And Into the Fire

by Robert Gleason

  “Your ride’s been compromised,” Adara said to the two women. “Grab only what you have to have and follow me. We have a van behind the Walmart.”

  “Who are you?” Jules asked.

  “Your only chance to get out of this alive.”

  “She’s right,” Elena said to Jules. “Grab money, medications, guns. Anything you can’t buy.”

  They crammed everything they could carry into two knapsacks and one duffel bag. Throwing them over their shoulders, they followed the woman toward the alley alongside the Walmart.

  8

  “Hit me, I’ll kill you.”

  —Hasad ibn Ghazi

  Eight semitrailers full of shipping containers were off-loaded at the Virginia farm.

  Later that afternoon, Hasad then assembled the new arrivals—eighteen long-haired, bearded young men—in the big farmhouse. Colonel Hakeem had smuggled them into the country in those containers. Hasad had bought the young jihadists a large assortment of shorts, T-shirts, hoodies, underwear, and gym shoes—typical American clothes—which they’d put on after they cleaned up. Hasad was dressed the same. He burned all their old clothes in an incinerator behind the house.

  Earlier, he’d bought food, plastic eating utensils, and paper plates and cups at a supermarket. For tonight’s meal, Hasad had assigned three of the men to boil the hot dogs and fry the hamburgers on the kitchen stove and to lay out the buns, condiments, and the potato and macaroni salads. He wanted them to eat like Americans and to start getting used to the food. They drank Coke with their meals. He had cans of coffee and a stovetop aluminum coffee pot for those who wanted it bad enough to make it.

  Tomorrow, he’d have them cut their hair short and shave off their beards.

  They ate around a big maple dining-room table or the kitchen table. Several of them sat in the living room and ate with their plates on their laps. Someone had already made coffee, and several of them drank it out of Styrofoam cups.

  Looking around, Hasad was not pleased. The general had forced this job on him against his will, and he did not know these men. He hadn’t recruited or trained them. Still, he was stuck with them.

  He’d been assigned two men as adjutants—Hamzi, whom he’d worked with before, and Jamil. In fact, Jamil was heading the operation out west, and Hasad had almost nothing to do with that mission. Also, after Hasad got the nuclear power plant job in shape and prepped the men, he would be heading down to Washington, D.C., to handle that op by himself.

  He was missing one thing. While he was training these men for the jobs, he needed a third man to assist him. For the most part, they were wiry little guys with furtive angry eyes and fidgety gestures. He needed a drill sergeant, a disciplinarian, someone to crack the whip over them and keep them in line. While Hamzi was running the show at the Hudson River Nuclear Power Station, he’d need someone like that.

  Only one man stood out. Taller than the others, he was six two, maybe 230, more muscular. He had a closely shaved beard, short hair, and army tattoos. Sitting at the dining-room table, he ate slowly, deliberately keeping his face down, with one arm around his plate.

  He’d no doubt learned the “arm around his plate” etiquette in prison.

  When he did look up, he met Hasad’s gaze steadily, his own eyes revealing no trace of feeling or fear.

  Hasad liked him, and he didn’t like many people.

  He gestured with his head for the man to come to him. Picking up his coffee cup, the man walked over. Hasad took him to a corner of the living room, where they could speak privately.

  “Have you had any military training?” Hasad asked.

  “I was a sergeant in the Pakistan Army.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I hit an officer.”

  “Why?”

  “We were in Kashmir, and the idiot tried to order us into an ambush.”

  “Did you do time?”

  “Six months’ hard labor.”

  “That all?”

  “I was proven right, so they went easy. They cashiered me though.”

  “Did you like the army?”

  “Best time of my life.”

  “Kill anyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “I did a lot of sniping, worked a lot of night ambushes, so I can’t be completely sure. Over a hundred, I’d guess.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fahad.”

  “You speak English.”

  “Fluently. I spent five years in the U.S. working for U.S. contractors.”

  “Good. My first lieutenant, Hamzi, spent time in the U.S. and speaks English, too.”

