“All that I’m saying
The game’s not worth playing
Over and over again.”
Depeche Mode

PROLOGUE
The Sun and the Rainfall
April 22, 2010
1:10 AM

1
TV reception was bad in this part of Mexico. Qatadah Abolhassan was slapping the side of the old 15-inch television, trying to get something besides static to appear on the screen. The static had a soothing sound, but Qatadah wanted news, cartoons, anything to appear on the damned screen. He understood that Mexico no longer had a functioning government, but one would think that some American broadcasts would still get through.

He thought he got a momentary glimpse of some infidel American sitcom. Qatadah hated those. Filled with sex and drugs and profanity, all things that he considered sinful. He wondered for a second why he was even bothering to get this TV to work.

Qatadah was from Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He had fought with the Taliban forces ever since the Americans invaded. He was sixteen then. Now twenty-five, he still hated the Americans, and he was now honored to have a chance to attack and destroy America’s sinful ways.

“Mustafa!” Qatadah yelled. Mustafa was the head of this al-Qaeda cell. A year ago, al-Qaeda would never have guessed that they would have a presence in Mexico. Even six months ago it would have been hard to imagine, despite the chaos in the capital of Mexico City.

Qatadah had been in his safehouse apartment in the Swat Valley of Pakistan when he got the news. He was admiring the view from the fourth floor room. The Swat Valley was beautiful in the autumn. He saw a report on al-Jazeera that a bomb had gone off in Centro Histórico in Mexico City. The bomb was said to have been massive, though no one had been able to contact anyone in the capital. It was uncertain what had happened.

As the night wore on, the news was grim. Survivors reported flash burns and shadows burned onto objects. An hour after the blast, the first officials with the CIA in America said that they believed the explosion was nuclear. It seemed unusual that someone would set off a nuclear bomb in Mexico City, of all places, but that seemed to be what happened. Mexico itself had no nuclear capabilities, so the weapon had to have been smuggled in.

The drug cartels were the main suspects. Mexico had been having drug wars over the past few years, and they had gotten extremely violent through September and early October of 2009. Hundreds were reported dead in a shootout in Chihuahua on the last day of September. The next day, Ciudad Juarez fell into chaos, and riot police in neighboring El Paso were then attacked. Dozens of El Paso residents were killed.

American President Miles Atkinson was under pressure during the first week of October. The economy, which had shown signs of improvement in August and September, had collapsed in October. But it was nothing compared to October 7th, when in one instant a good part of Mexico City was obliterated.

It got worse for America and Mexico as the days passed after the blast. Virtually all of the Mexican federal government was in the blast zone. The number of deaths was said to be at least a hundred thousand in the initial blast and another half a million from cancer and other effects of the bomb over the next year. The yield of the bomb was estimated at between six and eight kilotons. The model of the bomb was never determined.

A week after the blast, every state in Mexico had fallen. The drug cartels knew their time had come. They attacked the state governments and killed anyone working for them. By el Día de los Muertos, the nation of Mexico had collapsed entirely. There was no central government, just fighting drug lords. Mexico had become a Central American version of Somalia. Many refugees tried to cross the border into the United States. Miles Atkinson, knowing the influx of immigrants would enrage his conservative supporters, authorized construction of a massive wall on the Mexican border.

A wall on the border had been proposed before, but now the entire American populace wanted it. Construction began in mid-November. The drug cartels however, knew a wall along the border would make drug smuggling into the United States difficult. Before the Mexico City blast, the drug cartels had had to operate in secrecy. Now they could carry out their business practices openly and without interference from anyone. They grew bolder and started attacking construction workers and INS officials supervising the building of the wall.

On Thanksgiving Day, a drug smuggler attacked the Texas Governor’s Mansion in Austin with a Stinger missile launcher. The mansion was destroyed and the governor of Texas was killed along with eight others. On the first of December, twenty-eight construction workers in Arizona were attacked and killed by cartel gunmen armed with AK-47s. Political will for the wall dissolved as quickly as it formed once the American people saw the toll building the wall would take.

The wall was finally abandoned for good on December 15th, after the loss of over a thousand workers in the past month. The border between the United States and Mexico became completely porous. People came and went from one country to the other with no trouble at all. Most of the traffic was from Mexico to America. Few Americans wanted to be anywhere near the chaotic no man’s land Mexico had become.

