The Last Infidel Read online

  “Some might call them women, Jadhari.”

  “Two women, dead---”

  “And four young girls.”

  “One soldier burned up, horribly, and three BLMR – and who cares about them anyway? – shot to death in front of Bashar’s men. But that, my friend, is only a small part of the problem.”

  Cody raised his eyebrows and said, “Oh?”

  “My guards found something interesting in your truck. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Cody, grinning, looked at Jadhari and said, “I’ve been saving up those bottles of Jack Daniels’ for a special occasion – looks like you’ve spoiled your birthday surprise.”

  { 11 }

  The smell on the top floor of the hardware store was damp, sweaty, and stifling, the odor of twenty-five men who hadn’t been able to bathe in days nearly unbearable. At the end of the aisle running between two rows of beds, sitting at a small, solitary table near the window, was Jose. He had his shoes on the table, and he was leaning back on the two rear legs of the chair.

  Cody came up the stairs, his boots thumping and the old steps squeaking. He saw Jose quickly set a book down, get up, and turn and smile. Cody shook his head, berating himself for having left his diary out on the table. And he felt a bit angry that Jose, who knew better than to go through his personal items, had taken liberties with the book.

  “It was sitting here, man, honest – just like you see it,” Jose said. “I swear I didn’t know it was yours.”

  Cody picked up the book and turned it over in his hands. He saw a piece of paper sticking out, something he didn’t remember putting there.

  “So, really? She just didn’t show up for the wedding, and you waited for four hours?” Jose said, and he smiled the way he often did when he’d been caught, or thought he’d been caught, with his pants down.

  Silence filled the room. Nobody bothered listening to the conversation between the two, thinking it to be nothing more than talk about the mosque. Dinner had already been served downstairs, each man got a shot glass of home-style brew, and nobody had anything better to do than kick back and stare at the ceiling. There would be a couple hands of poker later on; but, for now, just like they did every night after dinner, they laid back in their beds and thought of their families. Some of them cried.

  “You know the story, Jose,” Cody said.

  “But you guys never fought, right?” Jose asked. “And you never found out why she left?”

  Cody shook his head and pursed his lips. He started to walk away, but he pulled a small bottle of golden whiskey from his hip pocket, pulled up a second chair, and motioned for Jose to sit back down.

  When they were both settled – Jose couldn’t take his eyes off the bottle – Cody took a deep breath. He broke the seal on the bottle of Jack Daniels’, dribbled a small taste into his mouth, and handed the bottle to Jose. “Just taste it,” he said. “It’s forty years old.”

  Jose did as Cody told him and smiled.

  “We met at the church building the night before to do some decorating,” Cody said, in a plain, monotone voice. “I had a passing feeling that something was wrong because nothing seemed to be right. I didn’t know what to make of it. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I brushed it off.” He reached over and picked up the bottle.

  “Maybe it was like, you know, that time of the---”

  “Are you ever serious?” Cody asked in a voice that expected no response. “Now I know. I think now that maybe she seemed beaten, defeated, or something.”

  “You were heading out to fight the next day, right?” Jose asked.

  “She’d told me she wanted to marry me as soon as possible. The next day, two o’clock came and went. We all waited for her, then we went to her apartment. She’d packed and left.” Cody slid the strange looking piece of paper out from between the pages of his diary and read it twice. He folded it up and, with his eyes glued on Jose, tore it into as many tiny pieces as he could. He swallowed half of it and threw the rest out through the window.

  “Now she’s here,” Jose said. “And now you can take her and leave – I have a plan.”

  Cody crossed his arms and said, “I’m all ears.”

  Jose looked around the room and scooted his chair close to Cody. “So, you know – we can make a cool hundred thousand in gold on that explosives shipment,” Jose said. “And Bashar? He’ll probably give her to you and let us go wherever we want to go after we sell it to him.”

