Although their role was extremely diminished and their official position was that they had pulled out, the Americans were still in Iraq. The country had since been thoroughly transformed economically and had become a site of extreme interest for tourists. Violence was now at a level only slightly higher than surrounding nations, and the economy had been growing with leaps and bounds. If Beirut was the city dubbed the Paris of the Middle East, Iraq had now become the country of the Middle East with an equal allure. It was now recognized by most as an emerging center of global commerce.
Samani, on the one hand, was very delighted by this prosperity, particularly because many of his Shia brethren, who were brutalized by Saddam for so long, were finally sharing in the wealth and prosperity. On the other hand, Samani resented that the Sunnis and the Americans had their hands in the affairs of the country.
It was Samani’s mission to extract the western infidels from the Iraqi equation. If the Mahdi were to return to reign in the Iraqi city of Kufa, it would need to occur under certain conditions. Those conditions would certainly dictate the absence of the Americans and the Sunnis. The removal of these elements was just one piece of his efforts toward Taajil.
It was Samani’s divine duty to encourage the conditions that would hasten the return of the Mahdi. Unfortunately for the people of Iraq, who had finally obtained a certain level of peace and security, one of those general conditions would be the intensity of chaos, war, and bloodshed. Even in the land of the Mahdi’s birth and the site of his eventual rule. Samani was more than prepared to help facilitate these conditions.
Samani desperately missed his dear mentor. He still remembered the day he met him at a meeting for the Hojjatieh Society. The Hojjatieh Society was a secret fraternal group that was mystical in nature. The members devoted themselves to the cult of the Mahdi as led by the groundwork laid down by its founder, Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi. Ahmadinejad instantly recognized and rewarded Samani’s intellect, enthusiasm, and devotion. Ahmadinejad made extra effort to take Samani under his wing and make it a priority to direct Samani in the ways of the Mahdi. As much as Samani despised Western Culture and Hollywood, he couldn’t help but imagining, in his quiet moments, that his relationship with Ahmadinejad was much like that of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker.
Hadi sat back in his leather office chair and exhaled some smoke from the hookah pipe while praying to Allah for the strength and wisdom to continue Ahmadinejad’s legacy. He knew that Allah would pave the way for this to happen, and ultimately pave the way for the return of the Mahdi. As Hadi reached for yet another puff from his hookah he was interrupted by the ring tone of his cell phone, which was an Islamic prayer sung over acoustic guitars. It was brother Samere.
“Samere!”
Samani put down his hookah so he could fully focus on his conversation with Samere.
“Good morning President Samani!” Samere’s excitement was audible.
“How are you today my friend?” Samere was Hadi Samani’s most faithful employee, and liaison for all things Messianic.
“I’m well. I have good news. The construction has begun for the train line. It will be a direct line from Tehran to the Jamkaran Mosque. Just as you wished.” Samere was extremely proud of his role in this progress.
“Excellent. I’m very pleased with the expedience with which this project is launching. The time of reckoning for the Zionists and the Arrogant Ones cannot come to pass until we have prepared the proper infrastructure needed to receive the Mahdi.” Samani fully trusted Samere’s leadership when it came to preparation and planning for the Mahdi’s return.
“I fully agree. The Jamkaran Mosque is where the great Mahdi briefly appeared in 941 AD, and it stands to reason that we must increase the reverence brought to this site by the Iranian people as a pleasing gesture to the Mahdi.”
“Yes. We must continue to create an atmosphere of honor and reverence in our great Republic to entice our Messiah’s hastened return. He deserves our utmost efforts.” Samani felt a slight chill in his bones as he thought of the return of his beloved Twelfth Imam.
“To that end, President Samani, I’ve increased funding three fold for the World Toward Illumination program, as was your wish. It’ll be televised more frequently and for longer duration as to further increase the awareness of the Mahdi’s near return in the hearts and minds of our people.”
