by Mike Bond
When he got home there’d be a message. They’d be there, Sophie weeping and holding him, Leo acting tough, Sarah in his arms. When the plane hit they’d already left for the dentist. But she wouldn’t have left till ten, and the plane had hit the North Tower before nine. Maybe they took the morning off, decided to stop somewhere.
Sophie never wasted time like that.
BY NIGHT HE KNEW THEY WERE DEAD. Each time he reached out in his heart they weren’t there. He’d been to all the hospitals, read all the lists. He’d called Sophie’s parents and his mother and the families of his employees. No one from his office had been found.
For the first two nights he searched, never giving up, going home twice a night to check, each time telling himself maybe they’d be there, weeping in hopeless pain each time he found the apartment empty.
Without the tiniest hope he kept at it for five days. Wandered the streets with a sign, begging for news. One afternoon he found himself before a little church, entered and knelt down between the hard wooden pews in the choking white dust but the only message that came is they are not alive.
On the sixth day he had the arm set in a cast and went to Fire Island. He couldn’t sleep in their bed, either here or on Christopher Street, couldn’t go into Leo’s or Sarah’s room.
There was no end to pain. Now and forever there would be no end.
Payback. You always get it, sooner or later. In the living room the mantel clock struck nine, the sound a spike into his heart.
The only thing that conquers all is death.
He walked the beach all night and sat looking out to sea. The surf rose hissing up the sand, receded. All is flux it said, gaining and losing, gathering and dispersion.
Somewhere across that cold deep were the men who had done this.
And he had helped spawn them.
Sun Tzu
SEVEN DAYS AFTER 9/11 Jack sent three obituaries to The Times,
Sophie Craig, thirty-nine, lover of all that is wise and beautiful. Suddenly September 11 in the World Trade Center
Leo Craig, seventeen, a young warrior with his whole life before him. Suddenly September 11 in the World Trade Center
Sarah Craig, eight, future astrophysicist, lover of the unknown. Suddenly September 11 in the World Trade Center,
and drove to DC. It was a cool blue afternoon. His heart was dead, his mouth tasted of metal. The cities, towns, farms, fields and forests, the endless black highways and swarming cars and trucks were artificial, estranged and vulnerable.
It made no difference to wish it had been he. It made no difference trying not to think.
There was nothing but revenge.
But he had helped to cause this. How do you take vengeance on yourself?
AT LANGLEY the mood was bleak. Secretaries moved quietly with bowed resolute faces. The air had a still, cold taste, like the grave.
“We want you with us,” Levi Ackerman said. “Not on your own.”
“Or we could kill you,” Timothy grimaced yellow teeth. “By mistake.”
Jack glanced round Timothy’s expansive seventh floor office, the English hunting prints on the walls, the photos of Timothy dressed in camo standing with generals, with Bush and Cheney. “We created Al-Qaeda,” Jack said. “Then made ourselves their victims.”
“That story won’t sell, not any longer.” Timothy swung his feet off his desk. “When you’ve been attacked it’s time for patriotism. Not self-examination.”
“Nearly all those nineteen hijackers were Saudis, the people GW Bush and his father work for. The backers of GW’s crappy fake oil company, Harken Energy.”
“Jack, you’re talking about the President of the United States. Have a little respect –”
“I don’t respect crooks. I don’t respect liars. I don’t respect cowards.”
Ackerman patted Jack’s knee. “We were crushed. All of us –”
“Yes,” Timothy opened a cigar box and selected one, “we’re all heartbroken.”
“You piece of shit, you don’t have a heart to break. And you’re both guilty; we all are. Find Al-Qaeda.”
Ackerman gripped his stump as if it pained him. “There’s a hundred million Wahhabis and other rabid Muslims out there. There’s a billion Muslims who listen to them. Their hatred of America, of anything modern, their vileness about women – spewed from mosques, radio stations, newspapers – how many casualties will it take to root them out?”
“So we stop buying their goddamn oil. Till they change.”
