Authors: Jason Elam
TUESDAY, MAY 12, 9:15 P.M. EDT NEW YORK CITY
The fan slowly cycled back and forth, causing the collar on Isaac Khan’s work shirt to flap up and tap him on the jaw every
ten seconds or so. But rather than shift positions or adjust the fan, he sat perfectly still on an old chair in his tiny studio
apartment, staring.
A cockroach skittered across the small kitchen table and stopped when it detected Isaac’s thick right forearm. A standoff
ensued, the cockroach staring at the hairy arm, Isaac staring at his bed. Finally, after sensing no movement, the insect pushed
ahead, lightly brushing against the man’s elbow, causing Isaac to absentmindedly sweep the fingers of his left hand across
his arm.
At last Isaac emitted an incredulous sigh, stood up, and walked to his front door. Opening it, he examined the locks and the
doorjamb.
No
sign of forced entry. Then how?
He closed the door, relocked the three dead bolts, and returned to his chair.
A smile came to his face.
I guess this means that
I truly have not been forgotten.
The past week had been torture for Isaac. The elation he had experienced following the initial phone call had gradually turned
to frustration as he waited day after day for instructions.
Soon the frustrations had turned to doubt. Had he really heard those words:
Awake, O Sleeper
? Had something happened to the person who was supposed to tell him his next steps? Had he forgotten some special orders from
long ago? Had he been contacted only to be forgotten
again
?
All these questions and doubts had been answered today by the three mysterious backpacks that sat across the small room on
his bed. They hadn’t been there when he left for work this morning, yet there they were now.
What do they contain? What are they for?
He knew the answers to these questions would be in the envelope propped against the center backpack. There was one word written
on the bright white paper—
Warrior
.
Isaac started to get up to retrieve the envelope but then sat back down. Fear and excitement battled each other in his mind.
Warrior.
Can that really be me?
It’s
been so long since
I’ve
fought—
so long since
I’ve
killed. Warrior? Oh, Allah, please forgive my unbelief.
Finally, Isaac took the two steps from the table to the bed. He reached for the left backpack, wanting to feel its bulk, but
then quickly drew back his hand.
Patience! What if there is something in the
envelope telling you not to pick up the backpacks?
Feeling like he just dodged a bullet, Isaac lifted the envelope. It was thick and heavy. He stepped back to the table and
laid it down on the chipped Formica top.
Tea,
he thought, leaving the envelope and walking around to his kitchenette.
Something like this cannot be
started without tea.
Isaac filled the teakettle and put it on a hot plate. After getting down a glass mug, his can of tea leaves, and two sugar
cubes, he began chastising himself.
What are you afraid of? You are a grown man,
but you are acting like a child!
Shaking his head, he sat in his other chair, reached across the small table, and picked up the envelope. He slid the handle
of his teaspoon into the corner of the seal and roughly pulled it across.
A gasp escaped his mouth when he pulled out the contents. There were five thin packets of one hundred dollar bills, each with
a band stamped with
$1,000
wrapped around it. Isaac had never seen that much money in one place at one time. He resisted the urge to count through the
money and instead lifted the rest of the contents.
In his hand he held three documents. Unfolding the first, he found a computer-printed map with a large
X
on it. The second and third documents were similar to the first but displayed different locations. A shudder went through
his body as he realized what he was being asked to do. He fell to his knees and raised his hands to heaven.
“Oh, Allah, I declare that you are one! Thank you for calling me to your service. Give me the strength and the determination
to carry out whatever tasks you lay before me. There is no God but you. There is no God but you. There is no God but you.
. . .” Isaac repeated these words over and over. His prayer blended with the steam from his whistling kettle, and they both
slowly ascended to heaven.
TUESDAY, MAY 12, 8:30 P.M. CDT
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Mohsin Ghani breathed into a paper bag that still smelled of his breakfast egg and cheese biscuit. It had been four minutes
since this bag had become his primary air source, and he was only now beginning to get himself under control.
