Fury

13

In another part of the city that night, Ahman Zakir caught up to "Mr. Mustafa" in the hall outside the meeting room of the mosque. "It was a warning. Someone knows your plans," he said. "I think we better call this off…tonight's event, anyway."

"Nonsense," Al-Sistani said. "It was nothing more than stupid American racists getting even for our brothers' righteous execution of the Crusaders and their lackeys in Iraq. As if this is some tit-for-tat game of revenge. Their inability to see the, as they say, 'big picture,' is why we will win."

Al-Sistani spoke the words with conviction. His Oxford-educated English was clipped and cultivated, his manners in polite company impeccable-on the outside, just another spoiled oil prince, perfect for a mujahideen cell leader. True, he'd initially been shocked and momentarily unnerved when he heard that his bodyguard who'd disappeared that night outside the mosque had been butchered and his head stuck on a spike in Central Park. For that one moment, he felt panic start to rise in his throat like bile, wondering if he'd been betrayed and his plan ruined.

However, the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that he and his men were safe. The American police and even their intelligence agencies were too weak willed, too emasculated by their politicians and civil libertarians, to make such a dramatic statement as killing a wanted terrorist and displaying his head for all to see. Maybe in Saudi Arabia but not here in America with its silly rules against torture and "cruel and unusual punishment." How could they expect to win?

As the days passed and there were no arrests of his people and "the supplies" remained in place, he was further convinced that the bodyguard's death was not even the work of some rogue element of the New York Police Department or any agency of the American government, including the laughable Homeland Security Department.

"Their culture of fair play dooms them," he lectured his closest aides. "They want to arrest us and put us on trial, then place us in prison, where we become the new symbols of the jihad. They do not have the testicles it will take to win this fight. In the meantime, we will slaughter them by the thousands in their homes, their stadiums, and their office buildings."

Al-Sistani was not, therefore, surprised when someone claiming to represent "the American Aryan Jihadi" called a popular radio talk-show host and claimed responsibility. As expected, the infidel had said the killing was in retaliation "for killing white men in Iraq. So all of you fuckin' little towel heads out there, consider yourselves warned. Get the fuck out of white man's country and go back to your little piles of shit sandboxes."

The police and district attorney's office had released a joint press statement saying they had no prior intelligence on any hate group called American Aryan Jihadi. The statement assured Muslim-Americans and Muslim visitors that every effort was being made to bring the murderer to justice. The statement also urged other citizens to "refrain from escalating tensions and unfairly singling out any one group based on events in Iraq and the Middle East."

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Muslim-American Anti-Defamation League of New York had immediately joined in condemning the police and district attorney's office for not taking a more proactive stance. "One cannot help but think that if this had been a Christian white man," Imam Abdul Ibn Barr, head of one of the largest Muslim congregations, wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece, "or a Jew, the police response would have been much more forceful and all-encompassing. Yet, they don't even know who this poor immigrant is, or anything about him, except that he died horribly and his head was left in plain sight of where police officers supposedly walk their beats. In all likelihood, he left behind a family in some far-off land who now waits to hear from their breadwinner-a call that will never come. And all the DA and police can do is promise some future justice."

Police chief Bill Denton, the mayor-elect's brother, got himself into hot water by angrily going on television to demand that the complaining organizations "point out the guilty man, and I'll arrest him personally." Which only resulted in another op-ed piece labeling him as "apparently too lazy to do his own work…trying to shift the blame back on the people who are trying to demand accountability from their police department."

District Attorney Karp, a man Al-Sistani knew was an enemy to be reckoned with from his past run-ins with Islam's holy warriors, had been more circumspect. "As in all homicide cases, we are working with all due diligence to bring any and all perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice. Whatever the cause or justification, murder is murder in New York County. All perceptions to the contrary are disingenuous and without merit."

It was almost laughable how the Americans had started backbiting. The fat lawyer Hugh Louis had taken a break from his television appearances talking about his case against the city-a case Al-Sistani had followed closely because it promised to yield more angry young black men who might become recruits-to denounce "the attack on our brown Arab brothers." Of course, Louis had used the extra television time to plug the Coney Island case, too. "The same institutionalized racism that imprisoned four innocent African-American men based on Gestapo-like police interrogation techniques is also responsible for the fact that racist murderers are roaming free, victimizing people of color."

