The Last Infidel (17 page)

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27
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Jadhari had been on his feet for hours, tied up to a post, his hands and legs bound with rope, his head covered with an old, musty, burlap sack.  He hadn’t had so much as a sip of water or bite to eat since who-knew-when.  He stood there in the darkness of the tunnel system like a prisoner of the Crusades awaiting death in a Crusader’s castle.  He stirred when he heard Cody coming down the tunnel, hearing Cody whistling The Andy Griffith Show tune like he always used to do, and he lifted his head and tried to mumble through the rag covering his mouth.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Cody said impatiently.  “You guys have us in chains for two years now, and you can’t just sit for a few hours?”  Cody removed his small knife and started to cut through the ropes, but thought better of it.  He put the knife away and worked the knots, pulling and tugging them with his hands.

Jadhari seemed to relax when he felt the ropes being removed, and he even tried to let out a small laugh, if his jiggling body was any indication.

“I guess I should have taken that bag off your head – or is it a towel?” Cody said.  “But I guess that will just have to wait.”

Jadhari mumbled something from inside the hood, but Cody paid him no attention.

“Just had a visit from your friend, Zaid,” Cody said plainly.  “Seems like the dogs will be hunting after Ramadan.”

Jadhari struggled a bit, trying to hurry up the untying process; but all he did was tighten the knots.

“You know and I know they’re just going to kill me and the others – probably something spectacular.  Like a cross or something.  Maybe they’ll tie me to four horses and quarter me – that’d be a sight to see.  But I’m sure they’ll try to rob me of my virginity first – your men are dying to know what a real man is like.”

Jadhari’s hands and feet were free a minute later; and he jiggled around like a marionette, losing his balance more than once, as he tried to regain his orientation. 

Cody loosened the rope around Jadhari’s neck and threw it aside.  Then he pulled the sack up off his head.  “You know, Jadhari – that’s the only way a woman would ever go out with you.  Just keep the sack over your head.  It becomes you, as does the death that awaits you.”

“Yes, Cody,” Jadhari said.  “I know what comes after Ramadan – and that’s why I and my father have offered you a way out of here.  But you just keep staying.  If you get killed, it’s not my fault.”

“We’ve got some business to---” Cody hesitated when he heard Lisa and Tracy raising their voices somewhere down the next tunnel, and he suddenly felt afraid.

“Those girls will kill me when they find me,” Jadhari said, his voice wavering.

“You didn’t rape Lisa,” Cody said, peering over Jadhari’s shoulder and down the tunnel.  No light.  Not yet.  But the girls were coming.

Jadhari shook his head.

“Marcus?”

“That was Zafar,” Jadhari said without insisting, and with a sober voice.  “I am not free to do as I choose.  They say let Zafar in, and I have to let Zafar in!”

He wasn’t lying.  Cody knew it, and he nodded, looking up towards the rocks in the wall above him.  He’d never thought for a second Jadhari had raped Marcus, let alone Lisa, though he could’ve lollipopped her.  And he could tell by the look on Jadhari’s face that, whether or not he did or didn’t rape Lisa and her son, more pressing issues were at hand.  He knew Jadhari’s expressions and mannerisms well enough to know that he was about to learn something about those other issues.

“When my father leaves here, I will remain,” Jadhari said.  “And I do not think it will go well for me.  The president of the mosque suspects I have not been true to Jihad.  I will be nothing more than a guard.  The other men, they will kill me.”

“Zaid said as much,” Cody said, pulling Jadhari by the sleeve back towards the Greenspan basement. “And Jose?”

“They were going to kill him anyway,” Jadhari said.  “They knew he had come to find the Lisa girl and that I knew all about it.  I refused to take part in the killing – I refused the order of the imam and the president of the mosque.”

Cody pointed back over Jadhari’s shoulder towards the tunnel.  The girls’ voices, now loud and close, forced Cody to a decision he’d rather spend an hour making.  “I believe you – but they won’t.  You have my back – I have yours.  Like old times.”