Timothy took out a box of wooden matches. “C’mon, Jack, you’re an oil man.”
“Most of my people are dead. I told my lawyers sell the assets and give the money to their families. I’m going back to Afghanistan. Either with you or on my own.”
“Anybody not with us,” Timothy lit his cigar, “is against us.”
“The opening phase is going to be SF,” Ackerman said. “Out of Tampa. Tommy Franks has decided. Sadly, we’re in the back seat. We’re the ones being blamed. Even though we kept begging them to do something, we’re taking the hit.”
“You guys fucked up. You keep fucking up but nothing ever changes.”
“So find Wahid,” Timothy said. “And bring him over.”
“You’ll be assigned to a twelve-man SF team,” Ackerman said. “As a resource.”
Timothy blew out smoke. “Who knows the lingo.”
“Our strategy’s evolved,” Levi said. “We’re no longer on a blind battlefield. The JFC has moved to technology warfare – satellites, sensors, linked forces –”
Jack shook his head. “It takes people to kill people.”
“Transformation,” Timothy Cormac said. “That’s what it’s called.”
“I NEED TO KNOW WHO CALLED ME,” Jack said as he and Ackerman walked the sad corridor to the elevators and down to Ackerman’s office. “That morning just before the planes hit, whoever sent me on a wild-goose chase to the Plaza to meet this Karim Al-Saleh –”
Ackerman punched in his code and clicked the door shut behind them. He sat down wearily, nodded at another chair across the table. “To save you?”
“Someone Inside? Someone you know?”
“Bullshit!” Ackerman glared at him. “Christ, if you’d stayed Inside you’d be running this Afghanistan thing now.”
“What for? We used them as cannon fodder against the Soviets. When their country was ruined and a million people dead we walked away like we’d never been there.”
“Big countries always use little countries to fight their wars, Christ, you know that.” Ackerman stared at him bleakly out of sleepless red eyes. “Forty-two times we warned the President. Forty-two times! Even the Principals ignored us. Now they’re blaming us, calling for intelligence reform.”
“Intelligence. Such a stupid word.”
Ackerman slapped a folder down on the table. “How long do I put you in for?”
“I want Timothy to admit it. What he’s done wrong.”
“You’re dreaming. He’s going to use this. He’s going to come out on top.”
“How many times did I beg him –”
“Timothy does what GW tells him.”
“GW belongs to the Saudis. So does his father.”
“How do you think Bush senior got to be Director?” Ackerman waved his hand at the building, the Agency. “We all know that.”
“He let that plane full of Saudis out of the country one day after 9/11, when everything else was grounded... There were Saudi terrorists and Al-Qaeda on that plane.”
“It’s not just his special relationship with the Saudis –”
“The Wahhabis.”
“- it’s the pipeline deal, too. Bush won’t do anything to piss off the Taliban.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore what you do. Just what you say.”
“You know where Bush was the afternoon after it happened?” Ackerman snickered, “when they got him out of DC? Cowering in a STRATTON basement at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha. Practically
catatonic.”
FROM THE TERRACE OF HIS VILLA overlooking Jorm, Wahid watched the dawn and contemplated the genius of God. Had the Koran not predicted this – Wherever ye be, death shall overtake you, though you be in lofty towers? Now who would not believe?
But the infidels had also been warned in other ways. Why had they not listened? If God is mighty and wise, what is His plan? He beckoned to a boy waiting in the shadows. “Come, little one, rub my neck.”
The boy was tall and slender as a young willow, the mascara round his eyes darkening them to pools of black light. His lacy fingers slid down Wahid’s neck.
Yet the infidels refused it when the Koran was revealed to them: How many cities have we destroyed, whose inhabitants lived in ease and plenty? But the Lord did not destroy those cities until he had sent unto their capital an apostle, to rehearse our signs unto them.
So they had burned, these infidels in their infidel towers. And would burn in Hellfire, never dying, in agony till the end of time. For God is mighty and wise.
