The Exclusion Zone

By Noel Carroll

An unlikely combination of events combine to provide the backdrop for an attack upon the Queen of England: a wayward satellite ending its life in a spectacular way, a young couple sailing too close to an active volcano, terrorists hiding out within the volcano’s Exclusion Zone awaiting the right moment to strike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Noel Carroll
• Release date: Jul 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452332260

Noel Carroll

About The Authors For years the husband-and-wife team, Noel Carroll*, has published novels and short stories in two genres: thrillers and science fiction. A third genre, humor/satire, permitted them moments of fun and mischief. Although unwilling to abandon fiction, they steadily gravitated toward political commentary, first in opinion editorials and then in a full-length non-fiction work (“If You Can Keep It”). All their novels, short stories and essays have received highly favorable reviews, many being awarded five-stars. They currently make their home in Ponce Inlet, Florida. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEErCnUycaE) *a nom de plume (Noel and Carol also write under the names John Barr and N.C. Munson.)

Book preview

The Exclusion Zone

"Hang on to your hats, as this book will blow you away!"

"Picks up the reader from the first page"

"Non-stop action plot"

Midwest Book Review

"A fast paced thriller with a mesmerizing arc"

"Knit(s) these characters and scenarios expertly together into a woven tapestry of an international political thriller"

eBooks NBytes

Also From Noel Carroll:

Novels

Circle of Distrust

Accidental Encounter

Delayed Awakening

Never By Blood

Broken Odyssey

Starve The Devil

Short Stories

Slipping Away

The Galapagos Incident

Silent Obsession

Recycled

The Collection

Butterflies

Stairway Through Agony

Beyond Sapiens

End of The Beginning

By Invitation Only

Humor-Satire

Hey, God; Got A Minute? (as John Barr)

Soul Food

Reviews Of Noel Carroll Novels

Never By Blood

"A most amazing read."

Midwest Book Review

"Chillingly believable"

Simi-Gen

"Non-stop thriller"

Scribes World

Broken Odyssey

"Masterfully engineered tale"

"First class dialogue, spine tingling action"

Book Pleasures Reviews

"Excellently crafted"

"Keeps you on the edge of your seat"

Simi-Gen

Starve The Devil

"Quick-witted writing style."

"Keeps nails short and edges of seats warm"

EbooksNBytes

"Not sure what worries me more, that I can actually

see something like this happening in the world today, or

that I understand the president’s action and partially agree."

Roundtable Reviews

***********

The Exclusion Zone

by Noel Carroll

Published by Noel Carroll on Smashwords

ISBN 978-1-4523-3226-0

Also available in print under ISBN: 0-9658702-6-x or ISBN-13: 9780965870269

Copyright © 2006 by Noel Carroll

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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Cover by KC Creations; Pictures printed with the permission of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, Montserrat, WI

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Dr. Gill Norton, Director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory for his generous help in better understanding the Montserrat volcano. And, as usual, thanks to our friend Barbara for another demonstration of eagle-eye editing.

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Prologue

On the 18th of July, 1995, a wisp of steam lightly dusted with ash trickled upward from the northwest crater of Soufrière Hills, a long-dormant volcano on the tiny Antilles island of Montserrat. Ten days of calm followed, but then additional vents opened, these more energetic in what they tossed into the air: steam and ash as before, but more of it and with greater force. Weeks of earthquakes followed, some of them strong but all of them frightening to the thirteen thousand inhabitants of the island.

Almost a month to the day after it began, a terrifying eruption blanketed the capital city of Plymouth with a thick cloud of ashfor fifteen suffocating minutes, there was no sun. The residents of Plymouth became instant believers, and the evacuation of the bottom half of Montserrat, soon to be called The Exclusion Zone, began. The volcano had officially awakened.

