The Blood of Patriots Page 4

  “She’s a Brooklyn girl,” Ward replied. “You drive a car at them, they’ll just stare you down.”

  Randolph let loose another throaty laugh and slapped his companion on the back. Ward turned off the car and followed Randolph to the house, the headlights lighting their way before winking off.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The wood-paneled room was lit by the shaded glow of a single desk lamp. Aseel Gahrah, director of the Al Huda Center, sat behind the large, clean, mahogany desk, stirring tea. His round face was serene behind his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He felt comfortable here and, despite the news, he felt comfortable at this moment. He understood that few plans run smoothly and that corrections were sometimes necessary. Results were more important than expediency.

  Nineteen-year-old Hassan Shatri had not yet learned those lessons. He stood shifting from foot to foot before the desk, his expression grim bordering on angry, his fingers curled to fists. Now and then his eyes flashed on the darkness behind the desk before quickly dropping away; two pinpoints of light seemed to hover there, like stars.

  Gahrah listened impassively as, with flourishes of self-reproach, the young man told him what had happened.

  “We didn’t know who it was,” the swarthy young man said. “The decision to challenge him was mine. The others did not wish to take a chance that the car belonged to an off-duty police officer, someone Randolph might have hired to—”

  “But you did,” Gahrah interrupted. “You were willing to risk being arrested or slain, exposing us all, inviting scrutiny.”

  “You gave us a job, Uncle. I wanted to make sure we finished it.” His voice dropped. “I had hoped to make you proud.”

  “By running yourself at an oncoming car?” The man’s face remained calm but his voice had an edge. He did not want to beat the boy down, merely make him aware that not everything could be solved by frontal assault.

  “I did not want to shame you with cowardice,” Shatri replied.

  “Courage is not merely in the sinew of a man,” Gahrah told him. “Many fools have that. As our brothers-in-arms in the Holy Land learned centuries ago, one must also have the judgment, the wisdom, the patience to know when a retreat today is the groundwork for victory tomorrow.”

  The boy considered that. “It is difficult to know this in the moment,” he answered.

  “Hindsight is useful,” Gahrah said. “I know that your passions have been raised by the imam. There is good and there is danger in that.” The director had turned his head slightly to the side when he said that. “Let us agree that if a plan is to be changed, unless you can tear the eyes from all who might see you, and deafen all who might hear you, the wisest course is to withdraw. Yes?”

  The young man hesitated then nodded once. “Yes, Uncle.”

  “It is done,” Gahrah said, softening. “Your identity was not revealed and your actions did tell us something. Whoever was on that field tonight was not a tourist, someone who came upon you by chance.”

  The young man’s interest perked. “Then you think the farmer has hired someone?”

  Gahrah shook his head. He smoothed his beard with a hand while he considered what had happened. “Private security would not have been permitted to intervene on public land. Not in the way you describe. No, this was someone who was willing to become involved either by design or chance.”

  “A friend of Randolph’s?”

  “Possibly. But waiting in the field? No. Randolph fired at you. I believe this person was passing by.” Gahrah thought aloud. “In any event, they may be emboldened by this. We cannot allow them to unify and start patrolling the field.” Gahrah raised both hands and set them down, indicating the matter was closed. “Join your brothers. We will speak of this no more tonight.”

  The young man bowed slightly then left the room. When the door had shut a short figure emerged from the shadows to the left of the desk.

  “A disappointment,” a soft voice said.

  “Not entirely,” the director replied. “The farmer did fire on them this time, Imam. The boys achieved that much.”

  The imam raised an eyebrow. “You assume I was referring to the boys?”

  Gahrah frowned. “You give them fire without a torch to hold it. That can be dangerous. He needed to hear what I had to say.”

  “Wildfires can be useful,” the imam replied.

  “And unpredictable,” Gahrah shot back. “The plan was to provoke the farmer to go after them in public. When he does that we will have the arrest we desire.”

