Bomber
by
J.D.Hughes
Copyright © 2011 J.D.Hughes
Published by Northwood eBooks at Smashwords
The right of J.D.Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.jdhugheswriter.wordpress.com
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*****
Bomber
Sadiq never knew what had hit him.
One minute he was bombing along a dirt track, otherwise known as a road in rural Pakistan, on his Uncle’s Yamaha motorbike and the next he was flying through the air past a vague image of a British Leyland truck grill, and into a solid stone wall.
Just before the fields beyond the wall dissolved into black, he was conscious of a sense of relief. At least I have not hit it with my head, he thought.
*****
“Sadiq.”
Leave me alone.
“Sadiq”. The voice sounded boringly like his elder brother and Sadiq was late for school again. He opened his eyes.
Ibrahim smiled down at him. “Welcome back, bro.”
Back? From where? He closed his eyes again and returned to the second innings, Pakistan versus England in the World Cup as once again he hit a six over the stands at Lord’s Cricket Ground to tumultuous applause.
“Open your eyes you little sod,” Ibrahim said above the roar of the crowd.
With a growing sense of annoyance, Sadiq opened his eyes.
“Wassup?” Sadiq heard his voice from half way down a railway tunnel and then remembered the accident. He tried to sit up. The pain sliced through him and tears sprang to his eyes. Ibrahim gently pushed him back on the bed.
“Steady Sadiq, take it easy, man, you’ve just had a big op, they had your guts out and stitched them up all neat and tidy. You are o.k. now, right?”
“This is o.k.?” Sadiq laughed and felt his stomach tighten, sending spikes of pain through his body.
“Three weeks they reckon and then we can get off home. Too many Pakis round here, ” Ibrahim said, in a broad Yorkshire accent.
Sadiq laughed again but it came out as a muffled groan – it was the only way to laugh without pain.
A bearded doctor, somehow incongruous in a pinstripe suit, walked in and said something in Pashtun. Sadiq noticed his own name mentioned, but everything else was just a melange of foreign gibberish. “What’s he saying, Ibby?”
“He says that you are a lucky boy, a piece of rock tore your stomach open and most of your chest but missed your spleen and liver. He says you would be dead otherwise.”
“Cool. Allah was doing the biz, then.”
“We all make mistakes,” Ibrahim said dryly.
“Careful, you’ll have the imam on your neck.”
“You would be wise not to take the Prophet’s name in vain”, the Doctor said in a cultured English accent.
“You speak English, then?” Sadiq asked.
“Much better than you, my son.” The Doctor turned to go, and paused at the door. “Three weeks and you should be fit to travel. I take it you will be going back to Britain?”
“We both will,” Ibrahim replied, “we are British.”
“First, you are children of the Prophet, may peace be upon him. Then you are Pashtun. Always remember that. It is not the British you will have to answer to when you stand before Judgement.” He smiled bleakly. “There will be very few British there.” Then he was gone, the swing doors sighing shut.
“Cheerful bugger,” Sadiq said.
Ibrahim looked troubled. “The sooner we are back in Sheffield the better.” He brightened “That bird Lucy sent me a text wishing you well. What’s going on there, bro? You been a naughty lad? Dad will be pleased; he has you down for that niece of Ahmed’s, Muska or summat. Her Dad’s got a new Merc.”
“Stuff her, have you seen her neck?”
“What’s wrong with her neck?”
“She ‘ent got one that’s what,” Sadiq felt his eyelids drooping. “She’s fat and got eyes like Kermit the Frog. Anyway, it’s not even an ‘S’ model just some manky old basic Merc…”
Ibrahim patted him on the head. “Get some sleep, kid. I’ll be back in the morning. I’ll let the family know that you are O.K., and remember…”
Sadiq drifted off as his brother’s words receded, and soon his score clicked over the hundred for the second time as opening batsman for the Pakistan team and they gave him a brand new Mercedes 500SL. Unfortunately, Ahmed’s niece was on the back seat wearing a frog outfit so his enjoyment of the car was spoilt a little.
*****
Back home in Sheffield everything settled down into the familiar groove. Work as an assistant manager at FonesR’Us, mosque, groping Lucy and working on the Renault Clio track car with Zameer and Nasir his best friends. The stomach wound healed well, apart from bad indigestion and a little tenderness, and two months after the accident Sadiq felt that as the cricket season approached he might even get back into the Burngrave Community Centre team.
