“Yeah, yeah, man, but like I said, Jews are smart. They aren’t gonna do anything like that, not now,” Al said.
Again, the two sat in silence. Again, Sam broke the silence.
“What if people thought it was Jews who did something really bad? Wouldn’t that do the same thing? It doesn’t really have to be Jews who do it, not as long as everybody thinks it was. Am I right or am I right?”
“I guess you’re right.” Al Farouk sensed, again, that his friend was serious; this was more than playing fantasy games. “Man, are you, like, for real about this, about doing something, and not just talking about how cool it would be to do something?”
Sam paced the room. He pointed toward the computer on which they’d spent so many hours visiting the American Mujahidin website.
“Serious?” he asked. “Of course I’m serious. Don’t you think those guys we read about in Palestine, all those martyrs, were serious? Not just guys. Girls. Girl martyrs over there, man. They aren’t any better than us—no older, no smarter, no braver. If they could do it, why can’t we? If they can die for Allah, why can’t we do it, too?
“Just think what a difference we could make. We stop the United States from bailing out the Jews in Palestine and the whole world is different. If we could do that, just us, a couple of ordinary guys here in Massachusetts, if we do that, they’ll write poems about us around the world, sing songs about us. How cool would that be?”
“Yeah, that would be pretty cool,” Al replied. He was catching his friend’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, pretty fucking cool. Heroes around the world. Pretty cool. I could get into that. So we die. Big fucking deal. We know what happens to martyrs when they die. I could dig that.”
He was talking more to himself than to his friend—talking himself into doing something he would not do but for all the hours of listening to Mullah Abu Hamzah, months of discussions with his best friend about martyrs in Palestine, young men who looked not unlike the two Americans, young men who were also in high school, who also left family behind. Talking himself into something that without that preparation he would view as just plain stupid.
Now, though, watching the news, listening to Jewish leaders predict they would get all the support they asked for from Washington, now it sounded more like a spectacular way to pole-vault himself into history.
“What do you have in mind?” he asked Sam. “Because whatever it is, I’m in it with you.”
“We do something big, really big. Lots of people die. And we do it so people think it was Jews who did it. They blame the Jews for it. Cool, right? Right before their big peace march the Jews kill a shitload of Americans. Make killing those Coast Guard guys seem like pissing in public.”
“Yeah, I see it, man. People are pissed off at the Jews enough for killing the Coast Guard guys, and that girl Coast Guard, too. And the FBI guys.” Al was getting excited. “So what are you thinking?”
“We can’t do it in DC,” Sam said. “Every cop in the world is gonna be there, and besides, we don’t want to kill Jews with this.”
“Well, duh, we do want to kill Jews,” Al interrupted, then thought for a moment. “Just not this time around.” He paused again. “Oops,” he continued. “Guess this thing will be our only thing. Guess somebody else will have to kill Jews. Our thing is to kill Americans and make everybody think the Jews did it. Right? That’s the game plan?”
“That’s the game plan,” Sam said. “Okay, we gotta get that TNT from your dad’s shed. You sure were right about the combination. So what do we do with it? Blow up a school like those Chechen guys did in Russia? That got people pissed off.”
“I don’t know if I want to kill kids,” Alfred said. “How about if we do grownups, adults? Kids is pretty heavy duty. Besides, it could be hard to get into a school if you don’t go there.”
“We could do our own schools,” Sam speculated, then backed away. “No. Don’t want to do our own friends. Some of those kids are okay. Besides, that might seem like a Florida kinda thing—what was that school?”
“Parkland,” Al said.
“Right, Parkland. They’d probably make us seem like loser types doing our own school. Okay, not a school. How about some sports event? Too bad it isn’t Super Bowl time.”
“Think, man, that doesn’t work. We’ve gotta do it this week. There won’t be any big sports events this week. Besides, there’s security at those things. I saw it on TV. They check everybody coming in and they’ve got dogs and sniffer machines and shit. No, man, it’s gotta be someplace where lots of people go all the time, even during the week. Someplace where there’s shit for security.”
“But there’s gotta be cameras, security cameras so everybody knows it was Jews that did it, right? Where do people hang out all the time, with no security except cameras?”
They thought for no more than thirty seconds before Al smiled broadly.
“The mall, man. The fucking mall. It’s perfect.”
“Fucking A, you’re right,” Sam said. “But not one mall. There’s two of us. We’ll do two malls.”
“Two malls. Okay. Let’s make a pact, a pact before Allah.” Al Farouk’s tone of voice changed from the near hilarity with which he and his friend were speaking as they exchanged ideas. Now, he was on board, committed. Neither of them spoke about Allah in jest.
“I vow before Allah that I will do this deed,” Al said. He looked at Sam.
“And I vow before Allah that I, too, will do this deed.”
“Good,” Sam continued. “Let’s go to your dad’s place tonight and get the TNT.”
“And the blasting caps,” Al added. “We need the blasting caps and the six-volt batteries there. We can skip the fancy box they use to set it off. Just touch the two wires together and boom. That’s all it will take.”
“Boom. That’s all it will take,” Sam echoed. “We skip school tomorrow and put the belts together. Nothing to it. Just duct-tape the TNT around us, hook up the wires and the blasting caps, connect it to the battery and boom when the wires get touched together. Right?”
“Right,” Al said. “We do it tomorrow night, three days before the big Jew march on Washington. So, man, what’s your favorite mall?”
Sam thought for a moment. “North Shore. The food court. Love that Japanese chicken thing they sell there. And you?”
“Burlington Mall,” Al replied. “Yeah, the food court is the place to do it. It’ll be packed around, say, six thirty, everybody eating their mall food.”
Sam looked at his friend.
“We are going to do this, right? We vowed before Allah. No backing out?”
“Hey, we vowed. We can’t back out now,” Al said. “Tomorrow night. I’ll meet you in Paradise.”
“Yeah, Paradise,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Do you suppose that shit with the virgins and all really happens when you die a martyr’s death?”
“I don’t know,” Al said. He smiled at his friend. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow night.”
CHAPTER 36
Robert Jordan was head of the White House Secret Service detail. Unlike two other presidents he’d guarded, Jordan both liked and respected President Quaid. Jordan’s job was protecting his boss from physical threats. And because he liked President Quaid, he thought it proper to tip him off to a political threat, too.
“Mr. President. I just spoke with Joe Bergantina. Joe’s in charge of the First Lady’s detail. Joe wanted to brief me about the First Lady’s travel plans for tomorrow, sir.”
“I appreciate the call, Bob,” President Quaid replied. “But the First Lady makes her own travel plans these days. In fact, she makes her own plans for pretty much everything these days. We’ve decided not to coordinate our schedules anymore.”