That was where Qatadah and his al-Qaeda network came in. The heads of al-Qaeda saw an opportunity in the hell of what was once Mexico. Operatives could be transported to Mexico and then they could enter the United States and wreck havoc. So far no Islamic terrorists had attacked America since 9/11, but Qatadah hoped he could be part of the force to change that.

2
Mustafa came into the room. He looked at the cables hooking the TV up.

“Hmm. It isn’t working, you say.” Mustafa said. Mustafa was the head of this cell. They were located in the former state of Chihuahua. They were about two hundred kilometers from the American border. The camp had a specific purpose. They were doing experiments in genetic engineering. Biological terrorism had been a field of study for Islamist terrorists for years, and many different biological agents had been suggested for engineering into new, extremely lethal strains. Anthrax, ebola, influenza, the list went on. There was the swine flu epidemic last year, but that was no longer an issue as the vaccine had proven very successful.

Back in January, shortly after Qatadah and his cell arrived to set up shop in Mexico, they found several people abandoned at a hospital in the capital city of Chihuahua. They were a group of people isolated from the main population. Qatadah found a mess of papers indicating that all of the eleven people were HIV-positive. Qatadah had an idea. He could kidnap the patients and do experiments on HIV. Mustafa had argued against taking them to their camp, saying that HIV had little potential as a biological weapon. He said that HIV was spread through sex and needles, and such a virus would be ineffective at spreading terror. He wanted to use something that was more transmissible, such as influenza or ebola. But Qatadah insisted on taking the AIDS patients with them. Mustafa decided to humor him and let him take them with the cell.

They arrived at the site a week later. Qatadah took samples from the AIDS patients and the cell’s geneticists began work on the virus. The geneticists were just young Arabs with biology degrees, but after a few months one told Qatadah that they had created a strain they could use for an attack.

The strain was derived from HIV, and did the same things as HIV. It affected and eventually destroyed the immune system of anyone it infected. The kicker was, it destroyed the immune system much faster than normal HIV. HIV took years to progress to AIDS, whereas this new strain took just days.

They had captured a Mexican drug smuggler and infected him with the virus. Sure enough, he progressed to full-blown AIDS in just a few days. He was kept in isolation, though two of the al-Qaeda operatives came down with the virus a few days later. The new virus wasn’t just much quicker to kill, it was much more transmissible. Mustafa realized it was airborne, and when he did, he hugged Qatadah.

“My friend, you are a genius!” Mustafa had shouted. Qatadah was proud of himself. He’d invented a brand new strain of HIV. It was just as lethal as previous strains of HIV, but it was much faster and much easier to spread. He hoped that Allah would give him the grace and speed to get this disease into the United States and hopefully bring down the Great Satan.

He had no idea just what kind of grace and speed God would give him.

3
The coaxial cable was determined to be why the TV wasn’t working. It was receiving a signal from the local stations in El Paso. Qatadah sighed. While the TV signals were weak here, they at least had wireless Internet. That was very reliable. Qatadah IMed with other al-Qaeda operatives a lot. Al-Qaeda’s heads were living in Islamabad, and he had an Instant Messenger account. Qatadah had other friends, including a teenage girl in Littleton, Colorado. Littleton was a straight shot north on the highway. Just cross the border in New Mexico and go north on I-25. Of course, the girl didn’t know that Qatadah worked for al-Qaeda; she didn’t even know that he was currently in Mexico. She thought he lived in Seattle.

“Well, unless the coaxial cable gets replaced, this TV won’t be working at all.” Mustafa said. Qatadah sighed. Just as he did so, gunshots rang out in the distance.

“What was that?” Qatadah asked.

“Probably just more drug lords fighting. You know how they are. Always fighting and killing for money. They seek wealth, when they should seek salvation with God.” Mustafa said.

“They sounded rather close, though.” Qatadah said. He knew that sooner or later they would have to smuggle the vials of the new virus into America. It was planned for some time in July. They wanted it to coincide with the nation’s Independence Day. That is, if the drug cartels didn’t attack their camp first. The drug lords knew of al-Qaeda’s presence in Chihuahua, and they were not on good terms with the terrorists. The cell had tried to buy off the drug cartels, providing them with arms and money to prevent raids on their camp. However, al-Qaeda’s heads in Pakistan were slow in getting weapons shipped to Mexico. The cell knew that if the cartels came tonight demanding arms or money, there would be none to give. Mustafa and Qatadah both knew that would mean the camp would be attacked and likely destroyed. There were just twenty operatives total in this camp, versus hundreds of fighters with the cartels here. The terrorists knew they stood no chance. The best they could hope for was to get a few of the men into America with the virus.