Samani was extremely pleased with Samere’s work. He only wished his mentor could witness these amazing advancements. “Mahmoud would be proud of us. We must continue to honor his name and carry out his devotion to the Mahdi.”
“We must.” Samere, of course, readily agreed.
“We must indeed. Continue to keep me updated. The day is coming.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE STREETS OF DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Blaze had felt fully ripe and alive. He could feel his true soul rising out of the mundane parameters that had confined him for so long. Blaze walked slowly down the cracked Detroit city sidewalks outside of Ramona’s Diner. He wanted to take some time to think before meeting Bernie back at the office. The wind was howling and the vibrant autumn leaves swirled majestically around the worn concrete with a musical rhythm. He pulled the brim down tight on his grey wool scally driver cap to further keep his head from the wind. He cupped his hands tightly around his cigar, preparing to light it. He then sat on a non-descript city bench and observed the downtown Detroit passersby while he took inventory of himself. He loved this time of year; crisp, full, and emblematic of abundance and plentitude. Abundance of life, hope, and vision. His skin felt like his own again. The only action that was left that would fully make him feel one hundred percent again, would be to break the news to Diem that he was getting back into the game. Diem…yeah….not quite sure how to attack that yet.
He sat for several minutes without the ability to muster up a coherent string of conclusive thoughts. The rich, aromatic cigar smoke bellowed beautifully around him as he admired the profound art and aesthetic of the band glued at the base of the cigar. The smell of the cigar was half of the pleasure, and that smell took on unique nuances that differed from season to season. Cigar smoke mixed with autumn air was one of Blaze’s favorite. Blaze had cut down to only a few times per week for this indulgence, and found that the infrequency magnified the pleasure.
Finally, the inevitable had been achieved. Relaxation simmered upon Blaze’s tumultuous mind as he pondered some of life’s dualities. Flashes of brisk, quick acts of violence jabbed within his mind against the juxtaposition of memories of familial harmony. Memories such as throwing Shane in the air, when he was a toddler, and catching him on his way down with a smile that melted all notions of pain and death. He recalled the sweet kisses that were given freely by Diem on their tenth year anniversary trip to China. He could feel her therapeutic lips on his cheek even as he exhaled the rich smoke that burned through the Madura wrapper of his Perdomo 20th Anniversary cigar.
His mind, playing ping-pong on the dichotomy of pleasure and pain, continued: fingernails yanked from the skin of the fingers of a terrorist’s family member, a joyful hug from a two year old on Christmas day, blood gushing from the sweaty jugular of an embattled terrorist, the first base hit by an eight year old little leaguer, shrapnel embedded deep in a colleagues shoulder as he flounders to his tragic death, the joy of signing papers with Diem to purchase their first home, his heart beating at an inhuman rate as he dismantled a bomb in an Israeli movie house, his son Dennis showcasing his newfound skills on an electric guitar, a phone call from a colleague’s wife asking him why he couldn’t find a way to save her husband—and why he was forced to leave her husband’s soon-to-be obliterated body behind.
He began to reach the beginning of the final puffs from his cigar and tried to encapsulate the totality of his thoughts. He focused in on acceptance. Acceptance of the sharp contrast. Life…Death… Life… Death… Life… Death. He lived
this rhythm so that the world at large wouldn’t have to. He was ready again to embrace it. He was ready for the fight. Ready for the call. Ready for the terror. Ready for the risk. Ready for the purpose. And he was finally ready to make this all now clear to Diem.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF DETROIT, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
The good Reverend Liam McCardle’s morning started much the way his life had unfolded—full of contradiction and opposing sentiments. He had his worn, torn, and prolifically marked Bible open in one hand to the beloved Psalms, from which he started each morning’s meditation. Resting in the clutches of his other calloused hand, even while the clock boasted the early time of 9:13 am, was his life’s vice and soul’s curse—whiskey; Johnny Walker double black blended scotch whiskey to be precise.
