And Into the Fire

by Robert Gleason

  “Prince Shaiq doesn’t know it, but he signed off on the stoning death of her favorite niece. His mistress raised the young girl like a daughter, and she’ll do anything to avenge her.”

  “You still pimped her,” Jamie said.

  “True, but Shaiq claims she’s hotter than all of hell’s furnaces with their doors flung open,” Elena said.

  “You probably taught her yourself,” Jamie said to Elena, shaking his head in dismay.

  “That would be a trade secret,” Elena said, smiling.

  Exhaling slowly and deeply, he began accessing the contents of Prince Shaiq’s hard drive.

  3

  “I have a lot to atone for.”

  —Sam Mazini

  Saif al-Mazini—known to his fellow workers as Sam Mazini—pulled up into the parking lot of the Hudson River Nuclear Power Station in his white Toyota Prius. A tall, lanky man with short dark hair and a mustache, he was wearing a tan suit, a pale-yellow shirt, and brown Florsheim wing tips. Fellow worker and security guard James J. Robinson pulled into the space next to his in his dirty black Jeep Grand Cherokee. Robinson was wearing gray sneakers, faded Levis, and a gray athletic T-shirt. His hair and beard were unkempt and disheveled. When he turned off the ignition, black smoke belched out of his exhaust pipe.

  “You know among the diesel SUVs, your model Jeep Grand Cherokee CRD is one of the worst CO2 polluters on the road?” Sam said as Robinson climbed out of his Cherokee.

  “What does a guinea bastard like you know about good patriotic American cars?” Robinson said, giving him the finger. “I want your opinion, I’ll ask you how to make clam sauce, fry garlic, or boil linguine.”

  Though he was born in Yemen, everyone assumed Mazini was an Italian name.

  “Yeah?” Sam said. “Well, it’s better than boiling the planet with greenhouse gases.”

  “Tell it to those girls you bang at the strip club,” Robinson said. “They got pollutants, too—STDs NIH never even heard of.”

  “I kill those diseases with garlic.”

  “By breathing your stinking garlic breath on them?”

  “I was told what was natural couldn’t hurt me,” Sam said, grinning.

  “Were all those shots of 151 you were throwing back last night ‘natural’? What were they? Some kind of new nature beverage?”

  A heavy drinker, compulsive gambler, chain-smoker, recreational drug enthusiast, and notorious womanizer, Sam liked to nonetheless act as if he were also a Greenpeace fanatic. The slightest hint of climate change denial could throw him into paroxysms of fake liberal rage, as if greenhouse gases were the End Time incarnate.

  “I was hoping it would disinfect all the impurities I pick up around here.”

  That Sam espoused Greenpeace and a natural diet while working in a nuclear power plant was an irony not lost on anyone.

  “A bunch of the guys are going to the casino after work, thinking of getting a poker game together,” Robinson said. “You in, or is gambling too unnatural for you?”

  “I learned the game at church socials. Father O’Doole taught me personally when I was an altar boy.”

  “Let’s hope that’s all he taught you.”

  “Are you suggesting I was his catamite?”

  “In a word, yes.”

  “I’ll admit I was his altar boy,” Sam said.

  “Then you probably corrupted him,” Robinson said.

  “Oh, you think my flesh is weak?”

  “For a man who constantly espouses natural living, you’re the most unnatural sonofabitch I know.”

  “Which is why I attend Mass faithfully. I have much to atone for.”

  “I heard the last holy father, who took your last confession, ran out of the booth, screaming into the night.”

  “He said I was ‘sired by Satan.’”

  “Then you’re on for tonight?”

  “Have you ever known me to say no?”

  “Never!” Robinson roared.

  He slapped Sam on the back, and the two men headed toward the plant.

  4

  “Do you want me to unneglect him?”

  —Malika al-Mansour

  Malika al-Mansour, Shaiq’s femme de la nuit, sat on his long black office couch in his palatial penthouse office. Her sensuous sloe eyes focused unwaveringly on her client. Flinging her long black hair over her right shoulder, she crossed her legs. She was wearing a short, low-cut black negligee with matching fish-net stockings, garters, and spike heels. Her dress hiked up to her thigh, and her legs were crossed, the top leg bouncing up and down impatiently.