Jadhari smiled and nodded, then he shook his friend’s hand and turned to look down the tunnel.  A faint light appeared.  The girls were coming.  “None of this ever happened.  We’ll forget all about it and get back to business as usual.  And do try to get out of here tomorrow night – I’ll try to keep just a few men on the square.  We’ll need them at---”

“The mosque is going to be blown up tomorrow at four,” Cody said.  “Gasoline tanker at the back.  Vernon and somebody else.”

Jadhari’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.  “How are they going to do it?”

“The generator tanks are going to go empty just before the five o’clock prayers,” Cody interrupted.  “That’s part of the plan.  You’ll find a charge of C-4 in the crawl space, about half way down, and another on the tanker itself.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You spring the trap at four on the nose, do you hear me?”

“Four o’clock – okay then,” Jadhari said.  “But why---?”

“You arrest the two people hiding in the crawl space, but don’t hurt them – will you promise me?”

“I don’t know if I will be able to protect them.”

“Oh, you will,” Cody said.  “You’re making an arrest, just like I taught you to do.  But you make it look mean and nasty.  Use that club a little, but don’t beat them up too bad.”

Jadhari’s face took on a guarded appearance, not because he didn’t believe what Cody was telling him, but why.  He touched his chin, now dark and stubbly, and he looked down.  Then he said, “I will not hurt them.  You have my word.”

Cody pulled on his arm and hurried him through the tunnels.  “You bring the president of the mosque with you when you make the bust, and you tell him that you’ve been watching for just this sort of thing.  Now, his dogs will never detect the bomb or the people in that crawl space.  They won’t even smell the bomb on the tanker.  You’ll be the hero of the year.  After that, nobody will bother you.”

“But what about the two people?”

Cody stopped near the steps leading up to the workshop.  “They belong to me.  You bring them back to the square and make it look like they’ve escaped – I don’t know.  Do something.  They just need to get out of here and head south.  They’ll know what to do once you let them go.”

“I don’t deserve the things you have done for me,” Jadhari said, studying the face of his old friend. 

Cody put his hand on his shoulder and smiled and said, “You’re right.”

Jadhari smiled.

“You know I’m kidding,” Cody said.

“But I know you are not.”

“You know what to do with what I’ve just given you,” Cody said hopefully.  “Maybe there’ll be times in the future when you can do what is right – I mean, real, honest-to-goodness right.  You might be Muslim, but you sure as hell aren’t an Islamist.”

Jadhari turned around when he heard a cry: a loud, angry, throat-scratching, full-of-cursing cry coming from behind him in the tunnel.

“That would be Tracy,” Cody said.  “And those cries might become knives or bullets any second now.”

Jadhari shook Cody’s hand, smiled, and said, “Maybe in another time, in another place – certainly not here – we will meet again and things won’t be so---”

“Islamist?”

“Yes, that is the word – Islamist.”

Cody and Jadhari rushed up the steps and hurried out of the tunnel and into the workroom.  The two men working in the shop, both of them wearing welding masks over their faces, looked up when they saw the two men coming.

Cody waved at them and said, “It looks like our old friend has just been saved!”

The two men laughed and shook their heads, and both of them went back to work welding steel pipes together.

Cody and Jadhari fled through the back door and ran down the alley.

{
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Cody Marshall stood on the second-story of the hardware store, holding a glass of water, looking across the square towards East Main Street.  The light of morning, it’s rays tripping over the tops of the buildings and tall trees opposite him, would blind him in moments.  He looked to his right, not at the old city offices complex, with its once stunning gardens, gurgling fountains, and bronze sculptures, now either dried up, destroyed, or removed, but through it.  As he looked, he thought of Lisa and Marcus and how they had, many hours earlier – probably around midnight – put on their packs, picked up their weapons, and hurried down the old tunnels once used by the Underground Railroad.  By now they’d be somewhere in the cedar thickets just east of the old interstate, Lisa leading not only Marcus and Katrina, but Nabeeb’s daughter and her boyfriend and what remained of Cody’s work crew.

