Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05

by Chris Stewart

  “Good,” Ammon said after his mouth had cooled down.

  Luke laughed. “You can’t fake it with me, bro.”

  “No, really. I would have stopped at eight drops, but this is OK. Just kind of caught me off guard is all.”

  Luke laughed again.

  Looking at the two brothers, one wouldn’t have known they were twins. Ammon, blond and tall, cut his hair short and combed it back. Luke was shorter but thicker, his arms dark and tan. Luke acted fast. Ammon acted slowly. Luke was always looking for something exciting, and he loved having friends around. In fact, it almost seemed he hated being alone. Ammon, on the other hand, sometimes would lock his bedroom door and just sit by himself. He just had to get away, even if only for a few minutes.

  Luke eyed the driveway, then leaned forward and looked down the empty street.

  Ammon watched him, reading his mind. “Dad must not be coming home tonight. Mom didn’t even wait up for him, so you know what that means. I’m sure he called and said he got stuck at some meeting or ended up having to fly off somewhere.”

  Luke nodded as he sipped his soda.

  Ammon thought of his father. He used to think it was so cool, the fact that his father worked for the president. The first time the White House sent a military helicopter to land in the intersection at the end of their street to pick up his dad for some emergency meeting, it had nearly blown his mind. He remembered watching from the corner, the police escorts stopping traffic to let the helicopter land, his dad ducking under the blades and then turning around to wave good-bye. He had nearly dropped dead with pride.

  But the glamour of his father working for the White House had worn off a long time ago. His dad was gone so much now. He worked all the time. And even when he was home, he was still far away. How many times had Ammon been talking to him, only to see that far-off look in his eye?

  His dad tried his best to compensate. But he was crushed with responsibility and it was very hard.

  It was just starting to rain, more a mist than anything serious, and Ammon watched the sidewalk grow wet. “Dad’s got it tough right now,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Luke answered. There wasn’t much more to say.

  “It’s hard on Mom, too. She wants to help him, but she can’t. And it’s hard on her, being alone all the time.”

  Ammon gazed at his brother in the darkness, knowing it was hard on him, too. Luke needed their father more than Ammon did. It had always been that way, even when they were young.

  When they were little boys, Luke would wake up in the night and want to sleep with his mom and dad. They let him for a night or two, but soon had quite enough of that. “You’ve got to stay in your own bed,” his mother had explained. “No more sleeping with Mommy and Daddy. You’re a big boy now, Luke. You need to sleep in your own bed.”

  Next night, Luke had tried slipping into bed with them again. No good. They brought him back. He claimed to have had a nightmare. His mom had handed him his favorite stuffed toy, turned on the night-light, and told him to stay in his bed. Ten nights in a row he had tried to slip in bed with his mom and dad. Ammon had watched, enjoying the marathon contest of wills, though he never said anything. After it became obvious they were not going to give in, Luke had taken to slipping into the hall in the middle of the night, curling up by their door with his blanket, and sleeping there. That went on for a long time.

  Ammon didn’t think his parents ever knew.

  The older twin smiled at the memory, but it made him kind of sad. Sitting there on the front porch in the middle of the night, he realized that some things hadn’t changed. The front porch, the hall near their bedroom door, it was pretty much the same: Luke was missing his dad.

  Luke took a final drink of soda. “I read something today. Really pissed me off,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Ammon asked.

  The clouds broke, a thin line of clear sky showing above the streetlight before falling behind the low clouds again. Luke kicked his legs out, extending them to the bottom stair. “OK, there’s this agency in Pakistan,” he began. “They work with refugees, orphans, that sort of thing. They’re trying to get food to this refugee camp. Have to haul it out there in these old, beat-up trucks, the only vehicles the Pakistani government will let them use. Yesterday, after a couple aid workers had taken a load of food to the camp, the bread and water ran out before everyone had a chance to get some. I guess a riot broke out. Here you have all these starving, dying people. No food. No water. So what do they do? They riot. Attack the relief trucks. Both of the aid workers were killed. One of them was trampled; the other one was dragged from under the truck and beaten to death.

  “Now, I don’t know, Ammon, call me stupid, but I just don’t get it. Those aid workers were there to help them. It wasn’t their fault that they ran out of food. Yet the refugees went so crazy, they trampled and beat them to death.”

  Ammon studied his empty soda can. “I guess people have to be pretty desperate for them to act that way,” he said.

  “Desperate or crazy.”

  “I don’t think you can say they were crazy. Have you ever been really hungry, Luke? I mean really, seriously hungry? Either of us misses a single meal and we act like we hadn’t eaten in weeks. We skip two meals and think we’re dying. But lots of people in the world, maybe most of the people in the world, miss one or two meals every day.”

  “Yeah, well, I still wonder what those people are thinking sometimes.”

  “Have you ever been so thirsty that you thought you might die? Have you ever been so dehydrated that you couldn’t sweat or spit or swallow because your tongue was so thick? Have you ever slept out in the desert with only the clothes on your back? Have you ever looked at a tiny cloth sack and knew it contained everything that you owned? Absolutely everything! You had nothing else! Have you ever been so scared for your family’s safety that you would have done anything?

