“I gave you a chance the last time I came, in spite of all your indiscretions. I warned that if you continued serving as a way station and support center for the forces of the West, I would send all of you to the realms of hell, instead of just your leaders. But even that, I fear, will not be enough to turn you from the darkness to the light we are shining on the new world. What sets the caliphate apart is our belief that there can be no compromise. Conquering the world starts with a single village, for that world can be no stronger than the weakest link, represented by that village and all the others.”
He stopped and patted another child’s head. She shrank back from his touch, clutching her mother, leaving al-Aziz wishing he could wipe the unclean stink of her off his hand. Around him, the sense of fear and desperation rode the air like a cloud, a fine mist of hopelessness sprayed by the weak willed and weak minded. Somewhere near the back of the dusty square, a young child was shrieking. Others, more children and adults, were choking back sobs or wiping their eyes free of tears.
“Today this village ceases to exist,” he resumed, walking on. “Today we burn your homes, your crops, your animals, your possessions. Today we take everything that defines you in the evil you have chosen embrace instead of giving yourself to the one true God. But He is a merciful God and has willed me to treat you in that vein. The last time I came here, I took the heads of twenty men identified as leaders. Today, being merciful and compassionate, I will take none. I will spare your lives and let you remain in your homes.”
Al-Aziz paused just long enough to give the villagers of Ras al-Maa a semblance of hope. Then he snatched the gift back from them.
“On one condition,” al-Aziz continued. “Each parent must take the life of their oldest child. Refuse, and your entire family dies.”
The villagers’ hope vanquished with the stiff wind that blew through the square, whipping the dust into miniature funnel clouds. The villagers dropped to their knees, begging, pleading, screeching, sobbing. The sounds were so joyous to his ears that al-Aziz could barely contain himself from smiling.
“You pray to a God who does not hear you,” he said, his voice rising above their desperate cries. “He does not hear you because He is not here to listen. Only I am here. And when you pray, it should be to me, for the power of the one true God I serve as proxy for.”
Al-Aziz stopped again to better enjoy the sounds of his majesty. A teenage boy, brandishing a knife he’d hidden under his shirt, tried to rush him, only to be snatched from the ground by Seyyef and held dangling in the air until the giant crushed the boy’s throat and discarded his limp form back to the dusty ground.
“A village must pay for the indiscretions of each part as if he was acting for the whole. Because no one stopped the charge of this one, my terms have changed: each family will take the lives of their two oldest children, instead of one. Dishonor me again and it becomes three. We will begin now, one family at a time, so others may watch and heed the lessons of the indiscretions that necessitated me coming back here today. I trust I shall not have to come back a third time.”
Seyyef approached and handed al-Aziz the satellite phone he’d left with the giant for safekeeping.
“Yes?” the ISIS commander greeted, listening to the report from Syria, feeling his spirits perk up even more. “And this has been confirmed?… No, I’ll want to handle it personally. Initiate the travel protocols for my men and I, and alert the proper contacts in the United States to prepare. Where again, exactly?… “Texas,” al-Aziz repeated, after the voice told him.
41
AUSTIN, TEXAS
Caitlin had suited up in full hazmat gear for drills but never for real, and she was amazed at how different everything felt. The suit was bulkier, hotter. The helmet tended to fog up worse than she recalled, and the portable oxygen supply was heavier. As soon as she stepped outside the command and control tent, the sun, which had chased off that lone dark cloud, felt like it was melting the suit’s space-age material into her skin. Approaching the wobbly tube attached to the covered entrance of Hoover’s Cooking felt like scuba diving on land, right down to the peculiar buzz she felt in her ear from the air pushing through the tank into her lungs.
“Can you hear me?” she heard Jones ask through her helmet’s built-in microphone.
“Loud and clear.”
“I’ve been inside already, Ranger, so I can give you the lay of the land and the chronology, as best as we’ve been able to reconstruct. Zero hour was right around one hundred and sixty-seven minutes ago and counting. We know that because that’s when a regular who’d come in for lunch rushed outside, puking his guts out, after finding what you’re about to see.”
She looked at him through her mask. His face was absent of smirk and snarl for the first time she could remember.
“Austin authorities pushed the appropriate panic button,” Jones continued. “Most of the cavalry’s still en route, but they got the containment procedures enacted faster than any drill ever conducted for a city this size, including getting the man who dialed nine-one-one into isolation. I’m starting to love Texas almost as much as I hate it.”
“We’re real good with disasters, Jones,” Caitlin told him, nodding inside her helmet. “Far too much practice, unfortunately.”