The Screaming Eagles (35 page)

Jalal got up, poured syrup onto Sadegh’s naked crotch then dribbled it toward rows of boxes. Sadegh turned his head and saw Jalal pull off a blanket from what he thought were boxes. To his horror, his heart hammering against his ribs, he saw that they were cages.

Jalal began to bring them closer to Sadegh.

In the light of the lamps he could see huge rats in the cages alongside him. Angrily they gnawed at the wire mesh sides of the cages, their sharp white teeth banged against the wire continuously as they tried to break through. Sadegh saw Jalal hold onto a rope at the back of the cage nearest him. He could see that each rat had one of its back feet tied, the ropes threaded through the back partition of their cage. When Jalal opened the door the rat tried to jump forward but Jalal held the rope tied to the rat’s back leg. It could not move forward. Hissing, it squirmed from side to side trying to get free, its teeth snapping and grinding obscenely.

“On behalf of my father and all the others you have murdered, these eight rats will attack you one at a time every half hour. Remember your sins well, Sadegh. You are about to begin your journey into the hell you never imagined could exist.”

Crazed with fear, Sadegh saw him let go of the rope.

Eyes shut tight, not wanting to see the rat as it ran toward him, Sadegh tasted blood and bile in his mouth as he screamed into the masking tape, howling his terror over and over again as the rat tore at his flesh.

Leon was downstairs sitting on the floor playing with his grandchildren. “Okay everyone, which story should I read before bath time?”

Obediently the three children stopped playing and came to sit close to him, the youngest Juliette as always, put her hand into his. Gently, he closed his hand, feeling the smallness and warmth as they held hands.

While Leon was reading the story, he failed to notice a Chicago Sanitation van driving into the Stockyards. To a passerby or others who lived in the vicinity, this was a normal occurrence. The van’s headlights cut easily through the darkness as the driver drove between the buildings. It didn’t take the driver long before he found the door he was looking for. Turning off the lights two men in Sanitation uniforms got out of the van. One of them walked to the door, which was partly open, and jerked hard to open it all the way. He joined the other man at the back of the van who already had unlocked and pulled the van doors open.

Both wore gloves and gas masks as they lifted the bulky plastic sheets out of the van. Making sure of their grip on the slippery plastic, they carried the bundle awkwardly through the door of the building. Both wore hard hats with lamps. They paused just inside the building. Grasping the plastic with one hand, leaning the bundle on his bent knee for support, the man pulled the door closed, leaving an inch or so open. Only then did he turn on his lamp, reaching across he activated the other man’s lamp.

Breathing heavily because of the weight in the plastic bundle, they walked slowly, picking their way carefully through the debris as they made their way toward the far wall. The room was enormous, the glow of rats’ eyes were all around them as they climbed over rocks and piles of rubbish. When the man in front thought they’d gone far enough, they stopped and put the plastic bundle on the floor near the wall. Standing together, they pulled sharply upward. The plastic unrolled and what was left of the body of Sadegh fell to the floor, groaning. Sadegh was nearly dead, his heart barely beating. He’d been tortured for five days and the rats in this building would finally kill him. They’d eat all of the flesh on his body within minutes. For days they’d continue to gnaw on the bones of his skeleton trying to suck out any juices. If his bones were ever found, it would be assumed that a homeless person had died there.

They threw the plastic, which held pools of his blood next to the body knowing that the rats would attack and tear the plastic into shreds to get at the blood.

Turning, the two men began retracing their steps toward the door. The rats, crazed by the smell of fresh meat, rushed toward Sadegh once the lights were no longer on him. Michael continued walking towards the door, but Jalal looked back. He focused his flashlight on the wall where they’d left Sadegh. Ignoring their natural instincts to run away from light, the rats continued eating. Jalal saw their feeding frenzy as dozens of rats clustered like oversized flies on Sadegh’s body. Jumping on top of each other, the rats fought to tear meat off the carcass.

*

Michael was quiet and reflective as he drove home from O’Hare International Airport. The man they’d killed answered to many names. Jalal called his father’s executioner Sadegh, but in his mind Michael saw a man named Leffeld who lived an ordinary life in Highland Park.

