A Dark Perfection Read online

  Even if they’d walked across the border, no one would have noticed.

  They had lived at the lodge for three weeks, having traveled from Iceland on a cod boat, the boat provided by their handlers, their teachers. They then ferried down across Hudson Bay, boarded a near empty train and exited at the small village that was closest to the lodge. The lodge had been fully stocked and there was no need to go into the village.

  They waited.

  The day before Their Blessed Return to Allah, a quote was placed in the local newspaper’s advert section, Please come to the opening of our Synagogue, Beth-El Zion Temple!

  The newspaper’s editor had never heard of a synagogue in the village, but as he continually told his copy assistant of forty years, Ms. Nettles, “The last time I looked, dear, it was a free country!” It was certainly going to cause a stir down at the Free Evangelical Church, that was for damn sure.

  Translated into ancient Aramaic – the tongue of Jesus of Nazareth – the remainder of the ad copy read, The Tears of Our God are Now in Your Eyes. No one at the paper, or down at the church, knew of the ancient language of their own Messiah and the words passed without notice, perhaps only a few grumbles down at the barbershop or between neighbors.

  “Did you see that funny thing in the paper today?” Marjorie Hunter asked as she stood at the end of her driveway, heading out on her daily jog with Bo, her coifed Spaniel.

  Bethany Drue, of Drue’s Hardware, one of the village’s oldest families, stood at the end of her own equally curvy driveway, lightly toweling and about to join Marjorie for their morning run. They nearly matched in their brightly colored outfits.

  “You mean that Jewish thing? You know, I have to be honest, I don’t know many Jewish people.”

  Marjorie smiled, “Me either. Tell me, though, what’s up with that Yiddish, or whatever it is? Hey, as they keep sayin’ on the TV, it’s a free country! Honey, you about ready?”

  And it passed, like it did in all of the conversations that morning. The Aramaic had been a tactical mistake when the Sheik had insisted and he’d known it at the time. He simply couldn’t resist. There were many things the Sheik could not resist.

  The tunnel surfaced inside a barn of an abandoned farm, secluded in the north Minnesota woods. The barn was now only used by deer hunters who might stop to get out of the autumn chill, or pause for a quick coffee. But it was not hunting season yet and the robins were just starting their morning greetings when the thirty martyrs opened the barn doors. The sun was beginning to rise.

  Inside the barn and concealed beneath a dusty tarp rested an old Blue Bird school bus, the type that state and federal prisons once used to transport inmates. It had been purchased two years before at a State of Minnesota government auto auction. The irony had not been lost on the Sheik.

  They filled the bus and Omar al-Azira, their driver for the mission, moved the bus slowly from the barn and across the dried mud ruts and onto the gravel road. An orange sun perched above the fields. Opening the window and hearing the wheat rustle, Aisha Hada thought it was the most sublime sight she’d ever seen. She accepted it as a sign.

  Normally, a bus filled with brown-skinned Arabs rambling through a rural American morning would’ve seemed wholly out of place. But their white faces were now their masks, a further necessity on their path to salvation. Aisha brushed away a blonde wisp as they passed a light blue Cadillac on the Interstate.

  The occupants of the Cadillac, Bob and Cecile Armstrong, were an elderly couple who’d decided to get on the road early. They were on the way to visit their adult children in North Dakota and Bob’s eyes weren’t what they used to be. Cecile never did like driving and so they thought this might be their last road trip together.

  Looking up, Cecile noticed a large decal of an American flag on the back of the bus, peeling from the sun. Next to it another sticker asked, “How am I driving?” Cecile and Bob looked up at the faces and only saw “Americans,” an extension of themselves. Aisha looked down and smiled as Cecile gave a quick wave back.

  A memory tugged at Aisha: the woman’s face, it had smiled up at her like her mother’s. In her mind, Aisha could see her mother taking water from the village well, laughing at dinner. As she’d been trained, she quickly pushed the images away.

