Sabotage Read online

  He felt shame, guilt, and anger—anger like no man should feel—and lost any sense of his place in this new world. He needed rules and guidance. He felt betrayed. His parents healed, dealt with “the situation,” as they called it, and, most disappointing to him, adapted. This made it worse. He helped them move to a better neighborhood. Sad and bitter, they still bought this lie. They still were a part of America. He was now its enemy.

  He moved to London, the home of the most radical of radicals. It took a while to completely transform from the American way of life, even when seen through the eyes of an increasingly radicalized Muslim, to the hard and rigid existence of his new world. But he hid his transition from these men who never knew the duality as it existed in America. He forced it down. He detached. He did not return or regret. He wrote his parents benign things so they wouldn’t worry, but he was sure they knew what was happening. They wrote him of Muhammad’s promises in the Quran. He read that book so differently than they did. His instructors programmed him with hate, stripped him of the individuality that America encouraged, and sent him further east, where he learned hand weapons in Afghanistan and bombs in Iraq.

  He was given no fancy nickname. He was not broadcast across TV or canonized. But he was known and admired by the right people. The network used him in a series of four increasingly difficult kidnappings of minor Israeli dignitaries in the West Bank, and each job was done with precision and without emotion or error. He obliterated his old identity so completely that when American intelligence finally started picking up on him, they believed he was a British citizen named James Malhi. Unfortunately for the original James Malhi, a studious British nurse, that was exactly what Naseem wanted when he strangled him to death in his own London flat.

  Now, a decade later, Naseem came back to the States to finish what Mohammed Atta and his other heroes began on 9/11.

  Problem was he hadn’t anticipated what the reintroduction into American life would be like. From the moment he landed, after more than a decade away, he noticed it all coming back. The smell of cotton candy, reminiscent of his high-fructose childhood. The sound of a video arcade. The flirtatious look of a young, pretty woman, whose face was uncovered, uplifted, and shown promise and verve. Little things he didn’t hate. Things he hated to admit he liked.

  And then there were the people. In the time since he came back, he sensed things had changed. Everyone was angry, but it was not just at him. It was at their government, at the banks, at everyone and everything. He was treated differently—better, like before.

  He saw his parents, who were now old. His mother doted on him and shared her experiences with her American friends, who now looked like a rainbow of different colors and backgrounds. His father, in his absence, learned to watch baseball and halfway understood the rules, something Naseem never thought he would see. He sat down with him and filled in the details of suicide squeezes and hitting and running. A suicide bomber explaining suicide squeezes—the irony was not lost on him.

  He knew he shouldn’t have come. It introduced conflict. It brought nuance. And nuance is the great enemy of the ideologue.

  At first, it was merely a niggling thought in the back of his head. But America was intoxicating. He took each job he was given and completed it, did it correctly and with painstaking detail. Now, it didn’t feel the same. He was stalling. He was thinking. And now, on the day he had based his whole existence since his teenage years, his fleeting thoughts turned into full blown doubt. He asked himself repeatedly if this was how he was to spend the final moments of his life.

  He still had two hours to decide before the explosion was scheduled. If he didn’t take radical action, the beautiful Four Winds boat filled with beautiful women, on this beautiful day would be blown to the top of the sky. He moved the craft into place in Party Cove, one of the most notorious, debaucherous spots in the Midwest, one that stood for everything he hated in his previous life. All around him, under a brilliant sky, in a picture-perfect setting, he saw boats with half-naked and fully-naked women screaming, wooing, and taking shots at the behest of all the shirtless males around them. For a week now, he had brought in explosives that looked like rock concert speakers and dummy boats filled stem to stern with TNT. Once he started this, no one would be able to stop it.

  All these attacks he planned and helped with, all over the Great Villain, and, now, at the moment that required his greatest singularity of mind, he couldn’t summon it up. These people were dumb, crude, and most certainly without God. Did that mean they deserved to die? Ashlee and the other girls he hired in St. Louis to be his models for this trip were so naïve and so happy to be here. And now here he was, being their God.

  The girls thought they were promoting a new movie. They were all in place on deck with T-shirt shooters and full of spirit. They screamed and wooed. They were getting paid what seemed a pittance to him, but they were excited. Men would look at them. Women would be jealous. They would be paid and laid, as one of them said. That was all they wanted.

  Naseem, fully shaved from head to toe, was now the most reluctant of martyrs with a head full of ideas and no concept of what to do with them.

  He docked and tied on, went to the front of the boat, and kissed Ashlee. She beamed. She was enjoying being with a successful man, one with a little age on him. She was loyal and playful, and, after last night, when he could summon no more willpower, he could say she was some sort of fierce in the bedroom, doing things Muslim women couldn’t conceive. She was not wife material, he thought, but now he felt almost certain he couldn’t sign her death warrant.

  He needed to think. He needed to not let his own mistakes obscure God’s message. He had two hours to figure it out.

  He told Ashlee he was going to take the Jet Ski for a couple of minutes. He would be back well in advance of their scheduled performance.

