Retribution (15 page)

The camera light went black.

Umarov smiled. Abaidullah would remember the face of Yousef until the last breath passed. So would many others. In fact, with the release of the video, the entire world would know what Yousef al-Qadi looked like.

CHAPTER 24

 

T
he Verrazano Bridge would be the worst of it. Thousands of runners, pushing and shoving, like salmon making their way upstream. Later, as they moved through Brooklyn, the runners would spread out, making one continuous stream that would last for hours.

Despite the crush, Clark felt the adrenaline as she moved outside, crossing the bridge. On the far outside lane she could glimpse north, seeing the boats on the East River. The weather was meant for marathoners. A chill had descended on the northeast that caused her teeth to chatter just before the gun went off. She knew that her body would warm up fast as the sun began to burn off the chill, but she would be miles into the race before heat became a problem.

Clark felt a breeze cutting up the East River. Helicopters covering the New York Marathon zoomed over the bridge. She felt energized; happy, even. Happier than she had felt since Parker had left.

Boston had no effect. The runners were a sea of red, white, and blue. There seemed to be more energy than a nuclear reactor's core. They were not to be deterred.

It surprised Clark that she had the energy even to let her mind wander. Parker would have wanted her to concentrate on the race, not him.

God, he has really trained me for this.
She was holding a solid pace, already starting to pass other runners. Clark could feel lightness in her stride.

She passed the ten-mile mark.

I need to keep the liquids.
William had reminded her that early on the energy would feel limitless. The adrenaline would be pumping. This was her first marathon and the lack of humidity in the north would energize her even more.

Clark cut over to the water station at mile twelve and forced herself to slow and grab a cup. Again, at the end of the tables, she grabbed a Gatorade and a Power Gel. She drank as much of the liquid as she could force down.

I feel so alive!
She laughed at herself.
I sound like a commercial.
The others in the courthouse had made fun of her for weeks now. The general consensus was that she'd collapse after mile ten. She laughed at that thought as the fifteen-mile marker passed by.

I'm over halfway. A little thirsty, but nothing bad.
Clark was even maintaining the same pace. She looked at her watch. 7:45-minute miles.
That can't be right, 7:45?
She was ahead of her targets. And this was mile sixteen.

Clark realized that two of the runners had kept the same pace with her now as they neared the eighteenth mile. They were slightly ahead of her when she came across the Verrazano. It looked like a father and son, a gray-haired man with a runner's body but legs white as a newborn child. He obviously had trained in the far north, where the cold rarely let one run without his sweatpants. The son, in his early twenties, inherited more from his mother than his father. He almost appeared to be Cajun, with a dark complexion. At first they chatted as they ran, but as they crossed the Queensboro Bridge, they became increasingly quiet.

“You still with us?” the son asked Clark as they passed by milepost eighteen.

“Oh, yeah.” She still had the energy to smile. “Are you slowing down?”

“Don't make me laugh, it hurts too much.” He smiled at her, but you could see the beginnings of it being a forced smile.

William had warned her of the gap between milepost twenty and twenty-five. It would be there that she'd be truly tested. Clark started to pull apart from the others as she passed the sign
20
. Now she was passing fewer runners. Runners would occasionally pass her. It was here that she'd have to reach deep. It wouldn't be easy.

Dad would be there. Standing at the side. Smiling with that ridiculous pipe stuck out of the side of his mouth.
Her legs were burning now. Somehow, some way, she was still passing a few other runners. Some looked desperate, soaked in sweat. Now her mouth was dry, like she had swallowed a cup of dust, and her lungs began to burn.

Just don't ever let the thought of giving up get into your brain. Not for one second.
William had said that repeatedly, again and again, when the runs had gotten longer.
Don't stop
.
Don't let the word
stop
exist.

The Madison Avenue Bridge was coming. Now, the legs would feel even the slightest incline. It would burn as she came up the bridge's elevation, but she would be back in Manhattan for the final time. Clark tried to keep her head up as she passed through the bridge, looking at the people cheering, pushing, and prodding her on. They were generous. She could feel their energy.

A man stood next to the bridge abutment on the Manhattan side. She glanced at him, but when she looked up again he was gone.

It was then that the pain began to worsen. Her pace was slowing down now as she crossed into Central Park. The trees were such a change. It reminded her of the runs on their hill trail.

I'm going to make it.
She was getting close.

Marker twenty-five was just ahead, with water and ice, but Clark knew now she was in the danger zone. A stop, even for a split second, for a cup of ice-cold water or Powerade could result in her stopping for good. Like an ocean liner that comes to rest, the force of energy required to move again could be unattainable.

No, Clark Ashby would not stop. Never. One foot would move in front of the other. Now it took too much effort to look up. She stared at the pavement in a continuous trance, watching her feet, in a trance, moving forward one at a time, one after another.

