The Mirage
Thunk! The lieutenant’s own head jerked sideways and his eyes rolled up. Mustafa caught him as he fell. The lead Humvee gunner zeroed in on the sniper a half second later and vaporized him. The driver, having restarted the motor, shouted at Mustafa: “Get in! Get in!”
Having run out of targets on the ridge, the gunner in the rear Humvee rotated his turret to check on the road behind them. A few cars were coming up the pike on the far side of the junction, but when their drivers caught sight of the firefight, they all made hasty U-turns.
Then a truck rig rumbled into view along the crossroad. The driver had his radio cranked, so he didn’t hear the shooting, and distracted by the U-turning cars on his left, he didn’t see the Humvees until he’d already begun his own right turn onto the pike. By then, the Humvee gunner’s attention had been drawn to the long silver tank that trailed behind the rig like a bomb.
“Fuck that,” the gunner said, taking aim. “No tailgating!”
Just up the road and out of sight around the bend, the members of the secondary ambush team listened to the explosions and the gunfire and watched the rising fireballs and smoke. Because they knew God was on their side, they concluded the initial ambush had been a great success and the Marines were being slaughtered.
Their feelings about this were mixed. They wanted to see God’s enemies destroyed, of course. But that was just it: They wanted to see God’s enemies destroyed, and take part in the destruction. What was the point of being a soldier of Christ if you didn’t get to do battle?
So instead of thanking God for granting them victory, they asked Him for another favor: Please Lord, they prayed, lips moving silently as they watched the road. Please, don’t let them all die. Save some Muslims for us.
God, they soon discovered, was in a generous mood.
Mustafa had loaded Lieutenant Fahd into the back of the Humvee so that the corpsman who occupied the other rear seat could tend to him. The sniper bullet had put a deep dimple in the lieutenant’s helmet, and while the slug had failed to penetrate the Kevlar, the impact had concussed him. A dark bruise was forming beside his temple, and when the corpsman tried to get his attention, his eyelids barely fluttered.
Mustafa sat up front and listened to the radio chatter. A Marine in one of the other Humvees was trying to call back their air support. But the gunship was having its own problems: After taking out the mortar, it had been fired on by a surface-to-air missile. It wasn’t clear, from the frantic transmission, whether the helicopter had actually been hit or was just maneuvering to get a shot at the missile launcher.
The convoy rounded the bend in the road. Just past the turn, the woods to their right gave way to a strip mall, the string of shops extending to a gas station at the corner of another crossroads up ahead. On the left side of the road, still slightly elevated on the back end of the ridge, was a single long box-structure building, its windows painted over and covered with OUT OF BUSINESS signs; individual letters running along the concrete lip of its roof spelled the words PIGGLY WIGGLY next to a smiling hog face.
A roadblock had been set up at the crossroads. A pair of Dominion Water & Power trucks were parked nose to nose on the pike’s eastbound side. And on their side of the median, just pulling into place across both lanes, was a big yellow school bus.
The lead Humvee driver eased up on the throttle. Knowing how insurgents thought, he was inclined to be highly suspicious of vehicles, like those used to transport children, that a Marine might be reluctant to shoot at. “Talk to me, Abu Azzam,” he called up to his gunner.
The gunner was already looking through a pair of field glasses. This was no ordinary school bus. Sheet steel had been welded onto its side, in a poor man’s imitation of the Humvee’s armor kit. As he scanned the windows, he saw no little kids’ heads inside, only big heads in tri-cornered hats, and gun muzzles, and—
“RPG!” the gunner shouted. The driver swerved to the right, as did the driver of the second Humvee. The third Humvee was just a little too slow, and the grenade struck it on the left side above the rear wheel well. The explosion was deafening and the tire instantly went flat, but the armor plating prevented any shrapnel from entering the passenger compartment. Amal, ears ringing, looked up at Salim, but he seemed to be OK too—he was standing firm in the turret, already returning fire at the school bus.
All of the Humvee gunners were firing at the school bus, whose improvised armor proved far less effective than the Humvee’s. The bus became a sieve.
