54 – Framingham, Massachusetts
The Jewish March on Washington was all over the news. Boston stations reported that local synagogues had chartered virtually every available bus for the demonstration protesting the country’s failure to intervene on behalf of Jews in Palestine. Sam Abdullah and Alfred Farouk watched the news on the TV in Sam’s room in the evening, when Al supposedly came over so they could work on a history project together.
The ABC News reporter described the security precautions in Washington as “unprecedented.”
“The FBI is saying that as many as one-and-a-half million Jews are expected to descend on the city this weekend,” the carefully coifed reporter said with a concerned expression, while the wind blew his jacket around his face. Amazingly, despite what appeared to be almost gale force winds, not a strand of hair on his head wavered. “And other law enforcement sources predict that several hundred thousand counter-demonstrators may attend, angry that there have been no prosecutions for the killings of ten Coast Guard officers and two FBI agents by Jewish terrorists in the Boston area. The law enforcement presence here is overwhelming.”
Farouk jammed his thumb on the remote control to turn the television off.
“A million-and-a-half Jews all in one place,” he said. “Imagine what a little bit of bomb would do there. There’d be Jew-meat splattered all over the place.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t sound like there’s any chance that’s gonna happen,” Abdullah responded. “It looks like every cop in the world is gonna be there to protect the Jews. Wouldn’t you know it, they’re the ones who killed people and yet its our taxpayers’ dollars that keep anybody from getting back at them.
“It shows that no matter what the Jews do, they get away with it, no matter how bad it is. They can do anything.”
“You’re right, man,” Al said. “Just let some Muslim set off a bomb or highjack a plane or something in this country and they get the Special Forces and all after them. The Jews go ahead and set off an atom bomb in the middle of a city and we still let them all get together for the biggest picnic in the world on the front lawn of the fucking White House.
“What does it take before this country gets pissed off at Jews for a change?”
The two young men sat in silence for several minutes, infuriated at the waste of their tax dollars, neither mentioning that they had yet to actually earn enough money to have to pay any taxes.
Sam spoke first, softly, barely above a whisper.
“What if the Jews did something really bad this week, just before their big march, something that really got the government down on them? Wouldn’t that screw up their march?”
“Probably, maybe,” Al responded cautiously. “But that would be pretty dumb of them, right before they hold what they say is gonna be a real peaceful demonstration, to do something that would get people pissed at them. One thing everybody knows is that Jews are smart. It would be dumb to fuck around right before they go to D.C. to beg the government for sympathy. They’re not that stupid man. But it would be cool if they were.”
“It sure would be cool. It would be better than cool,” Sam said. “It would totally mess up their peaceful giant march. Mess up that march, man, and there’s no way even that Jew-lover Quaid is gonna go into Palestine and bail them out.”
“Yeah, yeah, man, but like I said, Jews are smart. They aren’t gonna do anything like that, not now,” Al said.
Again, the two sat in silence. Again, Sam broke the silence.
“What if people thought it was Jews who did something really bad? Wouldn’t that do the same thing? It doesn’t really have to be Jews who do it, not as long as everybody thinks it was. Am I right or am I right?
“I guess you’re right.” Al Farouk was sensing, again, that his friend was serious, that this was more than a couple of teenagers playing fantasy games. He decided to push that issue.
“Man, are you, like, really for real about this, about doing something for real and not just talking about how cool it would be to do something?”
Sam stood up and paced the room. He turned to face his friend, pointing his hand toward the computer on which they’d spent so many hours visiting the American Mujahidin web site.
“Serious?” he asked. “Get real, man. Of course, I’m serious. Don’t you think those guys we read about in Palestine, all those martyrs were serious? Not just guys. Girls. Girl martyrs over there, man. They aren’t any better than us, no older, no smarter, no braver. If they could do it, why can’t we? If they can die for Allah, why can’t we do it, too?
“Just think what a difference we could make. We stop the United States from bailing out the Jews in Palestine and the whole world is different. If we could do that, just us, a couple of ordinary teenage guys here in Massachusetts, if we do that they’ll write poems about us around the world, sing songs about us. How cool would that be?”
“Yeah, that would be pretty cool,” Farouk replied. He was catching his friend’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, pretty fucking cool. Heroes around the world. Pretty cool. I could get into that. So we die. Big fucking deal. We know what happens to martyrs when they die. I could dig that.”
He sounded as if he were talking more to himself than to his friend, talking himself into doing something he would not do but for all the hours of listening to Mullah Abu Hamzah, without months of discussions with his best friend about martyrs in Palestine, young men who looked not unlike the two Americans, young men who were also in high school, who also left family behind them, something that without that preparation he would view as just plain stupid.
