The Hammer of God (12 page)

∞§∞

The Hiccocks started their Saturday twice. They awoke at 8:30, each thinking what the other was thinking, then acting upon it, so neither left the bed. At 9:10 they both collapsed into a deep sleep until 10:20, when Janice rolled over and opened her eyes.

“Bill, it's 10:20.”

Bill spoke into the pillow. “Errrrmp.”

She patted him on his butt until he lifted his head. “Good morning, almost afternoon.”

They showered, dressed, and went to a local diner for breakfast.

“No matter what, we are just looking,” Bill said. “We are not buying anything.”

“Exactly. We're going to see our options then sleep on it.”

“We have lots of time. We don't have to rush into anything.”

“Exactly.”

It was a beautiful, sun-shiny, day. They drove for 45 minutes to a store out on the highway that Cheryl's sister had recommended.

Forty minutes later, Bill was ruing the fact that they didn't take the old wagon. Tied to the top of the Caddy was the big box holding the crib. Jutting out from the tied-down open trunk was the stroller box and the back seat was crammed with little blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. With over 300 I.Q. points between them, the one thing they did that was smart in ‘Babies R Us,' was not commit to any gender specific color scheme or wallpaper.

“Didn't we say we were just looking?” Bill said, as he drove no faster than 40 miles per hour, lest the wind shear lift the crib's box into somebody's front grill.

The nursery wasn't ready yet. It wasn't even a nursery, and it still had to be divested of the books, junk, and old exercise equipment that lived there. Bill put the crib, stroller, and other stuff in the garage. He then began tinkering with a lamp he started rewiring last winter.

“I made you a sandwich,” Janice called out from the kitchen.

“Just a minute.” Bill snaked the new cord through the body of the lamp and out the top. He left enough hanging out to be able to work with when he would wire the new socket to it, later, after lunch.

The TV was on in the kitchen and CNN was all over the ambassador story with graphics and serious music calling it “Summit with Death?” They had silhouetted the grainy image of Greeley from the terrorists tape and it now flew back over the graphics of a masked terrorist as thunderous theme music played. Being CNN, there was a panel of talking heads who didn't beat the living shit out of the one “Intellectual” who espoused that the taking of the ambassador was “justifiable” due to America's continuing suppression of the Arab sentiments in the world. Instead, they simply went to commercial. Bill just shook his head.

“Did you know him?” Janice asked.

“Greeley? No, never met him, although I hear he was… is, a good man.”

“The news is now saying his ambassadorial appointment was a political payoff for campaign contributions.”

“Well, ain't that a scoop! They are only about a hundred years late on catching on to that dirty little secret. But that's the soft posts like Canada or Portugal, where some political appointee can't screw it up too bad. Egypt is prime time, Class one. Those only get career Foreign Service Officers. The press is just looking for any way to slam Mitchell because he isn't one of them.”

“Because he isn't a newsman?”

“No, because he's neither Fox news “Right,” or CNN “Left,” and they both hate that neutrality, like he was selling the secret formula of Coca Cola to the Russians.

“So what do you think is going to happen?” Janice asked as she poured Bill and herself more iced tea.

“Thanks. This is just a guess, but I'd say there's a delta force or SEAL strike team warming up the coffee right about now waiting for someone to drop a dime on where the man is being held.”

“What about Egyptian sovereignty?”

“That's covered under ‘Posse comi - fuck ‘em.'”

It took a second for Janice to realize that Bill had just bastardized ‘Posse Comitatus.'

Bill added, “If they get a 20 on this guy, our guys will go in first, snatch him back, then spin it as a joint U.S./Egyptian intelligence op or some kind of bullshit so that the Egyptians save face.”

“Okay, so now I feel better.”

∞§∞

Bill was in the middle of going through a box of stuff in order to throw most of it out and put what was left in a smaller box from which, if he continued the process, he could whittle down the contents of the ten boxes that were taking up valuable baby space in the garage down to one. He was going through old checks and photographs when he heard a familiar voice.

“You
are
human! You actually do normal stuff!”

