Domestic Enemies
By Kent E. Wyatt
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…and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. Matthew 10:36 (CSB)
Prologue
JULY 3, 1988
Bandar Abbas, Iran
Alireza Hamadani glanced at his watch, his hatred toward the Turk festering. He had hoped to test his bomb at the hotel, but he had to make the flight to Dubai. If I wait any longer, I’ll miss it. He contemplated what to do. I can’t cancel with this client. It will set the release back at least another week, maybe longer depending on scheduling. Large banks didn’t like last minute changes. Neither did the Imam.
“Imam.” Alireza used the term out of respect for Islam, but he had seen that the man the rest of the world knew as Ayatollah Khomeini was not infallible as the Imam title was supposed to denote. The old fool has no respect for the scientific community and no concept of the time required to create a masterpiece like this.
Alireza patted the case on his belt to reassure himself. He needed a success and he needed it soon. Grabbing his bag, he jerked open the door. A dark face made him jump.
Whenever Alireza looked at the Turk, he found himself staring at the scar that crossed his hooked nose and ran down past his mouth. He glanced away as he stepped back so the Turk could enter, but the casual expression on the craggy face angered Alireza.
“This was supposed to happen last night.” Alireza clenched his teeth and glared at the floor.
“Yes, it was.” The Turk entered the room carrying two identical nylon bags and kicked the door shut with his foot. “You were late.”
“Fifteen minutes? You couldn’t wait fifteen minutes?” Alireza’s eyes connected with dark circles gazing at him over the scar, which lifted at the volume in Alireza’s voice.
Alireza’s gaze retreated to the carpet.
“Sadly, no. Not in this business.” The dark man dropped the bags on the other side of him, away from Alireza. “Two Compaq SLT/286 computers. Not scheduled to be released to the public until September. No extra charge for early delivery.”
The thump the cases made hitting the floor made Alireza cringe. “Please don’t damage them.” It was all he could do to restrain his anger. I doubt he could even operate a computer.
The Turk let go of the smile that he held for a moment. “I hear the Compaq company has a very good warranty.” Holding out a waiting hand, he reminded Alireza, “You were in a hurry, were you not?”
Alireza knew the hazard of asking the taxi driver to get to the airport as fast as he could, but he had no choice. When the cab screeched to a stop in front of the terminal, he was grateful to be the one sliding himself across the seat instead of the inertia. He paid the driver for the abuse and hurried into the building.
Loaded down with the three bags, Alireza glanced at his watch again. No time to test it before boarding. He moved toward the line for the Iran Air counter.
Alireza carried the newly acquired computers and pushed his carryon bag with his foot. After a few minutes, the line stopped moving. Around the heads of the people ahead of him, he could see a man gesticulating in front of a stone-faced official who stood behind the counter. The whispered information made its way down the line, informing Alireza there was an immigration issue. He knew the flight would be delayed.
Wiping sweat from the back of his neck, Alireza used the motion to mask a look around. There was no better place to find out how well his bomb would work. Slipping out of line, he moved to a vacant set of seats in an out-of-the-way part of the terminal where he could still watch the progress of the line.
On each of the seats beside him, Alireza set up one of the portable computers he had obtained from the Turk and turned them on. When Windows 3.1 finished booting on both machines, Alireza took out the disks he had in his case. He inserted one into the computer on his right and ran the program.
Calling up the timer setting, he saw the default of a three-month delay before detonation. He hoped that length would be right for the bomb he would plant at the client’s location in Dubai. He wanted the bomb to do the most damage and not be traced back to him.
Looking to the check-in line for Iran Air, Alireza saw there was no movement and some of the customers were sitting on the floor. But that could change any moment. He needed to shorten the time to detonation as low as he dared. He erased the three-month entry and typed in one minute. The default was for his program to keep everything it was doing concealed, but Alireza changed that setting so a countdown timer would be displayed.
Pressing the start button, Alireza drew in a breath. The numbers denoting one minute appeared on the screen and started reducing by seconds…59…58…. Would his bomb work the same with this new breed of portable? Alireza would soon find out.
As the numbers on the screen clicked by, Alireza second guessed himself. He had initially wanted to wait a year before the big detonation, but he had decided on three months to make sure his bomb wasn’t discovered before it could go off.
The timer reached 30 seconds.
The earlier version that Alireza had planted in Jerusalem had been found too quickly to have the impact for which he had hoped. I need things to work this time.
20 seconds.
