One Rough Man (10 page)

The taller one, and the one who had done all the talking earlier, went by the
kunya
of Abu Bakr, after the first caliph who ruled following Muhammad’s death, and the first caliph leading to the split between Shia and Sunni.

Ordinarily a
kunya
is a nickname meaning “the father of,” as in Abu Abdullah meaning “the father of Abdullah,” and is commonly used in Arabic countries. In actual practice it’s a method for fanatics wanted by authorities to take an alias with a hidden meaning. The naming conventions in Arabic countries made it very hard to keep track of individuals, as a person’s recorded name could be any variation of full name or
kunya.

Unlike their heroes of 9/11, neither Bakr nor Sayyidd had been radicalized in modern Europe, where Mohammed Atta and his ilk were treated as inferior beings and outsiders, leading them to turn inward toward Islam. Abu Sayyidd and Abu Bakr heard the calling from the mosques in their own home towns in Saudi Arabia, a radical influence unstemmed by the ruling House of Al Saud because of the simple fact that the threat led outside the kingdom, and thus was something to be encouraged no matter how much the United States protested.

In the Saudi government’s thinking, if the radicals were given something greater to hate than the ruling class, so much the better. Not to mention that many in the ruling class sympathized with the cause anyway. Let the radicals leave the kingdom and get killed. It was a win-win situation.

Like many of the men who had made the trek to Iraq, Abu Bakr and Abu Sayyidd didn’t start out as rabid ideologues. They were simply looking for a little adventure in support of a worthy cause. Their plan was to go to Iraq, fulfill their romantic notion of the fight to support Islam for a few months, and then return to their life in Saudi Arabia, working a normal job and telling stories of their heroic actions to their grandkids years later.

The naïve illusion of jihad was broken quickly. Most actions were accomplished by snipers shooting their targets in the back, improvised explosive devices hidden in the dark of night, or suicide missions that left dozens dead and dozens more brutally mangled with little discrimination between the infidel and the believer. One walk through the bloody devastation of a suicide bomber was enough to take away any idealistic notions of jihad.

Abu Bakr and Abu Sayyidd were lucky in that they weren’t chosen for a suicide “martyr” mission. At the time, the terrorist pipeline had enough
shahid,
and thus they were allowed to fight, with IEDs and rifles. Once they had killed, their mindset began to change. They had to justify within themselves the murders they committed, and their psyche simply couldn’t accept that they had done wrong. The answer was simple: The cause was just, no matter what reality they saw on the ground that refuted the propaganda.

Sayyidd and Bakr, like many other radicalized fighters, had become nothing more than weapons of the most dangerous kind. Literal smart-bombs. Living, breathing, thinking weapons willing to trade their lives for their nihilistic goals, without any moral restraint remaining against taking innocent life. Had they the means, they would slaughter their enemies on a massive scale. The leadership of Al Qaeda had striven mightily to obtain such a capability. Sayyidd believed he may have found it in the story told by the native boy. All he had to do was convince Bakr.

I
nside his fleabag hotel, the professor twitched at every noise he heard in the hallway outside, wondering how long he had before he was arrested. He couldn’t believe the debacle that had occurred. The Mayans had come out of the darkness one by one, chopped to ribbons. So far only eight of the twelve original members had made it home. Counting Olmec, he could be looking at charges of man-slaughter or murder of four people. He regretted the deaths, he truly did, but the real shame was that no one would care that he was correct about his theory.

After spending the night by himself, it had taken him a full day to get out, and that was mainly due to his GPS. Without it, he’d probably be trying to suck water out of vines right now. He had hotfooted it to Flores, a small town on an island in the Petén province, with access to the airport at Santa Elena. At fifty-eight, he was weary down to the center of his bones, and wanted nothing more than to return to his calm life in Charleston. He hoped that the news of the travesty wouldn’t make it to this town before he could catch a plane out. Meanwhile, to keep his mind off his impending doom, he collated his information on the temple. Maybe, just maybe, he could get out of this alive and return with a real expedition of scientists.