“Joey, I don't believe it. I just found this in the box.”

Bill handed Palumbo an old photograph: a picture of the two of them and some other guys standing in front of a pipe held up by two braced two-by-fours.

“Hey, the high bar, Muzzi, Johnny ‘No', Soccio, Mush, B.O. Look at the mop of hair on your head!”

“Look how skinny we were.” Hiccock laughed as he tossed the picture back in the keeper box. “What brings you round this way on a Saturday?”

“Something is bugging me and I thought I'd run it by you.”

“Wanna beer?”

“Nah.”

“Okay, then shoot.”

“You remember Brooke Burrell out of the New York Bureau office?”

“Sure do. She was point on the whole virus thing and the poison gas tank plot in New York. Solid agent.”

“One of the best. She and I had a talk, off the record. A lot of it was just agent-to-agent, you know? ‘How do I do this, how should I handle that?' But she said one thing that…Have you heard the latest out of Egypt?”

“That they took Greely to set El Benham free? Yeah.”

“She had an inkling that Alzir knew he wasn't going to be in custody long.”

“Have they ever done this before?” Bill asked as he decided to throw out a desk calendar from 1999.

“Not one for one like this, and if they have it's usually a low-level or convenient grab. A local police chief or U.S. military captive. But it's always reactive, almost improvised by them. This has pre-meditated all over it.”

“And you're telling me this because?”

“Brooke had a sense about this guy knowing he was going to be sprung, and now she's right.”

Bill looked at him in a way that said, “So?”

“This is a big play. They wouldn't do this kinda thing if we caught Al Qaeda number 1. This Alzir guy is deeply connected to something else, something bigger.”

“Bigger than potentially infecting and killing fifty million Americans? I don't think I want to know what that could be.”

“I want you, as a deputy director of the FBI, to authorize a guy who I have been following for a while. He's Dr. Robert Fusco, a psych-ops guy who's got some methods and practices that might give Brooke and us an edge.”

“I am only dep director for stuff under my area.”

“This guy is under your area and, besides, the funding can't go on any record, so I need you to bury it in your SCIAD budget.”

“Okay, now you're scaring me. Is this one of your wild-assed ideas?”

“Who was it who taught me to think outside the box?”

Joey positioned it perfectly to create the maelstrom in Bill's head. It raged there for a minute then he simply said, “You really think this is going to pay off?”

“It's got a good shot.”

Bill responded in the affirmative by giving Joey the Boulevard Blades gesture of a fist with the thumb jutting out between the index and pointer fingers. Not that they knew it, but it was an actual gesture from the ancient Neapolitan society, meaning “to protect.”

∞§∞

At 4:00 p.m. in the Situation Room beneath the White House, President Mitchell was being pushed to make a decision between two diametrically opposed evils.

The Secretary of State was uncharacteristically lobbying hard to save the life of the man who worked for him. “Mister President, the ambassador is a prime asset of the United States. He is worth every effort to retrieve.”

“Chuck, we can't negotiate with terrorists. You'll be setting a precedent that will have every American overseas being kidnapped round the clock,” the Chief of Staff needlessly reminded him. “The only option is military, if we get that lucky. Otherwise, the ambassador is now a combatant and prisoner of war.”

The Secretary of State turned to Mitchell. “Mr. President, how can you sacrifice his life like this?”

“Look, Charles, this ambassador makes over $200,000 dollars a year plus all expenses paid. There are dog faced G.I.s, who are just as valuable to me as he is, who die in shit-holes all over the world and their families barely live at poverty level. So they are both soldiers and, unfortunately, he is as expendable as they are. Chuck, what's really going on with you? You know the damn policy as well as anyone, yet you continue to lobby for a trade that isn't going to happen?” The President's agitation was evident in the way he threw down his pencil.

“I pushed Greely into this post, sir. He wanted out and I personally strong-armed him to take another tour. He is a close personal friend of Saudi Prince Ramalli; they were roommates at Choate. I needed him in that post as part of my mid-east initiative.”