More militia appeared atop the Piggly Wiggly. They had rifles, another RPG, and a machine gun that set up directly above the pig’s head. Most of them began shooting at the convoy, but one Minuteman whose rifle was loaded with incendiary rounds took aim at the gas station.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop,” the lead Humvee driver chanted to himself, machine gun fire rattling against his door as he raced along the strip mall parking lot. Mustafa looked ahead, and had just noticed that the blacktop around the gas station pumps was soaking wet when the air itself seemed to ignite and the station disappeared beneath a massive bloom of flame. The driver slammed on the brakes; they jerked forward in their seats and then back as the second Humvee rear-ended them.
The third Humvee, which had fallen slightly behind, tried to brake more gently, but the friction shredded the damaged tire. The Humvee fishtailed, caught a pothole, and began to tip sideways. Its right wheels left the ground and it tilted to a forty-degree angle and hung there for an instant as if considering the matter, before the added weight of the turret armor and an inadvertent nudge from the fourth Humvee carried it all the way over. “Salim!” Amal cried. She tried to grab him, but his legs abruptly vanished as if God had yanked him up on a string.
The Humvee came to rest on its side. Amal, who had fallen against Zinat, immediately pushed herself up, grabbed Zinat’s rifle, and started crawling through the turret opening. “Wait,” Umm Husam called to her, but Amal didn’t wait.
Salim had landed on his back a few meters from the Humvee. He wasn’t seriously injured but the tumble had left him punch-drunk again. Rifle rounds were ricocheting off the parking lot surface all around him but instead of seeking cover he sat up slowly. A bullet grazed the shoulder of his flak jacket and he frowned, swatting at the spot as if it were a mosquito. Then he shrugged and started to get up, and a bullet whined off the asphalt directly behind him and ricocheted upwards and a red cloud puffed out of the top of his right thigh. He fell back, hard, onto his tailbone, and stared at the bleeding hole in his leg and said, sounding exactly like a little boy: “Ow.”
Amal, in a crouch, raised the rifle to her shoulder and sighted on a bobbing tricorne. She killed the Minuteman who’d shot Salim, and another man next to him. This got the attention of the Minuteman with the machine gun, who began swinging his weapon around, meaning to ventilate Amal and the Humvee behind her. “Target right,” Umm Husam said, appearing at Amal’s side. She fired, and the machine gunner’s head disappeared in a red sunburst.
The lead Humvee, having recovered from its fender bender, backed up to give them some cover, while the unarmored Humvee ranged back out onto the pike to offer itself as a moving target. Hunks of concrete began flying off the lip of the Piggly Wiggly’s roof as the Humvee gunners went to work.
In the back of the rear Humvee, Samir sat through all of this in numb detachment, feeling as though he were encased in a bubble. He’d thought for sure he’d died in the roadside bombing, and even now a part of him wondered whether that might not be so, and the chaos around him just the normal process of entering into hell. The prospect didn’t frighten him. The gunfire, the explosions, even the flames, all left him unmoved.
What did finally move him, and begin dragging him back to the world of the living, was the sight of the wounded Marine, Salim. Samir had missed seeing Lieutenant Fahd get shot, so Salim was his first glimpse of the human cost of his betrayal—something he had not counted on surviving to witness. He got a good close look, as the Humvee he was riding in tuc
ked in behind the lead Humvee to form an armored screen for the exposed Marines.
Salim was not the worst of it. The worst was Amal, the expression on her face as she tied her headscarf around Salim’s leg to try to stanch the bleeding. From her fear and her rage, one might think the Marine were family, rather than just some guy she happened to be riding with. Watching her, Samir felt a horrified pang in his heart. I’m sorry, he thought. I’m so sorry, Amal, but my sons, I had no choice . . .
Mustafa and the corpsman both got out of the lead Humvee to help Amal. An RPG round flew by too close for comfort, punching through the plate glass of a minimart in the strip mall and making everybody duck. Samir, suddenly sure he was about to see his friends get killed, looked away. Looked up. His gaze lit on the sign above the minimart, which to his tear-blurred vision appeared to read 9/11. He turned his head to the right, towards the roof of the Chinese restaurant next door.