It was Friday and he knew he should have been at mosque for jumuah - Friday prayers - but it was a day off and he had arranged to meet Lucy in the city centre to do some shopping for her sister’s birthday. Hopefully, nobody from the community would see him with her. Anyway, it was worth it for the chance to get into her pants, which for a white girl was proving surprisingly difficult to achieve. Usually, soft words and a few drinks were all it took. White girls were so easy and so stupid, they thought it was cool to be with a Pakistani lad and few realised that they were just toys for the boys. If you married a white girl that was it, you would have to move away, and for Pakistani girls even looking at a white boy could be fatal.
As he parked his car in the Arundel Street multi-storey, his mind was full of Lucy’s blonde hair. It might be worth the anger of the community, and he couldn’t say he was a dedicated Muslim: it was OK as religions went, but Lucy’s hair was so lovely compared to Muska’s, and Lucy didn’t have a moustache, which was a plus.
He locked the car door with the remote and turned towards the stairway exit. Without warning he was spun around and his face slammed against the car window. He felt the blood spurt from his nose.
Three men dressed in black from head to toe pressed him against the car. He could not move.
“What the fu…ff!” A hand like a pink brick banged his teeth against the glass.
“Shut up and don’t struggle or you will be hurt,” a voice said.
Sadiq kicked out backwards with his legs, writhing in the iron grip that held him. He heard a small, buzzing sound and a pain like none he had ever experienced shot through him as four million volts of electricity threw him to the floor, muscles rigid, and he felt his hands and legs quickly bound with plastic tie-wraps, before being bodily handled into the back of a windowless white transit van.
It all took less than twenty seconds. The van drove away sedately. On the floor of the van Sadiq trembled uncontrollably as his nervous system screamed in outrage. One of the men blindfolded him and another gagged him.
“You’ve had a shot of EMD, electro mechanical disruption from a Taser or more accurately a stun gun, boy. The shakes will pass”, a calm male voice said. “Keep cool, don’t try to escape or you will get a bit more.”
Sadiq wanted to ask why, what was happening, but his mouth would not move. Even his eyelids were working in slow motion. They are going to kill me, he thought. It’s the National Front or some other bunch of racist looneys.
The van stopped and he was carried out, down what sounded like a school corridor. A door opened and within seconds Sadiq was sitting upright on a wooden chair. He felt his body bend at the waist as he began to fall forwards uncontrollably.
“Prop him up,” another male voice said. He felt his arms being bound to the back of the chair and his ankles to the legs of the chair with the same plastic tie-wraps. The blindfold was removed and Sadiq found himself in a large room, probably part of a factory, an old steel mill maybe, he thought, judging by the rusty, massive machines lined up against a distant wall.
In front of him was a packing case and behind the packing case sat a small, round man with glasses. He heard a door bang and knew that the men who had abducted him had left.
“Hello, Sadiq, I’m Mr Smith. I would like to ask you a few questions and if you answer all my questions correctly, my chaps will take you back to where we picked you up. Does that sound fair? Just blink your eyelids if you agree.”
With difficulty Sadiq complied.
“Good,” said Mr Smith. “Now, you may be wondering what this is all about, or you may not. In either case if you try to lie to me or even evade my questions my men will come back in and they will hurt you. They may even inadvertently kill you. Do you understand?”
Sadiq blinked once, feeling the use of his eyelids return, and as they did, so too the fear. He could feel it now cold and churning in his stomach. Kill. He had said kill. What is this all about? Who are these bastards? Oh shit. A warm tingling began to spread throughout his body, similar to pins and needles, and he found he could flex his fingers.
“Good. I see you are recovering. I am going to remove the gag. If you make any sound I will call my men back in.” Mr Smith stood and removed the gag. “So far you are behaving correctly, Sadiq, and that is very good.”
Mr Smith resumed his seat. “You are allowed to speak in answer to my questions only,” he said. “Any other comments are forbidden. So let’s get started. The quicker you answer my questions, the quicker you will be back in the car park, off to meet Lucy.”
Sadiq started. How did this guy know about Lucy? What the fuck was going on here?
Mr Smith leaned forward. “Do you know a Doctor Ghazan Abdali? Yes or no will suffice.”
“Yes.” Sadiq heard his voice like a creaky gate. “He was my doctor…”
Smith sighed. “I did say yes or no, Sadiq. No further comments are necessary. You now have one mistake. Sadly, there will not be two.”
