Authors: George P. Saunders
Peter Detroit.
The Killer, known only as Aba-Akbar, remembered the Evil Rhetoric well; but it was the basic statistics on Peter Detroit that the killer remembered most of all.
Peter Detroit was white, forty-two (though looked almost ten years younger), and had black hair. He was intelligent and good-looking (by American standards) but otherwise unremarkable – at least physically. He didn't smoke, though liked to drink, and had never indulged in illegal drugs. He had attended college and law school, played football, served in his country's military services (specifically, the elite SEAL forces) and become a police officer in Los Angeles a decade before. He quit the LAPD after five years of service, officially having grown weary of the duties required of him.
From the time of his departure from the Los Angeles Police Department, Peter Detroit had never held a job down longer than three years at a time; before his meteoric rise to fame this last year, Peter Detroit had found his way into the business of being a mortician. Married once, and father of two, Peter Detroit by all accounts seemed terribly ordinary, albeit restless. Every photograph that Aba-Akbar had committed to memory on Peter Detroit seemed to bolster that ordinariness; even in person, twenty feet away from the killer and staggering toward the bathroom, drunk and being escorted by a young blonde woman, Peter Detroit appeared merely average, never mind being remotely threatening to the Children of Jihad.
Yet Aba-Akbar was not hired to kill average men. Peter Detroit might
appear
to be just another drunken, whore-mongering Imperialistic Dog, but that is where appearances must end. So stated the file, to the tune of two inches of research. The brothers who had hired Ala-Akbar to eliminate Peter Detroit had paid in cash. Up front. One million dollars. They didn't care how Aba-Akbar dispensed with Detroit, but they did care how long it would take. Peter Detroit, per the contract, could not be breathing by morning.
The assassin Akbar had no problem with the deadline. For one million dollars, up front, all problems were completely surmountable. Peter Detroit, whether good or evil, ordinary or not, would depart this planet sometime before midnight. Aba-Akbar guaranteed satisfaction. He was the most expensive. And he was the best.
For twenty minutes now, Aba-Akbar had watched Peter Detroit. Studying the prey, as it were; trying to see if he was missing something.
He looks so ordinary
, the assassin thought;
drunk, American, unimpressive
. Yet the file said differently. One million dollars said differently. The Brothers wanted Peter Detroit dead.
Ala-Akbar had been recruited four months ago from a specialized Iranian "death" camp known only as Madhhab. Akbar had been recruited for this latest assignment because of his acknowledged expertise as an assassin, and to his general overall experience in clandestine terrorist activities. He had played an important, though publicly overlooked, role in the overthrow of the Shah and the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran back in 1979. He had taken pride and great responsibility in the series of attacks on the American Wardog in Beirut, including the devastating 1983 suicide bombings off the American Embassy and the Marines' barracks that killed hundreds, as well as the abduction and assassination of individual Americans worldwide. The bombing of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993 and the spate of terrorist bombings that had been prepared months later for the sole purpose of turning the Fourth of July into a cataclysmic day of horror, were the result of terrorist network operations, one of which Ali headed.
And then, of course, there was September 11.
He had been one of the Godfathers to those nineteen martyrs for Freedom, for Allah. He had arranged the pilot training sessions for many of them in the United States. He had shaken each of their hands, hours before they would hijack four American jet airliners, and hurdle them toward oblivion.
Ala-Akbar was the best.
Several times in the past few years had Ala-Akbar’s talents had again been solicited; clearly, his versatility in terrorism was not merely limited to political assassination and mass genocide … though this was what he did best - and for which he received the highest fees.
In this last regard, Ala was different from others of his kind: for while most terrorists were motivated by their insane hate and religious zeal to kill both the innocent and themselves, Ala did what he did for one reason: cold, hard cash. The gallant warriors of the Great Holy War against America were not delighted with Ala’s financial ambitions, but they acquiesced to his demands before every assignment.
