The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 27)

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version    Mrs. Cowsnofsky was furious. The worst that could possibly have happened had happened. Aisha had been snatched from under her nose! She started across the restroom toward Henrietta. ‘Hank’ was still sitting on the floor wiping at his bloody nose with the back of his hand. There was blood on his blouse and on the floor around him.   A noise came from one of the stalls, a muffled cry for help, perhaps. Mrs. C had always been a woman of action, that’s what Mr. C liked about her. She had played lacrosse in college and not on the girl’s team. She leapt toward the stall and tore open the door. It was Aisha and she wasn’t alone. A woman in a burqa was standing behind the ten-year-old, an arm wrapped around the child’s waist, a hand clamped over her mouth. Someone cursed. It must have been Mrs. C. Aisha bit at the hand covering her mouth. The woman in the burqa yelped and shoved Aisha at Mrs. C, drawing a gun from somewhere inside her burqa at the same time. But Mrs. C was too quick for the pistol-packing momma. She stepped around Aisha, grabbed the woman by the arm and tossed her across the restroom as if she had read and understood every word Mike Hammer had ever written on how to safely dispose of creeps, thugs and gunmen without working up a sweat. Neat! She picked up the creeps gun. It was a Beretta.   The woman in the burqa had lost her headscarf in her mad tumble across the tiles and with her baldhead and Levis jeans exposed to the world she proved she was anything but a woman. Mrs. C was not surprised. She waved the Beretta at Mr. Burqa in a manner that could be considered threatening. Then, while winking at a frightened Aisha, she took Henrietta by the arm and helped the semi-stunned cross dresser to his feet. “Let’s get out of here!” she said. “I’ve got a cab waiting!”   The man in the burqa was furious! To be manhandled by a woman, to be tossed about like a grain of sand in a windstorm by someone who possessed nothing in herself, to be shamed by a dhimmi woman in a privy was something that could not have been foretold! No Mujahideen could have suffered a greater insult! He glared at Mrs. C—1,400 years of Islamic Jihad welling up from the depths of hell; she would pay for this!   Mrs. C herded Aisha and Henrietta from the restroom, handed the Beretta to a startled waitress. “You can shoot the first person through that door, honey, and God will forgive you,” she said.   The waitress dropped the Beretta. It hit the floor with a resounding clang.   The cab was waiting at the curb in front of the restaurant. Mrs. C shoved Henrietta and Aisha into the back seat and squeezed in beside them.   “Where to, ladies?” said the cabbie.   “Where to…” echoed Mrs. Cowsnofsky. The hackles rose on the back of her neck. Something was wrong here. This wasn’t the cabbie she had asked to wait in front of the restaurant! It was the same cab all right but not the same cabbie! “Sweet Mother Jesus!” she muttered under her breath. What the hell was going on?   There was a commotion on the sidewalk and the taxi was quickly surrounded by what Deputy Chief Constable Stumble would have said were ‘Asians.’   “What is this?” demanded Mrs. C.   The cabbie looked into the back seat. It was Mohammed Atta. “Get rid of the old one,” he said. “We’ll take the younger one with us.”   The back doors were yanked open, and one of Stumble’s Asians grabbed Mrs. C by the arm. Aisha screamed and Henrietta kicked at a man that tried to push his way into the cab. There were too many for Mrs. C to contend with and she was dragged squalling and kicking from the back seat and flung across the sidewalk. This had never happened to her before, not even in a game of lacrosse with the boys who, after all, were gentlemen. She lost most of the skin on her left elbow and the knees from her pantyhose. She rolled over, struggled to her feet, her fists clenched. She was ready for anything but it was too late! The taxi with Aisha and Henrietta crowded into the back seat with their abductors had already disappeared down the street! This was not going to sit well with Bernard Piffy!   “Joe’s going to kill me for this,” groaned Cowsnofsky. “Henrietta was his favorite nephew.”   Joe, of course, was owner of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club, the man more responsible, perhaps, than any other, for hiring Bernard Piffy to track down the notorious Dallas cabdriver, Yaser Abdel Said, who had murdered his daughters, Sarah and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage and then ostensibly fled to England.   