“God damn it, Charles, then get your head out of your ass. We send people to dangerous places and into jeopardy all the time. It may be a first for you, but, trust me, the bad news is you have to live with it.”

Brooke took a deep breath as her hand rested on the latch to the Sheik's cell. She hoped this would be the last time she'd have to do this. She hated it. But it was working. The last time, he wet himself as she approached. She wanted to let up on him a little because of it, but that would signal that she was weak. She had double-checked and made sure that she wasn't hitting him in the same spots. That could result in real injury and cause internal bleeding. She wanted him healthy.

Her hand pushed the door open. “What do you know about this?”

She held up the front page of the
N.Y. Post
. On it was a frame grab from the Al Jazeera video showing the ambassador blindfolded, the jihad flag and AK 47's around him, as a knife was near his throat.

“Hey, shit for brains, what do you know about this?”

“Nothing,” the Sheik said as he retreated to the corner.

“Oh yeah? Well they want us to release you in trade for him.”

“I know nothing of this. Except that Allah's will be served. If it is his way that I will be saved, then so be it.” He half closed his eyes in a now rare, cocky gesture.

It was too much for Brooke. For the first time, she wanted to wallop him in the jaw with the sock sending him reeling backwards and out cold.

Instead, she grabbed her gun, turned, and fired at the men coming through the door. They returned fire, sending her spinning back and crumbling onto the floor, lifeless. The Sheik heard more gunshots in the hallway and the sound of men yelling and groaning filled the room. A man in a ski mask grabbed and held down Aliz as another jabbed a needle into his arm. The last thing he saw was Brooke crumpled on the floor.

∞§∞

The Sheik awoke with a light shining brightly in his eyes. He was on his knees; his hands were tied behind his back. There were other people in the room. He turned and behind him was a banner with the words, “But One Answer.” There were two tall torches on each side. Two hooded men stood with M4 carbines across their chests. Everyone around him was hooded and in ski masks. One grabbed his face and turned it toward the light again. As the Sheik's eyes adjusted, he saw that the light was atop a camera. He was being videotaped.

Someone held his head back and a bayonet was drawn across his throat without cutting the skin. A man unfurled a scroll and read from it.

“You are no longer a prisoner of the United States nor subject to its protection. The Scared Brotherhood of the Shores of Tripoli, in accordance with the traditions set forth by our founders, has captured and taken custody of you and has declared you as a Practical Prisoner of War. You are hereby sentenced to endure the same life, conditions, and final status as the one that has been kidnapped in trade for your life. Those who have murdered, kidnapped, and extorted so that you might be set free are now warned; your fate and that of Ambassador Greely's are now inexorably one”

Aliz squeezed his eyes at what seemed the conclusion of the speech. Surely that was when they'd cut his throat. He started praying to Allah aloud.

It made for dramatic video. But instead of the knife separating his head from his torso, the man continued speaking.

“To the abductors of our Sacred Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary, his Excellency, Wallace Greely: every hardship, every discomfort, every trauma, and, ultimately, the fate of our ambassador, will be inflicted upon, and suffered by your Sheik. Therefore, the Sheik's destiny and the ambassador's are one, and in your hands.”

The man released the grip on the Sheik's head. The light went out and he was quickly dragged out of the room and thrown onto a cot in a small dark room.

∞§∞

Back in the makeshift studio, the ski masks and hoods came off. Brooke's smile matched others in the room. They went up to their mentor, Dr. Robert Fusco of the Psy-Ops division of the new FBI. He critiqued their performances.

“Bob, the guy with the knife in the videos we referenced, always stays close to the captive. You veered away.”

“Got it.” Bob nodded.

“Brooke, you still have a trace of perfume. That could've sent a false signal and compromised the whole ploy.”

“Won't happen again, sir.”

“Chet, a little more passion when you speak of the Brotherhood. Zealots whip up their emotions, almost to rapture, a torrent of devotion to the cause. They are almost overcome with their own sense of self-importance. Let it flow more in your voice!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I love the banner,” the doctor said.