  “So he’s fluent?”

  “Very fluent. He studied chemistry at Columbia for four years. You two will work out fine. You’re Sergeant Fahad now—my second-in-command.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Hit me, I’ll kill you.”

  9

  “We’re in for it now.”

  —Jules Meredith

  Jules, Elena, and their two new friends jogged slowly through the dark alleyway next to the Walmart.

  “Nice to meet you two,” Rashid said as they headed up the alley, “even if it is during a near-death-encounter.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jules said, “and thanks for saving our lives.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Rashid said.

  They stopped at the edge of the building, and Elena looked around the corner.

  “Our SUV is parked thirty yards away at the back of the lot. There’s also a dumpster by the building about twenty yards from our ride. I need to check it out. There might be more men behind it.”

  “That sounds a little paranoid,” Jules said.

  “You wouldn’t believe the full-court press these guys have put on you,” Adara said.

  Rashid glanced around the corner. “I’d suggest you wait five minutes. Elena, Jules, if I come out from behind the dumpster and wave you toward the car, you’ll know everything is fine. If I don’t, assume there’s trouble. If I open fire, you’ll know there’s trouble. Then you two will take off, running low and fast in S-curves, toward our car. There, you’ll get down behind the tires. If you receive incoming fire, Adara will return it from this corner. In the meantime, I’m going to circle around the store and come up on their flank. If I run, I can make it in three or four minutes.”

  Elena nodded, and he took off. Elena looked at her watch and they waited.

  Two minutes later, Rashid opened up with staccato, noise-suppressed bursts from the far corner, and two men behind the dumpster ran to its other side.

  Adara stepped out from behind the building and cut them in two with her H&K 9mm MP7.

  “Both of you go!” she shouted to Jules and Elena.

  They ran, zigzagging hard at a low angle, Elena working the slide on her 12-gauge Ithaca pump as fast as she knew how as the men poured out of the passenger side of the SUV. The pattern was so spread out, the double-0 pellets so numerous—each the size of a .22 round—she hit men with every blast. Crouched down behind one of the van’s tires, Jules shot at men’s ankles, hitting one of them in the foot. He went down, howling.

  Elena circled around, and the screams were silenced by the pop of her 10mm Glock.

  Finally, there was silence.

  At their van, Elena and Jules took the backseat. Adara got behind the wheel, while Rashid climbed in on the other side. Starting the car, she drove around the far corner of the Safeway.

  “Who were those men behind the Safeway?” Jules asked.

  “They weren’t CIA or FBI,” Elena said.

  “I heard one of them shout ‘Yarhamuk Allah’ when his comrade was shot,” Rashid said. “Allah have mercy on you.”

  “I heard one of them scream, ‘Astaghfiru lillah!’” Adara said. “I seek forgiveness from Allah.”

  “Yeah,” Elena said, “but the guys in the vans back in the front lot were Agency or Bureau.”

  “Did we just gun down half the CIA
, FBI, ISIS, and al Qaeda?” Jules asked.

  “We’re up against a global alliance,” Rashid said. “That’s for sure.”

  “Someone wants us dead really bad,” Jules said.

  “Yeah, and I’m afraid this van’s also made,” Adara said, “which is why we have to get to the other one parked down a dark street three blocks over. We need to get in it and get the hell out of here.”

  “What do we do after that?” Jules asked.

  “Rashid and I,” Adara said, “were told to protect you. I have an address for a safe house.”

  “And you’ve done great,” Elena said. “I have another idea though.”

  “I hope it’s not who I think it is,” Jules said.

  “I have a friend who’ll put us all up,” Elena said, nodding.

  “We’re in for it now,” Jules said to Rashid and Adara.

  PART IX

  When the deal goes down,

  And you’re lookin’ to score,

  When the shit hits the fan,

  When the firestorms roar,

  When there’s blood all around,

  When there’s nuclear war,

  You’ll be rockin’ the apocalypse

  Rockin’ the apocalypse,

  You’ll be rock-rock-rock-rock-rockin’ the apocalypse.

