As Beak Man roughly pulled her along, just before depositing her in her cabin, he said something that jarred her.
“You do look a little like your mother.”
Chapter 30
Two Days Earlier
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, DC
All eyes were on John R. Connelly, the Director of the FBI.
The agents and department heads batted around panicked whispers, while their eyes were riveted upward at their boss. A massive bank of screens—only two flickered grimaces from field office heads—covered the wall behind him.
“I’ve called this emergency meeting because no one has been able to figure out what the hell is going to happen today. As an update, we’ve raised the threat level to Red. The president and the Joint Chiefs are already at Camp David with their families. The president will join this meeting in a few minutes. Agent Simpson, please give us an update.”
Agent Thomas Simpson, the Executive Assistant Director for Intelligence Branch, hesitated near the platform before pacing to where the director stood. He was, in every practical sense, the very head of all “intelligence” in the FBI, and yet he had nothing to share which they already didn’t know. All he could do was encapsulate what his analysts postulated from their suspicions. When he approached the microphone, he cleared his throat.
“In the brief you have, I ended with the facts that we lost comms and then visual with Agent Broadmoor yesterday at thirteen forty-two. As all of you know, Agent Broadmoor was deep undercover, after helping us break up the Seattle terrorist cell and recover a rogue nuclear device. He was getting very close to finding the location of Abdul Raheem Farook. Further, it was Agent Broadmoor that uncovered the target date of July 4th for an upcoming, as of yet unknown, attack on the US.”
“Agent O’Mally, sir.” O’Mally stood up in the fifth row of the large auditorium. “Do you have any guess on the location?”
Simpson pushed his face into the microphone. “We have no intel leading us to speculate on any specific location. Some of our analysts believe it will be at secondary cities, like San Francisco and Phoenix. Our field offices in each location are beating down every lead.”
One of the wall screens, like a big rectangular eye, blinked on. The harried face of Agent Wilber Johnson, the head of the Chicago FBI Field Office, turned to face the group. “Excuse me for interrupting, but I’m told by my agents that we have just busted up a cell at a private home a mile from Wrigley Field. Our Nuclear Specialist says that they’ve detected radiation that indicates a nuclear device was here. We have virtually shut down the cit—”
”Excuse me,” Director Connelly interrupted, “did you say a nuclear device?”
“Yes, I did. Our NS confirmed it, just seconds ago.”
Voices erupted all around the room. It sounded like a Beltway restaurant on a Friday night.
“Please, one at a time,” the Assistant Director chimed back in.
“How sure are you this was a nuclear device and not just nuclear material?” a nervous agent asked.
“Look, we don’t have all—”
Another screen on the back wall flashed on, and a face appeared, already talking. “—just decrypted Agent Broadmoor’s phone and you need to see this …”
The face of Agent Billy Rice from the Houston field office was replaced by a picture of a poorly lit room, with a map on the wall and lots of pins and notations on it.
“… this picture was taken by Agent Broadmoor at Yusuf Habib’s apartment. Several of our field agents are on scene now and will be reporting in shortly.”
The map was enlarged so that all could see it. Every agent in the room leaned closer.
“What the hell are we looking at, Rice?” barked Director Connelly.
“Sir, it’s a map of the US and it shows three target areas: Chicago, New York, and … DC.”
“We’re fucked,” a voice broke the hushed silence from the back of the room, no one taking credit for it.
“I was just sent an MP4 file,” Agent Rice said, also nodding to someone off-screen. “This was just recovered and sent from a laptop in Habib’s apartment. You should have this now …”
“Sir, Executive Assistant Director Thompson, sir,” a man said from the first row, tilting his head and touching his ear. “I’m told we should now have the video. It’s a recording by Abdul Raheem Farook.”
The main screen flickered once and the dark face of a man they had never seen before displayed larger than life. He had a slight smile swimming in a closely cropped black beard with sprinkles of white.
He started in Arabic. “As-salaam.” The volume was lowered while an interpreter started speaking, over Farook. “Ahh … Brothers, our great war against the infidels will begin soon. The first phase will occur on July 4th. As you know, this is known as America’s Independence Day. While they are cheering … no, celebrating, the Great Satan’s legs will be cut off at its knees. We will destroy their technology and poison them in nuclear clouds and gas. Then while the infidels struggle to survive, many thousands of our fighters will come and America will bow down to the … might of Allah.”
The video appeared to be unedited, as Farook was interrupted and he turned to a young Indian man in the background. The agents could just barely hear him say in perfect English to the Indian man, “I’ll be there in a moment, Leo…”
And then the power went out and the room went black.
Only a few moments later, everyone in that room, along with the Herbert Hoover Building and all of DC, perished at one hundred thousand degrees.
Chapter 31
Abe
Lexi sat slumped over, while her disquieted mind played tug-of-war over a cloud of thoughts.
She was no longer disturbed about almost killing that man, or that he’d been slaughtered anyway. She wasn't even too worked up about being covered in the man's gore; her listless hand rose up and brushed against her check, pulling some of the blood and brain matter off, and she examined it.
