. He followed, shooting any person in his way.
From afar, he saw the Imam duck behind the podium, trying to conceal himself. His real target was in sight. Suddenly, four large men charged at him from all sides with fury in their eyes. He shot one, blasting his throat open, then turned and shot another. He raised his second pistol and put a bullet between the eyes of the third man. The fourth one tripped over his dead friend and rolled on the ground, stopping right at Travis's bare feet.
“No!” he shouted, looking up.
Travis shot him in the face with little acknowledgment as his focus remained on the petrified Imam. The room had been nearly cleared of any living soul. He shot a wounded man in the head as he the man tried to crawl away. He examined the other bodies for movement and then
strolled to the podium.
The Imam’s pale head peeked up from the podium and looked toward the emergency exit. “Wait!” he cried out to Travis as his trembling hands shielded his face. “Please. We can discuss this. Tell me what your grievance is...”
“You,” Travis said, blasting six rounds through the podium.
The Imam flew against the wall and slumped over, dead. Travis turned around and examined the room, disappointed that his body count hadn't been higher. He counted fifteen in all, in a room that had housed at least one hundred. He had underestimated the crowd. They had moved too fast. As he headed for the exit, feeling thwarted to a degree, he pushed open the double doors and found Bari on the other side, crouched down and shaking. The horror in his eyes was immeasurable.
“Wha-What have you done?” he asked, terrified. He saw the pistols and held both hands out in a defensive posture. “I-I have called the police. They are coming!”
Travis didn't shoot him. Instead, he approached him calmly, while placing one pistol back in its holster. He then placed his free hand on Bari's shoulder.
“Good. I want you to tell them exactly what happened here. You tell 'em everything.”
Bari was beside himself with grief and shock. “But… But… Why?”
Travis glanced at him with a vacant, sullen expression. He spoke calmly despite the adrenaline pumping through him. “Haven’t you been reading the news? This is a war.”
He walked past Bari and out the door, leaving a massacre in his wake as police sirens wailed in the distance. Bari clung to the wall, clutching his heart and gasping for air amid the smell of gunpowder and carnage.
2
Strategize
Angela stood in a small, darkened room where only moments before, the sleeper-cell leader, Salah Asgar, had escaped along with one of his henchmen. The long corridor outside was still littered with bodies of his men, torn to shreds primarily from Burke’s 7.62mm M240 machine gun. Its loud, rattling blasts had left a ringing in Angela’s ear. Though she wore a bullet proof vest, she had overlooked earplugs. Of course, the rescue mission wasn’t supposed to go down the way it did.
Angela had wanted leverage. They found that with David Ramsey, a British opportunist who was working with ISIS for his own reasons. With Ramsey at gunpoint, Angela and Chief Special Agent Burke—of the CIA—were supposed to move their way through the terrorist compound and rescue her daughters without firing a shot. That was the idea. And it had nearly worked.
What began as a tense standoff, however, soon descended into a violent firefight resulting in fourteen dead ISIS militants. It was a miracle that both she and Burke had survived. The same couldn’t be said for Ramsey. His body was riddled with bullets, his head blasted open by Angela’s shotgun. He was gone.
She didn’t mean to pull the trigger, but she had no choice but to shoot back. Everything had happened so fast, Angela had little time to react. She did what came naturally. She defended herself. Most of the casualties came as a result of Burke’s heavy firepower. He mowed nearly half the militants down like weeds in a barrage of heavy-duty gunfire. Angela took care of the rest with her M4 rifle. Following the carnage and haze of gunfire, all that mattered to Angela was that her two daughters, Chassity and Lisa, were found unharmed. Their unseen emotional scars, however, were apparent in their vacant stares.
Just when Angela believed the worst to be over, Burke discovered documents left behind by Asgar during his hasty escape. Typed in Arabic font, the papers revealed a series of planned strikes against America. To Angela, the words were illegible. Burke, however, could read and speak Arabic—something she hadn’t known before.
He sifted quickly through other papers lying on a cluttered fold-out desk, coming across one of particular interest, showing a series of diagrams. The blueprint exteriors looked like some kind of electrical plant. It was, Burke explained, the Dallas nuclear power plant, one of two plants in the entire state of Texas. Other documents, just as disturbing, contained a list of other targets throughout the state: outdoor festival venues, shopping malls, movie theaters, and other high-value civilian targets. But most chilling off all was Asgar’s justification for the planned attacks.
“Listen to this,” Burke said, reading from another page.
Angela turned back to the doorway, eager to leave. “My daughters are waiting. We have to get out of here.”
“Just a moment,” Burke said, his eyes still on the page.
