As he continued speaking, the temperature inside the room began to rise, fed by the emotion of the crowd. Finally, after forty minutes, after everyone in the room was dripping with sweat and he knew they were emotionally spent, he leaned forward and let his eyes rake the crowd. That was how he personalized his message to each man standing before him,w and it was the key to his delivery.
As usual, he brought the Kutbah to an end with a dramatic call to action. “We shall make the streets of their cities run red with blood, Insha Allah, God willing and praised be His Name,” he screamed, making eye contact with every man in the room. Looking down, he knew he had them in the palms of his hands, as he always did. All he needed to do now was to point to the door and whisper, “Go!” It was cathartic; and to a man, they would obey. They would rise, turn, and march off to the frontlines to attack their enemies with their bare hands if that was all they had. He had taken them to the brink, as Aslan Khan wanted, but the time had now come to gently pull them back down with a series of group prayers and recitations from the Koran.
After the final prayer had been said, the Caliph turned, walked down the stairs to the main floor, lowered his head, and headed for the side door. Being much shorter than most of the audience, he seemed to vanish. Sleight of hand and emotion, he thought. The only thing missing from his magic act was a puff of smoke and perhaps a pigeon or a rabbit up his sleeve. He would suggest that to the Khans, but he was afraid they might think it was a good idea. That would be heresy, of course, but what did it matter at this point, anyway. He was already damned to hell.
Kneeling in the center of the crowd, Henry Shaw had never experienced anything like this collective religious fervor before. He was agnostic, a cynic, and con man of the first order, but the effect of the rhythmic movements, the tightly packed bodies, and the collective recitation of public prayers that followed was stunning, and he found himself caught up in the emotion no matter how much he tried to fight it off. Mass hysteria? Group hypnosis? Whatever, it grabbed him by the throat and held on. Shaw could see that the others around him were on fire too. The tightly-packed, parallel rows of men stretched from wall to wall in the cavernous warehouse. As they had done since boyhood, they stood, knelt, and prostrated themselves on the floor, sat up, rose, and started over and over again as al-Zaeim led them through the selection of midday prayers. As he did, they became one unified being, responding to the Caliph in body and mind.
When the service finally ended and al-Zaeim had gone, Shaw stood, stunned, and he finally turned and looked around at the crowd. Most of the others were doing the same thing he did, taking it all in and savoring the last drop of emotion in the room as one might extend one’s hands toward the dying embers of a campfire before turning away and going out into the cold, lonely night. One by one, patiently and politely, they began to file out through the warehouse’s main rear doors. Many of the soldiers nodded to each other and occasionally shook hands, recognizing the faces of other men from the front lines. Once outside, they gathered their shoes and rifles, hand grenades, and bandoliers of bullets, which had been carefully stacked along the building’s front wall, and wandered away in groups of two or three.
Turning back, Shaw saw several worshipers hurry toward the side door in a futile attempt to catch up with the Caliph, perhaps to ask him a question, secure a blessing, or to get him to intercede in some personal matter or another. The reason was immaterial. Two burly bodyguards and Aslan Khan blocked their way. No one was allowed to follow the Caliph — well, almost no one. Aslan motioned to his brothers, Batir and Mergen, who grabbed Henry Shaw by an elbow again and levitated him through the doorway. The two bodyguards nodded and stepped aside, allowing them to pass on through.
No one in the room knew who the tall, thin foreigner with the Khan brothers was, and they knew not to ask. From his fair complexion, blond hair, and clean clothes, he could not have appeared more out of place in this room full of dirty, dark-haired, bearded street fighters. The man looked to be northern European, perhaps British or German, or even American. But what was he doing here with their Caliph, they wondered. Peculiar indeed. Well, they might not know who he was, but everyone in the room knew who the three Khan brothers were. They were the Caliph’s closest subordinates, his hatchet men and enforcers, as some dared to suggest — three men no sane man would cross.
