Act of Revenge

Flash forward

Massina felt a sudden attack of nerves as he was called to the podium. He hadn’t expected the President to be here.

Not that he was intimidated, exactly. Just that he was suddenly aware that this was a very big deal. There were news cameras all over the place; what he said would be broadcast live to the entire world.

Which he wouldn’t have minded, except that he hadn’t prepared a speech; he hadn’t considered what to say. No one had said it would be this important.

Massina took a breath and forced a smile. He remembered the rule one his grammar-school teachers had given him about speaking before an audience: Talk from the heart and you won’t go wrong.

“Mr. President, Governor, Mayor, thank you for coming.” Massina tilted the microphone down, making sure it was directly in line with his mouth. “Everyone else has spoken about how we’ll rebuild,” said Massina. “We will. And we’ll do more than that. Much more.”

He stopped talking. It was as if his mind had emptied.

What did he feel?

Something lofty, inspirational?

Hell, no. He felt a need for justice.

Revenge.

Right this wrong.

“I tell you something, from the bottom of my heart, speaking for everyone from Boston, whether you live in town or not,” he said. “We’re going to get those bastards. We’re going to wipe them from the face of the earth. We will. And no one will mess with us again.”

The crowd hesitated, then broke into a thunderous applause as he left the microphone.

17 Real time

One hundred and seventy-three people were killed in Boston during the Easter Sunday attacks. Seventeen terrorists also died, but they didn’t count as people, at least not to Louis Massina.

Massina attended most of the funerals. The first convinced him to go to them all. It was a service for a young man named Joseph Achmoody.

Massina had met the teenager when he received a limb crafted by Massina’s company a year before. He remembered their conversation before the operation: seeking to reassure him, Massina had showed him his own prosthetic arm, removing the plastic “skin” to let him have a good look at the titanium “bones.”

“Yours will be even better than this,” he promised. “Lighter, stronger, and it can grow.”

“Grow?”

That always got the kids. How could a fake arm grow?

But that part was easy — a simple operation extended the skeleton. Assuming the patient wasn’t squeamish — about half were — he or she could even watch.

No, the real art and science were in the way the devices worked seamlessly, or almost seamlessly, with the brain. Translating nerve impulses into actual movement — you could set that out in a formula, and not a particularly complicated one either. But to make it work in the real world, to make it work without a hitch, despite fatigue or something as bizarre as magnetic interference — there was the difficulty. The fact that Massina’s scientists and doctors had managed to do it only increased Massina’s genuine admiration for the original workings of the human body. To do this all on the fly as it were — to construct life in “real time”—now, there was the magnificence of Nature, and through Nature, God.

As he stood at the back of the church watching Joseph Achmoody’s funeral mass conclude, Massina couldn’t help but feel immense loss. The unfairness of his death ate at him. The kid had barely entered his teens; most likely he hadn’t even had a real kiss yet.

And somehow, the fact that the church was less than a quarter full bothered Massina even more. The kid was a martyr, yet only a handful of people had taken the time to honor him and comfort the family. That, too, seemed wrong. Massina, in a rare and uncharacteristic show of emotion, made a point to go to the mother and father and directly express his condolences.

Walking away, he decided he would go to as many of the others as his schedule permitted, to bear witness, to honor the dead. And he made sure that his schedule permitted the absolute maximum possible.

Today, Benjamin Fallow was being buried in his hometown of Southbridge, Massachusetts. It was in the southern part of the state, a bit far from Boston, and very likely Massina would not have attended this service had it not been for the fact that he had a meeting in Hartford. This was on the way.

Massina stood at the edge of the crowd in the cemetery where Benjamin was being buried. He was forty-five, the father of two children, both in college. There was an article in the local paper giving some brief details about his life; he’d been an insurance salesman. It wasn’t clear why he’d gone to Boston that day; the paper only said that he was survived by his wife and sons.

The minister began by reciting Psalm 103, a verse Massina had heard often over the past several days:

Halfway through the prayer, Massina decided he’d had enough — enough funerals, enough sorrow. It was time to move on.

He turned and started walking back to his car. Johnny Givens, who’d accompanied him as an aide and bodyguard, swung around and walked with him.

“Touching service,” said a woman near the parking lot. She’d ducked out to smoke; the cigarette dangled from her fingers.

Massina nodded.

“Did you agree?” she added.

The question was so odd, he stopped.

“The choice of the Psalm,” she prompted. “Almost like, turn the other cheek. I don’t think that’s right.”

“Neither do I,” answered Massina, heading for the car.

18

Five years before, Samir Abdubin had given up his family name in favor of Ghadab min Allah — roughly, “God’s wrath.” In the time since, he had endeavored to live up fully to that name.

He’d done well.

Starting as an apprentice bomb maker, Ghadab had participated in the planning and preparation for no less than twelve “missions” against targets in European cities. Only three of those missions had actually come off, and only one — in Paris, where he had minimal involvement — had resulted in clear victories against the infidels.

Nonetheless, Ghadab was seen as one of the movement’s brightest lights, and after fleeing France for Libya, he had planned two attacks, both more spectacular than anything the Caliphate had undertaken before. One was in Rome, the other Boston.

The leadership council vetoed Rome, for reasons Ghadab couldn’t fathom. But Boston — Boston had been approved.

It was a grand plan, a simultaneous attack at six carefully chosen locations, each with its own peculiar circumstance. A bombing on the subway, hostage taking in a hotel, a mass shooting in a restaurant — it was the very variety that tormented the nonbelievers. The idea that any place, big or small, might be hit — that was what unnerved them.

And the body count. Over a hundred. The one true God and His holy messenger, praise be his name, would surely be pleased. He’d even managed to keep his contingency strikes on reserve; he could activate them in the future for an even bigger attack if events proved favorable.

Ghadab had one disappointment: he had not been allowed to travel to America to coordinate and witness the attacks. The council had told him flatly that he could not go and had in fact placed him under guard to make sure that he would not disobey. It wasn’t a matter of security; they wanted him to plan more attacks and strongly suspected that if he was there he would participate, which necessarily would lead to martyrdom. Instead, one of his lieutenants had been selected to coordinate the operation on the ground. The man, a second cousin of Ghadab’s, was now enjoying the fruits of Paradise.

Ghadab did not begrudge him his just reward. He himself had no desire to enter Paradise quite yet. If martyrdom came — and it would — so be it. But before that time, he wanted more than anything to hasten the coming of the end time. The prophecy had to be fulfilled. When the barbarians arrived in force in the Levant, with their armies of devils and the serpents flying above all, then and only then would he be truly comfortable with martyrdom. For that would be the moment of glorious apocalypse. That was the moment the Caliphate was aiming at; that was the goal of the true believers who had pledged themselves to the new order. The new age would be born in that cauldron of fire.

Ghadab’s cell phone buzzed with an alarm: it was two minutes before Isha’a, the night prayer. He retrieved his rug and walked out of his room, passing down the long corridor of the ancient building. Built as a castle, it had been converted to an administrative building in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and completely refurbished and expanded by the old dictator, Gadhafi. Now it was a headquarters for the Caliphate’s troops outside of the Levant.

Ghadab had just reached the roof and turned toward Mecca when the first flash appeared on the horizon. He stared at it for a moment, thinking at first that it was a defect in his vision, the product of spending long hours in the desert without proper eyeglasses.

The second flash disabused him of that.

They’ve come for their revenge.

He threw the rug down quickly, falling on top of it and praying so quickly that he was done even as the formal call to prayers began blaring from the mosque across the way. Ghadab ran to his room and grabbed his small suitcase, then ran to the tunnel as he had rehearsed.

Three of his underlings were already there. Two more followed, and then the bombproof door was closed.

The ground began to shake; the infidels had launched a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at them. They were useless against the massive stones of the castle, and an empty gesture given the depth of the reinforced shelter.

If any of the others thought it strange that Ghadab laughed as the explosions continued, they didn’t have the courage to mention it.

19

Chelsea had gone to work the day right after the attacks, and every day since. Massina himself had told her she was welcome to take time off; in fact, he practically ordered her to do so. But time off wasn’t what she needed. She needed something to occupy her mind, to challenge her thoughts, to keep them busy.

Because without that, without something difficult and intricate and knotted to focus on, she thought about what had happened. How close she’d come, first to being raped, then to being killed.

Chelsea had grown up in a suburb of San Diego, the daughter of a white mother and a black father himself of mixed background. Light-skinned, her ethnicity was hard to pin down — she could plausibly pass for Hispanic, Middle Eastern, even Asian and Sicilian as well as black. Like anyone of African descent in America, she had experienced prejudice and to some degree discrimination, but Chelsea would have been the first person to say she’d had a very easy childhood, and had found far more acceptance and encouragement than most kids, whatever their ethnicity.

The fact that she was very intelligent didn’t hurt. Her parents weren’t rich, but they were comfortable; there was never a concern about the basics. Frankly, if it weren’t for her mother, Chelsea suspected her father would have spoiled her rotten. Along with his reasoned advice and steady manner, Chelsea’s dad had a soft, overly generous impulse, especially when it came to his only child. Mom was the family banker, for good reason, and it was Mom who generally imposed the harsher discipline, or at least enforced it.

All of which was to say that nothing in Chelsea’s childhood had prepared her for the shock of Easter Sunday. Even her experiences in Ukraine, where she had faced down gunmen for the first time in her life, couldn’t quite compare. She would have been the first to object if someone suggested she’d been traumatized; on the other hand, even she would admit that the experience had been powerful in the most unwelcome way.

After her initial shakiness, Victoria had recovered quickly. Talking about how scared she’d been the next day before Chelsea left for work, she’d compared it to the time she’d faced down a boyfriend holding a shotgun on her.

