The Last Infidel Read online

  “Yep, old Gus,” Cody said disinterestedly, as he turned and rummaged through some papers on his desk. “Now that was a man. You remember him, don’t you? Dang fool always invited you to his birthday parties even though half the kids stayed away because they knew you were coming. Didn’t he end up in an acid bath?”

  Jadhari, shaking with anger, walked over to Cody and pulled a switchblade from his pocket. He flipped it open, swung Cody around to face him, and pressed it against Cody’s neck. “I had no choice in the matter!” he yelled. “It wasn’t my call! I didn’t want any of this! I wanted the hell out of here the moment ISA arrived – but I couldn’t leave! So shut your freaking mouth! You don’t know what it’s like to be me! You will never know!”

  A deep, dark silence followed; the loudest silence Cody had ever heard. He never flinched, never once batted an eyelid, never once let fear flicker in his eyes. With his jaw firmly set, he slowly untucked his dark red, button-down shirt and raised it, revealing a dark, round wound in the left side of his waist. “If you’re going to do it, Jadhari, stick me in the waist – it’ll hurt more, and it’ll take me longer to die.”

  Jadhari pulled away and retracted his knife. He took the flask from Cody and took a long drink of what was probably a pint of homegrown, Cannon County moonshine. When he finished, he looked for the lid. It was sitting on Cody’s desk.

  Cody walked towards the end of the trailer as if nothing had happened, set the office chair upright, and rolled it back to his desk. He put his hand on Jadhari’s shoulder and set him down in it, not because he felt sorry for him, but because he needed to act like he cared. And if Jadhari ever completely lost control, especially in front of the new visitors who had arrived to inspect the mosque, Cody’s job here – and his pending escape west – would become exponentially more difficult. Jadhari needed saving from himself.

  Jadhari looked fine. He’d be okay with just a little time, maybe a couple of hours, maybe a day. He sat there at attention, with his hands tight around the flask, waiting for Cody to buck him up, like he’d always done when the two were younger.

  Cody had loved Jadhari once, as a best friend; and though all of that was part of a distant and nearly forgotten past, Cody still remembered the young boy who had once been in love with Middle Tennessee and all of the opportunities America offered him when he first arrived.

  “You okay?” Cody asked.

  Jadhari nodded.

  Cody didn’t move. He remained in place, bent over at the waist, listening to Jadhari’s breathing return to normal, watching the pained expressions in his face suddenly turn blank.

  The two visitors waiting outside had come to see Cody, the job manager overseeing the building of the mosque. And they would be asking for Cody’s personal assurances that the mosque would be open on the last day of Ramadan.

  “We have to get out there,” Cody said.

  “What do you want, Cody?” Jadhari asked, with a certain dejected tone of a child about to lose something.

  “You know what I want.”

  “I’ll order your truck to be filled up with five gallons of gasoline,” Jadhari said. “You can leave tonight. By evening tomorrow, I’ll report you missing. But you know you’ll probably be killed.”

  “Probably,” Cody said. “But I’m dead already – having my throat slit would be nothing more than a garnish.”

  “Then get out of here. But you have to do one more thing before you leave, and this is from Bashar himself.”

  Cody jerked his head back. “From Bashar?”

  “Yes. You need to go the Golf Course Camp and pick up a woman named Susan Reid. She’s in C block, you know, with the ugly chicks. One of Bashar’s men has asked for her as his wife.”

  { 8 }

  Cody Marshall’s intention in arranging Susan Reid’s pickup for a later hour than Jadhari requested was three-fold. First, he needed to remove one of the rifles from the work trailer under the cover of darkness, for Jadhari’s guards, who never left the mosque, would probably see him during the daylight hours. By nine o’clock at night, most of them would be hungry and tired, intent upon breaking their daylong, Ramadan-required fast. They’d never see a thing.

  But equally important, he hoped to make his way through an internal check point – the guards there would think he was on mosque business – and slip out of town, heading east on Hall’s Hill Pike. From there, he’d make his way to the old church, where Lisa and Marcus had hidden the explosives, trade away the rifle, and take what explosives he needed to reduce another checkpoint in the south, the last checkpoint standing between himself and freedom.