  “Just have some drinks and chill,” he winked. “And don’t use up all the T-shirts at once.”

  Who was speaking these words? Who harbored this kind of feeling for infidels and vermin? The self-loathing Naseem remembered at 18 was back but for very different reasons.

  “Okay babe.” She looked at him, and his heart broke, not with love for her but with absolute hatred of himself.

  He tore away from the boat, utterly unsure of what to do next.

  Three

  Nathan Kinder worked all year on getting into Courtney Hollis’ pants. He was relentless. It was something out of an 80s teen sex film, only, to this point, it was decidedly PG-rated.

  The professors, students, and staff at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock agreed with Nathan on his choice of muse. She was a combination of innocent and pouty-lipped sexy, and she either knew she was the best thing alive, or she didn’t, and both answers were equally as acceptable.

  And now, he was about to make it. He had tried everything: cards, letters, flowers, poems, tweets, Instagrams, and, finally, direct pleas for love and affection. Nothing worked, so he gave up, but that was the one thing she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t handle that he no longer wanted her, and he was talking to and possibly smashing other girls.

  He didn’t know she was a virgin. She didn’t want anyone to know she had never been that close with a boy. She played a role, and it worked until that damn Nathan had quit playing the pursuer.

  She came to his room that day wearing a sundress that suggested everything. It clung to her curves and rode up her perfect derriere. She knocked on his door, gave him a kiss as soon as he opened it, and whispered closely in his ear she wasn’t wearing any panties underneath it.

  When their obituaries would be written the next day, no mention of their proximity was given to the press nor was there any hint of her lack of underwear. He was written up as a promising sophomore baseball star who hoped to one day coach, and she was called the apple of her daddy’s eye in the Fort Smith paper’s full-page spread. The men of Little Rock would have erected a statue to Nathan had they known where that afternoon was heading, but, in death,
he was viewed as one more could-have-been.

  * * * * *

  Jackson Mingus, after ten years of teaching at community colleges all over Cleveland, finally landed a book deal. It was not as impressive as it sounded. He merely wrote a murder mystery—which Jackson, frankly, felt was cheating on his love of literary fiction—and published it with a small imprint of a large New York publisher, Pulp Town.

  It was a good book, and he would speak at a couple of writer’s conferences and hope that it got enough push to be able to write a second one. Today, he was off to meet with his college friend, Barb Detmer, who was a writer for the New York Post and in town covering the upcoming vice-presidential debate. Jackson proudly held a galley copy of the book for her, and he secretly hoped she could get it in the hands of someone on the Post’s literary side. He figured it was unlikely she would know anyone, but she was the most famous person he could claim any connection with, so he figured it was worth a shot.

  He walked downtown toward the Hilton and past a new restaurant they agreed on for lunch. He was just passing Crate and Barrel when the explosion came.

  If Jackson had lived, if he hadn’t been killed in the first wave of this most notable of terrorist attacks, his book had almost no chance of getting publicity. Jackson was paunchy, homely, and looked much sweatier than authors were supposed to. But in death, he was somehow transformed into a hero, all because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was enough to turn that first novel into front-page news. Sadly, he did not live to enjoy it.

  * * * * *

  Two hours. That was all that separated Officer John Morales from his long weekend. He was going to grab his wife, and he was going to really surprise her. Through his side job doing security for a law firm, the one she always felt took too much time from them, he befriended a lawyer who gave him use of his house in the Hamptons for the weekend. Morales couldn’t believe his luck. It was free house-sitting to the lawyer, but it was a godsend to him. He packed a bag for his wife, made up a boring cover story about meeting him near the train station, and he now stood a chance of pulling off the romantic fireworks she sadly said she never saw anymore.

  He was in Times Square, on a midsummer Thursday afternoon, checking his watch every five minutes, waiting for the crew that was supposed to have been there half an hour ago. There was some fashion-related gala that was going to put a bunch of anorexic blondes in Lady Gaga outfits out in the middle of the square, shaking what little asses they possessed and generally embarrassing themselves. Morales had credentialed and overseen hundreds of these events—rock concerts and rallies, protests and politicos—but he hated the fashion events the most. The people never understood what was required in terms of permits, they all spoke in the third person, and, whether they spoke English or not, they never ever listened. He hated to lose his temper, but he always did when there was a fashion show.

  He was checking on the trucks when the bomb ripped through them. It cut through the crowd with the concussion of plastic explosives and the metallic chink of the nails and glass that the bomb maker added. They skidded across the pavement and made the most hideous sound. Most people nearby never had a chance to even shield themselves and fell as the fireball made its way through them. They never heard the second wave hit behind them as the PA system and all the fashion trucks that Morales himself had waved into the park, filled with the same mix of C4 and foreign objects, cut down the large crowd behind them, rolling across the plaza like an army battalion, striking down everything in the way. Those who survived the fire looked down to see their bodies punctured again and again. They watched the blood slowly escaping through their wounds and heard themselves pay homage to their pain.

  Morales survived just long enough to think about the surprise his wife would never know he so meticulously planned.