“Not quite as scared as that, but almost,” she’d said breezily. “There’s so much evil in this world.”

To Chelsea, the cliché at the end seemed to make light of what they’d gone through, and she told her aunt she was trivializing murder.

“Come on, dear,” said Victoria. “Of course I’m not trivializing it. We certainly could have died.”

Though she loved her aunt, she was happy when Victoria left for home Tuesday afternoon, having changed her plans.

The scratches and bruises Chelsea had suffered during her ordeal were minuscule, the sort she might have gotten from falling while running on a sidewalk. She’d been extremely lucky.

Had the man meant to rape her or kill her? Probably both, she thought.

She replayed the tragedy in the hotel obsessively. It crowded into her thoughts while she tried to work, forced its way into her calculations, even elbowed away her attempts to solve sudoku puzzles. The men being lined up, the kid, the AR-15…

Jin Chiang stuck his head through the open doorway of the lab.

“Chelsea, come down the hall and look at this,” said the software engineer, bobbing away. “Hurry!”

Chelsea closed down her workstation and locked the door before following Chiang to his lab. There, rather than finding him and one or two protégés staring at a workstation screen, she saw over two dozen Smart Metal employees watching the oversize presentation monitor at the front of the room.

Just as surprising, it was tuned to a cable news network.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she came into the room.

Some shushed her. Chiang pointed at the screen.

What she saw first was nothing — literally, just blackness. As she stared, she could make out some boxy shapes; buildings maybe.

Then there was a flash. Several. White and yellow.

Then a red hand rising. But not a hand — flames.

Words scrolled across the bottom of the screen:

Up in his office, Massina flipped back and forth between the different channels carrying the news reports. The U.S. had launched a wave of attacks in Libya against different ISIS cells. Targets in at least three different cities were being hit. The commentator speculated that there were probably a dozen others targeted, but at the moment the military was refusing to comment. All the news reports were coming from people on the scene, mostly via cell-phone uploads to sites like YouTube.

One hearty CNN reporter had climbed onto a roof in Tobruk — shades of Peter Arnett in the First Gulf War — and was giving a live commentary as the missiles struck a building about a half mile away.

“I know that building,” he told the anchor back home. “It’s just a school. Thank God it’s night and all the students are at home.”

At that point, the “school” erupted in a series of fireballs as the missiles hit a store of ammunition and explosives.

“I suppose those are their pencils igniting,” said Massina caustically.

Bozzone, standing near the desk, laughed.

Massina flipped through the channels again, settling this time on Fox. They were replaying an earlier, extremely shaky cell-phone video from Misrata.

“What do you think?” he asked Bozzone.

Bozzone shrugged.

“At least they’re doing something,” offered Massina.

“True,” said Bozzone. “But how do we know these are the guys? It looks more like they’re targeting a guerilla movement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s almost beside the point, at least as far as Boston is concerned. Despite what these guys are claiming.”

Yes, thought Massina. It wasn’t retribution.

Chelsea stared at the others as the broadcast continued. They were smiling, cheering each explosion.

She felt as if she should be doing the same. Yet for some reason, the explosions didn’t make her feel any better. Not that she was sorry for the terrorists who were dying; on the contrary, she knew they deserved to die, and if she’d been piloting the bombers or commanding the missiles, or even pointing a gun at one of them, she would have no hesitation pulling the trigger.

But that wasn’t the same as feeling satisfied, let alone elated.

She didn’t feel anything. Not joy, not sorrow.

Pain?

No.

Pleasure?

No.

Satisfaction?

Not even close.

Nothing?

Nothing.

“I’m going back to work,” she said, leaving the lab.

20

Tolevi had just sat down to watch television with his daughter, Borya, when the American assault on the ISIS bases in Libya began. His first impulse was to change the channel, but all that did was bring a slightly less fuzzy image of exploding bombs to the screen.

“Do you want to watch this?” he asked.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“Not particularly. But all right.”

“Why don’t you want to see it?” Borya leaned forward on the couch, her head tilted slightly, a mannerism he thought she’d inherited from her mother. “Does it scare you?”

“How could it scare me?” answered Tolevi. He was genuinely surprised — what did his daughter think of him?

“Maybe you think the bombs will come here.”

“We’ve already been attacked. This is simply the response.” He studied her face, as if there were some clue there that would reveal the secret workings of her teenage mind. “And are you scared?”

“Of course not.”

“What about the other day, downtown,” he asked. “Were you scared then?”

“No.”

He actually believed her. The child had a very high threat tolerance, something that often got her in trouble.

“You would have been scared if one of them had pointed a gun at you,” said Tolevi. “Then.”

“Has that happened to you? I know it has,” she added. “I know people have shot at you. That’s why you only have half an ear, right? When you were with Chelsea.”

“Only a little was cut off,” he said defensively. About a third had been sliced, mostly the lobe, by an overzealous Russian prick of an officer.

“They cut it because you wouldn’t give up your friends, I bet.”

“Where do you get these ideas?” asked Tolevi, rising. He decided he would have a drink.

“Can you get me some chips?” she asked. “If you’re going into the kitchen.”

“Potato chips give you pimples,” he said. But he got the bag out anyway, and also a glass of orange juice — in his mind a balance to the chips — and was bringing them into the living room for her when the doorbell rang.

“You’re not expecting anyone, right?” Tolevi asked.

“I doubt it.”

That was a no.

“Stay here,” he said, setting down her snacks.

Tolevi went back to the kitchen, out into the hall, and checked the video monitor, which showed the front door.

Maarav Medved. A Russian mobster with whom he occasionally did business. He was alone, the street behind him empty.

“What the fuck now?” muttered Tolevi. He opened the drawer below the security monitor and reached behind the back to get the gun hidden above the panel. He slid the gun into the back of his belt and covered it with his shirt before going down to the door.

“What do you want?” he demanded from behind the locked door.

“Gabor! Is that a way to greet an old friend?”

“I heard rumors you wanted to kill me,” said Tolevi.

“Kill you? Never!”

“You’re lying.”

Tolevi put his eye to the security peephole. Medved was still alone. His arms were wide, palms up.

What the hell was he up to?

“You hurt me more than you know, Gabor.”

Tolevi cracked open the door. Medved smiled.

“Come in,” said Tolevi, stepping back.

Medved spread his arms out to grab him in a bear hug. Tolevi put up his hand.

“My daughter is here,” he said.

“And that is perfect, because I have a gift for her.”

Medved reached into the pocket of his sport coat. Tolevi stepped back and pulled his pistol.

“What? A gun on your friend? What is this?” sputtered Medved.

“You tried to get me killed.”

“No. Never.”

“Don’t lie.”

“It was not me, and you know it. You had trouble with the Russian service, big trouble.” Medved shook his head dramatically. “But many people do, and it passes. You have no trouble now! Of course not! You worked that out. Now, I–I had nothing to do with that. Ask anyone.”

Medved seemed genuinely offended, even hurt.

“So what do you want?” asked Tolevi.

“Want? Me? Nothing. I am honored to call you a friend.”

This, clearly, is going to cost me something huge, thought Tolevi.

“Can I come in?” asked Medved.

“My daughter is here, as I said.”

“And as I said, excellent, because I have a present for her. A new iPad.” Medved held out a slim rectangle wrapped in plain brown paper. “They call it a mini.”

“She has one.”

“And now two. This one is better. I understand she is very good at computers, yes?” Medved took a step inside. Tolevi, puzzled by what Medved might be up to, let him go.

Not much was sacrosanct with the Russian mafya, but attacking families, especially children, was generally considered out of bounds. And this sort of attention was meant to convey the opposite, to make up for past wrongs.

Or curry favor.

“Borya! Borya!” said Medved, tromping up the stairs to the kitchen. “A present for you.”

Borya, bewildered, emerged from the living room. If she remembered Medved, her expression betrayed no hint of it.

“How much you have grown! I brought you a present.”

“Thank you,” said Borya hesitantly. She glanced at her father. He shrugged.

“How is school?” asked Medved.

“Do I know you?” asked Borya.

Medved laughed genially. “I work with your dad. You and I met at the Christmas party two years ago. I knew your mother,” he added gravely.

The last was a lie, but Tolevi didn’t correct it.

“Open the present,” urged Medved. “Go on.”

Borya ripped off the paper gingerly, revealing an iPad mini. It wasn’t boxed and didn’t include a plug.

“Uh, thank you,” she said, turning it over. “You know, usually these have, like, a wire for charging.”

Medved’s face fell. “Oh.”

“I’m sure I have a spare,” she said quickly. “Thank you.” Borya winked at her father. “I have homework.”

“You better get it done,” Tolevi told her, winking back.

“So, what favor is it you want?” Tolevi asked when she left.

“Favor? No favor. In fact, I have a present for you,” declared Medved.

He reached into his jacket and took out a thick envelope. “It is a way of saying thank you.”

“Thank you for what? What did I do for you?”

“Not for me,” said Medved. “Someone more important than me.”

That would include 99 percent of the world, thought Tolevi. “Can you give me a hint?”

“You helped a babushka, on the day of the attacks,” said Medved.

Tolevi shrugged. The old grandma in the deli. He’d forgotten the incident entirely.

“Let’s just say she is the mother of someone very important. He will not forget this. Ever. Anything you need — anything — come to me. Bingo.”

“Bingo?”

“Yes, yes. Well, have a good night with your daughter. Family is very important. The most important.”

Tolevi showed him to the door. It was only when he had gone that he opened the envelope.

There were a hundred one-hundred-dollar bills.

Borya came into the kitchen as he finished counting. “What was that all about?”

