Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist (2 page)

Jonathan printed all 5 of the
Heliracer
emails and began piecing together the messages. Al Qaeda was very sophisticated in its communication within the hundreds of cells that it operated throughout the United States, and Jonathan knew that if it truly was a message of importance, it would be communicated through several pieces, perhaps from several users. The emails from the past 2 weeks focused on 2 principal themes: children and Virginia. He finished his lunch, brushed away the crumbs and laid the emails out on his desk.

May 3: Instead of being conservative, we need to be very liberal, because it is time for the liberals to retake Washington.

May 21: Each will be rewarded based on his works, you will receive the final payment of 15 when the secret is revealed.

June 13: There is more pain with the defenseless child and one has the value of ten. Why Virginia? Why now…..because they are looking somewhere else.

June 22: The worm when broken in half grows into two and is twice as strong. It is time for us to split. We will break them in half and each piece will wither.

July 15: How best to work, but through their children? They will not understand, nor leave us alone until their seed is gone. Virginia, 12:30:200:1941.

His cell phone rang and he saw his wife’s name come up on the LCD.

Jonathan punched the speaker phone button, knowing that Carly saw magic in hearing her mother’s voice and talking to her when she wasn’t there. “Hi honey,” he said. “How come you’re calling me on my cell?” Carly perked up and yelled, “Hi mommy.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m at the office.”

Mary had a nervous urgency to her voice, “What is Carly doing there?” she asked.

“You know how she loves liverwurst. She’s eating today with her daddy.”

Carly looked up proudly, “Mommy, Daddy’s given me half his sandwich and I gave him half my cookies.”

“Is something wrong?” answered Jonathan sensing anxiety.

“Where’s Matthew?”

“He’s downstairs in the daycare where he is every day. Honey, what’s wrong?”

“You were supposed to take the kids to the pediatrician. Their appointment was at 11 a.m.”

“They called and rescheduled. Dr. Overbay had an emergency at the hospital, so Dr. Hampton’s going to see them at 3 today. I’ll take them, no problem.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

“Honey what’s the matter? Are you crying?”

“I love you,” she answered.

“I love you, too, are you sure you are okay?”

She didn’t answer

“See you tonight.”

“I love you Mommy,” yelled Carly.

“I love you sweetie.”

Jonathan hung up the phone and went back to work.

His mind clicked back into gear and he studied the messages that were sprawled across his desk, using all the decoding techniques that he had learned over the last 5 years in this covert operation.

Liberal vs. Conservative
was a common phrase used for a conflict or an attack on the current administration. It was no secret that Al Qaeda hated the current administration.. Someone was on the inside being paid either 15 times or 15 thousand or million dollars for information out a strike in Virginia. The cells were being split to avoid connection, and the target was being split to bring confusion. Something was going to happen at 12:30 at 200 at 1941 that would affect children. The 200 probably represented the number of people or number of days or a quantity of weapons or pounds of explosives. He looked at his Julian calendar and saw that today was the 200th day of 2012. “Probably a coincidence,” he thought. He looked at his watch and saw that it was 12:25 p.m. and 1941 was probably a coordinate, perhaps part of a GPS location or perhaps an address. He looked down at his stationery and was struck by the address of his building, The Federal Office of Administration, 1941 Jeff Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia. The daycare was on the first and second floors. “My God. It can’t be,” he thought. A cold shiver ran down his spine as he sprang from his chair to the door. He ran over and scooped Carly up with one motion and ran to the stairwell. “Everyone, get out!” he screamed as he ran toward the emergency exit.

The explosion incinerated the first two floors of the building and shot fire through the other 15 floors like a roman candle. The building shifted on its foundation like a boxer rocked by an unexpected upper cut and collapsed like a
Jenga
stack losing a critical building block. The first explosion was followed by a series of smaller explosions, and cries of agony came from the thousands of people, crushed and burned and trapped in the fiery tomb. Jonathan engulfed Carly with his 6 foot 2 inch frame as the building fell down on top of them and then everything was quiet.

