The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  “I’ll tell you something funny, it’s not the climate or the country I find alien, it’s the war.” The colonel shook his head. “I really should be used to it by now. This is my fifth tour of duty. I’ve been here so long, when I think about Arabia, it’s not just like another lifetime, it’s like I was never there at all.”

  “Maybe you should take a leave,” Mustafa suggested. “Go back home, get reacquainted with the place.”

  “No, I’m here for the duration, now . . .” A tremor went through him that he did not seem to notice. “You know, I have these dreams sometimes, very vivid, you’ll probably get them too if you stay here long enough.”

  “Dreams about what?”

  “About being an American citizen . . . This one dream in particular, I have it over and over. I dream that I’m a civilian only pretending to be a soldier. It’s outdoors in a big field, at a place called Manassas. I’m there with other Americans, professionals mostly—doctors, lawyers, defense contractors . . . We dress in these costume uniforms, some blue, some gray, and stage mock battles, ‘fight’ for freedom. Then at the end of the day we go to a tavern and drink beer—mine is nonalcoholic. And then I get in my car and drive back to Alexandria . . .”

  “A long drive,” Mustafa said.

  The colonel laughed. “Alexandria, Virginia, not Egypt . . . It’s right across the river, just south of here. In the dream I have a house there, a big yellow house by the water. I live there with my wife and four children. It’s nice . . . And then I wake up and I’m here in the house of war, not a citizen but an invader. And my head spins . . . But prayer helps.”

  They’d reached the museum. A drowned tyrannosaur welcomed them back.

  The colonel asked: “Have you been to Mecca, Mustafa?”

  “You mean on hajj? Yes,” Mustafa said. “My wife Fadwa insisted on it . . . What about you?”

  “I want to go,” the colonel said. “When I am done here . . . I’ve spoken to other Marines who’ve gone, and they all seem very grounded, in a way I would like to be.”

  “Grounded?”

  “At peace,” the colonel said. “Mecca is peace.”

  “What about Alexandria?” asked Mustafa. “Have you ever gone across the river to look for your dream house?”

  “No. That would not be wise.”

  “Really? I would be tempted.”

  “I am tempted,” the colonel said. “But it’s the Red Zone. Not a good place to go chasing after dreams. You should remember that on your foray tomorrow.”

  “You’re not coming with us, then?”

  “No, I have business here. But I’ll ask God to look out for you.” Then he smiled, for even as he spoke these words they entered a hall decorated with another mural, showing the prophet Daniel standing untouched in the den of the lions.

  “Thank you,” Mustafa said, looking from Daniel’s calm expression to the frustrated snarls of the beasts. “I would appreciate that.”

  THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

  A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

  T.A.B.

  T.A.B. is an abbreviation of the English-language phrase “That’s America, baby.” During the reign of Lyndon Johnson, it was common for American citizens to say “T.A.B.” in response to bad news, particularly bad news that the government was in some way responsible for, a usage captured in this protest song by Jewish folk singer Robert Zimmerman:

  Power’s out in the city tonight . . . T.A.B.

  Shelves at the co-op store are bare . . . T.A.B.

  Gas lines stretching out of sight . . . T.A.B.

  LBJ don’t seem to care . . . T.A.B.

  Following the Coalition invasion of America in 2003, the expression took on a new meaning of defiance towards the occupying troops. “T.A.B.!” became a popular chant at protest marches and a rallying cry for insurgents; Coalition soldiers have reported finding it scrawled on the side of unexploded roadside bombs. In July 2005 an attempt by the Coalition Authority to discourage the use of T.A.B. as a graffiti tag led to a gun battle in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in which 17 Coalition soldiers and at least 400 Americans were killed.

  The church was located in the town of Herndon, in western Fairfax County. The men of the militia began assembling there after midnight, arriving singly or in pairs and dispersing their vehicles throughout the surrounding neighborhood so that their gathering would not be noticed from the air.