  Cody didn’t hesitate for even a millisecond. Jose’s little attempt to make him feel again, something he hadn’t wanted to do since he’d been stood up by Tracy, angered him. He uncrossed his arms, pointed towards the wall to distract Jose, and swung a weak left hook into the side of his head. Jose tumbled out of his chair and hit the floor; but Cody wasn’t finished. He picked Jose up, forced him out of the window, and dangled him above the street by his feet. It was a trick he’d learned from watching Bashar’s men.

  Jose screamed and flailed his arms like a bird trying to hold onto a flimsy clothesline. “You’re crazy! Help me! Help me!”

  Down below, one story beneath them, a few of Bashar’s guards began to laugh and yell in Arabic. A gunshot, probably from a pistol, rang out. The bullet ricocheted off a red brick near the window, throwing pieces of mortar and dust into Cody’s face. Cody pulled Jose back inside and set him down carefully onto the hardwood floor. He picked up a chair, carried it to the window, and threw it down at the three men standing just below the window. The chair hit one of the men, knocking him down, and Cody waved and smiled when the hurt man looked up and glared at him.

  One of the other men called out: “Your time is coming, Cody Marshall, infidel! You don’t have very long – and we are going to peel the skin off you and dip you in alcohol! Do you hear me, Cody Marshall? We have wonderful plans for you! You will die horribly on the last day – do you hear me? You will be the last infidel!”

  Cody leaned out and spit. He said, “Don’t you have a goat – or is it a pig? – waiting for you at home? Or is she seeing another Muslim man?” He put his head back inside and helped Jose to his feet. “I wouldn’t have let you ago,” he said. “But I will the next time. Got it, amigo?”

  Jose brushed himself off. “You can throw me out the window – and I know I probably deserve it – but Tracy? She works for command. And after what happened out there on the highway, you know she wants those explosives. Are you going to meet with her like it says in the note you just ate?”

  “There isn’t enough whiskey in Tennessee to make me want her to see her again,” Cody said, implying he had no intention of contacting Tracy. “Besides, what am I going to do? Just walk through the street at midnight, meet her, and hope I don’t get shot?”

  “You got a point,” Jose said. “Those bastards out there? They’ll shoot you and tell Bashar that they didn’t know it was you.”

  A certain doubtfulness settled over Cody’s face. He held his next thought, a thought that might not have crossed his friend’s mind. Someone had put the note in his diary – though none of the men in the room had been here since early in the day. Tracy couldn’t have done it – not after today’s little episode on the square; and any woman being seen entering the men’s dorm would have been summarily shot with no questions asked. But who’d left it? The note, obviously, was meant to pique his interest.

  “And you heard what they said, right?” Jose said. “You and me – we’re going to have to get out of here before July fifth. You know, I’m not gonna be here when that day comes because they’re gonna kill me, too!”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “No plan, yet. But I’m working on it. You and me, we’ll go together, right?”

  Cody Marshall climbed into his old, military-style bed late that night, fully dressed, still wearing his shoes, his head swimming with sleep. Jose snored loudly beside him.

  He played his wedding day over and over again in his mind. He saw himself arriving, pulling up in a rented Lexus, parking i
t, and hurrying into the church building where his friends and family anxiously awaited him. His vision shifted and, four hours later, he saw himself standing in Tracy’s apartment, looking at her empty drawers and closet.

  An intense pain filled his forehead, something beyond Tylenol, all of it focused on the thought of Tracy. If only he’d been the one to stand her up – and he’d do it if he could go back in time and relive their wedding day – then she’d be the one left standing around in the church, asking all the questions, wondering what had gone wrong. If only he’d let her have it last night, out there on the highway. Or maybe he could’ve handcuffed her to the bumper and let Bashar’s imbeciles have her, all for no reason other than he wanted to hurt her.

  But as the hours wore one, the more absurd his thoughts and dreams became. Somewhere in those dreams, beyond the sensibility of the real, without any logical reason, and far from the hatred that had once chained him, he thought that, maybe, he still loved Tracy Graham.