He put on a classical C.D. to try to calm down, but his mind was racing into savage, scary places that he wanted to forget. He was shaken badly, not by the way he’d killed Leffeld but by the people Leffeld had named. People who wanted so badly to destroy America, not with a revolutionary’s wish for utopia, but with a ferocious desire to be the new masters of their type of order. Leffeld had proved to have no superhuman threshold for pain and by the second day Jalal had begun to get answers he was looking for. The third day Michael started asking questions he’d prepared in advance. Each answer led him in directions he never dreamed of. Like a virus that continued to divide and multiply as it invaded and took control of all functions of the body, the Milton Leffelds of the world had penetrated every possible avenue of business and the professions, not only in America but in countless other countries. The companies, politicians and banks were some of the best known in America.

What Leffeld and his co-conspirators were doing was terrorism at its worst. The cycle of rage, control, and domination was always the same. Leffeld had moved up a notch by choosing people whose only motivation was greed, not power, for most were already powerful people. Leffeld had chosen each person with great finesse, playing on their rage or their need to control.

All were prepared for the destruction of America and that was their thirst for domination. Leffeld promised them that they could run the new order with total and absolute power, modeled on regimes similar to those of the sheiks in the Middle East or dictators in South America, Asia or Africa. Most leaders could blatantly bleed their countries dry, execute their opponents, make their own laws. That sort of power in its purest form was the bait that Leffeld had dangled. In his briefcase Michael had over forty pages of names. First they had to be exposed publicly, then arrested. He’d been in touch with Perry each day to acknowledge everything was proceeding as planned. The call never lasted more than thirty seconds so no trace could be put on the location of the phone.

Michael also had the names of the remaining six Eagles. They were in safe houses with false passports, each in a different city. He knew their code words, code names, when, where and what their missions would be. They would have to be eliminated. Like Leffeld, they would have to disappear with no trace. Each had a specific mission to cripple the United States. If they collectively succeeded, they would pose as great a danger as Leffeld would have. This had been Leffeld’s backup plan and without a doubt it was brilliantly thought out. They had the ability to complete the economic destruction of America.

They would have to be killed in ways that would seem accidental. Totally preoccupied, he was driving the car by instinct and didn’t see the cars in front or those that passed him. He turned off at Addison, driving automatically. Red lights and brake lights reminded him to stop, otherwise the car just kept moving.

Arriving in the underground garage of his condominium was mildly surprising to him. He had no recollection of the drive from the airport.

Sitting in the parked car, he turned off the engine and made his final plans for the morning. Michael decided to contact Perry and to include Hanan in their meeting in case they needed Mossad’s help. He would meet with both of them and hear what they had to say about the remaining six Eagles.

His private place, the farm he loved, would be put up for sale as soon as possible. The ghost of Leffeld and the echo of his screams would forever live in the cave next to the riverbed. His farm was now a place of torture and death, not the place of healing it had been for him in the past.

He replayed Leffeld’s last hours. Mentally he went through his checklist, his mind searching once again to make sure that he had not forgotten something crucial.

Jalal had been monitoring Leffeld’s pulse, heartbeats and blood pressure. They only allowed the rats to attack non-vital parts of his body and face. His right arm was out of their reach so that a saline drip could be connected to the veins.

On the fifth day Jalal had warned him that death was near.

They’d caged the rats then cut off the ropes that bound their back legs. Untying Leffeld, they’d wrapped the plastic around him, leaving enough space open so that he could breath, and carried him to the van. Earlier they had cleared everything from the cave, stacking each item into the van after wiping it down carefully in case of fingerprints. Then they brought out the lamps, stakes and lastly the rats.

On the drive back to Chicago just before they reached the Illinois State line, Michael left the highway and drove to the Des Plaines River, near where it flowed into Lake Michigan. He stopped his van halfway across the bridge, got out and looked to see if any fishermen were on the banks or if any boats were in the vicinity. Seeing no one, he threw the caged rats into the fast-flowing river below. Then making sure once more that no cars or people were watching, he threw each plastic bag containing lamps, ropes and metal stakes into the river.