Everything was a calculated risk. The longer he waited to detonate, the more widespread the damage—wait too long, and the bomb might be found before it went off.
10…9…8…
He had worked hard to make his bomb undetectable, but he didn’t want to be so short sighted as to underestimate the pace of development of the new virus scanners that were starting to appear… Alireza looked at the timer.
3…2…1.
It was done. The timer went back to one minute and displayed another start button.
To check the files on the computer, Alireza used a separate disk that he had designed to get past the masking features and find the subtle changes his program caused in certain files.
Alireza disliked the word “virus” to describe what he had made. It sounded small and inconsequential. He also did not like that the term had been coined by an American Jew. He preferred to call it his “bomb.” This was no ordinary virus. His latest version was invisible and devastating.
Alireza regretted that the Zionists would not be the first to feel the explosion, but it was too risky to go back to Israel. But Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, was only a 28-minute flight away. The spoiled rich Emirates are always flirting with the infidels. They will spread it all over the world. At the speed Alireza had calculated his new program could reproduce itself, months should be enough. Let’s see what it did in one minute on a portable computer.
In the minute that had elapsed, his bomb had attached itself to every program. Alireza took another disk containing financial software and loaded it on the computer. His check program verified that the financial disk was immediately infected. He then inserted a game disk and checked it to find the same result.
Alireza was pleased. The new portables were just as vulnerable as the other computers he had tested. “Laptops,” as they were being called, were the future of computing, and people would be connecting them to everything.
Even though it altered files on the computer, his program had the traits of what some were calling a “worm.” If a computer was attached to a communications port of any kind, including a modem, his creation would silently, aggressively try to contact other computers to link with them and duplicate itself onto the new machine. His bomb attached itself to everything that it touched, and then it waited. The detonation was yet to come.
Alireza switched to the timer window, changed the time to ten seconds and pushed start. At the end of those ten seconds, the timer would simulate what would happen across the world, three months after the bomb’s release. As he watched the screen, the time elapsed and the timer reset to five minutes and began counting down again.
Alireza smiled. The bomb had armed itself for the actual detonation. He quickly created a file in the word processor and saved it. Typing rapidly, he created small documents, spreadsheets, batch files—as much as he could in the five minutes he had. He searched for the files and they were all there where he had saved them. Everything looked normal. Then he waited again.
The five-minute timer was the default time he had preprogramed for the detonation on the portable. 3…2…1. The screen went blank.
The beauty of his bomb was that there was no visible explosion. But, once armed, the bomb would surreptitiously begin deleting files. In the version he was going to release in Dubai, the files would vanish one hour after they were created. He had set the five-minute delay for the simulation on the portables to speed up the test.
Alireza searched for the files. The first document he created was gone. Another search a few seconds later showed more of the files were gone. He ran the search program repeatedly, ever more satisfied. Whenever a file reached the five-minute mark, it vanished, its data completely overwritten and irretrievable.
None of the virus scanning software created so far would detect his bomb, and if the computer techs got too aggressive in their effort… From another disk, Alireza loaded a high-level diagnostic and repair tool and ran the program. Though it occurred invisibly, Alireza knew that his bomb was reacting to the deep scan program by replicating itself over and over and each time it was 100% larger. Within seconds it would fill all available memory.
The computer crashed.
Alireza tried to reboot it, but it would always die at the same point. He tried every method he knew to get it going again but nothing worked. It was sweet failure.
If the computer had been connected to other computers in any manner, it would have sent the detonate command to them. Whole networks would go down. Alireza also designed the bomb to immediately digitally shred any backup. The backup data would appear normal until it was used to restore the computer. Then the only thing it would do was reload his bomb.
Alireza eyed the check-in line—no movement yet. He switched to the second portable on his left. I still have time to test the defusing program.
He inserted a different disk that contained the protection software and let the program load. When it was complete, he put in the disk containing his bomb and ran it. Using the unmasking disk, he searched for evidence of his bomb attached to the programs on the portable computer—nothing. His defusing software had prevented the bomb from loading. It was the same protection program that was being loaded on all of Iran’s major computer networks.
Alireza set the computer aside. He would use it to tie into a phone line in some out-of-the-way office or conference room when he got to his client’s headquarters in Dubai and make the release there. He glanced across the expanse of the airport lobby. The line was moving.
Approximately fifty miles south
The boom of the deck gun reverberated through the hull of the USS Vincennes, a Ticonderoga-class, Aegis, guided-missile cruiser. The barrel recoiled into the mount housing, and the spent casing ejected onto the deck with a metallic clank.
