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THE CALIPHATE
an online short story..
When a terrorist group establishes an Islamic republic in Canada, two friends are forced to confront their own loyalties---and each other
Part 7
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Phil left his apartment and drove toward the American border just before sunrise. He packed the relatively few possessions that he could into his car, an old Toyota Tercel that had spider’s web cracks on two of the windows, and rust around the wheel bases.
He had gagged Marty and tied his hands behind his back before locking him in the closet. That was okay. Marty would be discovered within hours when Harb searched his apartment. But he couldn’t risk his getting loose and ruining things.
Before departing, Phil locked his front door and threw the key far into the rambling tract of pine and scrub at the edge of the building’s parking lot.
The main highway was deserted this late at night. Phil knew that he still faced significant obstacles. There were Harb checkpoints at all roads leading out of the city. But Phil had his Guard uniform, his Uzi, and the element of surprise on side. Maybe these would be enough. Maybe.
He turned on the radio: a bit of rock music—maybe even some rap or hiphop—would help to steel his nerves, get him in the proper frame of mind. He began punching the radio’s channel buttons. He needed to find a song to inspire him.
He had forgotten about Harb’s control of all the local radio stations. Every station he found consisted of Islamic programming—some in English, others in Arabic. After a few minutes of button pushing in vain, he turned the radio off.
Phil had chosen a route that would require him to pass through only a single checkpoint. He could not afford more than one confrontation. After that Harb would be looking for him and all the advantages would be theirs.
Before he reached the checkpoint, Phil looped the strap of his Uzi across his shoulder and placed the gun behind his back so that it would not be conspicuous when he stepped out of the vehicle. There were only two men at the particular checkpoint that stood between him and the American border—one Harb and one Canadian. When they saw his Guard uniform, both of the men relaxed somewhat, but they still had plenty of questions. Where was he going? Did he have written orders? What was in those boxes in the back seat of the car?
They asked him to step out of the Tercel so they could inspect the vehicle’s contents.
Standing beside his car, Phil smiled and began fabricating a story about a delivery to a Harb unit camped outside the city. Both men immediately eyed the boxes inside of the Tercel. He had made a fatal mistake. They would open the boxes and see that they contained not supplies, but his personal possessions.
The Harb guard frowned. “I’m going to have to verify this with our unit leader.”
He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.
That was when Marty made his move. The Harb guard never even knew what hit him; Phil fired a quick burst of rounds that nearly severed the man at the waist. The Canadian—a tall, lanky man in his late thirties—tried to draw his weapon, but Phil fired another three shots in rapid succession. The Canadian fell to the ground, convulsing as he clawed at the holes in his chest.
Within a few seconds he lay still and it was over.
Phil grabbed the feet of the Harb guard and began to drag him away from the car. Then he noticed the damage that his own Uzi had done to his only means of transportation. The front and rear tires of the Tercel were punctured on the driver’s side; and the rear window was shattered.
He only had one spare tire; this car wasn’t going anywhere.
Could he take the guards’ car? He made a quick scan of the area surrounding the checkpoint. As Murphy’s Law would ordain it, the guards did not have a vehicle. Someone must have dropped them off at the beginning of their shift.
For no particular reason, Phil thought about Marty. What would Marty say about the predicament that he had backed himself into? Marty would say that he had it coming. He had bucked the system; he had refused to go along and play it safe.
But Phil had been playing a decidedly unsafe game even before his departure. Marty no doubt believed that he was running because of what happened to the Donovans. Although the murder of the Donovans horrified and enraged him, Phil had been planning to flee Ontario prior to that.
He patted a bulge in the breast pocket of his jacket. The pocket held three tightly folded pieces of paper: a crude map and two pages filled with what looked like random numbers. These handwritten notes were everything—more valuable to him than his own life, in fact. And today he would carry them out of the Islamic Republic of Ontario.
Two days ago, when his unit was on guard at the Toronto City Hall, Phil had been given a full five minutes alone in the security office at the Toronto city all hall. During that time, he removed the key to Mustafa al-Benah’s office.
Then he had returned late that night, entering the city hall building when the guards changed shifts. This gave him a fifteen-minute window of lax security. Once inside the building, he took the service elevator to the fifth floor and used the pilfered key to enter al-Benah’s office.
Phil spent the better part of three hours rummaging around with a penlight before he found what he needed: a black binder containing the radio frequencies and safety codes of the four Harb missiles. The binder also contained a map that showed the missiles’ locations.
With a knowledge of the safety codes and the radio frequency, it would be possible to jam the Harb missiles. The missiles could of course be reset, and the safety codes could be reprogrammed; but this would take several hours.
More than enough time to destroy the missiles with an air strike.
Phil laboriously copied the map and the missile codes by hand. When he was done, he double-checked his work, and carefully returned the black binder to the shelf where he had found it. He left al-Benah’s office and locked the door behind him, praying that he had left no discernable sign of his presence.
The next day he entered the security office during his regular shift on the pretense of delivering some routine paperwork. When the guard behind the main desk wasn’t paying attention, he palmed the stolen key from his pocket and let it drop to the floor. Then he nudged the key underneath the desk with the toe of his boot. They would almost certainly find it there. If he was lucky, they would conclude that another guard had knocked the key from its peg while removing another from the cabinet.
And now he had launched the second part of his plan. Marty, his friend and Islamic Guard superior, was locked in a closet in his apartment. He had just killed two men. He was a fugitive refugee from the Islamic Republic of Ontario and there could be no turning back now. Soon Harb would be hunting him.
They would be angered and alarmed by the actions he had taken this morning and last night. But Harb did not know about the papers in his jacket pocket; and the papers—in the proper hands—could be used to destroy them.
The American border was perhaps five or ten miles to the south. The walk would take hours. He would need a change of clothes. The Harb commandoes who would be scouring the area before noon would be looking for an Ontario Islamic Guard deserter.
He looked around and surveyed his surroundings. To his right was a field that had recently been tilled for spring planting. Beyond the field there was a one-story farmhouse with a pickup truck parked in the driveway.
The pickup truck bore a Canadian maple leaf sticker. It was an image of the Canadian flag—not Harb’s Islamic Republic of Toronto banner. The bumper sticker looked new; it had been applied to the vehicle since the beginning of the occupation. The sticker was an unmistakable sign of opposition to Harb, but subtle enough to avoid harassment by Harb agents. That meant that the farmhouse was probably not the home of collaborators.
Someone there would help him.
“God willing,” he said aloud, recalling the words Marty had uttered the previous afternoon in the terminal. He began making his way across the field.
THE END
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