Somehow in the past week, Mohsin had convinced himself that they had decided not to use him. Maybe they had gone a different
direction. Maybe they had realized how much more he could benefit their cause by remaining in the position he was in. Maybe
they discovered what a coward he really was. However, all those hopes had crashed to the ground the moment he sat down in
his Mercedes Roadster. There, on the steering wheel, resting against the protruding speedometer and tachometer, was an envelope.
Mohsin slowly opened his eyes, praying that maybe he had been mistaken. Maybe he was sick and didn’t know it and was simply
having a hallucination. Maybe he had forgotten that he had placed a bill there that needed to be taken care of after work.
Maybe . . . maybe . . . But there it sat. “‘Warrior!’” he screamed. “Who are they kidding?”
Angrily, he snatched the envelope off the steering column and ripped it open. Inside were four sheets of paper. The first
was a Google map with an
X
.
“What is this? Am I supposed to meet somebody here? Do they think I’m a pirate looking for buried treasure? Idiots!” He angrily
tossed the first sheet onto the passenger seat and saw that the second was a map like the first. “Could you people have at
least left some instructions? I’m not a mind reader! This is ridiculous!” The second map joined the first, and a third map
was about to meet the same fate when he stopped cold.
His hand began to tremble as he looked at the fourth sheet. There was no map on that page. There was only the hand-printed
word
Trunk
.
Sweat broke out all over Mohsin’s body, and he could feel his breathing rate beginning to increase. He loosened his tie and
undid the top button of his shirt. “No . . . No . . . No, no, no!” Mohsin slammed his fist into the passenger seat with each
word. He grabbed the wheel with both hands and cried out, “Oh, God! What should I do? Help me, help me, help me!”
Leaning forward, he rested his head against the warm leather of the steering wheel. After a couple of minutes, Mohsin said,
“Come on, you can do this. You can do this!” Mustering all his courage, he reached out and pressed the trunk release.
His legs felt rubbery as he stepped out of the car, and he steadied himself on the roof, leaving streaky fingerprints on the
glossy black finish. Before going to the rear of the sports car, he reached back in and grabbed his paper bag.
“Come on, Mohsin, you know you can do this,” he muttered to himself. “What could be back there—a body?” He tried to chuckle,
but the resulting wet spurt betrayed his anxiety. “Quit being ridiculous. It’s probably just more instructions. Be a man!”
With the bag in one hand and the lid in the other, Mohsin thrust open the trunk. Inside were three large backpacks laid side
by side. A dull matte black handgun lay on the middle pack.
Mohsin’s knees buckled, and his weight drove the lid down, sealing away the trunk’s contents. Spinning himself around, he
leaned against the back of the car and began again to breathe in the stale smell of breakfast.
TUESDAY, MAY 12, 7:45 P.M. MDT
LONE TREE, COLORADO
Abdullah Muhammad’s contact had come earlier in the day via a series of coded text messages. When the first one had beeped
through and he had seen the gibberish written there, a surge of adrenaline had rushed through his body. After all the waiting,
waiting, waiting, with a flick of Allah’s hand and a message across his cell phone screen, his time had finally come!
Abdullah had immediately pulled his patrol car into a Burger King parking lot. After copying the messages down in his notebook,
he had quickly deleted the texts from his cell phone. The page was then torn out of the notebook and tucked down deep in his
wallet.
Finishing out his shift that day had taken what seemed an eternity—making the stops, writing the tickets, taking the reports.
When he finally walked out of the precinct, he did it knowing that he would never step foot back in.
At first, rather than just not showing up anymore, Abdullah had thought of quitting the police force or taking a leave of
absence. However, both of those options would require him to give up his badge, and he really wanted to keep that useful piece
of hardware for the activities to come. So Abdullah simply became a ghost instead.