A fresh wave of fear rushed blindly through Sadiq’s mind.
“I know he was the surgeon who saved your life in Pakistan.” Smith said. “How well do you know him? You may speak freely.”
“I don’t. He was just the bloke who patched me up after a truck hit me. Look what is all this? What have I done? Who are you? I don’t…” Sadiq felt suddenly cold as Smith placed a finger to his lips.
“The rules are there for your protection, Sadiq. Please do not abuse my tolerance again.” Smith thumbed through a sheaf of yellow papers he was holding before staring unblinking at Sadiq. “Did you know that Dr Abdali is a prominent member of al-Qaeda?”
“How would I know something like that? No. No. No. He was just the doctor…”
“My information is that you know Dr Abdali very well. In fact he is family: your great-uncle on your father’s side. Are you telling me that you do not know who your family members are?
“He’s in Pakistan. I don’t know hardly nobody in Pakistan. It’s a foreign country. I’m British.”
Smith smiled bleakly. “ Very good, Sadiq. They trained you well.”
“Nobody trained me!” Sadiq felt the hysteria creep into his voice. It doesn’t matter what I say, Smith doesn’t believe me. The men in black will come in and kill me. I’m only twenty. I don’t want to die.
“Someone must have trained you. How else would you know how to construct a bomb?” Smith’s voice was level, but his eyes bored into Sadiq.
“Bomb? What bomb? I don’t know about no fucking bomb! I sell phones. I work in town, check it up, dude.” Now it was panic. Sadiq glance wildly around the room, looking for a way, any way to get out, away from this maniac.
“My information is that you came back from Pakistan with the instructions for making a bomb, said bomb to be detonated in Sheffield city centre using a mobile phone. The sort of phone you sell, Sadiq.”
“Listen to me, I don’t know how to make a bomb, I don’t have any reason for making a bomb and the doctor was just the bloke who…”
For a portly man, Smith was surprisingly agile. He moved from his chair in one fluid movement and with a kick pushed the chair on which Sadiq was sitting over. Sadiq felt the back of his head bang against the concrete floor with a crack.
Smith looked down at him. “We have found a bomb at your house. You are lying, and I did tell you what would happen if you lied to me.” He shrugged, and turned to the door.
Sadiq’s mind raced. Found a bomb? At my house? There is no bomb, unless…Ibrahim? No, couldn’t be. Ibby a member of al-Qaeda? He hates the bastards. Always says he wishes they would blow themselves up when they were making the bombs, says there is zero justification in the Qu’ran for killing the innocent. Dad? He couldn’t change a fuse let alone make a bomb. Must be Ibby, the twat.
Smith walked towards the door.
“I did it. I made the bomb,” Sadiq said, surprised at the way he sounded like someone else, someone who was a man. It made him feel sick.
Smith turned and walked slowly back to Sadiq. For what seemed like ten minutes but was probably less than thirty seconds, Smith paced around, and then in one swift move righted the chair. “You see, our information was that an al-Qaeda mule was to bring in an undetectable bomb, but since nothing is undetectable to the electronics we decided that it would have to be made here. Abdali was the lynch pin in all this, and you were his last British contact.”
“Did you hear me, man? I made the bomb. Me. Do what you are gonna do.” Sadiq felt the sourness rising in his throat; at least Ibrahim would be all right, and self-sacrifice earned much kudos in Paradise, and it wasn’t even Ramadan. Pity about Lucy, though.
Smith was silent. He glanced through the sheaf of papers. “Your brother, Ibrahim, was with you in Pakistan.”
“I made the bomb. Just me, right?” Sadiq said.
“I don’t think so.” Smith smiled that bleak smile again. “You are protecting your brother. Maybe your father.”
“You thick or what? My dog learns better than you. Watch my lips: I made the bomb, right? Ignorant twat.” Sadiq waited for the sudden move that would dump him on the floor, or the signal for the goons to appear and do him over, but neither came.
Smith nodded. “The bomb you made. Where were you supposed to plant it? At what time?”
“Time? I don’t…there was no time, no place…I just…what’s the point of all this shit?
“The point is that you have no idea of where you were supposed to plant the bomb or at what time, Sadiq. Once more you are lying.”
“I …”
“2nd May. 09.32 a.m. Pond Street Bus station?”
“I knew that. The bomb…”
“Does not exist. There is no bomb. The intelligence is flawed. You are just a boy.” Smith walked to the door, and turned. “You will be returned to the car park. I don’t have to say that you will not discuss this interview with anyone. If you do I will know. That would not be healthy for you. Do you understand?
