The Last Infidel (18 page)

“And he will become the hero, my dear Cody, when he does as the imam asks him to do, which will all be according to the words of the Holy Prophet.”

Cody clenched his fists, slowly, and his neck corded.  Jadhari would do no such thing.

Zaid stepped back a foot or two, not perhaps for his own safety, but maybe because he wanted to enjoy the larger picture he’d just created.  For the first time in two years, Zaid had shaken Cody.

“Where are they?”  Cody demanded loudly – feeling powerless, reeling in the psychological clutches of his enemy.  He moved closer to Zaid, with his hands on his hips, one hand, his right, feeling the rebar barely sticking out of the back of his pants.  All of his memories of Tracy – she as a young a girl, he as her boyfriend, came flooding back to him.  The birthday parties, the trips to the pool in the summer, school, all of it – their engagement, the day of the wedding---

Zaid, his eyes moist with tears of glee, laughed; and he threw his head back.  “You know, when I kill you, Mr. Marshall, I will kill you without anger, but with happiness.  Allah will be pleased, and I will be most blessed!”

The young man raised his rifle, lining the sites up with the top of Cody’s skull.  He took another step backwards, just as he had been trained to do when holding prisoners at gunpoint.

“Now we will all climb to the top of these rocks,” Zaid said, pointing up, “because it is almost time.  You will lead us up, Cody Marshall.  And please have your binoculars ready.”  He nodded to the young boy, and the boy stepped back yet again.  He extended the bayonet on his rifle, stepped forward, and pressed the tip of the bayonet into Cody’s left hip.

Cody flinched and pulled away.

“Move,” the boy said, as he stepped forward, jabbing the bayonet at Cody.  “And put your hands up where I can see them.”

Cody raised his hands and turned.  He walked forward, compelled by the tip of the bayonet, and reached the edge of the rubble pile, the same place he’d climbed up earlier.  He used his hands and his feet, and he pushed and pulled himself up.  Zaid and his boy would have to do the same, he thought.  The boy would have to sling the rifle over his shoulder, Zaid’s knife would have to be sheathed.  They’d need both hands if they hoped to make it to the top of the rubble pile.

Cody remembered every single rock he touched earlier as he ascended the mound, touching and stepping on each one just as he had before.  The large, flat piece of concrete, the one that shifted under his feet and nearly threw him down the pile, he avoided.  He moved to the right of it and stopped at the top of the pile.  Zaid avoided the rock was well, moving to the right when Cody moved.  The boy, who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, stepped up onto the rock and stopped.  Cody moved himself to the left and positioned himself in front of the boy and Zaid.

“The exact time, right on the nozzle,” Zaid said with a smirk.  He knelt, drew his knife, and put the point of it against the back of Cody’s neck.  “Time for your binoculars.”

Cody did as he was told, lifting the binoculars to his eyes.  He looked out across the barren, graveled ground.  With its uneven paving, tall spindly weeds, and occasional piles of boulders, it looked more like a moonscape than it did anything else, if that’s what the moon looked like.  Or maybe it looked like a desert somewhere out west, where things struggled to survive in the heat and drought, finding water and hope in unlikely places; where carrion fowl looked for the dead, rotting in the scorching heat of the unforgiving and unrelenting sun; where the determined wanderer, with little left in his canteen, marched forward, driven by hope, however fleeting and mirage-like it might be.

Then Cody saw Vernon and Tracy near the back of the mosque.  Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were kneeling.  He could see Jadhari; and he saw a number of Jadhari’s men standing with him: his father, Bashar, the president of the mosque, and the imam.  Beside the imam stood the President of the United States.

Cody lowered the binoculars, but he quickly felt the blade of Zaid’s knife pressing into his upper back just below the base of his neck.

“If you do not watch,” Zaid said, “I will certainly cut you right here and now.  And I will peel you, inch by inch and layer by layer.”

