Inside Threat

by Jason Elam; Steve Yohn

  Still holding the two bags, he walked toward the office. Through the glass in the door, he saw Saifullah and Adnan Bazzi, the third of the three team leaders, watching his approach. As he neared, Saifullah took a seat at a conference table inside the office, while Bazzi opened the door.

  As soon as he entered, Alavi deposited the bags on the table and knelt before Saifullah. “Please forgive me.”

  Saifullah’s hand rested on his disciple’s head. “You did what needed to be done. That one has been trouble from the start. It is as Allah wills. Now please, rise and eat.”

  Alavi took a seat across from Saifullah, while Saliba sat to the leader’s left. Bazzi already had his meal spread out at Saifullah’s right.

  “Are you sure you won’t have my meal?” Alavi offered the imam.

  Saifullah shook his head slowly. “No. I’m afraid I have my meal right here,” he said, indicating a plastic Pepcid bottle that was sitting on the table.

  Alavi opened his bag and inhaled deeply the warm, heavy scent of the fries. But instead of the anticipation he usually felt at that aroma, this time it turned his stomach. And by the third packet of ketchup that he squeezed into the open lid of his cardboard burger container, he could take it no more. He pushed the meal aside—disappointed and slightly nauseated.

  He saw that Saliba had done the same thing. However, Bazzi, who had the benefit of distance, continued to scarf down his meal.

  “I’m sorry this unfortunate incident has stolen your appetite, my friends. You’ll need your strength tomorrow.”

  “We’ll eat before the sun comes up in the morning, Teacher,” Alavi said. “That should give us what we need for the day.”

  “Very well. Now, let us begin.”

  For the next hour, the four men talked through the following day’s attack, step by step, move by move. Whereas on Monday, when they first rehearsed the events, the process was choppy, awkward, with each man trying to figure out how his part fit in, now it was like a flowing narrative—a four-man recitation of a memorized presentation.

  When they reached the end, Saifullah said, “La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah. There is no power or strength except with Allah. He will determine the ultimate success of our mission. We must simply follow the plan he has given to us.

  “Tomorrow, when the gunfire starts, you must observe your men closely. Most will follow the plan perfectly. However, because this is the country of their birth, there are certain things you must watch for.

  “There are some who may feel the fires of revenge against past wrongs burning out of control. As a result, they may resort to unnecessary violence and cruelty. There are places for these things, but they must be controlled. Sloppiness due to unbridled aggression puts us all in danger.

  “Others you must watch for signs of doubt. Many have mentally accepted the fact that these men and women are their enemies. However, when the bloodshed starts, they may begin seeing old friends or loved ones in the faces of the infidels. These are ones who can be compromised by compassion as time goes on. They are the potential chinks in our armor. We must be diligent in watching them.”

  “Yes, Saifullah,” the three team leaders said in unison, while Alavi stole a glance at his discarded quarter-pounder. Time was creating a separation from his previous actions, and the hunger in his stomach was beginning to make the cold burger look more appealing. He forced himself to turn away.

  “Now go and get your teams together. Rehearse the plan with them again. Watch their eyes to see which of them you may need to spend more time with. Then pray with them. At 8:30, I’ll lead in prayers and give an address for the advent of Ramadan. Everyone must be in bed for lights-out at 9:30. Now go, and may God go with you.”

  Alavi left the office and approached his already-assembled team. He glanced toward where the attack had taken place and was gratified to see no sign of any violence. After sitting down with his men, he looked each one in the eye. He opened his mouth to begin his speech to them but found that he had lost his train of thought. Instead, his mind was filled with the aroma, the texture, the taste of a stale quarter-pounder and cold, soggy fries.

  This could turn out to be a long, hungry night.

  Wednesday, September 14, 7:45 p.m. EDT

  Washington, DC

  “I’ll let them know. . . . Love you too.”

  Tara ended the call and set the handset on the kitchen counter. Riley could see just a hint of aggravation on her face, but she quickly hid it behind a smile.

