As the days passed and there were no arrests of his people and "the supplies" remained in place, he was further convinced that the bodyguard's death was not even the work of some rogue element of the New York Police Department or any agency of the American government, including the laughable Homeland Security Department.
"Their culture of fair play dooms them," he lectured his closest aides. "They want to arrest us and put us on trial, then place us in prison, where we become the new symbols of the jihad. They do not have the testicles it will take to win this fight. In the meantime, we will slaughter them by the thousands in their homes, their stadiums, and their office buildings."
Al-Sistani was not, therefore, surprised when someone claiming to represent "the American Aryan Jihadi" called a popular radio talk-show host and claimed responsibility. As expected, the infidel had said the killing was in retaliation "for killing white men in Iraq. So all of you fuckin' little towel heads out there, consider yourselves warned. Get the fuck out of white man's country and go back to your little piles of shit sandboxes."
The police and district attorney's office had released a joint press statement saying they had no prior intelligence on any hate group called American Aryan Jihadi. The statement assured Muslim-Americans and Muslim visitors that every effort was being made to bring the murderer to justice. The statement also urged other citizens to "refrain from escalating tensions and unfairly singling out any one group based on events in Iraq and the Middle East."
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Muslim-American Anti-Defamation League of New York had immediately joined in condemning the police and district attorney's office for not taking a more proactive stance. "One cannot help but think that if this had been a Christian white man," Imam Abdul Ibn Barr, head of one of the largest Muslim congregations, wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece, "or a Jew, the police response would have been much more forceful and all-encompassing. Yet, they don't even know who this poor immigrant is, or anything about him, except that he died horribly and his head was left in plain sight of where police officers supposedly walk their beats. In all likelihood, he left behind a family in some far-off land who now waits to hear from their breadwinner-a call that will never come. And all the DA and police can do is promise some future justice."
Police chief Bill Denton, the mayor-elect's brother, got himself into hot water by angrily going on television to demand that the complaining organizations "point out the guilty man, and I'll arrest him personally." Which only resulted in another op-ed piece labeling him as "apparently too lazy to do his own work…trying to shift the blame back on the people who are trying to demand accountability from their police department."
District Attorney Karp, a man Al-Sistani knew was an enemy to be reckoned with from his past run-ins with Islam's holy warriors, had been more circumspect. "As in all homicide cases, we are working with all due diligence to bring any and all perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice. Whatever the cause or justification, murder is murder in New York County. All perceptions to the contrary are disingenuous and without merit."
It was almost laughable how the Americans had started backbiting. The fat lawyer Hugh Louis had taken a break from his television appearances talking about his case against the city-a case Al-Sistani had followed closely because it promised to yield more angry young black men who might become recruits-to denounce "the attack on our brown Arab brothers." Of course, Louis had used the extra television time to plug the Coney Island case, too. "The same institutionalized racism that imprisoned four innocent African-American men based on Gestapo-like police interrogation techniques is also responsible for the fact that racist murderers are roaming free, victimizing people of color."
The city councilwoman Shakira Zulu had joined in the fray by calling a press conference to raise the ante. "Until the black man and the brown man arm themselves, they will be preyed upon by the power structure of white America. Let us not forget, the black man suffering in the ghettos of America has more in common with his Palestinian brother, who daily faces the tanks and bullets of Zionist oppression with nothing more than rocks and his blood, than he does with the white man."
Although Al-Sistani regretted the death of the bodyguard, a well-trained man he'd known for years, the murder only played into his cause by distracting federal agents from the real danger. He wasn't worried about his man being identified, if for no other reason than after his rat-chewed body was discovered in the alley next to the mosque by a believer assigned to take out the trash, both the body and that of the believer had been taken to a landfill operated by a sympathizer and buried.
If the Americans wanted to play tit-for-tat, well, then, he'd see how they felt after New Year's Eve. As for the others, the lawyers and the whiny activists, he cared no more for any of them than any other infidel who did not accept the Prophet as the representative of Allah and the one true faith. Even these Nation of Islam blacks would have to learn the errors of their misguided interpretations of the Quran or have their heresy cured by the sword.
Soon they would all be trembling with fear and awe when he struck at the very heart of their loathsome city. But he would be long gone to California, where he would lie low and plan his next triumph in the name of Allah. In his dreams, he saw the Golden Gate Bridge crashing into the sea loaded with early-morning commuter traffic, and airliners falling from the sky on fire, or crashing into skyscrapers in Chicago, Seattle, and L.A.
The stupid Americans would lash out at the next tinpot dictator, like that secular idiot Hussein, crush his army, and find itself in another quagmire where the holy warriors of Al Qaeda would flock to sow the seeds of insurrection and martyrdom. Soon enough the Americans would be abandoned by the timid Europeans, cowed like the Spanish into submission, their rail systems in shambles and their hospitals overflowing with the dead and maimed. Until at last, the United States would stand alone, ostracized by its former friends who feared retribution from their huge Muslim immigrant populations and the martyrs of Islam.
Then, with no other country willing to be a trading partner, the economy of the United States would be crippled and its population living in terror of the next World Trade Center or, he laughed, New Year's Eve in Times Square. Thus, the most powerful nation in the world would have to sue for mercy and give itself over to Islamic law.
Despite having spent many years among them in his youth, Al-Sistani was amazed and delighted that the Americans could not see what needed to be done to save themselves. Worried about political correctness, they allowed him and others like him to travel freely. Instead of paying close attention to young men, even women, of Arab extraction or those coming from Muslim countries, they wasted their time and resources at airports checking the bags of their grandmothers and patting down small children. It was all for show, anyway, a farcical allegory right out of their stupid children's book The Emperor Who Had No Clothes. It was all for an illusion of security when their government was too ham-strung by partisan politics to react effectively. If ever there was a plum that was ripe for the plucking, it was the God-accursed and decadent United States of America.
When he lay in his apartment at night, this was the pleasant dream of the future he saw unfolding before him like the desert sands of Arabia. Even now, it took an effort to bring himself back into focus outside the door of the meeting room. The Islamic States of America would not be accomplished merely by dreaming. It would take hard action.
His plan needed volunteers to make sure that all his preparations and energy weren't wasted. There were always too few trained men for these operations, and most of those he had with him were too valuable for martyrdom. Of the dozen, now minus one, he'd had slip into the U.S. and meet up with him in New York, he planned to leave half to carry out his glorious blow against the infidels; the rest would go with him to California for the next plan. But he wanted a half-dozen more volunteers to help set up "the supplies," a dangerous job in itself, and then guard them until the moment of martyrdom was at hand.