Now, with the Arab Unity Party once again in control of both Congress and the executive branch, there is hope that the War in America will soon be over. But even as the first troops return home, there are rumors of new terror threats against the Arab homeland, and fears that Arabia’s most challenging days still lie ahead . . .
The crusader was staying on the eleventh floor of the Rasheed Hotel. He’d arrived in Baghdad in the early afternoon and registered under the name John Huss. Among his possessions was a five-kilogram box of plastic explosives stolen from the army base at Kufah.
Arab Homeland Security knew all about him, or thought they did. His real name was James Travis. A citizen of Texas, he was in the UAS on a student visa that had expired nine months ago. During his last year of medical school, he had fallen in with a band of Protestant fanatics and was now working as their courier. Tomorrow he would meet with the leader of a sleeper cell to deliver the explosives.
AHS headquarters in Riyadh wanted to capture the whole cell, so rather than arrest Travis immediately, a plan had been hatched to disarm him. An agent dressed as a hotel maid waited down the hall from Travis’s room with a dummy munitions box filled with harmless clay. When Travis went to get dinner, the agent would swap out the real plastique and plant tracking devices in Travis’s other luggage.
It was a decent plan, but it did require Travis to leave the room, something that, as of 7 p.m., he showed no sign of doing. As the clock crept towards eight, one of the men staking out the lobby grew bored and began making prank radio calls to the eleventh-floor maid station.
“Amal, room 1169 needs fresh towels.”
“Very funny, Samir.”
“Amal, the gentleman in 1124 would like his pillows fluffed.”
“Very funny, Samir.”
“Amal—”
“Very funny, Samir.”
Silence for a bit. At quarter to eight, Mustafa asked: “Do we know if he’s awake?”
A member of the surveillance team watching the hotel room from across the street clicked in: “He’s still got the window shades drawn, but it looks like the lights are on.”
“His television’s on, too,” added Amal. “I can hear it from here.”
“You know what would be great?” Samir said. “If we had a working camera and microphone inside the room.”
“Very funny, Samir”—this time from the surveillance man. “I told you twice already, the equipment worked fine when we were testing it.”
“Do you want me to knock on the door?” Amal asked. “I could tell him the other guests are complaining about the TV noise.”
“No,” said Mustafa, “I just want him to get hungry. Abdullah? Anything?”
Abdullah was monitoring the hotel switchboard. “He hasn’t tried to call room service. No other landline calls in or out either, and e-comm unit says he hasn’t used a cell phone . . . What if he’s too nervous to eat?”
“A nervous terrorist, that’s just what we need.”
“Maybe his conscience is bothering him,” Samir suggested. “What kind of Christian did you say he was, Mustafa?”
“Methodist.”
“Are those the ones who handle snakes?”
“Hey,” Amal said. “The TV just switched off . . . He’s coming out.”
“All right, everyone check in,” said Mustafa. They were supposed to respond in sequence, but excited by the prospect of something finally happening, everyone spoke at once, and a confusion of voices filled the radio channel.
“He just stepped on the elevator,” Amal announced as the babble subsided. “I’m inside the room . . . Oh, damn it.”
“Amal?”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it . . .” Breathless now, as if she were running: “He’s not a courier.”
On the ground floor, Samir and three other agents made a dash for the elevator bank, arriving just in time to see the descending car pass the lobby without stopping. All the other cars were engaged on upper floors; Samir pounded the down button uselessly, then barked a warning into his radio as he and his companions scrambled to find the stairs.
The crusader, unaware of the flurry of activity above him, stepped out into the quiet of the hotel’s underground parking garage. Although it was a hot summer night, he wore a heavy, oversized sport jacket and kept his left hand tucked inside it.
As he walked across the garage, he recited under his breath: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible . . . And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God . . .”
A spark from the shadows to his right brought him up short. A thin man with a mustache, cigarette dangling from his lips, stood beside a black van, trying to coax a flame from an ancient brass lighter. The man looked up at the crusader staring at him. “My friend,” he said, “can you help me?”
The crusader didn’t answer. The man took a step towards him, gesturing with the cigarette: “Please, sir. Can I have a light?” He repeated this entreaty in Hebrew and French, and then, when the crusader still didn’t respond, in fractured English. At last the crusader’s left hand came out from inside his jacket. As the crusader reached into his front pants pocket, the man with the mustache took another step forward and punched him in the throat.
The crusader ended up belly-down on the ground, his left hand still trapped in his pocket, his right arm flung up and out, fingers splayed against the concrete. His assailant straddled him, pointing a gun at his sideways-turned head as he gasped for air.
“Easy, Mr. Travis,” Mustafa said, his English dramatically improved. “The only person you can kill now is yourself, and Jesus won’t reward you for that.”
The crusader finally caught his breath, but instead of relaxing he tensed, his face turning an even darker shade of red.
“Don’t . . . ” Mustafa warned, then hesitated, smelling something. Smoke? With a cry the crusader reared up underneath him. Mustafa pulled the trigger but the gun misfired, and then he was bucked off. He scrambled up into a crouch, but the crusader was up too, something shiny and bright appearing in his hand; as Mustafa wielded the gun like a brick, the crusader leaned in and drew a line along the side of Mustafa’s neck. The pain was sharp, simultaneously searing and cold, and Mustafa’s collarbone was suddenly wet. He dropped his gun and clapped both hands to the wound.
He swooned, falling onto his back. The crusader stood over him, arms raised, a wire trailing from his left hand into his jacket. Nearby voices were shouting orders—“Stop! Drop it!”—but the crusader began his recitation again, his own voice rising to drown them out: “And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church, I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the—”
Two shots rang out, and something ugly happened to the back of the crusader’s head. Mustafa, his field of vision starting to narrow, watched fascinated as the dead man swayed a moment more on his feet, left thumb twitching spasmodically.
“God willing,” Mustafa whispered. Travis’s knees buckled and his corpse fell forward. The world grew dim but did not disappear, and then a woman in a maid’s uniform was leaning over Mustafa with a still-smoking pistol in her hand. She called his name.