Exactly a minute-and-a-half later, she and her assistants barged into the conference room, out of breath, out of energy, and out of time. Sixteen of the twenty seats, all of them occupied by the general staff, swiveled around when Tracy opened the door.
Nobody but General Williams smiled. He stood up and motioned for Tracy and her team to take their seats.
The lights never went off at headquarters, though the air conditioning, due to fuel shortages, had been purposely scrapped in the event the brass might be tempted to comfort at the expense of war effort. A single box fan, precariously perched in an open window, hummed and vibrated loudly. Some of the women at the table fanned themselves with manila folders. But everyone looked covered in sweat.
Tracy seldom ever read her transcripts under such bright, white lights before; and she opened her manila folder, conscious everyone around her was watching and waiting. She removed the last transcript, the one that had just arrived. It read:
BOOTLEGGER / STRIKE AT DISTILLERY / ALL EMPLOYEES FIRED / MANAGER GOING DOWN TO THE RIVER TO PRAY / HAD PAYROLL BUT NOW GONE INTACT / CHOPPING WOOD /
General Williams cleared his throat and said to her, “Brief us.”
Tracy squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them with her finger tips. She opened them up and saw not one, but two sets of letters, all of them blurred, one letter overlapping another.
Margie reached for a glass, filled it with water, and handed it her boss.
Tracy drained it and took a deep breath, then she said, “Jaden Malone’s team. He’s lost all his men and he’s wounded. He says Zafar Katila isn’t with him – where he is he doesn’t say. Malone is destroying the radio – and that’s a---”
“That makes two teams in as many days,” Langford, the General’s aide, said.
Tracy paused and looked up, smiling tiredly but authentically. She never interrupted interrupters. Instead, she listened.
“Go on, Tracy,” General Williams said, with a sidelong glance at Langford.
“Oh – yes,” Tracy said. “I just need a second here.”
“Take your time,” General Williams said.
She put the transcript back into the manila folder and slid it over to Margie. Then she said, “Malone, he . . . he mentions going down to the river to pray. He’s been shot and doesn’t expect to live. We’ve never lost a team near Murfreesboro before. The ambush must have gone bad.”
“As you know, General, Alpha Recon 4 was last operating two miles east of Bashar’s main base in Murfreesboro,” Margie said, looking at Tracy.
General Williams nodded.
Tracy rubbed her face and motioned for her to continue.
“That would have been a little more than twenty-four hours ago,” Margie said. “They completed the ambush, achieved their objective, and---”
“As of this communication, Zafar Katila is safe,” Tracy said. “More than likely, if I had to make a guess, I’d say Zafar is still alive and there’s no reason to think he’s been compromised. Malone fulfilled the mission, began extracting his team and the asset, and somebody surprised him. He made it back to base camp, radioed, and then destroyed the radio. He’s praying – that means he’s hurt and needs another team to be sent in right away. I assume Malone died during the transmission. He didn’t end with his call sign – and he’s required to do so for verification purposes, as you know.”
“Can you verify this radio transcript is from Malone’s team?” General Williams asked.
“I don’t doubt it’s from Team Four,” Tracy said. “Come on, Teion – I’m sorry, guys. I’m just that tired.”
General Williams, confident in her assessment, said, “Who are we sending back in to get Mr. Katila, and how many hours will it take to get a team underway?” He looked over at his aide, Mr. Langford.
“All of the teams are out,” Margie said. “We don’t expect a rotation for another---”
“You know people there, Tracy,” General Williams said, leaning back in his chair. “You know Murfreesboro better than everyone, including me.”
Tracy’s eyes, nearly half-closed with sleep, widened and bulged as she did a double take. A sudden coldness hit her and, in a soft, shaking, and disbelieving voice, she said, “I’m . . . I’m not going to Murfreesboro.”
