Fueling the Rage Read online

  Bill removed his shoes and entered the nicely decorated main room. Two large window fans kept the inside temperature tolerable. The dining table, covered with a white tablecloth, was set for three. The guard and his wife gave Bill a tour of their home. The kitchen was modern European, and the wife showed off her large, well-stocked pantry. Bill followed his hosts through two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The guard smiled with pride as he opened the door to his favorite room, “My satellite receiver offers wonderful access to sporting events.” He pointed, “This is my forty two inch plasma television.”

  In discussions before dinner the senior guard volunteered, “Many workers have recently converted back to Christianity. Henry’s new policy of tolerance allows Christians to work in the complex. In fact, he converted part of his great house into a dormitory to educate fifty Christian and Muslim orphans.”

  The guard opened the bottle of wine and his wife served a garden salad. She followed with a nice porridge made with millet flour, and served it with a meat sauces. Bill raved, “This has a wonderful flavor.”

  The wife informed him, “This is a special dish, and a favorite of Aozou. I make the sauce from dried fish, tomatoes, onions, and spices.”

  Bill replied, “It goes well with the Merlot.”

  Dinner was finished and the guard and Bill relocated to the television room. They sat in front of the plasma television in comfortable recliners. The wife opened and served the second bottle of wine, and placed a bowl of dates and berries on the small table between them. She left the room. The men made friendly conversation and watched a soccer match. Later in the evening, as they sipped on their last glass of wine, the guard talked freely. “Under the great house there is a long tunnel that leads to the hotel. It is secret, but widely known in the community. As the senior guard, I often drive Henry through the tunnel in a golf cart to the hotel. Many times, a prince joined us, but he sadly died in an airplane crash.”

  Dinner was finished and the second bottle of wine was gone. The guard walked Bill back to the waiting taxi. With authority, he told the driver, “There will be no more charges for his ride home.”

  The air had cooled and the ride back to the hotel was pleasant. Bill tried to tip the driver, but he refused to take it. ”I am very sorry about over charging you on the first part of the trip.”

  Outside of the town or the wall of the great house, this was a difficult place to live. Most of the population of Chad lived in the southern territories. The oasis and the Uranium mines gave the town its reasons to exist. The isolation gave Henry’s settlement security, and both Chad and Libya approved of his presence. He stabilized the fine line between the two countries. In this lawless area of the world, his settlement was a source of authority.

  There was little crime in Aozou and bandits bypassed the area or behaved when passing through the town. The oasis allowed for agriculture and trade. The head of a family with a good job ate well by African standards, but they knew Henry was their meal ticket. His recent change to a more tolerant ruler strengthened respect for him among the natives of Aozou. Bill could feel this local respect, and would make killing Henry in Aozou a little more difficult.

  Dinner with the guard had occurred at the end of his second week in Aozou, Chad. Bill thought. Good people live here. It reminds me of Wesley Chapel. I am starting to like Henry, and it will be an unpleasant task to kill him. Tomorrow I will ride to the Uranium mines, and build my cover while I wait for him. It will be easier for me to kill him there. Bill knew it would be three more weeks before Henry returned to his great house in Chad, but in one week, The Group ordered Bill to return to MacDill.

  Creating an empire for revolution

  Living the dream for doers wrong

  Money and evil a wicked fusion

  Death to infidels won’t be long

  Chapter 13

  Malcolm traveled from city to city building his army. He liked the prison converts to Islam, and their fire for Jihad. The Topeka, hiring a Kansas leader would be his next important decision. Malcolm’s travel time caused difficulties and he had realized that he needed a manager for each city, an executive that could give and take orders. He considered. One bad decision and everything goes up in smoke.

  As he traveled from city to city, he shared his secret war plan with his clerics. “It is an American Jihad. We kill for Allah, but most of my soldiers will not die. When we finished this war, my army will live their lives in the paradise of Muzuk, Libya. I have a special job for you. If you see weakness in a leader or soldier, act fast, and kill them. The authorities may make many mistakes, but we can make none.”

  A cleric in Atlanta gave him an idea. “In Pakistan we required every new leader or soldier to bring us the head of a non-believer.”

  Malcolm replied, “That is a good idea. Have them kill the people of the streets, invisible unbelievers. Find a way to make the requirement without implicating you or the mosque. A recruiter must be prepared to offer membership or death and to kill his recruit if the invitation reveals any reluctance. I will concentrate on managers and you find soldiers.” He then gave insightful advice on the character of prisoners, and his rule in their selection. “They tolerated prison life with dreams of excess. Their common dreams are sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence. When given a 50-50 choice between right and wrong, they make the wrong choice every time.”

  Malcolm knew the mind of the con. Like them, he had prepared for failure well before each of his releases. That propensity for failure was now behind him and he had new dreams. He also knew some proclivities that prisoners could not overcome. He liked to deal with murders and thieves. It was easy to bring drug users and sex offenders to Islam, but they seldom forgot their old ways. He did not trust murderers that killed members of their own family or children, but liked murderers that killed during arguments. He even liked murderers that killed during other crimes like robbery or carjacking. He preferred major thieves to petty thieves. Malcolm knew the con’s mind well and knew whom the clerics could trust in prison.

