The Lion's Game (20 page)

The entire flat roof had collapsed into the room, covering the tile floor, the rugs, and the furniture with broken slabs of concrete, wooden beams, and stucco. Khalil looked upward at the open sky.
In the name of the most merciful
...

He took another deep breath and tried to get himself under control. On the far wall was the wood and tile cabinet that his father had built. Khalil made his way across the rubble to the cabinet, whose doors had been flung open. He found the flashlight inside and switched it on.

He swept the powerful, narrow beam around the room, seeing now the full extent of the damage. A framed photograph of the Great Leader still hung on the wall and this somehow reassured Khalil.

He knew he had to go into the bedrooms, but he couldn’t bring himself to face what might be there.

Finally, he told himself,
You must be a man
.
You must see if they are dead or alive
.

He moved toward an arched opening that led further back into the house. The cooking and eating room had suffered the same damage as the front room. Khalil noticed that his mother’s dishes and ceramic bowls had all fallen off their shelves.

He passed through the destruction into a small inner courtyard where three doors led to the three bedrooms. Khalil pushed on the door to the room that he shared with his two brothers, Esam, age five, and Qadir, age fourteen. Esam was the posthumous son of his father, always sickly, and was indulged by his sisters and mother. The Great Leader himself had sent for a European doctor once to examine him during one of his illnesses. Qadir, only two years younger than Asad, was big for his age and sometimes mistaken as his twin. Asad Khalil had hopes and dreams that Qadir and he would join the Army together, become great warriors, and eventually become Army commanders and aides to the Great Leader.

Asad Khalil held on to this image as he pushed on the door, which encountered some obstruction on the other side and held fast. He pushed harder and managed to squeeze himself through the narrow opening into his room.

There were three single beds in the small room—his own, which was flattened under a slab of concrete, Qadir’s bed, which was also buried in concrete rubble, and Esam’s bed, across which Khalil could see a huge rafter.

Khalil scrambled over the rubble to Esam’s bed and knelt beside it. The heavy timber had landed lengthwise on the bed, and beneath the timber, under the blanket, was Esam’s crushed and lifeless body. Khalil put his hands over his face and wept.

He got himself under control and turned toward Qadir’s bed. The entire bed was buried under a section of concrete and stucco roof. Khalil’s flashlight played over the mound of debris, and he saw a hand and arm protruding from the concrete pieces. He reached out and grasped the hand, then quickly let go of the dead flesh.

He let out a long, plaintive wail and threw himself across the mound of debris covering Qadir’s bed. He cried for a minute or two, but then realized he had to find the others. He stumbled to his feet.

Before he left the room, he turned and again shone the flashlight on his bed and stared transfixed by the single slab of concrete that had flattened the bed where he had lain only hours before.

Khalil crossed the small courtyard and pushed on the splintered door of his sisters’ room. The door had come unfastened from its hinges and fell inward.

His sisters, Adara, age nine, and Lina, age eleven, shared a double bed. Adara was a happy child and Khalil favored her, acting as more her father than her older brother. Lina was serious and studious, a joy to her teachers.

Khalil could not bring himself to shine his light on the bed or even to look at it. He stood with his eyes closed, prayed, then opened his eyes and put the beam of light on the double bed. He let out a gasp. The bed was overturned, and the entire room looked like it had been shaken by a giant. Khalil saw now that the rear outside wall had been blown in, and he could smell the powerful acrid stench of explosives. The bomb had detonated not far from here, he knew, and some of the explosion had blown down the wall and filled the room with fire and smoke. Everything was charred, tossed about, and reduced to unrecognizable pieces.

He stepped over the rubble near the door, took a few paces, then stopped, frozen, one leg in front of the other. At the end of the flashlight’s beam was a severed head, the face blackened and charred, the hair nearly all singed off. Khalil couldn’t tell if it was Lina or Adara.

He turned and ran toward the door, tripped, fell, scrambled across the rubble on all fours, and felt his hand coming into contact with bone and flesh.

He found himself lying in the small courtyard, curled into a ball, unwilling and unable to move.

In the distance, he could hear sirens, vehicles, people shouting, and, closer by, women wailing. Khalil knew there would be many funerals in the next few days, many graves to be dug, prayers to be said, and survivors to be comforted.

He lay there, numb with grief at the loss of his two brothers and two sisters. Finally, he tried to stand, but succeeded only in crawling toward the door of his mother’s room. The door, he realized, was gone, blown away without a trace.

Khalil got to his feet and entered the room. The floor was relatively free of debris, and he saw that the roof had held, though everything in the room looked as if it had been moved toward the far wall, including the bed. Khalil saw that the curtains and shutters had been blown out of the two narrow-slit windows, and he realized that the force of the explosion outside had entered these windows and filled the room with a violent blast.

He hurried to his mother’s bed, which had been pushed against the wall. He saw her lying there, her blanket and pillow gone and her night dress and sheets covered with gray dust.

At first he thought she was sleeping or just knocked senseless by the force of the collision with the wall. But then he noticed the blood around her mouth and the blood that had run from her ears. He remembered how his own ears and lungs had almost burst from the concussion of the bombs, and he knew what had happened to his mother.

He shook her. “Mother! Mother!” He continued to shake her. “Mother!”

Faridah Khalil opened her eyes and tried to focus on her oldest son. She began to speak, but coughed up foamy blood.

“Mother! It is Asad!”

She gave a slight nod.

“Mother, I am going to get help—”

She grabbed his arm with surprising strength and shook her head. She pulled on his arm, and he understood she wanted him closer.

Asad Khalil bent over so that his face was only inches from that of his mother.

She tried to speak again, but coughed up more blood, which Khalil could now smell. She kept her grip on him and he said, “Mother, you will be all right. I will go for a doctor.”