  * * * * *

  It was a summertime tradition to wait in line at the Shedd Aquarium, always one of the hottest tickets in Chicago. In a city where summer meant long lines, the line at the Shedd was always the longest. Jeannie Gregg promised her kids she would stay this time. They tried this three times already that summer. Every time prior—due to the fighting between the two youngest, the heat, or the list of important things on her mind—she became too impatient to stick it out and would take the kids to another spot on the campus—the field, the planetarium, anywhere but that dreaded line.

  But this time, she knew she couldn’t disappoint them again. It was time to bring the Nook, the Kindle, the iPad, and think yoga thoughts while she waited.

  She never liked the Shedd. To her, it was like paying to walk through a pet store. But her kids wanted to go, and she did love their love of ritual. To a professor of sociology, it was delightful to watch.

  Almost twenty minutes had passed, and the line hadn’t moved an inch. Ugh. Meanwhile, it grew longer behind her. She liked observing people, but she didn’t like standing near them or with them. She would be a ball of nerves by the time she got to the front.

  Jeannie hadn’t noticed the man directly in front of her, carrying a simple college-style canvas backpack. She didn’t know there were five others in line, two in front of them and three filling in behind. She didn’t notice that the man’s arms were shaved or that he was trembling slightly, as if he had a mild neural issue. She was too busy imagining herself in tree pose and keeping Hanna away from Kenny. She was too busy engaging in her own life to know that it was going to end—as soon as the force of hell emptied that backpack.

  Four

  When Caitlin woke up, a cowboy was snorting cocaine off her belly.

  “Do you wake up from being passed out? Is that the correct terminology?” She looked down at the man, a low-budget Matthew McConaughey wearing a decent-looking western shirt with a ridiculous cowboy hat. White powder stood out like luminol in so many different places: on his nose, in his untrimmed mustache, on his cheek. He looked like a kid baking cookies.

  No one else was around, but that wasn’t a surprise. Cowboy certainly didn’t want company. She had no idea who he was or where she was. All she remembered was a burning desire to get away from Britt, from whatever crazy shit seemed destined to go down. She knew she had traded one crazy for another but hell. That was the story of her life.

  Work backwards, she thought. At times like these, start putting the pieces back together. She lay still, trying to take it all in. Her dress was pushed up just under her bra, but nothing appeared to be torn, burned, or bloody. Burgundy curtains were everywhere, brightened by nice track lighting. She was sitting on a comfortable and obviously expensive black leather couch. Okay, now she knew. She was at Oscar’s in the back room. That told her several things—she knew people here, she would have to live this shit down, and nothing too horrible had likely happened. Her watch said one o’clock; she assumed that was p.m., which was bad.

  To make matters worse, Cowboy was trying, rather ham-handedly, to take a selfie of him snorting cocaine off her belly. That was it. Her moment of self-examination was over. She snatched the phone from his hand and threw it against the wall like Roger Fucking Clemens. It made a loud scratching sound as it hit. The screen cracked, but it still glowed, daring her to try it again.

  “What. The. Fuck.” The cowboy said this like a commentator at a sporting event.

  Caitlin smacked him on the side of the face and spilled all of the goodies on the floor while she got up and moved to the wall. The phone still worked. The dumbass didn’t have a password, so she scrolled through, careful not to cut her finger on the newly jagged glass, and deleted the picture he snapped. She flipped through a few other shots to make sure he hadn’t already taken some. She was pretty sure he hadn’t. There were photos of Cirque Du Soleil taken from long distance and ones with a cowboy out to dinner with friends and with a beplumed Vegas showgirl. She gave him a little bit of credit—the photo of her as his buffet table was easily the most interesting picture he had taken in a while.

  She sat on the chair across the room and continued to take stock.
“I know this may be a major blow to your ego, but can you tell me who you are?”

  The man looked taken aback. He ran his hand across his face with his thumb like an eight-year-old with a cold. “Rick, baby. Don’t you remember?”

  “Have you violated me in any way?” She didn’t think he had.

  He looked sad and bewildered—like many of her dates, since her change of heart. “Violated?”

  “Sorry. My bad. I don’t know you. I don’t remember anything. I don’t think we have ever met. You appear to be snorting a Schedule Two substance off of my belly, and I don’t remember shit about the last six hours. My guess is you or someone you know roofied me. I don’t feel violated, but you might have a small penis. So I regrettably must ask again. Have you violated me in any way?”

  “My penis …”

  “Stop. I am utterly uninterested in your penis, unless it has unlawfully been inside any of my holes. You get one more shot or I scream rape.”

  “Shit. No. I ain’t no pervert. I wasn’t gonna start that party until you woke up.”

  She called bullshit on that entire remark and did a roll call of her body parts. Nothing seemed to be bleeding, stinging, sore, or chafed.

  “Okay. How did we meet?” She was glad the guy had snorted the coke. His ego was going to need it.

  “Paolo. He introduced us. You acted like …”

  She put her head in her hands, and his voice trailed off.

  He silently mourned the rail or two of coke spilled all over the floor.