Target America

52

The power to the house went out, and Buck stood up from the couch where he’d been reading the latest internet news about the intensifying search for the nuke. Lightning flashed, and Janet saw him clearly for a brief instant, his hand on his pistol.

“Probably just the storm,” she said. “It happens out here a lot.”

“My place too, but this ain’t a good night to be in the dark.”

Marie came hurrying down the stairs with Oso growling, gripping Gil’s Springfield Armory .45. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered. “Oso’s upset.”

Oso went straight to the back door and began to scratch at the locked dog door.

“Wake Hal up!” Buck said, drawing the pistol. “Janet, you and Marie get upstairs. Take Oso with you.”

Hal was already coming down, a carbine in each hand. He crossed the room and gave one to his father. “We got movement outside by the stable, and it’s not the boys.”

After cutting the power and phone lines, Akram gathered his team of twenty men in the stable and stripped off his soaking jacket. The odor of horse manure was offensive to him, and it made him feel unclean. He ordered Abad and the rest of the men to cover the entrances. The Muslims were equipped with civilian-grade, first-generation night vision goggles, but Duke had brought along his third-generation military-grade binocular, which allowed him to see in infrared in addition to utilizing ambient light.

“If anyone comes out of the house,” Akram said, “shoot them immediately.”

Duke sat down on a bale of hay. “So what’s our next move gonna be?”

“I’m not sure,” Akram said glumly. “I hadn’t planned on it raining.” Where he came from, rain had never been a problem. “I’ll take the TAC-50 up into the loft. You set up down here, and we’ll wait for Shannon to show himself.”

“We could assault the house,” Duke said. “We’ve got the manpower.”

“We’ll wait to see. If Shannon’s in there ready for us, it could be a disaster. We don’t know how many more men he has inside with him.”

“Listen, you want to end this duck hunt before morning, or you wanna fuck around out here all night in the goddamn rain?”

“You need to stop with the blasphemy.”

Duke chortled. “I’m talkin’ about the Jew God.”

“It’s as Abad told you before… blasphemy is blasphemy.”

“You want to kill this prick or not?”

Akram narrowed his eyes, wishing it was time to put the American to death. “I’m listening.”

“You need to send in that kid with the bomb vest. Even if the blast doesn’t get Shannon, it’s gonna fuck up whatever defense they’ve organized in there and set the house on fire. Then we shoot whoever comes running out.”

“Tahir!” Akram called in the darkness, his face illuminated briefly by a flash of lightning. “Come here.” It was a brilliant idea to send a bomber into the house. But Akram was irked with himself for not having thought of it on his own.

Tahir appeared with a pair of night vision goggles on his face, an AK-47 hanging from his shoulder. “Yes, teacher.”

“Your moment has arrived.” Akram put his hands on the youth’s shoulders and squeezed. “I need you to go into the house and detonate the bomb. You will arrive in heaven instantly, bathed in the affections of Allah.”

Tahir shivered, and then felt the warmth of his urine running down the inside of his leg into his boot. “Yes, teacher.” His voice felt raw, and he suddenly realized that he did not want to die. But there was no turning back.

Akram unzipped Tahir’s jacket and readied the dead-man switch, putting it into the youth’s fist. “It is very easy,” he promised. “All you have to do is let go of the handle, and Allah will take care of the rest.”

“Will there be pain?”

“None,” Akram promised. “And your name will live forever.”

Weak in the knees, Tahir leaned back against the stall door where a horse stood eating from a bucket of oats. “Should I sneak across or run?”

“Be stealthy,” Akram said. “Work your way to the red truck, and from there you can run full speed to the back of the house. If you cannot force the door, break in through a window. Whatever you do, you must stay alive long enough to get inside, where the pressure wave will do the most damage. If you see our target, get as close as you can before releasing the detonator.”

“I will not fail,” Tahir said numbly, feeling utterly empty inside his skin.

Akram broke open a hay bale and spread it on the ground, getting to his knees and beckoning the youth to do the same beside him. “Now let us pray. This straw will serve as our musallah and protect us from the dung of these animals.”

A few feet away, Duke sat watching them in infrared as they knelt in the hay, bowing their foreheads to the ground. He felt nothing but contempt for them.

It’s too bad I don’t have all my money yet, he thought, because I’d waste every one of you crazy fuckers and be on my way.