The Last Infidel (16 page)

Cody got their attention and said, “But, if I were you, I would place the tanker further away.  Maybe I could park it behind the mosque, up on this paved elevation.  I don’t like the idea of having it so close to the mosque.”

Imam Kumali raised his hand in the air and said, “Just the point my . . . I was making to my assistant.  This tanker would make an easy target, being so close to my mosque – so, yes.  I agree.  We will park it up on the hill with the other equipment.”

“Shall I begin cooling the prayer rooms for tomorrow’s celebration?” Cody asked.

“Yes, sixty-nine degrees, no more and no less,” Imam Kumali demanded.

“Sixty-nine is the best position, as you obviously know,” Cody said.  But seventy-four is the best I’ll be able to do.  Maybe seventy-three.”

“Seventy-three it is, then,” Imam Kumali said in a surprised voice, as he looked at his watch.  “Now that we have everything worked out, Mr. Marshall, please spend the rest of the day and inspect once more.  Report to me if you need anything.”

Cody looked back up towards the elevated area as Imam Kumali and his men walked back towards the front of the mosque.

And he smiled.

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Tracy was absolutely, no-holds-barred, vicious as she sat at the wooden table, in the old Greenspan basement, in the light of two oil lamps that seemed to flicker whenever she spoke.  “Whatever Lisa chooses to do with Jadhari,” she pronounced to Cody with a fury know only to scorned females, “would be far more civilized than any pardon or leniency granted by the henchman of ISA to any of their victims.”  And the best thing about her having snatched Jadhari from the workshop of the hardware store – Tracy shouted to Cody from the basement after he had gotten up and hurried towards the room beneath the courthouse where Jadhari was tied, gagged, and chained to the wall – the best thing, Cody, was that there would be one less, high-powered, Muslim thug left in Murfreesboro about whom innocents would have to worry.  Jadhari is worse than them all – holy cow, Cody, really – even though you can’t see it through that overly-sentimental, wishful thinking of yours that everyone can change given the time and encouragement.  And now that you have Lisa, your new girlfriend, the second one you’ve ever had, an affair at which I’m frankly shocked knowing about, shows how little you grasp the reality that’s staring you in the face – that there can be no love in war.  Not two years ago, certainly not now, not ever.
[i]

And if you can stop Lisa from killing Jadhari, slowly, and with the great pleasure she’s entitled to, then tomorrow will never come: nothing will ever change. 

Jadhari had to die.

The first words Cody and Lisa said when they saw each other were simple words of greeting, familiar to them both, kind and gentle.  Cody told her he understood her reasons for wanting to do what she wanted to do, that he knew she wanted justice for what she and her son had endured recently and over the last two years.  Lisa responded with a nod, telling him she was glad he understood her position; but she also reminded him that no fate could ever be too severe for Jadhari, just as Tracy had said. 

Jadhari seemed to have something to say in the matter, if body language and muffled grunting and moaning was any indication that actions spoke louder than words. 

And Cody carefully reminded Lisa that all of the infidels remaining in town were in this fight together; and that, “If you kill Jadhari,” he whispered in her ear, “the plans I’ve made for the last day of Ramadan will probably fail.”

“I really, really want to hurt him,” Lisa said softly, putting a long combat knife against Jadhari’s throat.

Lisa was an athletic type, nothing flabby or lose about her, with well-defined calves, muscular thighs, and an upper body chiseled from her waist up.  Cody had first seen her a year ago, up close, near the edge of a stream, after he’d quietly made his way down to the edge of the water to refill his canteen.  Lisa had just finished taking a bath.  She’d seen him watching her – she recognized him as the ex-sheriff immediately – and allowed him a moment’s glance at her bare chest before covering herself.  After picking up her bow and quiver, she turned and spoke to him, saying, “Hey there, Cody Marshall,” much to his everlasting embarrassment.

Cody knew Lisa wanted to kill Jadhari.  But he kept his cool and smiled in a way he always did just before he made an arrest he didn’t want to make.  “Jadhari here would like to dissuade you from slitting his throat open from ear to ear,” he said, and Jadhari, nodding his head, seemed to agree.  “But even then, I don’t want you doing it – but only for your sake.”

Lisa just kept her damp eyes on the task at hand.  She wore a tensed frown, the sad kind, a frown that told Cody she’d never do it, and that she knew she couldn’t.  If Jadhari had been in the sights of her rifle, where she could have shot him at an impersonal distance, she probably would have pulled the trigger.  But a knife to the throat took cold, dark talent, something Cody thanked God Lisa would probably never have.

“If I don’t do it, he’ll just keep on doing to others what he did to Marcus,” Lisa said.