Returning to the highway, Michael phoned Perry to request a Sanitation van and two uniforms complete with gas masks and hard hats. Perry gave him an address where to pick up the van and told Michael to return it to the same place when he didn’t need it any longer.

*

Michael turned off the light. The alarm clock next to his bed showed 3 a.m. After his shower he’d taken sleeping tablets and disconnected his phone. Tomorrow was going to be a day of many decisions. Should he hand all the information to Perry and Hanan and let them handle the Eagles, or did he want to be involved. Five lonely days sitting in the cave had got him thinking about Julie. He’d called and left a message on her answer machine that he’d gone out of town and would call her in a few days. Knowing her, she probably thought that their quarrel had something to do with his not contacting her. She was another decision that would have to be made, and he was certain that time had run out on just lust and no commitment.

He had to have some sleep so that he could think clearly.

Soon the tablets started to take effect, and he felt himself drifting. The last thing he remembered as his body began to relax and sleep drew closer was saying goodbye to Jalal at the terminal. The goodbye had been far more emotional than he’d thought it would be.

They’d arrived at the gate for Jalal’s flight half an hour before boarding and were sitting, when Jalal had said there was something that needed to be explained so once and for all he could have closure between Sadegh and himself.

“Michael, what I am going to tell you now I have never told anyone, not even my mother or my family. When I got home I would not discuss what had happened when my father was killed. It is the way of the mountain people to leave a mourner alone so that he can mourn privately. They did not need to tell me to be a brave little boy or that my father would be missed or that he had been a brave man, so thankfully I was left alone whenever I needed to be with my grief. When the doctor announced my father was finally dead, I was instructed to stand under the gallows and position the wheelbarrow under the body. A policeman cut the rope above the noose and my father’s body fell onto the wheelbarrow. I was shaking and wanted to cry, but there was a fierce fire in my soul that stopped my tears from falling, for I knew the murderer, Sadegh, would be watching me.

A policeman directed me to follow him. Pushing the wheelbarrow, I was taken to a small room near the exit of the prison. The policeman tried to unwind the rope around my father’s neck, but the slipknot would not unravel. The man started cursing and told me to move the wheelbarrow next to a coffin that was lying open on the floor. Lifting the side of the wheelbarrow and tipping it, the policeman pushed my father’s body and it fell into the coffin with the noose still around my father’s neck. Up until that moment I had not looked at my father’s face, only at his body. Even when the trapdoor opened and he fell to his death, I would not look at his face I could only watch his body as it struggled to fight death, his feet kicking against the ropes that tied them. Only after a long time did my father’s body become still. As he lay in the coffin I saw that his death face was distorted and swollen. The agony of his struggling had caused him to bite his tongue nearly in half, and blood ran slowly out of his mouth and both nostrils. His eyes bulged nearly completely out of their sockets and blood trickled from the corner of one eye. I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped and I jumped at the policeman, screaming at him and trying to gouge out his eyes.”

“Easy Jalal, you don’t have to upset yourself anymore. Let it go. It’s over.”

“I must tell you this Michael, if I don’t, it isn’t over. I could have killed Sadegh over thirty years ago and I didn’t. Listen to me please.

The policeman smacked my face and I fell backwards against the wall. He grabbed his riot club and was about to hit me when I heard a man shout at him to stop. Both of us turned and saw a man standing at the door. He entered, and the policeman immediately stood to attention still holding the club in his hand.

I had never seen Sadegh but I knew immediately that it was him. He had a thick black beard and was dressed in a military uniform with four stars on each shoulder. His bodyguards stood outside the door when he walked in. He looked at me as if he was trying to memorize my face and I remember the pupils of his eyes were the blackest I had ever seen. He said to me as he pointed in the direction of the coffin, “Your father?” and I just nodded. Then he turned from me, bent down, took hold of the noose, pulled it so that my father’s head came out of the coffin, and spat on my father’s face.