Sadiq released the breath that he felt he had been holding for a year. “I understand.”
The door banged behind Smith and the room was empty of others. Dimly, above the pounding in his ears Sadiq heard approaching footsteps but only the black shapes were visible through tears of relief. Then he was standing shakily by the side of his car as the white Transit drifted away. It could have been a dream, and often afterwards, Sadiq imagined it so, but for the bump the size of a golf ball on the back of his head.
*****
He texted Lucy and broke the date. Lucy and the contents of her pants seemed irrelevant now. She was just another kāfir, an unbeliever. More than ever he felt an affinity for his religion, and a dawning realisation that he was not British, not Pakistani, not anything, except perhaps Muslim. And what was that except a life of obedience to old guys, marrying Muska, and prayer five times a day? He had never truly felt Muslim until now, but was that just because there was nothing else to rely on? For the first time in his life the props had been knocked out and he was adrift in uncertainty.
When he arrived home, Ibrahim was gone. His father said that he had caught a train to visit relatives in Leeds, but when he did not arrive back in Sheffield on the expected date, a phone call to the relatives in Leeds confirmed he had never arrived.
Sadiq wondered if Ibrahim was in an empty room with Mr Smith, but surely that would have been some time ago now, they would have moved him to a secure place, or maybe they had waterboarded Ibrahim until he had cracked and confessed and he was in an MI5 asylum, or even dead. The tears for his brother were real and unexpected, a loss felt deep within his soul, even though the thought which had prompted the imagined event was almost certainly fantasy. Almost. Nothing was certain anymore.
2nd May. 09.32 a.m. Pond Street Bus station. The terminus would be full of travellers and if there were a bomb the casualties would be high.
He realised with a start that it would also be the anniversary of the supposed death of Osama Bin Laden at Abbotabad, Pakistan, at the hands of U.S. Navy Seals. Sadiq did not believe that Osama was dead, or even captured. It would be just another American fabrication, like the moon landings – the Yanks needed a win in both cases so they did what they did best, made a movie with actors.
But the Brotherhood believed that Osama was dead, and if it were believed then revenge against the infidels would be the only course. Didn’t the Qu’ran expressly command it for those who believed that Osama was a freedom fighter and not a terrorist? Sadiq could not remember, but it just seemed to him that Sheffield with its sizeable Muslim population could not be top of al-Qaeda’s target list.
Unless Sheffield was just one of many targets. Hundreds of targets nationwide, perhaps worldwide. They were just mad enough to carry out the acts, and maybe Ibrahim had been drawn into their net. Thousands of dead people.
Shit.
It clarified everything. Now he knew what he had to do. It would be a test of what he was, at his core. A test of manhood.
*****
It was cold for May and Sadiq had borrowed Ibrahim’s fleece lined hoodie for the trip into the city.
Bracing his frame against the brisk, North wind he made his way to Pond Street bus station.
Inside the booking office area people bustled in and out, all nationalities to judge by the babble of voices, all carrying bags or suitcases. National Express coaches rumbled past the windows as Sadiq bought himself a Mars bar at the kiosk.
Everything looked normal. But wasn’t that how it always looked before a bomb went off? The people who had been blown up in the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square on London’s 7/7 in 2005 would not have even been thinking about normality, not even suspecting that soon they would lose their limbs or lives in an explosion and a hail of flying metal. What was more normal than a red bus in London? Or more normal than the three tube trains that had been similarly bombed one hour previously.
Looking around the bus station Sadiq tried to imagine a bomb right here, right now and he could not. Would it be like a Diehard movie, all Technicolor effects and dramatic moments, or would it be lots of people in pain and screaming? It was impossible to visualise it without Bruce Willis or Nicholas Cage being somewhere in the picture.
He walked outside, breathing in the smell of diesel and hot exhausts. Whatever the morality of the bombers, there was a small corner of his mind that kept reminding him that there would have been no bombs if the Americans had not wanted oil so badly. Ibrahim had said, “It’s nothing new, this has happened throughout history when someone has something that is valuable. Buy it, steal it, or invade the country that has it. Our people wanted a Muslim state and persuaded the British to set up Pakistan in 1947 against the wishes of India who actually owned the land. The Persians invaded everywhere to get land and gold. Romans, Egyptians, Africans, it’s life.” Ibrahim was so logical. He could never be a bomber.
