The Zeppelin Jihad Read online

“Don’t be stupid. That is merely anti-Western. Despite what common sense and fourteen hundred years of inter-civilizational conflict might suggest, such a tome would not be dispositive of conspiracy. In this investigation, at any rate.”

  My voice was loud enough to echo down the hall. “Race might not be dispositive either.”

  “True,” he conceded, “but irrelevant. We have an Arab terrorist hiding in this country. If he were to find assistance here, it would most likely be amongst those with whom he shares language, culture, and religion, not to mention physical appearance. If you were looking for a Chinese spy, absent any other information would you begin in a given city’s Irish pubs, or its Chinatown?”

  I felt like I had landed on another planet. Such obvious profiling would have meant a lawsuit back home, and dismissal from any police force.

  He paused, awaiting my reply. I didn’t give it to him.

  “Irish pubs, obviously,” he said before opening one of the doors.

  Inside was a thin man in a black suit. He looked younger than Speer, and his skin was such a phosphorescent white, it was as if he never left this basement room.

  “Special Agent Mackenzie Hoff, this is Inspector Deacon Harker,” Speer announced. “He handles our interrogations.”

  “I guess that explains the black suit,” I said.

  “Actually, I borrowed this from our guillotine fellow,” Harker said. “My other suits are being laundered.”

  I almost thought he was serious until Speer erupted laughing. Harker’s thin face broke into a smile, and he extended his hand. I put mine out as well, but to my surprise he bowed to kiss it like a French courtier. “I hope you don’t find this offensive,” he said, “but such is the nature of our rather traditional etiquette.”

  Stateside, guys might open doors on the first few dates, but a year in, it was a miracle if they didn’t burp in front of you. I got the impression that a man like Harker never would.

  I suppose I should have been bothered that I wasn’t being treated like one of the boys, but it was better than being treated like a lesser life form by Speer. “Thank you,” I said, looking sideways at Speer. “You’re actually the first person to extend such courtesy on this trip.”

  “Don’t consider Hiram representative,” Harker said. “Many Pointers enjoy chatting with the few Americans they meet.”

  “Only because they haven’t spent as much time amongst them as I have,” Speer cut in. “By the bye, isn’t there a terrorist we’re supposed to be hunting? Why yes, I recall that there is. Did you get anything out of those three Arabs, Deke?”

  There were two desks in the subcellar office, both with papers neatly stacked on them. Harker pointed to the documents on one table. “This is what we found when we tossed their apartments. Two of them had receipts for several questionable Middle East charities. We also found printed-out Internet journal articles they must have brought from home in the ‘Kill Jews, Kill Christians, they’re the root of all your life’s failings’ genre.”

  Internet journal articles. I guess he meant blog posts. These would have had to be printed out by Talib before he came here since computers were illegal in Steam Pointe.

  “In other words,” Harker continued, “they were more like armchair-Mujahidin than the actual thing. Their responses to questioning were consistent with that interpretation. One of them even cried during our discussion. I am having them held pending deportation.”

  “And the third?” Speer asked.

  “The third is a man named Omar Khaliq.” Harker picked up a sheaf of papers from the other table and handed them to Speer. “He is more the genuine article.”

  Speer looked them over with a mild look of disgust before handing them to me.

  These sheets were a heavier bond, more like parchment than anything you would stick in a laser printer. I could feel the slight imprint where the old-fashioned mechanical press had stamped the words, and the seal of the Steam Pointe government.

  The first couple pages were a list of all incoming cargo vessels. One listing was circled in pencil, a ship out of New York carrying, among other things, helium. It had arrived in Steam Pointe three days earlier.

  “The ship we think Talib escaped on,” I said. “This man knew.”

  “Khaliq probably picked him up at the docks himself,” Speer said.

  “What are these other documents?”

  “Those,” Speer said with a grimace, “outline the government’s production of hydrogen, our security protocols for same, and the airship routes that employ hydrogen zeppelins.”

  Hadn’t these people heard of the Hindenburg? “You use hydrogen blimps?”

