‘You weren’t brave enough to help me. You could have gone to the police, to the FBI, and you didn’t. You left me to die.’
‘I am trying to save us…’
‘Prove it. Hellfire, Henry. What is it?’
Silence.
‘Tell me what it is, give me your greatest secret, and I’ll believe you want to help me. I know it’s separate from the attacks that are happening now. It’s bigger, isn’t it? What is it? Bombs? Airplanes? Bioweapons? God help me, is it a nuke?’
A silence again, a stillness heavy enough to crush a heart, to flatten a family. Then: ‘I don’t know that term Hellfire. I swear to God I don’t know.’
‘Goodbye, Henry.’
He took the phone and he broke it apart, scattering its components on the floor. He saw no point in talking to Henry again, no value in talking to Jane. What was he going to do: beg them for his life back? Screw pleading and begging.
A rage and a despair he had never felt filled him. He imagined what it would be like to kill his stepfather. But the image of Henry’s face, distorted in fear and remorse, the thunder of Luke’s own heartbeat in his head – vanished in a snap.
You can’t kill him because then you’re him.
He stood over the broken phone and the rage changed to a hardness in his heart, a welcome toughness.
He sat on the floor in the back of the plane while Aubrey slept, knees drawn up to his chin, wondering what darkness he was flying into, salvation or death. For a moment his hand closed on the Saint Michael’s medal. Strength, the ability to face and overcome evil of the basest sort. He had to find his courage, fan its flame, keep going. He slipped the medal back under his shirt. The hum of the plane worked through his exhaustion and he closed his eyes to ponder his next move.
30
The Night Road was cutting its path through the heart of America, as Luke headed toward New York.
The high school football game in suburban Kansas City had been targeted because the attacker was a neo- Nazi and the high school had been named for a soldier who died early in the war in Iraq. The soldier was Jewish. The neo-Nazi hated seeing the Jew’s name on the sign when he drove past every morning on his way to work.
The football game was a close one, and the neo-Nazi sighed in relief: a rout might have led to more people leaving earlier. Instead the game – he could hear the distant rumble of the announcer, voice tense with excitement – had been decided in the final three seconds by a field goal. The target school’s team had won. The neo-Nazi rubbed at the dark tattoo across his neck – a highly stylized swastika – gritted his teeth and thought: And no one will remember that. As the crowd spilled out into the lot, waving flags, banners, girls laughing and clutching at boys’ arms, he pressed the first button.
The trunk of the car he’d parked in the middle of the lot popped open.
He saw a white girl, holding onto the arm of a boy who looked Mexican, glance over at the popping hood. The neo-Nazi gritted his teeth again. The world would go mongrel in two generations, if people didn’t realize they just couldn’t do what they wanted, he thought.
He waited until a bigger mass of people had spilled out into the lot, but before many of them had gotten into the protective cocoons of their cars.
He pressed the second button.
The bomb was not big; it had been built the month before by Snow. The neo-Nazi, who had picked it up from her the previous week, packed her creation with nails, bolts and screws.
Chaos. A flash that burned his eyeballs. Screams and a distant heat and, he imagined, the whistle of thousands of flying blades whittling through flesh and bone. And then he heard the screams, much worse than even he had dreamed they would be. A glimpse of hell.
He got into his car and drove away, careful to stick to back roads. The emergency responders would be creating a traffic headache. He drove south and dialed a phone number. ‘Mine is done with success,’ he said by answer. ‘I get to be in Hellfire.’
Henry Shawcross – but the neo-Nazi did not know him by this name – said, ‘There has been a change in plans.’
‘Is Hellfire canceled?’
‘No. Check the following email account.’ Henry gave him a Gmail account name and password. ‘It will contain the name of a city. Drive there, call on a fresh prepaid phone when you arrive, and await further instructions.’
‘When do I get my money?’
‘Follow instructions.’ He hung up.
The neo-Nazi bit his lip. Not even a word of congratulations? His contact sounded like he’d lost the stomach for this battle. The neo-Nazi did not like that answer but what could he do? Complain? The mission first, that had been driven into his brain ever since he met the man with glasses and the rumpled gray suit at a coffee shop. He’d spent so much time complaining about the damned Jews (and various other groups) and their plots to eviscerate America on websites, it felt good to meet with someone who recognized his unique potential. And with the first wave of attacks nearly done, now they could truly hurt this hated world. He drove for a while – he felt the need to put distance between him and the school – and stopped ten miles later at a suburban coffee shop that offered free internet access. He opened his laptop, checked the account.
The email account’s one message simply said: CHICAGO.
He checked the news websites. The bombing was, of course, the lead news story. A smile, a bubble of laughter, rose from his chest and heat traveled along his skin. It felt good to make a fist for justice and throw a hard, savage punch. And Hellfire was going to be so much more than a little punch. He trembled with excitement. With his promised cut of the money, he could recruit new adherents. Buy automatic weapons. Buy better material for bombs, higher-quality explosives, and much more of it. He could set up operations throughout the Midwest.
He could be somebody who shaped the world.
He was tempted to go onto the Night Road site, but no. Not now. Not here. There were a few patrons lingering over their lattes. And the barista, she looked Jewish to him, and she kept trying to see what the sharp- edged tattoo on his neck was. He suddenly didn’t want her looking at him.
He got back in his car and drove north toward Chicago, the screams playing in his head like a symphony he’d written himself, a masterpiece.
The second attack took place in Los Angeles, California, outside a small restaurant off Sunset Boulevard. It had, unusually, been a stormy day in Southern California. Rain fell in broken wind-blown curtains and the wind hissed like steam, and the young man in the car waited on a side street. He had never killed before and his hands shook with fright at the thought of what he was about to do. He opened the file folder next to him, although he had studied it for hours in the past several days, when he wasn’t praying at the mosque or trying to hide his activities from his mother and his father, who would disapprove.
The target’s picture was drawn from his books, which outlined how the war against Islam must be waged, and sold in the hundreds of thousands to the unbelievers. His advice was being cited in Washington; he had the ear of powerful people who might act contrary to Allah’s will. He was a history professor at UCLA, a specialist in terrorism and the Middle East, an educated man who apparently knew nothing. His words could not be allowed to continue, and he had been talking and writing more and more about the possibility of American Muslims being seduced into violence, as had happened in France, Germany and Britain, becoming home-grown carriers of terror.
Then the young man saw the professor. Walking with his wife and his teenage daughter, hurrying, huddled under an umbrella. The rain had eased in the past fifteen minutes, Allah smiling on his mission.
The young man lowered his window. Fifteen feet away.
The gun was ready in his hand. Ten feet away. He had to do this, he had to keep his nerve so he could qualify himself for a much greater battle.