Pastor Liam McCardle undoubtedly and unequivocally retained a deep, searing passion for both of the items he held in his hands. He relied almost schizophrenically on the power of each item to bring him daily pleasure, to accentuate his joys, to aid as elixirs of life and also to powerfully neutralize, clarify, and mediate his pain.
Pain was more than a familiar friend to Pastor McCardle. It was an unrelenting force that had been so normal for him that it may have well been crafted into his DNA. After years of serving in the Police force’s CTSA (Counter Terrorism Security Advisors) unit in his native Belfast, Ireland, he had learned to assimilate the pain of life quickly and efficiently. His living room wall was not big enough to host the photographs of all the fallen brothers he’d served with, nor the friends and relatives who had been unwilling participants in an ethnic fight that persisted like a never-ending virus.
Reverend Liam closed his eyes as he sipped from his glass of Johnny Walker Black. A half-melted ice cube lingered on his tongue and slowly disintegrated as his mind wandered from the provocative text of Psalm 151. Images of men he had shot in the heat of urban battle surged to the forefront of his mind. Young men. Maybe twenty or twenty-one, no older. He remembered distinctly one such man. A face he would never forget. It was in the heat of an operation when the young man had momentarily pulled up his black ski mask to wipe his brow. Liam saw and felt the intense trepidation in the young man’s eyes. The terrorist’s identity had been compromised and his position severely weakened.
Liam thought of his own son in retrospect as he downed another sip of Johnny Black. Why Lord? Why were these young men so attracted to the violence? Why this young man and not my son? He knew the reasons. He knew all about the depth of feelings, the long documented historical and cultural strains, the obstinate family ideologies and the clear, impassioned logic that hid behind, and fueled the fire for, the fighting in Ireland. His eyes circled back to the words of the Psalm as he sipped yet some more scotch whiskey prior to his 10:00 am marriage counseling session that he was quite unprepared to lead.
I went out to meet the Philistine,
and he cursed me by his idols.
But I drew his own sword;
I beheaded him, and removed reproach from
the people of Israel.
Pastor McCardle recalled how he fell to the ground that day with a bleeding, wounded shin as the young man spat in his face. The bullet had taken him down to the ground that day, leaving him vulnerable to the young IRA terrorist. Liam remembered how alert he felt at that moment with the young man hovering over him with a sense of absolute impunity and false victory. Liam’s ability to think and act quickly in the heat of an operation was by far the greatest ability the good Lord had ever bestowed upon him. He remembered the curse words that hurled from the young man’s lips as the kid spat on him. All the while, Liam’s temperament remained untouched by the mockery. Instead, his situational agility rose to a heightened state of acute observation and patience.
The lifting of the black ski mask was the boy’s fatal mistake. As the terrorist reached to wipe the sweat from his brow, Liam swiftly lurched up, and forward, to grab the kid’s gun right out of his loose hand. In one unhindered, continuous motion he stared straight into the kid’s countenance and shot him square in the head.
That recollection struck Liam McCardle with more intensity than he could handle on a Monday morning as he weighed the parallels between that memory and the last words of the 151st Psalm. He had drawn his enemy’s own gun. He had put a bullet directly in his head—a modern day beheading. His stated goal was to uphold the honor, and remove the reproach, of his people of Ireland.
He remembered when that incident hit the papers in the days of The Troubles. He’d never forget his wife’s tears as she threw a milk carton at him and screamed at him hysterically as if he had done something wrong in the ordeal. The heart of a woman, he even then knew, was a mysterious and altogether different thing than that of a man. To his wife Kathy, it was his fault. His fault that he wasn’t a bloody mailman, or a carpenter, or some pencil-pushing attorney or business executive. It was his fault, he recalled her saying, that he had to aspire to work as a police officer. It was especially his fault that he chose to train for the CTSA. This was all his fault. To Kathy, the fate of the world was not nearly as important to watch over as was the fate of her beloved husband. It seemed to Liam that not a week had passed by in his nineteen years on the force in which she didn’t beg him to quit. Stubborn as I was, she should’ve known there was no talking to me back then. An empty glass stared back at Liam as he held that regretful thought for a slight moment.
