Against Shadows and Winds

“Sorry, honey, didn’t mean to worry you. Look, one of the symptoms of post traumatic stress is flashback or re-experiencing. I had an incident today. I was putting the class through an exercise and it hit like a ton of bricks. For a fleeing instant, I was back on the mountain in Afghanistan with rockets going off and men screaming in pain.”

“Josh, oh my God! Are you all right? What did your students do?”

“Apparently, my experience is common knowledge among the students. How, I don’t know, but they handled it well. Actually, I’m proud of them. But, it was…

“Traumatic?” she supplied gripping his hands.

“Yeah, traumatic,” he said giving her an odd little grin.

“Is that what you wanted to talk to Detective Carlson about?”

“No. Mel, do you know what the term smoking gun means?”

“Sure. That there is evidence but nothing conclusive.”

“That’s what I’ve got. I’m going to begin at the beginning. Bear with me. The two men who wanted to buy you out were Arabs named Omar Barach and Joseph Mason.”

Mel thought then shook her head. “No, not Barach. It started with an A, I think.”

“Abbas. Barach is using that name. Carlson called a few minutes ago. David ran the police drawings through FBI databases. Mason is Joseph Masri, an Egyptian, a naturalized American citizen. Barach aka Abbas was trained as an explosive expert during the Afghani war with the Russians. Trained, I might add, by American advisors. When the war ended, he sold his skills to any terrorist organization in the Middle East.”

“Meaning, he turned a real gun on us?”

“It appears that way. Don’t forget, so did Osama bin Ladin. Saddam Houssein was the Frankenstein monster that our military created during the Iraqi-Iranian War. I suspect that a lot of the terrorists wanted by our government were trained in Afghanistan. Okay, until a few days ago, Abbas and Masri had rooms in the hotel across the street.”

“Then I did see Abbas watching me from a balcony?” Mel felt her heart rate increase and a tiny knot of alarm settled in her stomach.

Josh nodded. “The day after the fire, two days after you were mugged, both men came in here for coffee. In hindsight, I figure they knew you were out. I was preoccupied with the fire damage, worried about you, and back in the kitchen busy setting up for dinner alone. I barely even glanced up when they came in. They spoke in very low voices. I heard one say Osama’s name clearly and realized they were speaking Arabic. Masri left the diner saying he had an appointment with someone from the Chamber of Commerce. I watched Abbas go into the Cactus Star Hotel across the street.”

“They had no idea that you understand Arabic?”

“Hey, to them I’m a cook in a diner. It’s a pity that I was so preoccupied or I might have heard more. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear the name of the chamber member.”

He sat tossing a packet of artificial sweetener up and down on the table. “None of the pieces connected until the day we went next door to take a look at the empty space.”

“I don’t understand. What has the tee shirt shop next door got to do with Arabs?”

“I believe Abbas and Masri are part of a cell that is going to—Mel, my gut feeling says there is going to be a terrorist attack here at the Beach on November ninth.”

As Josh sat forward to blurt out his suspicions, Mel felt her jaw go slack and her eyes widen. She sucked in her breath recalling the confession that he had made only minutes before, that he was suffering from PTSD and had an incident that day.

And yet, regardless of how wild his explanation, it seemed to fit the violence committed against her and her diner the past few weeks.

‘The smoking gun you spoke of?” she cried.

“Yeah.”

“But, but—I thought those two men were drug dealers?” she exclaimed.

“Oh they may be. Most of the heroin in the world comes out of Afghanistan and the region around it. Like I said, if the UN and Western nations don’t find a lucrative crop that can be grown in place of poppies, drugs will keep coming out of that area for generations to come. But, I don’t think that’s their goal. You were the one who clued me in. The veteran’s conference, remember? The Secretary of the State as keynote speaker?”

Mel shook her head. “No way! I was at several of the early planning meetings last year. The Secret Service and FBI will be thick as fire ants on a rampage the day of the keynote speech. How do these men expect to get through all that police power?”

“This diner and the tee-shirt shop.”

It was said so quietly she barely heard him. “You’ve got to be kidding?”

Getting to his feet, he took her next door and went through his suspicions. In shock, she stumbled back to the diner without a word. Josh locked up and followed.

As he entered the diner, Mel said, “Does Detective Carlson buy into this…

“Suspicion, Mel, a theory based nothing but a gut feeling. Thing is that I’ve learned to trust my instincts. My gut said that searching those caves on that mountain was a trap. What I didn’t expect was a rocket attack from the opposi