I watched from the comfort of my home office as Caliphornia was loosed upon the world.
An evil, a star.
At first he had no name except to us.
The social media were first: scores, then hundreds, then thousands of shared Facebook postings and YouTubes of the carnage, all multiplying dizzily — an explosion on this side of the world instantly fanning out to the other and back again.
At first it was all amateur video of carefree San Diego, America’s Finest City, the moody bay and the invincible Midway, Hector’s confrontation with O’Hora and Lark. Then the sudden, vicious, oddly small-looking explosion that ripped apart O’Hora and Hector so finally. Followed by jerky video of onlookers running in various directions, their cries and wails and many languages, the pounding of shoes and the squelch of wind on microphones, hanging smoke. Eyes wide in faces slack with fear. Money fluttering in the air. Brief, shaky video of a woman praying over a man in a parking lot. Neither one of them clear enough to identify.
Next, the professionals — networks, cable, PBS — regular programming canceled or delayed. Even most of the advertising. Fast as you could turn channels, graphic scenes of Caliphornia’s violence flashed past; the man himself was neither pictured nor named.
Terror has apparently struck again in America tonight, this time in San Diego, where two FBI agents, a suspect, and two bystanders have been killed in a wave of coordinated public attacks just moments apart...
Reporters and stunned witnesses muttered under the light-blanched Unconditional Surrender, San Diego’s chief of police and mayor, a U.S. representative, and, later, a senator all weighing in. Followed by a hurried press conference with FBI, Homeland Security, and JTTF.
The two dead FBI agents are Directing Special Agent Darrel Blevins, sixty-three, and Special Agent Patrick O’Hora of San Diego FBI, who was forty-four... The dead suspect has not been identified.
I turned on the radio, too, and every time I landed on a strong signal, it was about the terror in San Diego.
Also reported dead at the scene are two visitors, possibly in port aboard the Azure Seas.
Just before nine o’clock, the IS-affiliated news agency Amaq claimed through Al Jazeera that “an IS detachment has claimed four lives in San Diego, California, and one IS martyr has entered heaven.”
At nine p.m. Caliphornia introduced himself to the world. He posted on the big popular platforms — encryption and secrecy be damned. He was after fame and he was ready to crow:
I am Caliphornia. I pledge bayat to Islamic State. San Diego is mine and Bakersfield is mine and Grass Valley is mine. I am Caliphornia. I am a part of you and I am inside you. You will know me by the knife, the bullet, the bomb, and the fire. You will know me well but not at all. I am everything you see and fear. I am Caliphornia. Mashallah.
His posts had pictures of a long-haired young man with his face partially covered by a scarf-sized version of the California flag — spelled Caliphornia — with the beheaded bear traipsing through its own blood. Or the same young man partially hidden by bars of shadow and light, or wearing sunglasses with palm trees reflected on the lenses. In some he was bearded, in others clean shaven.
The terrifying video clips of Caliphornia dangling Kenny Bryce’s and Marlon Voss’s heads stayed up for nearly half an hour on social media feeds before their cyber-security could scrub them off.
The president of the United States Tweeted his disgust at the “barbaric attacks,” and promised “very massive retaliation, very quickly.”
My Internet slowed to a crawl.
We are aware of this problem...
My mobile apps froze and unfroze and froze again.
We are working to resolve these issues...
We’ve made a star out of him, I thought. The biggest since bin Laden. Exactly what they wanted.
—
Let me see that snout of yours,” said Burt Short.
He turned the office desk lamp to my face. Peeled back the bandage and took a long look at the stitch he’d put in my cheek. It had taken him longer to remove the small ragged shard than it had to take the stitch. My cheek burned and my right eye watered. The scar would be on the side of my head opposite the boxing scar. I wondered how many more scars I’d collect on my face in this life.
Lindsey sat on my office couch, Zeno lying bulkily between her and the world, his head on his front paws, eyes open. She had watched with me in stunned silence as Hector and O’Hora were detonated again and again.