Cody raised the binoculars. In any other circumstance, he would have thrown them down and faced off whatever Muslim bastard needed to be fought.   But his interest in Jadhari, his old friend, had suddenly seized him; and he focused the binoculars in his direction.  Surely Jadhari, just like he himself, had been caught.  But no, he thought.  Jadhari is smiling – this is his day.  He’s the hero – why wouldn’t he be smiling? 

“Jadhari is proving himself to be the man I never thought he would be,” Zaid said.  “He came to the imam the moment he learned of this plot to destroy the mosque.  And being the honest, naïve person he is, he credited you with revealing the hiding places of your beloved Tracy and that no good friend of yours, Vernon.”

Cody thought he would swoon, but he kept his eyes in the binoculars, eyeing the scene across the sea of dead gravel.

“And so you shall forever remain a slave of Allah,” Zaid said with joy in his voice.

Jadhari?  Are you pointing at Tracy and Vernon, laughing wildly along with your men and the imam? 

“… doomed forever to maintain the mosque which you have built.”

Are you dragging your fingers across your throat – Jadhari? – while your father and the president of the mosque give you the thumbs up?

“And the years will pass you by, and so you will grow old in the service of Allah, praise be unto him, until you are the last infidel.”

And would you, my old friend, dare to cut away the clothes from my Tracy, with a long knife that glints in the glare of the westering sun?

“Allah is good, and holy, and just …”

And would you rape her and allow the others, including your father, to take their turn with her, as she swoons and lies unconscious on the sharp, hot stones, vulnerable and helpless? And who is that young boy – Jadhari? – who is too young to be aroused by a woman, but instead urinates all over her?

“… as are all those who seek and follow the words of the Holy Prophet, Mohammed, praise be unto him.”

And now that everyone is finished, dare you turn her over on her back and slit her throat from ear-to-ear, laughing as you sever her head from her weakened body?

“You will learn to love him too, Cody Marshall, for the bounty he sends upon those who call upon him.”

Cody Marshall, frozen in the heat, stunned into numbness by the brutality, no longer aware of the pain of the rocks as they pierced his knees, watched, coping in a way he could not understand.  And he hated himself for having coped.  What was it about murder, cold and brutal, the act of one man against another, committed without the slightest hesitation?  Perhaps it wasn’t about death at all – yes, he was certain he was right about that: everyone died eventually.  If not today, tomorrow.

Jadhari slowly began cutting into Vernon’s neck – Cody could see Vernon’s mouth and eyes wide with terror as Jadhari filleted him.  When he finished the job, Jadhari picked up Vernon’s head and held it up, reveling in the applause of those who stood around him.  Certainly Vernon would have screamed for his mother to save him – like all of Islam’s victims did –  and he would have cried out to her with every ounce of strength he had.

“That’s it,” Cody said, setting his binoculars down and standing up.  “What makes murder so horrible is that the only people who can save you from being murdered are the people who are murdering you.”

The boy began to unsling his rifle.

Cody stepped on the wobbly rock, pushing with all of his weight, while he reached for the length of rusty rebar tucked into the rear of his pants.

The boy, trying to steady himself, dropped his rifle and waved his arms in the air frantically, trying to keep his balance. 

Zaid turned to grab the boy’s arm.

Cody pulled the rebar out of his pants, drove the jagged end if it into Zaid’s throat, and shoved the boy backwards.  Zaid fell and hit his head on a slab of concrete – dead before his body stopped at the foot of the mound.  The boy wasn’t as lucky.  He landed on a piece of rebar, rusty and sharp, and the metal pierced his back on the right side and came through his stomach.

Cody hurried down the rubble pile as quickly as he could, careful not to imitate the macabre dance he’d just witnessed.  He ran to his truck, removed a canteen, and returned to the boy.

The boy, unable to remove himself from the spike, breathed in hurried, rattled breaths.  He looked longingly at Cody; and his eyes, full of fear and pain, called out for him to help, to do anything he could to save him.

And for Tracy and Vernon’s sake – this boy once belonged to somebody, was once somebody’s child – he carefully lifted his head and gave him a drink of water.  When the boy had had enough water, he set the canteen in his hands.