  “Rigid airships,” Harker corrected.

  “Helium has to be imported from the United States, and so is relatively expensive,” Speer explained. “Hydrogen we can cheaply produce here through industrial electrolysis. We use the helium for military and passenger airships, and any others whose routes take them over populated areas. Hydrogen primarily gets used for industrial heavy-lifters traveling just off the coast.”

  “Talib wouldn’t need any of his plastic explosive or electronic detonators. All the explosives he needs are right here,” I said.

  “If they’re so interested in finding accessible explosives, it follows that Talib isn’t here to hide. He’s planning another attack,” Speer said.

  “But what would be the target?” Harker asked. “We’re in the middle of the Indian Ocean, far from any vital international sea lanes. The only American interest close-at-hand that I can think of is their consulate.”

  Speer shook his head. “I don’t think the target is American. I think it’s us.”

  “How do you figure? It’s not like you guys committed troops to Afghanistan or Iraq,” I said.

  Speer shrugged. “We’re not Muslim. Need they another justification?”

  “Well then,” Harker said before I could get into an argument with Speer, “I suppose that means I should continue my conversation with Mr. Khaliq. I was just taking a breather when you all came by.”

  Harker led us into a darkened room. I could sense more than see its cathedral-like scale. From high above, a single point of light—too bright for a gaslight, this was electrical—stared down onto the floor like the angry eye of God. Inside the light’s cone was a man strapped to a chair. It made me think about old pictures I’d seen of Thomas Edison’s electric chair.

  We crossed the room’s vastness towards the man in the chair, our steps echoing like gunshots.

  The prisoner was an Arab, mid-to-late 20’s. He was naked. His head hung down on his chest, and though the room was cool, sweat beaded along his receding hairline. I smelled the vomit before I saw it, stuck in his hair and smeared on his chest and groin.

  No injuries, though. At least, not on the outside.

  Like a man anxious to return to his muse, Harker’s gait had sped up as we’d entered the room. He was far ahead of us when I hissed to Speer, “This is inhumane. What have you done to him?”

  “You’ll see,” Speer said.

  “No. Make him stop.”

  “And give up our only lead?”

  “How are you any better than he is?” I hated how Pollyanna I sounded, but it was true. This job had taught me that the world was colored in grayscale, and sometimes rules had to be bent. But there was a difference between bending rules and not having any.

  “I am better than he,” Speer said, “because I do not blow up theaters showing the latest Disney movies to maximize child casualties. Nor do I enable, celebrate, or excuse those that do. I stop such people.”

  “Nice rationalization. You’re white, racist xenophobes with an enthusiasm for torture. Nazis, basically.”

  He actually laughed at me. “One man’s racism and xenophobia are another man’s common sense.”

  “Sounds like a police state,” I said.

  “Does it? Applying common sense to counterterrorism, for instance, one would naturally
focus first on those coming from Islamic countries, and next on legal residents of Arab extraction, while allowing the rest of the citizenry to go about their daily lives unmolested. Ignoring common sense, one might very well wind up with a regime where all citizens are subject to checkpoint stops, surveillance, and offensive searches as they simply try to travel around what used to be their country.”

  That stung. My badge had spared me from being groped by the TSA on the flight out of JFK, but I’d still had to wait in line half an hour for the privilege of getting irradiated by a body scanner.

  Speer was on a roll now. “Civil society is organized to protect citizens, not vouchsafe the sensitivities of foreigners and their imbecilic champions among the native population. When did you people forget that?”

  I was tired of this. I needed Talib found. So this would be one of those moral compromises we make for the greater good. At least any blood was on the Steamies’ hands, not mine.

  We caught up with Harker. Just outside the light now, I could see a series of levers jutting out of the floor. Weirdly, an umbrella stand was also nearby.

  “Hello again, Omar,” Harker chimed in the same pleasant tone with which he’d greeted me. “Do we feel more cooperative now that you’ve had some time to think? Or would you like to go for another spin on the Merry-Go-Round?”