  “A hate crime.”

  “That was the goal,” Gahrah reminded him.

  The imam shook his head slowly. “It is no longer enough.”

  The imam shuffled around the desk, his slippered feet whispering along the rug. He stood by the room’s one window and looked down the main street toward the mountains. He was a tall man with hunched shoulders and hawkish eyes peering from beneath thick gray brows. His skin was deeply wrinkled and his white beard came to a sharp point just below his thin neck. Bony fingers locked behind his back as he stood there.

  “What we need are basijis,” the holy man said, almost wistfully. “Then we would have results.”

  The holy man was referring to the undercover operatives who mingled with the civilian population in Iran. When suspected anti-government activists were found, the secret police would draw them out by pretending to be fellow revolutionaries.

  “That would not work,” Gahrah pointed out. “You have not been here long enough. You do not know Americans. The citizens of this town know each other, they only trust each other.”

  “Your banker?”

  “He trusts money,” Gahrah replied. “He is the exception.”

  “These Americans,” the imam said disdainfully. “That boy fights against his instincts and you encourage that. He has been raised in a country where men are taught to be like women and women to be like men. It is a sin against the order of things.”

  The director had a sip of tea then sat back. He did not agree with the imam. The young men had been following the plan the director had laid out for them: to get a judgment against the farmer, then convince him to sell the farm in exchange for the charges being dropped. The land was the immediate goal, not ideology. Gahrah was aware of the laws and the ways to manipulate them in a way the imam was not. But the holy man was nearly eighty. For him, patience was a weakness. Inactivity showed a lack of faith.

  “The swine must be gotten rid of,” the imam said suddenly.

  “The pigs,” Gahrah clarified.

  “Yes. I have lived these weeks with those creatures of the devil and with the stubbornness of their owner.” The imam was silent for a long moment then fixed his gaze on Gahrah. “Do it tonight.”

  Gahrah regarded him with open surprise. “Are you certain?”

  “I am certain that we shall be the victors in this, and I tire of waiting,” the imam said.

  “Imam, I understand,” Gahrah said. “But the boys are needed for the other mission. If we were to lose any of them now—”

  “‘Those that have left their homes and fought for God’s cause with their wealth and with their persons, it is they who shall triumph.’ What the boy did tonight was rash but his heart was true. Let ours be likewise, tempered with the tactics of our jihadi brothers. If the time and place are unexpected, we will bend events to us, not the other way around.”

  Gahrah mouthed his silent accord as the imam retired to the adjoining prayer space of the community center while the director considered how they should enact the will of their partners. One turned to God for guidance; one turned to the Internet for practical applications. Gahrah took his laptop from a drawer, opened it, and studied the map of Basalt. It was marked with virtual pins: property they owned was in red, property they wished to own was in green, public lands were in white.

  The colors of the flag of Iran, their native land. A country they had not seen in over a score of years—the young men, never. They had lived their lives amo
ng the Arab community in and around Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It had been necessary that the group not travel, that they remain invisible to airlines and immigration officials, especially in the aftermath of the September 11 strikes.

  Gahrah brought up a Google Earth image of the Randolph farm. He studied it for several minutes. There was only one way the thing could be done. He would inform the boys after dinner. They would prove to the imam that they were not afraid. They had, all of them, embraced the imam’s dream, the vision articulated by the late Ayatollah Mohammad Zarif, the Islamization of the west in a single generation. So ordered, they would do whatever was necessary.

  The director shut the computer and looked around. Yes, he was comfortable here. The room reminded him of the religious center where he had studied in Tehran. Books were brought to students at a desk and, there, one was transported to Paradise and the presence of God. What greater comfort could one know than that?

  Perhaps the imam is right, he thought. He was the spokesman of God, and perhaps it is God’s will that everyone know that joy as soon as possible.