For Sadiq that same mental corner had also prompted imaginings of freedom fighting against the Americans in the mountains of Afghanistan. But those same mujahadin were killing British soldiers, maybe kids he had gone to school with. It was confusing.
He finished the Mars bar and threw the wrapper into a litter bin. There was no point in being here, nothing would happen. The ridiculous idea that there would be a bomb in Sheffield was a fantasy. He turned to go.
A bus passed in front of him as he crossed the road to the centre of the bus station. Like a jerky TV wipe, the bus trundled past and revealed a familiar figure.
At first Sadiq thought his eyes were playing tricks.
Dr Abdali.
The Doctor was about 100 metres away from him in a dense crowd queuing for a bus to the Meadowhall Shopping Centre, but even in this cosmopolitan bus station Sadiq could see the doctor’s full beard incongruous against a Western pin stripe suit. Abdali waved cheerfully, which in itself was unusual.
Sadiq waved back, puzzled. What was Abdali doing here in England? In Sheffield. On this date. He glanced at his watch.
At 9.30 am. Two minutes from the time Smith had said a bomb would go off.
Sadiq felt himself backing away.
Abdali is the bomb.
He glanced around at the milling travellers; the numbers around the cheerful Abdali, and for the first time could imagine the carnage as the bus station exploded. His stomach turned over as the image of blood and death, the reality of a bomb, the grieving relatives, played in his head like a computer game.
I must stop him.
This is the test.
He began to walk quickly towards Abdali. His watch glinted in the cold light.
9.31.
There is no time.
Abdali started to walk away from him, increasing his pace to match that of Sadiq. Sadiq began to run, but then Abdali stopped and turned as Sadiq hurled himself through the Meadowhall queue. 50 metres to go.
Sadiq could see him smile, as he moved behind a concrete roof support. Now only his hand was visible: the hand that held what looked like the newest Blackberry 4G, £399 with a contract. Good phone.
Why would he hide behind a pillar?
The realisation was one that had always been there, lurking in his subconscious. Now it sprang into the open like a jack-in-a-box. Abdali is not the bomb.
Indigestion.
The surgical operation that not only had saved his life had ended it.
I am the bomb. It is inside me.
He could see Abdali fiddling with the phone. That was the trigger. Sadiq sprinted towards the doctor. I have to get that phone.
He reached Abdali and lunged for the phone, but the doctor was too quick and stepped away holding the phone up so that Sadiq could see his finger on the transmit button.
“Go back to the terminus, boy. Make your father proud.”
“Why me?” Sadiq stepped back.
“You are British born. The publicity will be immense. And you were available. It is American C5 explosive – very powerful, so you will not feel a thing, and you will be a martyr and sit at the right hand of the Prophet, may peace be…”
“Shut it. I don’t want to be a martyr.”
Abdali’s lip curled. “I see that. You are a coward.”
“That would be why you are hiding behind a concrete pillar, then. Because you are a brave man,” Sadiq said.
“Go back to the terminus. Obey me, boy.” Abdali brandished the phone.
Sadiq smiled but felt his legs turn to water. “If I’m gonna go, then I’m taking you with me. Press it.”
For a moment Abdali hesitated. It was enough. Sadiq lunged forward with the speed of youth and the doctor fell back against the concrete, but still holding the phone. As he fell, his elbow rammed against a projecting plinth and his thumb pressed the send button.
In that moment Sadiq wondered what it would be like to fly apart. To suddenly become pieces, to be nothing. Frozen in a tableau, as if dancing, the two waited, and waited.
Nothing happened. No explosion. No sudden tearing apart. No oblivion.
Abdali pressed the button again and again as Sadiq grabbed the hand grasping the phone as he wrestled the doctor to the ground. He pried the fingers gripping the phone apart, bit down on Abdali’s hand and watched as it fell, skittering away on the pavement. Now Sadiq knew why the phone hadn’t worked. It wasn’t a Blackberry. It was a NuTone 325.
The cheap phone, made in China, was top of the charts for breakdowns. At FonesR’Us there was a big box in the stockroom full of NuTones. All returned because the send button stopped working after three or four pushes. Unless it was used simply to answer a call and then it worked normally.
Struggling with Abdali he laughed into the hate-filled face of the doctor. “You couldn’t even afford a decent phone. You should have asked me. I would have got you a discount, you twat.”