With Aslan taking up the rear, the Khan brothers’ short procession continued down a dimly lit hallway, turned right, and passed through another door, finally coming out into the bright glare of the street beyond. The blond stranger was a head taller than the two younger Khans, but that wasn’t unusual. Like most Turkmeni men and women, they were built like large, upright bullfrogs — barrel-chested and no-necked, with muscular arms and legs. Theirs was a small, arid country located at the eastern end of the Caspian Sea. It was wedged between Iran and Afghanistan on the south and Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the other central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union to the north, east, and west, across the Caspian Sea. Turkmeni men rarely spoke and never smiled or argued, always deferring to their elders. Raised by loving mothers and beaten early and often by stern, uncompromising fathers, they had the personality of their native Alabai sheep dogs. These huge mastiffs were powerful, brave, and intensely loyal. Whether the dogs took on the characteristics of their masters, or the masters took on the characteristics of the dogs, their breeding was lost somewhere back in antiquity.
In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, Aslan Khan’s ancestors migrated west through the high, rugged Kopetdag mountain range, and settled in northeastern Iraq, where the other tribes quickly learned to leave them alone. Although insignificant in numbers, they were intensely loyal to Saddam Hussein and became one of the few tribal groups the dictator trusted beyond his own kinsmen in Tikrit. Consequently, he placed Turkmeni in a number of key security and defense positions in his government. Aslan was five years older than his brothers and a full head taller, but Batir and Mergen were only slightly less physically imposing and threatening. All three had curly black hair, thick mustaches, dark, hooded eyes, and could tear a Baghdad phone book in half with their bare hands. They followed Aslan into the Republican Guard and had just finished their own pilot training when the second Gulf War struck, the regime collapsed, and their military careers came to an abrupt end.
The Americans had won the war, but they soon lost the peace. Aslan was surprised at how incredibly stupid and naïve they were. With Saddam and his regime gone, the Americans assumed democracy would simply sprout like desert wildflowers after a spring rain. They do, but soon wither and die under the blistering summer sun. Iraq had an ancient culture. It was a tribal, sectarian, police state, whose people had always submitted to strongmen, dictators, and kings. That is why ISIS drew former Republican Guard officers with talent, such as the Khan brothers. In truth, ISIS was the same old Iraqi politicians and generals doing the same old thing, but they quickly learned that religious fervor, black balaclavas, pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted in the back, and the occasional beheading on Al Jazeera and CNN sells a lot faster than a dour, murderous despot.
Batir and Mergen Khan hustled Henry Shaw out into the bright, sunlit side street. After the intense speech and the group prayers, the professor couldn’t even feel their firm grip on his elbows or the dusty cobblestone street beneath his feet. Perhaps he’d spent too long in the heat of the warehouse, but it seemed as if he was flying. He had no idea where the Khans were taking him, but if they released their grips on his arms, the professor was confident he would have floated away.
He needn’t have worried, though. He wasn’t going anywhere that Batir and Mergen Khan didn’t want him to go. Aslan took up the rear with a 9-millimeter automatic hanging casually at his side as they strode confidently through the narrow street and around the first corner. That was where a dusty, ten-year-old Mercedes sedan was parked, with another of their gunmen standing guard with an AK-47 waiting for them. There were too many traitors in town, too many rooftops w
here an assassin with a rifle could hide, and too many opportunities to rig a bomb if a car was left unattended for long.
As they approached the Mercedes, Aslan nodded at his man, who promptly opened the front and rear doors, put his hand on Shaw’s head, and shoved him inside the back seat. He soon found himself sandwiched between Batir and Mergen Khan, while the guard got in behind the wheel, with Aslan Khan riding shotgun, and the Caliph sitting between them.