The city councilwoman Shakira Zulu had joined in the fray by calling a press conference to raise the ante. "Until the black man and the brown man arm themselves, they will be preyed upon by the power structure of white America. Let us not forget, the black man suffering in the ghettos of America has more in common with his Palestinian brother, who daily faces the tanks and bullets of Zionist oppression with nothing more than rocks and his blood, than he does with the white man."

Although Al-Sistani regretted the death of the bodyguard, a well-trained man he'd known for years, the murder only played into his cause by distracting federal agents from the real danger. He wasn't worried about his man being identified, if for no other reason than after his rat-chewed body was discovered in the alley next to the mosque by a believer assigned to take out the trash, both the body and that of the believer had been taken to a landfill operated by a sympathizer and buried.

If the Americans wanted to play tit-for-tat, well, then, he'd see how they felt after New Year's Eve. As for the others, the lawyers and the whiny activists, he cared no more for any of them than any other infidel who did not accept the Prophet as the representative of Allah and the one true faith. Even these Nation of Islam blacks would have to learn the errors of their misguided interpretations of the Quran or have their heresy cured by the sword.

Soon they would all be trembling with fear and awe when he struck at the very heart of their loathsome city. But he would be long gone to California, where he would lie low and plan his next triumph in the name of Allah. In his dreams, he saw the Golden Gate Bridge crashing into the sea loaded with early-morning commuter traffic, and airliners falling from the sky on fire, or crashing into skyscrapers in Chicago, Seattle, and L.A.

The stupid Americans would lash out at the next tinpot dictator, like that secular idiot Hussein, crush his army, and find itself in another quagmire where the holy warriors of Al Qaeda would flock to sow the seeds of insurrection and martyrdom. Soon enough the Americans would be abandoned by the timid Europeans, cowed like the Spanish into submission, their rail systems in shambles and their hospitals overflowing with the dead and maimed. Until at last, the United States would stand alone, ostracized by its former friends who feared retribution from their huge Muslim immigrant populations and the martyrs of Islam.

Then, with no other country willing to be a trading partner, the economy of the United States would be crippled and its population living in terror of the next World Trade Center or, he laughed, New Year's Eve in Times Square. Thus, the most powerful nation in the world would have to sue for mercy and give itself over to Islamic law.

Despite having spent many years among them in his youth, Al-Sistani was amazed and delighted that the Americans could not see what needed to be done to save themselves. Worried about political correctness, they allowed him and others like him to travel freely. Instead of paying close attention to young men, even women, of Arab extraction or those coming from Muslim countries, they wasted their time and resources at airports checking the bags of their grandmothers and patting down small children. It was all for show, anyway, a farcical allegory right out of their stupid children's book The Emperor Who Had No Clothes. It was all for an illusion of security when their government was too ham-strung by partisan politics to react effectively. If ever there was a plum that was ripe for the plucking, it was the God-accursed and decadent United States of America.

When he lay in his apartment at night, this was the pleasant dream of the future he saw unfolding before him like the desert sands of Arabia. Even now, it took an effort to bring himself back into focus outside the door of the meeting room. The Islamic States of America would not be accomplished merely by dreaming. It would take hard action.

His plan needed volunteers to make sure that all his preparations and energy weren't wasted. There were always too few trained men for these operations, and most of those he had with him were too valuable for martyrdom. Of the dozen, now minus one, he'd had slip into the U.S. and meet up with him in New York, he planned to leave half to carry out his glorious blow against the infidels; the rest would go with him to California for the next plan. But he wanted a half-dozen more volunteers to help set up "the supplies," a dangerous job in itself, and then guard them until the moment of martyrdom was at hand.

