His smile began to widen and grow as she glanced his way with a wide smile of her own and a genuine look of surprise and excitement at his presence. Liam felt a burning inside that usually only occurred when he gulped down whiskey too quickly.
Liam had known Erin McNeil presumably since his birth. Their mums used to walk together in the late mornings with Liam and Erin respectively in the strollers side by side. They had been given baths together as toddlers. Play dates with the two of them were frequent long before the term ‘play date’ existed. As they progressed into their tween and early teen years, the two had always been close even though they ran in different circles.
As young adults, they had secretly each kept a close ear to the street on the others doings, but had never maintained a tangible relationship to speak of. Under the circumstances, their mutual sights in mind were clearly sparking unbridled, pent-up fondness beyond the pail of normalcy.
Erin managed to gracefully, and playfully, meander over to where Liam was standing so boyishly as he studied her every dance move, suggestive or not.
“Well, well, well…if it isn’t the red, white and blue preacher making an appearance back in his home country.” She shook Liam’s hand as he bowed to kiss hers.
“Very, very nice to see you Erin. You look wonderful and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying your exploits on the dance floor.” Liam’s eyes locked on Erin’s with a magnetic gaze.
“Thank you Liam. You know, I often wonder about you, what became of you, how you’re doing, what’s life dealt you. Are you doing well? Has happiness nestled inside of you?” She peered inquisitively as she asked.
“My dear, the good Lord has blessed me beyond compare, and I’ve been given the exquisite privilege of ministering to so many wonderful folks in America—albeit in the rough and tumble urban context of Detroit, Michigan.”
Erin changed the subject. “I heard about Kathy…and your father. My condolences.”
“Thank you Erin. I’m doing well considering and appreciate your concern. How’s life been treating you?” He had not gotten as many reports on Erin as she had on him.
“Life’s been good…well, it’s becoming good…I separated from Patrick a little over a year ago…that was tough. My McKinnis is now eight years old, and she’s darling. Taking care of her is a lot of work, particularly when I am all by myself, but she’s a true joy. Work is steady, the best that an Irish gal can hope for.”
She had overcome life’s obstacles and come out the other side with grace and charm. “Well, it’s wonderful to see you. The way life moves so fast, it’s a miracle and a pleasure that our paths have even crossed again at all.”
“We could cross some more if you dared to get your ass out on the dance floor…”
And with that, the preacher went head over heels into a long-gone nightlife he had been far removed from up until this evening. He danced with vigor and passion for hours with Erin and engaged in various forms of flirting, both subtle and intense, and both verbal and physical. They ended up back at her place.
His life at the pulpit, his memory of his wife, his gnawing fear of the prospect of Ezekiel 38 and 39 unfolding—all those backdrops—had all submerged into a foggy, grainy background. For the moment the carnal, hopeful, uninhibited drawings of his soul dominated him.
He spent the night with Erin and made love to her in such a way that his entire being felt as if it was transported to an entirely different ethereal realm. His flock in Detroit, his lovely deceased wife, and his concern for the dangerous mission embarked upon by his friend Blaze McIntyre were as far from his mind as the Earth from the Sun. Leave Ireland to the Irish. As they say.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE HAMPTON INN, SOMEWHERE NEAR FAIRTON, NEW JERSEY
After pulling some strings and springing Zack Batt from the slammer, Gallagher bought him dinner and got him a hotel room. He paid for the hotel room for several days in advance, and ordered him to get some “serious damn shut eye” because we have “some serious damn work ahead of us”. Zack, weary of the rigors of prison life, insisted on a suite that had a hot tub and allowed smoking.
As soon as he swiped his key card and entered the room, Zack immediately undressed and began drawing the water in the hot tub. His head was thumping something fierce, and the rest of his body was fatigued to the core.
The clicker lay on the bed. Zack reached for it and turned on the large flat screen TV. He scanned the channels until he found something worthy of his attention and that would agree with his mood. The old FX show Justified caused him to stop channel surfing and he settled on watching a re-run of one episode of the program from Season 3. He remembered seeing this episode back when it aired in 2012.