  Either they would know joy, or Hell would be their home.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When John Ward was ten years old, his parents took him on their only real vacation together. They went to Yosemite and stayed in a cabin at the Ahwahnee Hotel. They had booked one of the cottages and what the young Ward remembered most about the visit wasn’t the scenery or the wildlife, the Native American guides or the sky drenched with stars. Even then, big buildings full of light impressed him more than distant pinpoints in the sky. What stuck with him was the smell of the cottage. It was like nothing Ward had ever experienced, a mixture of smoky wood and volcanic soil you could literally feel at the back of your throat, of air filled with fragrances he couldn’t place blended in a way he could never have re-created. That smell was just a memory until he entered Scott Randolph’s home.

  Maybe because his nose was more sophisticated now, Ward could pick out the pine from the lavender, the smell of the horses from the pigs, the old leather of the chairs from the adobe used to build the chimney. But it was still a blend that transported him to his childhood. The feeling was a sense of wonder tinged with caution and fear because he felt—he was—so clearly an outsider.

  The floorboards creaked as the two men entered. Even that was different from the way New York hardwood sounded. He glanced down. The slats were wide and held firmly in place with wooden dowels. The pegs had been there so long they had become a part of the wood around them.

  “You built this place?” Ward asked.

  “Put it up with my dad in 1960,” Randolph said. “His father owned the property—oh, it was about three times larger then, but a bunch of it was sold off in rough times to build the houses where your ex-wife lives now. The family lived in a real small place next to the barn. Thing fell to hell about 1970. The hog shed is still the original, though I’ve had to fix the roof a coupla dozen times.” He laughed. “But the rest is all new. Well, newer than what Grandad built in 1930.”

  Randolph spit his chaw into a real brass spittoon, then went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of beers. Ward just stood on a bearskin rug—unashamedly real, the teeth yellowed and eyes stone-dead—and turned a slow circle. This was a home. Ward had never really had one, other than the city itself. An apartment was where you showered and slept, the bars were where you watched TV, and the streets were where you lived and worked.

  For the second time that night his backbone felt a chill. A familial home and the values, the survival traditions that got you there. Those were worth fighting for.

  “Sit,” Randolph gestured to an armchair with a beer as he handed the bottle to Ward. The farmer pulled over a rocker and sat facing his guest. “I hope Megan will forgive me for holding you a bit longer.”

  “I think that engagement is on hold till I can square things with her mother,” Ward said ruefully.

  “Your daughter—she knows about what happened back East?”

  Ward sipped the beer and nodded. “She knows what people say happened and what everyone thinks.”

  “About half of which is BS?”

  “Depends,” Ward said. “I’m guessing they got it right on Fox. I’ll explain it to her before I go. What about you? Any family?”

  Randolph shook his head. “I had a wife. Boston gal. Met her when she was out here taking photographs for college back in the 1970s. She thought it would be neat to live in the mountains. That lasted about a year. I used to date a gal in Aspen, but she ran off with some European asshole name of Franz. Last I heard she was alone and tending bar in Italy.” He shrugged. “It’s okay. I got my hogs, I got my horses, and I got Papa Vito’s when I feel like a game of pool. I’ve got a cabin in the mountains when I want to go hunting. I like not having to answer to anyone except my pigs.”

  “What about those off-roaders? How long has that been going on?”

  “About three, four weeks,” Randolph said. “Damnedest thing. I can’t put a finger on it, but I don’t think this has anything to do with recreation or their goddamn bikes. I feel like they’re baiting me.”

  “Why?”

  Randolph shrugged. “Ornery? Vegans? Got a grudge I don’t know about?”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  Randolph shook his head. “They come when it’s too dark for me to see their faces, and they all dress in black. If I had to guess I’d say they’re young Muslims.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Randolph finished his beer, went to get another. “I know all the kids in town here. None of them would behave this way. Besides, a bunch of Arab kids moved into town shortly before all this started. It was after that strip of Muslim places opened. The newspaper reported that some group from Chicago picked up a string of foreclosed homes over on Floating Fork Court. Quiet cul-de-sac, very private. Some of the places were for families and some are like frat houses, all young men.”