Ever since the destruction of the World Trade Center, Al Qaeda had redoubled its efforts to recruit American Muslims to its cause, especially from within the ranks of the more militant offshoots of groups like the Nation of Islam and the Black Muslims. Al Qaeda operatives such as himself, as well as those from affiliated organizations like Hamas, had for years been establishing contacts in sympathetic community mosques all over the United States. Not all, or even most, were welcoming-some had even betrayed the cause by reporting their activities to the police; someday they would pay a price for their treason to God. But here and there the recruiters had made inroads, especially in poor neighborhoods like this one in East Harlem, where poverty created fertile ground for spreading anti-American seeds of destruction. Waiting for the young men in the meeting room to come in and take their seats, he looked at Zakir and smiled.

Zakir smiled back, but he was not happy. He knew that Mr. Mustafa wasn't working for any charitable organization. He didn't know precisely what the pockmarked zealot was planning, but he knew it was big and that it was going to happen on New Year's Eve. He suspected a bomb set in Times Square. Maybe, he thought with a mixture of fear and excitement, a plane out of JFK International will be hijacked to dive into the crowd. More than a hundred thousand people would be crowded into the area. The hijackers will want a plane still loaded with fuel to burn as many as possible…there'd be no escape; they'd be caught between the buildings.

Zakir tried not to think about the burned bodies-the innocent people. This was the evolution of the race war he'd advocated in his youthful days as a Black Panther. But Times Square will be filled with black as well as white, his conscience told him. Some of them Muslim. He pushed the thought away and concentrated on the money he had in the bank, plus the money he'd been promised when the deed was done. There was going to be another large payment after tonight's ugly business, a business he'd objected to until Mr. Mustafa told him he'd be paid twenty-five thousand dollars.

"We have a traitor in our midst who endangers you as much as the rest of us," Mr. Mustafa had told him. "We must make a bold statement if Allah's will is to be accomplished."

"Have you heard from Basir and Moammar?" Zakir asked, more for something to say than because he cared about the answer. He didn't ask a lot of questions about the men who used the back rooms of his mosque, nor was much information ever volunteered.

Al-Sistani furrowed his brow. Basir and Moammar were two of his best men, handpicked from the training camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. They had been due to arrive from their shift guarding the supplies a half hour ago. Then again, they'd all been ordered to be careful going to and from the mosque and might have taken a circuitous route; something might have made them nervous-a cop walking his beat or patrol car moving slowly in close proximity to the mosque-and were taking their time just to be safe.

"No," he replied, "but they'll be here. Come, let's do this."

While Al-Sistani trusted his own men with his life, he did not trust these recruits. He'd done his best to weed out the weak and those whose commitment to Allah was not as great as it needed to be. Those who remained had been told that they would be taking part in a plan to humble the United States and the white men and Jews who oppressed them.

Of course, they would never be told the real plot. But there were ways of rooting out traitors, which, after his bodyguard's death, he'd decided to implement. He'd told the recruits at the last meeting that he was going to give them a taste of what was to come for infidels in America. He told them to pay attention to the news two days hence coming out of Union Square and involving a UPS delivery truck.

On the morning of that day, he'd called UPS from a pay phone and asked that a package be picked up from a law firm across from Union Square. He then went into a nearby Starbucks, ordered a venti caffe latte, and sat at the window to watch what happened. When the delivery truck arrived, it was immediately swarmed by SWAT team officers, who yanked the driver from his seat before he knew they were there.

Of course, the truck was just a truck, there to pick up a package. The driver, one Benjamin Hamm of South Queens, was taken away to be questioned but released a short time later when the police decided he'd played no role in the "hoax."

Al-Sistani left the Starbucks wearing a grim smile, which had returned to his face as he and Zakir and two of his men entered the meeting room. He had a traitor to deal with and there was only one way to do it.

Worried that the mosque was no longer secure, he'd withdrawn his men from the barracks the night before he called UPS and had them disperse to safe houses throughout the city. He'd then had the mosque watched for several days to see what happened. But when no teams of federal agents swept down on Zakir and his congregation, he decided that the traitor had not told them everything and probably intended to sell information bit by bit for the money.

Unfortunately, it did mean that the mosque was no longer completely safe. Even coming back this night was taking a chance, but he'd also wanted to make a dramatic statement the recruits would not soon forget. If the federal agents were watching him, he would know by how the recruits responded to tonight's event. But if they came looking for him, either here or at his midtown apartment, they would not find him. And soon it would not matter.