  Then he’d head to the Golf Course Camp, with Bashar’s silver crescent shield clearly displayed on his dash, and pick up the girl. He’d take his time driving her back to the courthouse on the square and, by then, it would be late. He’d pass out a few mason jars of whiskey to any guards who might stop him on the way down South East Broad Street – and they’d know him anyway because he’d bribed them before – and he’d head south on 41A towards the Beech Grove end blockade and towards freedom.

  The plan was a sound one. But Cody ended up with far less C-4 than he’d been expecting and only one manual detonator. Lisa had insisted that her terms for the trade had not been met. She’d asked for one hundred rounds of ammunition for the silenced REC7 DI rifle, no more and no less. Cody had brought her only forty rounds. A swindle of the first magnitude Lisa had thought at the time, and she’d told Cody so. But in the end she relented, reminding Cody that, though she liked and trusted him, Marcus came first. She handed over twenty sticks of C-4 to Cody and told him he could have more if he brought her the rest of the ammunition. What made the whole deal so rotten was that he had to show her how to use the strange-looking new rifle he and Jose had taken from the Greenspan building.

  Cody met Jadhari, now tired and thoroughly ploughed, on the steps of the courthouse, and Jadhari handed him the crescent shield, a small pendant on a chain about the size of a man’s palm. The crescent shield, solid silver, one of twelve allowed in each city, was always issued by the commanding officer himself. The shield signified to everyone that the bearer was acting in the name of the commanding officer, in this case Bashar el Sayed, and that the bearer could not be detained or hindered in the execution of his duties as long as they were carried out within the inner checkpoints of the city. Cody inquired about this restriction only to have Jadhari, whose speech was mostly garbled, and whose breath reeked of alcohol, brush him aside. Cody said no more. Neither did Jadhari. Cody got into his truck. He drove away from the square and down West Main Street, unnoticed, unhindered, and unconcerned. He arrived at Golf Course Camp shortly after ten o’clock that night.

  Cody parked and hurried through the tall grass and weeds towards the front gate. The gate was tall and long, and three men stood guarding it. Cody flashed his crescent shield, and the men slid the gate to the open position, slowly and with great difficulty. Its rusting rollers argued and screeched against the equally rusting horizontal bars and against the serene quietness of the night. He arrived at the camp overseer’s office and, anxious to get this night on the road, hammered on the door incessantly. A guard, with his weapon at the ready, came up onto the porch behind him. Cody held up his crescent shield, not bothering to turn around. The door opened and a woman in a burka greeted him.

  “I’m here for Susan Reid.”

  “Mr. Shaheed says to wait until morning,” the woman said. “You are to wait in the guest house until---”

  Cody held up his shield and pushed the woman away. He looked to the right, across the small living room and into the kitchen. Then he turned and walked down the hall, looking into every door he came to. When he opened the last door, Shaheed, dressed in nothing but a white tee shirt and a pair of underwear, jumped up from an office chair. He reached for his pistol just as Cody raised his crescent shield and stuck it in his face.

  “I’m here for Susan Reid by order of Bashar el Sayed, and I’m here to pick her up now,” C
ody said. He grabbed Shaheed by the front collar of his tee shirt and dragged him out the of the room, down the hall, and out through the front door. “Bashar will not be kept waiting – those are his orders, not mine.”

  Shaheed, breathless, his eyes wide with surprise, craned his head around from the left and then to the right. Several guards came running, and he motioned for them to stop. He turned to Cody and, with a hint of humility and shame in his voice, said, “Allow me to get myself dressed first.”

  “Prisoner area C,” Cody said, shaking his head. “Now.” He held his crescent shield up above his head and pushed Shaheed along in front of him, down the steps, across The Yard, and towards the right. The guards, unsure if they should look at their boss in his state of undress, or whether they should turn away, held back, whispering to each other. Cody’s shield worked marvelously, doing what it was intended to do: it cleared him a path in the name of Bashar.

