Rick Mofina
Six Seconds
Prologue
The woman in the video is wearing a white shoulderlength hijab, embroidered with delicate beadwork. Her immaculate silk scarf frames her face, accentuating her natural beauty. She gives a tiny nod to the camera.
A soft cue is heard, then she begins.
I am Samara. I am not a jihadist. I am a widowmother baptized with the blood of my husband and my child when your governments murdered them.
Her strong, intelligent voice underscores her resolve in accented English, suggesting a mix of the Middle East and East London. Her eyes burn into the camera as it pulls back slowly. She speaks directly to the audience who will soon meet her on every television set in the world.
She lets a moment pass in silence. Her hands are clasped before her on a plain wooden table. Her rings glint from her thumb and wedding finger. The camera eases back, revealing a framed family photograph of a man, a boy and the woman herself. They are smiling. Joy swims in the womans eyes. For it is a portrait of her from another time. Another life. It stands next to her as headstone to her happiness and witness to her destiny.
To exchange pain.
For the intelligence analysts who will study her message, there is no prepared statement. No grenade launcher on display before her. No AK-47 flanking her.
No chanting from the glorious text.
There are no black-and-gold flags on the walls behind her. No flags of any group. No carpet or fabric. The background is simple with angled mirrors.
Nothing betrays the womans location, where she is recording her video or who is helping her. She could be in a safe house in the West Bank. Or in Athens. Maybe in Manila, Paris or London. Perhaps Madrid, or Casablanca.
Or in a suburb of the United States.
Your soldiers invaded my home, tortured my husband and child. They forced them to watch as one by one they defiled me. Then they killed my husband and my son before my eyes. They fled when your bombers delivered death to my city. I carried my dead child through the ruins and to the bank of the river of Eden where I buried him, my husband and my life. But I have been resurrected to seek justice for these crimes.
And it is for these crimes that I deliver my widowmothers wrath. For these crimes you will taste death.
Dying for me does not mean death. Dying for me is a promise kept. For I will have avenged the destruction of my world by bringing death to yours. Death is my reward as I join my husband and my child in paradise. For them, I am the eternal martyr. For them, I am vengeance.
Book One
1
Blue Rose Creek, California
Maggie Conlin left her house believing a lie.
She believed life was normal again. She believed that the trouble preying on her family had passed, that Logan, her nine-year-old son, had come to terms with the toll Iraq had taken on them.
But the truth niggled at Maggie as she drove to work. Their scars-the invisible ones-had not healed. This morning, when shed stood with Logan waiting for the school bus, he was uneasy.
You love Dad, right, Mom?
Absolutely. With all my heart.
Logan looked at the ground and kicked a pebble. What is it? she asked.
I worry that something bad is going to happen. Like you might get a divorce.
Maggie clasped his shoulders. No ones getting divorced. Its okay to be confused. It hasnt been easy these past few months since Daddy got home. But the worst is over now, right?
Logan nodded.
Daddy and I will always be right here, together in this house. Always. Okay?
Okay.
Remember, Im picking you up after school today for your swim class. So dont get on the bus.
Okay. Love you, Mom.
Logan hugged her so hard it hurt. Then he ran to his bus, waved and smiled from the window before he vanished.
Maggie reflected on his worries as she drove through Blue Rose Creek, a city of a hundred thousand near Riverside County, on her way to the Liberty Valley Promenade Mall. She parked her Ford Focus and clocked in at Stobel and Chadwick, where she was a senior associate bookseller.
Her morning went fast as she called customers telling them orders had arrived, helped others find titles, sug gested gift books and restocked bestsellers. As busy as she was, Maggie could not escape the truth. Her family had been fractured by events no one could control.
Her husband, Jake, was a trucker. In recent years, his rig had kept breaking down, and the bills piled up. It was bad. To help, he took a contract job driving in Iraq. High-paying, but dangerous. Maggie didnt want him to go. But they needed the money.
When he came home a few months ago, he was a changed man. He fell into long, dark moods, grew mis trustful, paranoid and had unexplained outbursts. Some thing had happened to him in Iraq but he refused to talk about it, refused to get help.
Was it all behind them?
Their debts were cleared, theyd put money in the bank. Jake had good long-haul driving jobs and seemed to have settled down, leaving Maggie to believe that maybe, just maybe, the worst was over.
Call for you, Maggie, came the voice over the P.A. system. She took it at the kiosk near the art history books.
Maggie Conlin. May I help you?
Its me.
Jake? Where are you?