Al-Sistani entered the room and looked at the upturned and expectant faces of the young black men sitting in rows on folding chairs. Someday we will have to recruit their women as well; they are easier to get past security, he thought. "A salaam alaikum," he greeted the audience.

"Peace be unto you," Zakir translated for the non-Arabic speakers. He listened proudly as some of his more adept students replied:

"Wa alaikum salaam. And unto you, peace."

"I would like to read to you from the Quran," Al-Sistani said, opening his copy. "O you who believe, let Me inform you of a trade that will save you from painful retribution. Believe in GOD and His messenger and strive in the cause of God with your money and your lives. In return, He forgives your sins, and admits you into gardens with flowing streams, with beautiful mansions in the gardens of Eden. This is the greatest triumph. Additionally, you get something you truly love: support from GOD and guaranteed victory. Give good news to the believers!"

Al-Sistani closed the Quran and looked up. "I come to you tonight, my brothers, at a monumental time in history…when the shackles of Christian and Jewish oppression shall be cut from the legs and arms of true believers. In the days ahead, a few of you will be chosen to take part in an event that will shatter their world. You should be proud, as you will be freeing your people and other peoples around the world from the oppression of centuries."

As he spoke, Al-Sistani began to pace in front of the recruits, watching their eyes, searching for a doubter. "In the days ahead, the chosen few will take part in this glorious undertaking that will mark the beginning of a new world, a world dedicated to the one true faith and the worship of Allah. For security's sake, I cannot yet divulge the entire plan, nor can I meet you here again, though we will be in contact." He paused and wagged his head sadly. "One reason for that is tonight, sadly, there sits among us…a traitor."

Al-Sistani stopped in front of Rashad. He wondered about this one. He seemed to hate the "system" that he viewed as having ruined his life and had sworn fealty to jihad. But he had the friend Khalif, who'd made his distaste for Al-Sistani and his men no secret. Could he have influenced his friend to betray them? He'd half expected, when he set his trap for traitors, that his spies who'd followed Rashad and had his home telephone bugged would return and point the finger at him. But instead, the spies told him that the traitor was a small, yellow-skinned man named Robert, who was sitting next to Rashad. He'd been seen talking to a man who was obviously a plainclothes detective the night before the UPS ruse, and received an envelope.

Meanwhile, Robert sat quietly wondering what was going to happen to the basketball player, who was obviously the traitor. Serves the motherfucker right, he thought, Mr. Big-Time Basketball. Robert was still feeling flush from the two hundred dollars the detective had given him for snitching on that crack house in East Harlem. He'd been a snitch most of his adult life; it was how he made his living, though he was hoping that the "reward" Mr. Mustafa kept talking about would soon be forthcoming. He was happily fantasizing about how much money it might entail when Mr. Mustafa suddenly yelled and turned to him.

"Those who betray us, betray Allah!" Al-Sistani shouted. "In the name of Islamic jihad, I condemn this traitor and send his soul to hell."

Robert's mouth dropped open. He was going to protest that they had the wrong man-he was just a snitch-when the big bodyguard who'd been standing to the side suddenly pulled a handgun with a silencer out of his coat and pointed it at his head.

"Wha…," Robert said just before the.22-caliber slug struck him dead center between the eyes. His head flopped back as blood spurted from the little hole like a geyser, causing a general scramble by the men behind him to get out of the way. The bodyguard placed the gun on the dying man's chest and pumped several more rounds into his heart.

"Oh, God," Rashad screamed, jumping up and away. "Oh, God." He'd panicked when Mr. Mustafa started talking about traitors. After he told everyone at the meeting to watch what happened at Union Square with a UPS truck, Rashad had boasted to Khalif that "things are about to change; you can either get with the program and be part of a new Islamic state, or you can go down with the rest of the muthafuckas."