Something else was deeply wrong.
A crucial factoid was misfiled in her head, or her brain was holding it back; maybe an incident from her past that she was repressing, like the women she had read about who were molested, but didn't remember this until years later when an event or image opened up their darkest memories. Thankfully, she was never molested or abused, but she felt some other malevolent secret lurked in the darkest places of her mind, waiting to be pulled out.
Maybe it is there, but it’s locked away for a good reason. And here I am, trying to pick the lock.
“Don't be a crybaby,” she scolded herself.
Lexi stood up, determined to do something, but not sure what that might be. A small tremor of recognition hit as she realized she was still holding the fully extended survival knife. Shaking her head in disbelief, she folded it and slipped it back into her waistband, before striding over to the cabin's small bathroom.
The next shock of the day was firmly delivered in front of the mirror when some stranger stared back at her. This person covered in a substantial splatter of blood couldn't be her. Could it?
With both faucets opened, she scrubbed at her face and hair. After a while, she felt somewhat satisfied. Her clothes were still soiled, but they were all she had to wear, so they would have to do. She reached over to a stack of clean towels and pulled one off the top, giving her face and head a light tousle. Slinging it around her neck—she was in too much of a hurry to complete the job, desperate to find the answer to her quandary—she marched over to her pack and pulled out her father's journal to look for something. Sitting back on her cot, she thumbed through the pages, unsure what she was looking for, only feeling that it must be there. One of her fingers landed on a page with lots of notes below the name Abdul Raheem Farook, just before several drops of water dripped from her wet hair and tumbled to the paper. The fallen droplets expanded outward, like pebbles making ripples in a pond, blurring the writing at each point of impact.
She
glared at the page, looking for her missing clue. It just wasn't there. Realizing some of the words from her father's pen now bled into others because of her dripping, she unfurled the towel from her neck and tossed it over her head, intending to dry her mop completely.
Then it hit.
That one fragment that had been missing; it was the secret she had repressed for so long. And all at once she was horrified because it connected and then she knew everything. It was like she had just taken off dark sunglasses inside and now she could see what was always there, but she had been blind to until this moment.
With her head shrouded in the towel's gloom, not unlike the women must have been in the main dormitory under their black covers, she shuddered. But it wasn't from the darkness: it was from the light of knowledge. Her fingers tugged at the towel's edges so that she was once again eying the page.
Extracting the pen from the pack's front pocket, she clicked out the point, and wrote on the top of the page one word and a question mark. It was rhetorical. Because it was the answer to all the questions that wracked her brain and when she wrote it, she knew it to be correct.
A loud knock at the door went unheard.
The second was louder.
The pen paused below what she had written; with her hand trembling so much, the clutched pen kept marking the book with little black dots. It was as if her mind was taping conclusive periods to its monumental revelation.
Right above this she had written: “ABE?”
The door opened and Lexi turned to face the nightmare she knew to be true. Her eyes swam in puddles, obscuring her vision like a heavy morning mist, but this didn’t blur her sight. She could see perfectly clearly now.
He walked through the door, standing tall, with the same welcoming smile that had greeted them yesterday. But that was before …
He hovered above her for a moment before sitting down in front of her, not saying a word.
It wasn't possible, was it?
She stared at his eyes, which seemed to look right into hers, into the deepest stretches of her mind. She was letting him in, letting him see. She shuddered more at this, but she couldn't look away. She was transfixed by his gaze and what it all meant.
He broke his scrutiny and looked at the open journal in her lap, the big bold letters she had written just above her father's.
The smile grew longer on his face. It was one of recognition.
He knew that she knew.
“It's you, isn't it?” The question leapt from her open lips. “You're the Abdul Raheem Farook that my father was searching for, aren't you?”
He waited for a long pause. Long enough that for a fleeting moment, she thought—no, hoped—she was wrong.
“Yes, I am he,” Abe said in a calm and reassuring voice.
“So, why would my father send us to you? Who are you to my father?” She suspected she knew the answers.
“Your father, Stanley, was my brother.”
Images of her father popped into her head: the same complexion, hair color, chins, even similar smiles, just like—
“And Sara is my sister. You have the same beautiful eyes.”
—her Aunt Sara. “But …” It was all she could say.
“We all came over from Syria, just before the Zionists bombed our country. We were raised by the Broadmoors, and we all took their American surname. But they were Zion-lovers too and had long forgotten our Muslim ways. Stanley became Americanized and forgot his roots, and he died running away from his calling. He studied the Quran, but his infidel wife pulled him away.”
“Is that why …” Lexi wasn't sure if she had the courage to ask what she needed to ask. “… why you killed our mom?”
His eyes drilled holes in her. For a moment he seemed a little surprised, but then at once resolute, and with the same calm voice he answered, “I don't expect you to understand, at least not yet. But in time, I suspect you will.”
A loud thumping at the door caused Lexi to jump and turn to see who it was. Abdul continued to look at her when he addressed the hooked-nosed man coming through the door.
“Yes, Yusuf.”
“Everyone is assembled for you outside.”