A young seaman, barely out of high school, pushed his way into the group of crew members gathered on the deck. He had been in the head when all the excitement started. The young man was proud to be part of the fleet of US Navy ships cruising the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, protecting cargo vessels going in and out of the Persian Gulf from both sides of the war between Iran and Iraq. He didn’t want to miss a minute. “What’s going on?”
The slap of the sea against the ship was overwhelmed by the sound of the next round from the gun. Smoke from the five-inch round barrel followed the faster-than-sight projectile like an old dog after a rabbit but abandoned the chase and dissipated into the hazy atmosphere. The rabbit, a deadly explosive shell, whistled through the air toward its target.
“Boghammers were hassling an oil tanker again.” Another seaman, only a couple years older, pointed across the sea toward a group of small Iranian gunboats weaving through the water. “They went too far this time. They fired at our helicopter that was monitoring them.”
“They hit it?”
The older crew member shook his head. “Nah, our bird bugged out before they could. But I think the captain’s had enough. We’re hit’n ‘em and so’s the Montgomery.” The crewman dipped his head toward the other U.S. ship that was also in pursuit of the boghammers.
The young crew member licked his lips and strained to see the action. It was the first time any of them had experienced live combat. He tapped the shoulder of another young man who held binoculars pressed hard against his eyes. “Let me take a look.”
The other man glanced at him with a wrinkled forehead then handed over the binos. “Take a quick look and then I want ‘em back.”
Through the lens the first crew member focused on the enemy boats. One of the large shells fired at the boghammars found its mark.
An equally young-sounding voice from the Montgomery came over the radio, “Hey, all stations, I think we just smoked that guy.”
The other man grabbed the binoculars with a scowl. “You made me miss it.”
The first young man resumed his bare-eyed watch, listening to the rapid overlapping voices around him as some called out details of the engagement and others commented.
Below, in the dark of the Combat Information Center (CIC) of the ship, where the row of computer monitors gave the commanders their view of the action, the mood ran more toward tension than excitement. The skipper of the Vincennes, Captain William Rogers, mulled over the situation. He had taken the plunge and ordered the attack on the Iranian boats. They’re getting bolder. Someone has to put a stop to it. I can’t let them take a shot at our bird and get away with it.
The captain focused on how the Iranians might respond. We can handle the boghammars. Not much of a threat there, but that P3 is still out there. Earlier Rogers had his radio man give a warning to one of Iran’s long-range surveillance aircraft. The pilot had agreed to keep his distance, but he was still in the area. He’ll have us on his radar. It wouldn’t be much for him to call in an airstrike. I’m not going to let this end up like the Stark.
Rogers remembered how thirty-seven sailors had died when an Iraqi jet hit the USS Stark with two Exocet missiles a year earlier. The Stark’s captain was retired under the cloud of not acting to defend his ship. I’m not going to let my career end that way.
Alireza sat in the first-class section of the airliner designated as Iran Air 655. Even his anger at the Turk had subsided. He let a smile form and took a minute to let the stress roll off. The bomb works. That’s all that matters.
Alireza imagined what it would be like to watch an average office setting on the day that his digital bomb detonated. Despair and suspicion would run wild through the organization as more and more critical files disappeared. In the banking industry, a customer would deposit money in an account, and one hour later all record of it would be wiped away. People would flood the bank, waving receipts for transactions that could not be verified, demanding their money in cash—far more than the bank would have on hand.
People would be fired, departments reorganized, new security put in place, all on a quest to find who was deleting files. Trust would be gone as the bomb used every weakness and back door to spread itself from computer to computer and organization to organization. Businesses would fail with no knowledge of the program that could hide in the latent memory of every floppy disk and tape drive. Only Iran’s technology was protected.
Alireza envisioned the effect on the wealthy westerners and Europeans that presumed to dictate what his country could do right down to denying import of the two portable computers that he now possessed. In less than a year, the world would bow under his electronic jihad, and Iran would hold the keys to power. The Imam will be pleased. He already likes Failak, and this will secure a place for the boy. We can outlast the old man.
His thoughts turned to Failak. One of the portables will make a nice gift. Alireza would give it to his son on his upcoming sixteenth birthday—after he reformatted it and wiped it clean of any evidence of what he was about to do. He’s earned it. Alireza knew that he pushed the boy too hard, even with his son’s natural aptitude for math and computers.