  “Scott says to apologize and that he’ll be home in about ten minutes.”

  “No problem. This way we get you all to ourselves. Right, Skeet?”

  Riley turned to get an affirmation, but Skeeter never heard him. He was too engrossed in the book he was reading. The best Riley could figure out, it was about this caterpillar that just kept eating everything in sight until he made himself sick. It was Skeet’s fourth time through, and he seemed to still be as fascinated with the story as baby James, who was nestled snugly in the crook of his massive dark arm.

  “A salami? A lollipop? A cherry pie? That’s nothing for a silly caterpillar to be eating,” Skeeter’s deep voice softly rumbled across the room like the tremble of a thunderstorm heard from miles away.

  “Can’t get enough of seeing that,” Tara said, moving up to where Riley was seated on a stool.

  “Too cool,” Riley agreed. “Reminds me of when we were in New York after the attack. We actually started something called Uncle Skeeter’s Story Time, and kids from all over the refugee camp would come running each afternoon at 3:00. There would always be a big clamor over who got to sit on his lap while he read. Finally, Skeet would lift two kids out—never the same ones twice—and drop them on his legs. He’d put his arms around them, and they’d hold the book while he read—turning it to show the pictures when Skeet’d tell them to.

  “It was an amazing thing to watch these kids whose lives had totally fallen apart laugh and cheer and dance around, even if just for fifteen or twenty minutes. It truly was remarkable. . . .”

  Riley’s voice trailed off as his mind drifted back to those terrible days. So much death, so much sorrow, so much hopelessness, so many tears. The faces of the victims—men, women, children, old, young, dead, alive, somewhere in between, dirty, bloodied, crushed—still visited him in his dreams.

  The sound of a refrigerator closing snapped Riley back to the here and now. He saw that Tara had moved away from him and was laying out ingredients on the counter—onion, green pepper, olives, pepperoni, pineapple, cheese.

  “Sorry, I kind of lost myself there for a minute,” Riley said, embarrassed.

  Tara smiled. “Occupational hazard. Scott does the same thing.”

  Riley took a knife and a green pepper and began cutting. “What about you? You spent enough years in CTD.”

  “True, but I was never ops. I read about the things you guys did, but I never actually saw them.”

  “You ever regret that?”

  “Are you kidding? I like being able to close my eyes at night without seeing whatever it is you guys see.”

  Riley smiled at Tara, but he knew his smile was hollow. He turned his head back to the cutting board. “You know, right off the top of my head I can think of about twenty-nine other topics of conversation that would be both cheerier and more interesting.”

  “Hear, hear,” Tara said, dumping a can of olives into a bowl, then popping one into her mouth. “Let’s talk about football.”

  Riley looked up to confront Tara’s laughing face. “You know, that wasn’t even nice.”

  “Here, help me out,” she said, tossing him a jar of pizza sauce.

  Riley quickly dropped the knife and caught the jar. He was thrilled when he had seen that they were going to make homemade pizzas tonight. Not because it was necessarily his favorite meal, but because it was fun, simple, and best of all, cheap.

  In the past, whenever Riley and Skeeter had come over for dinner, Tara had always felt like she had to make a
big production of it. The recipes would be intricate; the ingredients would be expensive; the china would be gleaming. Tara would spend most of the night scrambling to make everything perfect, and Scott would become more and more subdued.

  “I wonder what was up with Scott tonight,” Riley had said to Skeeter a few weeks ago on their way home from a dinner that probably could have earned Tara Michelin stars.

  “It’s the money,” Skeet said.

  “What money?”

  “Think about how much jing they laid out making that dinner.”

  A wave of shame and anger came over Riley. How could I have missed it? I’m such an idiot! Living in my world of way too much, I keep forgetting the struggles of those just getting by. Since Tara stopped working, they’re down to one salary in the household—and a government one at that.

  “Dude, you’re awesome. I’m calling Scott and demanding he let us pay for the dinner tonight.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket, but before he could dial Skeeter snatched the phone from his hand.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You’re not. Come on, Pach, you’re not really this clueless, are you?”