“No!”

He was surprised to hear her voice, which sounded nothing like his mother’s voice. He worried that there was damage done inside of her and that she was bleeding internally. He thought he might be able to save her if he could get her to the compound hospital. But she would not let him go. She knew she was dying and she wanted him close when she took her last breath.

She whispered in his ear, “Qadir ... Esam ... Lina ... Adara... ?”

“Yes ... They are all right. They are ... They ... will be ...” He found himself weeping so hard he couldn’t continue.

Faridah whispered, “My poor children ... my poor family ...”

Khalil let out a long wailing sound, then screamed out, “Allah, why have you deserted us?” Khalil wept on his mother’s breast, felt her heartbeat beneath his cheek, and heard her whisper, “My poor family ...” Then her heart stopped, and Asad Khalil remained very still, listening for it, waiting for her chest to rise and fall again. He waited.

He lay on her breasts a long time, then he stood and walked out of her room. He wandered in a trance through the rubble of his home, and found himself outside in front of the house. He stood looking at the scene of chaos around him. Someone yelled nearby, “The whole Atiyeh family is dead!”

Men cursed, women wept, children screamed, ambulances came, stretchers took people away, a truck passed by, loaded with white-shrouded bodies.

He heard a man say that the Great Leader’s house nearby had been hit by a bomb. The Great Leader had escaped, but members of his family had been killed.

Asad Khalil stood and listened to all that was said around him and noticed some of what was happening, but everything seemed very far away.

He began walking aimlessly and was almost hit by a speeding fire truck. He kept walking and found himself back near the munitions building where Bahira lay dead on the roof. He wondered if her family had survived. In any case, whoever was looking for her would be looking through the rubble in the area of the living quarters. It would be days or weeks before she was found on the roof, and by then the body would be ... It would be assumed she died of concussion.

Asad Khalil found to his astonishment that he was still thinking clearly about certain things despite his grief.

He moved quickly away from the munitions building, not wanting any further association with that place.

He walked, alone with his thoughts, alone in the world. He said to himself, “My whole family are martyrs for Islam. I have succumbed to a temptation outside the Sharia and because of that I was not in my bed, and I have been spared the fate of my family. But Bahira succumbed to the same temptation and has suffered a different fate.” He tried to make sense of all this and asked Allah to help him understand the meaning of this night.

The Ghabli whistled through the camp, blowing up dust and sand. The night was colder now and the moon had set, leaving the blacked out camp in total darkness. He had never felt so alone, so frightened, so helpless. “Allah, please, make me understand ...” He lay face down on the black road facing toward Mecca. He prayed, he asked for an omen, he asked for guidance, he tried to think clearly.

He had no doubt who it was that had brought such destruction on them. There had been rumors for months that the madman, Reagan, would attack them, and now it had happened. He had an image of his mother speaking to him.
My poor family must be avenged
. Yes, that’s what she had said, or was about to say.

Suddenly, in a flash of understanding, it became clear to him that he had been chosen to avenge not only his family, but his nation, his religion, and the Great Leader. He would be Allah’s instrument for revenge. He, Asad Khalil, had nothing left to lose and nothing left to live for, unless he took up the Jihad and carried the Holy War to the shores of the enemy.

Asad Khalil’s sixteen-year-old mind was now set and focused on simple revenge and retribution. He would go to America and slice the throats of everyone who had taken part in this cowardly attack. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This was the Arab death feud, the blood feud, more ancient even than the Koran or Jihad, as ancient as the Ghabli. He said aloud, “I swear to Allah that I will avenge this night.”

* * *

Lieutenant Bill Satherwaite asked his weapons officer, “All bull’s-eyes?”

“Yeah,” Chip Wiggins replied. “Well, one of them may have overshot ...” Wiggins added, “Hit something though. A line of, like, smaller buildings ...”

“Good. As long as you didn’t hit the Arch of Mario.”

“Marcus.”

“Whatever. You owe me dinner, Chip.”

“No, you owe
me
dinner.”

“You missed a bull’s-eye. You buy.”

“Okay, I’ll buy if you fly back over the Arch of Marcus Aurelius.”

“I flew
in
over the Arch. You missed it.” Satherwaite added, “See it when you come back as a tourist.”

Chip Wiggins had no intention of ever coming back to Libya, except in a fighter plane.

They flew on over the desert, and suddenly the coast streaked by below, and they were over the Mediterranean. They didn’t need radio silence any longer, and Satherwaite transmitted, “Feet wet.” They headed for the rendezvous point with the rest of their squadron.

Wiggins remarked, “We won’t hear from Moammar for a while.” He added, “Maybe not ever again.”

Satherwaite shrugged. He was not unaware that these surgical strikes had a purpose beyond testing his flying ability. He understood that there would be political and diplomatic problems after this. But he was more interested in the locker room chatter back at Lakenheath. He looked forward to the debriefings. He thought fleetingly about the four 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs they had let loose, and he hoped everyone down there had enough warning to get into their shelters. He really didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Wiggins broke into his thoughts and said, “By dawn, Radio Libya will report that we hit six hospitals, seven orphanages, and ten mosques.”

Satherwaite didn’t respond.

“Two thousand civilians dead—all women and children.”

“How’s the fuel?”

“About two hours.”

“Good. Did you have fun?”

“Yeah, until the Triple-A.”

Satherwaite replied, “You didn’t want to bomb a defenseless target, did you?”

Wiggins laughed, then said, “Hey, we’re combat veterans.”

“That we are.”

Wiggins stayed silent awhile, then asked, “I wonder if they’re going to retaliate.” He added, “I mean, they screw us, we screw them, they screw us, we screw them ... where does it end?”