The Hammer of God

by Tom Avitabile

  ?§?

  Back in the makeshift studio, the ski masks and hoods came off. Brooke’s smile matched others in the room. They went up to their mentor, Dr. Robert Fusco of the Psy-Ops division of the new FBI. He critiqued their performances.

  “Bob, the guy with the knife in the videos we referenced, always stays close to the captive. You veered away.”

  “Got it.” Bob nodded.

  “Brooke, you still have a trace of perfume. That could’ve sent a false signal and compromised the whole ploy.”

  “Won’t happen again, sir.”

  “Chet, a little more passion when you speak of the Brotherhood. Zealots whip up their emotions, almost to rapture, a torrent of devotion to the cause. They are almost overcome with their own sense of self-importance. Let it flow more in your voice!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I love the banner,” the doctor said.

  “It was Brooke’s idea,” Bob noted.

  “It’s from Thomas Jefferson’s speech to Congress in 1801 when he sent our naval armada on its first-ever mission of war across the seas to fight the Muslim Pirates. He told Congress their demands for money and their call to jihad had left America with ‘but one answer.’”

  “To sail over to Tripoli and kill them all, sir!” Chet said.

  “Nice touch, Brooke.”

  “It’s a shame no one will ever see it, sir.”

  “Well, if this works, it will have all been worth it. Ready for the next stage?”

  “Yes, sir. Achmed is already in position. Poor schlub, worked out for eight hours, didn’t shower, and cracked an egg into his hair. He smells and looks awful.”

  The Sheik stirred and rolled over on the cot. He came awake and quickly scanned his surroundings. It was dark but not pitch. He was chained to his bed. His mouth was dry and his back ached from the springs in the cot. He lifted his head and saw a shape in the corner of the room. It was a man, naked to his briefs, a manacle around his ankle. He was not moving.

  “Are you dead?” the Sheik asked the lump on the floor. There was no response. He lay back down.

  The door opened. Two men in masks entered. One held a bowl of hummus with an ant crawling on top of it. “We have learned that your brothers, the scum who are holding his Excellency, are feeding him one bowl of this crap a day. So here’s yours. Choke on it, you son of a bitch.” He threw the bowl down on the cot.

  “Who are you?” The Sheik hazarded to ask.

  “We have been fighting your kind since America was born. We’ll show the American government that they can’t fight you guys like you were criminals — that the only way to beat you is to kill you, eliminate the infestation of our culture by your kind. We are not afraid to die to keep America pure of Islamic zealots like you.”

  “You killed the FBI girl?”

  “Many more than her in busting you out. In war, some die. They were going to make sure you lived a long comfortable life. The idiots. Then your people took our ambassador. That is as insulting as it gets. So we took you. Now what happens to him happens to you. What he eats you eat. When they beat him, we beat you.”

  “You will kill me?”

  “Why? Is that what your guys will do to the ambassador?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know your kind. If you have any information that will save him, it will also save you. Can you get that into your 7th century head, raghead?” He pushed two fingers into the Sheik’s temple with enough force to turn his head. It was the perfect glimpse of concealed rage and hatred he had rehearsed with Doctor Fusco.

  “Who is that?” the Sheik said, gesturing toward the body on the floor.

  “He is about to be beheaded. Unfortunately your friends in Afghanistan are just about to behead a captured marine. When that happens, we’ll mail his head to the Mosque in Istanbul. I think the word will start getting out that we hate you motherfuckers as much as you hate us.” He made a fist and pumped it in an aborted attempt to smash in the Sheik’s face, but he stopped himself, then leaned in. “I almost hope they torture the ambassador because I am going to enjoy ripping out the nerves running down your legs and arms with a long nose pliers.”

  They left. Aliz started to tremble. He tried to control it, but could only do so for a few seconds before it became even worse. He grabbed the food and scooped it into his mouth with a shaking hand as his mind raced. Should he tell them of his brother? Of the plans they often spoke of if either was ever caught? Would his brother release the ambassador now that he was abducted and would suffer the same fate? Would his brother even see the video from the Infidels?