There was another Minuteman up there. He had crept in a crouch to the corner of the roof, unnoticed by the Marines. He was holding a bottle filled with amber fluid and trying to use a balky lighter to ignite the rag stuffed in the bottle’s neck.
“No,” Samir said. And once more he was in freefall, but this time the fear was galvanizing rather than paralyzing. Like an acrobat in midair, he twisted and reached, drawing the .45 automatic from the leg holster of Private Dimashqi beside him, turned again, shoved his door open, stepped out, and aimed up. Samir’s first three shots missed, but the fourth hit the bottle even as the Minuteman got the rag alight. The Minuteman became a burning man with a blazing three-cornered crown.
Samir fired the pistol until it was empty. Then he ducked down beside Mustafa and Amal and Salim and the startled corpsman. “I’m sorry,” he said, weeping. “I’m sor—”
The ground shook. All the windows in the Piggly Wiggly blew out, and the roof, suddenly fluid, bulged upwards, flinging Minutemen into the air. “Shaitan!” one of the Marines cried, thinking that the helicopter gunship had returned. But this was no missile strike; it was another bomb, detonating inside the store—or rather, in the parking level below it.
The roof fell back in and with a long rumble the outer walls collapsed, spilling a last few screaming Christians into the rubble. After that a stillness fell, a stretch of calm during which even the roar of the gas station blaze seemed muted. When half a minute had passed with no more shots being fired, the Marines began to relax.
A voice called out: “Mustafa al Baghdadi!”
Heads—and guns—turned towards the sound. Forty meters back along the parking lot from where the Humvees were stopped, a pale man had appeared, standing out front of a greeting-card store with his arms in the air. His hands were open and empty, and he’d unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a scrawny chest to which no bombs or weapon holsters were strapped.
The unarmored Humvee drove up beside him. Marines jumped out and shoved the pale man to his knees.
Mustafa stood up. “Hey!” Umm Husam said. “Your helmet!” Mustafa nodded and got his helmet and then walked down the parking lot to the unarmored Humvee. When he got there, one of the Marines was staring through the open door of the greeting-card store; just inside, another Minuteman lay dead with a loaded RPG launcher beside him.
Mustafa turned his attention to the pale man. “I am Mustafa al Baghdadi,” he said. “Who are you and what do you want with me?”
“My name is Timothy McVeigh,” the pale man replied. “I’m an agent of the Texas CIA and I was sent here to find you—to protect you.” His eyes flicked briefly to the dead man, and then to the pile of rubble across the pike, before returning to Mustafa. “The director would like to see you, sir.”
THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA
A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE
Christian Intelligence Agency
(Redirected from CIA)
The Christian Intelligence Agency, or CIA (sometimes also referred to by its members as “Christ in Action”), is the primary espionage arm of the government of the Evangelical Republic of Texas. According to the public version of its charter, the CIA’s function is to collect and analyze intelligence on foreign governments, organizations, and individuals. However, it is believed that the agency also engages in domestic spying and acts as a secret police force, detaining, torturing, and assassinating political dissidents.
The CIA’s headquarters are located in Crawford, about 15 kilometers west of the city of Waco . . .
“No,” Umm Husam said firmly. “I cannot permit this.”
They were standing in the parking lot of another strip mall on the far side of the crossroads. More Humvees and a tank had arrived, and the road was now blocked off in all four directions. The only nonmilitary vehicles that had been allowed through were a couple of fire engines, whose crews, under the watchful eye of Marine riflemen, were working to put out the gas station. Two helicopter gunships now circled overhead, and a medevac chopper had just landed. With Lieutenant Fahd heading back to base still unconscious, Umm Husam was the senior officer on site.
“I understand your reluctance to allow me to go with this man,” Mustafa said. “But if he wanted to kill me, I think he would have done so already.”
“If he kills you he cannot kidnap you,” said Umm Husam. “Do you know the term Verschärfte Vernehmung?”
“ ‘Sharpened interrogation.’ It’s a Lutheran euphemism for torture.”