  There was fear in Khaliq’s eyes, but the Arabic that came from his throat was guttural and defiant. Harker responded himself in brief, polite-sounding Arabic before throwing one of the levers.

  The floor shook slightly, as if a dragon was awakening beneath us. Then there was a hiss of steam, and the groan of massive iron gears limbering.

  “What did you say to him?” Speer asked, as the steam’s whine grew louder.

  Harker smiled. “Bon voyage.”

  Dozens, maybe hundreds of gaslights suddenly came to life. The cavernous torture chamber glowed orange, and I could see now what the darkness had been hiding.

  Weaving all around and above us was a hopeless tangle of what looked like rollercoaster tracks. Silhouetted black against the orange light, it might have been an amusement park designed in hell.

  My eyes couldn’t follow the layout, but Khaliq’s scream drew my gaze back to him. I noticed now that there were wheels on his chair’s legs, threaded into tracks beneath him. Carnival music—popping and skipping as if played on a phonogram—blared on, and the chair shot away from us down the length of the room.

  It was going almost too fast to follow as the chair took Khaliq up and up, never slowing before sweeping down even faster through the tracks’ absurdist architecture.

  With the chair’s every turn, I could feel the rush of wind in my hair. It had to be going fifty or sixty miles per hour.

  “You may want to get an umbrella,” Harker yelled over the music and clatter. “I’d think his stomach would be empty by now, but one never knows!”

  I leaned into Speer so he could hear me. “You torture people with rollercoaster rides?”

  “Just watch,” he said.

  Harker began throwing levers like a mad scientist. As he did, not only would Khaliq’s chair react, so would the room itself. The chair stopped suddenly, and jerked onto another track close to the wall where an iron panel retracted. Out slid a small pool, and the chair swung him upside down, dragging his head through the water.

  Another lever, and the chair stopped and rotated like a spit as a different wall panel opened. This time, he found himself turning inches above hot coals like a cannibal’s appetizer.

  Another lever, and a giant bell descended over the stopped chair, then clanged deafeningly.

  On and on it went, one absurd, Wile E. Coyote contraption after another appearing from behind the walls or out of the floor or ceiling. Periodically, some vomit would rain down as Speer and I took shelter beneath our umbrellas. It felt like it went on for hours. It was closer to 15 minutes.

  Finally, Harker returned the levers to their starting position, and Khaliq’s chair slid to a halt in front of us. The music died, the gaslights dimmed, and the rumbling machines quieted. Once again, a single finger of bright light spotlighted the prisoner.

  “Shall we go again?” Harker asked. “No need to worry about keeping me up all night. I can have coffee brought down.”

  Blood was coming down Khaliq’s nose. His voice sounded barely human. “No—I’ll tell you,” he gasped.

  2

  Blue Cliffs

  Fifteen minutes later, Speer was assembling his team in the courtyard. Twenty-five men in thundercloud blue uniforms milled around us, some checking their rifles, others simply smoking pipes or cigars. They looked like Civil War re-enactors to me, except I’m reasonably sure neither side in that war used cartridges as big as the ones in these men’s belts.

  On the periphery were what had to be pilots. The goggles, leather jackets, and general swagger were a dead giveaway. I could see the noses of smaller zeppelins peeking over the building’s roof.

  “Right,” Speer shouted, calling the group to attention. “The interrogation section has determined that the terrorist wanted by the Americans is hiding in the Blue Cliffs Industrial Airship Parks. While he is only one man, he has proven himself quite adept at explosives, so we will move on him in force. A Triclops will be taking up the rear, with two infantry squad carriages leading.

  “Infantry shall dismount a mile from Blue Cliffs and advance on foot through the nearby woods. Darkness will cover our approach. We would prefer to take him alive, and since smashing down trees, fences, and buildings tends to draw no small amount of attention, the Triclops will remain behind with the carriages until needed.

  “Additionally,” Speer continued, “we will have three pocket-zeps to keep an eye on things from above, and to fire upon anyone who tries to slip our cordon. Any questions?”