I need him to be ready, just in case. Not that Alireza took the Imam’s veiled threats seriously. He was too important to them. So many intelligent people had left Iran since the revolution. It made Alireza valuable.
Only he and Failak understood the computer code and knew the location of his notes and backups. He needed to maintain his value to the Imam until he passed it on to his son. Someday, Failak would be that “arrow” that his name suggested, piercing retribution even further into the world of their enemies.
Alireza’s daydreaming was interrupted by the captain’s voice over the speaker. “Our flight has been cleared for departure. Please fastened your seatbelts.”
Soon, the plane was under way. As it lifted off, Alireza thought about his next steps. I’ll soon be in Dubai, and I need to be ready.
Petty Officer Andrew Anderson, the identification supervisor on duty aboard the USS Vincennes, jerked his head to the top of his screen when the dot appeared – a new aircraft contact that the Aegis computer had designated as 4474. The designator then switched to 4130. For a second, he thought he had another plane on the screen, but then he realized that the computer was communicating with another US ship’s computer that had already assigned the same aircraft the 4130 number. The computer had settled on using that number to track this particular aircraft and had deleted the 4474 designator—the Aegis was a very smart machine. It was the most sophisticated mix of computer and radar deployed by any military in the world, yet it still couldn’t ID the plane. Anderson knew that was up to him.
The aircraft was moving at over 300 knots, so it was something powerful, but beyond that it was just another blip on the radar screen. It had apparently lifted off from Bandar Abbas Airfield. That could mean it was commercial, but the Iranian Air Force also flew out of there. He was fairly sure he remembered that one of the many recent intel warnings the Vincennes had received talked about the Iranians moving F-14 fighters to that field. One thing was certain. the new contact was heading right for them.
The forward five-inch gun on the deck of the Vincennes boomed, and the lights in the CIC flickered off and on as they did each time the gun fired. It irritated Anderson. They were in a battleship after all. You would think that they would have designed the lighting system to take a little pounding.
Anderson moved his cursor across the screen and onto the dot which represented the new contact. He pressed the button, triggering the IFF (Identification/Friend or Foe) radio frequency squawk that went out from the ship, requesting an identification signal from the plane. Another round from the deck gun caused another flicker of the lights. Anderson made a growling sound in his throat. Come on. I’ve got to see what I’m doing. He waited for the lights to settle so he could verify what the IFF was telling him.
The digital display showed the plane responding on Mode III, a designated commercial frequency. That should mean it was a civilian airliner not a warbird. The frequency was 6760. As Anderson checked his reference to identify the particular aircraft that used that code, the lights flickered with the next round.
“New bird on the scope,” Anderson called out. “It looks like COMAIR. Working on an ID now.” He fumbled with the notebook in his hands, turning past the place he needed to be. “Come on.” He flipped the pages back the other way. The aircraft identification was crucial. The captain was waiting. Another vibration – another flicker of the lights.
Captain Rogers gritted his teeth in frustration. The last round had jammed the forward gun.
A voice called out. “Captain, topside reports the boghammars are returning fire and heading our way.”
Rogers contemplated the risks. The two things the boghammars had in their favor were acceleration and maneuverability. With the forward gun out of commission, even temporarily, the relatively tiny crafts gained a new advantage. He didn’t want to underestimate them.
He also had this new radar contact. He could hear the radio operator transmitting on various frequencies, requesting the new contact identify itself and state its intention.
Rogers prioritized. He was waiting on an identification on the aircraft. The boats are the more immediate threat. He wanted to be sure he could fully engage them, so he ordered the Vincennes into a high-speed turn. He needed to get it done while the boghammars were still a distance away. “I want rounds in the tray on the rear gun,” he snapped, as the ship was swinging around. “We’ll show ‘em our good side.”
Petty Officer Anderson was frantically trying to decipher a copy of the Iranian commercial flight schedule in the dark of the CIC. At least the lights had stopped going out, but he was wishing he had learned how to read the civilian flight schedule prior to that moment. To make matters worse, there were four different time zones used in the Persian Gulf, and Anderson was trying to decide which zone the schedule was based on, but he wasn’t sure. He imagined the captain staring his direction, still waiting. So far, he had not found any flights scheduled for that time.
Anderson routinely pressed the IFF again to verify the contact. A rapid turn of the ship sent his papers and reference binders sliding onto the floor, and he scrambled to retrieve them. As he came back up with the bundle of items, he noticed something new on the IFF. A second frequency was squawking on Mode II—that was definitely a military aircraft. Was it a new bird or the same contact now identifying as military? There was nothing else close.