He had a deep affinity for the portrayal of the main character, Federal US Marshall Raylan Givens, and he enjoyed the tension between Raylan and his primary nemesis, Boyd Crowder. Zack absorbed every nuance that oozed out of the badass, gun-slinging Southern lawman that was personified by Raylan’s character. It was the perfect show to help him ease into a post-prison soak in a Jersey hotel hot tub.
Zack leaned back in the hot tub, enjoying the movement of the whirlpool mechanisms, and lit a cigarette. He had taken up the habit recently despite its obvious contradiction with the straight edge ideals with which he associated himself. Sometimes, he reasoned, life had a way of eating away at your ideals. To him, straight edge was largely about avoiding highly addictive hard drugs. He rationalized that cigarettes didn’t count. He inhaled slowly, but deeply, and enjoyed every second of the drag.
He was beginning to feel like a human being again, and was trying to shut out the horrible memories of being in the hole and all the rest of this most recent prison visit, including the crackpot broad who threw the lamp at his head and put him in the joint in the first place. He chuckled to himself softly as he intently watched TV. The dialogue that ensued in the episode of Justified he was watching was phenomenally written. It reminded him to make sure to get back to finishing the Elmore Leonard novel he was reading. Justified had inspired Zack to go back and read the work of the author who inspired the show. He’d begun to read Leonard in prison. As he watched, smoked, and soaked, he also began to download and unpack all that Gallagher had told him about his mission. The mission that was his get-out-of-jail-free ticket.
The whole notion of a Persian Nazi group emerging at all, let alone gaining support and ascendancy, astounded him. He had never imagined such a strange thing to exist, let alone with such strong historical context. The dots that Gallagher had connected for him in regards to the Aryan makeup, the anti-Semitic tendencies and the true history of Iran and its connection to Germany circa WWII completely blew him away. As appalled as he was at the existence of such a group and its relevance to assisting the enemy government of Iran, he was still monumentally stoked to have been commissioned to infiltrate it.
He felt a new surge through his being. It was an adrenaline rush akin to that sought by the most avid of thrill junkies. He purposed to begin his research and digital outreach to anyone he could find connected to the group online first thing the next morning—after consuming what had become a highly anticipated room service breakfast delivery.
Morning came slowly. Zack slept like a hibernating bear. He awoke with new and refreshed thinking. The contrast was extremely enjoyable. Yesterday I was stuck in a prison with a bunch of numb nuts convicts and today I am relaxing in a robe in a nice hotel room paid by the generous taxpayers of the United States of America. Life sure has a funny way of forcing a roller coaster ride. Zack sat at the provided desk in the hotel suite surfing the net in an eager attempt to spark the first connection to his new mission. He sipped the strong, black coffee with a deliberate sense of pleasure. Such a luxury had not been part of his morning routine in quite some time. He had hoped that he would have the patience to savor every bit of the eggs benedict and hash browns he ordered from room service, but his jailbrea
k appetite got the best of him and he devoured it with a vulture-like intensity. He was well rested, and now well fed, for the first time in a long time.
Prior to retiring the previous evening, he had managed to quickly set up Facebook and Twitter accounts for his new identity and he sent some preliminary messages out to some hopeful online targets, including this guy Hamid that Gallagher had given him intel on. Zack’s undercover name was Douglas Schmidt. Common, but German as hell. It gave not a hint of the reality of his half-Jewish heritage, and was a fine fake name to wrap his newfound Nazi Skinhead persona in. He took another sip of his coffee and felt the surge of the caffeine. He sorted through a slew of irrelevant junk messages until he finally stumbled on a tweet of interest. Hot damn. It was Hamid. Hamid wasted no time to show a clear lack of respect for keeping anything to the chest in his response to Zack’s—Doug’s—ranting tweets the night before.