  Henry had set up a storefront mosque in Topeka much like the one in Atlanta and tried to interviewed clerics, but found he was afraid to say what he needed to say. Mainline American mosques did not overtly accept the fire of Islam. It was just below the surface even in respected mosques. Henry stopped searching and used his Atlanta clerics to find clerics for all of his mosques. Malcolm thought. I must build my wall of separation, just as Henry did.

  He trusted his Topeka clerics and worked with them to staff Kansas Truck with prison workers. It would take time, but it would work. The prison, the mosque, and Kansas Truck marched together towards Jihad, but he still needed to find the men who could be trusted with his life.

  The new clerics had a big job. Isaac Cleveland was the seventy-seven year old Muslim chaplain of the Topeka Prison. His parents were from Lebanon, but he was born in Kansas and raised in the faith. He had volunteered his work without pay for many years and started Topeka’s most respected mosque. Isaac would need to be replaced by one of Malcolm’s clerics, so he repeated the plan that the Atlanta clerics had used to kill their interfering chaplain.

  Isaac’s eyes were too weak for him to drive and he lived alone in a bad neighborhood about a mile from his mosque. The clerics watched him for a week, and then made their move. Isaac spent the day at his mosque and in the early evening walked to his small apartment. On a particularly dark night the clerics waited for him on a quiet corner, pulled him into the alley and beat him to death. Police considered it a mugging, and blamed the crime on wild young black men in the neighborhood. There was now an opening for a prison chaplain. Malcolm’s clerics got the job, and began converting prisoners into employees of Kansas Truck.

  Malcolm’s business skills grew as he traveled from company to company. Kansas Truck showed a nice profit. His general manager, Tim Scott, was a Southern Baptist with a tolerant streak. In the few months that Malcolm had helped Tim manage the business, they had added health care and 401k benefits for the workers.
Improved job training made also helped the company become more competitive.

  Customers noticed the improved quality and the warden was very happy that none of his paroled prisoner had returned to prison. Kansas Truck’s new reputation improved truck sales. They now had a three-month waiting list for ambulances and twelve for fire trucks. Tim wanted to add an eighty thousand square foot addition to the factory, and Malcolm approved forty thousand.

  Malcolm shifted his concentration to Houston, Texas. Henry had purchased Well Oil at a premium price. Its outdated main refinery needed updating so Malcolm hired Bill Sims, a young PhD, to run the operation. Sims had previously managed a refinery in Fort Worth, Texas. Malcolm followed the doctor’s long list of recommendations, and used most of profits from Kansas Truck to pay for them. Within three months, the output of the Houston operation tripled. Sims also standardized all of the refineries in Texas and Arkansas. The price of oil was rising. At one hundred thirty five dollars per barrel, Sims sold contracts to hedge against the coming fall in prices. When the time was right Malcolm would use Well Oil diesel fuel for his bombs, but for now he used profits as a measurement of his success.

  The oil business generated cash and a wild-cater from Houston offered Dr. Sims a package of two hundred new wells in ‘green field”, a one hundred fifty thousand acre reserve west of Dallas. Malcolm invested twenty-nine million dollars of Well Oil’s profits into the new venture. The project required many workers, giving Malcolm a place to hide his solders. The two Houston clerics grew their mosque and recruited prisoners to work as laborers on Well Oil rigs.

  Dr. Sims established an excellent training facility for the prison converts, and his new wells were the most efficient of the ‘green field’ project. Malcolm began to reduce the amount of time he spent in Houston, and let Sims take over full management the company. Malcolm enjoyed success after success. He loved business and Jihad. On rare occasions, he considered delaying his war, but his mind came to the same conclusion. Allah is the source of all this wealth and I will keep to my plan. These vast resources will support a powerful attack. I will execute my four-city plan and change America.

  Flying to Tampa, he reclined his comfortable leather chair and evaluated his plan. The prison converts are an American flag and I will make good use of them. What could they do to stop me? During the two-hour flight he considered the strengths and weaknesses in his plan, and kept coming back to the same problem. Is Libya really a safe place for us? I need to have an alternative location where a few hundred men can hide and prosper. Then the answer came to him. I control billions, and some must go to for alternative locations. I must hide to be safe, and I tell no one this part of my plan.

  The Falcon 50 arrived at the small airport near downtown Tampa, where his driver was waiting. Ten minutes later, he was at his office. The elevator ride to the top floor again gave him time to think about a safe place for his army to hide. Henry does not understand how important it is to save my soldiers. If a single one of them feels cheated after the jihad he will tell the authorities and it will be impossible to prevent retaliation. The only safe place is a secret place. Henry only needed a two room office, but I now require the entire top floor to manage the businesses. Times are changing, and he may not understand that I need a second location to hide. In fact, I might find more than one location.

  He was taking three lessons a week in Farsi. One of the prison converts was Iranian and enjoyed giving lessons to the boss. It was important to Malcolm to be able to read the Iranian blogs. He was also drawn to the Yemen blogs that would come and go like the wind. He chatted with six brothers who lived in Mongolia near the border of Russia. Three of them were nuclear scientists that had been trained in China. They had decided to defect when they could not practice their religion. Russia had agreed to take them into their weapons program.