  “Cody,” he heard her say, and it was Tracy, calling out to him in whispers with her lips close to his ear. Then he felt a hand on his chest, and that hand shook his shirt gently, back and forth across his chest. He opened his eyes, slowly, reluctant to leave his dreams, and he jerked himself up just as a hand covered his mouth.

  “Follow me,” Tracy whispered. “But do it quietly.”

  “If I have to,” – he said in a way that might infuriate her – “but how did you---?”

  Tracy put her hand over his mouth again and shushed him, and she looked back the way she had come. “We don’t have a lot of time,” she whispered.

  Cody looked around the room. Not a soul stirred. He got up from the bed carefully, removed his boots, and followed Tracy down the steps. She led him across the hardware store’s workshop where most of the tools used in the building of the mosque were kept.

  On the far wall, just passed the now-dead gas furnace, a number of unpainted slats in the wall had been slid back. Tracy turned on her small flashlight. A small, dark passage, narrow and tight, appeared in the light. Old, worn steps descended into darkness.

  “What the heck?” Cody said. “So that’s how---?”

  Tracy turned and put her finger on his lips. “Not here.” She motioned for Cody to go on ahead, and when he had descended the first few steps, she slid the wooden panel door, closing it behind her.

  Eight steps down they came to solid flooring – worn limestone slabs is what the light revealed – and Tracy hurried Cody along, moving in front of him when she became impatient and decided they needed to be moving faster. Cody’s head nearly touched the ceiling above him, so he walked with his back bent, afraid he might bash his head on a wooden beam.

  “Old, Underground Railroad tunnels, right here in Murfreesboro – you’d never have guessed, right?” Tracy said. “Right now, we’re passing under Benton and Beech Law firm. A few more yards, and we cross under West Main Street. It’s magnificent, isn’t it?”

  Cody looked at the walls. Most of them were carved out of solid limestone. In other places, hand-carved stones, perhaps cut elsewhere and brought in, were stacked perfectly, one upon the other. “Does it go all the way around?” Cody asked.

  “Access to every building on the square,” Tracy said. Without stopping, and without turning around, she reached into the pocket of what looked like a new pair of camouflage army fatigues and took out a second small flashlight. She handed it to Cody. “You’ll need this to find your way back.”

  “Light up the darkness, huh?” Cody asked.

  “Light up the darkness,” Tracy replied.

  As he walked, Cody watched Tracy rubbing her hand over the back of her shaven head. If she’d still had her long, blonde hair, she’d have run her fingers through it, like he remembered she used to do. The short hair, stubble actually, didn’t seem to fit her, but he tried to make it fit.

  “Almost there,” Tracy said. “I hope you’ve been watching for landmarks.”

  She’d lost weight, or maybe the shadows were playing tricks – no, he’d put the light on her heart-shaped backside too many times already – she’d lost some weight; but maybe not too much. Or maybe he’d really forgotten what she looked like.

  “Zafar Katila,” Tracy said. “He’s on our side. He’s close to Bashar because he’s a logistics guy for ISA.”

  Her voice had changed. Not the easygoing, carefree voice he once recognized, the musical voice that spoke of puppies and trips to Starbucks and high heels bought for pennies on the dollar at Marti and Liz’s. There may have been a few auditory hints of the past coming through her voice, back in the hardware store, when she’d whispered him awake. But Cody couldn’t quite remember the sound.

  “We’re here,” Tracy said.

  “Where’s here?”

  “Greenspan Realty and Auction.”

  “I knew there was a passage from the café that led here, I used it a couple of day ago,” Cody said. “But we’re not in it.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt there are others,” Tracy said, as she walked quietly. She aimed her flashlight at an X carved into a wooden slat. Then she whispered, “If you slide this piece back just a bit, you’ll be able to see what’s going on in the room. Of course, it won’t show you who’s in the building. That’s just the risk you’re going to have to take. But the room is a secret one and it’s clear – I know, because I just came from here.” With very little effort – the secret panels must have been on well-oiled rollers – she pushed the panels back and stepped into the basement of the realty building.