“Finally, an American who gets it. Down with Zionism.” The tweets to follow were even more lovely, that is, if you fancy hate-filled anti-Semitic bigotry. The subsequent tweet read, “No one likes a pig in their house. Death to non-Aryans.” The rest of this man’s tweets reeked with similar non-eloquence. The last of the turd-filled shorthand prose proclaimed, “We will finish what Hitler started. Allah willing.” The man’s opinions were completely devoid of subtlety or nuance.
Zack saw many Facebook messages and Tweets fly by that were anti-Semitic, pro-Jihadists, and favorable towards the desire for a Caliphate, but the tweets from Hamid were the most incendiary. His tweets mentioned the word ‘Aryan’ more than any others. That was the key word Zack would focus on to try to bridge a connection. Zack smiled with satisfaction. He needed to know more.
“Being American is irrelevant. A pig is a pig.” Zack knew he’d have to tread slowly and develop a rapport with this ghost tweeter for a while before digging in deep and finding a way to use him to infiltrate NINP—the Neo Iranian Nazi Party group. It would take even longer, and likely prove to be much harder, to try to find a way to leverage himself into a trip to Iran to meet with the group.
Zack followed up quickly with another tweet. “Aryans worldwide unite. The time is now.” He had to continue to find ways to build on the ‘Aryan’ emphasis.
After Zack tweeted his call to arms worldwide for Aryans, he sat back and took a deep breath. What drives these people to seriously embrace such extreme ideologies and theologies?
Zack had always engaged in his share of extreme behavior. He knew his internal questioning of the jihadists and the Persian Aryans was somewhat oxymoronic, but he also knew there was a huge difference between extreme behavior of a wayward street thug and a global jihadist hell-bent on a Caliphate and the elimination of all non-Muslims.
With the bubbling angst and alienation that had been a persistent thread throughout Zack’s tumultuous youth and young adulthood, faith was not something that he ever managed to get a handle on. He went through times in which he flirted with embracing one faith or another, but he never really pulled the trigger on anything. His inherent distrust in people, any organized body, and the state of humanity in general always became a last-minute roadblock to his becoming a full believer in any truth claim.
Stemming from his affinity for reggae music, he came very close to cloaking himself in Rastafarianism, but despite his respect for Bob Marley and the Bad Brains, he still saw way too many gaps in both the theology itself and the lives of those who called their God ‘Jah’.
There was also his curiosity about Hare Krishna. He knew many kids in the hardcore punk scene who had converted to this offshoot of Hinduism and were instantly zealous about its virtues. Mostly they were wooed by the preaching of Hare Krishna punk bands like Shelter, 108, and Cro-Mags. The notion of rejecting materialism, embracing physical health, and prioritizing stewardship of the earth all appealed greatly to Zack. But when it came down to Zack considering giving up eating Philly cheesesteaks to become a strict vegan or believing in reincarnation, again, he became lost and was disenchanted with the idea all together.
Christianity had always seemed like an unnatural fit for Zack because of his Jewish heritage and he was heavily inculcated with noise about the hypocrisy of the global Christian church and individual Christians who were in the public eye. That said, Zack’s personal interactions with those who claimed Jesus as Savior were all positive and he had a great deal of respect for Christians.
As a half Jew, Zack was simply not inclined to explore the merits of Islam. That said, he did have several strong friends, one of the Lebanese Shia variety, and another an African American convert he met in prison, that he had grown very close to in hard and strange times. Through them, it had been confirmed to Zack that the Islam that was so distorted by the radicals and the terrorists he now hunted and killed was far from the peaceful brand lived by many the world over who called Allah their God and Mohammed their prophet.
To Zack the most attractive faith was Judaism, and he did gravitate towards a loose and infrequent interlude into the faith cherished by half of his ancestors. In his mind, he was attracted to the pragmatic, civilization-building tenets of Judaism. He viewed these tenets as the common sense relational and societal building blocks for a prosperous world. The prevailing worldview, and every day directives, of the Talmud spoke to Zack. It was the idea of being subservient to an invisible force in the sky that Zack still could not wrap his arms around. He still did not, in his moments of intellectual honesty, fully belief that a God of any sort actually existed. As a result, he still remained an agnostic who was open to evidence of ultimate truth.
