“This is a form of evil, in my book – evil dressed up as a higher morality, as a superior or even supreme morality…In your heads, you’re still right. You remain right and will always be right. It doesn’t matter what happened, you’re forever right.” – David Guterson, The Final Case.
By Rey Moreno
He is a big presence in our street but nobody has seen him. Many rumours are circulating: he is a fighter of the underdogs; a religious man with many wives and big families; he is a rich man, disgruntled with his wealth and becomes a rebel; he is incorruptible but ruthless; he is evil-incarnate; he is elusive and full of secrets; he exudes loyalty and passion; he is a legend and a mystery. For now, though, he lives in this three-storey building with a rooftop in a compound fenced by ten-foot tall of cement structures laced with broken glasses on top.
My name is Ali Mehta. My friends and I, once in a while, saw two rugged and tough-looking men inconspicuously patrolling the ground. Sometimes, if our timing was right, we glimpsed a small head on the rooftop walking around in circles in the early morning or late evening. We heard children playing inside the compound but we were not sure how many. One time we asked them if they could play with us but we were shooed by an angry adult voice. They might be from a different country since we didn’t understand any words they said.
But why stay here, we wondered. Our curiosity was getting piqued more and more. My friends and I plotted to solve the mystery once and for all. The plan was simple. We would intentionally throw our soccer ball inside the compound and when the servant came back home from the market, we would force ourselves at the open gate and tell him we were just retrieving it. Of course, we were thwarted before swarming the gate because the soccer ball flew back to us. The following day our parents punished us for the misadventure. We were confounded by the quick response from our sworn enemies (we called them that now) but were not deterred. We had to be more intelligent and cunning.
Our next plan called for patience and methodical strategy. We would have a hidden observation post that would be manned in rotation throughout the day. The observer would document any movements in and out of the compound including the time and people. We kept this up for two months and filled five spiral notebooks. We got bored and gave up. I kept the notebooks for safekeeping. I never thought they would be of interest to anybody except us.
The school break was over. My friends and I were back to annoying our teachers and classmates. Our curiosity of the mysterious old man had vanished into thin air. But when I came home one day, I saw my father talking a stranger. When they saw me my father beckoned me to approach them. He told me to answer all the questions the stranger might ask. The stranger never introduced himself and immediately spewed questions after questions like a machine gun. At the end, he forewarned me about the dangers to my family if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. That’s precisely what I did because I loved my family deeply. He also confiscated our notebooks of two-month labour in patience and ingenuity.
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I am Major Preston, a highly-trained special force officer. I have been tasked to track down the elusive old man for almost a decade now but he’s so adept in hiding. The old man is the head of a terrorist organization that has successfully initiated a series of bombings and attacks that killed innocent civilians. He has no qualms of people being displaced or maimed as long as his violent objectives are met. Even if children are impacted, to him they are just collateral damages for his righteous ideology. There is no conscious evil or harmful effect as long as victory is achieved for the “just” cause.
We got a break when we found out from interrogating captured members of the old man’s group of a courier who was a close and trusted aide to the old man. We discovered his real name and connected him to be residing in that luxurious three-storey building. We sent a drone to take pictures. There came out an image of an old man pacing around the open-air balcony atop the building. He was of the same height and built as the old man we had been hunting for ten frustrating years. We called him The Pacer.
We started surveilling the place and got spooked when young kids, with so much time in their hands, did their own surveillance as well. We let them had their fun until they stopped. We got to know who the leader of these kids was. I paid him a visit and scared the living daylight out of him. He wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
We began our planning and training to capture The Pacer. We built a scale model of the entire compound. Our intelligence gatherings estimated there were five women and twenty children living in the compound. We guessed The Pacer was on the third floor for easy access to the balcony to do his daily walking routine. We also knew that the neighbourhood was densely populated, and not far away, a military base and police stations were located. So if we had to raid the compound, we had to be precise and quick.
The president gave the green light to proceed with the mission we dubbed as the Operation Neptune’s Spear.
The Black Hawk helicopter named Chalk 1 was supposed to hover over a designated spot in the compound for my men to climb down in a rope near the main house. But it was having a problem, its tail spinning and striking the compound wall. Chalk 1 crushed outside the compound without killing anyone.
Chalk 2, where I was riding, was in a better shape. It landed on the compound without incident. My men and I moved fast and entered the building. Explosions and rounds of machine guns ensued. Bodies fell down. Children were screaming. Women and children were being used as shields. My men were clearing every room and searching for the main target. I went straight to the third floor. As guessed, The Pacer was hiding on the third floor. When he was found out, his last act of cowardice was to grab a woman as his protection from being shot. I shot him anyway above his eyebrow, splitting his face open. While he was on the floor, I shot him on the head to make sure he’d never cause trouble again.
I took pictures of The Pacer for confirmation and put him on a body bag. My men ransacked the building and loaded everything important into the bags. We had been in the compound for over twenty minutes. We exploded Chalk 1 to destroy evidence. Several people in the neighbourhood were now milling outside the compound. We told them it was a military exercise. Our rides were ready. It’s time to go.
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A place at one time in its history becomes famous for its notoriety. Salem in Massachusetts for one is known for prosecuting women accused of witchcraft between February 1692 and May 1693. There were more than two hundred people that were subjected to the witch trials, resulting in thirty people found guilty, nineteen of them were hanged. Other notorious places famous for exterminating around six million Jews between 1941 and 1945 include: Auschwitz-Berkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Trebilinka.
The old man never intended his secret hideaway to be his last. He was making himself invisible to the world, biding his time for the next great havoc he might instill, not the pacing he took every day. Though his death may not end terrorism at all, it may still inspire others to take his mantle.
A year later, Ali’s neighbourhood became a tourist spot. The compound is now being managed by the Ministry of Tourism. People can see the inside of the three-storey building for a fee. But before they could make profit out of the old man’s death, Ali entered the building right after the raid and the soldiers were gone. It was so messy with many things broken, burnt and destroyed. The walls were riddled with bullets. Spills of blood stained the floors. Beds were tossed upside down. Drawers emptied of their contents. Curtains ripped but still hanging. Piles of debris were all over the stairways. Ali went to the third floor and into the open-air balcony. He paced in circles just like the old man. He felt the breeze in his face. He saw the early morning light with the promise of a new adventure. He could sense the old man’s presence. The aura of his legend flashed before Ali’s eyes. Then there he was in front of Ali like a ghost, full of wrath and evilness. He seemed to be saying to Ali, “Take the mantle! Take the mantle! Take the mantle.” Ali got scared and ran out of the building as fast as he could and went home. He bumped into his real old man, embraced him tightly and cried hard. “I couldn’t be like him,” Ali said. “Violence begets more violence. A cycle of madness is no way to live. Only love is the answer.”
8 March 2023