“You’re as good at recon as anybody, probably better,” General Williams said, as he slapped his hands down on the table. “So that settles it – you’re taking a team in. Langford and I will brief you at 0530, your team at 0540. Make sure you’re geared up and in my office on time. This meeting is over.” He stood up and slid his chair under the table and followed his staff towards the door, purposely trying to avoid Tracy.
Tracy shot up out of her chair and told Margie to wait for her outside. She hurried towards General Williams, gently pushing several chairs out of her way, and she grabbed his arm. He turned and looked at her, almost as if to wish her a good night; but she refused to let him leave.
General Williams glanced around the room uneasily, hoping somebody – anybody – needed to speak with him. When nobody appeared to have any other business other than to turn in for a good night’s sleep, he resigned himself to the confrontation he knew he’d brought upon himself.
“I can’t do it, Teion,” Tracy said. “Send me anywhere, and I’ll go. But not home.”
General Williams sighed, made a half smile, and gently nodded. He loved Tracy as a daughter, and never in his wildest dreams would he do anything to hurt her. He waited for the room to clear. A half minute later, when he and Tracy were alone, he put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I need you on this one, Tracy. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“Asked?” Tracy said. “Funny way of asking!”
General Williams raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Yes, it was.”
“I’m not doing this – not in a million years,” Tracy said, shaking her head. “How many different ways do you want me to say no?”
A staffer stepped back into the room and said, “Colonel Graham’s men will be ready to go in the morning, per your orders, General.”
General Williams waved the staffer away. He turned Tracy around, putting her back to the door, and whispered, “I know this is going to be hard. But I know you can do this.”
“You don’t know what it’s like not showing up for your own wedding. And I’m not even sure if Cody is still---”
“He is alive, Tracy – and you can be thankful to God for that,” General Williams said with a smile. “Seems like he has a guardian angel. That or he’s playing ball with the towel heads in town.”
Tracy didn’t move, nor did she look away from General Williams’ face. She stood there like a rock, adamant, her face full of resentment, her brows furrowed, her lips taut. Her body told the general one story. But her heart told a different one – and she knew her old friend and boss could read it as plain as a map on a wall. Or maybe she’d just told him one too many times how much she missed home, or how she’d wished things with Cody would have gone differently. She brushed her damp, lank hair back behind her ear and said, “He . . . you’re saying Cody is still alive? I want to hear you say it.”
General Williams smiled, nodded, and squeezed her shoulders. “Yes, Cody Marshall is still alive. And your country needs you to go into Murfreesboro, find Zafar Katila, and have him tell us how we stop Bashar. You’re the only one who can make this happen.”
“I still haven’t agreed to go,” Tracy said.
“I’ll brief you at 0530.”
“No, you won’t.”
{ 3 }
In the summer of that year, the Army of Tennessee had recon teams working to the east of Knoxville at Farragut, and north to Crossville and Cookeville. Their missions were to shadow any number of non-descript ISA units, grab what stragglers they could, and relay information back to command. Two other teams, separate from the others, watched the western approaches south of Murfreesboro in Manchester and Shelbyville, two areas still under the nominal control of AT and normally quiet. A s
mall combat team, the last mobile combat unit remaining in Central Tennessee, worked out of what was left of the ruins of Arnold Air Force Base.
Because intelligence reports indicated ISA movements in the direction of Middle Tennessee, and because two teams, including Alpha Recon 4, were now out of action, headquarters wasted no time putting together two more teams, each consisting of five recruits and one experienced officer. On the night of June 26, one of those teams was ready. Tracy Graham would lead it.
General Williams and two of his aides, still on their feet after the 0100 staff meeting with Alpha Recon, pored over the latest intelligence reports. According to General Williams, the mosque being built in Murfreesboro was “the most significant event in North America since the capture of the Atlantic states by Muslim forces three years earlier.” This mosque, the largest ever built in the United States, would be finished on July fifth, the last day of Ramadan, and it would be built in the exact geographical center of the state. The symbolism was hard to miss.
