Kill The President's Women (Joe The Magic Man Series Book 2)

SYNOPSIS

In January 2013, a bloody gun battle at the Algerian B.P. gas plant in the Sahara desert claims the lives of 40 workers and 39 Islamist militants after a three-day siege.

After undergoing specialized training by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Afghanistan, the two eldest sons of one of the slain militants receive their mother’s blessing to avenge their father’s death and carry on his legacy: the elimination of Western women in government who speak publicly and who also blaspheme.

Five months later, the brothers land in San Francisco – two willing suicide bombers intending to kill the “President’s bitches”.

Deputy Director of the FBI, Frank Brubaker realizes that he is on the back foot and quickly activates a new special task force consisting of two highly trained special agents and two equally special civilians. One of the civilians – “Joe the Magic Man” – is an elusive, roguish character with a hidden identity and highly potent powers of mind reading, telepathy and hypnosis.

As the FBI struggles to come to terms with the potential destruction he could wreak with his powers, they find they have no choice but to work with him, especially because he possesses the ability to invade peoples’ dreams and extract withheld information.

The manhunt is conducted in earnest, with every passing second increasing the probability of the militants’ success in making a bold statement on American soil.

THE HUNT IS ON

In dreams, wonderful, weird and bizarre things can happen, while seeming to be very real. Welcome to the world of Joe the Dream Walker.

KILL THE PRESIDENT’S WOMEN

ALLAN J. LEWIS

• Tuesday October 1, 2013.
  
• Wednesday October 2, 2013.
  
• Thursday, October 3
  
• Friday, October 4th
  
• Saturday, October 5
  
• Sunday, October 6th
  
• Monday, October 7
  
• Tuesday October 8th
  
• Wednesday, October 9
  
• Thursday, October 10
  
• Friday, October 11
  
• Saturday, October 12
  
• The End
  

1900hrs.

Somewhere in the back streets of Algiers.

Yusuf Bahari sat in the dwindling light outside Omar’s cafe, massaging his aching knee and watching the road carefully with his highly-trained eyes. Omar was his friend and he ran a cafe situated in a conspicuous part of town so the tourists could stop by on their way to and fro their hunt for entertainment spots at night. Not that the tourist trade was booming like it once was; the tourists were getting fewer every year, with all the unrest in the Arab nations.

Yusuf liked to go by the title, “tourist information person”, but he knew deep in his heart that he was just a street beggar, like all the children pestering the tourists. The major advantage he had over most of the other beggars was his good command of the English language. In a city where the locals primarily spoke Arabic, Berber and French, it was an advantage indeed.

He was also a lucky beggar who couldn’t technically be labeled “street”, for he had a wife, family and roof over his head. He had been married for 41 years and his six children were all married. He still had a full house though, for his youngest daughter, her husband and their four kids all lived with him. His wife tried hard to find work but only got the odd job. His son-in-law had the same trouble finding work, so whatever Yusuf could earn was more than welcome in their household.

It hadn’t always been this way; Yusuf had started work at the railway yard when he was fourteen, and he would still be working there now if it wasn’t for a stupid accident. Yusuf and his workmate had been unloading the cargo off a train and on to a handcart to take over to the storage depot. It was near the end of the shift so they rushed the job and didn’t secure the boxes properly to the handcart. The handcart had a handlebar in front that could be pulled to guide the cart, and when the handle was let go, it would shoot upright and act like a brake.

The boxes were stacked three high with Yusuf’s workmate pushing from behind and Yusuf pulling and controlling the cart from the front. They were going a little faster than usual and when Yusuf let the handle go, the cart stopped abruptly and the top box fell on him, breaking his ankle and smashing the bones in his foot. They were both sacked on the spot for negligence and were lucky not to be sued for damage and loss of the cargo.

Yusuf never found out what was in the box and why the railway company had put the importance of the cargo over his broken leg. The accident had happened 11 years ago when he was a proud man of 50 and unfortunately, his foot never healed properly, forcing him to aid his movement with a stick.

These days, Yusuf worked the streets all day, peddling his information to the tourists. This information mainly consisted of where to get the best deals for what they were looking for or routes to get to the marketplace. He would haggle with a taxi driver on a tourist’s behalf, hoping for a tip. Yusuf knew all the taxi drivers well and no matter whose taxi he took the tourist too, he’d introduce the driver as his good friend and the tourist also as his friend.

He would agree on the price that the driver would charge to take the tourist to a chosen destination, the driver would then give a little bow of the head to the tourists and say in broken English, “Any friend of Yusuf’s is a friend of mine, please get in and I will look after you”. Usually, the tourist would then tip Yusuf and this was his routine which he carried out multiple times a day.

Yusuf’s knee ached because of the way he walked to keep the weight off his ankle and his friend Omar, let him sit and rest outside his café because Yusuf would often bring tourists around. And that was what he was doing that evening, resting up outside the café with his eyes half closed, when young Ali Haddad crossed the street and went into the café without noticing Yusuf. The teenager ignored him and that was the way Yusuf liked it, no hassle. The younger boys would tease him by calling him names but Yusuf paid them no mind.

Ali Haddad was seventeen – the same age as his two friends that he met in the café with the greeting of “Salam, brothers” and a hug. The three of them sat inside the café drinking soft drinks, while Ali’s two friends asked him where he had been for the past week. They were talking noisily and Ali told them his mother had made him stay at home. His two friends laughed out loudly, until they saw the serious look on Ali’s face.