Angela heard a faint creaking outside the room and held the M4 rifle up. “Take that with you, and let’s go,” she said. Burke’s car keys rested in her pocket, and she half contemplated storming out of the hideout and leaving with or without him.
Burke held up a restraining hand and began to translate the scrawling Arabic text. “It is our duty to rid the world of as many nonbelievers as we can. Apostates. Infidels. Adulterers. Liars and thieves. They are instruments of evil, meant to steal our souls from us and deny us paradise.”
Angela shuffled, agitated. She looked around for anything else of interest before storming out. There was a mattress in the corner with layers of blankets on it. A nightstand with a teapot. She also noticed a prayer rug, some robes hanging on a hook, and a stack of books about four feet high.
The room smelled of baked bread and tea. And as empty as the room was, she could still feel Asgar’s unmistakable presence throughout. Burke continued with a few more lines in which Asgar made calls for a “twenty-first-century cleansing” of their enemies.
“The ramblings of a fanatic,” Angela responded dismissively.
“Will you listen to this?” Burke said, voice raised and eyes looking up at her. He then continued. “Mohammad commands us to slay them for our own survival. There is no coexistence, only survival against those who would deny us a paradise among Allah and His prophets. For this, we are not killers, but redeemers. Redeemers of our own way. A way that is under the assault of corruption by those who are our enemies.” He stopped and grabbed the rest of the documents on the table, prepared to take them all. “Do you know what this means?”
Angela said nothing. Of course she knew what it meant. Terrorists justified their killing however they could. Murder, in some form or the other, had been justified since the beginning of mankind.
Burke offered his take as Angela inched toward the door. “They are on a mission to kill as many people as they can. Hell, it’s their duty!”
“Is that news to you?” Angela asked.
“No,” Burke said, reaching for the M4 in her hands. “But we now know that they have every intention of carrying out these attacks.” He took the rifle and tried to hand the documents to Angela.
“What are you doing?” she asked with suspicion.
Burke ejected the magazine from the rifle, grabbed a full one from his vest, and slapped it in. He then pulled the charging handle back, chambering a round. His eyes were stern and uncompromising. “Take these documents, get your daughters, and get the hell out of here.”
Angela shook her head. “I plan to, but how are we going to stop these attacks?”
Burke looked around. Both he and Angela suspected that there was a secret escape entrance somewhere in the room, but neither had been unable to find it. “You get yourself to safety first. Then call the border chief and tell him what we found.”
“But I can’t read any of this,” she said, waving the papers.
“I just told you what they said.”
Angela huffed in frustration. First he held her up by calling her into the room, now he was asking her to leave anyway. “I can’t do this without you,” she said. “There’s no point in leaving you now.”
Burke held his rifle up in a dismissive manner. “I’ve got scores to settle. Need to search this place top to bottom,” he said. “I find anything, I’ll call and let you know.”
It seemed clear that Burke had made up his mind. Her daughters were waiting, and she no longer had any time to stall. She turned and looked Burke directly in the eyes. “If you find A
sgar, you better kill him.”
“You know that’s the only way it’s going down,” he said.
He looked like some kind of black-ops soldier in his dark tactical gear and skull cap. It was a startling difference from the suit and tie he appeared in when they first met. Then again, Angela looked different as well. Her blond ponytail had streaks of faded red blood—Ramsey’s blood. Gone was her Border Patrol uniform. Replaced by a black T-shirt and jeans, covered in bits of dried blood as well. Her Beretta side pistol would be enough for the escape of her and the girls.
She had known Burke for only a few days, but felt a connection with him. They had both experienced unimaginable losses. For Angela, the loss of her husband Doug at the hands of terrorists. For Burke, his wife and two sons—murdered by Al Qaeda in an act of vengeance. Lisa and Chassity were all Angela had left, and she wasn’t going to spend one more second apart from them.
“Good luck,” she said, walking toward the door. “And you better find me.”
“Sure thing,” Burke said, scanning the room carefully with his back turned to her. He was on a new mission now. A new hunt. As a former CIA assassin, the hunt was still in his blood. Angela didn’t bother asking him how he was going to find her without a car. She knew him to be a resourceful man, and that was enough. She ran down the hall past the carnage, fallen bodies mutilated beyond recognition—and found her daughters right where she had told them to wait, huddled in the confines of their former holding cell.
Angela ran inside and threw her arms around the girls as they cried with relief. Their embrace could have lasted forever as far as she was concerned. She pulled them close as their arms wrapped around her from both sides. As tears streamed down Angela’s cheeks, she assured them that she was back for good. It was bad enough having to leave them for the few minutes Burke had called her away. She looked down, smelling the scent of their light-brown hair and kissed the tops of their heads.