“It was Brooke's idea,” Bob noted.

“It's from Thomas Jefferson's speech to Congress in 1801 when he sent our naval armada on its first-ever mission of war across the seas to fight the Muslim Pirates. He told Congress their demands for money and their call to jihad had left America with ‘
but one answer.
'”

“To sail over to Tripoli and kill them all, sir!” Chet said.

“Nice touch, Brooke.”

“It's a shame no one will ever see it, sir.”

“Well, if this works, it will have all been worth it. Ready for the next stage?”

“Yes, sir. Achmed is already in position. Poor schlub, worked out for eight hours, didn't shower, and cracked an egg into his hair. He smells and looks awful.”

∞§∞

The Sheik stirred and rolled over on the cot. He came awake and quickly scanned his surroundings. It was dark but not pitch. He was chained to his bed. His mouth was dry and his back ached from the springs in the cot. He lifted his head and saw a shape in the corner of the room. It was a man, naked to his briefs, a manacle around his ankle. He was not moving.

“Are you dead?” the Sheik asked the lump on the floor. There was no response. He lay back down.

The door opened. Two men in masks entered. One held a bowl of hummus with an ant crawling on top of it. “We have learned that your brothers, the scum who are holding his Excellency, are feeding him one bowl of this crap a day. So here's yours. Choke on it, you son of a bitch.” He threw the bowl down on the cot.

“Who are you?” The Sheik hazarded to ask.

“We have been fighting your kind since America was born. We'll show the American government that they can't fight you guys like you were criminals – that the only way to beat you is to kill you, eliminate the infestation of our culture by your kind. We are not afraid to die to keep America pure of Islamic zealots like you.”

“You killed the FBI girl?”

“Many more than her in busting you out. In war, some die. They were going to make sure you lived a long comfortable life. The idiots. Then your people took our ambassador. That is as insulting as it gets. So we took you. Now what happens to him happens to you. What he eats you eat. When they beat him, we beat you.”

“You will kill me?”

“Why? Is that what your guys will do to the ambassador?”

“I don't know.”

“You know your kind. If you have any information that will save him, it will also save you. Can you get that into your 7th century head, raghead?” He pushed two fingers into the Sheik's temple with enough force to turn his head. It was the perfect glimpse of concealed rage and hatred he had rehearsed with Doctor Fusco.

“Who is that?” the Sheik said, gesturing toward the body on the floor.

“He is about to be beheaded. Unfortunately your friends in Afghanistan are just about to behead a captured marine. When that happens, we'll mail his head to the Mosque in Istanbul. I think the word will start getting out that we hate you motherfuckers as much as you hate us.” He made a fist and pumped it in an aborted attempt to smash in the Sheik's face, but he stopped himself, then leaned in. “I almost hope they torture the ambassador because I am going to enjoy ripping out the nerves running down your legs and arms with a long nose pliers.”

They left. Aliz started to tremble. He tried to control it, but could only do so for a few seconds before it became even worse. He grabbed the food and scooped it into his mouth with a shaking hand as his mind raced. Should he tell them of his brother? Of the plans they often spoke of if either was ever caught? Would his brother release the ambassador now that he was abducted and would suffer the same fate? Would his brother even see the video from the Infidels?

The lump on the floor moved.

Without a word, the lump prostrated himself and started morning prayers using a newspaper instead of a proper prayer mat. The Sheik didn't interrupt, but quietly prayed along, offering it up to Allah as the best he could do while being chained to the cot.

When prayers were over, he spoke to the man who looked like he'd been there a long time, “What is your name?”

“Achmed; you?”

“Aliz. Why are you here?”

“Because I am Muslim. Because I believed that in this country you are free to worship.”

“Who are these men?”

“They are not government, of that I am sure.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Two weeks, three… I have lost count.”

“Do you know what they are doing?”

“Yes. They are holding me hostage because a marine is being held hostage in Afghanistan. Why are you here?”

“They are holding me because an ambassador was taken in Egypt.”