“Looks like I did a good deed,” said Tolevi.

“I checked it for a virus,” she said, holding up the iPad. “It’s clean. Newest specs. Is it stolen?”

“That’s anyone’s guess,” admitted Tolevi.

“Do you think there’s a bomb inside?” she asked.

“Not one with explosives.”

21

Massina’s vague sense of unease after the American assaults in Libya only grew in their immediate aftermath. The waves of cruise missiles and standoff munitions launched by American ships, submarines, and aircraft were followed by ground operations conducted by Libyan troops. These were reported to be a great success.

Still, despite claims that they had been launched in retaliation for the Boston attacks, nothing Massina heard or read indicated that the Boston plotters had been brought to justice, or even captured. The Pentagon wouldn’t even comment on whether they’d been targeted.

Having given the issue some thought following the attacks, Massina realized that Muslim extremists were a nihilistic pathogen that poisoned countries directly and indirectly. No amount of reason or goodwill could convince them to alter their path toward conflagration. Eventually they, or people they influenced, would get ahold of a nuclear weapon. Maybe this would happen in Pakistan, maybe Russia, maybe even, God forbid, the U.S. Millions would die or be poisoned. The only way to prevent that was to stamp them out, and keep stamping.

Given that logic, the attacks in Libya made sense. And yet they were inadequate at best. And since they didn’t directly target the perpetrators in Boston — or if they did, clearly they had missed — they were beside the point. If you didn’t punish the people responsible for the attacks, there would surely be more attacks.

The evening of the attack, Massina had met with a friend of his at the FBI and offered to help in any way possible. It was a sincere offer, but he could tell from the reaction that his friend thought it was pro forma, the sort of thing people said in times of crisis.

Which only frustrated him more. Still, Massina was taken off guard when he got a text on his private phone a week and change after the attacks:

Massina almost dismissed it as spam, then realized who “YJoh” was. He replied:

The answer came quickly.

Now it was Massina’s turn to pass.

He thought for a moment.

Johansen didn’t respond.

“Must be a yes,” Massina told himself.

Massina spent a good forty-five minutes at the party before Yuri Johansen caught his attention with a subtle wave from the portable bar in the corner. Massina excused himself and ambled over, stopping to say hello to the mayor’s wife, who was here alone tonight, her husband being in Washington on business.

“I’m so glad none of your people were hurt,” she told him after an air kiss.

“Yes, and it’s a miracle that you and your family were OK,” said Massina.

“We have good people around us. The bastards tried.” The word bastards came out of her mouth easily, even though it was a stark contrast to her otherwise dignified, nearly prim, manner. Evelyn—Mrs. Mayor to the press — was old-Boston Brahmin, a sharp contrast to her husband. Their marriage was the ultimate proof of opposites attracting.

“Anything that I can do to help us get back on our feet,” said Massina, “you’ll let me know. Make sure Bobby knows.”

“He does.” Evelyn grasped his arm. “Thank you, Louis. Your help means a lot.”

Massina nodded. Evelyn let go of his arm, then drifted away.

“You feel very strongly about your city,” said Johansen, who’d walked over while he’d been talking.

“Of course,” said Massina.

“I’d like to have a conversation.”

“Go ahead.”

“Needs to be private. Come on.”

Johansen led him out of the hotel to a waiting Escalade. As soon as both men got in the back, the Cadillac SUV pulled away from the curb.

They drove up to Atlantic Avenue, continuing north. Massina waited for Johansen to say something — anything.

“Mr. Johansen,” he said finally, “if you want my help, you should start by not wasting my time. It’s very precious to me.”

“We believe the Boston attacks were planned by a man whose nom de guerre is Ghadab min Allah — Allah’s Wrath.”

“I see.”

“He was in Libya. He’s gone. Where, we’re not sure yet.”

“Were the attacks launched against him?”

“Multiple targets. The administration—” Johansen paused. “Politics is a complicated thing.”

“I’m glad to hear that someone’s trying to get him.”

“Yes.” The word sounded odd, as if it came from a synthetic voice box, rather than a human being.

Johansen looked back out the window. “I’m putting together an operation.”

“You or the CIA?”

“It depends whether we’re caught,” said Johansen. His voice was too serious for Massina to take it as a joke, though perhaps it was meant as a dark one. “You were of great help in Ukraine. I could use some of those devices. And others.”

“What do you need?”

“Surveillance drones. An autonomous information-gathering system — we’d plant the bugs around an area and let the system do the heavy work. I won’t have enough people to watch everything and can’t risk them in certain areas. Your devices solve both problems.”

“I see.”

“We haven’t pinned down for sure where this guy is,” added Johansen. “But assuming it’s Syria, which is most likely, the political situation there complicates things. The Russians work closely with the Syrians, and in theory we’d have to work with them if we wanted to do something there.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“Not in a million years. Even if their hearts were in the right place,” added Johansen. “Talking to the Russians is in effect talking to the Syrians, and word inevitably gets back to Daesh. This has to be completely off the books.”

“Daesh?”

“ISIL, ISIS, scumbags — Daesh. Technically it stands for the phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham—the same as ISIL. But in Arabic, it sounds like slang for a traitor against Islam. That’s why people in the administration use ISIL — it’s translated as Daesh. It’s a silly game,” added the CIA agent. “But I guess you get your knives in where you can. They don’t like it, which to me is the best reason to use it.”

“I see.”

“Will you help us?”

Massina wanted to grab him and say of course. But he knew this was more like a business decision — or should be. He struggled to be systematic, to think, to divorce himself from the elation he suddenly felt.

A chance to strike back! You bet I’m in!

“Who operates the systems?” he asked Johansen.

“You train my guys.”

“When are you attacking?”

“As soon as we have a definitive target.”

“Training your people isn’t going to work. It’ll take months, and frankly, you’re unlikely to have the expertise.”

Johansen was silent for a few moments.

“I could take two people,” he said. Clearly he’d already considered this a possibility. “They stay behind the lines with me in Turkey.”

“Two may not be enough.”

“It will have to be. And I have to train them. For survival,” added Johansen. “Otherwise they don’t come. And volunteers. They have to volunteer.”

“Fair enough,” said Massina. “We’ll work it out.”

22

After the accident that had cost him his legs, Johnny Givens had undergone a series of operations and rehabilitation that not only rebuilt his body, but made it measurably better. His prosthetic legs, whose jumping strength alone was three times beyond his “natural” strength, were only the most obvious improvement. (The figure came from comparing his ability in the broad jump with his measurements in high school track events.) The medicine that had helped him recover had bulked up the rest of his body; the drugs that got his nerves ready for the grafts to his legs’ controls had accentuated not only the rest of his nerves but his brain’s processing as well. He literally thought faster and learned quicker as a byproduct of his recovery.

But these improvements had had an odd effect on his emotional state. Confident in his abilities before, he now wondered how much of him was real.

Assigned a counselor as part of his rehab — post-traumatic stress was among several fears — he found it impossible to describe precisely how he felt. The counselor, a man in his fifties with a beard that made Johnny think of Sigmund Freud, told him what he was going through was perfectly natural.

“What does that mean exactly?” Johnny asked. “What am I going through?”

“Adjustment.”

“Adjusting…?”

“Are you sad?” asked the counselor, stroking his beard.

“I wouldn’t say I’m sad. Meh, maybe.”

“Meh?”

Johnny shrugged. “Meh.”

“Describe it.”

But Johnny couldn’t. He dropped counseling in favor of more workouts; those seemed far more productive. He ran five miles a day, every morning, and used the Smart Metal gym as well. The facility was outfitted along the lines of a Gold’s Gym; what it lacked in muscle-conscious gym rats it more than made up in stat-obsessed health nuts. Computers — yours or a central unit — could track and critique every aspect of a workout, from breathing to posture to sweat content. There were four different personal trainer programs, each customizable for body type and goals.

Johnny eschewed that electronic assistance, but otherwise was one of the gym’s most frequent “guests,” as the system called them. Mornings from eight to ten tended to be rather busy, but otherwise the gym was big enough that it was easy to work through even the longest sequences without interruption. Johnny was often alone when he started, which could be as early as 4:30 in the morning on nights he couldn’t sleep.

So he was surprised when, pushing in at 4:42 a.m., he found Chelsea running on one of the treadmills. He waved, but she had her earphones on and her head down as he passed. He got on a treadmill, did a bit of cardio to warm up before hitting the weight machines. He’d just finished some easy hammer presses, still in warm-up mode, when Chelsea walked over.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I have a question about one of the machines.”

“No problem,” he told her, getting up. “What’s up?”

“I want to use the Gravitron, but I don’t know the settings.”

“Gravitron?”

“I’m following this workout.” She showed him her phone.

“OK.” Johnny took a look at the routine. “The Gravitron’s over here.”

He showed her how the machine worked — it was like a pull-up machine, with a counterweight — and then spotted her through a set.

She was pretty. A shorter, stronger Ilana Glazer.

No glasses. A heart tattoo on her shoulder, barely visible beneath her T-shirt and wide bra strap, a lightning bolt on her right thigh.

Well-shaped thigh.

“How do your arms feel?” he asked as she dropped down.

“Good. A little burn in the shoulders.”

“Two more sets and see how it feels,” he told her. “It should be a bit of burn but you should be able to use your arms.”

“I hope so.” She laughed.

“Have you worked out before?”

“Not here. I haven’t done weight training since college, really. I played field hockey in high school,” she added. “But since then, I just run, mostly.”

“You like hitting people with sticks?”

“It has its advantages.”

Johnny spotted her on the next two machines. She was small, but wiry, stronger than he would have expected.