  “Think about this, Luke. I’ll paint a picture for you. You’re a young father. You used to live in a small village that was taken over by the resurgent Taliban and now you’ve been chased from your home in Afghanistan because of another war. The same thing happened to your father. Same thing happened to your grandfather before. Your wife was killed by Taliban rebels because she dared to appear in public showing part of her hair. You flee with nothing but a bundle and your little girl. You sleep in the desert for three days until you get to the refugee camp. When you get there, there’s no food and no water. Your little girl is going to die unless you get some for her. She’s crying. She’s begging. Then she doesn’t cry anymore. She just kind of lies there. Sometimes she’ll reach for your hand. She squeezes your fingers, but she doesn’t focus her eyes on you anymore. She’s dying and she knows it. She needs water now! The trucks show up, but there’s not enough, and neither of you get anything. You’re wild-eyed crazy with hunger. And you love your little girl. You would die to protect her. That’s not an American thing, a Western thing, or anything else—that’s a human thing. A father thing. You would die to protect her. But they have run out of food. She’s dying. She needs water, or she won’t live through the night.

  “Think about that, dude, and maybe it will make it a little easier to understand what happened over there.”

  Luke scrunched his face. “That’s a pretty horrible picture.”

  “It takes place every day.”

  “I know. And it helps to remember the whole story. But it doesn’t explain everything.”

  Silence returned for a moment. “I guess there are some things we may never understand,” Ammon said.

  Luke crossed his feet. “There’s a lot I don’t understand.”

  “Me too,” Ammon said. “But let me tell you something important, Luke. Something I do understand.

  “I’ve been watching over your shoulder, and I know more about you than you may think. I mean, come on, dude, why am I out here with you tonight? You can’t sleep, and I feel that. You get a cold, I do too. I know your moods. I know what you�
�re thinking. I sometimes think I know you even better than you know yourself.

  “And I want to tell you something I’ve been meaning to tell you for the past couple weeks. You have a destiny, Luke, a reason you’re here. Think about it, bro—do you think it was the outcome of blind fate that brought you to this time, to this place? No! There had to be a reason. But just as you can seek out and complete your mission, you can screw it up as well.

  “And that cute little girl who likes to hang on your arm, she isn’t right for you. Play with fire, and it burns you; any fool knows that’s true. I don’t care how cute or good-looking or rich or cool they might seem, this young thing and her buddies, they are poison for you, man. She cares about two things. Money and showing it off. So ask yourself something; if it wasn’t for our dad, would she be that into you? Is she interested in you or the fact that your dad hangs with the president? Because she strikes me as the kind of person who’s really impressed with that kind of thing. That’s not right for you. She will burn you. I know that. And you know that. Now stand up and be a man!”

  Ammon stopped talking and stared at his brother. Luke didn’t say anything. Ammon turned back toward the streetlamp, looking into the dark night. “Don’t you dare screw this up, Luke,” he threatened, “or I’ll kill you, my friend. Don’t screw your life up over a chick with a lot of money who’s going to burn you in the end.”

  * * *

  For the next couple of days, Luke spent a lot of time in his bedroom and driving around in his car. He was sullen and moody, and he seemed to glare a lot. Then, on the third day, he woke up in a very good mood. He came downstairs, kissed his mother, and made breakfast for them all.

  Later that night he called her. “Alicia, I really like you,” he said in a determined voice. “But I can’t see you any longer. It’s not right. And it won’t work. I’m sorry, Alicia, I really am, but we’ve got to back off.”

  She cried. She protested. She called him names and said he’d lied. She begged more than once, and then started crying again. She swore at him, and then said she loved him, but it seemed that he didn’t love her back.

  Luke knew she was right. He liked her. He liked her friends. He liked her roommates. He certainly liked the Porsche she drove. They had a great time when they were together; they seemed to laugh all the time. She was interesting and sincere, and she listened to him. It seemed they could talk for hours. She would tease him. She would challenge him. And there was that smile. And that hair.

  He caught his voice then answered slowly that he thought that she was right.

  When they finally hung up, he was frazzled and frustrated. But he was not confused. He had done the right thing—not the easy thing, but the right thing—and inside he was calm.

  It would be a very long time before he would see her again. The world would be very different. So would Luke. So would Alicia. Everything would have changed.

  ELEVEN

  The timing of the attacks had to be precisely coordinated. Like an enormous tsunami that would crash over the land, they had to be unexpected and devastating; with no chance of being repelled. The destruction had to be wide and deep, completely demoralizing and debilitating in every way. And they had to create a sense of passing, as if the old world was gone, leaving normal life shattered like broken glass on the floor.

  They had to leave the world utterly breathless, with no chance to respond, no chance to think, debate or wonder. This wasn’t a military battle; King al-Rahman knew that it was a battle of wills, a test of resolve. So there was no desire on his part for measured escalation, no strategy of attacking, then sitting back and weighing the response, attacking and negotiating, trying to score a single military victory or political point. Indeed, just the opposite. The entire purpose of the plan was to create a sense of complete vertigo, overwhelming devastation, as if things had immediately and irreparably spun out of control. At the end of the day—a day was all it would take—his plan had to shatter the old preconditions, leaving no sense of proportion at all.