It did not take long for the powerful sedan to negotiate the maze of narrow streets and reach the dusty road that took them to a small house on the eastern edge of the city. It was one-story with a tall parapet around the roof, and was built with pale pink stucco over concrete block. Indistinguishable from most other houses in the crowded working-class neighborhood, it was hidden behind a stout, six-foot-high masonry wall and a sheet-metal gate that enclosed a small front courtyard, screening the house from the road. The Mercedes stopped at the gate and Mergen quickly jumped out. He unlocked the gate and pushed it far enough open to let the car pass through, pausing to look up and down the road to see if they had been followed, but they hadn’t.
By the end of the drive, Henry Shaw was visibly more composed than he had been when they started — composed, but just as excited. Aslan Khan got out and held the front door open for the Caliph, but the professor wasn’t standing on formality. He was already halfway out and eager to follow al-Zaeim, until Aslan Khan stopped him with a finger in the chest.
“A moment, if you please, Professor. There are men inside with guns, who may not appreciate a pale-skinned stranger trying to enter unannounced.”
“Oh, yes, of course, I was only…” he let his voice trail off, when he realized how stupid he sounded. Someone inside must have been watching them drive up, because the front door of the house immediately opened just wide enough for the Caliph to pass through. A moment later, Mergen took Shaw by the elbow and led him inside, while Aslan told Batir to turn the car around, so the Mercedes faced the gate. As he stepped inside, Shaw looked back. Batir sat in the driver’s seat with the engine running, presumably in the event they had to leave, quickly.
CHAPTER NINE
Sherwood Forest, North Carolina
The most distinctive feature of Bob’s Sherwood Forest “farm” was that quarter mile-long, entry drive, which went straight from the highway to the front door of the large Victorian house in the center of the property. It blew Bob and Linda away the moment they saw it. A row of tall oak trees ran down each side of the drive, forming an arched canopy over the paved surface, reminiscent of the opening shot of Tara in Gone with the Wind. The house itself was a white gingerbread Victorian, not a grand antebellum Georgian with tall white columns like in the movie; but it gave Linda ample opportunity to tell him, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!” nonetheless.
She was the one who named it “Sherwood Forest,” since it provided the perfect hideout for “Robin Hood and his Band of Merry Men,” as he and his guys jokingly began calling themselves, because they stole from the crooks and gave it away to people who needed it, mostly through veterans’ charities. The 600-acre compound had been previously owned by a Connecticut insurance company, whose president must have had the Waltons’ house from the old Earl Hamner TV series in mind when he turned it into his corporate retreat and hi-tech conference center. The main house was a large, eight-bedroom Victorian, to which he added a wing of meeting rooms, a large swimming pool, a modern satellite communication system, an indoor pistol range, running track, helipad, exercise center, and a half-dozen large barns and outbuildings scattered through the trees to the rear.
The house itself stood two-and-a-half stories tall, complete with white gingerbread, pointy-top cupolas, and a distinctive forest-green, raised-seam tin roof. A deep, covered porch ran along the front and both sides and held two dozen white Adirondack deck chairs. Meanwhile, the property continued to be a working farm. While some of the outbuildings continued to store seed and various farm vehicles, the larger ones had been converted to more guestrooms and the compound’s security and telecommunications center. In addition, Ace, Chester, and Koz installed a few “army surplus” security surprises, which they claimed, “fell off the back of a banana truck,” which no one would expect to find on an innocent-looking North Carolina farm.
The first floor of the main house contained the parlor, main dining room, lounges, recreation rooms, and a huge central kitchen. The six bedrooms on the second floor had been converted into two large suites. Bob and Linda took one of them for themselves, plus Ellie, and Ellie’s overweight attack cat, Crookshanks — Godzilla as Bob called him when Ellie wasn’t listening. Ace Randall and his new ex-Air Force pilot captain wife, Dorothy took the other suite now that they had both retired. There was also a separate rear annex, which resembled a barn from the outside, but contained a dozen high-end guestrooms. Some were individual, but others were arranged in pods or suites. The entire right half of the annex was assigned to the Geeks. Sasha christened it “The KGB Spymaster Data Center.” Their vast array of telecommunications and computer gear, entertainment center, and video game room took up the first floor of their half, and their own bedroom suites were on the second floor. Two were bachelor pads for Sasha and Ronald, while the third had a softer touch for Jimmy and Patsy. The other half of the annex was for the other Merry Men when they visited.