  She watched him working at his desk computer. He was still dressed in a black business suit. He’d been away in D.C. for two months, and she had frequently visited him there. Now, however, his work here in Riyadh had backed up, and his desk was piled high with papers. His eyes were red with fatigue.

  Getting up from the couch, she walked over to him, seated herself on the edge of his massive mahogany desk, and crossed her legs again. Her already short negligee was now hiked up over her hips. Staring out the windows at the bright full moon, she absently studied the cloudless star-filled midnight sky. Viewed from eighty-seven stories up, the Arabian Sea was filled with what looked to be a thousand yachts, tankers, tugboats, barges, and dhows. Still, Shaiq’s eyes were buried in his computer monitor, ignoring both her and the spectacular, panoramic view.

  “I need you, Shaiq,” Malika said. “It’s been over a week.”

  “I really can’t. It’s after midnight, and I have work to finish. You can see that. I have a big day tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”

  “Just one kiss,” she said, “and I’ll leave you alone. I’ll just sit on the couch and worship you from afar.”

  Shaking his head, he sighed deeply. “Just one.”

  She pulled his chair away from his desk and eased herself onto his lap. Her tongue went deep in his mouth, probing and palpating his teeth and lips, even as she rubbed his chest, stomach, abdomen, luridly, lasciviously working her way down, all the way down.

  “Why, I don’t think you’re tired at all,” Malika said. “At least, part of you isn’t tired—a very big part. In fact, he feels abandoned and neglected. Do you want me to unneglect him?”

  Shaiq let out a long, slow, gasping groan and gave her a weak nod, his pupils dilating.

  “I think I should take you to the couch.”

  Shaiq was now incapable of objecting.

  She dragged him like a dog to the long suede sofa.

  PART XII

  Those that I fight I do not hate,

  Those that I guard I do not love.…

  —William Butler Yeats, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”

  1

  “In short, we should act like mindless, moronic Americans.”

  —Hamzi Udeen

  Ever since they’d left the safe house and Hasad’s crew, Jamil and Adman had scanned the highway for surveillance vehicles and searched the sky for choppers.

  “A van full of Arab men might well attract attention,” Jamil explained to Adman back at the safe house.

  “Or we could get pulled over for a routine traffic stop,” Adman said, “have car trouble—any number of things could draw attention to us.”

  “Our cover story is we are innocent tourists,” Jamil said. “That’s why we’re all wearing country-western T-shirts. We are fans of American music, and we’re in the U.S. to enjoy the blues, bluegrass, rock and roll, and country music.”

  “Our papers are bulletproof,” Adman said.

  “We should be able to pull it off,” Jamil said.

  All of them were dressed like rednecks and rockers—Wrangler jeans and a variety of rock and roll/country music T-shirts blazoned with the logos and likenesses of Hank “A Country Boy Can Survive” Williams, Jr., Bruce “I Answer to Only One Boss” Springsteen, and Toby “I Love This Bar” Keith. The two men in the front seat—Jamil and Fahad—favored western-cut shirts and cowboy hats. At every stop, Jamil kept a weather eye out fo
r country-music-and-culture regalia with which to adorn the van and his men—miniature plastic guitar keychains; fake Elvis driver’s licenses; bumper stickers with “I-Aint-Giving-Up-My-Beer-Can-Till-You-Pry-My-Cold-Dead-Fingers-Off-It!” on them; Confederate flags; and posters of a young, buxom, scantily clad Tanya Tucker, her booty and boobs boasting beaucoup décolletage.

  Per Jamil’s orders, all of them had close-cut hair and were clean shaven. Jamil had even outlawed mustaches. He had brought two Norelco electric razors and insisted the men shave twice daily. He did not want them looking like bearded terrorists.