  It had to be quick.

  Then would come the opportunity to rewrite the rules and reorder the world.

  * * *

  The first attack would never have been successful but for the fact that the enemies of Israel knew a secret no one else knew.

  And though the terrorists had long been aware of the quirk in the aircraft hangar’s construction, they had waited, ever patient, for the right time to hit. With such an ace up their sleeves, they had been willing to delay, willing to stay at the table and keep their hand in the game until the stakes were the highest and they could win the whole thing.

  So the attack had been in the planning stages for just over nine years. Logistics, munitions, communications, materials, recruitment, decoys, reconnaissance, explosives, and hardware—the list of technical specialists involved in the planning was very long indeed. And though almost a hundred men had been involved in the preparations at one time or another, only a handful ever knew all the details.

  Unlike the Israeli military, an organization that had to rely on its superior technology and advanced weapons to protect its lands, the Islamists kept it simple and did it the old-fashioned way. Nothing new. Nothing fancy. A simple and straightforward plan.

  All they needed was a man who was willing to die (there were many) and a single opportunity to fire. Then great patience. And a rifle. And just a tiny bit of luck.

  Ben Gurion International Airport, Tel Aviv, Israel

  The Israeli prime minister’s aircraft touched down at 4:19 P.M. on a hot afternoon. The aircraft, one of five different, unmarked airplanes the prime minister used for his out-of-country travels, was a small corporate twin-engine jet with civilian markings and an untraceable tail number. It touched down on the thousand-foot marking on runway eight, the sun at its back, decelerated slowly on the twelve-thousand foot runway, then took the high-speed taxiway to the right, which led toward a large steel hangar on the west side of the airport. As always, the perimeter around the government hangar had been secured with uniformed soldiers, though there were plainclothes security officers also on patrol. Three black sedans waited in a line in front of the hangar, where the enormous metal doors had been rolled almost shut, leaving room for the automobiles to squeeze through but not so much as to reveal the outlines of the other four Israeli aircraft that were hidden inside: a white G-4, a highly modified Boeing RC-135 provided by the United States government, and two blue and red C-21s with “Mediterranean Airways” painted on their tails. As Talon One, the call sign for the prime minister’s aircraft this day, taxied toward the hangar, the three black vehicles waited until the enormous doors began to roll back, allowing enough space for the aircraft to taxi inside. Following the taxi lines, which changed from yellow to red once inside the threshold of the hangar, the pilot taxied quickly, then cut his engines and switched to auxiliary power, allowing the waiting vehicles to follow the aircraft without fear of having their windows blown out or being rolled over by the jet engine blast. Inside the hangar, the vehicles swung around to the right side of the aircraft, and the hangar doors were rolled shut again to avoid exposing the prime minister to any view from outside the hangar.

  Thirty seconds after the aircraft had come to a stop, the cabin door opened and the small, chrome steps extended automatically from the aircraft’s floor. Two security men stepped from the aircraft and moved quickly down the stairs, but the prime minister and his wife did not emerge.

  Outside the hangar, the uniformed servicemen moved on patrol. Three sniper teams had been positioned on the roofs of nearby hangars, and a single military helicopter flew slowly overhead. A thousand feet farther out, another security perimeter had been established with motion sensors, infrared detectors, and ultra-sensitive listening devices. Behind an enormous civilian airline hangar on the south end of the runway and hidden behind a row of trees, two Apache attack helicopters were waiting, their rotors spinning, ready to escort the prime minister’s convoy to Tel Aviv. Each of their muniti
ons winglets was crowded with air-to-ground rockets, and their nose-mounted Gatling guns swung quickly, following the movements of the gunner’s eyes. The single airport road that led to the hangar had been secured. Beyond that, the main airport road was crowded with cars, taxis and buses. Several unmarked police cars moved through the traffic. Inside each vehicle, police officers watched the other cars carefully through their tinted windows.

  The security measures around the prime minister of Israel were extraordinary even during the most peaceful times—and things were not peaceful now. The Israeli security operations were operating in Defensive Posture Two, the second highest state of alert. The security apparatus protecting the state of Israel had heard enough rumors and read enough message traffic to have their ears on the ground and their eyes reading the graffiti on the walls. Over the past week it had only gotten worse. They had seen too many suspicious travelers moving in and out of Gaza, and picked up enough troubling information from Iran and Saudi Arabia not to be on an increased state of alert.

  Although they had their suspicions, they didn’t know exactly what the threat might be. But they had learned from experience it was best to be prepared. So the chief of security had ordered additional precautions, demanding extra layers of security to be added to a seemingly impenetrable security machine.

  * * *

  Because the aircraft hangar had originally been designed and built for civilian purposes and only later converted for use as the prime minister’s official hangar, it had not been constructed with security as the primary concern. And though the hangar had been modified and upgraded by the Israeli Secret Police, the agency responsible for protecting the PM and other government leaders, there remained a few very narrow gaps in the security wall.