“Is it always this empty?” she asked.

“This early, yeah.”

“You always work out now?”

“It varies, but yeah, a lot. I don’t — I haven’t needed so much sleep since the recovery period, you know, for my legs. I think it’s like a side effect of the drugs.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

Chelsea had been there when his legs were crushed, and though she had nothing to do with it, he knew she had some sort of odd guilt about it. It was stupid and irrational, but he could see it in her face.

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.

“It’s OK,” he told her gently. “It’s really all right.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, still holding him.

“Are you all right? The attack on the hotel—”

“I’m fine.”

She let go. He stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say, if he should assure her he was fine or probe about her reaction to the attack.

Her oversize, shapeless T-shirt and shorts made her look far more vulnerable than she really was.

“I, uh, I gotta get upstairs,” he said, glancing at the clock. “I, uh, am picking up Mr. Massina early, for Beef.”

“And I gotta finish,” she said, turning back to the triceps dip. “See ya later.”

Halfway to the door, he stopped short.

“Maybe we can get a drink sometime,” he said, his voice more tentative than he wanted.

Her frown threw him off; he braced himself.

“I’d like that,” she said. “Really.”

23

Tolevi swung the car to the curb and looked over at his daughter.

“Have a good day,” he told Borya. “Good luck on the test. Be sure to text Mary when you’re on your way home.”

If Borya heard any of that, she gave no hint. The car door slammed behind her as she ran to see one of her friends near the school steps.

“I thought girls liked to talk,” he grumbled to his steering wheel as he pulled back into traffic.

He had a full agenda today. First stop was the Port of Boston, where he had to meet with the man who was going to drive some of his imports to a distribution center down in New York State. Then he was meeting a food broker to see about buying coffee — a lot of it. Tolevi’s recent visit to the Ukraine had convinced him that coffee would sell well on both sides of the border — occupied and “free.”

Tolevi tightened his grip on the steering wheel as he passed the restaurant that had been shot up and then burned by the ISIS terrorists. Like many people, he wasn’t particularly impressed by the administration’s “measured action” in Libya. The news sites were all claiming that three or four hundred “ISIS-affiliated fighters” had been killed or rejected from the country.

Somehow that didn’t seem like a proper response. The Libyan government, with help from the Americans and Europeans, had launched a comprehensive offensive to retake the western half of the country from the rebels. All very well and good, thought Tolevi, but in the meantime, cut the balls off the bastards who’d attacked. It was the only way to make a point.

Behead them on Boston Common — that was what he wanted to see. And that was the only sort of thing these pricks would really understand. How dare they kill innocent people? What kind of savages were they?

Sociopaths.

Gut them, feed them their balls, then behead them. That was the way to deal with the fucks.

Tolevi’s contact worked at a small cargo operation in the shadow of Conley Terminal, Massport’s massive container operation on the harbor. Its smaller size meant it had to scramble; more important, its operators were very understanding, even flexible.

Not that Tolevi intended to break the law in this deal. Just bend it a bit, where necessary.

A truck cab without a container cut in front of Tolevi as he entered the yard.

“Asshole,” yelled Tolevi, and he laid on the horn.

If the trucker heard it, he gave no sign. Tolevi continued to the small shack where his contact, Andrew Bastos, worked. Inside, he found Bastos in deep discussion with two crane operators.

It was more monologue than discussion, Bastos chewing them out for some unspecified infraction. The men listened with blank expressions — not frowning, not smiling, not showing emotion of any kind.

“Get out, get out, I call the union,” said Bastos finally. He had a thick Portuguese accent; he came from Gloucester up the coast, from a fishing family that had members on both sides of the ocean.

“What do you want, Tolevi?” Bastos demanded, dismissing the others. “I don’t have all day.”

“Your brother-in-law,” said Tolevi. “I need him to take a container down. It should be here tomorrow.”

“Humph.” The man tapped a button on his computer’s touchscreen. “Gonna be here late. Maybe that container doesn’t get off until morning.”

“It’d be better that night.”

“There are costs involved.”

This was all purely bullshit — Tolevi had checked earlier in the morning; the ship was due to dock no later than 8:00 a.m., and if anything was running ahead of schedule. But the shakedown was part of the arrangement — Tolevi wasn’t so much paying to make sure the cargo came off on time as he was paying for silence if anything went wrong.

“You’re moving what?”

“Olive oil,” said Tolevi.

“From Argentina?”

“They have a surplus.”

They did, in fact, have a surplus. And a good portion of the oil in the container was in fact Argentinian.

Another portion had come from Syria, but that fact needn’t be specified. The documents certainly didn’t.

“And you need my brother-in-law?”

“If you know someone else dependable, I’m all ears.”

“He’ll do. Usual arrangements.”

“Absolutely,” said Tolevi.

As he left the building, he found a burly man blocking his way. Tolevi was by no means short, but the man in front of him loomed over him. His T-shirt strained with his arm and chest muscles; he looked twice the size of a professional wrestler.

Three other men, all as big, stood behind him.

“You were in that car,” said the man.

“You’re the jerk that cut me off?” snapped Tolevi. It wasn’t exactly the most politic answer, but if he was going to get beaten up, he might as well go down with dignity.

“I wanted to apologize,” said the man. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tolevi.”

Tolevi was sure this was some sort of trick. One of the men nudged the trucker, and he stuck out his hand to shake.

Doubtful but seeing no other choice, Tolevi extended his own. To his great surprise, the man gripped it gently and they shook.

“I really am sorry, sir,” said the trucker.

“It’s not a problem,” said Tolevi, flabbergasted. “Don’t worry about it. It’s forgotten. I don’t even remember hearing anything, except ‘good morning.’”

“Anything we can do for you, Mr. Tolevi,” said the man who’d nudged the trucker, “just let us know.”

Tolevi nodded, then walked quickly to his car.

24

The clerk frowned. “Let’s see the paper.”

Chelsea took it from her pocket and slid it onto the counter. The clerk picked it up and examined it closely.

“All right, so you have a gun license,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Show me the SIG.”

“You’d really probably be more comfortable with something smaller,” he said.

“I want stopping power,” she told him.

The man’s moustache twitched. He was older, midsixties, she guessed. Though that wasn’t an excuse for his chauvinism.

“Look, I’m an ex-trooper and gun instructor,” he told her. “I’ve seen a lot of girls—”

“I’m not a girl. Are you not going to even show me the gun?”

“A small automatic—”

“If I wanted that, I’d ask for it.”

“Old-fashioned shotguns are the best weapon for home defense. There’s nothing like that sound in the middle of the night.”

“I have one. I need something to carry.”

The clerk removed the gun from the display. He made sure it wasn’t chambered, then handed it to her. Chelsea inspected it carefully, knowing he was watching her.

“A lot of people are worried because of the ISIS attacks,” he said gently. “I get it. Believe me. And I’m not trying to give you a hard time—”

“You are giving me a hard time.”

“I just want to make sure you’re getting the right weapon,” he said. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

“You think I’m a woman and can’t handle a gun.”

“What do you weigh? A hundred pounds?”

“I’ve used 1911s without a problem. I know it’s not a toy. You want to come down the street to the police range and see?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

The SIG 226 felt heavy in her hand. Chambered in .40 S&W, it was the same gun used by many police officers and even some special-operations soldiers. It could hold fifteen bullets in its magazine.

“You know, if you like SIGs,” suggested the clerk, “you might think about a 229 or even a 224. The 224 is really compact. It would fit easier in your purse.”

“I don’t carry a purse,” said Chelsea.

“There’s no manual safety,” he said.

“No shit.”

Chelsea put the gun down on the counter.

“You want a case?” asked the clerk.

“Absolutely,” she said, taking out her credit card. “And three boxes of ammo.”

25

Ordinarily, Massina would have blown off the fund-raising reception for the New Millennium Advancement Project. He had no connection to the foundation or its board and plenty of other things to do. But in the aftermath of the attacks, he felt almost obligated to attend. The cocktail party was being held at the Windhaven Hotel, across the street from the Patriot, where so many people had been murdered. Windhaven had opened its doors to its erstwhile rival, providing rooms at no charge to some of the displaced guests following the assaults and even lending its own employees. Attending the reception was a small gesture of thanks — and an opportunity to reclaim some of the area soiled by savages.

In the aftermath of the Easter attacks, there was a general consensus that life had to go on. Amid the sorrow and the cleanup efforts, under the watchful eye of National Guardsmen and state police reinforcements, Boston made an effort to push ahead. The citizens didn’t ignore what had happened, let alone hide their grief, but many went out of their way to stick to their old routines. Even with a significant part of the Orange Line closed for emergency repairs, ridership on the T approached record levels, as if residents had decided taking the subway was a good way to give the terrorists the finger. Restaurants were overbooked. If the atmosphere throughout the city wasn’t quite St. Patrick’s Day happy — a bit too warm for that — it was definitely Boston Proud: F-U to all and any that messed with us.

Defiance ran deep, from skin to bones and back. But there were other things beneath the surface: wariness, queasy suspicion, distrust. There was ugliness as well. A handful of Arab Americans had been beaten in the wake of the attacks; there were threats and graffiti.

There was also fear. People glanced over their shoulders as they walked. Many rehearsed what they would do if something nearby exploded.

Massina passed through the security check, then waited for Johnny, who had to explain who he was and why he needed his weapon even though he’d been precleared for the event as Massina’s bodyguard. The screener’s supervisor came over and gave him a small red pin to wear on his lapel.

“Red Badge of Courage,” remarked Massina.

The former FBI agent gave him a confused look.

“Stephen Crane. Book,” said Massina, turning to greet one of the board members as she came forward to peck him on the cheek.

