The Last Infidel (14 page)

The square looked clear to the left, where the legal office and justice buildings stood.  The solitary guard who had passed minutes earlier, now joined by two others, stopped at the end of the square on this side, over to Cody’s right, and lit up a cigarette.  Right in front of Cody, not ten yards away, he saw the park bench he was aiming for.  The bench had been made four years ago by the Rotary Club to raise money for autism research.  They’d raised over fifty-thousand dollars that year, all in the name of the children.  Cody couldn’t help but think that this bench had been put here, on this corner, for just such a time.

Cody pushed Asad forward and threw him down onto the bench.  He pulled some wire out of his pockets and wired Asad’s hands to the slats between his legs, pulling them as tight as he could.  Asad groaned and tried to wiggle free.  Cody put his lips close to Asad’s ear and whispered, “This is for the children, you dirty Muslim bastard – that’s right, I called you a bastard because Mohammed is no father.  Satan is your daddy – and you’re going to meet him.”

Cody grabbed a large, plastic planter – someone had replaced the dead plants in all of the planters with plastic ones – and slid it behind Asad.  He grabbed another and then another until Asad was perfectly hidden behind a wall of tacky, cheap, plastic, tropical foliage.

He lit the firecrackers, shaking as he did, and he threw them as far out into the street as he could.  Hardly had he turned to run than they began to go off, a string of fire crackers containing five hundred individual crackers.  They rattled off cleanly, crisply, and consistently, roaring away in a once-silent night. 

Cody ran back the way he had come, past the plantings, ducking and stopping behind each one so that nobody would see him, until he reached the alley.  Not wanting to miss the show, and because he wanted to kill as many Muslims as he could, he crossed the road to the opposite side and waited for his enemies to appear.

Soldiers instantly began running onto the square, pouring from the businesses Cody could see: Martin’s Bar and Grill, Cheapy’s Shoes, several law offices, and from the courthouse itself.  When several soldiers ran towards the bursting and flashing fireworks, calling other soldiers to hurry over, and when Cody thought a large enough crowd had assembled, he activated the detonator.

The explosion rent the night air in a smoky, percussive blast, shaking the ground beneath his feet, sending nails and debris far and wide.   Cody rolled into the plantings, protecting himself from falling splinters of wood, metal, and brick.  With a huge cloud of smoke filling the square, white and acrid, concealing him from anybody who might be looking, Cody ran back across the street and down the alley without looking back.

{
22
}

Cody ran through the back door, through the workshop, and up the stairs towards the second floor.  Out of breath, more because of fright than fatigue, he raced across the length of the upstairs sleeping quarters and pushed his way through the mass of men leaning and looking out through the upstairs window.

“Make a hole,” he yelled, as he nudged some of his men aside.  When he got to the window, he leaned out as far as he could, looking down and to the left.  He saw debris, lots of it, scattered across the square.  Bodies, too many to count, some of them one on top of another, lay on the ground.  The blast had been enormous, sending the mangled and torn bodies of soldiers all the way up to the steps at the rear of the courthouse.

David, a trim expert and ex-owner of a local millworks, pushed his way through the men and tugged on Cody’s shirt.  “Mr. Marshall – we lost four or five of our guys.  They left as soon as you left.  They took their weapons and went towards the library.”

“Well, that’s just great,” Cody said.  “If they get caught, let’s just hope it’s with a bullets.  If they talk, we’re done for.”

“They won’t talk,” David said.  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were up to something else.  I don’t think they mean to run – they didn’t take any food.”

“Jadhari’s men will be coming soon,” Cody said.  “His men and probably a few from some of the other units.  Something tells me we all need to be dressed and waiting downstairs, like we mean to help – or we can fight.  If we fight now, we die.  If we can hold on for two more days, and if they don’t kill us all, we’ll have a real chance.”

“I have an idea,” a voice said, thin and tired.  It was the voice of Brad Temples, the old preacher-turned-barkeeper who’d publicly repented of his excess before ISA marched in two years earlier.  “We have enough rope in the workshop to tie everyone up.  If you put a gun in my hands, I can stand guard over you – and maybe take out a few of Bashar’s men when they arrive.  They’ll think we – you know, the four other guys who left and I – tied you up and did the deed, so-to-speak.”