“So you’ll kill him and that’ll be the end of it,” Cody agreed.  He slipped in close to Lisa, putting his lips to her ear.  “One more day – that’s all we need.”

Lisa lowered the knife and turned towards the opposite side of the room, taking a few steps with her blade at waist level while Cody watched her.

He studied her movements and, now that his eyes had acclimated to the low light conditions in the room, he tried to study her face.  He felt sure she’d never do it.  The tears in her eyes were tears of anger: she probably hated herself because she knew she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to cut Jadhari.

Lisa put her knife back into its sheath.  Without a word, she stormed back down the passage to where Tracy was waiting.

Cody let her go.  He’d catch up to her in a minute.  He walked over to Jadhari and said, “You know and I know that I should have let her cut you.  But you owe me now – this is the last bullet I am ever going to take for you, do you understand me?”  He saw Jadhari struggling to breathe, so he loosened the ropes around his chest and arms.  Then he turned and followed Lisa.

Cody, Lisa, and Tracy sat around the wooden table, all of them looking at each other, waiting for the others to speak.   How many times they’d gathered around this table he couldn’t guess.  But this would probably be the last time.

Cody didn’t bother with trivialities, because every hour, every minute, had become precious.  He could only see the evening’s job staring him in the face, and he knew he needed to be working.  It would take him at least two hours, maybe three, in the workshop, fabricating a tool he’d need on the last day of Ramadan.  And he’d need two men to help him with the job.

“Tonight’s the night,” Cody said, Looking at Lisa.  “But we’ve got a slight change in the plan.”

“No changes,” Tracy said forcefully.

“A gasoline tanker is going to be parked behind the mosque tomorrow morning,” Cody said, as he raised his eyebrows and looked at Tracy.

Tracy’s eyes began to glow.

“Sure, no changes – I’m good with that,” Cody said with a smile.  “You’ve got some second-rate ammo dumps to deal with, along with the courthouse.  Those are some worthy objectives.”

“Hold your horses, sweetie,” Tracy said, getting up out of her chair, running her hand over the top of her stubbly head.  “That’s our best chance to take out that mosque and everyone inside it.  How do you know about the tanker?”

“Tomorrow night, at five sharp, every ISA officer and every soldier not on guard duty will be in that mosque for evening prayers,” Cody said, ignoring Tracy.  “Every floor will be filled – three thousand men at least.  Probably four thousand.  All of them celebrating the last day of Ramadan.”

“But not at the rear of the mosque,” Lisa said, rubbing her chin.  “And that’s the problem.  Blow up the tanker there and maybe you’ll burn down the educational wing.  But that would be like swatting a hornet’s nest with a rolled up newspaper.”

Cody turned his eyes on Lisa, pursed his lips, and nodded in agreement. “I’ve got an idea, but we’re going to need a reason to refuel the generator tanks at about five tomorrow afternoon.” 

“I’m all ears,” Tracy said.

“I’m going to need you at the mosque tonight,” Cody said to Tracy.  “Vernon, you remember him – I’ve got him in a crawl space in the right rear of the building.  You need to tell him to turn off the fuel flow to the generators tomorrow at four forty-five.  We won’t be able to bring the tanker down to the building unless we can make it look like we’re out of gas.”

Marcus and Katrina, along with Nabeeb’s daughter and her boyfriend, came running into the room.  Marcus stopped, leaning over the wooden table, looking around the room at the walls.  He was wet from head to toe and nearly out of breath.  He looked at his mother and said, “On the other side of the square, near where Jadhari was keeping you, there’s another tunnel.  Goes all the way out to Lytle Creek – maybe a mile.”

“That’s our way out, then,” Lisa said, looking at Marcus with a mixture of surprise and immediacy.  “Can you show us?”

“And we saw more soldiers,” Katrina interrupted.  “Lots more.  And it looks like they’re heading this way.”

“Extra security for the president and the rest of the high-ranking rabble,” Tracy said.

“Who?” Lisa asked.

“The ex-President of the United States,” Tracy replied.  “He’ll be here, along with other high-ranking ISA officials.  Everybody who’s anybody will be at the mosque when it’s dedicated.”

“Lisa,” Cody said.  “Check out Marcus’s discovery, will you?  And see if you can identify the troops moving towards us – see if they’re Bashar’s men.”

Lisa was heading towards the tunnel, slinging the rifle Cody had given her, and reaching for her camo hat.  With her one free hand she straightened out her shirt.  It was still early.  She’d run the distance under the courthouse, past Jadhari, and find the new tunnel.  She’d be back in an hour or so, and she’d have plenty of time to prepare for tonight’s escape.

Cody got up and hurried towards her before she disappeared into the tunnel, unconcerned about Tracy for the moment, and he put his hand on her waist and said, “Wait for us under the courthouse when you get back,” he said, but Lisa’s only answer was a nod and a smile.