As far as Rashad was concerned, his life had been ruined. Ever since childhood, he and Khalif had talked about how they'd use their basketball skills to get out of the ghetto. They'd go to college on scholarships and then play in the NBA. They even joked about who'd have the upper hand when their respective teams played each other, or if they were really lucky, maybe they'd get to play together for the Knicks or the Nets. They'd have money and all the things it bought; they'd buy nice homes for their moms and their siblings, too. Their kids would grow up happy and prosperous. Such would be the will of Allah.

Then it all came tumbling down. He'd had sex with the bitch, just like everybody else, if what he'd heard was right. Then when she kept calling, he'd told her he wanted no part of her. Then there was the party. The bitch got drunk and lured Khalif into her room and they'd had sex. When Khalif came out, he looked troubled. "It was a sin to lie with a whore," he said. "I'm going to go get my coat and leave. You coming?"

"Yeah, just a minute," Rashad said, and went into the bedroom. There were candles burning, and the bitch had known who he was. "I knew you'd come back, Rashad, if you thought I was going to be with your friend. Now come here."

A lay was a lay and Rashad had not minded sloppy seconds. But then Khalif returned to the room and flicked on the lights. He looked disgusted but only said, "I'm going," and turned away. Rashad had laughed and jumped up, pulling up his pants.

"Come on, baby, stay here tonight," the woman pouted.

Rashad had laughed again. "Fuck no, bitch. I ain't spending the night with a whore. There's another five guys out in the living room, but you can get one or two of them to keep you company." Then he left, thinking it was the last time he'd see her.

Then the bitch lied and went to the university and said she'd been raped by a man she didn't know. But worse than that, the district attorney's office had believed her, and then compounded it by hiding evidence that would have demonstrated it was a lie. That's the way it was when a white woman accused a black man.

Nightmare followed nightmare. First, the university kicked them out and withdrew their scholarships. Then there was the trial, where he'd had to sit quietly in his seat and listen to the bitch lie and the prosecutor lie worse. After that the jury came back, and as he listened in disbelief, he and his best friend were found guilty. But nothing, nothing could compare to the terror of arriving at Attica, trying to look tough while real criminals leered and taunted. Except for the night he was gang raped when the Bloods caught him alone in the prison laundry. He'd been too ashamed even to tell Khalif, but Mr. Mustafa had understood his hatred.

Mr. Mustafa had put it all in perspective. The district attorney was a Jew. The prosecutor, Rachel Rachman, was supposedly a Catholic, "but look at her name…she's just another Jew," Mustafa said. The jury had contained some blacks "but the Jews on the jury swayed them with their lies and deceits." He'd lost his dream and been defiled "because of the Jews." That's when he'd sworn to join the jihad.

Then Mr. Mustafa started talking about a traitor, and he wondered if they thought it was Khalif. He hadn't told his friend any of the details, having taken Mr. Mustafa's warning to keep secrets or be considered a traitor to heart, but he'd gone to Union Square that morning just to see what would happen. When the UPS truck was swarmed by cops, he figured Khalif must have somehow figured it out and snitched. He'd been about to jump up and explain that his friend was just misguided and not a traitor when Mr. Mustafa turned on the little man next to him.

"Thus, it is written, will be the fate of all traitors who have sworn to Allah to carry out jihad," Mr. Mustafa said.

Al-Sistani looked over the frightened faces. Good, he thought, there will be no more traitors. Still, as one of his men dragged the body out of the room for its final journey to the New Jersey landfill, he wanted to try one more test.

"Tonight, I am going to tell you our plan and your role," he said. "But first, I want to ask you to search your hearts, and if you do not have the will for jihad, leave us now in peace."

No one moved but a lot of eyes went to the man with the gun.

"Do not worry," Al-Sistani said. "I do not consider it an act of treason to leave, so long as you make no attempt to contact our enemies, which we would surely know and take our revenge for. But until I have divulged the plan, you are free to leave, the blessings of Allah upon you." It was a lie, of course; anyone who stood up was going to receive a bullet in the head, but no one stood.

"Please," Al-Sistani said, motioning those who were still standing back to their chairs. "It is time to reveal the great blow you will help us strike for Allah."