General Williams, a tall, thin man, younger-looking than his fifty-five years would suggest, was a retired English professor at Middle Tennessee State University. Following high school, he joined the army, served the next fifteen years with the 101st Airborne out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, achieving the rank of captain. At thirty-five, he was dishonorably discharged for his part in organizing a racially-charged Black Lies Matter event in Nashville that resulted in the death of three counterdemonstrators.
Williams spent the next two years fighting white privilege, writing articles for various liberal political groups, and organizing protests. But when the state of Michigan elected an all-Muslim house and senate, instituted Sharia Law, and when ISA training camps began to emerge in that state, his life, like the lives of so many other Americans, changed. Within a week of the Federal Government declaring Michigan a no-go zone, little Mogadishu, a Somali settlement in Minnesota, attacked Minneapolis with five thousand well-equipped men. A day later, New York saw its first of four dirty bombs. In Shelbyville, Tennessee, Somalis and Syrians, equipped with guns and machetes, cleared every subdivision in the city within twelve hours. Within days, America had become a battle zone. After that, not a single American called another by the name “stranger”. “It was a sight to see,” Williams told a friend shortly after the war began, “when you walked into a place and saw the Klu Klux Klan and the Black Panthers sitting down to dinner together.”
General Williams quickly sifted through every piece of paper on his desk, and then he rubbed his hands over his face. The intelligence reports devastated him. In less than a month, Bashar’s Islamic Front Army, with three thousand men, would move south and challenge the Army of Tennessee for control of Chattanooga, the Tennessee River, and Northern Georgia. Chattanooga might hold, it might not. Zafar Katila, who knew intimately every logistical detail of ISA, could make the difference. Zafar was the key.
This game of war, now entering the fourth quarter, was far from over. Williams had great players on the sidelines. Tracy Graham was one of them. He’d sent her into the field numerous times; and she’d gone out only last month, trekking as far north as Crossville, Tennessee, returning to base with intel every bit as valuable as that gathered by the more experienced team leaders. But she’d made it clear on more than a few occasions that under no circumstances would she return to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
General Williams got up and called for his aide. He walked over to his map of Murfreesboro and put his right index finger down on what used to be one of the college’s parking lots on Greenland Drive near the intersection of Old Las Casas Pike. Where once there was a straight road now sat a mosque. He drew a circle around it, slowly and thoughtfully. Then he moved his hand east and tapped on the town square. “Here’s where it will all play out.”
Langford, the general’s aide, stepped up beside him and said, “I hope this guy was worth Alpha Recon 4.”
General Williams hoped so, too. Zafar Katila, close to a few key men in Bashar el Sayed’s inner circle, needed to become even more important part of that circle; but he needed to capture the attention of Bashar in a heroic way in order to do earn his trust.
Alpha Recon 4, offered up by the Army of Tennessee for that very purpose, had unknowingly played the part assigned them. The covert agent had lied to Malone. Zafar had no intentions of fleeing south.
Two hours after Malone’s team ambushed Zafar’s convoy, they, in turn, were ambushed by men under Zafar’s command. Zafar, once a member of the Tennessee Islamic Forum for Democracy and now devoutly Christian, would be richly rewarded by Bashar for taking the initiative in removing an enemy reconnaissance team; and Zafar, besides being elevated in rank, would also be able to choose a reward.
“She’ll never do it,” Langford said. “You think Tracy’s really going to show up here and agree to undertake the mission?”
“Don’t underestimate her,” General Williams replied.
“Get herself captured?” Langford hated the idea of losing Alpha Recon’s brightest mind to a mission as risky as this. Command would never be able to replace her.
“We’ve been over this,” General Williams said.
“And what if that old horn dog Bashar wants her?”
“We don’t have that kind of luck,” General Williams said. “Nobody will know it’s her anyway. Besides, Bashar will offer Zafar the woman of his choice, Zafar will ask for the blonde-haired girl at the camp, and it’ll be a done deal. Bashar may be a terrorist dog, but he’s honest.”