“That's good. Good that these American bastards cannot just go anywhere in the world they want. They have to pay the price. Do you know where their precious ambassador is? Don't tell me, but do you know?”

“Do you know where the marine is?”

“Ambar Province, I think,” Achmed whispered as to not be overheard.

“Then tell them. They may let you go.”

“Never. I would sooner die then help these pigs. What did you do?”

“I got shot.”

“Come on; what did you do?”

“I was in a motel room and a bullet came through the wall.”

“The bust at JFK! I heard of this. You, you are the Sheik? Oh, it is an honor to meet you, a real honor. Forgive my appearance but…

“No need. They beat you?”

“Yes, they say because the marine was beaten, but how would they know? They couldn't know, could they, Sheik?”

Aliz sat there thinking of his own predicament.
Do they know or are they just ruthless thugs?

“Sheik, I am scared. They are out to kill me. I'm scared.”

“If you die, you will die as Martyr. Do not be scared. Don't let them get the satisfaction of scaring you.”

“I only fear dying before I see them crushed.”

“It will happen; Allah be praised.”

“It will, Sheik? How? How will they suffer?”

“It will be by…” Suddenly the Sheik realized the room could be monitored. He scanned around.

In the control room, Brooke and Fusco saw his change of demeanor and decided it was time for stage three. Brooke nodded to two men already donning their ski masks.

“What, Sheik? How will these American bastards be driven to hell?” Achmed's body language became that of student at the master's feet.

The Sheik stayed mum, looking for any sign of a monitoring device. Then the door opened and two men entered and went straight to Achmed.

“Bad news scumbag. Your buddies just beheaded the corporal. Smile, will ya, ‘cause we hope your mother is watching when we send this to Al Jazeera.”

Achmed started to scamper back and resist. Then his eyes caught the Sheik's. Achmed suddenly cooled and defiantly exclaimed, “You sons of pigs can't take me down.”

They unshackled him and dragged him out of the room, slamming the door just as a bright light went on. The Sheik strained to hear. A man was reading a death sentence. He heard Achmed's low steady prayers. The man was now saying that real justice would be carried out for the injustice of the captors of Marine Corporal Lyndon Banks. Then he yelled, “Burn in hell!” The next sound was a peaking of Achmed's prayer followed by a gurgling scream more and more muffled. The Shiek closed his eyes.

Out in the room, Chet finished pouring the water into Achmed's throat as he gave a final gurgling gasp then spit up into a pillow to muffle his coughs as he ran from the room. Chet then pretended he was holding his victim's head by the hair.

“This will be the fate of all who believe that America has lost its way, and that we don't also celebrate death.” He took a hammer and started battering a watermelon. The sound that came through the door was unmistakable.

The Sheik imagined them smashing the severed head with a hammer live onto the videotape. He turned and vomited onto the floor.

Chet stood up as Bob punctured the top of a plastic pouch of pig blood. He then squirted the blood onto Bob's body in the manner consistent with that of a severed, carotid artery. For extra measure, he hit Chet's hands twice and one nice spray pattern across his ski mask. Then he bloodied the end of the hammer and placed a patch of skin from pigs' feet on it. The crowning touch was the lock of Achmed's hair, which was glued onto pigskin. The result was a very convincing piece of scalp that any Apache warrior would have proudly waved in victory.

The door opened and the man wielding a hammer, covered in blood, entered. The Sheik watched him with great caution as he approached.

“You killed him?”

“Nah, Sheik. Your fellow ragheads killed him when they decapitated our marine. They did this! This death is on their hands, not ours.” His yelling became more intense. “You want to fuck with us…. We'll fuck you right up the ass.”

He raised the hammer and started in towards the Sheik, who put up his hands in a defensive manner.

But another man from the room grabbed the hammer. “No, not that way, we need to kill him on camera or he is wasted.”

Slowly, the crazed one released his grip on the bloody hammer. He kicked the cot and left.

Aliz's temporary savior leaned over and spoke softly. “Pray to your Allah that they don't hurt a hair on the head of his Excellency, the Ambassador.” Then he left as well.