Court Martial (3 page)

Elijah tapped the surface of his desk in a frustrated attempt to burn off some of the nervous energy inside him. He knew that
another rescue attempt would be foolhardy and trying to kill James would be as dumb; he could only try to support his captured
Death Angel and never make the same mistake again by bragging to an underling. James knew that there were Death Angel chapters
in every one of the Nation’s mosques throughout the United States and also in military units throughout the world.

A soft knock on his office door brought the minister out of his deep thoughts. “Yes?”

The door opened. “Master, it’s almost time for the meeting.”

“Thank you. Give me a few more minutes.”

“Yes, Master.” The door closed softly.

Elijah opened his top desk drawer and removed the small notepad where he had written the list of names that James had given
him. Mohammed James was being shipped to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for trial by a general court-martial,
and the names on the list were the prime witnesses against him. Elijah ran his long fingernail down the column of names:

1. Salvador Garibaldi (POW with James)
   
2. *Spencer Barnett (POW with James)
   
3. Jeremiah McDonald (sergeant in Vietnam)
   

Elijah’s finger went back to the name
Spencer Barnett
and remained there He would start with him James had informed a brother in prison that this Barnett devilbeast was the prime
witness against him. Brother Karriem would be given a second chance.

Master Elijah pushed back his chair and stood up. He adjusted his clothes and inhaled a deep breath before walking to the
door and turning the knob. He transformed into the Supreme Minister of the Nation and smiled when the bright light from the
hallway struck his face. A group of very well-dressed men was waiting for him. Elijah nodded his recognition to each of them
and then led the procession down the hall to a set of double doors. He paused and allowed one of his bodyguards to push open
the heavy oak panels and then entered the room. A long conference table occupied most of the area and was surrounded on three
sides by high-backed chairs. Sitting off to one side of the room were three men dressed in black suits and wearing very somber
expressions. Master Elijah smiled and nodded at them. A dozen men sat in a row of chairs that lined the opposite wall. Brother
Karriem occupied the chair closest to the main attraction.

A pair of spotlights attached to the ceiling behind the long conference table intersected at a spot exactly 257 inches from
the front edge of the conference table; an inch for every year of black slavery in America.

The fourteen-year-old boy stood naked under the bright lights, his hands and feet tied tightly with leather thongs to a black-lacquered
seven-foot pole. The ceremonial pole had been uniquely attached to a threaded hole in a specially designed base plate in the
cement floor. A thick, clear plastic painter’s ground cloth had been spread out in a five-foot circle around the pole.

Master Elijah took his seat and stared at the terrified child as he waited for his special guests to take their seats. The
boy’s bright blue eyes sparkled in the spotlights. Elijah smiled. He could see the terror. The boy licked his lips and tried
to swallow. He had been told that if he spoke to anyone, he would be beaten. Master Elijah allowed his eyes to drift down
to the boy’s crotch. He could barely see any pubic hair, but that was due mostly to the child’s having almost white-blond
hair, which didn’t show up as well as black hair against white skin.

“Thank all of you for coming to this very special meeting.” Elijah spoke using his authority-filled voice. He was a master
at changing his voice to reach any audience, and this group of men would respond only to absolute authority without a glimmer
of human compassion in it. “Tonight we have three new members to present to a special gathering of Death Angel leaders from
across the United States....” Elijah moved his open hand around the table. “Minister Fiad from our Los Angeles mosque; Minister
Mohammed Aheem from New York; Minister Rhain-Rheem representing our Miami brothers at the Sun Mosque; and Minister Fard…”
Elijah did not like the idea of the man taking the name of Fard and allowed it to show in the tone of his voice and the pause,
“from our newest mosque and Death Angel chapter in Atlanta.”

Each of the men nodded slightly to the three men sitting together and then over at the assembled Death Angels from the Detroit
mosque.

The fourteen-year-old boy tried staring past the bright lights in his eyes to see who was talking. But he could see only the
three men sitting to his right side and a few of the men lining the wall to his left. A light coating of sweat covered his
forehead even though he stood naked in the cool basement room.