Uncomprehending, Abdali pushed a balled up fist into Sadiq’s throat and broke free, searching for the phone.
The phone rang.
*****
Anthony Harrison was having a bad day: no job, no money and now his wife had left home with a wind farm salesman. On top of which he had given his girlfriend a black eye that morning and she had changed the locks on the flat in Heeley. He was annoyed about that since he was paying for the flat, or rather, he had been paying for the flat until he was made redundant. So when he saw the expensive-looking cellphone on the pavement he picked it up. A bit of luck at last. Looked like a Blackberry. He heard people shouting but nobody seemed to be claiming the phone.
With the way his luck was turning maybe it was a sign from the gods that all was well. After all, what else could go wrong?
He spotted the strange looking little man with a beard running towards him gesticulating, and thought, I found it first, pal. It’s mine. Behind the little man, Anthony saw a younger man shrug and then unaccountably smile to himself. Obviously on drugs.
The phone continued to ring. It could be good news. You just never knew. Anthony pressed the answer button.
“Hello?”
*****
Mr Smith turned away from the carnage in the bus station and spoke into his cellphone. “It’s done, God forgive us.” He paused, listening. “No, he had no idea. Yes, it is a shame.” Smith clicked the cellphone off and sighed. “Friends across the water,” and to no-one in particular, “Bloody good friends.”
Through binoculars, from a bank above Sheffield railway station, Ibrahim watched the smoke and flames twist and billow. He swung the glasses thirty degrees to focus on Smith, as the spook climbed into a waiting Jaguar, then swung back to the burning bus station.
Sadiq. My brother. Ibrahim wiped the tears away from his eyes. You are a martyr for Allah and with the Prophet, may peace be upon him.
Ibrahim watched as the emergency services arrived. The British and Americans are stupid, he thought. They think that this gives them the excuse to steal more oil and invade Iran. And when they do, it will ignite a war the like of which they have never seen. All the infidels will pay for Sadiq.
They do not know about the second bomb.
Ibrahim allowed himself a smile. The one that is four times the size of the first and sitting in a freight car on platform four in the railway station.
He took the Blackberry cellphone from his pocket. “Allahu Akbar, God is The Greatest,” he said softly, and pressed the send button.
*****
700 kilometres above Ibrahim, the latest version of an IntelliMark SharpEye imaging satellite watched with its six-inch target area resolution telescope as Ibrahim walked to his car through wreaths of black smoke. Even with the smoke the number plate of the car could just be read. Ibrahim’s image flickered in and out of focus as the smoke curled towards a weak sun and the camera caught his quick glance to the sky as if he knew that there was an unseen watcher. In microseconds the pictures had been processed and transmitted to the Office of Terrorism Analysis at the CIA, Langley, in McLean, Virginia, and Ibrahim identified.
The pictures of the burning bus station and the destroyed railway station flashed into the office and onto the monitor of a dark-haired man whose current job was not itemised in any public document, but was spread across all offices of the CIA. He reached for the telephone.
“Operation Steeltown is concluded. It was pretty poor atmos, but the new hyperspectral imager performed well. The Keyhole 12 sat might have given better res but wrong orbit, wrong angle. Anyhow, we have more of the SharpEye. Oh yeah, we lost one asset unexpectedly.” The dark haired man paused to listen. “A good operator? I suppose.” He paused again, and nodded absently, thinking about the following day and the beginning of his annual leave. He was looking forward to seeing his grandfather in Delhi.
“Name?” He riffled through papers on his desk. “Codename Omar. His real name was Abudabi…no, Abdali. Charcoal now. Some kinda doctor in Pakistan. We have the young guy, extraordinary rendition. He should be at Guantanamo in thirty six hours.” He laughed, “The Brits are, as usual, helpful.” He put the telephone down. A stray thought wandered in. It was a strange coincidence that the CIA was formed in September 1947; in the August of that same year the fading British Empire had inaugurated the independent State of Pakistan.
One for the trivia fanatics, he thought. All that mattered was a successful mission. He allowed himself a smile, stood, and left the office.
On the monitor the thick, oily smoke finally overwhelmed the satellite’s electronics and the image was lost.
*****
Thank you for downloading and reading this story. If you enjoyed this one, you may enjoy my other short stories, ISSUE 49 and THE 500, also on Kindle and other platforms.
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Currently, I am finishing editing a paranormal, time-slip novel, which will be available in the New Year for download. More details and progress report on my blog. Hope to meet you there.