  “Or barracks,” Ward mused.

  Randolph shot him a look from the kitchen. “Are you serious?”

  “I didn’t think I was. At least, I hope I’m not.”

  The idea hung there as each man processed it. Randolph sat down and leaned back, the chair dipping slowly. Ward held the beer on his knee and looked at the bottle. The big picture wasn’t coming together from the parts they had.

  “I don’t know what’s behind this,” Randolph said. “Maybe they just don’t like the idea that I’m a pig farmer. They got a strong dislike for pork.”

  “It has to be more than that,” Ward speculated.

  “Why? These people are funny. You draw their prophet in a cartoon and they want to cut your head off.”

  “True,” Ward said, “but I still think it has to be more.”

  “Some folks think they torched the Pullet ’n’ Pork because of that.”

  “I heard that was a grease fire.”

  “The fire alarm had been disconnected,” Randolph said.

  “How was business there?”

  “So-so,” Randolph admitted. “Tough going up against Papa Vito’s.”

  “Well, that’s a reason too. Besides, wouldn’t they have struck you first? Choke the supply line at the source?”

  Randolph took another chaw and chewed it thoughtfully. “Possible, I suppose.”

  “Is there anything special about your property?” Ward asked. “Size? Location?”

  “Both,” Randolph said. “Highest in Basalt and single biggest privately held chunk of land.”

  “Those are more likely reasons to try and get under your skin.”

  “More likely, but not practical. There’s no way in hell they’re gonna chase me from my home.”

  “Has anyone tried to buy it?”

  “Nah,” Randolph said. “People try, but most know better. Dickson would’ve told them. I mean, look. I don’t owe anyone anything, and the farm provides me with a sufficient income. What I don’t shoot during hunting season or catch in the river I’m able to buy
. What the heck reason have I got to leave?”

  “No kidding,” Ward said, a little envious. “I guess the other question would be why Basalt?”

  “I think that should be obvious,” Randolph said.

  Ward was missing it. He waited.

  “We’re the heartland,” the farmer said.

  Ward couldn’t dismiss the symbolism of that, though his gut told him it had to be more. “You got someone to watch your back if these guys come back?”

  Randolph dismissed the idea with a wave. “I can look after the place. They know I wasn’t shooting at them before, but they know I can. I’ll be okay.”

  “Well, if these guys do come back tonight don’t get carried away,” Ward cautioned. “And I’m speaking from experience here. Minorities have a way of turning public opinion against a man.”

  “John, I’m pissed off and I’m worried but I ain’t stupid,” Randolph assured him. “I hold my water unless there’s a real fire.”

  Ward grinned and finished his beer. Randolph saw him to the door. The farmer clasped his hand and didn’t immediately let go.

  “You reminded me of something tonight,” Randolph said. “That true Americans, wherever we’re from, whoever we are, are in this together. It’s not ‘you give this to me’ but ‘what can we do together.’ That’s one of the things that distinguishes us from other people and it’s one of the things we’re in danger of losing.”

  “Too many hyphenates,” Ward agreed.

  Randolph frowned. “I don’t follow.”

  “Korean-American, African-American, Gay-American, Muslim-American,” he said. “We’ve got more tribes than Afghanistan.”

  “Amen,” Randolph nodded. “Hyphenates. I’ll forget the word in about two minutes, but I like it.”

  Ward grinned and returned to his car. He switched from green to gas. Driving without engine sounds was like trying to walk down the stairs without looking at your feet. You didn’t get the full feel of what you were doing.

  He sought out the illuminated clock on the dashboard. He had left the house forty minutes before. If her mother didn’t push, there was a good chance Megan wouldn’t hold it against him. He leaned into the gas and crossed the field and got down the dirt road as quickly as the streamlined little car would allow.