1

Island of Antigua

December 26th, Boxing Day

Malcolm Vershun, on the threshold of gaining recognition after forty-three difficult years, tightened his grip on the phone and struggled to understand what it was his sick wife was trying to tell him. This call was expected to be cheerful, a final pat on the back, their last chance to gloat before the Knighthood ceremony, the KBE, began. Soon, in front of friend and foe alikeand he had to admit there were more of the latter than the former, he would receive an honor that not one of them had any hope of matching. Not ever! A black man, an islander, becoming a Knight of The British Empire, a black man who brought employment to thousands on six Antilles islands, three of them, including his own island of Antigua, members of the British commonwealth. His island steamers, warehouses and import-export facilities served cities from Granada all the way to Florida.

Sir Malcolm.

They would call him that, even his enemies. Those who did not would come to see that their stubbornness came at a price. He was mentally superior to all of them, and he had not come so far and achieved so much without knowing how to deal with enemies.

Still maintaining a death grip on the phone, Malcolm glanced over at the platform hastily built on the grassy knoll adjacent to Government House. The chairs had been carefully arranged and the lectern that had been carried down from the upstairs assembly room was standing proud but unoccupied in front of an impatient crowd. The Queen of England would soon be standing on that platform, the chair she would occupy obvious by its color, the purple of royalty. Malcolm could even now hear a distant thumping of rotors that said her helicopter was on the way.

He had only seconds to ensconce himself in one of the platform’s chairs, there to await Her Majesty’s arrival with the proper amount of dignity, respect and, of course, expectation. Selina, I must go.

His wife Selina was confined to their home a short block away, but she would be watching from a bedroom window. It was a beautiful home, the best on Antigua, a proper testament to the fortune he had accumulated.

Malcolm, it … happening; … frightened. I can’t ….

What? Tell me what it is, woman! I cannot understand you. Her voice was strained and broken and so high pitched that it was difficult to connect enough of her words to make a meaning. Although Malcolm was

annoyed at this threat to what was to be a perfect day, inside he felt a stitch of fear.

Die … my … cannot ….

Cannot what? What are you trying to tell me? This woman was everything to him, his lover, his best friend, his partner. Much of what he had accomplished was due to her, her support, her loyalty, her wisdom. When he was down, she was up; when he was wrong, she was right.

Breath, can’t get … breath.

Reality began to dawn. Take your nitro, Selina!

Like himself, his wife was only in her fifties, but less than a week earlier she had been diagnosed with a heart condition that called for periodic use of nitroglycerin under the tongue. Not serious yet, so they had been told, but it had scared Selina enough that she panicked whenever she discovered she’d forgotten to carry with her the small container of life-saving tablets.

Malcolm, however, had been less than convincedthe diagnosis was too severe; it could not happen that quickly; they were too young. A more logical explanation was the excitement, the Queen’s visit to Antigua and what was to be the crown jewel of the ceremony, her husband’s elevation to Knighthood. Malcolm tried to shake the resentment Selina’s call was giving him, as if his wife had joined the many who considered the award to be a token, a piece of meat thrown at a tame minority from a commonwealth junior partner.

I … I cannot.

What do you mean, ‘you cannot’?

Find ….

You lost your nitroglycerin tablets? Is that what you are trying to tell me?

Downstairs … can’t get … down.

Although the day was cool by island standards, Malcolm was sweating profusely. Ribbons of heat were shooting through his body, bringing him to momentary paralysis. This could not be happening. Sit down, Selina, you are upset, that is all. Sit down and take deep breaths. Even as his body knew the truthmuscles had drawn taut, and his gut was feeling darts of heatMalcolm’s mind cried out for another explanation. The ceremony of his life was about to begin; his wife could not be having an attack, not a real attack! But the thud of a phone hitting the floor brought an instant change of mind. SELINA!

Even with the ambient noise of a thousand excited islanders, Malcolm’s cry was heard. Eyes swung in his direction, almost all of them mirroring their alarm. Those harboring the greatest alarm belonged to the Queen’s security detail.

Trapped in fear, Malcolm saw none of this. He dropped the receiver to swing on its short line, then began a mad dash toward his house a block away, the route taking him within spitting distance of the pad where the Queen’s helicopter was about to land. All he could think about was getting one of those nitroglycerin tablets under Selina’s tongue. He had time, but not much of it.

