Authors: Nathan Goodman
71
The black and white patrol car rolled up to 217 175th Street and stopped, blocking the driveway. The officer in the driver’s seat keyed the mic attached to his left shoulder, “Central, unit 487 awn site. Yeah, the g’rage door is up. We’ll be ten-eighteen, ovah.”
“Roger that, 487. Ten-eighteen. Proceed with caution, over.”
The two officers walked up the driveway, the sun bright against the bleached white cement.
“Hey, Pete, wait down heyah by the garage. I’ll try the front door.”
But before the officer got up the steps, his younger partner called out.
“Paulie, hold on a minute. Come down here.” He squinted hard and pulled out his flashlight, trying to see inside the dark, cavernous garage. “Sweet Jesus, smells like a dead body in there. Holy Mary mother’a God.”
“Central, this is 487. Send me two more units,” said the younger officer into the radio.
“Roger that, 487.”
“Oh my gawd,” said the other officer, “they’s a bahdy in there for shu’ah. I haven’t smelled anything like that since Iraq,” covering his mouth.
“Central, 487, go ahead and send Hawmicide while you’re at it.”
The radio replied, “You found a body, 487?”
“Negative, Central. But from the smell out heyah, it won’t take us lawng.”
72
The van driver’s name in Arabic meant
follower
. He had never dwelled on that fact much, but in these last days of his life, he thought it appropriate. His mother would never understand, but his jihadist father, were he alive today, would be very proud.
He kept his eye on the speedometer and traveled only the back roads to avoid attention. Small town officials were always looking for outsiders to write speeding tickets, and he wanted to take no chances. He also was wary in case anyone had seen the van leave the ghastly smelling house in Queens. If someone had spotted it, staying out of sight now would be critical.
It was strange to be in this country with its rolling hills, sprawling oak trees, and horse farms with their endless white fences. In his experience, the land was nothing but sand, yet in this place, the color green covered everything as if a bucket of paint had been dropped from a low-flying airplane. All of it seemed like another planet.
The driver had only known the crowded, filthy shanties, the hunger, the sandstorms, and the need, no, the requirement, to obey. To obey was a part of his fiber, as if it had been sewn into the cloth of his very soul. The sun rose every morning, and his soul’s embroidery stitched itself deeper and deeper into a woven tapestry of Allah.
This was hilly country in a place called Kentucky. And, after so many hours on the roads, his mind wandered back to his childhood. His father had been taken away when he was sixteen. The driver was a young man at that point, but his three little brothers, so much younger, were not so lucky. As children, they would have to survive the slums, the scorpions, and worst of all, the soldiers wearing sunglasses—all without their father.
The Americans came for his father in the night. They were not wearing sunglasses in the dark of night, but the driver knew they were there, tucked into a pocket somewhere. It was a level of fear he had never known. He was barely able to console his mother. It had taken over a week to find that his father had been taken to a prison many miles away, to a place called Abu Ghraib. He knew nothing of such places. The only thing he did know, however, was that people taken there never tended to come home again. He was afraid. Those sunglasses became a thread intermeshed into the fabric of his soul.
And so it was to be. Allah’s will. Volunteering his life wasn’t something the driver fretted over or considered for very long. It was simply his destiny. As he came down the far side of the mountain pass, he slowed to round a rather sharp curve in the road and then downshifted into a low gear. He glanced in the rearview mirror at the tall, fat canister in the back of the van.
They did a good job camouflaging it,
he thought.
It looks just like a propane cylinder
. Several boxes of un-inflated balloons and rolls of twine provided the perfect cover story. If he were stopped by authorities, they would think he was just a balloon vendor on his way to a carnival or festival. In fact, he was on his way to just such an event. Resting on the gritty floor of the van, a small poster lay. The headline read, “Tammy Lynn’s Bluegrass Pickin’ Party and Hog Roast—Pineville, Kentucky.”
Allah’s will be done
, and he rounded the next curve.
73
“Okay, people, come on,” yelled Uncle Bill. “What have we got?”
Cade noticed that Uncle Bill’s mouth only became exposed from underneath all that facial hair when Bill was yelling.
“Knuckles, how about those e-mail addresses, son? Where are they?”
