True Allegiance

“General,” said Ashammi, looking down at Brett, “I hope your accommodations were not too primitive. I must say, you look somewhat the worse for wear.”

“No,” said Brett, glancing at Yusuf. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Ah, ever the tough American. Well, the good news is that your suffering will not last much longer.”

“Yours either, I’d bet,” said Brett.

“But I will not suffer,” Ashammi said placidly. “Remember, I serve Allah, and no matter what happens, he will be with me.”

“I only hope he’s with all the different pieces of you after we nail your ass with a Hellfire missile.”

“Any plans I don’t know about, General?” Ashammi smiled.

Brett smiled back. “Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll find out soon enough.”

Ashammi took a long ceremonial dagger from his robes. “General, I’m sorry to have to get down to business. I’ve enjoyed our conversations. But I will admit that I will enjoy killing you more, given how much Muslim blood you have on your hands. Now, I am afraid we don’t have much time. Let me be perfectly clear. You will cooperate. If you say anything we do not wish you to say, I will personally cut off your testicles. If you do anything we do not wish you to do, I will cut off your testicles, and then I will slash your throat after letting you bleed.”

Brett grunted. “You make a convincing argument.”

“I have to admit, I am somewhat surprised at your reasonableness.”

“I’m already going to get killed, I assume. No reason to lose my balls in the bargain.”

“Very wise. All right, Hassan, record.”

A young man, no more than seventeen, hit the record button on the digital Canon. The red light flashed. Ashammi began to speak.

When the taping was all over, Ashammi thanked Brett for his cooperativeness. Then he offered him a copy of the Koran. Brett turned it down and told Ashammi to stuff it up his ass. Ashammi smiled, then gestured to his henchmen to take Brett back to his cell.

Brett lay back against the stone wall on his thin mattress, thinking of Ellen. He tried to remember her face, the softness of her eyes; he tried to recall the feel of her body, every line of it silhouetted. He found himself crying. For himself, just a bit. Mostly for her. For the child they had never been able to have.

Then, slowly, he did something he had not done for years: he got down on his knees and he prayed.

“Dear Lord,” he whispered to the darkness, thick with the stench of feces and urine, oppressive with the smell of sweat, “I know I haven’t spoken with You for a while. But I need you now. I may never forgive You for what you did to my Ellen, why You took our baby from us. They say You have a logic all Your own, and I reckon that’s the case, since I sure as hell can’t understand You or the things You do. I know I’ve tried to do the right thing as I see it, and I haven’t broken too many of the lessons I learned in Sunday school.

“And You know better than anybody that I’ve never been one for prayer. I always thought that some people treat You like a gumball machine, like if they pray just the right way and say just the right things, that You’ll give them what they want, when this whole world is about something bigger than what any of us want. It’s about what You want, and I do hope that I’ve done at least a few things the way You want them.

“But now I’m not praying for myself. I’m praying for Ellen. Because after this, she’s gonna be alone, Lord, and I just want her to be happy. You took her children away from her. Maybe I took myself away from her. But however it worked out, now she’ll be on her own. Please let her find someone else. Please let her be happy for once in her life. Please let my sweetheart go on with her life, let her understand what I’ve done and why I’ve done it. Thank You, Lord, in advance. Amen.”

Brett closed his eyes and dropped into an uneasy sleep.

President Prescott

Washington, DC

PRESIDENT PRESCOTT ALWAYS FELT a surge of power through his body when he sat in the Situation Room. This is where they had all made their biggest decisions. It’s where Kennedy read teletype during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s where President Barack Obama had sat, watching SEAL Team 6 take out Osama bin Laden. And this is where, Prescott knew, he’d be sitting—at the head of the table—while American special operations troops dispatched Ibrahim Ashammi.

Intelligence had recognized General Hawthorne’s signal within minutes of its first airing on the Ashammi hostage video. Hawthorne had spoken the prewritten message from Ashammi just as Ashammi had written it, prompting a national debate on whether Hawthorne should have complied with the propaganda requirements of the world’s leading terrorist. But intelligence kept the fact that Hawthorne hadn’t complied under their hat. While the rest of the world had watched Hawthorne’s mouth, intelligence had watched his eyes.