  By 2 a.m. there were sixty men in the pews. The church lights were kept low and there was no music or singing, just the soft voice of the preacher reading from the climax of the New Testament: “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet . . . They gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.”

  The sermon that followed was long and full of assertions that a more critical Bible scholar might have taken issue with. But the men of the militia, many of whom expected to die this coming day, listened attentively and without objection.

  Sitting alone in a pew at the back of the nave was a man with a plain silver cross in his lapel. He was the militia’s chief strategist and he had provided the intelligence that had resulted in this gathering being called, although he had lied about where his information had come from.

  The strategist’s Christian name was Peter Lightfield. He claimed to be a descendant of Thomas Jefferson; in truth he knew nothing of his ancestry, having been raised in a series of foster homes. To his secret masters in Al Qaeda, he was known as Ibn Abihi, “his father’s son,” and Ibn Abihi was also how he thought of himself, though for reasons of personal amusement he preferred the Aramaic rendering: Bar Abbas.

  Bar Abbas sat through the reading of the scripture and the first few minutes of the sermon, but got up before the preacher could start blaspheming against Islam. If anyone had asked, Bar Abbas would have said he was going to check on the progress of the bomb-laying team, which was true—but first he had a different call to make.

  He stepped out into the narthex and went downstairs to the church basement, which was divided into three rooms. The front room contained mostly paper: old church newsletters, handbills attacking the Coalition Authority and threatening retaliation against collaborators, and stacks and stacks of comic-book tracts that explained, using crude images and semiliterate prose, the connection between the Antichrist and the Arab and Persian governments.

  A padlocked door gave access to the church armory. As was the American custom, every weapon carried a scriptural reference—either an actual Bible verse or a coded citation. The sights of the assault rifles racked along the front wall were all engraved with the legend JER50:14 (“Take up your positions around Babylon, all you who draw the bow. Shoot at her! Spare no arrows, for she has sinned against the LORD.”). The grip of a .45-caliber handgun was stamped PSA110:5 (“The LORD is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath”) and the stock of a machine gun read JDG15:16 (“Then Samson said, ‘With a donkey’s jawbone, I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey’s jawbone, I have killed a thousand men.’ ”). The lid of a crate of hand grenades had been stenciled with the words of 1st Samuel, chapter 17, verse 45: “David said to the Philistine, ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, whom you have defied.’ ” And a case holding the militia’s prize possession, a Scorpion man-portable surface-to-air missile launcher, was painted with a verse from Revelation chapter 12: “Satan was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

  The third room was a disused janitor’s closet that now held random junk. Sitting on a chest-high shelf was a dusty laptop; it looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long time, but its battery was fully charged and it started up immediately when Bar Abbas pressed the power button. While the ope
rating system loaded, Bar Abbas retrieved a webcam from behind a box of crèche figurines and plugged it into the laptop. He opened a videoconferencing window and entered a series of passwords. There was a burst of sand-like static, and then he was staring into the face of Idris Abd al Qahhar.

  “You are late,” Idris said.

  “I had to wait until the service started.” Bar Abbas glanced at the armory’s outer door, which he had bolted behind him. “We’re less likely to be interrupted this way.”

  “Did you locate Samir Nadim?”

  “Yes,” said Bar Abbas. “I gave him the cell phone and told him what to do. But I don’t know if he’ll go through with it.”

  “You told him what would happen if he didn’t?”

  “Yes, and from the way he reacted, it’s clear he loves his sons’ lives more than his own. But that may not be enough when the moment comes. He seems . . . weak-willed.”

  “He is a coward,” Idris said sternly. “You have a contingency plan?”

  Bar Abbas nodded. “I’ll be there to set it off if he doesn’t.”