  —Sister Cassandra, “Rockin’ the Apocalypse”

  1

  Shouts of “Al mawt li Amreeka!” or “Death to America!” rocked the farmhouse.

  Later that night, Hasad assembled the men in the living room. When he purchased the old sprawling four-story, ten-room farmhouse, he’d also bought the previous occupants’ furniture. The old couple had been devout Baptists, and walls were covered with religious paintings and crucifixes. When they’d first gotten there, Hasad ordered the men not to defile, deface, remove, or destroy the Christian décor. He viewed the artwork as protective coloration. He also wanted the men to get used to the world they were about to enter. They were no longer in Pakistan, but in the land of the Great Satan. When one of them rebelled, saying that tolerance of infidel religious symbols and relics violated Allah’s law and then ripped the crucifix off the wall, Hasad’s newly recruited adjutant, Fahad, had hammered him so hard the man hadn’t just hit the floor, he’d bounced. Twice. Hasad was surprised that Sergeant Fahad hadn’t broken his jaw.

  He was pleased he’d picked Fahad. With Fahad and Hamzi running things at the nuclear power plant, there would be no insubordination.

  The men sat on straight-back chairs, worn-out couches, and threadbare armchairs. Most of them were now drinking Styrofoam cups of black coffee. They did not seem to care that the caffeine might keep them awake.

  His experience with ISIS/TTP was that they recruited men as much for their religiosity as their special ops background, so he had no faith in this group’s professional skills. Still, he had to work with them. To that end, it was important to give them confidence in their mission, the unshakable belief that they would succeed no matter what the odds.

  “We know quite a bit about American nuclear power plants,” Hasad began. “We’ve had agents working in U.S. nuclear plants for over two decades. Some of you might have heard of Sharif Ewan? He was a young man who got jobs in a half dozen U.S. nuclear plants despite being on the FBI’s watch list. He proved how easy it was for us to find jobs in U.S. nuclear facilities. He had access to every department of these plants even though he railed at his fellow employees, denouncing them as ‘infidels.’ Ironically, no one in the plants turned him in. Nobody. Management didn’t, and neither did the workers. Sharif Ewan proved how easy it is for us to infiltrate U.S. nuclear power plants. We will now prove how easy it is to breach their security and destroy them.”

  “Placing a number of our people at these sites,” Hamzi said, “we made sure they were disciplined jihadists, that they blended in with those around them. We had them emulate their fellow workers’ lifestyle and manners, most of whom didn’t even know our agents were of the true faith.

  “Since that time, we have succeeded in placing two highly skilled, deep-cover agents in the Hudson River Nuclear Power Station, otherwise known as HRNPS. They have each been there over ten years. In two weeks, I will take a dozen of you into the HRNPS in the dead of night. You will cut through the fence, sneak in the same way Sister Megan Rice did at the Y-12 nuclear site, and help us melt down its reactors and set fire to its spent fuel rods. We will kill millions of infidels and render the surrounding area, including New York City, uninhabitable for ten thousand years!”

  Cries of “Jazak Allahu Khair!” (May Allah reward you) and “Bismillah!” (In the name of Allah) spontaneously erupted across the living room, some of the young men ecstatically rising to their feet.

  Hasad motioned them to remain seated.

  “That is only the beginning. On that same day, we will hit two other U.S. cities with Hiroshima-style bombs, nuking them off the face of the earth.”

  The applause, shouting, and foot stomping were deafening, utterly out of control. Fahad had to slap one man and force several of them back into their chairs before Hasad could continue.

  “We are going after three targets. Jamil will take three of you out west, where you will do some truly spectacular, top-secret work. Jamil will prep you for it thoroughly. I will take Hamzi, Fahad, and the rest of you up to the HRNPS, which is only ninety-five miles north of Manhattan Island. Two days before you melt it down and raze it to the ground, I will leave for my own assignment. I will be taking out one of the most important cities in America and will be handling that one alone.”