  Taking I-95 to Petersburg, Virginia, Jamil ignored the turnoff for the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier—featuring its famous Battle of the Crater exhibit—and hooked a left onto I-85. Following it all the way to Durham, North Carolina, he turned onto I-40, which he would take straight through to California.

  Initially, Jamil had wanted to put as much mileage on the van at a time as possible, stopping only for take-out food, coffee, and restrooms. During these stops, he let the men out one at a time so as not to attract too much attention.

  On the way to Nashville, however, he decided to reinforce the men’s cover story. Spotting a fifty-foot-high neon sign of a cowboy in a Stetson with a bucket of spare ribs under one arm and chawing on a rack of baby backs with both hands, Jamil quickly pulled in and parked. Above the restaurant itself was a neon sign emblazoned with the words, DONNY’S DOWN-HOME BARBEQUE!!!

  Explaining to the men in the van that they were to pose as infidel tourists, Jamil said they should eat pork, drink beer, laugh, sing, smoke, and swear.

  “In short, we should act like mindless, moronic Americans.”

  When Dawad, however, pointed out to him that “Islamic law strictly forbids both drinking and the eating of pork,” Jamil stared at him with cold eyes.

  “We only eat it to convince the infidels that we are like them!” he said.

  “It’s still pork,” Dawada countered.

  “It’s also Darura,” Jamil said.

  “The Islamic law of necessity,” Adman explained. “If the act is necessary for righteous survival, then one is allowed to commit it—as long as it does no harm—even if it violates Islamic law.”

  The men grudgingly agreed.

  The hostess sat them at a big circular table, and Jamil ordered for everyone: baby back pork ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, and fried chicken, all of it drenched in Donny’s Down-Home Bar-B-Que Dressing. Quickly warming to their role—that of redneck Americans—they ravenously devoured colossal plates of coleslaw, macaroni salad, potato salad, and baked beans from the all-you-can-eat buffet. Much to everyone’s surprise, the men found they loved the greasy food. Jamil watched in astonishment as they demolished mountains of pork and beef, pausing only to pound down multiple schooners of Pabst Blue Ribbon draft.

  A five-piece country music band came on. Except for Adman, Jamil’s men spoke little English, but they were able to repeat a few lyrics from some of the songs. One they especially seemed to like. It was called “Achy, Breaky Heart,” and they enthusiastically bellowed out the chorus along with the crowd:

  Don’t tell my heart

  My achy breaky heart

  I just don’t think he’d understand.

  Ordering more pork ribs, they then chanted at the top of their lungs:

  “Darura! Darura! Darura!”

  After chanting, they threw back shots of Jack Daniel’s backed by more pitchers of Pabst draft and roared out more country music choruses:

  She’s actin’ single,

  I’m drinkin’ doubles.

  More shots, more pitchers, and they were hollering in badly mangled English:

  Jose Cuervo

  You are a friend of mine

  I like to drink you with

  A little salt and lime.

  Near the evening’s end, Hamzi muttered in Jamil’s ear:

  “This country truly is the Great Satan.”

  Jamil could only shake his head.

  2

  “They told me I was a bipolar castrato-psychopath!!!”

  —Elias Edito

  Whenever Elias felt anxious, cleaning his guns and listening to Sister Cassandra’s melodic voice soothed his soul. Tonight he needed both. As he oiled and swabbed out his .50 caliber Barrett M82 rifle down in his gun room, he listened to the Good Sister’s haunting rendition of “End of Days.” It seemed to Elias a harbinger of things to come and a tragic summation of his own life and times.

  I have seen the end,

  (The end-time, my son).

  And I have heard the cryin’

  Faced the dyin’ all around.

  And I have felt the fire

  For all time to come.

  In the darkness

  In the thunder

  In the blaze

  I have felt the rumble

  Felt it tumblin’ down.

  And I have heard the thunder

  Seen the wonder to come.

  And I have smelled the blood tide

  In the flood tide I was drowned.

