“Shit-shit-shit!” Don’s staring at a live feed from the neo-Nazi’s website. Now he understands Jensen’s reaction. He looks away from the screen almost as fast as he glanced at it.
Sufyan is at his shoulder. They hear a woman screaming.
“That’s Emma!” Sufyan shouts.
“Is that your daughter?” Jensen asks Don.
“Absolutely.” Don forces himself to look once more. He can’t see her, but Em’s clearly out of her mind with pain or fear — and for good reason: a decapitated body lies in a blanket-size pool of blood on the floor of a shadowy room. Male? Female? Don can’t tell. God, he hopes to Christ it isn’t Lana, which would explain Emma’s hysteria. There’s blood everywhere. All over the victim’s clothing.
With Emma still screaming, Don can’t help believing his wife is dead or dying. He looks up, dizzy, as Sufyan darts away, racing into the half-bath off the kitchen. Don hears him vomit. He can’t look at the screen anymore himself. This is sheer butchery. And whomever’s wielding the chainsaw is about to start again. No horror he’s ever seen rivals this. But he has to know if he’s staring at the remains of his wife, so he looks back. That’s when he sees some poor guy’s head sitting like a stump to the side.
Sufyan walks out of the bathroom, face wet from rinsing. His eyes are damp, too. “Is she going to be okay?”
Don can’t speak. Not a word in the world can make this better.
Cairo remains on the ground in the forest. But his head turns back, though not as far as it used to; he has arthritis in his cervical spine. He sees a border collie running toward him.
The elderly Malinois soldier stands, as if to say, “Enough’s enough. ”
The border collie is not alone. A stately blonde in camouflage pants and jacket with a short-barreled .357 Ruger is close behind. She stares at Cairo, who’s exchanging sniffs with the gray and white dog.
The border collie moves on, leading the woman to where his herding instincts may be telling him his master has gone. A scent seems to have him excited.
The Malinois trots along, not as fast as the smaller dog, but quicker than the woman, who ignores him. She has eyes only for the border collie.
Vinko Horvat told the woman to come back when her husband Bones Jackson died. He said he’d show her a good time. She’s determined to take him up on his offer — on her own terms.
And she has Horvat’s gun to return.
On her own terms.
With her hands cuffed behind her back, Lana can’t hold Emma. But she keeps warning her daughter not to look. Em’s eyes are buried in her mother’s shoulder, though they both hear the woman revving the chainsaw as she cuts off Horvat’s right arm, the last of his limbs. The body shows no signs of life.
The woman shuts off the saw and grabs his head from a rising pool of blood. When she sets it down on dry concrete, it makes a nauseating splat.
She walks to the console and speaks into the computer: “You have just watched me torture and kill the Nazi-lover and kafir Steel Fist.
“I openly declare war on the United States of America on behalf of all ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters who have joined together and authorized me to speak on their behalf today. Allah Himself has moved these great forces. Now we fight side by side against infidels and apostates and will soon declare victory over all non-believers. The caliphate must spread across all oceans.”
Lana startles. The woman is announcing precisely the nightmare the intelligence community has feared for so long: that the two Sunni factions would recognize they have far more in common than the differences that have kept them apart. For more than a year, Al Qaeda’s top leadership has been publicly extending an olive branch to the upstarts in ISIS, urging all jihadists to act together against their common enemy. Now they are, and the results, as Lana can see at a glance, are terrifying.
The ceiling cameras rotate from the vivisected body to the cage, a chilling sign of shifting interest, as the woman continues:
“I have captured Lana Elkins, one of our greatest enemies. The young woman holding onto her is her daughter, Emma. They, too, must die to advance the caliphate and stop the cyberattacks on our noble fighters.”
Lana realizes in a horrifying flash that the woman wants to incite neo-Nazis to attack and murder American Muslims to drive them into the arms of extremists. That was the same strategy jihadists, regardless of affiliation, used to bait the United States into launching wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, invasions that destroyed much of those regions and radicalized millions of Muslims. If the radical Islamists’ vicious strategy succeeds here at home, Lana knows it could spell the same kind of disaster for her own country.
If what the woman said were true.
It’s true.
On a hilltop less than a mile away, Tahir Hijazi looks up from his phone at twenty bearded men who have rendezvoused with him. They are ISIS’s and Al Qaeda’s top lieutenants, each carefully vetted for this mission by their commanders in Iraq and Syria and the U.S. They form the martial heart of their reconciliation movement.
Golden Voice has their admiration. Using her extraordinary hacking skills she’s made possible the final steps leading to the imminent slaughter of the Elkinses, a momentous victory struck in the very heart of satanic America. History is replete with examples of single, spirited actions triggering widespread revolt. In joining their forces together, the twenty know they are establishing a new and powerful fighting paradigm for the Americas, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. This has been approved by the highest councils of the two factions. Now the twenty know it’s their job to demonstrate the inability of America’s corrupt and failing government to protect Lana Elkins and her daughter. Torturing and murdering them will symbolize the pervasive weakness that lies at the fallow heart of the United States. Sleeper cells in cities across the land are waiting to witness this victory: then they will rise as well.
“I know this country,” Tahir assures them as they look at a bungalow in the distance. “Every drop of blood we spill will bring backlash, and that will drive millions of our weaker brothers into our ranks.”
The men on this hilltop have ample reason to believe this, for those dynamics have come into play time and again throughout the Middle East, where the middle ground was squeezed to death in every sense.
They look to Tahir Hijazi, who has performed well. For years now, he’s been insinuating himself into the darkest realms of Washington power on their behalf. He’s a legendary mujahid.
“Golden Voice has taken our first step,” Tahir says to the men around him.
“And we are the second,” an ISIS commander says.
Nods follow all around.
“But we must win here,” Tahir emphasizes.
Not a man of easy geniality, he offers a broad smile now. A great war for him is almost over. He keys in a required code.
They move out.
“You’ve got to say you’re Muslim,” Lana whispers to Emma as the woman wipes down the chainsaw. “You’ve got to tell her about Sufyan and Tahir and your daily prayers. You can claim conversion. Horvat ran photos of you and Sufyan. He threatened to kill you because you were with him. Throw it back at her, get it out there for the world to hear and you might survive. You’ve got to do it, Em, now while she’s going live. Scream it. Put her in a position where’s she’s got to let you live.” Maybe, Lana says to herself.