As he always did, he maintained his level of secrecy, only this time he wanted to get all traces of the location of the temple out of his immediate possession. He downloaded the waypoint data and tracks from the GPS to his computer. Then he wiped the memory of the GPS so that it showed no trace of where he had been. He opened his laptop and booted up a very powerful encryption program by means of a sequence of keystrokes. The program itself couldn’t be found by a cursory examination. He pulled the drop-down menu and selected the steganography feature.

The professor had first heard of steganography, or the hiding of messages in otherwise innocent carriers such as pictures or letters, while still an undergraduate student. He had read about the ancient Greeks, where Herodotus tells of hiding a message of Xerxes’ planned invasion underneath the wax of a writing tablet to avoid scrutiny, and the legends of the pirates, where the head of a man was shaved and tattooed with a treasure map that was concealed when the hair grew back.

Later on, while on a dig with a savvy undergraduate of his own, he had been shown the modern usage of the technique. Every computer file, such as JPEG, MP3, or WAV, has unused data streams within itself, basically empty pockets that serve no purpose. The steganography program simply fills up this empty space with the data that one wishes to hide. Thus, while the picture of Aunt Sally still looks like a picture of Aunt Sally, someone who knows there is hidden information within the picture can extract and reconstruct it.

After the program booted up, the professor was asked what he wanted as his carrier file, or the file that would hide the data. He selected three MP3 songs from his hard drive. When asked what he wanted to hide, he selected the GPS data. He continued by selecting AES 256 encryption and the password key. Now, even if the data were to be separated from the songs, it would be encrypted in an algorithm that had never been cracked, and thus would be secure.

In thirty seconds it was done. He was asked if he wanted to create a physical key, and selected “yes.” When prompted, he put a blank thumb drive in the USB port and the computer churned for a few more seconds.

He now had his data securely encrypted and could extract the data both virtually with a password on his computer, which held the steganography program, and physically by inserting the thumb drive into whatever computer held the carrier file, regardless of whether that computer contained the stego program or not. Once the thumb drive registered, it would self-extract the data.

The professor plugged in the phone line and dialed the closest ISP given to him by the front desk. It never failed to amaze him how far and deep the Internet had penetrated. It seemed like it was in more places than indoor plumbing. Once he was connected, he logged onto
Hotmail.com
and pulled up his account. He typed a short note and e-mailed the songs to his niece in Charleston, South Carolina. Jennifer was an anthropology student, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that she would appreciate the local Mayan music. Still, even if she thought it a little odd, she’d have no idea the information she was helping her uncle to hide.

Three minutes later the e-mail completed sending. He closed out of the Internet, then used a shredding program to erase all traces of his stego activities. Nothing related to the expedition remained on his hard drive.

He gave a sigh of relief and leaned back in his chair. Maybe he should get himself a giant margarita and relax a little bit. As he cataloged the bars in the small town he heard a knock on his door, and his name called out. He nearly passed out in shock. Just as his mind spun into overdrive, with fantasies about the tortures he would experience along with the ludicrous choices he faced, such as jumping out of the third-story window, it dawned on him that the man outside the door was speaking with an English accent. He must be an expat who worked for the hotel. When he had signed in, the professor had tipped handsomely to generate goodwill, so perhaps the man was here to warn him about something he had heard on the street. In the span of seconds the professor went from doom to giddy excitement. He rushed to the door, intent on seeing who was there.

There was no peephole, forcing him to crack the door. He found himself looking up into the ice-blue eyes of a man a full head taller than himself. His clothes didn’t indicate that he worked for the hotel. In fact, he was dressed like he was going into the jungle. His face was expressionless, giving no hint as to why he had knocked. The only indication of why he was there was a section of pipe held in his right hand. Maybe he was a plumber.

“Yes?”

“Professor Cahill?”

“Yes. Can I help you?”

In response, the man kicked in the door, knocking the professor to the floor. The last thing the professor saw was the section of pipe coming at his head.

