The Seventh Pillar (11 page)

They made it to the side of the truck and crouched by the rear bumper.

"Sudanese license plate," she whispered. "It’s the right truck."

"Cover me." He crept to the window and risked a glance over the edge.

There was only one room. Three men sat at a table playing a board game and talking. The music came from a small battery powered radio. One man smoked a cigarette. A bottle of fruit juice stood by the radio. Assault rifles were close by each man. A kerosene lantern provided light. Beyond, an open door revealed the shore and water.

He went back to Selena, squatted down beside her.

"Three men with AKs. They’re sitting at a table. We can take them through the window."

"Bausari?"

"He’s not there. No box or containers, either."

"What if this isn’t the right place?"

"Do you believe that?"

"Not really, but we’re not certain. We can’t kill them."

"Why not? They’re sure as hell not fishermen. You said yourself it’s the right truck. Sudanese plates? That’s too much of a coincidence. What do you think we should do?"

"If Bausari was here, they know where he went. We should interrogate them, find out what they know."

"There are three of them and two of us. They have AKs in reach. What makes you think you can get them to cooperate?"

"Something I've learned from you is that looking at the wrong end of a rifle does wonders for attitude."

"I don’t like it. We go through the door, it gives them a chance to grab those weapons."

They might have talked it out some more but the decision was made for them. One of the men stepped outside. He walked a little way from the shack, set his rifle down and urinated. As he turned back he saw them. He shouted and lunged for his weapon.

Carter shot him. Shouts came from the shack. A long burst of fire came through the window and ripped through the canvas of the truck that shielded them. Rounds hammered the body, sending bits of metal and glass flying. Carter and Selena's rifles danced in their hands as the magazines emptied.

The walls of the shack splintered. Rays of light streamed out through holes made by the rounds. Carter heard screams. He shoved in another magazine and kept firing. When that one was gone, he reloaded and waited. Selena had stopped shooting.

The bullets had shattered the lamp on the table and blown flaming kerosene around the room. A broad tongue of yellow fire licked up the inside of the shack.

"That will bring everyone here in a hurry. Time to haul ass, Selena."

She hurried to the back of the truck, lifted the canvas. "Nothing there. Okay, let’s go."

They ran to the Toyota and jumped in. He started the engine, threw it in reverse, turned the wheel, hit first gear and bumped over the track leading away from the burning shack. Dark figures ran toward them and dove out of the way. Someone fired at them. Nick reached the highway, took a hard right and sailed past a pickup truck filled with armed men going the other way. In the glare of headlights he saw them staring as they went by. In the rear view mirror he saw their brake lights come on.

"They're stopping." Nick looked in the mirror. "Turning around."

"Go east. Get off the highway." Selena pointed.

Along this stretch it was flat and level and there wasn’t much difference between the road and the desert. He spun the wheel and turned into the empty land.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Carter cut his lights. The moon threw cold, beautiful light over the desert. The random rock outcroppings looked like alien creatures surfacing from a silver, shadowy sea. The headlights behind had turned off the highway, coming after them.

The wheels whined over the hard packed sand. The ground dipped. They drove into a depression, toward an outcropping of rocks thrust up from the desert floor. For a moment they were out of sight.

"We have to make a stand." Carter shouted over the noise of the engine. "If they catch us in the open we’re finished."

Selena inserted fresh magazines into the AKs. Tip to the front, catch the edge. Rock back, lock in place. It felt like it was getting to be second nature.

Carter slewed to a stop at the rocks. A sudden glare of headlights bounced over the edge of the depression and caught them. He threw open the door and hit the ground.

Selena emptied a magazine at the truck. It kept coming. Wild bursts of fire came from the back of the pickup. Bullets whined from the rocks and sent sprays of stinging sand into the air. Something cut Nick's cheek. He fired quick bursts at the truck, trying to pick out targets.