She must not die! She must not die!

Geared to instant response by the Queen’s imminent arrival, the two security men detailed to guard the landing site reacted by instinct. The rapid thumping of the helicopters rotors told them the black man, who had screamed some kind of protest, was timing his arrival to that of the Queen. Their guns came out even as they issued a cry for him to stop where he was, a cry that had to be shouted to overcome the clamor of the helicopter blades. The security detail had been briefed that this man was somehow connected to the ceremony, but his bizarre behavior suggested he had a dark side.

Malcolm heard the cry but saw little reason to obey. Selina was in the throes of a heart attack, and the pill that would keep her from leaving him forever was too far away for her weakened body to retrieve. He did not stop or even slow down, but instead cried out to the men with guns, cried out that his wife would die if he did not get home. In his excitement he yelled it out in island patois, a language the alarmed security men did not comprehend.

Halt! I say halt! The wild man running toward them was dressed properly for the ceremony, a suit, tie, even a proper vest, but this could conceal explosives strapped to his chestjust in case, they aimed their guns at the wild man’s head. Alerted to the situation, the Queen’s helicopter halted its descent, but it was still close enough to share a piece of shrapnel should this be a bomb and should it explode directly beneath them.

The security men saw their options rapidly dwindling to none. The wild man was still vomiting a wild flow of patois and approaching at top speed. They hesitated until he got within a few meters of the helicopter pad then knew they could tolerate no more. One of them fired.

The bullet missed Malcolm’s head, but did hit heavily just below his neck. At first the impact merely surprised him, but then a searing pain shot through his upper chest and his body lost all sense of purpose and direction. He fell and his voice dropped to a whisper.

But still the appeals came. Using island patois to the end, he begged his assailants to get to his wife. He tried to tell them that they were killing her as surely as they had killed him. In mid sentence, the faces around him offering no sign that they understood, he lost consciousness.

The Queen returned to her escort ship, the incident troubling to her, even as she put up a good front. After it was determined that this was a tragic mistake and not an attempt on her life, she promptly ordered the helicopter back and the ceremony to begin. The Bestowing of a KBE, a Knight of the British Empire, was not part of it.

The world ceased to exist for four days, and even then Malcolm knew only pain, fuzzy images and voices that made no sense. It took a while to process enough of what he saw to tell him where he was and what had brought him there. It had not been a dream; it had really happened. He had been shot by the very people who were going to make a hero out of him. Why had they done this?

Oh my God, no!

The nurse taking his pulse jumped at the unexpected sound coming from what she thought was a comatose patient. Recovering quickly, she hastened to summon a doctor.

A heart attack. I’m sorry.

The doctor did indeed look sorry, but it gave Malcolm little solace. How could this be? She had the nitroglycerin tablets?

Yes, but she was either unable or unwilling to take them.

Unwilling? She was stricken! She needed help!

Please calm yourself. You are a very sick man; you need rest.

Malcolm stared at the doctor as if he had lost his mind. Rest? How could he rest? His Selina was gone. His life was gone. Please tell me, did she … die immediately? How he hated to use that word.

She … uh, lingered for perhaps an hour, then … passed on.

Malcolm was finding it difficult to breathe but still he had to ask. Where is she?

The doctor, an elderly island man who had seen too much misery in his time, was clearly uncomfortable. She was buried this morning. When shock began to grow onto his patient’s face, the doctor quickly added, We could not know how long you would be in coma.

The rest of what he was told seemed to come from within an echo chamber, as a part of Malcolm’s brain shut down. Although everyone regretted what had happened, especially in light of the loss he had suffered, they were disappointed in the way he had conducted himself during the emergency, in effect placing a mark on the Queen’s visit that could never be erased. Their disappointment extended to a postponement of the proffered Knighthood. Malcolm listened first with a sense of incredulity and then with a smoldering anger. This was how the British apologized for killing his wife?

2

Houston Space Center

December 23rd, One year later

Bullshit! That sucker’s going to hit! And considering what it’s carrying, it’s going to hit hard.

Too soon to tell.