  The lump on the floor moved.

  Without a word, the lump prostrated himself and started morning prayers using a newspaper instead of a proper prayer mat. The Sheik didn’t interrupt, but quietly prayed along, offering it up to Allah as the best he could do while being chained to the cot.

  When prayers were over, he spoke to the man who looked like he’d been there a long time, “What is your name?”

  “Achmed; you?”

  “Aliz. Why are you here?”

  “Because I am Muslim. Because I believed that in this country you are free to worship.”

  “Who are these men?”

  “They are not government, of that I am sure.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Two weeks, three… I have lost count.”

  “Do you know what they are doing?”

  “Yes. They are holding me hostage because a marine is being held hostage in Afghanistan. Why are you here?”

  “They are holding me because an ambassador was taken in Egypt.”

  “That’s good. Good that these American bastards cannot just go anywhere in the world they want. They have to pay the price. Do you know where their precious ambassador is? Don’t tell me, but do you know?”

  “Do you know where the marine is?”

  “Ambar Province, I think,” Achmed whispered as to not be overheard.

  “Then tell them. They may let you go.”

  “Never. I would sooner die then help these pigs. What did you do?”

  “I got shot.”

  “Come on; what did you do?”

  “I was in a motel room and a bullet came through the wall.”

  “The bust at JFK! I heard of this. You, you are the Sheik? Oh, it is an honor to meet you, a real honor. Forgive my appearance but…

  “No need. They beat you?”

  “Yes, they say because the marine was beaten, but how would they know? They couldn’t know, could they, Sheik?”

  Aliz sat there thinking of his own predicament. Do they know or are they just ruthless thugs?

  “Sheik, I am scared. They are out to kill me. I’m scared.”

  “If you die, you will die as Martyr. Do not be scared. Don’t let them get the satisfaction of scaring you.”

  “I only fear dying before I see them crushed.”

  “It will happen; Allah be praised.”

  “It will, Sheik? How? How will they suffer?”

  “It will be by…” Suddenly the Sheik realized the room could be monitored. He scanned around.

  In the control room, Brooke and Fusco saw his change of demeanor and decided it was time for stage three. Brooke nodded to two men already donning their ski masks.

  “What, Sheik? How will these American bastards be driven to hell?” Achmed’s body language became that of student at the master’s feet.

  The Sheik stayed mum, looking for any sign of a monitoring device. Then the door opened and two men entered and went straight to Achmed.

  “Bad news scumbag. Your buddies just beheaded the corporal. Smile, will ya, ‘cause we hope your mother is watching when we send this to Al Jazeera.”

  Achmed started to scamper back and resist. Then his eyes caught the Sheik’s. Achmed suddenly cooled and defiantly exclaimed, “You sons of pigs can’t take me down.”

  They unshackled him and dragged him out of the room, slamming the door just a
s a bright light went on. The Sheik strained to hear. A man was reading a death sentence. He heard Achmed’s low steady prayers. The man was now saying that real justice would be carried out for the injustice of the captors of Marine Corporal Lyndon Banks. Then he yelled, “Burn in hell!” The next sound was a peaking of Achmed’s prayer followed by a gurgling scream more and more muffled. The Shiek closed his eyes.

  Out in the room, Chet finished pouring the water into Achmed’s throat as he gave a final gurgling gasp then spit up into a pillow to muffle his coughs as he ran from the room. Chet then pretended he was holding his victim’s head by the hair.

  “This will be the fate of all who believe that America has lost its way, and that we don’t also celebrate death.” He took a hammer and started battering a watermelon. The sound that came through the door was unmistakable.

  The Sheik imagined them smashing the severed head with a hammer live onto the videotape. He turned and vomited onto the floor.