Holy War, the infidels destroyed and Islam to sweep the world. A Taliban for every country. A madrasah for every boy. All over the world.
The infidels had been warned. Why had they not listened? Did they not care?
He tilted his neck to let the boy reach deeper, felt a little shiver of belonging to God, of God filling his body. How often he’d looked forward to Paradise. Terraced gardens, scented trees and voluptuous flowers. Cool streams over mossy rocks into pools where naked boys cavort, velvet water veiling and revealing their golden bodies.
He kissed the sleek skin between the boy’s slender fingers. Most men were slaves because they accepted everything they were told without question. The Koran did say that lusting after other men is perversity and abomination, but that referred to the impure bestial copulations of camel herders and the sad conflicted hungers of drunks. God made all men to love each other’s bodies, or why would woman be made so ugly, impure, and stupid?
He drew the boy closer. A device for making children, woman. He had a moment’s distasteful memory of his mother. Could she have survived, had he tried to save her?
The Koran could not dwell on man’s righteous desire for other men, for then all men would desert their wives for each other, and the duty of making children would be forgotten. But he who’d never stooped to consort with women, he was free of the Koran’s dictum. As were the boys he took, for were they not too young to marry?
The sky had grown orange, the last stars fading like coals in a fire. Soon the Holy War would come, and like an eagle he would soar over it, high as the sun, the earth renewed by God’s purifying fire.
RAWALPINDI WAS EVEN DIRTIER, smellier and more crowded than Jack remembered. There were jeeps and trucks of Americans and Brits everywhere, taxis of journalists and international relief staffers, Pakistani soldiers looking truculent in their ragtag uniforms. Every time a truck of Afghani irregulars growled by he watched them but recognized none.
Bernie Rykoff was there, having worked his PhD in Middle East Affairs to a top Pentagon post, with a belly now, soft and venal. He had a crewcut and spoke in clipped sentences. “Glad you’re back.” He flipped a chair round and sat astride it.
“Your wise men in Langley didn’t know shit. Did they, Bernie?”
“We’re flying you up to K2 and choppering you and nine SF and SAS guys into Jorm, north of Edeni. As far as we can tell, Wahid’s camp is about twenty klicks from there.”
“Don’t try to sound military, Bernie.”
“When you find Wahid, like Timothy said, you bring him over. Not dead. Alive.” Bernie tried to look stern. “He’s gonna play a big part in our new Afghanistan.”
“IF WE DO FIND HIM,” Sergeant Corwin said, “We’re going to cut off his balls. Without them he can’t get into Heaven. Well he can, but all those virgins won’t do him any good.”
“I hear he’s not that way,” Walcott the SAS man said. “That he prefers boys.”
“Well he won’t be able to diddle the boys either,” Corwin said.
Walcott ignored him. “Apparently in Heaven their peckers still work. Or why would they blow themselves up? Unless they could get put back together?”
Corwin adjusted his rifle. “Jack knows but he ain’t saying. Ain’t that true, Chief?”
“When you were here before, Chief,” Engle said, “were these people crazy like this?”
“I was here before the Taliban –” He thought about it. “But yeah, they’ve always been crazy –”
“But we tricked the Soviets into invading, right?” Corwin said. “Walcott here, this dumb Brit, doesn’t believe me.”
“We stirred up the Afghanis with fundamentalism to open a front on the Soviets’ soft Muslim underbelly, as we called it. Then we started Stars Wars so they had to spend billions gearing up for that. Then we drove down the crude price their economy depended on.”
“Classic Sun Tzu,” Corwin said. “Force your enemy to prepare for attack in all places. So he can be strong in none.”
“Then once the Wall came down and they asked us for help we screwed them over with Harvard economists,” Engle laughed, “and now they’re really broke.”
“Remember what else Sun Tzu said.” Jack halted in the low doorway. “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
Stars filled the sky like shattered glass. He could see the dark outpost walls, beyond them the shadowed village, a bare tree, the starlit valley and black mountains high above it.
He went silently down to the forward LP. “All well?”