“Where’d you learn to take stitches, Burt?” asked Lindsey.
“The Philippines.”
“Were you a paramedic or something?”
“Yes,” he said quietly, holding my cheek to the light. “Good. Clean. Keep it dry for a couple of days.”
I turned back to the computer monitor — back up to half-speed now — where Hector was running past Smith and Lark with his funny little stutter-step. I picked up my phone, left open to Facebook, where a frozen image of Voss lay in the scattered snow on the running path.
Then looked at the wall TV, where Taucher’s boss of bosses at the Western Region JTTF, Frank Salvano, said: “We consider this a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force will bring their full weight to bear on this investigation. If this man calling himself Caliphornia is responsible for these heinous crimes, we will bring him to justice, and we will do so with relentless pursuit and conviction. We have no higher priority at this time.”
Salvano was tall and almost gaunt, with short silver hair and rimless glasses. The anger in his voice was substantial. He offered a hotline number, which trailed along the bottom of my TV.
Then Taucher called, finally. I shooed off Burt and Lindsey, closed the office door.
She was at the hospital with Lark and Smith. She and Lark had been far enough away from Hector to avoid shrapnel, for which she thanked God. Smith had been hit, but his motorcycle leathers had protected him. Hector’s micro-bomb was made with carpet tacks — cheap, sharp, and heat-retentive. Joan’s voice sounded thin and spent.
“Our special agent in charge just left here,” she said. “Turns out our Washington friends have some, um, deep reservations about my idea to lure a known murderer into a public place. And the resultant loss of life. Although — of course — all of us involved last night, from the SAC on down, couldn’t wait to nail Caliphornia’s butt to the floor. SAC said I should consider a voluntary reassignment to Washington. Said he didn’t want to write me an official reprimand — just yet. I demanded they let me finish this out with Caliphornia. Then I insisted. Then begged. I’m still in. Skin of my teeth.”
I couldn’t think of anything reassuring to say.
“They’ve been waiting for something like this,” she said. “I put body and soul into protecting my city. Now that I’ve failed, all I feel is tired.”
“People won’t die aboard Glorietta, thanks to you.”
“They died tonight instead,” said Taucher. “And Caliphornia got away.”
I felt the moments moving by. Heard something in the background, radio or TV or the chatter of hospital staff.
“So, how can Raqqa Nine get our young terrorist to trust us again?” she asked, almost dreamily. “Do we blame him? Claim that the FBI was watching him, not us? We could say that moneybags Hassan is furious and on his way home. That our fifty thousand dollars are gone. That we are out of faith in him.”
“He won’t trust Raqqa Nine again,” I said. “Not after this.”
I glanced at my phone and the computer monitor, both still devoted to the death and destruction. Bodies on the ground, covered. Twenty-dollar bills falling through the air. I’d seen the real thing, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off it. Hypnotic, I thought. For the whole country. For the world.
On my TV BBC news feed, Amaq, again quoted by Al Jazeera, stated that “donations to Islamic State have been flooding in...”
“On the hush, Roland,” said Joan, “we think Hector’s bomb was detonated by remote. This is preliminary. Very.”
“Why kill Hector?” I asked. “It cost Caliphornia a soldier and fifty grand.”
“Look at this spectacle! Caliphornia’s introduction to the world, through the martyred Hector. Think like a terrorist, Roland.”
I listened to her breathing, soft and slow.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m still in this game, whether the SAC wants me here or not. Look, we know that Caliphornia is murderous, suspicious, and completely out of trust. Is he going to blunder into our You Got It stakeout? Doubtful. But, if there’s any way we can get to him, the Bureau is a thousand percent ready. No expense spared, nothing they won’t consider. Is there something personal to Benyamin Azmeh, maybe? Something important enough to get him out of his hole? He’s hot right now. He’s lucky, therefore risk-tolerant. Maybe you can exploit that. Think of a way, Roland. You’re good at this kind of thing. The Bureau has trouble thinking outside the box sometimes. Hell. We are the box.”