Cody didn’t have time to think.  “Are you willing to do that?”

“They killed my wife,” Brad said.  “Then they killed all my sons and grandchildren.  No greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

“David,” Cody said in a hurry. “Get the rope, and bring one of those hooked roofing shingle knives so we can cut it.  Everybody down at the foot of your beds.”

The men agreed, and all of them quickly paid their respects to the old man who, for the first time in the last two years, wore a satisfied smile across his face.  Brad reminded them all that this was his decision and that it was his alone to make.  He also said that the death of Asad, far from being a reckless stunt, had probably happened for a good reason and that no amount of complaining or griping about the deed was going to change it. 

The job of tying up the men was finished in less than five minutes.  Brad tied Cody up last, pulling the ropes around his wrists and body so tightly that Cody could barely breathe.

“Now, Cody,” Brad said.  “I’m going to smash you in the face with my rifle butt, just as I’m going to do to three other men in this room.”

Everyone to the last man let out a groan, and a few protested vigorously that they not be included.

“This way, when Jadhari comes in, or whoever, some of you will be out for the count,” Brad said.  “That will make it all look real.  As for myself?  I’ll get a good two or three of those Muslims when they come crashing up the steps.  I’ve got two clips, maybe I’ll get lucky.  If I fire all of those, and if I’m still kicking, I’ve got this dandy bayonet.”

The sound of vehicles, noisy and loud, could be heard coming towards the square.  Men yelled and screamed, typical of ISA soldiers, and officers, all of them yelling in Arabic, shouted orders with brutality.  The sounds of booted feet, all hurrying across the pavement, drew close to the hardware store.

Brad apologized profusely, and then proceeded to knock out three of the men: one of them across from Cody, and two others to his right.  For good measure, he added another, but only because the man had insisted at the last minute.  Then Brad came for Cody.

“Hey, I just remembered something.  What about Jose?”  Before Cody could get answer, the rifle butt came down on the right side of his face.  He felt the shock, saw the flash of light, and he remembered no more.

“He’ll be fine, don’t worry – and yes, he will have the generators working like they’re supposed to.”

“Are you positive?”

“The man’s a genius, I promise you.  But we need to give him a little time, feed him a good breakfast, and just leave him alone.”

The voice belonged to Jadhari: Cody knew that voice anywhere. The other one he didn’t recognize.  He slowly opened his left eye and tried to make out the other person in the room.  But all he saw was a blur.

“I want Mr. Marshall and what’s left of his men ready in two hours,” the other voice demanded.

“Maybe, just maybe,” Jadhari said aggressively, “if our soldiers would stop killing every last infidel they see, we might just have the technicians we need to jumpstart this train wreck that we are responsible for!  You know, it’s easy doing war.  But sooner or later, we’ll have a country to run.  And maybe you don’t want to win the war because you know you’ll never be able to run a country!”

“You will not talk like that,” the other man said, “or I will report you to the imam.”

“Yes, you do that,” Jadhari shot back. “You run home and tell your
ee-mommy
all that I have said.  He’ll tell you that he has heard that statement many times before, and that even he has said the same to people just like you.”

Cody heard the man stomp off and slam the door.  He tried to open his right eye, but he was unable to do so.  The room smelled like alcohol, almost like a doctor’s office, and the thing he was lying on crinkled when he moved, like the paper on a bed in a doctor’s office.

Jadhari saw Cody trying to raise his head and arm.  He walked over to the side of the bed and gently took Cody’s outstretched arm and helped him into a sitting position.  “Just a big bump on the head, so stop being such a baby.  You’ve had worse.”

Cody reached up with his right hand and touched the right front side of his forehead.  He felt something the size of small apple and twice as hard, and it stung when he touched it.  He squinted his eyes in the bright light, then he covered them, hoping to adjust them to the intensity of the glare little by little.

“Well,” Jadhari said.  “It seems like you and me are even now, though it took many more years than I ever thought.”

“Even?”  Cody asked.  “What are you talking about?”

“All of your men, or most of them, seemed to have up and crapped on my people,” Jadhari said.  “Last night, one of your men in particular, the old guy, killed twenty of our troops with his rifle and bayoneted one other to death.”