It was then that she heard the noise. A band was playing and thousands of people were yelling. The crowds on both sides were now layers and layers deep. Little children held signs for their mothers or fathers. No, stopping now was not an option.

God, I
am
going to make it!

Clark barely noticed the finish. It was the broad stripe on the ground and the sudden stopping of movement. In a moment, the people that had surrounded her for hours now had come to a stop. A stranger wrapped her in a silver thermal blanket. Another gave her a frozen Gatorade. She inhaled it, took another, and tried to slow it down to sips.

Clark walked toward the trees. The salt on her skin felt like a dry powder. She needed some grass and something to lean up against. She knew that if she lay down, it might be hours before she would ever get up, but who cared? Clark Ashby had finished a marathon! The New York Marathon! She was a marathoner! She would go to parties years from now. The conversation would wander around, and then she would work it in.
Yes, I ran New York
. Her dad would be beaming.

She slid down at the trunk of an oak, feeling the cold, damp grass under her butt. It was a mistake. Her body would become glued to the ground. Her sweats were in a basket somewhere on the other side of the finish line. They would have to wait. Clark wasn't moving for anything.

A man with a Yankees cap pulled down, sunglasses, and a new beard sat down next to her on the grass. Clark pulled back from the stranger who suddenly appeared in her space and then looked up.

“Hey. I'm proud of you.”

Clark couldn't get out any words.

“William?” Tears suddenly flooded her eyes. The exhaustion, the pain, and then this.

“Can you walk?”

She would be stiff, especially by making the mistake of sitting down. The muscles quickly froze up after hours of constant motion.

“I think so. The hotel is just across the park.” Despite the pain, Clark was now riding an endorphin high. She felt euphoric. William had come!

“We'll get you to a hot shower. I'll get your sweats.” He smiled at her, kissed her on the forehead, and then looked into her eyes. “Your arms full, and your hair wet . . . I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light . . .”

“Who's that?”

“T. S. Eliot.”

“You remembered that one just for me, didn't you?”

“Especially the wet hair part.”

She laughed, then winced.

“Oh, my God, I'm too tired to laugh!”

Her running mate had made New York after all.

 

 

If it weren't for the other runners crowded into the lobby of the Carlyle, the two would have been an odd sight. Only on the weekend of the New York Marathon. Even the rich, the famous, and the well known could enter the hotel dressed in Gore-Tex and Nikes.

They were in the elevator alone.

“You'll like the room,” William said.

She nodded, resting her head on his chest. They'd made the reservation months ago. She had stayed at the Carlyle once as a child on a trip with her father. Her memory was of a palace with crystal chandeliers and fresh-cut flowers in crystal vases. She remembered the starched hand towels and the sweet soap.

“Clark, I don't have long.”

The smile left her face. “How did you get here?”

“I had the most expensive seat in transatlantic travel.” The F/A-18 jet fighter flew the Atlantic in half the time of a commercial jet. Scott hadn't liked having to put in the request.

The elevator opened and they walked slowly toward their room.

“I only have a few hours.”

“Okay.”

“You remember Mack Dennson at the sheriff's office?”

“The one who had the baby last year.”

“Yes.” He handed her a piece of paper. “You've got Stidham, but it could take him an hour or more to get to you. Just in case you need someone quicker who can also call in the cavalry, I want you to have Mack's number. Put this in your cell. Put it as the first listing. He knows your number, and if he sees it, he will come. He owes me.”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I just found out that this may go all the way back to Pan Am.”

“Oh, God.”

“It's okay. It's going to be fine. But like I said, we live out in the middle of nowhere. It could even take Dennson half an hour or more to get there. If it comes to that, you get out of there any way you can, you hear?”

She nodded.

“Good.” He opened the door to the room. “These men don't play.”

CHAPTER 25

 

T
he side streets of Danish Abad were packed with barefoot children chasing each other, hardly noticing the men who walked down the alley near the canal. A stream of water no wider than the length of a man's arm, the canal drizzled through a ditch cut between the mud-brick houses stacked tightly together one upon the other.

The orphans who lived in Danish Abad knew that the canal was a necessity. A stranger would not be able to bear the overwhelming stench from it, and many of the locals would hold their hands over their nose to force themselves to breathe through their mouths as they passed by. Everything that the poor had no use for was dumped into the canal. Carcasses of dead dogs, punctured plastic jugs, and torn trash bags lined the banks. Rats were the only creatures that seemed to flourish there. They poured out of the pipes that constantly dripped green liquid into the countless tiny tributaries that fed the canal.

Most times of year the canal seemed to be an unfortunate trash dump, but it had a purpose. In the desert, once in several years, a colossal storm would come, and with it days and days of rains. The monsoon would turn the creek and canal into a raging wall of water. In a matter of minutes, the stream would turn into a torrent that poured over the banks and ripped through the mud-brick walls, sucking the orphans of the city into it. Without the canal, everyone and everything in Danish Abad would be pulled into the churning brown water.