  Someone called from the back, “Is the girl coming?” Laughter followed.

  I’m pretty sure I was blushing. I refused to lower my eyes, though. Instead I kept my head up, which is why I could see the smirk on Speer’s lips.

  “With that keen eye for operational detail, Abernathy, I can’t believe you haven’t made sergeant yet. Special Agent Hoff is the United States’ eyes and ears on this caper. Here to make sure we primitives do a good job. Being that she represents a key trading partner, and that you would no doubt prefer your loved ones to travel by helium and not its more combustible cousin, yes, she will be joining us.” More laughter. “The Special Agent will accompany us in the infantry element. Sgt. Baylor will command the armored element.”

  “How will the sergeant know to assist us if he’s so far away?” Abernathy asked. I’d been wondering the same thing. Radio has been around for over a century, but I’d yet to see one, and didn’t know if it was kosher to Steam Pointe orthodoxy.

  “The way you queens will scream if anything goes wrong, I’ll be able to hear it even with my engines on,” Sgt. Baylor called out.

  “Or we’ll simply launch a flare,” Speer said. “And with that spirit of team cooperation, I yield the floor to our esteemed Triclops commander.”

  Baylor was a thickset man with a lumberjack beard. He looked like he’d have trouble catching anyone going faster than a slow jog, but if he did, it wouldn’t be hard for him to crush their trachea with those tree-trunk arms.

  “As Inspector Speer mentioned during his comedy routine,” Baylor began, “your orders are to take this terrorist alive. You’ll be shocked not-at-all to learn that he’s Arab. His name is Mohammad Talib. You’ll be given photographs to help identify him, but just remember that if he has a deeper suntan than you, that’s probably our man.” With that, Baylor began outlining the route this steam-driven lynch mob would take.

  The caravan rumbled out of the SIO’s courtyard just as the sun was beginning to set. The Triclops turned out to be a combination of locomotive and tank—an armored, self-propelled artillery piece with not one but three long barrels protruding out. Three small zeppelins
whispered off the building’s rooftop, and shadowed us from above.

  Inside the lead personnel carrier, I checked my Glock.

  Speer sat across from me. “Nervous?” he asked.

  “Excited.”

  “I just thought you might be anxious, given how you’re fidgeting with your sidearm.”

  “You don’t think it’s a good idea to check your equipment before an operation?”

  From his holster he pulled out his revolver to show me. It was large and long-barreled, like something a movie cowboy might use. Its black metal was inlaid with silver blazons. It could have been something from a museum except that the scratches made clear it had seen heavy use. “Unlike autoloading pistols, revolvers never jam.”

  “I’d rather have an autoloader’s higher capacity,” I said, ejecting the Glock’s magazine and brandishing its ten rounds in front of him. “Not to mention the quick reloading.”

  “We have rapid-loading as well. Plus, we enjoy more exotic bullet capabilities.” Speer opened his gun’s cylinder and pulled out one of its six bullets. The cartridge was thick as a .45, but longer than any magnum load I’d seen. “Jacketed hollow-point for ordinary circumstances,” he said. Then, depressing a button near the hammer, he detached the cylinder and put it aside.

  From a vest pocket, he withdrew another cylinder, except this one was gold. He took out a round, and I could see its red tip. “Mercury-tipped explosive for more trying circumstances,” he said. Then he reloaded the bullet, and attached the cylinder to his revolver.

  “You people use explosive bullets?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I’d heard that there isn’t much street crime here. Why such heavy artillery? I mean, why even have a three-gunned tank, much less feel the need to drive it around city streets?”

  For the first time, Speer looked uncomfortable. “You are correct on that point. Except in a few communities to the south, and some of the barrier islands, murders and property crimes are rare here. But when you have a people who have put the physical sciences on such a pedestal, who are taught from childhood that they can bend the universe with iron gears, steam engines, and Tesla coils, that the only limits to what they can achieve are their willpower and imagination . . . Well, perhaps it’s inevitable that such knowledge would be used by some for evil. These are what you might call supercriminals. My office protects the people from them.”