Soldier of God (48 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Soldier of God
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Kathleen McGarvey stood at the window in her husband’s hospital room and stared out toward the city that was coming alive with the dawn. The entire nation had breathed a sigh of relief, and she could feel it.
There had been a steady stream of visitors ever since Mac had been moved down from the ICU. He was a national hero once again, and half of Washington wanted to shake his hand. But Kathleen had managed to
hold most of them off. He had lost a lot of blood, especially from the knife wound in his shoulder. There would be no lasting damage other than a new set of scars, but he was still weak, and the shrapnel wounds to the bottoms of his feet were causing him a lot of pain.
Kathleen had been treated and immediately released, and since then she had not left her husband’s side. Except for a chipped tooth, a couple of broken ribs, and a lot of bruising, she’d not been seriously hurt. No damage had been done to the baby; as the Saudi doctor had told her, the bleeding had not been a result of her beating, but she’d been very frightened.
She felt her husband’s eyes on her, and she turned around.
“Good morning,” he said. He’d fallen asleep after Dick Adkins had left last night with the news that the president wanted him back, and he had not awakened the entire night.
“Good morning, darling,” Kathleen said, kissing his cheek. “How are you feeling?”
McGarvey took a moment or two to answer. “Better,” he said. “Hungry.”
For the first time since the incident he seemed to be his old self. Alert, not so groggy and disconnected around the edges. “Breakfast is in an hour, unless you want something now. I can get it from the cafeteria—”
He shook his head. “Don’t leave. I can wait.” He seemed to study her face as if he hadn’t seen it for a very long while. “How about you?”
“Sore as hell, but the baby’s going to be okay.” He had asked the same question a dozen times since he’d come out of surgery, and each time he was visibly relieved; the muscles around his mouth and eyes relaxing, he smiled. She wasn’t tired of giving him the same answer.
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “I was worried about you.”
Katy squeezed his hand, and a surge of emotions, from love to thankfulness for his presence in her life, filled her heart. She didn’t want to go through this sort of thing ever again. She didn’t know how she could take it. “Do you remember Dick being here last night?”
McGarvey nodded. “Do you remember what I told him?”
“Did you mean it?”
“Hundred percent, Katy,” he said. “I’m quit and I’m staying quit.”
She searched his eyes for any hint that he might be regretting his decision, that he might just be telling her what she wanted to hear. But she
saw only warmth, and sincerity and love. Again her emotions surged, and her eyes wanted to fill, but she fought back the tears. “That’s fine, darling,” she said. “Really fine.”
The door was open and the hospital was coming up to speed for the morning, nurses and orderlies passing in the hall. Katy hated hospitals, and the sooner she could get her husband home, the sooner they could start putting their lives back together. It would be a month or two before he could walk without crutches, and by then he would be irascible because of the enforced inaction, but she found that she was actually looking forward to his mood swings.
“When do I get out of here?” he asked.
“They said this afternoon, if you’re up to it. But you’re going to be on crutches.”
“I figured as much,” he said. “After breakfast I want to see Otto, and at some point my secretary, and probably Dick again.” He smiled. “I don’t think I had it completely together last night.”
Something clutched at Kathleen’s stomach, but it wasn’t the baby. “Do you remember the president’s speech? The Pakistanis think they’ve got bin Laden cornered, and they’ve asked for our help this time.”
“That’s why I want to see Dick and Otto. I’ve got a few ideas.” He smiled at his wife. “Don’t worry, Katy; I’m not going back. But I’ll have to be debriefed, and that’s probably going to take a couple of weeks, and there are a few loose ends I’ll have to take care of. Including apologizing to the president.”
His words were music to Kathleen’s ears. “Don Shaw called; he’s doing fine now. He and Karen want to have us to their house for dinner as soon as you’re up for it. And of course the media have been camped outside from day one, wanting to interview you as soon as the doctors gave the okay. But I told them no, for now.”
“I’m not talking to anybody.”
Kathleen smiled. “You’re not going to get away with it for long,” she said. He started to protest, but she held him off. “You’re a national hero, practically a saint. Not only did you rescue Shaw and the rest of us from the
Spirit
, you stopped the suicide bombers. No children were hurt. There isn’t a parent in the country who isn’t grateful as hell to you, and all of
them want to thank you personally. Otto said he’d gotten word that there was going to be a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on what you did. They wanted something to give the Saudis, but they wouldn’t dare now. Besides, Haynes is behind you all the way.”
McGarvey looked past his wife to the window. “We were wrong about Salman.”
“That’s the point; you weren’t
completely
wrong,” Kathleen said. “He wasn’t a terrorist, but he and his wife were funding Khalil. Otto figures they’d probably supported others too, and maybe even fed money directly to bin Laden.”