He peeked at her name tag, unable to place the face.

“Delilah, how are you?” he asked.

“Fab-u-lous.” She was a sketch out of Saturday Night Live. “And you, Lou-is?”

“Just looking for a drink,” said Massina, excusing himself.

He made his way toward the bar at the far end of the room. Along the way he shook a few hands, received three or four air kisses, and nodded a lot. When he made it to the bartender, he asked for a pair of seltzers. Stuffing a five in the cup, he took the drinks and slid sideways toward Johnny, who was watching the crowd. Bozzone insisted he go everywhere these days with a bodyguard, and aside from Bozzone himself, he felt most comfortable with Johnny.

He handed Johnny the cup. “It’s seltzer,” he told him.

“Thanks.”

Massina passed through the crowd, nodding and smiling, occasionally stopping to chat. He knew a good number of the people at the reception, though he wasn’t very close to any of them. The crowd was a bit too artsy for his taste.

A half hour later, he nudged Johnny aside and glanced at his watch. “I think we’ll call it a night.”

“Your party, boss.”

“Party is too strong a word.”

Massina headed to a side door, smiled at two people he didn’t know, and pushed through. He walked down a short hall to a door that opened onto a side terrace. To his surprise, there was a small group of men there smoking cigars. He started to pass through — there was a gate at the far end to the street — when someone called his name.

“Louis, trying to escape?”

Massina stopped. “Jimmy? Hey.”

A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped through a cloud of cigar smoke and thrust a beefy hand toward him. It was Jimmy Gorman, former district attorney, former mayor, former party chairman, now just a big muck behind the scenes.

“What the hell are you doing at this soiree?” asked Gorman. He pounded Massina’s back so hard he nearly coughed.

“Thought I’d see where they were spending my money.”

Gorman laughed. “Want a cigar?”

“Nah.”

“How about your friend?” asked Gorman, gesturing to Johnny.

“This is Johnny Givens. He works for me.”

“Yeah, I see his pin.” Gorman smirked, then turned to introduce Massina to the others he’d been standing with. Two were state senators whom Massina had met briefly in the past; the others were business people — donors, he guessed.

Everyone nodded politely. Massina was about to leave when Gorman pointed his cigar in the direction of the Patriot Hotel across the street.

“You want to go for a look?” he asked.

“What’s to see?”

Gorman shrugged.

“Johnny helped rescue the hostages,” said Massina.

“No shit.” Gorman stepped over and clapped Givens on the back. Johnny gave him a very uncomfortable smile.

“So,” said Gorman to Massina, “you wanna take a look?”

“Sure,” decided Massina. “Sure.”

There were no less than three dozen police officers and twice that many National Guardsmen scattered around the block, with half a dozen cops blocking the entrance to the Patriot. Gorman tossed his cigar into the gutter and walked up to the sergeant in charge of the hotel detail; the man waved them in.

“How long before it reopens?” asked Massina.

“Don’t know. They still have their investigators running in and out,” said Gorman. He waved toward the bank of elevators. “They do a complete DNA vacuum thing or something in each of the rooms, pulling out all sorts of DNA, you know, hair and saliva and that stuff. Looking for any sort of clues. Seems like a hell of a lot of work to me, but they know their business. I’ll show you the ballroom.”

Massina remembered the hallway from the surveillance video, but it was difficult to map that memory on the wide space he walked through now. In the video, it was dark and grainy, foreboding. Now, even though it was night, the hall was bright and inviting, the walls a delicate mauve, the sconces polished, the hardware gleaming.

The doors to the ballroom were open. Gorman ducked under the yellow evidence tape still strung across them and walked a few feet in. Massina hesitated, then followed.

“They took out the carpet and the wallboard for evidence,” Gorman said. “That’s where the massacre took place.”

He pointed to the area where the men had been slaughtered. Studs and insulation were all that were left.

“That’s where I danced with my daughter,” said Gorman, pointing near the stage. “On her wedding. Not five years ago.”

Massina looked around. He’d been at that wedding.

“Wanna see upstairs?”

Massina caught a glimpse of Johnny’s ashen face.

“I think this is enough,” Massina said. “But thanks.”

“Difficult,” said Gorman, leading them out.

He stopped when they reached the front lobby, pensively retrieving a cigar from his pocket and cutting it with fastidious precision. Retrieving a silver-shrouded torch lighter, he slowly warmed the end before setting it afire and taking a puff.

“Bastards,” said Gorman. “We can’t let them keep us down.”

“They won’t,” said Massina.

“No. I wonder, Lou — I wonder if maybe you might want to do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m getting together some people to make a statement, public, you know? On a stage. TV. Tell the fuckin’ world we’re not taking this shit on the chin. I know you don’t do this sort of thing, but it would be good for us. People respect you.”

“I’ll do it. Send my assistant the details.”

“You got it, bro.” Gorman swatted him on the back.

Bro? thought Massina. He’s getting hip in his old age.

“Home, boss?” Johnny asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“No. I have some things to do at the office.”

“All right.”

“What’d you think?”

“Think of what?” asked Johnny.

“The hotel. Did it bother you? Being inside again?”

“Nah. Just a place.”

“We’re going to get them back,” said Massina. “This sideshow in Libya, it’s got nothing to do with what’s really going to happen.”

“Really?”

“We’re lending the government some gear. I need volunteers to—”

“If there’s some sort of action involved,” said Johnny, “I’d like to be part of it.”

“I was hoping you’d think that way,” said Massina. “I’ll make it so.”

26

Everywhere he went, they hailed him as a hero.

Even at four in the morning, on a dusty airstrip in eastern Syria, Ghadab was well-known. “Emir!” they called him, bowing their heads and striking their chests. Ghadab, in theory traveling in secrecy, was accorded every honor and luxury the Caliphate’s soldiers could afford.

Objectively, this wasn’t much — fresh water as he stepped from the plane, a blanket against the cold of the truck, which had sat at the edge of the airstrip for nearly three hours, waiting for the plane. But he appreciated it nonetheless.

Escaping from Libya had been difficult. It wasn’t just that the Americans were bombarding everything that had even the slightest connection to the Caliphate. The group that had been sheltering Ghadab split into several factions and began attacking each other, making it dangerous even for Ghadab to travel. He’d had to use his influence with two of the rebels to institute a cease-fire so he could meet the plane to Sudan.

Getting from Sudan to Egypt and then Syria was another odyssey. The Jews had spies everywhere, and he’d had to lay over in a gas station in Abri for five hours, at one point pretending that he was the attendant when some men in suit jackets arrived. They turned out to be Saudi businessmen, but could just as easily have been Mossad or even Egyptian GID, who would have shot him and sold his body to the Americans.

Getting into Syria was easy by comparison: a commercial flight in heavy disguise to Jordan; from there, a private plane deposited him in Syria. The truck ride that followed was long and uncomfortable, but not dangerous — the center of Syria and much of bordering Iraq was Caliphate territory.

Located in central Syria, Palmyra was a sleepy town organized around an oasis that made it possible to grow crops. It had been settled for millennia; monuments to old pagan regimes, an outrage to the true God and all that was good, still stood near the town. Its airfield and barracks abandoned at the start of hostilities, it had been one of the first places taken by the Caliphate and had withstood the infidels’ many counterattacks. At the moment, the hostilities there were largely dormant here; the puppet Assad was too busy concentrating on his weaker enemies to the northwest to bother with Caliphate strongholds.

Assad’s caution bothered Ghadab. The end time would never arrive if their opponents were so cautious.

He was especially disappointed in the Americans. True, they had attacked in Libya, and quite fiercely, but they had not brought their army back to the Levant as the Word declared they would at the start of Armageddon. The prophecy implicit in the words of the Koran had not been fulfilled.

They were in sight of the city, close enough to make out its minarets in front of the distant hills, when Ghadab saw the first sign of war: a thin trail of gray smoke rose near the river on the near side. Apparently a structure had been targeted overnight. A missile — Russian or American, it was impossible to know — had destroyed the building. Being empty, it was allowed to burn.

“It was on fire when I left,” said the driver, pointing in the direction of the ruins. “Now just the rocks are left to burn.”

“Do they hit here often?” asked Ghadab.

“A few times. It’s not serious. The Russians attack. With them, there is always some danger, since they never hit what they aim at.”

A single bridge crossed from the south directly into the city. It had been damaged by artillery and bombed several times, but each time the brothers had repaired it swiftly, and the infidels appeared to have given up on it. They passed over quickly, speeding past an orchard and heading into the city proper. They took a right at the first intersection, then the next left, passing a mosque and continuing on to an intersection dominated by a large park, which in ancient days had been the grounds of a house so large it was called a castle. No longer standing, it had been home to relatives of the emir.

Bordering the park at the corner was a restaurant and inn. The Caliphate had requisitioned it over soon after taking the town.

A single man stood outside the entrance. Ghadab knew him only as “the African”; he was his liaison to the War Council.

“Ghadab min Allah,” said the man as Ghadab got out. “The entire city is honored by your presence.”

Ghadab bowed his head. They had first met three years before, serving together in Yemen. The African had apparently been born in Ethiopia, though his accent and features seemed entirely Arabic.

“I am honored to be here,” Ghadab told him.

“Work brings us all blessings, brother.” The African’s Arabic was quick and precise, with the slightest hint of Egypt in its accent.

“I was told I have space to work?”

“A facility has been found, a proper place for you,” said the African. “We will tour it tomorrow. Tonight, you must rest.”

“I’d feel better working.”

“Your people have not even arrived.” The African’s tone was that of a father chiding a child who wanted to play. “Come, we have arranged something for you.”