The windshield of the truck shattered. It veered, then straightened and kept coming. Two men fell from the back. The passenger door opened and a man leaned out with a rifle. Selena shot him. Carter jammed in another magazine and concentrated on the truck.

There was a bright, orange flash and a loud explosion. The truck lifted into the air in a cloud of fire, tossing bodies like a dog shaking fleas. The wreckage came down in pieces on the moonlit sands.

The crackling sound of flames from the burning vehicle broke the silence of the desert night. They stood up.

A trickle of blood ran down his cheek. He dabbed at it with his sleeve.

"They weren’t very smart, were they?" she said.

"No. Lucky for us." He watched her, calm as if she were at a Sunday outing in the park. She's changing, he thought. She's not the same woman who walked into Harker's office a few months ago. He wasn't sure what to make of it.

Selena took out her phone, punched buttons and looked at the display. "We’re about eight miles from the pickup point. We need to head south east." She nodded in the general direction.

They went over to their truck. Two of the tires were flat, the glass was shattered and oil pooled on the ground underneath. Bullet holes riddled the cab. The Toyota was finished.

"Well," he said. "Let’s hope nobody else comes looking."

"We’d better start." Selena slung her AK.

They walked in silence under the moonlight, under the stars.

After a while she broke the silence. "I was thinking about what you said, about vipers."

"What about them?"

"Vipers are instinctive. They don’t think. Terrorists think."

Carter said nothing.

"You don’t think there’s any justification for their actions? Like poverty and injustice? Anything that excuses their behavior?"

"There are billions of people in the world who live in poverty under unjust and corrupt regimes. A whole lot of them are Muslims who don’t blow up busses and schools and markets because they’re pissed off."

"No excuses? To the British, George Washington was a terrorist."

"That’s different. That’s revolution, organized rebellion against a regime. Armies fighting armies, soldiers against soldiers. Washington didn’t bomb markets to make a point. He didn’t target civilians, even the loyalists who didn’t agree with him, unless they picked up a rifle. Then they were fair game."

"But it’s different now. Take the Palestinians. They don’t have armies and planes and tanks. How are they supposed to get what they want?"

"It doesn't matter what they want. Nothing justifies the murder of innocents."

"We kill innocents, too. Except we call it ‘collateral damage’, as if that makes it okay. War kills plenty of innocents, civilians, non-combatants. It’s immoral."

"There’s no morality in war. People are always trying to impose moral values on something essentially immoral. It’s a contradiction in terms."

"So the end justifies the means?" She hiked the AK up on her shoulder.

"That’s the question, isn’t it?" Nick said. "In the end, it comes down to survival. Then all bets are off. Morality doesn’t stop bullets and bombs."

"It could," she said, "if there was enough of it."

The soft lines of her face were a moonlit contrast to the harsh angles of the AK on her shoulder. They walked on across the desert.

They reached the rendezvous point two hours before dawn. Carter eased himself onto the hard ground. Selena unslung her rifle and sat down.

"Jesus, I’m tired," she said. "It's cold." She leaned against him.

He put his arm around her. "Just a couple of hours to sunrise. We’ll be out of here."

She turned her face toward him. "Did you know your eyes shine in the moonlight?"

The kiss was electric. She said, "Take off that stupid beard."

He pulled off the beard. The next kiss was deep and long, her hands on his head, pulling him to her. His hand moved to her breast and she sighed. She reached for him.

Her breasts were pale in the moonlight, the nipples standing out in the chill night air. He kissed and nuzzled them. He kissed her belly, tongued her navel. He moved down and spread her legs. She smelled of sweat and sex. He buried himself in her. They made love on the rumpled clothes and the sand. For a while there were no terrorists in the world.

The sky started to change color.

Selena pulled away. "We’d better get dressed. It’s almost dawn." They got their clothes on. Picked up the rifles.

She was pensive. "Ever notice we kick it up a notch after someone's tried to kill us?"

Nick looked at her. "Yeah. I think it's about life. About being alive, feeling that."