Piffy studied Mrs. Cowsnofsky. “Don’t blame yourself, Mrs. C,” he said. “You did as well as you could under the circumstances.”   “Yeah, honey bun,” said Cowsnofsky. “It wasn’t your fault.”   Mrs. C massaged her skinned knees. Tears streaked her face. She had been crying on and off for at least a half hour. No matter what they said it was her fault. She had failed miserably in the face of rampant Islamic absolutism. She would never forgive herself—not today, not tomorrow, not the next day.   There wasn’t much Piffy could do about Aisha. The Islamo-fascist thugs that had grabbed her off the street had the law on their side—Sharia Law, Common Law, Tom Jefferson’s Law, Barney Rubble's Law; every law but that of Judge Roy Bean and Rooster Cogburn and they were dead and buried, gone with high-button shoes, Winston Churchill, Dr. No and Maggie Thatcher. It was the 21^st Century—a strange and perplexing time. Britain was going down the cultural drain. The handful of Brits still willing to die for the Queen and country had less chance of prevailing in their desperate rearguard action against the encroachments of Islamo-fascism than Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne had had of successfully retreating from Saratoga. But damn it, if he, Bernard Piffy, couldn’t do anything about Aisha he could do something about Henrietta and he wouldn’t go crawling to some obsequious government timeserver like Deputy Chief Constable Stumble—no, sir, not to Stumble; not to James Bond, not to Andy Capp, not to the Queen. He would rely on himself!   And he had an idea of where he could find Henrietta. They would take Aisha to her father and where they took Aisha they would have to take Henrietta. So he had time. He would go to the Madrassas. They would be there. It had suffered only minor damage in their botched explosion attempt and was still in operation. And he would go alone—this was his mess. Sure, sure, he could hear Little Joey whispering in his ear, “But, Shane, there’s too many!” Well… maybe…   Piffy looked at Cowsnofsky. “I want you to do me a favor,” he said. “I want you to call Deputy Chief Constable Stumble in exactly one hour. Tell him I’m ready to surrender. Tell him I’ve got the girl and I’m at Ahmad’s Madrassas.”   Cowsnofsky blinked. “You’re kidding?’ he said.   “Call him,” said Piffy.   Cowsnofsky was cautious about committing himself. “And where are you going to be?” he demanded.   “I’ll be there,” said Piffy. “I’ll be somewhere in the environs.”   “Are you sure you don’t need any help?” insisted Cowsnofsky. “I’m a pretty good man with my fists. Mrs. C can make the phone call.”   “No, you’re staying here,” Piffy said emphatically.   Cowsnofsky was a hard man to convince but with the help of Mrs. C he agreed to stay behind and hold down the fort.   Piffy took a cab to the Madrassas. As the vehicle pulled up to the curb across the street from the squat two-storied structure Piffy could see that Plan A was obsolete. Stumble was already there. And so were Anjem Choudary and Red Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London and currently adviser on urban planning to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. There were others—two score and ten. They were holding a farewell party for Mohammed Ahmad. He would be leaving shortly for Gaza. Aisha was there, red-eyed and silent. There was no Henrietta.   Piffy mingled with the guests. He bumped into Maliki al-Maliki.   “Glad you could come, Mr. Piffy,” said the unctuous al-Maliki,   “Wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” said Piffy.   He wandered about for a while; sampled the hors d’oeuvres; then asked a waiter for directions to the boy’s room. There was a cell in the basement beneath the Madrassas and if Henrietta were in the building that is where he would be.   He slipped away from the crowd into the classroom section of the building. The basement door was locked but it was no match for Piffy’s Tenth Anniversary Shell Scott Pick and Skeleton Key ring. He paused to look at his watch—in another fifteen minutes Cowsnofsky would be calling Stumble on his cell phone; a lot of good that would do. He eased through the door.   They must have been waiting for him. A man came hobbling toward him from out of the gloom. It was Hani Hanjour. Piffy knocked him down, found a gun in his pocket. That was as far as he got. The lights came on before he could straighten up and in the sudden harsh glare he saw Mohammed Atta holding a gun to the side of Henrietta’s head.   (To be continued)