I said, “Look, all of you. Obviously I’ll try to make the whole thing as smooth and trouble-free as possible. But we’re all grown-ups. We know how it goes. I’ll ask for the extra mile if I have to.”
Whereupon the transport coordinator asked a related but more mundane question: “How long are we signing up for?”
“Eighty days,” I said. “Ninety, maximum. But you know how it is. We won’t be in play every day. I want you all to map out a six-month window. I think that’s realistic.”
Which statement quieted things down a little. But in the end they all nodded and agreed. Which, again, I thought was brave. To use another sports metaphor, they knew the rules of the game. An operation that lasted six months, overseas in hostile territory, was certain to produce casualties. I knew that, and they knew that. Some of them wouldn’t be coming home. But none of them flinched.
There was another hour or so of talk, and then another. I felt I got to know them all as well as I needed to. They didn’t leave until well into the morning. I called my editor as soon as they were through the door. She asked me how I was, which question from an editor really means, “What have you got for me?”
I told her I was back on track with something pretty good, and that a six-month deadline should see it through. She asked what it was, and I told her it was something that had come to me while I was high. I used the tone of voice I always use with her. It leaves her unsure whether I am kidding or not. So she asked again. I said I had the characters down, and that the plot would evolve as it went along. Iran, basically. As a private joke I couched the whole thing in the kind of language we might see in the trade reviews, if we got any: I said it wouldn’t transcend the genre, but it would be a solid example of its type.
DESTINYCITY by James Grady
Four men walked through the December night along tracks for Washington, D.C. ’s subway and Amtrak trains that rumble through America. Their shoes crunched gravel. Musica ranchera drifted from a nearby industrial park where Sami, who drove a taxi, remembered signs for a Latino ballroom.
“When?” Maher was a California blond born with the name Michael.
“Soon,” said Ivan, their Ameer.
Zlatko said: “Ameer, I have money for my last buys tomorrow.”
“Brother, I can drive you with my taxi,” said Sami.
“No,” said Ivan. “Work alone. Let no one see us as fingers of a fist.”
“A fist is five,” said Maher. “I thought there were only us four.”
“Jihad is the thumb that shapes us,” proclaimed their Ameer.
Sami said, “Someone’s coming.”
A trio of hombres swaggered toward them through the darkness.
“Hola, amigos,” said that trio’s jefe. “What you doing here, eh?”
“Leaving,” said Sami.
“Don’ thin’ so.” Jefe soured the night with his beer and tequila breath. “You gringos got lots of nowhere to run.”
His tallest compañero frowned. “Not gringos. Only the blond guero.”
“Who cares?” Jefe drew a black pistol. “Tool up, Juan.”
The third Hispanic fumbled inside his coat’s back collar.
Maher jumped Juan as he unsheathed a machete.
Jefe blinked-and Sami ripped the pistol from him with a move taught in al Qaeda’s Afghan camps, while Zlatko and Maher wrestled the machete from Juan.
Ivan relieved Sami of the gun. “See what they have.”
“Amigos!” said Jefe as Sami searched the three thugs, made them kneel on the gravel. “We all just joking, si?”
Maher said, “Shut up, motherfucker!”
Sami gave confiscated cell phones, cash, and IDs to Ivan. Zlatko threw away the machete.
“Let’s go,” whispered Sami. “They can’t tell anybody anything.”
“Whach you sayin’?” called out the kneeling jefe.
Ivan whispered, “They are kuffars. Unbelievers.”
“That is not enough.” Zlatko shrugged. “But they saw we don’t belong-especially with Maher.”
“They can’t tell police or FBI or CIA,” said Sami. “They don’t dare.”
“You talkin’ FBI? La migra? Don’ fuck with us! We MS-13!”
Ivan said, “Loose ends. They’ll tell someone. And America is full of ears.”
He put the pistol in Maher’s hands. The blond kid stared at it. Stared at three men kneeling before him. The night floated their clouds of breath.
Ivan told him, “You asked when. Allah granted you the answer.”
Maher fired three flash-cracking shots. The thugs crumpled into the gravel.
Ameer Ivan led his followers away from the trackside executions. He gave Zlatko the gun. Distributed the dead men’s cash to all of his soldiers. Sami saw Zlatko tuck his bills inside an envelope he returned to his jacket’s outside right pocket.
The Ameer tossed the thugs’ cell phones. Plastic clattered on unseen rocks.
Maher staggered away from his comrades. Vomited.
“Be proud, Maher.” The Ameer wrapped an arm around the youngest man’s shoulders. “Diverting the enemy with the gun let us attack.” Maher mumbled, “I went wild in my mind.”
“And learned a key lesson,” said the Ameer. “Timing. When is now, and if all goes well with Zlatko’s work… three days.”
“Three days?” said Sami. “Are you sure, Ameer?”
“Yes.” They neared the gap in the chain-link fence. “And only we four know.”
“And Allah,” said Zlatko.
“Sami,” said the Ameer, “keep that vaquera in your control.”
“She is no problem,” said Sami.
They left the tracks for a street that was once a route from the capital to a rural town. Now city sprawled from Congress’s white dome to far beyond D.C.’s Beltway.
Ivan stood alone by a roadside white pole, an ordinary, fortyish man waiting for the bus that took him to his gold SUV stashed among a multiplex’s moviegoer machines.
When the bus rolled out of sight, his three warriors walked from the shadows to a Metro subway station. Sami made Maher stand alone on the platform. Zlatko’s nod approved such trade-craft for the cameras mounted on the platform’s ceiling.
A silver subway train snaked to a stop. Maher carelessly drifted onto the same car as Zlatko and Sami. Words bounced in his eyes. Sami’s glare welded the young man’s jaws shut.
The subway slid out of the station. Zlatko sat between Sami and the window. They memorized their fellow passengers: A black guy bopping to earphone music. Two Spanish-babbling women dressed like office cleaners. A white-haired security guard.
Zlatko whispered, “Brother Maher did well, though not like our karate school teaches. But he would not last fifteen minutes in interrogation. He needs to tell. Get fame so he can be real. I worry that he’ll always be a born American.”
“Our Ameer must know what he’s doing, choosing Maher.”
“The smallest cog turns the whole assembly.” His engineer past haunted Zlatko’s words. “But, brother, that is not what troubles me most.”
Brake squeals killed Sami’s question. The train stopped. Zlatko and Maher stood to leave the train for wherever they would spend that night, facts the jihad brothers did not share amongst themselves.
Sami stood to let Zlatko pass. Pick-pocketed the money envelope.