Kill Them Wherever You Find Them (21 page)

Once she realized that she was in a seated
position, unable to move her hands and feet, she snapped to full
consciousness; struggling to make sense of her situation. Her torso
was also strapped to the chair back in a way that she could barely
breathe prohibiting her from yelling out in anger and
frustration.

The woman speaking on the mobile phone had
yet to see her awaken, as her back was to Mona while she continued
the conversation. Survival instinct itself closed Mona's eyes, not
tightly but delicately – as if she were sleeping. She calmed her
breathing and relaxed her limbs as best she could, easing her body
to as close a state of peaceful rest as she was able to muster.
Mona knew it best that the unknown woman think she was still
unconscious.

As the woman continued to speak, the full
effect of the drug-induced haze finally lifting, Mona realized this
was her sister speaking in the lowered voice that rendered a
conspiratorial effect. She was here to rescue Mona! She must have
been speaking with the police on the phone. It had to be; she would
be okay.

Her sister Balour would have been aware of
her return as they were both working for the same organization. As
immersed and committed as she was to their righteous cause, her
sister was even more so. As so many times during their childhood at
play, Balour had searched and found her.

"Balour!"

"Mona, you are finally awake!"

"Help me get out of these constraints. We
have to get back to the office, find Ghasem, let him know I'm okay,
that you found me." Mona found it difficult to speak normally with
her inability to take in a full breath.

"Mona, Ghasem knows where you are. In fact,
he is on his way here already."

"Then find a knife for these ropes. I don't
want Ghasem to see me in these clothes. How did you find me? How .
. ."

"Mona, my dear sister. You do not understand.
Ghasem ordered you changed back into your immodest clothing and
bound. As your sister, I asked for the privilege of carrying out
his orders. Don't you see it? Can't you understand? Yours will be
the high honor of being one of the first martyrs to the cause. In a
few days you will be in Paradise!"

"Balour, what are you talking about? A
martyr? I'm here to be debriefed, in a few days I will be back
among the Zionist entity, not Paradise."

"I will let Ghasem explain everything when he
arrives."

"What do you mean, everything? Why are you
using the word martyr?" Panic fused with her voice as fear tainted
her beautiful face.

"Mona, you didn't really think you'd be
allowed to carry out your mission among the Jew Monkeys
indefinitely, did you?" Balour asked this with the sad smile of an
older sister marveling at the naïveté of her younger sister.

It took more than a year for Balour to be
absolutely certain that Mona could be introduced to the philosophy
and work of this cause. It astounded her that she couldn't see
clearly, could not understand her more complete and glorious role
in bringing down the two Shaitans and the Jewish population centers
elsewhere across the globe.

"Balour, yes I understand. I need to get back
to No'am and Avi." Mona pleaded. "There is still a great deal of
information they can provide us."

"Oh Mona, you really are still an innocent
little child. They will provide information to be sure. They will,
in fact, throw vast quantities of vital information our way without
the slightest concern for self-preservation or national security -
when they become witnesses to your torture!"

"What are you talking about!" Mona felt
herself creeping toward hysteria as she considered her sister's
willing complicity in this.

"Oh, you don't know, do you? The Bahá’í woman
we used as your mother died from infection after her hand was cut
off." Balour continued to explain, "Obviously we couldn't use a
different woman in hopes that Avi and No'am would be duped into
continuing to give us information. Even with the appearance of a
similar-looking woman, we simply could not take the risk of either
of man recognizing the deception. With your
father
in hiding
outside of the country – he, by the way, was beheaded for not
recanting his belief in that apostate religion, and your
mother
now dead, we had just the one course of action left
to us."

"I see. Provide Avi and No'am a recording, or
live feed, of my
capture
and staged torture to elicit more
information from them." Mona's lowered, hopeful voice saddened
Balour. Her sister wasn't as strong, perhaps not as committed, as
she thought.

"No, dear. The torture will have to be real
to be believable. I wish there had been a different way. I really
do."

"Balour, there
must
be a different
way." Mona accelerated her rate and intensity of pure panic as the
full weight of the situation continued with dizzying speed. "I'm
your sister!"

"Yes, and I have loved and looked after you
all of your life. Don't you see? This is the final act of love I
can offer you, helping you give the ultimate sacrifice for our
glorious purposes."

"I will
not
allow this. I'll find a
way to warn Avi. I'll
not
say whatever it is you expect of
me." Anger crept into the feeling of panic. When Mona was angry one
couldn't reason with her at all.

"We know that, my dear one. For this reason
it has been decided by Ghasem that the very first incident of
torture that Avi and No'am will witness will be your tongue ripped
from your mouth. They will be told that it is because of the
Zionist lies your tongue has spread to subvert our society. It will
serve a dual purpose. No'am and Avi will realize the gravity and
reality of the situation, and you will be unable to say anything to
them."

"Ghasem can't possibly have come up with
this. It's
insane
! My value to the cause will only be fully
realized if I am to continue as I have been."

"No little one. I can assure you that Ghasem
himself, along with Abd, reached this decision. Understand that we
all are grateful for everything you have done. We know it has been
difficult for you. Just think about it, soon it will be over and
you will rest in glory. In Paradise you will be married to another
martyr. Your story, after our victory, will be told to children
throughout the world. Little girls will have posters of you on
their walls! Little boys will look to you as an example of what
women should be!"

"Balour, how can you talk like
this
?
You are my
sister
!"

The door opened, Ghasem walking in with
another man she didn't recognize. The stranger had a menacing look
about him. He ignored both women, walked to a table and unburdened
medical instruments from a satchel. Behind him two more men
entered, also unknown to Mona.

