Guardian Sniper Mira Longbow takes on Evil In Amsterdam
DIE BY WIRE – CHAPTER ONE
Amsterdam
Debate thundered through the black iron gates of the Agnietenkapel and sprawled into the Oudezijds Voorburgwal.
Arguments about God, evil and religion shattered the university district’s late-evening calm. Age-old questions with no answers ricocheted among the antique brick facades of lean, tall houses that stood shoulder to-shoulder along the elm-lined canal still bright with the long summer daylight that lingered into the evening at Amsterdam’s northern latitude.
Surrounded in the academic scrum, Mira Longbow clung to her backpack, following her students through the gate. Her bright copper hair fanned across the shoulders of a jade wrap-over top with a chaste décolleté that did little to obscure the ample bust that rarely failed to attract men’s eyes. Her tanned, well-exercised legs contrasted with a modestly above-the-knee white cotton skirt.
In moments, the enthusiastic assembly flooded a narrow, brick-paved lane lined with battered bicycles and sub-compact cars parked along the canal.
A tow truck lifted a tiny car from the canal, another athletic casualty of “Smart Car tipping.” Beyond, a water taxi trailed a brownish-green wake through the dense murky water. Behind it came a skiff provisioned with an outboard motor, three dreadlocked adults, a spot-lit Jamaican flag and a small bale of dried vegetation mizzling off the unmistakable aroma of marijuana. A string of tiny white lights outlined a sign: “Mendocino Gold: 24-Hour Delivery.” A mobile phone number followed.
Mira watched both boats slow at the Grimburgwal bridge, and marveled at the improbably fortunate disasters that had dropped her down right at this place at this moment.
Disaster one: the errant jihadi missile in Al-Kut.
The last time Mira had seen Jackson Day, he had already died and been revived three times by EMTs in the medevac Blackhawk. They told her Day would never have survived had she had not thrown herself over his head and neck. When she tried to tell them a third soldier had pushed her, they smiled knowingly.
“We’ve met the third soldier. Be thankful.”
Falling debris smashed both of Day’s legs. But the lethal roulette of falling concrete let Mira off with a separated left shoulder.
Back then, back when she still believed in God, Mira considered the third soldier a sort of guardian angel. During her brief recovery, she read books detailing the experiences of hundreds of people who had been saved by a mysterious third person: Charles Lindberg, John Muir, astronauts, mountain climbers, explorers. All testified that at times of ultimate peril, at the point of death, a mysterious stranger had arrived, helped them to safety then vanished along with the danger.
But now? Mira dismissed the third soldier — and God — as delusions of desperation.
Disaster two: The company commander recommended her for a Silver Star for her bravery in Al-Kut.
Disaster three: In less than 30 days, the Barrett .50 the Army had finally put in her hands had became so effective al-Sadr placed a $100,000 bounty on her head.
Disaster four: Her notoriety and 217 confirmed kills brought her to the attention of the Pentagon. A court martial convicted her of dereliction of duty for failing to perform her duties as an MP. The kangaroo court offered Mira a reduction in rank and an immediate honorable discharge.
Instead of contrition, Mira spoke her mind.
“Muqtada al-Sadr thanks you,” she told a panel of rear-echelon officers whose closest encounter with a Purple Heart had come from paper cuts. “Will you be splitting Sadr’s $100,000 reward among yourselves? Or will you share it with the families of soldiers who died because you get rid of people who could have saved their lives?”
A baritone voice now shattered Mira’s reverie.
“Innocent babies are born with AIDS, good people are wiped out in tsunamis alongside rapists and murderers. What kind of God allows that?”
What kind of God, indeed?
The words knifed through Mira’s heart.
Disaster five: She arrived home from Iraq just in time to watch her sister and newborn son die from a grotesque and painful flesh-eating infection from antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
“Karma,” said a drowsy, demi-stoned voice behind her. “Like the Buddhists and Hindus say. Maybe the baby did something bad in a previous life.”
Go to hell, Mira thought.
Disaster six: Two months later, Mira discovered her mother and father dead in bed, wrapped in one last loving embrace. Both had suffered for months. Unable to afford medical treatment, incapable of enduring the gathering pain and each unwilling to live without the other, they had found peace in an overdose of tranquilizers.
Mira buried them in a quiet Elmira cemetery.
For weeks, Mira drifted through life in a continual dark introspection that led her to conclude that God wasn’t dead. Just absent, didn’t give a damn.