He looked down onto the street and scowled.  Soldiers, all of them armed, were lining up at the rear of the courthouse.  From the far left came another group of soldiers; and, on the right, coming up from Church Street, other troops, all of them marching in unison, made their way towards the courthouse lawn.  By now, all of Bashar’s men would have eaten; and they would not eat again until after nightfall.

As far as Cody knew, every last infidel, with the exception of himself, Vernon, and Tracy, had left Murfreesboro.  Jadhari would have explaining to do tomorrow morning.  But, by then, he’d also be a hero, and perhaps he’d also be forgiven for having allowed the infidels in his charge to have escaped.

Cody heard the sound of several pairs of boots, heavy and quick.  He turned and walked the length of the sleeping area, now vacant – thanking God that his remaining men had not died here – and hurried down the stairs to meet whoever it was Jadhari had sent this morning.  No doubt it would be Zaid and perhaps two other equally detestable pigs of his caliber.  Why he would come this morning, Cody couldn’t guess.

“Cody Marshall!”

It was Zaid, Cody thought.  Maybe he’d come to remind him that, tomorrow, at sun up, he’d be nailed to an old, wooden cross.  Cody hurried down the wooden steps and saw Zaid.  He smiled, brushed back his hair, and walked confidently up to the man.  “What can you do for me today, Zaid?”

Without a word, and without hesitation, but with an intense fire of hatred in his eyes, Zaid handed Cody a silver crescent shield, the one marked number thirteen.  He turned and started to walk away.

Cody snapped his fingers.

Zaid stopped, but neither he nor his two men turned around.

“So, it looks like Jadhari’s got you in hand,” Cody announced loudly and triumphantly.  He lifted the silver shield and said, “You like this, don’t you, Zaid?  I guess you have some orders from Jadhari as well, isn’t that right?”

Zaid swung himself around.  His dark, thick neck strained, and his jaws worked like a pair of Vice Grips.  He said, “You are authorized to make your way to the mosque unhindered for any reason.  However, at five o’clock, you cannot be on the property of the mosque.  The imam has ordered that you, while under guard, are to see that the generators are . . . are happy.”

Cody laughed and said, “Happy?”  Then he put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the ceiling, still laughing.  “Did you---?”  He pointed his finger at Zaid.  “You . . . did you really just say that?  Holy crap – you probably don’t even know what that word means!”

Zaid’s eyes flickered with rage, like an old projector running through a reel of some B-rated slasher film.

“See that?” Cody yelled, pointing at Zaid.  “Yep.  You guys are always pissed off because being pissed off is easy.  I would recommend Zig Ziglar – oh, but I forgot.  You burned down the library.  Oh, and by the way, if you hadn’t destroyed the electrical grid, your houses would still have air conditioning.”

“And you’re running out of time, Mr. Marshall,” Zaid hissed.

Cody, without a word, expressionless and without a hint of anxiety, dangled the pass in front of Zaid.  “I got all the time I need.  Maybe I’ll use it to escape.”

Zaid and his men turned and left.

Cody slipped quietly away, letting Bashar’s men have their day on the back lawn of the courthouse and on the rapidly deteriorating streets.  The dignitaries, and everyone else of stature who had come to town – all of them probably hiding out in the fashionable, though now fragrant, east side of town – would be addressing the troops and their officers, if not here on the square, then in the camps; and later, at the mosque.