McGarvey’s mood deepened.
Kathleen knew what he was thinking, but it no longer bothered her. “Liese was badly wounded, but she’ll come out of it okay.” It’s what Otto had told them last night, and Mac was still beating himself up over what could have been a tragedy.
“I screwed up,” he said, softly.
“We all do from time to time. But you did the best you could with the information you had.” She wanted to make it better for him, even though she knew he would have to work out his guilt for himself. “In a few days you can give her a call, see how she’s doing. I think it’ll mean a lot to her.”
He looked away again. “She’s in love with me, and I used her.”
“Yes, you did. And now you have to live with it,” Kathleen said. “No one was killed, and she will recover. And think about what you and she together prevented. You stopped Khalil.”
“A smart man,” McGarvey said.
“But not as smart as you.”
McGarvey laughed. “You’re prejudiced.”
“Yes, I am,” Kathleen said, and she finally knew for a fact that everything was going to turn out fine. Just fine.
She kissed her husband, this time deeply and with a hundred years of love and passion and friendship, because he was finally coming home.
Liese awoke to bright sunlight streaming through her hospital window, a terrific pain pounding at the back of her heavily bandaged head. Raising a hand to her face, she blocked the sun so she could see what kind of day it was. Only a few puffy summer clouds, but they were beautiful to her.
She had survived. By dumb, blind luck, according to Claude LeFevre, who’d come up to see her yesterday afternoon. Had the bullet entered her head one centimeter to the left, she would have been killed.
“We were picking up everything, but Gertner wouldn’t let us go for the rescue,” LeFevre said. “Not until we heard the gunshot. Then we had to get you out.”
Liese tried to smile, but the effort sent a sharp pain through the middle of her head.
“Take it easy, Sarge. The docs say you’ll come out of this with nothing more than a scar in your thick skull.”
“And a lot of years behind bars to think about what I did,” she’d told him. “I’m sure Gertner is beside himself with joy that he’s finally able to get rid of me.”
LeFevre shook his head. “You’re wrong about that. Your Kirk McGarvey killed Khalil, stopped the al-Quaida attacks, and we got the proof that Salman
and
his wife were part of the money behind bin Laden. Wouldn’t have been possible without your help. You’re Gertner’s star pupil.”
She didn’t want to believe it. “What about Salman?”
“Khalil killed him.”
“How about the princess and the children?”
“They’ve been deported,” LeFevre said. “But why don’t you ask me about McGarvey?”
She hardened her heart for the bad news.
“He’s okay, Sarge. He was hurt, but he’ll pull through.”
Liese closed her eyes for a moment, relief washing through her body.
It was finally over. No matter what happened now, this was behind them. Time to go forward.
LeFevre touched her arm. “Hey, are you okay?”
She opened her eyes and managed a small smile. “Do me a favor, would you, Claude? Don’t call me Sarge. I don’t like it. My name is Liese.”
“Anything you’d like, Liese.”
Time to go forward, she told herself again. But she was tired. “Would you stay a little longer? I don’t want to be alone.”
“I will,” LeFevre said, a warm, honest smile creasing the corners of his eyes.
It was the last thing she had remembered from the previous night: his eyes. Someone came into the room, and she turned slowly to see who it was.
LeFevre, all smiles, carrying a vase of pretty flowers, came around the bed to her. “You had a good night’s sleep?” he asked. He set the flowers on the broad windowsill. “I wanted to get these up here before you woke up, so they’d be the first thing you saw.” He looked closely at her. “They’re okay?”
“Just fine, Claude,” Liese said, and for a moment, looking at LeFevre and the flowers he’d brought her, she couldn’t bring a clear image of McGarvey’s face to mind.
She didn’t know what that meant, because she had dreamed about Kirk every night for the past ten years, but she was willing to accept it.
“My dearest mother,
” the letter began, as so many had begun before it. “
The day
of joy will soon arrive. Send out presents
and
sweets. Prepare my father and my brother for my
wedding to come. My black-eyed wife waits for me in Paradise. Rejoice, 0 my mother, for we will meet
in
heaven
.”
The imam, Mustafa Amir Qasim, who was taking the boy’s dictation, looked up and offered a comforting smile. “You may continue. You’re doing fine, Muhamed.”
The boy was shivering. At nineteen he knew very little of the real world, although he had been raised in the refugee camps of Lebanon, in what was called Hell’s Bootcamp, and he had seen at least something of the United States, including the stab in the heart of capitalism where the World Trade Center had once proudly stood. But he was frightened to be away from a place he knew; horrible, a hell on earth, but home nevertheless. He nodded uncertainly.