“Coming on screen five now, sir,” said a kid with thick-rimmed glasses and unkempt hair.
Jana whispered to Cade, “Why do they call that guy Knuckles? He doesn’t look like a Knuckles. He looks more like an . . . Alice.”
Cade whispered back, “Oh come on, when I was nine I looked just like that.”
“Okay, run the list. There should be thirty-seven e-mail addresses,” Bill yelled, squinting at screen five high against the wall. “That’s thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven . . . thirty-eight? What the hell? Knuckles, recount that. We should have thirty-seven e-mail addresses to correspond to the thirty-seven different sets of instructions sent to these bomb chuckers. Come on, son.”
“Sir, I count thirty-eight, not thirty-seven,” replied the young man.
Jana whispered, “There’s an extra e-mail address. What does that mean?” But Cade was lost in thought.
Bill said, “Thirty-eight. Thirty-eight. Hmmm. Either there’s a senior member of the terror cell that just gets copied on these messages, or . . .”
Cade stepped forward. “Or there’s a thirty-eighth terrorist out there who already knew his final objective.”
Bill looked at him. The blankness had returned.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Bill. “All right, people, new priority. Teams one and two, concentrate on those first thirty-seven e-mail addresses. I want to know their IP address, I want to know where they were the last time they accessed their e-mail accounts, I want to know their shoe sizes, I want it all. Listen up! It doesn’t get any more important than this. Beg, borrow, steal, hack. I don’t give a shit. Just find those locations!” Then he turned to the kid and said with the voice of a father, “Knuckles, I want you on number thirty-eight. Move, son.”
Bill picked up a phone next to him. “Get me Stephen Latent.” Their phone conversation was brief. When it was over, Bill hung up the phone and rubbed his neck.
His eyes flew back and forth across monitor three, which displayed the last known locations of where each terrorist had accessed their e-mail accounts. To Jana, for the first time, Bill looked like he had come alive. But she could see the worry in his eyes. It was as though his brain was in overdrive yet he’d left his poker face at home.
“That’s great work, people. Knuckles, transfer the data on the locations of the thirty-seven bomb chuckers over secure six to the bureau right now.”
“But I haven’t isolated number thirty-eight yet, sir,” replied Knuckles.
“That’s all right. Transfer the data we have and keep working on it. They need those locations now.”
Bill was on the phone again. “Stevie? Bill, the data is coming your way. We’ve isolated the last known IP address and physical location each terrorist used to access their e-mail accounts. Most look to be Internet cafés, a few Starbucks, and a public library or two. You’ll want to pull surveillance footage from each location to ID your targets.”
“That’s great work, Bill. Are you listening to this? We’ve got reports of seven different incidents that have already occurred. It’s hard to know that each is one of our bomb chuckers, but confidence is high. They’re in full swing.”
“Steve, these locations are everywhere. From downtown Chicago to Hahira, Georgia. How are you going to . . .”
“I’m ready. We’ve got every badge in the country suited up and ready for a raid, local and federal. I’m talking everybody. I’ve even got six military teams that have gone hot—four Navy SEAL teams and two from Army Delta Force. Those, along with my HRT teams, are airborne right now. If I could recall the rest of the military special ops teams from Af-fucking-ghanistan, I would. Airspace over the US is shut down. I’ve got fighter jets cruising from Florida to Washington State. We’re going to descend on them like flies on shit. I’ve got to go. Oh, and Bill?”
“Yeah, Stevie.”
“No one’s going to forget what you did here. You put your life on the line, and nearly lost it. Thank you.”
74
“. . . and that was Press Secretary Erik Childs, live from the White House press room; he’s just leaving the podium now. To recap, Mr. Childs indicated the president had temporarily, in his words, stepped down from office. Vice President Palmer has been sworn in and is the acting commander in chief. It’s unclear at this point whether the president stepped down of his own accord, or whether he was ordered to surrender his powers under federal indictment by the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court met in closed session today, wrapping up within the last hour. The contents of that session are sealed, but it appears highly coincidental that the president’s announcement comes so soon after the Supreme Court broke session. The president is under enormous pressure in the wake of the latest series of terrorist incidents. Those incidents appear to have been funded with taxpayer dollars—something that was allegedly conducted with the president’s knowledge. As his last act of office the president ordered the FAA to clear the skies over the United States, a response designed to protect the country from hijackings. For now, I’m John Carden, reporting live from the White House, WBS News.”
