The Command

When all the threads were burning, fizzling up a thin blue sulfurous smoke, they bailed out of the cab to either side, drawing Russian-made automatics.

At that moment the green pickup pulled up the ramp behind them. The man with the Kalashnikov saw the komiteh-men at the instant they saw him. They were armed only with heavy sticks, but they charged out of the pickup and up the ramp at him without hesitation, shouting and brandishing the clubs. He pulled the rifle close to his body and hosed out a burst. The bullets blasted them backward.

* * *

The bomb went off in two stages, separated by milliseconds. The first detonation, the five kilos of explosive on the right side of the truck, fired the heavy steel I-beams sideways and upward through the ancient brickwork and plaster between the underground access and the reception hall above. They crashed through bricks and lath and the thin sheathing of marble and tile on the plinth, mowing down the women who stood closest to the wall.

Then the main charge went off. This second explosion was so powerful the plates only resisted for a time too short to measure before they gasified in the expanding fireball that stamped the truck frame down into flattened steel, and blasted apart the heavy masonry foundations, dating back to 1602. But before they disintegrated, they and the mass of heavy brick focused the blast, sending a half ton of rusty rivets and bolts through the freshly torn hole.

Moving faster than bullets, heavier and even crueler in their jagged irregular shapes, the thousand-pound fragment-charge cut down the waiting crowd in a welter of blood and torn flesh, jewelry, cloth. They sheared off arms and hands. Smashed through faces and skulls, punctured bodies, tore through lungs and eyes and stomachs.

Some of the women had grasped toddlers by the hand. Others carried infants beneath their chadors. These, too, were torn to pieces by the flying steel, then flayed by the shock wave, lungs and arteries and sinews torn apart in an instant and blown through windows and mirrors.

Their surroundings turned instantly from decoration into instruments of murder. The immense nineteenth-century chandeliers disintegrated into millions of shards of impaling-sharp crystal. The inscribed tiles, cut with the holy concentration of craftsmen intent on the worship of God, became a hail of ceramic projectiles.

A horrible bloom of torn meat, shattered bone, and bright blood sprayed out across the lovely calligraphy, across the holy words of the Prophet of Mecca.

The shock sent a tremor through the building, popping lightbulbs, setting the walls and pillars swaying above the thousands of pilgrims. They instantly concluded an earthquake had began, and began herding out into the open air.

In the wrecked porch, smoke billowed from a gaping hole in the floor. For a moment the terrible sound seemed to have wiped out all sound. Then the echoing silence slowly yielded. To cries, gasps, prayers. To a slowly rising chorus of terror and screams and pain.

* * *

Outside the city the Datsun stood parked by the side of the road. Not far away uphill, lethargic sheep milled slowly in a wire pen, or lay on the dusty ground, not even blinking as flies crawled over their eyeballs.

The man called by the name of the angel of punishment watched smoke rising above the minarets. Listened to the wail of sirens. The radio babbled with horror. A reporter spoke urgently from the courtyard of the shrine. He wept as he described the bodies being carried out. Scores of dead. Hundreds injured. Blood. Slaughter. Death.

He stood smoking as more sirens joined the lament. It sounded as if the Baluchis had parked in exactly the right spot. The announcer, voice shaking with outrage and fury, spoke of gunmen shot down in the ring tunnel.

Heroes? He cocked an eyebrow. Perhaps, in their way. Simple men, who believed. Damaged men, filled with hate.

Tools, to be used.

As he’d used such tools before.

He wondered now whether he’d put enough acid in the mix. Maybe next time he’d add more.

In the pen, a herder or lot manager came out and began sifting feed into a trough. The animals slowly congregated, but they didn’t seem eager to eat. The small man glanced his way a couple of times; then walked over.

“Komak bokonam?” said the Iranian.

A northern-flavored Farsi. “Your sheep seem tired,” Malik told him, in the same language, though he knew his accent would sound strange.

“They’ve been that way for some time. The lambs — they don’t grow like they should.”

“You might consider feeding them something to pep them up. There are such things.”

“Are there? I’ll have to look into that,” the herder said, bending to feel along a lamb’s flank.

The man went back to the car. He watched for a while longer, listening to the frenzied voices on the radio. Thinking about them, and about the sheep, and about where he was bound next.

Then only a tracing in the air of dust and smoke marked where he had been.

8

Norfolk, Virginia