J
ennifer Cahill opened her eyes and watched the ceiling fan above her rotate for half a minute.
This isn’t going to cut it. I need to find something to do or I’m going to go nuts.
At first, she had enjoyed sleeping in. Waking up whenever she felt like it or rolling over and going back to sleep had been a nice reprieve. Now, with spring break almost over, she was beginning to feel a little restless. As an anthropology major herself, she had asked her uncle to let her go with him to Guatemala, but he had refused. She hoped he was having some luck, although she knew it was a long shot. Everyone else had written him off as a crackpot, but she believed in him, if for no other reason than because he had been so kind to her.

She threw off the covers and padded into the kitchen. She had a one-bedroom apartment in a row house on Pitt Street about two blocks from the College of Charleston, in the heart of downtown. The house had been turned from a regal antebellum statement of the past history of Charleston into a rat maze of individual apartments for college students. She was the only one still at home. Everyone else had left the city for party time at some spring break location. She didn’t miss that. At twenty-eight, she wasn’t that much older than her peers, but she was a world apart in maturity. She’d had enough of the spring break bullshit and
Animal House
lifestyle on her first try at getting a degree.

She put on a pot of coffee and went to open the front door to get some fresh spring air. It was only March, and the weather was already starting to warm up. The swelter was something that she enjoyed. She couldn’t see how anyone could live in cold weather. She got cold in a movie theater—forget about living permanently in the snowbelt. Having grown up as a tomboy on a ranch outside of Dallas, Texas, where she had spent most of her time outdoors, she had become used to the heat. It was muggier here, but still pretty close. If she couldn’t live in Texas, at least she could sweat like she did.

She turned to check her coffee and found a flyer at her feet. It was for a live band at a bar called the Windjammer on the Isle of Palms, a barrier island about thirty minutes from her house. She picked it up and saw writing at the bottom: “You should be going stir crazy by now. The offer still stands—you can stay with us. Meet us at the Windjammer tonight. If you don’t like it, you can always go home.” It was signed by her girlfriend Skeeter.

Jennifer thought about it for a second. She was looking for something to do, and maybe it was time to get out a little. Yeah, she’d have to fight off all the ogling boy-men who only wanted to get drunk, then get laid, but she could handle that. She just wasn’t sure it would be fun anymore. Those situations always made her think of her past.
Shit, who am I kidding? I think about the past no matter what happens. The damn weather makes me think about it.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and was reading the flyer again when her cell phone rang.

“Hey, you’re up. Let me guess. You’re in your pajamas studying for a test that might come after spring break. Did’ja get my flyer?”

Jennifer smiled. “Hello, Skeeter. No, I’m not studying. I had a man over here last night. He’s an exchange student from Nigeria. He’s still asleep because we were up pretty late watching C-Span. I’m not sure what you mean by flyer.”

“Bullshit. I left a flyer on your doorstep. Go get it. I’ll wait.”

“I got the stupid thing. It’s in my hand right now.”

“Well, what do you say? Come on out. The condo’s already paid for, so it won’t cost you a thing.”

“Skeeter, you know how I feel about that scene.”

“Jesus, Jennifer! When are you going to let go? I get you had a rough time, but come on. This is your last year of college! Your final spring break. You’ll be able to sit in a cubicle and slave away to your heart’s content in a little bit. Think about it. I’ll call back and bug you later.”

Jennifer was going to reply when she realized that Skeeter had hung up. The truth of the matter was not a day went by when she didn’t think about her ex-husband and what he had done. Not a day without feeling sweat break out over the memory, wondering what her life would have been like if she had stayed in school the first time.

She had dropped out of the University of Texas after her junior year to marry the iconic frat boy son of a Texas oil tycoon, who had just graduated. Things had been fine for all of ten minutes before she realized he was sleeping around on her. It was as if her husband was trying desperately to hold on to his frat boy lifestyle while walking up the corporate ladder. Nobody held him accountable, least of all his trophy wife. Thinking about it now, she had been very shallow. She had been raised poor, but proud. The Cahill name had been drilled into her from an early age as something that mattered beyond wealth. She had believed it, then had thrown it away.