Anderson slid his chair back up to the console as he deposited the armload of paper and binders onto the workspace. What should he do? The plane looked a lot closer on the screen than it had. Was it speeding up? Speeding up and diving would indicate an attack profile. He was trying to remember how high the plane was before and determine its present altitude, but he decided that he should be identifying this new IFF code.
Anderson tried to calm his mind and focus on what he was trained to do, but none of this fit the training scenarios. The IFF indicator said 1100. Anderson began digging through the pile on the workspace until he found the binder that contained the IFF codes.
Apprehension began to give way to fear. If this was a fighter attacking, Anderson needed to get that information to the captain before it was too late.
He ran his finger down the columns of numbers until he found 1100. As he moved his finger to the column that indicated the aircraft that used those numbers, he was incredulous as he read, “Iranian F-14.” He quickly ran his finger back, making sure he was on the right column.
Anderson pressed the transmit button and practically yelled into his headset. “All stations. I have a possible Mode II on track 4-1-3-1, 1-1-0-0 which breaks as an F-14.”
Anderson had everyone’s attention. “You got an F-14?” one of the other crew members asked in disbelief.
Anderson was shaking as he searched the radar screen, not really seeing the activity he thought he saw before. The CIC began to crackle with the news.
“Possible Mode II, breaks as an F-14,” was repeated throughout the Command Center.
Captain Rogers looked away from his screens to the sound of the voices that were transmitting the ominous announcement. All eyes were on him.
Shifting back to the monitors, Rogers saw the tactical display in front of him had changed. The contact “blip” had been relabeled as an F-14. The title moved with it as the dot advanced, bringing potential destruction with every refresh of the screen. Rogers was not a man who hesitated.
“Radio command,” he ordered the operator. “Tell them what we have and request permission to engage the aircraft if it crosses within 20 miles.”
In a moment, the radio operator gave the response. “Theater commander concurs. Warn the aircraft first and then fire on it if it continues.”
And continue it did. The dot moved, but the crew was fixated on the “F-14” trailing along with it. With every rotation of the radar, it closed in on the circular display now encompassing the Vincennes indicator on the screen—the ominous twenty-mile radius.
The officer standing behind Rogers called out, “Sir, possible Comair.” He pointed at the IFF squawk that had changed to the civilian frequency.
What was going on? Rogers considered what it meant. It might be a warbird masked as a commercial flight. The missiles that hit the Stark were fired from a retrofitted civilian jet.
The radio operators in the CIC were again calling out warnings to the aircraft, but it was not responding. The lieutenant sitting next to Rogers announced that the aircraft had crossed the twenty-mile boundary.
Rogers inserted his launch key into the slot on the console in front of him but didn’t turn it. To fire his deck guns on the boghammars was one thing, but to launch the deadly SM-2 missiles at a plane that was now identifying as “civilian” was beyond frightening. He could feel his hand shaking on the key, and he hoped no one else could see it in the dim light. Moments passed.
Beside him, the lieutenant was poised. “Captain, do you wish to engage the target at twenty miles?”
Rogers deliberated. Would they really risk an attack like this? He wondered if the Stark’s captain had thought the same thing.
“Captain, do you wish to engage the aircraft?” The Lieutenant’s voice made it sound like a plea.
If the contact was an Iranian fighter, it would soon be able to launch its own missile first. Still, Rogers…hesitated. “Negative.” What if it’s a civilian aircraft? How many people would be on board a jet like that? He needed more than what he had. Why weren’t they answering?
The buzz from the earlier information was still moving through the crew. Inside the command room, someone called out, “Altitude declining!”
Declining? The word was like a slap to Rogers. All indication was that the plane had just taken off from the Bandar Abbas Airfield. There would be no reason for it to decrease altitude unless it was a fighter diving to attack.
Rogers realized he wasn’t breathing and took a deep inhale. It was much louder than he intended. His priority was to his crew. He grabbed onto that thought and his mind used it to push confusion aside.
Rogers turned the key. He had never done anything so simple and yet so difficult. “Take order on track 4131.” Rogers pronounced the fate of the unidentified aircraft that was now within eleven miles. The captain’s words set the CIC in motion.
Rogers thought about the possibility of dying. The dot had moved far inside the circles surrounding the Vincennes indicator. It was close enough to accurately fire a missile.