I’m telling you, Tom, there is no way we’re going to come out of this smelling clean! Standing behind his seated colleague, Seth Connors leaned his slightly outsized frame forward and pointed at the monitor, one of dozens in the new Mission Control Center in Houston. Look at the angle; it’s all wrong. It won’t hang in the atmosphere long enough to burn up. A chunk, maybe a large one, is going to make it through.

Ten years older and less sure of things than his thirty-nine-year-old friend, Tomas Legard shook his head but did not otherwise reply. In truth he was having the same thoughts.

And the one piece we can’t have survive in any way, shape or form is the nuclear reactor.

That Tom did not want to hear. If it hits at all, it’ll hit water. Probably well out into the Atlantic.

It first has to clear the Gulf of Mexico then make it over the Antillesyou’re talking thousands of miles. Besides, if the reactor breaks up rather than burns, it doesn’t matter where it hits. So it makes it to the Atlantic, so what? We’ll still have fish glowing in the dark and people eating those fish!

Tom turned to look at his co-worker, like himself a NASA program manager. Their job at the moment was to monitor the re-entry of a 1960’s-vintage satellite. The expectation had been that this was no big deal, especially as the return path took it mostly over water. Dammit, Seth, what would you have me do, send a jet up there with a lead catcher’s mitt?

Seth Connors pulled back, both physically and rhetorically. There was truth in what his friend was saying. What indeed could they do? What could anyone do? "Well, my considered opinion is that some of this satellite is going to survive reentry, and even if it misses the islands, it will require some action on our part. Better that action be proactive then reactive. Maybe you’re right and maybe the nuclear fuel will turn to dust in the upper atmosphere, but even then you have to figure it might have touched something that didn’t burn."

That wouldn’t amount to much.

Seth blew out a breath of exasperation. Wishful thinking, Tom! Hell, it might be the worst spread of nuclear contamination since Chernobyl.

Now who’s reaching?

All I’m saying is, we don’t know. And that means we could have a big problem, one that we should be planning for this very moment.

"‘This very moment,’ we have to monitor the damn thing’s re-entry! And I have been planning. I got the George Washington to lend us two F-14 Tomcats. They’re circling the area from Antigua down to Martinique as we speak. We have others in reserve should a piece of it drop short of the islands. Washington is a nuclear carrier; they know how to handle sensitive material."

Seth said nothing for a moment, but his face showed his doubts. If I’m right, this will go down as a lot more than just ‘sensitive.’

The doomed satellite was one of the Transit series, the first of the satellite navigation systems employed by the US Navy for Polaris submarines. It had been in orbit for forty years, well beyond its intended life. Unlike similar satellites of today, its nuclear power source, referred to as a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or RTG, was not hardened against catastrophe. Or, as NASA would put it, did not enjoy full fuel containment design philosophy.

You know we’ve got almost a hundred nuclear-powered satellites circling over our head right at this very moment?

Tom turned to look at his colleague, unsure where he was going with this. So? It’s just the old ones we’re worried about.

They both knew how much things had changed since the depths of the Cold War, how later satellites were launched subcritical, which meant if the satellite failed to achieve orbit, there would be no dangerous radioactive products stumbling out of its reactor as it came crashing back to earth. As an additional precaution, after its useful life, each reactor was to be shut down then made to remain in space for hundreds of years, enough time for its waste products to decay to safe levels.

This US Navy Transit was born too early and had no such protection. Its original function of navigation now covered by more up-to-date satellites, it had long since been relegated to monitoring the Ionosphere, and it would have continued doing this for decades more had it not run into a piece of space junk, a tiny aluminum sphere just one centimeter in size. In the dynamics of space that tiny piece of aluminum packed the wallop of a four hundred pound safe traveling at sixty miles an hour. Knocked into an untenable orbit, the Transit was coming back to earth with an attitude.

There are enough ‘old ones’ up there to keep you and me busy for years.