“I forgot you guys used to golf together.”
“Don’t remind me,” General Williams said. “I should have clubbed him to death while I had the chance.”
“And the guards at the camp – what if they don’t look the other way when Tracy sneaks in?”
“Just be glad they like guns and Jack Daniels,” General Williams said. He picked up the old, rotary dial phone and called the quartermaster. Supply always did an excellent job with the field equipment, but he felt Tracy needed to have her head shaved in the morning. She also needed jeans and a tee shirt to change into once she’d arrived in Murfreesboro, preferably something stripped off the body of a prisoner of war. He gave the order and hung up the phone.
“If there’s a way for us to stop Bashar,” General Williams said, looking at Langford, “Tracy Graham will find it. And if she can get Cody Marshall back into the game, the two will be unstoppable.”
Langford raised his eyebrows and said, “Yep, as long as we can get them to talk to each other.”
{ 4 }
Cody Marshall had no intentions of backing out. The second he’d laid his eyes on the stash of explosives hidden in the basement of the destroyed church building, the question in his mind was not if he would use it, but how and when. Fifty pounds of C-4 would be more than enough to blow a hole through Bashar’s western checkpoint, defenses and all; and Cody would be able to simply walk away from Middle Tennessee with a pack slung across his back and a rifle in his hands. He wanted out of this hell. And he wanted out soon.
Even a casual, disinterested glance at the stack of C-4, each one-pound stick wrapped tightly in green plastic, all of them nicely stacked at the far end of the basement, showed a pile of at least two hundred pounds. Three boxes of detonators, a mix of manually-activated handhelds, digital timers, and a couple of remotes, sat in front of the pile.
“And you’re telling me that six Americans put these here last night? Six Americans and one of Bashar’s men?” Cody asked.
Marcus, a boy of twelve who lived with his mother beneath the ruins of the old Emmanuel Methodist Church on Hall’s Hill pike, nodded. “We hid – and they didn’t see us.”
“Who was the Muslim guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was short and he wore a blue Titan’s baseball cap.”
“And the Americans were working with him?”
Marcus nodded.
“And nobody but you and your mom
know about this?”
Marcus nodded again, and he looked at the small back pack Cody had put down on the floor.
Cody got the hint and apologized. He opened the pack and dumped its contents onto a wooden work bench against the wall: five tins of sardines, a loaf of bread, and an old bottle of Flintstone’s chewable vitamins. Cody reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of perfume. “We can’t leave all this stuff here, so I’m going to come back tonight and---”
“There’s another part of the basement we can hide it in.” Marcus’ mother, Lisa, had just climbed down through the rubble, quickly and quietly, her movement perfected after two years of hiding and foraging. She laid two rabbits out on the work bench and hung her bow and quiver from a peg driven into an old, hand-hewn floor joist. Her dark brown hair ran down her back in a single braid, nearly touching the belt holding up her camouflage cargo pants. “Marcus knows not to tell you about it but, given the circumstances,” she said, nodding at the pile of C-4, “I think we need to move this ‘stuff’, too. And they’ll never find it behind the rocks on the other end of the basement. They haven’t found us there, yet.”
Cody looked at his watch. The sun would be up in an hour. “That’s a pile to move,” he said, and he looked towards the exit.
“Like we have anything better to do?” Lisa said, smiling when she saw the bottle of perfume. “Love Me Tender? Don’t get any ideas – not yet, anyway.”
Cody smiled. He liked looking at Lisa – loved it more when she got testy.
“We’ll hide it – just make it worth our while,” she said.
“Deal. What do you want?”
“A rifle, preferably .308, silenced, a hundred rounds,” Lisa said.
Cody Marshall groaned. “That’s a serious piece of hardware.”
“And C-4 isn’t?” Lisa said.
“Silenced rifles don’t appear in my bedroom overnight.”
The Last Infidel Page 2