Cody, thinking himself to be in a dream, hurried back to his truck and drove away.

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29
}             

The guards on the road were absolutely lethargic.  Cody knew they’d be: they hadn’t eaten anything since before dawn.  Add to their hunger pangs the brutal and unforgiving heat – there wasn’t a drop of cold water and ice left to the Muslim armies in Tennessee – and to that, add the probability these sons of hell had spent the better part of the night and day putting up the new checkpoint protecting the mosque, and that made for tired, barely alert soldiers. 

They’d let him in through the barricade.  They’d have to.  Right now, the generators we’re probably running on fumes, choking and sputtering like Christians trying to recite a verse from the Koran.  That meant the air conditioning was about to go down and, due to the lack of sufficient insulation in the ceiling, the soldiers assembled for the five o’clock prayers would feel the heat before the prayers and the dedication had barely gotten under way.  Bashar’s men might have been the best fighting soldiers in the south, but they were made of skin – and that meant they were just as hot and tired as the next piece of meat.

Cody slowed the vehicle down as he neared the turnoff to the mosque, hoping the cloud of dust behind him would dissipate before approaching the checkpoint.  No need angering the guards – four men he recognized and who, for all intents and purposes, hated him as much or more so than Zaid,

may he burn in hell
,

did.  The guards looked dog-eared and beaten; and Cody doubted they could muster up even a couple of seconds worth of fight before passing out in the hot sun.  These guys were raised in America, in homes with air conditioning.  They hated this heat as much as Cody did.

But Cody had been wrong before, and more times than he cared to remember.  When he pulled into the checkpoint – a Civil War era styled affair except for the Porta-Potty being used as an office for a solitary guard – he slowed down, idling his truck towards the guards at less than a few miles per hour.  Just as he started to apply the brakes and stop, the guards jumped to attention – three with their rifles raised and aimed at Cody, a fourth with a rubber truncheon in his hands.

The man with the truncheon hurried to the front of the checkpoint, motioning wildly for Cody to stop.  He was a black man, either a Somali from Shelbyville, Tennessee, or one of those Black Lies Matter rabble-rousers from the past.  He was dressed in fatigues; but he wore a white cloth up top – probably an old tee shirt – one that wrapped around his head and covered his neck.  Sweat dripped from his face and his clothes were soaked. 

No towelhead this guy.  He was American.

“Stop right here!” the man yelled with deliberate rage, angry that an infidel would dare approach the grounds of the mosque, though a few years ago, he’d probably celebrated Christmas with his family over a ham dinner.  He beat his truncheon in his palm, self-importantly and self-righteously, and strutted over to the driver’s side door.

Cody, sitting in the comfort of the truck’s air conditioning, shook his head before rolling down the window.  This black guy, like other Christians-turned-Muslim, thought he had something to prove to the other Islamists watching him.  Cody just laughed.  It never occurred to died-in-the-womb Muslims that people like this guy, converts, had to prove anything. 

But Cody waited a split second too long, or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d gotten out while the truck was still rolling. 

The black man, perhaps seeing Cody laugh, or because he felt that he just needed to take some reparations out of the hide of the next white infidel he saw – or maybe because he was a run-of-the-mill cop hater from the past – jerked violently on the handle of the truck.  But the door was locked.  He screamed like a madman, and began pounding on the roof of the truck with his lead-filled, rubber truncheon.

Another guard, with his rifle ready, walked up to the passenger side door and chambered a round in his weapon.

“Shoot the sorry son of bitch!” The black man shouted angrily.

Cody, without a second to spare, opened the door of the truck.  As he tried to climb out, his leg caught on the metal tool his men had made for him, and he fell sideways, knocking the guard to the ground.

The guard, swearing and cursing, jumped back onto his feet and, with his black, rubber truncheon, began hitting Cody.

Cody felt the blows, heavy and fast, striking him on his lower and upper back.  He turned on his side, curling up into a fetal position, and he drew his legs up to protect his stomach and groin areas.  With his hands he covered his face, and with his arms he covered his sides and chest, blocking successfully several of the heavy blows aimed at his head.

But Cody never gave the black man the thrill of a groan or a cry.

The blows seemed to slow down as quickly as they had started.  Cody could tell the man was fatigued, tired, weary under the pain of hunger and a hot summer sun. 

In the distance, through the humming noise in his ears, Cody heard someone yelling, calling out at the top of their lungs.

“Stop!” the voice yelled from not too far away. “Get away from him!  Get away from him! And get the hell away from my truck!  Did I just see you hitting my truck?”

It was the voice of Jadhari, high-toned and panicky, and he called out to the black man, shouting and cursing.

Cody heard the sound of scuffling.  He uncovered his face, rolled onto his back – which would be okay except for some bruising – and picked himself up off the ground. 

Jadhari, with the guard’s truncheon in his hand, beat the guard mercilessly as he lay in the gravel, yelling, “Don’t you ever touch him again, do you hear me?  Don’t you ever, without my permission, touch this man again!”

“Yes, sir!  Yes, sir!” the man screamed, typical of a Muslim being beaten in a fair fight. 

Cody looked at the other guards, and at a few others who were making their way over to the check point, and yelled, “Allahu Akbar!”

The guards, the ones who knew Cody, whispered among themselves, perhaps thinking that Cody Marshall may have converted.

Jadhari, after landing a few more blows on the black guard, relented.  He threw the truncheon down on the ground, brushed the dust away from his clothes, and smiled. 

Cody reached into the car and grabbed his canteen.  He removed the lid, drained it, and handed it empty to Jadhari, saying, “Have a drink with me.”

Jadhari took the canteen and shook it, handing it back to Cody with a smile.  He said, “Vernon and Tracy – they are being held somewhere safe.”  He looked around carefully, smiling, and pulled Cody closer to him.  “I have seen to it that they will be released in a few hours.  But we’ll talk about that later.”

Cody nodded.  “Today’s the day. You’re the man that saved the mosque.”

“And all the soldiers in there as well,” Jadhari said.  “And did you know there are some very important people in there?  Generals, the imam – even the President of the United States!  Three thousand five-hundred men total.”

Cody put his hand on Jadhari’s shoulder.  “And tonight?”

“Big celebration,” Jadhari said, “in the gathering room in the back.  We hope it will be cool enough by nine tonight – and yes, the generators are filled with fuel, and the air in the mosque, though it is not as cold as we would like it, is good.  But you can’t always get you want – Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones.”

“The truck’s yours, just like I promised,” Cody said loudly, throwing his hands up in the air.  “And you can drive it as fast as you want!”

“And I will drive it fast because I now have enough fuel!” Jadhari said.

Cody motioned for Jadhari to get into the car, smiling and patting his old friend on the back.  When Jadhari got in, and with the door still open, Cody hit the window button and rolled down the window.  He shut the door and climbed up onto the step and looked in.

Jadhari looked down at the steering wheel.  “I love the feel of the cold air!  And what kind of modification did you make to the truck?  Is this one of those anti-theft devices?”

Cody leaned in through the window and said to Jadhari: “Now, I want you to close your eyes – like you used to do whenever I gave you your birthday present.”

“Is there something else besides the truck?”  Jadhari asked excitedly, as he closed his eyes.

“Now keep them shut,” Cody insisted.  “You promise me?  If you open them, I won’t give it to you.”

Jadhari, with a huge smile on his face, a smile Cody remembered belonging to a boy he loved so many years ago, nodded.

Cody reached for the ignition switch.  He quietly snapped the key off in the ignition, the throaty sound of the truck’s engine more than sufficient to cover the noise.  “Almost done – but you can’t open your eyes yet.”

Next, Cody slid back just a bit and looked down.  In the cup holder in the door panel, knee level to Jadhari, sat a pair of unlocked handcuffs.  He carefully reached down and removed them.  Without making a single audible sound, he locked one of the cuffs onto the steering wheel.  “Keep ‘em shut.  Keep ‘em shut,” he said.

Cody reached down for the tool his men had made.  He had already locked it onto the steering wheel before stepping out of the truck, ensuring that the steering wheel could not be turned either to the right or left.  All that remained for him to do was to simultaneously cuff Jadhari to the steering wheel, put the truck into drive, and push down on another bar attached to the gas pedal. 

And that was just what Cody Marshall did.

Jadhari screamed.  The tires of the F-150 spun in the gravel, roaring, throwing a shower of gravel into the air, sending up a screen of white dust behind them.  The engine, whining into high gear with an ear-splitting staccato, made the guards cover their ears.  Cody’s truck shot forward like a race horse from a chute, making a straight line towards the mosque, not swerving either right or left as it drove perfectly across the expertly surfaced gravel drive.

Cody expected to be shot at any moment, but he hoped the Lord would let him live to see what came next.  But to those standing around the checkpoint, having watched Jadhari take possession of his new truck, Jadhari’s cries were the cries of delight and joy.  Every person standing there, cheered; but Cody ran in the opposite direction.  The soldiers watched with excitement as their boss drove his truck furiously and dangerously down the smooth driveway towards the mosque.

In less time than it took to count to ten, the truck, traveling at a speed of no less than fifty miles per hour, impacted the mosque.  It passed through the glass doors easily and plowed straight into the crowd of worshippers, scattering their shattered and broken bodies like dolls being thrown by a child. 

Cody never saw the explosion.  When the hundreds of pounds of C-4, all of it hidden beneath boxes of sheet metal screws in the back of his truck, detonated, he was across Greenland Drive, lying in a ditch behind what was left of an old, brick house.

The earth rumbled beneath the blast; and the shock wave, like ten years’ worth of thunder all rolled into a few seconds, shook everything for thirty miles in every direction.  Cody, curled up in the ditch, with his hands pressed tightly over his ears, bounced and shook, and he thought he would die. 

Three minutes later, after the rumbling had stopped, Cody was up on his feet, slightly disoriented, looking up at the sky.  Debris, most of it small, was falling all around him; and a huge white cloud rose upwards into the heavens.  It had already begun forming into a small mushroom cloud by the time Cody stood up.  Chunks of the mosque, mixed with the flesh and bone of almost four thousand Islamists, began to fall from the sky; and the grayish white gravel surrounding the mosque seemed to Cody to have a pink cast to it.

Cody took off his cap and ran his fingers through his dirty, oily hair, and he trembled.  He saw that his hat was dusty, and so he beat it against his leg. 

What was left of Bashar’s Islamic Front Army – some of his men had been left behind on the square, others at checkpoints around the city and county – would be coming.  And there were other units, too.  Tracy had spoken of them.  Units coming in for the final push on Chattanooga.  But for all intents and purposes, the ISA’s finest outfit no longer existed.

Maybe Cody would wait for ISA.  Tell them he’d spent these last three years building their mosque just so he could destroy it in less than ten seconds.  They wouldn’t believe it. 

Funny, he thought.  He’d just killed more Muslims than any single American had since the war started, but nobody was here to see it.  And who would believe him if he’d told them?  Not the Army of Tennessee.  Not even if he’d had a video of it.

Cody heard the sound of a motorcycle, and it startled him.  Or maybe he heard the sound of several, but the noise was subdued, and it seemed to be growing louder.  He put on his hat and hurried around the side of the old, crumbling, brick house.  When he came to an old trellis covered thickly with morning glory vines, he stopped and listened.  The noise continued growing; and it was coming in his direction. 

Scattered gunshots rang out, all of them coming from his left.  He hurried through the weed-strewn rubble and headed towards the road.  Above him, high in the sky, the cloud from the explosion continued to climb, covering the area in a deeper afternoon shadow, blotting out any light that may have been left in the sky.

He looked across the road towards what remained of the mosque, and a four wheeler with two riders drove up and stopped in the road across from it.