Jonathan awoke amidst the whiteness and the floral smells and gadgetry of his private hospital room. His wife Mary was upon him as soon as he opened his eyes. She looked different, as if she had aged several years and the weight of life had stretched her skin from her face. Mary was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. Her hair was amber and so were her eyes and she was perfectly proportioned. In fact, she was perfect in every way: beautiful, smart, sexy, and a wonderful mother. But now those beautiful eyes were full of grief, like an overworked and emotionally abused single parent. Her hair, which was always perfectly kept, had streaks of gray and was ruffled. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, showing lines that he hadn’t seen before. Still gorgeous, her sadness wore on her strong Eastern European features like scales. Her puffy eyes said it all, that she had carried an immeasurable burden, alone, without his help. He tried to reach a hand to comfort her, but saw that both of his arms were constrained, one in a cast that extended from his shoulder to his wrist and the other to keep from upsetting the IV’s that were spitting nourishment and medication into his veins. He tried to talk but his tongue was thick and his mouth was dry. Mary held a glass of water with a straw over to his mouth and he tried to turn towards it but was restricted by a collar that was wrapped around his neck. She maneuvered the straw into position and he took a long soothing drink. She stood up to alert the nurses that he was awake, but stopped frozen when he spoke.

“What happened?” he asked.

At the sound of his voice Mary started to cry as if she had never expected to hear it again, and then realized what he had said. She looked at him bewildered, “You don’t know? We can talk in a minute, I have to tell them that you’re awake.” Mary disappeared and was back in a few seconds with 3 nurses. A page echoed over the hospital intercom for Dr. Hamilton, and Jonathan knew it was because of him. The nurses scurried around him, adjusting his bed, taking his temperature and writing down statistics from the overhead monitor. Within a few minutes Dr. Hamilton came through the door. He was a tall African American man in his early fifties, slightly balding and about 30 lbs. overweight. He grabbed the clipboard from the bottom of the bed, read it quickly, made a few notes and then sat on the bed next to Jonathan peering into his eyes with a light pen and asking questions of the attendant staff as he worked.

“How long has he been awake?”

Mary answered, “Less than 10 minutes.”

“Has he spoken?”

Mary said, “Yes.”

“Slurred speech, coherent?”

“He seems okay, except he doesn’t remember the accident.”

Dr. Hamilton continued with his physical, looking through all the orifices in Jonathan’s head. He then listened to his chest and breathing with his stethoscope. Finally he looked directly at Jonathan and asked him, “How do you feel Mr. Anderson?”

Jonathan grinned as if he had been asked a ridiculous question. “Very tired?” he answered sarcastically.

“Headache, trouble breathing?”

“A little, no a lot, I mean my head is pounding. It feels like someone hit me in the back of the head with a baseball bat.”

The doctor motioned to the nurse and instructed an adjustment in his medication. She disappeared for a few seconds and returned with a new bag with a different mixture of narcotics. Jonathan struggled to remember more, but his head felt consumed with pain and ready to explode like a volcano getting ready to spew molten lava.

She could see in his eyes that he was confused. “There was a horrible explosion at your building and you were hurt; they airlifted you and Carly here.”

He was stunned by the word Carly.

“Is she okay?”

Mary nodded. “She’s fine, you saved her, you know. They found her wrapped in your arms without even a scratch, no broken bones. It took 3 of them to get you to let go of her. It’s a miracle that someone can hold another person so tight that it took 3 firefighters to pry her free and yet there wasn’t a bruise on her. How did you do that? It was like you squeezed an egg with all your might and didn’t break the shell.”

“I don’t know, maybe she’s tougher than you think. Can I see her?”

“She’s with my sister.”

“What about Matthew?”

She stopped, remembering the doctor’s words, but he read it in her eyes. She saw that he recognized this and then shook her head no and started to cry, not able to say the words.

He closed his eyes with the weight of her unspoken words. She put her head gently on his chest and they didn’t say anything for the next ten minutes, finding comfort only in each other’s presence. Finally Jonathan was the first to speak.

“Did he suffer?”

Mary shook her head no and then said, “I don’t think so.”

Jonathan nodded telling her that she had said enough.

“How long have I been here?” he whispered.

“A little over two weeks, actually fifteen days.”