Lisa took Marcus with her, leaving the others in the Greenspan basement, and she hurried away.

“You should have let her kill him,” Tracy said coldly, after Lisa had gone.

“Why?” Cody snapped.  “So she can have somebody tell her one day that she’s too much of a cold-blooded killer to have as a wife?”  He glanced at Tracy’s face in the soft light of the lamp, saw that she looked cold and detached, like somebody comfortable deploying expendable soldiers to the field of battle.  “And it may never have occurred to you that me and my guys have everything under control here,” he added smartly.

“How many have been killed in the last two days, Cody?”  Tracy said.  “Yep, you’ve got everything under control.”

“I want you to find Vernon as soon as darkness allows you to move,” Cody insisted.  “And if you can do it, drain the tanks down to half tonight.  That’ll guarantee we’ll be short on gas by around three or so. When you shut down the flow at four forty-five, I’ll have to check the fuel levels before they let me bring the truck down.  If I’m not the one driving, you’ll have to improvise.”

“How much C-4 are you going to give me?” Tracy asked.

“How much do you need?”

“Ten pounds.”

“You won’t need that much,” Cody said.  “But I’ll give you ten pounds and two detonators in case you have any problems.  Tell Vernon to start pumping the gasoline into the crawl space---”

“Crawl space?”

“It should be enough to burn the mosque down – the whole mosque,” Cody said, taking his seat in the chair next to Tracy.  “Tell Vernon to pump as much gas as he can under the building any time after four forty-five.  But, before you do that, put five pounds of C-4 deep inside the crawl space – he’ll know just the place.”

“You haven’t much thought this through, have you?”  Tracy asked, impressed with Cody’s ideas, however much improvisation they’d need in order to work.

“There is no other way,” Cody replied with a smile.  “Now, you’re recon – catch up with Lisa and tell me what’s at the other end of that tunnel.”

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Cody and two of his men removed the explosives and detonators from the tunnel, carrying them up and out in old, wooden crates.  They stacked the boxes, old, antique ammunition crates salvaged from a local antique mall, in the hardware store workshop.  The three men worked quickly, like drug dealers unloading a tractor trailer; and despite the cool air in the tunnels, the work was hot, tiring, and strenuous. 

Cody considered the chance of discovery by one of Bashar’s men unlikely – though if he’d been caught with the C-4, the chances of his being shot were practically certain.  There’d been a few times, times when he’d been full of doubt – or maybe he’d been depressed – when he allowed his fear and better judgment to lapse comfortably into the background of reality.  It was during those times that he took the greatest risks, even stupid ones, but he’d always survived: saved, perhaps, by the hand of God.  Or maybe he’d been saved by his sheer bravado and carelessness, a boldness so glaring that his enemies would brush off his actions as being too brazen to be taken seriously.  And Cody hoped that, right now, this was one of those times.

With a grunt and a huff, two of Jadhari’s guards came strolling up the steps to the back door of the hardware store, both of them looking back at Cody’s F-150, perhaps wishing they had one just like it.

Cody’s men paid the two visitors very little attention other than to whisper something among themselves and shake their heads.  Just as Jadhari’s men stepped into the workshop, Cody’s guys went to work looking for some metal pipes in a scrap pile.

“It’s about time Jadhari sent someone over here,” Cody said.  “We’ve got a couple hundred pounds of explosives to load into the back of my truck, plus some detonators.  You can start with the box next to the door.”

One of the guards, Zaid, a heavyset, heavily-bearded, thirty-something man, laughed.  “You are a funny man – so you think.  You are one of the last infidels – thus, you are the slave.  That means you do the work.”

“Which is why the town looks and smells the way it does,” Cody said, walking over to a pile of boxed sheet metal screws.  He had more to say, but he held his tongue.  Having jabbed Zaid once, he backed off.  But he thought how sweet it would be to take one of the conduit pipes leaning against the wall and bash this guy’s brains in – not a bad idea right now, given the fact that most of the infidels left in this town, including himself, had probably less than a day’s worth of living left to enjoy.  And the bodies of Zaid and his men, all dead and bloodied?  They’d stash easily, somewhere beneath the floor. 

But Zaid was a tough, angry Muslim.  And when he could get away with anything, up to and including beating infidels, he’d take the chance.  Jadhari would usually let him have his way, opting to take his side in the matter – though Jadhari had once taken Cody’s side after Cody had beaten Zaid for interfering with his work.  Even Bashar had stood behind his old friend. 

Cody knew Zaid was getting hot, like he always did when no ranking bastard of Mohammed was around to distract him from his temper.  The look in his eyes – Cody kept glancing at him – confirmed it.  In two seconds, Zaid was going to tell Cody how he planned to kill him.