There were eleven technicians in the large control room, but other than Tom and Seth, none was aware of the problem. Their attention was captured by matters considered more vital than the monitoring of an old satellite. In the background and seen by all were three huge viewing screens, each with a different display of a space function. The left one was filled with statistics and flight data. The center offered a map of the world overlaid with multiple wavy lines slashing diagonally across it, each an orbital path of the International Space Station, the current focus of most of the men and women in the room. The right screen held a spectacular real-time image of the ISS.

His attention far from the ISS at the moment, Tom focused on the figures staring out at him from his monitor as if expecting an eleventh-hour miracle. Looking more uncomfortable by the second, Seth continued to lean over his shoulder and offer unwelcome comments. It’s acting like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Whatever it collided with made it crazy. Look at that wobble. How the hell can we predict when it’s going to enter, let alone where it’ll hit?

I say that works in our favor. Makes a collision with the islands improbable. With a re-entry uncertainty rate of ten percent even in the best of circumstances, the contact point could be anywhere along a three, four, or even five thousand mile trail.

It’s not just the islands, Tom. With the angle that thing’s coming in on, we’re not talking about spreading nuclear contamination around the upper atmosphere, we’re talking about bringing it right down to the ground. Hitting the islands gives us one set of problems, but as I said before, hitting water is not much better. Hell, they’ll be people all over the world wanting to fry the United States.

Poor choice of words.

Well, it’s not something I want to find out.

Tom shook his head. I still say, most of it will burn.

Seth looked at the back of his colleague’s head, his face showing surprise. "Do I sense a change here? ‘Most’ of it will burn. You want me to play back what you said earlier?"

A sigh was Tom’s concession. If the bastard would only fly straight …. He left it hanging, aware that such speculation was useless. Something was terribly out of kilter on that satellite, and it was going to do what it wanted to do all the way to the ground. This had happened only one other time, Transit 5BN which had slipped back into the atmosphere in 1964. In that case it did what it was supposed to do: its nuclear component burned. There was a release of radiation, but it stayed in the upper atmosphere, some seventy-five miles above the Earth.

We’ve got to sound the alarm, Tom. Let our people know they might be in for trouble, maybe big trouble. Have the PR boys ready their story.

Tom’s face said he was not happy with any of that. A deep frown all but hid his eyes and his head was shaking even before Seth stopped speaking. I’ve already done too much. Morris nearly shit a brick when I suggested we hedge our bets and go public. Thinks people will run around like some modern-day Chicken Little.’

Morris DeVrese was NASA’s traffic cop, responsible for seeing to it that each US satellite traveled in a safe lane. Not easy considering how many objects, both known and unknown, were flying around out there, often crossing one another’s paths at breakneck speeds.

You told him that, and he shot you down?

Well, I, uh, told him we probably could manage it.

Seth’s humorless chuckle spoke his doubts. Christ, I hope to hell we can! The chuckle became a troubled sigh as he pointed to the monitor and added, Looks like we’re about to find out. Here she comes!

When the 165-pound Transit satellite first tasted the upper edges of the atmosphere, it found it to be little more than an annoyance. But then, because of the steep angle on which the collision had placed it, and because its speed was more than twenty times that of a bullet, heat-creating friction began to tug at its skin. The tug became worse as the doomed Transit dropped into thicker air, its temperature quickly rising to the melting point. Those parts with a low melting threshold dissolved immediately, but other more durable parts resisted the heat, some for seconds, others for minutes.

At seventy miles up and suffering a pressure of more than ten G’s, the super-heated metal was tortured to the point where it broke apart. The start of a long debris trail began, this one to claim a thousand miles of ocean, less than was feared by the NASA program managers but hardly insignificant. Because these managers were three minutes off in predicting when it would enter the atmosphere, that thousand miles included the Leeward Islands of the Antilles.

As it was designed to do, the nuclear reactor began to burn. But the heat and pressure were too soon and too much, and a rupture appeared while other parts of the spacecraft were still attached. Within seconds, one of these pieces, a titanium pressure cylinder with a high melting temperature, broke off and began moving away. But not before receiving a splash of radioactivity.

God, look at that! It’s like a meteor, coming right at us.

