Pursuit of Honor

chapter 53
NORTHERN ARKANSAS

WHEN he awoke in the morning, the sun was filtering in through the sheer white shades. Hakim blinked several times before he could focus. There was a DVD player on a shelf under the TV. Four small blue numbers stared back at him. If the device was right, it was nine-forty-one in the morning. Hakim looked down and saw the blood on his shirt. He opened his mouth and felt the dry, caked blood on his lips. He remembered the coughing fit and the blood and the dead man on the porch and the woman in the bedroom and knew he hadn't dreamed any of it. Not with Karim around. He was a living breathing Angel of Death.

Hakim didn't have the strength to get up, so he grabbed the remote sitting on the end table and pressed the power button. A moment later two anchors from a twenty-four-hour news channel were on the screen. Ahmed must have heard the TV. He entered the living room with glass of water and a washcloth.

"How are you feeling?" he asked softly.

Hakim wasn't sure. He was all beat up inside, but his breathing was better than it had been yesterday. "I'm alive." He glanced over Ahmed's shoulder and asked, "Where is Karim?"

A frown came over Ahmed's face and he said, "He is outside."

"Doing what?"

"He is very upset."

"About?"

"You." Ahmed shook his head. "He thinks you are causing us problems."

Hakim told himself not to get angry. He wasn't the one who had gotten them into this predicament. "What kind of problems?"

Ahmed shrugged his big shoulders and tried to remember the exact words. "He said you have become an operational liability."

"Me?" Hakim asked with genuine surprise. In better times he would have laughed, but not now. "He thinks I am the problem. What do you think, Ahmed?"

"It is not my place to think. I am trained to follow orders."

"Are you a monkey? If he orders you to shoot yourself will you do it?"

Ahmed took the washcloth and dabbed Hakim's chin, "You look horrible."

"And you did not answer my question."

Ahmed worked on a crusted piece of blood. "There is enough arguing between the two of you. You don't need me to join in."

"Let me ask it a different way then. You were trained to think tactics. Did you think I had things handled back in Iowa... at the house? Did you feel he needed to step outside and shoot them?"

"What if they had been police?"

"If they had been police, we would be dead right now. Shooting them would have solved nothing. The best course was to wait and see. Besides, the police don't use young boys. They were simply a father and son looking to do some hunting."

"But we did not know that at the time," Ahmed said.

"We?" Hakim asked. "You mean you and Karim did not know, and you did not know because you have spent no time in this country. You do not understand America the way I do. So you do not see what is obvious. You blindly follow him, and where does he keep leading you? To another house where he kills a husband and wife. Two people minding their own business, breaking no law, and doing nothing to offend Allah."

Ahmed looked out the window for a moment and said, "These are strange times."

"Tell me... why couldn't he have tied them up?"

"I don't know. He has his reasons." Ahmed turned his attention to the TV and a moment later added, "It is not my place to question him."

"You keep saying that, but if you ever want to see Paradise, you had better start thinking for yourself. Allah does not condone this. The people who lived here were not infidels. They had done nothing to provoke his wrath."

"This is different. We are in the land of our enemy, thousands of miles from any support. We must do whatever it takes to survive."

"Whatever?" Hakim questioned Ahmed's choice of words. "Now you sound like him. You know what pleases Allah, and you know what displeases him. Tell me... do you think Allah will condone what was done here last night in his name?"

Before Ahmed could answer Karim entered the house through the front door. He stood in the foyer and looked suspiciously at the two men. "What have you been discussing?"

Ahmed quickly said, "I was telling him that the White House has announced a major press conference."

"About what?"

"The media is saying their president is going to discuss what happened in Washington last week."

"What is to discuss?" Kakim holstered his pistol and took off his jean jacket. "We won... they lost."

Ahmed flashed Hakim a nervous look and then said, "They are speculating it is about the investigation."

"Who?"

Ahmed was confused. "I do not understand."

"Who is speculating?"

"The reporters. They are citing sources inside the administration."

"Good," Karim said, "we could use some information." With that he moved down the hallway to the kitchen.

Ahmed gave Hakim a worried look and whispered, "Be respectful. Do not upset him."

Hakim watched his Moroccan friend follow Karim into the kitchen. He turned his attention to the TV and wondered how much longer it would be before they had their final confrontation. A minute passed before Karim came back into the room. He was holding Hakim's black backpack. He placed it on the coffee table and opened one of the side pockets.

Karim withdrew three mobile phones and said, "Why did you not tell me about these?"

Hakim looked at the three prepaid phones he had purchased months earlier. "I did."

"You did not."

Hakim eyed him cautiously. His friend was looking to provoke a fight. "I thought I told you while we were at the farmhouse... back in Iowa."

"You did not."

Hakim swallowed. "The day after we arrived I made sure they were charged. They were in the kitchen. On the counter." Despite being beaten unconscious he remembered it clearly. Karim had questioned him about the phones.

"I never saw them," Karim said.

He was lying and Hakim knew it. "I purchased them months ago. They are also radios. We can talk to each other by pressing the buttons on the side."

"Where did you buy them and how?" Karim said while shaking the phones.

"In New Orleans and with cash." This had all been covered the previous weekend.

"I do not remember giving you approval."

"There is no way to trace them."

"What about a surveillance tape at the store where you bought them?"

"It is possible, but extremely remote. I wore glasses and a baseball cap and used a British accent when I spoke to the clerk."

Karim paused and considered all of this. He looked at the phones and said, "No more secrets." He tossed one phone to Hakim and the second one to Ahmed, who was standing in the dining room. "Do not turn them on unless I tell you. Are the numbers for all three phones programmed?"

"Yes." Hakim watched Karim stuff the last phone in his pocket and then leave the room without another word. Hakim looked down at the phone in his hands and briefly questioned his own sanity. Was everything that had happened in Iowa a dream? He was almost certain it wasn't. The phones had been discussed. Hakim had specifically told him they had been purchased well in advance as a precaution. He told him they needed the phones in case they were separated. That meant Karim either had a terrible memory or was conveniently forgetting that it had all been discussed. Hakim knew the truth, and he was also beginning to understand the depths of Karim's immaturity. This was all about him and nothing else. It wasn't about Allah, or Muslim pride, or a battle against the colonial powers. It was about the need to feed the Lion of al Qaeda's ego.