  In the fury

  In the flood

  In the fray

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  Just as Cassandra wrapped up the first chorus, Elias finished wiping off the Barrett. He was pleased with the big gun. He planned to get a lot of use out of it. Built to take out planes, choppers, armored personnel carriers—even tanks—it was also accurate enough to kill people over two thousand yards, though he had other weapons that could do that. Using a Barrett on a human being was like swatting a fly with a drop forge.

  Tonight, however, Elias couldn’t focus. He had a lot to do, a lot to think about, and his mind was wandering. Pulled away from his work by Sister Cassandra’s melancholy ballad, he could not concentrate on the weaponry, and he finally let himself go with the sad song.

  Oh, I have seen the madness,

  (The madness, my son).

  And I have known the darkness,

  (The darkness to come).

  I was broken on a rack,

  On a rack of the sun.

  I have seen the end.

  (Please, say it ain’t the end.)

  I have witnessed the end.

  (Don’t let it be the end.)

  I have prayed for the end.

  (Lord, it can’t be the end.)

  In the wrath

  In the rage

  In the flames

  In the violence

  In the hate

  In the pain

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  End of days

  Through an act of will, Elias begrudgingly dragged himself back to the job at hand. He began digging a sizable assortment of weapons, ammunition, and equipment out of the big safe—his 9mm Glock and the MP7 machine gun, which he could conceal under a coat. He had a 7.62 NATO assault rifle in the power plant’s watch tower, so he didn’t need to bring one of those. He also assembled a dozen magazines for preloading, as well as sniper scopes, noise suppressors, and a Ka-Bar combat knife.

  All of these weapons would be smuggled into his guntower the night of the attack.

  He then dug out a heavy steel grenade box with a padlock on it.

  Why the hell not?

  But then his mind began wandering again, and he was recalling, once more, how it all began.…

  * * *

  His AA meetings had not been going well. When he tried to explain to the other members about his Iraq nightmares and the hundreds of firefights he’d survived, to say nothing of the more than two hundred men, women, and children he’d killed, a number of the people raised their hands to protest. Some of the complaints were insulting.

  A slender white-haired woman in dark slacks and a white sweater was especially irate. She looked a
bout eighty but attacked him with the energy of an eighteen-year-old.

  “Listen, Elias,” she began, “why don’t you think about the families of those men and women you killed. Think about the lives you cut short—men and women who’ll never see their kids grow up, who may never have kids because of you. If you thought more about other people and less about yourself, you wouldn’t have to drink. And you wouldn’t have gone off to that idiotic war in the first place.”

  Man, she had a mouth on her. Elias wondered what she was like when she was young and had all of her strength and energy. He wouldn’t have minded getting her in his gun sights.

  Most of the comments were along those lines. Nobody wanted to hear about his war troubles. They were so hostile about the conflict that he didn’t dare tell them the real truth was he didn’t feel guilty or sorry. He felt rage and hate over the way he’d been treated. That U.S. political leaders could lie to their own people, bullshit them into a war fought for oil—then cut and run when the tsunami of oil money didn’t materialize—filled him with a lust for revenge that he could not contain.

  Finally, there was that last night at AA when the meeting leader—a nice man in a blue blazer, Levis, and a white T-shirt—took him aside after the group broke up. He told Elias that the members had asked him to tell Elias they wanted him out of the group. His angry obsession with Iraq wasn’t helping them with their own drinking problems. In fact, he made them want to hit a bar and get smashed.

  The man gave him a list of phone numbers he could call if he wanted to enroll in another session somewhere else. He also advised him to “put a lid on the Iraq shit.”

  Instead, for the first time in a year, Elias went to a bar near his house, where he ran into Sam Mazini from work. They had a couple of drinks, and he told Sam about getting kicked out of AA because they disapproved of his participation in the Iraq War. They didn’t want to hear about all the Iraqis he’d shot to hell and gone. They didn’t want to listen to his complaints and his anger over it.

  A couple of vets on stools next to him overheard and started sending down shots. They were wearing VFW hats and dirty factory clothes. They’d just gotten off the 3:00–11:00 shift at the Honda plant. One of them—a friendly older man with a pale gray beard and a 101st Airborne Screaming Eagles tat on his forearm—said: