The Mirage: A Novel (32 page)

The Lionesses’ commander was a fifty-two-year-old from Yemen named Umm Husam, who also served as the women’s prayer leader. As the last of her charges entered the room, she turned to face the northeast wall and raised her hands beside her head.

“God is great,” Umm Husam began.

The main banquet room in the Watergate Hotel was now a Marine chow hall. A portion of the seating area had been reserved for the Lionesses, and during Christiane Amanpour’s visit that section of the hall had been cordoned off by folding screens. Today, with no reporters present, the screens had been exchanged for orange traffic cones, and even these were largely ignored, the women and men fraternizing openly with only an occasional disapproving glance from Umm Husam.

At a table just on the men’s side of the divide, Mustafa, Samir, and Amal took breakfast with Colonel Yunus, Zinat, and two male Marines. Mustafa asked a question about the African-American civilians working the serving line; like the iconic homeowner in Amal’s pamphlet, they were all wearing tri-cornered hats.

“The tricorne is a symbol of the Minutemen,” Colonel Yunus explained. “Most of our support staff are former National Guard. We give them jobs to discourage them from taking up arms against us. The hats are a touchy subject—insurgents like to wear them, too—but we’re trying to win hearts and minds so we don’t make a fuss about it.”

“What kind of Christians are they?” Mustafa asked next. “My reading suggested that black Americans are more often Protestant than Catholic, but it didn’t say what denominations they favor.”

“I’m afraid I know nothing about Protestant denominations,” Colonel Yunus said. “But these men aren’t all Christian. Some of them are Muslim.”

“Muslim?” said Samir.

“Yes. Islam is still a minority faith in America, but it has made inroads, particularly among the marginalized.”

“Which sect of Islam?” Mustafa wondered. “Sunni or Shia?”

The colonel seemed disappointed by the question. “Surely that’s of no consequence. Islam is Islam.”

“I agree,” said Mustafa, “but still I’m curious.”

The colonel shrugged. “If it were considered polite to inquire, I imagine most would answer Sunni.”

“That’s interesting,” Amal said, guessing at Mustafa’s train of thought. “If they’re Sunni Muslims, that would make them eligible for membership in Al Qaeda, wouldn’t it?”

“Al Qaeda!” Zinat snorted laughter. “What fantasy is this?”

Samir looked alarmed. “You really think Bin Laden would recruit Americans?”

“If I might change the subject a moment,” Colonel Yunus said, clearly uncomfortable with this turn in the conversation. “I’d like to talk a bit about your mission here . . .”

“Of course,” said Mustafa.

“I’ve discussed the matter in some depth with Lieutenant Fahd.” The colonel indicated one of the other Marines at the table. “The address you are interested in visiting is about thirty kilometers from here. There are insurgents in the vicinity—they’ve been quiet lately, but we know they are still there, and if we try to secure the area in advance it might just encourage them to mount an assault. Lieutenant Fahd proposes instead that we dispatch you with a light reconnaissance force—four Humvees, plus air support—and try to get you in and out before the insurgents can react. Do you know how much time you’ll need on site?”

“It depends what we find there,” Mustafa said. “Obviously we won’t stay any longer than necessary.”

“Very well,” Colonel Yunus said. “I’ll reserve some additional forces in case it does become necessary to secure the area—or in case there’s trouble. This will take another twenty-four hours to arrange. I suggest you spend today resting, and be ready to leave tomorrow after breakfast.”

“Thank you. That will be fine.”

“If you’d like some diversion, I can have one of my men give you a tour of the Green Zone. Or if you don’t mind waiting while I take care of a few matters, I can show you around myself.”

“Sir,” Zinat said. “Amal has expressed interest in visiting Potomac Park. With your permission I’d be happy to take her.”

“The combat range?” The colonel gave Amal a quizzical look, but then shrugged. “Of course . . . If that’s what you wish.”

He said something else but Amal didn’t hear it. She was staring at the chow line, where the ghost of her father was bantering with a black man in a tri-cornered hat.

The ghost was not Shamal as she had known him. This was the young Shamal, a newly minted BU grad working off his ROTC scholarship, still a year or two away from meeting the ambitious woman from Maysan Province who would become his wife. The uniform was wrong—he’d been an Army cadet, not a Marine—but other than that he might have stepped right from the family photo album, so uncanny was the resemblance. Likewise his mannerisms—the way he stood, the way he tilted his head to listen, the easy way he laughed, which would become less easy as time and Saddam wore him down—were all just as Amal remembered.

Zinat saw the ghost too. While Amal sat motionless, fearful of dispelling this vision with a careless gesture, the Lioness stood up, cupped her hands to her mouth, and called out: “Hey! Salim! Over here!”

“Target right!”

This Minuteman was a white American, with big teeth and a big nose, angry eyes, and slashing eyebrows beneath a tricorne that looked a size too small for him. Like the restaurant in whose window he had so suddenly appeared—a painted stage flat adorned with golden arches—he was also two-dimensional. And he was armed with a revolver, which made him a bad guy: Amal pulled the trigger on her rifle and put three bullet holes in a tight grouping between his eyes. The Minuteman continued to glare at her for another full second before succumbing to his wound and dropping out of sight.

A chime sounded and Amal walked another ten paces down “Main Street”—actually an indoor lane lined with fake buildings. Her next target swung out sideways from behind a building marked
KRISPY KREME
. He had the same exact face as the Minuteman, but instead of a tricorne he wore a jersey with the word
REDSKINS
on it. “Target left!” Amal said. But the man was holding a soda cup, and after double-checking that the straw wasn’t really a lit fuse, she held her fire. After three seconds, the man ducked back into cover.

The rules of the game were simple. There were four kinds of targets—Minuteman, sports fan, woman, child—each holding one of four objects—revolver, pipe bomb, daisy, or soda cup. The goal was to shoot only those targets holding weapons. Hit three unarmed adults or one unarmed child, and you lost. Miss even one target holding a gun, and you lost. Miss a target holding a pipe bomb, and everyone on the shooting course lost.

Two of the course’s four lanes were down for maintenance, so Zinat sat out while Amal and Salim played. To keep from shooting each other, they advanced side-by-side and announced the appearance of each new target before deciding whether to pull the trigger.

“Target left!” Amal called out again, as a woman in a cocktail dress appeared in one of the windows of the Krispy Kreme. The woman was holding a daisy, but Salim had just called a target of his own and was firing, so Amal imagined she saw a revolver cylinder and put a three-round burst in the woman’s ample bosom. A buzzer sounded and an X appeared on the scoreboard at the end of Amal’s lane. It was her second strike.

“Damn it,” Amal said.

“You’re doing fine,” Salim told her. “Stay cool, we’re almost at the end.”

There were only two buildings left in Amal’s lane, a house and a hospital. She watched the windows, and got two Minutemen in quick succession, one—“Target right!”—with a revolver, whom she killed, the other—“Target left!”—with a daisy, whom she (just barely) let live. In his lane, Salim shot a Redskins fan with a pipe bomb, and then a final chime sounded and the voice of the gunnery sergeant said, “Course completed. Please clear your weapons.”

Amal removed the magazine from her rifle and emptied the chamber, calling out “Clear!” once this was done. Salim called out “Clear!” as well and a long buzzer sounded, indicating that the course was, for the moment, safe.

“You did well for a first-timer,” Salim said as they walked back down Main Street.

“I don’t think those two poor innocents I shot would agree with you,” Amal said. But she was pleased with her performance. Earlier at the sniper-rifle range she’d been a bundle of nerves, barely able to focus on the target.

She was beginning to get used to him. Thank God he didn’t sound like her father. The timbre of his voice was more like Anwar’s, and while Anwar’s voice in young Shamal’s mouth was unnerving in its own way, at least she didn’t feel as though she were talking to the dead.

Zinat had been joined by another Lioness. “Do you mind if we have a go?” Zinat asked, nodding at the course.

“Please,” said Amal. She and Salim turned in their weapons, and then, at Amal’s suggestion, stepped outside to have a smoke.

Before the invasion, East Potomac Park had been LBJ’s private golf course, and you could still get in nine holes down by Hains Point. But the Marines, on the pretext of securing the Tidal Basin, had turned the upper part of the peninsula into a carnival of violence. East of the blockhouse that contained the indoor target range was a great earthen berm, erected around the sniper’s range to stop stray rounds from traveling into Southwest D.C. To the north was the grenade toss, and to the right of that in a concrete pen, handheld sprayers belched fire at asbestos-clad mannequins. West was the Potomac, with Marines and other Green Zone refugees sunning themselves on the riverbank, while patrolling gunboats kept watch for waterborne suicide bombers.

