“Just water.” Rassad faced the man. Bright eyes and beer breath. Glancing at the table, Rassad saw a stack of empty bottles.
“Ain’t polite to refuse a man’s offer,” said Hix. “Not down ‘round here.”
“I do not wish to be impolite. My religion forbids alcohol.”
“Where is it you from, then? Me and Robert are Baptists. Our preacher don’t like us to drink neither, but the Bible says wine is okay. If wine is okay, then ain’t beer and whiskey?”
“I am Muslim.” He finished the pie, drank the water. “Thank you for your kindness.” He fished a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and put it on the counter.
Hix slapped his hand down on the green face of President Andrew Jackson. “Moos-lim? I thought so.” He spun on the stool to face Robert. “I tole you he was some kinda sand nigger, din’t I?”
Rassad tensed. “Please. I wish no trouble. I will just get in my car and go.”
“You damn sure will. And you don’t come back. Hear? Go on back to Egypt and fuck your camel.” Both of the men laughed.
He had just unlocked his sleek gray sedan when he heard the screen door of the diner slam shut, and tensed just as beefy hands shoved him against the vehicle. Rassad smelled the dirty breath of Myron Hix. Two miles away, a stream of headlights moved north, kids going back to school after the holiday. The lighter steps of Robert approached. “We ain’t through with you yet, boy,” said Hix. “You need a good lesson in ‘firmative action so you don’t forget who you are.” Hix spun Rassad around and loomed over him like a bad dream.
The Iraqi looked steadily at the bigger man. “I believe that you are what people call a roughneck?” he asked mildly. “No. My English is poor. The term is stupid fucking redneck. Is that correct?”
As he was being turned, Rassad’s right hand was hidden long enough for him to pull a sharply honed knife with a three-inch blade from the leather sheath clipped to the back of his belt. He had worn such a knife since he was a boy, and it almost jumped into his hand, like an old friend. He knew exactly what he was going to do with Myron Hix.
Rassad kept the knife shielded just behind his right ass cheek while he rotated the blade into position, then he struck upward in a quick, smooth motion with all the force he could muster.
The tip of the blade slid into the soft flesh under Hix’s chin and Rassad shoved it in all the way, up behind the nose until the butt of the knife came to a stop. He ripped to the right and down, hard, cutting the jugular vein before jerking the knife out with the sharp edge toward him in order to cause a maximum of damage. One of the most valuable lessons of his brutal childhood was that once you start an attack, never pause until it is done, and be utterly ruthless.
He held Hix steady and watched the eyes go wide in anger, then surprise, then fade to dimness. Rassad let the body fall, stepped over it, and took three long strides to close on Robert, whose last word was, “Myron?” Rassad plunged the knife in at the belly button, careful to avoid the big metal belt buckle, got his left hand into Robert’s hair, and pulled him forward while he stabbed three more times in the mid-section. As Robert fell, the blade stabbed into the neck on the right side and was raked across the throat, opening a deep and bloody track.
Rassad wiped the knife on Robert’s jeans, returned it to the sheath, got into his car, and started the engine. He wasn’t even breathing hard. His clothes were soaked in blood, and he wiped his face clean with a handkerchief.
All the way back to Massachusetts, he drove safely among the hundreds of honking cars of other students, avoiding police attention and notorious speed-trap towns by just being one of the crowd. Friends at his local mosque arranged for the car to be stolen, and for the knife and clothing to disappear. Rassad replaced the Beemer with the insurance settlement.
Rassad now considered that Myron Hix had been sent by the Prophet to point out the darker side of American political history. More than twenty years later, Ali Shalal Rassad, the Rebel Sheikh, still savored that delicious moment when Myron-he liked to refer to him by his first name-called him a sand nigger to his face.
In his senior year at MIT, he expanded his exploration of United States history to include racial hatred. Signs in Texas restaurants once decreed, NO DOGS OR MEXICANS ALLOWED INSIDE. Native Americans had been slaughtered for their land. Railroad builders hung Chinese workers over the sides of mountains in baskets to blow away chunks of rock with dynamite and created the saying that an unfortunate person might not have “a Chinaman’s chance.” Japanese citizens were thrown in huge camps during World War II, but German citizens were not. The South was still dealing with the aftermath of slavery. Mexican immigration was a burning issue. The color of a person’s skin seemed very important in America.
Rassad was fascinated by the political demagogues. Each brimmed with vices, but rose to political prominence by painting themselves as ordinary men of the people. It was called populism, but extended only to those of their own kind: white voters who were extremely religious. When Rassad attended their churches, the congregation stared. Americans taught him racial intolerance.
His professional degree was as an engineer, but his life was about politics, a thirst for power that increased when Saddam’s son threw him in prison, where he somehow endured until the Americans came. Prison always seemed to be a good place for visionaries, and torture was excellent fuel for serious thinking.
When he was released during the first weeks of the American occupation, Rassad set out to perform political magic in Basra because he knew that populism would work as well in Iraq as it ever had in the Southern boondocks. Tribal strength, blind hatred, and fervent religious beliefs inherited over generations proved to be a potent combination. All that was needed was a leader to focus it all, someone to unite the factions.
Within a few years of the occupation, the people of Basra thought they had chosen him for that task, when in reality he had created a political vacuum by getting rid of his enemies. He was trusted by other Iraqis and bridged the gap between the religious factions by showing them there was more to be gained by working together. Peace got the oil flowing, and the oil brought in money enough for everybody. His private militia kept the peace by frequently reminding citizens about the horrors of war.
He had recognized the precise moment to shed his old skin as the leader of violent opposition and be reborn as a strong political savior, the man of peace. Rassad had the grace and intelligence to win the confidence of other foreign leaders, and the Americans were desperately begging for someone, anyone, to step forward and become the Iraqi George Washington. Rigorously managed, democracy could be just the springboard he wanted to expand beyond Basra and take over the government in Baghdad, with all of the levers of power and a treasury that King Midas would have envied.
In the coolness of his air-conditioned office, Rassad again read the urgent coded message he had received from America. It was an instruction to kill the American general Middleton immediately, but gave no details.
He let out a soft, tuneless whistle and smoothed the note on his desk as he let his mind roam free. This was tantamount to an order! Something had changed in his arrangement with Gordon Gates, and he had not been informed in advance for approval. It was irritating.
Therefore he had to examine the entire plan again. The game obviously had entered a new stage, and he would not risk losing all of those lucrative U.S. contacts because of a plot in Washington to change the way their military establishment was funded. Old alliances had to be constantly weighed on the scales of current and future value. Gates would be angry, but they would still work together in the future no matter how this single incident turned out. Gates would have no choice. There was a bigger game. Rassad could not allow the kidnapping to convince the American government to pick someone else to be George Washington.
Rassad asked his aide, “Have you acted on this instruction from the Americans to have our friends in Syria execute the Marine general?”
“Yes. I made the contact within this past hour. They will gather the needed video equipment overnight and record his beheading tomorrow morning.” He bowed slightly, expecting praise for a well-done job.
The Rebel Sheikh puffed out his cheeks, then ran a finger across his dry lips. “Send this new order. Do
“As you direct.” The assistant bowed and left the office.
Rassad had not decided what to do with Middleton. He might yet kill him, or give him back to the Americans and appear to have negotiated his release. What had hardened in his thinking was that he would be the one to
