And it’s Vinko’s fault, plain and simple, although I’m kicking myself for not having connected his public enthusiasm for show trials with the possibility that he might prove just thick enough to try that with such a high-risk prospect as Elkins. I’ll admit, a show trial would have been a coup, but all the “would have beens” that have failed in the past five years alone could provide data enough to shut down the Pentagon with a distributed denial-of-service attack.
But instead, the world salutes a woman who survived a grenade and four killers. Granted, her victory came with the help of a game warden with a hunting rifle and a black man whose identity now intrigues millions, but who kept the camera off his own face.
Now Elkins looms larger than ever in the eyes of the public. Which does make taking her daughter a bigger prize. Steel Fist could redeem himself — if I were fool enough to give him a second chance.
That is not going to happen. Here’s what I mean:
Emma Elkins must be abducted to Hayden Lake, where cyber clues will lure her mother to the lair I have in mind. There are few people whom I’ll trust with that task, mostly myself. When her mother comes calling for her — and I know precisely how to manipulate her hunt so she doesn’t arrive in the company of the SEALs who have saved her in the past — I’ll dispose of mother and daughter, along with Vinko. Nobody will be the wiser about my role. Few even know I exist, and Vinko’s a complete loner. I’ve checked his communications. Never a word of a personal nature. He lives in isolation up there. But he doesn’t deserve to live any longer. I’ll remind him of that as I start to lop off his head. Just before I finish, I’ll offer him another old line: “Live by the sword, die by the sword.” Let Vinko hear that as the blade severs the last few inches of his neck.
Besides, I’m better suited to snatching Emma. I have a quality Vinko lacks. Actually, as I’ve seen of late, I have a number of them that he could use, so I’m confident Emma will find me eminently approachable, were she to need some emergency assistance. And she will. She drives a Fusion, after all. I know the exact nature of the malfunction she’ll soon experience. So does J.D. Powers and Associates.
But I do have one final task for Steel Fist, for which he’s shown supreme ability. Disgusted as I am by him, even I have to admit the man knows how to drum up hatred against Muslims. And now he’s got plenty of ammo, thanks to those ISIS fighters who have spread smallpox throughout the Southeast, though an honorable mention must go to the boat racer named Jimmy McMasters for transporting the deadly virus to New York City.
Could we have asked for a more beloved victim than Matt Lauer? Probably. But he’ll certainly do. He looks like he’s going to die. Even if he doesn’t, he’s probably going to be scarred from head to toe, and all because boat racer boy gave Lauer a nice big hug that went, well, viral in the original sense of the word.
As for the government’s response, the CDC is doing a splendid job of keeping the public up to date and scared to death. The venerable New York Times reports on its website, right at this very moment, that the CDC has identified outbreaks of smallpox spreading from tightly knit Muslim communities in Dearborn, Michigan; Patterson, New Jersey; Los Angeles; and, of course, New York City, particularly Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. In fact, the CDC has finally called the spread of the disease an epidemic, and it’s pointing its finger right at Muslims, blaming sleeper cells of infected believers for mixing with large crowds wherever they can find them.
“It’s no coincidence,” a CDC official is quoted in the Times as saying, “that this is taking place as ISIS claims responsibility for the epidemic in North America. ISIS is everywhere.”
And the Times reports that local officials from coast to coast are cooperating with the panic by calling for the quarantining of all Muslim neighborhoods. Delightfuclass="underline" a whole series of our own Warsaw ghettos.
And those are the mild reactions. Others, including the men and women who cluster in Vinko’s chat rooms, are calling for the “culling of all Muslims” from their cities and suburbs. The Times is giving that quote and the rest of the chat room chorus lots of coverage, too.
While a handful of officials refuse to sanction such efforts, there are reports of organized groups of “red-blooded Americans,” as the Times puts it, attacking Muslim “cells” in five cities. Apparently, police in those communities have refused to intervene to stop the vicious assaults and murders. The tacit approval of vigilante violence has set off similar beatings and killings elsewhere. So it’s not just smallpox that’s spreading.
“There are no moderate Muslims,” the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, said flatly after the city’s Islamic center was reduced to ash, along with fourteen of its members.
None of the coverage is true, but people who want to believe what I wrote on the Times website, after hacking it, are having no trouble accepting the “news.” And by flipping their online edition’s servers to read-only I’ve made sure there have been no corrections or updating on the part of the paper’s editors. Fox News is reporting the lies as if they come from its own “reliable” sources.
This is my fourth hacking of the Times; my earlier efforts were all alpha runs. I’ve also hacked the Wall Street Journal twice, which has marginally better cyberdefenses.
When the Times finally regains control of its website, which I expect is still several hours away, even more violence will be underway against Muslim communities throughout the country. And when the paper’s brass tries to make its predictable claim that they were hacked, they’ll be widely accused of conspiring with, and kowtowing to, government efforts to support Muslims “in their time of need.” In the malleable minds of millions, it’ll stand as another example of the Times’ self-imposed sharia law.
So… Elkins, her daughter, Vinko, and the American public. Check, check, and check. Simple as cyber — to me. What I can’t put my finger on so easily is how that African American beheaded the colonel and vanished so completely. Whose side is he on? He’s got me wondering.
Let’s look at what he’s done. By chopping off the colonel’s noggin, he’s created yet another incitement against mainstream Muslims, or, to put it in patently American terms, the Uncle Toms of their religion who so proudly hail their moderation and patriotism. We’ll see how steadfast they remain in both regards when their fellow citizens continue to burn down their homes and slaughter them in the streets. That will certainly drive many survivors into the arms of ISIS.
So separating the colonel from his head could be part of a neat divide-and-conquer strategy — if you’re a radical Muslim. I understand and appreciate that. It will spread the violence against moderates as fast as the fear of smallpox is moving through the country at large.
But it could also serve as an incitement to Muslims to behead their neighbors in retaliation for violence visited upon them. So it could cut — please excuse the pun — both ways.
Still, I wish I could be sure of the man’s game.
I’m dipping deeper into the nether regions of the Net to try to find out. I haven’t found anything yet that would link me to him; nothing, in short, in the realm of arms dealers, terrorists, or bomb makers, all of whom have left many a head behind. And the obvious video of him committing the beheading is missing. How does that happen in a wealthy community like Bethesda? Even in the poorest, blackest ghettos of America a cop can’t sneeze without it showing up on someone’s smart phone. But, then again, those purveyors of instant history are primed to react, while the more affluent among us presume degrees of safety and justice not so readily accessed by those further down the food chain.