The African led him around the building to the back, entering a side gate to a fenced patio before continuing through another gate to the garden. Organized around a desert spring, the grounds were crisscrossed by gravel paths and heavily studded with trees; it was cool, almost cold in the predawn air.

“Your thoughts are far away,” said the African as they walked. “Best watch your step.”

He led Ghadab to a small rectangular pool near the center of the property. At one point, there had been a statue on the pedestal that stood above the pool; Caliphate soldiers had disposed of it soon after claiming the city.

A man stood on that pedestal, hands bowed, head covered. He was barefoot; his clothes bore the blood and tears of a recent beating.

“Hamas,” spit the African. “A spy.”

Twelve warriors in black uniforms stood in a semicircle at the eastern end of the pedestal. Each held a Kalashnikov diagonally across his chest. Across from them was a young man in traditional Syrian dress, holding a video camera. A boom microphone extended from the top; the man looked like a tourist, or perhaps a new father waiting to capture his son’s first steps.

Nearby was another man holding a curved sword.

“We execute him at the moment of sunrise,” said the African. “I wonder if you would like the honor?”

Hearing the words, Ghadab no longer felt tired. “It would be my pleasure.”

His distractions stayed behind as he walked to the man with the sword, who handed it to him reverently. It was a heavy, well-polished and finely sharpened tool, a weapon even the Prophet would be proud to wield. Ghadab swung it around his head, slashing the air.

Oh, yes, this is the pleasure of jihad. The victory over the weak, the profane infidels, the destroyers of the Word and all that is holy!

Ghadab climbed up the pedestal. The apostate spy tried to stand erect, but Ghadab saw that his hands were trembling.

“On your knees, blasphemer!” he commanded.

When the man didn’t sink fast enough, Ghadab pushed him down with his left hand. Then he positioned his head slightly forward. The man moved it too far, bowing almost to the stone.

Really, it did not matter. A clean stroke or several hacks — it was all the same to Ghadab. There were blotches of dried blood already on the pedestal. It was a sacred place.

Ghadab glanced over his shoulder. The edge of the earth had a pink line, but there was no glow yet.

Another minute. Perhaps two.

The spy began to mutter something.

“What are you saying!” shouted Ghadab.

Instead of answering, the man continued to mutter, almost singing.

It was a prayer.

“Apostate!” shouted Ghadab. “Blasphemer!”

With that, he slammed the sword down as hard as he could, severing in one blow the man’s skull from his body. It was a clean stroke, and it unleashed a flood of blood. The head shot forward, bouncing on the flat stone, and rolling off the pedestal. The body stayed as it was for a full five seconds, blood spouting as if it were a fountain. Then it caved off to the side, bereft.

Ghadab plunged the sword into the dead torso, pushing so hard that the tip went through and struck stone.

Satiated, he went down to the African. A calm fell over him; he was no longer annoyed at the inconvenience of being given new quarters or told not to get to work. He felt tired, but also ready to concede that he needed rest.

“Thank you, brother,” he told the African. “I wish to pray now and have a meal before I rest.”

27

Chelsea rubbed her eyes, blinked a few times, then forced herself to reexamine the code on the computer screen. It was out of whack — she could see the syntax was messed up, but for the life of her couldn’t figure out why.

She got up from her console.

I need a break. Coffee.

Chelsea walked down the hall, heading for the kitchenette at the far side. She put a coffee pod in the single-serve and waited for the French Roast to spritz through. A half-dozen donuts, two glazed, the rest sugar-jellies, sat in a box next to the coffee. She barely noticed them, unnerved by her loss of concentration.

Fatigue.

Cradling her cup in both hands, Chelsea walked back down the hallway, passing her own lab and continuing to Room B4. The lab had been taken over by Chiang, who headed a team assigned by Massina to “explore” the identities and location of the perpetrators of the Boston attacks.

“Come to help?” asked Chiang.

“Just seeing how everyone is.”

Massina had asked Chelsea if she wanted to be involved, but she demurred. Her instinct was to get back to what she had been doing all along, to not let the attacks alter her course.

She regretted that now.

“Here’s something we’re stuck on,” said Chiang. “Check it out.”

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, there was a flood of postings and communications on social media. The vast bulk of these were not by terrorists; even those expressing “solidarity” with the bastards were almost always far removed from anything nefarious. Nonetheless, a tiny minority of these accounts could be linked to other accounts that were using high-level encryption programs to send messages. A list of these accounts had been developed by the NSA and shared, through the CIA, with Smart Metal.

Chiang’s team — or more precisely, their computer software — had broken the encryption the night before. But the messages themselves yielded no useful information about terrorist operations; the bulk were trivial greetings. Of course, those could be code: “All good here” or “Happy Birthday” could easily be meant as a signal to start an attack or lay low. So Chiang and his team were now sifting through those messages and the accounts associated with them, comparing them to different news events and other intelligence that they had gathered to see what information they might tickle out of the cross-references. Thus far, though, none of the patterns they’d noticed seemed significant.

Except one. But it was baffling.

“We’ve looked at some Facebook pages with baseball postings that might be interesting,” said Chiang, explaining that the subject seemed to be an anomaly — onetime entries by posters who otherwise seemed to have no interest in the sport. “We thought maybe they were targets or messages about meeting places, but it looks like a dead end.”

Chiang pulled up one of the pages, then clicked into a window that showed the owner’s “friends.” A number of the accounts were bots, created to increase hits and ratings. The team had ignored them for the most part; Chelsea asked why.

“They’re just kind of noise in the system,” said Chiang.

“Do you mind?” Chelsea asked.

“Please.”

Chelsea sat at the workstation and began looking at the links associated with the bots. The bulk had been traced to outfits in China and Russia and labeled according to expected intent — propaganda was big with the Russian contacts, which, in many cases, used the links to legitimate commenters. The results tended to cluster, with multiple accounts and interlocking links.

So what was interesting?

Not the links, but the lack of them.

“What about this Croatia website?” she asked Chiang about an hour after sitting down. “What’s the story?”

“Tourism,” said Chiang. “The Google translation is pretty good.”

“The pictures are all taken from other sources.”

Chiang smirked. “Welcome to the internet.”

“Can we get a list of who looks at the site?” Chelsea asked.

“Well…”

Chiang leaned over and hot-keyed up a tool to hack into the server.

It was harder than Chelsea thought it would be, way harder than most of the other sites, on par with the work done by the best Chinese sites.

“I think we should look at this one pretty hard,” said Chelsea when they finally reached the folders associated with the site. “That’s a hell of a lot of material for a tourist site.”

“Yeah,” said Chiang, opening a folder and a document at random. It was written in Arabic. “You think they get a lot of tourists from the Middle East?”

28

The fact that Johansen brought a lawyer bothered the hell out of Massina, and his annoyance only grew as the lawyer insisted on opening the meeting with a statement.

“For the record,” he intoned, “you are private citizens, acting entirely out of your own self-interest, sharing in good faith with us information you have developed.”

The only way Massina managed to hold his temper in check long enough to let the idiot finish was to focus on the rearrangement of the gear and furniture. The Box had been reconfigured as more of a conference room than a computing center for the meeting; a large table sat in the middle of the room. All but four of the dozen chairs were empty. Besides Johansen and the legal beagle — Massina had blocked out his name, Bert Backlash or something — Jenkins from the FBI had been invited. Massina had decided to present the data himself.

“So, for the record,” continued the lawyer, “we are all here with no preconceived commitments and no entanglements.”

“No one is making a record of this meeting, as far as I know,” Massina said. He had trouble pushing the words out of his clenched teeth. “There is no need for legal bullshit.”

“I think we all understand each other,” said Johansen, trying to soothe things. “This is simply an exchange of ideas. The source of these ideas is not relevant. That’s all.”

Massina opened his laptop, which was hooked into the large screen at the front of the room to his right.

“This is a restaurant in Palmyra, Syria. It’s supposedly a decent restaurant, or it was. There’s a small computer in the storeroom that’s used as a server. On first glance, the files on the server appear innocuous. They turn out to be sites on the so-called dark web, which I assume you all understand are addresses that, among other things, don’t show up on your standard Google search. I’m not going to take you through the entire process,” Massina added, “and won’t bore you with everything we’ve found. But we were able to trace the funding network for an organization associated with Daesh through this site.”

“This server is linked to the Boston attack?” asked Johansen.

“A credit card associated with one of the bank accounts that this server is regularly used to access, yes. It’s an administrative account; the same credentials were used to set up the file system and a peripheral, so we believe there is a physical presence there.”

“In other words,” said Johansen, “that’s where our bad guy is.”

“That’s where a bad guy is,” said Massina. “Or at least someone directly interested in the Boston attacks and helping fund them. Maybe indirectly,” he allowed.

“It’s an intriguing connection,” admitted Jenkins.

“If it were just that,” continued Massina, “you wouldn’t be here. Another account linked with this server belongs to an alias used by this man.”

“Ghadab min Allah,” said Johansen when the face came up on the screen.

“You have definite proof that he’s tied into the attacks?” asked the lawyer. “Beyond the rumors, which are popular on the web.”

Another screen.

“This card was used to pay for a plane ticket to Canada a year ago. It was also used to rent a car. The mileage on the account shows that it could have come to Boston. The names are here; I assume you can verify in your own data from Immigration if he crossed the border.”

“He wasn’t here when the attacks occurred,” said Jenkins.

“No. He was in Libya.”

Massina brought up the next screen, which showed the alias he believed Ghadab had used there: Durban Rahm. He continued sketching out what they had found, laying out the network as they knew it. Every so often he would glance at Johansen, trying to gauge how much of this he already knew. But the CIA officer’s face remained neutral — until Massina’s presentation shifted from briefing to a plan to deal with what they had found.