“Nothing lately but an owl, Sir,” Ray whispered. “Grabbed a rat in that field.”
“Amazing, these NVDs. We started to get them when I was here, but the Russians had better ones.” Through Jack’s NVD the valley popped into lurid greenish yellow, the low mud houses wavering, the mountains arrested in motion. “Guy out there,” he said, “taking a leak.”
“That’s his second one, since I came on.”
“Keep an eye on him, but don’t let him distract you from something else.”
“Yes Sir.”
“Sorry. You young guys don’t need my advice.”
“We’re lucky to have you, Sir. I always wanted to meet you. Sorry it’s in these circumstances. . . From your perspective,” he added after a few minutes, “how are things?”
“When I was with the mujihadeen I never knew these guys we’re with now. They’re northerners, not the same tribe or language as the Taliban. It’ll be hard getting them to take on the Taliban, when they’ve already been beaten by them...”
“I don’t trust them.”
“I don’t either. That’s why we keep our own watch.”
“I’d die to avenge your family, Chief. And all the others. We all would.”
“That’s the trouble with war, everybody dies avenging someone else.”
Through the NVDs Jack watched the mountains. “When I found my village destroyed, I blamed the Russians. Then later I found out it wasn’t the Russians who destroyed it, but Afghanis working for us. I still blamed the Russians because they’d invaded. But in a way we pulled them in, just like we did a decade later with the Iraqis in Kuwait. So who do I blame?”
“You don’t think this’s right, Sir, hitting the Taliban?”
“Of course it us. But we can’t stop there. We have to deal with every fundamentalist Muslim in the world. They’re close to getting nuclear weapons, germ warfare. We have to kill the worst ones and intimidate the rest. Still the question is, who’s responsible?”
“Beats me, Sir. I’m just here to kill the bastards.”
Taliban
FOR DAYS THE BOMBS had fallen. Their thunder kept knocking Wahid down and split his head. The earth leaped and shuddered like a wounded beast. When he stood blood ran from his nose and ears and the earth tilted up to meet him.
Every time they regrouped new bombs came silently out of the sky, terrorizing the survivors with their blasts.
How had this happened so fast? Only weeks ago God had punished the infidels; now everywhere explosions rained down on the Taliban. In the Soviet War the bombs had come from MiGs, easy to see and hide from, but these bombs came from nowhere, from Heaven itself.
How could the infidels have these bombs when the Taliban were God’s chosen? And now the infidels had even turned the Northern tribes, fellow Muslims, against the Taliban. Why would God allow that? Why had God made him, poor Wahid, endure this?
Was God doing this to test his faith?
He could barely see the praying men in the dust and smoke, the glisten of rifles with which they dreamed they could fight back against the bombs.
The thunder eased as the bombs moved eastward and Wahid crouched weeping and begging the bombs to kill the others and leave him be.
“Praying again?” Suley’s voice.
Despite the gloom Wahid could see how Suley’s eyes glistened. “You’ve been smoking khief again – you think they smoke khief in Paradise?”
“In Paradise there’s no need for khief.”
“You know, do you?”
Suley took his hand. “When my parents died you showed me favor. These things you wanted from me, I did them in thanks. When I fought bravely it was to show you I could.”
Wahid stood. Dizziness sickened him. “Now the bombing’s stopped, the enemy will come.” He climbed over shattered boulders into the dawn that stank of explosions, seared rock and death. Another bomb could come, he thought, wanting to crawl back into the bunker. But death sat in there, waiting and smiling like an unwanted guest.
“Brothers!” he called, his voice hollow in his ears. From outside came a distant crack of rifles. “We are not snakes or toads. We are not women!” He looked for his gun, could not find it. “Our warriors destroyed the Devil’s towers in the Devil’s country of evil! Now the Devil is angry and we must fight him! Fear not, for God stands beside us with His rifle, and God shall not lose.”
“We’ve lost this fight,” a man called. “Let’s go home, protect our families.”
“That’s true,” said another. “They won’t kill us if we surrender.”