“Allow me to introduce our newest members.” Master Elijah held out his hand in the direction of the three somber pledges to
the secret society. “First, there is Henry Phillips, who chose to eliminate nine male devilbeasts.” Elijah blinked his eyes.
“And then we have Mohammed Mombutu, whose mother has been a very active member of this mosque since Master Wali Farad founded
this mosque… his
first
mosque here in 1931.” Elijah allowed that fact to sink in to the membership in the room. It was important for all of them
to remember where the Nation had been born and where the power rested. “Mohammed chose a more difficult task of exterminating
five white women of the devilbeasts.”

The room remained very quiet but a number of the assembled Death Angels nodded their heads in approval.

Elijah saw the nods and quickly added so that he could maintain his absolute control of the group,
“But we
have a very special new Death Angel joining us tonight… Red Wolf Moore. He asked for special permission to have a quota of
eight
devilbeast children instead of the
usual
four.... All of us here know that it takes more courage for a Death Angel to kill children than it does to kill the adult
male blue-eyed devils, and a score of
eight
just to become a member is commendable and I am going to personally present Red Wolf a brand-new Cadillac Seville for his
accomplishment! Brother Karriem from our Los Angeles mosque will take him outside after this meeting and show it to him—a
yellow one that will remind you, Brother Red Wolf, of the gutless devilbeasts.”

Karriem felt his stomach tighten, but he didn’t dare let it show on his face that he cared if Master Elijah gave his car away.

“As a special treat tonight in honor of our guests, Red Wolf has provided us with a Polish devilbeast he found hitchhiking
from Hamtramck to his freedom in California.... I must say that I like the devilbeasts’ newfound love for running away from
their families to join the
love
cults out west.” Elijah’s remark brought a couple of muffled laughs from those sitting around the
conference
table. All of them knew that the hippie movement was filling the highways with runaways and the pickings were extremely
easy for Death Angels. Elijah added to his comment, “By the way, it should be noted that Red Wolf also got his quota the
hard way.
He got his spawn from hell in the northern suburbs right under the noses of the devil-beast police!” Master Elijah smiled
and looked over at Brother Karriem. “That is
eight
devilbeast children for his Death Angel wings.... This one is a poor Polack, but Red Wolf was pressed for time and had to
get something
locally.”
Elijah nodded and Karriem stood up. “Brother Karriem has some special entertainment for us tonight.”

Elijah’s two bodyguards checked the heavy drapes that covered the walls of the basement room that were designed to muffle
even the loudest noise.

Karriem walked over to the child and gently brushed the long strands of fine blond hair out of the boy’s eyes. He smiled at
the terrified child and then smiled back at the assembled Death Angels, whom he couldn’t see because of the bright lights
shining in his eyes. Karriem reached into his back pocket and removed a razor-sharp hawk-billed linoleum knife. He reached
over and tried grabbing the fourteen-yearolds scrotum, but fear and the cool basement room had drawn the child’s testicles
and penis up tight against his stomach. The boy tried looking down to see what the huge black man was going to do to him.
He hadn’t seen the fat blade of the knife yet.

Karriem dug with his fingers to find the boy’s testicles.

“You’re hurting me.” The scared adolescent’s voice was the only sound in the room.

One of the assembled Death Angels choked as he tried swallowing a laugh.

Karriem tugged on the boy’s scrotum and then used the knife to slash it away from the child’s body. Surprisingly, there was
very little blood. The boy’s veins withdrew back inside his body and the first scream rushed out of his lungs.

Brother Karriem turned around to face the bright lights and held up the adolescent’s scrotum and testicles for everyone to
see, then he threw them down on the plastic dropcloth.

Elijah nodded his approval. “The devilbeasts have been castrating the black man for centuries… now it is
our
turn!”