  “Doesn’t she look just like little Marie?” Cecile said. “Sure is a pretty thing.”

  Cecile turned, “You see, honey, there’s still some nice, young people around. Maybe we just need to look harder. Did you see her smile?”

  Bob stayed at precisely fifty-eight miles per hour as the bus slowly pulled away, disappearing on a rise at the horizon.

  In the small Minnesota town of Redwood Falls, the bus pulled into a parking lot filled with cars. A sign on the whitewashed building at the far end read, “Ron’s Used Cars. Rentals too!”

  It was early Sunday and the lot was empty of people, the streets quiet. The door to Ron’s office was unlocked and they entered, one by one, each taking a key from the row of hooks on the wall. They knew that the longer they lingered, the greater the probability that a local police officer might drive by. So, without a word or a goodbye, each calmly exited and entered a vehicle. The gas tanks had been filled and the tires checked. When the last car left the lot, Omar drove the bus away in the opposite direction.

  Two blocks away, Ron Jeevers, the owner of Ron’s Used Cars, watched from his parked vehicle as the last of his brothers and sisters drove his treasured collection from the lot. He looked down at his white hand. It still made him feel odd. He rubbed at the top, but the white stayed, as it always did. Even through the itching, he proudly saw his whiteness as a modern day mark of Allah.

  The Sunday before, “Ron” had repeated his Koran prayers in his mind, even as he’d listened to the rolling sermon at the Free Evangelical Church. The choir director, Mary Burns, his girlfriend for the past six months, would miss him when he was gone. He’d grown to care for her and regretted that he’d had to use her as a part of his false mask. Earlier in the week, he’d spoken to the chief of police while bowling, “Almost forgot, chief. Next weekend, when you see my cars off the lot, it’s nothing. I’m just moving them across town, so I can finally get some asphalt on that lot. I’m going on vacation for a while, but will move them back in when I return.”

  He started the car, driving slowly down Main Street – past the hardware store and the Redwood County grain elevator, where he’d shared morning coffees with local farmers, Jud and Jerome. And then past Dottie’s Diner, where he’d laughed with Mary over scrambled eggs and hash browns after each Sunday service.

  He drove out of town and into the flatness of the wheat fields. Turning onto a gravel road, he followed a series of faded signs to Lake Minear. The road became darker as the pines reached up on all sides.

  He turned onto a dirt road that disappeared deeper into the forest. At the end, he exited the car.

  It took him an hour to clear the brush and hardened dirt. He slid the metal cover away from the rectangular hole he’d dug the year before and heaved the aluminum rowboat from the hole. He retrieved the ramps from the bottom and put them into place.

  Slowly, he drove the car down into its grave. He then carefully replaced the metal cover, pounding the dirt down and repositioning the brush. Looking around, he pulled some dying ferns up by their roots and roughly planted them over the car.

  He paused.

  A black-capped chickadee flew by, fee-bee, fee-bee, the pungent loam of the forest floor mixing with the hepatica buttercups that had suddenly bloomed in the Indian summer heat. He took a deep breath and pulled them in. His attention was drawn down and he saw that his pant legs had become wet from the dew off the ferns. As a man of the desert, it surprised him how he’d become so close to the feelings of these woods.

  He’d come to this place many times, always on the premise of fishing in the lake. Sometimes, he brought a pole with him. Once, he even brought a string of fish back to town and gave them to Dottie at the diner. “My heav
ens, you really are a fisherman!”

  But his true purpose had always been to check on the car’s grave.

  Dragging the boat through the dying foliage, he followed a deer path to the lake, sliding the boat in and beginning to row. Mists arose as the shore disappeared.

  Once in the middle, he affixed the heavy chains around his shoulders and midsection and heard the locks click. They had told him that the locks were important.

  Like a Scottish loch, Lake Minear was deep, having been carved out by glaciers ten thousand years before.

  He lowered himself into the cold water, taking care not to let the chains rattle against the side. He could feel the concrete anchors pull on the chains.