He stepped out into the workshop and walked over to one of the workbenches.  He picked up the tool he had designed, examining the length, the welds, the nuts and bolts, and its functionality.  It felt solid and heavy, exactly as he had designed it; and his guys had made it better than anything they’d ever made before.  They’d even painted it with a semi-gloss black paint.  When Cody flipped it right side up, he smiled.  “From Cody with love,” he said out loud to himself; and he walked towards the rear door, carrying his new tool in one hand and a toolbox in the other.  He slowly opened the door and leaned out like he always did before stepping outside.  There’d be no reason for Jadhari’s men to patrol the alley, not this morning, anyway.  He walked out onto the top step, closed the door, and descended into the alley.  He worked on his truck until nearly three in the afternoon and, when he finished, he jumped in and drove off towards the mosque.

Carefully making his way down East Main Street towards Greenland Avenue, Cody drove more on the curb than on the road.  The bed of his truck, filled with tools, boxes of sheet metal screws, and cylinders filled with Freon, rode low behind him.  His bumper dragged the curb when he’d been forced to steer off the road.

The street was filled with men of Bashar’s Islamic Front Army.  Hundreds of men, perhaps a thousand or more, walked in front of him like the flow of molasses dripping from a spoon on a cold winter day.  All of the soldiers were armed, most of them carrying a variety of weapons: AR15s, AKs, and rifle propelled grenade launchers.  They’d first head to the college campus, stack their weapons, and, from there – hardly more than a tenth of a mile – make their way to the mosque.  Everything and everybody looked on time and on schedule.

Today, Bashar’s men weren’t marching, Cody noticed.  They looked instead like groups of teenagers heading to physical education, or to the school nurse for a physical, bunched up into small groups, everyone laughing and joking about something that might or might not have mattered.  As long as they arrived at the mosque shortly before five, in time for the prayer and dedication of the mosque, how they got there and how they conducted themselves on the way wouldn’t matter.

The drive down East Main to MTSU Drive took Cody twenty minutes, and in that time he worried about Vernon and Tracy who, by now, had probably already drained the generator tanks, placed the C-4 deep beneath the underbelly of the mosque, and were tucked away in the crawl space.  He reassured himself more than once that Jadhari, who answered to no one but Bashar, and who could always appeal to his father’s authority to justify everything he chose to do, would have no problem arresting Tracy and Vernon.  He’d do as he had promised.  Tracy and Vernon would be caught – hopefully they wouldn’t shoot Jadhari – and Jadhari and his men would take them back to the square, handcuffed, and place them behind bars in the Juvenile Center behind the square.  After that, Jadhari would find a way to get them out: he’d done it for others more than once; and he’d probably wait until nightfall, when every Muslim in the county broke their fast on this, the last day of Ramadan.

When Cody reached the corner of Greenland Drive, he was alone.  Bashar’s men were behind him and would be arriving soon.  But other troops, from what unit Cody didn’t know, would be coming as well; and they would be coming down the street opposite him.

In a split second, Cody had an illuminating change of mind.  Instead of driving on to the mosque – he had a few minutes to spare before Jadhari “saved” the mosque – he turned onto Greenland Drive and then right again.  He came up behind the piles of rock and rubble of what had once been a strip mall and had since become a major construction refuse dump site.  Except for a few small chunks of concrete, the thin, bumpy path into the building graveyard was clear.  Cody drove into it slowly, following it in the direction of the mosque.  It turned right, narrowing as it ran.  When he came to the end of the path, he pulled into a small, hidden turnaround.  He turned the truck off, grabbed a pair of binoculars, and climbed down onto the white, dusty, ground.  He looked at his watch.  Three forty-five.  Jadhari would be assembling a few of his guards right about now, probably looking at his watch, timing his arrest of Vernon and Tracy so that it fell exactly at four o’clock.

Cody hurried across the turnaround, ascending a heap of broken concrete slab and wire.  The mound looked to be about a story high and not a foot more, but getting to the top took some effort – more of a balancing act than a feat of strength.  He slid backwards more than once as he struggled upwards, catching himself before he fell, twisted an ankle, or cracked his skull open.  But he managed to pull himself up little by little.  He reached the top and nearly fell backwards when a large, flat piece of concrete tilted and wobbled.  He did fall on his backside, but he caught himself.  Then he stepped to the side and started to stand up.