Karriem stepped back from the screaming child and allowed each of the assembled Death Angels who had been sitting with him
against the wall to take a turn at mutilating the white teenager.

Master Elijah watched with his eyes half-closed as the boy’s mouth opened and closed in silent agony. He always loved watching
the victims die and he loved hearing them scream. An evil grin crossed his face as the boy died. He would make the devilbeast
named Hitler look like a friend of mankind before he was through.

The only problem he had was Mohammed James, who could ruin everything if the devilbeasts got him to talk.

The nurse smiled as she pushed open the door to the private room. She always smiled when she saw the sparkle in the fire-blue
eyes of her patient in room 131. He was special. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to show any partiality to her patients,
but Spencer Barnett had won her heart in one gigantic, emotional, love-filled explosion.

Spencer Barnett had been shipped directly to her ward from a prisoner-of-war camp in Laos. He had been in very bad physical
condition when he first arrived at Walter Reed Army Hospital, but a month of intensive care by some of the best medical people
in the business had made a dramatic improvement in the young recon soldier. The nurse smiled again when she thought about
the first time she had seen him lying on the hospital bed in a horribly emaciated condition with his body covered with infected
insect bites and jungle ulcers. What drew the smile from the woman was that even though his body had been tortured and broken,
he wore a smile in his sleep that was caused mostly by the natural curl located at each corner of his mouth; it looked as
if he was constantly smiling over a very private joke.

She pushed the door all the way open and entered the room beaming her best morning smile. Spencer lay on the white hospital
sheets drenched in sweat. The curl was still there on his mouth but the deep wrinkles across his forehead told the nurse that
he was in trouble. She ran over to the side of his bed and felt for a pulse. Her free hand rested on the soaked sheets. Spencer
moaned and thrashed his head from side to side, sending pellets of sweat from the ends of his hair across the front of her
clean uniform. She ran from the room to the nurses’ station to get help. The staff had been expecting Spencer to have a malaria
relapse. The virus had been detected during a blood test when he arrived at the medical center. The doctors had hoped that
Spencer’s body would have healed from the tortures in the prisoner-of-war camp before the malaria surfaced again. But it had
come, and Corporal Barnett was fighting for his life.

He moaned again as the malaria fever attacked his body. The moan came from inside, created by the images that were scarred
forever in his brain tissue.

He was dirty and naked, with his arms wrapped around his drawn-up legs and his back pressed against the bamboo bars of a low
cage. She lay coiled up watching him from the opposite side of her pen. The sun slipped behind the tall trees that bordered
the Montagnard village and instantly he felt the chill against his naked skin. She flicked out her tongue to test the air.
She too felt the change in the temperature and slowly adjusted her coils. Spencer rested his chin on his knees and tried recalling
everything Colonel Garibaldi had told him about large snakes.

The nurse returned to the room followed by a team of trauma medics. Spencer’s personal psychiatrist had heard the emergency
call for room 131 and was only a couple of steps behind the trauma team.

Spencer moaned again in his delirium and spoke just as the nurse reached his bedside. “Get the fuck away from me, bitch!”
The nurse gasped and raised her hand to cover the shock that was expressed by her open mouth.

“He’s not talking to you, Mary. He’s delirious,” the psychiatrist said to the nurse over her shoulder.

“Oh…” She felt reassured but was still worried over Spencer. He looked very ill.

The huge python started crawling next to the side of the cage toward Barnett. He held his breath.

“Oxygen!” The doctor standing over Spencer reached back for the face mask and slipped it over the lower part of the soldier’s
face. Spencer still held his breath. “What the hell is he doing?”

The snake tested the air again. Spencer stretched out his leg, planning on kicking her head if she got too close, and then
he remembered what Colonel Garibaldi had told him about
looking
like an object that was too large for her to swallow. His foot was
bite
size for the thirty-six-foot-long reticulated python, and he drew it back again against his body and watched as she continued
her slow approach. A thin rod came through the side of the cage about an inch in front of the snake’s nose. Spencer took a
breath.