Baltimore. Are you working all day today?
Yes. When do you expect to get home?
Ill be back in California by the weekend. Hows Logan?
He misses you.
I miss him, too. Big-time. Ill take care of things when I get home.
I miss you, too, Jake.
Listen, Ive got to go.
I love you.
He didnt respond, and in the long-distance silence, Maggie knew that Jake still clung to the untruth that shed cheated on him while he was in Iraq. Standing there at the kiosk of a suburban bookstore, she ached for the man she fell in love with to return to her. Ached to have their lives back. I love you and I miss you, Jake.
Ive got to go.
Twice that afternoon, Maggie stole away to the stores restroom, where she sat in a stall, pressing tissue to her eyes.
After work, Maggie made good time with the traffic on her way to Logans school. The last buses were lum bering off when she arrived.
Maggie signed in at the main office then went to the classroom designated for pickups. Eloise Pearce, the teacher in charge, had two boys and two girls waiting with her. Logan was not among them. Maybe he was in the washroom?
Mrs. Conlin? Eloise smiled. Goodness, why are you here? Logans gone.
Hes gone? What do you mean, hes gone?
He got picked up earlier today.
No, thats wrong!
Eloise said Logans sign-out was done that morning at the main office. Maggie hurried back there and smacked the counter bell loud enough for a secretary and Terry Martens, the vice-principal, to emerge.
Where is my son? Where is Logan Conlin?
Mrs. Conlin. The vice-principal slid the days sign-out book to Maggie. Mr. Conlin picked up Logan this morning.
But Jakes in Baltimore. I spoke to him on the phone a few hours ago.
But Jakes in Baltimore. I spoke to him on the phone a few hours ago.
Terry Martens and the secretary traded glances.
He was here this morning, Mrs. Conlin, the viceprincipal said. He said something unexpected had come up and you couldnt make it to the school.
What?
Is everything all right?
Maggies breathing quickened as she called Jakes cell phone while hurrying to her car. She got several static-filled rings before his voice mail kicked in.
Jake, please call me and tell me whats going on! Please!
Each red light took forever as Maggie drove through traffic. She called her home number, got her machine and left another message for Jake. Wheeling into her neighborhood, Maggie considered calling 911.
And what would I say?
Better to get home. Figure this out. Maybe shed misunderstood and the guys were at home right now. Was Jake actually in Blue Rose Creek? Why would he tell her he was in Baltimore? Why would he lie?
Turning onto her street, Maggie expected to see Jakes rig parked in its place next to their bungalow.
It wasnt there.
The brakes on her Ford screeched as she roared into her driveway, trotted to the door, jammed her key in the lock.
Logan!
No sign of Logans pack at the door. Maggie went to his room. No sign of Logan or his pack there. She hurried from room to room, searching in vain.
Jake! Logan!
She called Jakes cell again.
And she kept calling.
Then she called Logans teacher, then Logans friends. No one knew, or had heard anything. She ran next door to Mr. Millers house, but the retired plumber said he hadnt been home all day. She called Logans swim coach. She called the yard where Jake got his rig serviced.
No one had heard anything.
Was she crazy? You cant drive from Baltimore to California in half a day. Jake said he was in Baltimore.
She rifled through Jakes desk not knowing what she was looking for. She called the cell-phone company to see if billing could confirm where Jake was when he made the call. It took some choice words before they checked, only to tell her that there was no record of calls being placed on Jakes cell phone for the past two days.
By early evening she phoned police.
The dispatcher tried to calm Maggie. Maam, well put out a description of the truck and plate. Well check for any traffic accidents. Thats all we can do for now.
As night fell, Maggie lost track of time and the calls shed made. Clutching her cordless phone, she jumped to her window each time a vehicle passed her house as Logans words haunted the darkness that swallowed her.
something bad is going to happen
2
Five months later
Fausts Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada
Haruki Ito was alone, hiking along the river when he stopped dead.
He raised his Nikon to his face, rolled his long lens until the bear in the distance filled his viewfinder. A grizzly sow, stalking trout on the bank of the wild Faust River in the Rocky Mountains.
Photographing the grizzly was a dream come true for Ito, on vacation from his job as a news photographer with The Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Tokyos largest news papers. As he took a picture then refocused for another, something blurred in his periphery.
He focused and shot it- a small hand rising from the rushing current.
Ito hurried along the bank to offer help, struggling through dense forests and over the mist-slicked rocks while glimpsing the hand, then an arm, then a head in the water before the river released its victim into an eddy nearby.