  Shaheed climbed the steps to the women’s shack, trying his best to look dignified, when the door opened up, almost of its own accord. A woman wearing a burka stood there in a state of shock. She looked at Shaheed and scanned his dark, thick body from head to toe.

  “We’re . . . we’re here for Susan Reid,” Shaheed said, with his eyes on the ground.

  “She has no Burka,” the woman replied.

  Cody pushed Shaheed aside. “Give her yours.”

  Shaheed nodded, cutting his eyes over to Cody.

  The woman bowed and retreated into the shack, closing the door behind her.

  In less time than it took for Cody to turn and grin at Shaheed, the door opened again. Out stepped a woman dressed in a burka. She kept her head down and her eyes to the ground, reluctant to step across the threshold.

  Cody grabbed the woman’s hand, pushed Shaheed aside to give the woman more room, and hurried her down the steps. Without looking back, and without so much as a word or nod to anyone, Cody jogged across The Yard. The woman stumbled along after him, her feet catching and ripping away the hem of the long, black burka.

  They reached the gate at the perimeter, and the guards, eager to not hinder a bearer of one of Bashar’s shields, put the gate in motion as Cody and the woman hurried towards it. Once they passed through, they continued on past another guard standing on the other side. The two men quickly closed the gate, and Cody and the woman headed through the tall grass.

  Cody stopped when he saw the lights of four or five vehicles out on the main highway, then he heard sporadic gunfire. Bashar’s men. Why they got liquored up the way they did, alcohol being prohibited to Muslims on every occasion, especially during Ramadan, Cody could never figure out. Must have been the new interpretation of the Koran ISA was teaching their men these days. After all, what’s a little whiskey when you’re raping, torturing, and the killing defenseless women and children?

  “You,” Cody said to the woman. “Into the bed of the truck – and hide under the tarp, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Tracy, her face hidden beneath the black cloth, recognized Cody’s voice. She turned towards him and stared. She knew that voice, knew it belonged to Cody; but it sounded harsher than she remembered, with a certain edginess to it, rough and abrasive. She strained her eyes trying to pierce the darkness, but she could barely make out his facial features. He’d taken her hand back at the shack, and she’d felt it. Strong hands. She’d known it then, hadn’t she? The way he’d held it, letting his pinky finger rest on her wrist in a way nobody had ever done before. She began to speak, to say, “Cody!” – or was it, “It’s me!”? – but she felt a tinge of hostility forming within her as Cody flung her towards the back end of the truck, hurrying towards the driver’s side door.

  “Just do as I say,” Cody said. “Climb into the back, now – and don’t move or say a word until I say so.”

  Tracy, feeling like she’d been saved, did as she was told.

  Cody drove slowly through the tall grass with his lights out. Bashar’s men seemed content to spin their wheels at the intersection of the Golf Course Camp Road and the main highway, turning doughnuts, squealing their tires. Even Bashar would have let them be, fearful that even he’d get shot.

  Cody got close to the intersection and stopped behind a row of thick Crepe Myrtles and waited. Two of the cars stopped a few minutes later. The drivers appeared to be speaking to one another, but only momentarily; and then both cars spun their wheels and turned back towards town. A third car followed after them a few seconds later. Two other vehicles, one of them a van, went right and disappeared from sight.

  Cody put the truck back into gear and crept towards the intersection. He looked left and right, seeing nobody, but feared he’d meet Bashar’s men on the mile stretch heading back to the courthouse.

  He passed the vacant businesses along the parkway. Fat Man’s Spaghetti House and Boffer’s Bar-Be-Cue had gone under long ago, as had Dismount Tire and some old, non-descript, used furniture joints. Too bad, he thought, because he’d known the owners of those businesses well.

  He came around a bend in the road and continued up onto an overpass. He saw two vehicles, a Camaro and an old Buick Roadmaster, the ones he’d seen earlier at the intersection near the camp, and he hit the gas. His truck roared to life and started down the other side of the overpass before the two drivers knew what had happened.