Now, though, watching the news, listening to Jewish leaders predict they would get all the support they asked for from Washington, now it sounded more like a spectacular way to pole vault himself into history.
“What do you have in mind, brother,” he asked Sam. “Because whatever it is, I’m in it with you.”
“We do something big, really big. Lots of people die. And we do it so people think it was Jews who did it. They blame the Jews for it. Cool, right? Right before their big peace march the Jews kill a shitload of Americans. Make killing those Coast Guard guys seem like pissing in public. Are you with me?”
“Yeah, I see it, man. People are pissed off at the Jews enough for killing the Coast Guard guys, and that girl Coast Guard, too. And the FBI guys,” Al Farouk was getting excited. “So what are you thinking?”
“We can’t do it in D.C.,” Sam said. “Every cop in the world is gonna be there, and besides, we don’t want to kill Jews with this.”
“Well, duh, we do want to kill Jews,” Al interrupted, then thought for a moment. “Just not this time around.” He paused again.
“Oops,” he continued. “Guess this thing will be our only thing. Guess somebody else will have to kill Jews. Our thing is to kill Americans and make everybody think the Jews did it. Right? That’s the game plan?”
“That’s the game plan,” Sam said. “OK, we gotta get that TNT from your Dad’s shed. You sure were right about the combination there. So what do we do with it? Blow up a school like those Chechen guys did in Russia? That got people pissed off.”
“I don’t know if I want to kill kids like,” Al said. “How about if we do grownups, adults mostly. Kids is pretty heavy duty. Besides, it could be hard to get into a school if you don’t go there.”
“We could do our own schools,” Sam speculated, then backed away. “No. Don’t want to do our own friends. Some of those kids are OK. Besides, that might seem like a Colorado kinda thing, what was that school?”
“Columbine,” Al said.
“Right, Columbine. They’d probably make us seem like loser types for doing our own school. OK, not a school. How about some sports event. Too bad it isn’t Superbowl time.”
“Think man, that doesn’t work. We’ve gotta do it this week. There won’t be any big sports events this week. Besides, there’s security at those things now. I saw it on TV. They check everybody coming in and they’ve got dogs and sniffer machines and shit. No, man, it’s gotta be some place where lots of people go all the time, even during the week. Someplace where there’s shit for security.”
“But there’s gotta be cameras, security cameras so everybody knows it was Jews that did it, right? Where do people hang out all the time, with no security except cameras?”
They both thought for no more than thirty seconds before Al Farouk looked at Sam Abdullah with a broad smile on his face.
“The mall, man. The fucking mall. It’s perfect.”
“Fucking A, you’re right,” Sam said. “But not one mall. There’s two of us. We’ll do two malls.”
“Two malls. OK. Let’s make a pact, a pact before Allah.” Farouk’s tone of voice changed from the near hilarity with which he and his friend were speaking as they exchanged ideas. Now, he was on board, committed. Neither of them ever spoke about Allah in jest.
“I vow before Allah that I will do this deed,” Al said. He looked at Sam.
“And I vow before Allah that I, too, will do this deed.”
“Good,” Sam continued. “Lets go to your Dad’s place tonight and get the TNT.”
“And the blasting caps,” Al added. “We need the blasting caps and the six volt batteries there. We can skip the fancy box they use to set it off. Just touch the two wires together and BOOM. That’s all it will take.”
“Boom. That’s all it will take,” Sam echoed. “We skip school tomorrow then and put the belts together. Nothing to it. Just duct tape the TNT around us, hook up the wires and the blasting caps, connect it to the battery and boom when the wires get touched together. Right?”
“Right,” Al said. “We do it tomorrow night, two days before the big Jew march on Washington. So man, what’s your favorite mall?”
Sam thought for a moment. “North Shore Mall. The food court. Love that Japanese chicken thing they sell there. And you?”
“Burlington Mall,” Farouk replied. “Yeah, the food court is the place to do it. It’ll be packed right around, say 6:30, everybody eating mall food for their nutritious dinners. They’ve got that Apple Store there. That’s where I got my iPod Nano. I love that thing. I think I’ll wear it when I do this.”
Sam slowly inhaled deeply, then looked at his friend. All expression vanished from his face.
“We are going to do this, right? We vowed before Allah. No backing out?”
“Hey, we vowed. We can’t back out now,” Al said. “Tomorrow night. I’ll meet you in Paradise.”
“Yeah, Paradise,” Sam said, shaking his head from side to side. “Do you suppose that shit with the virgins and all really happens when you die a martyr’s death, like for real?”
“I don’t know, Al said. He smiled at his friend. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow night.”