  Shouts of “Al mawt li Amreeka!” or “Death to America!” rocked the farmhouse convulsively.

  “Let them get it out of their systems,” Hasad said to Fahad. “I want them confident, even arrogant.”

  “They’re taking on a hard job,” Fahad acknowledged.

  “Three hard jobs,” Hasad said, “so let them blow off some steam.”

  “If they start to break the furniture,” Fahad said, “I’ll step in.”

  “Good,” Hasad said. “We have two weeks to go, and we’ll need every minute of it and every ounce of their energy and strength.”

  2

  “Like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.”

  —Jules Meredith

  Elena drove the big SUV through a labyrinth of dark Virginia country roads, high into the steep, wooded Blue Ridge Mountains.

  “I can’t see the hand in front of my face,” Rashid said.

  “You got any idea where we’re going?” Adara asked.

  “We’re seeing an old friend of Jules and mine,” Elena said.

  “Mostly Elena’s friend,” Jules said.

  “At least, he used to be,” Elena added.

  “You did dump him pretty hard,” Jules said.

  “This guy’s pissed off at you?” Rashid asked.

  “To say the least,” Jules said.

  “But he’s supposed to help us?” Adara asked. “Why?”

  “I’ll give him my killer smile,” Elena said.

  Elena flashed Adara her “killer smile.”

  “You look like a mako shark eyeing a mackerel,” Adara said. “Jules, you sure this is going to work?”

  “It better,” Jules said. “We need him. Jamie can hack into any computer system on earth.”

  “That could be helpful,” Adara admitted.

  “He also has more money than Vladimir Putin,” Elena said.

  “And we’re going to need a lot of money if we’re going to get through this in one piece,” Jules said.

  “Do I know this guy?” Rashid asked.

  “John C. Jameson?” Jules said. “Sure. He invents and builds the encryption and antihacking systems that most governments, intelligence agencies, and defense contractors use worldwide in their computer networks.”

  “When it comes to Internet and computer security, Jamie’s the gold standard,” Elena said.

  “I read about him,” Adara said. “The crazy recluse who lives in a
hidden mountain redoubt surrounded by nothing but computers, guns, and fine wines. He never sees anybody.”

  “Oh, he saw Elena,” Jules said with a malicious laugh. “He’s never recovered from the experience—Post-Traumatic Elena Syndrome.”

  “What was the attraction?” Adara asked.

  “Pelvic,” Jules said.

  “You’re shitting me,” Adara said.

  “He had a thing for me,” Elena admitted.

  “But Elena pissed him off?” Adara asked.

  “He was mad enough to murder the earth,” Jules said.

  “Can you get him to help us?” Adara asked. “For old times’ sake?”

  “Depends how mad he is,” Jules said. “How mad is he, Elena?”

  “Pretty mad,” Elena acknowledged.

  “On a scale of one to ten,” Jules asked.

  “A twenty-eight,” Elena said.

  “This isn’t going to work, is it?” Rashid said.

  “I have faith in Elena,” Jules said. “I’ve seen her in action.”

  “What’s she like?” Adara asked.

  “Wicked as sin, proud as Satan,” Jules said.

  “That’s why he’ll help us?” Adara asked.

  “That—and my killer smile,” Elena said.

  Elena flashed them the grin again. It did resemble a mako shark’s.

  “I thought powerful men liked pliant women,” Adara said.

  Elena shrugged. “So I’ll wilt like a lily.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jules said.

  “He’ll know,” Adara pointed out, “we’re wanted for capital crimes. It’s all over the news.”

  “And the people who want us are some of his best customers,” Rashid added.

  Elena looked back at Rashid and Adara and shrugged. “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  Elena continued up the winding mountain switchbacks until the road dead-ended. The SUV was facing a heavy twelve-foot cyclone fence topped with coiled razor wire and multiple surveillance cameras and motion detectors. A computerized lock with a digitized punch code controlled the gate. Elena exited the car and punched in the same code she’d used when she and Jamie were together. The gate swung open.