“Please give me more details and tell me again what happened.”

She looked at him with pain in her eyes, “The Federal building was attacked.”

Jonathan was once again stunned and lay quiet. Finally his mind caught up with his grief, “How many people hurt?”

“Almost 1500.”

“Dead?”

“All of them, except a handful. There were 700 hundred from the Federal Building killed and 400 still missing. 350 of the people were killed in the street all standing around, watching some accident.” She stopped and then looked at him with horrified eyes, “Five hundred children! They killed 100 children! What type of people target children! What kind of God Damn monsters kill helpless children! They killed our baby!”

Jonathan closed his eyes to shield himself from the searing heat in her words, his memory flashed like frames in a 50 year old 16 millimeter black and white film between the poundings in his head; most of the details were lost in the snow and the fuzz. A clear segment of the film floated through his mind, “Of course. Children and Virginia, they’re an easy, unprotected target and then they get the added benefit of destroying the operation. They must have found out about our operation.” Mary’s eyes looked at him to see if he was babbling from his injury or speaking rationally. She lifted her head from his chest and sat upright in the chair and then her eyes turned ferocious. “What do you mean operation?”

Jonathan didn’t have the mental fortitude to be clever. He stuttered, “I meant that federal offices are always targets for terrorists.”

“But you said your operation. What were you doing there? Jonathan, tell me you’re not responsible for this? Oh Jesus Christ, tell me that you weren’t in there using our children as cover for some crazy operation of yours? We’ve been married all these years and I trusted you when you told me that you worked for the government and couldn’t talk about your job. But now, I have a need to know, so you can stop lying.”

“Please don’t cry, Mary. Certainly you must have suspected I worked for the CIA?”

“And why would I do that? Marriage is based on trust, Jonathan, and you told me you were a Procurement Officer. But now Matthew is dead, and your little make-believe world has become very real to me, okay! You’ve crossed the line and I need to know what was going on in there.”

He tried to speak but was overcome with exhaustion. “I’m really tired, can we talk about this later?”

Mary realized that she had gone well beyond the doctor’s limits, but had a hard time holding back. “Jonathan, I can wait until later, but you are going to give me a full explanation.”

Jonathan nodded.

He closed his eyes and entered a tomb between life and death, terrorists and agents, with dreams about his children. He awoke suddenly with the thought, “Matthew’s dead!” And then hoping it to be a dream, he tried to recall all that had happened, not knowing what was real and what had come from the demons he had slept with in the underworld.

Mary was napping in the chair next to his bed when he awoke. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was 1 p.m. and knew he had been sleeping for about 3 hours. He let Mary sleep for another 20 minutes and she woke as suddenly as he had.

Immediately, as if there hadn’t been an interruption, Jonathan continued with his explanation, “You cannot repeat this, do you understand? Bob and I were working on a joint Homeland Security/CIA/Secret Service project. The operation was planted with the other federal employees to avoid detection.”

It took Mary a few seconds to catch up with him because she was still disoriented from her nap. “Planted?” She snapped. “Jonathan, what in God’s name were you doing in there?”

“We were an anti-terrorist group, studying all the signs, tracing emails that terrorists use to talk between cells, trying to prevent the very thing that happened.”

The comment caused her anger to swell until it overflowed, “You fucking murderer! Well your operation didn’t do a very good job did it? Why would our government use children as a cover for you? How could you take a position like that and then lie to me? How could you put our children in danger and not even tell me? If we’re at war, why use children, our children as a decoy for soldiers? The kids were innocent, Jonathan; Matthew was just a baby! You killed our baby!” she started crying. “I don’t even want to look at you!” She backed away and went into the waiting room where she sat and cried.

Jonathan lay alone staring at the ceiling, realizing that she was right. “How could I have been so stupid?” he muttered. “Of course they would figure us out; how best to attack a more powerful enemy than to attack their center, splitting their front line in half.” The shock of the death of his son Matthew began to overwhelm him like a dark shadow and he was enveloped by an unbearable mixture of grief and rage. Desperately trying to stop the pain, he clicked on the television, but found it impossible to listen to CNN with his mind swimming in so many directions.