“Don’t worry about it. Allah will protect us.” Mustafa said.

“I hope you are right. Those cartels are ruthless, however. They show no mercy. Torture, murder, they will do anything for their drugs and their money.” Mustafa rolled his eyes, thinking that it was like Qatadah didn’t realize that al-Qaeda did the same things, only for different reasons.

A mortar fired and detonated inside the camp. Both men noticed. Two operatives guarding the camp ran into the living quarters that Qatadah was in.

“The drug lords are attacking!” One guard yelled. “Get your vials and get moving.” Mustafa picked up an AK-47 and gave Qatadah an Uzi. The Uzi was an Israeli weapon, Qatadah thought. It was an unusual choice for an Arab terrorist, but even he was willing to admit that the Israelis made excellent guns.

Qatadah had thirty-two rounds in the gun and another forty in a spare magazine. The two ran out of the living quarters and toward the only car the cell had, a Volkswagen Jetta. The two made it to the car without incident, but when Qatadah opened the door, a bullet struck the passenger-side mirror. Mustafa fired and hit one of the Mexican fighters.

“Qatadah, the vials are on their way. It’s obvious this camp will not survive long. When the vials get here, take them into the United States. We will see the Great Satan fall.” Qatadah was scared. He nodded, and wished himself the best of luck. Mustafa ran toward the labs. The labs were just greenhouses. One of the three labs was blown up. Shattered glass flew all over the camp. Two fighters attacked Qatadah. The terrorist returned fire and killed both of them.

Mustafa returned with a dozen vials a few minutes later.

“They’re wiping us out faster than I thought.” Mustafa gave the vials to Qatadah and he put them in the passenger seat. Two AK-47 rounds struck the ground next to Mustafa.

“Are you staying here, Mustafa?” Qatadah asked.

“I must. I will fight and die for God.”

“You can come with me.”

“No. I will not. I am a jihadist. I will die here. It is my time.”

“No, you can’t.” Qatadah had known Mustafa for most of his adult life. Now he was going to leave him. He felt like he was being thrown out into the wide world. His father had murdered his mother when he was only eight, and Mustafa had raised him after his father was stoned to death for it.

“I must. Now go!” Qatadah got in the car and started the ignition. He didn’t have a driver’s license, but he knew how to drive. He shifted into Drive and raced away from the camp.

As he drove away, he saw that some of the cartel’s men had found a flamethrower. He knew the camp was doomed. But he had the vials of the new virus. America would fall, one way or another. He was certain of that.

4
Just before reaching the border, near the abandoned city of El Paso, he stopped and decided to pray. He pulled over off the highway, right by the customs booths. They were all empty now. A few tumbleweeds blew by, giving the scene a vaguely old-time Western look. Qatadah had sometimes watched spaghetti Westerns on TV as a kid. His father had been wealthy, though wealthy was a relative term in Jalalabad. He had the TV, and the shows often comforted him during his father’s most violent moments. It never occurred to him until now that the shows came from the United States, a place he’d come to regard as the ultimate in materialistic evil.

He laid the prayer rug on the concrete. A strong wind was blowing. He placed a rock on each corner of the rug and faced east toward Mecca. He prayed for Allah to give him guidance and tell him when and where to release the virus.

He suddenly heard a voice. He knew it would tell him something. He wondered what it meant. It was brief, only saying a single word. He immediately suspected that it was meant to tell him where he was to release the virus.

The word was “Littleton”.

He finished his prayers and drove the Volkswagen past the customs booths. He entered the United States and drove through El Paso.

It was a sight to behold. This massive Texas city, now completely empty. Well, not entirely. There was a bar with a pair of bandits armed with M16s. One approached him.

“You don’t look like a drug smuggler.” One said in Spanish.

“You don’t look like a man of God.” Qatadah retorted. The bandit laughed.

“Where are you going?”

“Colorado. Can you tell me how to get there?” The bandit glared at him.

After sighing, he spoke again. “Take I-10 northbound. Get on I-25 after that. It’s a straight shot into Colorado.”

“Thank you.”

“You got money for me? Directions cost money, amigo.”

“Take this Uzi.” Qatadah handed him the submachine gun. The bandit smiled.

“This will do. Best be on your way. It’s going to be a scorcher today, my Arab friend.” Qatadah drove off. He looked for the highway entrance ramp. He finally came across it while driving north on Mesa Street. He got onto the highway, not seeing a single car around. He drove up the road at almost a hundred miles an hour.