“American Protestants call it enhanced interrogation. The latest version is what’s known as crucifixion: The victim is tied spread-eagle to the hood of a car and driven around at high speed. Road debris pelts the front of the body, while heat from the engine block causes burns to the back.”
“I don’t believe he intends to crucify me, either.”
“If you are wrong, you won’t be the only one who pays.” Umm Husam shook her head. “I am sorry, but I don’t wish to risk more Marines on a rescue mission.”
Mustafa looked at McVeigh, standing just out of earshot with a pair of Marine guards. “He predicted this would be your reaction.”
“That hardly makes him a seer.”
“He asked me to give you this.” Mustafa held up a gas station map of the county, backfolded to show a portion of Herndon village. “A gesture of good faith, he says. He’s marked the location of a house that he claims is the current headquarters of the leader of the militia that attacked us.”
Umm Husam chuckled. “You want to know who really lives there? Someone this man has a grudge against. Perhaps someone he owes money to.”
“Here I would be inclined to agree,” said Mustafa, “except for one thing . . .” He showed her what was written on the map beside the circled address. “Do you recognize this name?”
“No.”
“So it’s no one famous, then?”
“Not that I am aware of. Why?”
“Before I left Baghdad, I was shown a list of people who were in some way connected to my investigation here. This name was on that list.”
Umm Husam remained skeptical. “What list is this? Who showed it to you?”
Before he could answer, Amal appeared beside him. She’d been helping load Salim into the medevac chopper, and the hand she grabbed the map with was still sticky with her son’s blood.
She said to Mustafa: “Find out what the house looks like.”
McVeigh’s co-disciple Terry Nichols drove up in a silver van with a guitar logo and the words MESSIAH PRODUCTIONS painted on its side. The Marines let him through the roadblock, and McVeigh opened the van’s rear doors and bade Mustafa get in. “You’ll have to sit on the floor,” he said apologetically, “but it won’t be a long ride.”
“It’s fine,” said Mustafa. “Do you need to blindfold me?”
“Not for this part of the trip, no.” He glanced up knowingly at the helicopters overhead. “It’d be pointless.”
Samir, who had not been invited, stood by waiting to see if McVeigh would wave him aboard at the last moment. Umm Husam, in the midst of a planning session with Amal
and several Marines, looked over as well, her expression making it clear that she still wasn’t happy about this. Mustafa nodded to them both, mouthing, “God willing.” Then McVeigh shut the doors.
The ride, as promised, was brief, their immediate destination a railway underpass just off the Davis Pike. As they entered the underpass and eased to a stop, Mustafa raised his head up and saw a second van, with identical markings, driving away out the far side: a decoy for the helicopters.
“Now we wait awhile,” McVeigh said. “Go ahead and stretch your legs, but stay under cover.”
They all got out. Nichols went to urinate behind a pillar. McVeigh lit a cigarette and offered one to Mustafa. As they stood smoking, Mustafa looked around the underpass, his attention drawn to a phrase—T.A.B., HAJJI!—spray-painted on the far wall. A shallow pit dug into the embankment beneath this graffito held the remains of something that had been doused in gasoline and burned. Mustafa drew deeply on his cigarette and tried not to think too hard.
Eventually a car came. The driver, a gray-haired white man with the beard and sun-leathered skin of a Rocky Mountain tribal warrior, got out and nodded to McVeigh and Nichols. “Keys are in it, Randall,” McVeigh told him, and the man nodded again and got into the van and sat behind the wheel with the engine off. Nichols got into the front passenger seat of the car.
McVeigh turned to Mustafa. He pulled a cloth hood from his pocket and said: “If you don’t mind . . .”
This next part of the trip was longer. With the hood over his head Mustafa couldn’t see the road, but the cloth was thin enough that he could still judge light from dark, so when they stopped again he could tell they were outside in the open. McVeigh helped Mustafa out of the back of the car and led him, still hooded, across a gravel-covered expanse.
“Two steps up, here.” They pushed through a thick plastic curtain. “OK,” McVeigh said, and Mustafa pulled the hood off.