  He might have asked, Why involve this Samir at all? but Idris would likely regard such a question as impertinent. Bar Abbas assumed it was a subterfuge of some kind: Military investigators would find the modified cell phone on Samir’s body, and Idris would use that fact to cast him and his colleagues as traitors, and discredit whatever government agency had sent them on their mission to America. Hearing the way Idris said “He is a coward,” Bar Abbas decided there might be a secondary motive, as well: Perhaps Idris, for personal reasons, wanted Samir’s last hours to be filled with fear and torment. This was not professional behavior for an Al Qaeda leader, but Bar Abbas, who had tortured a number of his own enemies in the past, was in no position to pass judgment.

  “What about the other matter?” Idris said next. “Have you investigated V. Howell Industries?”

  “I took a squad of men to the address you gave me,” Bar Abbas told him. “The offices were abandoned—but recently. It looks like they cleared out in a hurry.”

  “They knew you were coming.”

  “If they did, it wasn’t any of my people who warned them. There wasn’t time.”

  “And you found nothing?”

  “There were some artifacts in one of the rooms. Books, mostly.”

  “Books about what?”

  “The history of Arabia,” Bar Abbas said. “The real history, I mean.”

  Idris’s face expanded on screen as he leaned forward. “What did you do with these books?”

  “Burned them in a dumpster behind the facility.” Or most of them. Bar Abbas had saved a few volumes for himself.

  “And the other men who were with you . . .”

  “They were curious, but nobody read anything they weren’t supposed to. Anyway,” he couldn’t resist adding, “it doesn’t matter. Once God lifts the mirage, everyone’s going to know the truth.”

  “Yes, but until that day, there are certain truths we don’t want widely known . . . What else did you find?”

  “A Texas state flag. That was in another room that was being used as a dormitory. There were some empty pill bottles in a wastebasket.”

  “What kind of pills?”

  “The bottles weren’t labeled, but I’d guess Valium or some other sedative,” Bar Abbas said. “Almost everyone takes something to sleep here.”

  “What else?”

  “Just some personal effects. Somebody must be a Green Desert fan—I found a copy of the Son of Cush CD under one of the dormitory beds.”

  “Son of Cush? What is Son of Cush?”

  “Alternative punk rock,” Bar Abbas explained, which judging from Idris’s expression didn’t clarify matters. “Don’t worry, none of the songs are about Osama bin Laden.”

  “If it’s music, you should destroy it anyway.”

  “Already done.” Bar Abbas lied. He looked up, hearing a board creak overhead. “I should go. I still have preparations to make.”

  “You’ll contact me again when it’s accomplished?”

  “If I can,” said Bar Abbas. “If you don’t hear from me, it’s because God had other plans.”

  At that same hour not far away, two disciples crouched on a wooded ridge overlooking the Jeff Davis Pike.

  The lead disciple’s name was Timothy. He was tall and thin, and paler than any man who ever sat at the foot of the living Christ. He wore a pair of night-vision goggles and was using them to spy on a trio of Christian militiamen as they planted an IED in a culvert beneath the roadbed.

  He could not help but admire the militiamen’s bravery. They were dressed in the reflective jackets of a legitimate road crew and had a Dominion Water & Power truck parked on the median, but while that might fool passing civilian drivers (or at least give them an excuse to play dumb), it would be no protection at all against a military patrol. In the early days of the insurgency, when Army snipers sat on D.C. rooftops with orders to shoot anyone carrying a shovel or a toolbox after dark, Washington utilities employees had suffered a horrible death toll. After years of entreaties from the citizenry, the capital’s defenders were a little less trigger-happy now, but out here in the Virginia suburbs it was still open season on potential saboteurs—and rather than a quick clean bullet through the head, you were likely to get a shower of explosive shells from a helicopter gunship, leaving you torn up and dying in slow agony beside your burning vehicle.

  As the militiamen ran a wire from the bomb to an antenna on the back of a mile-marker post, a clatter of rotor blades echoed from the east. The militiamen didn’t stop working or even look up. More bravery, or maybe it was just fatalism: If the chopper pilot had spotted them, they were as good as martyred already. But minutes passed with no deadly hail of shells, and the sound of the rotor blades gradually faded away. Not long after that, the job was finished; the militiamen got back into the truck and drove off.