He knew he was in America when he saw the Sun Bowl Stadium. It was a large football stadium, though no touchdowns would ever be scored there again. Qatadah always watched football, what Americans knew as soccer. He had American football explained to him once, but it made no sense. He still never understood how a down was supposed to work.

He turned the air conditioning on as he passed the Sunland Park Mall.

5
The car, being in poor condition, broke down in Las Cruces, New Mexico, just as he was about to turn from I-10 to I-25. Americans still lived in Las Cruces, though the governor of New Mexico had stated in press conferences and on the state’s official website that people lived there “at their own risk”. Everything within fifty miles of the Mexican border was now no man’s land. Many rich Americans in the Sun Belt found it bizarre to think that the days of bandits and gunslingers in the West had returned. The only difference was that Colt six-shooters had been replaced by AK-47s and Spanish gold had been replaced by Colombian cocaine and heroin.

Luckily, Qatadah had a cell phone. He walked to a nearby Exxon station. The gas station had a mechanic’s shop. The mechanic’s tow truck was old and decrepit, but Qatadah managed to get him to the car and get it back to the shop. Qatadah spoke flawless English as well as Spanish.

“Well son, we don’t get many Arabs around here.” The mechanic said. “Then again, you’re probably used to deserts and violence.” The statement would have been offensive, but Qatadah found the mechanic’s demeanor too friendly for him to get annoyed.

“Where does the no man’s land end?” Qatadah asked.

“Truth or Consequences is the nearest safe zone.” A safe zone was a town where the drug cartels weren’t present. Americans could actually live in such places without fear of getting killed. It was surreal to the Americans that they now had to fear violence as if it were 1810 instead of 2010.

“Can you get my car fixed?” Qatadah asked. He had enough money to get himself to Denver. Once he made it past Truth or Consequences, he figured he was home free. It would be the 21st century again.

“Yep, sure can. Only three hundred dollars.” That was another thing. Prices were cheap in the no man’s land. Gas was rarely more than fifty cents a gallon, compared to close to four dollars a gallon in places further north.

“You have a deal, friend. May God protect you.” The mechanic smiled and got to work on the car.

“It’ll be evening when it’s fixed. Engine’s busted up pretty bad.” Qatadah turned around. He hadn’t counted on being stuck here until evening.

“So what do I do?” He asked.

“What anyone with any sense would do. Go to the bar and get wasted. The bar’s that way.” He pointed with his wrench and grinned ear to ear. Qatadah was a Muslim, and he considered premarital sex and drinking to be sins against Allah. Still, he figured he could at least get some soda.

He walked in the direction of the bar. The heat from the sun didn’t take long to bear down on him. He reached the bar just twenty minutes later, though it felt like much longer.

He ordered a Pepsi from the bartender. It was high noon, but business was already filling up with drug fighters ordering cocaine and booze. Qatadah sat at the bar counter and sipped down his Pepsi. A woman approached him.

“Hey stranger.” She said. “You look lost.” Qatadah turned toward her.

“Mmhmm. An Arab. That’s a new one.” The woman was dressed in a rather suggestive leather outfit. She was clearly a prostitute.

“Yes, I am. And a Muslim. My car broke down here.”

“Well, ol’ Bill will fix it up for you. In the meantime, we can get to know each other. I’ve never been with an Arab before.” Qatadah was amazed. He’d just met this woman. He didn’t approve of such promiscuity, and he was already appalled at what he considered to be typical of America. Still, a part of him below the belt felt tempted.

He thought about this situation. The woman clearly wanted him. Qatadah was a virgin. It would be embarrassing to be one at twenty-five in America, but Pakistan was a more moralistic society.

He finally decided to try it. Just this once.

6
Qatadah was driving alongside the sunset. He’d just left Las Cruces. The two hours he spent with the prostitute, whose name he still did not know, were exhilarating. He felt much happier after, though he did worry that Allah had seen him give up his virginity.

About an hour later, he reached the safe zone of Truth or Consequences. There were soldiers at guard posts. Qatadah drove by them with no problem. Truth or Consequences itself looked like a typical town. There were suburbs and a downtown district. He drove past the town and headed north toward Albuquerque.

He kept driving all through the night. The sun was rising again when he reached Littleton. He arrived and decided that before he did anything else, he would sleep. He found a Motel 6 and checked into it. He paid using cash.

The hotel’s bedroom wasn’t luxurious, but it was much nicer than the living quarters in Mexico. He lay down on the bed and was asleep inside a few minutes.