  The men defected with only their three younger brothers, believing that China had murdered their sisters and parents. In Russia, they had wonderful jobs and their younger brothers had all become physicists. Their happiness had ended when Russia reacted to a terrorist attack in Moscow, and cracked down on Muslims. Only by the grace of Allah, they were able to steal one hundred kilos of enriched uranium and escape to Yemen, where they developed a web site that allowed customers to conduct untraceable transactions. Malcolm chatted with the brothers, and soon requested assistance in buying a retirement home.

  *****

  Clark Watson had been the President for six years and was a young seventy-two year old. At twenty-eight, he had been elected to congress from North Carolina, and from that time was always in some elected office. He was tired of politics. A bad night’s sleep gave him time to consider problems that had no solutions. He needed to vent with his old friends. They had all known each other from their days together at Duke University. He knew all of the rules of political correctness, and broke all of them talking to his friends.

  “Are you going to give up on Cheap War? The more our enemies fear us the better. They will leave us alone if they believe we will eat their children, and pluck the eyes from their grandmothers. We must bring the fight to them and they must pay if they try to kill Americans in America. We will need The Group for our future, and can’t let them be intimidated by the do-gooders.” The three of them talked until the President finished venting his fears for the people. “When I used to get these feelings, Glenda would get me through them. It’s been two years since she died.” His friends knew that if they listened and comforted him he would be fine.

  *****

  Malcolm and the brothers had six very brief data chats over a two-week period. During the sixth chat, he outlined his request, “I need a very large tract of land. It must be big enough to hide an army.” A brother read the request, and Malcolm watched as his words changed to a request for a two-week rental of a vacation property.

  The brothers returned, “An email will follow,” and the web site vanished.

  The brothers emailed Malcolm instructions to go to the web site of an international business and search for specific series of numbers. From that point, all chats began and ended on other people’s computers, and were not traceable by NSA technology. They also secretly communicated with a South American family that needed to raise money by selling land holdings. The brothers wanted to leave Yemen for a better life and this was their chance.

  The family owned a remote three hundred thousand acre plot in Bolivia, and two hundred thousand acres in Paraguay that included an abandoned military base with a long airstrip that was still capable of landing heavy jets. The brothers contacted the family and negotiated a price for the two properties. The Paraguay military property included several very nice homes and five hundred small houses. The purchases would allow the brothers to move to Paraguay and prepare for Malcolm’s possible arrival.

  The brothers completed the property transaction in the complete secrecy that both sides required. The family of a high government official needed to move funds to the civilized world to insure their future. The Bolivian property was raw, wild land. The plot in Paraguay was a private environmental territory and had no controlling government. For fifty years, it would not appear on tax rolls and the agents of the landowner handled all security and legal issues. It took six bank transfers in four different countries using shell companies to make the purchase untraceable. The gold for land transaction closed in Yemen. An invisible trust completely protected Malcolm, and included terms such as ruler and subjects.

  Malcolm was now a landowner, but there were additional requirements for him to occupy his holdings. The brothers hired local immigration lawyers, and publicly purchased Malcolm unpretentious homes in La Paz and Asuncion. Malcolm deposited the required amount of money into bank accounts, and both countries issued him permanent resident status. The bank deposit allowed his servants to receive permanent resident status as well, and used the term ‘as needed, up to five hundred’ as a limit. He and his army of servants could come and go in both countries without questions. For one
billion dollars in gold and an annual budget of a few million dollars, Malcolm had a reliable hiding place.

  Perfecting the deadly destructive mixture

  While heroes plan to stop the state

  An unplanned act with violent timbre

  May unravel the jihads fate

  Chapter 14

  Many people in Kansas knew the history of Bryan Washington’s father. As a young Baptist preacher in Alabama, he felt the calling of the Lord to start an integrated church. All he had was three hundred dollars in savings and an old car. He drove until his money ran out, and started a church at that location. He had almost stopped in Kansas City, Missouri, but decided that he had the gas to cross the Missouri River Bridge. He kept going until his gas was almost gone, and pulled over next to a small restaurant in Topeka, Kansas. He asked the waitress, “What can I get for four dollars? This meal is for me and the Lord.” He preached and occasionally nibbled at his food. The waitress was Bryan’s mother.

  Mr. Zimmerman was white, not particularly religious, and the owner of the restaurant. The young black preacher moved him. “I own a vacant building downtown with a big open five thousand square foot space. I have had trouble renting it. You clean it and I will buy one hundred fold up chairs.”

  His waitress spoke, “I can help you clean, and if you like my voice I can sing some.” She had a wonderful voice and together they made a team. Five years later, Reverend Washington had the largest church in Topeka, Kansas, and Mr. Zimmerman never missed a Sunday.

  Something in Bryan Washington’s life had gone very wrong. He was the youngest of five brothers. Before he was born, his oldest brother graduated from the University of Kansas and started law school. When Bryan was five, his next oldest brother had graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in chemical engineering. His other two brothers had also graduated from college, one became a preacher and the other became an FBI agent.