Of course, he wasn't going to reveal the real plan. These martyrs would have no role except as laborers, and then would defend the supplies up until the moment they, along with thousands of others, were sent to meet the Creator. He didn't want them thinking, however, that this was a suicidal mission. Even the brainwashed children of Palestine sometimes balked at that; no, they would be told that they would live to fight another day.

"We have discovered an old, abandoned tunnel that the infidels have forgotten," he said. "This tunnel happens to run beneath the New York Stock Exchange, the financial heart of the oppressors. On New Year's Eve, we plan-with your help-to break into the building from below, set explosive charges, and bring the entire building crashing to the ground, and with it, the financial stability of the United States and its loathsome puppetmaster, Israel."

It was a good plan, he thought, one that did not seem to involve a lot of deaths to innocent civilians and would therefore be more palatable to these new warriors of the jihad. They could strike a blow for freedom without a lot of killing, which might have weighed on their consciences.

"Of course," he said, "there is some risk. You will be asked to help with final preparations and then to guard my men as they prepare the bomb. You will be given weapons for this task. But you will also be compensated so that you can live decently while continuing your efforts on behalf of the jihad. You may not know this, but the infidels keep quite a bit of currency in the building; my men will retrieve this and distribute it among you."

"How much, dawg?" asked Mahmoud Rauf, a hardened gang member who'd been among the first to swear fealty.

"About one hundred thousand dollars each…dawg," Al-Sistani replied, smiling at the different inflection he'd given dawg so that it came out as an insult.

"Damn," Rauf declared. "I'm in."

Al-Sistani smiled. "Great, Mahmoud. Now, the rest of you, are you in?" All the heads nodded. "This is good, here are your instructions."

Two hours later, Zakir prepared to turn in for the night. He lived in a small room upstairs in the back of the building. Mr. Mustafa and his men had quickly left, followed by the recruits. The killing had frightened him and he just wanted everyone to leave so he could forget about the whole thing in his slumber. He was just about to turn out the lights when there was a pounding on the front door of the mosque.

Sighing, he rose from his bed and walked down the stairs. Someone had probably forgotten something, though why they couldn't wait for the morning peeved him. He took out the.45-caliber Colt he kept in a box at the door-an imam couldn't be too careful in such a high-crime area, not with all the cash he had stuffed under his mattress.

Zakir looked out of the peephole and saw shadows moving away from the door. He could just make out a bag that had been left on the doorstep, and he smiled. Sometimes the members of his congregation left food and other items for him because they lacked cash; these had probably been too embarrassed by their pitiful donation.

He opened the door and saw a large, plastic shopping bag from Macy's. Picking it up, he was surprised by its weight. He looked inside…then started to scream and dropped the bag, which fell over on its side. Two round objects rolled out, one of them bouncing all the way down the three steps to the sidewalk, where it came to a stop.

The bearded head of Rajid Basir, a former member of the Taliban in Afghanistan, stared back at Zakir from the stoop. He assumed the round object on the sidewalk had belonged to Akmed Moammar, a Libyan who'd fought in Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He didn't really care to go find out and instead just continued screaming as lights came on in the buildings near the mosque.

In the alley across the street, two hooded shadows stepped farther back into the darker recesses. "That went even better than I'd hoped, Father," the shorter of the two shadows whispered. "He screams like a woman. Shall I go slit his throat before the police arrive?"

The taller of the shadows placed his hand on the other's shoulder. "No, my son," he said quietly. "We need this one to tell the others. Let his fear infect them."

A police siren wailed in the distance. "Come, let us depart," the taller shadow said. He took a step, then bent over as a gasp of pain escaped his lips.

"Father!" the shorter man whispered. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," his comrade said, straightening with an effort. "I am fine enough for these last days. But come, we've stayed too long."

As the screams of the siren began to drown out those of Zakir, the two shadows slipped from the alley and, unnoticed by the small group of people who'd gathered around the head on the sidewalk, moved away.

Reaching their destination several blocks away, the shadow men pulled the cover off a manhole and climbed down the ladder, pulling the cover shut just as a taxi came around the corner and nearly caught them in its headlights. Standing in several inches of filthy water at the bottom, the taller of the two mussed the hair of his comrade and sniffed.

"Ah," he said, "home sweet home."