Jonathan Maberry: Patient Zero

Gault leaned back and sipped his water and observed El Mujahid through the open tent flap. The Fighter stood right outside and was growling orders to his men. Even those who were bigger and more physically powerful than the Fighter seemed shrunken in his presence, their wattage dialed down as his shone like the sun. Once he sent them out to do whatever bit of nastiness he assigned them, they would swell like giants and through them El Mujahid’s fist would reach out and strike with godlike force across borders and around the world.

Gault thought the man was very well named; a name that could have been a code, a disguise, but wasn’t. It was as if the man’s peasant parents—a couple of nearly illiterate dust farmers from some godforsaken corner of Yemen—had known that their only child was destined to become a warrior. Not merely a soldier for Allah, but a general. It was a powerful name for a child, and as the boy grew into a man he had embraced the potential of his name. Unlike so many of his peers he was not recruited by groups of militant fundamentalists— he sought them out.

By the time El Mujahid was thirty he was on the wanted lists of over forty nations, and on the top ten most wanted list of the United States. He had ties to Al Qaeda and a dozen other extremist groups. He was single-minded, relentless, smart—though not particularly wise—and when he spoke, others listened. That made him terribly feared, but feared in the way a guided missile was feared.

Amirah… ah, thought Gault, now she was something entirely different. If the Fighter was the missile, then the Princess—for that was what her name meant—was the hand at the controls. Well… she shared those controls with Gault. By his estimation it was the most effective, harmonious, and potentially lucrative collaboration since Hannibal met an elephant handler. Probably more so.

The tent flap whipped open and the Fighter strode inside. He never simply walked anywhere—he had the same swagger as Fidel Castro, moving through space as if he wanted to bruise the air molecules and teach them their place. It always reminded Gault of the character of the Roman general Miles Gloriosus from the old Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum . Gloriosus’s opening line, bellowed from offstage, was: “Stand aside everyone… I take large steps.” Sometimes Gault had to dig his fingernails into his palms to keep from smiling when El Mujahid strode into the room.

The Fighter snatched up the water bottle and poured himself a glass, sloshing half of it on the table, and threw it back. Gault wondered at what point affectation had given way to true personality trait.

“The teams are leaving now,” the Fighter said as he dragged over a chair and threw himself into it. The cheap seat creaked under his bulk, but he ignored it. He was a handsome man with unusual looks for someone of Yemen birth. His eyes were a pale brown, almost gold, and his skin, though tanned by the blistering sun, was not as dark as many of his countrymen. Over the last eighteen months Gault had arranged for highly skilled cosmetic surgeons to do some touch-up work on the Fighter, including resizing his ears, a comprehensive dye job on his hair—head to feet—tonal changes to his vocal chords, and some bone smoothing on his brow and chin. They were all small operations but the total effect was that El Mujahid looked even more like a European. Like a Brit. Give him a modern haircut, lose the fierce mustache, and put him in an Armani suit, Gault considered, and he could pass for northern Italian or even Welsh. The anomaly of the Fighter’s complexion, and his ability to speak an uninflected English with a hint of a British accent, factored heavily in Gault’s plans for the man, and Gault had paid good money to make sure that under the right circumstances the Fighter would make a believable non-Arab. He’d even provided a series of audiotapes to allow the Fighter to practice speaking with an American accent.

Gault looked at his watch—a Tourneau Presidio Arabesque 36 that he’d taken from a former colleague who had no further need for checking the time of day. “As always, my friend, you are precise to the minute.”

“The Koran says that—” But that was all Gault heard. El Mujahid loved his long-winded scripture quotations and as soon as the big man was in gear Gault tuned him out. He sometimes forced himself to mentally say “yada yada yada” to drown out the doctrine. That worked well, and he had himself trained to start paying attention again when the Fighter wrapped it up with his trademark closer: “Allah is the only God and I am his wrath on Earth!”

Grandiose, but catchy. Gault liked the “wrath” part. Wrath was useful.

“Very apt,” he said of the unheard scripture. “Your men should be praised for their devotion to the cause and to the will of Allah.”

Gault was a lapsed Presbyterian. Not completely atheist—he believed some kind of god existed somewhere; he just didn’t think the human race had the Divine All on speed dial… and whatever calls they did make were certainly not being returned. To Gault religion was something to be factored in to any equation. Only a fool dismissed its power or ignored its useful potential; and only a suicidal fool allowed even a hint of disingenuousness to flavor his words. Financial backer or not, Gault would find himself lying in parts all over this corner of Afghanistan if El Mujahid thought that he was mocking his faith. The Fighter’s swagger might have started as affect, but his faith had never been anything but absolute.

The Fighter nodded his thanks for the comment.

“Will you stay for dinner?” Gault asked. “I had some chickens flown in with me. And fresh vegetables.”

“No,” the Fighter said, shaking his head with obvious regret. “I’m crossing over into Iraq tomorrow. One of my lieutenants has stolen a British half-track. I will oversee the placement of antipersonnel mines and then we need to put it somewhere that the British or Americans can find it. We’ll stage it well… the front end will have been damaged by a land mine and there will be one or two British wounded in the cab. Very badly wounded, unable to speak, but clearly alive. This has worked many times for us. They care more about their wounded than they do about their cause, which should convince even the stupidest of men that they do not have God in their hearts or holy purpose to guide their hands.”

Gault bowed in acknowledgment of the point. And he admired El Mujahid’s tactics, largely because the Fighter understood Allied thinking—they always favored rescue over common sense; which made sabotage so effective for men like El Mujahid, and which made profit so deliciously easy for Gault. Since long before the American body count had hit quadruple digits three of Gault’s subsidiary companies had landed contracts for improved plastics and alloys, both for wheeled vehicles and human assets. Now half the soldiers in the field wore antishrapnel polymer undershirts and shorts. Quite a few lives had even been saved, not that this mattered in anything except price negotiations during contract meetings; but it was there. So, the more damage El Mujahid could do with his clever booby traps the more defensive products would be purchased. And even though plastics, petrochemicals, and alloys were only eleven percent of his business, it still brought in six hundred and thirty million per year, so it was all a winwin situation.

“Ah, I understand, my friend,” he said, putting authentic-sounding regret into his voice. “You go in safety and may Allah bless your journey.”

He saw the effect the words had on the big man. El Mujahid actually looked touched. How delicious.

Amirah had long ago coached Gault in what to say when it came to matters of the faith, and Gault was as good a student as he was an actor. After his second meeting with the Fighter—and after Gault had privately noticed the subtle signs indicating how thoroughly his luggage was being searched every time he came here—he’d started packing a worn copy of a French edition of Introduction to Islam: Understand the Pathway to the True Faith, a book written by a European who had gone on to become a significant and very outspoken voice in Islamic politics. Gault and Amirah spent hours with the book, underlining key passages, making sure important pages were dog-eared, and ensuring that the bookmark was never in the same place twice. El Mujahid had never openly spoken of what he believed to be Gault’s process of conversion, but each time they met the big man was warmer to him, treating him like family now, where once he had kept him at arm’s length.