Zaid was good at death.  He’d been one of the terrorists arrested in a church massacre in Nashville a few years ago.  It hadn’t been enough for him to decapitate the preacher during Sunday service, taking his time with a large butcher knife – a cut here, a cut there, peeling back the skin, purposely avoiding the major arteries until just the right time.  And he’d told the assembly of Christians the only reason he hadn’t taken longer was because a young, nine-year-old girl had caught his eye.  He raped her on the communion table.  The leaders of the church he nailed to pews that had been set upright.  The rest he either enslaved or had shot.

“Where is Jadhari?” Zaid asked.

Cody turned around for a second, pursed his lips, and raised his brows.  Then he shrugged and went back to work.

Zaid walked towards Cody.  He grabbed him by the shirt and swung him around.  “I just asked you a question, you dirty infidel – where is Jadhari?”

“I told you I don’t know,” Cody said calmly.  “But I’ll be glad to tell him you won’t let me get my work done.  Better yet, I’ll tell him I need you to help load these boxes.  You guys are running out of infidels these days – and there’s too few of us to get the work done.”

Zaid grabbed Cody’s shirt and violently swung him into the stack of metal pipes.  Cody fell, and he rolled to the side just as a few large pipes came crashing down.  Cody composed himself and stood up.  Then he picked up a two-foot-long, two-inch diameter length of old, steel pipe.

“You really think you have some power here, don’t you, infidel?” Zaid said furiously, as he pulled out a long, dirty knife.  “But you’re going to end up on the edge of my knife soon – yes, very soon.”

Cody weighed the pipe in his hands, looking down towards the floor.

“And I don’t need a piece of American filth like you being smart!  You may be Jadhari’s friend, but even he will not be able to save you.  He doesn’t even know how to have sex with a woman.   We tied and blindfolded one for him the other day – but he couldn’t do it.  And he just turned away. He’s weak.”

The end of the pipe was rough on the ends, jagged and sharp, like it had been cut with a hacksaw blade.  Cody ran his finger along the lip of the cut and nearly nicked his finger.

“And the president of the mosque – he knows Jadhari set her up so she could escape,” Zaid snarled.  “And when Bashar’s Islamic Front Army moves out, and Jadhari is left behind, we will see just how loyal he is to The Prophet---”

“Piss be upon him,” Cody snarled as he turned, dropping the pipe to the wooden floor.

Cody’s men even stopped pretending to work at the bench when they’d heard their boss’s last remark.  He’d never said that in the presence of one of Mohammed’s bastard sons.

Zaid grabbed Cody’s hair with frightening speed and tilted his head back, putting the edge of his knife against his throat.

Cody’s men carefully reached behind them.  One picked up a claw hammer, the other a ball peen.

Zaid’s man, after a nod from Zaid, came up behind Cody and struck him in the small of his back with the butt of his rifle.  Standard fare when they didn’t want to kill you.

Cody fell to his knees with Zaid’s fingers still holding onto his hair.  He felt the cold blade against his neck, and he knew Zaid had placed only the flat part of the knife, rather than the raggedy, raw edge, against his skin.  Zaid might kill him, but not here.  Not now.  Cody, looking up, smiled and said, “Stop play-acting, you sorry Islamist coward.  Why is it none of your kind ever shows up for a fair fight?  You’re a big man – aren’t you? – as long as a friend of yours is pointing a gun.  But you’d never stand up and fight like a man, would you?  Heck, you people don’t even have sex like real men.  And your women, by the way, despise you – that’s why they try to keep a goat or two on hand.”

“We’re going to crucify you, Cody Marshall,” Zaid hissed through his teeth, close to Cody’s face.  “We will nail you to a cross, right here on the square – and I will drive the nails.”  Zaid jerked Coy up and then threw him to the floor, flinging him by his hair, and then he motioned for the other guard to follow him out.  The two stomped noisily through the workshop and made their way through the building towards the exit onto the square.

Cody, with the help of his men, picked himself up off the dusty, dirty, workroom floor.  He walked over to the workbench – seemingly unperturbed by the recent events – and grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil.  He sketched out a design for a tool, with great detail, and he asked his men if they understood each and every part of what he had in mind.  When he was sure they understood, he nodded.  “One-inch pipe ought to do it,” he said, nodding.  “We’ve got enough of it here to build a prison, so use it.  My measurements are exact – and I mean dead on.  You’ve got two hours.  After that, I’m going to need some help getting these crates as far away from here as I can.  After that, you’re on your own.”

The two men got to work selecting pipe and screws. 

“I’ve got some business to attend to, Cody said.  And he disappeared back into the tunnel.