  Releasing his hands from the edge, the concrete grabbed him, yanking him down – ten feet, twenty feet, thirty.

  The water became dark, the sun a blur. He felt his lungs compress and bit down hard on the cyanide capsule.

  His last thoughts were of joining his family. His last image, the laughing faces of his long dead children.

  His mind screamed, Praise Be to Allah!

  3

  The president stood outside of the Oval Office and reviewed his notes a final time. The network cameras were ready and the world awaited his address. It was 10:00 p.m. eastern standard time. No one in the country had gone to bed.

  Osborne approached. “Mr. President, I have the updates.”

  The usual support staff attending a Special Address was quietly escorted from the room.

  “Go ahead, Mac.”

  “So far, we only have one interior video from a mid-size theater in Nebraska. No individuals of Arab descent coming in or out. We’re not sure why. It’s dusk and the film is grainy, still…the analysts are pouring over it. On CLEOPs, the general says we’re set to go. One last thing. The vice-president made some off-the-cuff statements set to air tomorrow morning. Our friend over at CNN gave us the heads up. Nothing too serious – the typical bluster from Palmer. The problem is that he brought up Tehran and we’re getting media inquiries, asking for clarification. I’ve loaded the highlights into your office monitor in case you want some extra heartburn.”

  “Christ, Mac, we send him out there to console people and he still can’t keep his mouth shut.”

  The White House Chief of Staff, Jordan Swift, approached.

  “Sorry, Mr. President – hi Mac – the networks are ready.”

  “Thanks, Jordan,” Osborne said. “Good luck, Mr. President.”

  The president began down the long corridor, his eyes set straight ahead. He walked past the line of flags, the television lights blinding.

  He stepped to the lectern.

  “Good evening, fellow citizens. Once more, we gather here together on another night of infamy…”

  †

  Earlier that evening, Aisha had exited her car outside of the vintage Hi-Lo theatre in downtown Des Moines. She wore designer skinny jeans and a silk blouse she’d bought on-line the week before. She wanted to be dressed well.

  Inside the front doors, it was as they had said: no guards, no detectors.

  A teenager with beginning acne took her ticket, “Thank you, ma’am, theater number twelve. Yes, to your left.”

  She bought a soda, casually walked into the restroom and waited.

  One minute, two minutes, three…

  She exited the restroom and headed towards screen number 12.

  As planned, she entered the theater in the dark after the coming attractions had started. She felt the stiffness around her chest as she sat in her seat. The screen momentarily faded while the main show began and, suddenly, an aging but still agile George Clunét was running across a skyscraper girder as a massive explosion rushed up behind him.

  She looked at her watch. Thirty-three minutes…

  As the movie continued, she drifted into memories – of her mother in the village, of the white desert heat, of the evening meals and the laughter and the trust…

  Her mother would never understand. Yet she did this for the children, for the ones she would never have.

  Wasn’t this right?

  She pushed the question from her mind, with the ways she’d been taught.

  Ten minutes…

  George Clunét cupped the woman’s face, staring into her turquoise eyes.

  Aisha had never been in love, not truly, not in the way of that woman’s face, not by such a man. Not by any man…

  She began to breathe deeper, the straps around her chest seeming tighter. Another explosion flashed across the screen, making her flinch.

  Two minutes…

  In twenty-nine other theaters, twenty-nine of her fellow comrades, some of them her friends – Jumanna, the Cairo bookstore owner, Bara’ah, the graduate student from Lebanon – were sitting in a seat identical to hers.

  Did they feel like her?

  1, 2, 3, she pushed the questions from her mind. 1, 2, 3…

  Thirty seconds and another flash flared across the screen. She hid her eyes. It seemed to blind her.

  Her mother’s face…

  She moved her hand slowly across her stomach, where her baby might have been. Another flash. Had she become fire yet?