“Who was that?”

“The man he bayoneted was Mu’taz.”

“No, I couldn’t care less about who he stabbed,” Cody said.  “Which of my men did it?”

“That would be Brad Temples,” Jadhari said.  “And when my men finally shot him, they stormed up into your dorm area and randomly killed a bunch of men before I could stop them.”

“Did you catch all of the men that were responsible for this?” Cody said, pointing to the knot on his head.

“Every one of them,” Jadhari said.  “And every one of them is now dead.  Except, of course, that dirty Mexican friend of yours, Jose.”

“Jose wasn’t involved with any of this – I would have known about it.”

“I believe you.  But the imam doesn’t care.”

Cody felt a cold shiver run from his head to his feet, like ice water being poured over him on a blistering hot summer day.  The mere mention of the imam, like the monster you heard approaching in a horror movie, made him feel sick at his stomach, leaving him weak and helpless.  The last time he’d heard mention of one of those so-called Muslim holy men, one of those sons of Satan, he’d been ordered to execute Mikey.  But Mikey, he remembered, had had the last word – he’d died like a God-fearing, people-loving, Christian man.  He’d even saved one of Bashar’s own worthless dogs; and the Muslims were still beside themselves with rage over that little incident.

“The imam wants you to do the dirty work,” Jadhari said.

“You can tell those SOBs over at the courthouse that I’m not going to kill Jose,” Cody said, and he swung his feet to the floor and stood up.  “I’ll do a lot of things.  But I won’t kill Jose Lozano for any reason.”

“If you don’t, they’ll kill every last infidel, one by one, until you do.”

“Then they can get those generators running over at the mosque all by themselves.  But let me guess: most of your kind couldn’t read a manual to save their sorry lives let alone build anything.  Take a look around you, Jadhari!  Is Murfreesboro starting to look like any other place on earth that you can think of?  Like maybe the middle east?  Your kind can’t build or create – you can only kill and destroy!  Have you ever stopped to smell the air?  Hell, even the water tastes like your people smell!”

“That woman we captured yesterday,” Jadhari said.  “I took her with her consent, not once, but twice.  Right here in the daylight.  And she loved it.”

“Jadhari,” Cody said coldly and with feigned disinterest.  “The only thing you can get is what you chain to your bed.”

Jadhari, trying to hold himself back, with a leaping fire in his eyes, broke into a fit of rage and anger, one unlike Cody had ever seen before.  He put his fists up against his eyes and howled like a mad man, cursing and swearing while he twisted at his waist from side to side.

Cody, wanting to drive the nail deeper into Jadhari’s heart, said, “Funny how your damned Koran tells you to kill gay people, but every last one of you likes helpless little boys more than you like women.  Now, you little monster, tell me how that works!  And you probably dreamt of Mikey, didn’t you?”

Jadhari swung his hands in the air, reaching for anything he could lay his hands on – bottles, a calculator, a ream of paper, a chair – and he threw them all against the rear wall of the room while screaming at the tops of his lungs.

“I guess they’re waiting for me outside,” Cody said, as coolly as he knew to do.  “I’d better not keep them waiting.”

{
23
}

In the end, Cody’s place as executioner behind the courthouse was taken by a young Muslim fighter, a boy no older than fifteen, who first whipped Cody with twenty lashes, and then proceeded to behead Jose Lozano.  Though Cody was threatened with more lashes for failing to watch the death of his already dying friend, he stood his ground and refused to do so.  The imam, who was more concerned with the generators at the mosque than human life, granted Cody forgiveness and pardon; but he was required to stay as the execution was carried out. 

Jose Lozano, already weak and unconscious from being beaten earlier that morning, died without making a sound.  He’d probably never felt a thing.

The seven men that remained of Cody’s work detail – every one of them grateful to God that their lives had been spared – helped Cody to his feet.  He refused their help, not because he didn’t appreciate it, but because he knew he had to find his own physical strength.  If he didn’t, he’d never make it to Tuesday night. 