"Feeling. Sometimes I feel like we're characters in a Quentin Tarentino movie."

"Selena…"

"I think I hear the plane," she said.

Part Two:

Home

"We have the right to kill four million Americans, two million of whom should be children."

                                                                                                  Suliman Abu Ghaith

                                                                                                  A spokesman for al-Qaeda

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Lamont's arm stuck out at an odd angle, locked in a rigid cast. Ronnie's left hand was bandaged. Selena and Stephanie sat to his right.

"We know more than we did." Nick paused. "The man who attacked us in Mali was one of the assassins. Somehow it's related to Bausari and that cave. But al-Bausari is Sunni. The assassins are fanatics and Shia. They wouldn't work together."

"Why did he come after you?" Ronnie asked.

"He was in the library and saw Selena reading that manuscript."

"I'd like to know what was in that cave." Stephanie adjusted the pistol and pager at her waist.

"It must be a relic of Muhammad. A genuine relic could inflame Islam in the wrong hands. A sign of credibility, if you like. And now Bausari has it."

Selena crossed her legs, trying to get comfortable. "What worries me is it could be the sign the assassins have been waiting for all these centuries. It might be why they've come out in the open again. If it's really them."

"What kind of sign?"

"How's your apocalypse knowledge, Lamont?"

"Like in the Bible?"

"Right. In the Bible, you get all kinds of signs like earthquakes and plagues and famine and war that foreshadow the end. Like the world has right now. Then God sounds the Last Judgement and that's it. In Islam, it's similar but different, especially with the Shia theology."

"How so?"

"Those signs mean the Mahdi will appear, the Islamic messiah, to call in the Faithful. Christ reappears and converts all the Christians to the true faith of Islam. Anyone who doesn't convert is finished. Then Islam rules supreme."

Lamont rubbed the heavy cast on his arm. "Damn thing itches. Okay, but so what?"

"Anyone who doesn't convert is put to the sword. Do you know the seven pillars of Shia Islam?"

"No."

"They're pretty good, actually. The first six are about purity, prayer, charity, fasting, pilgrimage and a sense of oneness with God. It's the seventh pillar that can make trouble."

"Which is?"

"Jihad. Struggle. There are two interpretations of that. One is peaceful, the idea that jihad means struggling for a better life, a spiritual life, building the community, things like that. That's how most of Islam thinks of it. The other meaning is confronting enemies of the faith. All bets are off for the non-believer. Anything is justified. The non-believers can be killed."

"What are you getting at?"

"If someone who believes in Jihad as a call to holy war finds a sign that the Mahdi is about to return, and if that person has some kind of organization behind him..."

Everyone was silent for a moment.

Nick scratched his ear. "If it's a sign, we have to know what it is."

Selena brushed a hair from her brow. "I've got a feeling we'll find out soon enough."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The room was just another room on a ship. The ocean was visible through the porthole, an anonymous expanse of water. It could be anywhere in the world. There was nothing in the room to identify it. Al-Bausari sat cross legged on a low cushion, magnificent in his white robe and full beard. He wore a green turban, marking him as hajji, one who had made the journey to Mecca required of all the Faithful at least once in their lifetime. Behind him was a banner in Arabic, white letters on a green background.

ويوم المحاكمة قريبا

"Is all ready, Ghalib?"

"Yes, Teacher."

"Bring me the box."

Aban waited behind the camera as Ghalib reverently placed a wooden box at al-Bausari's feet. The wood was dark with the passing of the centuries. It was about three feet long, carved with scenes of Paradise, fruits and trees, vines and rivers.

The box from the cave. The Relic of the Prophet.

Al-Bausari nodded at Aban and the tape began recording. When they reached land, the tape would find it's way to Al-Jazeera and to the many websites preaching Jihad against the West.

"Praise God, the Day of Judgement is near. I have been given the sign. I bring His warning to the world."

Those words alone would guarantee rapt attention. Al-Bausari bent forward and opened the box and took out the relic and held it high.