  Chet stood up as Bob punctured the top of a plastic pouch of pig blood. He then squirted the blood onto Bob’s body in the manner consistent with that of a severed, carotid artery. For extra measure, he hit Chet’s hands twice and one nice spray pattern across his ski mask. Then he bloodied the end of the hammer and placed a patch of skin from pigs’ feet on it. The crowning touch was the lock of Achmed’s hair, which was glued onto pigskin. The result was a very convincing piece of scalp that any Apache warrior would have proudly waved in victory.

  The door opened and the man wielding a hammer, covered in blood, entered. The Sheik watched him with great caution as he approached.

  “You killed him?”

  “Nah, Sheik. Your fellow ragheads killed him when they decapitated our marine. They did this! This death is on their hands, not ours.” His yelling became more intense. “You want to fuck with us…. We’ll fuck you right up the ass.”

  He raised the hammer and started in towards the Sheik, who put up his hands in a defensive manner.

  But another man from the room grabbed the hammer. “No, not that way, we need to kill him on camera or he is wasted.”

  Slowly, the crazed one released his grip on the bloody hammer. He kicked the cot and left.

  Aliz’s temporary savior leaned over and spoke softly. “Pray to your Allah that they don’t hurt a hair on the head of his Excellency, the Ambassador.” Then he left as well.

  The Sheik’s heart rate and nerves combined to make him shake again. This was a new breed of American, outlaws against their own laws and government, yet seemingly more protective of an American ethic, than those laws or the government.

  When Chet entered the control room, Brooke went to high-five him, but he demurred holding up his pig-blood-stained hands. “You didn’t just take up space minoring in theater at Princeton,” she said, patting his non-bloodied back.

  “Yes, very good, Chet. Reminiscent of a young, raw, Brando.”

  “Really?”

  “No. But good enough to sell the Sheik.”

  “Achmed, what can I say? You sold the whole scenario. The proof of your performance is that you had him almost ready to spill, but he got conscious of his surroundings.”

  “Talk about Academy Award, Achmed, you rock!” Chet said, punching him collegially on the shoulder.

  The smile on Achmed’s face flattened out when Brooke added, “And now that showtime’s over, Ach, please wash that smell out of your hair.” She said this laughing as she handed him a wet towel.

  “Great preparation, Achmed. He would have seen through any theatrical attempt to make you look like you’ve been held prisoner for a while,” Fusco said, giving the thumbs up to one of the best of the new breed of Muslim F.B.I. agents.

  Rubbing a towel into his caked and matted hair, Achmed said, “He’s very smart, sir, like an engineer or scientist — his manner of speech and his demeanor.”

  “Well, thanks to all of you, we’ve given him a paradigm shift that will take his preconceived defenses out of the equation.”

  They looked at the monitor to see the Sheik shuddering in a fetal position on his cot.

  “We’ll move to stage four soon,” Dr, Fusco said.

  The Sheik was hustled from his bed into the other room. He was forced to his knees, hogtied, and blindfolded.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Bad news, Sheik. Your asshole buddies killed the ambassador and now we are going to show them that they took him for nothing.”

  The Sheik felt the heat of the TV light on his face and started saying his prayers under his breath. Then suddenly all hell broke lose. Gunshots rang out and he was knocked to the floor. After the yelling ceased, he was stood up and the blindfold lifted as they swept him out of the room. He briefly saw one of them in the mask down with blood pouring from his head and two more crumpled in the corner by a fallen camera.

  Out in the hall, a man in an FBI windbreaker grabbed him and said, “Do you want to live?” The man shook him roughly. “Do you want to live?”

  “Yes… yes…” Aliz said in exhausted rasps.

  “Then tell us your network. Where did you base your operation out of? Tell us, or we will shoot you right now as if you were killed by the Brotherhood.”

  The Sheik spoke without thought. “Philadelphia. The Al Alaxa safe house…”

  “Good, good choice Aliz. You will live. Now tell us more.”