The imam, along with Bashar and the president of the mosque, all agreed that, since all of the critical work on the mosque had been completed, Cody and his men could take the morning off.  They were ordered, however, to return to the mosque later in the day to check on the generators; but Cody, and Cody alone, was told that only he would be permitted to remain at the site of the mosque on the last day of Ramadan.

“You know,” Cody said, as he walked alone with his men towards the hardware store.  “At the Battle of Gettysburg, this day, to be exact, they said that the dead were so thick on the battlefield that people fifty miles away could smell it.”

“They can smell all that garbage piled up on Hall’s Hill Pike, that’s for sure,” David, the trim guy said.

Cody looked at him through the corner of his eye.

“Yep,” David said with a wink in his eyes.  “The odor just hits you right between the eyes as soon as you step out of that church basement.”

The men stopped in the shade of a tall maple tree just before they crossed the street; and all of them seemed to come to life all at once, struggling to contain their smiles.  One of them began to snicker.

Vernon, a black metallurgist who could barely contain himself, said, “You think we should tell him?”

“You might as well,” David replied.  “Even if he’s still around on the last day of Ramadan, he certainly won’t live long enough to know see it.  I think he might want to enjoy at least the thought of it for one day.”

Vernon, a heavyset black man with braids of hair running halfway down his back, put his arm around Cody and licked his lips. Then he said, “You know that I would never do a thing – not a damn thing – to hurt you, Cody.  I mean, you’ve had my back since the day you arrested me for selling looseys to teenagers on the corner of Burton Street.”

“I’d give my right arm for a drag of one of those menthols right now,” Cody said.

“And you make my point,” Vernon said. “Crime is a matter of dates – I would sell you one if I had one.  What I’ve done here would have been a crime three years ago.  Today, the mayor would hand me the key to the city if he’d lived to see it.”

All of the guys laughed.

“Now, when we go to the mosque this afternoon, there is a timer set under one of the tiles.  All I have to do is set the timer, which is set to go off at exactly five pm tomorrow night, and---”

“Let me guess,” Cody said discreetly, looking around the square.  “The place explodes?”

“We wish,” David said.  “When we were framing this thing three years ago, before the war, one of the guys – he went south with the army – made a three story cross out of steel girders.  It’s in the main wall just above the entrance.  I don’t know how he did it, but he anchored it to the concrete five feet deep.  It’s the strongest part of the building, if you can believe it.”

“But they’ll never see it,” Cody said, “like they’ll never see all those Bible verses we scribbled on the beams, studs, and sheet rock.”

Vernon smiled and shook his head.  “But that’s the neat part.  The sheet rock we put over the cross?  Well, you kept telling us something wasn’t right with it, and we kept telling you otherwise. That sheetrock’s hung very, very precariously.  But it is hung.”

“Go on,” Cody said.

“We made that wall with forty, three-story tall pieces of sheet rock – we just made them up as we went with mud, glue, and tabs we made out of plastic.  Some guy at MIT told us how to do it before the war.  He even emailed us detailed drawings.”

Cody shook his head.  “Is there a punch line?”

“The whole lot of them, all those sheets of sheetrock,” Vernon said, “are held up with the same kind of material safe manufacturers use when they make fusible links in safes.”

“Fusible links?” Cody said.  “Okay – with the least bit of heat on them, they melt.”

“And we have every one of them wired into the electrical system.  When my timer hits five pm tomorrow night, those panels are going to come crashing down on the heads of a thousand Muslims.”

“But it gets better,” David said.  “The cross – we strung it with a million twinkling Christmas lights!”

“Now that’s a fitting end to Ramadan!”  Vernon said.

Cody laughed.  “And you guys hid this from me for how many years?  And we won’t be here to see it.”

“Tonight’s the night, Cody,” Vernon said.  “We’re packed and ready.”

The men walked into the hardware store.  Cody came in behind them, looked around, and then ran to the secret door.  David had hinted earlier, as clearly and as unambiguously as anyone could, that he’d been to the church and had seen the explosives.  That could only mean that Lisa had told him about the stash, that she herself may have led him, as well as the others, to the hiding place in the old church basement.  Cody slid back the secret door, stepped into the cool darkness, and quietly closed the door behind him.

