was easy enough, he thought, to read between the lines of the voice issuing commands over the loudspeaker, telling passengers to remain calm, exit buses, leave carry-ons behind, apologies once again for the delays. Something had indeed gone terribly wrong, the glory of jihad about to be derailed, he feared, and when they were so close. The logical conclusion was that one of the cells had been captured, talked, betrayed the operation.
It was a gross miscalculation, he now discovered, killing time in the terminal, waiting for the others to arrive before he packed the locker with what the letter—delivered two days ago by courier to his motel room near Richmond’s airport—called divine retribution. Two of them stood at the ticket-information counter, he saw, huddled with Greyhound employees, three more breaking open lockers with small drills, working with methodical grim purpose. No FBI stenciled on the backs of windbreakers, but he noted bulges beneath their shoulders betraying concealed side arms, earpieces the glaring tip-off the building was about to come under siege by American law enforcement. Yes, perhaps they were surrounded, outgunned, he thought, but before the infidels began searching baggage and they were staring down weapons, he would take decisive action.
The run to Chicago would never bear sweet fruit, but there was hope yet. Or was there? he wondered, catching the eye of a windbreaker by the lockers. The infidel looked away, watching him without watching, he sensed. Was the FBI man—if that’s what he was—taking special interest in the three of them? Perhaps, he thought, their attire and nylon bags were more errors in planning, marking them, pearls in a sea of infidel swine. He knew next to nothing about the Great Satan’s Arena Football League, but their jackets, caps and bags were emblazoned with individual team emblems, meant to identify them to their brothers-in-jihad. Instinct for survival long since honed in Iraq, twice over, he knew all the signals warning when the end was coming.
The babble of infidels swarming his ears, he shut his eyes. And the past drifted back to him from a dark corner of bitter memory. Beyond the rage and hatred he forced himself to lapse into a soothing trance, wishing to use visions of years waded through in anger and grief to fuel the fires of courage and resolve.
In the beginning it seemed the impossible dream, but the miracle of bringing holy war to the land of the Great Satan had already been mapped out by Syrian sympathizers, well in advance of his fleeing Baghdad the second time around. Before that moment of hope in Damascus, more than a decade since what the enemy called Gulf I, there was unimaginable horror, the foreign devils destroying all that he cherished in his heart. The death and destruction he had witnessed on the way back home from Kuwait had been terrifying enough, the American vultures slaughtering thousands of his Republican Guard brothers on that highway. The unholy ones, he recalled, dropped their bombs, safe in their flying cocoons of death, thousands of feet above the column of vehicles, decimating their numbers, a cowardly act, to be sure, but the worst was yet to come. With his own eyes he had seen many of his brothers burned alive, trapped in the wreckage of tanks, transport trucks, luxury cars rightfully taken from the treacherous, self-indulgent, obscenely rich Kuwaitis.
He could still hear their screams of agony, the stench of cooking flesh something he could so vividly remember. Somehow—call it divine intervention, or a special destiny reserved for him by God—he had escaped the conflagration, wounded, crawling off into the desert, praying all the way back to Baghdad that someday he would return the favor to those faceless cowards who murdered from the skies. He discovered the enemy had robbed him of what life he hoped to return to, a blow so cruel it would have been better to have burned alive on the highway of death. The murder of his wife and two sons, massacred along with many innocent Iraqis during a bombing run on the city, had been grief enough to bear. Only the dagger, he discovered, plunged deeper, twisted harder. Shuddering, he saw in his mind’s eye his daughter—or what remained of her. He found it especially tormenting he couldn’t even recall what she had looked like in all her innocent, youthful beauty, then or now. On his return and discovery, it had taken several weeks of agonizing before he made the decision, praying for the answer, the strength to do the thing he most dreaded. Certain it was God’s will he finally acted. And how couldn’t he? How, as a loving father and true believer of the Islamic faith, could he stand idly by, allow her to suffer her horror and shame of living on like that? How could he, in all clean conscience and purity of soul, let a child languish in perpetual horror and pain, no arms, no eyes, half of her face sheared away to the bone from a coward’s bomb? Small comfort she never saw it coming, but…
He jolted, eyelids flying open, the crack of the pistol swept away to the deep caverns of memory. Oh, but there was now fuel, determination enough to proceed, the fearless holy warrior, carrying out the will of God.
Let there be vengeance. Let there be blood. Let the horror descend, the wrath of God, on the enemy.
He found commotion in all bays beyond the doors on both sides, passengers ushered from buses, large gaggles herded near the gates, Greyhound employees and armed security guards trying to soothe nerves, hands waving down the battery of questions. A quick tally of the anticipated body count, and he figured that between the three of them they could bring the building down while consuming, at the pitiful minimum, three, four hundred in God’s divine retribution.
He looked to the others, held their stares. He didn’t know these men, the names or their Arab country of origin. That the three of them were of like mind and spirit, nurtured the hearts of lions, was enough to succeed in Pyrrhic victory. No choice, no turning back. How it had all been arranged, though, was a miracle by itself, their destinies about to be fulfilled, divine warriors blessed by God. Tactics changed, naturally, to circumvent the enemy’s high-tech counter surveillance, but the ends of retribution always justified the means.
Qasi Alzhad unzipped one of the two bags, granting him easy access to the Ingram MAC-10.
It was time.
He rose with his brothers, aware, too, he would see them shortly in Paradise.
KHELID AMNAN LAUGHED. For him it was over, but the brilliance of foresight would preempt the problem. He wouldn’t be denied.
They were swarming the terminal from every possible entrance, he saw, FBI or SWAT or whoever, armed with submachine guns, full body armor and helmets, creating a ruckus as they began searching carry-ons down the line. Other armed enemy began surging into both men’s and women’s restrooms to clear them out. The building was sealed, then, locked down. So be it. The more, he believed the Americans said, the merrier.
Fear not, he told himself. Let them come, let them search his bags. He was prepared, expected them, in fact, to have arrived well before now.
Close to two hours, and no bus arrived or departed, repeated messages over the loudspeaker regretting all delays, instructing all passengers to remain calm, stand where they were. Since the first announcement the knot in his gut warned him he wouldn’t leave Washington, never make it to the Port Authority, the dry run and reconnaissance in vain. A lesser man, he decided, would have felt defeat, but initiative shielded him against failure.
He ignored the strange looks several infidels threw him, chuckling again. They looked confused, fear bordering terror, questions hurled between them, but he would soon enough shed light on their ignorance. There was some irony in the moment, he thought, unable to decide what it was, but there was most certainly truth and justice ready to be delivered by his hand. He was a holy warrior, an instrument of the will of God, after all, there to fulfill the promise he’d made to fellow Iraqis he’d left behind in his homeland of Syria. They would remember what he had done here. Someday soon they would sing his praises, glorify his martyrdom. From Karachi to Casablanca, they would pen his name in stories, splash his heroics all over Arab satellite television, his face wreathed on banners as they marched the streets, torching American flags and effigies of the Great Satan President. But this was about far more than a few dozen fedayeen and Iraqi officials smuggled over the border, seeking safe haven in his country, crying out for personal revenge. And more than