Salim bent close to light Amal’s cigarette. She glimpsed her father’s ghost again and shivered.

“So where did you learn to shoot?” Salim asked.

“Beirut.”

He was surprised. “You’re Lebanese?”

“Baghdadi,” Amal said. “But I went to college at U of L.”

“Huh! Me too!”

She played it coy: “Really? Forgive me, you don’t look old enough to be a graduate.”

“Ah, I’m not—I was only enrolled for about a week.” He looked around. “I didn’t want to miss this.”

“Doing your part for the War on Terror,” Amal said. “Your parents must be very proud.”

He frowned, and she worried she’d been too forward. But then he said: “My dad, you know, he’s not
entirely
happy with me . . .”

“Oh?”

“He’s a conservative,” Salim explained, loyalty and resentment warring on his face for a moment. “He loves me, but he doesn’t want me to take any risks.”

“And your mother? What does she think?”

This time there was no conflict: He just looked guilty. “She’s scared for me. In her last letter . . .” He trailed off, took a drag on his cigarette. “But I’ve promised her I’ll be OK.”

“Well then,” Amal said, eyeing one of the gunboats on the river. “As long as you promised.”

He laughed. “It’s only a seven-month deployment! In no time I’ll be home again, and bored . . . So what’s it like to work for Homeland Security?”

“Exciting,” she said. “More exciting than I expected, actually. And before this I worked for the Bureau, which was also pretty cool. You get to chase bank robbers. Of course,” Amal added, “for either job you need to finish college.”

“Yeah, I know,” Salim said. “I promised my mother I’d do that, too.”

They tossed their cigarette butts and went back inside the target range, where Zinat and her friend had just finished. “What’s wrong?” Salim asked, seeing their faces. “Don’t tell me you lost!”

“
I
didn’t,” Zinat said. “But Tamara shot a kid with a soda cup.”

“A fat American child,” Tamara sniffed, handing her rifle back to the gunnery sergeant.

“It’s well-known that soda’s no good for your health,” Salim offered.

“Speaking of unhealthy sweets,” said Amal, “what is that about?” She pointed to a dish of hard candies that sat on the counter in front of the gun storage area. The candy dish, which had been fashioned from a piece of a mortar shell casing, had a steel tab sticking up from its center, to which a crude skull and crossbones had been welded. Just in case this wasn’t clear enough, a little cardboard sign had been taped beneath the skull, reading
FORBIDDEN!
Amal had noticed a similar candy dish at the sniper range, although that one had contained toffees.

“That,” said the gunnery sergeant, “is an object lesson about the importance of following rules.”

“And of the long-term effects of testosterone on one’s sense of humor,” Zinat added. The gunny scowled at her, but she smiled back sweetly until he turned away.

“They’re not really poisoned, though,” Amal said.

“Oh yes,” Salim said, “with cyanide.” He explained: “There’s a Christian holiday here, called Halloween—the Eve of the Saints—where it’s traditional to give away candy to strangers. Last year, the chow hall got an anonymous gift of Halloween candies.”

“Did anyone die?”

“No Marines did. There was a stray dog that hung around behind the Watergate kitchens, begging for scraps. One of the cooks gave it a sweet, and that’s how they found out about the poison. The candies were supposed to be destroyed, but as you can see, some were kept as souvenirs. And as good luck charms, of course.”

“Good luck charms,” Amal said. “Because no one died.”

“Except the dog,” Salim said. Smiling, he took one of the candies from the dish and gave it to her. “Here. To keep you safe while you’re in America.”

Amal stared at the candy, which was wrapped in a twist of green cellophane. “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

“Just don’t forget and eat it by mistake,” he told her.

Samir spent the morning trying to hide from Al Qaeda.

Just before leaving Baghdad, he’d gotten a message from Idris saying that a Qaeda agent would contact him in America with instructions. Samir had no idea what he was going to be ordered to do, but he assumed that it would be something dangerous, possibly fatal, almost certainly illegal, and likely a betrayal of both his country and his friends.

He also knew that he couldn’t say no. But during the night a desperate strategy had occurred to him: If he couldn’t refuse the agent’s orders, perhaps he could avoid receiving them. The Green Zone was big enough that it ought to be easy to make himself scarce for the day. In the evening he’d have to return to the Smithsonian, but that was a pretty big place too; maybe he could sleep in a closet, or find a diorama of an empty tomb to curl up in.