He stopped when he heard the sounds of rocks popping beneath car tires.  Maybe it was Jadhari; but no, it wouldn’t be, he thought – this was his big day.  Jadhari wouldn’t miss it for hundreds of reasons, especially since his life might depend on it.

Cody looked frantically around him while feeling his waist and pockets.  Not a single weapon – not so much as a small penknife, or even a pen, for that matter.  A rock maybe; and he turned his head this way and that, looking down at his feet and to the sides; but he saw nothing small enough to be picked up.  He struggled back down the rubble pile the way he’d come, slipping and sliding, skinning his shin at one point, as he hurried down. 

The sounds of the approaching vehicle, now nearer, now about to come around the final turn, grew louder.  His eyes settled on a small piece of broken rebar, rusty and short, lying at the foot of the mound.  He hurried to it, reached down, and picked it up.  Then he slid it into the back of his pants just as the vehicle – one of the few trucks left, and one used by Jadhari’s men – came around the bend.

Cody rolled his eyes and swore.  Of all the people in the world, friend and foe alike, it would have had to have been Zaid, the bastard, along with one of his men.  He was driving a truck, an old, beat up Dodge Ram with more miles on it than the collective IQ of every Muslim in the country.  The truck slid into the turnaround, throwing rocks everywhere, and stopped.  A cloud of white dust filled the air, enveloping Cody in white a shroud.

The truck doors opened and Zaid, with an evil grin on his face, pointed straight at Cody. 

The other guard came around the side of the truck with his rifle raised, a young, smug-faced boy of about fifteen with thick black hair and laughing eyes.  His finger was off the trigger and the muzzle was pointed down at an angle.  He stood close to Zaid like a son with his father on his first hunt.

“Where’s Jadhari?” Zaid coughed, as he tried to wave the heavy, dry just away from his face.

“You know I don’t give a crap if you shoot me, Zaid,” Cody said, leaning into Zaid’s space, then backing off again.

The young boy flinched and raised his weapon.

“Looks like you’re breaking in, or should I say
into
, another young boy, Zaid,” Cody laughed.

Zaid raged at Cody, and he swore.  He pulled out his long, dirty knife.  He held it with a tightened grip, a grip so firm that his dark knuckles turned white.

The boy pulled on Zaid’s camouflage sleeve, and Zaid turned.  He whispered something to his boss, pulling him back when Zaid tried to lean away from him.  When the boy finished speaking – every word of which Cody could make out – he let go of Zaid and turned to face Cody.

Zaid composed himself.  He relaxed his grip on the blade, flattened out his lips, and took a deep breath.

“The boy knows his Koran,” Cody remarked.  “You’re not allowed to kill me in anger – Allah would not permit it.  That pretty much means I have nothing to fear when I’m with you, Zaid.”

Zaid raised his hand and thumbed it towards the boy.  “But he’s cold and---”

“Frigid?”  Cody shot back.  “You should try some soft light and music – maybe a little wine.”

“Maybe you would like to know about what’s going to happen to your two friends who are hiding behind the mosque,” Zaid said, nodding with an ever widening smile.  “And it is a good thing you have those binoculars, which you probably stole – but you can have them for now because you are going to need them.”

Cody stepped forward into Zaid’s space a second time.  The young man put the barrel of his gun against Cody’s chest; but Zaid raised his hand and lowered the weapon.

Zaid laughed, pleased with himself for finally having affected Cody, and he said, “And who is angry now?”

Cody could no longer feel the heat of the day, the ground beneath his feet, or the sweat running in buckets down his body.

“And Jadhari?” Zaid chuckled.  “He will kill them – he told me as much.”

The boy raised his gun and stepped back, keeping the weapon out of Cody’s tentative reach.