CHAPTER 7
TED White slid out of bed and grabbed the pile of clothes sitting on the chair in the corner. Through the gap in the shades he glimpsed the gray predawn morning. He picked up the bundle, looked over his shoulder at his wife, and began to carefully tiptoe out of the room. As he walked past the open door he grabbed the handle and slowly pulled it until the door closed with a soft click. Safely in the hallway, he allowed himself to breathe. He waited for a moment to make sure she didn’t stir, and then he took two steps and entered his son Hayden’s room.
The seventeen-year-old lay there twisted up in his sheets and blankets, two of his four pillows on the floor, one trapped under his body, and the last one on top of his head. He was due to graduate from high school in one month. White grabbed him by the shoulder and gently shook him. Nothing. He waited five seconds and tried again. This continued for another thirty seconds with increasing force until Hayden’s eyes snapped open with a dazed, crazy look.
“What?” he asked, still delirious with sleep. “What’s wrong?”
“Shhhh,” his dad said. “If you wake your mother up, there’s no way she’ll let you come with me.”
The kid didn’t reply, he just looked around the room and tried to figure out what was going on.
“Grab your hunting gear.”
“But Mom said I couldn’t go. I have an English test third period, and I have a game tonight.”
Hayden was headed to the University of Northern Iowa on a baseball scholarship. “You’ve worked hard enough over the past four years. I think you’re entitled to a little turkey shoot with your dad.”
“But Mom…”
“I know,” his father cautioned, shushing him with his hand. “As long as I have you back in school in time to take that test everything will be fine.”
“Coach doesn’t like it if…”
“I already talked to your coach. He likes to turkey hunt just like me, and he knows they’re randy as hell this week. He said it was fine just so long as I have you back in school in time for the test. We’ll head out to my uncle’s old place. Fifteen minutes out and fifteen back. If you get your butt in gear we should have no problem getting in a few good hours.”
Hayden untwisted himself and put his feet on the floor. He raised both arms above his head and groaned. “Mom’s going to be pissed.”
In a hushed yet forceful voice, White said, “I’m going to be pissed if you wake her up. Now get moving. I’ll make us a couple of fried egg sandwiches. We can eat them in the truck.” With that, White left his only child’s room and made it down the hallway to the kitchen. He started the coffee and warmed up the frying pan. Next came the hard part. He found a notepad and a pen and leaned over, placing his right elbow on the counter, and wondered how best to admit to the crime. Like most things in life he decided it would be best to be brief and hold his ground.
Honey,
I checked with Coach last night. He says it’s fine if I take Hayden hunting. I will make sure I have him back in school for third period. This is probably our last spring shoot. Next year he’ll be away at college. Where did all the years go?
Love,
Ted
CHAPTER 8
HAKIM closed the door to the bedroom, and despite wanting to clear his mind, he began to think of the attacks. The lunchtime explosions, the bomb that had decimated the emergency personnel who were sifting through the rubble of the Monocle-a restaurant that was a favorite haunt of U.S. senators and lobbyists-and then the final bold move. Hakim considered it a stroke of genius. For all his recent disagreements with Karim, he had to admit that the audacity of the plan was impossible to ignore. Karim had asked Hakim to locate America ’s National Counterterrorism Center -the nerve center for the Great Satan’s illegitimate war on terror, as he called it. Without telling any of the senior al Qaeda commanders, they put together a daring plan to assault the building. Karim wanted to turn the hunters into the hunted. They would hit the National Counterterrorism Center while the Americans were in disarray and focused on the initial attacks and the secondary explosion.
Hakim had been there with Karim when their six comrades, dressed in SWAT gear, burst into the building. Having spent a decent amount of time in Washington, Hakim knew it was not uncommon to see big black SUVs driving down the street loaded with menacing men armed to the teeth. With the confusion created by the initial blasts, they would drive right up to the gate of the counterterrorism facility and easily dispatch the light security.
The men had been trained for months in every detail of the plan, and from what they saw it had worked perfectly. The Suburban drove over the curb and right up to the front door with its emergency lights flashing. The men poured out of the vehicle, formed up in a single-file line, and entered the building engaging targets as they went. They were to avoid the elevators and take the stairs to the top floor where the nerve center was located. In addition to the M-4 rifles and Glock pistols, each man wore a custom-made suicide vest that was packed with C-4 plastic explosives and half-inch ball bearings.
Karim had predicted that the attack on the facility would cripple America ’s ability to effectively attack al Qaeda for years to come. And it couldn’t happen soon enough. The hunter-killer teams and the unmanned aerial vehicles with their missiles had decimated the upper ranks of their group. They expected casualties to exceed one hundred, but something had gone wrong. Either that or the Americans were lying. So far only eighteen individuals had been reported dead in the assault on the counterterrorism facility. Six days later, Karim still refused to believe the reports. He was convinced the Americans, in an effort to save face and reassure the public, were covering up the true damage.
Hakim had noticed one little problem with that theory, though. News crews had been able to get shots of the building’s upper floors from outside the security fence, and they were still intact. If the suicide vests had gone off as planned, every window would have been blown out and there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that the roof would be nothing more than a jagged hole. He had mentioned this to his old friend and had suffered a harsh rebuke. He was told he was naive in the ways of the world and the West’s ability to manipulate the media.
Hakim was growing tired of his friend’s inflexibility. He was the one who had traveled the world, while Karim had done little more than hang out at cafes and mosques surrounded by like-minded men. He had done almost no traveling outside Saudi Arabia. There were things Hakim would like to say to his friend, but he knew the timing was not right. They needed to find a safe way out of the country and then, when things had settled down, he could confront him.
When Hakim was done washing his face and brushing his teeth, he faced east, knelt on the floor, and began to pray. For most of his life he had prayed the required five times a day, often spending a total of two hours prostrate in an attempt to prove himself a good Muslim. It had been several years since he’d been that devoted, however. To accomplish his mission he’d been forced to abandon many of his habits and rituals. His travels to America and other countries required that he draw as little attention to his faith as possible.
Even now, in the secrecy of his room, in the middle of America, with not a person in sight, he rushed through his prayers. He offered himself up to Allah and asked for his guidance on this dangerous journey, and then, as was increasingly the case, his mind began to wander. He was still talking to Allah, but instead of asking for guidance he was asking questions. He was trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. He stumbled through it, as he did so often