“Lindsey,” I said.
A beat. “Bait?”
“Let me think.”
Later that night, the SDPD identified the suicide bomber as Hector O. Padilla of El Cajon, and the two dead innocents as Mr. and Mrs. Glen Nguyen of Miami. Pictures of all three. The couple was the one I’d seen, much in love and delighting in their travels and amused by the mystery briefcase at their feet. Hector looked his usual self, pleasant and befuddled.
The San Diego chief of police also said that “the murder of Agent Blevins and the suicide attack by Hector Padilla were coordinated acts of terror.” She added that “radical extremism is behind these acts,” and that so far as her department could determine, “Caliphornia, and the gruesome videos accompanying Caliphornia’s taunting claims, are authentic. We will stop this person or persons,” she said flatly. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Then, after a two-hour hiatus, Caliphornia himself stormed onto the digital stage again, boasting through a new Facebook post that his jihad had just begun and that the Kuffar will have their throats cut as they sleep at night. Allah-hu Akbar! Hector is in Paradise! You will know me again before forty-eight hours have passed.
Quickly followed by a fresh Tweet from newly minted @Caliphornia Dreamer, his avatar now changed to a janbiya raised in a black-gloved hand. All people of the Book rise up against America, this whore of Satan. The martyr Hector is smiling on us from Paradise! Forty-eight hours!
Then a YouTube video from Caliph2ReVenge of Kenny Bryce’s head on his bed, and narration in Caliphornia’s strangely inflected, surfer-Arabic English: Two down and one left to go. Pleasant dreams to you tonight, Lindsey, and all the unclean infidels you mate with!
YouTube took it down after five minutes, but it was already in the ether, the damage ongoing.
Which of course unleashed speculation on the identity of “Lindsey.” A specific woman or even man? A generic nickname for... a Western woman? A nonbeliever? An old lover? A prostitute? Why her, specifically?
Minutes before midnight, Frank Salvano, the tall and now haggard Western Region JTTF director, took to the lectern again while the cameras flashed and whirred. This time he had a large monitor beside him and a remote in his hand.
“We have identified two suspects in the murder of FBI agent Darrel Blevins in San Diego this evening,” he said.
The monitor blipped to life with a blowup of smiling Ben Azmeh and Kalima Amin, the image downloaded to Taucher’s phone by well-meaning Marah Azmeh. Their names were superimposed beneath them. Salvano spoke their names anyway, and said their last-known address was an apartment in Santa Ana. Next came an outdated DMV mug of one Ben Adams sporting dreadlocks and a humorless glare — clearly Ben Azmeh. Then a State Department head-and-shoulders photograph of solemn Kalima Amin, staring out from behind her hijab with just a hint of contempt.
“This picture of Kalima Amin was taken from her application for a fiancée visa, issued by our State Department in 2016,” said Salvano, the TV lights flashing on his glasses. He described the suspects physically and said they were last seen at approximately 6:30 p.m. leaving the parking area on Tuna Lane in an older white Ford Taurus, near the Unconditional Surrender statue on San Diego’s waterfront.
“Ben Azmeh is an American citizen,” he said. “Kalima Amin is a Syrian national in this country legally. They are armed and violent and should not be approached. Azmeh has pledged bayat — an oath of allegiance — to Islamic State. If you have any information on these suspects, call the number at the bottom of your screen immediately. If you’re having trouble seeing it, the number is...”
I watched and drifted. Watched and drifted.
Tired as I’d ever been.
Willing to hit back but no target.
Taucher’s desperate request for action gnawing inside.
I knew I wouldn’t sleep, not with Blevins’s blood under my nails and on my clothes and in my nostrils, my flesh held together by Burt’s neat stitch, and the kaleidoscope of gore turning relentlessly in my mind’s eye, with the threat of more upon the land.
This land.
Made for you and me.