As Zack thought about the lunacy of the rhetoric of the Jihadists, the Persian Nazis, and the Twelvers, he pondered the one Old Testament scripture that he conveniently held onto and took pleasure in as a highly-skilled mercenary of the US government: An Eye for Eye…a Tooth for a Tooth. Zack harbored no guilt in applying this policy, as he knew that it was actually a progressive step away from the previous policy of You take my eye and I will kill your entire family, and your family’s village.
Both of Zack’s eyes were firmly intact, and his vision was clear. In his vision, he saw himself successfully infiltrating this Persian Nazi group and using them to penetrate the nuclear facilities at Bushehr and disrupting the progress of America’s most ambitious enemy. Zack’s current policy was a revision of the Old Testament retribution standard: Before you come near my eye, I will destroy your entire arsenal and shut you down with extreme and uncompromising force. That was Zack 1:1.
As Zack chuckled at his arrogant thought of writing his own batch of scriptures, he got up from the desk, tightened his robe, and placed his room service tray outside his hotel door. He walked back to the desk and took a big gulp of ice water and once again checked his Twitter feed. Bang! There it was! His new pally from Persia was taking the bait and eager to chat it up like a schoolgirl that had too much fun on the weekend.
“Jews have nuke. Aryans need one. No justice, no peace.” Zack couldn’t believe his eyes. This guy was a piece of work. There he goes, co-opting social justice lingo to help with his neo-holocaust agenda. Zack shook his head in disgust at the obvious incestuous relationship that had developed between the global radical left and radical Islam.
Zack played along, happily, and instantly tweeted back. “Iran deserves nukes. Nothing should stand in the way.” So far, so good. He just needed to keep prodding this guy on so he could build a stronger relationship.
“America stands in the way. You are problem.” Wow. This guy is on his toes. Does he tweet 24-7?
“I’m not American. I’m Aryan. And proud.” Again, Zack had to keep pounding home the Aryan emphasis.
The next tweet volley came back to him twelve minutes later. “Are you organized?”
Bingo. Now we are getting somewhere. He wouldn’t ask if I was organized, unless he was already organized. Time to get him talking about NINP.
“Not organized. Want to
be. Need to be.”
Zack waited for a solid twenty-five minutes for a reply. Nothing. I guess this guy does actually know how to do something else other than tweet hate all day.
Zack’s impatience got the best of him and he decided to hop in the shower and begin to get ready for the rest of the day. If he had to bet, he would wager on a new tweet waiting for his perusal by the time he got out of the shower and dried off.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ESFAHAN NUCLEAR FACILITY, ESFAHAN, IRAN
No matter how many times he had to endure it, Blaze never got used to disguises. He was a warrior, not Sherlock Holmes. He’d much prefer an all out face-to-face gunfight, or fistfight for that matter, than the detailed planning of espionage. The problem, however, was that regardless of his preferences, Blaze McIntyre was damn good at espionage and ops that required disguises.
His skin had been cosmetically darkened and he was feeling as Persian as his Irish self was ever going to allow. His credentials were impeccably prepared for him and he felt as if he was all set to flex his multi-lingual muscles and rock some Farsi. Still, he preferred to go as unnoticed as possible. Minimal human contact was the goal. Maximum destruction to the target would follow.
The delivery truck was identical to the ones that hustled in and out of Esfahan on a daily basis. Although every op was loaded with unforeseen peril and risk, Blaze felt confident he could pass for the deliverymen who dropped off raw materials at Esfahan.
In 1984, a year that Blaze singularly associated with the title of one of Van Halen’s best albums, the lovely Chi-coms assisted the Iranians in getting the Esfahan Nuclear Facility up and running with three small research reactors. Purported to be a multi-purpose research center, Esfahan has come to be primarily important as a stockpiling site for uranium taken from mines, which are used to produce uranium fluoride gas. From Esfahan, the gas was shipped to Natanz to feed the centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
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