He was a slightly built boy, narrow-hipped, sloping small shoulders, an almost feminine face except for the intensely dark scraggly beard and deep-set coal black eyes. His name was Muhamed Ali Abdallah, and when he volunteered he had left behind his parents, one brother, two sisters, and many uncles and aunts and cousins, though many more were dead or in the hospital because of the attacks on their homes from the Zionist pigs. He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.
At four he was already going with his brother and some other boys in a neigborhood in Nablus to throw stones at the armed Israeli soldiers. When his mother found out, she had, for the first time in her life, stood up to her husband. “Rashid you may have. But Muhamed is mine. He will not die on the streets to prove he is a man.”
His father had dismissed her with an indifferent wave of his hand. “For now,” he said.
Muhamed had not heard this conversation, of course, but he had been told over and over again that his duties, for the moment, lay with the household, with his mother and sisters, and not outside the camps. Read books, he was told. Write dissertations; learn the mysteries of mathematics so that you can go to college and bring back knowledge—and money.
Money was the key to their salvation from the grinding poverty that would kill them all eventually, though such an heretical thought could not be spoken aloud.
He had learned to read and write. He had learned mathematics and physics and even engineering. But since the righteous attacks in New York and Washington, the doors to his education were closed. He was from the West Bank, he was a resident of Lebanon, his family were supporters of the PLO, his father and two uncles were wanted men in the U.S., and there never could be a legitimate visa for Muhamed to any Western country—where the good universities were located.
This now was his only way out, the only way in which he could help his family. To repay their years of love and devotion. This was his duty.
The imam was dressed, as he should be for this occasion, in a black galabiyya and white head covering, but Muhamed wore jeans, an L.A. Lakers sweatshirt, and Nikes. All-American, or at least a Muslim who appeared to have embraced the American ideal. The room they were in was small, without a window, and with only a small, cast-iron light fixture hanging from a plain plastered ceiling. They sat on a carpet facing each other, no furniture or other fixtures in the starkly familiar space.
Muhamed felt a measure of comfort being here, composing his last will and testament, his death letter to his family. And another, deeper part of him even felt a serenity that he would soon die and be transported to Paradise.
The death letter of the martyr Hamdi Yasin, who’d given his life to kill an Israeli officer years ago, had been read to him in Palestine before he left: …
It is not correct when some people say that we commit suicide because we do not value
life. We
love life, but life
in
dignity
.
Muhamed managed to smile, and the imam nodded his understanding that a sense of holiness had finally descended into the boy.
“‘Our flowers are the sword and the dagger,’” Imam Qasim quoted from Ali ibn Abi Talib as he calculated the profits from his nine 7-Eleven stores that would go to pay the fifty thousand dollars to this boy’s family and the families of the other three young men here this afternoon also dictating their death letters to other imams. Financial help would come as usual, but care had to be taken with the money trail.
The boy began to speak again, stealing and changing the lines of his death letter from Yasin because he could not remember them exactly.
“My dearest mother, I cannot allow God’s houses to be violated without defending them. I pray to Almighty God that my mission may result in the death of one hundredfold of God’s enemies.
”
Dictating the letter to an imam, rather than writing it himself, made sure that the words would be closer to Allah’s liking.
The boy straightened up a little. “
I profess that there is no God but the One God, and that Muhammed is the messenger of God.
”
Imam Qasim finished the flowing script, then passed the paper and pen to the boy for his signature. “It is a fine letter,” he said. “You are a soldier of God now.”
Muhamed signed his name. “You will make sure that my mother gets this?”
“Yes. As well as the money.”
“May Allah bless you,” Muhamed said, rising to go.
“And you, my son,” Iman Qasim responded. He handed the boy a sealed manila envelope with new identification papers, Greyhound bus tickets, some cash, and instructions.
Muhamed hesitated just a moment, wanting to say something else, but not sure what it was; then he left the room. Down a long corridor he passed a series of arches that opened to the main room of the mosque where a few old men were praying, their heads bowed to the floor. Such a scene had been perfectly familiar to him all of his life, but this afternoon he seemed to see this place as if for the first time, through the eyes of a newborn.
Outside, the noise, swirling colors, movement, and the sheer volume of the traffic on the downtown streets were almost staggering. America was so vast. So alive. So busy. Surreal.
Muhamed walked four blocks to the memorial on the site of what had been the Murrah Federal Office Building, the warmth of an early September
Oklahoma afternoon reminding him of Palestine. Unbeknownst to him, the three other martyrs to the cause would make the same pilgrimage from the mosque to this place this afternoon before continuing on to their targets. They were Ibrahim Hablatt, also from the camps of the West Bank; Abbas Adri from the deserts of Algeria; and Iskander Zia from Peshawar near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
Insha’allah.

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