Seth’s smile had no humor connected to it. What do you mean ‘us’? We’re not under it, they are. He waved a hand at the screen, now showing an overprint of the Leeward Islands. Tiny dots were racing toward it, each a piece of what was once an operational satellite. One by one the dots disappeared, a signal that they had been reduced to the point of insignificance. At worst, they would rain down as dust.

The two men stared at the screen, their concentration on the most critical dot, the nuclear reactor. Without being conscious of it, they were holding their breath, and their simultaneous release of it was explosive as the reactor suddenly vanished from the screen.

Hot damn!

Looks like it burned up.

Seth nodded. Yeah, we may have lucked out. If so, the radiation will stay up there, way up there. We’ll need confirmation, of course.

Of course. But we can start breathing again.

They continued to watch until only one dot remained. A dot that was by then moving too slowly to burn. It became increasingly clear that this one would hit the ground.

Uh oh!

Yeah, I see it, Seth. Heading for …. He consulted his map before filling in the gap. Montserrat.

After another look at his map, Tom said, The gods might still be smiling. There’s an active volcano on that island. Been making deadly mischief ever since springing back to life in ‘95.

Were the people evacuated?

Even while feeling guilty at the thought, Tom hoped it had scared everyone off the island. Couldn’t be many left.

All it takes is one.

The collection of fiery material that was once a US Navy Transit satellite steadily surrendered its mass to the determined atmosphere. Soon the contaminated cylinder was alone in the sky and turning more and more toward the ground, its forward motion depleted by the tough wall of air it had to plow through. In time it slowed to just above the speed of a falling object and would have offered nothing worse than a monstrous splash had it hit water.

Unfortunately, it did not.

Including the dust, we show about two percent of it surviving. Well below average.

Still an optimist, Tom. That two percent could give us a ton of trouble, even a couple miles under the sea.

Tom nodded. But at least it missed Montserrat. Passed over and impacted maybe …. He examined the monitor before concluding with, … three miles out at sea on its eastern side.

A little too close for comfort! We need to get a boat out there to test the water where it hit. I’ll check with the F-14s, see what they picked up on their radar, see if they can nail down the exact spot.

On Seth’s mind was the still-frightening Apollo 13 incident, where the nuclear component from the abandoned Lunar Module, reentered over the Pacific and landed in the Tonga Trench some six miles down. In that case they had lucked out. Air and water samples showed no release of radioactive material. But it was still down there.

Seth took a minute to bring Montserrat up on the screen. Along with a basic map, there were details on what the island was all about. Looks like some five thousand people still live there. They’re squeezed into the northern third of the island. The rest of the place they refer to as ‘The Exclusion Zone.’ It’s off-limits and deserted, except for the occasional scientist.

Good! A piece of our satellite just dropped in for a visit on their far side.

Think it’s radioactive?

The smile of relief on Tom’s face proved how tense he had been. No, the nuclear reactor burned at a high altitude. My bet is, this is just a hunk of space trash.

3

Baraki, Afghanistan

It had been worth the sleepless nights in the hospital. At first it had been a matter of gaining enough control over his emotions to think rationally, but when finally that happened, Malcolm was able to apply his considerable mental ability to the construction of a plan, one that would give him a reason to go on living. What he came up with, once he examined and reexamined it a dozen times, brought light to his day for the first time since his wife’s death.

Success meant getting to the right people, the kind who could carry such a thing off. That had been the hardest, with no one on the island he could go to, not friends nor any of the many people he employed. He had smiled in his hospital bed when the answer came to him, when he arranged in his mind how he would go about finding men willing to sacrifice everything in his private cause.

Having lost interest in his business, Malcolm placed it in the hands of a local manager then set in motion the deception that would open the necessary doors. He converted to Islam, pretending a conviction born of unbearable despair. It took a number of weeks, but with a daily dose of study and overt devotion, the small community of Muslims on Antigua became convinced that the new Malcolm was nothing like the old, that he had truly found his way to Allah. When sure he had arrived at that point, Malcolm gently protested a need to go further. He would make the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca expected of all Muslims at least once in their lives. Pleased with what he saw as obvious sincerity, the local mullah gave him his blessing and a letter of authenticity.