But evil certainly did.
Evil was a certainty she could believe in. And something worth further study. So she transferred her college credits and uncanny language skills to Cornell and completed a bachelor’s degree in Near Asian languages and a doctorate in philosophy.
Towards the end of her senior year, Mira also stopped believing she’d visit her post office box one afternoon and find a stack of letters from Jackson Day. She let go of that fantasy, but could not banish the faded-denim blue of his eyes, the irises all shot through with explosions of gold that radiated from the pupils.
“It rains on the just and on the unjust!” Someone in the seminar croud shouted.
“Why?”
Why indeed?
A well-received book describing how she had lost her faith led her to the University of Amsterdam to conduct a three-week seminar series that had filled the lecture hall with a standing-room-only crowd of the faithful and unfaithful, atheists and believers, agnostics and the intellectually curious.
“Verily we have created man in a life of pain, toil and trial,” said a tall, bearded man in front of Mira. He wielded a green and gold leather-bound Qu’ran. Yaqub, a young Muslim whose decency and rational thought were not contagious enough. Dressed in a suit and tie as always, he craned his head back and said, “The Prophet
— peace be upon him — tells us that suffering is his way of testing our faith, our total submission to Allah.” He
nodded confidently.
To Mira’s left, a woman, from Rotterdam, responded. “God has a plan; we’re just incapable of seeing it.”
Leslie, an Anglican priest, wrestled with her own doubts. “It’s a mystery we must struggle with.”
“Suffering comes from a weakness in our devotion to God,” said a reedy, middle-aged man with a yarmulke. Ari.
“Well said, my brother of the book!” Yaqub agreed.
Yaqub stood out in remarkable contrast to the radical Islamists who dominated Amsterdam’s Muslim community. Most had approved of the grotesque shooting, stabbing and near-decapitation mutilation murder of Theo Van Gogh. Imams in the Old South section of Amsterdam condoned the mutilation killing of a man who had obviously insulted Islam. Islamic organizations mostly followed their imams’ leads, or remained silent, thus offering tacit approval of the killer’s ranting letter left pinned to Van Gogh’s chest with a dagger.
“Hund pook!” Cursed a lean, muscular Dutchman who towered over the group. Jan. “A baby with AIDS or one dangling from a bloody bayonet is pure innocent suffering, the pain and suffering of the totally righteous. What kind of God would allow that?”
Mira’s mob roiled its way across the Damstraat, heedless of oncoming traffic. Horns and curses failed to bank the debate’s rising temperature.
“But the Bible says Job — ”
“If God created everything, then God created evil.”
“Evil is God’s equal!”
“Karma! We are our own evil!”
The moveable debate sent tourists and other pedestrians hustling for the safety of parked cars, doorways
and steps.
“God is testing us!”
The throng surged into Zeedijk, the red light district, then crossed to the northwest bank of the Oude Zijds Voorburgwal and made straight for Mira’s second-favorite rijstafel restaurant.
Near the Oude Kerk, Mira stopped.
“Hold on!” She turned waved her arms. The crowd urged her forward several steps then stopped and fell silent.
“Tomorrow — ” She looked around at the faces. “Change in tomorrow’s last class.”
Frowns and faces full of curiosity.
“An automatic ‘A’ for anyone who can reconcile the following three propositions:
One, Evil Exists.”
“Two, God is benevolent.”
“Three, God is omnipotent.”
“To get your ‘A’ you must prove that all three are true or that all are false.”
The throng fell silent. Implications played across the shadows of their faces. Into the vacuum of their ensuing silence, rushed the clatter of traffic, footsteps, nightclub hawkers and the shouted whispers of hash sellers.
Then, something new. A mounting chorus of footsteps. Running, sprinting, louder, closer.
Shrieks of righteous fury ripped through the evening.
Mira recognized the voice. She turned, saw the same hijab-clad woman who had disrupted the seminar’s first day. When Mira had suggested the Qu’ran was not the inerrant word of Allah, the woman had unleashed a vitriolic tirade.
“Blasphemy!” The woman had screamed. “Blasphemers must die.”
Then she stalked out and had not returned.
But now, the woman hurtled toward Mira, her eyes shone with an otherworldly, drug-induced glaze Mira had last seen through a Leupold scope in Al-Kut.
Instinctively, the crowd parted for the shrieking dervish.
Spittle dried at the corner of the woman’s mouth. Light strobed off the well-honed cutting edge of a long, broad knife.