  “No,” Riley responded defensively. What the heck is Skeet getting at? Why can’t I just pay for the stupid meal—I’ll even throw in a little extra to help out. “But let’s just say—for argument’s sake only—I was. What would you tell this hypothetically clueless, pretend Riley was the reason for not paying for dinner?”

  “Because you’d embarrass them—”

  “You mean, hypothetically clueless, pretend Riley would embarrass them,” Riley corrected.

  “And you’re not going to tell them to stop making expensive dinners because of their financial situation either.”

  “I’m not? I mean, he’s not? Then what, pray tell, is he going to do?”

  Refusing to play along, Skeeter said, “You’re going to tell them that you don’t like the fact that Tara is always running around and missing the company. You spend your life eating fancy meals, and you’d just like some good, old-fashioned, everyday, real-people food.”

  “Ahhh, that would probably seem like a really good plan to hypothetically clueless, pretend Riley.”

  So here they were tonight, eating homemade pizzas with packaged meats, jarred sauce, and premade, store-bought dough. And Riley couldn’t be happier.

  Riley loosened the lid from the jar and slid it back across the counter to Tara.

  “Thank you, kind sir.”

  “It’s good to have Captain America around the house.”

  “Tru dat,” Scott said as he walked from the mudroom into the kitchen. “What up, Cap?”

  Riley leaped up, and they did the manly one hand shaking, one hand double-clapping the back thing. Scott next went to Tara, gave her a kiss, and whispered something to her that made her smile and give him one more kiss.

  Then he moved toward Skeet and James. Holding out his arms, he said, “How’s daddy’s big man?”

  Skeeter looked up from the book and said, “You best be talking to me, because you ain’t getting the boy.”

  James, who got a big smile when he saw his dad coming over, turned and laid his head on Skeet’s chest when he heard the man’s voice. Scott pulled up short.

  “Don’t worry, buddy,” Riley said. “It’s like guys and the rumble of a Harley. You can’t explain why, but you could waste a whole day just sitting there listening to it.”

  Somewhat mollified by Riley’s explanation, Scott leaned over and kissed James on the top of the head. To Skeeter he said, “You can have him now, but he’s not going home with you.”

  “We’ll see,” Skeeter replied, turning his attention back to a new book, this one about a bear who was determined to stay awake until Christmas morning.

  “You want to go get changed, honey?” Tara asked.

  “Into what?”

  “He’s got a point,” Riley said, knowing that for Scott getting changed from a day at the office meant changing from a black Ozzy T-shirt to a black Dio T-shirt.

  “Well, then take the cheese and make yourself useful,” Tara said, tossing Scott a bag.

  “So, did you have fun storming the castle?” Riley asked, grabbing a handful of veggies to spread around the first pizza.

  “Well, I didn’t get shot today, so that’s a plus.”

  Tara punched him in the arm. “That’s not funny.”

  “You guys got anything going on?”

  “Mostly we’re just trying to figure out these attacks. They’re so random. We’ve got the ones that have already happened, and intel is going through the roof saying there’s more to come.”

  “You know who it is?”

  “On the surface, it’s just a bunch of homegrown hajjis. Guys pissed off—”

  Tara elbowed him and nodded toward James.

  Lowering his voice, Scott said, “Guys angry at America because they’re not able to make something of their lives, so they use their religion as an excuse to blow stuff up.”

  “But it’s weird that it’s all happening at once, don’t you think?” Tara said. “For a while, nothing. Now, all of a sudden it’s all over the place.”

  “That’s what’s been bugging me,” Scott said, sprinkling a final, thin layer of cheese over the first pizza. “There’s got to be some unifying factor.”

  “Could they be distractions designed to draw your attention away from some major thing?” Riley asked.

  “Funny, that’s what Khadi said.”

  Riley stopped short, a pepperoni hovering over the second pizza. “Khadi? When did you talk to Khadi?”