  The room, surprisingly clean since Cody had been here only days before, was lit with two oil lamps, both sitting on separate wooden tables. A hand-hewn limestone foundation, made sometime prior to 1860, ran around the perimeter of the basement. Large hand-hewn beams supported the first story floor above, supported in turn by rock. Even the basement floor had been laid with limestone; and a dark, shiny path, worn smooth after years of usage, led to a set of wooden steps that ended at the door to the first floor. Another smaller door, barely noticeable, sat to the left of the main door. Cody and Jose had used that one before.

  Tracy took a seat at one of the tables, grinned, and raised her eyebrows – her way of telling Cody they had things to talk about.

  “You’ve obviously got something on your mind,” Cody said, and he pulled a wooden chair out from beneath the table and sat down. He put his hands together and leaned forward with a vacant stare. “I hope it has something to do with why you ran out on me.”

  “I don’t really know how to say it, so I’m just going to say it,” Tracy said.

  “I’m all heart and ears, darling,” Cody said, scrawling his finger around on the wooden table top.

  “I left you because I loved you.”

  Cody sat there, staring into Tracy’s eyes, the same blank stare on his face. Not a wrinkle of the nose, not the squinting of the eyes, not a pursing of the lips. Nothing. He felt like the millionth winner in a million-dollar lottery game where everybody won the jackpot.

  “ISA was marching on Nashville, you were going to be fighting in days, I was recruited by the Army of Tennessee. I shipped out at two o’clock that Saturday. I couldn’t bear the thought that you might be killed, so I ran. Can you ever forgive me?” Tracy reached across the table for Cody’s hand. When she touched him, he slowly slid both of his hands back and set them in his lap.

  “Just like that?” Cody said. “Can I ever forgive you? And you never once bothered to find out if I was still around? I don’t know how that even works.”

  “Your team, all of them, were killed – I tried for weeks to get information on your unit. I want you to believe me, like you used to. But you never will – that’s what your eyes are telling me.”

  “It’s not that,” Cody said, his eyes fixing her even harder in a stony stare. “It’s just that I haven’t slept in two years. Now that you’re here, I won’t sleep for another two years. In fact, I won’t be able to sleep much after July fifth because I’ll be dea
d.”

  “Cody, I need the explosives,” Tracy said.

  “Fireworks, huh?” Cody replied coldly. “You know, I’d always hoped you and I would see them together one day, the way we’d always planned. But something tells me you’ve probably been to the show more times than I have. Who did you leave me for?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Cody Marshall, one of Islam’s greatest gifts to those it conquers is the scarcity of people, especially men – I haven’t much talked to a man for the last two years. If I had, I don’t think I’d find a match – to finish your pun about the fireworks.”

  “That’s funny,” Cody said, as he stood up, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “You don’t seem to be the kind that strikes me either.” He turned and walked towards the secret entrance.

  Tracy got up and ran over to him. “On July fifth, the last day of Ramadan, that pathetic mosque you’re building will be dedicated – all of ISA’s top leaders, and that worthless, turncoat president of ours, will be there to dedicate it. Every single one of Bashar’s men, including men from one other unit, will be there, praying. They’ll have their heads bowed east, and the brains in their filthy underwear pointing west. After that, they march on Chattanooga.”

  “And that means what?”

  “That means we need to turn the tide of this war.”

  { 12 }

  The next morning, far too early and much too noisily, Jadhari’s guards became rough and ill-mannered in their hurry to get Cody Marshall up from the breakfast table and out the door. Jadhari, the one usually sent by Bashar when Cody was needed, had not come. Cody recognized the two young men as having been on the street below the hardware store the day before, the two lucky enough to dodge the chair he had thrown down at them.

  “Where’s the other guy?” Cody asked, with a grin on his face. When he got up from the table, he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. If I would have killed him, would he still have gotten his seventy-two virgins?”