The Breath of God. Jeffrey Small

hours at the call center job he’d taken when he’d first returned from overseas three years ago had sucked, but the pay was decent. His long-range plans developed slowly, but as they began to crystallize in his mind, he realized that he would need funds to accomplish his goals. He may have left the Army, but he was still a soldier—only now he was working for a higher power than the U.S. government. He was a soldier for God. But then one day, six months into the job, his company announced that their call center was moving to Chennai, India. They offered to retrain many of the employees but told Tim he wasn’t “a good fit going forward.” His penchant for emailing the other employees his political and religious ideology had resulted in more than one reprimand from his manager. He was happy to leave behind the bureaucracy of the call center, not to mention their bullshit sensitivity training classes. Shortsighted idiots, all of them, he remembered.

      He had next moved to Birmingham to take a job working in the IT department of the UAB Hospital. That job lasted eight months after similar misunderstandings, plus accusations of missing medications and supplies. But those accusations were never proved.

      Tim glanced at the glowing dial of his watch. Just under three hours. Not bad for sticking to the speed limit. The last thing he needed in his moment of glory was for the police to catch him speeding in a stolen van, especially one that contained a two-hundred-gallon plastic tank filled with ANFO in the strippedout rear passenger area. He and Johnny had stolen the black minivan just after midnight from the long-term parking lot of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, driven it to their hunting trailer in the woods in the Sipsey Wilderness Area, removed the rear passenger seats, and then installed the tank. This had taken just under an hour, just as Tim had rehearsed it several times. Tim had been hesitant about including Johnny in his plans, but the simple doofus was good at taking orders. Even better, he was a true believer—a lifelong member of Reverend Brady’s New Hope Church.

      Unlike others Tim had teamed up with over the years, Johnny sat with rapt attention as Tim explained the things that weren’t taught in churches because the ministers were afraid of offending the fragile sensibilities of their congregations. Just yesterday, he had explained to his groupie the tenets of British Israelism. Like much of his knowledge, Tim had uncovered this fascinating tidbit during the hours he spent every evening researching on the Internet while others slept.

      Tim recounted for Johnny how, after the ten lost tribes of Israel were freed from their captivity by the Assyrians, they migrated to Europe rather than returning to Israel. Therefore it was people like him and Johnny—white American Christians, through their European forefathers—who were the original Old Testament Jews that God had picked as his chosen people. Those who called themselves Jewish today were actually the progeny of Cain. When Tim had read this account, he knew in his heart its truth. He had always felt that he was chosen, and now he understood the history behind that feeling.

      After Tim had read Reverend Brady’s new book for the second time last month, he emailed the minister links to this same research. Brady’s book had spoken to Tim, especially the predictions that the End Times were near. When Tim read the chapter about the Book of Revelation predicting that the rebuilding of Babylon would occur before the Second Coming, a chill had crept along his spine. Ancient Babylon was located in modern-day Iraq, and Tim had been part of an operation in that area and had seen firsthand the American efforts to rebuild the city. An hour south of Baghdad, the U.S. military had established Camp Babylon early in the occupation. Tim had been shocked to learn that the huge palace behind the high wall in the center of the city was Saddam Hussein’s attempt to reconstruct Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. He had relayed all this to Brady in subsequent emails, but he hadn’t yet received a reply. The reverend was a very busy man.

      Tim glanced in the rearview mirror at the tank in the back of the van. He had practiced for the past two weeks getting the mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, or ANFO, correct. The recipes Tim had downloaded from the Internet each differed on the proper ratio of fertilizer to fuel. He knew that fertilizer alone, which he’d been accumulating and storing in a mini-warehouse for the past three months, could be detonated with a blasting cap, creating a powerful explosion. But pure fertilizer tended to absorb moisture, making detonation unpredictable. His mission wouldn’t tolerate unpredictability. Adding the fuel oil in a precise amount solved that issue. He wished that he’d had access to C-4 like he did in his Army days, but he was confident that the ANFO would be just as effective.

      Reaching to the dashboard for his smartphone, which also doubled as a GPS receiver, Tim noted that the blinking dot of his destination was just a few blocks away. The campus streets were quiet, as he’d expected them to be at four AM on a weeknight. When he slowed to turn onto Clifton Road, he again caught the headlights in his rearview mirror. The vehicle tailing him followed his turn into the heart of the Emory campus.

      He clicked the radio off. He needed to concentrate. Passing the sign for the Rollins School of Public Health, he took the immediate left onto Michael Street and then parked the van on the right curb in front of the complex of beige buildings that made up the main campus of the Centers for Disease Control. He immediately cut the ignition and the lights. Tim glanced into the rearview mirror and smiled. Johnny was no longer behind him. He’d turned his Ford truck onto Houston Mill Road where he would wait, just as Tim had instructed him to do. If they were being watched, no one would’ve guessed that they worked together.

      Tim clicked off the phone and stuffed it into his pocket. From the backpack, he then removed the electronic timer. He’d preset the timer for one hour. Tim then searched the floor of the front seat for anything that might have fallen out of his pack.

      “No evidence left behind,” he mumbled. The heat from the explosion should incinerate everything, but those FBI forensic guys were crafty.

      Next Tim leaned between the two front seats and attached the electronic timer to the two wires coming from the large tank. Building the timer had been child’s play. When the red LED lights on the timer reached zero, an electrical pulse would travel from the battery across the wires to the detonation charges duct-taped to the container of ANFO. The results would be spectacular.

      He reached a gloved finger for the green button on the timer. Then the itching started. At first Tim felt a slight tingle on his left forearm. Quickly it spread to his right. His fucking eczema. He’d applied his lotion when he’d suited up earlier, but it didn’t matter. The tingle morphed into a full-fledged burn. Tim imagined the scaly surface of his skin cracking like clay mud drying in the summer sun. The desire to scratch became overpowering, but he didn’t have time for that. The streets were clear and the buildings dark. Clenching his jaw, he stabbed at the timer.

      1:00:00.

      59:59.

      Before opening the van door, Tim confirmed that the van’s interior dome light was off.

      57:48.

      57:47.

      Stepping into the night, he blended into the shadows in his black cargo pants and black wool sweater. He was well-concealed, but what was he thinking wearing wool? He pulled off his gloves, stuffed them in his pockets, and raked his fingernails across his forearms as he hurried by the buildings that housed the CDC.

      Atlanta was such a target-rich environment of sinfulness—strip clubs, adult bookstores, CNN, Hindu temples and Islamic mosques, the multiple liberal universities—that deciding which of these to hit first had been difficult. He’d ultimately picked the CDC because of the agency’s global research on women’s health and reproductive issues, which Tim understood was a code for abortion. Then there were the various genetic experiments and the research into Ebola and smallpox as potential biological weapons that he was sure also occurred there. This quasi-governmental organization is an abomination, he thought. These arrogant scientists were playing God, even though they didn’t believe in him. That its main campus was embedded in the heart of Emory University, one of the most liberal schools in the Southeast, was an added bonus. He would show them. His mission’s purpose was not loss of life but something more powerful: fear.

      Tim picked up his pace, continuing to block out the itching with sheer force of will. Tonight would start a new and more purposeful chapter in his life. He found Johnny’s