Alyssa passed through the little town of Pineville. It was more of a hamlet really—lots of box-style houses, long single-wide trailers, and abandoned shacks hovelled under rusted tin roofs. Still, the views of the approaching hills were pretty, though not quite idyllic. Little stone walls lined some of the yards cut into the hillside. Not the kind of stone walls you might see in the New England states, but flat, gray, lifeless stones stacked on top of one another. Houses on the left side of the road sunk down deep, well below the level of the road, and appeared to lean downhill towards a rambling streambed. There was a distinct absence of horses, but one thing in plentiful supply were pickup trucks that anchored each home or country store.
As the road’s elevation lifted, Alyssa felt her own weight press back against the driver’s seat. The road bed cut itself into the adjacent hillside, and craggily rocks reached out with tiny fingers towards her. Curving up the low mountain pass, Alyssa gunned the engine of the little yellow VW Beetle into the twists and turns; a peace flower bobbled on the dashboard. This part of Kentucky was sparsely populated, and today, there was hardly anyone on the roads. She rounded the curves hard and felt alive.
Back home in Atlanta, Alyssa loved the color of autumn. But the springtime here decried colors that were lucid and turbulent. Sunlight shattered into dozens of beams, free-falling through the amber and popsicle-yellow canopy, creating a soft glow that sprinkled across the greens painting the forest floor.
As she climbed Pine Mountain, she noticed that the stone along the roadside was thicker and almost blocky as compared to below. And the trees seemed to creep ever closer toward the road. When she drove under a banner that read “Tammy Lynn’s Bluegrass Pickin’ Party and Hog Roast,” she gawked at the number of cars parked on the shoulder ahead.
No wonder I haven’t seen many cars,
she thought.
They’re all here.
A deputy stood in the roadway ahead directing traffic. Alyssa pulled closer and leaned out.
“We can park anywhere along in here?” she asked.
The deputy, whose grin was as wide as his waistline, said, “Oh, yes, ma’am. Your first time with us at the festival? Well, you’re gonna love it. We’re real glad you came. We want ya to have a good time, but don’t eat too much, you hear?” he said, slapping his hands on the spare tire around his waist and adjusting his baseball-style deputy cap.
“This place is packed!” said Alyssa. “I had no idea how big it would be. How many people do you think are here?”
“Oh well, let’s see. Last year the pickin’ had about 12,000. Well, that’s what the sheriff said anyway. This year, well, don’ know rightly. Looks bigger to me. Must be 15,000 or more. Hey, just listen to that. Kin you hear it? They got Pearly Jenkins and his bluegrass band. Man, they’s gonna be a crowd fer him. Hey, my name’s Skeeter.”
“I’m Alyssa,” she said, reaching her hand out the window.
“Proud to meet cha. Well, jes let us know if there’s anythin’ we kin do for ya, Miss Alyssa. Have a good time, now.”
Alyssa drove ahead and parked at the first space she found. As she got out, the soft smell of hickory smoke ushered in on a breeze. The sun was warm on her face, and a light harmony of bluegrass music emanated through the trees. It made her feel . . . something. She couldn’t quite place it. The feeling was a bit familiar and settled deep in her chest and lined her heart. She was relaxed. She felt welcomed, like she belonged somehow. It was like having a guardian angel push the last vestiges of stress from her system, in the same way you might pick up a dandelion and blow the seeds out into the wind.
It was then she realized that in her day-to-day life, she carried a small blanket of stress with her everywhere she went. Maybe it was the city life, the traffic, the job, the fear, or the pollution that did it. Or maybe it was the sudden loss of her mother and the feeling of having to face the world without her. The stress laid upon her for so long it felt normal. But now, it was time to blow the dandelion seeds far and wide. Let them settle where they may.
She headed into the trees and towards the sounds of laughter, a picking guitar, a few fiddles, and perhaps a mandolin, and a lot of people stomping their feet to the rhythm and laughing. It sounded like . . . life.