  Before he reached 41A, Bashar’s men, now firing random shots in his direction, began closing in behind him. Without a moment’s hesitation, he turned right onto 41A, losing control to avoid a pothole, and ran the right tires up onto a curb. When he corrected, he heard the thumping of his passenger bouncing around in the back end of the truck, and he heard her shouting a few expletives.

  Cody looked into his rear view mirror and saw the two cars swing onto the road behind him. One of them took the turn too late, much too fast, and lost its traction. It spun and crashed into a deep hole in front of the Dodge’s gas station.

  The night was too dark and the road too torn up, so Cody reached for the headlight switch and turned the lights on. But when he looked up again, he heard the sound of automatic gunfire and heard the tick of rounds slamming into the bed of the truck.

  He saw a concrete road divider ahead, one that had been sitting in the middle of the southbound lane for the last two years, and he drove towards it. With a smile of defiance on his face – or was it a death wish? – Cody slowed the vehicle just enough for the car behind him to close in. He was almost on top of the road divider.

  More gunfire barked out from behind him, but not a single shot, as far as he could tell, hit his truck.

  “OK!” Cody shouted, as he simultaneously turned off his lights and swerved to the left. He never looked back. The car following him slammed into the concrete barrier. It hit with such speed that the raggedy, roaring impact was loud enough for Cody to hear over the roar of his truck’s engine.

  “To hell with this,” he said, as he slammed his hands down on the steering wheel. He turned around and yelled. “I’m getting out of here and it looks like you’re just going to have to come with me!”

  Cody stepped on the gas and sped south on highway 41A, heading for the armed check point.

  { 9 }

  Cody pulled his truck off the road. The millions of stars in the night sky could do nothing to penetrate the dark canopy of hackberry trees standing guard over the old, pioneer cemetery on the side of the road. Murfreesboro was miles behind him, maybe ten miles or so, and Cody reached for a small flashlight, one he’d stolen from Jadhari. He got out of the truck. A wind was coming up from the south, filling the air with the scent of rain, and the limbs on the trees were shaking and rustling. A sudden gust, cool and welcome, nearly blew the cap off of his head.

  The possibility of rain urged him to hurry, and so he did. He threw down the tail gate of the truck and climbed up into the bed. “You have a choice,” he barked out to the woman. “You can come with me – which is what you want to do – or you can walk back to Murfreesboro by yourself and be raped every
night for the rest of your life. The choice is yours.” He aimed his flashlight at the tarp near the front of the bed and loosened it. When he threw it back, he looked at the woman, noticing first her shaven head, then seeing she was no longer dressed in a burka. He looked into her eyes once and turned away. Then he looked a second time.

  “I’m supposed to be at the courthouse,” Tracy said stiffly, “a half hour ago.”

  Cody didn’t pay any attention to what she’d just said. He just knelt down beside her with his little flashlight aimed at the fifty-pound stack of explosives stored beneath the tool box. His flashlight began to go out and he slapped it with his palm. “Have you seen my---? Well, you wouldn’t even know what one looked like, would you?” His flashlight went out, dimming quickly, and he threw it against the metal bed of the truck.

  Tracy pulled a small flashlight out of her jeans pocket and flipped it on. She waved it around like a fairy holding a wand and said, “Light up the darkness, right? And yes, I know what a detonator looks like because I saw it magically disconnect itself and fly out of the back of the truck.”

  Cody, still kneeling in place, turned his head. “It couldn’t have. It was duct-taped onto the---” He reached out and tried to grab the flashlight. Tracy pulled it back. “You---”

  Tracy put the flashlight under her chin and made her signature platypus lips, something she used to do with Pringles back when you could still get Pringles.

  Cody felt himself become breathless and his heart began to race. He looked at the woman’s face – if it was Tracy, she’d changed – but maybe the absence of her long, blonde hair, usually worn in a ponytail, skewed his memory.

  “Light up the darkness,” she said. “That’s what you always said.”

  Cody stood up, but he never took his eyes away from Tracy’s face. He watched her stand up, turn off the flashlight, and sit on the tool box.

  “It’s been a long time, Cody,” Tracy said.