With deft efficiency the latter two put
together technical instruments. Recognizing the camera that would
be used for an Internet feed Mona's thoughts turned to dark,
horrible corridors in the recesses of her fevered mind. Thoughts
she knew were just a beginning of the exquisite pain and terror
that awaited her and the utter hopelessness of her situation.

Table of Contents

15. Heisenberg's Uncertainty

"The uncertainty of energy,
times the uncertainty of time, is greater than or equal to a
specific constant."
– Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle

Kibbutz David Ben-Yisrael, State
of Israel

After a quick dinner
in the common dining
area No'am went for a walk in the gardens of the kibbutz he had
called home. Not that this was ever a serious goal.

Admiring the fruits and vegetables growing in
the gardens, as well as the beautiful beds of flowers interspersed
therein to attract bees and adorn the living spaces of the
community, he started toward the area where fish were "farmed" for
meals at the kibbutz, as well as for sale. The old-timers mostly
did the latter as a holdover from a bygone era. The fact of the
matter was his kibbutz, like nearly all others, made the successful
business shift from an agricultural to a technological income quite
a while back.

On his way to the fish farm he received a
text from an unknown sender on the mobile phone used exclusively
for communication with Mona. There were but three words to the text
and an attached graphic file. The text simply read, "Picture of
Mona."

No'am's heart leaped with joy. His thumb
moved to the file icon and touched it to open. Looking, he was sure
he didn't see it correctly, given the light from the sun on the
screen. Holding his other hand up to shade the screen he looked
more closely. The photograph on his screen was small, given the
dimensions of the screen itself. Lack of visible details
notwithstanding, he clearly saw Mona bound to a chair, a gag in her
mouth. He could not be certain but it looked as if her eyes were
red and puffy.

As he was contemplating the terrible
implications of this photo the mobile phone alerted him to the fact
that a second text message had just been delivered. He opened it
with a shaking hand. It, too, was from an unknown sender. "View
Video File at this precisely 13:00 hours, local time."

No'am rushed back to his room, ignoring
greetings from several people he passed. In fact, he barely
registered seeing or hearing them. His ears sounded like the
pounding of ocean waves on a rock-strewn beach. It felt as if his
heart was beating so furiously that it must break past his ribs and
rip through the flesh of his chest.

His hand trembled to the point that he was
just able to get the key to insert properly into the locked door to
his living quarters. The third attempt proved successful. Flinging
the door open and then slamming it behind him, he leaned against
the door to regain his footing.

Making his way to his bed No'am was shaking,
sick to his stomach.

Despite this fear-induced nausea, his
scientific training took over. The person or persons who sent the
texts had this phone number, a number that was known
only
to
him and Mona. Yet they didn't use her mobile phone to make the
contact. Was this important?

Mona told him that she was relocating,
something she did a couple of times a year. During such times she
would be out-of-touch. Where was she being held, in Israel or
elsewhere? What about her parents, were they captive too?

While each was an important question in and
of itself, there was no way to discover the answer from his room.
With dread he opened the link. No'am used the kibbutz WiFi to
connect to the Internet for personal business. Nothing from his
work was to be found anywhere in his private life. Mona was only
contacted via the mobile phone. He realized that such a small
screen might conceal vital clues as to her location and
condition.

1:00 pm, 13:00 hours military time, was just
minutes away. No'am moved quickly to tether his laptop to his
mobile phone, turning the phone he used with Mona into a
hot
spot
. He couldn't risk utilizing the public access kibbutz
WiFi.

Computer finally on and connected to the
Internet, he returned to the text with the link to conduct a
property search for the origin of the texts and link. Identifying
the IP Address, he entered it into his computer. No sooner did the
link connect than a screen came up showing a numeric countdown.
Just over one minute left. It was impossible to find anything that
would reveal the source and location in that short of time. Other
than the screen and a freeze frame picture of her, the same photo
sent to his phone, the screen was blank.

In the time that was left he thought about
Mona and the situation now facing each of them. A Physicist, he
could not help but frame any situation into a formula to try and
make sense of it. He thought of the holy grail of Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle. Though it was meant to apply to the micro
world it seemed to fit oddly well in this macro world too.

Δx Δp ≥ h-bar/2

In this situation, though, it wasn't the
observation of mathematical inequalities in the Quantum Mechanics
world but rather the observation and an attempt to understand a
series of unknowns in his world. The application was wild at best,
more pathetic than anything.

No'am hoped that whatever would shortly
appear on his computer screen, he would be able to fill in some of
the unknowns so that he could reach an answer to the math constant,
the answer to this frightening equation of which Mona was the key
component.

No laws of Physics: Particle, Theoretical, or
otherwise, would have even the slightest application here. He was
on his own with no life experience tools he could use, nobody in
whom he could confide, to extricate her from . . .

Audio and video feeds pierced his thoughts.
Mona was gagged, crying. A man appeared in the feed instructing
No'am to send him a single-worded text to Mona's phone. He sent:
where

He could hear her mobile phone beep in the
background of the video. Seconds later he thought he heard a second
incoming message alert. Then he heard, and saw, the man in the
video plucking a word or words out on the mobile. Shortly
thereafter, he received a text from her phone that read, "It
doesn't matter, just watch." After receiving the response, he saw
the man type a second text message, but it wasn't transmitted to
him. Deducing that the live feed was being transmitted to somebody
else, possibly another unwilling witness, No'am instantly pushed
this thought from his mind.

"I've got to stay
focused
." If he let
his mind wander with conjecture No'am knew he might miss something
important, some clue that might help Mona.

The man in the video positioned himself
between the camera and Mona. Looking straight into the camera, he
felt as if the menace could actually
see
him.