“Here’s what I suggest be done,” started Massina. “First—”

“We’ve heard enough,” said Johansen, rising quickly. “And Bert has another meeting.”

“Uh—”

“Thank you for briefing us as a private citizen,” Johansen said.

The others were already heading for the door.

Massina watched them leave. He knew this must be some sort of internal politics, but it bothered the hell out of him.

Johansen was waiting in the hall, alone; the others were near the elevator, just out of earshot.

“Why the lawyer?” asked Massina.

“I know.” Johansen nodded.

“You know what?”

“Let’s get a cigarette.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Neither do I.”

Upstairs, Johansen strode quickly from the elevator, through the lobby and outside. Massina took his time catching up.

Johansen knew bringing the lawyer was a mistake, but his boss had insisted on it. He needed a witness when the shit hit the fan.

Which eventually it always did these days, no matter how much good you tried to do or how right you were to do it.

“I didn’t mean to blindside you,” he told Massina. “The deputy director—”

“Why are you covering your ass?” demanded Massina. “Am I supposed to take the hit if things go bad?”

“You don’t understand the atmosphere in Washington these days, Louis. And this administration — let’s just say they don’t have our backs. Happy to take credit, though.”

“And what happens to me?”

“Nothing. Nothing. You did your civic duty, and you have a witness from the FBI and the CIA — two witnesses — to prove it.”

“They’re going to accuse me of breaking the law?”

“Did you?”

“I could give a shit.”

“Then that’s your answer. And, uh, given the FBI’s reaction, I’d say you must not have.” Johansen shifted uncomfortably. He wouldn’t hang Massina out to dry, but he couldn’t be sure no one else would either. Still, this had to be done. “Look, we’re going to get this guy,” he said, changing the subject.

“But if things don’t work out, it’s not going to be a CIA operation.”

“It’s never a CIA operation,” said Johansen.

Johansen had approached Massina because he wanted Smart Metal expertise and tech, but the company’s involvement would also provide a very convenient cover if things went south.

Hey, we didn’t do it. It was a private company who funded the thing. Apparently there’s no law against that — Congress hadn’t thought of making it illegal for upstanding citizens to take revenge on bastard scumbags who blew up their city.

At least not yet.

“Your information parallels ours,” added Johansen. “Obviously I couldn’t say it inside.”

“So I wasted my time.”

“No. Not at all. It’s always good to have independent validation. And when we take a look, you may have more details. To be honest, I think I trust you more than our people anyway.”

Johansen looked over to the corner. The others were standing there, waiting. He took out a cigarette — plausible deniability was important. Nobody could lie, yet nobody could tell the exact truth.

I saw him with a cigarette. I wasn’t close enough to hear what he was saying.

Not lies, certainly. But not the entire truth.

“You promised two volunteers to watch the equipment,” Johansen told Massina. “I need them in Arizona next week. This thing is moving along.”

“You’ll have them.”

“Who?”

“I’m still deciding.”

Johansen considered asking for Chelsea Goodman — she had done amazing work in the Ukraine, and he knew she wouldn’t wilt under pressure, something in his mind that techies tended to do — but he decided not to ask.

“They have to be volunteers, your people,” Johansen reminded him. “Even though they’ll be behind the lines. Volunteers.”

“That part won’t be a problem,” said Massina.

29

Worn by the fatigue of his travels, Ghadab fell back to sleep after morning prayers and would have missed the noon call had he not felt the presence of someone waking him. He opened his eyes and was surprised to see a young, slender woman kneeling next to his bed.

“Honored sir,” she said in Iraqi-flavored Arabic, “time to waken.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Shadaa.” She bowed her head.

Ghadab raised his head, looking around. “You’re here alone?”

“I am yours.”

Puzzled, he ordered her out of the room. When she was gone, he rose and prayed, then changed the clothes he’d fallen asleep in for a fresh pair of fatigues. He spent some time contemplating the words of the Prophet most honored. He thought of his fate, and how he would fulfill it, and permitted himself a small bit of vanity, considering how deserving he was of the praises the African had given him on his arrival. They were meaningful, for the African was older than he was, old enough to be an uncle if not his father.

“You are displeased with me?” asked Shadaa when he emerged from the room.

Her hands trembled. She stood stiffly at attention, as if a soldier, in the middle of the hall.

“I’m not pleased or displeased,” Ghadab told her. “Who are you?”

“Shadaa. Yours.”

“I have work,” he said.

She bowed her head. He went downstairs, looking over his shoulder when he reached the landing to make sure she wasn’t following.

She wasn’t. She stood in the same place, ramrod straight.

Before the city had been liberated, the first-floor restaurant served a mixture of Western food — Italian and French, along with a little Greek. Although the bar had been removed and the liquor destroyed, there were still traces of this influence; steak and pasta remained on the menu, though the first was unavailable and the waiter frankly recommended against the latter. Only he remained from the old regime; the cook was the owner’s brother-in-law, which was not a recommendation.

“We have lamb prepared with mint,” suggested the waiter, “and rice with apricots. The meat is fresh.”

“That would be fine,” said Ghadab.

“As you desire. Water? Sparkling?”

Another Western touch, thought Ghadab. “Plain water.”

The waiter bowed, then sped off to the kitchen.

Ghadab was halfway through his meal when the African arrived. He had two young men with him, soldiers.

“I see you are eating,” said the African. “I don’t want to disturb you.”

“Sit with me,” said Ghadab. “We’ll have lunch.”

“Very generous, brother. But we have already eaten. These are my aides, Amin and Horace.”

Amin was a common name, but Horace begged explanation.

“I was born in America,” said the young man, whose Arabic sounded Egyptian. “My parents were convinced that they should fit in. They were apostates, worse than infidels.”

“And then they returned home,” said the African. “They returned to the faith.”

“They have no understanding of it,” said Horace bitterly. “They practice the motions, but do not know the meaning. Empty bottles that should be filled with pure water.”

“Like yourself when you arrived,” said the African with some fondness.

“Who is the girl?” Ghadab asked. He gestured toward the second floor.

“Shadaa,” said the African. “Yours to do with as you wish. The council has made it clear that all fighters’ needs are to be answered.”

Ghadab didn’t respond.

The African asked if she was not pleasing to him. “We can find another,” he added, “or if you prefer—”

“She’ll do,” answered Ghadab. “I wanted only an explanation.”

“The council is ready for you. At your convenience.”

“Let’s go now.”

The council was one of several groups that steered the Caliphate’s affairs. The Caliph himself was selected by the highest council, known informally as the majlis al-shura or Shura Council, the highest advisers of the people, learned religious leaders who had a deep understanding of the prophecies. The Caliph — to the West, Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri; to his followers, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — in turn appointed various aides to assist in governing and in the greater struggle. As an overseas soldier, Ghadab answered directly to a subsection of the War Council that ruled overseas jihad.

Ghadab had met the Caliph only once, and then for only a few moments. He didn’t expect to see him today, or anytime in the near future. The Caliph was constantly moving and, in any event, had better things to do than meet with a mere soldier, even one who had recently scored a great victory.

But it was the Caliph who greeted Ghadab when they arrived in the great chamber of the council building, a three-hundred-year-old mosque as yet untouched by the infidels’ bombs. Under the massive central dome of the vast prayer room, the Caliph looked smaller than Ghadab remembered, thinner, though still as vigorous. His eyes danced as he spoke, darting back and forth before settling on Ghadab’s own. The stare had the firmness of a handshake, and it energized Ghadab beyond even the words the Caliph spoke.

“This is one of our truest generals,” declared the Caliph. Behind him, three dozen men milled back and forth, as if jockeying for position. Sunlight flooding through the ruby windows cast reddish sunbeams to highlight their faces. “He has struck the infidels’ barbaric birthplace. We expect great things. More great things.”

Ghadab bowed his head. Emotion overwhelmed him. He was honored beyond belief, empowered. If he could have died in that moment, he surely would have found bliss. There could not be a greater honor than to be praised by the Caliph, with all these worthies watching.

When he raised his head, only a moment or two later, the Caliph was already walking away, called by other business.

“al-Bhaddahi wishes to talk to you,” said the African, nudging him gently toward a set of arches on the left. They entered an ornate room whose walls were enhanced with jewels and thick bands of gold chest-high.

Of the Caliph’s deputies, arguably the most important was Abu Muslim al-Bhaddahi, a relative of Abu Muslim al-Turkemani and heir to his position as number-two man in the organization. al-Bhaddahi, kneeling alone in the room in prayer, rose as Ghadab entered.

“My brother!” declared the jihad leader, clasping Ghadab to his chest.

“I am honored” was all Ghadab could say.

al-Bhaddahi talked to him as if they were old friends, complimenting him on his great triumph and asking after several men he knew in Libya, only two of whom Ghadab even knew. Asked to describe his mission, he did his best to tamp down his pride, talking about how he had painstakingly built the team that had struck at Boston. He recounted the toll: fifty-eight martyrs, against the demise of three thousand infidels.

That was his count. The Americans of course suppressed it, claiming much less.

“Of course they play it down,” said al-Bhaddahi. “The number is not important, in any event. When will you strike again?”

“I am ready to start preparing immediately,” said Ghadab.

“Good. We have found you a very suitable bunker. The African will address your other needs so the mission may be fulfilled.”

Ghadab thought “bunker” was a figure of speech, but in fact the place was a bunker, entered through a tunnel that slanted so sharply downward that Ghadab worried with each step that he would slip. Located on the northern outskirts of the city, the facility was part of an army base abandoned at least ten years before the war. The surrounding buildings were long gone; small piles of rubble remained, but most of the area had been bulldozed clean.