He saw an oil lamp, full of oil and well-trimmed, sitting on the floor just past the first turn.  He hurried along the passage as quickly as he could, stooping at times to miss the low, sagging beams above his head, and he crashed into Marcus just before reaching the basement below the Greenspan building.

“Where is your mother?” Cody asked. 

“She’s with Tracy and Katrina,” Marcus said, pulling Cody’s shirt.  “It didn’t take long to reach the foundation of the courthouse – it took us about two hours.”

Cody followed Marcus, careful to watch his steps, and he kept his eyes up on the beams above him as the light bounced along, illuminating them.  The passage widened; and Cody saw the C-4, all of it, all two hundred pounds of it, stacked neatly against the right hand wall.  He didn’t stop: he just kept running. 

Marcus gave out a short whistle just before they reached the space below the courthouse.

Tracy and Lisa turned and saw Cody. 

Lisa quietly put her shovel down and ran to Cody, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him wildly all over his face, squeezing her body tightly against his.

“Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you, Mr. Cody Marshall,” Lisa said, and she squeezed him, refusing to let him go.

“I’m glad you’re okay – I really am,” Cody said, pulling Lisa’s head close to him.  “Looks like God is on our side.  But how did you manage to get all the explosives here?” Cody asked.

“Nabeeb and his horse-drawn wagon,” Lisa said, pulling away a little.  “It took them two trips.  They got the detonators, every single one of them, and all of the C-4!”

Tracy came over to Cody and hugged him.  “Two hundred pounds?  And all you could give me was fifty?”

“So the game’s still on, ladies,” Cody said, embracing Lisa again, picking her up off her feet and squeezing her.  “How many digital detonators do we have, Lisa?”

“Five digital, five wireless, and ten plunger style, which they almost decided to leave,” Lisa said. 

“And Tracy, you’re still on for the courthouse and the ammo dumps?”

“David and I got that,” Tracy said.  “Once we set them tonight, we’re leaving – heading south to link up with the mobile group – that is, if you don’t mind.”

Cody shook his head. “So, Lisa, you got through?”

“I ran into a friendly patrol long before Beech Grove,” Lisa said, rubbing her hands gently up and down Cody’s strong arms.  “And I ran into Bashar’s men on the way back.  The crescent shield, I used it – and they didn’t touch me.  But Jadhari, he . . . he raped me, but not with his junk.  He---”

Cody hugged Lisa close, felt her body shaking, and he listened to her cry. 

“There was nothing I could do,” Lisa said.  “Two men tied me up.”

Tracy put her hand on Lisa’s back, rubbing it in small, clockwise circles.

“But I’m okay now,” Lisa continued in the same sad but defiant tone.  “He didn’t hurt me.  It was almost like he was being apologetic somehow, and kind, in a vicious sort of way.  But not the terrorist I always thought would end up getting me.  He even said he was sorry for what he did, and he untied me.”

“You kind of feel sorry for the guy, don’t you?”  Cody asked, as he put his palm against the side of her head and held her close.  “And I don’t say that lightly.”

“Somehow, and I don’t how I can say this, it seems like he could be a different person had everything turned out . . . differently.  I mean, here in America.”

Tracy leaned her shovel against the wall as quietly as she could, and then she gathered up Katrina and Marcus.  With herself in between them, she put her arms around them and led them back towards the Greenspan basement.  She turned and looked at Cody before she left.  “Why don’t you two come along and grab something to eat.  Nabeeb hasn’t held anything back.  His daughter and her boyfriend are supposed to meet us for breakfast anyway.  And it would be good for you to talk to them.”

“Where have you been hiding them?”  Cody asked.

“They’ve been on the opposite side of the square, mostly minding their own
business
,” Tracy said, rolling her eyes and grimacing, pointing to Marcus and Katrina.  “But they’ll be making the breakout tonight with the men.  So they’ll be staying with me and Lisa tonight.”  Tracy picked up an oil lamp and handed it to Katrina.  She hurried them out of the room and into the passage way

Cody looked at Lisa with a puzzled look.  “Minding their own business?  Did she put an emphasis on the word
business
?  What was she talking about?”

“Let’s get out of here,” Lisa said, managing a pained smile.  “It’s none of our business.”