The Faithful Spy

So he knew he would get to heaven.

But what if he didn’t?

The light ahead turned green but no one moved. Aziz leaned on his horn, and finally the cars ahead crawled forward. He looked at the street around him. These people walked around in a haze while their soldiers raped prisoners in Iraq. They sucked up the world’s oil and lived like kings while Muslim children starved. They treated their bodies with disrespect. They believed in a false god. They were pigs in slop. Everything they did was haram, forbidden. Anger surged in Aziz. He had no reason to fear. They deserved to die. It was Allah’s will.

The light dropped green again, and Aziz inched through the intersection of Hollywood and Ivar. Crowds filled the sidewalks. This was the spot. Aziz stopped the truck. He picked up the detonator and turned it back and forth in his hand.

I can’t, he thought. Allah forgive me, I can’t. inside the truck, time moved very slowly. Aziz knew he had to decide. People were looking at him, and a police officer would tell him to move along soon. But he felt paralyzed. He wormed his thumb over the detonator, pressing down on its button ever so slightly, feeling the tension under his finger. He looked out the windshield and silently murmured the first sura to himself.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. ”

Now, he told himself. Now or never.

He pushed the button.

the second bomb proved even more devastating than the first. The explosion blew a crater fifteen feet deep and thirty feet around, and shot a cloud of smoke, debris, and fire hundreds of feet into the sky. With no walls to slow it, the overpressure wave killed everyone in an eighty-foot radius. The people nearest the truck were blown apart and barbecued; farther away the bodies were left recognizably human, although many lacked arms and legs. A few of the dead appeared basically unhurt; the blast wave had left their bodies intact but shaken their brains to jelly.

The blast partially knocked down four buildings, including the Ivar-Cinescape building directly across the street. Inside the Ivar, a fire began, and with only one emergency exit left, panic set in. Eighty-five more people were crushed or burned to death. f o r j u s t a moment after the explosion a shocked silence descended on the street, a false peace splitting before from after. Then chaos: car alarms ringing, fires roaring, screaming. So much screaming, most of it hardly recognizable as human: a high-pitched keening that started and stopped at random. Bennett found himself on the ground. He pushed himself to his feet and ran toward the wreckage, not even noticing the blood dripping from his face. He didn’t know where to turn or what to do; he wished that he had taken that first-aid class at Crenshaw. He slowed down, crunching broken glass under his feet, then nearly tripped over what he thought at first was a blue denim bag. He looked again and discovered that the bag was a leg, a leg that wasn’t attached to a body, not anymore. Hell. This was hell on earth. A few feet away, a man lay trapped under a black Jetta, groaning softly. Ricky, the guy from the line. Oh God, Bennett thought. I told him to walk this way.

Ricky motioned feebly. “Shit, help me.”

Bennett threw his shoulder into the Jetta. It didn’t budge. He tried again.

“How ’bout some help!” he yelled.

Ricky was starting to shake, Bennett saw.

“Just be cool,” he said. A big white guy joined Bennett. They lifted together, inching the Jetta higher. Another man grabbed Ricky under his arms and began to pull him out.

Ricky screamed in agony, the worst sound Bennett had heard yet. The Jetta had masked his pain by crushing the nerves in his hips. Now they could fire again, and Ricky was learning the truth of his injuries.

“Ricky, Ricky—” Bennett said. The scream became a whimper. He grabbed Ricky’s hand and squeezed. “Ambulance’ll be here soon. Just—” Ricky’s hand went limp as he slipped into unconsciousness. Bennett looked at the other two men and wordlessly they decided to leave Ricky and see if they could help anyone else. Help? Bennett had never felt so helpless.

At that moment Bennett decided he would sign up for the army the next morning. He would kill whoever had done this. It was all he could do.

in his rearview mirror, Khadri saw the truck disappear. A moment later the blast wave rattled his car. He drove off, careful not to speed. He and his men had dealt America a mighty blow tonight. KNX was already reporting a massive explosion at a Westwood synagogue. But even before he reached the highway, his jubilation faded. He had so much more work ahead.