7
He woke up. He still had the vials in the car. It was a Friday night. The local nightlife would be busy tonight. Qatadah wondered if maybe that teenage girl he was friends with was around. It didn’t matter. He had reached his goal. Littleton, Colorado. Now all he had to was spread the virus. He stood up and got inside the car. He headed for any business that looked crowded. Littleton looked like Anywhere, USA. It was a small, quiet town. The air was a bit chilly, but not freezing cold. Qatadah found a Buffalo Wild Wings whose parking lot was completely full except for one handicapped space. Qatadah knew he was going to die soon. He figured it made no difference if he got a parking ticket now.

He took the vials and went into the sports bar.

Inside people were eating buffalo wings, drinking beer, and talking or watching TV. MSNBC had Countdown with Keith Olbermann on.

Qatadah walked to a waitress and asked for a buzzer. She gave him one. He sat down and waited. The bar was full and there was a lengthy line in the reception area. Qatadah silently broke one of the vials and smeared it on the seat.

His buzzer went off after a long wait. The waitress led him to a table. He looked at the menu she gave him. This restaurant had many flavors of wings. Qatadah had never had buffalo wings. He knew of them; as a child he wondered why they were called buffalo wings, since buffalo didn’t have wings. He later learned that they were named after Buffalo, New York.

Keith Olbermann was about to do the “Worst Person in the World” segment. Qatadah watched the TV.

“That’s ahead, but first our second story, today’s worst person in the world.” Olbermann said. The theme song for the segment, Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” played. “The bronze goes to Idaho senator Randall Orbins. Orbins has been under fire recently for his comments about President Miles Atkinson.” The TV went to a picture of the senator along with a transcript of what he said.

“Personally, I think Miles Atkinson is a socialist.” Olbermann read in a mocking, nasal voice. “He is trying to legalize same-sex marriage, give women more rights to kill their unborn, and furthermore, he is an atheist.” Atkinson wasn’t a part of any church and as such, he was often accused of being an atheist.

Qatadah broke another vial.

“Yes, Senator, lord knows there aren’t any atheists fit for serving as president of the United States and it’s a crime for atheists to be president, and that’s assuming Atkinson is an atheist, which he isn’t.” Olbermann said. “The silver goes to Bill-O the Clown” Olbermann had a long-standing feud with Bill O’Reilly. Qatadah knew that much. The teenage girl he knew had parents who watched Countdown every evening. She had told him all about the show and the feud. Qatadah considered both O’Reilly and Olbermann to be infidel sinners and cogs in the Great Satan’s machine.

“And finally the gold goes to Jamaican Prime Minister Wayne Silver. Earlier today, Silver made comments during an interview with Jamaican television stating that-“ Another transcript appeared as Qatadah broke a third vial. “homosexuals are a plague. They are a disease, a curse upon society. They spread their disgusting filth and molest boys and girls and I wish Jamaica would require the death penalty for them.”

Keith Olbermann returned after the picture of Silver with “Worst” written on it.

“Do I even have to say anything for this? That speaks for itself. Jamaican Prime Minister Wayne Silver, today’s worst person in the world!” The TVs then went to a commercial break.

After an hour, all of the vials had been broken at various points in the bar. The virus worked quickly. It had an incubation period of just fifty minutes. He saw a family take their two daughters out of the restaurant. The two girls, both just kids, were shivering. They had the chills. That was the first symptom of the virus.

Qatadah was starting to have chills himself. He also felt faint. He left the bar without eating anything and drinking nothing but another Pepsi. He got in the car and turned the heat on full blast.

He thought about what to do now. He’d spread the virus. He’d done his duty to God. Now all he had to do was wait. He knew that he should go into hiding for now. He started the car and headed west.

8
He was on a twisty road in the Rockies. He had no idea where he was and the pouring rain wasn’t helping matters any. It was cold out here in the mountains. Qatadah wasn’t sure what to do. He was shivering and had nearly fainted twice. He hoped for the best in the afterlife. He died serving Allah, but that didn’t make dying any more pleasant.

He kept driving, going sixty miles an hour in places. He swerved in and out of lanes. He was getting sicker by the minutes.

The car veered into the oncoming lane again. This time, Qatadah really did faint. His car smashed into a guardrail. He was unconscious for several minutes. He woke up only to hear an engine coming. He looked to his right and saw a semi. It was heading straight for him and didn’t appear to be slowing down.

He closed his eyes. I die for Allah, he thought.