It was generally conceded by most psychotic terrorist revolutionaries that, ideologically, Ala was as bad as the American Capitalists; a corrupt, indolent, life-loving, pawn of Satan. That he would not himself commit himself to the Cause, to destroy himself if necessary to lash out at the Infidel, to then subsequently cling tight in the afterlife to the multitudinous bosoms of 72 virgins, was incomprehensible to the Brothers of Osama and what remained of the inept Taliban coalition. Be that as it may, Ala-Akbar nevertheless always delivered. Religious leaders denounced Ala's un-martyr-like self-interest, but they explained away Ala's inevitable contamination due to his prolonged exposure in the West and to his age. Ala-Akbar had been in the terrorist business for over forty years, and that kind of work was admittedly wearing. It seemed like a reasonable explanation and it mitigated the obvious embarrassment of someone like Ala-Akbar functioning within the inner circles of the innumerable factions of radical Islam.
Ala-Akbar was born in the United States and had been educated as a Naturalized American citizen; his parents had belonged to a terrorist cell in Tehran and had taken on "submarine" assignment forty years earlier: that being, to assimilate into American society, living ordinary lives until activated by designated commanders of the Great Jihad.
Ala had been activated many years earlier, but in truth, was indifferent to spiritual and political foundation for terrorism. It was, quite simply, a living. A good one. Common sense dictated very early on that he keep his convictions to himself; his public and professed desire to be paid so much for services rendered by the Brothers of Jihad was to maintain a lifestyle befitting a rich, capitalist, thus allowing him access to the upper echelons of American society – and thereby closer striking distance on behalf of the Holy War still raging. As a consultant to the death camp in Iran, he made over a million dollars for each six month training assignment.
Ala had become a very wealthy mercenary – and everyone within the terrorist infrastructure recognized him for what he was: an unenlightened "hit man", working against the Great Satan America and the whore-sucking Zionists in Israel . . . and for a price. And while he may never enter Paradise, so believed these same spiritual leaders, Ala would nonetheless be utilized in this tortured world as a valuable tool to further the struggle against falsehood and Western Tyranny.
Tonight, the epitome of that falsehood and tyranny was being firmly represented in the form of Peter Detroit: the man who was being honored tonight by his countrymen for heroic exploits performed one year ago. Ironically, Peter Detroit's adventure had taken place only ten blocks away, in a portion of Beverly Hills that was still undergoing reconstruction due to one of several cataclysmic bomb blasts that horrible night one year earlier. The series of blasts had killed over forty people. Many more could have conceivably perished had it not been for action taken by Peter Detroit before morning arrived.
Unbelievably, so the dossier on Peter Detroit detailed with dogmatic vitriol, one of the Great Warriors for Jihad effort had been liquidated on that tragic night. Saddam Pusseati, known to the Motherland as "The Indestructible", a terrorist of legendary proportions, had been vanquished by Peter Detroit in mortal combat. On paper, this fact alone seemed to be a wild impossibility; The Indestructible in his day had thwarted the combined efforts of specialized agencies to a dozen enemy governments. Saddam Pusseati had been a mountain, a rock of indomitable proportions, a constant, unflagging, almost superhuman entity. Yet Peter Detroit . . . this American . . . had whisked The Indestructible prematurely to the sunlit lands of Islamic paradise.
How? It defied reason. Defied imagination. The righteous Brothers of the Motherland were furious. Ala-Akbar, the Islamic Grim Reaper to countless enemy souls, was fascinated.
And curious.
He had never been curious before about a Target.
The assassin known as Ala-Akbar sipped the Imperialistic Dog-Urine known as Champagne and watched Peter Detroit and the girl disappear into the lavatory.
It was 9:00 p.m.
There was still time.
Midnight was three hours away.
The Cat Incident
Peter Detroit fumbled with his pants with one hand, his tie with the other. More than a little drunk, he tried to focus on the girl presently sucking on his lip and tearing a button off of his two hundred dollar shirt. She had asked the famous question; the one everyone asked sooner or later: When did all the incredible, unbelievable bullshit begin?
Or words to that effect . . .
"Pleasssseeeeee, Petesy Wetesie. Tell me!!! Tell me how the shit hit the fan!!!"
The Cat Incident.