He drove his car from the precinct out to Denver International Airport, where he parked it in a long-term lot. After changing
clothes in his car and stuffing his old clothes under the seat, he pulled a baseball cap low onto his head and walked to the
terminal. There he caught a cab. He directed the taxi to drop him off downtown, where he picked up the light rail F line and
rode it south to its termination in Lone Tree. From there it was a quick walk to an apartment he had kept rented for the past
two years but had as yet never slept in.
This trendy singles location served Abdullah’s needs perfectly. The area was filled with high turnover apartments and condos
that were populated by young professionals who cherished their anonymity. And because of the nearby light rail, Abdullah could
keep the car he had purchased for this second life parked in the same place for a week at a time without raising any suspicions.
As the key turned the lock and the latch clicked, Abdullah felt that he was opening the door to a new beginning—his true person.
Without bothering to lock the door behind him, he strode through the entryway, past the bare living room walls, and right
to the bookshelf by the sliding glass door. He pulled out his Everyman’s Library edition of Naguib Mahfouz’s
The Cairo Trilogy
and picked up a yellow pad of paper that he kept on the bookshelf. Both items he took to the glass dining table. Abdullah
then pulled out his wallet and retrieved the coded message. Impulsively, he pressed the piece of paper to his lips.
All the years of waiting have finally come to an end.
The first two numbers told him to open to chapter 57. Then, using the text of the book as his key, he proceeded to decipher
the code. His heel tapped rapidly in anticipation as he worked.
Slow
down; slow down,
he chastised himself.
Now is not the time to be making
mistakes.
With each new phrase his excitement grew as his destiny was revealed to him. It wasn’t until he got to the end of the fifty-plus-word
message that the full brutal force of what he was being asked to do hit him.
Abdullah was ashamed to admit it, but he was rocked. He had known he would be asked to do something terrible, but this was
violent beyond anything he had imagined.
Stop it! Can you really be
surprised? You are a warrior, and you are being asked to act like a warrior.
This is not a time to question.
But, oh, my Lord, this is so . . . so . . . hands-on! This is so bloody! Oh,
Allah, can this really be in your will?
Abdullah began pacing around the apartment.
Remember who you are,
he chastised himself again.
You are simply a tool in
Allah’s
hands. People greater than you have been
given the words of truth. They are the ones who can discern his will. Who
are you to question them? You can do this! You
will
do this! Allah will
give you the strength.
Sitting back down, Abdullah reread the message, committing it to memory. Then he took the original notebook page and all the
pages underneath, as well as the entire yellow pad, into his bedroom and ran them through the shredder.
TUESDAY, MAY 12, 7:30 P.M. PDT
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Naheed Yamani put the copy of
The Cairo Trilogy
back onto the bookshelf. After rereading then destroying the message, she flopped herself down on her overstuffed Payton sofa
and tucked her feet up. She ran her hands over the khaki linen material and enjoyed its coolness.
Do I really believe in what
I’m
doing, or am I just bored?
Naheed had always been somewhat of an adrenaline junkie. Summers as a rich, spoiled, semiroyal teenager on the French Riviera
usually found her Jet Skiing, parasailing, or shoplifting worthless junk from the tourist stores. But no matter how much she
tempted fate, it was never enough.
Then one day she had been approached at a family gathering by her cousin, Saleh Jameel. Saleh had always been the one about
whom the rest of the mothers told their children, “Why can’t you be more like him?” Good grades, impeccable manners, never
forgetting to hold the door open for giggling old ladies—you name a positive quality, Saleh possessed it.
But Naheed had always been suspicious of her cousin. Somewhere beneath that sickeningly sweet exterior, she knew there was
a different Saleh. It could have been the quick flashes of anger on the soccer field or the way he sometimes was unnecessarily
harsh to the servants. Whatever it was, it was enough that when Naheed and Saleh were sitting together on a bench at another
overdone family feast, she was ready to hear him out.
Saleh began by telling her that he had been watching her for a long time. He followed that with a long description of his
recent involvement in a secret paramilitary organization. He finished by telling her, “You’re just the kind of person we need
to defeat the Great Satan and to end the oppression.”