The irony of his pouring his third glass of whiskey prior to 10:00 am while reading the good book did not strike Pastor McCardle. What did occur to the good reverend was the irony of his wife worrying, for almost twenty years, that he’d become a casualty of the force, and yet in the end she was the one who died suddenly and painfully of pancreatic cancer. It was not an irony that was at all likely to shed light on, or make him cognizant of, the irony of his simultaneous drinking and praying. The reality of that irony would take an ever-distant back seat. Likely until he met his Maker.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SOMEWHERE IN THE SUBURBS, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
“Bernie, pull over,” Blaze blurted out as they were cruising down the road.
Blaze and Bernie were on their way back to the office after a lunch meeting with a client.
Bernie glanced at Blaze but didn’t lighten his foot from the gas petal. “What? We have like forty minutes to get back to the office, prep the next case and get to our next meeting. What the hell do you want me to pull over for? Got a corned beef craving or somethin’?”
“Nah. Just shut up and pull into that candy store. I need to get some chocolate for Diem.” Blaze knew he’d need to make an effort to get Diem into a mood where she would even hear him out on going back to his warrior life. Chocolate always constituted effort.
“Since when do you get all sweetheart on me midday?”
“Don’t doubt me. I got strategies.” Blaze wasn’t about to explain.
“You ain’t got strategies, you got stupidity.”
“Another crack like that and you’ll be realizing your own stupidity after I re-define enhanced interrogation techniques on your ass.”
“Alright, make it quick. I don’t think they’re gonna have chocolate covered potatoes in there though.”
“Very funny. You’re killing me with the leprechaun humor.” If you’re gonna bust my stones for being a Mick, at least be funny about it.
The time bomb was indeed ticking. Blaze knew deep in his soul that the time of spousal confrontation was soon coming, and if he knew Diem, a little dark chocolate could go a long way—even if she later realized its strategic purpose. He couldn’t do this civilian job much longer, and his soul ached on account of him knowing what he needed to do. McCardle was right. His nation needed him. And he needed to once again become the hunter.
The financial planning duo entered the chocolate shoppe and were immediately greeted by the enthusiastic owner, a well-gr
oomed man with a friendly smile.
“Hello, thir, may I help you? I thust love that suit. Very handsome.”
Wow. Holy flamin’ purveyor of fine chocolate. The flamboyance was unabashed and quite comedic—especially the lisp and the exaggerated inflections. Unfortunately, it didn’t do too much to help tear down any stereotypes. Blaze got a kick out of such characters.
“Thank you. Glad you like the suit. I, myself, would be just fine with a tee shirt though.” Blaze smiled.
“Oh, I bet you would!”
Wrong response. Ouch. “Well, I just need something simple. A small collection of various dark chocolate truffles for the little lady. You know, the kind with different fillings. Gonna be dropping some life-changing bombs on her soon and this can ease the pain a bit. Know what I mean?” Blaze was trying to make this as quick and as simple as possible. He was hoping Bernie would not ask what the life-changing bomb was all about it. Luckily, Bernie barely heard Blaze’s mention of it.
“Oh, yes, I do. My partner is the same way. A little chocolate and he is thust all ready for whatever I got to say!”
“Yeah, well, then I guess you’re the guy to help me then. Whaddya suggest there cap’n?” A box of chocolates was all Blaze wanted, but he sensed he was getting a much larger experience during this purchase than he had asked for. He had a feeling Bernie would not help the situation.
Blaze caught Bernie with a juvenile smile on his face. Blaze almost lost it but was able to hold in his laughter. Luckily, he had been in enough tight situations around the globe that called for him to restrain the expressions of various emotions that he could handle withholding furious laughter. Even when confronted with a character that made Rupaul seem like John Wayne.
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