The bunker’s walls were bare when they arrived; furniture still needed to be brought in. But the place was more than large enough, bigger than what he had used in Libya by a factor of three or four. There were twelve rooms of various sizes, along with a galley and two bathrooms, one at either end of the long central hall. A musky odor mixed with the scent of bleach; the air circulated poorly. But the facility had nearly twelve feet of dirt and rock atop a reinforced concrete roof no less than four feet thick. Electricity was supplied by a generator near the entrance; a backup generator was located at the rear, buried in its own vault. Communications were handled by a telephone line that ran to the road, as well as a satellite and cell-phone link back near the highway, reached by a dedicated (and buried) line.

“I have a dozen men at your disposal,” the African told Ghadab. “They will help you organize the rooms and do anything you require.”

“I only want my people here,” said Ghadab.

“Understood. We have furniture and the gear you need on its way.”

“Then you can leave me,” said Ghadab. “Thank you.”

“You are going to stay in an empty bunker?”

“I need to think. There is no better place.”

“How will you get back to the city?”

“I will stay here until my men arrive.”

“As you wish,” said the African, nodding. “Your dedication is truly one of our greatest assets.”

“Everything comes from God,” said Ghadab lightly.

30

Chelsea pounded the treadmill, pushing herself with one eye on the heart meter.

One-ninety-five. Well above her target rate. But she had more in her. She leaned her head forward and threw more energy into her legs.

The workouts were the only breaks she took from work now. Tracking the bastard who’d planned the attack had become everything. She saw encryptions and coding and maps overlaid with Arabic even when she closed her eyes. Pounding her body in the gym was the only way to clear it.

“Hey!”

Chelsea jerked her head and saw Borya standing next to her. She pulled off one of her earphones, but kept running.

“Uh, Mr. Massina wanted to see you,” said the intern. “I guess it’s kind of important. Mr. Chiang sent me down.”

“OK.” Chelsea dropped into a trot, cooling down. “You’re here early.”

“No, it’s five. I’m, uh, on my way home.”

“Oh.”

“Was there something you wanted me to do?”

“I’ve been neglecting you,” admitted Chelsea. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s good. I got a lot of school work.”

“Next week, we’ll start on a new project. OK?”

“Deal.”

Twenty minutes later, hair still wet from the shower, Chelsea knocked on the clear glass door to Massina’s outer office. His assistant buzzed her in. Massina, seeing her, went to his own door and ushered her inside.

“How are you doing?” Massina asked as he slipped into his chair behind his desk.

“Fantastic,” Chelsea told him.

“You were in the gym?”

“Yes. It helps me think.”

“Something new?”

“I always worked out,” she said defensively. It was a lie, or at least an exaggeration, but his tone made her uncomfortable. Too… concerned.

“Beefy says you’re bringing a pistol to work.”

“I leave it with security at the front. I have a concealed permit.”

“You think you need the gun?”

“I do.”

Massina nodded.

“Is that it?” asked Chelsea.

“An old friend of yours was here today,” said Massina. “Yuri Johansen. I showed him the information your team developed.”

“It’s Chiang’s team. I just helped.”

“Right.”

“I want to continue working on it. We can find more out about Ghadab. I’ve found his family name,” she added. “Samir Abdubin. He has a sister in Saudi Arabia.”

“Is she connected to his network?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“The government is putting together a team to deal with Ghadab,” said Massina. His eyes held hers. “They’re going to use some of our gear. I need two people—”

“I want to be one of them.”

“Maybe you should wait to hear what it is you’re volunteering for before jumping off the ledge.” Massina got up from his chair and began to pace around the office. When he spoke, he sounded as if he was talking to himself as much as to her. “I need two people who can handle a variety of things. One would be more on the operational side, watching our stuff and making sure the bots are deployed correctly. The other person has to be a jack-of-all-trades, someone who can code and look after the computers.”

“That’s me.”

He looked at her without speaking.

“I’m going,” she insisted. “I was in the Ukraine.”

“This is a little different. And the hotel—”

“What happened in the hotel doesn’t bother me.”

“Not even a little?”

“No.”

Massina stopped walking. “You want to get this guy?”

“You know I do.”

“So do I. You’d stay behind the lines? Do what Johansen tells you?”

“Of course.”

“Be ready to travel Friday. Just personal items. The weather will be warm, and there shouldn’t be much rain.”

Massina watched Chelsea as she left.

She was happy. Not jumping-up-and-down happy, but determined, set — he hadn’t seen her like that since the attacks.

Was he doing the right thing?

There were many reasons she should go: she knew the equipment they would need; she was one of the best if not the best on-the-fly developers he had; she could code with just about anyone; she’d worked on and invented many of the systems that Johansen needed.

She’d already been exposed to a dangerous job in the Ukraine and handled it without a problem. There was no question that she was motivated.

Extremely motivated.

But maybe too motivated.

No. If anyone was too motivated it was him.

The phone buzzed. It was his assistant, telling him he was due downtown, at the event Jimmy had asked him to attend.

“The car is waiting,” she said.

“All right,” he said, rising. “Call Yuri Johansen. Tell him I have the volunteers lined up.”

31

By the time the first of his men arrived in the morning, Ghadab had hooked the television screens to the external satellite, allowing them to monitor the international news. By nightfall, they had the command room set up, along with sleeping quarters and a place for making tea and reheating meals. The men had been assigned rooms throughout the city, but Ghadab knew from experience that they would more often than not sleep here while work was being done. The group would gather preliminary intelligence, researching likely targets, potential recruits, and methods. When all was ready — weeks perhaps, though he would push to be finished as quickly as possible — they would disperse to finalize plans and begin arrangements, returning at intervals as the project progressed. While encrypted and coded messages were important, the in-person meetings and planning sessions were vital forums, and Ghadab emphasized that truly critical information should only be passed in person.

The last of his team — Po, a refugee from Britain who’d studied at Cambridge before receiving the call to jihad — arrived an hour after dark. Ghadab elected to return to the city and the restaurant where he’d been given quarters so they could share a meal.

He was surprised to find it overflowing. The place was popular with the Caliphate elite, and there was a long line outside the door when he and his eight companions showed up.

They were about to turn away when one of the waiters ran to Ghadab and urged him and his group inside.

“The house’s special room is at your disposal,” said the man. He looked Syrian, but his Arabic was stilted and his accent so difficult that Ghadab suspected the man was some sort of spy.

“Where are you from, brother?” asked Ghadab.

“France, your honor.”

“How are you here?”

“To join the struggle.” The man beamed. “Today I work as a waiter, tomorrow I will be a soldier, God willing.”

“Yes, God willing,” said Ghadab.

He waved at the others to follow. The waiter brought them through the dining room to a large back room, dimly lit, where two other men were in the process of pushing small tables together to form one big enough to accommodate Ghadab’s group. The room had been used as a private club room under the Syrian imposter; despite the Koran’s strictures against alcohol, it had served liquor freely until the arrival of the Caliphate. All of the bottles had been removed, of course, but there was still a long bar at one end. Two large urns, one for coffee and one for tea, had been placed at the center, but these were flanked by glasses in various sizes and shapes, stacked at regular intervals as if they were waiting to be called to action.

A cloth was spread over the table, and chairs assembled. Ghadab’s crew found their places as dishes and tableware were set. Before Ghadab could order, trays were brought: bread with tabbouleh and dips, an eggplant dish and some relishes.

“The lamb is being prepared,” said the waiter. “It will be ready presently.”

The waiters were pouring water when Khalid of Portugal got up to examine the televisions behind the bar. Khalid was a soccer fan and hoped to see some European game, but instead stopped at Al Jazeera news channel, recognizing the video they were showing.

“Boston!” he said.

It was a video showing the immediate aftermath of the attack Ghadab and most of this group had planned. Surely this was a sign — Ghadab rose and led the others to the bar to watch the broadcast.

The video was a compilation of scenes Ghadab had seen in Libya, but that did not lessen its impact. The images flipped by quickly — the burned-out restaurant, bodies in the street, smoke pouring from the hotel.

“God is great!” shouted one of his men as the montage ended and a newscaster appeared on the screen.

“Hush now,” said Ghadab. “Let us hear the infidel.”

The journalist said they were going live to Boston, for a press conference with the President and the Governor.

An image of the U.S. President filled the screen. Khalid spit at the television.

“The devils speak!” said another of Ghadab’s men.

The camera stopped on a man who was walking to the podium. He was short, dressed in a suit.

Words appeared across the bottom of the screen, English with Arabic below.

The television announcer explained who he was: an inventor, a man who made robots, prominent in local affairs.

“He lost his right arm as a young man,” she continued. “The prosthetic he uses is made by his company. It is just a sideline, but the artificial limbs they manufacture are among the most advanced in the world.”

Ghadab looked at the arm with interest. It was impossible to tell the limb was fake, at least from the television.

The American looked directly at the camera.

“I have a message for the Daesh,” he said bitterly. “We are not defeated. We will hunt you down and dispose of you.”

A few brothers started to laugh.

“Quiet,” commanded Ghadab. There was something about this man, something that angered Ghadab — something dangerous as well.

“We’re going to get those bastards,” said the American. “We’re going to wipe them from the face of the earth. We will. And no one will mess with us again.”

The men began to boo.

Ghadab raised his hand. Khalid flipped off the television.

“They have not learned humility,” Ghadab told the others. “Clearly they require another dose of education.”

He turned to Khalid. “Find out all you can about this one. We’ll see how he likes the feeling of his skin peeled off from the inside.”