“Ali, what’s happened?” one of his friends asked.

Ali glanced carefully around the café; Omar the owner was at the back and there were no other customers. The old cripple was asleep out front so he wasn’t much of a problem.

Ali whispered, “I don’t know if I should be telling you this...”

His two friends leaned over the table closer to him, and one of them whispered back, “You can trust us.”

The other asked, “Are you in trouble?”

Ali shook his head. “If I tell you, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone.”

Yusuf the cripple didn’t move a muscle but he strained his ears, shutting out the sounds of the street, to listen to the secret Young Ali was about to spill. Yusuf had a contact in the local newspaper that would pay him well for any gossip, scandal or story of interest, so he listened as best as he could.

Ali let out a sigh and said nervously, “My brothers have been home for three days.”

His two friends looked at each other with surprise, and one asked, “Malek and Hadj are home and they haven’t come to see us?”

“Shh... no one is to know that they’ve been home, my mother said it was best if Malek and Hadj stayed out of sight, and stayed in the house to pray for my father and eldest brother, who gave their lives to keep the Western infidels out of our land.”

“May they rest in peace,” the two friends said, out of respect for the two brave men.

Yusuf’s ears didn’t miss much; he recalled that Ali’s father and eldest brother had been members of the “Militant Islamist Fighters”, and they had both been killed in the siege at the B.P. plant back in January.

“Did your mother stop your brothers from going to the mosque to worship?” The first friend asked, his voice rising stubbornly.

“Keep your voice down!” Ali looked around nervously again. “No, my mother didn’t stop them. She just said it would be best if they didn’t leave the house.”

“Why? What have they done?”

“Nothing yet... They just came home to visit.”

“Then why didn’t they come to visit us?” The second friend asked. “We are their friends, are we not? We are practically family.”

The first friend asked, “Where are they working anyway?”

Ali lowered his head, bursting to share the secret with his friends. “You are not to tell anyone about this, okay? If you do, I will kill you myself.”– They both nodded – “Malek and Hadj didn’t go looking for work, they went to join al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. They went to carry on our father’s fight to stop this country following in the Westerners’ ways where they let the women speak in public and even run the country just like Margaret Thatcher did in Britain and that Merkel woman is doing in Germany.”

“Are Malek and Hadj going to Germany to stop her?”One of his friends asked, half-jokingly.

“No,” Ali said, raising his head proudly, “they are going to America to kill the President’s bitches.”

Yusuf the cripple found it difficult to keep still. His mind was telling him to get this information to his contact Hamid the newspaperman right away; a story like that should put food on the table for a week or more. His common sense told him to sit still so he would not be noticed. He pretended to be asleep, until a customer came into the café and yelled for Omar to come out and tune the TV to the football match.

Yusuf got up, stretched innocently and limped away unnoticed by Ali and his friends.

*

He hated having to use a dime to call Hamid the newspaperman to arrange a meeting, but he knew it would be worth it. He told Hamid the story he had overheard, leaving out the names until they settled on a price. They arranged to meet on the grounds of the Mustapha Pacha Hospital where they wouldn’t look suspicious. They met, acknowledged each other with the greeting of “Salam”, and both of them sat down on a bench to get down to business.

“My good friend Yusuf, if this story is true, then my editor might be interested,” Hamid started, slyly.

“It is true,” Yusuf said

Hamid smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “But you ask too much. What do you want to do, buy a car?”

The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Yusuf so he smiled back. He actually hadn’t named a price on the phone; he had only said that he would collect a larger sum than usual.

“My friend, if you phone the President of America and tell him there are two men,” he stopped himself, thought, then continued, “no, two terrorists coming to kill his women, then I am sure the President will buy us each a car.”

“So you think this boy you heard was genuine,” Hamid asked, “not just bragging to his friends about how tough his older brothers are?”

He watched Yusuf nervously look around as he nodded in the affirmative.

“Let me call my editor to see what he thinks.”

Hamid got up and walked a few steps away, but it wasn’t his editor he phoned, it was an antique dealer named Mustafa Kafi who had his store in a busy tourist area. Hamid knew that the antique business was just a cover for his work with the Algerian Government, and that he would be more than interested in this story. Mustafa had asked him to let him know if he heard any talk about protest groups or terrorists.

As far as Hamid knew, Mustafa was a government spy. He usually gave Hamid tip-offs concerning when and where trouble was likely to break out so he could go there and report it. Mustafa would ask Hamid to take as many photos of the crowd as he could, and send a copy of all the photos to him. Hamid was sure Mustafa would be interested in this story, and would find out if it was true or just some kid bragging.

Mustafa picked the phone up on the third ring. “Kafi Antiques.”

“How are you my old friend, I hope Allah has been good to you?”

Hamid had been told to never to use his name, but use the code of, “I hope Allah has been good to you.”

“As I hope he has been good to you too, my friend.”

Mustafa was in his luxurious apartment above the store, and as soon as he heard the code, he went and sat at his computer. “You have something for me?”

“I don’t know how reliable the information is, but I’ve been told that two brothers have just come home after five months of training in Afghanistan, and now they are off to America, and I quote what my informer said, ‘To kill the President’s bitches’. That’s about it.”

“Is there a background story?”Mustafa asked.

“Yes,” Hamid replied, proceeding to relate the story of the B.P siege and the deaths that inspired this present plan of attack.