  Based on the information supplied by Sheik Alzir El Benhan, the FBI monitored and unraveled the Al Alaxa support network. First observing and learning the depth of its tentacles, then in one fell swoop, arresting and detaining 143 known operatives. That haul became a secondary treasure trove of other contacts that led to other networks. All this made Brooke’s star shine brighter than any other agent. The little show Dr. Fusco’s Psy-Ops division put on for the benefit of the Sheik garnered more funding and personnel for itself. The agents chipped in and had a phony Oscar done up and engraved with the name Chet Ballard. It stated, “Best Actor in a Crime Drama.”

  Happy to be back in an American prison with its culturally correct food menus and proper prayer mats, Alzir’s last iota of self-dignity arose from the fact that he remained true to the sacred oath they made to each other as they ran for their lives through the Hungarian forests. Alzir never betrayed his brother and never revealed the existence or location of “the key.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Into The Breach

  (Ghosts Of The Dessert)

  The Redrock Delta team was on strip alert at Prince Sultan AFB in Saudi Arabia. 20 operators, 4 pilots, 2 crew chiefs were at “Jump Ready 1.” The support personnel, mobile air conditioning units, and food trucks would not go on the rescue mission, should the call come. But while they were on the tarmac under the boiling sun, it made the men’s lives easier.

  Every man on the team was capable of not only finishing but also winning a triathlon with 40 pounds of field equipment strapped to his frame. Every one was an expert-marksman who shoots rounds everyday. All had medic, explosive, munitions, and communications training. In short, one of these guys, by himself, was a wrecking crew of enormous proportions. Twenty of them were an unstoppable force. Yet they were helpless without knowing the location of the ambassador. The Deltas were as forward deployed as they could be without starting a small war. All except for two of them.

  Master Sergeant Bridgestone and Sergeant Ross were haggling in Farsi with the street merchant over some bags of rice and flour. Both had acquired impeccable accents and their weather beaten, sun-browned, sandstorm-cracked skin left little doubt to any Arab that they were from the desert. As Bridgestone relentlessly kept dismissing the quality of the man’s goods in an attempt to lower the price, Ross kept his eye on the door of the small building across the way. The haggling stopped when he saw her enter the front door. Bridgestone, as “reluctantly” as he could play it, handed over a few coins and took possession of the bags. They were off in a second and headed toward the building. Ross was prepared to jimmy the front door with the bar he h
ad under his traditional robe, but to his surprise, the door was open. They both ascended the squeaky stairs, taking in the smell of evening meals being prepared and the occasional voice or cry of a child reverberating off the walls of the hallway. With only a look between them, they pulled their Sig Sauers out and Ross crouched low as Bridgestone went in high through the door of the apartment in the back.

  They caught her in the bathroom. She quickly scrambled, not to cover up out of any sense of privacy or humility, but to reach for a gun she had resting on the edge of the bathtub. Bridgestone got there first and pulled her wrist up hard, forcing her to rise. Ross covered her mouth to muffle any screams. They carried her off to the bed and placed her over the side, her head to the floor and her body bent at the waist. From that position, she would have to fall to the floor before she could do anything else. Ross replaced his hand with a gag made from a torn sheet that Bridge handed him. They tied her arms behind her back. She struggled but to no avail against men who were three times her weight.

  Ross put his foot on the back of her neck. In Farsi he said, “Where is your boyfriend? Where is Jamal holding the ambassador?”

  She struggled but didn’t speak. He stepped on her finger and applied pressure until he heard her catch her breath.

  “Salinda, please. You will not be able to endure what we are prepared to do to you if you don’t tell us where that dog of a man of yours is holding the ambassador.”

  Both Ross and Bridgestone were under operational orders to play the role of disaffected Muslim moderates looking to ward off confrontation with the U.S. If Salinda did survive this “interrogation,” she would only be able to report to her cell members that some other Arabs roughed her up. Of course, that would be right before her terrorist friends killed her for suspicion of betraying them anyway.

  Ross tried to convey this dead-end logic to her. “Salinda, you are now tarnished. Even if you don’t tell us anything, none of your people will believe that you didn’t tell us something, especially when they see how horribly disfigured we are going to make your face. They will kill you as an insect, without thinking. After all, you are only a woman.”