Collateral Damage - Marc Cerasini [30]
"Then the euro will replace the dollar as the world standard," the Albino concluded.
"And the United States will collapse into a mire of poverty from which it will never emerge. The balance of power will shift in Europe's favor once again, as it was meant to be."
The Albino chuckled. "A brave new world."
"Indeed," Ungar replied. "Who knows? In the twenty-first century, the poverty-stricken citizens of the new Third World America may welcome a modern wave of European colonialists. Then they can dine off the crumbs that fall from our tables."
7
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1:00 P.M. AND 2:00 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
1:00:32 P.M. EDT
Kurmastan, New Jersey
The eighty-eight martyrs squatted in subdued silence inside the dining hall. Tables and chairs had been cleared away and replaced by prayer rugs, dutifully positioned so the supplicants would face Mecca. Old men and young boys served them strong, bitter tea sweetened with honey.
Farshid Amadani — the man they called "the Hawk" — wisely abstained, though he waited with the rest for their spiritual leader to address them from the raised platform at the front of the room.
Earlier that morning, the martyrs had bid their final goodbyes to their families. They'd completed their ritual cleansing in the communal showers, and donned overalls and shoes that had never been worn. With skullcaps on their shorn heads, the men then proceeded to the mosque to pray.
Precisely at noon, Farshid Amadani had gone to the house of worship to collect them. Single file, he had led the procession out of the mosque and into one of the underground tunnels. He had marched them through a long, low-ceilinged corridor to a spacious chamber inside the main bunker.
There he had showed them what had been done to the infidel woman captured on their property the day before.
As their paramilitary trainer, the Hawk had been impressed by the martyrs' reactions.
He'd expected the older men — all felons convicted of violent crimes — to show no emotion when the miserable remains of the woman were displayed, and they did not disappoint him. But even the younger men, those who had not yet spilled blood, had hardened their hearts sufficiently to gaze at the grisly remains without flinching.
Truly these are the Warriors of God.
The Hawk noticed movement in the kitchen, and he knew Ibrahim Noor would soon appear. He settled onto his prayer rug and waited for their spiritual leader to arrive.
* * *
1:11:32 P.M. EDT
Warriors of God Community Center
From his vantage point behind a curtain that separated the dining hall from the kitchen, Ibrahim Noor watched his martyrs.
A powerfully built African American in his forties, Noor wore a skullcap over his shaven head. The prayer shawl on his broad shoulders did not cover the jailhouse tattoos that crisscrossed his bull neck, and his holy man's robes — a loose-fitting shalwat kameez— barely concealed the scars from multiple knife wounds and gunshots that puckered the flesh on his thick-muscled torso.
Noor waited for the powerful beverage to take effect before he deigned to make an appearance. Meanwhile the men nervously gulped cup after cup of the bitter brew, a concoction of tea laced with amphetamines and mingled with the same powerful steroids that had been pumped into his disciples since paramilitary exercises began many months ago.
The amphetamines were a stimulant created for, and then rejected by the NATO forces because they caused psychotic episodes. It had been supplied by Erno Tobias and his employer, the Swiss-based firm Rogan Pharmaceuticals. The food and water stored inside the trucks were laced with the same chemical. The dangerous