  As Scott and Tara exchanged glances, Riley heard Skeeter stop midsentence. A moment later, he softly started up again: “He stands with a stretch and a great big sigh. ‘I hope I can make it. I do want to try. . . .’”

  “Scott?”

  Scott laughed. “Dude, I’ve got the biggest mouth ever. I mean, ever! Remember that time when we were going to surprise Posada for his birthday? Remember that? I went off and—”

  “Scott, when did you talk to Khadi?”

  As quickly as the laughter started, it stopped. With venom in his voice, he said, “What, is there a crime in that? Are you going to start telling me who I can and can’t talk to?”

  “Didn’t buy the laughing bit. I’m not buying the angry one either. Why can’t you just tell me when you talked to her?”

  Scott sighed, beaten. “Because one question will lead to another, and I don’t know how much I can or should say.”

  Scott was always so free with his information, so when he clammed up, Riley knew something big was going on.

  “I’m not looking for you to betray any confidences. Just tell me this: is she doing okay?”

  Again the glance to Tara. “She’s all right. Going through a bit of a tough spell.”

  “Is there . . . I mean, you’d let me know if there was something I could do to help, right?”

  “Of course.”

  Stillness hung over the kitchen betrayed only by the steady movement of hands over pizzas and the low verbal rumble from Skeeter’s corner.

  Without looking up from his work, Riley said, “Did she . . . ask . . . You know, next time you talk with her, tell her I said hey. Tell her I’d like to . . . Tell her I said hey.”

  The rest of the night went great. The pizzas were great, the conversation was great, the obnoxious banter was great, the games of hearts after James went down were great. Scott was elated that Skeeter had decided to rejoin CTD, and for a while the two of them talked through logistics. Riley was thrilled that everything was working out so well for all of them. It was great . . . just great . . . absolutely, positively, flippin’ great.

  And at 2:47 a.m., when he looked at the clock on his nightstand, he was still thinking about just how great everyone’s life was. Everyone’s except mine . . . and apparently Khadi’s. But I can’t help her. And she can’t help me. Because we’ve got this thing, this
massive whatever-it-is between us that keeps us apart.

  So I’ll just stay miserable, and she’ll just stay miserable, and together we’ll separately live out our miserable lives. And it’ll be great. It’ll be just great.

  Thursday, September 15, 6:15 a.m. EDT

  Washington, DC

  Khadi had been thinking about her parents all morning.

  What do I do about this Bryson thing? I can’t let him proceed with any actions. He’s got enough connections in government to push a prosecution through, or at least an investigation. Who knows? He might even get Andrews in on it—a little revenge for his own failed attempts at me.

  I’m sure I could end the whole thing with one word to Scott. He and a few of the ops guys would be glad to give Bryson a late-night visit that would ensure the matter was never mentioned again. But can I really put him and the rest of the guys at risk like that?

  Untouched, the corn flakes in the bowl in front of her slowly softened in the milk. A spoon, which would eventually be returned clean to the drawer, lay next to the bowl. Khadi knew she should eat, knew that today was going to be a tough one and that she’d need all the energy she could get, but still the milk warmed as the flakes wilted.

  Got to get it out of your mind! You’ve got too much on your plate for today. Focus on happier things—happier times.

  Right now, my family is having a big suhoor meal, gathering their strength in order to endure the struggles of the first day of the fast. Even though it’s a solemn occasion, I can still picture my mom’s smile and my dad’s loving winks. They’ll eat together; they’ll pray together; then my dad and brothers will go off to the mosque. That’s when the real fun at home will begin. At the Faroughi household, most of the rest of the day would be spent laughing and playing as the family prepared the iftar feast for tonight.

  While she slowly dipped a teabag in and out of a mug, reminiscences of the past danced in her mind’s eye—the mayhem of flour fights that would break out among the ladies of the extended family, the laughter and the blushing of the younger girls because her mom’s sharp wit had struck again, the hugs, the accidental brushes, the impromptu neck massages, the kisses, the touches . . . You know, that’s what I think I’m missing most—the touches.