The activity buzzed around Rogers along with the deep metallic thumps and vibrations of the missiles moving into firing position. The missiles launched – first one, then the other.
“Birds away. Rails clear.”
When Rogers heard the verification called out, he was both relieved and petrified. The object the missiles were streaking toward had better be an F-14.
Hovering his finger over the hold fire button, Rogers considered the reality of the situation. If he pushed the button, the missiles would self-destruct before they reached the target. The button represented his last chance to stop what he had done. He wanted to push it, but he dared not. The missiles also represented the last chance for him to protect his ship from the potential enemy that was closing on them.
The radio operators were yelling warnings to the plane on all the frequencies they had available to them.
“Come on. Respond, you idiots.” Rogers was immersed in contradicting emotions. Everything else faded into the background. All he knew was fear and resolve crashing against each other like the sea against the hull of the ship.
So many apprehensions were running through Alireza’s mind as he stared out the window and watched the water widen below the airliner as it climbed out over the Persian Gulf. He went over what he remembered about the client in Dubai, strategizing about the best place to make the release undetected.
Suddenly, there was a flash of light, the entire plane shuddered, jerking him hard against the seat. His body lurched sideways, following the radical bank of the aircraft. His hands were clamped onto the armrests, gouging deep indents as his face was pulled against the clear plastic window. In milliseconds, he processed changes, more sky, a mass of jagged metal and broken hydraulic hoses sticking into the open air back where the wing had been. Thin streams of oil stretched out toward the tail of the plane. He had no time to realize the significance of the sight.
The second missile slammed into the tail of flight 655 ripping it apart with a shock wave so strong it blew the clothes from Alireza’s body, tore the seat belt from his waist, and crushed the two computers under his seat. Naked and lifeless, Alireza fell through the hazy Persian Gulf sky, unaware of the triumphant cheer that went up from the young men on the deck of the Vincennes in celebration of a direct hit.
It did not take long for the mood to change on the Vincennes as they began to pick up the traffic on the distress frequency indicating that a civilian jetliner had crashed in the Strait.
Ironically, but certainly to be expected, the Vincennes was the first on the scene of the disaster. The enthusiasm on deck was gone. The young seamen stared in shocked disbelief as the Vincennes slowly moved through the macabre scene of floating bodies and debris. They watched like wide-eyed children, aged in moments. The horror would be the subject of many nightmares to come, both asleep and awake.
The inquiry into what happened would go before the military court, Congress, the United Nations and the media. In the end, it would be ruled a horrible, perhaps preventable, accident by most of the United States. The strange events in the CIC that day would be explained as human error brought on by a combination of lack of training and misinterpretation of data in the stress of the event. “Scenario Fulfillment” the psychologists called it—fear so strong that it caused crewmembers to see what they feared they would see even in the face of conflicting data. The event would eventually fade in the memory of most. But some would not forget.
JULY 7, 1988
Iranians poured through the streets of Tehran like blood in an artery, separate corpuscles, unique but mingled and adhering into a flowing unit where all personality was lost. Failak’s right hand was raised above his head as he partially supported his father’s coffin. There were so many others assisting in carrying his father’s remains that he hardly felt the weight. People moved in from all around just to touch the box, people he did not even know, as if the physical contact would somehow establish a connection with the unknown man inside, entitling them to a share in the outrage.
The coffin he carried was one of many, draped in honor and lifted up on the flow of people. Failak struggled to keep pace, fearing that the simple wooden box would be carried away from him on the throngs of uplifted arms. Only the slow movement of the masses allowed him to stay with it. The noise from the shouts, the wails, the hate-filled chants, was so extreme that it became a feeling as much as a sound. Failak knew he could not escape it even if he wanted. The people were packed so closely around him that he, along with the others, had no choice but to gradually flow down the street wherever the current took them. His body was pressed on all sides by other bodies, but the crowd was connected even more by the emotion than the proximity.
Yet Failak felt detached. The ones around him did not know what he knew. Even in his grief, the knowledge lifted him up above the crowd, much like his father’s coffin. The Imam had honored him, but it must be in private. No one else must know. He was not part of this group, but Failak had no desire to escape the scene. He wanted to hear the crowds pay tribute to the martyrs. He wanted to think of his father that way—to feel something besides the ache inside. He needed somewhere else to channel his feelings. The horror of it was too much to contain. It was easier to blame and to hate. So that is what he did.