The men in the alley had been here many times before, and they were being led through the maze of alleyways by a friend who had lived his entire life in the place. He had never left Danish Abad of his own choosing, and he'd returned a hero after his sole departure.

The Pakistani Taliban controlled Danish Abad. It was described as being lawless, but it was far from lawless. The Taliban set the rules. Those who disobeyed the Taliban's laws suffered greatly. Only the week before, two men disobeyed the directions of Zulfiqar Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Danish Abad. Their real crime was that they hid some of their profits from burglaries on the other, more affluent side of the city. But they were accused of being spies for the West. The charge was convenient and their sentence simple. Their heads were cut from their bodies with dull knives as their screams turned to gasps and pleas, then gurgles, and finally silence. They didn't die bravely. They died like the desperate men they were.

Yousef knew that the man who led them through the alley could be trusted. More important, he knew the village could be trusted. Especially since the release of the video. Now, even the urchin children and simple thieves, from orphans who lived in the culvert to backstreet pickpockets, knew to say nothing to outsiders about Yousef 's arrival in Danish Abad. The law of the Taliban in Danish Abad now mandated that Yousef al-Qadi be protected at all costs.

Yousef and Umarov took the stairs on the side of the house to the second floor. The meeting would be short. They would never meet in the same place twice. The room had no furniture to speak of. Several of the men had laptop computers. They had their prayer rugs, they would remove their sandals, and then when the call came, they would turn to Mecca and pray. Then they would sit with their legs folded and plot and plan. It was an odd clash of old and new, prayer rugs inherited from grandfathers and wireless notebooks. It was in a room like this that the World Trade Center attack had been planned.

On the wall was a map. A black marker boxed in several provinces of eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and some of the western provinces of Pakistan. A thin thread of tribal cooperation and shared Muslim beliefs formed this state. It looked like an early colonial map of the United States. On the side of the map, a chart listed the governors and structure of each of the subterranean governments that ruled within this federation.

Yousef now stood in front of the map. “The true and perfect state. From this we will build a Muslim world.”

Yousef was not the only one in the room who believed, but he was, among the men, uniquely on edge. They had driven through the night and he had not slept now in more than twenty-four hours. The trip to Riyadh only added to the exhaustion. At least Danish Abad gave him refuge from the constant threat of Predator strikes when they were near the border.

“Samullah?” Yousef was speaking to Samullah Ullah, the man who had guided them through the spiderweb of alleyways. He was an officer of the Taliban. He was also a lieutenant of Al Jihad. If asked, he would say he worked with the IIRO, a charity worker helping the orphans of Danish Abad, keeping them away from the canal during the rains.

Samullah could be trusted for another important reason. He had a particular hatred for the Americans after spending five years in Guantanamo. Eventually they had released him, convinced that he only wanted to return to his simple farmer's life. Again, they were wrong. He had kept his Koran from Guantanamo. The children of Danish Abad revered it, touching it like the holy relic they believed it to be.

Samullah was an asset for yet another reason. Guantanamo gave him a particular understanding of how the Americans thought.

“Tell us what you see.”

Samullah nodded. “The word is traveling. The tribes of the north have heard of your war with Abaidullah. They have heard of Spin Boldak.”

“Allah be praised.”

Yousef turned to Umarov. “It's time we brought the battle back to American soil.” He rubbed his hands over his face in a prayer like motion. “The limp daughter of Danish Abad will change the world.”

Umarov knew when to say nothing.

“Samullah, your sister will serve us well.” Yousef paused. “This is good.” He smiled, suddenly reversing his thinking. “This is very good.”

Umarov gave him a quizzical look, but still didn't say anything.

“Attacks on Islam. Dissent in the Saudi Council as anger grows against America. True believers everywhere are looking for someone to carry the battle flag. And, lo and behold, a London journalist is coming to meet with us in only a few days.”

Samullah and Umarov relaxed visibly, suddenly grasping what Yousef envisioned.

“We will have opportunity out of this chaos.” Yousef smiled at his map. “It has been a thousand years since Mahmud of Ghazni built his Islamic empire on these grounds.” Yousef took a black marker and outlined a new country that extended from the south of Iran, across Afghanistan, and into western Pakistan. “His empire was on these same lands. It was of the true faith.”

The other men in the room stirred, clearly feeling the elation, seeing the possibility grow before their eyes.

“As Mahmud the Great did a thousand years ago, on the foundation of the Koran, we will commence a battle cry that will cause all the tribes to unite. A holy war with a purpose!”

The men murmured in agreement, smiles widening all around the room.

“But first we must spread the word.”

Loud cheers now, from all in attendance.

“A holy fighter will rise, one who'll rid your lands of the unbelievers. A
mujahid
to rid the land of unbelievers and expand the faith.”

The men repeated his words, and then cried them again in a chant.

And Sadik Zabara will be the one to introduce the world to the new
mujahid
.