Malcolm’s first stop on the way to Saudi Arabia was Egypt, a known hotbed of radicals. It was terribly disappointing. He nosed around, said all the right things, even showed a copy of his mullah’s testimony, but all he got was bad advice and suspicion. Discouraged but not defeated, he continued on to Saudi Arabia to fulfill his pilgrimage to Mecca. There, almost by accident, he made what turned out to be the right contact, an Afghan Muslim with a radical streak, a former Taliban with a following. Ingratiating himself to this man, Malcolm was invited to travel with him to Afghanistan and once there was led into a poorly-lit hovel where a blue-turbaned man sat cross legged on a badly-worn pillow. After the necessary devotions, and using his Taliban contact as an interpreter, Malcolm presented his credentials and his plan. Although the blue-turbaned man tried to hide it, Malcolm could see he was impressed by the latter.

It took three days to win them over, the first of which was spent waiting. Aware that he was being watched closely during this time, Malcolm spent almost all of it in Islamic study and devotion, even limiting his intake of food and tea. The second day was spent arguing with additional blue-turbaned men whose intent, Malcolm knew, was to unmask him, discover a more devious motive in what he was proposing, perhaps uncover him as a spy. Throughout it all, Malcolm maintained what his quick mind told him was a proper show of humility, devotion and understanding. He understood that these men did not accept that he could be so motivated by the loss of a woman, even as they did appreciate the intensity of his thirst for revenge.

The third day was spent with the blue-turbans shooting darts at the plan, poking at the details in search of weakness. Although there was vigorous discussion of each tiny point, no one was able to detect a flaw. Malcolm answered all their doubts with the same calm and self assurance as before.

In the end it had been easier than he thought it would be, this because the enormity of what he proposed carried great glory to all who would be connected to it. The blue turbans still questioned his motives, which they saw as having little to do with Islam, but they accepted that this could be due to his being a recent convert. Malcolm continued his act of humility and devotion, even in the face of anger and insult. The clincher had been flashing his money around, showing them that he not only had a plan to make them drool, but the means to finance it.

The decision came just as the blue turbans rose to leave at the end of the third day. The plan would be adopted and men would be provided. Also provided would be the necessary materials, the cost of which, naturally, would be borne by him. With regard to motive, it was understood that this was to be a blow for Islam, not a personal vendetta, and that to ensure it remain that way, recruitment would be the sole prerogative of his new allies. They did not want amateurs in control, money or no money.

It was more than Malcolm could have hoped for, and he readily agreed, knowing the outcome would be the same. The Queen of England would be just as dead.

4

Baraki, Afghanistan

Ten year old Majd Udeen al-Battuta, stared in envy across the barren waste at boys running freely a short distance away. Normally he would be with them, running with the fastest and shouting with the loudest. But he was not a boy, not any longer he wasn’t, and it was for him now to follow the path of a man. He would learn the ways of men, in particular what made them special in the eyes of Allah. He would learn what Allah expected of him, learn how narrow the path to Allah was, learn how necessary it was that he restrict himself to that path and no other.

A sigh slid off his lips as he watched his boyhood friends disappear down a dusty unpaved street heading, as well he knew, toward the mountain of rocks just north of the village, their offering of tunnels and secret passageways impossible to resist. It was a favorite among his group, and would occupy them in boyhood pleasure for the remainder of this day. Chances were Majd would never go there again.

Never. The word had so much more impact now than it had a day ago.

There were stark differences between the world of his friendsnow perhaps his former friendsand that of a man. One was carefree and overflowing with mystery and fascination, all of which, or so he now chose to remember, made him smile. The other, as proven by his parents, was crammed with endless hours of struggle, sacrifice, sadness and painhe could not remember the last time he had seen either of them smile.

Older sister Aisha’s time had come almost exactly a year before his, although for her the direction of change was different. She was initiated into womanhood, an institution that, although still a mystery to him, was a step down