The Geeks were high maintenance, but worth it. In the months that followed the “dust-up” in Atlantic City, they fleeced over $27 million from the mob casinos in Atlantic City and from the bank accounts of the Lucchesi and Genovesi families in New York. Bob figured that was the least they owed for tossing Sergeant First Class Vinnie Pastorini off the roof of their Bimini Bay casino. Still, that was a prodigious sum of money for a lowly US Army Major. He quickly divided it into large contributions to a series of blue-chip veterans’ charities, the purchase and upgrade of Sherwood Forest, and bonuses to the men and women who had put their butts on the line to pull it all off. As time passed, the number of Merry Men grew to seventeen, including his Delta Force sergeants, the women, the Geeks, Chicago Police Detective Captain Ernie Travers, Major General Arnold Stansky, Command Sergeant Major Pat O’Connor, Dimitri Karides the pickpocket, Ellie, and, of course, Godzilla the cat.
They titled Sherwood Forest in the name of a murky, international philanthropic foundation chartered in Switzerland, which was in turn owned by a dozen more layers of corporations and law firms through banks in Geneva, Berne, the Caymans, Lichtenstein, and Singapore. The New York Mafia families would never figure out what hit them or who, because the Geeks were light-years ahead of the investment firms the mobs used in New York in subterfuge and obfuscation. Still, Bob knew not to underestimate them. Revenge was a strong motivator and Gumbahs have long memories. Like all tribal cultures, the Calabrese and Sicilians were as well-known for their blood feuds as the Sunni, Shia, Ghilzais, and Pashtuns. Then again, a bunch of old, weathered Deltas could hold a grudge with the best of them. Sooner or later, however, the wrong people might come after him, his family, and his friends, and Bob Burke wasn’t going to allow that to happen. If they had to “go to the mattresses,” like the Corleones, Sherwood Forest was built to provide that margin of safety for them.
As soon as he purchased the big farm, he invited some old CIA friends from Langley to come down for a weekend of brats and beer and fine-tune his building and perimeter security. They were the best in the business, but with over six hundred acres of woods and open farm, nine buildings and a back gate to cover, Sherwood Forest was a challenge. They installed an integrated system of invisible wire, laser fencing, sensors, motion detectors, silent alarms, infrared and optical cameras, magnetic locks, and emergency lighting. Like most men of a certain age, Bob got his post-doctorate education in business management by watching late-night reruns of The Godfather. Whatever the organizational, personnel, or political question you had, Vito Corleone had the answer. On security, the Don said, “Women and children can afford to be careless, but
not men.” As usual, the Don was spot on.
However, as for going on another “Gumbah hunt,” as Ace liked to call them, that was the last thing Bob Burke ever wanted to get involved in again. All he wanted now was to fade into the woodwork and disappear. No more shooting, no more bombs, no more battles. It would take dynamite to get him out of the North Carolina woods to tussle with anyone.
As the weeks and months passed after they settled in at Sherwood Forest, Bob felt more and more comfortable on the big farm. Unfortunately, he still had big responsibilities back in Chicago. He remained President and Chairman of the Board of Toler TeleCom. While he had a great staff up in the Windy City to run that operation and they required very little direct input from him, the size and scale of the company’s operations required him to show his face every so often. There were also house calls to be made on the Pentagon to keep the procurement colonels in Washington in line, but being a weekend visitor to North Carolina quickly got old. That was when he had an epiphany. He promoted Ed Toler and his long-time executive assistant, Maryanne Simpson to president, gave her and a half-dozen other key employees large blocks of stock incentives, and stepped aside from day-to-day management. He continued on as Chairman, but he could do that in his sleep, going go up for meetings and presentations twice a month.
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 9