  “All right.” Timothy stood up and peeled off his goggles. “Let’s do it.”

  The other disciple made no move to rise. “I don’t know about this, Tim,” he said.

  “There’s nothing to know. You heard the director’s orders.”

  “What if that chopper comes back?”

  “It won’t. You heard the director. We’re protected from on high.”

  “Yeah? If the director’s so sure about that, how come he’s not here?”

  A crunch of leaves as Timothy half turned towards him: “We’re doing this, Terry. You’re doing it.”

  After so much time in the dark, Terry didn’t need night-vision goggles to see the expression on his companion’s face. He shuddered, trying in vain to summon up the nerve to tell Tim to go fuck himself. But there was a reason Timothy was a leader while he was only a sidekick.

  “OK,” he said, ducking his head in submission. “OK.” Then: “Fuck it.”

  Mustafa opened his eyes around 4 a.m., disturbed by silence. Samir had been tossing and turning most of the night, but now the other bed was empty. Mustafa got up and went to use the restroom. Samir wasn’t there either, but the toilet stall smelled strongly of vomit.

  He found Samir in the deluge room, seated on the “mountaintop” beside the velociraptor skeleton. The ’raptor remained poised to leap at Noah’s ark, but Samir looked like he’d already tried that and failed: His face and neck were damp, and his hair was plastered to his skull.

  “Samir?” Mustafa said. “Are you ill?”

  “I suppose I am,” Samir replied, his voice thick like a sleepwalker’s. “Many would say so.”

  “Do you want me to get a doctor?”

  “No. It’s not that kind of sickness.” Then: “Is it time to go already?”

  “Not just yet. But listen, Samir, if you’re unwell, perhaps you shouldn’t go at all. Amal and I can—”

  “No!” Samir came suddenly alert, looking alarmed and then angry. “I’m not a coward!”

  “All right,” said Mustafa. “I’m going to go find Colonel Yunus, to pray. Would you
like to join us?”

  Samir’s face had gone slack again, and he took so long answering that Mustafa became convinced that he really was still asleep. Finally Samir said: “No. If God has no time for me, I have no time for Him . . . Come get me when you’re finished.”

  A covered foxhole had been dug into the hillside by some previous group of partisans, abandoned and forgotten, then rediscovered by Bar Abbas as he scouted the highway for ambush sites. He crawled inside just before dawn. Twenty other militiamen were dispersed along the top of the ridge, lying belly down in the dirt with their weapons beside them.

  The foxhole’s observation slit gave a view of the Davis Pike, hazy now in the dawn mist. On the ledge of packed earth that formed the base of the slit, Bar Abbas laid out a pair of binoculars, a pack of cigarettes, a coffee thermos, and last but not least, a remote-control box.

  The green lamp on the remote control lit as soon as Bar Abbas switched it on, and when he pressed the test button the lamp flashed, indicating that the detonator circuit on the IED was live. A red lamp would let Bar Abbas know if and when Samir pressed the SEND button on his cell phone. After that, he wouldn’t have to do anything; the bomb would use the cell’s GPS to decide when to detonate. But the remote control also had a second button, under a safety catch, that would allow Bar Abbas to detonate the bomb manually if the red lamp failed to light.

  Bar Abbas’s own cell phone vibrated silently in his jacket. It was a text message from a confederate in the Green Zone: SARACENS WILL DEPART 0700. Assuming normal traffic, drive time from the Green Zone to this kill zone should be about thirty minutes, so he had roughly two hours to wait.

  There was room in the foxhole for at least three men, but Bar Abbas had insisted on privacy. While his subordinates shivered in the open air, he poured himself coffee and took a book from a satchel at his feet. In the gray dawn half-light he studied the title and author on the book’s cover: The Osama bin Laden I Know, by Peter Bergen.