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turned his resulting anger on all enemies of Islam and blamed them, however indirectly, for her death. Such anger was useful to a warrior.
    She was buried up to her neck in the ground and killed by the hurled rocks that turned her beautiful face into a bloody abomination because she had been gang-raped by godless thugs. Nadif didn’t precisely see the justice in her punishment, nor understand how it was that she deserved to die for having been raped, but who was he to argue with an imam whose devotion to the laws of sharia was unimpeachable?
    Had Aziza not died, Nadif would not have joined Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen, Movement of Warrior Youth. Her death had left him ripe for recruitment.
    Had Aziza not been stoned to death by the villagers, then Nadif would not be carrying the seeds of Great Satan’s destruction in his backpack across the border. He would not have learned to speak flawless Spanish in order to pass himself off as an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua.
    Now when he saw Aziza in his mind’s eye, he saw her with one eyeball hanging over her cheek by a stem from a ruined socket, hanging like a broken flower. Nadif’s rock hadn’t knocked her eye out of her head, that much he was sure of. The stone he threw at his beloved’s head had struck the delicate bridge of her nose. He hadn’t wanted to participate in the stoning but it would have been wrong to go against the dictates of sharia law as well as against the will of the other villagers. Nadif had a responsibility as one of them. So he had mustered enough anger at Aziza, anger for getting herself raped by thugs, to propel the stone with enough brutal force to break her nose.
    The image of her once lovely eye hanging like a broken flower over her bloodied cheek would not leave him. And try as he might, he could not absolve himself of the guilt he felt for having had a hand in killing her. He told himself he had no reason to feel guilty but he felt it nonetheless.
    He looked up at the unholy eye glowing in the night sky and he shuddered. That unnatural eye terrified him. Others among his party of border crossers speculated that it was the eye of their Christian god come to either judge them or watch over them but Nadif feared that it was the very eye of Great Satan looking down on his cursed continent.
    Looking down on him.
    Seeing into his heart and reading his murderous intentions.
    Allah protect me
, he silently prayed.
Give me the courage and strength to unleash this plague upon the infidels of this godless country
.
    All he had to do was follow the plan mapped out for him by his al-Shabaab handlers. The Mexican “coyote” had been well-paid to see that Nadif got across with no untoward difficulty. He called himself El Lobo and was in effect Nadif’s guide and bodyguard. He was a filthy man of slovenly habits and Nadif disliked and distrusted him. But he would follow the plan. As instructed. As he had trained to do. Once across the border, Nadif would rendezvous with a Shabaab brother already in Arizona and would be driven to Los Angeles, California, where he would deliver the canisters of the weaponized plague virus to those brothers who would set it loose upon Great Satan’s left coast. They would provide further instructions for him. Nadif was prepared to give his life if necessary. He was ready to earn his place in paradise.
    El Lobo spoke harshly to the others in their party, barking hoarsely at them to step lively, to stop dragging, to stop talking, but he said nothing to Nadif. Nadif suspected this was because the man had been very well paid to deliver him to his Shabaab brothers.
    But perhaps it was something more as well. Perhaps the coyote was afraid of Nadif. Afraid of what he carried. As well he should be. Yes. It was good to command such respect. Nadif was sure that El Lobo could not know what was in Nadif’s backpack but he sensed that something of terrible power was secreted within it.
    One of the women stumbled and fell to her knees.