  Ten seconds…

  Her hand shook at the trigger, hidden at her belt, just below her womb. As if thawing from a thousand years, she stood with her finger at the trigger.

  Her mother, her child…

  The world was trembling.

  “Ma’am, please, could you sit?” an elderly lady politely asked from behind. She turned and looked at the old woman. There was kindness in her eyes.

  Her mother’s face…her mother’s face!

  She pulled away from the trigger and ran from the theater, a chorus of angry flashes cascading across the screen fading behind her. Stumbling across the dimly lit parking lot to her car, she fell into the seat. Mile after mile, she never looked up from the stripes in the road, ticking off like a metronome.

  Fifty-eight miles from Des Moines, she vacantly pulled off onto a gravel road and drove into a field, fallow from the past winter. The Milky Way washed across the sky, a chorus of tree frogs calling endlessly from the forest edge.

  Her mind was numb, unable to think, only to see.

  She removed the strap of explosives from around her chest, ripping the tape from her skin. She disengaged the trigger and activated the backup timer and threw the bundle into the driver’s seat.

  The alfalfa felt wet. Somewhere, she had lost her sandals.

  She stumbled across the dark field, felt the cool beds of alfalfa and then the hard, sharp gravel on her bare feet. She heard the explosion behind her, the ground shaking through the road and into her. The stars disappeared in the flash, the frogs silenced in the shock.

  She never looked back.

  †

  At precisely 10:28 p.m., fifteen minutes after the president had finished his address, four F-36 stealth fighter jets silently took to the air.

  It was predawn in the village of Amaruk, tucked into the Sarawat Mountains in southern Yemen.

  The fighter jets passed over and released the CLEOPs weapons. When the missiles hit the ground they began their four-stage flight into the Earth.

  CLEOPs was designed like a Saturn lunar rocket, except with its trajectory in reverse. Five hundred feet above the ground, in a massive lightning storm, the first stage emitted an electro-magnetic pulse from its nose cone that disabled all ground-based surveillance assets. As the first stage touched the ground, it instantly detonated, blowing a large hole where the rest of the missile could follow. The second stage drilled through the initial hard rock layers while the third stage blew another hole even deeper. The final stage was the large-yield conventional payload that exploded a quarter mile beneath the Earth’s surface.

  On the ground above, there were no screams, no cries for mothers. In an instant, the sky turned to lightning, the ground disappeared and they simply fell into the bowels of the Earth.

  †

  The president rolled
over, asleep in a dream. He mumbled something, perhaps an order. He could steel himself during the day to others, but at night, like us all, he rode the pitches and waves of subconscious.

  He awoke with a start and stared around the dark room. It was silent. His wife lay asleep next to him.

  He took a couple of deep breaths and rubbed his eyes. The clock read 3:00 a.m.

  He looked over…still beautiful.

  She felt his movements, “Hon, you up? Another dream?”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s almost as if something, someone…”

  The memory of the dream began to slip away.

  “Something…a bright light, a star. I don’t know.”

  And then it was gone.

  He chuckled, “You know, the older I get, the harder it is to remember my dreams.”

  He kissed her cheek, “Go back to bed.”

  She snuggled up against him, spooning like she had since college, murmuring something and falling back asleep.

  He moved the covers away and slid from the bed. He found his robe on the armchair and walked towards the window. Bands of stars were competing against the moon’s haloed light.

  The weight of the day began to come back to him – the theaters, the briefings, the rush of it all. And always the faces – the endless, unknown faces.

  He thought back on his dream.

  A light?

  A star?

  †

  Following the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth in 33 A.D., a blood moon arose, fulfilling the prophecy of Joel, “The Sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord.”

  An alternative name for the blood moon is the Hunter’s Moon. Native American Indians hunted and tracked prey under its revealing light.

  Xquis, known as the Blood Moon Maiden, was the daughter of the Mayan god of the underworld.

  A blood moon many times arises after an eclipse, turning from bone-white to a glowing red as it dives toward the night horizon.