Abdul rose from the cot and walked to the door. “Bring her. This concerns her, and her brother.”
“He's waiting for you as well,” Yusuf answered
“Good.” Abdul turned to Lexi. Her mouth still drooped open; her eyes were blank.
He flashed a grin before walking through the door.
Yusuf didn't ask her. He marched over to Lexi, grabbed her between her clavicle and her neck, and led her out the door.
At first, he didn't squeeze so hard that it hurt, until she slowed, then with a hold like a vise he shot painful tingles down her spine and she matched his pace once again.
There was a crowd of people in front of the wide-opened area leading to the dock. A makeshift platform was set up, which abutted the dock, but was still on land. On it stood Abdul, elevated on a second platform. Before and below him were seven prisoners. Each was bound with rope in such a way that they were sitting cross-legged, their arms tied behind them. They were lined up, a few feet between each one. Standing around the platforms and the prisoners, were thirty or forty others: The men on one side, the women all covered in black on the other. Everyone was quiet.
Travis was standing near the platform, beside Sal, who had his hand on his shoulder. But unlike Yusuf's grip on Lexi, Sal's appeared to be almost comforting. Travis glanced up to Sal, and grinned at him. Sal smiled back.
“Attention everyone,” hollered Sal. Then he looked up to Abdul, who was already facing his followers, standing around him.
“Assalam alaikum,” he bellowed, his strong voice carrying without the aid of a microphone.
“Wa-alaikum-assalam.” It seemed everyone including Yusuf responded. Only Lexi and the seven hog-tied men remained silent.
“America, or who we know as the Great Satan, has long ago become corrupt. Soon it will be cleansed.”
A murmur spread through the crowd. “Praise Allah. Praise Allah. Praise Allah.”
“As you know, Allah the Merciful has chosen you to be among his warriors, along with over one hundred groups such as this, comprising thousands of believers. We are all part of a plan that would make Mohammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, proud. Our efforts will bring the caliphate to the whole world, starting here.
“Phase One is complete and with it, America has been brought to its knees. Soon the next phases will start and then we will be joined by many thousands more of our warriors. Together, we will strike at the heart of the infidel. Those who choose to follow Allah’s laws will be saved. But, those who do not will perish among the fires where they belong. And when our plan is complete, America will be ours.”
The throng of followers cheered and spoke praises to Abdul and to Allah.
When quiet returned, he continued. “The time has come when we can no longer hide in the shadows, pretending, as we have been, to be part of this culture. This culture's sinful ways have permeated this camp and were starting to make us weak. That will stop right now.
“Immediately, we will practice what America will come to learn. We will follow Sharia. All will pray five times per day. And those who do not yet know our laws”—he looked at Lexi, and so did many of the crowd—“will learn the Quran and show respect for Allah's laws.”
He paused to make sure all were listening. “Violators will be dealt with just as Mohammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, has prescribed.”
Seven men wearing white throbes, capped with black ghutras emblazoned in white Arabic writing, marched up the platform, each stopping behind one of the seven bound men.
The prisoners rustled, and their eyes grew wide.
Lexi recognized the prisoner on the end. It was Clyde. She lifted her eyes in shock to see that each man was holding in both hands a curved sword
“These men,” Abdul continued, “have been found guilty of crimes and t
heir sentence will be carried out immediately.” He nodded toward the first man, who without hesitation, swung his scimitar from left to right from behind the first sitting prisoner. A swish and a corresponding spray arced toward Travis, who was splashed with heavy droplets of red. He barely even flinched, like he was in a trance.
The head of the first prisoner rolled off the platform's side and tumbled down the bank into the river. His body, still attempting to pump lifeblood to a brain that wasn’t there, remained erect for a couple of seconds before finally slumping over. A small fountain of red spurted twice more as it fell.
Lexi attempted to look away, but Yusuf's claws dug into her head and turned her back to the carnage, just as the second executioner swung—right to left this time—sending gore and a severed head at those followers. A few moved out of its way, but most didn't move, just like Travis.
Lexi's attention may have been forced in that direction, but her eyes stayed on Travis, who remained still, watching every whimpering man die in equally grisly fashion.
She had seen videos of these kind of things on the Internet; snippet after snippet of masked jihadis beheading other Muslims who believed a different version of the same faith, Christians, who of course possessed a different faith, and anyone else who crossed their path: all murdered in the name of Allah. But, it was supposed to happen in those dark corners of the Middle East. Not here, in the United States.
“I love Allah, man. Really, I'll follow him, I really will. Please don't ki—”
It was Clyde, pleading for his miserable life. Lexi couldn't help but be drawn to his words like a spectator to a car crash. She focused on him just as his head was sent forward, the last word traveling with it, “Killlllllll,” before it bounded into one of the covered women sitting up front. She emitted a small shriek of surprise under her burka, but otherwise didn't react.
Lexi looked down too late, catching every bloody moment.
“And Sharia law tells us to submit to all rules imposed on us. If we don’t, our punishment will be swift; no matter who breaks them.”
Highway: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival Page 18
